Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo

by Boris Fishman

  In Kiev, the Shulmans’ living room had up to half a dozen extra bodies if it was a weekday, more on the weekend, usually neighbors (this is how Maya’s mother came by so much of her material), two in the corner slinging bile at the president of the tenant council, two others fixed on a soap opera, a solitary soul smoking wistfully out of the kitchen window while sipping from a thimble of balsam. It was not an astrophysics symposium, in fact the television dominated here as well, but at least it served as an invitation to others. And unlike Eugene—who sneered at the false sophistication of Bender and held up, as a contrast, the purity of his own—those who stopped at the Shulmans’ Kiev apartment for balsam and tea did not consider themselves with special regard, in part because they were professional gossips and knew it, and partly because all their lives had low ceilings courtesy of the state in which they had the misfortune to live. And so there was nothing to brag about, was there, might as well enjoy a thimble of balsam with the neighbor. The Low Ceiling made ambition impossible, so not one of those heads was riveted by the next day’s work docket, and that was the only way Maya could explain Eugene’s preferences—the American economy gave you an excuse not to see people. You were unavailable until retirement; until then, it was one long dark night in the embrace of Profit, the eternally undersexed mistress. While Eugene watched TV, he worked over in his head bills of lading, sales numbers, the new van driver—not something you could do with a Bender in front of you. However, now, one hip propping open the fridge door, she was seized by another interpretation. It filled her with pity instead of the usual bafflement. Did Eugene and Alex avoid acquaintances to avoid the possibility of a careless word alerting Max he was adopted? Perhaps they themselves did not understand it.

  She made herself stop. Was there nothing that would keep her from drifting away? What crisis was urgent enough? It would have taken nothing for her to crash the Corolla on the ride home. Now, she was blessed to have arrived safely, and she was standing and thinking about . . . what? Why did her plans get away from her? With the visit to Stella, she had meant only to help Max. As, now, she meant only to make things easier for the bodies in the living room. Why couldn’t she keep to her plans? She felt afflicted alongside her son; she did not recognize herself. Alex always panicked when the fridge door remained open for too long, wasting electricity, and with a guilty tremor she knocked it closed—she intended to cause no provocation tonight—though everyone was in the living room.

  Maya would expertly steer the Benders through several plates and then out the door, earning the gratitude of Alex and Eugene; the problem of her disappearance would be buried in the relief that would follow the Benders’ departure. Maya had failed to get Madam Stella to lay hands on Max, but several weeks had now passed without Max acting strangely, and so perhaps her husband was right, and the thing to do was to leave the boy alone, to let him grow out of it. He had, after all, come out of his bizarre adventure unscathed. Perhaps he was protected. Maybe her son was charmed in some way. If she couldn’t be, then maybe he was. Abruptly, Maya was filled with a light-headed optimism. She took four plates, two in her fingers and two balanced across her forearms, as she had seen waitresses do at the Acrewood Diner, and, feeling a frisson of otherness (she was a waitress in some diner), stepped into the living room.

  It was only now that she realized that she’d heard no sound from it for some time. If Maya had been less preoccupied by her thoughts and looked in to check why the Rubin/Bender quartet was so quiet, she would have seen much sooner what they were seeing. They were all four standing in a hushed pall at the sliding door to the backyard—Bender femme was actually shaking her head slightly in a kind of pained wonder. Alex was rigid with disbelief, Eugene impassive, and Bender had slid his hands professorially into the pockets of his striped trousers, as if the vision before them would require not a little professional insight.

  What they were witnessing was the resolution of Alex’s problem with deer damage—sans deer repellent. Its ingredients surrounded their son in a clearing beyond the lawn, where the pines began: a carton of eggs from the refrigerator in the garage, a small bucket filled with water, a spray bottle, a second bucket, empty. The five of them watched him extract an egg, crack it on the rim of the water bucket, and seesaw the two halves until the yolk and albumen were separated from the chalaza. The former went into the water bucket, the latter into the other.

  But it wasn’t this ritual, strange though it was due to the cabalistic overtones of the odd, raw ingredients—for a moment, Maya tensed at the thought that Max had been cursed in a new way at Madam Stella’s—that held their attention. It was the fact that around Max milled a convention of bucks, does, and fawns, who always bolted as soon as Alex heaved open the yard door in fury. Maya counted, stricken: There were nine. They were chewing the twigs around Max’s feet. Though Max had yet to utilize the mixture he was preparing, the teeth of none were clamped around the pines. Occasionally, the visitors rubbed their white-spotted flanks against Max’s side, like housebroken cats. Except for the fawns, all were bigger than Max, and when they sidled past him, they bumped his small body so that it looked as if he might fall over.

  Maya reached for the handle of the sliding door. But another hand—she was too startled to check whose, but it was an unfamiliar hand, and later she thought it must have been Bender—held her forearm. They watched Max bumped hard by a fat buck, stupidity in its eyes. It was the color of dead leaves save for two white circles around the eyes and a patch below its mouth; it looked like it was wearing a mask. Max put down the water bucket—which, perhaps out of sensitivity toward his father, he was trying to pour into the sprayer without spilling onto the lawn—and turned toward the buck, its antlers like two gnarled, splayed hands. Then he laid his palm on the velvet-looking spot between the antlers. They stood like that for a minute, the deer’s eyes shielded by Max’s palm. Finally, the buck tucked its hooves under the muscled flank of its belly and dropped to the ground.

