The Kingdom of Childhood Read online

  “I want a real Christmas,” she replied, her voice attempting a breezy note but leaking venom nonetheless. “One with Jesus in it. Elise’s family goes to church and all that stuff. I need to experience this for myself.”

  “You know perfectly well there’s Jesus in our Christmas,” I said, feeling my blood pressure rising with each word. “God only knows they’ve been hammering Jesus into your brain at school since kindergarten. I make those damn salt-dough nativity scenes with my kids every year. I know.”

  “That’s that Waldorf phony crap. The ‘Cosmic Christ.’ Puh-leeze. And that stupid story about how there used to be two baby Jesuses and one died and was reincarnated as Buddha or something—”

  “‘The Two Jesus Children.’”

  “God, what crap! How can you teach that stuff to kids? Do you have any idea how ridiculous it sounds?”

  “I don’t teach that stuff,” I reminded her. “I don’t believe in anything at all.”

  “You think you don’t, but you would if you pulled your head out of the Steiner sandbox long enough to consider the possibility. You would have handled it a lot better when your best friend died if you’d had some kind of context to put it in, but instead you fell apart like wet toilet paper.”

  “Thank you.”

  “My point is, Christmas is about a miracle. And I want to spend it celebrating that miracle. I hope you can honor that.”

  My lips pressed into a brittle smile. “I understand better than you might think.”

  “Good.” Her voice sounded assertive but a little confused. “Merry Christmas, then.”

  “To you, too.” A pregnant silence hung across the low static of the phone line. “And when the trap snaps closed, I’ll understand that, too. You can cry on my shoulder then.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your ideas. Your miracles. They’re just peanut butter on some fucked-up cosmic mousetrap. I’ve been there. I’ve wanted that, too. And what I’ve learned is, seek out what’s beautiful and love it before it rots. Because there’s not a damn thing in this world that doesn’t.”

  For a long moment she said nothing. Then she said, “I hope you’re not teaching that to the kids, either.”

  “No need,” I told her. “They’ll learn it on their own.”

  He felt ashamed after the afternoon with Judy, displeased with himself for his lack of self-discipline. After the day of the holiday bazaar, when he had puked by the Dumpster and she consoled him with her version of chicken soup for his morally conflicted soul, he had told himself they needed to break things off. The dreadful conversation with Temple only steeled his resolve, not just to end it but to erase it, to bend his eleventh-grade year into an arc that, as far as it mattered, had never included Judy in the first place. It helped to focus on the negative: the time he was feverish, the slap to his face, the sickening guilt, and, of course, the times he’d turned in a lousy performance and felt himself revealed as a hopeless amateur.

  And then—every once in a while—there was a rip in the fabric. Monday afternoon, for example: when his desire did not feel like a backburn to her wildfire, when everything flowed, and at the end he rubbed his eyes and felt restored. He could almost convince himself they were two normal people doing what normal people do, until he peeked between the blinds before she opened the door and he was reminded that everything he took he was stealing.

  When the temperature reached sixty-seven degrees one December day, Fairen cornered him after Main Lesson and suggested they cut out early. She had twenty dollars from babysitting. She wanted to get a pizza.

  They slipped out as if going to the workshop, then hustled into the woods. The trees were bare gray skeletons against the sky, but the air had a springtime headiness to it, fragrant and brisk. Once on the sidewalk, Fairen reached for his hand. It was a friendly, tentative sort of hand-holding, fingertips loosely intertwined, but it gave Zach hope. She had invited him, after all.

  The pizza place was not far away, in a minimall with a barbershop and variety store. Signs plastered to the brick advertised an upcoming festival at the lake. Fairen ordered a mushroom-and-green-pepper, size large, and two giant Cokes.

  “Because I know you eat like there’s no tomorrow,” she said.

  “There isn’t.”

  She gave him a strange look and he said, “Carpe diem.”

