The thoughts occurred to me in a chain, one linked to the next like the magnetic couplings between the wooden train cars I knew I’d find inside. I had to bring something home for Jacob, and instead of sifting through mountains of plastic junk at the souvenir shops, I could get him a book—maybe something like the picture search book we had looked at the night before I left, or something filled with other kinds of puzzles. It was such a compelling idea that I forgot momentarily about the burrito dinner calling my name, as well as the supervisory chore at the conference registration desk that wasn’t. I turned and starting walking towards the bookstore with happy thoughts of Jacob and I working together on puzzles dancing in my head.
Inside the aroma of sand and surf gave way to coffee beans and bindery glue, a familiar scent that seemed to transport me, as if the sliding glass doors were a magical portal capable of transcending time and space. The decor was identical to the store back home, identical, I knew, to hundreds of other stores across the United States. Caricatures of famous authors were framed on the walls—mostly nineteenth and early twentieth century, names everyone knows but no one reads—looking down on a labyrinth of wooden tables and laminate shelves, each with a tasteful sign bearing some generic category of books—subjects like history, fiction and poetry squared off against weight loss, sports and gardening, as if it was reasonable to put such topics on equal footing. It was filled with quiet people, shuffling between the rows and stealing a few paragraphs out of random tomes they had pulled off the shelves. In our modern world I suppose it was what passed for a temple, a cookie-cutter one, dedicated not to the sum of human knowledge but to the information people will pay $8.95 a title for, and only then if it’s on sale.
The children’s section was identical to the one I took Jacob to—the train table surrounded by the same display of wooden toys, and the books organized both by subject and by age. I found the shelf stuffed with puzzle books and was overwhelmed by their sheer number. There were picture search books like Jacob’s on every subject imaginable, and hundreds of other options, from sticker books and coloring books to word searches and crossword puzzles.
It was bewildering. Maybe it was the drinks I had poured on my empty stomach, or the disorientation that always came with travel and lack of sleep, but I just couldn’t decide what to get. I wanted something challenging, something Jacob and I could do together, but not too challenging, something he wouldn’t shrink from, something that would nurture that inner genius I so desperately wanted him to reveal. Pulling out my cell phone, I decided to call back home and see what Jenny thought. The phone rang six times before it picked up.
“Yes? Hello? Who is it?” Jenny sounded breathless, as if she had run for the phone.
“Jenny?”
“Yes?” she said into the phone, and then, with her mouth away from the receiver, she barked at someone like a drill sergeant. “Put it down, mister! Right now!”
“Jenny?”
“Yes! Who is it?”
“It’s me, Alan. What’s going on?”
“Alan! It’s your goddamn son. He’s driving me out of my mind.”
“What is he—”
“Jacob! No! Oh my god!”
Then the phone must have fallen out of her hand because I heard the shuffling of fabric against the ear piece and a loud thump as it hit the floor. Jenny’s frantic shouting and Jacob’s screaming echoed in my ear as if from a great distance.
“Jenny!” I called into the phone, knowing she had left and couldn’t hear, but needing to say something all the same. Looking around to assess what kind of scene I would create if I started shouting, I lowered my voice only slightly. “Jenny, what the hell is going on?”
No response. I waited, the phone pressed hotly against my ear and a finger stuck in the opposite organ, straining hard to pick up every auditory clue. I was angry, viscerally so, but held it in check out of courtesy for the bookstore patrons surrounding me. Jenny’s final intelligible comment—oh my god—seemed to fill my world. It had been desperate, as if something not just frustrating but tragic had happened. My thoughts ran wild. Jacob was hurt, he had cut himself and was bleeding all over the floor. Or he had found some matches and had set the house on fire. Or he had hurt Jenny or the baby in some way, striking out in blind fury and hitting her in some tender spot. I couldn’t tell. The thumps, shrieks and footfalls I heard weren’t enough to piece anything together, and here I was, two thousand miles away in a bookstore in Miami Beach.
What the fuck am I doing here? I thought absently, staring blankly at the puzzle books arrayed before me. Entertaining a pack of influentials while my real life was destroying itself back home. And for what? A paycheck? A career? A chance to do something important? Did any of that stuff even matter?
It was a long and frustrating wait for Jenny to come back on the line. I almost hung up twice, figuring she could call me back when the crisis had passed, but both times decided not to, afraid I would involuntarily hurl the phone against the wall. Instead, I closed my eyes and started counting the slow and measured breaths I forced myself to take.
“Alan? Are you still there?”
