“A thousand dollars!” Diane Hummel exclaimed to her husband. “Have you gone out of your mind? I thought it was twenty-five bucks.”
“A thousand dollars?” Sam said in a drawling whine. “For a thousand dollars you could buy every Nintendo game in the world!”
“In the universe!” Jonah said.
“Yeah!” said little Jake, rubbing his mucous mustache. “In both universes!”
“I’ll get you a tissue,” Debby said to Jake. “Or you could use your napkin.” Debby leaned over and offered Jake his pristine napkin.
Jake crossed his little arms, ducked his chin to his chest, and shook his head from side to side, saying, “No.”
Debby appealed to Nan to support her position. Jake’s mucus was running again, new cloudy fluid oozing over the dried black and yellow mustache.
“Leave him,” Nan said. She had been sullen throughout the meal. Except for a comment, as she took a second helping of turkey, that she would have to go to an extra aerobic class.
The two grandmothers, although Jake was no relation to them, exchanged sad looks. Flora mumbled, “It’s not very sanitary.” Max’s mother nodded at him to intervene. Debby meanwhile was still poised, halfway out of her chair, Jake’s napkin in her hand, hovering about a foot away from his smeared upper lip. Nan dropped her eyes to her plate and resumed eating. Debby looked at Max for help.
As always she assumed it was his job to make up for the failures of others. “You want to do something, do it,” Max said to her.
“Peter,” Diane Hummel was saying to her husband, speaking in an intense whisper, although of course everyone could hear her. “Are you out of your mind? Spending that kind of money on a child?”
“I’m not a child,” Byron said and Debby, still focused on Jake’s nose, laughed. “I’m not,” he said to her. “Not after what I’ve lived through.” Byron inhaled dramatically and exhaled with emphasis, a magnified sigh. “I’ve told my dad. He’s just got to get used to it. I’m never going to be normal again.”
“You know,” Nan said while chewing food. The words were muffled by her stuffed mouth. “You ought to take him to a shrink. He’s got problems.”
Peter Hummel was offended. He showed it by leaning back in his chair, stiffening to attention, eyes wide, showing a lot of white.
“I see a shrink,” Byron said, confusing Max, who didn’t know it and didn’t understand. If Byron was seeing a therapist why was Peter so scandalized by the suggestion? “He agrees with me. He doesn’t think I’m a normal kid.”
“So you’re not normal. So that’s why your parents should buy you thousand-dollar toys,” Nan said and resumed eating. Jonah and Sam both smiled at each other, flashing their big and little teeth.
“I don’t think that’s fair—” Peter Hummel began sternly to Nan.
“We’re going to have to talk about this,” his wife was saying at him.
“I need it!” Byron protested to his mother.
Debby, perhaps thinking all this confusion would distract Jake, finally got her courage up, dipped the napkin in a water glass and stabbed at his snotty mustache.
Jake screamed. A piercing howl of innocence violated.
Shocked, Debby backed away. But without the napkin. It stayed behind stuck to Jake’s upper lip, adhered by his natural glue. Jake batted at it wildly with the backs of his hands, but the napkin didn’t come off. His brother Sam laughed so hard he fell sideways onto Jonah. Jonah also convulsed, bits of food appearing at his lips, coughed up by laughter.
“Enough!” Max roared. He stood and reached across the table, pulling the napkin off Jake. A line of snot floated in the air for a moment and then fell gracefully into the serving bowl of cranberry sauce. Sam and Jonah both stared, mouths open, and then fell again into each other’s arms laughing with open mouths, showing their odd teeth. “Go play video games!” Max shouted at them as if he were Moses ordering his people across the Red Sea. Their laughter stopped and they hopped out of their chairs, scrambling on all fours in their hurry to escape.
“Max!” Debby protested.
“That’s what they want to do. For God’s sake, at least somebody is made happy by something. Let them do it in peace and without shame! Without all this goddamn shame!” Max shut his eyes and took a long breath.
He heard but could not see Nan as she said in a bored throaty voice: “We’re not talking about jerking off, Max. I don’t think they’ll become traumatized adults if we embarrass them about playing Gameboy.”
That opened Max’s eyes. What he saw was clouded. His vision was blurred by something floating on his eyes. It muddied the faces of all but Byron. The boy’s head was up, his eyes were shining, and he showed off a grin of awareness.
“Nan, please!” Debby said. “What a mouth you’ve got tonight.”
Max blinked hard and that cleared his sight. Peter and Harry seemed to have retreated into their chests. They had the false self-absorbed looks of passengers on a subway car pretending not to notice the approach of an armed gang.
“Listen, honey,” Nan said. She dropped her fork onto her plate and it clattered loudly — a harsh cue warning of an attack.
“Take it easy, Nan,” Max’s sister Kate mumbled across the table.
“I am so sick and tired of you and Max taking over with my kids! Who the fuck do you think you are! If you spent less time wiping my baby’s nose and more time kicking your nutty husband in the ass to testify to the truth! To the truth, for God’s sake! So that we can get what we deserve for what—” Nan stopped. Her eyes narrowed. She swallowed hard. In a minute she would be crying. That was her pattern — when making demands Nan traveled from rage to tears.
It was time, Max decided. “Excuse me,” he said. He moved away from the table, turned and left the dining room.
Byron called, “Wait for me.”
Max went down the hallway toward the bedrooms seeking Jonah. In case he lost the gamble this time, he wanted to say goodbye. He was only halfway there when Byron bumped at his side.
“Hi.”
Max didn’t answer. He would have to get rid of him. They passed the living room entrance and turned down another hall leading to Debby’s old room where the boys would be playing.
“I know what jerking off means,” Byron said.
“Un huh.” Another turn past a bathroom and they were there. The door was shut.
“It means playing with yourself,” Byron said.
“That’s right,” Max said. He knocked.
“Come in,” Jonah said.
Max opened the door and pushed Byron in. “I want the three of you to play together. I have to go out for a little while.”
“Okay,” Jonah said unenthusiastically.
Byron fought against Max’s hands to leave with him. “I don’t want to. I don’t like video games.”
“That is sick,” Sam said. He was playing his portable game: head down, fingers dancing, feet shifting weight in time with imagined combat.
“Shut up,” Jonah said in a friendly tone and touched his friend gently on the back of his head as if mocking a punishment.
“Go and play,” Max shoved Byron in and then pointed his finger like a scold.
“Okay,” Byron said. He was suddenly dignified. He stepped back from Max and entered the room, his high bright cheeks shining, his small eyes unblinking and bold. He stopped and faced Max. “But I want to know one thing. Dad says now that you’ve closed your office I can’t visit you after school. Why can’t I come to your apartment? I could even walk from school to your apartment. It’s only eleven blocks. My friend Timmy walks home and that’s nine blocks—”