The Kingdom of Childhood Read online

  “At least Tally likes guys her own age,” he muttered.

  I took my eyes off the road to glare at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You heard me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He shook his head, his eyes squinting in disdain. “Come on, Mom. You aren’t fooling anybody.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Silence iced over the car. After a minute I said, “Go on. If you’ve got some nonsense you want to throw at me, throw it.”

  In my peripheral vision I could see him staring at me, the tightness around his eyes still prominent. When he spoke, disgust tinged his voice. “Mom,” he said, “I don’t use condoms.”

  It took me a moment to put together what he was telling me.

  “Well,” I replied, turning onto the exit toward our house, “you should.”

  Scott went straight to his room, without a good-night or a thank-you to break the silence that had descended after our abbreviated conversation. It was three in the morning. Wide awake now, I turned on the gas beneath the teakettle and glanced into the living room. There was his blue-and-white ski boot, tongue pulled forward, askew by the fireplace. I had no idea how I had managed not to notice it. But then, maybe I should not have underestimated the lapse in my attention. Fallout from it seemed to be everywhere.

  The truth was, I realized gradually, I didn’t really care if Scott knew. If he wanted to heap resentment upon me for it, then he could just add it to the pile he’d been shoveling since he was about thirteen. I felt relatively certain he would not tell anyone, because I could imagine no embarrassment greater to a teenager than for his friends to discover his mother is sleeping with one among them. I cared if he told his father, but mainly because Russ would destroy me in the divorce—and that was a genuine concern. Russ would not be likely to keep his mouth shut. He specialized in preemptive criticism, delivered by deadly accurate, laser-guided verbal missiles loaded with contempt. He would wedge as much distance as possible between himself and my dalliance, and he would do it by digging up all the dirt he could find and broadcasting it like seeds by the handful. And of it there was plenty.

  Off went the stove. I picked up Scott’s boot and put it away in the closet. Poured a cup of tea with my shivering hands.

  Then I turned on the coffeemaker and sat down with a bag of Russ’s pills, hoarded in a corner of my purse and a meat mallet.

  Zach slept most of the day and awoke when Fairen called late that afternoon, her bright, energetic voice breaking through the wall of his fatigue. She wanted to know if he needed a ride to the Advent Spiral, and he was happy to take her up on the offer. By the time she arrived he had managed to work in a shower and an enormous bowl of lentil dhal, and felt almost human again.

  The multipurpose room had been emptied of all its chairs and tables, leaving a wide parquet floor on which pine boughs had been arranged to form a great spiral. The room was deeply dark. Only a few candles in the corners provided a small light, their white flames flickering under the invisible draft from the heating ducts. Zach followed Fairen to the section of the floor where his classmates sat. Temple was there, but Scott did not appear to be present; Judy, too, was blessedly absent, so far as he could tell. He guessed the open flames were not her thing. The Advent Spiral was the school festival most likely to end in third-degree burns, which, to Zach’s thinking, also made it the most interesting.

  A teacher struck up a few notes on a harp, and a young teenage girl stood and walked forth into the spiral, carrying in her hands a crimson apple fitted with a glowing white candle. At the center of the spiral she stopped and set down the candle beside a bough before slowly walking back out. One after another, the younger children, and a few of the older ones, followed her lead, each leaving their candle and its apple at a point along the path. Now and then a child’s toe struck an apple, and a flame wobbled. Other times, the hem of a dress breezed just above a candle. A bucket of water sat next to the stage, but if it came to that, things already would be quite fascinating.

  “I’m going to go up,” Fairen whispered. “Are you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Oh, come on,” she encouraged. “What kind of Waldork are you?”

  “Not as big of one as you are, apparently.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him and rose, collecting her candle-fitted apple from a teacher who stood at the spiral’s opening. Her hair was up in braids that crossed at the top of her head, like a Swiss peasant girl. He supposed this was in deference to the St. Lucia theme of the celebration, and since she was too old to crown her head with a wreath bearing four candles, she carried on the childhood tradition with an approximation of it. She lit her candle and progressed slowly up the spiral, and he watched her reverent face, her sly eyes gone childlike beneath the gossamer crown of her braids.

