McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [24]
Karen gets out one of her nursing books, and Gene watches her face tighten with concern as she flips slowly through the pages. She is looking at Chapter Three: Neurological System, and Gene observes as she pauses here and there, skimming down a list of symptoms. “We should probably take him back to Dr. Banerjee again,” she says. Gene nods, recalling what the doctor said about “emotional trauma.”
“Are you scared of bees?” he asks Frankie. “Is that something that’s bothering you?”
“No,” Frankie says. “Not really.”
When Frankie was three, a bee stung him above his left eyebrow. They had been out hiking together, and they hadn’t yet learned that Frankie was “moderately allergic” to bee stings. Within minutes of the sting, Frankie’s face had begun to distort, to puff up, his eye swelling shut. He looked deformed. Gene didn’t know if he’d ever been more frightened in his entire life, running down the trail with Frankie’s head pressed against his heart, trying to get to the car and drive him to the doctor, terrified that the child was dying. Frankie himself was calm.
Gene clears his throat. He knows the feeling that Frankie is talking about—he has felt it himself, that odd, feathery vibration inside his head. And in fact he feels it again, now. He presses the pads of his fingertips against his brow. Emotional trauma, his mind murmurs, but he is thinking of DJ, not Frankie.
“What are you scared of?” Gene asks Frankie, after a moment. “Anything?”
“You know what the scariest thing is?” Frankie says, and widens his eyes, miming a frightened look. “There’s a lady with no head, and she went walking through the woods, looking for it. ‘Give . . . me . . . back . . . my . . . head. . . . ’ ”
“Where on earth did you hear a story like that!” Karen says.
“Daddy told me,” Frankie says. “When we were camping.”
Gene blushes, even before Karen gives him a sharp look. “Oh, great,” she says. “Wonderful.”
He doesn’t meet her eyes. “We were just telling ghost stories,” he says, softly. “I thought he would think the story was funny.”
“My God, Gene,” she says. “With him having nightmares like this? What were you thinking?”
It’s a bad flashback, the kind of thing he’s usually able to avoid. He thinks abruptly of Mandy, his former wife. He sees in Karen’s face that look Mandy would give him when he screwed up. “What are you, some kind of idiot?” Mandy used to say. “Are you crazy?” Back then, Gene couldn’t do anything right, it seemed, and when Mandy yelled at him it made his stomach clench with shame and inarticulate rage. I was trying, he would think, I was trying, damn it, and it was as if no matter what he did, it wouldn’t turn out right. That feeling would sit heavily in his chest, and eventually, when things got worse, he hit her once. “Why do you want me to feel like shit,” he had said through clenched teeth. “I’m not an asshole,” he said, and when she rolled her eyes at him he slapped her hard enough to knock her out of her chair.
That was the time he’d taken DJ to the carnival. It was a Saturday, and he’d been drinking a little so Mandy didn’t like it, but after all—he thought—DJ was his son, too, he had a right to spend some time with his own son, Mandy wasn’t his boss even if she might think she was. She liked to make him hate himself.
What she was mad about was that he’d taken DJ on the Velocerator. It was a mistake, he’d realized afterward. But DJ himself had begged to go on. He was just recently four years old, and Gene had just turned twenty-three, which made him feel inexplicably old. He wanted to have a little fun.
Besides, nobody told him he couldn’t take DJ on the thing. When he led DJ through the gate, the ticket-taker even smiled, as if to say, “Here is a young guy showing his kid a good time.” Gene winked at DJ and grinned, taking a nip from a flask of peppermint schnapps. He felt like a good dad. He wished his own father had taken him on rides at the carnival!
The door to the Velocerator