I sat forward and put my hand on his forearm. “Lincoln, stop it. What are you trying to prove? You know you shouldn’t talk like that here. It’s offensive and totally inappropriate.”
Instead of answering, he put a thumb in Greer’s peach ice cream. Sticking it in his mouth, he sucked the finger. It was so incongruous seeing this mess of a kid sucking his thumb. He closed his eyes in exaggerated delight. I realized it was the first time in all our years together I had seen him make that innocent gesture.
“Lincoln! What are you doing? What is the matter with you? Why do you make trouble every time you are coming in now?” Ibrahim marched over, seething. He was a kind man but had had enough of the boy’s behavior. Our son had caused a number of scenes and near-fights here in the last two years. Cruel comments, jokes as gross and loud as this one, rotten things that he shouted at us about how much he despised the restaurant and all those connected with it. Long ago we had given up asking him to join us, but many times he chose to tag along and then usually wound up making trouble. None of us knew why, other than his very aggressive homophobia. The only reason I’d wanted him along tonight was so I could be sure he was away from the house when I went searching for his gun.
“This is the end. I have had enough of you now. You have no right to treat us like this Lincoln, you are making everyone who loves you crippled. You cut off our legs and then cut out our hearts. Love goes very far, mister, but it is not the universe. Someplace it stops and then that is the end.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
When Ibrahim was gone, Lincoln asked if we could go outside and talk alone. I agreed and, walking out, asked a waiter to tell Lily we’d be back in a few minutes.
Standing in front of the restaurant, the boy shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “I know, Maxie. I know everything! I found it all out today. Tonight. It’s so incredible how in one second your whole life can move from here to way way way over there. Unbelievable. A real mind warper. But I know every one of your dirty fucking secrets!” He was so happy. If I hadn’t known what was going on, I’d have been shocked by his face of pure joy. “I cannot believe it. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me anything all these years. Would you have? Would you ever have told me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fuck you, Max. Fuck you for the rest of your shit-ass life. Fuck you and Lily and all the lies and everything about you two. You want me to do something for you? You’re gonna pay for it. You’re going to pay for everything now, cocksucker.”
“How do you feel?”
He thought a moment. “I feel… I feel weird. Like my life, um, has been lived on another planet till now and it just landed here. Something along those lines. I’m sure you can understand what I’m saying, Dad.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“I bet. Well, good. I wanted to tell you that, Max. But I don’t think I want to inform your wife for a while because, um, one ‘parent’ at a time’s enough.”
I didn’t understand what he meant but had no time to ask. A beautiful silver Mercedes pulled up across the street and stopped. The horn honked. Lincoln waved to it. “Gotta go now. I’ll, like, talk to you later, okay?”
“Where are you going?”
“Got some stuff to do with Elvis.”
“Elvis? That’s him in the car? He doesn’t own a Mercedes.”
“It’s a friend’s.”
“Lincoln, don’t! We have to talk—”
“The fuck we do!” He ran into the street without looking. Yelling over his shoulder, he stopped in the middle of traffic, turned to me, then to the Mercedes, to me. “Now we do things my way, Daddy-o. Now that I know the big secret. Just today. It’s like my friggin’ bar mitzvah! Today I became a man!” He threw up both arms, hands in fists, and, waving them at the sky, howled like a wolf. Cars slowed to look. One driver howled back at him. Another sped away from this raving punk. Elvis honked and honked the horn. I stepped into the street but was stopped short when a motorcycle came zooming by. On the other side, Lincoln rounded the Mercedes, ducked, disappeared, and the silver car roared off before I heard the passenger’s door close.
Running back into the restaurant, I told Lily I had to go home right now, no explanation why. I had to get to his gun. What might he do on the day he discovered who he was? Maybe go crazy. Or do something crazy. Forget what Mary said. I had to get to that gun before him and put it someplace safe. Then we would talk. Talk and talk until I’d made things as clear as I could to him.
There was a bad accident on Wilshire Boulevard, and the familiar ominous mix of whizzing lights on police cars and ambulances, plus a sputtering orange flare lying on the ground, made the early-evening scene even more neon and ugly. For the first time in years I remembered a day from childhood. On a summer Sunday before Saul was born, my parents took me to Palisades Park in New Jersey. I was about seven and had never been to an amusement park before. The day was a complete success and should have been one of those cherished memories of childhood because I had enough fun and excitement to exhaust ten boys. But fun isn’t often as memorable as death.
On the ride home, once across the Tappan Zee Bridge we were immediately stopped by a giant traffic jam. The line went on for miles and was so slow moving that several times my father turned off the engine to keep it from overheating. But there was a baseball game on the radio, my mother had her knitting, and if anyone got hungry there were still a couple of sandwiches left in the picnic basket. We were happy. Dad and I listened to the game for a while, but tired from the day and the sunburn it had given me as a going-away present, I lay down on the wide back seat and fell asleep.
I don’t know how long I was out, but I awoke to the sound of Mom’s voice. “Just don’t make any noise and he won’t wake up.”
Dad made a long quiet whistle. “I haven’t seen one that bad in years.”
I opened my eyes, but with a child’s intuition knew a moment before she turned that Mom was about to check me. When she did, I pretended to be fast asleep.
“Max’s all right. Still snoozing. Oh my God, Stanley! Oh my God!”
I couldn’t stand the mystery. What was happening? It probably wouldn’t have made any difference if I had sat up and exclaimed too, because both parents were transfixed by the scene outside. I slid across the seat and, peeking through the window, saw a smoking battlefield of wrecked cars, flashing lights, fire engines, people running around. Police blue, firemen yellow, doctors white.
There were bodies. First I saw two together covered by a blanket, their feet sticking meekly out. Next, and most amazing, was the child launched halfway through the windshield of a car. This was in the time before unbreakable safety glass was standard in automobile windows. It was a child; I was sure of that because despite being almost entirely covered by a coating of shiny blood, the visible part of the body was short and thin. The upper torso stuck up through the windshield like it had been shot from the back seat but stopped halfway out. A small arm wearing a wristwatch hung down. I could see the white watch face. That small spot of white in all the streaked, glaring red. A perfect white circle. The rest was blood and crushed, formless chaos. I absorbed it all in seconds. When my mother began turning around again, I zipped back to my sleeping position and wasn’t caught. I was too scared to try for another look, and a short while later we were past the wreck and sped up.
“Roll it up, pal.” Four decades later, a helmeted policeman held a flashlight and waved it across my face. “You’ve seen the show. Move on.” I accelerated, thinking about my seven-year-old self in a back seat, the dead child through the windshield, and my son.
When I got home there were no cars in the driveway or in front of the house. Good, but that didn’t mean anything. He could have been dropped off already and could be inside. I parked on the street and, standing next to the car, took several long, deep breaths before moving. What should I say if he was there?