Bad Animals by Joel Yanofsky

Author:Joel Yanofsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2012-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

NINE

Okapis

Jonah is three months younger than his first cousin, Cynthia’s brother’s son. Even before Jonah was born there was the assumption that the two boys would grow up together and be close if not best friends. But that was unlikely from the start. The more everyone pushed the two together the more they seemed to be a bad match. As toddlers, they tolerated each other but hardly more than that. Jonah was the happier and more outgoing of the two, and, as a result, more of a fuss was made about him and not just by us. He was a smiley, good-natured kid. He didn’t talk much, but he sang all the time, a kind of human jukebox with the lyrics serving as a substitute for ordinary, basic communication. On weekends, he’d sing “Jolly Holiday”; at meal time, “Apples and Bananas.” It was undeniably odd, but also undeniably winning. His tastes, for a toddler, were eclectic—running from Raffi to Frank Sinatra. Most of all, he was happy, especially compared to his cousin, who brooded more. I suspected some instinctive baby-style jealousy was at the core of their relationship. After all, Jonah had come along like a little brother might, only sooner. This was an arrogant thought on my part and I did my best to keep it to myself. Still, I couldn’t help noticing how routinely the two resisted each other whenever they were forced together. “They don’t have anything in common,” I finally told Cynthia. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, “they’re two years old. They have everything in common.” It was around the time Jonah’s cousin turned three that I began to notice he and I were engaging in small talk. He seemed curious to hear what I had to say on subjects like stuffed animals and apple sauce. He listened and looked for clues in my body language, tone of voice, expression. Jonah talked, but at you more than to you. He usually used words or phrases he’d heard somewhere else and then inserted them, like song lyrics, into a conversation. He developed catch-all phrases he could use whenever he was asked a question. “Too mad, too sad,” was his response to a simple request about how he was feeling. In retrospect, we may have judged this remark to be more profound than it was. I remember once, out of the blue, Jonah saying, “The hippopotamus is an incredibly territorial animal.” This was, for a two-year-old, an impressive feat. I knew he’d heard the line on TV and knew, too, he had no idea what it meant. Still, it was a mouthful. “Territorial is, what, five syllables?” I said to Cynthia. So I beamed and encouraged Jonah to say it again and again. No encouragement was necessary.

His cousin’s vocabulary was more rudimentary. But he could play Candyland without lining up all the pieces. He could throw and catch a ball without wandering off. He would answer you when you asked him a simple question and then ask you a simple question in return.

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