“I was looking the wrong way into the living room!” Sam said in a nasal whine, his typical tone of voice. “I didn’t see you.”
“Well, I’m here, dummy,” Jonah said and touched the back of his friend’s head gently. “And you have Gameboy with you. Big surprise.”
“Boxxil is really tough!” Sam said. He had switched on the game. His head was down; his thumb flickered speedily from button to button. A tinny electronic song could be heard.
“Did you die yet, Sam?” his little brother Jake asked and sniffled. A dark streak under his nose, a mix of dirt and smeared snot, gave him a fake Hitlerian mustache.
“My beautiful sons,” Nan said and cleared her throat.
Peter Hummel laughed, but briefly. It wasn’t clear if Nan was kidding.
Jonah knew instinctively they had become a spectacle for the grown-ups. He pulled on Sam’s elbow, but gently, respectful of the game in progress. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
“On pause,” Sam said, pressing a button on the portable video game. The tinny music was stopped in mid-melody. “Change screens,” Sam said and ran out of sight. Jonah followed, laughing.
“Wait for me, guys!” little Jake yelled and lumbered after them, his blanket swishing on the floor.
“I thought we were going to watch the Civil War,” Harry called to his grandson.
“Don’t want to!” Jonah shouted back.
Harry slumped, exaggerating his disappointment comically, but it wasn’t funny. There was too much real disenchantment in his eyes. “Well,” he gestured to Byron. “How about you? Do you care to learn anything about the most significant period of your country’s history?”
For an answer Byron turned to Max. “You said you were going to watch with me.”
“Byron,” his father said in a soft voice. “That’s not polite.”
“Oh, you can’t expect Max to keep his promises,” Nan said. She had finished her drink; she put the glass down on Harry’s bookshelves with a bang. The shelves lined one entire wall of the living room and were filled with old hardcovers missing their jackets. Max thought they had a pompous and depressing look, dusty sentinels of useless knowledge. “Max has been reborn so he doesn’t have to keep his promises.”
“Why don’t you play with the other boys?” Diane Hummel said to her son.
“I don’t like video games,” Byron said.
“Then ask them if they want to do something else.” She ran a hand over her smooth black hair, pulled flush to the scalp, fingers combing all the way back to the bump of her demure bun. Finding it in place, she patted it.
“A boy who doesn’t like video games!” Nan said in disbelief.
“I have a weird son,” Peter Hummel answered in the same tone of pride he used when telling Max that it was odd of Byron to enjoy drawing.
“I’m not good at them so I don’t like playing them,” Byron said blandly. “I don’t think that’s weird, Dad. What I think is weird is a dad who says his son is weird for not wanting to play video games. That’s what’s weird.”
“Your father’s weird, there’s no doubt about that,” Diane said.
Peter listened to his wife’s and son’s comments thoughtfully and then nodded in agreement.
“What promise haven’t I kept?” Max asked Nan.
“You said you’d help Brillstein and you’re not,” she said, her onstage tone turned down, the sexiness gone. She was serious. Serious, she looked older.
“I’m helping him as much as I can,” Max said, sighing.
“Bullshit,” Nan said. She turned away and announced, “I’d better see if the womenfolk need any help.” She marched out, the heels of her loafers clattering on the bare hallway floors.
They watched her go. Harry raised his bushy eyebrows and opened his arms. “What is she talking about?”
“I don’t know,” Max said. He was tired. Nan always made him feel tired. He backed into the wing chair that Harry liked to read in. Flora complained it was too big for the room. Max agreed but then most comfortable things didn’t fit anymore. Max let himself drop into it. “Every week she finds some new thing to add to the lawsuit. This week it’s negligence on the kind of seats they had in the plane, even though Jeff’s seat didn’t come loose, that’s not what killed him. And she wants me to exaggerate how hysterical and terrified Jeff was at the end.” He remembered Jeff crapping in his pants. He had never mentioned this to Brillstein or Nan or anyone. What an excellent proof of his partner’s fright. It was so faint in his memory that he wondered if it had really happened or if he had just invented it for the sake of the lawsuit.
“Well,” Diane said, running her hand over her head and touching the bun in back again. Her sharp chin bobbed forward, like a bird pecking. “I hate to say it, but it’s good strategy. At this stage the lawsuit is largely a game of bluff. You’re pushing for a settlement really and you want the other side to know that you’ve got so many shots on goal to make with a jury that you’re sure to score at least one. And one is all it takes.”
“I thought you’re a public service lawyer,” Max said, annoyed by her tone of absolute knowledge.
“She used to work for the pigs,” her husband Peter explained, flashing a polite smile that Max imagined he might have used on a fellow member of the Century Club. Who were these people? So rich they could give their son a computer system Max wouldn’t indulge in himself, so uptight he had never seen them hug their damaged son, and yet agreeing to come to 103rd Street to have Thanksgiving with a gaggle of crazy Jews. Who were any of them? Why was Nan dressed up like Madonna? Why was Byron standing there listening to the adults rather than going after the other boys? Was Byron special, like Max, a creature of the unafraid living, a true son of his spirit, while Jonah, obsessed by the fakery of computer life and death, was forever lost to him?
Nan wants me to sleep with her, it occurred to Max abruptly. He was stunned by the clarity of this revelation. That’s why she’s angry. She’s lost a mate and she wants me to replace him. But it isn’t me, she doesn’t want me, she wants any replacement — I’m just the nearest to her dead husband. For a moment he felt he understood her but then he wasn’t sure. If she didn’t want to sleep with him, the real Max, and it was merely a desire for a generic male, then why did she persist no matter how often he was cool to her? None of her actions, her wildness and sensuality, fit the person Jeff had lived with. Jeff had talked to Max about Nan daily, had told countless stories, whined and analyzed her at length, and yet not one of Jeff’s judgments was helpful. They didn’t seem to have anything to do with the widow Max had to deal with every day.
“Max,” Byron said. He had come to the wing chair and leaned against Max’s knees. “Come and watch with me.”
“Leave Max alone,” Diane said. “Go and play with the other boys.”
“We’ll be eating soon,” Harry said to no one in particular.
“Max,” Byron said, his elbows digging into Max’s legs.
“I can’t help you, Byron,” Max said in a low voice. He felt near to tears and yet he was angry.
“I just want you to watch TV with me,” Byron said in a shy voice.
“Go on, Byron,” his mother said. “Go play with the other boys.”
“All right!” Byron shrugged his shoulders and walked out miserably.