It\u2019s 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\u2019s dark. Or almost everything. I\u2019m 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\u2019t be surprised. Aaron\u2019s always up late. It\u2019s actually a problem. Still, I guess I\u2019m glad he\u2019s up late tonight. I could stand some company.<\/p>\n
Of course, I\u2019ve 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\u2019s 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\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what Michelle does not yet know: The new business is a failure. And although this is bad\u2014and bad for both of us\u2014I 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were great at your job,\u201d quoth my bride, \u201cbut you don\u2019t want to be in charge of a whole company.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was right, of course. I didn\u2019t want to be in charge of a company. And now I\u2019m 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\u2019t bear to leave until that dream had been officially extinguished.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
In fairness, Aaron hasn\u2019t 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 \u201creal promise.\u201d He snagged a supporting role in the high school musical his senior year and \u201calmost stole the show.\u201d 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\u2019t 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\u2019s just that the passion he finally settled on was not a line of work but a human being. Her name was Pippi Lattimore.<\/p>\n
The Lattimores had always been the richest family in the neighborhood. For years we knew Pippi chiefly as our daughter Emma\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n
Four years ago last April, a recently fired Amazon warehouse employee named L\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 McL\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n
McL\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 walked into the main seating area of The Empyrean Diner, removed from a duffel bag his stepfather\u2019s 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 fianc\u00e9e.<\/p>\n
None of the more than 200 rounds fired struck Pippi or Aaron. For that much we\u2019ll always be grateful. But the booth just to their left was the final hiding place of a young family of four,<\/p>\n
McL\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2019s last four victims. Witnesses, Pippi and Aaron among them, reported that the father\u2014an HVAC service technician\u2014charged out onto the floor to tackle McL\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014. First, though, he made several hissed overtures to Aaron to join him in this unlucky final stand.<\/p>\n
\u201cBig man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aaron tried to ignore him.<\/p>\n
\u201cBig man, come on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
This exchange repeated itself until the HVAC tech identified the sound of the rifle\u2019s magazine release and\u2014having been put off by Aaron for the last time\u2014seized his chance. It turned out he was right about the magazine. He hadn\u2019t, though, accounted for the pistol that McL\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 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\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 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.<\/p>\n
When the second-to-last bullet McL\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 fired that day had finished passing through the skull of the HVAC tech\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019t say for whom.<\/p>\n
Nobody in Aaron\u2019s 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\u2019t believe the things they say about a person they\u2019ve never met, a person who would never hurt a soul. I\u2019ve 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\u2019t 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\u2019s firm. Last spring, someone on Facebook shared the announcement of her wedding to a thin-haired, serious-faced assistant state\u2019s attorney. In the photo, Pippi looks ecstatic. Michelle was crushed that we weren\u2019t invited to the ceremony. Personally, I considered this an act of mercy.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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\u2019ve found ourselves quietly accepting his housebound status as permanent.<\/p>\n
Inside the house it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Less than a year after Aaron\u2019s return, I got my own correction. One day at lunch I was unburdening myself to a junior partner I\u2019d 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
At Aaron\u2019s 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\u2019s avatar is pitted against an indeterminate number of evil, super-intelligent aliens who are outwardly indistinguishable from the city\u2019s human residents. I might be tempted here to indulge in a little amateur psychoanalysis, but, perhaps dismayingly, Aaron\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi, Dave.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s menu screen, the muffled violent soundtrack cycling steadily behind it. The twin controllers lie idle on the carpet. The lamp above my son\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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\u2019s true love, the one-time future mother of my one-time future grandchildren.<\/p>\n
\u201cPippi! It\u2019s good to see you!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks, Dave. You, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019d always insisted that she didn\u2019t need a diamond.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll give you some privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
I step out into the hall and shut the door, abandoning my wineglass. Back up the stairs I go, fumbling with my nonsensical cargo\u2014the box containing the all-but-unused chess set and the bottle containing less than a glass\u2019s 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\u2019ve just refilled my glass and reset the board for a second game against myself when Pippi Lattimore enters the kitchen.<\/p>\n
She wears a smart white blouse with a pencil skirt, a white suede purse slung over her arm.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look nice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re sweet.\u201d<\/p>\n
She seems to be waiting for something, but Aaron does not appear behind her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWine?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease.\u201d<\/p>\n
I fetch another glass.<\/p>\n
\u201cSay when.\u201d<\/p>\n
