The Kingdom of Childhood Page 16

  But before he could utter a curt response she asked, “Would you fill up the Volvo for me?”

  He smiled in confusion. “Your car?”

  “Yeah. It’s nearly out of gas, and Russ won’t be back for days yet. I could ask Scott, but you know how he is.”

  “Is there some reason you don’t do it yourself?”

  She shrugged. “The smell bothers me, that’s all.”

  “No problem,” he replied, and he meant it. He stuffed his feet into his sneakers, fished her car keys and a twenty-dollar bill from her purse, and slipped out of the dark house into the damp morning air.

  It felt good to be behind the wheel, with the cool wind rushing through the open windows and the radio, for once, set to a station he actually liked. At the gas station he filled the tank and browsed the mini-mart for necessities: a cold bottle of green tea, eye drops, and a breakfast of an apple and a bag of almonds, the only non-objectionable snack foods available. With most of Judy’s twenty gone, he climbed back into the car and signaled his turn onto Crescent Road.

  The town was still sleeping. Rising up along the road were the whitewashed cinder-block apartment buildings, the small postwar town houses, that marked off the hamlet of Sylvania from the sprawling prefab buildings of the larger suburbs. A banner hung above the road announced a community art contest. Past the low-slung Catholic church—in whose shadowed lot he often met Judy in the evenings—lay Hauschen Lake, glittering darkly beyond the pines. He followed the uphill curve until he saw the sign for Judy’s street, and then, on impulse, turned his gaze toward the top of the hill and hit the gas.

  The road crested, then expanded toward a highway whizzing with cars. Even at this early hour the delivery trucks raced along, the poor suckers with inflexible jobs tolerated their commute, and Zach joined them. He drove without any particular idea of where he was headed, following the curve of the road as it roared past office buildings and storage facilities, broken-down ranch houses and an electrical substation. After a while he took an exit and the road grew narrower, flanked by forest. The sky, glowing a deep hazy blue but streaked with rose and yellow, looked like the painting on Judy’s classroom wall blurred by distance. On an impulse as immediate as the one which had led him on the journey, he pulled onto the shoulder and shut off the car.

  His brain was tired, but the drive had turned the nauseated gloomy feeling into one of shallow exuberance, and he gamely wished to follow that thread wherever it took him. With his bag of almonds in hand, he crunched through the russet leaves into the woods. The mild hill was slick with pine needles, but he dug his toes in deeper, touching the trees for balance, and made the climb. Farther in, a tall chain-link fence marked some border that seemed to make no sense at all; the woods continued beyond it, and no sign announced an owner or reason. He clasped the bag of almonds in his teeth and clambered over the fence, taking the eight-foot drop in easy stride.

  The forest. It felt good to be here. He breathed in the piney air and hiked up the crest of the hill, where it leveled off and stretched into a few acres of sweetgum and fir before flattening into farmland. Upon sight of the yellow fields he understood where he was. He had driven past this place with his friends before; it was an agricultural facility of some sort, a practice farm where they tried out new plant hybrids and fertilizers. Still, he had trees and space and he was blessedly alone. He sat down beside a spruce and ate his almonds, then lay on his back to watch the last of the darkness slip from the sky.

  The November trees, their contorted branches nearly bare, made it easy to catch the subtle shifts that marked the sunrise. In his home state it would be far too cold to lie in the woods in nothing but street clothes and a down vest, but here he felt barely a chill. The leaves crackled beneath his back and, above, the last remaining ones shuffled softly to the earth, a sound best heard with his eyes closed.

  Beautiful, he thought.

  He breathed in the clear air and felt the living woods surround him, the ground buoying him on a litter of leaves, the sunlight a pale, narrow beam that promised warmth yet to come.

  When he awoke, a county sheriff was glaring down at him, hands on his belt.

  Zach’s mind, most recently settled into the depth of the word beautiful, rose to the state of oh shit.

