Nick Halpern

The Kanga King

SARAH HAD, three years ago, after a decade of marriage, abandoned Skip. He had not wanted children. Two years ago she’d married Ian Donegan, a man who did want, had always wanted children; last spring she and Ian had had a baby girl named Alice; a week and a half after Alice was born, Ian Donegan had died in a car crash. Skip had, almost immediately, reappeared and tried to persuade Sarah that she should move back in with him—she and the baby girl. Last August she did move in, she and Alice. She had wanted familiarity; she had needed a friend. Now, in November, she was walking out on him again.
     “Start your next sentence with because,” Skip said.
     “Because of the way you loom over Alice’s crib,” she said finally.
     Here was something they could come back to, but now Skip needed to make his main point again. “I’ve been a loyal husband. Even when you went out and married Ian Donegan, I stayed right here and waited for you. I waited up. And you came back, didn’t you?”
     She had come back. That was a mistake, but luckily she had not agreed to remarry him. And now she was going to move in with Caroline, the babysitter.
     “Skip, we’ve had our marriage,” she told him.
     “You remember our divorce better than I do,” Skip said, and waited. “Is there nothing you would like to tell me?”
     There was one thing he wished he could tell her. Ian—Ian, who was dead, had, since nightfall, been standing in the street outside the house.
     He knew it was Ian Donegan. They’d had drinks a year ago, the three of them, in this very room. Of course, it was discouraging to be able to see Ian out there, but everything about this evening was discouraging, and it was important to Skip’s sense of morale that he should not be made to doubt—tonight of all nights—his own sanity. Sarah was leaving tonight. He needed to feel he had all his wits available to him for argument.
     But Ian’s presence out there was deeply unexpected and distracting. Did he expect to waylay her outside? It was obvious she couldn’t see him.
     “I loom, is what you’re saying.”
     “Yes, because of the way you loom over Alice’s crib. You sigh down at her, Skip. You want empathy from her?”
     “Yes!” He laughed happily.
     “She’s ten months old, Skip.”
     “Suppose I told you this: that she sighs up?”
     She looked at him the way beautiful women in old paintings looked at him. “You need to circulate a little. Socialize. The world is full of adults—well, not full—who would gladly feel sorry for you.”
     “You astonish me.”
     “Nobody will like you to loom or to shiver, though.”
     There were trees—bare trees now—just outside each window. Skip had called their house a birdhouse. “Birdcage, you mean,” Sarah had said. By banter he would win her back.
     “How can you take Alice?” he asked her. “I have rights, surely?”
     “No.”
     “But I’ve been wronged, though?”
     She touched his arm.
     “Make a new life.”
     “Like you keep doing?”
     They heard Alice cry out. Sarah went upstairs to check, and Skip began drumming his chest with his thumbs. “Make a new life, she tells me.” After a while, she came back.
     “I’m old,” said Skip. “Say it.”
     “You’re ancient,” she said.
     “Take me again to your arms as of yore.”
     “And you say weird things.”
     “Marry me again.”
     “Hilarious things.”
     “There’s so much you’re keeping back,” Skip said. “As though it isn’t appropriate any more to say it.”
     Sarah went upstairs. Skip stood at the window and tried to stare Ian Donegan down. When Sarah came back down, she was carrying Alice.
     “I’ll mean nothing to Alice,” he said to her. “She won’t remember me.”
     “You never wanted children,” she said.
     “I’m a child myself,” he said solemnly.
     Alice turned her face to the window, and Skip understood—it seemed a certainty—that Alice would be able to see her father in the night. He moved to block her view, then he addressed his ex-wife. “Listen, I’m going to die, apparently.”
     Alice was sighing up at him. He didn’t imagine such things.
     “For the love of God, Montresor.”
     She was taking Alice from him.
     “I’ll wait up,” Skip said.

THE REST WAS SNOW. There was no daylight or darkness, there was only snow light. But the snow didn’t stick and this was strange.
