It’s after midnight, and the house is dark. The front porch, the fanlight, even the twinkly LEDs Michelle got me to hang along the eaves a couple Februarys back, everything’s dark. Or almost everything. I’m out of the car before I see it: On the downhill side, just past the dryer vent, the hopper window flickers blue and pink. My son is awake. This cheers me right up, although I probably shouldn’t be surprised. Aaron’s always up late. It’s actually a problem. Still, I guess I’m glad he’s up late tonight. I could stand some company.
Of course, I’ve got no business at this hour doing anything but brushing my teeth and taking off my clothes and crawling into bed beside my ear-plugged, sleep-masked wife. The thing is she’s a very light sleeper. And I know for a fact the moment I make contact with the mattress her internal seismograph will come stuttering to life, and in the morning she’ll announce that once I woke her up her sleep was ruined for the night, and I will nod and quietly decide today is not the day to give her the bad news.
Here’s what Michelle does not yet know: The new business is a failure. And although this is bad—and bad for both of us—I know Michelle will take a certain satisfaction in hearing me admit out loud that, yes, she told me so. From the start, she was against the whole idea. She was against the new laptop, she was against the website, she was against the ad buys and the licensing and registration fees, and she was especially against the rented office in the coworking space.
“You were great at your job,” quoth my bride, “but you don’t want to be in charge of a whole company.”
She was right, of course. I didn’t want to be in charge of a company. And now I’m not. As of midnight tonight, my key card to Basic Office Unit H no longer works. Looking back now, it seems almost as if, with all those rented hours and weeks and years, I never really accomplished much more than (a.) lingering by the Complimentary Refueling Station in the corner of the Casual Meetup Area, only to be snubbed by kids with bird tattoos and prophylactic earbuds, unimpressed with both my banter and my fancy Staunton chess set, or (b.) holing up in Basic Office Unit H for some privacy in which to get back-rank mated by chess bots with cartoon faces. And yet, until the locks switched automatically tonight at midnight, part of me still held out hope that, through some intervention of the gods, my little business might somehow prove successful after all. Fool that I am, I couldn’t bear to leave until that dream had been officially extinguished.
For better or for worse, Michelle is now the only person in our house who has a job. So to speak. She volunteers part-time as bookkeeper for a men’s shelter downtown, and, just by virtue of not daily setting fire to our savings, she has for the past few years maintained a substantially higher income than yours truly. Though I guess the same could be said of our son, who simply does nothing at all.
In fairness, Aaron hasn’t always been such a write-off. Before The Empyrean, I still believe, he could have been anything. Tall, good-looking, well-liked by his peers, he was a born winner. He took to soccer, baseball, basketball, and track with natural grace, even if he never made team captain. He dabbled in photography and showed “real promise.” He snagged a supporting role in the high school musical his senior year and “almost stole the show.” He was waitlisted at half a dozen top-tier colleges, and even if he ended up just going to state, he graduated comfortably cum laude. Throughout his career of near-excellence, Aaron remained cheerful, self-deprecating, and unfailingly kind. Nobody who met him didn’t like him. To really make something of himself, I told him, all he had to do was pick one passion and stick with it. And maybe I was right. It’s just that the passion he finally settled on was not a line of work but a human being. Her name was Pippi Lattimore.
The Lattimores had always been the richest family in the neighborhood. For years we knew Pippi chiefly as our daughter Emma’s prettier, wealthier, better-spoken other half. But it was only when Pippi graduated college and came back home for her JD that her true place in our family history was revealed. Aaron had spent three years selling women’s shoes at a chichi New York-based department store downtown the day Pippi came in to buy a pair of pumps for her summer internship. Within a month, they’d moved in together. Not a year later, Aaron proposed. Even the Lattimores could see that they were perfect for each other. It seemed like destiny. Then came The Empyrean.
Four years ago last April, a recently fired Amazon warehouse employee named L———— McL————
McL———— walked into the main seating area of The Empyrean Diner, removed from a duffel bag his stepfather’s Armalite AR-10 and a recently purchased Sig Sauer P220, and calmly murdered eighteen patrons before blowing out the back of his own skull and collapsing to the checkered tile floor. Under a table not fifteen feet away lay my son and his fiancée.
None of the more than 200 rounds fired struck Pippi or Aaron. For that much we’ll always be grateful. But the booth just to their left was the final hiding place of a young family of four,
McL————’s last four victims. Witnesses, Pippi and Aaron among them, reported that the father—an HVAC service technician—charged out onto the floor to tackle McL————. First, though, he made several hissed overtures to Aaron to join him in this unlucky final stand.
