DINAH COX

All The Happy Children

The pediatrician, paid off by Big Oil, told her not to worry, dismissed it as mere anomaly, and sent her home with a prescription for high-powered steroid cream. Still, she suspected what had happened to her son was not normal. What had started as a harmless recycling project with the goal of making a little extra money for his second grade class had gone awry. She was worried. In spite of this, she convinced herself the marks would go away and the boy would return to his usual state. Now a week had passed, the dinner party imminent, and the blurry smudges had grown darker. 
            “I’m like a red panda.” The boy raised his arms as if to brag about his recently rising height. But he still wasn’t taller than a tall stack of old encyclopedias or an inoperable gramophone, an antique she’d bought at a yard sale sponsored by the boy’s absent father. She leaned over to comb his soft hair. “Red pandas are bear cats,” the boy said. “Just like me.” 
            “It’s fun to pretend,” she said. 
            “I’m not pretending,” he said. “I’m real.” 
             She had taught him the categories of plastic resins, how to sort by number without checking each yogurt cup, peanut butter jar, or bottle of Tide. Together, they learned how to dumpster dive. She trained her son as if he were a seeing eye dog, and all the stray plastic bags and aimless milk jugs blown against the playground fence became his hard-earned rewards.  
             But something happened to him. His fingernails began to grow at odd angles, the brittle edges jutting like so many splintered proteins into the corners of the beds. And then they began to grow very quickly, sometimes two or three inches a day, so that she had to cut and file the painful edges every morning before he went to school. And finally, the true sign he was ill, the discoloration, the rapid expansion of each individual nail, and finally, the event that sent her scrambling to find a substitute at work and hustle him to the emergency room: the early morning appearance of expiration dates and bar codes on each of his thumbnails and pinkies. According to the inky residue still left after a half-hour of scrubbing, he would go rotten in exactly fourteen days.  
             The child’s father was her former professor, a kindly, bearded pacifist twenty-two years her senior. He was married to his first and only wife—Peggy—a woman who’d taken a shine to Regina back when she was a student and seemed to like her still. The professor’s wife did not know the professor was the father of Regina’s child, or if she did know, she did not give it away. The professor also had adult children, one of whom was a marine biologist, another an American history professor in the manner of the family tradition, and a third, Marcus, who was perpetually homeless and a drunk. On the day the boy’s fingernails grew expiration dates, Regina read online that Marcus had moved back in with the professor and his wife. 
            “I’m going to work,” she told the boy in front of the bathroom mirror. “And you are going to school.” 
             “School is for dummies,” he said. “Dummies and fags.” 
             “Who told you that?” she said. “That’s not something we say.” 
             “Donald Trump keeps us safe,” he said. 
             “That’s not right,” she said. “Who said these things?” 
             “People,” he said. “Old people.” 
             “Which old people?” 
             “No one you know,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it.” 
              She had named her son George, neither after George Washington nor George Bush but after Boy George, of Culture Club fame. George was slow to speak, slow to walk, slow to look you in the eye, but he could sing like nobody’s business. He heard songs on the radio—especially classic rock and the blues—as if they were coded messages from the other side, scriptures meant only for him.  
             “I feel funny,” he said. “All hot and itchy.” 
             “You’ve been messing around with my magic markers again,” Regina said. “Tell the truth.” 
             “Not today,” he said. “Not yesterday. Maybe some other day.” 
             “But you’ve been into something, right? With your fingernails? Arts and crafts with Ms. Hatch?” 
             Ms. Hatch was an old friend, former college roommate of Regina’s, and the boy’s art teacher. Regina knew Ms. Hatch would not let any parent’s idea of cleanliness get in the way of dancing her students down the long road to artistic freedom. And Ms. Hatch would not have been the guilty adult speaking well of Donald Trump or poorly of fags. Probably the boy had caught a bit of Fox News in line at a fast food restaurant—she would have to conduct an intervention at some point soon—and whatever had stained his fingernails had come from Ms. Hatch’s low-budget acrylics. 
             “Ms. Hatch doesn’t come on Thursdays,” the boy—George—said. “We have Career Class on Thursdays.” 