     Skip behaved heroically, venturing forth every morning through the snowfall, but it was not easy. It was the hard time back again, but this was worse than the first time she had left him, for the simple reason that the first time he had not been dying. He tried to keep up appearances but it was difficult. “Provide,” he told his clients conscientiously, but he himself had not provided, and they could see it in his eyes, probably. There was a big window in his office, and he stared out of it. He made many inward resolutions, but the only one he kept was to dream away the days till Sarah and Alice came back to him. One morning he overheard a story about a woman who had taken her husband back when she’d found him sleeping in her car. That afternoon he drafted a letter to Sarah in which he said that solitude was an excruciation for him and that he thought, in the snowy watches of the night, of nothing but their marriage and how much he had loved it. He told her that he was not a man who should be left alone, that people did not know that about him, but she did. Alice did.
     Later he was not sure if he had sent the letter.
     Ian Donegan, even, had abandoned him. Had Skip really seen him? Sarah’s infidelities had wrecked his health, but had they affected his reason also? He hoped he hadn’t really seen him. It was sordid if he had. Not that it mattered, because he would be joining Ian shortly.
     In his letter he had suggested that Sarah and Alice might return with Caroline. Sarah and Caroline could sleep in one room and Skip in another. Different ceilings were acceptable, he’d written, provided there was one roof. Allowances had to be made because this was Sarah, after all. She and Caroline were like movie stars but from a decade that had never happened, a decade everybody could have used. Sarah was like Paulette Goddard but with style, and Caroline was like Veronica Lake but with mystery. Who was Alice like? In the bedroom at the top of the house, he watched a movie in which Shirley Temple tap-danced in a white sailor suit. Skip watched most of the movie, even though there was snow in the picture. Snow was everywhere, after all—except on the ground. He wished there were somebody with whom he could banter. Alice was only ten months old, but she would be like Shirley Temple, though with a touch of watchful melancholy because of what was happening to him.
     On Christmas Eve Sarah called him and they chatted. Sarah was concerned. He had talked about dying.
     “Not to worry,” he said. He could be unforthcoming too.
     Was he sure he was fine? Because she worried about him.
     “We’ve had ninety days of snow in a row, Paulette Goddard. And none of it sticks. No snow is anywhere but in the air! The snow is everywhere but on the ground!”
     Someone was playing the piano loudly, and Sarah was having trouble hearing him. She put Caroline on, then Caroline put the phone to Alice’s ear.
     “When I was a baby,” Skip said to Alice, “snow fell on the ground and it stayed put. Do you understand me?”

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE DAYS into the snow, Skip, looking out for the return of Sarah and Alice, saw that someone different had come back. It was Hap, his father. Skip felt confused and embarrassed, and he turned his back on the big window. “This doesn’t bode well,” he said. The dead come to those whom the living have forgotten, and Hap’s return was a kind of proof that he’d been forgotten by Sarah. It was maddening! It was as if she was incapable of keeping her mind on him. In their first courtship she had appeared to pay attention, but it soon seemed as if she had married him to forget him. He hadn’t let her forget him. But she had fought him, had insisted on dividing her attention, first with Ian, now with Caroline.
     On his way to the office the next morning, he talked to himself about Alice. There was a kingdom of absolute quiet and gold light, and she was the princess of it, and she wished he could visit it. She was a check for ten million dollars, and she wished she could be signed over to him. On the way home he made a purchase at a baby shop and had it gift wrapped—“It’s a present to myself,” he whispered to the clerk, who wouldn’t look at him—and when he got home, he immediately unwrapped the box. He must do what he could to make himself remembered. What a time he was having with the ties and clips! This worried him, but when he finally did get it strapped to his chest, he felt high-spirited and went back outside.
     Hap was standing in the falling snow like it was his own ticker-tape parade. His beautiful silver hair had all come back, and he was wearing a big white cable-knit Christmas sweater and baggy trousers. In life, he’d been tremendously affectionate. Without warning he would throw his arms around his son and rock back and forth with him, giving the top of his head great kisses. Before he’d become ill and died, Hap had been an enormous man, though his word for himself was roly-poly. And now he was roly-poly again. Would Skip gain all his weight back too?
