“I know,” I say, using my body to block his view of the small glass bowl. Aja’s life has been turned upside down enough in the past two years—from his parents’ death, to my adopting him, to my now moving from the only town he’s ever known in New Hampshire to Lincoln, New Jersey. If I can shield him from his dying fish, at least for today, I’m going to do it. “But he looked hungry. And I am, too. Let’s go get breakfast.”
Suspicion doesn’t leave Aja’s eyes, but he turns and plods toward the kitchen, hands in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched, making his already slim ten-year-old frame appear even tinier.
“Ready for your first day of school?” I ask, heading toward the sink to rinse out yesterday’s coffee mug with hot water. Maybe today will be the day I find the extra mugs in an errant box, as I’ve unpacked all the boxes marked KITCHEN, and they were not there. Moving is the only time that I’m able to suspend my belief in the laws of nature and understand that some other dynamic force is at work. Black magic? Teleportation? It’s the only explanation for how things get lost. The coffee mugs should be in the kitchen boxes. Where I packed them. And yet . . .
I grab the coffeepot handle and pour the dark brown liquid into my mug. I shouldn’t have made an entire pot, as, after seeing some news segment on the dire health consequences of too much coffee, I promised myself that the new me in New Jersey would only have one cup a day. I can’t remember what the consequences are now, but they probably involve cancer and death. Which seems to be the end result of every health study these days. I turn back to Aja, realizing he didn’t respond to my question.
“Bud?”
He’s carefully measuring one cup of Rice Chex to pour into his bowl, as the serving size suggests. I know he’ll measure the half cup of milk next.
When he’s done with his precise breakfast preparation, he picks up a spoon.
I try again. “Aja?”
I realize I sound a bit desperate, but that’s mainly because I am. Because even though I’m now four full states away I can still hear her voice as though she’s speaking directly in my ear.
You don’t know how to talk to your own fucking child.
And that’s one of the nicest things Stephanie has said to me since our divorce. When we were married, she always complained I wasn’t good at picking up on social cues or implications or the meaning behind words and actions (and maybe she was right; is it too much to ask people to just say what they mean?), but I had no problem picking up on the implication of what she was telling me that night.
You’re not a good father.
I didn’t argue with her. It’s hard to be a good father when you only see your daughter every other weekend and the entire time her ears are plugged up with those white buds, her fingers moving at light speed, typing god knows what to god knows who on her phone. I would sometimes try to glance over Ellie’s shoulder to make sure she wasn’t sexting, as I had read an article about that in the Washington Post. She may well have been and I wouldn’t have known it, because all I saw were a bunch of uppercase letters that didn’t make words. It was like code, and I puffed up a bit wondering if maybe she’d have a future writing HTML in Silicon Valley.
Anyway, when Ellie and I had our massive falling-out four months ago, I picked up on another implication, without Stephanie’s saying a word—which I fought the urge to point out to her because I thought she would have been impressed by my progress: it was all my fault.
I should have tried harder. I should have been there more. I should have somehow made my fourteen-year-old daughter take those earbuds out and have a real, live conversation with me. Because now she won’t even speak to me. Not even via coded text.
And maybe that’s why I’m so desperate to have Aja respond to every single one of my questions. I’ve only officially been his father for two years—Two years? Has Dinesh been gone that long?—but I know the parent-child connection is so very fragile, like a soap bubble, and it doesn’t take much to break it.
“Eric?” Aja keeps his eyes trained on the Rice Chex box.
“Yeah, bud?” I say, hating the overeagerness in my voice.
“Did you find a wheelchair yet?”
I take a long sip of my coffee, not wanting to get into this conversation so early in the morning. Or ever. Aja got in his head last week that he wanted to be Professor X from the X-Men for Halloween (which, it should be pointed out, is nearly two months away. Aja likes to plan ahead). I readily agreed, without realizing the costume required a wheelchair. I told Aja I wasn’t sure it was appropriate, seeing as how he doesn’t have a disability and it could be offensive to people who actually do. “But Professor X does,” he said matter-of-factly. I let it drop, too overwhelmed by the move to argue about it.
“Not yet,” I say, and before he can ask a follow-up question, I close the gap between us with a few steps and bend at the waist so I’m eye level with him, all four of our eyes now trained on the cereal box.
“Any luck today?” I ask. It’s the exact opposite of what I was told to do by the therapist I took Aja to after his parents died. Don’t feed into his delusions, she said in her obnoxiously nasal tone. But it seemed overreactionary. Or maybe it was that drug, that Risperdal they gave him that made him so drowsy, he slept seventeen hours a day and barely ate, that felt overreactionary. I stopped giving him the pills and didn’t go back. Aja has an imagination. So what? What’s the harm in that?
He shakes his head. “I can’t even get a little spark, much less a flame.”
“A flame?” I’m a little alarmed at this. “I thought you were just trying to move it with your mind.”
“No, this week I’m working on the advanced levels, specifically telekinetic destruction.” He glances at me. “That means blowing things up.”
Oh. I scratch the side of my cheek and straighten up and glance around the small kitchen. My eyes land on the phone book that was on the counter when we moved in. I wonder who uses phone books anymore. And then I wonder where I put that therapist’s number.
Maybe it’s with the coffee mugs.
WHILE AJA IS brushing his teeth and finishing getting ready for school, I check back in on Squidboy. He is now decidedly belly-up. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I poke him with the pencil anyway, but nothing happens. I sigh. Maybe Aja won’t look at his bowl before we leave. Then I’ll have time to go to the pet store, pick out a Squidboy replica, and hope he doesn’t notice that either.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I set the pencil on the shelf next to the fishbowl and retrieve my cell.