  To wonder at beauty, he thought automatically. The first line of the Bell Ringing Verse from his grade-school years. All the compromises he had made, moral and otherwise, to be with Judy, had not corrupted his ability to observe beauty when it happened upon him. He sent his thanks out to the universe for that reprieve. The other imperatives tumbled forth in his mind: stand guard over truth. Look up to the noble. Decide for the good.

  He had lost sight of these things. He had been a bad Steiner student, not for the narrow reason of sleeping with the kindergarten teacher, but for allowing his life to tumble into an amoral and disorganized mess. In all the hand-wrought and color-blended loveliness of the Waldorf environment, what outsiders often failed to see was the rigid order that lay beneath it all. What seemed to others to be hypocrisy made perfect sense to him. Freedom can only exist where there is structure. Without it there can be no understanding of how to be beautiful, how to be good.

  At the center of the spiral, Fairen turned and began walking the opposite way, still holding her candle. She caught his eye and almost smiled. He smiled warmly back at her, then clasped his hands around his knees and resolved two things to himself.

  One, he would not sleep with Judy again. Really and surely this time around, regardless of what happened with Fairen, but especially because of her, too.

  Two, he would stop eating meat. It was time.

  The second would be easy—well, easy enough, in any case. The first would be more problematic. He could control his own impulses, but when Judy came toward him with all guns blazing, as she had the night of the trip to the abandoned hospital, he had no idea how to defuse her without just nailing her and getting it over with. In his mind he pictured two comets racing toward each other, immolating each other in the explosion.

  Then, in a burst of awareness, he realized he had it all wrong. What he had learned in judo flashed into his mind: when you are confronted with force, give way to it. When you are pushed, pull. Apply your opponent’s force against him.

  It was so obvious he couldn’t understand why it had not occurred to him weeks ago. Rather than meet her lust with a stronger, angrier lust of his own, he needed only to get out of the way and let her energy consume itself. It would not be easy to watch, but it was the only route to a takedown.

  It was what he needed to do. To produce peace in his feeling, as they said at school. Light in his thought.

  Beside him, Temple recrossed his legs and leaned back on his palms. Zach stared out at the floor dotted with candles, a nameless constellation being formed one star at a time.

  “I’m sorry I lied to you,” Zach said quietly.

  Temple glanced at him in mild surprise, then looked back at the spiral. “No prob,” Temple replied. “I didn’t blame you.”

  28

  I managed to stay out of the house all day on Sunday, coming home late to find Russ’s office door closed and the light glowing dimly beneath it. More and more these days he ended his late nights with a nap on his office sofa. When I awoke Monday morning and found him at the breakfast table reading the Post over a bowl of Familia, I felt my hands clench into a spasm so har
d that my fingernails left eight red crescents in my palms. He was like Rasputin, the mad monk of Russia. A fairy-tale foe who would not die.

  I took a large mug of coffee and a blueberry muffin, and left for school.

  I arrived late. Sandy Valera was working in my classroom, directing the early arrivals to the coatrack, the bathroom, the play table. She shot me a searching look when I dropped my scarf on my chair and plunked the coffee on a windowsill, so I said, “Car trouble.”

  She nodded. I had not noticed the other woman in the classroom, kneeling beside a child and unraveling an absurdly long hand-knitted scarf from around his neck. When the woman rose Sandy said, “Judy, this is Rhianne Volker. She is considering Sylvania Waldorf for her children.”

  Rhianne’s smile popped out immediately, then stayed stiffly in place. “Oh, Judy and I know each other,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Well, now that you’re here, I’ll get back to my office,” said Sandy. As she brushed past me, Rhianne tucked her hands in the side pockets of her overalls and regarded me with a look even more searching than Sandy’s.

  “Judy, I had no idea you taught here,” she said.

  “Since Maggie was little.”