     “It’s gorgeous to see you, Skippy!” he said. “Bring me up to speed.” He had sharp eyes and very thin lips. He would probably have embraced Skip had he been able.
     Skip felt ashamed to have bad news to tell. This was not the life he wanted for himself. He was a man who would like to have good news, especially for Hap, whom he loved.
     “Sarah walked out,” Skip said. “She’s done it before but I think this is it. Unless the new one dies like the last one did. But it looks like I’ll go first. Because I went to the doctor last November.”
     “You have my fatal illness, don’t you?”
     Skip nodded vigorously. “I feel strong, though. I do feel strong. And that bodes well. And I caught it early.”
     His father made his cheeks chubby, then released the air. “It makes no difference, Skip. You’re a dead man.”
     They walked and walked, as in the old days. There was no one else on the streets, and every house was dark. “Here is a stopping place,” his father said sometimes, and they stopped and stood together, then went on.
     “Listen,” Skip said. “I didn’t know a person could come back afterwards. I would like to come back.”
     “You will not come back,” Hap said. “Only the fathers come back.”
     Skip told Hap a little about Alice.
     “She sounds extremely prepossessing. Which is not to be wondered at. I always liked Sarah. But you’re not the girl’s father.”
     “Alice sees everything, Hap. She is wise beyond—” Skip looked at his hands. “She wants me in her life, Hap. Do you understand me?”
     Hap’s enormous face was very close to Skip’s, and his breath smelled like stale beer. “Go to the new house, Skip, and snatch her back.”
     “You’re advising me to—”
     “Slouching around with the pouch on your front and acting all innocent. You’re the Kanga King! Take her away and raise her up.”
     “I should take her?”
     “You are the only begetter, Skip! You are her mother and father. Skip, I know you’ve considered this.”
     “Can I tell you my plan? I was thinking of taking a nice long bus ride, the kind that people used to take. I would like to take a ride like that. I mean if this is all a dream.”
     “No,” his father roared. “No dream. Don’t make me angry.” He opened his mouth as wide as possible and crossed his eyes. “This is no dream.”
     “Can you excuse me just a second?” Skip asked. Imposing buildings rose on either side of them, all dark. He knelt against one of them and vomited for a long time. At last he stood and rejoined his father in the middle of the street.
     The snow made fell swoops.
     “The kind of bus ride people used to take,” said Skip.
     “A marvelous bus ride.”
     “A chance for Alice to get used to me,” Skip said. “We’re on the same wavelength now, she and I, but we don’t really know each other that well yet.” He hesitated. “But if I die too soon, Hap, then what? She’d have no memory of our association.”
     “Of yours and mine?”
     “Hers and mine,” said Skip quickly.
     “You’ll be the man who was there at the start.”
     “But I wasn’t. What if it’s Ian Donegan who haunts her?”
     “Take command of her infancy.” Hap chuckled. “Oh, she’ll remember you. Whenever she sees the snow do what it’s doing now. Whenever she hears one of those really sad slow songs. Or she’ll look out at the night sometimes and see your fabulous face.”
     “Oh, I should like that,” said Skip. He felt conscious of pulses all over his body. Everything was decided then. There was a plan. Ghosts did not mean something bad but just that justice would be done. He tried to calm himself. This was nice. Walking through the falling snow with his father was like the old days, except that in Worcester, when he was a boy, the snow had stuck. When he was a boy there were great drifting hills of snow, and he was king of them. Hap was the splendid emperor. Skip remembered long dreamlike days of fathering and mothering and nights of high-heartedness, which didn’t end. They would go out to Gallagher’s, Hap and his boy: they were a famous father and son. Inside the bar the air was stale and smoky, but when the king and emperor went out into the night, the snow was fresh, gorgeous falling and gorgeous on the ground. One night they fell asleep, the two of them, in the snow, the neon lights of Gallagher’s their night-light. A sweet, warm wind awakened them, and they made illustrious snowmen in everyone’s front yards.