  Bender’s hands fell out of his pockets. Though he had solved the Kennedy curse, he had never witnessed anything comparable.

  Maya felt—she felt rather than saw it—a body break from the group by the door. It broke forward, it heaved open the sliding door with a melancholy sigh, it lunged ahead only to discover the screen door blocking its way, it uttered a curse that had never been heard in the house, it ripped open the screen door, and burst onto the deck. Only then, from the back, did Maya see that her husband was rushing out after their child. She mouthed a weak no—mouthed it weakly and without any intention to be heard.

  Seeing Alex, the buck with the masklike face sprang from its seat, an antler grazing Max on the side of his head. Max yelped and clutched his temple with both hands; the Rubins and Benders did not need perfect vision to see the blood spurting down his little fingers. Maya shrieked. The fawns and does became agitated and began to flee, trampling the ground. Max, down on one knee, went down on his butt, and then he was prostrate. As they stalked away, the animals trampled him. He tried to roll up like a snail to protect himself from the stampede.

  +

  Alex was shouting for her to get Max in the car. Max was sobbing in short, agitated bursts. Kissing him up and down his face, Maya managed to pry his hand from his temple. Alex barked Maya’s name again. The elder Rubins and the Benders stood fixed in place, terrified. After she wiped his temple with a damp cloth, Max wincing and wriggling and his sobs turning to squeals, Maya saw a puffy pink welt, but no broken skin. But where had the blood come from? She soaked a gauze pad in peroxide and then tied a strip of gauze around his head so it would remain in place. He looked like a war wounded. Max whined, too tight. “Shhh, my love, shhh,” she whispered into his ear, and allowed the two of them to be swept toward the car.

  In the emergency room was the usual collection of young men with heads in their hands, blood on their T-shirts, and hastily wrapped bandages marking the injury, and mothers with whimpering children. It was the latter group that frightened Maya more—part
ly because it was mothers and children, and partly because you couldn’t tell what was wrong.

  In the car, Maya had got Moira from the hospital—Moira was off on the weekends, but she had a friend in the emergency room. The Rubins were quietly seen as soon as they entered, though it was not apparent whom to thank. However, the doctor they were given looked no older than twenty and spoke wearily from behind owlish glasses. Maya wanted to insist on someone more alert, but settled on apprising him that she was an employee of the hospital, though this did not alter his manner. The blood was not Max’s. “It’s summer, they’re in velvet,” he said. “It’s soft tissue. One scratch, and it flows. You’re lucky. If it was fall, your son might have been really hurt. Disinfectant twice a day, and he’s going to be fine.” He squatted before Max, who wouldn’t let go of his father’s hand. “You got yourself a fright,” the doctor said to him. “Usually, someone’s walking out onto the deck, and they’ll startle a buck. Is that what happened?” Alex rushed to say yes before his wife had a chance to answer truthfully.

  Maya spent the night next to Max in his bed. She didn’t sleep, though he did. She resisted her craving to check the wound. Because it was night—because the chorus of Rubins had quieted, because she was sleeping in a different bed with a different body beside her, because sometimes she did drift closer to sleep—several times she believed for more than a moment that it had all been imagined. The remainder of the time, she marked the slowness with which time passes when one is watching the clock. It was 2:17, and an hour later, it was 2:23. Was she responsible? Had the visit to Madam Stella hexed Max instead of unhexed him? But everything had been fine until Alex intervened. And yet, what had been fine—her son playing with deer? She didn’t know what to do because she didn’t know what to regard as the problem.

  At six, she had the impression that the sun would not rise. It was not dread that she felt, more a general impression that incrementally—imperceptible in the passage of days—her life had tilted from its center, like a ship listing. This was the new level. After seeing her son surrounded by more deer than he had ever had friends, it was not difficult to imagine the sun no longer rising with the same regularity. When it did, at half past six, it did so rudely, all at once. A blast of gray light cut through the night, and then it was everywhere.

  Belatedly, she heard the sounds of coffee downstairs. It was too early for Alex—he took advantage of being one of the principals at work by arriving at nine. Maya’s work started earlier, and Max was sometimes out the door for school before his father had woken. Maya eased herself out of Max’s grip and tiptoed downstairs. Alex was at the kitchen table—in a bathrobe and leather slippers, a cup of black coffee steaming in front of him. He drank it milky and sweet but there was no milk or sugar in front of him. He didn’t seem particularly interested in the coffee—he just fingered the handle and stared at the cup.

  “You’re up,” she observed.

  He nodded distractedly. She leaned against the doorjamb and crossed her arms.

  “Sit at the table,” he offered.

  Maya didn’t have the energy to pull out the chair and merely wedged herself into the thin space between its back and the table. She felt thin—scooped away. She had eaten badly in the previous weeks, and her body showed the change quickly. Until now, she had not noticed it, really. The only thing she was aware of was how unaware she felt. And this despite trying so hard to pay attention. Trying to notice every little thing.

