What the Dead Can Do, page 2
He guessed she’d been right because, for better or worse, Nicole had Ethan living out of that suitcase. The boxes had stayed packed and were living quietly in their bedroom—on Matthew’s side of the bed, no less—just one more thing on Nicole’s infamous list of things she meant to get done since he’d brought the boy home. But Matthew found it difficult to get angry at Nicole for not having already inventoried the boxes’ contents. After all, even with all the distractions, he’d had ample time to unpack them himself.
It threatened to pour that day, and Pepper needed to be walked. Surely boots were in those boxes upstairs, and if they weren’t, so be it. Squeezing in a trip to the playground down the street was one of the few activities Ethan seemed to enjoy.
Of course, even if Ethan’s boots were in one of those boxes, they could be the wrong boots. In Park Slope, nothing you did with your children, and nothing you did parenting your children, went unnoticed or escaped being picked apart. To your face, or in a more passive-aggressive manner on the neighborhood app—a forum where busybodies posted everything from what they were doing better than you to what you were doing worse than them.
No margin for error.
That thought birthed another: So, you’re saying there’d been a margin for error with Em?
Zero errors were an impossibility. They’d made plenty while raising Emily so far, but Em was doing fine. Their little girl was evidence enough to disprove that nurture deserved equal billing in the nature/nurture debate.
Still, it meant they hadn’t screwed up that bad, right?
The microwave’s clock flicked to 2:55 PM.
Nicole had left to pick up Emily from school an hour ago. His anxiety was the most unhinged when he was alone with Ethan.
It made no sense that his wife’s absence had this effect.
He was the better parent—always had been. Hands down. She’d spent more time with Emily over their daughter’s eleven years, but it was quality, not quantity. Also, Nicole had the unfair advantage of having made herself unemployable for the past five years. He’d taken unpaid leave that his boss granted on short notice to help Ethan get accustomed to his new home, but more so to help Nicole come to terms. Thank God he had, too.
His worrying turned to self-gratification as he imagined how poorly Nicole would’ve managed the onslaught of journalists, bloggers, and Jesus-nuts that wanted interviews, pictures, and chances to see—or sometimes to touch—the Miracle Boy. Hell, he’d thwarted three already today. Smugness wasn’t a long-term solution, but it felt good to rise above his worries.
He might’ve gone on spiraling out, but Ethan’s silence was too professional.
Matthew hadn’t had eyes on his new son for a good five minutes. He wasn’t choking—big phew—still just picking at Cheerios from his bowl. The boy seemed indifferent to his panic.
Long silences from Ethan were common, at least around Matthew and Nicole. That made sense, given what he’d been through. Only Emily could get him really talking, and when the boy did, he was surprisingly articulate for his age.
Maybe it was time to settle on how he’d refer to the boy: son, stepson, adopted son, godson—there were a handful of choices. He was leaning toward son but had yet to use the word aloud in front of Nicole, who so far had only called the child Ethan or “Tag’s kid.”
His son liked dry cereal. Not an irresponsible snack if it’s the right cereal.
The bowl wasn’t fun, though. No cartoon animals or colorful shapes lived on its surface. It was a ceramic bore, glazed in a color that could be called Meh. His placemat was no better. Totally lessonless. No solar system or human body circulatory diagrams, just plain white and in no way stimulating. The untouched spoon to the placemat’s left was metal and adult-sized, which was reason enough for Ethan’s tiny hands to have ignored it.
The snack time Matthew had thrown together was neither educational nor thought-provoking. When Emily was Ethan’s age, stimulation was thought to be important, too, but Park Slope parents today made it out to be paramount. Not that long ago, Tag had said as much over the phone to Matthew while frantically searching for the perfect educational place setting in the aisles of a Target. If pressed about the boring placemat, Matthew could justifiably say he’d been a bit scattered, or he could dig in and insist it’d still been an opportunity for his son to work on his hand-to-mouth dexterity. Ethan put one Cheerio into his mouth as if on cue, then grabbed at five more using his hand like a bulldozer to excavate the surface of the pink high chair’s tray.