  She smiled approvingly. As they waited on the bench, she played footsie with him. There were no tables or chairs, so when their pizza was ready, they carried the box to a small underpass beneath the street, built like a stone bridge to shelter a sidewalk. It was cozy and relatively private, and Zach felt a little saddened to realize that he enjoyed her chaste company as much as the non-chaste. Had he realized that months ago, he might have saved himself a lot of trouble.

  “We need to go on another choir trip when the weather’s like this,” she said as she wiped her hands on a napkin. “So I can have another excuse to corrupt you.”

  “Who needs an excuse?” he asked. She smiled, and he ventured, “I thought you were done with me since I tried to scalp you.”

  “I wasn’t in love with that. But the rest was really great.”

  “You thought so, seriously?”

  She nodded. “Really great.”

  “I’m sorry I pulled your hair,” he admitted. “I just got carried away, but I didn’t mean to hurt you. I really had no idea what I was doing.”

  She looked uneasy at his apology. “I think I blew that out of proportion. I just felt uncomfortable that it happened at all, because I hadn’t planned it. I got caught up in the moment and…” She shrugged.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “But I felt even worse after, when you lost interest so fast. I figured you’d moved on to somebody else, and that made me feel pretty awful.”

  He tipped his head. “Why did you think that?”

  She smirked. “Because you lost that desperate vibe. There’s only one explanation when a straight guy starts acting like he doesn’t care if girls like him or not. He must be getting laid on a regular basis. It made me jealous.”

  Zach laughed. “That’s goofy.”

  “It’s true. And I couldn’t figure out who, and it was driving me crazy. I know every girl at Sylvania. It’s not any of them. So who is it?”

  He grinned. “It’s Ms. Valera.”

  She broke into laughter. “Oh, no! That’s why she called you out of class last week, huh? So she could molest you in her supply closet?”

  “Yep.”

  Her laugh carried the music of her lovely soprano. She rested her elbows against her knees, leaning toward him. He looked at her: at her silver-trimmed ears with her pale blond hair tucked behind them, at her broad beautiful smile, at the way her crystal necklace dangled above the dark shadow of her cleavage. He didn’t want her jealousy; he didn’t want her to know at all. The way she leaned toward him, he suspected she would welcome it if he kissed her. But he couldn’t do it. He would be cheating on her before they even got started. She was too beautiful to be led into the muck he had made out of his sex life in the short time since she had introduced him to that pleasure. And so he tossed a piece of ice into her cleavage and made her scream.

  “Any day now,” said Rhianne, patting Zach’s mother on the stomach and slinging her stethoscope around her neck. She helped her to sit up, and Zach had to smile at his mother’s cumbersome movements. All his life she had been lithe and graceful, but now she was in full waddle mode, swaybacked half the time from her burgeoning stomach.

  “Pregnancy is a beautiful thing,” said his mother, “but I can’t wait for it to be over.”

  “You’re not the first woman I’ve heard say that. Take it easy, all right? Make this one treat you like a queen.” She gestured to Zach and winked. “I’ll see you in a week, or less if you’re lucky.”

  He followed Rhianne to the foyer, opening the door immediately to let her out. She looked amused by his rudeness, but he rallied by trailing her out the door and cl
osing it behind them. The porch light shone bright above their heads, a white moth beating against it in looping arcs.

  He asked, “Are you in a hurry?”

  “Of course not. What’s up?” Over her coveralls she wore a thick down vest, forest green. Her breath came out in clouds.

  With a deep exhale of his own he pointed toward the driveway, indicating they should walk. She took the cue, pulling her knit cap from her pocket and tugging it over her short low pigtails. They stuck out like the ends of paintbrushes when she turned to him again, hands crammed deep into the pockets of her vest.

  “I’m in a relationship of sorts,” he said carefully, “and it’s a problem.”

  “How is that?”

  “I don’t want to be.”

  Rhianne nodded. “But you feel afraid to break it off. Is that it?”

