by Ted Sanders
“Not blame—associate. With an understanding.”
“You know, it’s not like I didn’t explain all this to him.”
“Well, that’s good. I’m sure you did, and I do think that’s good. I talked to him, too.” Sara raised her magazine into the air at me, holding it high in both hands. I dropped my glasses back down onto my nose. In the sky of a big blue travel advertisement—over an open sea—she’d written: NOT HER BUSINESS, in thick, gone-over letters.
“What, at school?” I said into the phone.
“Yes.”
“You talked about death at school today. At the Harvest Party,” I said. Sara dropped her magazine back into her lap.
“Yeah, we went for a little walk. We went out to the playground for a little bit.” I tried to picture them, ambling together out the side door of the first-grade wing, kicking through the forbidden buckeyes near the parking lot, their heads bent. Some dear and kept conversation under the yellow leaves there, just the two of them.
“What did he say?”
“He said he was sad.”
“He did?”
“Yes, and we talked about how some things get sick and die, and how that’s just a part of nature. And also that just because someone gets sick, it doesn’t mean they’re going to die.”
“Rafael is going to die, Beth.” I looked at the clock over Sara’s head. She had her eyes laid on me like a cat’s. “I mean, he is probably dead now.”
“Well, I get that. But maybe I should’ve known about it so I could answer Evan better when he asks about it. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, well. I know what you mean,” I said.
Sara got up. She took her magazine and slid into the hall. Light unfolded briefly from the bathroom, winked out again. Evan’s mother and I went on talking. We got around to the distribution of long pants and short pants between our two houses, thick jackets and thin. We talked about lunches, hot and cold. We made arrangements.
And now, a week later, with the box from the veterinarian waiting on the patio at home, I felt relief when Evan came out of his mother’s house alone. In the house, TV shadows rose and fell behind the curtain along the driveway where I idled. Evan tottered down the steps, his backpack as big as his torso. He’d been bundled beyond reason, so I took his coat off before he got in. We left, and drove halfway home in nearly complete silence. I watched him through the rearview mirror, where he sat in his red turtleneck, huge in his fat blue car seat—an absurdity. He looked out the window. He didn’t mention Rafael, not for miles.
“So, Rafael?” I said at last.
“Yeah, Daddy?” He rolled his head to look at me in the mirror, his plump lips—his mother’s—pink with cold. His eyes as much like hers as mine. I had no good sense of how much of my face the mirror allowed him.
“I went and got him,” I said.
“Oh,” said Evan. Not a disinterested oh, I knew. Sometimes, when you’re five, you don’t know how to answer. An oh is like a lob.
“I got his body, I mean. The doctor said it went well. The euthanasia? He died very peacefully. It didn’t hurt him at all.”
“Oh.”
“That’s good, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s sad, though.”
“Except now we can get a new lizard.”
“Well,” I said. I tried to think what to say. For a minute I had no idea what a person would say.
Evan said, “Maybe they have another Rafael at a different store.”
“Oh buddy, I don’t know. I don’t think we’re really ready to get a new lizard right now. We’re pretty sad, Sabby and I are pretty sad. About Rafael. I don’t think we want a new lizard right now.”
“Well, sometimes when pets die, it’s nice to get a new one. To not be sad.” He shrugged his mother’s shrug. He looked out the window again and I did too, for a moment.
Then I said, “Yeah, but sometimes it’s nice to just be sad for a while.” I watched Evan watch the trees go by on the roadside, smoky brands in front of the setting sun. “I think maybe we should just be sad for a while,” I said to the mirror. “He was a good lizard.”
Evan didn’t answer. Shadows ran in and out of his face. A few minutes later he said, “Look, Daddy. The trees are attacking the sun.”
We went home with dinner, burgers in paper and a fish sandwich for Sara, which she finished before I even sat down for myself. Afterward, the three of us went outside and we stood on the patio around the box, Evan and Sara and I. I removed the rose of Sharon tree and set the milk crate aside. It had gotten colder, much colder, and dark outside. The orange porchlight had burned out months before, had become ancient with spiders and bugs.
