Adam Kohut fiction short story Chuck Trombone
Detail from Capra Malus, Nancy Panganiban, 16″ x 20″, Acrylic on birch panel, 2024
Chuck Trombone
by Adam Kohut
My son bursts into my apartment this evening, after spending summer at his father’s, proudly announcing that he is no longer my daughter, but my son, whose name is no longer Annaliese Jensen, but Chuck Fucker.
No way, I say. Not a chance, pal. Not in this house.
Fine, he says. I’ll go with Chuck Trombone.
That’s better, I tell him. But then I go on: Chuck, I get, I say. That’s a fine, strong name for a boy. But Trombone?
To which he replies that it’s the manliest name he could think of, and quite possibly the manliest name to have ever existed. Besides Fucker.
Watch it, I say.
Sorry, he says.
Surely, however, there are more manly instruments. Like a tuba, I say. Or I mean, heck, even a trumpet. Or is it a size thing? Is that what this is, honey? Although in that case, still, I think tubas are bigger.
Chuck rolls his eyes and looks at me so scornfully, like I am just the most disgusting alien-slug of a mom on the planet. But isn’t that every fifteen-year-old’s way?
That’s exactly the problem with people like you, he sneers. You’re always peeking behind all the wrong curtains in your inevitably fruitless search for the answers. And don’t call me honey. That’s wrong on, like, so many levels.
Then he stalks across the room to the pullout sofa and slams it out and throws himself upon it and begins playing a handheld video game.
I retreat to my bedroom, where I pick up the phone and call Ron, who, wouldn’t you know it, tells me of course he’s aware. Chuck’s his son, after all.
Look, I say, I know you’re not happy about our current arrangement. You’ve made that abundantly clear by how hard you’re making things for this involved party. But at the very least, would it kill you to clue me in on something like this? So I can at least partially prepare for what, in this case, has amounted to a sneak attack?
He puts on that wounded, beleaguered voice that I know so well, and I feel contempt rising in me like a wave of ants. Technically, he tells me, Chuck’s always been our son. Nothing sneaky about it. Best to get with the program regarding the social climate in which we are currently sun-tanning.
Why we can’t act like a team, I shoot back. We’re supposed to be doing what’s best for our kid. Our son. Chuck Trombone.
Teammates don’t split up, Ron replies. Teammates don’t move to different states. They have to be in the same state—in the same city, in fact—so that they can play in the same stadium. You know who does split up? Opponents, that’s who. And seeing as I’m here and he’s there, with all these personal and legal sanctions between us, and that this whole divorce thing was my, and not his, idea, he’s leaning more and more toward the notion that this is a competition—and it’s one he aims to win.
Real mature, Ron, I say. And, just as a rebuttal, teammates don’t carry out secret online affairs with women they hardly know behind their other teammates’ backs.
He tells me that a single bikini photo isn’t an affair.
And I say, oh darling, it is when it’s Janice from down the street, which batters him into an icy silence.
Together we sit, anchored amongst the floes, until I attempt to chart a course toward somewhere more hospitable.
Let’s focus on our son, Chuck Trombone, I suggest, using what I would describe as a gentle manner. Whom, you may have forgotten, this call is about.
Healthwise, Chuck’s fine, Ron snaps. That’s all I’ll get from him. Other than that—and especially as far as hints or heads-ups—well, my former sweetheart, you’re on your own. I’ll raise our kid my way, and you’re free to raise him yours.
He chuckles dismissively and hangs up, and I’m sitting on the edge of my bed, fuming, thinking what a son-of-a—, but also feeling grateful that this time it is me on the wrong side of meanness.
The rest of the evening I spend learning about trombones. I research famed trombone players. I type detailed questions into online forums regarding both musical history and purchasing decisions. I use website features to compare and contrast various models. Finally, I place an order and sign Chuck up for hour-long lessons each Wednesday at Wagon Wheel Melody Hall.
By then it’s nearly midnight, and I’m exhausted, yet cautiously optimistic for the future, so I hit the hay. But just before the soft fade of sleep, I remember that it is Sunday, meaning tomorrow is Monday—and that sharp reminder carves a hole inside my guts, sending my internal Feelings Thermometer, which I have been so diligently checking over the past months, into the cavernous murk of Dread Face.
♦ ♦ ♦
A return to the workforce after a twenty-year absence is like squeezing into an old pair of jeans: you know what to do, just not how to do it. You see them in movies and on TV, these independent, crisp-clothed women nobly tacking into the post-marital chop, in hot pursuit of their passions. They get slapstick internships at high-profile magazines, start designing dresses, open bakeries to hilarious-yet-heartwarming effect. What they don’t show is the abject, utilitarian side of things. The boatloads of job applications. The hours of bone-numbing recruiter calls. How child support turns out to be but one column of the many columns required to preserve the structural integrity of one’s emotional and financial well-being. How I’m fifty-three, and I’m somehow supposed to wrap my head around these companies offering software solutions for this, and all-in-one platforms for that.
Of course, I’m no senior citizen. But compared to these kids who are now my employers, I’m dinosaur bones.
I know, I know. Wake up and smell the digital roses, Sheila. But the fact remains: for me, this is less a renewal of the self than a forced reentry to a past life, with me doing my best not to burn to a crisp in the atmosphere.
For me, that means focusing on the job at hand and nothing else—not looking one inch further than what’s right in front of me. It’s the only way to keep sane.