     That was so long ago, but tonight; again, the air was snow spangled.
     “It’s a marvelous night!” Hap said.

THERE WAS A CLOCK on the wall at the Peter Pan bus station, but Skip couldn’t understand what it said. Also, the smell of urine was disappointing. He felt, for a moment, undone.
     “Babyfall,” the ticket seller said over and over.
     Skip’s forearms tingled. “No, Hollywood. Hollywood, California. Two one-way tickets.”
     On the public address system, a man said, “Soft continuous hits.” The fluorescent ceiling lights hummed. The vending machine hummed. The bus would leave first thing in the morning.
     “Baby fall out of the pouch? Ouch!”
     The snuggly had come unzipped, and the flap was hanging open.

THEY WALKED UNDER AN OVERPASS. Later, Skip saw the Hancock and the Prudential in the distance. After a while, they came to Caroline and Sarah’s house. There was Alice’s real father standing between two parked cars in front of the house. Skip’s nausea returned for a second but he fought it. Ian Donegan. What could a man say to such a person? He’d wanted a baby, wanted one from the start, had needed no persuasion. Even as a ghost he communicated solidity and maturity.
     “I don’t seem to make much difference to her happiness,” Ian said at last.
     Hap said, “You’re the ghost of a ghost then.”
     “I’ll make a difference,” Skip said. “I’ll be everything to her.”
     “You’ll be everything but there,” said Ian Donegan.
     “I won’t be in there, no. But I will be here. I’m going to take your place.”
     There was so much snow but it kept vanishing.
     “I’m a kangaroo!” said Skip, pointing to his pouch. “The king of all the kangaroos!”
     And now Ian himself had vanished, which was so much to the good.
     “Look. Look.”
     It was the redoubtable Sarah, lit by a blaze of birthday candles. It was Alice’s birthday already? He was unprepared. Balloons, red and green and white, were everywhere. People in party hats—Skip did not think he recognized them—stood around. Look, a birthday banner. It was Caroline’s birthday, but he had nothing for her either. She was blowing out the candles. They were singing lustily. Something like an hour passed. Hap and Skip loomed and watched, Skip making his own wish. Periodically great cheers rang out. It took forever for everyone to leave the house and drive away in cars. After a while the light went off in the kitchen, and then a light went on upstairs. They were putting Alice to bed? He and Hap exchanged glances. Skip stepped gingerly onto the little front lawn. Audacity would be called for, but tactical skills required would be minimum. He would make them believe he was simply playing—and then he’d take her! She’d fly along the ceiling and down along the floor. When nobody was looking, he’d fly her out the door. First he must gain entry.
     Skip turned to his father. “You’ll go away now?”
     “Without seeing the girl?”
     “Please,” he said. “She mustn’t see you.”
     “Skip, she won’t be able to see me.”
     “You don’t know Alice. She misses nothing.”
     Hap curtseyed. “Abracadabra,” he said. “Poof.”
     “Here goes nothing,” Skip said, ringing the doorbell.
     Hap gave him the thumbs-up sign.
     “Hap, you’ll go away?” Skip said.
     The door was opened by Caroline.
     “Hey,” Skip said shyly. “Happy birthday.”
     “Skip! Skip! Check out your beard.”
     “I grew a beard.”
     “It makes you look dignified.”
     Caroline’s hug filled him with nostalgia. She was a star from the decade that never happened. The stupendous babysitter turned divinity student, sledding into the snowdrift of his heart.
     “I was in the neighborhood,” Skip said. He took a deep breath. “And I was wondering if there was anything you needed me to bring or to fix.”
     The kind and pretty girl with snow on her eyebrows, snow on her tongue, though now she was frowning at him. “You’re wearing a thingy,” Caroline said, pointing to the snuggly that was strapped to his chest.
     He wished he could have pulled a bottle of Dom Perignon out of it. Instead, he laughed merrily.
     “Oh my god, I’m sorry, come in!” she said.
     He was alive and was invited in.
     “Weird weather but what else is new,” Caroline said. “You’re not wearing a coat.”
