The Kingdom of Childhood Page 19

  So I said, “I can’t answer that. I don’t know why I’m doing this at all. I don’t get a thrill out of the risk, that’s for sure. And I’ve certainly never felt attracted to a teenager. Not as an adult.”

  His laugh was quick and harsh. “You’re doing a good job faking it.”

  “So are you.”

  “I’m just taking what’s available.”

  “Then maybe you only care about one thing,” I suggested. “Or perhaps we both have reasons we’re not owning up to. I could take a stab at what mine might be. And maybe for you it’s about all the time you spent imagining that yoga student going to bed with your mother. But regardless, I’m not thinking about anything else when I’m with you. Are you thinking about your mother when you’re with me?”

  “No,” he said curtly.

  “Then we’re on the same page. You call the shots here, Zach. You decide when enough is enough. I made a mistake last week, and I’m sorry. But if I was any good at thinking straight when I’m with you, then we wouldn’t be in this situation, would we? If you’re fed up with it, fine. Tell me to my face, and then stop asking me for rides home. You can’t come looking for me after school and then get angry with me when I feel the same way. You have to just say, ‘No, Judy, I’m not doing this anymore.’”

  He took a deep breath. “No, Judy, I’m not doing this anymore.”

  My heart lurched, but I said, “Fine. Then I’m not offering anymore, and you’re not asking.”

  He looked at a point over my shoulder. “What if I slip up?”

  “I’m not a prostitute, Zach. Make up your mind and let me know what you decide.”

  The cat wandered into the kitchen and curled around his legs. Sighing, he slipped his fingers up under his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling a little better,” I told him. “That’s all I came to ask.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut tight and gave them a final rub. When he looked at me, his eyes were tired. In an edgy voice, one I couldn’t read at all, he said, “Thanks for stopping by.”

  19

  By Friday morning Zach felt better, his mother’s mystery teas and phosphorous tablets having worked their magic. He shaved off his week’s worth of beard, blinked his contacts back into his eyes, worked some goop into his hair, and almost looked normal again.

  Almost. Something didn’t seem the same. He shook his hair from his eyes and peered closely at himself in the mirror, just as he had a week ago, after the crappy night with Judy. For once his skin was clear, but the difference was more than that; the angles in his face looked sharper. He pulled up his shirt and examined his midsection. His stomach and chest looked the same, but his face suggested he had lost a few pounds. Not surprising, given the fever that had sapped his appetite as well as the fact that, under stress, his stomach had a tendency to return anything delivered to it. He fixed himself a cup of chai and a bowl of granola with milk, and, when it all stayed down, he figured it was time to get back to the grind.

  Back at school, his friends were glad to see him. A few girls in his class even hugged him. As he settled into the morning’s Main Lesson he tried to focus on the teacher to gather in all the information he had missed, but as usual, Dante’s Inferno failed to hold his attention. His gaze wandered toward the windows, to the trees shedding the last of their crackling brown leaves into the chilly wind. Distantly, at the end of the building which housed the Lower School, the voices of children echoed from the playground. He watched the little kids chasing each other and digging in the sand with their red metal shovels, the teachers in barn jackets walking among them, their heads all covered.

  None of the teachers was Judy. These children were older, second-and third-graders probably, but still his mind meandered to the kindergarten classroom: its miniature town of wooden buildings scattered on the floor, the beeswax gnomes pressed against the window glass, the protective inward curve of the rose-colored walls where the corners would be. Its windows overlooked the playground on one side, and on the other, the garden. The first time he had come to her, after the day in the woods, she had not drawn the shades. Anyone could have seen them. So blinded had he been by what he wanted, so surprised by the ease of acquiring it, that he had not considered the danger. Neither had she; they had never discussed it, but he had read a lot into her foolhardiness that day. Since then, she had made a habit of drawing her shades at dismissal time.

  He bided his time through Spanish, and then, as lunchtime arrived, gathered his books and hustled past the multipurpose room. By now Judy would be outside with her morning class. She caught his eye as he approached, a small figure dwarfed by her canvas jacket, her face half-hidden beneath her kerchief. Sexless creatures these teachers were, bland to the point of invisibility. He knew better, of course, but in some sense he enjoyed the illusion of it: that she was a blank canvas onto which he could scribble everything he had ever wanted to do to any woman, that she set out the raw material of story or craft but his imagination gave the spark that brought it to life.

  “You’re better now,” she observed. “All shipshape.”

  “All shipshape,” he agreed. Her face was impassive. He added, “My voice is still a little rough, so I’m skipping Madrigals tonight, but I feel fine.”

  She nodded. Then she asked, “Where are we?”

  “The Lower School playground.”

  “Come on, Zach, you’re a more abstract thinker than that.” Her gaze burned into him, but, unsure of what she meant, he gave no reply. She asked, “Are you still upset with me?”

