A Brilliant Novel in the Works by Yuvi Zalkow

says to me. “I want to have a family.”
    I stop scratching her head.
    There’s the fact that we haven’t had anything that approaches
baby-making sex in years. There’s the fact that our communication
is nearly as tangled and broken as Shmen’s large intestine when
the surgeons pulled it out of his body. There’s the fact that Julia
didn’t exactly say that she wants a family with me, she just wants a
family. I might not be in the picture at all. And there’s the fact that
I feel a terror somewhere deep in my chest when thinking about
being responsible for another thing that breathes.
    I could ask her to expand on what she wants. I could discuss
this subject further. I could explain my various thoughts about
family—some positive and some terrified. But what I do is
something more self-involved and more cowardly, something
less sincere and less open to discussion.
    I say, “I don’t want a fucking kid because I’ll be an asshole
like my dad.” And then I walk out of the room. I walk out of
the house and don’t come back for hours.
    This is how my dad dealt with complicated subjects when
I was a kid. Except when he walked out of the room, I always
pictured that he had an unwavering feeling about the matter,
that he was convinced of being right.
    But I now understand that my father walked away from
discussions with the exact feeling I get after walking away—
an instant sense of regret, confident that I’ve dealt with the
situation poorly, and wondering why the hell I always fuck
everything up for no good reason.
    LAYING EGGS
    My father did this thing with children where he pretended
    he could lay eggs. After the first time he did it to me, I asked him to do
    it again and again. And he did this trick for years and years. I best remember
    when he did it to my little cousin, David. At the time I was maybe sixteen
    or eighteen and David was maybe six or eight. It was at my aunt and uncle’s
    place after dinner; we were celebrating someone’s birthday or mourning someone’s
    death or celebrating some Jewish holiday or perhaps atoning for our many sins.
    My father came out of the kitchen and sat with David on the living room
    couch. “You know,” my father whispered. “I can lay eggs.”
    David thought about this for a moment and then said, “Nuh-uh!”
    “It’s true. I could lay one for you right now.”
    “Only birds lay eggs,” David said. A boy who had clearly read a book
    or two about who lays eggs and who doesn’t. “Mommies make babies a different
    way. Eggs aren’t the way.”
    “Now, normally I’d agree with you,” my dad said, “but I can sit here
    right next to you and lay an egg on this couch. I could make you an omelet
    with my eggs.”
    “Show me,” David said, still skeptical.
    My father scrunched his face tight. He opened his mouth and groaned loud
    enough for people in the kitchen to come into the living room to see what
    was going on. And then my father stood up.
    “He did it!” David said, and he stood up off the couch and pointed and
    yelled. “He did it he did it he did it he did it!” David grabbed the egg and
    ran around the house showing everybody what my father had just given birth
    to.
    We left the party soon after that, with David in the corner of the living
    room grunting, trying his best to lay an egg.
    About two hours later, we got the call. My mother picked up the phone
    and listened to my uncle’s situation. “You need to get your tuches back there.
    David has already made kahkee into two pairs of pajamas.”
    My father drove those fifteen miles for the second time in order to reveal
    his trick, which David would end up using on his own children twenty years
    later.
    And that’s one of the things I loved about my dad. He had a charm that
    was powerful enough to cause you to shit your pants twice in one night, trying
    to lay a damn egg
.
    Chapter Fourteen
Shmuvi
    “Dude, I need a favor.”
It’s a reflex of mine to look for my