by Ben Marcus
“I know that you and Mom are in charge and you make the rules,” Jonah said. “But even though I’m only ten, don’t I have a right not to be touched?”
The boy sounded so reasonable.
“You do,” Martin said. “I apologize.”
“I keep asking, but you don’t listen.”
“I listen.”
“You don’t. Because you keep doing it. So does Mom. You want to treat me like a stuffed animal, and I don’t want to be treated like that.”
“No, I don’t, buddy.”
“I don’t want to be called buddy. Or mister. Or champ. I don’t do that to you. You wouldn’t want me always inventing some new ridiculous name for you.”
“Okay.” Martin put up his hands in surrender. “No more nicknames. I promise. It’s just that you’re my son and I like to hug you. We like to hug you.”
“I don’t want you to anymore. And I’ve said that.”
“Well, too bad,” Martin said, trying to be lighthearted, and, as if to prove his point, he grabbed Lester, and Lester squealed with delight, squirming in his father’s arms.
Do you see how this used to work? Martin wanted to say to Jonah. This was you once, this was us.
Jonah seemed genuinely puzzled. “It doesn’t matter to you that I don’t like it?”
“It matters, but you’re wrong. You can be wrong, you know. You’ll die, without affection. I’m not kidding. You will actually dry up and die.”
Again, he found he had to explain love to this boy, to detail what it was like when you felt a desperate connection with someone else, how you wanted to hold that person and just crush him with hugs. But as Martin fought through the difficult and ridiculous discussion, he felt as if he were having a conversation with a lawyer. A lawyer, a scold, a little prick of a person. Whom he wanted to hug less and less. Maybe it’d be simpler just to give Jonah what he wanted. What he thought he wanted.
Jonah seemed pensive, concerned.
“Does any of that make sense to you?” Martin asked.
“It’s just that I’d rather not say things that could hurt someone,” Jonah said.
“Well…that’s good. That’s how you should feel.”
“I’d rather not have to say anything about you and Mom. At school. To Mr. Fourenay.”
Mr. Fourenay was what they called a “feelings doctor.” He was paid, certainly not very much, to take the kids and their feelings very, very seriously. Martin and Rachel had trouble taking him seriously. He looked like a man who had subsisted, for a very long time, on a strict diet of the feelings of children. Gutted, wasted, and soft.
“Jonah, what are you talking about?”
“About you touching me when I don’t want you to. I don’t want to have to mention that to anyone at school. I really don’t.”
Martin stood up. It was as if a hand had moved inside him.
He stared at Jonah, who held his gaze patiently, waiting for an answer.
“Message received. I’ll discuss it with Mom.”
“Thank you.”
* * *
—
Without really thinking about it, Martin had crafted an adulthood that was essentially friendless. There were, of course, the friends of the marriage, who knew him only as part of a couple—the dour, rotten part—and thus they were ruled out for anything remotely candid, like a confession of what the fuck had just gone down in his own home. Before the children came, he’d managed, sometimes erratically, to maintain preposterous phone relationships with several male friends. Deep, searching, facially sweaty conversations on the phone with other semi-articulate, vaguely unhappy men. In general, these friendships had heated up and found their purpose around a courtship or a breakup, when an aria of complaint or desire could be harmonized by some pathetic accomplice. But after Jonah was born, and then Lester, phone calls with friends had become out of the question. There was just never a time when it was okay, or even appealing, to talk on the phone. When he was home, he was in shark mode, cruising slowly and brutally through the house, cleaning and clearing, scrubbing food from rugs, folding and storing tiny items of clothing, and, if no one was looking, occasionally stopping at his laptop to see if his prospects had suddenly been lifted by some piece of tremendous fortune, delivered via email. When he finally came to rest, in a barf-covered chair, he was done for the night. He poured several beers, in succession, right onto his pleasure center, which could remain dry and withered no matter what came soaking down.
The gamble of a friendless adulthood, whether by accident or design, was that your partner would step up to the role. She for you, and you for her.
But when Martin thought about Jonah’s threat—blackmail, really—he knew he couldn’t tell Rachel. In a certain light, the only light that mattered, he was in the wrong. The instructions were already out that they were not to get all huggy with Jonah, and here he’d gone and done it anyway. Rachel would just ask him what he had expected and why he was surprised that Jonah had lashed out at him for not respecting his boundaries.
So, yeah, maybe, maybe that was all true. But there was the other part. The threat that came out of the boy. The quiet force of it. To even mention that Jonah had threatened to report them for touching him ghosted an irreversible suspicion into people’s minds. You couldn’t talk about it. You couldn’t mention it. It seemed better to not even think it, to do the work that would begin to block such an event from memory.
* * *
—
The boys were talking quietly on the couch one afternoon a few days later. Martin was in the next room, and he caught the sweet tones, the two voices he loved, that he couldn’t even bear. For a minute he forgot what was going on and listened to the life he’d helped make. They were speaking like little people, not kids, back and forth, a real discussion. Jonah was explaining something to Lester, and Lester was asking questions, listening patiently. It was heartbreaking.