  “Yes and no.” He sighed heavily, sending a whirl of condensation into the night air. “I’ve tried. But it’s almost like I’m addicted to her body. About ninety-five percent of me doesn’t enjoy it at all anymore, but the five percent that does won’t give it up.”

  “And what about her? How does she feel about it?”

  “Fine, as far as I can tell. I don’t think she feels conflicted like I do. Not in the same way, at least.”

  She tipped her head in a musing way. “Do you feel maybe she loves you, and you’re not so sure?”

  “No. Love’s not part of the equation at all. It’s just sex. Which I also feel pretty shitty about, to tell you the truth. I don’t think you need to be in love, necessarily, to have sex with somebody, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be this totally meaningless, either. You’d think that would make it easy to give it up, but if you did, you’d be wrong. Really, really wrong.” His laugh sounded hollow even to him.

  “Zach,” said Rhianne, “I understand this is the first sexual relationship you’ve had—”

  “It’s not.”

  “Okay, well, the first that’s felt like this. But you don’t have to stay in any relationship that isn’t rewarding. There will be others, and you’ll enjoy them just as much.”

  He shook his head. “Not like this. Not like her. She’s insane. She’s always on, way on. And knowing I shouldn’t be doing it makes it even better.”

  Rhianne frowned. “Why shouldn’t you be doing it?”

  He sighed again. “Because of who she is.”

  “Who is she?”

  The curiosity in her eyes was so polite. Somehow he had assumed that as soon as he brought it up with her she would know the situation was skewed and abnormal, that she was being called in like a hostage negotiator or a bomb technician, because what else would explain how he had found his way into a woman’s bed? Yet she seemed unsurprised, as though she saw nothing out of the ordinary in the fact that a girl had said yes to him. Well, she was about to be surprised now.

  He squinted against her coming reaction and said, “She’s a teacher at my school.”

  Rhianne sucked in her breath. Zach knew he could trust her, but still the force of her response made his stomach cramp up. She asked, “One of your teachers?”

  “No, no. In the Lower School.”

  “Is she young?”

  He shook his head. “She’s in her forties someplace.”

  Her mouth twisted harshly to the side. Nostrils flaring, she stood silent in the cold, clearly weighing what he had told her. Watching her, Zach felt a sense of dread that he had told her as much as he had. He had expected her to share his sense of shame, but not to look so angry.

  Finally she said, “Zach, you need to put a stop to it. What’s going on is wrong.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m talking to you about it. If I thought it was all hunky-dory I’d just keep banging her and stay quiet about it.”

  “Does anyone else know?”

  He gave an ambiguous nod. “One of my friends thinks he does, but I swore up and down it wasn’t true.”

  “I mean anyone who works at your school. Any other adult.”

  His laugh was scornful. “Hell, no. I’d be expelled for something like that.”

  She seemed to wince. “No one is going to blame you for being—for being victimized. You do realize it’s statutory rape, don’t you? That what she’s doing to you is considered rape?”

  He dismissed the idea with a shake of his head. “Believe me, I’m not having any trouble doing my end of the deal. No trouble at all.”

  “That’s not the point. It’s rape just because of your age.”

  He shook his head again firmly. “Technically, maybe, but that’s bull if you ask me. Nobody’s raping anybody. My problem is I don’t know how to get myself to stop.” He laughed humorlessly. “I don’t know how to make myself stop wanting to be raped.”

  Rhianne regarded him with a hardened gaze, her lips pressed together. “Then you just have to resolve it to yourself, Zach. Tell yourself it’s over and stay away from her. If you want, I can talk to her for you.”

  With a grimace, he turned down the offer. “Uh-uh. That would just be a bad idea.”

  “Promise me you won’t see her again.”

  “I can’t do that. If I could promise anyone that, I would have promised myself a month ago. I tell myself I won’t and then out of nowhere I’ll want her. It’s like bloodlust. It just comes over me and then there’s nothing but that. I can’t control it.”