“Tomorrow we’ll bury him. You and I,” I said.
“He is in the box,” Evan said. His breath plumed.
“Yes, he is. His body is.”
We looked at the box, with its blue animal parade. All of them hunted, hunting, I saw now. Even the little rodent, whose hapless imagined prey stalked around the corner from where I stood. I didn’t move to see.
“Why is he in a box?”
“Well, he’s dead. He’s there because he’s dead.”
“Did they put him in the box?”
“Yes.”
“For you to take him in?”
“Yes.”
Evan said, “Did you see him?”
I hesitated, just for a second. “No, I didn’t.”
I turned to Sara and she was right there, tearing at her mouth’s corner with her teeth. She was staring at my forehead, and I tried to think if I knew what kind of thing that meant, or if it meant anything at all. And then as I stood there, with Evan between us, beneath me, suddenly I was losing my sense of years passing, of having passed, and I was falling back with my memories swept in the curved stretch of my arms, and I thought about the things you learn about the people you choose to know, and the sad fading mystery of how you let those things come loose from the people, from the reasons you love them, from the reasons you don’t.
Evan rolled his head back on its hinges and looked up at me. “Can I see?”
Before I could even take in a breath, Sara said, “Sure you can.”
I looked up at the sky. High over us, spilt-flour clouds, lit from the ground, slid by past the branches of new winter trees. Leaves rattled low in the yard. I felt my heart rising in my chest, Evan’s eyes on me from below.
“Sara…,” I said into the air.
“I’m sorry,” she said immediately, even as my voice still fell.
“Can I, Daddy?” Evan asked.
“No, buddy,” said Sara. “I’m sorry, it’s not such a good idea.”
“I’d rather we didn’t,” I said.
“Why?”
“It’s better not to see some things.”
“Then why did Sabby say I can?”
“Why are you asking me that? She’s standing right here.”
Sara exhaled and, I think, slid a tiny halfstep away from me—or maybe she just shifted her weight that way.
Evan rolled his head back in her direction. “Sabby why did you say I can?” All in a breath.
“Evan, honey, I don’t know. I just wasn’t thinking. But listen to your dad.”
“Can I, Daddy?”
“No, Evan, no.”
“Would it be scary?” he said, although by the way he said it I could tell it hadn’t really occurred to him that it might be. And as I tried to gauge the issue for him, for a minute I forgot that Rafael wasn’t in the box at all, and I had no sense myself how scary the contents might—in reality—be or seem. Or which would have been scarier by now, after four days outside: the real or the not.
And then Sara said, “You might think it was scary if you saw, buddy, but it isn’t really. It’s just body. The only thing that’s scary is that Rafael won’t be around anymore. He won’t be our pet anymore, our friend. That’s scary and sad, but it’ll be okay.”
“That’s right,” I said, though
I had no idea, that moment, whether it was or not.
Evan dropped out from beneath my touch. He went to his knees and elbows in front of the box. He put his chin into his hands.
“It’s just body,” he said.
We watched him, and then Sara spoke again. “Evan, do you know how Rafael got hurt?”
“Well,” Evan said, and the top half of his head levered like a puppet’s as he spoke. “Well, I think nature did it, is what I think.”
Sara turned to me. Her face had become brittle, her upper lip curling. She shook her head. “Oh, it’s nature all right,” she said.
Evan rocked forward, pushing his nose inches from the box. His toes tapped against the concrete. “Rafael, Rafael,” he whispered.
IN THE NIGHT, THAT NIGHT, I WOKE UP BEWILDERED. IN A backward avalanche of panic. Slaps at my neck, my chest, a small voice calling in soft alarm. Daddy? Daddy? Daddy, Daddy. I sat up quick into cold, piling my breath in the back of my head. Evan bent into me over the edge of the bed, heat unfurling off him, his white undershirt glowing and swinging in the dark.
