He grasped the medal around his neck, squeezed his eyes closed, and vowed not to open them again until his parents burst through the door to save him.
Chapter 11
Becker rose with his plate and carried it to the sink, prompting Karen to say, “I’ll do the dishes. It won’t take a minute. You two just go in the other room and relax.”
“We’ve been relaxing all through dinner,” Becker said. He returned to the table and picked up his glass, his silverware, the crumpled napkin. They had eaten in the kitchen and the trip from table to sink was only a few steps.
“Go on, go on,” Karen protested. “I can do it quicker if you’re out of here.”
Becker looked at the sink, which now held all of the plates, the cutlery, the serving dishes, the two cooking pots. All together it looked to him as if it would take something less than two minutes to rinse, scrape, and stack everything in the dishwasher. It had taken little more than that to prepare the meal in the first place, a warmed-up conglomeration of a chicken and tomato ragout, rice, and a green salad. Karen cooked four entrees on the weekend and froze them for use later in the week, she had explained. On the fifth day she and the boy either went out to eat or ordered Chinese food delivered. She had not mentioned the weekend, but Becker knew that Jack’s father frequently had the boy with him then. It was not hard to imagine Karen eating leftovers while standing over the sink when she was alone. It was the way Becker took most of his meals himself.
“Happy to help,” Becker said.
“It’s basically a one-person job,” she said, standing with her back to the sink, protectively.
Becker understood that the object of the exercise was not to get the dishes done but to put him alone with the boy for a few minutes. Dutifully, he turned and walked to the living room, where Karen’s son was already sprawled on the floor in front of the television set.
“No television. Jack!” Karen called from the kitchen.
“Mom!”
“I mean it!”
Sullenly, Jack turned off the set.
“She’s tough,” Becker said.
Jack nodded his head in agreement and looked at an area in space about three feet to the side of Becker’s head. After an initial stare of surprise when he first arrived at the door, Becker had noticed that the boy had never looked directly at him. Nor had he volunteered a word of conversation. On the few occasions when Becker had directed a question to him. Jack had frozen as if stunned by the need to come up with an answer. His shyness and embarrassment were so palpable that Becker changed his method of converse. He worded his statements so that they could be agreed to or denied with a simple movement of the head. In that way he was able to string several sentences together, giving both the questions and voicing the answers himself, with Jack registering some sort of involvement so that it appeared to be a dialogue. It certainly wasn’t an exchange of ideas, but it wasn’t silence, either. Neither of the participants was fooled, of course, but Becker hoped that Karen was. It seemed to be important to her that all should go well.
“Your mother’s a good cook, don’t you think? That was a delicious, uh, stew thing, with the chicken and the tomatoes. If you eat like that every night, you’re doing all right. Jack.”
Jack kept his gaze fixed on empty space in Becker’s general direction. An unhappy hint of a smile seemed frozen on his face. Becker realized it was the boy’s approximation of politeness. He was being addressed by an adult. He clearly was expected to stand and take it, but liking it was out of the question.
Becker sought a way to end the child’s discomfort as well as his own and conversation clearly was not the solution. The two of them sat for a minute in awkward silence, still playing a game neither of them understood.
“How’s it going out there?” Karen called from the kitchen.
“Great!” said Becker. He pictured her standing by the door, ears straining to pick up every sound. The dishes must have been stacked in the dishwasher long since. He wondered how long she was going to put them both through this form of torture. And for what reason.
“Just a few more minutes,” she said.
“Can I go to my room. Mom?” the boy called.
“You keep Mr. Becker company.” she called back. “I won’t be long.”
The boy’s smile seemed to become even more firmly fixed, Becker thought. He wondered if the boy was really as close to tears as he looked.
“Can you find yesterday’s newspaper for me. Jack?”
The boy looked at him directly for the first time. It was as if Becker had just pronounced him a free man. He darted out of the living room and into the kitchen. Becker heard a flurry of conversation between mother and son, and then the boy reappeared bearing The New York Times.
Poor kid thinks I’m going to read it and get off his case, Becker thought. No such luck.
“This is a famous trick,” Becker said. “Performed originally by the wazir of Baghdad. Using the Baghdad News, I believe.”
Becker separated the sections of newspaper and laid them so they overlapped. He then rolled them diagonally into a long tube and proceeded to tear it halfway down from the top. The boy was watching, almost despite himself.
“A lot of your magicians will make coins disappear, but there’s no trick to making money vanish. We all do it every day. And then where are we? Poorer.” Drum roll, please, Becker thought. “Or they’ll pull a rabbit out of a hat. You’ve seen them do that. I imagine.” Jack nodded. He seemed uncertain whether he wanted to participate in this affair or not. Becker kept tearing the paper into thin shreds, alternating each rip with a flourish of the hands as if every motion were special and magical.
“But what are you going to do with the rabbit when he’s done? Did you ever have a rabbit as a pet. Jack?”
“No.”
“A good thing, too. All they do is eat and poop.”
Jack laughed.
“Eat and poop, eat and poop, eat and poop,” Becker said. Jack’s shoulders shook and explosive sounds burst forth in his throat, where he tried to hold them.
Scatology, Becker thought. Works every time. Nothing funnier than bodily processes.
“And you know who would get stuck with the job of cleaning that rabbit’s cage, don’t you? You would. Jack. The rabbit would poop and you would scoop. Poop and scoop, poop and scoop. You know what that would make you, don’t you?”
“What?”
“The pooper scooper. You be the pooper scooper.”
“No, you be the pooper scooper,” Jack said, grinning.
“Thanks very much, but not to worry. This is not going to turn into a rabbit.”
Becker held the tube to his eye and looked through it at Jack.
“You know what it looks like to me?”
“What?”
“A fart tunnel.”
Jack clamped his hand to his mouth, his eyes jumping gleefully. He looked to Becker like someone about to explode.
“Does your mother ever fart. Jack?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, when she does, you could look through this and say, ‘I spy.’ ”
“Or… ”
“Or what?”
Jack took the newspaper tube from Becker’s hand. He held it to his nose.
“You could smell her,” he said, sniffing loudly.
“What a fine idea. Why didn’t I think of that?”
Jack shifted the tube to his ear. “Or you could listen to her fart,” he said happily.
“That’s a good idea. Seek her out wherever she goes, listening, listening.”
“You could hear her if she farts in the other room,” Jack said, turning the tube toward the kitchen.
“Or under the covers,” Becker said.
“You could hear her when she does it under the covers!” Jack agreed gleefully. “Or in the car, or in the kitchen, or…” His imagination flagging, he looked to Becker for help.
“Or in the garage?” Becker offered.