These Dreams of You

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Zan and Viv each have a different dynamic with Parker. Zan is steady, calming. Viv and Parker clash, especially over how he treats Sheba; not so long ago the mother posted a sign in the house that read PARKER BE NICE TO YOUR SISTER OR FEEL MY WRATH. But the two also have an intimacy that father and son don’t. The boy will confide in his mother what he won’t in his father: Let them have the Talk, Zan has thought more than once. Zan is ballast, Viv is sail. They’ve both noticed that Parker is at his best when the parents have had an argument concerning some point of child-rearing; Parker has enough friends whose parents are split that when his own parents fight, it’s a shot fired over the bow of the family, chastening him into doing whatever he can to set right the ship of domesticity.

There’s never been a doubt in Zan’s mind that when Sheba first became part of the family, it was hardest of all on Parker. In the two years since Sheba’s arrival, Parker has turned more volatile, explosive. This has coincided with the onset of adolescence, a time when every affront listed on the ledger of his still brief life takes on a scope worthy of tribunals in The Hague. It bugs the twelve-year-old as much as it pleases him that, among his friends, his parents are considered the cool ones — the mom who’s turquoise and the dad who plays music on the radio; and now Parker’s salutations, cordialities and exchanges are spoken in the language of estrangement. Though the boy has been calling his mother and father “Viv” and “Zan” since he was Sheba’s age, the implicit remove of a first-name basis, which between children and their parents is tantamount to last-name basis, becomes all the more meaningful.

Testosterone abides. Lately there have been eruptions of violence. Years of sensitive parenting early on, strict supervision over what the boy watched or was exposed to in movies or on television, aimed at cultivating the next Dalai Lama, vanished in a flash of hormones around his eighth birthday. Soon the house was a paramilitary compound, fully stocked with any kind of weapon of any ballistic — air pellets, paint balls, small BBs — that wasn’t actual bullets. “Shall I shoot it?” Zan heard Parker say one afternoon back in the family room of their house, and when the father turned to look, there on the wall was a small rat.

Immediately enflamed, Zan said, “Yes,” and Parker pulled the trigger. With a squeak, the rodent fell. Half an hour later, Zan was in the office upstairs when Parker came in, tentative, as close to weepy as his age allowed anymore. “What’s the matter?” said Zan. Softly Parker said, “I feel bad about it. It was a little one. It made a noise when I hit it.” After a moment Zan said, “I told you to shoot it, it’s not your fault. Listen, I can’t say I’m sorry about killing the rats. But it’s right that you have feelings about it.” They went downstairs and Zan looked for the body of the mouse behind the sofa where it fell; it wasn’t there and, for his son’s sake, Zan was relieved. “You didn’t kill it,” he told Parker, “it would be here if you did. Must have winged it.”

“Good,” said Parker.