The boy shook his head. “I got a snake.”
“Nuh uh.”
The boy looked up. “Uh huh.”
“What kind?”
“It’s black and scaly and it lives in a glass box.”
“A terrarium?”
“Yeah. Daddy catches mice for it.”
“It eats them?”
“Uh huh. Slinky’s belly gets real big.”
Mitchell smiled. “I bet that’s something to see.”
They sat watching the Discovery Channel for twenty minutes, Joel engrossed now, Mitchell with his head tilted back against the headboard, eyes closed, a half grin where none had been for twelve months.
At 8:24 p.m., the cell vibrated against Mitchell’s hip. He opened the case and pulled out the phone.
“Hi, Lisa.”
“Mitch.”
“Listen, I want you to call me back in five minutes and do exactly what I say.”
“Okay.”
Mitchell closed the phone and slid off the bed.
The boy looked up, still half-watching the program on the world’s deadliest spiders.
He said, “I’m hungry.”
“I know, sport. I know. Give me just a minute here and I’ll order a pizza.”
Mitchell crossed the carpet, tracking through dirty clothes he should’ve taken to the laundry a week ago.
His suitcase lay open in the space between the dresser and the baseboard heater. He knelt down, searching through wrinkled oxfords and blue jeans, khakis that had long since lost their creases.
It was a tiny, wool sweater—ice-blue with a magnified snowflake stitched across the front.
“Hey, Joel,” he said, “it’s getting cold in here. I want you to put this on.” He tossed the sweater onto the bed.
“I’m not cold.”
“You do like I tell you now.”
As the boy reached for the sweater, Mitchell undid the buttons on his plaid shirt and worked his arms out of the sleeves. He dropped the shirt on the carpet and rifled his suitcase again until he found the badly faded T-shirt he’d bought fifteen years ago at a U2 concert.
On the way back to the bed, he stopped at the television and lifted the videotape from the top of the VCR, pushed it in.
“No, I wanna watch the—”
“We’ll turn it back on in a minute.”
He climbed under the covers beside the boy and stared at the bedside table, waiting for the phone to buzz.
“Joel, I’m gonna answer the phone. I want you to sit here beside me and watch the television and don’t say a word until I tell you.”
“I’m hungry.”
The phone vibrated itself toward the edge of the bedside table.
“I’ll buy you anything you want if you do this right for me.”
Mitchell picked up the phone.
Lisa calling.
He closed his eyes, gave himself a moment to engage. He’d written it all down months ago, the script in the bedside table drawer under the Gideon bible he’d taken to reading every night before bed, but he didn’t need it.
“Hi, Honey.”
“Mitch, I’m so glad you—”
“Stop. Don’t say anything. Just hang on a minute.” He reached for the remote control and pressed play. The screen lit up, halfway through the episode of Seinfeld. He lowered the volume, said, “Lisa, I want you to say, ‘I’m almost asleep.’”
“What are you—”
“Just do it.”
A pause, then: “I’m almost asleep.”
“Say it like you really are.”
Mitchell closed his eyes.
“I’m almost asleep.”
“We’re sitting here watching Seinfeld.” He looked down at the top of Joel’s head, his hair brown with gold highlights, just the right shade and length. He kissed the boy’s head. “Our little guy’s just about asleep.”
“Mitch, are you drunk—”
“Lisa, I will close this fucking phone. Ask how our day was. Do it.”
“How was your day?”
“You weren’t crying that night.” He could hear her trying to gather herself.
“How was your day, Mitch?”
He closed his eyes again. “One of those perfect ones. We’re in Ouray, Colorado now. This little town surrounded by huge mountains. It started snowing around midday as we were driving down from Montrose. If they don’t plow the roads we may not be able to get out tomorrow.”
“Mitch—”
“We had a snowball fight after dinner, and our motel has these Japanese soaking tubs out back, full of hot mineral water from the springs under the town. Say you wish you were here.”
“That’s not what I said that night, Mitch.”
“What did you say?”
“I wish I could be there with you, but part of me’s so glad you two have this time together.”
“There aren’t many days like this, are there?”
“No.”
“Now, I just want to hear you breathing over the phone.”
He listened. He looked at the television, then the boy’s head, then the ice-blue sweater.
Mitchell held the phone to Joel’s mouth.
“Say goodnight to Mom, Alex.”
“Goodnight.”
Mitchell brought the phone to his ear. “Thank you, Lisa.”
“Mitch, who was that? What have you—”
He powered off the phone and set it on the bedside table.
When the boy was finally asleep, Mitchell turned off the television. He pulled the covers over the both of them and scooted forward until he could feel the hard ridge of the boy’s little spine press against his chest.
In the back window, through a crack in the closed blinds, he watched the snow falling through the orange illumination of a streetlamp, and his lips moved in prayer.
The knock finally came a few minutes after 3:00 a.m., and nothing timid about it—the forceful pounding of a fist against the door.
“Mitchell Griggs?”
Mitchell sat up in bed, eyes struggling to adjust in the darkness.
“Mr. Griggs?”
More pounding as his feet touched the carpet.
