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“What do you do before bed?” I finally have to ask, feeling sweat drip down my back. “Do you have a routine?”
He gives me this look that says, “I can’t believe I have to explain this to my father.” “I wouldn’t exactly call it a routine.” And then he scratches the back of his head and nods to his bathroom. “But I brush my teeth and go to bed.”
Moving past me, he disappears into the bathroom separating his and Noah’s rooms and brushes his teeth. I take that moment to sneak into Noah’s room and kiss him goodnight. By the way, he sleeps in his mask. It’s a little weird kissing Batman goodnight, but that kid has so much damn personality it’s unbelievable. He’s been that way from day one, always crazy.
“Night, Wolverine,” I whisper, kissing Noah’s forehead and pushing his hair away from his mask. He doesn’t stir. The world could end in a ground-shaking earthquake, and there’s no way in hell Noah would wake up. Callan, on the other hand, if you even sigh in his room, he’s wide awake.
I meet Callan back in his room where he pulls a pair of pajamas out of his dresser drawer.
I bury my hands in my pockets, unsure what to do next as he gets dressed, but go with, “Okay, so should I read you a story?”
“No. But I do have a question.”
I sit down on the edge of his bed. “Okay.”
Do you sense the apprehension in the “okay?” You should because what comes next makes me feel stupid and wonder if I’m just that dumb, or my kid is a child genius and I’m not really his father. It’s not the first time I’ve thought this. I’ve often wondered if Madison slept with a science geek who looked like me and just told me I was the father.
Sitting with his hands in his lap, he stares at me with what can only be described as pure confusion. Or maybe it’s me. “What went on at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl? Were they different?”
Do you see that guy sitting on the bed? The one blinking rapidly like his contact lens fell out? Well, one, he’s not wearing a contact lenses and two, he has no idea what Chernobyl is. I know what happened at Three Mile Island. “Um, uh, so Three Mile Island was a nuclear power plant that had a cooling malfunction and it caused part of the core to melt the reactor and destroy it. There was a little radioactive gas released, but it didn’t kill anyone.”
He nods like he knows this already and I’m not at all surprised he does. “And Chernobyl is whatcould have happened then?”
My eyes widen. “Yes?”
Callan grins just a little. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
I sigh and pull back his blankets so he can get under the comforter. “No. I don’t.”
“Chernobyl is in Ukraine. Can we go there? I read that it’s like a tourist town now. Well, part of it anyway.”
“Really?” There’s no way I wanted to go to Ukraine, but I wasn’t telling Callan. He seems, I don’t know, almost excited to be talking to me about this, so I don’t want to let him down. I was never one to promise what I couldn’t deliver. My dad pulled that shit when I was a kid so when I became old enough to know better, I swore I’d never promise Callan anything I couldn’t give him. Now I see exactly why parents did it.
“Yeah, in 2011 they opened up a sealed zone around the reactor. I want to go there.”
You’re laughing, aren’t you? I see the humor in the way Callan is. It’s funny. But that’s because he’s not your son and you’re not living with him and wondering, what the fuck? This isn’t normal, is it? Should we be concerned? Madison laughs his behavior off, but I see that he’s not like the other kids. He’s different. He reads at something like a fifth-grade level and his math skills… don’t even get me started on that.
“What if you turn into The Hulk?” I tease, raising my eyebrows as I tickle his ribs.
He squirms away from me, his hands over mine to push them away. “I’m being serious, Dad. I want to go to Ukraine for my birthday next month.”
“Buddy, we can’t go to Ukraine next month. Besides the fact that you don’t even have a passport, I don’t think your first out of country trip should be to a nuclear reactor war zone.”
“It’s not a war zone, Dad.”
“What do you want for your birthday?”
His eyes light up. “I want to go to Ukraine.”
“Besides that.”
“Well, how about a book on Chernobyl?”
“Do you have one in mind?”
He nods and hands me a note beside his bed. “It’s calledVoices from Chernobyl. The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster.”
I think I should be worried about his obsession here.