Jake, Son Of Zeus

At noon, Jake walked two blocks to Subway, bought a meatball sandwich and a Big Red, and settled himself on a dark blue plastic bench in the pocket park across the street. Young trees stood everywhere with perfect straightness and order, no limb or leaf out of place, like Lego trees on a flat Lego lawn. Ducks splashed in the mud-colored water of the pond, and sidewalks snaked in every direction, as though a curved cement path was somehow more in tune with nature than a straight one.

Jake was halfway through both The Wasteland and his sandwich when a deep voice broke through his focus. Beside him sat a fat white duck, eyeing him with an expression of mild disapproval. "How"s it going, Jake?" said the duck.

"Just fine, Dad," Jake replied, looking around to make sure they were relatively alone. "How are you?"

"Can"t complain," Zeus said. "Finally sold the beach house in Hawaii. Living next to Shiva made me nervous. Everything else is good too, except Hera"s been a b.i.t.c.h lately, though that"s not exactly news. How"s Lily?"

"She"s great. She"s already excited about starting kindergarten in the fall."

"That"s wonderful…." Zeus drifted off, staring hazily at a very young jogger.

Jake motioned to the jogger with his sandwich. "I"m pretty sure she"s a little young for you."

"Nah. She"s what…nineteen? Twenty? That"s more than legal. Give me ten minutes to charm her with witty conversation—"

"Or scare her to death as a talking duck."

"—and she could be the next queen of the G.o.ds." A high pitched bleeping sounded from Zeus"s feathers. He lifted a wing. "d.a.m.n. Hera"s calling. That woman needs a hobby. She probably has a l.u.s.t satellite-radar focused on me from s.p.a.ce.��� Zeus beaked his phone, then sat nodding for a few seconds in thought. "You seeing anyone?" His voice was carefully casual.

If Jake had been talking to anyone else, he would have said, "I"m married, remember?" But that excuse never seemed to have an effect on Zeus. Instead, Jake said, "No. I don"t really have time these days," which was a lie, but he felt that it was for his own protection.

"I sympathize." The duck looked away after a moment, shifting its feet.

"What is it, Dad?" Jake asked.

The duck glanced back at him. "Well, it wasn"t my idea. Hera—you know she likes you despite…everything—she has a friend she wants you to meet," he finished in a rush.

"No."

"C"mon. She seems like a perfectly lovely girl."

Jake stared at the murky pond.

"You could at least meet her. Hera"s not going to leave me alone about it. She works at that coffeehouse just a few blocks from your apartment."

"Is she mortal?" Jake asked. He wasn"t interested, of course, but he wondered what kind of girl Hera, who was after all known for her matchmaking skills, thought he needed.

Zeus gave a half-smile. "It didn"t work out with Rachel. Do you really want to try the mortal thing again?"

"It"s not going so well with Rachel because a nymph took up residence in the pool. And a c.o.c.katrice ruined the garden. And—"

"I get it. Being my son has just ruined everything for you."

"No, that"s not what I mean," Jake said with a full-body sigh. It was what he meant. But Jake hated to see the duck lower its head in disappointment that way. Zeus was much easier to reject when he took a meaner form, like a Doberman or a truck driver. He had shown up on Jake"s front porch as a bunny once, when Jake was still living in the white brick house on Lime Street with Rachel, before Lily was born. Jake had avoided eye contact with his father throughout the visit, hardly able to stifle the weird impulse to pick him up and pet him.

Now, Zeus"s soft duck head and sad, dented beak were turned away in an unG.o.dlike pout. Jake said in a voice that asked his father"s understanding, "It"s just…impossible. I get nervous every time I open my closet door. I spend as much money on garlic and mugwort and ghost beads as I do on gasoline. I"m stuck between worlds. And there"s…there"s just not a good support group for this kind of thing."

The duck nodded.

Jake continued, remembering his conversation with E. E. that morning and countless conversations before, reminding himself painfully of that kid in his first period cla.s.s who talked only about Star Wars, "It wouldn"t be so bad if I"d gotten something out of it, you know, G.o.d-like strength, the ability to control the weather. Even some painting skills would be nice. Don"t get me wrong. I"m enjoying the prospect of living through a car accident at some point, and the whole idea of being part G.o.d is pretty great. I just…I wish that I didn"t have to run like a little girl when sirens show up."

"I could give you—"

"No, thanks. Gifts from the G.o.ds cause more trouble than anything. Haven"t you ever read Greek mythology?"

The duck snorted, then looked quickly straight ahead and then back at Jake. "Listen, I"ll come by your apartment tonight. You"ve got to get back to work, and that raisin-skinned woman is looking at me funny."

Jake looked across the pond and cringed. "That"s Moira Bags, the health teacher."

"Want me to turn her into a bat?" he asked, squinting his eyes and pointing his wing at her.

"No, thanks. I"ll see you later."

The duck shivered and ruffled its feathers, and Zeus was gone. Jake looked up again and waved to Mrs. Bags, who looked at him in alarm before scurrying away. "That"s not good," Jake told the duck. It looked mindlessly at the remaining half of his meatball sandwich, and Jake, knowing the over-intimate tendencies of city-raised animals, wrapped up his sandwich, took up his book and his Big Red, and walked back to school.

