The Kingdom of Childhood Page 23

  He drifted into a few hours of uneasy sleep and got up when the alarm woke him, dressing for school with the reluctance of the small boy he was no longer. Outside the sky was still the blue dark of a winter morning. He felt tempted to claim sick and crawl back into bed, but already he had missed a week of school with the flu, he couldn’t afford to miss any more work, and staying housebound all day was likely to drive him insane. What he needed was to distract himself through the day and then gather the cojones to talk to Judy. He needed to tell her they’d been caught, they needed to stop hooking up, stop riding in cars together, stop looking at each other for God’s sake because they couldn’t even do that right; and above all he needed to pass on this information to her without taking advantage of the privacy to get in one last adrenaline rush. To that end, as he filled the pockets of his jeans, he deliberately skipped over the stash of condoms at the back of his underwear drawer. Weeks ago he had resorted to buying his own when he grew embarrassed at how many he was taking from Rhianne, and, as hard as it was for him to believe, he had actually developed preferences. If he could go back in time and tell his September self that in a few months he’d be a prima donna about condom brands, he never would have believed it. Even Rhianne’s assurances had seemed fantastical then.

  Rhianne. Maybe he ought to run his problems past her. She had told him over and over that she was there for any question he might have. He was sure she wouldn’t approve, but no doubt she’d heard worse, and if she judged him for it, well, she’d be out of his life soon enough. The thought of confiding in her raised his spirits just slightly, and he headed off to school with the small hope that he might, after all, find a solution.

  His optimism lasted just long enough to get him to the door of his classroom. There his Main Lesson teacher greeted him with his usual handshake and a warm “Good morning, Zach.” Then he handed him a hall pass and said, “Ms. Valera wants to see you this morning.”

  “What? Why?”

  “She just wants to speak with you. It’s between you and her.”

  “I can just talk to her after school or something, can’t I? I don’t want to miss class. I’ve got my Inferno summary in my Main Lesson book to show you. I know it’s late and all, but—”

  “Zach,” said his teacher. He looked at Zach over his glasses. “Go.”

  As he walked down the hall, Zach felt his anxiety level spiraling upward by the second. Temple had ratted him out. I won’t tell Scott, he had said. You’ve got my word. But he had never promised not to tell an adult, and now here Zach was, on his way to the classroom Temple must have visited first thing that morning. He could almost hear Temple’s end of the conversation, his SAT-genius, teacher’s-pet explanation: I tried to explain it to him by what you taught us about crime in Germania, but he just denied it and denied it. And I’m really worried about him. He’s not keeping up with his end of our project because of his relationship with the kindergarten teacher. Left foot, right foot; fear and fury throbbed in him, each in turn, with the pounding of every step. Temple had forgotten: traitors hung from trees. He walked past classroom after classroom. From each came the chorus of the other students chanting the morning verse:

  I do behold the world Wherein there shines the sun Wherein there gleam the stars Wherein there lie the stones.

  Normally he slogged through it, by rote. At the moment, though, he would have enjoyed nothing more than droning out a scripted introspection about his soul if it meant he could circumvent a conversation about it.

  He stepped into Ms. Valera’s classroom, which was empty of students—her planning period, he supposed. Straight ahead was the supply closet at which, not very long ago, he had attempted to get a little attention out of Judy and she had freaked out like the entire concept astonished her. The history classroom was a Bermuda triangle in which Judy was chaste, Temple was a rat, and Zach wished to be in the presence of anyone but the hottest teacher in the school. It was no wonder the previous teacher had died. The place was cursed.

  “Have a seat, Zach,” Ms. Valera said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  She sat at its far end at her desk, scribbling onto a stack of papers, her long hair brushing her arm as she wrote. Objectively speaking, she was probably still hot, but at the moment she looked simply terrifying. He sat in the chair nearest her, which was not on the opposite side of her desk but rather very near her own seat, to diminish any sense of her as an authoritarian figure. He would have preferred the desk in the way, as a sort of emotional shield.

  She turned to face him and crossed her legs, resting an elbow on her knee. “Do you know why I asked you to come see me?”

  Oh yeah, he thought, but there was zero chance he would offer that answer. He decided to plead the Fifth. “No idea.”

  “Sure you do. I can tell by your answers that you’re not doing the readings. Your papers are hastily done, and in class, you always have this look.” She waved a hand up and down in front of her face slowly. “Glazed as a donut. Do I bore you?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “I try to keep it interesting. I spoke to some of your other teachers and they report you seem distracted, but to some extent they write it off because you’re new here and still getting acclimated. But I’m in the same boat, and I think it’s something else. What do you think?”

  The back of his nose began to burn, near his throat. He looked away and replied, “I’ve just been real busy in the evenings and not getting enough sleep.”

  “So you feel you’re under a lot of stress.”

  “No. I’m just busy. It’s not necessarily stress-busy. I like to hang out with people after school and I don’t want to have to give that up to read fucking Dante.” She cocked an eyebrow, and he muttered, “Sorry. But I don’t.”

  “How’s the Tacitus project coming along?”

