“Farting in the soup is your idea of showing respect?”
“I was just trying to befriend him. I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“Why would I want that?”
“I’m not sure, but you certainly set us up that way. You were hiding in the kitchen for half an hour.”
“I was doing the dishes, then I was cleaning up. I happen not to like a messy kitchen, if that’s all right with you, although I gather it isn’t. Apparently nothing about me is all right with you. I’m sorry if you were subjected to such an ordeal.”
“It wasn’t an ordeal… What are you so mad about?”
“I’m sorry if you think I’ve deprived my son of an adult male role model, which I happen to think he can get along without very well, thank you, especially considering the kind of role models that seem to be available.”
“What are we talking about?”
“I don’t know… Oh, it’s just too hard, it’s too damned hard.”
“What?” Becker asked.
“Getting along.”
“With me?”
“Who else are we talking about?”
“Sorry.”
“Oh, don’t look so woebegone. It’s not just you, it’s men. They’re such a waste. I mean, really, John, you’re all such a waste. You never say anything supportive, you don’t seem to have a clue how hard I work or how difficult it is to raise a child by yourself and still hold down a full-time job and all I hear is criticism…”
“I think you’re doing a terrific job at everything.”
“I know what you think of me as a parent. You’ve made it equally clear you don’t think I’m much of an agent, either… ”
“You’re a very good agent…”
“You think I’m a soup farter in everything I do. Maybe I am…”
“I think you seem to have lost your sense of humor a little bit
…”
“Not funny enough for you either,” she said. “You see, everything I do falls short.”
“I think…”
She dropped heavily onto the sofa.
“Who gives a shit what you think, Becker? Why don’t you just go home.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You drove me here. I don’t have a car.”
Karen slumped into the cushions, all the fight gone. “Oh, why don’t you stay then,” she said. “I just don’t have the energy to fight you.”
“You were doing a pretty good job.”
She dropped her head to the back of the sofa. Her face stared at the ceiling.
“I am such a bitch sometimes.”
Becker sat beside her on the sofa, but she continued to stare upward.
“The hardest part is right at the end. The last fifteen, twenty minutes before I say good night to him. I’ve had the whole day’s work, the commute both ways, the hassle with the couple dozen agents who think they’re a better man for the job than I am, fixing dinner, doing the dishes, cleaning up. I’m so damned tired, all I want to do is sit in front of the television and glaze over for an hour, then collapse on my bed, but instead I have to sit with him and read a story, then go through this ritual of saying good night in just the right way. If I’m impatient, he knows it. If I try to cut it short, he jumps on me for that. I’ve got to do it all just right or else do it over again, and he’s watching me every step of the way to make sure I’m not faking it. Kids are so superstitious. Putting him to bed is absolutely the toughest part of the day-and yet it’s my favorite part, too. I see so little of him and then for these few minutes we’re completely alone together with no distractions, and I love him so much and he needs me like I’m his next breath. If I do say everything just right, he’ll feel safe and secure and he’ll be able to sleep through the night. God, how can I ever be impatient about that? I am such a bitch. I’m not fit to be a mother.”
“From what I’ve seen, you’re a great mother.”
“Do you really think so?”
“He’s a nice kid, Karen. You’re doing a good job.”
“He’s a great kid… And I’m doing a terrible job.” She turned and looked directly at Becker. “John, he doesn’t sleep. He’s so afraid.”
“Of what?”
“He can’t tell me, or he won’t tell me. Sometimes he talks about robbers getting into the house, but that’s not it; it can’t be that simple. Some nights he won’t let me go. He grabs hold of me and just won’t let me leave the room. He says he’s afraid I’m going to die.”
“What do you say to him?”
“I tell him I’m not going to die, what else can you say? Oh, I word it a little better than that. I tell him everyone dies eventually, but it will be so long from now that he’ll have his own grandchildren by then, blah-blah, but what can you really say? How can you promise anyone you won’t die?”
“Is he worried because of your work?”
“My work? I’m not in any danger because of my work. Most of the time I’m in an office.”
“Except for this case.”
“Except for this case. But that doesn’t mean I’m in danger.”
“Does he know that?”
“I don’t know what he knows. He won’t tell me. But I’ve seen him. John. I’ve looked in and he’s just lying there, my baby’s just lying there in the dark with his eyes wide open. It kills me.”
Becker took her hand. She allowed it but did not respond. Her hand lay in his palm as if it were dead.
“Why don’t you leave the light on?” Becker asked.
“He has a night light.”
“I mean the overhead light, the bedside light, the light in the hallway, every damned light in the house if that’s what it takes.”
“He’s got to learn to sleep in the dark sometime. He can’t grow up and keep the lights on…”
“Why not?”
”… I’m not sure.”
His thumb rode slowly back and forth across the top of her hand.
“I don’t know anything about kids,” he said. “Nothing at all. But I know something about fear. If he’s afraid of the dark, get rid of the dark. Maybe you’ll figure out eventually what he’s really afraid of-or maybe you won’t. Maybe he’ll learn to deal with it himself-or maybe he won’t. But in the meantime…”
“Turn on the lights.”
“Right.”
He took her hand in both of his and gently worked his thumbs into the muscles on each side of the palm. Karen sighed and closed her eyes. Becker worked on each of her fingers individually, lightly but insistently pulling one at a time, then insinuating his fingers between two of hers, letting them fall to the valleys, then all the way out to the tips. Karen’s lips parted and she moaned with a sound as light as her breath. When Becker finished one hand she gave him the other without opening her eyes.
“You have no idea how good that feels,” she said.
“Yes, I do.”
Her head lay all the way back on the sofa, her lips were still open and smiling now.
“Nobody just touches me anymore,” she said.
When Becker stopped massaging her hand, Karen slid all the way down on the sofa and lifted her feet into his lap.
“Please,” she said, her eyes still closed. But Becker had already started massaging her feet.
Karen abandoned any pretense at decorum and moaned aloud. Becker ran a finger between her toes and she shivered.