He snuck out to see the boys on the couch, Lester cuddled up against his older brother, who had a big book in his hands. A grown-up one. On the cover, instead of a boy dashing beneath a bolt of lightning, were the good old Twin Towers. The title, Lies, was glazed in blood, which dripped down the towers themselves.
Oh, motherfucking hell.
“What’s this?” Martin asked. “What are you reading there?”
“A book about 9/11. Who caused it.”
Martin grabbed it, thumbed the pages. “Where’d you get it?”
“From Amazon. With my birthday gift card.”
“Hmm. Do you believe it?”
“What do you mean? It’s true.”
“What’s true?”
“That the Jews caused 9/11 and they all stayed home that day so they wouldn’t get killed.”
Martin excused Lester. Told him to skedaddle and, yes, it was fine to watch TV, even though watching time hadn’t started yet. Just go, go.
“Jonah,” he whispered. “Jonah, stop. This is not okay. Not even remotely okay. First of all, Jonah, you have to listen to me. This is insane. This is a book by an insane person.”
“You know him?”
“No, I don’t know him. I don’t have to. Listen to me, you know that we’re Jewish, right? You, me, Mom, Lester. We’re Jewish.”
“Not really.”
“What do you mean, not really?”
“You don’t go to synagogue. You don’t seem to worship. You never talk about it.”
“That’s not all that matters.”
“Last month was Yom Kippur and you didn’t fast. You didn’t go to services. You don’t ever say Happy New Year on Rosh Hashanah.”
“Those are rituals. You don’t need to observe them to be part of the faith.”
“But do you know anything about it?”
“9/11?”
“No, being Jewish. Do you know wh
at it means and what you’re supposed to believe and how you’re supposed to act?”
“I do, yes. I have a pretty good idea.”
“Then tell me.”
“Jonah.”
“What? I’m just wondering how you can call yourself Jewish.”
“How? Are you fucking kidding me?”
He needed to walk away before he did something.
“Okay, Jonah, it’s actually really simple. I’ll tell you how. Because everyone else in the world would call me Jewish. With no debate. None. Because of my parents and their parents, and their parents, including whoever got turned to dust in the war. Zayde Anshel’s whole family. You walk by their picture every day in the hall. Do you think you’re not related to them? And because I was called a kike in junior high school, and high school, and college, and probably beyond that, right up to this fucking day. And because if they started rounding up Jews again they’d take one look at our name and they’d know. And that’s you, too, mister. They would come for us and kill us. Okay? You.”
He was shaking his fist in his son’s face. Just old-school shouting. He wanted to do more. He wanted to tear something apart. There was no safe way to behave right now.
“They would kill you. And you’d be dead. You’d die.”
“Martin?” Rachel said. “What’s going on?”
Of course. There she was. Lurking. He had no idea how long she’d been standing there, what she’d heard.
Martin wasn’t done. Jonah seemed fascinated, his eyes wide as his father ranted.
“Even if you said that you hated Jews, too, and that Jews were evil and caused all the suffering in the world, they would look at you and know for sure that you were Jewish, for sure! Buddy, champ, mister”—just spitting these names at his son—“because only a Jew, they would say, only a Jew would betray his own people like that.”
Jonah looked at him. “I understand,” he said. He didn’t seem shaken. He didn’t seem disturbed. Had he heard? How could he really understand?
The boy picked up the book and thumbed through it.
“This is just a different point of view. You always say that I should have an open mind, that I should think for myself. You say that to me all the time.”
“Yes, I do. You’re right.” Martin was trembling.
“Then do I have your permission to keep reading it?”
“No, you absolutely don’t. Not this time. Permission denied.”
Rachel was shaking her head.
“Do you see what he’s reading? Do you see it?” he shouted.
He waved the book at her, and she just looked at him with no expression at all.
* * *
—
After the kids were in bed, and the house had been quietly put back together, Rachel said they needed to talk.
Yes, we do, he thought, and about time.
“Honestly,” she said. “It’s upsetting that he had that book, but the way you spoke to him? I don’t want you going anywhere near him.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not for you to say. You’re his mom, not mine. You want to file papers? You want to seek custody? Good luck, Mrs. Freeze. I’m his father. And you didn’t hear it. You didn’t hear it all. You have no fucking idea.”
“I heard it, and I heard you. Martin, you need help. You’re, I don’t know, depressed. You’re self-pitying. You think everything is some concerted attack on you. For the record, I am worried about Jonah. Really worried. Something is seriously wrong. There is no debate there. But you’re just the worst possible partner in that worry—the fucking worst—because you make everything harder, and we can’t discuss it without analyzing your feelings. You act wounded and hurt, and we’re all supposed to feel sorry for you. For you! This isn’t about you. So shut down the pity party already.”