Despite their apartment’s lack of storage space, Em’s old high chair had survived Tidying Up with Marie Kondo for no good reason.
Matthew had had a vasectomy when Emily turned four. The decision to have the surgery had been his. Plus, a vasectomy was reversible, TV said so, which would only have mattered if anything ever happened to Em.
The decision to focus on Emily had been a mutual one.
Publicly, he’d say their choice to only have one child was due to climate change, and that was fine. In Park Slope, a solid fear of the dystopian future adults were leaving their children was very popular.
Privately, he knew he’d been snipped because Nicole couldn’t handle two kids.
Either way, finding the high chair at the back of their bedroom closet was a lucky break, or maybe a lazy break. The chair had brought no joy, he knew that. Marie Kondo would have, too. Hadn’t he been put in charge of giving it a good home? Things like this had to cost more now than they’d paid over a decade ago.
Tag and Amanda had left them funds to offset the cost of raising a second child. Mid five figures wasn’t anything to sneeze at, but it wasn’t the windfall Matthew had been expecting and certainly not enough to have dulled the miserly rush he’d gotten when he found the high chair.
He grinned at Ethan, or maybe it was an affection meant for the chair, but it didn’t do anything to stop Matthew’s cursed thinking from bubbling back up.
There’s no margin for error with this one.
Tag and Amanda hadn’t outlined their dreams for their son, nor made a list of expectations for Matthew and Nicole to follow. There’d been plenty of legal paperwork but no notebooks, journals, or “If you’re seeing this, it means we are dead” videos providing instructions. What the boy loved, hated, could or couldn’t do, or needed was a mystery. Maybe you don’t make a list like that for fear of tempting fate.
What had Tag and Amanda been hoping for when they picked Matthew and Nicole?
The day he had picked up Ethan and all those boxes waiting upstairs, Tag’s mother, Lucinda, asked Matthew the same question. “What in the hell were they thinking picking you two?” she had asked. “I’m his paternal grandmother, for Christ’s sake.” That made good sense.
Initially, Lucinda had flown straight to Nevada and taken Ethan from the authorities herself. Matthew didn’t believe her intent had been malicious. It was what any good grandmother would do. Plus, that first week after the crash had been hectic for all parties involved. The opportunity to pass Ethan’s guardianship to a blood relative—an upstanding, well-off relation at that—was there. As Matthew understood it, he and Nicole were under no legal obligation and could decline. On paper, Tag’s boy was a headache Matthew knew his family didn’t need. No promise had ever been made aloud, but it had been implied, and breaking it felt like a dereliction of duty that far transcended what was or wasn’t required of him by law. Via the executor, the t’s and i’s were eventually crossed and dotted. Tag and Amanda’s wish for him and Nicole to serve as Ethan’s guardians was legally clear, their reasons not so much.
Matthew had arrived at Lucinda’s house ready to give her the slack she needed for a peaceful exchange. The woman was an intimidating silver-haired force. Former collegiate athlete, former CEO, former-anything-respectable really, and, in Matthew’s opinion, plenty alert and physically capable at age sixty-five to raise her grandson. She was a widow, but didn’t that mean she’d have more time to focus solely on Ethan? More than either he or Nicole would have.
“It’s outrageous,” Lucinda said. “I don’t care what the law says.”
Matthew had tried for a sympathetic smile and decided to stick to mostly nodding.
“It makes zero sense. ZERO!”
He nodded.
“Do you have any idea how much money I have?”
He nodded.
“I don’t know you well, or your wife, but I remember how drunk she was at Ethan’s first birthday party. I was there—not that you’d remember. Maybe she was high. Maybe both! I have a sixth sense for fuck ups like your wife and zero empathy for them.”
He still nodded, but his smile dropped, and the heat in his face was plenty visible.
