Crash
Yes the market crashed yesterday, but today it will recover. And if it doesn’t, then. There’s still tomorrow, and tomorrow. Long line of golden afternoons. Good crisp opportunities for termination.
Purely a business decision. “I know how it feels,” says his boss. When the man hears that, he wants to say: “No you don’t!”. But he doesn’t. He smiles and says: “Look, I get it.” And drives home at a reasonable speed, with the music only a little too loud.
When his wife hears heavy footsteps approaching the dining room table, she raises her head. “Hello,” she says, meaning How are you? How was your day?1
“Hey,” he says, meaning Don’t ask.
“Where’s the kid?”
“In his room.”
“On the computer?”
She shrugs.
He looks around the kitchen. Dirty sink. The remains of breakfast. “Are we having dinner? Or is everyone just fending for themselves?”
The wife says, “You know what? I’m not even gonna answer that.”
He opens the fridge. Gazes at the leftovers, the eggs, the slices of deli meat. Closes the fridge again. Leaves her at the table, walks over to his son’s room. Knocks on the door frame, enters before he hears a response. “Hey, kiddo,” he says. He’s a good dad. “Hungry?”
The connection between laid-off fathers and plain pizza crusts is unmistakable.2 The laid-off father is too busy to cook, or too idle. He doesn’t have cash to drop on Benihana or Mount Fuji. But he wants his kid to enjoy dinner. Being a kid is supposed to be fun. Kids love pizza. So the laid-off father drives the two of them in the okay-good minivan to the local pizza joint.
The son is neat. Very conscientious. How many 12 year boys do you know fold their napkins over their lap? And eat carefully enough that not a single crumb, not a single bit of salad escapes their plate? Even if it’s just a paper napkin. Even if it’s just a paper plate. Yes he’s a good kid, even special. His father sees this. It’s very clear. He wants you to see it too.
The horror of parenthood, I think, is not in the moments when your child fails. The horror of parenthood is in those moments when you can see both the sheer exquisiteness of your child and their undeniable inconsequence to others. There are so many boys in the world.
This boy eats slowly. Between bites he sips ice water through a thin clear straw. By the time he’s done with his first slice, his father has plowed through three. And then there are four slices left and the laid-off father doesn’t want to take them home, the wife will nag. And he doesn’t want to throw them out, there’s been enough waste already. So they sit there - the father in his windbreaker, the son in a gray or navy sweatshirt - as the father finishes the pizza. It’s good pizza except the crust is actually not good. After the fourth slice the crust is basically a chore. So the laid-off father leaves it. Moves on to the next loaded mouthful.
Finally they’re sitting at a dark table amid rims of crust. The laid-off father gathers the sauce-stained napkins and the powdery crusts and dumps them in the dark open trash. The son tries to help; the father waves him away. The father would like to do it himself. Do a good job, set an example. “Want some ice cream?” The son doesn’t want ice cream. “Wanna watch a movie? Wanna play a game?”
The boy wants to play chess. That’s how bright and good my son is, the laid-off father thinks, and the sweet round tire of fat around his chest expands happily. It’s not all delusion. The boy is smart. The boy is bright. Maybe not a genius, maybe his parents shouldn’t be pinning all their secret weights and wings on him, he’s not an angel, but he can see 3-4 moves ahead, he’s memorized the top 5 openings, his dad taught him. Dad is good at chess. But for some reason which the boy can’t grasp, this game isn’t like all the other games. Dad is in a different mood tonight. When the son takes one of his father’s pawns, the father scowls and curses under his breath. Sonofabitch. When the father takes one of the son’s pieces, he does it vindictively, almost snatching the white bishop off the board.
It’s been a long day. They’ve had too much salt for dinner. Soon enough there are only a few pieces left. The father has two rooks and a king; the son has a knight, a king, and a few pawns. The son makes a stupid blunder that costs him his knight, and then he finds his king trapped between the two rooks. The two rooks drive the king to the edge of the board. One rook closes off a file or rank and the other gives check on the neighbouring one which drives the king back. It’s a basic endgame and one he should have been able to prevent. The son is tired and irritable and humiliated and surprised at his father’s sudden viciousness. Tears of embarrassment and anger prick his eyes. It’s clear that in 3-4 moves everything will be over. In a burst of pique, he knocks over his king and stands up to leave.
As quickly as the son can stand, the father raises his hand and slaps the side of his son’s face. Not the sweet fleshy part of the cheek. But the side. The band of skin stretched tight over bone. In a low voice he says, “Even if you know you're going to lose, you should play to the end. Don't cry. Don't hunch. Don’t complain. Sit down and play to the end.”
The next day the son’s face, already chubby from baby fat and last night’s carbs, is swollen. There’s a purple imprint of a palm along his left profile. He won’t talk to his father. He won’t talk to anybody on the bus.
Here’s what you want to hear about him: he grows up fine. Of course. None of this stops him from achieving his dreams of becoming a swole AF backend B2B engineer. Nothing can stop anyone in this country. He has such good eyebrows. He sleeps with a girl on a trip to Japan.
That slap, his parent’s divorce - it doesn’t stay with him, not really. Or if it stays with him, it only stays with him to make him stronger. Because no job interview, no boss, no rejection can hurt him now. He doesn’t play to win or lose. He plays to play. He plays to the end. I love you daddy, he says. You gave me life as play. You gave me everything. The tender grass of boyhood transformed into the strength, the gentleness of trees by the clarity of his suffering. Like clear shining after rain.
And of course, here’s what you want to hear about the market: it crashed yesterday, but today it will rebound. And if it doesn’t today, then tomorrow. None of this will stop any of us.
But why, can someone tell me, why is it that when a boy grows up he not only becomes his father — he also becomes his father’s father — and even then his father is his father — so why do we keep becoming our father’s father’s father’s … father — and why must we jump over our fathers to become men — and why at last must we live and play the roles of both ourselves and our fathers and our sons all at the same time here — now — as sell-offs cascade through global markets — long line of fathers and sons — like so many golden afternoons —
this is a paraphrase of Allegra Goodman’s excellent short story, “A Challenge You Have Overcome.”
this is adapted from Mark Halliday’s excellent poem, “Divorced Fathers and Pizza Crusts”