The Moment

                             The Moment
                                                                               Marty Livingston

         Sometimes a relationship is strained beyond the breaking point.  Sometimes, something occurs in a moment, and there is no going back.  Nate and his father Jack had such a moment.  After that, they never again really talked with any earnest.
Nate’s Tale.
         At sixteen Nate was a wiry athletic youngster who walked with what he hoped was a sense of assurance.  He had tried over and over to get Jack to act like a dad, but always ended up frustrated.  There was the time when he was much younger, that Jack took him to see the toy factory he owned.  Nate was wide eyed when he entered the factory.  The factory was big.  It was awesome.  There was a machine that made dart guns.  That was his favorite.
         “Wow,” he told Morris, a worker who took a liking to him.  “Wow.  The machine takes the metal sheets and wham they become a gun.  That is some kind of wonderful.  And they shoot real darts.  Look at the tip.  It has a thing on it so it will stick to what you aim at.  You can tell how good your aim is. Yikes! That’s great.”
         “Yeah,” Morris replied enjoying Nate’s enthusiasm.  “Here let’s take this one and see how well you can aim it.” 
         Nate pushed a dart into the gun.  It felt sleek in his hand.  He had to strain a bit to force the dart into the barrel.  He wasn’t sure that he could do it.  And then, it clicked.  “Wowee,” Nate giggled.  “Now it is loaded and ready to shoot.  Who should I shoot?  I know, I will wait for Daddy to come in and shoot him right in the chest.  Bam!  That would be great.”
         “I’m sorry Nate,” Morris said a bit shaken.  “We better put the gun away before your dad comes in.”
         “I’ll just shoot the wall over there, okay?” 
          “Sure, and then we will put the gun away,” Morris bargained.
         Nate took aim, resting the barrel of the gun on a box.  “I will imagine that the wall is Daddy.  Okay? “ 
         “Sure,” Morris responded wanting to get this over with without jeopardizing his job.
         “Bang, I got you.  Right in the chest.  That’s neat.”
         Jack came in as Morris put the gun in the bin where guns go.  Jack was very tall with big muscled arms.  Nate looked at his chest.  “Daddy, can I have a gun.  The guns are neat.  They shoot darts.  You have lots of them.  Can I take one home with some darts? “
         “We’ll see, “ Jack said back casually.  Nate hated those words.  They made his stomach tight like a knot.  They almost always meant “not now, not ever.”  Nate imagined having the gun and shooting.  “Pow, right in the kisser.”  “When will we see?”  “Will we see when it is time to go home?” 
         “We’ll see” usually meant no.  More than that, “We’ll see” felt like words from an adult, a grown up.  “Grown ups like Daddy don’t know anything about how much I want the gun.  Fuck him!” Nate thought to himself.  He felt pumped up with the sound of that.  He wasn’t supposed to say things like that, but no one could stop him from imagining.
         Jack went on talking to him.  Showing off his factory the way he showed off his muscles.  Nate didn’t hear much.  He was too busy imagining shooting his gun.  “Bam. I got you again.”
         By the time Nate was fourteen he had pretty much given up hope of being listened to, or asking for anything.  “We’ll see” still struck a painful note every time he heard it, but he didn’t show it much.  His lip would quiver and a sensitive father would have seen, but Nate hid that kind of thing from the world as well as he could and certainly from his father. 
         One night Nate came home from a basketball practice.  He came in the back door as usual.  It opened onto a tiny hallway and then through another door into the kitchen.  Nate loved the kitchen.  It was cozy and full of great snacks.  The fridge was always loaded with ice cream and pies.  There was a big closet that you could walk into full of things like pretzels and cookies.  Milk and cookies was his favorite snack.
This particular night he passed up the milk and cookies.  He was feeling great after practice, pumped up and thrilled with how hot he was on the court.  He was in the big closet and he could hear Jack and the rest of the family in the living room.  They were listening to classical music.  They all loved classical music.  Nate certainly did not.  It was all part of feeling left out.  He really didn’t fit in this family. 
         Nate wished he had a dad who was interested in basketball.  Who would hear him come in and call out a warm hello?  He wished he had a dad who would be interested in hearing how well basketball practice went.  He didn’t go into the living room.  He hated the living room.  It was stiff with plastic covers on the sofa and chairs.  It wasn’t at all a place where a guy could plunk down and hang out. 