“Yes,” I said, with renewed calmness. “What happened?”
“It’s Jacob.”
“I know it’s Jacob.” I was a stone. At the bottom of a forgotten well. “What’s he done?”
“He’s wild, Alan. He’s out of control. He doesn’t listen to me when you’re not here.”
“Jenny,” I said measuredly. “What just happened? You dropped the phone and said, ‘oh my god.’ Is Jacob all right?”
“You need to talk to him, Alan. You need to make him listen to me.”
It was like she wasn’t even hearing me, like I was just the buzzing of an annoying insect in her ear. Every time I said something, she just spoke more loudly.
“Put him on.”
“He’s always like this when you travel. Something happens to him when you leave. It’s like he turns into a monster.”
“Okay. Let me talk to him.”
“Christ, he makes me so angry! It’s like he’s looking to cause trouble. He won’t do anything I tell him to do.”
“Jenny! Put him on and let me talk to him.”
“Here, just a minute.” And then with the phone away from her mouth, “Jacob! Come here and talk to your father!”
“No!” I heard Jacob say, as if curled up in the corner, a voice like the yip of a wild dog, raised on the streets and alleyways, subservient to nothing but its own need for dominance.
“You get over here right now, young man. You need to talk to your father.”
“I don’t want to!”
“I don’t care what you want, mister! You’re going to talk to him.”
Then I heard Jenny’s heavy tread across the room and when Jacob began to scream, I imagined her grabbing him by the arm and twisting it.
“Take this phone, Jacob! Take this phone and talk to him!”
“Jenny,” I said, a sickness creeping into my stomach. “Forget it, honey. I’ll call back later when he’s calmed down.”
She couldn’t hear me. The phone wasn’t even next to her ear. The way Jacob’s cries suddenly amplified, she must have been pushing the receiver against his face.
“Jenny,” I said helplessly, wanting to shout but knowing it wouldn’t do any good. Nothing I could do from that distance would have any positive effect. “Jenny, it’s all right.”
“Talk to him, goddammit! Or so help me, I’m throwing all your trains in the garbage!”
That must have got Jacob’s attention. Threatening his treasured possessions usually did.
“Hello, Daddy,” he said feebly, as if defeated.
“Hi, buddy,” I said as pleasantly as I could. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Why is Mommy upset?”
“What?”
“Why is Mommy upset?” I repeated, more loudly.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you do something to make her angry?”
“What?”
“I said, did you do something to make her angry?” Could he not hear me?
“No.”
He must have, I knew, but he wasn’t likely to tell me. He may not even know, I realized. Sometimes it seemed like cause and effect didn’t work in Jacob’s world, or at least like he had a faulty understanding as to how they were connected. The way he faced life, it was as if the good and bad things that happened were the capricious acts of a trickster god, wholly unconnected from his behavior in any way.
“You must have done something,” I coaxed, knowing that unless I figured out what he had done, there wasn’t any remote parenting I could do. “Why else would she be so angry?”
“Daddy?” A new tone in his voice, like he hadn’t heard me again and was starting his own line of inquiry.
I sighed. “Yeah, buddy?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in Miami. I told you that yesterday.” Yesterday, right? It already felt like a month.
“When are you coming home?”
Now he was hard to hear. I closed my eyes and plugged a finger back into my free ear. “Not for a while, buddy. Not for a while. Can you be a good boy for Mommy while I’m gone?”
“What?”
I heard the static this time. “Can you be a good boy for Mommy?!”
“Uh huh.”
What that a yes or a no? I wasn’t sure. “I really need you to. I need you to do what Mommy says. Can you do that for me, buddy?”
“Uh huh.”
It was the best I was going to get. I was just a tinny little voice in his ear. Ten minutes from now, would he even remember anything I said?
“I love you, buddy.”
“Okay. Bye!”
His farewell was said with the receiver falling away from his mouth, as if now that the obligatory conversation with Dad was over he could get back to the more serious business of tormenting his mother. The way his voice faded away I wondered if the ten-minute estimation I had just made wasn’t optimistic.
“What did you tell him?” It was Jenny, back on the phone and insistent.
“What?”
“Jacob,” she clarified. “What did you tell him?”
“What do you mean? I told him to behave.”
“That’s it? What about the way he’s treating me?”
“Jenny, I don’t know how he’s treating you. I’m in Miami, remember?”
“Go!” Jenny said suddenly, obviously to Jacob and not me. “Go play!”
“Jenny?”
“Jacob! Stop climbing on me! Go in the other room and play!”