            She drove George to school—all that extra time scrubbing meant he had missed the bus—and parked in the lot of the Dream Factory, a misnomer for sure because that place had been giving her nightmares for months.  
            The Dream Factory was both mattress store and medical marijuana dispensary; all the male employees “worked” on the marijuana side, while all the women—except for one gay man—toiled away toting boxes to and from high-up shelves and taking endless inventory on the maze-like showroom floor of the mattress side. Indeed Oklahoma’s exploding cannabis market meant the marijuana side entertained a greater number of customers—a lot more cash to handle—but the mattress side’s managers were ruthless and lazy, taking three-hour lunch breaks in “the accounting room” while everyone else sorted, stacked, moved, and counted the same six hundred and seventy-four mattresses over and over again. 
             Marcus, the history professor’s wayward son—technically George’s half-brother—came into the mattress store on the same day the boy’s fingernails had grown expiration dates. Though he was moving home with his parents at the shameful age of almost-thirty, he wanted to “contribute,” to pay for all his own furniture and food, to take charge of his life once and for all.  
             “That sounds good,” Regina said. “Can I interest you in these SoftLine SleepyTimes over here?” 
             “Too expensive,” Marcus said. “I’m really looking for something more like a mattress pad.”  
             Regina imagined he must have spent all his money in the marijuana side of The Dream Factory. But she didn’t mind; one needed priorities. She led him to the recently-inventoried section of pillow shams, alarm clocks, sleeping masks, and books so boring they would put you to sleep. She knew exactly twenty-seven mattress pads were available in his price range. Here she decided to take a chance. 
             “Marcus,” she said. “I’m glad to hear you’re getting your life together.” 
             “My parents have always liked you, Regina. My dad especially.” 
             “Thanks,” she said. “I like them too.” 
             “How’s that boy of yours?” 
             “Fine,” she lied. “Great.” 
             “He sure can sing,” Marcus said. “You should put him in commercials.” 
             “Marcus,” she said. “I want you to invite me over to your house. Your parents’ house. I know it’s your house, too, of course—” 
             “Wait, are you inviting yourself over to my parents’ house?” 
             “You’re inviting me,” she said. “I mean, if you want to.” 
             To her surprise, he not only agreed but also had an idea in mind for a theme night, Taco Wednesday, he said, because his clarinet lessons were on Tuesdays. He asked her to bring her favorite chips and salsa, and then made what seemed more like a demand: that she bring not just the boy but also a friend. Preferably a woman between the ages of eighteen and thirty. “I’m trying to meet new people,” he said. “Nothing creepy.” 
             He left with a mattress pad—reasonably priced, she assured him. After he paid with his father’s credit card, he stopped in the lobby to buy not just one or two but a total of eight bottles of root beer, each one featuring the most noble of all resin recycling numbers: one. 
             Regina had always liked Marcus, though she’d long suspected he was the only one in the family who knew about her on-again-off-again relations with Marcus’ father, whose first name—Aloysius—she thought ridiculous and whose last name—Traitor—she thought too on-the-nose. Like everyone she called him “Hap,” not because he was especially happy but because he always pretended to be happy and expected everyone else to pretend to be happy in his presence, even and maybe especially when they had more than enough reason to be sad. Hap was overindulged in their small university town, the kind of person who orchestrated the timely appearance of his own photo in the newspaper’s “Happenings” section every time he won a small award. Hap carried himself as if he were judicious, warm-hearted, the mayor of Whoville in Who’s Who, America. People always wanted “to bend his ear.” Young people, in particular, loved him.  
             At home, George was restless and recalcitrant. His fingernails had grown another half inch at school, but the expiration dates had not worn off. She suspected the other children were teasing him; it was hard enough being a fatherless boy, but now he was a fatherless boy with visible blemishes, not birthmarks, exactly, but more like deathmarks, something the others—vicious junior-Trumpers—surely would notice and punish him for. But children had always been that way, right? Before bed, she asked him if they’d had Art or Music, Career Class or Computers.  
             “None of those,” he said. “I took a nap.” 