     Skip nodded cordially.
     “Sarah’s upstairs putting Alice down.”
     Skip nodded knowingly.
     Sarah stood at the top of the stairs, looking alarmed.
     He’d had a joke about visitation rights, but it was only a tune in his head now. Also, the stairs were steep and he had to concentrate.
     “Is everything okay? Has something happened?” Sarah! Down she came in her velvet and lace, looking pre-Raphaelite, pre-everything. “What are you doing here, Skip?”
     “The neighborhood,” he said.
     They were the famous couple Skip and Sarah, and they stood together on the landing. Skip’s eyes filled with tears.
     “Skip?” She touched the snuggly.
     “All the men are wearing them. Tell me how you are. How’s Alice?”
     “She’s fast asleep. Not that there was anything fast about it. You’ve lost so much weight, Skip.”
     He was being led back down the stairs and into a room where there were many lamps and a fire in the fireplace. He stood in front of the fire and held out his hands. The radio was on, and a woman with a beautiful low voice was interviewing a man. Should she accuse Skip now, the woman on the radio, he would deny nothing. Yes—he was not human! Another man preoccupied her, though. He looked around. Container gardening was still one of Sarah’s interests. There was a piano. A book had been left on a rocking chair, and he picked it up. “Good night, moon,” he said. There was another book about speech language therapy. That was another one of Sarah’s interests. Wandering into another room, he stationed himself in front of a bulletin board. There were clippings from the Phoenix and a schedule from the Brattle; there was information about recycling; there were valentines and snapshots of different babies, or perhaps the same one. There was a jazz calendar with a big black and white picture of Wingy Monone playing the trumpet. Some postcards. Who had written from Corona del Mar? Just visible through a half-opened door was a bed with a red and orange quilt thrown over it.
     He had lost his bearings and could not have said anymore where the front door was.
     “Skip, are you okay?” asked Sarah.
     It occurred to him that if he produced the bus ticket from his pocket, they would intuit that plans had been set into motion, and they would not try to get in his way but might actually help him. He would need help. As a father he was largely untried, but he had some sense of what would be required. Diapers, of course, bottles, infant formula. Did they have a portable crib? There was something called a stim-mobile. And toys—toys help a lot on a bus ride. Did Alice have a wooly bear, some little monkey?
     Good people, Skip would start by saying. Dear souls.
     They guided him into the kitchen. Were they managing him? Good. It was better if they thought he was manageable. Caroline turned on the light in the kitchen, and he stood a moment, his hands in his pockets, looking. In every room there was so much to look at, but here . . . everything abounded! Something bothered him, though. What was it? Great bunches of greenish yellow bananas. Dozens of cookbooks held up by colorful ceramic bookends of people—were they women?—in red sombreros. A popcorn popper. He remembered Caroline loved popcorn. Could he ask for popcorn? Those refrigerator magnets were swan boats. He noticed a bottle of echinacea capsules and another bottle marked Wellness Formula and wondered if they might give him some. Then he realized what was wrong. Sarah had taken so much from him, and yet, except for the Arctic flatware on the counter, he had recognized nothing in any of the rooms he had seen so far. There was so much here, and all of it was strange.
     “May I have some of the birthday cake?”
     They had trouble understanding and made him repeat himself.
     “Careful what you wish for, darlin’!” Caroline said. She sat him down, and brought him a paper plate and a plastic fork and a napkin while Sarah cut him a piece. Skip hesitated, not wanting to seem ravenous. Glancing out the little kitchen window, he saw his father standing at the edge of the front yard. Hap loved cake but Hap must be left outside. Hap was not presentable. Not that there was anything to worry about. The women would not be able to see him. Pleased with the way things were going, Skip lifted the fork to his mouth.
     “It’s a birthday cake but it’s instant death!” said Sarah.
     “No” he said.
     They were telling him the recipe: heavy cream, dark brown sugar, cream cheese, butter, bourbon.
     “It’s instant sex!” said Caroline.
