“So let it run. We’re having Christmas.”
Abel only sighed.
Anthony continued to tear at the paper one-handed until the telescope emerged. It was more impressive in person than it had appeared in the catalogue. It looked bigger and more technical. More expensive. More desirable even than he had imagined.
“It’s just what I wanted.”
“Well, of course it’s what you wanted,” his father said, his voice hurried and gruff. “Like you didn’t make it clear a hundred times exactly what you wanted.”
Anthony’s mother shot her husband a stern glance. He fell silent.
“We figured this way you’ll have something to play with while we’re gone,” she said.
“He’s not going to play with it,” his father shot back. “Stop treating him like a boy. He’s going to learn. Explore. Enrich himself. He doesn’t play anymore. He’s a grown man.”
“He’s not a grown man.”
“He’s legally an adult.”
“Legally an adult does not make you a grown man.”
“Well, he’s certainly not the child you—”
“Could you guys please not fight over me?” Anthony asked, interrupting.
“Fine,” his father said. “There’s no time, anyway. We have a plane to catch. We have to go. There’s a cab waiting downstairs, and the meter is running. Or did I say that already? The other package is the tripod. You’re smart. You’ll figure it out. Now come on, Vera. We don’t want to miss that flight.”
“How are we getting all of these bags downstairs?” Anthony’s mother asked, a sentence that felt like it wanted to be the start of another fight.
“I can help,” Anthony said.
Although, he noted, none of the bags had shoulder straps. So he could take only one at a time.
“Nonsense,” his father said. “I asked the super to come up.”
As if this scene were only a stage play, and as if the super had heard the line of dialogue that was to be his entrance cue, there was a knock at the door.
Anthony’s mother swooped across the room and kissed Anthony on the head, blocking out most of the world with her large and solid self.
“Be a good boy,” she said. “Well . . . a good man, if your father has anything to say about what I call you. Then again, this time he might be right. For a change.”
She stepped away, and Anthony looked up to see the apartment door standing open. No bags. No super. No father. They were all gone.
“Have fun in South America,” he said to her.
But she only smiled in reply, and the smile looked tight and sad.
Then his mother stepped out, closing the apartment door behind her, leaving Anthony entirely alone.
For weeks.
For the first time in his life.
He was fast asleep when the knock came at the door, but had been dreaming of nothing as far as he could remember. He stumbled out of bed and shrugged awkwardly into his robe on the way to the door.
“Grandma Marion . . . ,” he called out. Then he began the tedious job of undoing the locks one-handed. “You know I love you, but they’ve only been gone a few hours. I mean, really.”
A deep male voice boomed through the door. “If I see Marion, I’ll pass your message along.”
Anthony swung the door wide. Standing on the welcome mat was his uncle Gregor. Or, at least, the man he had always called Uncle Gregor, despite his being a great-uncle—the late grandpa Anton’s brother.
“Oh, hey, Uncle Gregor.”
Uncle Gregor was a stooped man in his late seventies with wire-rim glasses and a neatly trimmed beard. He wore an expensive camel-hair coat, and looked Anthony up and down as he spoke, rubbing his beard with the heel of one hand.
“You were asleep, Anton?”
“I . . . actually was.”
“It’s almost one thirty in the afternoon.”
“Is it?”
They stood awkwardly, all four of their eyes trained onto the doormat. As if it would have something weighty or amusing to say. As if it had said “Welcome” every time before, but might say something surprising just this once.
Then Uncle Gregor—who was, inconveniently, a psychiatrist—said, “This is a thing we associate with depression—changes in sleep patterns. I’m guessing you must know it, at least on some level.”
“No. It’s not that.”
“You’re not depressed? After the year you had, that would be a miracle.”
“I’m not saying I’m not depressed. I don’t know what I am. But I mostly haven’t been sleeping all day. I just did it today for a completely different reason. My parents gave me that telescope I’ve been wanting. I want to try it out when it gets dark tonight. So I thought I’d sleep as much as I could today. You know. So I can stay up.”
“It’s in there somewhere, Anton.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Trauma and grief. It’s in there somewhere. I worry about you.”
He felt a deep, sickening flutter down in his gut, as he often did when Uncle Gregor challenged him about his feelings. But he talked around it until it settled again. Behind the wall he’d built to contain it.
“What’s wrong with sleeping during the day so you can stay up late?”
“It’s the dead of winter, Anton. It gets dark around five p.m.”
They stood without talking for a time.
Then, much to Anthony’s surprise, his great-uncle turned as if to go.
“Well, I’ll leave you to that,” Gregor said.
“Wait. You’re not coming in?”
“Not if you’re trying to sleep.”
“But you came all this way.”
“Ten minutes on the subway.” He raised his hands, turning them palms up for reasons Anthony did not understand.
“You should come in. You’d be doing me a favor. I need help with that telescope. It needs some assembly . . . getting it properly on the tripod and everything. It’s a job that takes more than one hand.”
“Let’s set it up on the balcony,” Anthony said. “It’s heavy. Once we get it all together it might be hard to move it.”
Anthony rolled back the heavy glass balcony door and they stepped out into the winter cold together.
Uncle Gregor frowned at Anthony’s bare ankles, and his slide-on slippers with no heels. “Go inside and get yourself dressed properly for the weather, son.”
“I don’t know. It takes me forever.”
“No matter. I’ll be right here. Where did you think I would go?”
When Anthony arrived back out on the balcony, his great-uncle was smoking a cigar and peering closely at the instruction manual.
Anthony sat on a cold metal chair beside the older man and wondered what, if anything, it was currently his job to do.
“So, did my parents tell you to come check up on me?”
“Let’s just say I came to wish you happy holidays and leave it at that. Though it’s not the holidays quite yet.”
“It is around here. Mom forced us to celebrate this morning.”
“It made her uncomfortable to leave you.”