Looking around the kitchen, I expect to see Noah on the floor drinking water or running around like Wolverine, but I don’t see him. “Where’s Noah?”
“In bed.” Madison hugs Callan to her side. “How about Daddy gets you ready for bed? I’m gonna go take a hot bath.”
Callan shrugs again, as though this might just be the only action he’s good at. And after tonight, I’m kinda convinced it might be.
But let’s backtrack here a second. She wants me to get him ready for bed. I don’t care either way. I’ll do it since I’m, you know, his father and I should be doing this kind of thing, but I can’t help but wonder if this is a trick to ignore me. I know it is for sure when she refuses to make eye contact with me as she slips into the other room and upstairs, leaving me alone in the kitchen with Callan.
He stares at me but this time doesn’t shrug. I think we’re making progress. “Is she mad at you?”
He’s perceptive, isn’t he?
I roll my eyes following him up the stairs. “How’d you guess?”
“She made you take me to soccer and now you’re here alone with me.”
He acts like we’ve never spent any time together. And I know that’s not entirely true. At least I don’t think it is.
“Let’s go get you ready for bed. You have school in the morning.”
I have absolutely no clue what my son does before he gets ready for bed. I did when he was younger, but the last two years, I guess you could say I haven’t been around much. Needless to say, we stare at one another in the hallway.
I know the usual, the things most kids and adults do like brush your teeth, but does he shower before bed or in the mornings?
This is Callan we’re talking about. The kid might take two showers a day knowing him. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit. I remember when he was a baby, bath time was his favorite and if I ever needed to calm him down, I’d sit him in the tub for a little while.
“What do you do before bed?” I finally have to ask, feeling sweat drip down my back. “Do you have a routine?”
He gives me this look that says, “I can’t believe I have to explain this to my father.” “I wouldn’t exactly call it a routine.” And then he scratches the back of his head and nods to his bathroom. “But I brush my teeth and go to bed.”
Moving past me, he disappears into the bathroom separating his and Noah’s rooms and brushes his teeth. I take that moment to sneak into Noah’s room and kiss him goodnight. By the way, he sleeps in his mask. It’s a little weird kissing Batman goodnight, but that kid has so much damn personality it’s unbelievable. He’s been that way from day one, always crazy.
“Night, Wolverine,” I whisper, kissing Noah’s forehead and pushing his hair away from his mask. He doesn’t stir. The world could end in a ground-shaking earthquake, and there’s no way in hell Noah would wake up. Callan, on the other hand, if you even sigh in his room, he’s wide awake.
I meet Callan back in his room where he pulls a pair of pajamas out of his dresser drawer.
I bury my hands in my pockets, unsure what to do next as he gets dressed, but go with, “Okay, so should I read you a story?”
“No. But I do have a question.”
I sit down on the edge of his bed. “Okay.”
Do you sense the apprehension in the “okay?” You should because what comes next makes me feel stupid and wonder if I’m just that dumb, or my kid is a child genius and I’m not really his father. It’s not the first time I’ve thought this. I’ve often wondered if Madison slept with a science geek who looked like me and just told me I was the father.
Sitting with his hands in his lap, he stares at me with what can only be described as pure confusion. Or maybe it’s me. “What went on at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl? Were they different?”
Do you see that guy sitting on the bed? The one blinking rapidly like his contact lens fell out? Well, one, he’s not wearing contact lenses and two, he has no idea what Chernobyl is. I know what happened at Three Mile Island. “Um, uh, so Three Mile Island was a nuclear power plant that had a cooling malfunction and it caused part of the core to melt the reactor and destroy it. There was a little radioactive gas released, but it didn’t kill anyone.”
He nods like he knows this already and I’m not at all surprised he does. “And Chernobyl is whatcould have happened then?”
My eyes widen. “Yes?”
Callan grins just a little. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
I sigh and pull back his blankets so he can get under the comforter. “No. I don’t.”
“Chernobyl is in Ukraine. Can we go there? I read that it’s like a tourist town now. Well, part of it anyway.”
“Really?” There’s no way I wanted to go to Ukraine, but I wasn’t telling Callan. He seems, I don’t know, almost excited to be talking to me about this, so I don’t want to let him down. I was never one to promise what I couldn’t deliver. My dad pulled that shit when I was a kid so when I became old enough to know better, I swore I’d never promise my boys anything I couldn’t give them. Now I see exactly why parents did it.