This is so cool. Superman is my dad. I don't think he knows that I know, though; I pretended to be asleep when he came in my room because I didn't know what to say to him. Then he started talking. This is so cool.
I guess I have three daddies, now. Richard White is the daddy that I live with; the one that everybody thinks is my real dad. Superman is the daddy only mommy knows about, and Mr. Clark is the daddy only I know about. Or maybe mommy knows about him being my daddy too. She's really smart.
This is so cool. I like Superman, and I like Mr. Clark. He's funny. And he has cool ties, even though they always smell like coffee. If he comes back tomorrow night, I'll tell him that I know who he is.
"Goodnight!" I call out the window when he leaves. He turns back, smiling, then he looks down at the lawn. Mom is down there, holding her cigarettes and lighter. She was supposed to not smoke anymore. Maybe he'll get her to stop for real. Daddy never could. I wonder where Daddy is. He's missing Superman!
Wow, Mom's so lucky. Superman is taking her flying and she's not even being rescued. I wonder if he'll take me sometime. I wonder if someday I'll be able to fly, too, because he's my dad. I'll ask mom. She knows everything. If she doesn't know, I'll ask Superman because he probably knows even more than mom. He's from a different planet, after all.
- - -
I get out of bed; I have to find Daddy to tell him about Superman taking Mom flying two nights ago. He came by to talk to her last night, too, but I didn't listen to what they said. She's so lucky. I wonder if Superman ever takes Daddy flying. Probably not. Dad can fly in his seaplane whenever he wants to. They probably wave at each other. That would be cool.
Dad's out by the fire pit. It's glowing orange with the flames. It's just a small fire, like when he doesn't want mom to notice he's burning something, or doesn't want to disturb the neighbors or something.
"Hi Daddy," I say, climbing up onto the lawn chair just behind him. He gets mad when I get too close to the fire even though it doesn't hurt. I even touched the fire on a candle once when nobody was looking. It was at Christmastime last year. Nobody likes to leave me alone by things like candles because they're afraid I'll get hurt, and I know it can hurt people, but it looked so cool. So I stuck my finger in it. I could tell it was warm. It wasn't a comfortable feeling, but it didn't hurt. Mom came in then and I jumped so my finger was above the fire like I was roasting it and she got mad at me. I tried to explain that I couldn't feel it, that it didn't hurt, but she didn't believe me. She blew all the candles in the house out and made me sit in the very corner of the kids' table for dinner. I hate the kids' table, and I hate sitting at the corners of the table. My elbow always falls off the side.
"Jason," he says, surprised to see me. "What're you doing out of bed?"
"I woke up," I say, shrugging. "Two nights ago, Superman was there, he said goodnight. Then he took Mommy flying. He came and said goodnight last night, too. I didn't see him tonight, though," I tell him with a smile. He doesn't smile back. I think he thinks I'm telling him about a dream. He usually smiles anyways, though, like grown-ups do. "What're you doing?"
"You should be in bed, Jason," he says. He sounds grumpy.
"Do you like Superman?" I ask him, trying to make him happier. People always like talking about Superman.
"I don't know, Jason," he sounds sad now. At least it's not grumpy. I don't know what to say to that. How can he not know if he likes Superman? Maybe it's because Superman is my daddy, too. Maybe he doesn't want anybody else to be my Daddy. Does he even know Superman is my Daddy? I'll have to ask Mommy. I don't want to hurt his feelings by telling him that he's not my only Daddy.
"Can I have a drink?" I ask when he takes a sip of the dark juice in his tall glass.
"No, Jason," he says calmly. I frown.
"Why not?"
"You should be in bed," he says. There's something in his voice that makes me nervous. Then he dumps the juice out, or what's left of it, over the fire. The fire flares up and it gets bright enough for me to see the stack of papers beside him. They're my drawings. He's burning my drawings. Why is he burning my drawings?
"Why are you burning my drawings?" I ask, holding back tears. Daddy doesn't like it when I cry. He doesn't like seeing people cry. Not even Mommy will let him see her cry. I'm the only one Mommy lets see her cry, she even lets me hug her when she's sad and it seems to help.