Although don’t get me started on this MeatD technology stuff. It’s beyond me. I made that abundantly clear during my job interview. I told Chance and Jim, I said, guys, it’s great that you’re excited about this thing, and it’s even greater that you two have the gumption to go out and start a company of your own—I mean, you’re really going for it, aren’t you? But now what is it, exactly, that it does? It prints meat? Like a computer printer but for dinner? And it goes in your kitchen? Like on the counter or what? I see. And it’s called, what, the Meaty-D? The Meatsies Meat-D printer. Got it. Now how much does this cost? You’re kidding me. So just who is it that’s going to be buying this, exactly, Donald Trump?
At that last part I’d thought they’d laugh, but instead what they’d said was the tech’s not important. What is important, they said, is getting through thirty-seven percent of the workforce before the end of the fiscal year. For morale purposes. They kept saying that: for morale purposes. Needless to say, the people who work here aren’t happy. And needless to say, that unhappiness is directly at yours truly, who, let’s be honest, is simply carrying out orders.
Bitch, they say, in voices pathetically disguised in the tattered rags of whispers, as I slink down the hallway. Fat-ass. Scab.
Those first two are up for debate, depending on who’s talking and how much the tabloids have warped their view of a normal woman’s body. But scab? No one’s on strike. No picket lines have been crossed, and heck, a job’s a job. One that if I don’t do, someone else will. And too, I remind myself, what is a scab, if not nature’s bandage?
Still, in the face of their naive hatefulness, I try to be as kind about it as I can, going through the process of cutting the unlucky many loose, one-by-one. While at the same time staying disconnected. Because, not-so-deep-down, they’re good kids.
I tell them that they are young and vibrant, and have so much more to do and see, let alone give.
I know this seems like a bad thing now, I say, but you’ll look back on this and, while no, you won’t necessarily laugh, you will see this as the insignificant pothole it really is. And, you know, I say, maybe you’ll even be thankful. Maybe this is one of those railroad track switcher things, and by Meatsies pulling that lever, you’re being rerouted to the station where all along you’ve been supposed to end up.
Effects vary. This morning, one employee tells me she doesn’t believe in fate; she believes in paying rent.
I tell her, my friend, any life without a dash of hardship now and again is no life at all. Then I tell her about my son, Chuck Trombone, who this morning I left balled within a twist of sheets on the pullout. First his parents split and now this identity crisis? Not that it’s a crisis. Not that it’s a change, zeitgeistically speaking. But from my view? How Chuck walked out the door in May one way, and came back in late August another? It’s like how a house may have a cracked foundation, and you don’t even know it until it crumbles down in the night and crushes the family that lives inside it. Not that Chuck’s foundation is cracked. Not that I’d have my trombonist any other way. Not that he’s ever been any other way.
But for me, I’m wondering, was it a failure on my end? Should I have seen this brewing from an early age? Gotten him a boy cat? Painted his dollies blue? Sent him to ballet in cargo shorts? Better prepared him in some socially approved manner for the sharp-toothed world that lies in wait before him?
The employee sitting before me, she says, Sheila, I don’t mean to interrupt you, because it sounds like you’re really going through somewhat of a thing. But a ‘dash’, Sheila? What I’m being served right now seems like a dollop, if not a scoop.
I say, oh, it’s not personal. You’re part of the thirty-seven percent. Which was come to by an algorithm. Which, don’t ask me about, because that’s way above my pay grade. But I do know Chance and Jim. They’re good guys. But they’re also running a business. And they know that, here, at Meatsies, we’re ahead of our time. Meat-D technology is here to stay—that much is a sure thing—but the bad news? The world is not yet ready to adopt it for countertop production. Meaning it’s time for hibernation, corporately speaking, during which we will reflect, develop, fine-tune, and ready ourselves to burst forth onto the consumer market once it undoubtedly transforms into a viable landscape that the Meatsies Meat-D Printer can conquer.
That last part I have to read. It’s scripted. It doesn’t come naturally, but I force it out, attempting to make the words seem less cold and clinical, giving them a personal spin by tossing in a big smile.
Despite my efforts, this, too, yields mixed results. Take this worker—and no, I’m not going to reveal her name, if only for her own sake—who waits patiently for me to finish, before telling me I can stuff the corporate buzz-speak right up my front-you-know-what and squeeze tight until I queef out a diamond.
I’m not going to respond to that, I tell her, taking the high road. What I am going to do is ask that you use this tablet to drag your avatar to the appropriate temperature on the displayed Feelings Thermometer. Your responses help us calibrate the Meatsies Experience for future Meatsies Team Members.
That part’s also scripted. It’s a bit silly. Childish, even. But since when is that so wrong? Because I have to admit I’m warming up to the idea. It’s catchy. It’s fun. It sticks with you in such a way that even I have gone so far as to use it, now and again, metaphorically and inadvertently, in my personal life.
She drags her avatar to Mad Face
Which is not good.
Not good for company optics. Not good for company morale. Not good for job security, especially when that job is mine, especially when I am expected to pull in at least seventy-five percent Happy Face, averaged out between the choices of Happy, Mad, and Neutral Faces.
The last two HR staffers? Lots of Mad Faces, according to Chance and Jim. Being handed this role is an opportunity, they told me.
An opportunity to turn digital frowns upside-down.
An opportunity for piles of Happy Faces.
It is also an opportunity, it is becoming increasingly apparent, that is near-impossible to achieve, given the number of meetings I have left. The few Happy Faces I’ve managed to wrangle thus far come from those with hefty severance packages or who are too disengaged to care. It’s a stark, bruise-colored outlook. Yet, I remind myself, one inch at a time. So I shake it off and hold my head high, and I march on in the face of this thundercloud-horizoned, midlife adversity.
And while the employees I meet with currently neither love nor like me, I dare to think that, one day, they’ll remember me and think—or perhaps say out loud, to whomever they are snuggling with—Oh, Sheila. She was always looking out for us. She was always doing what she thought was best.
