Man and Boy by Tony Parsons

Author:Tony Parsons
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2013-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

twenty-two

Whatever the opposite of inscrutable is, that’s what small children are.

Maybe in ten years’ time Pat would be able to hide his feelings behind some blank adolescent mask and the old man—me—wouldn’t have a clue what he was thinking. But at four going on five, I could tell that the latest phone call from his mother had given him the blues.

“You okay, Pat?”

He nodded listlessly, and I followed him down to the bathroom where he squirted some children’s toothpaste on his Han Solo toothbrush.

“How’s Mommy?”

“She’s all right. She’s got a cold.”

He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t about to cry. His eyes were dry and his mouth was still. But he was down.

“You want to watch a video?” I said, watching him polish teeth that still looked brand new.

He spat into the sink and shot me a suspicious look.

“It’s school tomorrow,” he said.

“I know it’s school tomorrow. I don’t mean watch the whole film. Just, say, the start of the first film up until the two ’droids get captured. How about that?”

He finished spitting into the sink and replaced his brush in the rack.

“Want to go to bed,” he said.

So I followed him into his bedroom and tucked him in. He didn’t want a story. But I couldn’t turn out the light knowing that he was depressed.

I knew what he was missing and it wasn’t even what you could call a mother’s love. It was a mother’s indulgence. Someone who would tell him that it didn’t matter if he couldn’t tie his shoes yet. Someone who would tell him that he was still the center of the universe when he had just learned what we all learn on our first day of school—that we are not the center of the universe. I was so desperate for him to make it that I couldn’t be relaxed about him making it. Gina’s indulgence. That’s what he really missed.

“She’ll be back,” I said. “Your mother. You know that she’ll be back for you, don’t you?”

He nodded.

“As soon as she’s done her work,” he said.

“We’re okay, aren’t we?” I asked him. “You and me—we’re doing okay, aren’t we?”

He stared at me, blinking away the fatigue, trying to understand what I was going on about.

“We’re managing without Mommy, aren’t we, Pat? You let me wash your hair now. I make you things you like to eat—bacon sandwiches and stuff. And school’s okay, isn’t it? You like school. We’re all right, aren’t we? You and me?”

I felt bad about pushing him like this. But I needed him to tell me that we were doing all right. I needed to know that we were coping.

He gave me a tired David Niven smile.

“Yes, we’re all right, Daddy,” he said, and I kissed him good night, hugging him gratefully.

That’s the worst thing about splitting up, I thought as I turned out his light. It makes children hide their hearts. It teaches them how to move between separate worlds. It turns them all into little diplomats. That’s the biggest tragedy of all. Divorce turns every kid into half a pint of semi-skinned Henry Kissinger.

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