And then Charlene saw the boy with the bowl cut stop and point at Radar. He was pointing right at him. The boy said a word — she couldn’t hear what it was, but his face had twisted into a scowl when he said it, giving him a momentarily precocious air of menace. Charlene stood and stared at the boy thrusting his finger in the direction of her son.
That little shit.
She resisted the urge to go over and slap him. Why on earth was he pointing like that? What had he said about Radar?
“Charlene? Are you okay?” asked Maureen. “What is it?”
The boy was pointing, and now he was saying something to Bryan, next to him, and they were both laughing and kicking at the blocks with their little feet. Charlene could not believe it. Bryan was laughing, too. Bryan was supposed to be Radar’s friend.
“They’re laughing at him,” said Charlene.
“At who?”
But Charlene was already running over. She grabbed the boy’s hand.
“Never,” she hissed at the boy. “Never, ever do that. Do you hear me?” The boy looked bewildered for a moment and then began to cry. Charlene plucked up Radar and hurriedly left the room.
“Wait, Charlene! What happened?” Maureen called after her, but she did not stop. She ran to the car and did not bother putting Radar in his car seat before driving away.
• • •
SEVERAL WEEKS LATER, perambulating Radar down Harrison Avenue, Charlene was lost in thought when she felt the baby carriage hit something. She looked around and saw a black couple in their seventies standing next to her. The man was holding the chassis of Radar’s carriage. Beneath a battered newsie cap, he studied Charlene with sad, elephant eyes magnified by a thick pair of grubby eyeglasses. His knuckles were dry and white with age.
“I’m sorry,” said Charlene, thinking she must’ve clipped them by accident. She tried to push forward but could not break free from the old man’s grip.
“Herb!” His wife grabbed his arm and tried to pull it off the stroller.
He pushed her away and lifted a finger at Charlene.
“You got some nerve, you know that?” His voice like a memory, pressing against her chest.
“Herb!” his wife said again. She uncoiled his fingers from the carriage. “I’m so sorry. He doesn’t know what he’s saying these days.”
She took out a handkerchief and wiped his nose. “Come on, love,” she said. “Let’s go get you some goulash.”
Charlene was paralyzed.
“It’s not what you think,” she finally stammered.
The woman turned and placed her hand on Charlene’s arm. Her eyes were warm.
“I think it’s wonderful what you’re doing, really. God bless,” she said. “So many out there who need good homes, no matter what color they is.”
• • •
THE ENCOUNTER DOGGED HER. It filled the folds of her consciousness. She kept seeing those cataract eyes, large and unblinking behind his Coke bottle glasses. A soft man filled with such malice. She wished she had confessed all to this couple, explained to them what had happened and why, sought their advice, sought their forgiveness. On more than one occasion, she found herself back at the place of their encounter, hoping she might run into them again.
She had always struggled with insomnia, but now she stopped sleeping altogether. After consulting a doctor, she began relying on an array of potent sleeping pills. If she did not take enough, she would not sleep and would wake up nauseated, tired, and depressed. If she took too many, she would pass out and wake up nauseated, tired, and depressed. Every night became an exercise in threading the needle. Days began to blur together.
During a winter playdate with Bryan, she and Maureen huddled on a bench at the playground, watching their parka’d boys attempt to crawl up the red tubular slide, a Sisyphean task that was defeating them.
“He really is gorgeous,” said Maureen.
“Who?”
“Radar,” she said. “Where did you get him? I mean, where’s he from?”
Charlene panicked.
“Originally?” she said, punching at her thighs.
For the first time in many years, she thought of T. K. lying naked in her bed in Hell’s Kitchen. She wondered where he was. The great torment of a life unlived. What if things had gone much differently for her? What if life could be ironed out smooth, like a shirt?
The boys finally made it to the top. They came down the slide knotted together, squealing with gravity’s delight. Radar raised both of his hands to his mother and said, “We come down, we slip down!” He proudly put his arm around Bryan.
“He’s from Minnesota,” she said to Maureen, watching her son. “His parents died in a fire. They were Congolese.”
As soon as she said it, she realized what a terrible thing she had just done. She instantly wanted to rewind time, to take it all back. But she did not. She left her words hanging there in the frigid air, waiting to see what would happen next, like a child standing over a shattered bowl.
“Oh!” Maureen said after a moment. “I wouldn’t have thought. Minnesota! It must’ve been so cold for him.”
“Yes,” said Charlene. “It must’ve been.”
The lie sprouted roots. Charlene began telling everyone that Radar had been adopted after a tragic fire in a Minneapolis apartment building. Sympathy was garnered. At first, Charlene hated herself for saying it, but then she became used to it. She slowly shifted from feeling guilty about the moral culpability of her fiction to being afraid of what Kermin would do if he ever found out.
One afternoon, she went to pick up Radar at day care, only to find him crumpled and sniffling in a corner. His eyes were red from crying. Her heart dropped.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“Matt said some hurtful things,” said Alison, the teacher.
“I knew it! I knew it,” said Charlene. “Who’s Matt? He’s the one with the haircut, isn’t he?”
“We’ve had a conversation, and Matt’s apologized to Radar.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t know what he was saying. He’s so young. He’s just repeating words.”
“What did he say?”
“He called Radar a monkey.”
“What?!”
“We’ve let him know that names can be very hurtful, even if he didn’t mean for it to be hurtful.”
“He meant for it to be hurtful.”
“Matt’s a good kid.”
“Matt’s a shithead,” said Charlene. “You have no fucking idea what you’re doing, do you?”
She took Radar to get a chocolate-and-vanilla Softee swirl, his favorite. He had a habit of trying to put his mouth around the whole ice cream when he first received it — not to eat it, but just to see if the act could be done.
When they arrived home she saw a letter lying on their doormat. The envelope was covered in several colorful stamps and featured a return address in Oslo, Norway.
“What is dat?” Radar asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Someone wrote us a letter.”
She debagged in the hallway and opened the envelope.