I sit with that, for a moment, basking in the warm glow of Compassionate Face. Then I call in the next one and re-start the rodeo.
♦ ♦ ♦
I arrive home exhausted, as usual, and I see the trombone has been delivered, accepted, and unpackaged—feverishly, from the looks of how the box has been torn into and left in a trail that originates on the linoleum in the entryway. I follow it into the living room, thinking this is fantastic, Chuck’s really going to go for it. Mom did good. I’m picturing symphony halls. I’m picturing pensive evenings and wine pairings and murmurings of erudite assentation. I’m picturing tuxedoed gentlemen with strong yet gentle hands.
Then I see the Junior Musician Performing Stool, which is both portable and adjustable. It’s been upended, legs sticking into the air like an executed beetle’s. The music stand is right side up, but rather than the books of sweeping music I imagined, there’s instead a Rumptacular! magazine opened to the centerfold. Now where would Chuck get such a magazine? You guessed it. Ron’s in that phase of single parenting where he thinks you can buy love. Newsflash, Ron. And Chuck? To so brazenly leave something like this at the scene of the crime? This sticky little MO? As though he wanted me to find it? As though he is daring me to take offense?
I leave the magazine where it lies, and, disgusted as I may be, vow to say nothing about it. Instead I focus on the center of the brutal mess, where the gleaming silver trombone has been clunked, a forgotten relic in a sacked city. Several golf-ball-sized dents crater the instrument’s once-beautiful bell. I’m standing there thinking, what on Earth?
Then I see the golf balls on the carpet. They’re pooled around a club-filled golf bag, brand new, having also been hastily unboxed. On closer examination, the clubs have been broken, snapped, so that their heads droop like dejected snakes. A tag on the bag’s zipper reads: TO CHUCK TROMBONE HAVING YOU AS A SON IS A HOLE-IN-ONE LOVE DAD.
Just great. Another artillery shelling in the ongoing war of parental attrition.
I pick up the phone and pound in Ron’s number, and on the sixth ring he picks up, but I can barely hear him above a rousing chorus of “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow.”
Now’s not a great time, he shouts. I’m being honored. For work.
I say, Ron, don’t be a yeller.
It’s hard not to be when I have to take phone calls from my ex-wife in the middle of my special day, he shouts back.
Well, I say, curtly. I won’t take up too much of your time. But I did want to let you know that I don’t appreciate you sending Chuck lavish gifts. He’s a young boy, for God’s sake. What’s he going to do with a full set of Callaways?
Play golf, was the aim, Ron shouts back. Or did he not tell you?
Now whoever’s all in the background is chanting his name. I hear the lofty honk of one of those rollout party horns.
Someone starts whooping. Others join in.
Tell me what? I say.
And he laughs. Or chuckles. Whatever’s the most condescending of the two, he does that. It is then I am informed that our son is currently long-putt champion at Willow Wisp Country Club, where there is an engraved plaque displaying his name, and there is also a small trophy in a place of honor in Chuck’s bedroom in Ron’s sad, little, beige-carpeted condo.
A voice, silky like lotion, so close it might as well be whispering into my ear with its gentle, lustrous, giggling urgency, says, Come on, Ron, we’re all waiting.
And just like that, Ron bids me adieu—he actually says it, adieu, can you believe that—and the line goes dead.
I pocket the phone and take another look around the living room at the scene of angst and destruction, and you know, I would love to say that all I feel is resentment—and of course it is there, a not-so-small part of me that feels as though it has been taken out, stamped on, and shoved back inside, deformed, so that it no longer fits. But another part? Well now I’m thinking of my Chuck, the athlete! Of podiums and novelty-sized checks and championship victories dedicated to, dare I say it, mothers. Of retired athletes with shoulders like yokes, men with squared jaws and tightly tailored button-ups, having left behind the playing field for the broadcast booth. Who understand, from their own childhood, what it takes from a mother to raise a champion, and respect that, and perhaps, in that Oedipal way, even find themselves pulled toward it.
I’m there, standing amidst the ruins, lost in fantasy, when a knock at the front door destroys it. So I get up and pad over and open it to reveal a barrel-chested, large-hipped police officer holding Chuck Trombone by the scruff of his hooded sweatshirt with a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt.
♦ ♦ ♦
He introduces himself as Officer Warburton with the Metropolitan Police Department.
You’re remarkably big, I tell him. I mean, what a presence.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I add quickly, as I see indignance rise from the dead on Officer Warburton’s face. It’s impressive. Really. It’s also beautiful, I say. In a way. In a way, it’s beauty. Your stature. The imposing nature of it. Did you play sports as a kid? There’s beauty in it, is what I’m saying. You’re a very attractive man.
Woman, he says.
Woman, I say.
There’s a heavy silence, then, which feels about how you’d think.
So what’s he done? I finally manage, mercifully crossing the finish line of my verbal obstacle course.
Caused a ruckus at the Wagon Wheel Melody Hall. Protesting and such.
Protesting? I say. Protesting what exactly?
Unclear, ma’am, Officer Warburton says.
Well, anyway, doesn’t he have the right to protest, I say. Free speech or whatever it is?
That he does, ma’am, says Officer Warburton. So long as he keeps it on the sidewalk. The marching along the aisles is where the trouble begins, on account of the destruction of property. Much of which, he says—both luckily and oddly—is relegated to the store’s trombone area.
There’s a whole trombone area? I ask.
He also broke a tuba, Office Warburton says. He tells me the areas kind of overlap.
Like broke it in half? I say. Honestly, sir, a kid of his size? I have my doubts about that.
The valves, ma’am, Officer Warburton says. Snapped them clean off. Due to his wild movements, ma’am.