             Second grade was too old for naps, but the boy was perpetually drowsy; sometimes the school nurse even sent him home. The pediatrician had ruled out anything serious, but this was the same man who’d said the trouble with the boy’s fingernails might have been a result of poor nutrition or—and he hesitated before saying this— “hygienic neglect.” The fundraiser for the boy’s art class—Recycle or Die, Regina called it to herself—had made her nervous in equal measure to the boy’s fatigue: if he wanted to rest on the sofa and watch cartoons, she wanted to pace the length of the living room and make multiple phone calls to check the balances of her bank account, credit cards, and her Walgreen’s Rewards; to check her credit rating from all three agencies, and find out when her Amazon order actually shipped and  what the elementary school cafeteria was serving next Monday through Friday. All this checking did nothing to alleviate her anxiety, and while well-meaning friends had urged her on a number of occasions to soften the hard edges of her every emotion with prescription medications, she always declined: better to feel what you feel, better to know the well-trodden avenues of despair than to make a false map of fantasyland, better to be human.  
             That her child had turned out to be plastic seemed like a cruel joke, but not entirely unexpected, given the boy’s origins. She had cried every day of her pregnancy, and every day until his first birthday, after which the tears stopped. The circumstances surrounding her misery—loneliness, poverty, thwarted ambition—had not diminished and she carried within her a deep, abiding darkness, not grief but its cousin, not hopelessness but more like fragments of former beliefs. But she never again felt the urge to let loose with a sob. She accepted the thick resin coat of numbness. Now she began to wonder if the boy was growing plastic fingernails not because of his father’s dishonesty but because of her own daily dreariness, her refusal to take the blinders off to stare at the sun.  
             Every night before the boy went to bed, she turned on the radio and allowed him to sing. This was no ordinary singing, no kiddie-style shouting and flailing about for no reason. The boy could shake the windowpanes with operatic splendor. He’d had no formal training, and although Regina had tried to enroll him in lessons on many occasions, he always refused, insisting that the presence of another human in the room would keep him from being able to hear the music. On the day his plastic fingernails grew their expiration dates, she scrolled through his favorites and stopped on Sinatra.  
             “This music is beautiful,” he said in the bathroom after brushing his teeth. “But I must rest my voice.” 
             “You’re tired,” she said. “It’s been a long day.” 
             “I’m winding down,” he said. “Like a clock that won’t tell time.” 
             It seemed an odd comparison for someone who’d never owned a wristwatch and could not—in spite of her best efforts to teach him—tell time on an analog clock. Was she teaching him to be fearful? Perhaps she was. But she couldn’t help it: more and more she kept herself and the boy away from everyone and everything—a world in which even the most harmless recycling project would give you a disease. 
             But going to Hap’s house was a different matter. She needed money, for one thing, and she knew he’d find a way to slip her a check. And George’s fingernails? She wanted Hap’s wife to see them, and Marcus, too; maybe they’d take pity on the boy, recommend another doctor or, what she really wanted, welcome him as a legitimate member of the House of Traitor. She’d spent the day counting box springs—each individual box spring—at The Dream Factory. Now in front of the full-length mirror, she flattened the boy’s unruly hair against the soft edges of his scalp. 
             “You look very nice,” she told him. “Like a gentleman.” 
             “I’m not gentle,” the boy said. “And I’m not a man.” 
             True on both counts.  
             The boy looked at her through the mirror’s gaze. He said, “Why do you like him?” 
             “Why do I like who?” 
             “Hap.” 
             “Everyone likes Hap,” she said. “You said just the other day that you like him.” 
             “I don’t like him,” he said. “Not anymore.” 
             She finished combing his hair and took one last stab at scrubbing his fingernails under the faucet in the bathroom sink. The day before, she’d bought a wire brush meant to remove rust from outdoor furniture, or, at least, that’s what the happy heterosexual white couple pictured on the package had used it for. The brush had no effect on the expiration dates, but made the boy’s cuticles bleed, which necessitated the use of Band-aids, which obscured most of the ink and made him appear merely dirty from digging in the dirt, something most boys did as a matter of course. But George was not a digger, not a connoisseur of action figures, not a gun-wielding can of whoop-ass. He liked singing and butterflies and bubble baths and volunteering to brush the cats at the Humane Society; still, he’d been correct when he’d said he was not gentle. He was rough. 