Jake had been in the building six minutes when he heard his name over the intercom in the giggly, girly voice of the princ.i.p.al"s secretary. He was to report to the Mr. Gripp"s office immediately. The temporary high of sitting in the sun, enjoying a good meal and a good book and chatting with his dad was stomped out by the dread of what was coming next. Jake lamented that he didn"t enjoy being belittled and bored more than he did. Yet another survival skill that had pa.s.sed him by.

The cla.s.sroom wall clock read 1:08, and it was unlikely that Princ.i.p.al Gripp would be finished with him in two minutes. The first few students filed into the cla.s.sroom. Jake flipped open the grammar textbook to a random page. Commas. Everyone needs extra practice with commas. He scribbled the page number on the dry erase board.

"Do the exercise on page forty-one," he told the students. "Tell the others when they get here, and make sure you get it done before I"m back. I"ve been called to the princ.i.p.al"s office." A couple of girls laughed sympathetically.

Jake opened the top desk drawer, pulled out his whistle, and stuffed it in his pocket. He hurried out.

If Gripp, d.a.m.n him, only kept him ten minutes, Jake might make it back before the cla.s.s had fallen into chaos. The fact that they were soph.o.m.ores, and this was the first period after lunch, might buy him another five minutes. If not, well, that"s why Jake kept a whistle in his desk.

Down two more corridors, he maneuvered through the ma.s.s of students, imagining a scene in which he told Gripp just how much more difficult teaching high school was when the boss was a smelly, inconsiderate, football-obsessed, stuck-up, senile tyrant. The scene ended with Gripp melting like the Wicked Witch of the West and Jake taking a seat behind the princ.i.p.al"s desk. He was smiling when he reached the princ.i.p.al"s white door. Some rather harsh spray-painted words were still visible beneath the layers of paint. Jake"s smile broadened.

He knocked twice and opened the door, then pa.s.sed through the secretary"s office into the inner sanctum. Mr. Gripp (Princ.i.p.al Bigot, Jake thought with a deeply buried smirk) sat behind his desk, not attempting to budge his ma.s.sive form as Jake entered. "I don"t want to take up too much of your time," Gripp said over his noisy nose-whistling. "I know you have a cla.s.s starting soon." Jake glanced at the clock behind Gripp"s head. Cla.s.s started a minute and a half ago. It hardly matters, thought Jake, as Gripp launched into a speech about the responsibility teachers bear, not only in the cla.s.sroom and at extracurricular blah blah blah.

Two or three long minutes pa.s.sed. Jake"s eyelids began to droop, and he imagined that he would never be able to leave this room. He would sit forever, listening and nodding until his body decayed and all the books and papers and the cherry wood desk biodegraded, but Gripp would survive, somehow, and keep blabbering on until the sun became a supernova and the earth dried and began to burn as it was sucked into the swirling, blazing orb of the swollen sun….

"Mr. Foster?"

Jake looked up at Princ.i.p.al Gripp, trying to act as though he had been listening. "Yes, sir."

"Foster, I"ve heard some concern from the other teachers about you. I think you should consider taking some time off. I mean, you were talking to a duck? This is not healthy behavior. Not healthy at all," Gripp eyed him warily.

"Haven"t you ever had a pet?" Jake asked lamely.

"I have a cat. I say, "Here, kitty, kitty," and "Come eat your din-din," but Pipsy and I do not have twenty-minute conversations, especially not in the park where anyone could see."

"Sir, there"s only two weeks left until summer, and I—"

"Finals time is stressful for everyone, but I can"t have you falling apart behind the wheel. I can"t have you going postal in a room full of kids, Foster."

Jake, trying to envision what that would look like, said in his most a.s.suring voice, "I"m fine, sir. If I start feeling at all…postal…I"ll be sure to let you know."

Gripp"s tiny, buglike eyes tried to look inside Jake"s head, and Jake sat, smiling, trying to appear as sane as possible, hating himself more the longer he smiled. Are you wondering about the purpose of your life? Starting to doubt your choice of career? Does your pathological spinelessness make you want to stab your supervisor and then yourself with a red ballpoint pen? Why as a matter of fact, it does.

Finally, Gripp nodded. "Go back to cla.s.s. I"ll have someone check in on you from time to time over the next two weeks, and if you start to feel funny—" Gripp pointed his index finger toward heaven in some unknowable gesture.

Jake nodded and hurried out of the office. He turned a corner and realized he could hear his cla.s.s from the end of the hall. There weren"t gang fights, exactly, at Bee Caves High, but the cheerleaders and the flag corps got into it sometimes, and his fourth period cla.s.s was a mixture of both, with some boyfriends and groupies in the mix.

He reached into his pocket and brought out his whistle. The mouthpiece had lost some of its shine in its years of use, but it still got their attention. He sighed and stood outside the door for a second, listening to Elspeth Mader, the science teacher, asking questions from her cla.s.s across the hall, her sweet soprano voice full of feeling about binomial nomenclature.

For a moment, he could hear her clearly. Then the familiar sound of someone being whacked in the head with a megaphone issued from his own cla.s.sroom. What would it be like to work somewhere without whistles, without possessed teenagers and Princ.i.p.al Bigot?

Jake swung open the door and entered, covering the sound of voices with the shriek of his whistle.