The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(32)

After school, Dave played soccer. An average member of an average team. Every afternoon, he arrived at practice on time with his shorts and jersey clean, cleats tied. He ran the warm-up lap and drills knowing he was not the fastest or the slowest, not the preternaturally graceful Ryan Harbinger yet not a klutz. He rarely scored goals but happily assisted other, better players in the mad pack-run down the field. Most of his friends were on the team, and he loved to practice. But he hated the games, because his parents attended. As soon as he felt them there, he had to strive for points, elbowing opponents and herding the ball toward the goal line, all the while sweating under his oppressive swoop of hair that he could not cut because to do so would be to break his mother’s heart.

—

After dinner Dave retreated to his room and closed the door, but his mother pushed in anyway.

She stood on the square red rug in the center of the room, which was lit by the gentle glow of Dave’s soccer-ball desk lamp. The room had light blue walls, bare except for one Ansel Adams poster—a black-and-white photograph of Muir Woods redwoods reaching into gloom—that had hung above Dave’s bed for as long as he had slept there. The bed’s beige comforter masked Superman sheets. Beside it sat a small maple desk, so close that he could roll out of bed and into the black desk chair with hardly a step between. His desktop was bare except for the soccer-ball lamp, a Mason jar of mechanical pencils, a tray of paper clips, and a laptop computer.

Dave’s backpack slumped on the floor by the desk, yawning to reveal a crowd of books and binders. His desk drawers were full as well—of papers tumbled and dog-eared and torn; broken sticks of lead and crumbles of eraser; movie-ticket stubs; scribbled-on school pictures; four Harry Potter figurines and a pack of Batman Silly Bandz from when he was a kid; a hot-pink condom handed to him by a member of the HIV Awareness Club on the first day of his freshman year; a crumpled picture of Kate Upton in a white bikini, ripped from the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue that Jonas Everett had brought over; a pile of metallic origami papers from sixth grade; a half-drafted love note to Elisabeth Avarine that would have looked to anyone at first glance like a list of SAT Most Commons (abundance, adulation, impetuous, inevitable) and which, after what had happened to Tristan Bloch, he knew better than to send—but these were Dave’s secrets. The drawers were shut.

“David?” his mother said. “Why are you hiding here? We’re not finished with our talk.”

Reclined against the maple headboard of his bed, Dave shrugged. His mother was small, compact, yet there was no room for her in there. He was too old for her to curl beside him on the bed—if she’d even perched on the edge, it would have embarrassed him. They were used to seeing each other over tables spread with food, or sitting in her Lexus in their separate leather seats, listening to the radio, looking at the road.

It still felt strange to him, this distance between them. When he was a kid, they’d spent hours, days, years alone together. When his father would leave for work, the air in the house would seem to lighten and expand, and she’d sit with him on the vine-laced living room rug playing Thomas the Tank Engine and then cook him butter noodles, warm and plain just like he liked, and fold him into bed at night with stories about heroes who were always brave and always saved the world. And just loved him. And there was nothing that he’d had to do to earn it.

Dave’s mother arranged herself in the desk chair, pointed her knees toward the bed. “We are not understanding each other,” she said.

Dave shrugged.

“You think we don’t love you? We don’t care? You’re the most important thing in our life, David. Number one.”

“I know,” he said. What she’d said was supposed to be a compliment, but it made the acid lurch in his stomach.

Dave’s mother wrinkled her forehead. Her eyes were liquid brown. The skin around them had feather grooves in which the black gunk of her makeup had smudged. She said, “All we ask is that you realize what you are.”

“What I am,” he echoed.

“You know you could do so much better, you could do anything. If you’d only try.” His mother’s voice was firm, emphatic. He was going to throw up. Did she really believe these things? Did she believe he hadn’t tried?

He had nothing to say to her. He pulled his legs to his chest. His socks were bleached and his toes banded by a thin gold thread.

In his silence his mother said carefully, “You know, I have always wondered what it would feel like to have really done something.”

This confession had come out of nowhere. Was he supposed to respond? He couldn’t. He felt he had intruded on a private moment she was having with herself. Yet she seemed to be waiting for him. Her gaze fell to her hands; her hair swept into her eyes and she tucked it self-consciously behind her ear. It was not her usual harried brushing away. It was something a girl would do.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She smiled, waved him away. The moment was over. “It’s just, I don’t want you to regret. You have so much potential. You can be anything you choose to be.” She placed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

Dave looked into her eyes. What he saw was not anger or disappointment or righteousness but simple human need. She had given up her life to be his mother. Because he was special. Every report card had told her otherwise, that he was little more than “a hard worker” and “a pleasure to have in class,” yet she had kept her faith. He had the potential, he could, and one day—at the right time, with the right class, the right teacher—he would. This was the story she’d told herself; it was his job to make it true.