PHOTOGRAPH BY HEIKE STEINWEG

Y_our story in this week’s issue,_ “__Cold Little Bird,” is about a ten-year-old boy who decides one day that he doesn’t love his parents and doesn’t want to be touched by them. Where did the initial idea for the story come from? Have you known a child like this?

I had the opening sentences for a little while. A kid who just goes cold and distant on his parents. I didn’t know what the story might be, but the situation worried me, and I kept coming back to it. We have a potentially terrible power over the people who love us—simply because of what they have come to need from us that we can withhold—and that problem seems even stickier and more upsetting with children. Children are far more easily forgiven, and parents are more willing to endure the hurt. Children have a lot of latitude when it comes to cruelty in the home. What is just growth and independence and what is unendurable? The whole dynamic of a child lurching away from the fold feels fraught and mysterious. At least to me.

Expectant parents live in fear of their child turning out to be autistic or disabled in some way. In this case, the parents have had ten normal years to give them a false sense of confidence. Why do you think Jonah chooses this moment to transform himself?

Well, his motive is not given, and I hope that that omission informs the story, just the way he eludes and confounds his parents. What scares me about Jonah’s transformation is how much agency there seems to be behind it. He is a smart and articulate kid and he can explain himself. He’s not having a tantrum, screaming and shouting. He’s being reasonable. Even his father, at first, senses a kind of logic to it. It’s a rational decision to stop loving his parents—and if it takes a toll on Jonah we don’t see it, because this is not his story. It’s the rationality that makes the situation seem more menacing to me. As kids grow up, they pull away from their parents—so why not pull all of a sudden and very hard?

Rachel and others suggest that part of the problem here may be Martin and his overreactions. Do you think that’s true?

I wanted Martin to misbehave in the wake of Jonah’s detachment, because if he’s a saint, or just a doormat for this rogue kid, the story is less interesting. He takes it personally, he gets mad, he yells. Rachel is pushed into the role of defending Jonah and his behavior, and maybe the reader is forced to wonder just how disturbed Jonah is. I was most interested in the moments when it’s unclear how bad the situation is. Bad kid, bad parenting, or maybe both? If Jonah is a straight-out monster then everything flattens in a way that doesn’t interest me.

How did 9/11 truthers become part of the narrative?

I had Jonah doing a variety of terrible things as I was writing the story, but not many of them worked, and I kept cutting stuff out. Jonah’s cold behavior needed to escalate in some way that wasn’t just antisocial or run-of-the-mill. I’m not sure how the 9/11 book got into the story, but once it was there it seemed to function as a pretty serious threat to Martin and Rachel. Martin’s Jewishness is called out, because he is passive about it, and Jonah makes some reasonable points within the larger unreason of his 9/11 denial. This becomes a kind of direct attack on Martin, while also being generally upsetting for the obvious reasons.

“Cold Little Bird” is, of course, something of a horror story for all parents. Why do you think we’re so frightened by the idea of a child who doesn’t express “appropriate” emotions?

Well, it’s alienating and lonely-making when people close up shop on us and fold inward, when they turn off the lights and no longer look on us kindly. It’s super threatening. And if it’s your own kid, the creature who is supposedly programmed to love you unconditionally, then it’s far worse. How alone can anyone really bear to be?

In the editing process, we went back and forth a bit on the ending of the story. Do you imagine the situation staying as it is or getting worse after we fade out?

Worse. I think the family has entered a new normal, and, even if it’s quiet, it’s not pretty. Perhaps there could be another story about the loveless ways of a family that has had to adapt to something like this, a family tiptoeing through some kind of bleak aftermath.