Michael Thomas
Man Gone Down
For Michaele—
My wife, my love, my life: the one. Everything is for you.
We proclaim love our salvation. .
— Marvin Gaye
I. The Loser
If you came at night like a broken king.
— T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” I
1
I know I’m not doing well. I have an emotional relationship with a fish — Thomas Strawberry. My oldest son, C, named him, and that name was given weight because a six-year-old voiced it as though he’d had an epiphany: “He looks like a strawberry. ” The three adults in the room had nodded in agreement.
“I only gave you one,” his godfather, Jack, the marine biologist, told him. “If you have more than one, they kill each other. ” Jack laughed. He doesn’t have kids. He doesn’t know that one’s not supposed to speak of death in front of them and cackle. One speaks of death in hushed, sober tones — the way one speaks of alcoholism, race, or secret bubble gum a younger sibling can’t have. Jack figured it out on some level from the way both C and X looked at him blankly and then stared into the small aquarium, perhaps envisioning a battle royal between a bowlful of savage little fish, or the empty space left behind. We left the boys in their bedroom and took the baby with us. “They don’t live very long,” he whispered to us. “About six weeks. ” That was C’s birthday in February. It’s August, and he’s not dead.
He’s with me on the desk, next to my stack of books and legal pads. I left my laptop at my mother-in-law’s for C to use. She’d raised an eyebrow as I started to the door.
Allegedly, my magnum opus was on that hard drive — the book that would launch my career and provide me with the financial independence she desired. “
I write better if the first draft is longhand. ” She hadn’t believed me. It had been a Christmas gift from Claire. I remember opening it and being genuinely surprised. All three children had stopped to see what was in the box.
“Merry Christmas, honey,” she’d cooed in my ear. She then took me by the chin and gently turned my face to meet hers. “This is your year. ” She kissed me — too long — and the children, in unison, looked away. The computer was sleek and gray and brimming with the potential to organize my thoughts, my work, my time. It would help extract that last portion of whatever it was that I was working on and buff it with the requisite polish to make it salable. “This is our year. ” Her eyes looked glazed, as though she had been intoxicated by the machine’s power, the early hour, and the spirit of the season. It had been bought, I was sure, with her mother’s money. And I knew Edith had never believed me to have any literary talent, but she’d wanted to make her daughter feel supported and loved — although she probably had expected it to end like this. C had seemed happy when I left, though, sitting on the floor with his legs stretched under the coffee table, the glow from the screen washing out his copper skin.
“Bye, C. ”
“By-ye. ” He’d made it two syllables. He hadn’t looked up.
Marco walks up the stairs and stops outside his kid’s study, where I’m working. He knocks on the door. I don’t know whether to be thankful or annoyed, but the door’s open and it’s his house. I try to be as friendly as I can.