  He shook his head. Upset was the wrong word. He didn’t offer up any that felt more accurate. Numb. Hard. Resentful. He felt duped by a bait-and-switch maneuver: led in by the illusion that their affair was based on primal, mutual need, only to discover, when he felt none, that she would take from him anyway. Her apology had taken the edge off his anger, but it also proved a point that made him feel gloomy and helpless: he could have her the way she was, a dark star of desire for him, or he could have her not at all. If his time with her had taught him one thing, it was that he had been keeping his own set of desires on one hell of a choke chain, and he had little motivation to try to order the animal back into the cage. But he didn’t have to be nice about it.

  “Come by my classroom when everyone else is at Madrigals,” she said, her voice a low monotone. “I’ll give you a better apology then.”

  “I don’t want that.” At the moment it held no appeal to him. To be vulnerable to her, needy of her willingness, in her debt. He wanted to establish to her how he felt about her now, and that wasn’t the way.

  She shot him a nervous glance. “What do you want, then?”

  “Russ is teaching tonight, right? I’ll meet you at your house. I’ll tell my folks I’m going to the library or something.”

  She frowned. “During Madrigals? That’s not very convenient as far as timing goes.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Her lips tightened in disapproval, deepening the lines at the corners of her mouth. The edges of her Russian-grandma headwrap fluttered in the wind. “You’re still angry. This is your way of getting me back.”

  “No. This is my way of getting laid. It’s been over a week. I don’t want a BJ. I want a bed.”

  She sighed. “Well, I guess I ought to be grateful you’re still coming to me for that.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “You should.”

  She shot him a sideways look, her gaze lingering on his face for a beat, seeming to take in his grim expression. He shoved his hands deeper in his vest pockets and hunched his shoulders against the wind, then turned and headed back into the school.

  His anger left me anxious all afternoon. I poured myself what apple juice was left in the bottle from the children’s snacktime and dosed it up with Bach’s Rescue Remedy to calm my nerves. My students engaged themselves in a game of tying on a golden silk cape from Michaelmas Day, back in September, and chanting its rhyme for each other in turn. Ai
dan wears a cape of light. It gives him courage, strength and might. As soon as the cape went on, the child’s expression would change, grow prouder and more noble; occasionally a beaming smile would cross his or her face. If it was a girl, she might spin in a circle; a boy would plant his fists against his hips. I sat in a tiny chair, my knees hiked up beneath my jumper, and wished Steiner had thought up an equivalent item for adults. What I needed was a sweeping velvet cloak with a hood, panther-black, to make me feel aloof and mysterious instead of groveling and desperate. But I would have to shed it anyway to give Zach what he wanted, so I was fresh out of luck.

  As the school day ended I sent each of my students, one at a time, off with their parent or caregiver. Easing them through these transitions was an important part of my job, and one I valued, but today I felt impatient to get these rituals over with and move on to the business of smoothing things over with Zach. But after the last child left, as I moved around my classroom tucking in chairs and straightening baskets, Sandy stepped in.

  “Judy?” she began. “Do you have a moment?”

  I turned to face her, and she perched on the edge of the shelving unit beneath the window. “I saw you speaking with Zach Patterson on the playground earlier. He’s one of my students.”

  “Is he?”

  “Yes, and something’s off about him. He doesn’t even make a passing effort to pay attention in class. You should see his notebooks. I’ve seen fifth-graders turn in better work. Clearly he’s not stupid. I mean, I don’t think he’ll be discovering the cure for cancer, but I’m sure he’s not as…boneheaded as he comes across in my classroom.”

  I nodded, then shrugged. “Kids that age. They can be pretty disengaged. Scott’s the same way.”

  “I know you’ve spent a lot of time with him lately. Helping him get in his service hours, and all that.”

  “Yes.”

  Her hands moved in a searching gesture, slowly stirring the air. “Has he—said anything to you? Indicated if there’s a problem at home? Does he seem distressed to you?”

  I offered her a small smile. My heart was beginning to settle down from the panic that had trickled into me when Sandy began asking her questions. Now I understood the situation was simple: Sandy wanted me to tell a story. In the Waldorf teaching college we had learned the right way to tell a story, and that way is quite different from the common wisdom. It calls for the teacher to speak in a near monotone, absent of animation, never varying from the script. A story told this way is almost hypnotic, sending the child’s focus to the words rather than the storyteller, allowing her to memorize the tale and grow familiar with it until it is drawn into the heart. This is a very good way to tell a fairy tale, and also an excellent way to explain a complicated lie. I was a master at Waldorf-style storytelling, because I had been using these techniques all my life.

  “Yes,” I admitted. “He’s had problems with that girl. Fairen Ambrose.”

  “Ah.” Her face rearranged itself instantly into a look of total comprehension. “He told you this?”

  “Oh, yes. She plays games with him. Strings him along. I saw it myself on the choir trip to Ohio. Playing footsie, back massages, and then when he pursues it she turns him down. He’s a bit stymied by it. Embarrassed. He covers it up by acting like he doesn’t care.”

  “That makes sense. I’m trying to get to know all these kids, but it’s a process. You’ve known most of them since kindergarten, I’ve been told.”