I say, officer sir, there must be some mistake.
Officer Warburton’s nose is in his ticket pad, over which he tells me it’s ma’am, ma’am. And there are multiple witnesses. Also bodycam video. And this here, in his breast pocket, is one of the broken valves. Then he hands me a citation —the dollar amount upon it makes my head swim—and clonks away.
Chuck’s standing there, blinking, contemptuously expectant, as though here’s a child who’s conditioned to his old bag of a mother laying into him with a switch. Good Lord.
What gives, Chuck? I say. What’s gotten into you? I thought you loved the trombone!
Why would I love the trombone? he snaps. So that I might one day sit, like some pathetic societal drone, do my part to musically appease our overlords? Politicians? World leaders? Technocrats? What a privilege. Oh yes, how grand, to sit first chair for Morceau Symphonique in honor of the state visit of some corporate-backed, first-world despot, who, true, knows just what to say and when to say it, and true, once performed karaoke to the latest pop hits on Late Night with Whatever Horse-Toothed White Man Is Currently Famous, and true, once dropped his ice cream cone, plop, cue the hysterics, how relatable, right there on Main Street in Small Town, USA in full, humanizing view of both the general public, and wouldn’t you know it, the masses of vulturous paparazzi.
Bread and circuses, mother, Chuck continues. Oh yes, bread and circuses, indeed. To distract us from the fact that the only reason these creeps want power is to obtain the capital they need to fund their maniacal, greed-driven journey to—well, to nowhere mother, seeing as how intent they all are on destroying not only society, but on raping the environment, what with their fracking and their private jets and their collusion with the Saudis, that whenever they are finished there will quite literally be nothing left.
I say, honey, if you care about the environment so much, why not look into getting one of those junior fellowships at Green Peace I keep hearing so much about?
Green Peace, he practically snorts. Green Peace? Mom, the green in Green Peace doesn’t stand for anything environmental. No, Mom, we’re talking a different type of green here. The kind that buys intercontinental ballistic missiles.
I say, honey, last I checked, Green Peace just saved the whales. Wouldn’t you like to save the whales?
About as much as I’d like to play the stupid trombone! he shrieks, then makes a mad dash across the few feet of hallway to the pullout, which he throws himself upon and burrows beneath the sheets until he’s just a little sobbing ghost-lump.
My Feelings Thermometer flutters in the lavender chill of Wistful Face as I remember Chuck, age eight, single-buck-toothed, dripping sweetness, posing in his “The Order Cetacea” crewneck afront the Humpback sculpture at the Nemo Science Center, arms spread wide like whale fins, and all I can do is stare at the chip on the Formica countertop and wonder where I went wrong.
♦ ♦ ♦
Next day, back at the office, there they are waiting, seated in a line outside my door. So orderly. Funny how they do that. The only thing differentiating them from children sent to the school principal is the fact that their legs aren’t dangling just above the floor. Instead it’s too-cool leather boots and, of all things, flip-flops, planted staunchly upon it.
The mood is icy. There are no hellos. No eye contact. No good mornings or polite smiles.
There’s just me, Sheila.
I unlock the door to my office, and I step inside. I take my time setting up, knowing they’re out there stewing. It’s not a kind thing to do; in fact, some might call it cruel. But I say you get what you give. And since this whole thing started, I’ve been treated as though giving these kids the boot was my dying wish, and not the result of trickle-down, managerial sludge. As though I’m not just doing my job, as they are theirs. As though we’re all not slogging through that muck together. As though it is my fault, on this occasion, in this one speck-tiny moment, that I am blessed with the luxury of galoshes?
I call in the first one. Sweet guy in a backwards ballcap. He says, what about the bills, what about his mortgage? To which I tell him, pal, how old can you possibly be? You’ll have so much time to bounce back from this. Try not to look at this as something real, but as one of those—I don’t know, those virtual reality games. My Chuck, I tell him, he’s good for three, four hours per night easy. By the time he finishes, his eyes are rolling in his head like slot machines.
He tells me he’s thirty-two.
But, I tell him, you’re wearing a backpack.
He’s looking at me as though he can make my limbs gnarl and wither with his mind.
I go on.
Regardless, I tell him, it’s only money. Sure, it might take some finagling, but thirty-two is still young, and if, at this point, money is the only thing holding you down, count that as a blessing. You have no familial obligations. No child to care for, nor wife to tend to. Or husband, far be it from me to make assumptions in this day and age. Now as for me? Of course, you know of my son, Chuck Trombone. That’s him, in the picture frame on the corner of my desk. That was opening day at the ballpark. Man, was it hot. But try being the best mother possible—in the face of his wasteful excuse of a father, who, I might add, is too lazy and braindead to parent a sack of beans with a face drawn on it. So yes, you try, through thick and thin, to be the mother you know your child deserves, and the mother you know you can be, although one that requires the blazing of trails. That requires moving forward, scythe-like, cutting down the myriad factors that serve as obstacles or entanglements to your parental efficacy. And try doing that in the wake of a divorce that humiliates you on multiple fronts—by the publicization of your inability to hold your marriage together; by your nearsightedness in being attracted in the first place to a man would turn out to be—and who, in fact, always was—so tepid as to have a wandering eye he couldn’t even necessarily act upon, I mean, what kind of man is that; and by the unjustness of it all happening to you, and not someone else. And, of course, then there’s the anger. As though you needed something to make it all harder. With that being said, trust me, Bud, you’re going to be absolutely fine, foreclosure or not.
Somewhere along the way, his hateful glare has transformed into one of disgust. He tells me he’s married. With two kids, a girl and a boy, who are both enrolled in private school, and do I have any idea as to the cost of that.