              They decided to walk the short distance to Hap and Peggy’s house. In their growing Oklahoma university town, everyone who was anyone lived on College Avenue, a tree-lined one-way with old Victorians and creaky porches flanked by urns overflowing with leggy geraniums. She wondered why the boy had decided he didn’t like Hap any longer. Children were capricious—and certainly they were obsessed with likes and dislikes, as if everything under the sun were classifiable by color or shape or available for instant parental purchase so as to impress one’s friends and classmates—but rarely did the boy ever talk about Hap—or really any adult—with such a critical eye.  
             They stopped on the way to pick up Ms. Hatch, the boy’s art teacher. In spite of teaching in the public schools, she, too, lived on College Avenue. Ms. Hatch was tall and energetic, formerly a drummer in a semi-important rock band from the 1990s. Regina had admired her constant movement since they were roommates, her agency, her determination to act rather than be acted upon. By comparison, Regina was cautious, circumspect, lifeless, afraid.  
             “You have a song prepared for us, Georgie?” Ms. Hatch said, taking the boy’s hand and pulling him, as if in conspiracy, away from Regina’s grasp. “Something catchy, I hope.” 
             “Don’t put so much pressure on him,” Regina said. “This isn’t some reality show.” 
             “Oh, yes, it is,” Ms. Hatch said. “Everything is. These days.” 
             Ms. Hatch and the boy skipped ahead of Regina and into the puddled street. Ms. Hatch had been married, once, to a man they both knew in college. They’d divorced after only a year, so now Ms. Hatch and Regina were the same, more or less, single and probably destined to remain so for the rest of their days. Even if Peggy suddenly stepped out of the picture—if she wised up and divorced Hap—Regina would not want to be married to Hap, would not want to be his girlfriend, would not want to go on dates. She couldn’t imagine sharing space with him in his narrow bed, watching as he hogged the remote over breakfast in the morning, folding his napkin or buttering his toast. What she did want was for the boy to know his father, to understand his origins and, eventually, his inheritance. But she’d been a fool to sleep with Hap—back in college, certainly—but that one time, later, for old time’s sake, had been the worst mistake of her life. 
             Ms. Hatch did not know Hap was the boy’s father. No one knew. Well, Regina knew. And Hap knew. And the boy, George—in spite of their never having spoken about it—knew for sure. One day, at the worst possible moment, Regina was sure, he would speak it aloud along with some declaration of bigotry he’d heard from the Trumpers at school.  
             “Next time Georgie and I shall prepare a duet,” Ms. Hatch said.  They had reached the Traitors’ front porch and now were waiting—for too long, it seemed—for someone to answer the door. “The birds, too, are full of song.” 
             “Birds are stupid,” the boy said. “They fly into airplane propellers.” 
             “It’s the airplane propellers that are stupid,” Regina said. “The birds are smart.” 
             “It doesn’t matter when they’re dead,” the boy said. Just then, the front door opened. Marcus appeared as if framed by sparkling white lights from the living room beyond, and Hap and Peggy’s yellow tabby—Skipper—jumped from the rafters and onto Regina’s shoulder.  
             “He’s always liked you,” Marcus said. “You must smell like fish.” 
             If anyone else had said this, it would have been an insult but Marcus liked both cats and fish. Behind him, Regina saw the table set for eight, each place with its own bottle of root beer, a glass bowl of seashells and switchgrass in the center. “I’m hungry,” the boy said. “Do you have tacos?” 
             Marcus looked at the boy, for a little too long, Regina thought, and seemed to scrutinize both his face and the entire length of his body for signs of family resemblance. “We have many tacos,” Marcus said. “Tacos and farts.” 
             The boy laughed. This was Marcus: root beers and curly-Q drinking straws, fart-talk and secret snacks in a treehouse fort. If he had a dark side Regina had never seen it, although she’d heard from Hap that, even when he wasn’t drinking, he suffered from incurable road rage and once, on vacation, had become so agitated by a much younger man’s failure to use his turn signal he’d talked about buying a gun. Hap and Peggy, both practicing Quakers, would never allow it.  
