War Babies

“This is your third time,” his dad says. “I don’t get it.” He looks at Chris, then focuses on the road. His dad has beady ferret eyes that Chris didn’t inherit, and thin little lips that he did. He’s always happy, yet he also has a skeptical look, like he can’t quite understand what he’s so happy about. Even these days he’s happy. Chris would be a very angry person if he had to pick up his son from detention and his wife had had an affair and a baby with another man.

“Can we go to 7-Eleven?” Chris asks.

“No, I’m afraid we can’t. Sorry. No 7-Eleven.”

Chris laughs because his father sounds just like he does on TV when someone asks him for a letter. No, sorry, I’m afraid there’s no T.

“What’s so funny?” his dad asks.

“You know what,” Chris says.

His father is a mystery, the way he can be so patient. Only once in Chris’ 14 years has he seen his father snap at someone. This was a few weeks ago. They were in Brentwood, coming out of a baby boutique where his dad had bought Chris’ new sister a soft pink blanket. The saleswoman said Brangelina and Tomkat had also purchased this blanket. Earlier he had heard her say to a customer, “If your friends have an ugly baby just get it some gorgeous clothes!”

When they were walking down Barrington to their car Chris saw a few guys with McDonald’s cups in their hands, and he had a feeling they would say something to his father. If they were carrying Snapples or bottled water they probably wouldn’t say anything, but they had drinks from McDonald’s and that usually means something. “Hey!” one of the guys yelled. “Can I get an ‘S’?” He was wearing flip-flops and a visor, his shirt tight across his chest, his jeans loose around his waist. He looked like all the guys in

this neighborhood--rich and poor at the same time, like they could either work at a drive-through or produce music videos. His father didn’t banter along and say, “Here’s an S, coming atcha.” Instead he mumbled that they needed to get home.

“What,” the same boy said. “I get no love? What about a vowel, man. Can I get a ‘U’?”

His father stopped and turned. “Why yes,” he said. “You can get a big screw U.”

Chris didn’t know what surprised him more, his father yelling or buying a present for the stupid baby. Actually, the baby is OK. Dumb as knuckles, but OK. She’ll grab for a toy and Chris will hide it and she’ll forget about it in a second. Or when he puts a mirror in front of her face, she doesn’t even know she’s looking at her own reflection.

“Have you ever had sex with Anna?” Chris asks.

“She’s married.” His father waves in a driver entering his lane.

“So?” Chris says.

“So you don’t do that when you’re married.”

“Mom did.” Chris stares at his father and tries not to blink. He wants to catch him looking angry or sad, but he looks amused.

“Did you ever try?” Chris asks.

“No,” he says. “She’s a dear friend.”

“I don’t see how she can do that job for so long.”

“Same reason why I can do mine. Actually, she may be retiring. We need to find a new letter turner, or toucher. I forget she doesn’t turn the letters anymore.”

“I’d have sex with Anna.”

“Spin again,” his dad says.

Chris has never spoken so casually with his dad until recently, and he likes it. He has realized that he either can’t or won’t lie, and this realization has opened up all sorts of opportunities. The other day he started asking different sorts of questions--”Have you ever tripped on acid?” and “Have you snorted cocaine?”--and was shocked when his father said yes to both. Still, despite his honesty, Chris feels there’s something he’s not saying. Something small, but important.

“You still haven’t told me why you’ve been in detention so much lately,” his father says. “What were you in for this time?”

“Why?” Chris asks. “Are you pissed?” His father doesn’t answer, and his expression doesn’t change. He looks as if he’s listening to a slightly amusing comedian that he hadn’t planned on liking.

“Not running,” Chris says. “In our timed mile I hid behind this blue mat. The mat people land on after they leap over a pole with a pole.”

“I know what you’re talking about,” his dad says. “Pole vaulting.”

“Why do people do that?” Chris asks.

“People love sports and games,” he says.

