“Relo,” Luke said. “Who wants this last piece?”
“All yours,” Herb said. “May you not die before you get a chance to do this crazy matriculation thing.”
“Ménage à college,” Luke said, and laughed. “He talked to you about rich alumni, didn’t he?”
Eileen put down the napkin. “Jesus, Lukey, you discussed your parents’ financial options with your guidance counselor? Who are the grownups in this conversation? I’m starting to feel confused about that.”
“Calm down, mamacita, it just stands to reason. Although my first thought was the endowment fund. The Brod has a huge one, they could pay for you to relocate out of that and never feel the pinch, but the trustees would never okay it, even though it makes logical sense.”
“It does?” Herb asked.
“Oh yeah.” Luke chewed enthusiastically, swallowed, and slurped Coke. “I’m an investment. A stock with good growth potential. Invest the nickels and reap the dollars, right? It’s how America works. The trustees could see that far, no prob, but they can’t break out of the cognitive box they’re in.”
“Cognitive box,” his father said.
“Yeah, you know. A box built as a result of the ancestral dialectic. It might even be tribal, although it’s kind of hilarious to think of a tribe of trustees. They go, ‘If we do this for him, we might have to do it for another kid.’ That’s the box. It’s, like, handed down.”
“Received wisdom,” Eileen said.
“You nailed it, Mom. The trustees’ll kick it to the wealthy alumni, the ones who made mucho megabucks thinking outside the box but still love the ol’ Broderick blue and white. Mr. Greer will be the point man. At least I hope he will. The deal is, they help me now and I help the school later on, when I’m rich and famous. I don’t actually care about being either of those things, I’m middle-class to the bone, but I might get rich anyway, as a side effect. Always assuming I don’t contract some gross disease or get killed in a terrorist attack or something.”
“Don’t say things that invite sorrow,” Eileen said, and made the sign of the cross over the littered table.
“Superstition, Mom,” Luke said indulgently.
“Humor me. And wipe your mouth. Pizza sauce. Looks like your gums are bleeding.”
Luke wiped his mouth.
Herb said, “According to Mr. Greer, certain interested parties might indeed fund a relocation move, and fund us for as long as sixteen months.”
“Did he tell you that the same people who’d front you might be able to help find you a new job?” Luke’s eyes were sparkling. “A better one? Because one of the school’s alumni is Douglas Finkel. He happens to own American Paper Products, and that’s close to your sweet spot. Your hot zone. Where the rubber meets the r—”
“Finkel’s name actually came up,” Herb said. “Just in a speculative way.”
“Also…” Luke turned to his mother, eyes bright. “Boston is a buyer’s market right now when it comes to teachers. Average starting salary for someone with your experience goes sixty-five thou.”
“Son, how do you know these things?” Herb asked.
Luke shrugged. “Wikipedia, to start with. Then I trace down the major sources cited in the Wikipedia articles. It’s basically a question of keeping current with the environment. My environment is the Broderick School. I knew all of the trustees; the big money alumni I had to look up.”
Eileen reached across the table, took what remained of the last pizza slice out of her son’s hand, and put it back on the tin tray with the bits of leftover crust. “Lukey, even if this could happen, wouldn’t you miss your friends?”
His eyes clouded. “Yeah. Especially Rolf. Maya, too. Although we can’t officially ask girls to the spring dance, unofficially she’s my date. So yeah. But.”
They waited. Their son, always verbal and often verbose, now seemed to struggle. He started, stopped, started again, and stopped again. “I don’t know how to say it. I don’t know if I can say it.”
“Try,” Herb said. “We’ll have plenty of important discussions in the future, but this one is the most important to date. So try.”
At the front of the restaurant, Richie Rocket put in his hourly appearance and began dancing to “Mambo Number 5.” Eileen watched as the silver space-suited figure beckoned to the nearby tables with his gloved hands. Several little kids joined him, boogying to the music and laughing while their parents looked on, snapped pictures, and applauded. Not so long ago—five short years—Lukey had been one of those kids. Now they were talking about impossible changes. She didn’t know how such a child as Luke had come from a couple like them, ordinary people with ordinary aspirations and expectations, and sometimes she wished for different. Sometimes she actively hated the role into which they had been cast, but she had never hated Lukey, and never would. He was her baby, her one and only.
“Luke?” Herb said. Speaking very quietly. “Son?”
“It’s just what comes next,” Luke said. He raised his head and looked directly at them, his eyes lighted with a brilliance his parents rarely saw. He hid that brilliance from them because he knew it frightened them in a way a few rattling plates never could. “Don’t you see? It’s what comes next. I want to go there… and learn… and then move on. Those schools are like the Brod. Not the goal, only stepping stones to the goal.”
“What goal, honey?” Eileen asked.
“I don’t know. There’s so much I want to learn, and figure out. I’ve got this thing inside my head… it reaches… and sometimes it’s satisfied, but mostly it isn’t. Sometimes I feel so small… so damn stupid…”
“Honey, no. Stupid’s the last thing you are.” She reached for his hand, but he drew away, shaking his head. The tin pizza pan shivered on the table. The pieces of crust jittered.
“There’s an abyss, okay? Sometimes I dream about it. It goes down forever, and it’s full of all the things I don’t know. I don’t know how an abyss can be full—it’s an oxymoron—but it is. It makes me feel small and stupid. But there’s a bridge over it, and I want to walk on it. I want to stand in the middle of it, and raise my hands…”
They watched, fascinated and a little afraid, as Luke raised his hands to the sides of his narrow, intense face. The pizza pan was now not just shivering but rattling. Like the plates sometimes did in the cupboards.
“… and all those things in the darkness will come floating up. I know it.”
The pizza pan skated across the table and banged on the floor. Herb and Eileen barely noticed. Such things happened around Luke when he was upset. Not often, but sometimes. They were used to it.
“I understand,” Herb said.
“Bullshit he does,” Eileen said. “Neither of us do. But you should go ahead and start the paperwork. Take the SATs. You can do those things and still change your mind. If you don’t change it, if you stay committed…” She looked at Herb, who nodded. “We’ll try to make it happen.”
Luke grinned, then picked up the pizza pan. He looked at Richie Rocket. “I used to dance with him like that when I was little.”
“Yes,” Eileen said. She needed to use the napkin again. “You sure did.”
“You know what they say about the abyss, don’t you?” Herb asked.
Luke shook his head, either because it was the rare thing he didn’t know, or because he didn’t want to spoil his father’s punchline.
“When you stare into it, it stares back at you.”