Eight Minutes (7 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PARTY RECAP

I
leave Ian’s with a tiny shred of leftover party mood that dies somewhere in the taxi on the way home. Eric doesn’t say a word. We crawl into bed, and I send out the “leave me alone” vibe. In the morning, I go out of my way to demonstrate that I do not have a hangover, despite my dry mouth and radioactive regret. He leaves early to ride his bike downtown so he can retrieve our car from Ian’s. It feels like the door sucks the energy out of the room as it shuts behind him, louder than usual, a borderline slam that I hope made more noise than he intended.

It wakes Toby up. You’d think he was the one with the hangover. He’s grouchy from the minute his little foot hits the floor, which is unusual for him. I let him eat an entire cantaloupe for breakfast—his favorite—but he throws his fork on the ground before he’s finished.

“I don’t want any more!”

“Here now, Tobe. That’s not the way to act at the table. We don’t throw our forks. What should you do instead?”

“May I be excused?” he grumbles.

“That’s right. My goodness, what’s gotten into you today?”

“I don’t want to see her!”

“Right. We talked about this. You don’t have to, remember?”

“I’m not going to!”

“That’s right.”

While Toby plays with his planes in the living room, I can’t stop thinking about Eric’s weird fighter-pilot rant. The longer I think about it, the creepier it seems.

I call Carla to recap the party. She thinks it’s nothing more than Eric grandstanding. She says, “Please. He overhears you say memories are evidence, and he makes up a fake memory right there, on the spot, to make his point.”

“You didn’t hear it.”

“True. So ask someone who did. See what Ian thinks.”

I text him, since he’s at work. He thinks phone calls are rude interruptions left over from a previous technological age.

What was that thing with Eric last night? Was it as weird as I think?

He answers within two seconds:
He was drunk. nbd

No big deal? I don’t know why I’m asking Ian for insight into an emotionally nuanced situation. Of course he thinks it’s no big deal. He thinks not marrying Mamie is no big deal.

I call Carla back. “I need for you to talk me down,” I say. “Tell me it wasn’t tip-of-the-iceberg weird. That nothing woo-woo happened last night. Convince me.”

“You know Eric. He takes everything to its logical extreme. If you say this thing with Toby is more than a game, then he’s exaggerating the game to show you how ridiculous it looks. It’s like he’s daring you to try to make a big deal of it because he knows you’ll sound crazy. I think he’s hoping you’ll realize how crazy it sounds and let it go.”

“Do you think I sound crazy?”

“I think you were both drunk and he acted like a dick to make the point that you’re overreacting to all this fighter-pilot stuff. So don’t overreact to his version; it just proves his point,” Carla says. “If it were me, I’d make the point that he shouldn’t act like a dick and make fun of me in front of my friends. But you gotta decide whether you want to pick that fight or not.”

“I don’t want to pick a fight. I just want to be able to talk to my husband.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

UNDER PRESSURE

E
ric and I haven’t had a decent conversation all week—not since Ian’s party. I think Toby’s picking up on the tension in the house. His objections to Kay are worse in the mornings, I’ve noticed. Where’s the kid who laughed in his sleep? I don’t think he’s waking up in the middle of the night; he’s not calling out for me, at least. He says he doesn’t have nightmares. In fact, he says he doesn’t dream at all. I write it down in my notes. I don’t know if he doesn’t dream, if he just doesn’t remember, or if his language skills aren’t developed enough to articulate it yet. I don’t know how accurate anyone can be when talking about what happens in their sleep. Even when I catch him doing it, Eric says he doesn’t sleepwalk anymore.

I simply don’t know. Whatever is going on in my kid’s head at night, it’s making him wake up as grouchy as Pa used to be right after my mom died. Every morning, he’d have to realize all over again that he was alone.

Today, I decide to try a distraction technique, so we take an early-morning trip to the grocery store. Instead of getting a cart, we walk hand in hand down the aisle. It’s a pleasant change, even if I have to keep stopping to replace items kept at knee height. We take our time.

“Shelly?” An almost-familiar face is smiling at me, a woman pushing her squirmy son in a cart toward us. “It’s Wendy—from the playgroup?”

“Of course! Toby, do you remember Dylan?”

