Free A Brilliant Novel in the Works by Yuvi Zalkow Page B

Night Live, which none of us understood. A few
    minutes later Ezra walked out of the bathroom with a pair of Adam’s sweatpants—Adam’s
    favorite pair, apparently.
    I wouldn’t explain to my mother why I was crying so badly when she picked
    me up. When we got home, she had to call Adam’s mother to get the story. And
    then my mother looked at me, all confused, as if she wished I had wet my pants
    as well, so as to explain my hysteria.
    The next day, nobody said anything, not a word about this whole event.
    Even Ezra acted like nothing had happened. And so I kept my mouth shut. But
    I cried that next night as well. When my mom came into my bedroom, I told
    her that I had a cold, and so she gave me some chewable Tylenol, a remedy
    she used for many of my bouts of angst.
    Ezra would later become a highly acclaimed surgeon. He’d be famous for
    his success in performing high-risk operations on children. I’ve been toying
    with calling him one of these days. It’s a little tricky to know how to phrase
    something like, “Remember that time when you pissed in your pants and I was
    trying to force your crotch closed? Because I think about that all the time!”
    It’s not that I’m scared to call him. I don’t call him because I know
    what he’ll say: “I guess I just don’t remember that.” It’s not because he
    has blocked out the event. It’s not because he is in denial or has some part
    of him that is stuck in his childhood. It’s not a deficiency. He doesn’t remember
    because it wasn’t a memorable event for him. It was one of a thousand blips
    along the road of his childhood. Ezra Roth is a man who has to go up to a
    young couple in the waiting room and say to them that he has just seen their
    five-year-old son die on the operating table. And then he has to go back into
    the operating room and do it all over again with another child. Ezra Roth
    can’t afford to dwell on how he pissed his pants in 1980.
    I don’t have to do the things in a day’s work that Ezra has to do. Some
    days, I don’t interact with a single person. But I do often think about Ezra
    Roth. And sometimes I even think about Adam Silver’s dad in those days when
    he looked so happy. And I imagine the sound of balloons squeaking when twisted
    into absurd shapes, expecting them to pop
.
    Chapter Thirteen
Family
    A few weeks into living with the knowledge that napkin men
don’t exist, I catch Julia moping on the couch.
    It’s a rare sight to actually catch Julia feeling down. For
Julia, feeling down causes her to move faster, to do more, to be
more than her already-complete self, to save twenty families
rather than just ten. Down keeps her up on her feet. As for me,
down is down. So when I see her in the living room lying on
the couch, staring at the ceiling, looking nearly as helpless as
me, I’m pretty damn scared.
    “Julia,” I say. “What happened?” I expect her to tell me a
story of how one of her alcoholics has died, so it scares me
even more when she reaches out for my hand and pulls me
toward her. Her hand is warm and sweet and soft and I don’t
know what to do with it.
    She says to me in a quiet and scratchy voice, “When my mom
would try to get Joel and me to bed, she’d do this thing where
she’d have us hide under the sheets. She’d leave the room for a few
seconds, and then she’d run in and tickle us through the sheets.”
    I put my hand in Julia’s hair and scratch her head. “It
sounds awfully scary,” I say.
    “It’s one of the happiest moments I can remember.”
    It takes an adjustment in my mind to make this scene happy. I
have to make the sounds and colors and smells a little bit different.
I have to change the mood of the characters. I have to think of
Joel and Julia so pleased to be hiding together. I have to put that
gorgeous giggle on Julia’s face. And suddenly, I can picture the
scene just as sentimental and beautiful as she meant it.
    “I want a family,” Julia