  “You damn runaways always gotta show up here,” the officer said. “You kids ever hear of the mall?”

  Already pushing himself up on his arms, Zach mumbled, “I’m not a runaway.”

  “Get up. You got ID?”

  Zach fumbled for his wallet, handed over his driver’s license, and rubbed the sleep from one eye with his palm. “I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to be here.”

  “Of course you’re not allowed. This is a federal facility.”

  “I thought it was a farm.”

  “It is—USDA. Licensed personnel only.” The officer held up Zach’s driver’s license. “New Hampshire. Not a runaway, huh?”

  After drifting off following nearly twenty-four hours without sleep, his body begged to be allowed to return to the forest floor. Even the presence of a police officer could not stop him from nearly falling asleep on his feet. Shaking his head groggily, he said, “I moved to Sylvania last summer.”

  “So what are you doing all the way up here?”

  “Visiting my girlfriend.”

  The side of the officer’s mouth lifted in a peevish smile. “Don’t see her around here, do you?”

  “No. I stopped here just to—see the woods. I like the woods.”

  “You walked from Sylvania.”

  He shook his head again and wavered on his feet. God, he needed to sleep. He couldn’t even figure out how to put the words together to explain how he had arrived here. When he thought about Judy’s car on the shoulder at the bottom of the hill, his thoughts melted into a puddle. He blinked several times in an attempt to clear his head, and the man asked, “How much have you had to drink?”

  “Drink? Nothing. Just some tea.” Coffee would have been a good idea, he realized now. He still wasn’t used to choosing it, with one of his parents normally around.

  “You expect me to believe that? Your eyes are bloodshot from here to hell and back.”

  “It’s my contacts, that’s all. Look at my license. I’m sixteen. I can’t drink.”

  “Like that’s ever stopped you kids before.” The sheriff took him by the upper arm and led him toward a sand-colored car between the forest and the field. “You got a parent at home?”

  The momentary prickle of fear that seized him quickly gave way as his mind finally kicked into gear. “Yeah,” he muttered. “My stepmom.”

  By the time Judy appeared at the door of the security station, Zach felt considerably less agitated than he had in the first moments after being escorted into the officer’s car. First, he gradually realized the man was not, in fact, a county sheriff, just some rent-a-cop who worked for the agricultural center and wore a brown uniform. Second, Judy’s shrieking in his ear included a rant about how she hated driving Russ’s car, which reassured Zach that he could count on her to bail him out, however grouchily. As the minutes ticked by and he scratched at a mark on the officer’s desk with his fingernail, he grew to feel almost cocky. What was she going to do—report him to his parents? Ditch him? Refuse to let him tank up her car again? No—the power was all his. He had spent the past ten hours pleasing the living hell out of her. She was just fortunate that when he found himself being dragged along by a guy in a uniform, he had the good sense to keep his version of their relationship G-rated.

  She caught his eye as the officer came toward her. She wore one of her baggy kindergarten-teacher jumpers over the T-shirt she had slept in, but her coat disguised the strange look. Her hair was back in a loose, messy ponytail. He shot her a smile and was rewarded with a venomous glare.

  “Said he was visiting his girlfriend,” the officer told her. “Staggering around like he’s three sheets to the wind.”

  Judy responded with a few short shakes of her h
ead directed at Zach. “I told you to stay away from that girl.”

  “I told him we could charge him with trespassing on federal property, but so long as there’s an adult going to set him straight, we won’t pursue it. I’ll let you two work that out.”

  “Oh, we will,” she muttered as she signed the clipboard.

  Once enclosed in Russ’s red sport-utility vehicle, Judy turned toward him with a look that made her earlier glare seem angelic. “What the hell, Zach.”

  “I felt like driving.”

  “You felt like driving. My car. And practically getting arrested. God, are you ever lucky I knew how to play along when he called.”

  Zach shrugged.

