Supervolcano All Fall Down(16)
Then his father caught him by surprise: “I bet I know where you’ll be able to make some money, anyhow. Not enough to live on, but some.”
“Oh, yeah? Where?” Marshall wondered what kind of harebrained scheme was dancing through Dad’s beady little mind.
Only it turned out not to be so harebrained after all. “Taking care of your half-brother, that’s where,” Colin Ferguson answered. “Your mother will be looking for somebody to do that, I’m sure, once she runs through however much maternity leave they give her.”
“Huh,” Marshall said thoughtfully. Whatever he might have been looking for, that wasn’t it. “I’m . . . not sure I want to do that. I . . . don’t know how much I want to have to do with Mom these days. And taking care of, of that kid?” He didn’t even want to say Teo’s name. Teo, after all, had stolen Mom away from Dad and screwed up the family. That was how he’d seen it at the time, anyhow. Little by little, he’d come to realize things weren’t so simple (which was another part of growing up). The first approximation still ruled his gut, though.
His father sighed. “Well, it’s your call. If you don’t want to, I sure won’t try and make you. But it’s not like I’d mind or anything. I . . . wish your mother the best in spite of everything. I don’t want her back. Too much water over the dam for that. But I do wish her the best. And she’ll need the help. Better if she gets it from somebody she knows, somebody she can trust, and not somebody she hires off a supermarket bulletin board or from Craigslist or somewhere.”
“I’ll think about it.” Marshall hadn’t expected to say even that much.
“Thanks. You do that.” Dad gave him another one of those lopsided grins. “Five gets you ten taking care of a baby gives you something new to write about, too.”
“Hot shit!” If Marshall sounded distinctly unenthusiastic, it was only because he was. He didn’t let Dad beat him to the punch line, either: “That’s what I’d be writing about, too, isn’t it?”
“Hot shit and cold shit and piss and spit-up and all kinds of gross stuff,” his father agreed. “But there’d be other stuff, too. Getting to know your half-brother, and him getting to know you, when you’re old enough to be his father.”
“I guess.” Marshall didn’t want to think of it in those terms. If he was old enough to be his mother’s son’s father . . . Somewhere, a goose was walking on old Oedipus’ grave. The idea creeped him out bigtime.
Maybe that showed on his face, because his father said, “I’ll let it go. You don’t have to make up your mind right away. One thing you should do, though, if you’re even halfway thinking about it, is poke around online and see what kind of money child-care providers or whatever they call ’em make. If you do decide to take it on, you’ll want to get what you deserve.”
“Makes sense,” Marshall said. To his relief, Dad did leave him alone then. He chewed on it for a while, chewed on it without deciding one way or the other. He had Mom’s number on his phone, of course. He could count on the fingers of one hand how often he’d used it since his folks broke up. Odds were she wouldn’t even recognize his number if he did call her again.
The baby might be stillborn. It might be kidnapped by Gypsies—or even by Roma, if you wanted to be PC about baby thieves. All sorts of things might happen to keep him from needing to make up his mind. He might even sell some more stories. If he sold enough, he wouldn’t need to worry about playing nanny to his mother’s bastard.
Writers find inspiration and incentive wherever they can. Any excuse for sitting down in front of a keyboard and monitor instead of doing something—anything—else is a good one. Marshall was still very new to the game, but he’d already figured that out. And, for the next several days, he wrote a hell of a lot more than usual.
* * *
Bryce Miller had a fancy new Ph.D. in classics from UCLA, with all the rights and privileges appertaining to the doctorate of philosophy. Chief among those privileges, it seemed, was the privilege to starve.
He’d saved money from his TAships and research assistantships. His only real vice was books. As vices went, it was a cheap one. His old car was paid for. His apartment wasn’t expensive. So he starved slowly, an inch at a time, instead of in a hurry.
He scoured the online Chronicle of Higher Education, Craigslist, monster.com, anything that might possibly land him an academic job. He sent out zillions of résumés, by e-mail and snailmail both. Nobody wanted anything to do with a new-minted classicist, even one who could also teach ancient history.