     “No,” he said. It was instant happiness. He felt as if he had been living all winter on seeds and nuts. Why hadn’t he thought to intrude on them before? So much lightness and kindness!
     The face of his father filled the kitchen window. The face was bluish white. Was he making exhaling motions onto the pane? The joke was that he wasn’t able to fog it?
     Skip turned to Caroline. “Divinity School’s—good?”
     “Don’t get me started,” she said.
     But he had got her started, and she was off and running with tales of scandal and gossip, criminal mischief and retribution. Caroline was a wonderful storyteller, and Sarah was all lively and incredulous with her. If only Hap had been able to tell a story! After a while the topic turned to household management, and though he had a hard time following everything they said, it was a pleasure to listen. They spoke freely in front of him, as if he weren’t there or as if they thought well of him. He’d been moving all evening in a kind of spell, but now that spell had been broken and another cast. He hoped that one of the women would touch his shoulder or his arm or his hand. They might but right now they were talking. His father had wanted to embrace him and had not been able.
     Was there more birthday cake? There was. He wondered if they might re-light candles, not the little birthday candles but tall candles. Torches!
     He felt drowsy, though. How late it must be. Soon they would say it was bedtime, though he hoped they would not say it. To be allowed to stay up all night with these women and listen until morning. In the morning Hap would be gone, and he and Alice would make their way—maybe Caroline or Sarah could drive them—to the bus station. Sarah, meanwhile, was opening the refrigerator door (the refrigerator was full to overflowing) and closing it; she was arranging jars and bottles on the counter space (the counter space was full to overflowing); she was putting the teakettle under the Poland Spring tap; she was bumping against a green balloon. This was the life from which—because no one could remember him—he was barred. His father had been memorable, had made himself conspicuous, but not Skip. Hap had owned the world, and when he died he had taken almost all of it with him.
     Sarah used to have some of the world, but now she and Caroline were sharing it.
     Skip looked at whichever woman was talking. He liked them both extremely. When they talked both at once, it was like a screwball comedy.
     His father had squashed his nose and lips against the window pane.
     The women asked him about himself. He did not feel ready yet to tell them what was foremost in his mind, but he spoke a little about some cases he was working on. They listened and nodded and asked questions. Was this what Sarah had meant by socializing with adults?
     “What about you, Sarah?” he asked. “How is work?”
     Sarah began to talk about speech pathology and social services. Skip asked for some milk, and she filled a tall glass to the brim. Another napkin was provided him as well. He had another bite of the cake. It was, after the first excitement, a deeply appeasing cake.
     They had personal questions now.
     “You look really awful,” Caroline said.
     “I had some tests done,” Skip admitted.
     The women waited.
     “And the doctor said I need another test.”
     They looked at him.
     “A screen test! He says I could be like Dirk Bogarde but urbane. And I described Alice to the doctor and he said, ‘Yes, have Alice tested too.’ Now, I don’t want her to be too Hollywood. I want her to do little independent pictures too.”
     Alice cried out, and Caroline got up quickly and went upstairs. Skip, having lost his best audience, stopped talking.
     Sarah just stood there looking at him.
     Caroline could be heard upstairs comforting the baby. Skip stood up and wandered into a room where the woman was talking on the radio. It was a thrilling voice. She sounded so intelligent and interested. He jingled the coins in his pockets. Sarah was standing in the doorway of the room.
     Skip said, “We could be having this in our house. Cake. Milk.”
     “It’s sensational cake,” said Sarah.
     “You’re on to me. That’s fine.”
     “I’m worried about you. You look awful.”
     “I’m not interesting to you. That’s fine. But do you remember that I was really interesting to Alice?”
     “Skip, why did you come?”
     “I came to use the bathroom. Seriously. I saw it. I did see it. But I’m having trouble with the layout.” She was leading him down a hallway. “Do other people have my trouble?” On the walls were framed photographs of people he did not know if he recognized or not. In the bathroom, he splashed cold water on his face two times. There was lotion, and he put some on his hands, which were very dry. Finally he adjusted his contraption in the mirror and fixed his tie. Then he opened the door and stood in the hallway. If he could only stay here in the middle of the house, away from windows. Were there inner chambers? Houses had them sometimes. The women could lead him there. They would not try to analyze him or ask for explanations but just provide for him there. They were sisters of charity, though they sometimes forgot they were.
