"Well, she's grading papers."

"She never grades papers until Sunday."

"Jake. She has things to do. She just couldn't come with us today."

"She never comes with us anywhere anymore."

"That's not true! And remember, she takes you to your cello lessons."

"You never come to my cello lessons." never come to my cello lessons."

"Buddy boy, I do do have a job. If I don't show up once in a while, my boss tends to get upset." have a job. If I don't show up once in a while, my boss tends to get upset."

Jake ignored what I'd just said. "Doesn't Mom like us?"

I stumbled on the slippery subway steps, grabbed the handrail to keep from falling. "Jake. What a question!"

"Doesn't she?"

"Your mother loves you, Jake. You know that."

"Does she love you?" you?"

We'd reached the subway platform. The uptown Number 1 train roared into the station just then, giving me time to compose myself in the wake of this dreadful question. We got on the train and settled into our seats. Jake was all earnest-looking in his thick winter coat and hat, staring at me as he waited for his answer.

"Of course your mother loves me, Jake. And I love her."

There was no strength in my words, absolutely none. My heart was colder than my slush-numb feet.

"You never kiss her," Jake said.

I forced a chuckle. It had a horrible sound, like laughter in a funeral parlor. "Sure I do!"

"I've never seen you kiss her."

"We kiss in private, in our bedroom."

"You don't sleep in the bedroom."

How long had he been holding this this in? How the h.e.l.l did he know? I didn't have to ask. in? How the h.e.l.l did he know? I didn't have to ask.

"I was thirsty one night and I got up to get a drink and I saw you on the couch."

He'd gotten himself a drink of Wilson's Grape Juice, packed with Vitamin C and fortified with essential nutrients. We always had plenty of that stuff around, free of charge.

I swallowed, long and hard. Jake's gaze was steady, relentless. Did he want the truth, or did he want comfort? I opted for comfort. It would be easier on both of us. "Sometimes I can't sleep, so I get up to read, but I don't want to wake your mother. So I go to the couch with my book, and sometimes I fall asleep reading."

"The light wasn't on, Dad."

"What light?"

"The reading light by the couch. You were just asleep there, in the dark."

Jesus Christ. "I didn't want to wake up your mother by going back to bed in the middle of the night, so I just stayed on the couch. It's no big deal, Jake."

He stared at me like a trial lawyer who knows the witness is lying, and can do nothing about it. I had to say something to break that terrible stare. "We usually eat dinner together, don't we?"

This gave him something to think about. "Yeah...."

"When you're in a play, we always go together, and what about when we take weekend trips upstate? Aren't we all together then?"

It had been a long time since we'd taken a weekend trip, but he seemed to be buying it.

"Yeah." A tickle of a smile appeared on his face. "I guess we are."

"Sure we are!" I was encouraged by my own false enthusiasm. "Listen, when we get home, we'll all have dinner together, and maybe there'll be a good movie on TV that we can watch."

"Mom doesn't like the movies we like."

"Well, that's all right. The main thing is we'll eat together, and we can tell her all about the painted grapes."

His face lit up. "Can I tell her?"

"Sure. It's all yours, champ. You tell her."

We came home to an empty house. It was nearly eight o'clock when Doris trudged in with a shoulder bag full of books. The sight of this was supposed to tell us she'd spent the day at the library. Maybe she had, or maybe she'd spent the afternoon humping one of her colleagues. I didn't really care, either way.

By this time I'd begun a stupid fling with a copygirl from Hoboken that took place one night a week, during Jake's cello lesson. Her youthful enthusiasm soon gave way to whiny complaints about the limits of our relationship, to which I could only reply: "What relationship?" She knew my situation, knew I wasn't about to make any kind of move that would jolt my son. She "wanted to write" and heard I was a good person to learn from, and that's how it started-the crusty old rewrite man with the heart of gold, showing the budding journalist the way.

But my heart wasn't gold, and her dreams of a journalism career were tarnished by a nightmarish lack of talent. She could not put a sentence together. If the English language could speak for itself, she'd have found herself facing a.s.sault charges.

I was always eager to catch that train out of Hoboken, to get home in time to tuck my son into bed. The fling only lasted a few weeks, and when I broke it off in a coffee shop near the Star Star she was as relieved as I was. She stared at me long and hard before saying, "You think you're doing your son a favor, but the price he'll pay goes up every day." she was as relieved as I was. She stared at me long and hard before saying, "You think you're doing your son a favor, but the price he'll pay goes up every day."