"I don't like Superman," he says, not looking at me. He takes another drawing, this one of Superman saving some people from a fire, and puts it in the fire. It looks really cool for a minute, the bottom where I drew the house on fire catching first. It looks like real fire on the house, but then the sky is burning too, and then Superman and the people he's saving. That would never happen. Everybody knows Superman can't catch on fire.
"Why don't you like Superman?" I ask, not believing it. "He saved us. He's our friend!"
"No, Jason. He's Mommy's friend. Not my friend," he says.
"But, he saved you too!"
He's quiet for a really long minute and then he says, "You should be in bed Jason."
"I don't want you to burn my pictures!" I say, grabbing the next one as he's about to put it in the fire. This is the one I made for Mommy when Superman was in the hospital, the one where Superman is saving all of us. It's almost in the fire when I grab it and I feel the heat of the flame licking at my fingers when I touch it. The edges of the picture are on fire and I shake it, blowing on it until the fire goes out. Daddy is just staring at me and I realize I'm crying. He hates seeing people cry.
"Is your hand okay, Jason?" He asks and I look at my hand. It's fine. Why would there be anything wrong with my hand?
"It's okay," I say, holding it up for him to see. He just stares at it like he was staring at me a minute ago. Now I know why Mommy always says it's impolite to stare; it makes people uncomfortable.
"That's why he left," he says really quietly. I have really good ears, though. I can even hear Mommy and Superman talking in the front yard. They're talking, but I can't hear their words, just their voices. I wish they'd come back here and save the rest of my pictures and make Daddy stop acting so weird.
"Who?" I ask, wiping away a tear with my perfectly-okay hand.
"Superman. He left because of you," he's still talking really quietly.
"No," I say. "No he didn't. He left because he wanted to find his family."
"No, he was running away from his family. He was running away from his responsibility."
"No, Superman wouldn't do that," I try to reassure him, but I'm so much littler than he is, and he doesn't believe me. Especially because I'm crying.
"No, Jason, he left because he didn't want you," he says. His voice is really quiet. He pours wine into his glass from the bottle sitting next to him. He fills it up almost all the way to the top of the glass. The firelight looks really cool when it reflects off the liquid, but it really doesn't matter.
I'm crying a lot more now. Why wouldn't Superman want me? Isn't he my dad? Didn't he just come into my room to tell me goodnight and that he'd be watching me last night? I didn't really understand the words that he was saying. They were all grown-up words, but I usually do pretty well at understanding what grown-ups say. Why would he even come if he didn't love me just a little bit like a Daddy would?
"Richard," I hear Mommy's voice say from behind me. He's put more of my drawings and a few newspaper clippings from the Daily Planet on the fire. I want to reach in and grab my pictures and Mommy's articles, but Mommy will yell at me again for being too close to the fire like she did last Christmas. Then I'll cry more and Daddy will be even less happy.
"Lois," Daddy's voice sounds really cold.
"Superman didn't even know about Jason until he got back."
"And why would he want a bastard son?" I don't know what that means, but Mommy gets really angry about it. She looks like she's going to hit Daddy until she sees me crying, then she just looks really angrily at Daddy again.
"Why are you burning my pictures, Daddy?" I ask, seeing him drop another handful onto the fire. Now it's a big fire. Now he doesn't have to hide it from Mommy because she's standing right there.
"You don't deserve them," he almost whispers. I bite my lip, trying not to cry.
Mom grabs me around the waist, pulling me up into her arms. I wrap my arms around her neck and put my face on her shoulder, hiding my tears from Daddy. "I don't want him to be my Daddy anymore," I say as we move away and I know that he heard me. "Why can't Superman be my only Daddy?" I ask, but only Mom hears that one.
She makes soothing noises, rubbing the back of my head like that will make it all go away. She's crying too when we get upstairs to my bedroom. She wipes the tears off my face and I wipe the tears off hers.
"Daddy's just having a bad day, honey," she says in that soothing voice even though we both know she's not telling the truth. "Don't listen to anything he says. I'll go save your drawings for you."
