Make Believe

Middletown, New Jersey

November 2000

Mike opens the door to find Amy sitting on Caleb’s bed, combing through his hair with her fingers. Light is beginning to seep in through the blinds, but it is still very early.

Amy gives him a look that says What? He realizes he has a smile on his face; it’s a small, thin one, but it’s all wrong and he knows it.

Mike looks from her to the window to the ceiling. He reaches a finger out and touches one of the fish tanks. It’s actually there. That’s good … he thinks.

“Remember the song we made up together?”

Who said that? It was definitely his voice. Given how Amy and Caleb are looking at him, he is pretty sure it came out of his mouth.

Caleb sits up. “Yeah.”

He feels a tiny bump on the glass; Beep Bop is attacking his finger. Or is it Boop Boop? I should ask Caleb which one it is. But that’s not what comes out.

“What did Oscar tell you?” his voice says. “Why does he live in a trash can?”

“Mike, it’s five in the morning,” Amy snaps. Her voice cuts through the fog like a searchlight, but it’s gone just as quickly. No, I’m over here, he thinks.

“It’s okay, Mom. I’m up now. He lives there because …” Caleb chews his lip.

“Oscar told you why, didn’t he?” Mike’s voice again. Something is surfacing. Oscar is the key. Or he’s the door. Or maybe he’s the dead bolt. But he knows something.

Caleb nods. The look Amy flashes at Mike conveys both anger and curiosity. He knows it well. Caleb does a half sob that pulls her attention away.

“Honey, they’re not real,” she says. “They’re just make-believe.”

“Oscar says make-believe is real. And believing is making-real. I don’t like him.”

Amy tries another “honey,” but Caleb keeps going—it was him who said that!—as if a seal has been broken.

“… and they say our house isn’t real. It’s the Dream House. Beep Bop and Boop Boop say—”

“Your fish tell you things, too?” Amy says.

Quiet, dammit! This is important! He didn’t say that out loud. Surely he didn’t. Amy would have put his head through a fish tank if he had. Go on, Caleb. 

“—they say Dad wants to hurt them, that he will be mad. That he is going to kill them!”

Caleb’s voice rising in pitch. Amy looks at Mike. “I’m going to call … Can you stay with him, please?” The question floats on an undercurrent of Can you manage this much at least?

She kisses Caleb’s forehead and goes downstairs.

Mike looks at the bed, picking his spot, like a drunk guy concentrating too hard on doing something simple. He sits down. A small bump on his arm. Caleb is leaning into him. He feels a surge of something different. He knows how to be a dad. He knows how to do it.

“I had a make-believe friend once, too,” Mike says. That he had meant to say. Good. Fight the drift.

“Oscar is not my friend,” Caleb says. “I don’t like him or Grover or any of them.”

Caleb’s fear is an anchor. Mike clings to it, but the current is strong. A memory leaks in: a late afternoon in strange woods, a house …

“We talked about things,” he says, “and we played together.”

“What happened to him?”

A door slams. The lights go out. Not this door, not these lights. Other ones.

“One day, I told him to go away,” Mike says. He sees this room and another one. He sees them both. He’s in them both.

“Make them all go away,” says a voice Mike knows. “Make them all go away, Dad.” So familiar, that voice. Have to do something now. Something … else. Gotta go down first. Then I can get back up. Gotta go down first, though.

###

On the way down the stairs, Mike hears voices.

One of them is saying: “… message is for Dr. Taupin, calling about Caleb Smith …”

Another one is saying: “… campaign continues amidst accusations of potential impropriety.”

Another one says: “… in uncharted waters here …”

He runs into a wall. That’s not supposed to be here. More stairs. Good. Down first.

There’s a thing. It’s a piano. But it’s not an old yellow one that stands up; it’s a huge black thing glistening like an orca’s back. It’s got a big German name on it. There’s another thing that wants his mouth. It’s a microphone. It’s all for him, waiting for him. Down first.

“Okay,” Mike says.

Mike is in the studio, but the studio is not in the basement. Everything is humming with electricity, throbbing with anticipation. This moment has import and immediacy. His fingers are on the keys. There is a hand on his shoulder.

“Finally,” the voice behind him says. Mike turns and looks up.

Connor smiles. “Ready to play?”