I was stunned by her words. For one thing, it was a startling perception. For another, it was the most coherent sentence she'd ever come up with. Maybe I was a better mentor than I'd thought....

Anyway, Doris entered the house after a day of reading and/ or f.u.c.king, and luckily Jake was taking his bath, so I had a chance to fill her in as she poured herself a gla.s.s of white wine.

"Doris. He's asking all kinds of questions."

"He has an inquisitive mind."

"He was asking why we never kiss, and why I was sleeping on the couch."

Now I had her attention. "What did you say?"

"I told him we kiss in private, and I like to get up and read at night so I won't disturb you."

Doris nodded approvingly, one conniver to another. "Not bad."

"I also reminded him that we eat dinner together."

"Except on the night he has his cello lesson." She had a catlike grin she saved for times like this. "Where is it you go on cello nights, Samuel?"

"The library, just like you. Now listen. We've got to jolly it up a little bit tonight, you hear me? I'll order in Chinese. That always puts him in a good mood."

Fifteen minutes later we were seated at the table, pa.s.sing around Chinese food cartons. In the midst of it all was our son, clean and chirpy from his bath, his wet hair slicked back so that his ears protruded in a way that was almost unbearably adorable. He was happily chattering away about his day, but when he got to the story of the painted grapes Doris put her chopsticks down and looked accusingly at me.

"What a horrible thing to do. That's false advertising!"

"No, it isn't, Doris. The grapes were out of season. They just needed a little sprucing up."

"It seems very wrong to me."

You'd have thought that the paint job was my idea. Jake looked from his mother to me. His ears seemed to be trembling. I struggled to remain calm.

"Doris," I said, "they aren't advertising the grapes, they're advertising the juice." juice."

"Nonetheless, it's a canard."

"Ooh, a canard. canard. Is that the big word of the night? Let me look it up so I can think of something snappy to say." Is that the big word of the night? Let me look it up so I can think of something snappy to say."

"You needn't look it up, it simply means-"

Every Chinese food carton jumped as Jake's small fist slammed down on the table.

We looked at him in shock. His lips were quivering, and his eyes were blurred with tears of fury.

"Can't you two ever ever stop fighting?" stop fighting?"

It was a question, a plea, a cry for decency. Doris and I looked at each other, two reasonably intelligent people who'd greatly underestimated the perceptivity of this human being we'd come together to create. What a strategy we'd lived by. Feed him, clothe him, send him to school, keep him busy, and he'll never detect the underlying tension in this home, will he?

Not much he wouldn't. And even if he weren't a bright boy, he would have known. Kids detect marital misery through their skins, not their brains, the way animals know when to run from an earthquake before the seismograph even detects the tremors.

But when you're a five-year-old boy living in the midst of marital turmoil, there's no place to run. All you can do is sit there in your Spider-Man pajamas and listen to your parents go after each other in an argument over a bowl of painted grapes that has absolutely nothing to do with a bowl of painted grapes.

The sudden silence was excruciating. Jake's words struck like meteors, and it's as if Doris and I were waiting for the dust cloud to settle, but that could take years, so I bl.u.s.tered my way through the dust, flying blind as I said, "We're just having a little disagreement, Jake."

He gave me a withering look. "Bulls.h.i.t," he replied, and it was the first time we'd ever heard him use a vulgar word.

Doris gasped as if she'd just been knifed in the chest. "That was uncalled for, Jacob!"

He ignored her. "It's not just a little disagreement. You guys fight all the time."

"Not all all the time," I said, but there was no strength in my words, none at all. I was just throwing them up the way an overmatched boxer throws up his arms to block a barrage of punches. the time," I said, but there was no strength in my words, none at all. I was just throwing them up the way an overmatched boxer throws up his arms to block a barrage of punches.

But there were no more punches. Jake's attack was over. The anger was gone from his tears. Now his eyes were wet with sorrow and his face was pale. Smudges of that rosy makeup stood out on Jake's white cheeks. It took a lot of washing to get them off, and Jake had failed to do it in the bath. He looked like a heartbroken clown.

Shouldn't one of us have gotten up to hug the boy? Doris and I just sat there, staring down at our plates. We had been outed. The fraud of our lives was no longer a secret. Jake understood the situation, maybe even better than Doris and I understood it. His childhood had just come to an abrupt end on that miserable winter night, and even Chinese food couldn't fix that.

