Robby was staring at Nintendo Power Monthly while slipping on a pair of Puma socks and then he was tying his Nikes. The TV was turned to the WB channel and as I stood in the doorway I watched a raunchy cartoon zap into one of the many commercials pitched toward the kids—one in a series of ads that I hated. A scruffy, gorgeous youth, hands on his skinny-boy hips, stared defiantly into the camera and made the following statements in a blank voice, subtitled beneath him in a blood red scroll: “Why haven’t you become a millionaire yet?” followed by “There is not more to life than money” followed by “You do need to own an island” followed by “You should never sleep because there are no second chances” followed by “It is important to be slick and evocative” followed by “Come with us and make a bundle” followed by “If you aren’t rich you deserve to be humiliated.” And then the commercial ended. That was it. I’d seen this ad numerous times and had yet to figure out what it meant or even what product it was trying to sell.
Robby’s shoulders were slumped and the Hilfiger sweater tied around his waist fell to the floor as he stood up and stretched. There was a young adult book on his pillow called What Once Had Been Earth. My son was eleven and had a Prada wallet and a Stussy camouflage eye patch and a Lacoste sweatband clung to his wrist and he had wanted to start an astronomy club but due to lack of interest among his peers it never materialized and his favorite songs had the word flying in the title, and all of this saddened me. He sprayed Hugo Boss cologne on the back of his hand and didn’t smell it. He still hadn’t noticed that I was standing in the doorway.
“So, Mom wouldn’t let you go as the rap star, huh?” I said.
He whirled around and gasped. And then he regained his composure.
“No,” he said sullenly. He looked shameful, handcuffed.
Something in me broke. I swallowed another mouthful of wine and walked into the room.
“Well, you need platinum blond hair and a wife to beat, and since you don’t have either . . .” I had no idea what my point was; all I wanted to do was make him feel better, but every time I tried, it just seemed to add to his general confusion.
“Yeah, but Sarah’s going as Posh Spice,” he grumbled as I turned down the volume on the television.
“Well, your mom has a problem with the whole rap thing . . .” I drifted off, then caught myself. “So what are you gonna go as?”
“Um, nothing. Nothing, I guess.” A pause. “Maybe an astronaut.”
“Just an astronaut?” I asked. “Can’t you think up something a little more . . . entertaining? Mom said that’s what you were last year.”
He said nothing.
I just shuffled amiably around the vast room and pretended to be interested in a variety of things.
“Is there something wrong?” I heard him ask worriedly. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, no, no, Robby,” I said. “Of course not. I was just admiring your room.”
“But, um, why?”
“You’re very . . . lucky.”
“I am?”
I hated the way he asked that. “Yeah, I mean, you should be grateful for all the things you have,” I said. “You’re a fortunate kid.”
Wearily, slumped over, his arms at his sides, he looked around the room, unimpressed. “They’re just things, Bret.”
“I mean all I ever wanted was a TV and a lock on my door.” I made a superficial gesture with my hand. “All I wanted to do was play with Legos.”
I stared at the mobile of planets hanging in the middle of the room—the universe floating below the star-studded ceiling. The satellites in orbit, the rockets and astronauts, the spaceships and moon rocks and Mars and the fiery meteorite heading toward Earth and the concerns about extraterrestrial sightings and the need to establish colonies throughout the solar system. It all seemed horribly useless to me because the sky was always black in space and there was no sound on the moon and it was another world where you would always be lost. But I knew that Robby would argue that far beneath its freezing craters and treacherous sand-blown surfaces lay a warm and yielding heart. It took only two and a half seconds for a laser to flash from Earth to the moon and back again, as Robby had told me at that wedding in Nashville so many years ago.
“Yeah, I guess an astronaut,” he said.
“Okay, that’s cool,” I said. “I think that’s a cool costume.”
I finally noticed the helmet on the bed and the accompanying orange NASA suit hanging on a hook in the closet. “I’ll see you downstairs, bud.”