  “And now here we are in Russ’s car,” she continued, “you in your T-shirt with cat hair all over it, forcing me to sign off on a document that says I picked you up at seven in the morning. How is that going to look? Are you trying to get me arrested? Or to find yourself in court giving a blow-by-blow of all this in front of your mother?”

  He shrugged again. He recognized the melodrama. It was a mom thing. The best course of action was to shut up and let her vent it until she was done.

  “You have nothing to say for yourself,” she prompted.

  He considered that, then said, “I’ve got to pee pretty bad.”

  She banged the steering wheel with both hands. “Damn you, Zach. You’ve got some serious nerve. You’ve got chutzpah.”

  “Chutzpah?” He laughed. “Is that like R-R-R-Rudi?”

  Her open palm collided with his face in a burning slap. Hand flying to his cheek, he sneered at her. “Ow. What the fuck.”

  “Don’t you mock me,” she ordered, but her tone had a nervous waver.

  “Don’t you hit me, goddamn it. What the hell was that?”

  She turned the key in the ignition. “That was me snapping you out of it.”

  “Snapping me out of what?”

  “Your attitude problem is what.”

  “My attitude problem?” He felt his face growing hotter by the moment. “Who the fuck do you think you are, my mother? Even she doesn’t hit me.”

  “Don’t start with me, Zach,” Judy warned. “It’s not like you’ve never taken your aggressions out on me.”

  “When have I ever done anything like that to you?” he said. All the muscles in his body seemed to shiver with fury. “When have I ever laid a hand on you because I was angry.”

  “Why would you be angry?” she yelled, her voice filling the car. “You call all the shots. You’re the one who walks away happy no matter what. You take advantage of me and scare the shit out of me and then you have the nerve to sit there with that smug look on your face mocking me for being upset. How dare you.”

  He set his jaw and met her angry stare. “You owe me an apology. It’s one thing if you’re pissed, but you don’t hit me. Nobody hits me.”

  “I am pissed.”

  “That’s fine. If that’s how you want to be about it, I’m gone.”

  “Maybe that’s not a bad idea,” she countered. “Go. And rub it in my face while you’re at it, so I won’t be tempted next time you try to seduce me while I’m babysitting you. Go get in Fairen’s bed, since she’s obviously the one you really want. See if she puts up with your shit.”

  That hit a nerve. He remembered Fairen’s cold eyes and angry words at the rest stop, the way his heart had lurched when she pulled her wrist from his grasp. He said, “Don’t be a bitch.”

  She barked a laugh. “I’m a bitch. Imagine if that officer had done his job a little better. Found my car and ran the tags. Called your mother. I’d go to jail. My kids would never speak to me again, and my husband would divorce me. In twenty years I’d be living in some roachy little rented room and put ting on a hairnet to go to work. All because I gave you a blow job.”

  He cast a narrowed glance in her direction. After a moment he said, “You’ve done a hell of a lot more than give me a blow job.”

  “Yeah, you seem to be suffering for it. That punishment fits the crime, don’t you think?”

  She threw the car into gear and turned the corner toward where her Volvo sat on the shoulder, not very distant at all. He rolled down the window and turned his face toward the wind, allowing his silence to be its own reply. When she pulled up behind the Volvo and cut the engine, he didn’t budge. He stared out at the trees and let the stillness gather.

  “You still owe me an apology,” he said.

  “Fine,” she replied. Her voice was breezy and hard at the same time. “I’m sorry I hit you. All right?”

  He said nothing. Her tone made it clear she felt no remorse. He felt a sting at the corners of his eyes and thought glumly back to the previous night, when he had found himself toying with the idea that he and Judy were a sort of dirty Bonnie and Clyde and that it bonded them somehow, made them not just two mismatched people who hooked up when it was convenient, but a pair. Now he felt foolish in his delusion.

  “Do you accept my apology?” she pressed.

  He sighed. “Sure.”

