Aunt Mavis lives on the top floor of this sort of run-down building.
The elevator has been broken since the first time I brought Marco to her last year when she became his afternoon sitter. He’s big enough to walk up the whole way now, so that’s something at least. No more of him having tantrums after two steps and demanding to be carried. Small mercies, as they say.
The climb up the stairs makes me sweat into my coat so that I start to feel like a baked potato, but it’s good to be warm after the long walk from the bus stop. Someone in Aunt Mavis’s building keeps the stairwell clean at least, though all the lightbulbs are dead and dusty in their sockets, dangling like dead teeth, and it’s mostly dark as I make my way up. I follow the red emergency exit signs up ten flights. My own breathing echoes behind me, following me like a ghost. My bad knee kills by the time I knock on Aunt Mavis’s door.
“Come in,” she calls from inside. I hear Marco shout happily at the sound of my arrival, and the pounding of his feet running to the door. My heart is soft as melted butter even as tired as I am and the seconds until I can see his face seem like ages. Marco throws the door open and clings to my middle.
“Hey hey,” I say, giving his forehead a little kiss, savoring the softness and lingering fragrance of baby shampoo. I am weak for this child. We tell each other a few secrets about our days in the doorway. He shows me the tattoo he drew on his arm with a pen from the school library. A dragon with a fiery maw, already a bit smudged, one crossed eye blurred.
“Very cool,” I say, giving it genuine thoughtful consideration. It is an ordinary drawing any boy his age might do; i.e. a bit terrible, but charming as hell. I’m always relieved to see him being average. Though, of all the exceptional gifts he might wind up inheriting from his mother, art isn’t likely to be one. It’s not a thing she is known for.
Marco grins and stands back to let me into Aunt Mavis’s. He might not get any artistic talent from her, but his smile is unquestioningly his mother’s; i.e. perfect. I don’t think he could get a cavity if he tried and he’s six, so sometimes I think he is.
Aunt Mavis’s place smells like fast food and clean dog. That is a very important distinction. It makes the place charming rather than not. A bit eccentric, but home. Safe.
Aunt Mavis’s beloved little demon tears in from the kitchen and wags a stumpy tail at me. A bubblegum tongue droops out of her gray muzzled mouth. Unable to resist, I reach down and scratch the dog behind the ears. Aunt Mavis soon follows, wiping her hands on her pants as she comes into the living room.
“Good day kiddo?” she asks me, scooping up the dog. Aunt Mavis had never called me by name, Vince, and has always insisted on being Aunt. I don’t mind either of those things. Marco and I have little enough family. I won’t turn down an extra aunt out of the blue.
“Sure thing.”
I hand over my envelope of small bills and coupons and high end samples from the salon where I work.
“You’re an angel,” says Aunt Mavis, settling it next to an ugly lamp from the seventies on the table beside her recliner. She lowers herself down with a grunt and flicks on the television as the dog turns a circle on her lap and sighs as she slumps into a furry lump. Aunt Mavis’ fingers twitch toward the mug of tea by the remote. She looks tired and I am grateful to her for wrangling my child every afternoon.
“Go get your stuff,” I tell Marco. “Time to head home.”
Aunt Mavis might not always be the most fun for a six year old to stay with after school, but she’s a cheap sitter and she likes him. Likes him in the totally uneventful way nice old ladies like adorable little boys with fat cheeks and big brown eyes and lashes long and dark as a December night. Sometimes she gets tired of him. Marco has complained more than once that Aunt Mavis was grumpy with him.
“Good,” I thought. “Someone needs to be.”
People have strong reactions to Marco. First grade and he’s already on his third school. Kids went weird around him at the first two, fighting for his attention and that sort of thing. An assistant at the last one started stalking him. Showed up late one night looking off kilter, glassy eyed like she was drunk. She had a gift for him, a pink nosed kitten crooning in her arms. The poor woman was real embarrassed then scared as hell when she snapped out of it and realized where she was and that she had no clue how she got there, much less where the cat came from. I sent her home in a rideshare with no hard feelings, but I never brought Marco back to that school. The cat we kept.