I tell him that’s such a nice thing to hear, and how lucky he is, but you know, don’t you think private school only serves to shelter rather than prepare your young ones? Wouldn’t they be better off given a taste, however small, of the imbalance of the real world, which is certainly something that public school can provide? We’re talking about young minds here, and it’s so important that they be given the sociological nutrients they need to grow upward and outward, rather than inward toward a familiar yet ultimately stagnant—and often toxic—environment?
He takes me in for another movement, then reaches for the tablet and slides his avatar right on down to Mad Face, and in my head I hear the creak of the executioner’s lever, one inch closer to snapping open the trapdoor beneath my feet and plunging me into the void.
He stalks away, and I call in the next one, and on we march. I get through five more. The best I earn is a Neutral Face, and that’s only because the young woman is weeping so fiercely that her tears blur the screen. When she asks if she can re-rate, I say, no, bagel-bite, sadly no. Now, it’s time for you to go. She flips me the bird on her way out, and I pretend I don’t see it.
♦ ♦ ♦
I eat lunch in my office, reflecting on the idea that the past several years have been the first in which my future, to me, does not resemble a wide-open-if-translucent thing, inside which ill-defined shapes await with open arms. Instead, the future feels like a water balloon, which admittedly is filled with those same translucent shapes, but which are instead ready to burst upon me so that I am cold, soaked, and left out to dry.
It is a dark moment, one that is only escapable by focusing on the light that is my son, Chuck Trombone. No matter what, I remind myself, I have my boy, who this morning slept so peacefully, as I made coffee and banged around in the kitchenette a bit louder than I should, in the hopes that he might wake and we might smooth things over. No dice, even as I emptied and reorganized the silverware drawer. As I made coffee twice. Ran the microwave and burned popcorn, spilled it, and vacuumed it up. Through it all, snoozefest beneath the blankets on the pullout. Teenagers.
But then, in spite of this, I’d thought, perhaps it is a bit too quiet.
Then, just as quickly, I’d thought no. Not my Chuck, who once wept after taking down a grackle with a pellet rifle. Who once tearfully admitted to accidentally stealing a glance at his classmate’s spelling test. Whose sense of guilt is a honed, precise thing, surgically sharp, that cuts quickly and deeply and down to his very soul.
I’d taken a step toward the pullout. I’d paused. I’d listened for breathing. For snores. For sleep talking. For lip smacking. For morning farts.
So maybe he’s dead, I’d thought. Some undiagnosed heart thing. An aneurysm. Or could leukemia come on in a sudden bout?
I considered throwing off the covers to reveal his probable corpse.
In the end, I placed my bet with trust and vowed never again to err on the side of doubt. Until the end of time, I promised myself, no questions asked, the chips fall on my son, Chuck Trombone. And with that, I’d collected my purse, walked out the door, and headed to the office.
I ride the buzz of that decision for the rest of my lunch break. I imagine all those pitiful mothers with no faith in their own kids, and the resultant emotional chasms of such a misstep. How they widen into landforms—jagged, time-resistant, inhospitable things that over the years rise and eventually become insurmountable.
Chuck and me, of course, have our rocky moments. So how? How do we navigate them? We let go. We remind ourselves that it’s part of the deal. That when your baby arrives, fresh and pink and coated in that weird, white, clay-like substance, and you’re holding him or her for the first time, and you think of all the years that stretch ahead—the first steps, the first days of school, the first heartbreaks—all those years when you will be there, when you must be there—those are your years. And once they pass, think not about how pliable your child once was. How he or she would wear the outfits you purchased and laid out upon their changing tables or twin mattresses. How they believed in your beliefs. Adapted to your views of the world and grew along with them, entwined within them like creeping ivy, as though they themselves had cultivated them. During those years, trust doesn’t factor into the equation. It’s total dependence, a complete acceptance of reality on your terms. That’s what punching the parent ticket gets you. Nothing more, nothing less. Once puberty’s boosters kick in and send them from your orbit, out beyond the warmth of your parental gamma rays? From there? Your job is to open the window and let your little bird(s) fly.
So let them fly! I announce, triumphant. And here, in my imagination, I release a handful of white doves that I have secreted away into several roomy pockets within my robes (I’m wearing robes? It’s a graduation ceremony? For some sort parenting course, which I designed and founded, and for which I have achieved national acclaim?) and they flutter off, up and into the rafters, where they settle and begin to coo, rejoicefully and at this thousands of parents stand, weeping at the conceptual reality of setting their little ones free—and, of course, at the symbolic beauty of the moment—and begin to applaud. I am then presented with a bouquet of fresh wildflowers from a handsome man with a squared, stubbled jaw; a man whom I do not know, but whom, from the mischievous glint in his eyes, will very soon.
I begin to feel a bit better. Perhaps things are not—and will not be—so bad. Perhaps this downturn is one that has arrived in the face of a remarkable upswing. Perhaps, Sheila.
Perhaps.
And at this—and on cue—my phone rings, which I answer, and Officer Warburton’s familiar voice booms across the line and summons me to the lobby, and before I know it I’m in the elevator, descending, my Feelings Thermometer mired in the treacly heat of Doomed Face.
♦ ♦ ♦
In the lobby, I find Chuck, handcuffed, soaked through, and looking up at me with an expression of extinguished fire. Again, Officer Warburton’s got him by the hood. I know Chuck is not glad to see me, but my heart swells anyway, as though I’m rescuing a sweet-yet-behaviorally-challenged puppy from the pound. A funny thing, how your kids bring that out in you. The whole ride down, I’m fuming. Then one look at the little guy and I’m a globby stick of countertop butter.
Oh man, I say.
Woman, Officer Warburton says.