             Regina had not known all of Hap and Peggy’s adult children would be in attendance, although Hap and Peggy themselves so far were nowhere to be seen. The party, Regina could tell by the empty bottles and rocks glasses and rumpled cloth napkins, had begun in earnest at least an hour or so before their arrival.  
             Kate, with her hair-sprayed ponytail and shoulders hunched up to her ears, was the favorite, a newly-tenured professor of history at a faraway university and in town only for an academic conference about botulism. Then there was Jamie, the adventurous golden boy with the golden tan, a marine biologist who professed to be both “there for you, buddy” and “taking some time to himself.” And conducting his balancing act on the (supposedly) youngest branch of the family tree was Marcus, everyone’s favorite drunken clarinetist, just like Artie Shaw, he said, only with a greater sense of swing. He’d moved home with Hap and Peggy the week before, but soon would be back out on his own, where he could have room to stretch his legs and see more of the world, before everything went to hell, he said, while the air was still free to breathe.   
             “And this must be George,” Kate said. “We’ve heard so much about you.” 
             “What have you heard?” the boy said. 
             “That you’re handsome,” Kate said, looking up at Regina and smiling, not unkindly. “And that you’re very good for your mom.” 
             “I’m bad for my mom,” the boy said. “But good for babysitters.” 
             “I’ve heard you’re an excellent singer,” Jamie said. He drained the last of his martini and offered the boy the shriveled olive from the bottom of the glass. “A regular Perry Como.” 
            “He’s dead,” the boy said.  
            “Yeah,” Jamie said. “So?” 
           Looking more closely now, Regina watched as Jamie pushed back from the table and wiped his mouth with a napkin. When he stood and started for the kitchen, she saw it, the smudge of blackish-purple ink on his right ring finger, the deep cut in his cuticle from misbegotten attempts to scrub it off. With his back turned, she looked closer and saw that his expiration date was the same as George’s, only eight days away.  
             “I want some tacos,” Ms. Hatch said. “Is this Taco Wednesday, or what?” 
             “I need to stir the sour cream,” Marcus said. And when he motioned as if to stir the empty space in the air before him, Regina noticed something she should have noticed before, that all Marcus’ fingernails were covered with Band-Aids, the flesh-colored kind, mostly, except for one on his left thumb that seemed to depict some kind of superhero or video game villain. She fought the sudden urge to grab his wrist and peel them off, quickly, so he’d have no chance to escape. And what about Perfect Kate’s fingernails? Was she, too, a victim of the family plague? Regina looked immediately at Kate for evidence of the genetic curse, but she was too late: already Kate had made her way to the kitchen sink and clad herself in yellow rubber gloves, “to wash the dishes,” she said. “You all go on and have fun.” 
             Regina looked through the sliding glass door and out onto lush hills of the back yard. Peggy was pacing the edge of the patio and calling to the dogs, two mostly deaf and blind St. Bernards they’d had since Marcus was a boy. Somehow the dogs—and Skipper, too—had become Regina’s old friends, closer and more reliable than either Hap or Peggy had been, a fact Regina found necessary to hide. She watched as the dogs bounded to Peggy’s outstretched hand and felt for a moment something akin to jealousy.  
             But Peg slipped in the back door and left the dogs panting on the glass outside. “Regina,” she said. “You look beautiful this evening.” 
             Regina looked down at her drab, button-down shirt and ancient, mannish blue jeans, her “nice” pair, yet decidedly more casual than anything anyone else was wearing. She did not feel beautiful. But Peg was not one to flatter or suck up. She was instead the type of person who might buy extra boxes of Girl Scout cookies, and, without eating a single one, give them away to various people in need. When she said someone was beautiful, she meant it.  
             “The dogs have been asking about you,” Peg said. “In their way.” 
             “I’ll have to spend some time with them,” Regina said. “After dinner.” 
             “They’ll like that” Peg patted Regina’s shoulder. And in that moment, Regina realized Peg knew, had always known, that George was Hap’s son, and furthermore, she didn’t especially mind. Regina herself once had been a daughter-figure of sorts, so much so that Peggy had worried over her ragweed allergy and insisted on stocking her pantry with granola bars and bulk bags of dried fruit. Maybe Regina wasn’t the only one. Maybe George wasn’t the only one. Maybe there were others. When would they all expire?  