Thanks, Mom.
Marco hasn’t exactly yet figured out how to make being his mother’s son work for him. When he does, that’ll be the end of me having any control over him, unless he turns out to be a much better person than both of us, something I hope daily for. I’ve read about his half-brothers on his mother’s side and I know I could be in for a bumpy ride.
Marco zips back in with his backpack over his shoulder, grinning. Aunt Mavis is ready focused on her programs but wags her mug of tea in our direction as we leave. Holding hands as we walk down the dark stairwell together, Marco whispers to me.
“Dad, I didn’t like the snack Auntie made me, so I hid it in my backpack.”
“That’s okay, buddy.”
“I didn’t want to be rude.”
“You did the right thing.”
Marco looks visibly relieved to hear that. I know I shouldn’t, knowing his mother and I, knowing what his brothers turned out like, but I am holding my breath for this kid’s unspoilable goodness.
It’s Friday, so Marco and I go to get pancakes at IHOP for dinner like we always do. He has a big sweet tooth and can put away a surprising amount for a boy his age. Well, partly a boy, at least. The other half is divine. Not sure how much they eat, as a rule. I’ve heard stories, of course, was actually made to study those stories on a number of occasions when I was in school, but only I knew the one of them and her not long. I let Marco eat as much as he wants while I content myself to nibble and still leave a bit hungry. This ritual is important to us and my not eating much is the only way I know to preserve it. The young waitress grins at Marco as she comes back with the check and a cup of hot chocolate that she sets in front of my son.
“On the house,” she says, reaching to ruffle his hair. I panic, looking for the familiar glint in her eye of someone under his spell. Surprise, she just seems nice. I work to unknot my nervous gut.
“Time to go,” I say as soon as Marco’s finished his cocoa, and bundle him up into his coat. We meld into a group coming into the restaurant, and are out onto the snowy street.
We go grocery shopping next. My son holds my hand as we walk through the store, fingers laced together, chattering a mile a minute. People smile at us. A father and his beautiful boy. It doesn’t take long for the part of Marco that is his mother to draw them in, causing them to stare just a bit too long, and I move us on with a quick, polite nod. At the checkout, I hand the cashier all the coupons I’ve clipped, watching the prices tick downward as he scans them, and finally let out the breath I’ve been holding when I see that I can afford the bill.
Marco falls asleep on the bus and has to navigate getting him and all the grocery bags off the bus and inside.
“Wake up, buddy,” I whisper as I struggle for my keys. My son’s head lolls toward me and he yawns.
“No, Dad. I’m tired”
“Just a little bit longer, okay.”
When I open the door, the cat his old teacher gifted us, now a behemoth shaggy thing, jumps from the couch to wind around my feet. Marco decided to call him Captain. At the sound of his eager meows of greeting, Marco opens his eyes and scrambles from my arms to pet the cat. Captain is one of his best friends. We’ve moved so much to keep him safe that Marco is a bit lonely. If his mother lets anything at all happen to this cat, I will lose it.
I put away the groceries and then give Marco a bath, savoring it because he’s six and half now and any bath I give him could be the last before he decides he’s too big for my help. He splashes around for a long time, enjoying the bubbles and giggling now that he’s woken up. Like every day since he arrived on my doorstep, part of me wishes he would never get bigger.
I pull out the sofa bed in the living room and make it up with all Marco’s things. We cuddle together reading a story until he falls asleep and I can carefully slide out of the sofa bed and turn the living room light off. I leave Marco under the competent watch of Captain, his emerald eyes sharp in the darkness. On the way out of the room, I reach into Marco’s bag and bring out the smushed peanut butter sandwich he wrapped in a napkin. That will be the rest of my dinner.
