The Devils Teardrop

his pocket. “After the theater,” warned the man who tells him things, “there’ll be more police looking for you. You’llhave to be careful. Remember, if anybody sees your face . . .”
    I remember.
    * * *
    Upstairs, in Robby’s room, Parker sat with his son. The boy was sitting in bed, Parker in the bentwood rocker he’d bought at Antiques ’n’ Things and tried unsuccessfully to refinish himself.
    Two dozen toys were on the floor, a Nintendo 64 plugged into the old TV, Star Wars posters on the walls. Luke Skywalker. And Darth Vader . . .
    Our mascot for the evening.
    Cage had said that. But Parker was trying not to think about Cage. Or Margaret Lukas. Or the Digger. He was reading to his son. From The Hobbit.
    Robby was lost in the story even though he’d heard his father read it to him a number of times. They gravitated to this book when Robby was frightened—because of the scene of slaying a fierce dragon. That part of the book always gave the boy courage.
    When he’d walked in the front door of his house not long ago the boy’s face had lit up. Parker had taken his son’s hand and they’d walked to the back porch. He’d patiently showed the boy once again that there were no intruders in the backyard or the garage. They decided that crazy old Mr. Johnson had let his dog out again without closing the fence.
    Stephie had hugged her father too and asked how his friend was, the sick one.
    “He’s fine,” Parker had said, looking for but finding not a bit of truth to hang the statement on. Oh, the guilt of parents . . . What a hot iron it is.
    Stephie had watched sympathetically as Robby and Parker had gone upstairs to read a story. At another time she might have joined them but she instinctively knew now to leave them alone. This was something about his children that Parker had learned: They bickered like all healthy youngsters, tried to outshine each other, engaged in typical sibling sabotage. Yet when something affected the core of one child—like the Boatman—the other knew instinctively what was needed. The girl had vanished into the kitchen, saying, “I’m making Robby a surprise for dessert.”
    As he read he would glance occasionally at his son’s face. The boy’s eyes were closed and he looked completely content. (From the Handbook: “Sometimes your job isn’t to reason with your children or to teach them or even to offer a sterling example of maturity. You simply must be with them. That’s all it takes .”)
    “You want me to keep reading?” he whispered.
    The boy didn’t respond.
    Parker left the book on his lap and remained in the scabby rocking chair, easing back and forth. Watching his son.
    Thomas Jefferson’s wife, Martha, had died not long after their third daughter was born (the girl herself died at age two). Jefferson, who never remarried, had struggled to raise his two other girls by himself. As a politician and statesman he was often forced to be an absent father, a situation he truly hated. It was letters that kept him in touch with his children. He wrote thousands of pages to the girls, offering support, advice, complaints, love. Parker knew Jefferson as well as he knew his own father and could recall some letters from memory. He thought of one of these now, written when Jefferson was vicepresident and in the midst of fierce political battles between the rival parties of the day.
    Your letter, my dear Maria, of Jan. 21 was received two days ago. It was like the bright beams of the moon on the desolate heath. Environed here in scenes of constant torment, malice and obloquy, worn down in a state where no effort to render service can aver any thing, I feel not that existence is a blessing but when something recalls my mind to my family.
    Looking at his son, hearing his daughter bang pans downstairs, he worried, as he often did, if he was raising his own children right.
    How often he’d lain asleep at night worrying about this.
    After all, he’d separated two children from their mother. That the courts and all of his (and most of Joan’s) friends agreed that it was the only sane thing to do made little difference to him. He hadn’t become a single father by the quirk of death as Jefferson had; no, Parker had made that decision himself.
    But was it truly for the children that he’d done this? Or was it to escape from his own unhappiness? This is what tormented him so often. Joan had seemed so sweet, so charming, before they were married. But much of it,