Let’s hear it, I say.
Picked him up at Lucky Luke’s Family Fun Center, Officer Warburton reports.
And since when is that a crime? I say. I’m tired, I’m on edge, and some overly ambitious police officer who’s just looking for trouble is the last thing I have patience for. I’ve seen the news. Watch footage from those body cams. I know how they treat young people in this day and age.
Yesterday I get, I say. As there’s an element of danger involved. But here’s a kid on the tail-end of his summer break and you’re pinning him for what? Loitering? Too much sugar? Was he sneaking cigarettes? Good lord, if you’re telling me you never experimented with a Marlboro, I’ve got something to tell you, Jack.
Jackie, Officer Warburton says. And, for my information, it’s a crime since Chuck fell into a miniature tropical cay on Hole 7, handcuffed himself to the pirate ship, swallowed the key, and, in the ensuing removal-predicated scuffle, crushed the fiberglass treasure chest.
I put my hand up, palm out. Hold up, I say. First off, a cay is land. What do you mean Chuck fell into it? As in the floor collapsed? Because if the floor collapsed beneath my son, and he fell onto the plumbing and electrical wiring and what have you, and has been lacerated, electrocuted, burned, flayed, or otherwise grievously injured, I am going to be one litigious mama.
He says, the water around—Chuck fell into the water around the miniature tropical cay. And there’s no injury, save for pride, which you can see just by looking at him. And the pirate captain’s hook is also broken, he says, holding up the severed, plaster appendage.
He’s actually brought the hook with him, for God’s sake—and, you know what? I can’t help but smile when I see it.
Do you know what that reminds me of, I ask.
There’s a swollen moment then, one which is soon aspirated by Chuck, in what is almost a croak.
Mom, don’t. No. Seriously, don’t. Seriously.
But surely you remember, I say. Your Peter Pan era? You wore that costume—I made it myself, remember? The green tights and the felt hat with the red feather? —just about everywhere we went. To the grocery store. To see Dr. Scroggie, your old pediatrician, you remember him? He was so sweet. You wore it to the movies. God, you loved that thing. Standing there with your hands balled into tiny fists, chest puffed out, belting “I’ve Got To Crow?”
Now, again, this is in the Meatsies lobby, where people are flowing in and out, and doing nothing to hide their interest—one might even call it hope—at seeing me, of all people, standing beneath this towering police officer and a child who looks as though he’s just been found adrift after weeks at sea. Some are using their phones to film or take photos. When Officer Warburton pulls out his pad and writes me a citation—this one heftier than the last, further tipping the scales into life’s general direction—I hear laughter, the steel-edged kind, forged in derision, and my patience runs out.
Oh, to heck with it, I say. Do you get some sort of sick enjoyment out of this? Standing there like an Easter Island statue in your sunglasses and handing out tickets to poor working mothers. That’s a reference to your stoicism, sir, mind you, and not your size. Although those statues are huge. Do you ever wonder how they got there? I mean, it’s truly a marvel.
Officer Warburton says nothing, only extends his hand with the triplicate slip, and I snatch it away and storm from the office, Chuck trailing behind me, little duckling that he is. Soon we’re buckled in and on the access ramp, heading home, the day half done, but fully over. He’s taken the backseat, of course, as though I’m a taxi driver and he my hesitant fare.
Finally I tell him, spill it. What’s the hard stance on golf? Let’s hear that undoubtedly monumental take.
God Mom! he says, throwing his head back in a teenage war cry, pushing himself back into the upholstery on the off-chance he might disappear within it.
Miniature golf, he says, finally, calmly, explaining a very complex subject to a very simple mind, is a gateway to the real thing, itself steeped in elitism and racial inequality. You’ll notice, he goes on, his voice low and flat and firm, how all those country clubs resemble plantations? Like that’s a coincidence. Caddies, for instance. Historically, what color do I think they were?
No, he goes on, you play golf, you might as well do it with a black fellow tied to the back of your cart, as you drag him, shrieking, down the fairway.
Sweetheart, I tell him, Tiger Woods is black. He married a Swede. You dressed up as him for Halloween when you were six. You painted your face. It was a different time.
And furthermore, I say, what about your little foray into golf? From what I understand, you were quite the champion. Not that I, as your mother, would have any idea about that. Not like I, again, as your mother, would take great pride in such an accomplishment.
To which Chuck responds that yes, over the summer, perhaps he did make a few ill-advised trips to the driving range and the putting green, and sure, he was a natural at it, and sure, he took home the gold, but in all, it’s just another sad story of the white man shamefully kowtowing to the societal norms of the past, and that, sure, at the time, it had been in good fun. But the subsequent shame? Well, that carries with it an invisible price tag that has unfortunately put him forever in debt.
Then he clamps his earphones over his head and disappears into an aural security blanket.
♦ ♦ ♦
Fuming, I try to focus on whatever song’s on the radio. When it goes to commercial, I turn my attention to the flow of traffic, but it’s so sparse—this is post-lunch-rush on a Tuesday, remember—that I’m staring down a desolate slab of sunbaked freeway. I begin to make ghastly predictions of the future, facing the hard, unfortunate truth that the Happy Face quota is near-impossible to hit—especially so after our little dramaturgical episode in the Meatsies Lobby. Who’s going to give a Happy Face to a woman involved in something like that? As such, I lose my job. I am evicted. The color leaches from my life, and I exist in shimmering tones of sepia. Maybe I get back on the pills.
