Without waiting for Jubilee, I run up the stairs two at a time and unlock the door, throwing it open to Mrs. Holgerson on her hands and knees scrubbing the carpet. The pungent scent of carpet cleaner and something else—burned dinner?—fills my nostrils. The apartment is otherwise quiet.
Her face contours itself into squished wrinkles of anger upon seeing me. “No!” she says. “No, no, no.” She struggles getting to her feet and I go over to her, extending my hand out for support. “I did not sign up for this.”
“Did The Dog have an accident?” I ask.
“Try four,” she says, holding a damp rag. My heart slows as I realize it’s just the puppy she’s mad about. “But that’s nothing compared to the fire!”
“Fire?” And that’s when I smell it. The acrid smoke lingering in the air that I mistook for burned food. I feel, rather than see, Jubilee step in the door behind me.
“Your boy! Almost burned down the whole apartment building,” she says. “Good thing I checked on him. Then has nothing to say for himself. Nothing!” She shakes her head. “You said a little trouble—not a delinquent!”
I pause and narrow my eyes. “He’s not a delinquent,” I say.
“Whatever,” she says.
“No, not whatever. He’s not a delinquent,” I repeat, firmer this time. “I’m sorry for the trouble, but I think it’s best if you just go.”
I reach in my wallet for enough bills to cover the amount we agreed on and hold it out to her, not taking my eyes from her face. She exchanges the damp rag she’s holding for the money and lifts her bag off the coffee table. “Good-bye,” she says curtly, and then mumbles something that doesn’t even sound like English. She huffs past Jubilee out the door, letting it slam with a thud behind her.
Jubilee’s eyes meet mine and there’s a hint of pride on her face, matching the same satisfied feeling I had in telling Mrs. Holgerson off, standing up for Aja, for my son. But that feeling is quickly replaced by something else.
“Shit,” I say, holding the pee-soaked rag. “I think I just ran off the best—the only—babysitter I had for Aja.”
Jubilee mutters something under her breath. It sounds like: “I’d hate to see the worst.” I smile.
“I gotta—” I stick out my thumb toward Aja’s room.
“Go.” She waves me off, bending at the knees to lower herself onto the couch. “I’m OK here.”
I take the rag to the kitchen sink and then head down the hall, the lingering scent of burning growing stronger with each step. “Aja?” I say, and peek my head around the corner, unsure what I’ll find. He’s sitting on his bed with The Dog on his lap. His wide eyes take me in when I enter.
“Bud?”
He’s like stone, except for the small tremors I can see rippling through his body, and my mind jumps back to the hammer-in-the-table incident. I need to handle this better than that. I sit on the edge of the bed and wait.
We stare at each other, the silence growing, until The Dog emits a whimper, as if he too is getting tired of the game.
Aja blinks. “Are the police going to come get me?” he whispers. And his voice sounds so young, so helpless—nothing like the adult way he typically speaks—that my whole body feels like it’s liquefying. The anger that was edging its way into my limbs dissolves, and I move my hand toward him on the bed, as close as he’ll let me. I yearn to enfold him into my arms.
“No,” I say, and then repeat it for emphasis. “No. Is that what Mrs. Holgerson said?” Wow. I really did a bang-up job picking a babysitter. “Tell me what happened.”
“It was an accident.”
“OK. Were you trying to set something on fire? Telekinetically or something?”
He shakes his head. “It was stupid,” he says.
I wait, scared to say anything for fear of shutting him down. The silence draws out, until Aja finally breaks it.
“Me and Iggy? We were Skyping.”
“Iggy,” I say, remembering the IM exchange I read between the two of them, and wondering if this Iggy is a bad influence and someone I should be more concerned about. For now, I decide to just listen. “OK.” I move my fingers closer until they’re brushing his kneecap. I try to give him a comforting squeeze, but he moves his leg. The Dog stands up, unhappy to have been disturbed, and repositions himself on Aja’s pillow with a sigh.
“We were playing a game.”
“What game?”
“The match game.” He ends every sentence as if it’s his final one. As if no further explanation is needed. I keep prodding.
“How do you play?”
“You each light a match at the same time and whoever drops theirs first loses.”
I take this in. “And you dropped yours?”
He nods. “Yes. It was burning my fingertips. And the trash can was right there.”
The tin trash can beside his desk finally catches my eye and I can see the blackened streaks running up the inside of it, along with some droplets of water from where I assume Mrs. Holgerson doused the flames. All I can think is: Thank god it wasn’t plastic.
“It was Iggy’s idea.”
I massage my face with both hands.
“I see,” I say. Because I really do. He was playing a game. A stupid game. And when the trash can ignited, he probably just froze in fear.
And even though I know I should be mad—not about just the fire, but the fact that Aja has run off the only option I was able to conjure up on such short notice for his after-school care—a smile starts to creep its way onto my face. My lips twitch. And then a sound burps from between them. And then another. And before I know it, I’m full-on laughing, like I haven’t laughed in years. I don’t know what’s funnier to me, picturing the look on Mrs. Holgerson’s face when she discovered the fire or the surprise on Aja’s when he realized a lit match was capable of burning him and looked for the closest receptacle, but I cannot get control of the guffaws that keep erupting from my belly. Tears are streaming down my cheeks and just when I think I can finally take a breath, Aja says: “At least it got rid of her old onion smell.”
And then I’m off again, my shoulders shaking from the effort. When I finally start to peter out, Aja is smiling at me, and even though I know he hates it, I reach up to palm his shoulder with my hand. Aja maneuvers away before I can touch him. I drop my hand and just stare at him. And in that moment, even though he has Dinesh’s thick straight hair, down to the cowlick at the crown of his head, and his crater of a dimple on his right cheek and charmingly large nose, his eyes—and the way they’re looking at me—are Kate’s incarnate. And I’m so glad I have him, to remind me of my two favorite people no longer on Earth. “God, I love you,” I say. His smile disappears and he looks down at his lap, clearly uncomfortable from the affection.