         It was then that he noticed the scotch, a half full bottle of scotch.  No one would notice if he took one sip. It felt good. It warmed his whole body.  “Basketball is much more important than classical music,” he muttered under his breath. He took another slug of the scotch.  “If he knew I was drinking his scotch he would have a fit,” he thought.  He laughed out loud and finished most of the bottle.
         He set off for bed.  He was totally tipsy, but made his way silently, so he thought, through the formal dining room.  He hated that room almost as much as the living room.  When Jack was at work, Nate and his mom snacked at the kitchen table.  That was great.  When Jack was home the family ate in the dining room at a big table.  The grown ups talked and children had to behave.  It was no fun.
Then he had to pass by the living room where Jack and the others were listening to music.  He didn’t have to go through it, just pass by.  He planned out in his head how he would say a polite good night and go up to bed.  No one would notice.  No one cared anyway.
         He planned to slip by unnoticed.  As he went by and was about to say his polite good night the whole thing seemed absurd.  The only thought he had was a triumphant voice inside his head saying, “You can’t hurt me anymore.  I’m drunk.  You can’t hurt me.”  It struck him as so funny.  He resisted, for the moment, saying it out loud, but he couldn’t resist exploding into laughter.  It was so funny.  He laughed and went up the stairs to his bedroom.
         It was funny to Nate.  It was not funny to Jack.  Nate could hear him angrily stomping up the stairs behind him.  When Nate got to the top of the stairs, he turned.  He turned facing his father square in the eyes and laughed loudly.  It was a riot. 
         “You have been drinking my scotch.  You aren’t allowed to do that,” Jack said with more that his usual venom.  You can’t do that. You can’t laugh at me.”  Whack, Nate knew that he was being hit.  He knew that Jack expected him to be scared.  He knew that Jack thought it would hurt him.  It didn’t.  Nate laughed.  “You can’t hurt me.  I’m drunk as a skunk and feeling no pain.”  Strangely, nothing was said the next morning.
         That was at fourteen.  At sixteen Nate was out of the house a lot.  He loved sports and was always practicing.  He also had a girlfriend.  So he didn’t see Jack to often.  When they did, he was polite and kept some distance.  He did this, in part because his mother pleaded with him to get along with Jack and in some small measure because deep down he tried to nurture a hope that somehow his father would understand and love him.  There always seemed to be some hope, however tiny, until that moment.
         Nate and his mother were finishing lunch at the butcher-block table in the kitchen when Jack came in.  Nate kept talking to his mother as Jack waited to be recognized.  Nate was sitting on a high stool next to the kitchen window and when Jack tried to talk he just looked out the window till Jack stopped.  Then Nate went back to what he was saying to his mother.
Nate could see Jack turning red.  His breathing became shorter and forced.  He looked right at Nate and in a loud, but still controlled, voice, insisted, “Look at me when I am talking to you!  You are my son, living under my roof.  You are going to respect me and look at me when I talk to you.”  Nate again gazed out the window.  His breathing started to speed up.  He tried to take some deep breaths like he might when he was nervous before a foul shot.  He wanted to stay cool.  He also had to still a laugh building inside.
         “Look at me!” Jack said again.  This time with some desperation as his tone escalated.  Nate stayed contained.  He turned to look Jack in the eye with an icy cool stare. 
         “Why?  Why don’t you ever listen to me?  Why don’t you obey me?  Why do I have to demand your attention?  I want you to tell me why on earth you act like you have no respect for me?  I want you to tell me now.  Right now!”
         Nate could feel an imaginary dart in his hand.  He looked in Jack’s face as he imagined pushing the dart into the gun.  It clicked in place.  He could feel himself taking aim.  “Right between the eyes,” he thought. 
         “Now.  Tell me now!” Jack bellowed.
         Zap!  Nate pulled the trigger.  “Because you are stupid. No one in this family respects you.  Mom talks down to you all the time.  Because you are stupid.  One word stupid!”
         Bam!  The dart hit its target.  Whack! Jack swatted Nate with a backhand chop to his jaw that knocked him right off his stool. It sent him flying into the window. The window shattered as Nate hit it.  When Nate told the story later, and he told it many times, he said that he was “propelled right through the window onto the grassy yard right below. “
         “A few cuts and bruises, but I’m okay,” Nate thought.  He couldn’t wait to get cleaned up and go tell his girlfriend.  Jack left the window unrepaired for several weeks.  Nate sensed that Jack thought this would “keep him in line,” but when Nate spoke of it, his chest swelled with pride.  He had won.  Even without the fortification of scotch, Nate felt no pain.