             Peggy, Regina, Ms. Hatch, and all the—currently available—happy children sat down at the table, ate tacos drowning in warm sour cream, and drank martinis and/or root beer, all without Hap making an appearance. “He’ll be along,” Peggy said, after the table was clear of dishes. “He’s been unwell, but I know he wouldn’t miss seeing George and Regina for the world.”  
             “Regina and George,” Marcus said. “Not George and Regina.” 
             “It’s OK,” Regina said. 
             “It’s not OK,” Jamie said. 
             “Yes, it is,” Kate said.  
             “Does everyone here hate America?” George said. “Because no one said grace.” 
             “Where did you learn that?” Regina said. “That’s not how we believe.” 
             “The principal,” Ms. Hatch said. “We’ve been made to sign a pledge.” 
            The pledge, she explained, meant teachers promised always to encourage adherence to the Constitution of the United States of America, to defend their classrooms against all enemies foreign and domestic, and to make mandatory mention of the founding father(s) whenever serving refreshments or passing out permission slips. It was awkward, she said, but also chilling, though no teacher yet had mustered the courage to object.  
             “That’s totally wrong,” Kate said. 
             “I’m calling the ACLU,” Peg said. “And the Presbyterians.” 
             “Don’t call them,” Jamie said. “Homewreckers.” 
             Regina had no idea why Jamie thought the Presbyterians were homewreckers, but she knew, in time, she’d end up scheduling an appointment with the boy’s school, writing a letter to the superintendent, calling her members of Congress. Dear America. We’re all so sick of you. She knew it was past time to begin disabusing the boy of all these erroneous, not to mention fascist, ideas, but some essential part of her felt paralyzed in the face of his insistence, his ignorance, his budding cruelty.  
             Just then, Hap, flanked by the blind Saint Bernards, floating as if made of air and stardust, stood on one foot and performed a yoga pose—the king dancer—in the safety of the back yard. He did not appear to notice his entire family and his former mistress watching him from the other side of the sliding glass door. 
             “I’ve told him to save his practice for indoors,” Peggy said. “The neighbors.” 
             “The neighbors don’t mind yoga,” Kate said. “They’re very athletic themselves.” 
             Regina looked past Kate and Peggy and onto the hills of the Traitor backyard. She could tell Hap had lost weight, and that his nose, recently broken by an overzealous member of the university’s Color Guard, had finally healed, but very likely would remain crooked for the rest of his life. He was wearing knee-length shorts with a Hawaiian print—something he never did—and his beard was whiter than she remembered it from the last time she’d been invited over. He remained in the king dancer pose, stock still, as if a long set of invisible strings descended from the heavens and attached to his joints. He did not waver in the wind.  
             “He’ll come in eventually,” Peggy said. “We should have dessert.” 
             Kate said, “I wonder if he’s hungry. We should bring him a plate.” 
             “There’s nothing left,” Marcus said. “We ate it all.” 
             Regina knew then that she would not get an opportunity to ask Hap for money, he would not slip her the usual white envelope containing the usual check made out in such a way she easily could change the amount. She would neither discover the true meaning of all the discolored fingernails nor learn how to anticipate future bumps in the road for their hapless owners. Certainly she would not learn what solvent or spray might stand a chance against the expiration dates. And she would not find clues as to what might happen when the calendar’s pages, unfurled and ripped at the seams, found their way to the dustbin of history on the fateful day the expiration dates arrived. Taco Wednesday had been a waste. 
             Regina began to wonder if Hap himself suffered from inky fingernails, since she’d already checked very carefully and come to the ultimate conclusion that Peggy, who was wearing sandals and so allowed her toenails to be inspected as well, did not. Kate had worn her stylish set of rubber dishwashing gloves all through dinner; no one, not even George, had spoken of their odd appearance, and while everyone else had eaten their tacos with their hands, Kate had used a fork to mash hers into a small but messy taco salad.  