We’d met at the last neighborhood playgroup. She was new and noticeably more granola than most of the women I call the Other Mothers, the gray in her long hair seeming like a statement. She’s going gray without apology or chemical deterrents. I like that.

“He’s still on the airplane jag, huh?” she says, as Toby shows Dylan his F-105. “Is his imaginary friend still around?”

That’s how I talk about John Robberson. It makes people feel better. Wendy and I make small talk and go our separate ways.

When we reach the bakery aisle, Toby asks me where they keep the oatmeal cream pies. It’s been weeks since we’ve talked about oatmeal cream pies.

“They don’t sell them here, Toby. Remember?”

“Why not?”

“I think they’re not healthy enough.”

“Yes, they awe.”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“Thud wants one.”

“They’re really not healthy for Thud. Dogs like meat. Not sugar.”

Toby lets out a shriek that would raise the dead and flings his entire body onto a basket that holds thin loaves of crusty French bread. The basket crashes over, sending the half-exposed loaves out of their fancy paper wrappers and sliding across the newly mopped floor. Toby is grabbing any loaf within reach and throwing it, screaming, “I don’t want to!”

It happens so fast, I barely know what to do. I reach for him out of pure instinct, but he clocks me with a long baguette. A small crowd is forming at the end of the aisle.

“Toby!” I wrap my arms around his, preventing him from using any more bread as a weapon. “What is it, baby?”

As quickly as it flared up, it passes. He collapses against me. We’re both crying as we sit on the bakery floor. I know my kid. This is not like him.

Wendy and Dylan appear out of nowhere. “Need a hand?” she says.

“We’re fine. Just need a minute.” I whisper to her, over Toby’s head, “Can you get rid of the spectators?”

She nods and rolls her cart directly into the crowd, causing them to dissipate. For a few moments. I can just sit cross-legged on the cold linoleum tiles and rock Toby, shushing his sobs. When he can speak, I ask him if he can tell me what upset him.

“Kay.”

I can’t be objective and just write this on a list somewhere. I have to say it.

“Oh, baby. Kay’s not going to hurt you.”

“I don’t want to talk to her.” He flings his arm, like he’s throwing a toy. “I don’t!”

“You don’t have to, remember? Nobody is going to make you. You’re the boss.”

He sniffles.

“There. Okay.” The other shoppers have returned to their own business, but we’re still on the floor together.

“Now that you know that you don’t have to see her,” I say to Toby, “can I ask you a few questions about Kay? I want to understand why you’re upset.”

He nods.

“Who is Kay?”

“John Wahbuhson’s wife.”

I do a double take in the grocery aisle. After nodding to a shopper who looks disapprovingly at us on the floor, I whisper, “Whose wife?”

“John Wahbuhson’s!”

“Okay, okay. What does John Robberson say to you about Kay?’

“We have to go see her.”

“And you don’t want to see her, I know. But if you’re the boss, and you know you don’t have to see her, I don’t understand why you get so upset.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I know, baby.” I kiss his forehead. “But help me understand why not.”

Toby’s face turns into a little ball of fury, in a split second. “I don’t want to!”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. No more talk. Let’s finish our shopping, and we can get a strawberry smoothie.”

Toby’s satisfied, but I’m still rattled as we walk into the juice bar that adjoins the grocery store. I see Wendy at a table with three Other Mothers including Pauline, the president of the homeowners association. What are the others’ names? Emily and . . . Renee, was it? Remy? Something like that. I order Toby’s smoothie and let him join the kids at the other table.

“You okay now?” asks Wendy.

I hold up my drink, a bright green concoction of kale and cucumber juice. “I almost asked for a vodka shot in this one!”

“We’ve all been there,” she says with a laugh.

“How’s Toby?” Pauline asks, knowingly.

“He seems to be fine now,” I say. “So weird. The oatmeal cream pies set him off.”

Pauline looks around the table, eyebrow cocked, before she erupts in laughter. When she speaks, she’s not talking to me. “He’s afraid of oatmeal cream pies? Shelly, let the kid have a little sugar now and then!”

“That’s not it,” I say, cutting the joke short. “I actually understand his reaction. That’s why I’m a little shaken, to tell you the truth.”

“Does this have anything to do with that imaginary friend you were so worried about?” Emily asks.