“Big man.”
Aaron tried to ignore him.
“Big man, come on.”
“Not yet.”
This exchange repeated itself until the HVAC tech identified the sound of the rifle’s magazine release and—having been put off by Aaron for the last time—seized his chance. It turned out he was right about the magazine. He hadn’t, though, accounted for the pistol that McL———— was also carrying, with which the brave father of two was moments later shot in the spine. Even so, witnesses sheltering on that side of the restaurant agreed that, before McL———— got his shot off, the HVAC tech very nearly had the upper hand. If Aaron had gone out there with him, it seems likely that the two of them together might have brought the shooter down.
When the second-to-last bullet McL———— fired that day had finished passing through the skull of the HVAC tech’s younger daughter, it sent a shard of the tile floor flying several feet to where Aaron and Pippi lay hidden. The shard lodged in Pippi’s cheek, just below her eye. Doctors removed it, but the wound healed badly, and Pippi refused the services of the plastic surgeon her parents had arranged for her to see. Pippi’s otherwise porcelain face is still marked below the right eye by a tiny triangle of angry-looking skin. A reminder, I heard her call it once, though she didn’t say for whom.
Nobody in Aaron’s life accused him of doing anything wrong. Not Michelle, not Emma, not Pippi, not the Lattimores. Not even the HVAC tech, who from his wheelchair has since become something of a Christian internet celebrity. Still, every website has a comments section, where perfect strangers are allowed to say just anything. People feel so sure how they would act in a situation. You wouldn’t believe the things they say about a person they’ve never met, a person who would never hurt a soul. I’ve had to stop reading. Aaron, to his credit, never complained about any of this. But a few months after the shooting, he and Pippi broke off their engagement. Not much later, Aaron lost his job. By the time I looked into his finances, it had gotten so there wasn’t an apartment in the city that he could have rented without a co-signature. Meanwhile, Pippi graduated from law school and took a position as an associate in her father’s firm. Last spring, someone on Facebook shared the announcement of her wedding to a thin-haired, serious-faced assistant state’s attorney. In the photo, Pippi looks ecstatic. Michelle was crushed that we weren’t invited to the ceremony. Personally, I considered this an act of mercy.
When Aaron moved back home, Michelle devoted herself to the boy, cooking him whole separate meals, arranging special mother-son sessions with her therapist, even dragging him with her to the men’s shelter, where apparently he flirted with the nuns and played poker with the sheltered men and washed not so much as a coffee cup. After a few months, even Michelle grew tired of goading him along, and, given his choice, Aaron declined further participation in work or therapy or volunteering. Over time, we’ve found ourselves quietly accepting his housebound status as permanent.
Inside the house it’s almost as chilly as outside. Michelle likes to sleep beneath a burial mound of quilts and blankets, and before she goes to bed each night, she cranks the thermostat way down. When I get inside, I keep my jacket on and go straight to the kitchen, where a half-full bottle of shiraz is calling my name.
Less than a year after Aaron’s return, I got my own correction. One day at lunch I was unburdening myself to a junior partner I’d first mentored and then worked under, when he brought up the example of an executive who had taken a year off work to ride a tandem bicycle cross-country with his wife while she recovered from a pill addiction. The executive returned thin, tan, and full of new ideas, and his first year back was the company’s most profitable since its founding. How did I like the sound of that? I liked it fine. Given my record, said my young friend, odds were strong the partners would go for three months paid leave, if not more. The following Monday, he invited me into his office, where I found him at his Plexiglas standing desk, chatting with a smiling young brunette from Human Resources. He asked me to shut the door. The partners, as it happened, had agreed that I could use some time away. In fact, considering my age and the length of my requested sabbatical, they thought this was a great chance to consider bolder steps to shake things up by pursuing new growth opportunities and reprioritizing my work-life balance. How did I like the sound of that? I did not like it at all. But I am nothing if not a team player.
In the kitchen, I hunt down a burgundy glass and fill its softball-size bowl past the halfway point. I set my office things down on the floor, then, on an impulse, scoop back up the mortifyingly expensive chess set, in its torn-open Amazon box, and carry it along with the wineglass and bottle out to the hallway and down the carpeted steps into the basement. While Michelle’s resentment of my errors has calcified over the years into an almost visible deposit about her eyes and mouth, Aaron has proven, with every new day spent amid the evidence of his uselessness, only increasingly gracious. Like a dog on the vet’s table or a martyr at the stake, he looks out at the world with tender eyes, mysteriously at peace. Somehow the indisputable, all-comprehending nature of his failure has imbued him with a kind of saintliness. Or something in that ballpark. With the head-start of an empty stomach, the wine is making short work of me.