Jack’s Tale.
         More than anything, Jack wanted his family to respect him.  He was proud of his deep understanding of music and also of his business success.  He often thought to himself, “God knows I’m a good provider and I try so hard to be a good father.  No one gets me.”
His daughter Maggie was the only exception.  She understood him and his music.  She loved to sit in the living room with him and listen to classical recordings and he loved to hear her play the piano.  He would sit leaning forward in his chair entranced as she played.  It made him feel whole and appreciated.  The living room was Jack’s favorite place in the world.  The acoustics were great and he always got to choose the music.  It was his domain.
         His wife went through the motions of sharing the music, but really loved literature.  Jack could never share her love of words.  He had no words in his head, only music, and couldn’t begin to put that into words.  It just played endlessly in his head, sometimes gently organizing, sometimes loud and disturbing.  When it was disturbing his pulse raced and his breathing became shallow and rapid.  When the music was peaceful, Jack felt together.  He breathed more deeply and took in a beautiful world.  Music in his head was the one constant he could rely on.
Nate didn’t even go through the motions.  From when he was a little boy, Nate wouldn’t sit still and appreciate the music. He didn’t even enjoy the living room. “Yes Daddy, the music is pretty, but what does it mean?  It isn’t any fun.  You can’t run and catch it.  You can’t wrestle with it.  It just isn’t any fun.  I like to move, not to sit and listen.  Come play ball with me!  Let’s have a catch.”
Jack tried to explain, but words didn’t come easily to him.  He just wanted Nate to sit still long enough to appreciate what he knew.  “Nate, just give it a chance.  You have to sit longer.  Stop fidgeting and listen.  Don’t you hear the beauty?” 
“No Daddy, I don’t.  Can we go to the park now?”
“We’ll see.  Maybe later.” Jack said trying to show some willingness.  Nate never understood, never appreciated. 
Jack often thought to himself, “I always try to get Nate to act like a son.  It never goes anywhere.  I even bought him a violin when he was a little boy.”
There was the time that Jack took his son to see his factory.  “I am so happy that you are coming with me to work today.  I want you to see the wonderful toy factory that I own.  I have men working for me to produce toys that sell.  I make money in the factory so that you can have all the good things.”
“A toy factory?  Great.  Will you play with me?”
“We’ll see.  I have to make sure that the factory is running smoothly.  I am in charge there and responsible.  It’s important work.”
“What kind of toys do you make?  Can I have one?  Can we play?”  Nate could feel his heart beating.  “Daddy is taking me to have fun. “ he thought to himself.  He isn’t going to just listen to music all day.  This is great.”
Jack could feel Nate’s excitement.  “Finally, this kid is going to appreciate something about me.  He is going to see what an important man his daddy is.”
When they got there Jack introduced Nate to Morris, his foreman, and set off to look at the books and see how well his factory was doing.  He came back after a while, eager to see how impressed Nate was with the place. 
“Do you like the factory?”
“Can I have a gun Daddy? Can I?”
“We’ll see later Nate, but don’t you think the factory is awesome?”
“It’s neat.  Can you shoot the guns?  Can you hit the wall?  I can.  Come watch Daddy.  I can aim and shoot just like a bad guy.”
“Not right now Nate.  I want you to see the other machines and all the people that work for me.”
“Okay Daddy, but can I have a gun?”
“We’ll see later Nate,” Jack said firmly.  “All this kid wants is the toys,” he thought to himself.  He is a selfish brat.  He has no sense of appreciating the process of making the guns.  He just wants one.  He wants to shoot, to play, and not at all to learn.  I really tried here.  I always try.  He is impossible. Just an annoying kid.”  The percussion section in his head got louder and angrier.
Then there was the time that Maggie was playing a slow emotional symphony and he and his wife were listening.  The music reverberated in Jack’s head with overtones of wonder and warmth.  In his head a full symphony orchestra was accompanying his daughter.  He was in his element now.  He held his wife’s hand and felt at one with her.  They both loved Maggie and the way she played. 