“Evan? Buddy, what is it? What’s wrong?” I scoured him up and down with my foggy eyes. I slapped at the bedside table for my glasses, but they were never there. Evan’s face looked dusky and swollen, and I put my hands unthinking on his cheeks. His skin felt so hot and so torn from its usual shape that I tried to smooth it with my thumbs, to see if it had broken.
“What is it, Evan? What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” I slid my hands down Evan’s arms to his palms, turning them up and tilting them toward me. Blood pounding in my ears put my voice under water.
“Rafael, Rafael,” Evan cried, twisting his hands in my grasp and taking me by the wrists. The pull of it took me to my feet. He led me out of the room. I left Sara there where she still slept.
The patio door stood open, the blinds pulled back. A faint premorning blush fell through and lit pink angled shapes across the kitchen tile. Cold crept along the floor and around my feet. “Outside, Daddy.” Evan went to the first panel of the patio door and pressed his palms and forehead against the glass, looking out and down. He had no pants on, I saw now, no underwear even. I came up beside him to the open door.
“Evan, were you out here?”
“Well, I was,” he said, looking up at me. “But Rafael.”
I sagged. “Evan, did you try to see Rafael?”
“Yes, but they ate him.” His voice rose as he spoke. He put both fists into his crotch, bending into them and lifting one foot after the other.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, let me see.”
I stepped out, my bare feet crumpling up onto their sides to get away from the freezing concrete. Bird voices unfolded tersely from the air around me, flickering into strings of ornaments. The sun hadn’t come up yet. In the corner of the patio, the orange crate had been turned upright, empty. Further out, the box from the vet lay on its side, its flaps gaping like the mouth of a tiny whale. A cluster of paper towels nearby made a ragged, small-headed ghost—dropped there and given accidental shape, I could just see, by the clutch of a tiny fist. I went around the far side of the box, noticing as I did that the rose of Sharon tree still stood against the patio wall. I’d left it there, and an animal had gotten into the milkcrate, into the box. A raccoon, probably, or a possum. So stupid of me, to forget the tree. Evan watched me from inside, his dim shape swaying, his forehead and hands going suddenly white where he pressed himself flat against the glass. The little tip of his penis.
“Was there an animal?” I called to him.
He spoke into the door, muffling himself, steaming a circle onto the glass—Yes?
“Yes, Evan? An animal?”
Evan pulled away from the glass and leaned into the open doorway. He pointed at my feet, swung his arm around. “Ants,” he said. “Ants, Daddy.”
I squinted in the faint light. I stepped up and nudged the box with my toe, twice. Nothing happened. I gave it a good push, swinging the open end around, and instantly a coarse black ball rolled out onto the concrete between my feet. I jumped away, a noise leaking out of me. Not a ball, exactly—a tube, black and churning, breaking apart in tiny, jumping pieces.
“Evan, turn on the kitchen light,” I said. I stepped around the seething mass. “Turn it on, Evan.” I grasped my shirt at my belly with my other hand. I heard the pop of a switch from inside, and a second later the fluorescent from the kitchen stuttered on.
Hulking black ants, as big as flies—dozens upon dozens. They were into the sausage, of course, everywhere atop it, so thick that I couldn’t even see the thing. So many that the sausage rocked beneath them like a boat, seeming to move toward me across the concrete. More ants swarmed over it even as others fell away, and now I saw that ants milled here and there all about the patio, thinning further from the pile. I took two long steps back. I saw, too, a braided black trail that ran along a seam in the concrete, down to the rose of Sharon tree and up over the patio wall.
I squatted, keeping my distance, watching. I pulled the corners of my eyes back, stretching them into focus. The massive ants churned over the sausage, shining. Individuals staggered away, bearing gristly, glistening chunks. Those that left wove between other ants just arriving, or returning. I fancied I could hear the ants ripping into the thing, their mandibles clicking—the wet snicker of vivisection. I couldn’t tell for sure, but the sausage looked half-gone, at least. I held my hands against my face and I watched the ants working. I breathed hard through my nose onto my palms. I spotted a single ant weaving toward me. I reached out and flicked a hasty finger at it, lofting it out of sight. A little bile rose in my throat.
