The Zero Hour

Just after midnight, Sarah Cahill unlocked the front door to her Cambridge house. The only light came from the parlor at the front of the house, where the babysitter, Ann Boyle, snoozed in the La-Z-Boy recliner, the Boston Herald tented over her wide bosom.

Ann Boyle, broad and sturdy, with blue-rinsed curls and small, tired eyes, was at sixty-seven a great-grandmother and a widow. She lived in Somerville, the working-class town that bordered Cambridge, and had taken care of Jared since he was small. Now that Jared was eight, she came over much less frequently, but Sarah’s hours were so unpredictable that it was important to have Ann on call.

She woke Ann, paid her, and said good night. A few minutes later she could hear the cough of Ann’s ancient Chevrolet Caprice Classic starting up. Then she went upstairs to Jared’s bedroom. She navigated the cluttered floor by the dim yellow glow of the night-light and narrowly averted demolishing her son’s latest project, a desktop basketball hoop he was constructing with a Styrofoam cup for a hoop and a square of foam core as the backboard.

On the shelf above his bed a platoon of stuffed animals kept watch, including a pig he’d named Eeyore and a bear, Coco, who wore a pair of Carrera sunglasses. Another bear, Huckleberry, kept him company in the bed.

Jared was sleeping in a tie-dyed T-shirt he’d picked out at the flea market in Wellfleet and Jurassic Park dinosaur pajama bottoms. His brown hair was tousled. His breathing was soft and peaceful. His eyelashes were agonizingly long. On his wrist was a soiled yellow rubber band imprinted “Cowabunga!”

She sat there on the edge of the bed, staring at him-she could stare at him for hours while he slept-until he suddenly murmured something in his sleep and turned over to one side. She kissed him on the forehead and went back downstairs.

In the kitchen, Sarah took a highball glass from the cabinet. She needed something to lull her to sleep. Whenever she was called out of the house for work she came back wired. But Scotch had its costs, and she was growing less tolerant of awaking with even a mini-hangover. She set the glass down and decided to microwave a mug of milk instead.

While the microwave oven whirred, she straightened up the kitchen. All the supper dishes were still on the kitchen table; the spaghetti sauce still sat parched in a pot atop the stove. She’d asked Jared to clean up, and of course he hadn’t. Ann should have done it, but probably hadn’t been able to tear herself away from the TV. She felt a wave of annoyance, which merely compounded her foul mood.

Just seeing Peter could depress her, whatever the circumstances. Certainly there were times when she missed having a lover and partner around, and a live-in father for Jared.

But not Peter. Anyone but Peter, whom she’d come to loathe. What had seemed roguishness in the early days of their relationship had revealed itself as simple malice. He was a coarse, self-centered person, and she had only discovered that too late.

Not only did Jared sense her contempt for her ex-husband, but he seemed to feel the same way. There was an odd distance in the boy’s attitude toward his father, who behaved with his eight-year-old son like a Marine drill sergeant. Peter probably imagined this was the only manly way to bring up his son, whom he saw just once a week. The court-ordered custody terms allowed Peter to take Jared one weekend day a week, which usually turned out to be Saturday. Jared dreaded the visits. When Peter did come by, sometimes accompanied by his bimbo de jour, he would take Jared to breakfast at a diner and then to watch the pro boxing at Foxboro, above the track, or to his gym in the South End to learn how to fight. Saturdays with Daddy were always sports-related. It was the only way Peter could reach out to his son.

Jared was a creative, lively kid, sometimes moody, and intensely intelligent. Recently he was obsessed with baseball-collecting baseball cards, reeling off baseball statistics. Sarah was afraid this was some misguided attempt to snag his father’s approval. Bright and intuitive though Jared was, he still hadn’t figured out that whatever he did, it would never be enough. He wanted a father, but in Peter he’d never really get one, and the faster he learned that, the better for him.

A month ago, Sarah found herself recalling, Jared had arrived home late one Saturday afternoon after a day with his father, in tears and visibly bruised. One of his eyes was swollen shut. Sarah gasped and ran out to the street to flag Peter down before he drove off in his clattering AMC Pacer.

“What the hell did you do to him?” she shouted.

“Oh, calm down,” he’d replied. “I threw him a left hook and he forgot to duck, is all. I was trying to show him you gotta use your elbows to absorb the blow.”

“Forgot to duck? Peter, he’s a child!”

“Jerry’s got to learn how to take his lumps. It’s good for him.” To Peter, Jared was always “Jerry” or “little buddy.”