“What possible reason could Tag have had for wanting his son to live out his childhood with you two? You are virtually strangers to Ethan. Two nobodies. Tell me, Matthew, tell me how it makes one damn bit of sense?”
The older woman hadn’t reached out since. Through Tag’s lawyer, Matthew learned Tag had told Lucinda that he and Nicole were to be Ethan’s guardians should anything happen. She’d known, and they’d told her their reasons, but Matthew wasn’t angry she’d said otherwise. She was a mother, and no mother is equipped to believe they’ll outlive their child. It’s a passing thought, never a belief. It’s easy enough to shrug off the probability. Or it’s a biological imperative to hide the possibility in the furthest recesses of the mind in order to stay the course.
Lucinda was well-connected, though, friends with the types of power players who lived for a white-collar fight. Huge legal teams could be working on the case right now, biding their time as they waited for him and Nicole to screw up in a huge way, giving credence to a news-worthy suit.
Or, maybe Lucinda had made peace with the arrangement and was missing in action only because she needed time to lick her wounds. Regardless, Matthew wasn’t looking forward to constantly having to prove to Lucinda that they were up to the task of raising her only grandson.
“More O’s, please,” Ethan said, and Matthew obliged.
Right in that moment, his new son was the spitting image of Mrs. Lucinda Littlefield.
Matthew blinked a few times to erase the resemblance. Ethan blinked back, matching the intensity and pace. It was simple mimicry but Matthew smiled for the second time that day. For a moment, the challenge of raising a boy who’d come from somewhere better and been through so much shrunk into a more manageable task.
They had done a good job with Emily, and that’s what Tag had known—that’s why they’d picked him and Nicole. It had to be the reason Tag had been so calm when he’d phoned him earlier that year. It had to be.
* * *
“Sorry to bug you at work, brother.”
“No worries,” Matthew said, barely engaged while entering numbers into a spreadsheet. “What’s going on?”
“We’re adulting—or parenting, I guess—and, well, some things can’t wait, you know?”
“Sure, sure … hit me with it.”
“Would you be cool—I mean, would you and Nicole be cool with us naming you two Ethan’s legal guardians in our will? You know … in case anything tragic befalls us both?”
The ask pulled Matthew away from his work completely. This wasn’t a conversation to half-ass his way through. He wanted to be sure he’d heard correctly. “Anything tragic befalls you both?” He’d also repeated the phrase in a bad English accent.
Tag laughed. “Feels less likely when you say it that way.”
“I’m glad to hear you’re making a will. You two are way ahead of the curve. Or maybe I’m telling myself that so I don’t feel like we had been well behind the curve when we finally made our plans. Which, if I’m being honest, was done via LegalZoom. Not surprised you two—”
“This is all Amanda, brother,” Tag interrupted.
“Amanda doesn’t fuck around,” Matthew said. “You’re lucky about that.” He didn’t like the way that’d sounded. But he was nervous. This call was a big deal.
“Yeah, that’s mostly true,” Tag said, sounding somewhere between wounded and ambivalent. “Her way or the highway, I guess. Could be worse.”
Matthew left the line silent for too long as he pondered whether he needed to say something like “You know what I mean” or “Just screwin’ with ya” to soften what he’d said.
“If you aren’t into it,” Tag said, “we’ll figure out something else.”
If felt like an opening to decline.
“Nothing is going to happen to us, I’m sure, but …”
Matthew hadn’t audibly agreed to the ask yet. He’d spaced out. He’d insulted his friend’s wife and made him ask twice now if they’d be willing to be Ethan’s legal guardians.
“Are you kidding? Of course, Tag. We’d be honored.”
“Don’t you think you should check with Nicole first?”
“She adores Ethan, are you kidding me?”
“Yeah, still—”
“I’ve always wanted two kids, you know that. Shit, man, we’d be honored.”
“Thank you, Matty!” Amanda said.
“Am I on speaker?” Matthew asked. “Hi Amanda, not even a problem!”