     He found his way back to the kitchen, where he found Sarah busy at the drain rack. He ought to tell her that winning her back was no part of his plan now, but he wanted to banter with her, and for that the old topics were best.
     “I’d ask you to come back but you’d only leave me again,” he said.
     “I’m very happy,” she told him.
     “If you’re happy, I’m jubilant,” he said.
     “Why?” she asked.
     “Because there’s no suitor to slay. It’s more like two Penelopes here.”
     “You want me to dignify that. Explain about the snuggly, Skip. And then it’s time to go.”
     “It’s like a fake nose and mustache or an arrow through the head. It’s a visual gag.”
     “Say why it’s funny.”
     Skip sat down to the cake again, grateful that she hadn’t taken it away. He said, “You’ve forgotten me now. Because I was . . . because why?”
     “Except for the mental cruelty you were fine,” she said. The teakettle began to whistle, and she lifted it off the burner.
     “I’m the opposite of mental cruelty now.” He was having difficulty controlling his fork.
     “Skip, you’re shivering.”
     “Can you bring Alice down?” he asked. It was crucial that Sarah give him the baby. It must never seem that he’d just snatched her.
     “You’re asking me to wake a sleeping baby and bring her downstairs?”
     “Sarah, when I said I was dying I was telling the truth. I saw my doctor last November. He said I have the thing my father had. What Hap had.”
     “Skip, you were so afraid of that.”
     “Do you remember? I wanted so much not to get it.” He was holding a white balloon in his lap and rubbing it with his thumb and the heel of his hand.
     “It’s as if he’s found a way to haunt you from beyond the grave.”
     “He’s found a way.”
     She shut her eyes.
     “Listen. I have not long. There’s no chance I can see Alice? You asked me why I came. I came for her. I’ve been husbanding my strength. But I cannot climb your staircase unassisted or I would.”
     She opened her eyes and they were full of tears. “Skip, of course,” she said.
     “Your little sleepyhead. She’s all tucked up. You’ll tiptoe in.”
     Sarah wiped her hands with a hand towel. “You want to hold her.”
     He let go of the balloon. “Not in my arms, no. Sarah, look. I brought the pouch so she’d be snug.”
     “Okay,” she said.
     “Okay,” he said.
     She was really going upstairs, and she would shortly give him Alice. She had never known the worst, and now she would—the worst, anyway, is what she would call it. Skip looked at the coffee maker, the microwave, the photographs of Alice on the refrigerator, and then at the measuring scoop, the little birthday candles in the saucer on the counter. Balloons tapped the ceiling. A red crepe paper streamer near a heat vent moved a little. Noticing the crumbs on his snuggly, Skip realized that he should have told them it was just a bib.
     He wished, though he loved his father, that his face would vanish from the window.
     Down came Caroline. “Skip, I’m so sorry,” she said. “We had no idea.”
     She talked to him about the diagnosis, the prognosis, the treatments, insurance. He kept shaking his head in answer. Finally, she asked him if he wanted more cake. Yes to the cake! What else, she wondered, could she offer him? Did he need a parking permit? Because they had a parking permit for him. Of course they assumed he had driven over because who would walk so many miles at night in the falling snow? No to the parking permit.