“So I hid behind it, and then I joined in on the last lap. Someone ratted me out. I don’t know who. Probably Tim. He’s such a spank.”

“Why didn’t you just run?”

“It’s a ridiculous thing to do,” Chris says.

“I don’t know. I used to run a lot.”

When his mother asked for a divorce, remarried two months later and then was mysteriously five months’ pregnant on her wedding day, his father said the same thing. “I don’t know. I don’t know about all of this.” When Chris asked if it was his baby, his father said, “No. I can’t make those anymore.”

His dad drives past the 7-Eleven.

“You can let me off here, you know,” Chris says. “You don’t have to take me all the way. I know it must be hard for you.”

“Don’t be silly,” his father says.

“Have you ever had sex with a contestant?” Chris asks.

“No. You seem to forget I have, or had, a wife.”

“But not anymore,” Chris says. “You could have sex with one now. Any hot contestants playing today?”

“It’s Armed Forces Week,” his father says. “So, no.”

“That sucks.”

“Oh no, I like Armed Forces Week. Since I was in the military--it’s sort of nifty to trade stories.”

“You were in the military?” Chris asks. “Are you lying?”

“I don’t lie. I was in Vietnam.”

Chris imagines his father moving through a swamp with a cigarette in his mouth. “Wow,” he says.

“How could you forget that? I fought in Vietnam. That’s not something to forget.”

At the stop sign a traffic cop walks into the road and holds out her hand, but no one is in the crosswalk or at the other stops. Chris looks past his father and sees why they have to stop. A herd of girls runs toward them. Chris can hear the sound of their shoes on the pavement. They run in front of their car. Chris sees that they’re women and not girls, which means this isn’t for P.E. It’s their choice to run, and Chris can’t understand it. He almost says something, but knows his father will just say that people love competition. They love games. That’s why people watch game shows. That’s why people eat spiders and roll around in bat feces--to win something. He wonders what the women are trying to win.

“What games do you like?”

“Me?” His father taps the steering wheel. “Poker.”

Chris thinks this is cool. He wants to like poker too.

“No one believes me when I say I went to Vietnam.” His father’s voice takes on a higher pitch. “I was fighting there for more than a year. I fought,” he says, and saying this seems to surprise him.

“How old were you?”

“Twenty. Twenty years old. Boy.”

There’s something about his father’s glassy-eyed expression that makes Chris feel sorry for him. He wonders if something died in his father when Chris was born. He was a smoker, a fighter. He snorted cocaine and made poker faces.

Women continue to run by. Chris sees a woman about to cross the street who sort of looks like his mom. Wavy brown hair and eyebrows that look like boomerangs. The woman looks at Chris and then at his father and Chris sees the moment she recognizes him. She approaches the car with a huge grin on her face like she’s checking for lipstick on her teeth. She taps on the window. His father lets the window down and smiles with a closed mouth. He raises his hand in the air and lowers his head. It’s his way of saying hello to strangers.

“Hi!” she says. “I can’t believe it. It’s me, Sandra. I was the winner, remember? About a month ago. I won the PT Cruiser?”

“Sandra!” he says in his game voice.

Chris can see a sheen of sweat glazing her chest.

“Well,” his father says. “Nice seeing you again, Sandra. Enjoy your race. Don’t want to get left behind.”

She looks at the runners and shrugs. “It’s for cancer,” she says. “There are no winners.”

Chris never understood how running helped people with cancer. She doesn’t look like his mother anymore. She has a saggy face and those hard boobs that are everywhere now.

“It’s just so great to see you. I loved being on the show. Do you know when my episode will air?”

“The trick is,” his father says, “is that you have to forget about it. Then it will be on before you know it.”

“There’s a number to call that tells you when it will air. I’ve called it, but they still don’t know yet. It’s just that I’m so excited for people to see what I’ve done. I was the one who had $23,000 and I landed on the mystery prize and chose to turn it over. People in the audience came up to me afterward, amazed I risked so much. I can’t wait until everyone sees it. My ex, my son who hates me, basically. They’ll see. I can risk it all, give everything up.” She seems to have forgotten they’re even here. She’s resting her forearms on the car and looking down and shaking her head. “Do you remember?” she asks.

