"Are you finished?"
"Yes," I said.
"You'll be okay, Milo," said Vargina. "Here."
Vargina pushed an index card across the table. It was a recipe for egg salad.
"I watched my husband make it. He can never know. Nobody can ever know."
"Thank you, Vargina."
"No more turkey wraps, Milo. They're gross."
"I see that now," I said.
Twenty-eight
I still had the key to the life I'd been evicted from, and the next morning I took the train out to Astoria, let myself into the apartment. Life was doing fine without me. There was Maura, jabbing at her laptop, always this, the work before work. It wasn't her fault. It was how they had us. There was Bernie on the sofa, watching his favorite show, the one where children mutated into gooey robots, sneered. It was like a parable from a religion based entirely on sarcasm. I'd seen the program before, tried to ban it. But there was no banning it. This wasn't China. This was dead America. If Bernie lucked out, he'd only be as warped as Horace. I could live with that. Assuming I could live.
"Bernie," said Maura. "Put on your velcros. Daddy's taking you to school. I'll see you at pickup."
There were not too many school days left. It would be another summer on Christine's concrete apron: blood and corn dogs.
I gathered up Bernie's sandals, slipped them on his feet.
"I want to see this show," he said. "Daddy, are you crying?"
"I have something in my eye," I said.
"Both eyes?"
"Yes, Bernie."
I walked into the bedroom, threw a few things into a knapsack. I took the money Purdy had given me, peeled off some for my wallet, wadded up the rest with a rubber band.
I dropped the wad next to Maura's laptop.
"What's this?"
"I don't know," I said. "Child support?"
"Do you need to be so dramatic? This is still your home. We're still your family. We're in a rough patch. We're taking a break."
"Rough patch? That's kind of a worn image, isn't it? I'm not sure what it means. Is it a driving thing? We're driving over a patch that's rough? Or is it like a patch on your coat? A smooth coat except for this little rough flap you ironed over a rip in the elbow? Or maybe the elbow skin is rough. Remember that time you said my elbow skin was like an elephant's? Is that what this is about? Is that what it's always fucking been about?"
"Language," said Maura.
"Indoor voice," said Bernie.
"Let's just patch up this rough patch now," I said. "I can't take this anymore. I want us all together."
"You seem really strung out, Milo. You need some rest. Aren't you getting rest at your mother's house?"
"Yeah," I said. "Nothing but rest."
I walked Bernie down Ditmars toward his new school. His little hand slid around in my palm.
"Daddy, are you sick?"
"No, I'm fine. Why?"
"You look funny."
"I'm just tired."
We passed a souvlaki cart and just beyond it a man with a chapped face slept sitting up on a bus bench. A pint of gin stuck out of his sweatpants.
"That's Larry!" said Bernie. "He must be back from Elmira. I wonder if Aiden knows."
I pushed Bernie past the bench.
"Bernie," I said. "I want you to be a good boy."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do you want me to be a good boy?"
"Because that's the best thing to be."
"That's stupid."
I took a knee on the sidewalk, clasped Bernie by the shoulders. I'd seen fathers kneel like this in movies, standard posture for the rushed essentials, the Polonius rundown. A little too in love with itself, Don might judge this moment, but that didn't diminish its necessity. Bernie might not understand what I told him today, but he would carry the words with him forever, and with them, me.
"Listen," I said.
"Yes, Daddy?"
"Squander it. Always squander it. Give it all away."
"Give what away? My toys?"
"No, yes, sure, your toys, too. Whatever it is. Squander it. Do you understand?"
"Not really."
"Don't save a little part of you inside yourself. Not even a scrap. It gets tainted in there. It rots."
"What does?"
"I can't explain right now. Someday you'll know. But promise me you'll squander it."
"I promise. What's squander?"
"You don't need to know that yet. Here's what you need to know: The boy can walk away from the ogre's castle. He doesn't have to knock. Some people will tell you that it's better the boy get hurt or even die than never know whether he could have defeated the ogre and won the ogre's treasure. But those are the people who tell us stories to keep us slaves."
"Daddy?" said Bernie.
"Yes?"
"Can I have a stegosaurus cake for my birthday like Jeremy got?"
"Yes, of course. For your birthday."
I yanked him to me, buried my face against his strong, tiny neck.
"I love you, Bernie."
"Will I ever see you again?"
"Yes," I said. "Later today."
"Will you be dead?"
"No."
"Will I?"
"No."
"Can it be a brontosaurus cake instead?"
"Yes."
"With an asteroid flying into his face?"
"Sounds wonderful."
"Let's go to school."
"Good idea," I said, stood.
After I'd dropped off Bernie I walked down to the park under the Hell Gate Bridge. It was one of those beautiful Fridays when everybody decides to ditch work, trust sheer numbers will protect them from retribution. Hondurans roasted chickens near the river, kicked soccer balls at their toddlers' knees. Indian families spread out curry feasts on blankets. A magician did card tricks for a field trip of drooling tweens. Mothers puttered around the quarter-mile track in velour running slacks.
Beside a stone tower some youngish men played touch football with a battered Nerf. They were young me's by the look of them, their watch caps and lazy passing routes, their Clinton-era trash talk. They had marked the end zones with packs of organic cigarettes and film theory pamphlets.
I skirted their game, found a quiet spot in the grass under an elm, read Schopenhauer, or read a scholar's long introduction in the paperback I'd dug out of my closet. Some of the stuff I remembered from college. It was foolish to want. You would never get what you wanted. Even if you got what you wanted you would never get what you wanted. It was better to strip yourself of the wanting. But this was impossible. So you suffered. Your raw eyeballs suffered.
I fell asleep before I got to Professor Schopenhauer's tips on dating. The introduction noted that he once beat a woman senseless on his doorstep. She sued for assault and he paid her off for twenty years. When she died, he wrote, "Obit anus, abit onus."
"The old woman is dead, the burden is lifted."
As I slept in Astoria Park, I dreamed of a park in 1820s Berlin. I squatted at the lip of a pond, tossed hunks of black bread to geese. A man with fierce side-whiskers and a greasy coat pushed an immaculate Maclaren stroller along the walkway. A cigarette bobbed in his lips. Two children hunched in the stroller, a boy and a girl. The boy sat on the girl's lap. They were laughing, but suddenly the boy punched the girl in the mouth.
"Anus," said the man, "don't hit your sister."
I tried to say something, couldn't get my tongue right.
The man smiled, spoke, his voice muddy and loud.
"Hey, you," he said.
Something pressed into my side and I opened my eyes.
Predrag stood over me. He tapped my ribs with his boot.
"You," he said.
"Predrag," I said.
"Hungry?" He dropped a doughnut on my chest.
"Thanks," I said, sat up, bit into a honey-glazed. "Thank you. Wow, I was having the weirdest dream."
Predrag held up his doughnut sack.
"I like to take some around, spread the wealth, you know? I usually give them out to homeless guys. But then I saw you."
"I might be homeless one of these days."
"Yeah?"
"It's tough to call."