At Aaron’s bedroom door, I give a knock and wait. No answer comes, but I can make out the texture of thudding bass, manful cries, and automatic gunfire that I recognize as the soundtrack to his favorite video game. A queasily realistic first-person shooter, it takes place in the heart of an embattled American city. The player’s avatar is pitted against an indeterminate number of evil, super-intelligent aliens who are outwardly indistinguishable from the city’s human residents. I might be tempted here to indulge in a little amateur psychoanalysis, but, perhaps dismayingly, Aaron’s infatuation with the game predates by several years the killings at The Empyrean. I give the door another rat-a-tat-tat and swing it open, sloshing in the process half my wine onto the beige carpet as well as my own khakis. I set the glass down and snatch a handkerchief from my pocket. For several seconds I am too occupied with blotting at the spilled wine to notice who is in the room.
“Hi, Dave.”
The voice is soft and female and familiar, though I cannot place it. As if for an excuse, I look to the television, which displays the alien shooter game’s menu screen, the muffled violent soundtrack cycling steadily behind it. The twin controllers lie idle on the carpet. The lamp above my son’s old school desk is lit but turned to face the wall, so the old back-broken futon lies in shadow. I straighten up and squint into the gloom. My son sits against the wall, a pillow in his lap. Beside him kneels a girl, a young woman, hugging a sheet to her chest. They are naked. Aaron gives me a friendly nod, unflappable as always. The young woman is Pippi Lattimore.
It’s been almost four years since I was in the same room as Pippi, and the first thing I feel is joy at her presence. The darling pretty neighbor girl, my son’s true love, the one-time future mother of my one-time future grandchildren.
“Pippi! It’s good to see you!”
“Thanks, Dave. You, too.”
But this, of course, is also a naked grown woman, the daughter of our estranged neighbors, a successful young attorney, and the wife of someone who is not my son. Out of the darkness at her side, a tiny object twinkles. With Aaron she’d always insisted that she didn’t need a diamond.
“I’ll give you some privacy.”
I step out into the hall and shut the door, abandoning my wineglass. Back up the stairs I go, fumbling with my nonsensical cargo—the box containing the all-but-unused chess set and the bottle containing less than a glass’s worth of unpleasantly chilled shiraz. In the kitchen, I stuff a dishtowel into my pants leg to absorb the spill and, waddling sideways so as not to dislodge it, retrieve a fresh wineglass from the cabinet and an unopened bottle from the rack above the fridge. Newly fortified, I clear the fruit bowl and the paper towel roll from the kitchen table, give the last stray crumbs a swipe, and set down the chessboard. I’ve just refilled my glass and reset the board for a second game against myself when Pippi Lattimore enters the kitchen.
She wears a smart white blouse with a pencil skirt, a white suede purse slung over her arm.
“You look nice.”
“You’re sweet.”
She seems to be waiting for something, but Aaron does not appear behind her.
“Wine?”
“Please.”
I fetch another glass.
“Say when.”
We sit and, after a heavy pause, take simultaneous sips of wine.
“You two have fun?”
Oh, God. This is not the thing to say.
“Time flies.”
In chess, each move initiates a new theoretical line. By sidestepping my question, Pippi’s offering me a mulligan. Only I find I do not want a mulligan.
“I was surprised to see you.”
“Because I’m married?”
She does not look the least embarrassed, but her hand fiddles absently with the chessmen.
“Do you play?”
She shrugs.
“My dad always had this fantasy of a firstborn son.”
“Mine too. Spassky–Fischer coincided with his midlife crisis.”
“It’s a beautiful set.”
I take a black pawn in one hand and a white pawn in the other. Behind my back I switch them, then I offer Pippi her choice. She just smiles and shakes her head. For a little while we drink, as Pippi moves the chessmen on the board into some sort of obscure pattern. Several times I almost ask the question. At last she speaks up.
“I gotta head.”
She stands, and I stand with her, then bend back down and take hold of the table.
“Are you all right?”
“Lightheaded.”
“Here.”
She takes my arm to help me back into my seat, and I clap a hand to her hand, holding it in place.
“I apologize. I’m not usually up this late.”
“I know.”
Of course. Of course she knows. This isn’t the first time she’s come here to commit adultery with my son. It’s just the first time I’ve been awake to witness it.
“You and Aaron— You’re seeing each other?”
“I’m married.”
I’m back in my chair now, with Pippi leaning over me, bent awkwardly at the waist. I don’t let go of her hand.