He didn't want the rest of his chicken lo mein and pork fried dumplings. He picked up his plate and set it on the floor, where the cats appeared out of nowhere to devour the food.

This was strictly forbidden by Doris, but she realized this was not a night to enforce the house rules. If Jake were to have pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his pajama pocket and lit up, Doris probably wouldn't have objected.

Me, I'd have asked him to give me a cigarette. And a blindfold. For the first time in my life I actually wished I were dead, and even that wouldn't have been quite enough. Lousy as I'd been as a husband and a father, my death would have traumatized Jake and made things worse for Doris.

No, I didn't wish that I were dead. What I wished was that I'd never been born.

But I was, and so was Doris, and somehow we got together and because of that Jake was born, this sweet, bright five-year-old who got up from the table to kiss first his father and then his mother on the cheek, politely, like a child from an upper-cla.s.s British family bidding his parents good night before the governess takes him up to bed. Doris tried to hug him, but he kept his arms tight to his sides and tensed up, like someone trying to break a wrestling hold. He took a few steps toward his room and then whirled around to face us, like a gunslinger expecting an ambush.

"You're going to get a divorce, aren't you?"

There was no place to run, no place to hide, no place to die. I tried to speak, but my words, whatever they might have been, perished in my throat. Doris wasn't doing much better. She took off her gla.s.ses, rubbed her eyes, squeezed the bridge of her nose, and put the gla.s.ses back on before speaking just one word: "Eventually."

What a way to put it. Yes, my boy, your parents' marriage is a dead thing, but there's no rush to bury it. The divorce is just something we'll get around to, like new carpeting in your room.

I was ready for Jake to throw a tantrum, burst out crying, but he didn't. This was no shock to him. He'd absorbed the shock of it bit by bit over the years, all on his own, piecing together the all too obvious puzzle of his parents' collapsed marriage (collapsed? Had the structure actually ever stood in the first place?) without letting on to either of us. This is something unhappily married parents just don't get. They're not the only ones keeping up a facade. The kids do it, too, and it's absolutely exhausting.

No wonder Jake looked tired. His eyes seemed as flat and cold as the eyes of a shark. No light. No hope. Nothing.

"I'm going to bed now," he said to both of us, or maybe to neither of us.

"We'll tuck you in," I said.

Jake chuckled, and he was right. What a ridiculous offer, like offering a Band-Aid to a man whose throat has been slashed. He held up a hand to keep us both at bay. "I'll tuck myself in," he said, turning to go once again.

Suddenly, he turned to face us one more time, arms folded across his chest. He looked like the world's youngest lawyer.

"You guys," he said, "are like the grapes."

Doris looked at him in wonder. "Baby?"

"Your marriage," Jake said, almost impatiently. "It's like the grapes. Just a paint job."

He went straight to bed.

I really don't know why I didn't die that night. Doris and I couldn't even talk about it. We cleared away the food and went to Jake's room to find him sound asleep, stretched out on his back as if he were on a beach somewhere. He wasn't faking sleep. He was dead to the world. He'd just put down the burden he'd been carrying for so long, and now at last it was time to rest. There were heartaches and traumas to come, but not tonight. Tonight there was only the oblivion of sleep.

But not for his parents. I went to bed with Doris for the very last time that night. We lay on opposite edges of the bed like castaway enemies forced to share a life raft, sighing and crying over this monumental mess.

Toward dawn Doris pa.s.sed out, but I didn't, and at first light I moved to the couch. I didn't want Jake to catch me in bed with his mother. On top of everything else that had happened, the last thing he needed was false hope.

There was remarkably little to say about it in the weeks that followed-Jake had pretty much said it all that night. He'd actually accelerated the divorce process. Doris and I probably would have stewed and simmered and grumbled at each other until Jake went off to college, and who knows? By that time, we could have been too old and weary to split. Jake had fanned the spark of truth into a flame that burned down the facade, once and for all.

I started looking for an apartment, and two months later I was out of there. It was a relief to me, and a relief to Doris, and probably to Jake as well. We'd all be better off than we'd been before, except for one thing.

That special light was gone from Jake's eyes. He could still laugh and kid around the way he used to, but there was usually an underlying sarcasm to it, biting and bitter. And it wasn't until the light was gone that I was able to figure out what it had been.

It was the one emotion that was simply unteachable, and totally undefinable until it was gone.