“Nah, but you are loud,” Tag said. “Listen, thank you. We’re over the moon you two would agree to do this.”
“Do we need to sign anything?”
“Don’t think so. I’ll hit you back if that’s not the case. Let’s get together this weekend.”
“For sure. Ping me later,” Matthew said.
“Will do.”
“And Tag?”
“Yeah.”
“It means a ton that you’d think of us for this.” The sentiment felt too thick. It didn’t match Tag’s nonchalance. Matthew tried for a joke. “I mean, you two have to know we’ll be scheming ways to get rid of you both, so we can have Ethan to ourselves, right?”
There was no response.
“Tag?”
Tag laughed the huge laugh anyone who knew him loved to hear. He recovered more quickly than normal, then said, “Yeah, that’d occurred to me. We’re wily, though—killing us won’t be easy.”
Matthew gave a strained chuckle. “I was just—”
“Kidding. Obviously,” Tag said. “Love to the fam, brother. I’ll hit you up later.”
After they hung up, Matthew had been too amped to get back into the work on his screen.
It was weird, but being chosen felt validating.
The hypothetical deaths of his dear friends aside, it would be incredible to have a little brother for Emily, who would no doubt be an amazing sister, too. Another opportunity to do a few things better than they’d done the first time around. Maybe even another Yankees fan in the house—finally. Matthew continued speculating on what having Ethan join the family would look like. He daydreamed of a future that included a son until it made him uncomfortable.
There was something insidious about the joy he was feeling; obviously he wanted nothing bad to happen to his friends.
He wished like hell he hadn’t cracked the joke about scheming ways to kill them. Overcome with nausea, he grabbed his phone.
Yo. Sorry I said that last bit. I’m NOT planning to kill you.
That was text enough, but when no response came back, he dug the hole deeper.
We love all three of you and are up for the task!
He waited for a thumbs-up or any reciprocation, then kept typing:
Should it happen. I’ve said enough. TTYL
He added a sunglasses-smile emoji out of habit and hit send.
Typing indicator bubbles appeared then disappeared. Matthew waited, but no response ever came.
* * *
Until today, Matthew’s brain had done a bang-up job of forgetting that call.
“Such a dumbass thing to say,” Matthew said, and Ethan’s eyes went up.
“Dummass,” his son said plainly. “What dat?”
“Don’t say that. Sometimes I say bad words, Ethan. I’ll try to do better.”
Ethan nodded in agreement.
No margin for error.
Though his earlier attempt had failed, Matthew put his fingers to either temple and rubbed at the thought again. Ethan, still grinning in uncertain awe of a foul word that he probably couldn’t yet label a curse, put his fingers against his temples as if he, too, was suffering a pang of guilt for fuck-ups yet to happen, rubbing at them while trying to match Matthew’s pace.
There are going to be mistakes.
From age nine on, Emily hadn’t been shy about pointing out his gaffes. She went lighter on him than Nicole, and he was grateful for that. The verbal assaults his little girl piled onto her mother were relentless. It wasn’t daily, not even weekly, but her observations were hued in truths that routinely left Nicole asking Matthew in a wine-washed whisper, right before bed, if she was a good mother. He hadn’t stopped saying yes.
There’d been a time when he could tell himself she was doing her best.
Truthfully, Matthew thought that her best back then had been better than most. But now? At a minimum, he felt his parenting was in line with the parenting of other couples they’d known in the past decade. But what was he really measuring against? Maybe an outline or list of goals might help better define Ethan’s future.
He reached for the notepad that Nicole kept at the center of the dining table.
He opened it and grabbed the pen inside. Only the first page had any scribbles. They were indecipherable, mini-Rorschach-like blobs that reminded him of two things:
1) The book itself was swag from a boutique hotel in Manhattan. A three-night romantic getaway that had been anything but. A staycation that was hardly any more affordable than it would’ve been had they traveled to Bermuda, not that the location would have helped.