When this kind of talk came on, Martin knew to listen. This was the scold she’d been winding up for, and if he could endure it, and cop to it, there might be some release and clarity at the other end. A part of him found these outbursts from Rachel thrilling, and in some ways it was possible that he co-engineered them, without really thinking about it. Performed the sullen and narcissistic dance moves that, over time, would yield this kind of eruption from her. His wife was alive. She cared. Even if it seemed that she might sort of hate him.
He circled the house for a while, cooling off, letting the attack—no, no, the truth—settle. Any argument or even discussion to the contrary would just feed her point and read as the defensive bleating of a cornered man. Any speech, that is, except admission, contrition, and apology, the three horsemen.
Which was who he brought back into the room with him.
* * *
—
Rachel was in bed reading, eyes locked onto the page. She didn’t seem even remotely ready to surrender her anger.
“Hey, listen,” Martin said. “So I know you’re mad, but I just want to say that I agree with everything you said. I’m scared and I’m worried and I’m sorry.”
He let this settle. It needed to spread, to sink in. She needed to realize that he was agreeing with her.
It was hard to tell, but it seemed that some of her anger, with nothing to meet it, was draining out.
“And,” he continued. He waited for her to look up, which she finally did. “You’ll think I’m kidding, and I know you don’t even want to hear this right now, but it’s true, and I have to say it. It made me a little bit horny to hear all that.”
She shook her head at the bad joke, which at least meant there was room to move here.
“Shut up,” she said.
This was the way in. He took it.
“You shut up.”
“Sorry to yell, Martin. I am. I just—this is so hard. I’m sorry.”
She probably wasn’t. This was simply the script back in, to the two of them united, and they both knew it. One day, one of them would choose not to play. It would be so easy not to say their lines.
“No, it’s okay,” he said to her, climbing onto the bed. “I get it. Listen, let’s take the little man to the shop. Get him fixed. I’ll call some doctors in the morning.”
They hugged. An actual hug, between two consenting people. A novelty in this house.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m terrified. I don’t know what’s happening. I look at him and want so much to just grab him, but he’s not there anymore. What has he done to himself?”
“Maybe he just needs minor surgery. Does that work on 9/11 truthers?”
“Oh, look,” she said to him softly. “You’re back. The real you. We missed you.”
They talked a little and snuggled closer to each other in bed. For a moment, their good feeling came on them—a version of it, anyway. It felt mild and transitory, but he would take it. It was nice. He was in bed with his wife, and they would figure this out.
“Listen,” he said to her. “Do you want to just shag a pony right now, get back on track?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I feel gross. I feel depressed.”
“I feel gross, too. Let’s do it. Two gross people licking each other’s buttons.”
She went to the bathroom and got the jar of enabler. They took their positions on the bed.
He hoped he could. He hoped he could. He hoped he could.
He was cold and insecure, so he left his shirt on. And his socks.
They used a cream. They used their hands. They used an object or two. During the brief strain of actual fornication they persisted with casual conversation about the next day’s errands. In the early days of their marriage, this had seemed wicked and sexy, some ironic ballast against the animal greed. Now it just seemed efficient, and the animal greed no longer appeared. Minus the wet spot at the end, and the minor glow one occasionally felt, their sex wasn’t so different from riding the subway.
* * *
—
It turned out that there was a deep arsenal of medical professionals who would be delighted to consult on the problem of a disturbed child. Angry, depressed, anxious, remote, bizarre. Even a Jew-hating Jewish child who might very well be dead inside. Only when his parents looked at him, though. Only when his parents spoke to him. Important parameter for the differential.
They zeroed in on recommendations with the help of a high-level participant in this world, a friend named Maureen, whose three exquisitely exceptional children had consumed, and spat back out, various kinds of psych services ever since they could walk. Each of the kids seemed to romance a different diagnosis every month, so Maureen had a pretty good idea of who fixed what and for how much goddam moolah.
When they told her, in pale terms, about Jonah, she, as a connoisseur of alienating behavior from the young, got excited.
“This is so The Fifth Child,” she said. “Did you guys read that? I mean, you probably shouldn’t read that. But did you? It’s like a fiction novel. I don’t think it really happened. But it’s still fascinating.”
Rachel had read it. Happy couple with four children and perfect life have fifth child, leading to less-perfect life. Much, much, much, much less perfect. Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow, grief, and sorrow. Not really life at all.
“Yeah, but the kid in that book is a monster,” Rachel said. “So heartless. He’s not real. And he just wants to inflict pain. Jonah wouldn’t hurt anyone. He wants to be alone. Or, not that, but. I don’t know what Jonah wants. He’s not violent, though. Or even mad. I don’t think.”
“All right, but he is hurting you, right?” Maureen said. “I mean, it seems like this is really causing you guys a lot of pain and suffering.”
“I haven’t read the book,” Martin said. “But this isn’t about us. This is about Jonah. His pain, his suffering. We just want to get to the bottom of it. To help him. To give him support.”
In Rachel’s silence he could feel her agreement and, maybe, her surprise that he would, or even could, think this way. He knew what to say now. He wasn’t going to get burned again. But did he believe it? Was it true? He honestly didn’t even know, and he wasn’t so sure it mattered.
