It all came out at once now that she was frustrated. “You haven’t changed his diaper; you haven’t fed him.”

“I’ve fed him,” he protested.

The wails got louder.

“You haven’t prepared one bottle, made him one meal, dressed him, played with him. You haven’t spent any time with him alone, without me running in every five minutes to take him from you while you send an e-mail or answer a phone call. The child has been living in the world for over a year now, Lou. It’s been over a year.”

“Hold on.” He ran his hand through his hair and held it there, clenching a handful of hair with a tight fist, a sign of his anger. “How have we gotten from talking about my day, which you always want to know so much about, to this attack?”

“You were so busy talking about you that you didn’t hear your own child,” she said tiredly, knowing this conversation was going the same place as every other argument they’d had recently. Nowhere.

Lou looked around the room and held out his hands dramatically, emphasizing the walls around them. “Do you think I sit at my desk all day twiddling my thumbs? No, I work my hardest trying to juggle everything so that you and the kids can have all this. So excuse me if I don’t fill his mouth every morning with mashed banana.”

“You don’t juggle anything, Lou. You choose one thing over another. There’s a difference.”

“I can’t be in two places at once, Ruth! If you need help around here, I’ve already told you: just say the word, and we can have a nanny here any day you want.”

He knew he’d just walked himself into a bigger argument, and as Bud’s wails grew louder on the baby monitor, he prepared for the inevitable onslaught. He almost added, “And I promise not to sleep with this one.”

But that argument never came. Instead, Ruth’s shoulders shrank as she gave up the fight and instead went to tend to her son.

Lou reached for the remote control and held it toward the TV like a gun. He pressed the trigger angrily and powered it off. The sweating spandexed women disappeared into a small circle of light in the center of the screen before diminishing completely.

He reached for the plate of apple pie on the table and began picking at it, wondering how this had all started, practically from the second he had walked in the door. It would end as it did so many other nights: he would go to bed and she would be asleep, or at least pretend to be. A few hours later he would wake up, work out, get showered, and go to work.

He sighed, and then on hearing the baby monitor crackle, he realized it had grown silent. As he headed toward it to turn it off, he heard a faint noise that made him reach for the volume dial. His heart sank as the sounds of Ruth’s quiet sobs filled the kitchen.

The Turkey Boy 2

SO YOU LET HIM GET away?” A young voice broke into Raphie’s thoughts.

“What’s that?” Raphie snapped out of his trance and turned his attention back to the young teen who was sitting across the table from him.

“I said, you let him get away.”

“Who?”

“The rich guy, Lou, in the flashy Porsche. He was speeding, and you let him get away.”

“No, I didn’t let him get away.”

“Yeah, you did. You didn’t give him any points or a ticket or anything. You just let him off. That’s the problem with you lot, you’re always on the rich people’s side. If that was me, I’d be locked up for life. I only threw a bloody turkey, and I’m stuck here all day. And it’s Christmas Day and everything.”

“Shut your whining; we’re waiting for your mother, you know that, and I wouldn’t blame her if she does decide to leave you here all day.”

The Turkey Boy sat back in his chair, sulking.

“So you’re new to the area. You and your mother moved here recently?” Raphie asked.

The boy nodded.

“Where from?”

“The Republic of Your Ass.”

“Very clever,” Raphie said sarcastically.

They sat in silence. “So why did you leave the Porsche guy so quickly?” the boy finally asked, curiosity getting the better of him. “Did you chicken out or something?”

“Don’t be daft, son; I gave him a warning,” Raphie said, straightening up defensively in his chair, hoping his heart wouldn’t give him another scare again. At least not now, not until after he’d finished the story.

“But that’s illegal; you should have given him a ticket. He could kill someone speeding around like that.”

Raphie’s eyes darkened, and the Turkey Boy knew to stop his goading.

“Are you going to listen to the rest of the story or what?”

“How do you know all this, by the way?”

“I’m the police. It’s my job.”

“But the stuff with his wife and all, how do you know?”

“It’s my job to find the story. To talk to everybody and piece it all together.” And what a task that had been. “Now, are you ready to hear more?”

“Yeah, I am. Go on.” The boy leaned forward on the table and rested his hand under his chin. “I’ve got all day.” He smiled cheekily.

The Morning After

AT 5:59 A.M., LOU AWOKE. The previous evening had gone exactly as predicted: by the time he had made it to bed, Ruth’s back had been firmly turned, with the blankets tightly tucked around her, leaving her as accessible as a fig in a roll. The message was loud and clear.

Lou couldn’t find it within himself to comfort her, to cross over the line that separated them in bed, in life, to make things okay. They had definitely reached a low point. Even as students, completely broke and staying in subpar accommodations, with temperamental heating and bathrooms they’d had to share with dozens of others, things had never been like this. Now they had a giant bed, so big that even when they both lay on their backs their fingers barely brushed when they stretched out. A monstrosity of space and cold spots in the sheets that couldn’t be warmed.

Lou lay in bed and thought back to the beginning, when he and Ruth had first met at university—two nineteen-year-olds, celebrating the winter finals. With a few weeks’ break ahead of them and test results far from their minds, they had met at open-mike night in the International Bar on Wicklow Street. After that night, Lou had thought about her every day while back home with his parents for the holidays. With every slice of turkey, every present he unwrapped, every family fight over Monopoly, she was on his mind. Because of her he’d even lost his title as the Count the Stuffing Champion with Marcia and Quentin. Lou stared up at the bedroom ceiling and smiled, remembering how each year he and his siblings—paper crowns on their heads and tongues dangling from their mouths—would get down to counting every crumb of stuffing on their plate, long after his parents had left the table. Every year, Marcia and Quentin would join together to beat him, but his dedication—some would say obsession—could never be matched. But that year he had been beaten by Quentin, because the phone had rung and it had been her, and the call had been it for Lou.

The nineteen-year-old of that Christmas would have longed for this moment right now. He would have grabbed the opportunity with both hands, to be transported to the future just to have Ruth right beside him in bed, in a fine house, with two beautiful children sleeping in the next rooms. He looked over at Ruth now. She had rolled onto her back, her mouth slightly parted, her hair like a haystack on top of her head. He smiled.

She’d done better than him in those winter exams, which was no hard task, but she did so the following three years, too. Studying had always come so easily to her, while he seemed to have to burn the candle at both ends in order just to scrape by. He didn’t know where she ever found the time to think, let alone study, she was so busy leading the way through their adventurous nights on the town. They’d crashed parties on a weekly basis, stayed out all night, but Ruth still made it to the first lecture, with her assignments completed. She could do it all.