             “It’s time for Georgie to sing us a song,” Ms. Hatch said. The party had moved to the living room, where the view of the back yard was even better than it had been from the dining room table. Outside, Hap had moved into downward dog while no one was watching, but he was motionless as ever, the actual dogs having given up and moved on to their water bowl by the door. Hap’s beard brushed the grass, and Regina realized his personal grooming habits had deteriorated. He must never comb his hair, she thought, he must never shave his neck. Still, she could not get a good look at his fingernails.  
             Peg served snickerdoodles from a store-bought tin, after which everyone balanced saucers in their laps and gulped from ceramic cups of coffee. The boy shoved a cookie into his mouth and asked for a glass of milk.  
             “Your teeth and bones must be very healthy,” Peggy said. 
             “My circulatory system is functioning properly,” he said. “For now.” 
             “Sing us a song,” Marcus said. “Make it a good one.” 
             The boy wiped his hands on the tail of his shirt, removed his shoes without untying them first, and stood with some ceremony on the edge of the ottoman. The crowd quieted. The boy held both hands over his heart. Regina was proud of him before he even began. 
             “Every night when I get home 
             The monkey’s on the table, 
             Take a stick and knock it off, 
             Pop! goes the weasel.” 
             She didn’t know where he’d learned that song, though she supposed it had become a staple of American childhood and so must have been available for download from all devices, antique or modern. She watched as he squeezed his small hands into fists.  
             “Jimmy’s got coronavirus 
             And Timmy’s got the measles. 
             That’s the way the story goes, 
             Pop! goes the weasel.” 
             “It’s more disturbing than I remember it,” Kate said. 
             “This is the jam,” Marcus said. 
             “You’re missing the good part,” Jamie said. 
             Regina knew it was her job to perform the guesswork necessary to decode why, exactly, the boy had chosen this particular song, but lately, aside from the worry over the fingernails and burgeoning Trumperism, she’d found the boy’s inner-life very boring. This was something you were not supposed to say. But who cared about fantasy football leagues and YouTube videos of other children playing video games, safety scissors at school and statistics having to do with obscure sports no one actually knew how to play? Boyhood was a snooze. She watched as the boy jumped from the ottoman, and in a dramatic, full-throated finale, kneeled at Peggy’s feet. 
             “I've no time to wait and sigh 
             No patience to wait 'til by and by 
             Kiss me quick, I'm off, goodbye! 
             Pop! Goes the weasel.” 
             “Wonderful,” Peggy said.  
	     “Bravo,” Ms. Hatch said.  
             But the boy was not finished. 
             “All the poets go to their graves, 
             The artist breaks his easel 
             Guns are gods the president saves. 
             Pop! Goes the Weasel."  
             “That’s not how it goes,” Regina said. “I haven’t heard it in a long time, but I definitely don’t remember that part.” 
             “It’s new,” the boy said. “New and improved.” 
             She stood, grabbed the boy’s hand, and motioned for Ms. Hatch to make way for the door. “We’re leaving,” she said. “The food, the company, everything was wonderful.” She said all this as if to Peggy in particular, but instead of making eye contact or reaching for her arm, she spoke and gestured to the grandfather clock looming behind and above Peggy’s left shoulder. How much easier everything would be if parlor furniture suddenly took the place of most of humanity.  
             “I’m so glad you came,” Peggy said. 
             “I’m sure he’s just tired,” Kate said. 
             Marcus, who grabbed Ms. Hatch’s hand and kissed it—probably against her will—said, “Let’s make it a Taco Saturday next time.”  
             Just as the storybooks suggested, they all lived happily ever after, only they were not happy at all, they were not beginning to take steps toward some unknowable, miraculous sunset, they were not really even living in the same way people in prior centuries had. They were like ticking time bombs, Regina thought, terrifying amalgamations of man and machine, destined for the landfill after inspectors deemed the load contaminated, living the dream of altruism and careless self-care, all the while sleepless on sagging mattresses in a stew of their own fears and regrets, almost expired now in a world where the water was poisoned, and someone, somewhere, always lied and said it was safe to wash your clothes in it, safe to wash your face in it, safe to take a drink.  

DINAH COX is the author of short story collections The Paper Anniversary (Elixir, 2024), The Canary Keeper (PANK Books, 2019), and Remarkable (BOA Editions, 2016). She lives and works in her hometown of Stillwater, Oklahoma.