     Down came Alice now in Sarah’s arms. His forearms tingled. He must move quickly, braving insult and disgrace. It confused him a little to see that she was still so small, but now he was holding her. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “America would certainly take Alice to its heart.” So much gratitude so suddenly—he was afraid for a moment it might kill him, but they did not notice his exaltation, and he guessed he must just look very human to them. “Alice,” he whispered. Alice. The women were red or any color, but Alice was the warmest and most precious gold. He sat down, holding her in his lap. The women watched him. His heart was not beating quite as fast now; he felt shy and proud and would like to have covered her with kisses but remembered she didn’t like to be fussed over. “Hey!” he said, bending over her. “Here we go,” he said. He could smell cake and milk on her breath. She’d had a “startle response” that he liked to elicit last summer, but it was clear she’d outgrown it because she just looked at him pensively. “Okay,” he said, and lifted her high. Then he lowered her down to the gentlest of crash landings in his lap. He reported his findings: “She flies through the air with the greatest of ease!” Caroline beamed ardently at him. Sarah smiled but looked weary.
     His father at the window mouthed the word kanga.
     Alice liked him to sing. “You’re such a little baby girl I don’t know why I bother. But I have to, see, because I am—your mother and your father!”
     Alice laughed. Oh, she was adorable. He must show Hap. Rising up, he flew the girl toward the window. Hap was flushed and all swelled up with pride.
     But she could see him. She was trying to struggle free of Skip.
     “Get away!” Skip shouted. “Get away! Get away!”
     Hap wouldn’t budge.
     He had ought to have met her in a windowless chamber. How could he have been so stupid?
     Hap raised his hand and waggled his fingers at her.
     It was a wild distress. A girl’s compassion has its limits, and then it turns to terror. Skip couldn’t contain the cries. It was useless to try to console her or even to quiet her because she was not governable. Whispering that he was sorry, he planted a kiss on her forehead and then he gave her back. He noticed she calmed down quickly in Sarah’s arms. That was strange.
     “I’m sorry,” he said. “I made a mistake.”
     He opened the front door and bounded across the little front yard to the street. “Skip, Skip,” they probably called, but he would never come back. Not now. And he’d never go back to his empty house. He ran as fast as he could, the snuggly flapping against his chest. A wind was abroad and it sped him. Houses flew by. After a long time he slowed to a rapid walk. Hap overtook him then and fell into step beside him.
     “Show me the little creature again!” Hap said.
     “I don’t have her.”
     “Was it me that made her cry?” His father chuckled. “You used to love it when I made my faces at you.”
     “I never meant her to see you.”
     “Why not?”
     “Because—”
     “Hap and Skip,” his father said. There was nothing but houses everywhere, on every side, dark and stretching out forever.
     Skip kept turning it over in his mind. “It was strange the way she calmed down. As if she saw. As if she were renouncing the relation. Do you see what I mean? As if we didn’t have much to do with her.”
     “We don’t now!” said Hap.
     They walked in silence. Skip was glad for the companionship. After a while, he unhooked the folly on his chest and dropped it into an empty recycling bin that had been left on the sidewalk. The bus tickets he put in someone’s garbage can. What he wanted now was something public, something grand—a great square with statues and a fountain. There he would sit down. There was a playground just ahead. The seesaw and jungle gym looked ghostly, and in a minute he saw why. Look, look, he said. Snow also dusted the windshields of parked cars.
     “Oh Hap! It’s sticking!”
     There was an old bench on the edge of the playground and Skip sat down on it.
     Skip said, “It’s like it used to be. Didn’t we love the snow? We covered ourselves in it!”
     Soon he could see snow on his knees and in his lap and on his chest and all along his arms. It would not take long. “We shall not be judged by the grandeur of our victory but by the depth of our sacrifice,” Skip said. He hoped his father would not leave him again.
     “It’s a marvelous night!” said Hap.

NICK HALPERN lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has had poetry and fiction published in The American Peotry Review, American Short Fiction, Chelsea, Epoch, Shenandoah, and Southwest Review, and his essays on poetry have appeared in The Centennial Review and Contemporary Literature. Here is what he had to say about the generation of “The Kanga King”:

“Some bad dreams stay with you for days afterwards, and I was thinking about what those dreams have in common. A sense of dread because everything is turning out badly. A feeling of embarrassment because all the important people are present. When these dreams bring bad news it sometimes feels as if there is no way to question the dream or to answer it. News has been delivered, and all you can do is write it down.”

“The Kanga King” appears in the Winter 2000 issue.

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