  I nodded. “It’s interesting how little they change. Fairen, for example. She’s very bright, but she uses terrible language and doesn’t have much respect for adults. She was the same at five. And of course, since she spends a lot of time at my house and I have a son, there are other things I don’t love about her. To put it politely, she’s very liberated.”

  Sandy laughed. “No wonder Zach likes her.”

  “Yes, I’d say that’s an ill-advised match for a kid who seems pretty naïve.”

  She nodded, then leaned in and said in a stage whisper, “I’ll change my seating arrangements at the end of the term.”

  I chuckled. “Good idea.”

  “God, isn’t it hell?” she said. “Being that age and dealing with all the romantic drama? There’s no amount of money you could pay me to go back and experience all that again. Remember what it was like?”

  I smiled again, the muscles in my face going taut with the effort. I remembered.

  “Lift.”

  I followed Zach’s command and raised up my end of a folding table, taking a few mincing steps forward as he strode backward. His biceps bulged forward; the tendons in his forearms shifted beneath his skin.

  “This weighs about twenty pounds more than it ought to,” he observed.

  “Well, it’s pretty old.”

  His voice was derisive. “Everything in this school is pretty old.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  He caught my smirk and returned a patient half smile. “Present company excluded, Mrs. McFarland.”

  “Zach. Please.”

  He eased the table down into its spot and I gratefully followed suit. Banners were already strung high above our heads, the distinctive Waldorf script lettered in a dusky rainbow of colors by hardworking eleventh-graders. Baskets full of crafts were stacked three high along the walls. Zach’s beautiful playhouse sat at one end of the room as the crown jewel between the two silent-auction tables, its leafy top fluttering slightly beneath the whisper of the heating duct. I thought about my conversation with Sandy the day before, the questions I had answered for her about Zach’s distraction and Fairen’s negligible morals. The devil, it is said, will draw you in with nine truths and one lie.

  “Still got a pile of these left to put in place,” he said. “You want me to get one of my friends to help instead?”

  “I’ll be fine. I’m stronger than I look.”

  He circled around the table and walked a diagonal line across the room to the storage closet. Leaning across a table stored on its side, he shifted his balance forward to remove some obstacle from the floor, revealing beneath his hiked-up shirt a band of skin on his lower back. In the small room, with the door blocking any curious eyes peering in from the hallway, I felt the urge to run my hand affectionately over the bumps of his spine, but restrained it. Since he had gotten well and returned to me, Zach was all business. He was still willing, but no longer warm. It made me anxious, but I consoled myself that it was probably meaningless in the long term. Despite his youth he was a man like any other: he would get over whatever made him petulant, so long as I kept it coming.

  Footsteps behind me forced my thoughts back in line. I rested my hands appropriately on the table and turned only when my name was called.

  “Phone for you in the office.”

  Even over the phone line, the tension in Russ’s voice sounded thick enough to close off his windpipe. “I got a call from Maggie,” he told me. “We need to go up there and bail her out.”

  I turned my back to the secretary. “I’m sorry. Did you say ‘bail her out’?”

  “They picked her up at a protest. She crossed a line or yelled at a cop or something, beats the hell out of me. I can’t even tell for sure whether they actually set bail or they’re just being pains in the ass and won’t let her go unless we show up to claim her. She wasn’t exactly forthcoming with the information.”

  I grunted an exasperated sigh. “What sort of protest?”

  “Something about the impeachment. Some campus group protesting against it, and she was in the group on the other side in favor of it. They clashed, and now we’ve got a two-hour drive ahead of us. I vote we leave her there overnight, to tell you the truth. You want to play, you gotta pay.”

  “That’s impossible. The bazaar is tomorrow. I have to be here.” I pushed my hair back with stiff fingers and heard the squeak of tables being dragged around in the multipurpose room. “Russ, can’t you just go get her yourself? They need me here to set all this stuff up.”

  “I
can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ll kill her.”

  I closed my eyes and considered it was probably a poor idea to let him loose on distant roads with his system full of pharmaceuticals. The last thing I needed was two family members in separate jails around various parts of Maryland. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll be home in a few minutes. Just—gas up the car before I get there, all right?”

  20

  We drove north. Along the way, Russ played his Ken Burns Jazz Collection CDs until I felt tempted to kick the player through the dash and into the engine. At one point, when he changed discs, a snippet of radio blasted through. I recognized the tune, a song Zach frequently sang along to, headphones on, as he worked on the playhouse. She comes ’round and she goes down on me. Filthy lyrics, all sex and hard drugs, a capella in Zach’s angelic pitch-perfect tenor. I tuned out the jazz and let myself drift on the memories of Zach as he moved around the workshop, in those last hours when I accepted that he was completely beautiful and completely untouchable. I longed to turn the car around and go home.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Russ asked conversationally. “We got arrested twice for protesting the Vietnam War, and now here our daughter is getting arrested for being a right-wing nut job. Where did we go wrong?”

  I took my eyes off the road long enough to glance at him. He sat back easily in the passenger seat, the corner of his mouth upturned in an ironic smirk. He had voiced no objection when I asked for the keys, although the car was his. Perhaps he had loaded up on downers, because he seemed nothing like his usual self.