Another rustle of fabric and a thump like the phone fell to the ground again. I heard Jacob cry and then launch into full-throated wails that faded as he either ran or was carried away. Then Jenny was hollering from far away, telling Jacob to stay put until Mommy was done, and then a door slamming as if the house was empty, and angry footfalls coming back to the phone.
“Alan? Alan! Are you still there?”
I took a deep breath. “Yes, I am.”
“I really need you to talk to your son. Get him to stop acting this way.”
“Jenny,” I said with forced serenity, conscious again of the bookstore patrons around me. “I did just talk to him. I don’t know what you think I can accomplish from here.”
“Well, you have to do something. He won’t listen to me.”
And then the farcical enormity of it all struck me, pushed me over the edge, and I flew into a rage. “Goddammit, Jenny! What the fuck do you expect me to do? I’m two thousand miles away in the children’s section of a goddamn Barnes and Noble, trying to mediate a dispute between a grown woman and a four-year-old boy.” My eye caught a teenage girl with orange hair on the other side of the bookshelf wrinkling her diamond-studded nose at me. I gave her a look like she was the one acting crazy. “And my cell phone keeps losing its goddamn signal. Can you even hear what I’m saying? You sure as fuck don’t act like it.”
“What did you say?”
I'd heard the static on the line during my tirade, but I had pushed right on through anyway. Now, I didn’t have the energy to repeat it.
“You’re just going to have to deal with him. There’s only so much I can do from here.”
“But I don’t know what I’m doing, Alan,” she said, a note a desperation coming into her voice. “He just won’t listen! Am I doing something wrong?”
“Lower your expectations,” I said glibly, like a radio show psychologist used to diagnosing problems over the air. “You’re both perfectionists and are bound to butt heads. When I’m not there, seek compromise instead of obedience. You may find what you’re fighting over has an easy solution if you each just give a little. You’re the adult. Take the high road.”
There was silence on the line. At first I thought the call had been dropped, but then I could hear Jacob’s muffled wailing echoing in the background and something else, much closer, like the coughing of an old carburetor.
“Jenny? Are you crying?”
Breath hitching in. “Y-y-yes...”
Oh, sweet Jesus, she’s crying. “Honey, don’t cry. What are you crying about?”
“I don’t know how to do this, Alan,” she confessed angrily. “I don’t know how to be his mother and now we’ve got a second one on the way.”
She sounded lost. At her wit’s end. Ready to give up. Part of me was angry, convinced that she had the far easier job between the two of us, but her misery touched me and I could feel my heart fluttering in my chest. I didn’t know what to say.
“Jenny… I’m sorry… but you’ve got to hold it together. I just got here. I can’t come home and help you with this.”
“I know.”
“Stop trying so hard. You’re his mother. He loves you—more than me, anyway.”
“Oh, is it a contest now?”
It was a barb, meant to set us off into an argument, but I didn’t take the bait. “That’s not how I meant it. Just go easy with him. What are you two fighting about anyway?”
“It’s time for him to brush his teeth,” she said through her sniffles and tears.
I waited for more. “And?”
“And he doesn’t want to do it.”
“So? Skip it tonight.”
“Alan!” she said, as if I had suggested she cut off one of his fingers. “He has to brush his teeth!”
“Fine,” I said, switching gears and knowing the idea of not brushing your teeth before going to bed was as wild to Jenny as the idea of climbing into bed with muddy boots. “Then ask him when he wants to brush his teeth.”
“What?”
“Give him a choice. Brush your teeth before or after you put your pajamas on.”
“He’s already got his pajamas on.”
“Oh Christ, Jenny, I’m not going to playbook this one for you. Make him a deal. Let him decide when he brushes his teeth. Or sweeten the pot. Tell him after he brushes you’ll read him one of his favorite books. Just don’t order him to do something and expect immediate compliance. Nobody likes that. Especially not children with genes from you and me. Okay?”
“Okay.”
I felt like I was talking to a member of my staff. “Has he stopped crying yet?”
She paused, as if holding the phone away from her ear to listen. “I think so.”
“Good. Give him a few more minutes to calm down and then go in there a talk to him.” I paused, consciously softening my tone. “What about you? Are you all right?”
“I’ve stopped crying if that’s what you mean.”
I expected as much. Her acerbic tone had returned in full force. When she spoke I imagined her wiping a finger under each eye and looking up at the ceiling like she did when she was done crying and ready to move onto the next thing. “I love you, honey.”
“I love you, too.”
+ + +
“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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