“Not so imaginary, as it turns out.” I blurt it all out, from the oatmeal cream pies to the Thud and how I tracked it down but didn’t find John Robberson on the pilot list; and the whole thing about the 395 crashes but only 61 of them being operational; which opens the door to telling them how I took Toby back to the scene of the crime, the Boneyard, and his weird trance and how disappointed I was; and then how Toby heard John Robberson at the dinner table but the doctor said it was nothing to worry about; and how I kept digging until I found a real John Robberson who had actually died on Toby’s birthday.

“The very same day,” I say, a tad triumphantly, as I pause for a breath.

The Other Mothers exchange a glance, and too late, I realize I’ve stopped them cold. I take a long sip from my green drink, which is beginning to separate and look unappetizing.

“That’s quite a coincidence,” says Renee or Remy or whatever her name is.

Pauline asks, “How, exactly, did you put this together?”

Wendy adds, because I think she’s trying to help me out, “Oh, you’d be surprised what you can find on the Internet.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know where to look,” Pauline says.

Emily joins her, saying, “I barely have time to check my e-mail, much less track down something like that!” She looks at her watch. “Speaking of time, I’ve got to run, girls!”

They escape and Wendy lingers a moment longer. “Are you okay?”

“They think I’m nuts.” I shake my drink and take another sip. It’s awful once it gets warm.

Wendy says, “You know, I just read a memoir by a California woman whose daughter had a mean imaginary friend. The little girl kept hitting the mom and then crying, saying her imaginary friend made her do it. The mom ended up taking the girl to some South American country where everyone assumed she had a demon that needed to be driven out. She went to a shaman or something who told her to do this ceremony . . . or was it a ritual?”

She smiles at my puzzled expression.

“My point is this: I bet all her friends thought she was crazy, too.”

Crazy or not, when I get home, I go straight to my list and add this:

1. Toby knows Kay is John Robberson’s wife.
   
2. Toby’s temper tantrums are more frequent and intense, which means his resistance to seeing Kay is getting stronger.
   

I ponder that last entry awhile, my stomach churning the whole time, before I add one more:

1. John Robberson is pressuring Toby.
   

The worst part about this list is that I can’t even show it to Eric. I’m embarrassed about my bout of verbal diarrhea this afternoon. Pauline shouldn’t know more than my own husband. I need to sit him down and tell him everything.

At dinner that night, I try. I start by describing the temper tantrum at the store, but he doesn’t want to hear about the explanation. He just looks over at Toby and tells him not to do that again. He actually tells our three-year-old that temper tantrums are a sign of weakness.

Weakness? Are you kidding me?

I’m sorry to say I swallow that metallic taste in my mouth and take the bait. We argue about that one, late into the night. And one more day goes by, and he doesn’t know the truth.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

JUST A GAME

T
he very next night, I’m determined to tell Eric everything. But when he gets home from work, he goes directly to the liquor cabinet and makes himself a Jack and Coke. He sits down on the living-room floor with Toby, the two of them entirely focused on the airplane bucket.

“How was your day?” I call from the kitchen.

No answer.

I step toward the living room and watch as Toby pulls out the metal F-105. He shows it to Eric, holding his palm out flat like it’s the floor of a hangar.

Eric says, “You know, when I was a fighter pilot, there was this one time . . .” and he takes the plane away from Toby. Before Toby objects, Eric says, in an animated tone, “I was flying low, following the river.” He uses the plane to take a low swoop over the carpet, in a serpentine motion. Toby claps his hands.

I can’t believe it. A week after the fact and he’s resurrecting his party spiel—with Toby this time.

He keeps going, telling the same story about the Dragon’s Jaw, dodging enemy fire, the bomb getting stuck—only at the end, he says, “Is that how you did it?”

Toby, smiling, takes the plane from him, evidently understanding the game without Eric having to explain it. “Fly wight over the bwidge, and . . . awww. Stuck.”

“That’s right! The bomb didn’t release.” Eric takes the toy plane back. “I didn’t realize it until I tried to pull out. How about you? What do you have to do then?”

I stand stock-still in the kitchen. I don’t know which bothers me more—the fact that he’s doing this or what he’s saying. That fight I didn’t pick after the party? It’s coming to him.

“You have to woll out, with the bomb,” Toby says. “You have to be bwave. Like John Wahbuhson.”

“That’s right. I was brave, and I rolled out, but you have to do it on the side that has the weight. But you knew that, right?”