  There were papers in Alex’s hands. He was fingering the handle of the coffee cup only because his other hand was tracing the lines on the pages before him. One never saw papers in Alex’s hands. The paperwork was Maya’s domain. Alex handled the lawn, the fireplace, the doors when they needed oiling. Maya handled the bills and the coupons and Max’s permission slips and everyone’s medical records, and invitations from the local synagogue. There was a basket in the corner of the kitchen counter that said MAYA; all paper items requiring attention went there. But now Alex had papers in front of him. He was up an hour before his usual time, red-eyed and strange, with papers in front of him. All at once, she knew it was Max’s adoption paperwork. She knew it before she saw the agency’s logo on the stationery.

  “Why do you have that out?” she said cautiously. The folder’s location was not a secret for the adults, but it was buried in the back of a file drawer in Alex’s home office so that Max would never stumble across it. Maya had the berserk thought that Alex wanted to give Max back. No. Even she knew that was insane.

  “One page,” he said.

  She looked at him quizzically.

  “When they give you a human being, they give you one page of medical history.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re driving at.”

  “One page?” he said. “That’s all you needed to know? Look at this.” He waved the paper. “‘History of heart disease—none.’ No further detail. Did anyone bother to do more than ask? In this country, it’s assumed that the other person is telling the truth unless you can prove otherwise.” A look of—not perplexity, but grief—came over Alex. “Why?” he asked simply.

  “You should have gotten involved,” she said coldly. “Save me from mistakes.”

  “Give you the paperwork,” he said, “and I wasn’t involved. Take the paperwork away from you, and I’m cutting you back. How should I behave? Explain it to me. Give me a list of instructions.”

  “There are privacy laws, Alex. That’s why it’s so thin. But the hospital said everything was fine. And Laurel said so, too. Why was he such an easy infant? He’s been with us for eight years. It can’t have anything to do with his background.”

  “Privacy?” Alex said incredulously. “I must respect their privacy after they’ve decided to surrender their child? What about my privacy?”

  “Yours was respected in turn. You insisted on a closed adoption and got it.”

  “Oh, it was very closed,” he said. “So closed that I had the pleasure of the birth parents in my living room. I’m too soft, Maya—because I didn’t like growing up under my father. But as I become older—I hate to say it, this is the thing that children hate to admit, but I won’t lie to save myself the embarrassment of having been wrong—I see he was right. To know where I live, those people were allowed. For what reason? She needed to see with her own eyes it was far from Montana? Look at a goddamn map. But when I’ve got a question? And for a slightly more significant reason than I want to see where they live, such as my son consorts with wild animals? No—the privacy of the birth parents must be respected. You know what the issue is? We’re too nice, Maya. Too decent. Too fearful. Still the immigrants, thirty-five years later. Still asking permission.”

  “Alex,” she said quietly. “First of all, please lower your voice. Secondly, you’re not making sense. You wanted the adoption to be closed.”

  “I’m not asking to become their friends. I want a thorough medical history. Down to the Indians, or whoever the hell spawned these people. ‘Don’t let my child do rodeo,’ she said. What does it mean? Don’t let him be like his father? But who is his father? And children are sometimes like their fathers whether they live with them or not. It’s called genes. This is why I was against adoption, Maya. Because you get genes that belong to somebody else. We didn’t ask enough questions. The most important thing in our lives, and our eyes were closed by wishfulness. We wanted too badly for it to work out.”

  “You mean my eyes were closed by wishfulness,” she said. “I wanted it to work out.”

  “I am saying ‘we.’ I am trying to be charitable. To hold us both responsible.”

  “But that’s only what you are saying.”

  “It’s impossible with you.”

  “Alex, yesterday, it was you—it was only because you ran out that he got hurt!” She did not want to say it, had promised herself in the night to keep her mouth closed. He was only trying to help.

  Alex’s eyes were weary and threatening. “Perhaps you should say thank you that I saved
him from worse? Because you were standing at the door like a theatergoer.”

  She buried her face in her hands.

  He looked at her with spiteful merriment. “This is what you wanted,” he said. “You wanted to have a relationship with the parents. I was against it, yes. But changing circumstances revise facts.” He was not stubborn; he would happily acknowledge a badly made move. Alex leaned gloatingly against the back of his chair. “Tomorrow, I will call the adoption agency and demand their information. And I will threaten to sue if they decline.”

  Maya took her fingers from her eyes. “Alex? Let’s go there.”

  Alex’s forehead puckered. “Where?”

  “To Montana. Just like they came here.”

  Alex closed and opened his eyes. “Why would we do that?”

  “To meet them. To spend some time with them.”

  “I’ll consider us blessed if we can wrest their phone number from the agency,” Alex said. “There’s no reason to go there.”

  “Yes, there is. I understand why they came here. It upset us, but I understand it.”

  “So, go,” he said, aware of his cruelty, as she did not fly, could not drive far by herself. “You want to go—go.”

  “I want Max to see it, too. If he can’t know where he’s from”—she lowered her voice—“at least let him see it.”