"I love you, Mommy," I say, hugging her again. I don't know why he's having a bad day, but I do know that even on bad days he doesn't talk the way he was just talking. At least mom will be able to get the rest of my drawings before they get burned.
"Why are you doing this, Richard?" I hear her ask when she makes it down to the fire. She held onto me until we were both done crying. I had my eyes closed to keep the tears in, so she thought I was asleep. I like it when people think I'm asleep. She just tucked me in and went to go save my drawings instead of talking to me and telling me more lies about why Daddy's being mean.
"Why am I doing what?" He asks her right back, sounding like he doesn't know what he's doing is wrong. That makes sense, I suppose; if he doesn't know that he's being bad then that explains why he said what he did. But not really.
"Why did you say those things to Jason? Why are you burning the drawings he worked so hard on?"
"They're true."
"That Superman left because he didn't want Jason? That's not true," she says. They're both talking in the hushed yelling voices we use on the playground when we're pretending to be mad while we play and we don't want the playground lady to notice us. "He didn't even know I was pregnant."
"What, then, he didn't want you?"
Mommy is quiet. I don't know what she's doing. She's probably looking at him the way she looks at me when I do something bad. Because he's really doing something bad.
"Don't have anything to say to that, Lois?
"You're drunk, Richard," she says. She sounds really tired and sad. I don't really know what drunk is, but that seems to be an excuse for him to be talking to Mommy the way he is. I just wish Superman would come and take her flying again so that he wouldn't talk to her like that anymore. I wish Superman would come and take me flying so that I wouldn't be able to hear them anymore. I hate it when they fight. The last time they fought was the day before the mean bald man tried to hurt us on his ship. They were fighting about whether I really liked my piano lessons or not. I don't know why they didn't just asked me. I liked the piano lessons just fine until what happened on the big boat. I don't really want to be near anymore pianos for a long time.
"That doesn't make it less true."
I squeeze my eyes shut and stuff my fingers in my ears. That's worked before when everything was too loud for me to sleep.
"He's not even human," Daddy says and I hear Mommy crying. I don't know if they're talking about me or Superman, but if Superman is my Dad and he's from a planet called Krypton, then I'm part of from a different planet too. That makes neither of us quite human, but I think that's okay. I just wish Daddy wouldn't say it so mean.
- - -
They're fighting again, but this time I know Daddy Clark is coming. I asked him to today when I saw him at the bullpen. I even fell asleep on his lap. I was in the car with Mommy when I woke up, though. I was sad because I wanted to still be on Clark's lap; he has a nice, big, warm lap. It's a good place to sleep. Especially when I can never sleep at home anymore because they're always fighting downstairs. They think I'm sleep and that I couldn't hear them anyways, but that's a lie.
"No, Lois!" I hear Daddy Richard yell even through my fingers in my ears. I cringe and squeeze my eyes tighter shut. Then I feel the usual warmth that comes with Daddy Clark as he scoops me up onto his lap. I pull my fingers out of my ears and wrap my arms around his neck. He holds onto me, hugging me close. He knows I'm afraid even though I'm not crying. He knows I don't like it when they fight. I know he doesn't like it when they fight either.
"Do you want to go?" He asks. I can feel his chest moving below my ear when he talks and it feels good. When his chest is moving under my ear I can't hear the yelling downstairs. I just nod.
Mom helped me pack a bag earlier, just the stuff I'll need for school tomorrow and my clothes. She told me she and Clark would pack up the rest of my stuff and her stuff and bring it with them when Clark comes back to get her. I'm glad we're leaving.
Wearing my backpack and my Aquaman pajamas as we fly is weird. It's just weird to be wearing Aquaman pajamas when you fly with Superman, especially if Superman is your Dad. Mom would never let me get Superman pajamas, though; I think she's afraid somebody might recognize me as his son if I wear the big 'S' on me. I don't think so- I'm too little to look like him. Maybe when I'm bigger and stronger. I'll have to get glasses, too, so people can't see my eyes. They're the same really blue color his are. I like it.
