A Brilliant Novel in the Works by Yuvi Zalkow Page A

checkbook
when Shmen calls. But then he says, “I’m supposed to pick Maddy
up from school today, except that my knee isn’t behaving.”
    And as I try to formulate a question about the behavior
of his knee, he says, “Someone needs to be at her school in
twenty-five minutes.”
#
    Ally has told me it’s a ritual that her daughter loves. She runs
out of the school giggling whenever Shmen picks her up.
    I don’t even know if she’ll recognize me. I’ve only met her a
few times. But when I step into the school and look around the
after-care area, this cute little blonde-haired girl runs up and
hugs me. She squeezes me tightly and I’m tempted to explain
to this girl all the reasons that I’m not such a huggable person:
I’m a coward. I worry all the time. I’m a poor communicator.
I can’t stop thinking about my dead father, even while my wife
is trying to seduce me. I obsess over napkins. I can’t please my
wife. I’m a narcissist.
    But when Maddy stops hugging, I’m tempted to ask her to
do it again.
    “I guess you know who I am,” I say.
    “Of course!” She holds my hand and begins to drag me out
of the school. “You’re Joelly’s brother!”
#
    Maddy is carrying a book with her called
The Gorilla Did
    It
. When I ask her about it, she says it’s great because it’s about a
    gorilla that wakes up a sleeping boy and convinces him to mess up his room.
    When the boy gets in trouble, he explains to his mother that the gorilla did
    it.
    I start to wonder how I might use this phrase. For instance,
if I’m standing on my desk in my underwear and my wife
comes in, pissed off that I didn’t pick up the groceries like
I promised, I could say, “It’s not me, the gorilla did it.” And
when my wife puts her hand down my pants and feels that soft
and scared little organ, I could say, “The gorilla did it!” When
my editor asks for the novel, I’ll tell her, “The gorilla took it.”
    It would solve a lot of problems.
    On the drive home, Maddy tells me story after story about
her day as if I were a part of her family and it makes me feel so
glad to be around her. She tells me the rules of Everybody’s It
Tag and she explains how boys smell more like dirt and how
girls smell more like flowers and she tells me that her teacher’s
father died last week and she tells me that her best friend has
four cats, three ferrets, and twenty-seven tomatoes. And then
she asks me how to spell Poop Mobile.
    “Poop Mobile?” I ask. “What’s that?”
    “It’s the truck that picks you up when you have to poop so
bad that you need to go to the hospital.”
    “Does Joelly ever go to the hospital?” I ask, trying to sound
casual even while I’m scared to hear the answer.
    “Not really,” she says. “And did you know that the Poop
Mobile is made out of bulletproof glass?”
    “Well that makes sense,” I say.
    “And did you know,” she tells me, “you can’t spell husband
without anus?”
    Maddy pretty much controls the conversation the whole
car ride home. She’s under ten and she’s more confident than
the me that my therapist makes me write about when I’m
trying to pretend I’m overconfident.
    “I have a crush on a boy,” she says.
    “You do? Already?”
    “What do you mean already? He is my fourth, if you count
D avid.”
    “Let’s count him,” I say.
    “Me and Jeffrey are going to buy a four-bedroom house.
We’ll need three cars so that we can always have one for our
friends. And we want three kids—two girls. We’re going to
Hawaii for our honeymoon.”
    “Wow,” I say. “You’ve got more plans than I’ve ever had.”
    I glance her way and see that she is pondering this
observation. That she has it more together than a so-called
adult. “Where did you go,” she says, “on your honeymoon
with Aunt Julia?”
    “Oh,” I say. “We went to cremate my father in North
Carolina.” It comes out without me thinking about it. I see
Maddy try to parse my answer. But, fortunately, not