I open up the kitchen window and bring a bottle of seven-dollar wine and the sandwich out to the fire escape. It has started snowing again but I don’t mind the cold now that I’m home and drinking. Half the bottle goes down easy and I hardly notice it’s gone. My attention is first drawn to this fact by how drunk I feel and I survey the bottle with pleased surprise.
I watch the people on the street and keep drinking until my thoughts loosen up and float away like balloons. My eyes wander briefly to the window of the tattoo parlor right across from our building. A young red-haired woman lays on her back, splayed like a sacrifice, eyes squinted shut in stoic bravery while she has something inked onto her calf.
Nights like tonight, I wish I still smoked. But when Marco came along, that was it for me. Quit the second I held him and looked down into his brown eyes. I’m all he’s got.
I squint into the night at a shadow that is moving peculiarly. Lingering a bit too long in one spot. Waffling.
It moves closer, showing itself to be a bird. A dove to be precise. White against the nightscape, seeming to form from the snow itself.
“Fuck.”
The bird, luminescent and pristine in a way no wild bird really is, hops down onto the rail and dops a bracelet into my lap. It’s heavy, gold, and definitely antique. Perhaps ancient. Marco’s mom loves fine things and has a weird sense of humor for one of almost unparalleled loveliness. Not that she’s funny. She’s not. She’s far too gorgeous to have ever had need to be. Marco’s mom is the type that would think it was hilarious to stick me with something beautiful and literally priceless, something that I could only admire and never make use of and could actually get in huge trouble for having. A gift that is more of a burden than anything.
A lot like her. Or at least her attention. I suppose from what I know of her from our forty-eight hours together and from hearsay, Marco’s mom is a good time in short bursts at least, and her unpredictability definitely can be exciting. Even in such a short amount of time with her, I was sucked in, and had fallen into the trap of wanting nothing more than to please her. I suppose it’s good she’s so fickle and let me go before I hardly had a second to catch my breath.
The bird jumps around squawking, all proud of himself, cocking his oily head at me. Smug smelly bastard. I take another drink from the bottle as my hair whips around my face.
“Fuck off. And tell her to fuck off too. We’re fine.”
We are not fine.
Each day, I sense something blooming inside of Marco. I’m terrified of what he will become and that I won’t be able to handle him. I’m terrified I’ll lose him. I’m terrified he’ll realize how much power he has over others and hurt them.
Even though I want to chuck the thing down into the street to be some other unsuspecting person’s problem, I keep the bracelet because it’s for Marco and I’m saving her little gifts for him. This is out of pettiness though, not goodness. No one is going to accuse me of being a bad father.
I shoo the dumb bird away. He circles back for one last taunting coo then flaps off, flying off into the snow before disappearing in a very showy poof.
I hate her birds. I might be the only person to actually have a baby delivered by stork. She must have thought that was a laugh riot. I basically avoid swans like the plague at this point. They follow Marco like he’s their king. It makes him laugh.
I climb back inside and shut the window. We are never really out of her view, when she bothers to want to see us, but this feels more secluded somehow. Marco is still asleep, curled onto his side with an arm around the ever vigilant Captain. The radiator whistles. This is still my home, my evening with my son. It’s only 8:30. She is not going to ruin my night quite yet.
I slip the bracelet onto my wrist and hold my hand up. It’s beautiful and makes like the king who must have once worn this. I love it, actually. Fuck. I hate when she’s this smart, when she shows that she knows exactly how vain and silly I can be.
I would ask how my ex found us when I’ve been moving almost every year since Marco was born, but to that she would say, “I’m a goddess, you dumb bitch.”
I take the bottle of wine to my room and drop the bracelet in the box where I keep her gifts for our son, proud of my self-control, then get out my headphones. I am going to drink the rest of my wine and listen to the audiobook I’m halfway through until the day fades to black around me. It’s the only thing to do once Marco’s mom has found us again. Tomorrow, I think as I settle in, leaving the door open a crack so that I can see my son sleeping on the couch, things will be clearer.