Then the peace was shattered by a mocking laugh.  At first Jack didn’t know where it was coming from.  He just knew that it broke the wonderful mood.  He no longer had the wonderful overtones in his head.  He dropped his wife’s hand.  The music in his head changed from a melodic full orchestra to a mocking staccato wind section deriding him.
         He knew that wind section well.  He first heard it as a young boy.  An aunt had given him a toy violin.  He loved that violin and dreamed of playing in an orchestra some day.  He stroked its strings with his little bow and in his head he heard the sound of beautiful dreams.  He begged his father to buy him a real violin and take him for lessons.  One day he played his toy violin for his parents hoping they could hear his dreams.
         “Look at the kid,” his father mocked.  “He thinks he’s a little Yasha Heifetz.”  His mother laughed long and hard as his father imitated the way Jack held the toy and played.  “He thinks he is making music.  The kid is stupid.  He thinks he should have lessons.  What a stupid kid.”
  “Here Jack, give me the toy.  You won’t have time for lessons and foolishness.  We’ll see about lessons when you are old enough.  You are going to learn business first.  None of this silly music for you.  You are going to be a businessman like your father.”  He grabbed the violin out of Jack’s hands and twisted the strings until they broke with a horrible sound.  Jack’s mother continued to laugh.  The music in Jack’s head changed from a beautiful soft orchestra to the derisive screeching staccato of an out of tune and out of control wind section.  Along with the mocking wind instruments was a drum banging out, “ boom, bam, bang, stupid, stupid, stupid!”
         With that staccato screeching chasing him, he bounded up the stairs after Nate.  “How dare you drink my scotch.  You unappreciative kid.  I will show you.  You can’t laugh at me. “  He grabbed Nate with one hand and slapped him across the face with the other. He threw him down on the floor and hit him again when he started to get up and mumbled about being drunk and feeling no pain.  He finally stopped Nate’s laughter, but it was hours before he could quiet the mocking wind instruments. 
         The next morning he wanted to talk, but there were no words in his head, only the sound of a plaintive string section strangely out of tune quickly drowned out by the percussion section.
         A few years later, when Nate was about sixteen, Jack suffered some heavy business losses.  He came home from a meeting with his accountant with his head down.  In his head he could hear a the weighty sounds of a dirge.  “You will have to sell the factory,” his accountant had told him.  The union has too much power at this point.  You can’t afford to pay your workers what they are demanding and still stay in business.”  This time, along with the funereal music there were two words reverberating over and over, “bankruptcy” and “failure.”
         Jack walked in the front door somehow fantasying that his wife and daughter would be waiting for him with some soothing music.  It felt good to enter the room even if it was empty.  He could hear Nate and his mother talking in the kitchen.
         The dirge lightened a bit as he walked through the dining room anticipating his wife’s understanding and support.  He recalled the many satisfying times they spent together sitting at that table. 
         Jack entered the kitchen.  He never liked that room.  It was full of words, not music.  It was cluttered and crowded.  Still, he hoped that his wife would understand how awful this was for him, hoped that she would say something to support his sense of confidence that he was capable enough to rebuild.
         He began talking and Nate’s deliberate ignoring of him produced the staccato wind sounds.  He pleaded for attention.  What he meant to say was, “For once, be my son and my wife.  Listen to me.  I need you. I am going down.  Help me.” 
         The best he could manage was,  “Look at me when I am talking to you. Why don’t you respect me?  Why don’t you ever obey me?”  The funeral dirge was gone at this point.  What Jack heard now was the staccato wind instruments screeching and a building sound of the whole percussion section working into a full roar.  It built and it built.
         “Why don’t you respect me?” Jack pleaded above the roaring drums. 
         “Because you are stupid!  Stupid. Stupid. “
“Boom, bam, bang,” Jack heard the drums blaring.  Then all sound stopped.  There was only silence, an empty silence.  Then there was the horrible twang of violin strings strained beyond their tolerance and snapping. 
           Finally, there was the loud crashing of an entire section of cymbals.  One loud crash all at once.
         Whack.  Jack saw someone let loose one backhanded chop with all his might.  He saw Nate fly off his perch next to his mother and crash into the window next to him.  He heard the shattering of the window and then a triumphant John Phillip Susa march.
Epilogue.
The shattered window, in a bizarre way, was a trophy for both Nate and Jack.  They both held the shattered window, and that moment, in their minds, as a crystallization of what had come between them forever.  They both claimed victory.  Neither experienced any sense of the loss of each other.