“Do you still think about it?”
“About what?”
“The Empyrean.”
Her expression goes flat. It might just be my wine-soaked mind playing tricks, but the scar beneath her right eye seems to flush with color.
“That was why, wasn’t it?”
Pippi closes her eyes and lets herself sink down into a squat. I hold her hand fast.
“What are you asking, Dave?”
“You put a hundred people in that situation—put a thousand! Nine-hundred-ninety-nine are going to stay under that table. No matter what they say. Aaron just had the bad luck of being the one it happened to.”
“He wasn’t the only one.”
“I’m just saying you can’t blame him.”
“Why would I blame him?”
The question leaves me fuddled.
“The father— The HVAC tech—”
She jerks her hand away and stands.
“That man’s an idiot.”
“But Aaron didn’t go—”
“No shit. I didn’t let him. He had claw marks in his arm for a week.”
I don’t know what to make of this. Pippi collects her purse.
“Why did you leave him?”
“He left me.”
“But you’re the love of his life.”
Pippi laughs a big, loud, unattractive laugh. Her eyes tear up, and I offer her my wine-stained handkerchief. Dabbing her eyes with the unbloodied portions, she sits back down.
“He was always so angry.”
This isn’t true. Aaron was a cheerful kid. Popular, easygoing. “Angry” isn’t right at all.
“He just couldn’t see why things weren’t working out.”
“For you two?”
“For him. He was a fucking shoe salesman. He thought he was supposed to be, like, a movie star. Or Elon Musk. Somebody. He was so angry. Sometimes I thought he might—I don’t know—do something.”
“Do something?”
“Violent.”
“Never.”
Aaron has always been so gentle.
“After The Empyrean”—she snaps her fingers—“it went away. After that, he was just sad.”
I’m bewildered, but Pippi doesn’t seem to have anything else to say. She stands again, ready to return home to her successful, non-angry, non-sad cuckold.
“Will we see you again?”
She smiles. This isn’t my question to ask.
“Take care, Dave.”
When she’s gone, I finish my wine and stare at the board. It is a beautiful set. Bought impulsively one night while rewatching Searching for Bobby Fischer and shipped to the coworking space where Michelle wouldn’t see it. I study Pippi’s composition for a long time. Somewhere here, among the squares and pawns and pieces, hides—the premise of every chess puzzle—a single, perfect move.
Many times I’ve fantasized about what might have happened if Aaron and Pippi hadn’t been in The Empyrean that day. A wedding, a grandchild, a career for Aaron, maybe even the law. The future my boy always deserved. If the two of them had gone instead for tacos, or falafel, or even if they’d just ordered their food to-go. What wouldn’t have been possible in Aaron’s life if he had made that one move differently?
But now, as I clean up the kitchen, I let another line play out in my tipsy head. I imagine that I’m the father of L——— McL————. What kind of man is he? Was he close to his son? Was he aware of his boy’s fury at the world? Did he know his ex-wife’s husband owned an assault rifle? And afterward, when his child’s head lay blown open on the public floor, the room around him littered with the bodies of people he had murdered, what did his father think then? What would he not have given then to go back in time, to shift, even a little, the course of his son’s life? And what about tonight? Tonight he’d surely be nothing but overjoyed to see his son—the misanthrope, the recluse—living rent-free in his basement, playing video games, ignoring chores, bedding lawyers, innocent. A failure, but not a murderer. Alive, alive, alive.
When I’ve finished hand-washing the glasses, I look for a place to stow my extravagant chess set. In the morning, I will tell Michelle about the business, but perhaps I’ll hold off on revealing this particular expenditure. I go to the head of the basement stairs and listen. Somewhere in the dark below, I think I hear the rumble of the video game’s soundtrack. Of course, this may just be the menu screen, still cycling on its own. But then I hear the creak of a door. And at the bottom of the stairs the darkness softens slightly with a bluish-pinkish glow. I want to call out Aaron’s name, I want to summon him—to join me, to have a glass of wine, to play a game, to tell me about Pippi, about the alien infiltrators, about anything. How strange that this is possible, that I can simply say his name and he can simply answer, just like that. If there are miracles, this is a miracle. And on the other hand, of course, I’m tired, and a little drunk, and it has been a long bad day, and I should have gone to bed hours ago. In this state, I’m afraid that if I try to call out anything, my voice might break, and I might start sniveling, and who knows what I might end up saying. For now, it’s better that I don’t embarrass myself, that I don’t embarrass Aaron. For now it’s enough just knowing he is there.
