“Robbie? They think it might have been an opossum. It was an opossum.”
But you said . . .
I needed him to say: The opossum is North America’s only marsupial, Dad. Things Aly taught him: how hard winters were on opossums, how frostbite punished their hairless ears and tails. But he scowled in silence at the thought of the most despised large animal on Earth.
He swung his head toward me, stunned. You lied to me, Dad. You said nobody knew what it was.
“Robbie. It was only for a minute.” But no: it was forever, really.
He tilted his head and shook, as if clearing his ears. His voice was flat and low. Everybody lies. I couldn’t tell if he was forgiving me or condemning all humanity.
It was way past bedtime. But there we were, the two of us on his bed, the last of the crew of a generational spacecraft that had come to the end of its possibilities long before reaching its new home.
So she chose not to hit it, even though . . . ?
“She didn’t choose anything. There wasn’t time. It was a reflex.”
He thought for a while. At last he seemed appeased, although some part of him was still mapping the changing coastline between reflex and choice.
So Jayden’s parents are full of crap? Mom wasn’t trying to hurt herself?
I felt no need to reprimand the language. “Sometimes, the less people know about something, the more they want to talk about it.”
He got his notebook and scribbled in it, holding it away from me. He snapped it shut and squirreled it away in the nightstand drawer. Something brightened in him. Maybe he was happy that he might be friends with his friend again, tomorrow.
I stood and kissed him on the forehead. He let me, preoccupied with his hands, remembering how they’d deceived him.
How about this one, Dad? What does this mean?
He held one cupped hand upward on the stalk of his arm and twisted it back and forth. A tiny planet, spinning on its axis.
“Tell me.”
It means the world is turning and I’m good with everything.
We traded the signal, and he nodded. I told him I was glad he was who he was. I twisted my own hand in the air again by way of saying good night. Then I turned out the light and left him to fall asleep in the comfort of my larger lie. I’ve always been especially good at lying by omission. And I lied wildly to him that night, by failing to tell him about the car’s other passenger, his unborn little sister.
HE WOKE UP SUNDAY in high excitement. Before dawn, he was climbing all over me, shaking me awake. Great idea, Dad. Listen to this.
I was still half-asleep, and I cranked at him. “Robbie, for God’s sake! It’s six in the morning!”
He stormed off and barricaded himself in his lair. It took forty minutes and the promise of blueberry pancakes to coax him out.
I waited until he was sluggish with carbs. “So let’s hear this great idea.”
He weighed the quid pro quos of forgiving me. His chin jutted out. I’m only telling you because I need your help.
“Understood.”
I’m going to paint every endangered species in America. Then I’ll sell them at the farmers’ market next spring. We can raise money and give it to one of Mom’s groups.
I knew he’d never be able to paint more than a fraction of them. But I also knew a great idea when I heard one. We cleaned up breakfast and headed to the Pinney branch of the public library.
My son loved the library. He loved putting books on hold online and having them waiting, bundled up with his name, when he came for them. He loved the benevolence that the stacks held out, their map of the known world. He loved the all-you-can-eat buffet of borrowing. He loved the lending histories stamped into the front of each book, the record of strangers who checked them out before him. The library was the best dungeon crawl imaginable: free loot for the finding, combined with the joy of leveling up.
Usually he followed the same route through the trove: graphic novels, sword and sorcery, puzzles and brain teasers, fiction. That day, he wanted art lessons. The shelves were a total candy shop. Wow. How come you never told me about these? We found a book on how to draw plants and one on how to draw simple animals. From there we went to Nature, where we zeroed in on endangered species. Soon he was trying to choose from among a pile of books that came up almost to his waist.
I’m over my limit, Dad. He could make thrilled sound over--whelmed.
“You take your limit, and I’ll take mine.”
He sat on the floor of the aisle, narrowing down the choices. Opening one of the bigger volumes, he groaned.
“Tell me.”