“Do something, Daddy.”
Evan stood there inside the open doorway, backlit by the kitchen light, his face invisible to me. He leaned out from behind the glass. His shirt hung like a dress. His thick legs looked skinny, and long.
“Like what?” I said.
“Make them go away.”
I stood, my knees popping. My feet had gone numb. “Okay, let me think.”
I stepped around the ant pile and bent to pick up the box. I grabbed an open flap, taking it lightly between two fingers, and I flung the box over the patio wall, into the side yard. It rustled and thudded into the grass. Crawlies feathered my arm and I shook it, shuddering. I swiped at it with my other hand, and then I perceived more movement across my feet, through the hair on my shins. I minced stupidly to the patio door and in, bending to stare and swat at my legs.
“Did they get you?” Evan asked.
“What? No, no, they won’t get me. They don’t get you. I just don’t want them on me is all.” I didn’t know that they had been on me. They weren’t now, but I could still feel them.
“Can we kill them?”
“I would like to kill them.” I closed the patio door and went over to the sink. I rummaged around underneath, where we kept all the sponges and rags, poisons and cleaners. I found spider killer—Evan had a fear—and a plastic bag of mosquito-repellent bracelets. No other bug sprays; nothing I was sure would kill ants. But the big green bucket was under there, cupped beneath the hanging pipes—catching a weak, sporadic leak. I guessed it would hold four gallons or more.
“Here.” I slid the bucket out, standing. A handful of pale water circled around the grooves in the bottom. I turned on the water in the sink, shoved the handle all the way over to hot. I ran the water until steam billowed.
“What are you doing, Daddy?”
“I’m gonna drown them. Gonna wash them away.”
Evan put his chin on the counter and watched as I filled the bucket. The plastic grew warm and soft as the water rose, and we waited. Evan began chanting something softly under his breath, so low I couldn’t make it out. The water got deeper, began to muffle itself, and only then could I hear what Evan was saying: Go, go, go. We let the water run. I filled the bucket so high, I couldn’t even get it out from under the faucet without spilling some. I sloshed more onto the floor as I made my way slowly across the
kitchen, Evan skittering ahead of me.
“Get the door, buddy, okay? Go ahead and open it.”
Evan walked the sliding door open solemnly, dropping his head and pushing with both hands, putting his weight into it. I’d seen him do this a hundred times, but for some reason, just then, it caught me right up, watching him do it—a weird kind of ceremony in the poetry of his movement, the sincerity of his labor. I stopped for a second, the bucket dangling warm against my leg, and watched him. He turned to face me. He put his hands on his hips.
“Ready?” I said.
“Ready.”
I stepped up to the threshold. I brought the bucket up to my side. I judged that the bucket, full as it was, might weigh as much as Evan himself, but I had no idea how such a thing could be. I held it at my side, panting.
“Heavy,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Will it kill them?”
“No, I don’t think so. But they sure won’t like it.” Outside, the ants were still at work. I could still see the black pile around the sausage link, six feet out. “Okay then,” I said.
I hefted the bucket back and threw. It was so heavy that once the water had gone I almost fell into my motion, out onto the patio, following the great bow of water as it slapped monstrously onto the concrete—a huge and startling sound. Water splashed up onto the glass doors, back onto my legs. Sheets of steam bloomed. The water spread like a flame over paper, darking the concrete as it went. The crest of the water hit the sausage link and peeled into a brief standing wave as it broke over the top—scattering the ants, I hoped, blowing them away, though of course I couldn’t actually witness such a thing, not from where I stood. The sausage slid and began to tumble across the patio, still caught up in the frontwaters of the little flood. The cluster of paper towels Evan had dropped swirled briefly and was grounded, wet-bottomed. Water curled around the base of the rose of Sharon tree. And then almost immediately the water thinned to nothing—it ran out over the far edge of the patio or was absorbed by the concrete itself, channeled into the seams. I could hardly fathom where it had all gone, so fast. I set the bucket down.