  “It’s done, mostly.” This was true, and he felt a little defensive at the question. “Me and Temple and Fairen knocked it out pretty quick after you assigned it. Ask Fairen, she’ll tell you.”

  “I believe you. I spoke to Temple about it yesterday, actually. He filled me in on everything you’ve been doing.”

  It was involuntary, but Zach dropped his head down and cradled his forehead in his hand. He rubbed his eyes, and Ms. Valera asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” he said, grimly. “Listen, anything Temple’s telling you is stuff he’s just coming up with on his own. I know he’s really smart and all, but that doesn’t make him a mind reader. I don’t tell him anything, so I don’t know where he gets this stuff from.”

  Ms. Valera folded her hands on her lap and absorbed this information with a blank stare. “So are you telling me he has no idea where you’re at on the project? Because he told me everyone had their part finished except for the illustrations.”

  Zach looked at her unblinking, his mouth partly open. He couldn’t figure out whether she really didn’t know, or was trying to get him to own up to it without having to drag it out of him. Why else would she have called him down here, on today of all days? To discuss his grades? In his mind he heard Temple’s voice again: it’s obvious, my friend. Or was it?

  “Something’s off about you, Zach,” she said. “I wish you’d air it with me so we can work through it. It’s very clear that you’re capable of much more than you’ve given lately.”

  He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Yeah, you know, I worked all term on that playhouse for the auction. Did any body mention how great that turned out? The school got over five hundred dollars for it. So the stuff I care about, I am working hard at. And the stuff I don’t care about can just take a number.”

  She nodded again, more slowly this time. After a pause she said, “I’ll be a little more direct. Is there a particular person who’s distracting your attention at school?”

  He met her gaze with a look of pure, undiluted fear. “No.”

  “Because I think that’s the root of the problem. If you’ll open up to me about it, I can rearrange things for
you so it’s less of a concern. But there’s nothing I can do if you won’t talk to me.”

  He shook his head, but it seemed to take a monumental effort to do so. His stomach started to ache with the acid burn that had sidelined him at the Christmas bazaar. He tightened his folded arms and girded himself to get through this meeting without either confessing or vomiting.

  She watched him for a long moment. Finally she sat taller and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you so uncomfortable.”

  “Can I go?”

  “Just bear in mind what I’ve said, please, Zach. You can confide in me, and I’ll help you.”

  He nodded and, without word or smile, hurried out the door.

  Judy smiled when she opened the door to find him there, pushing the storm door latch to invite him inside. “What a nice surprise,” she said, as if he were there to drop off a plate of holiday cookies. “I just got home half an hour ago.”

  “Is Russ here?”

  “No. Neither is Scott. Aren’t you supposed to be at Madrigals?”

  “Yeah.” He knew Temple would note his absence, and in his paranoia—because everything looped back to his paranoia now—guessed what he would suspect. But Zach felt virtuous for his real intentions. Temple could take his eagle-eyed observations and shove it.

  “Listen,” he said. “We need to talk.”

  “Sure.” She smiled. She began walking up the stairs and, out of habit, he followed her. She had changed from her work clothes and, for once, was dressed like a normal person instead of a Waldorf teacher, in jeans and a pink button-down shirt. Once her bedroom door was locked, she rubbed his arms and said, “You look cold. Why didn’t you stop by my classroom? I would have given you a ride home.”

  “Yeah, I know. So does everybody else.” She creased her forehead quizzically, and he continued, “Temple confronted me about you.”

  “Confronted you?” Her voice nearly mocked him.

  “He told me he knows I’m sleeping with you. That it’s obvious, and we’d better get it back under wraps before Scott figures it out.”

  She folded her arms, her face set in a look of only mild concern. “And on what does he base this crazy story of his?”

  He rattled off a list of Temple’s observations. “He says it’s obvious. That we look at each other wrong. I don’t know what the hell to say to that one. ‘No, we don’t’? How do I know how I look at anyone?”

  She nodded and seemed to consider her reply. “So how did you respond?”

  “I told him he was smoking crack. What was I supposed to say? That he’s right? Because I’m telling you, Judy, he had it down. It’s like he’s been watching us for months. He had no doubt at all. And then Ms. Valera called me in today, telling me she knows someone’s distracting me at school and she can help me avoid that person if I’ll just come clean about it. I almost puked on her desk when she said that. She let me go without saying anything, but between her and Temple, it’s like dry fucking timber for the next person who notices something’s up.”

  She eased her arms out of their crossed position and tucked her hands into her back pockets. For a moment she regarded him with weary concern. Then she said, “Stand still.”

  He did as she asked. She circled behind him and helped him out of his down vest, then lifted his T-shirt and thermal off his body in a single piece. Once the clothes lay in a pile on the floor she embraced him from behind and, her fingers splayed against his pectorals, kissed him between his shoulder blades. Then she sat on the bed and smiled.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “Please continue.”

  “What was that for?”

  “I thought you might be wearing a wire.”

  He stared at her in disbelief. “You thought I was trying to turn you in?”

  “It’s happened to women in my position before. I just wanted to be sure. Your line of conversation was sort of painting me into a corner there.”

  “God damn, Judy. How can you not fucking trust me now? After all this.”

