Charles Grosel
Noah and I are in the family room together. That is, we are in the family room at the same time, keenly aware of each other, yet unable to spark the gap between us. I’ve been home two weeks, sober four months. Five-year-old Noah is still wondering about this tattooed stranger he’s supposed to call Mom. I say call me MG, my street name, but Grandma says he’ll do no such thing.
I’m perched on the edge of an unreclined recliner facing a blank TV the size of a movie screen, legs pumping with nervous energy, eyes darting from one appropriated object to another: dream catchers, spears and shields, Navajo (or are they Hopi?) blankets draped on the furniture, shelves of kachinas. Noah is on the couch, paging through a picture book of castles, his legs dangling in that way people think is cute. I see that he is cute, if a little scrawny, a thatch of brown escaping the helmet of product Mom has troweled on his hair.
“Why don’t you play a game?” Mom says as if encouraging a roomful of bored cousins. She’s all southwest chic in her turquoise print over black leggings, silver bangled wrists, bling-studded sandals.
And why don’t you fuck off? I can’t help thinking. My mother likes to tell people what to do, as if she’s still producing her long defunct TV show. Aloud I say, “Game?” and glance at Noah to gauge his interest. He looks up. “What’s your druthers, young sir?” I say in my movie voice. My streetmate Jo and I used to entertain each other by spoofing old movies.
Noah looks at me, puzzled, wary.
“What’s your preference, dear boy?”
“Jenga?” he says tentatively.
“Jenga ’tis,” I say, though it’s not my favorite. I never saw the point of building something that would only come crashing down, though Mom would say I’ve had plenty of practice.
Noah scoots off the couch and procures the game from the cabinet below the TV. I stand to clear the Sunset magazines from the coffee table, a crosscut of a huge old redwood, polished and glistening with shellac. I imagine the height of a tree that diameter, picture myself perched in its crown, looking down on the human ant farm below. They don’t call it getting high for nothing.
“Wait!” Mom rushes in as Noah is about to set the game on the table. “The mat.” She must have been watching us closely.
Noah freezes. “Sorry, Grandma. I forgot.”
I’m stung as if she had scolded me. “I’ll get it,” I say. In the cabinet I find a roll of clear plastic, what you might lay out on a desk to write on. I unroll the mat, but the edges spring up. I search the room for something heavy, books or figurines, to weigh them down.
“Flip it over,” says Mom. “You won’t have that problem.”
I see that she might be right, but I continue to scan the room, not ready to give her that.
She marches in, flips the mat over, then smooths it out, bangles jingling. It lays flat with just a small undercurl.
“I knew what you meant,” I say, more childish than intended.
She withdraws, grimly triumphant.
Noah kneels on the rug, his chest against the table. I’m sitting across from him. He opens the box, flips it upside down on the mat, then carefully raises it off the stack, leaving the blocks in a plastic sleeve. He works the sleeve out from under the tower, dislodging a few pieces, tamps those into place, then sits back on his haunches.
“Want to go first, Mom-G?” he says, then stiffens again, not sure how I’ll take it.
My response is sober slow, but when I register what Noah has called me, I let out a belly laugh. “That’s perfect,” I say. “Mom-G.” I feel instantly lighter.
Noah smiles, then laughs. “Mom-G,” he says, testing it out.
“Look at you two, thick as thieves,” Mom says on a pass through the family room, not entirely pleased.
“You go,” I say to Noah.
We get down to business, tapping at the blocks, prying out the loose ones, stacking them up top. Neither of us is taking much care. Maybe that’s why our tower looks like something out of Dr. Seuss.
“Wait,” I say as Noah goes after the piece I’m sure will topple the tower. “Let’s call it a draw and gaze upon our Seussian feat.”
“You talk funny,” he says, but seems glad of it. He leaves the piece where it is. In our maneuverings around the tower, we’ve ended up next to each other. I lean back on my hands, stretch out my legs next to my son. My son. My son.
Mom swoops in, announces dinner in fifteen. “So finish up.”
“We’re finished,” I say. “We’re going to leave it like this forever, save it for the Jenga Hall of Fame.” Noah nods happily, lays his head on my arm. I tense up, a street response, then fight to keep from yanking my arm away. He doesn’t seem to notice. Good.
Mom frowns, then steps up to the table, leans over, and pokes the tower with a lacquered nail. Down it falls, the sound of hail on the roof. “Noah knows the rules,” she says. “Everything put away before dinner.”
Noah pops up in alarm. He’s made another mistake, poor kid. He’d better get used to it. Mom turns and leaves, her shoulders stiff as an empress. Without thinking, I reach my arm around him, pull him to me. It’s his turn to tense up. His small body is more solid than I thought. Less bird, more cat. He looks at my hand on his arm. I’m squeezing too hard. I loosen my fingers. He hesitates, then folds into me.
“Mom-G?” he says, asking the questions I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to answer.
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Charles Grosel is an editor, writer, and poet living in Arizona. He has published stories in Western Humanities Review, Fiction Southeast, Water-Stone, and The MacGuffin and poems in Nimrod, The Threepenny Review, Poet Lore, Cream City Review, and Harpur Palate, among others. His chapbook of poems is The Sound of Rain Without Water.