  Leaning back in her seat, she reached over and massaged him, the gesture conciliatory but her fingers pliant, confident. He looked out the window carelessly and did not stop her. And that was the worst part: his desire for her, still intact. After all the fear and guilt and bullshit, he still wanted her.

  16

  The day of the Martinmas lantern walk had arrived, and after my last student left that afternoon I set out a sheet of poster board on the art table and spread around it every photo of Bobbie I had managed to hoard. The distraction, grim though it might be, was a welcome one. The momentary pop of my palm against Zach’s cheek had grown into a thunderclap that echoed across the days. Nobody hits me. Afterward he had no choice but to return to my house to drop off the car, but he had also come inside, set his back against the closed front door, and accepted my makeshift apology in grouchy silence. It was enough to assure me his silent treatment wouldn’t last long, but in the meantime I missed his company, in all its manifestations.

  Since Dan’s request that I put together a little tribute for Bobbie, my colleagues had come to me with whatever pictures they could find of her. I had waited until the last minute in order to be sure no one’s photos were excluded from the display. Now came the difficult work of actually looking at them. Already I had painted the board in swirling pastels, using the wet-on-wet watercolor technique that was a fixture of our trade, and written her name at the top in the noble and calligraphic Waldorf hand. Along the bottom now I attached one photo after another of Bobbie posing with her fellow teachers. In many, she was young and round-faced, with her smooth brown hair in the bob she had always worn; in the later pictures she was thinner, with a lavender bandanna tied around her head. As I set to work arranging the earliest photos toward the top, the task grew much harder. She had done her training a couple of years after me, having grown discontented with her experiences in other private schools and envious of my enthusiasm and sense of purpose. But as undergraduates our lives had been so intertwined almost to the point of codependency, and as I looked at those pictures I felt anxiety taxiing inside me like a plane down a runway, filling my mind with the shrilling thought of the loss, the loss, the loss.

  There we were: two twenty-year-olds in brief white running shorts and emerald-green knee socks, standing in the field of the inter-dormitory softball game and smiling as though this were something we truly enjoyed. Her arm rested over my shoulders; she balanced her weight on one foot in a jaunty way, while I, short in stature and bird-boned, stood with my hands folded beneath my sternum as though caught in the act of prayer. Her smile was openhearted. Mine was nervous, and with good reason. The semester before, I had lost nearly everything in a fire at our previous dorm building. Bobbie had, too, of course—she was my roommate—but unlike me, Bobbie didn’t carry her whole life off to college with her out of fear that her family would dissolve in her absence and scatter her possessions to the four winds. And also unlike me, Bobbie had not
been dating the man who had caused the fire by getting drunk and falling asleep while smoking in bed. I felt responsible, in a way, because I had known of Marty’s bad habits but did nothing to report or repair them. He drank when he was angry, which was often. On the night of the fire he and I had slept together; afterward, as I lay with my head on his chest watching the smoke from his cigarette curl toward the ceiling, a girl called. He had asked me to step out of the room so he could talk to her, and we argued. I had gone back to my own room feeling put out, and even months later my sense lingered that if I hadn’t been quite so sensitive, several dozen people would have been spared the heartache and difficulty of losing all their things. And of course, Marty would still be alive. You can’t blame yourself, Bobbie had told me, and set to work making our new room as cheerful as possible to distract me from my gloominess. It was she who bought me a new Last Tango in Paris poster, pointing out that Marlon Brando could take anyone’s mind off anything at all, and gave me a glass ball swirled with purple that hung in the window and captured the light, sending it off in little rays around our room. Even now it hung in my kitchen window, and like everything that bore the stamp of Bobbie’s love, I treasured it as though it were the relic of a saint.

  I taped the photo near the top center of the board, running a hand over it to smooth it down. As I did, my door thumped open and Sandy came in, carrying a rattling box of lanterns made of tall Mason jars covered in tissue-paper stars slicked down with white glue.

  “I found these in my supply closet,” she said. “Thought you might be able to use them for the younger siblings who show up without one. Will they do for that?”