Sooner than later, I am out on the streets, draped in the tattered remnants of Nordstrom Rack. I collect nickels and BOGO coupons, which I trade for more nickels with a formerly distinguished elderly gentleman, the lid of whose top hat flaps loosely in the breeze, like an opened can. His fingernails, attached to fingers which poke mischievously from his excuse for winter gloves, are miraculously clean, and when I lean in to thank him, raising my voice so that it can be heard over the rush of traffic, I catch a scent of not garbage, but a tastefully applied cologne sample. We get to talking and it turns out he runs a school, in an alley, for homeless orphaned children—a Fagin-type, but good-hearted, driven not by greed but philanthropic intentions, and while our affair is brief, it is lively and impassioned, and I use my background as both mother and mentor to put a spark in these orphans’ hearts so that they may rise from the societal ashes in which they are entombed, and on to bigger, better, more productive things.
Some still send me Christmas cards, with photos of families attached. One, now a successful and highly ethical business executive, writes me into her will.
Mom, comes Chuck’s voice, pulling me, like a weed, from my reverie. MOM!
Somehow, we’ve made it to the parking lot of my apartment, where I’ve parked, and we’re seated with the engine running.
MOM! Chuck says again.
I tell him, stop yelling in the car; I’m right here.
Then how come you won’t answer me, he presses. As though it is his God-given right to receive an immediate answer from the mother he treats like dirt.
Because, my dear, I tell him. Because your mother has her own life, which, contrary to popular belief, follows a route that, at times, differs ever-so-slightly from yours.
That’s funny, he replies, in just the snottiest tone. From my view it looks like I’m all you’ve got.
If this kid doesn’t join the debate club, I’ll eat my shoe. You have to give it to him. Still, you sometimes can’t help but bounce down the good old rocky path of outrage, and that’s where I head now.
That’s it, I snap. Your rebelliousness and your forays into illegality? That I can handle. What I will not tolerate is outright rudeness. I bend over backwards for you, do you know that? Everything I do, I do for you.
All of this, through the rearview mirror, which frames his little indignant face.
Trying doesn’t mean succeeding, he says, in that same snot rag of a tone.
Enough! I shout, sharply, as one might to a disobedient hound. That’s enough. You are the child, and I am the parent. Don’t like it? Too bad, pal, so long as you’re living rent-free.
Only for two-and-a-third more years, he says loftily. Then I’ll be a legal adult.
Oh, believe me, sweetheart, I tell him. Go look on the calendar in my bedroom and you’ll notice the big, red, hastily drawn Xs that are helping me count down the days.
You think I have it so easy? I continue. You think we’re on some pre-planned route and I’ve gone off-road? You’re just so sure of yourself these days, aren’t you? I know you, kid. Even if you think I don’t—I know you. You might think you’re this transformed person, but in the eyes of me, your father, and the rest of the natural world, you’re still a little boy.
He says he didn’t ask to be born.
I say, oh sweetie, don’t be boring. Also welcome to the club. Where we all got more than we asked for and are waiting around to see exactly what we can do with it.
Then he says the big one. The big F. With a YOU tacked on the end. The phrase ambushes me in the midst of an attack, and it is this surprise, I think, which makes the tears come. They seem to appear rather than form, sliding down the curvature of my cheeks on their escape route to the upholstery. Through the blur, and still through the rearview, Chuck sits, stone-faced, watching as I weep. The heat from the asphalt comes up in shimmering waves, where it seems to congeal upon the car windows, encapsulating us in a greasy metal bubble. We might as well be in the center of the Earth.
I continue to weep. My soul has been tapped, and what pours out is a cocktail of recent misfortune. I weep for motherhood, for marriage, for professionalism—and for lack of it. So powerful are my sobs, so soul-wracking, that I do not hear the car door open, nor Chuck exit. Eventually I gather my thoughts and my things, and I trudge up the stairs and straight to my bedroom, where I turn on the television. I flick through the channels, which all seem to be broadcasting something familial: hijinks, marriages, mishaps, murders. I keep pressing up on the clicker, my Feelings Thermometer lying prone upon the chilled, gusty plains of Alone Face, thinking how it especially finds you when you aren’t looking for it.
♦ ♦ ♦
The next morning I awake feeling hollow, but also enlivened with a sense of renewal. From now on, I tell myself, rather coldly, it’s no more Mr. Nice Mom.
I stamp into the living room and rip the blankets from the pullout. I shove a blueberry Nutra-bar into his hand, even though I know he likes strawberry best, and we’re in the car within a quarter-hour, his hair frazzled and his eyes puffy. I play showtunes. When “Good Morning” comes on, I’m overtaken with the urge to remind Chuck how he pleaded to go see the children’s stage production of Oklahoma! when it came through the Casa Manana that one summer, and how he’d stayed afterwards to get one of the cowpoke’s autographs—they were played by children, actual children, wearing pint-sized suede chaps and too-large cowboy hats, which half-concealed their mock horror from the audience as peered outward at Jud from behind carboard haybale cutouts—and I remember Chuck holding the Playbill aloft, like a golden ticket, with the name ALAN P scrawled across it in block print. The pure triumph of the moment gets me—it’s always about that, the purity—but as I turn my head to speak, the memory of yesterday’s events blasts into my mind in a shotgun spatter, and instead I turn the volume up and drive faster.
We arrive at the office a half-hour earlier than normal. Chuck, still silent, takes to the office sofa, slumped so low he might as well be a severed head.
I let him sulk and play stoic, pretending to be busy until the first appointment of the day. My frustrations shine through in small ways. I send emails that are fifteen percent more curt than usual. I slam desk drawers. I hunt for Advil from deep within the junkyard-cluttered confines of my purse with pointed, bracelet-jangling authority. I check my daily schedule, which is bumper-to-bumper with Feelings Thermometer meetings, and confirm my suspicions: to survive, every meeting has to end with a Happy Face. Every single one. Again, this is no small surprise, but the fact that the future I have been working so diligently to avoid is now upon me brings forth a swarming burst of panic. I wave it away and instead do my best to focus, on valiance. Heroic music swells.