“Sure I do,” his father says.

The woman nods in agreement. “HOLE IN ONE. That was the prize puzzle.”

“You’re losing,” Chris says. “You must not care about cancer.”

“Chris,” his father says. “Heck, what’s gotten into you?”

“My son is your age,” she says, rolling her eyes. “God, I wish he’d just . . . sometimes I want to snap his neck.” She looks at Chris’ neck.

“I guess we should get going,” his father says.

“Yeah,” Sandra says. “I guess.”

“My father was in Vietnam,” Chris says.

The woman laughs and he sees a glimmer of irritation in his father’s smile. “I was a war baby,” Chris adds.

“Aren’t we all,” she says. “Aren’t we all.”

Chris hates when people say things twice. “We have to go,” he says. “We have to go.”

“You just hold your horses, young man,” she says, then looks quickly at his father. “Sorry. I just . . . he reminds me of my son. Thanks again. The show is going to change my life. My ex, my son. They’re going to respect me now, I’m sure of it. If you could get the episode to air as soon as possible . . . “

His father, to Chris’ surprise, says, “There’s not a lot I can do,” while raising the window. Sandra looks pissed, like she needs a better answer or else. Chris likes the way she looks.

“You weren’t a war baby.” His father squints and Chris can see his father in the jungle, squinting in the hot Vietnamese sun.

“Why aren’t you mad like that lady?” Chris asks. “Are you mad at Mom? Are you mad I was born?”

Chris feels his throat close and his eyes water.

“Yesterday,” his dad says. “There was this contestant. This guy in the military. He won, and he was good, very smart. Anyway, he went to the final round. There weren’t a lot of letters up there, and I knew he wouldn’t get it. He just stared at the puzzle, and then the buzzer buzzed.

“ ‘ROOM DARKENING SHADES,’ we both said together when the letters came up, and I gave him the usual line, ‘You can’t feel too bad because you did win such and such dollars.’ But he didn’t smile. He was angry. He kept saying, ‘Thing. That’s not a thing.’ And he was so mad that we’re not going to be able to air the episode. He looked so foolish. He made everyone uncomfortable. Anger never looks good on anyone, really. Remember when I yelled at that boy? He probably tells the story every day and people probably laugh. They laugh at me and it’s because I couldn’t control my anger.”

The traffic cop has waved them through, but his dad stays at the intersection. This is a lesson, Chris thinks. Anger will make me look foolish. I should be happy with anything. Is that the lesson? But he liked the way anger looked on Sandra, and he liked the way it looked on his dad when he yelled at the boy.

“I’m not going to let that woman’s episode air,” his father says. “It’s not meant to work for you that way. As revenge. It’s a whole lot easier if you just say the same lines. Don’t get worked up. Sad things happen. Take the loss, take the prize, whatever.”

Chris thinks of the lines: Well, hello there, folks, sorry, too bad, it’s a thing, it’s a place, it’s a person. He thinks of the woman waiting for something that will never come.

The traffic cop knocks on their window. “You OK?” she asks.

“Are we OK?” his father asks.

“I don’t know,” Chris says.

His father nods at the cop, and she waves them through.

“I don’t think you should say the same lines,” Chris say. “You can say them, but you’re just hiding, like I did behind the pole-vaulting mat. You’re going to get busted sooner or later.”

His father doesn’t answer and Chris knows it’s because there are no easy lines he can answer with. They drive toward Chris’ new house, toward his mother and Stu and the baby who doesn’t understand her own reflection.

He wants to be there when the baby knows she’s looking at herself, the moment she realizes so much has already been done without her. He wants to see the shock on her face as she witnesses her self appearing. His father would say, “Well hello there, baby,” but Chris will say, “What the hell should we do now, baby? What will we do now?”