  The corner of her mouth twisted. “It’s not you I don’t trust. It’s all the adults around you. If they wanted to hang me, they wouldn’t give you a choice. They’d slap a wire on you and send you in here saying, ‘Go do your thing.’”

  She had a point. He leaned back against the dresser and closed his eyes in exhaustion.

  “First of all,” she began, “Temple doesn’t know anything. Not unless you said something to him. He’s jumping to conclusions and that’s his own problem. If you deny it and I deny it, there’s no issue. As long as we don’t get caught in flagrante delicto.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s Latin for ‘fucking in the car.’”

  In spite of himself, he laughed. He rubbed a hand down his face and said, “We’re not doing cars anymore, remember?”

  “I remember. And as for Ms. Valera, I think you’re just reading too much into whatever she said to you. She thinks you’re bent out of shape because Fairen is toying with you. I told her myself.”

  He felt the ghost of a smile rise to his face. “Seriously?”

  “Yes. A while back she asked me if I knew why you’re having those issues in class. She figured since you and I spend so much time together, I might know. So I told her. You want Fairen, but she’s a tease. It eats you alive.”

  This time the grin broke through, small but genuine. “Good call. That explains it, yeah.”

  “Thank you. I specialize in fairy tales, remember.”

  He looked off toward the window. The lacy curtains let in just enough light to show the dark-blue twilight sky of winter. Soon he would need to be home for dinner. In his panicked state he had expected he and Judy would agree to an urgent lockdown of their relationship, an easy out, brought on not by rejection but by necessity. The thought had been soothing, in its way. The affair, however guilty or forgivable, however abhorrent or deliciously forbidden, had burned through its fuel and needed to fall, empty, to earth. Yet in this room with her he had not expected to be reminded of all the things he genuinely liked about her: her quick wit, her ability to listen and be calm, the sensuality that thrummed just beneath the surface of her small uptight form. He liked her better, wanted her more, when she kept her grace—a shell of no enclosing a liquid center of yes.

  “You need to relax,” she said. “Stop sweating the small stuff. Could I offer you a foot rub? Because it seems like something’s blocking your chi.”

  He rubbed his palms against the edge of the dresser and acknowledged the comment with the wicked grin it deserved. She waited for his response, and finally he said, “I came here to say I think we ought to take a break for a while, until people stop sniffing around.”

  “I thought we already were taking a break,” she parried. “I haven’t seen hide or hair of you for a week.”

  He considered that. “Has it been that long?”

  “It has. Since the bazaar. When I found you tossing your cookies, very literally, next to the trash cans, and you begged me to go down on you to cure your tummy trouble.”

  “Yeah. Temple noticed we slipped away.”

  “What do you mean, ‘slipped away’? We were back inside of half an hour. And that raises Temple’s suspicions? I would think a progressive boy like him would have higher standards than that.”

  He drummed his knuckles against the dresser and stared at the carpet. She slid off the bed and came to him, cupping his face in her hands. He met her eyes and let her kiss him softly on the mouth.

  “But we can take a break whenever you want to,” she whispered. “You call the shots, remember. Are you leaving right away? Or are you staying a few minutes longer?”

  “I didn’t bring anything with me.”

  She nodded. “It’s your call, then.”

  “We’d better not.”

  She nodded again, but as she took a step back he reached for her upper arms and kissed her again. Then again; and of course she did not stop him, and of course he did not want to stop. A tumult o
f conflicting thoughts rushed forward in his mind, then fell like lemmings off the edge of the cliff past which he knew, good or bad, right or wrong, he was going to do this.

  What is it about her? he wondered hopelessly. What did she offer him that he couldn’t find elsewhere? Why did he persist in seeking her out, thinking of her, wanting her, when she was exactly wrong for him in nearly every way? Why was he willing to be this adversary to Scott, to Russ, to his own father—to scatter principle to the four winds and scuttle off to hunt what was forbidden?

  But that question was its own answer. Because it was forbidden. Because fucking a woman in a crashing plane is a thousand times more exciting than in the bedroom of a nice home.

  It occurred to him, as he crawled onto the bed and nestled himself into the welcome of Judy’s body, that he suddenly understood all he needed to know about his mother’s affair. That it had nothing to do with him. Nothing to do with his father. Nothing connected to it but the drumbeat inside her that called her to the atrocity. It was comforting to understand, at last, his own irrelevance. In the moment of this realization he felt a momentary spark of sympathy for her, before other feelings overwhelmed him and snuffed it out.

  24

  Maggie called while I was untangling a knotted thread with my teeth, working on a dream pillow that had gone all wrong. Right away I knew this was not going to be a pleasant phone call. Maggie never called to chat.

  “You can use my room for storage or whatever,” she said. “I’m not coming home for Christmas.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I’m going home with my friend Elise. I’ll be in Hagerstown. I’ll give you the number so you can call me or whatever.”

  “Maggie.” I sat on the edge of the bed and rested my forehead against my hand. “We’ve got the tree up already and everything. I’m counting on you coming home. It won’t feel like Christmas if you’re not here, and it’s hard enough already this year.” I did not attempt to go into detail as to why.