“Awound and awound.”

I can hear Toby get up, and when I step into the living room, I see him spin with the toy plane in his hand; Thud the airplane flying around Thud the dog.

“And then what?”

Toby looks closely at Eric, then answers, “The smoke whooshed,” and he sticks his arms in front of him and swings them toward his chest, in a sweeping motion and continues, “and I jumped out.”

“That’s called ejecting. You eject so you can get out before the crash.”

Toby jumps into Eric’s chest, knocking him backward. “Ka-boom!”

They wrestle around on the floor, laughing until Toby says, “Oh! I bwoke my weg.”

“Which leg?” Eric asks.

Toby slaps his left leg as he jumps up and throws his body into Eric’s. “Cwash!”

I stand over the two of them, not saying a word. As Eric falls backward with Toby, he makes eye contact with me.

“What the hell was that?” I mouth the words, unable to keep from flinging my arms in his direction. If I could shove him over, I would.

“What’s up with you?”

“Me? What do you think you’re doing?”

“Cwash!” Toby says again.

“I’m playing a game.” Eric picks him up and carries him into the kitchen. “And you are overreacting. Again.”

I hate Eric’s version of the game. Just as I’m trying to observe objectively, Eric goes out of his way to initiate the game with Toby. Carla’s right. He’s making fun of me; that’s all it is. How on earth did I come to be married to a man who mocks me? Where is the logical Eric, the one who can put his emotions aside and have a sane discussion?

Instead of Eric dismissing me out of hand, I’d like him to help me figure out how to protect Toby from otherworldly messages.

For an entire week, Eric comes home and plays the same airplane game with Toby. And every night, I make notes and hold my metallic-tasting tongue.

Finally, while we’re brushing our teeth one morning, I broach the topic. Because I’m brave. Like John Fucking Robberson. But I begin with a soft, roundabout approach.

“You were sleepwalking again last night.”

“Huh.”

“It’s the fourth time this week.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I spit into the sink and give him the rundown, including the previous night’s weird encounter. On both Tuesday and Wednesday nights, I hadn’t realized he’d been sleepwalking until he got back into bed. But the previous night, Thursday night, I woke up and the bed was empty. When I got up to look for him, he was leaving Toby’s room. I followed him down the hallway and he stopped dead still, like he knew I was there. I stopped, too. He turned and looked right through me. No expression on his face. No recognition, but also no anger. He just started walking toward me, back to our bedroom, so I turned and walked in front of him. We got into bed without a word or a touch.

“Weird,” he says, walking out of the bathroom. “But you know I never remember any of it.”

“I know. But four times in one week, Eric. Are you stressed? Tense?”

He says, “I’m tense because you’re tense. About a stupid game. If you would let it go,” he says, “then neither of us would be tense.”

But that night, when he returns, he starts right back in again. Before I’ve even finished eating, he pulls Toby out of his booster seat and takes him to the living room. I put down my fork and shake my head. Unbelievable.

I can hear them wrestling on the floor. “Where’s that Thud of mine?” he growls. “I feel like bombing somebody!”

I can’t take it.

I storm out of the house without a word. I have my phone with me for the music, not the calls. I don’t even look at his texts. Headphones in, I find a good playlist and speed-walk laps around Oasis Verde until it’s dark and I’m sure Toby is in bed.

When I return, Eric switches the TV off and says, “Okay. You made your point. I’m sorry.”

“All I want is to talk to you about this. Can we do that?”

He nods. “Come sit down. I’m listening. Can you explain to me what it is about this game that bothers you so much? I can’t believe you care how I play with Toby.”

I join him on the sofa and take a deep breath. “It’s not the game I’m objecting to. You know Toby plays it every day with Sanjay. It’s not the game itself. I think the game has a meaning. So that’s why the part you add, where you act like you remember actually flying the plane—that’s what bothers me. It seems ironic that you won’t let it go.”

“Ironic?”

“You’re the one accusing me of keeping John Robberson alive,” I say.

“Who said anything about John Robberson?”

“Toby does! That’s the whole point. Whenever you play this game, Toby adds what he heard from you to the game, to what he thinks John Robberson said, or knows, or wants.”

Eric closes his eyes and squeezes the bridge of his nose. He takes a long time to answer, and when he does, his voice has lost that defiant edge. “I still don’t see why this is such a big deal.”