  Rhianne listened, eyes watchful. For a long moment his words hung in the chilled air. Then she said, “Well, don’t fool yourself into thinking she can’t control it. She’s using you, Zach. I don’t have to know who she is to know that. She’s flattered you into thinking you’re her unstoppable sex god, but really, she’s got you by the balls.”

  Zach looked at her sharply. “No, she doesn’t. Nobody does.”

  “Then break it off. You’re not so hopped up on hormones that you can’t turn down a middle-aged woman. She’d like you to believe you are, but you’ve got your free will.”

  He sighed heavily, his breath clouding the air between them. “Well, it sure doesn’t feel like it right now. I keep laying down rules for myself about lines I just won’t cross, and then I run right over them. Before this, I thought I was a pretty nice guy. Now I look at myself in the mirror and think, ‘what a scumbag.’”

  Rhianne reached for his hand and held it between her two gloved ones. He felt his teeth begin to chatter, but it didn’t seem to be from the cold so much as from his hammering heart. When he dared to look at her, she gazed out at him with hard eyes beneath the rim of her wool cap.

  “You are a good person, Zach,” she said quietly. “Too young to know how ordinary these things are. Everybody struggles. Everybody loses sometimes. Even the people we love and look up to. I think you know that.”

  He gritted his teeth and searched her eyes for meaning.

  “If you want to solve your problem nice and quickly,” she continued, “turn her in to the police. Or if you don’t want to, I will. It’s the right thing to do. A teacher, for God’s sake.”

  He shook his head and let his hand drop from hers. “No way. If I did that, everybody would know. It’d be in the newspapers, and—no.” With a grimace and a shudder along his shoulders, he wiped the thought from his mind. “I just want to make it go away. Break it off, like people do all the time. I’m not out for blood or anything. I just want to stop wanting her.”

  A shadow of irritation moved across Rhianne’s face. “Get your head away from the idea that she’s somehow your lover. She’s manipulating you. Coercing you. This is what abusers do, Zach. They make the victim feel like they deserve it.”

  He looked away. Now he wished he had never confided in her. She meant well, but she heard him only as a mother would, without comprehension of the roiling dark inside him. He could leave bruises. He could delight in seeing her on her knees.

  “If one of your friends was in your shoes,” asserted Rhianne, “what would you tell him?”

  Zach considered the question for only a moment. “That
it’s stupid. That there’s no reason to be all hung up about some old chick when you could hook up with somebody hotter.”

  “So why don’t you follow your own advice?”

  He bent his head and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, weary with the fruitlessness of the conversation. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Tell me her name.”

  He looked up. “What?”

  “Her name. Tell it to me.”

  She looked calm and even-tempered, but he shook his head, for the first time ever feeling frightened of her. “I’ll deal with it on my own.”

  25

  It began to enter my mind that I should see a doctor.

  The reason was Bobbie. I had managed to stay composed for so long, but now my grief over her loss came in thundering waves. All day long tears welled up at unexpected moments; the cuffs of my sweater were constantly damp. The more perceptive of my students gazed at me with serious faces, their brows tightened by worry. I found that intolerable. My job was to shelter them from the fraught world of adulthood, not to wander among them trailing it like noxious fumes. I took to drinking glasses of apricot juice dribbled with Bach’s Rescue Remedy. The five homeopathic flower essences didn’t seem to be enough for whatever ailed me, and I envied Russ his stash of meds.

  You can talk to me about her, Sandy had said. She had offered herself up as a new friend, one who could be the rock for me that Bobbie had been. But what would I tell her? That I was afraid my sixteen-year-old lover was growing tired of me? Haunted by the characters in children’s tales? Anxious that I often looked at the silvery-eared blonde who, at five, had been nicknamed Fairygirl by her mother, and pondered how much more pleasant my life would be without her?

  It could be worse. I knew, because it was getting there.

  Inexplicably, Russ canceled his Friday night class the week before finals. He stayed home, and instead of locking himself in his office upstairs, he sat in front of the television and watched old episodes of Three’s Company.