“there’re no glazed?” She handed the box back to you. “But they looked glazed,” you said. “They’re not,” your wife-to-be said. In the end, Little Ma decided to go with some kind of marshmallow cookie, called a Mallomar, which you’d never tried and never plan to.
2.
After the usual snafus with luggage at O’Hare, you and your son are standing on a curb. It’s Friday rush hour and a logjam. Your father is making the pickup. In the old days when you visited home after many months, he’d come inside and meet you right off the plane at the gate; but now security and fear have turned everything into curbside pickup. This would be fine if he or Mom had a cell phone. Their car is a dull beige sedan and always gets camouflaged in the pack, especially on this gray evening; this is going to be a real hunt.
Owen is motioning and moaning in the direction of a very large man with a muzzled dog. “Just a sec, hon,” you say, looking for something to distract him. From your shirt pocket you hand him a crumpled boarding pass, “Go for it.” He may eat it but, like sitting too close to the TV, you can allow it once in a while. Just don’t let these things become habits.
Habits. Six months ago you decided to break a few of them. To do things differently than before, to forge new patterns. It was kind of your own personal addition to the famous Kübler-Ross stages of grief. You started with small things—brushing teeth with the left hand, changing shampoo, drinking green tea instead of coffee. If you started with the small things, you figured at some point you could change the big things. Move to a new apartment, for example.
None of it did much for your mental state, so you made a modification to your new stage of grief—don’t break patterns, instead break things. One night you scooped Owen out of his bed, stuffed him tenderly into the car seat, and started driving. You didn’t know where you were headed exactly, just somewhere remote. The bayous. Owen wouldn’t settle down in his seat; he knew something was up. He kept wiggling and making mouth-fart noises, something cute you’d taught him long ago, which your wife hadn’t approved of and which was now nerve-wracking.
You turned on some classical music and rolled down the windows. The hot spring winds replaced the air conditioning and after ten minutes the boy fell back asleep. But you couldn’t wait to get to the bayou. The next turn-off would have to do. Down an unlit one-lane road to nowhere, you began throwing them out the window, one by one, yelling Goodbye and Good Luck! Fuck you, Good China! Fuck you Beijing, fuck you Shanghai! You expected each dish and glass to sound with a violent crash. But of course they didn’t. You were driving too fast and by the time they hit the ground the sound was carried backward. No pleasure even in breaking shit. And now you’d have nothing to eat on tomorrow, having donated the regular dishes to the Salvation Army weeks earlier. Alas, you weren’t very good at grief six months ago and you’re not much better at it now. You have a lot to learn, as your mother said periodically to you as a child. Of course you always knew there was sarcasm in that statement, but now you believe there’s an earnest reminder in there as well.
It only takes an hour and a few more papery things for Owen to chew on, including inserts from your magazine, to find the right beige vehicle. You make a mental note to ask the pediatrician about this paper eating—what’s the name for the disease, picca?
Dad greets you with a smile and a handshake and gives Owen a little pat. “Hello there, little man.” You pile into the car just ahead of a police car blaring its sirens.
The ride home will be forty-five minutes, if you’re lucky. You could really use a nap, a coffee, and a shot of bourbon, in that order.
“What classes are you teaching this fall?”
Dad always asks the same question, and you’re not sure if he ever hears the answer. If he asks other questions, they’re not really questions—they’re excuses for him to talk about the latest paranoia sweeping the country or the world. A few years back, before Owen, when you and your wife took a vacation to Europe, he continually warned you about Algerian muggers in Paris. Don’t go out at night, those terrorists will take your passport and you’ll never be able to come back. Last year it was red grapes from Chile purposefully laced with salmonella.
“I said, what are you teaching this fall?”
“Sorry, I’m a bit wiped out. Research Methods, Senior English, and The Novel.”
“How do you teach novels on the computer?”
Dad has never really understood your job as a teacher in a virtual high school. You don’t blame him. Sometimes you think the job is ridiculous, too, teaching English online to mostly home-schoolers and prisoners. But when you dropped out of the doctoral program with only a master’s, you knew a college teaching gig was out of the question. And you could never go back to a cube in an office, unless the job came with a suicide clause.
After an involved explanation of email, websites, and blog-ging, you notice that Owen is asleep again. Is he getting too much sleep? Is he depressed? Is that possible for a two-year-old?
Fortunately, Dad is an extreme introvert and won’t say much for the rest of the ride home. You do wish you could talk to him about real things. In the twenty years since you left home, only coming back for holiday visits, he has never phoned you. You have called home and Mom has called you. But not once has Dad called you, independent of your mother, not even after your wife died.
You figure it’s just his way. Your parents have always been eccentric, though not in a way that’s really ever interested you. They may have believed in holistic medicine, acupuncture, and vitamin supplements long before such things gained mainstream popularity, particularly in the Midwest, but as they’ve aged they’ve gotten increasingly judgmental and seem to have strong, if not vehement, opinions about everything. The last time you called home, for example, your mother kept going on and on about how there’s a cure for cancer but the American Medical Association keeps it under wraps. As gently as you could you tried to interject that that would require an impossible conspiracy between thousands of doctors, medical schools, drug companies, as well as every branch of government. But she argued that it was possible, and that’s when Dad added If they can cover up Roswell, they can cover up anything. Your parents aren’t total conspiracy-heads, however. They do believe we walked on the moon, if only because your father worked for the Ray-theon Corporation and led the engineering team that developed Apollo 13’s guidance system.
You’re almost home when Dad says, “When’s this reunion of yours?”
“Some people are meeting at the football game tonight, but the actual event is tomorrow night.” You tell him this, but you’re still undecided about going. Part of you believes that Owen has been long overdue for a visit to grandma and grandpa’s and the reunion was simply a good excuse for a visit. Maybe you should move back to Chicagoland, to be closer to them and your sister. None of them seems overly eager to visit you in New Orleans. Dad would fly, but Mom hasn’t been on a plane since she was thirty. You’ve suggested the train, but she says it’s too expensive. They’ve threatened to drive a few times but her office manager job always seems to get in the way. Too busy—that OGO conference I have to organize is a bear, Dr. Janis wants all these transcripts by Monday, I have all the fellowship applicants to review, etc. It is plain to you that she knows more about the lives of her boss and office mates than she does about your life, which is probably as much your fault as hers.
You walk in the front door, Mom hugs you and Owen, and you’re genuinely glad to see her. She has dinner almost prepared. When you visit, she usually makes one of your favorites. Tonight it’s homemade macaroni and cheese, garlic bread, string beans, cucumber and tomato salad, and chocolate pudding pie. It’s nice to feel something resembling normality. You set Owen down in the family room, next to a box filled with toys they keep for him and your sister’s four-year-old, Pearl. Mom says she’d love to play with Owen while you unpack. Owen is not so sure but you figure he’s got to get to know her.
Unpacking uses up only a few minutes, but you take your time afterwards. You are happy to have a moment alone. Sitting on the toilet in the