It wasn’t anything they’d planned, but the children had positioned themselves on the couch in the order of their birth. They had brushed their teeth and put on their pajamas.
“Okay, guys,” Ursula said, having reclaimed her role as family cheerleader. “Mom and Dad have something to tell us.”
That night even Toby had an air of expectancy. Some big and surprising piece of news must be coming. A winter camping trip, maybe, or a new building project. Ever since visiting her friend Pamela, whose parents had a farm, Al had been lobbying hard for their family to get pygmy goats.
“You used to have one, Dad. Mom told us all about it. Opal, that you brought to the craft fair with a flower in her collar the day you and Mom fell in love.”
Maybe this would be the moment their parents would say, “Okay, then, let’s do it. Goats. But no more than six of them.”
The three of them sat there, each with their brownie, waiting for the family meeting to begin. Whatever the big news was that they were about to receive, they were ready.
Good morning to you.The first song Eleanor had taught to Alison.We’re all in our places, with bright shining faces.
Eleanor started it.
“You know we love you more than anything,” she told them. “We’re so proud of the three of you. You’re the best kids anyone ever had.”
Blah blah blah,she might as well say.Blah blah blah blah blah.
“But your father and I...we haven’t been... we’ve come to the decision—”
Eleanor hadn’t come to any decision. Cam did.
“It has nothing to do with the three of you.” This was his contribution.
Slow motion.
She watched their faces as they took in the words. A gradual crumbling. Like one of those time-lapse films of an avalanche, with the sides of a mountain caving in on itself, collapsing, until all that was left was a heap of snow. Somewhere in there, the word: “divorce.”
“We still care about each other,” Cam told them.
Blah blah blah.
“We’ll always be your parents. Everything that matters is going to stay exactly the same.”
Lie.
“Your mother and I just need a little space.”
Needing space.Where had Eleanor heard that one before?
“The important thing is, we love you so much.”
So if you love us so much, why would you do this to us? If you care about us more than anything, how could you let this happen?
“We know you probably feel very sad right now,” Eleanor said. “That’s natural. Maybe you have some things you’d like to ask us. Or just things you want to say.”
They had nothing to say, in fact. Then Ursula got up from the couch. “It’s time forCosby,” she said. There was a happy family for you. The Huxtables.
Al had no interest in television. “I guess you’re done, right?” she said, when Eleanor had completed her speech. “So, can I go now?” She picked up her programming book and headed to her room. A minute later they could hear the sound of her Mandarin tape, and Al repeating the phrases.
Ursula’s eyes stayed fixed on the television—an episode in which Rudy Huxtable stole a pack of gum from a convenience store and her father, Dr. Huxtable, as portrayed by Bill Cosby, made her return it. Toby sat on the floor next to her, stacking blocks.
Eleanor was just clearing away the mugs from the hot chocolate she’d made for them when it happened. The reaction they had been bracing for, from the one of their children who would have seemed least likely to deliver it.
Toby. He shot up from his spot on the rug, as if a high-voltage electrical current had surged through his body. Or maybe it was more like magma, rising up from the center of the earth, finally reaching the surface and spewing hot, flaming lava in every direction. He knocked over the blocks. Then he flung himself on the ground. He let out a howl so primitive and raw a person might think it could only have come from a desperate animal, shot through the heart.
“You’re going to be all right, Tobes,” Eleanor said, kneeling on the floor next to him, not so differently from that other time, when she’d found him in the pond, though this time he fought back. With a force no one would expect from a five-year-old, he pushed her arms away, yanked her hair, kicked her in the stomach, the breasts. He lay there howling. In all the months since his pocketful of stones pulled him to the bottom of the pond, he had barely displayed a shred of emotion. Now came a torrent. Under other circumstances, this might have seemed like a hopeful development.
