“Mommy, why is that man rubbing a paper?”
“Don’t mind him. C’Mon, let’s go.”
But the boy continued looking at the raggedy man, drawn to the determined set of his eyes.
“I said don’t mind him. And for christ sake don’t stare!”
The boy continued watching him raptly, his attention broken only once to ask
“Why?”
With a grimace of exasperation the mother steamed by, grabbing the boy and pulling him in her wake as an afterthought. Even so, as he was pulled away, he couldn’t help but glance at the man again, trying to see what he saw, to experience what he was experiencing.
The topic wasn’t broached again until the boy and his mother had put the groceries in the back and were riding home in the station wagon.
“Geoffry, sometimes there are things best left alone-”
“Like that hobo?” he asked. She continued as if she hadn’t heard.
“Sometimes there are things you just shouldn’t mess with.”
“Was that paper bad, Mommy?”
The question seemed to baffle her, who pursed her lips and stared without seeing at the road ahead.
“Well, not bad, really, I don’t think...look, hon, I know this probably won’t make sense, but remember that time when you and your father went hiking and he dared you to climb that big rock?”
“Yeah,”
“And remember how you didn’t want to but he kinda...forced...you to with his words?”
“Yeah,”
“And remember how you fell and broke your arm?”
Oh, yes, the boy remembered that, all right. His mommy and daddy had shouted at each other for half the night after he got back from the hospital.
“Yes.”
“Well, there you go. The paper’s kinda like that.”
“Oh.”
The rest of the ride home was taken in wary silence, but all along the way, the paper continued floating and bobbing on the surface of Geoffry’s mind like a rotten old apple in a pool of vomit.
When he got home he helped his mother unload the groceries (the three packs of beer were too heavy, so his mother unloaded them) and put a few drops of grease on the rusty hinges of the door that led from the garage to the house. He had to use a step stool and stand on his tiptoes to reach the top one.
Once inside, he dropped his load unceremoniously on the floor (his mother had judiciously made sure his bag contained the crackers and bags of noodles, NOT the eggs) and was just about to tromp upstairs when a picture next to the stairwell caught his eyes.
It was one of the countless pictures of the Old Family he’d seen and walked past. Nothing special about it- plain black frame, dingy yellow glass, grainy polaroid faded yellow at the edges. In the picture him, Mommy, and Daddy were at the beach. Daddy was being a goofball and Mommy was laughing. Geoffry was just being himself with a big, cheesy picture-smile on his face. Oh, yeah, and in the corner, their old family pet that died a month ago, that golden, medium-sized labrador that was put down a week after the picture was taken.
He remembered that day clearly, for that day was the day when he first noticed the crack which ran through Cap’s lower belly.
He hadn’t shed a tear or even felt sad when he was told Cap had colon cancer. Even as he ran his fingers through his fur for the last time, all he felt was a tight, unpleasant squeeze in his chest, as if some kind of circle had pinched together at last and squeezed his middle briefly. His mother had blubbered, of course, and his father made sure to take him out to the dog’s grave (and out to Chuck-E-Cheese later), but no sorrow had gone through him then, nor did it show itself even briefly when he lay awake in bed that night. Just the unpleasant finality of a circle pinching shut on him.
The memory suddenly faded with a bang as Mommy shoved the glass bottles of beer into the cupboard on top of Daddy’s old lunchbox. Geoffry’s kindergarten lunch-pail tumbled out and got tangled up in Daddy’s, but Mommy slammed the cupboard shut regardless and began putting the eatables away.
Geoffry turned and glanced at the picture once more before starting upstairs, feeling those unnameable bands begin closing on his chest once more.
From his angle the crack that had spread from Cap’s belly glimmered a silvery white, the same color as the paper that he’d seen in the hobo’s hands and which he now saw gripped just below the crack in Daddy’s forearm.