“Because there’s more!” I grab a pillow and pull it into my lap before I cross my legs and face him. “What about Kay? How can he know about Kay?”

“Jeez. The way you talk about it. He doesn’t
know about
Kay; he made Kay up.”

“Eric. You have to listen to me. Toby is telling the truth.”

“What truth is that?”

I finally tell him about the obituary of the real John Robberson. The Thud pilot. A former fire chief. With a wife named Kay. The date of his death, which happens to be the very same day as Toby’s birth.

I’ve held it back for so long, this actual evidence, hoping against hope that he’d be persuaded. But no.

He shifts his position, crossing his legs and facing me. “It’s nothing. A coincidence. You can find anything on the Internet. I’m not convinced that just because there was a guy named John Robberson, who was married to a woman named Kay, that it means that Toby’s John Robberson is the same guy. Think about it. Use me as an example: there are probably a thousand different Eric Buckners in the world, maybe a hundred thousand, and odds are that one of them, besides me, is married to someone named Shelly. I really think John Robberson is nothing more than a superman version of me.” He shakes his head, almost in disgust.

I can tell I have to use a new tactic. I want to just come right out and say it, but the distance between an imaginary John Robberson/superman and a real John Robberson who died on the same day our son was born—it’s a chasm that can’t be leaped in a single bound. The room is starting to get dark, and I pause to turn on the lamp. Baby steps.

With Jell-O for vocal chords, I say, “Just for the sake of discussion, let’s assume Toby’s John Robberson is the same one that I tracked down.”

“Okaaaay.”

“Either Toby is a reincarnation of John Robberson, or John Robberson is some kind of spirit that talks to Toby.”

“Like a ghost? Are you the ghost whisperer?” He smiles. “Like that chick on TV? What was her name?”

“Please, try to listen to me. Pretend for a minute that you don’t find this assumption both ridiculous and offensive. Can you do that?”

“Barely. Because, ghost whisperer extraordinaire,” Eric says, “there’s no way to find out which of your ridiculous assumptions is correct.”

“Maybe there is. Remember that researcher? I’m using the same methodology. I’m paying attention to anything he says about John Robberson. I write it down. Does he say he remembers? Or does he say John Robberson told him? What about these temper tantrums about Kay? Because no matter how many times I tell him he doesn’t have to go, he still freaks out almost every day.”

“Not every day,” Eric objects.

“And I write whether he says anything new about John Robberson. Like the thing with him smelling smoke and jumping out. I look at how often he adds details like that.”

“Seriously? You have this written down somewhere? Like a journal? Dates, categorization? Direct quotes?”

I feel my neck and cheeks go red. “Yes.”

With an affectionate lilt in his voice, he says, “Well, I admire your scientific approach. Impressive. Very thorough. What are your preliminary findings?”

“I think early on, I made a mistake. I may have pushed him too much for details.”

He unfolds his legs and changes position, so I can’t see the smirk on his face as he says, “Ya think?”

I glare at him. “So now I don’t want you to do the same thing. My findings, as you call them, are unclear. At first because of me. But now because of you. You’re contaminating the data pool. When you initiate that game with him, when you pretend to
remember
when you were a fighter pilot, he imitates it and adds to the game all the things he knows from when
he
was a fighter pilot . . . Do you see what I mean? I can’t tell if he is remembering something, or if he sees something, or if he’s playing along with you.”

“So, which way are you leaning?” He leans back, hands behind his head. “Reincarnation or ghost?”

“Ghost.”

“Okay. Let’s say you’re right. It’s a ghost.” He takes my hands in his. “What difference does it really make?”

“The tantrums. I think John Robberson is pressuring Toby to meet Kay face to face. And we have no idea what would happen—jeez. I don’t even want to think about
that.
It scares me to death.”

He starts laughing. He reaches over and motions to Thud, who rolls on his back so Eric will scratch his belly. Eric obliges the dog, and when he’s done, Thud thinks he’s going to get to go outside. He’s at Eric’s feet with his front paws set apart, his hindquarters in the air, his tail wagging from side to side.

“Okay, buddy,” Eric says to the dog. As he stands up, he looks over his shoulder at me. “Chill out. It’s just a game.”

I sigh and lean back against the sofa. “No, it’s not.”