We sit and, after a heavy pause, take simultaneous sips of wine.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou two have fun?\u201d<\/p>\n
Oh, God. This is not the thing to say.<\/p>\n
\u201cTime flies.\u201d<\/p>\n
In chess, each move initiates a new theoretical line. By sidestepping my question, Pippi\u2019s offering me a mulligan. Only I find I do not want a mulligan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was surprised to see you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I\u2019m married?\u201d<\/p>\n
She does not look the least embarrassed, but her hand fiddles absently with the chessmen.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you play?\u201d<\/p>\n
She shrugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad always had this fantasy of a firstborn son.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMine too. Spassky\u2013Fischer coincided with his midlife crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful set.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI gotta head.\u201d<\/p>\n
She stands, and I stand with her, then bend back down and take hold of the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you all right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLightheaded.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHere.\u201d<\/p>\n
She takes my arm to help me back into my seat, and I clap a hand to her hand, holding it in place.<\/p>\n
\u201cI apologize. I\u2019m not usually up this late.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course. Of course she knows. This isn\u2019t the first time she\u2019s come here to commit adultery with my son. It\u2019s just the first time I\u2019ve been awake to witness it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou and Aaron\u2014 You\u2019re seeing each other?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m married.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m back in my chair now, with Pippi leaning over me, bent awkwardly at the waist. I don\u2019t let go of her hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you still think about it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Empyrean.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was why, wasn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Pippi closes her eyes and lets herself sink down into a squat. I hold her hand fast.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you asking, Dave?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou put a hundred people in that situation\u2014put 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wasn\u2019t the only one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just saying you can\u2019t blame him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would I blame him?\u201d<\/p>\n
The question leaves me fuddled.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe father\u2014 The HVAC tech\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
She jerks her hand away and stands.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat man\u2019s an idiot.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Aaron didn\u2019t go\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo shit. I didn\u2019t let him. He had claw marks in his arm for a week.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know what to make of this. Pippi collects her purse.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did you leave him?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe left me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you\u2019re the love of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was always so angry.\u201d<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t true. Aaron was a cheerful kid. Popular, easygoing. \u201cAngry\u201d isn\u2019t right at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just couldn\u2019t see why things weren\u2019t working out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor you two?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor 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\u2014I don\u2019t know\u2014do something.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo something?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cViolent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aaron has always been so gentle.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter The Empyrean\u201d\u2014she snaps her fingers\u2014\u201cit went away. After that, he was just sad.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m bewildered, but Pippi doesn\u2019t seem to have anything else to say. She stands again, ready to return home to her successful, non-angry, non-sad cuckold.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill we see you again?\u201d<\/p>\n
She smiles. This isn\u2019t my question to ask.<\/p>\n
\u201cTake care, Dave.\u201d<\/p>\n
When she\u2019s 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\u2019t see it. I study Pippi\u2019s composition for a long time. Somewhere here, among the squares and pawns and pieces, hides\u2014the premise of every chess puzzle\u2014a single, perfect move.<\/p>\n
Many times I\u2019ve fantasized about what might have happened if Aaron and Pippi hadn\u2019t 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\u2019d just ordered their food to-go. What wouldn\u2019t have been possible in Aaron\u2019s life if he had made that one move differently?<\/p>\n
But now, as I clean up the kitchen, I let another line play out in my tipsy head. I imagine that I\u2019m the father of L\u2014\u2014\u2014 McL\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014. What kind of man is he? Was he close to his son? Was he aware of his boy\u2019s fury at the world? Did he know his ex-wife\u2019s husband owned an assault rifle? And afterward, when his child\u2019s 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\u2019s life? And what about tonight? Tonight he\u2019d surely be nothing but overjoyed to see his son\u2014the misanthrope, the recluse\u2014living rent-free in his basement, playing video games, ignoring chores, bedding lawyers, innocent. A failure, but not a murderer. Alive, alive, alive.<\/p>\n
When I\u2019ve 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\u2019ll 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\u2019s 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\u2019s name, I want to summon him\u2014to 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\u2019m 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\u2019m 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\u2019s better that I don\u2019t embarrass myself, that I don\u2019t embarrass Aaron. For now it\u2019s enough just knowing he is there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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