I’m thinking, I can do this. I need no safety net.
I am battle-hardened.
I am capable.
I am ready.
I am Sheila.
Four short minutes later, and I’m looking at the Mad Face this guy has just dragged his avatar to. It all happened so fast. We just got to talking and I pointed out how hot it must be, wearing a wool beanie indoors, and you know, being bald isn’t that bad, and while sure it might shrink the dating pool a little, it’s by no means something to be ashamed of, I mean, my ex-husband, Ron, he’s a bald man, but he wasn’t always, and man, was he a looker then.
So here we are. And you know what? —I feel a sense of calm. Of relief. Alive in the liminal space of those few seconds post trapdoor opening, when you’ve begun to plummet, but the rope is still slack.
Talk about bliss.
I glance up at Chuck, who is buried in his phone, hood pulled up over his headphones like some sort of robot monk.
I take a deep breath and let it out, and I look out the window, wishing there were trees. The little bald guy’s packed his things and is standing to go, and as he turns, astonishingly, the cavalry arrives, by way of Chuck’s voice.
So what, Chuck booms, you’re actually mad about this? This is upsetting to you? This? Listen, my friend, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Be grateful. What, you want to spend the next decade making your salary in an attempt to make whatever dope’s at the top a millionaire? And what do you get for it? A notebook with a logo on it? A hoodie? A weekend trip to some bullshit team-building thing, where you’re forced to share a room at a Holiday Inn with a guy you only kind of like?
Chuck looks at me. I look at him.
Sorry for saying BS, he says. And for, you know, yesterday or whatever.
Like a genie’s granted wish, my forgiveness is instant.
Then he turns his attention back to the little bald guy, who’s looking around as though he’s searching for the hidden camera.
Mad Face, Chuck says. Mad Face indeed. What you should be dragging your avatar to is Drone Face. Droid Face. Good Little Soldier Face. Unquestioning Follower Face. Just Following Orders Face. How pathetic. What a dweeb. You’re better than this, aren’t you? Think about it. Don’t you have something you want to do? Something you want to go for? Something you think you can achieve?
I know you have it in you, Chuck says. Maybe all you needed was a push. Consider this that push. Consider this someone unlocking the chains that have for so long held you down on the packed-dirt floor of mediocrity. Consider that now, my friend. Consider that you are free.
All three of us, we spend a good half-minute frozen in our various locations around the office, making an isosceles triangle of blinking eyeballs.
Then the bald guy shakes his head softly and says, Look, I’ll change my answer, OK?
I’m like, you what?
So he says it again: he’ll change his answer. If that’s what it takes to get out of here. Just give him the tablet, and he’ll give me a Happy Face.
Of course, this isn’t possible. Because of how the software’s set up. So we send him on his way and count it as a moral victory, and then it’s just me and Chuck.
I look at him.
He looks at me.
So, I say.
Chuck rolls his eyes. See, he says. Not so hard, is it?
To which I say, mister, if you’re so finely attuned to this, why don’t you hop in the pilot’s seat and take the controls, and I’ll go sit on that sofa and do my word puzzles.
To which he says, sounds good to me.
So that’s what happens. Chuck takes over. And these people, they don’t even seem to notice, much less care. And you know what, it’s just the cutest thing. There are real connections taking place. He is gentle yet firm, and blessed with a keen sense of direction by which others seem even keener to be guided. Here and there, there’s a bit of laughter. When the inevitable tears fall, Chuck leans over the desk to offer consoling pats and/or tissues. He does a complex high-five thing with a kid of African-American descent that looks so natural he might as well be one of those rap guys.
From my perch on the sofa, I look on as Chuck lords over the Feelings Thermometer, refining his spiel ever so slightly with each appointment, so that, by the last, it is a finely polished thing, in which I see a reflection of the man he may one day become.
I continue to let him work. When I finish with my word puzzles, I attempt a Sudoku, but cannot figure out the rules.
The afternoon flits by.
Soon he’s seen the last one. A Neutral Face, which we’ll call a draw.
All said and done, we aren’t even close. While vastly more effective than my approach, at the end of the day, these people are being let go. There’s simply just not much Happy Face about that.
Alone together now, I look over at Chuck, and I say, well, kid, you win some, you lose some. Today, your mother’s a loser. Looks like the workplace is one area in which your father might have me beat.
Oh Mom, Chuck replies, in a voice of such childlike sincerity that the words act as lubricant to my rusty heart. Don’t worry. He reaches out and he touches my shoulder. It is a tentative touch, one with undertones of a child’s disgust for his parent’s physicality—a hand ready to recoil, should I burrow into it or make any other type of movement that reveals my enjoyment of our proximity.
Mom, he says. Dad’s just as much of a loser as you are. Believe me.
Oh, stop it, I say.
Truly, he says. Believe me, Mom. You’re both huge losers.
Overhead, there’s the muffled white noise of a plane, heading somewhere. The sun glows through the window, golden in the late afternoon. I hear the merry ding of the elevator as its doors open, and I imagine my Feelings Thermometer boarding, ready for the smooth ascent to somewhere mild and comfortable, a climate both exotic and familiar.
That’s my boy, I think.
My little man.
My son, Chuck Trombone
What a good kid.
Adam Kohut is an American writer who lives in the Netherlands. “CHUCK TROMBONE” is a story from his linked collection, “MEATSIES.” Other stories from the collection are featured or forthcoming in Mid-American Review and 3:AM Magazine. Another was a finalist for CutBank’s Montana Prize in Fiction.
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