Are the Animals Real?

Middletown, New Jersey

May 2000

Beep Bop has boxing gloves on. Boop Boop has a giant wooden hammer. They are about to fight again, but now they stop. Their eyes are big. There is a squishy sound, and now they know they are in quicksand. They start sinking. Both tigers look straight out of the TV. They sink until only their heads are above the quicksand. Then their eyeballs pop out and stay above quicksand while their heads sink. The eyeballs blink twice—like plink, plink—then there’s a boing and a squish, and the eyeballs are gone under the quicksand, too.

Dad laughs. The show is over, and it’s a commercial.

“Can we watch Sesame Street?” Caleb asks.

“I don’t think it’s on now,” Dad says, but Caleb knows it is. It’s Sunday morning—Sesame Street is always on on Sunday morning.

“Dad!” Caleb says.

“Shh … don’t wake up Mom. She needs lots of sleep right now.”

Caleb slumps back on the couch.

“Mommy and I think we should take a break from Sesame Street for a little while,” Dad says. “Take a break for a little while” means something is wrong.

“Why? What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing! Sesame Street is the best, and I know you love it. But Mrs. Leibniz said you might be watching it too much.”

Caleb drops his head. Uh-oh.

“It’s okay, son. You’re not in trouble. Look at me. You’re not in trouble, okay? I promise.”

“Okay,” Caleb says. Dad is still looking at him. He’s supposed to do something, but he doesn’t know what, so he just waits.

“Can you tell me some of the stories you made up and told the other kids, about the animals and all?”

Caleb’s stomach feels bad, and he doesn’t want to cry.

Dad gets up from the couch and walks into the yellow piano room and sits on the bench. “C’mere.”

Caleb sits next to him and looks at all the white and black keys. He’s not supposed to play with the piano when Mom is sleeping.

“I used to make stuff up all the time when I was your age,” Dad says.

Caleb looks up at him.

“Maybe not stories about Sesame Street animals, like you, but songs—lots of songs. You don’t know this, but …” He looks around the room, puts his head close, like he’s got a big secret, and whispers, “… dude, I was even in a band!”

“Like a music band?” Caleb says, and Dad laughs.

“Yes! I had a friend named Sam, and he was the drummer.” He stops for a minute and looks at the piano keys. There is a deep thump as he puts his foot on the pedals near the floor.

“What were you?” Caleb says.

“I was everything!” Dad says.

He puts his hands on the keys, presses on them softly. “See, press one and you get a note. That one’s A. Press it, but not too hard. Good: A! Now, here’s a secret about pianos. Don’t tell anybody, okay?”

Caleb nods.

“See the shape of the A key? All the other As are the same shape. Now, if we could just find another—”

Caleb looks hard. He finds one and presses it.

“There it is! That’s another A!”

Caleb wants to find all the As. He does, and then he asks what another one is (it’s a C) and that one (it’s a D) and the black ones (those are something called sharps and flats, but they aren’t sharp and only kind of flat).

Dad’s hands change position. “Okay, next secret. If you press more than one at the same time, you get a chord—but it has to be the right ones. This one, this one, and this one together”—he presses them—“that’s a C chord. Try.”

Caleb tries, but he can’t remember. His dad moves his fingers around a bit, then gives him a nod, and he pushes down.

“C chord!” Dad says. “And now, all you have to do is start putting all those things one after the other, and you get a song!”

“That’s how you make a song?” Caleb says.

“Pretty much. But some chords sound better next to other chords, and there’s different—”

“Make a song, Dad!”

“Okay, I’ll try,” Dad says. “But it has been a while. …”

Caleb watches his fingers move around. It’s a song Caleb doesn’t know, but it has a fun sound. Dad sings:

Why does Oscar live in a trash can?
Why does Oscar live in a trash can?

Caleb smiles. Dad looks at him, scrunches up his eyebrows, and tilts his head.

And why does Grover fly on a bicycle?
And why does Grover fly on a bicycle?

Caleb laughs. Dad sings another part, but now Caleb hears more sounds, like other people singing along. It’s coming from down the hall, where the door to the basement is. When the song is over, Dad looks at him and smiles.

“See? I used to make stuff up, too. I still can, I guess!”

“Oscar hates his trash can,” Caleb says. “He doesn’t even want to live there.”

Dad doesn’t say anything for a while, like he is waiting for Caleb to say more, but Caleb doesn’t want to.

Dad puts his arm around him. “What’s up with you and Sesame Street? Why do you tell the kids at school scary stories about them?”

“I didn’t make up the stories! Oscar … Oscar tells me them. He tells me scary things.”

Caleb looks down.

“It’s okay, bud. You’re not in trouble.”

Caleb sniffs.

“Sometimes things that are supposed to be funny are scary. When I was your age, you know what I thought was scary?”

Caleb looks up at him.

“Jawas!” Dad pulls his hood over his head and reaches for Caleb’s nose. He’s trying to make him laugh, but Caleb doesn’t care about Jawas.

“No!” he says. “Not TV Oscar. Basement Oscar. Basement Oscar is scary!”

“Caleb. Caleb. It’s okay. It’s not real. It’s make-believe, like we talked about. Just like Beep Bop and Boop Boop. It’s not real.”

Dad hugs him, and he stops crying.

“I don’t want to play in the basement anymore,” Caleb says.

“You don’t have to. We’ll bring the ball pit and stuff up here or to the backyard. Would that be better?”

Caleb nods, but he knows Dad won’t stop going in the basement. And he’s scared, because he doesn’t want something bad to happen to him. He’s scared because he knows he has to keep going to the basement, too.

It’s quiet now, and Caleb feels like somebody’s watching them. He looks behind him but sees only the reflection in the mirror on the wall of himself and Dad and the piano.