  “Amazing. Small world. Small community, I suppose I should say, but surely you know that.” Her brows knitted beneath the close-fitting winter cap she still wore. “Surely.”

  “It’s one of the things parents love about Sylvania,” I replied automatically.

  “I’m sure. I’ve seen several familiar faces this morning.” She looked me up and down. “How is that prescription working out for you?”

  “Fine,” I said. “So how old are your children?”

  “Nine, six and four.” She turned to look over my romping students, then back toward me. “I have met all the other Lower School teachers but you this morning. A nice bunch.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “and very skilled.” But I remembered quite well that she had no children. She had told me herself. I felt a chill of fear, like a pearl of ice behind my ribs. It grew larger by the moment.

  “One of my clients recommended this school to me,” she continued. “Vivienne Heath. Perhaps you know her.”

  “I don’t think so,” I hedged. “How old is her son?”

  She grinned. Her full mouth of teeth seemed to ooze poison. I realized my error as she took a step closer. With a curious tip of her head, she said, “He is only sixteen.”

  I responded with a twitching shrug. “I only work with the young children.”

  She replied, “That’s not what I’ve heard.”

  Despite the blasting heat of the forge, Zach’s bare arms felt a chill as he moved around the workshop, gathering materials to work on his first blacksmithing project. The bottom of the long black apron flapped against his legs. Making a fireplace poker didn’t hold a lot of interest for him, but the opportunity to play with fire and red-hot metal cheered him. So did the fact that school would be over in an hour, heralding the beginning of Christmas break, and he’d be saying goodbye to this place until January. His classmates were all talking about the Wicker Man Festival that evening, and he felt glad to have been invited by Fairen; finally, it seemed, he was beginning to feel like part of the tribe. He missed New Hampshire less today than at any point since the move.

  Putting on the gloves and mask, he turned toward the crackling forge and felt a tingle of anticipation. The instructor, his watchful gaze cast on a handful of students in various stages of metalwork, was being nice to allow them to fire up the forge so close to the end of school. Zach set the rod of metal with the tongs and thrust it into the fire, which spit and crackled, blindingly orange. With one hand still in the brace it was an awkward process, but the tools felt secure in his hands, and the fire was mesmerizing. An echo of Judy’s voice spoke in his mind: I do think fire can be beautiful in a terrifying sort of way.

  “Sure you got it?” his teacher asked, hands hovering around his as Zach removed the rod from the flame.

  “I’m sure.”

  He placed it on the anvil and, with another student holding it in place, used his good hand to give the rod four strong whacks with the hammer. It was coming along respectably enough, for a one-handed first try. He geared up again for a second chance at the fire.

  A draft blew toward him, and he looked up just in time to see Judy entering the room, a small figure in the cavernous space, her movements deliberate among the narrowly organized chaos. She made her way between the worktables, her arms crossed, rubbing her forearms as though cold. Her khaki jumper dress was like a lunch sack, but her long dark hair looked unnaturally smooth, combed precisely. She blinked at the heat of the forge and asked in a low voice, “Can I talk to you a minute?”

  “Sure,” he said, his voice muffled by the mask. There was no point in play-acting as though he expected the conversation to take place right here. He lifted the mask and set it on the table, slipped off the gloves beside it. His instructor met his eye, but only by way of accounting for his safety; nice to see someone at this school paying attention to that, for once.

  She stood beside the door that led outside, her hand on the push bar. It was brazen of her to corner him like this, long after the bazaar was over, with no conceivable excuse for pulling him out of class. He hadn’t spoken to her since their ill-conceived rendezvous the week before; and earlier that day he had, in the courtyard, succumbed to the urge to kiss Fairen, to the approving whoops of the few present to see it. It would not surprise him to learn that Judy had been spying on him. It had to be the most tedious part of sleeping with somebody’s mother: no matter what you did with her, she was still a mom, and the eyes on the back of her head seemed to have twice the range when she was creepily obsessed with your body.

  He dropped the apron on a stool and followed her out the door, bracing himself against the rush of frigid air and a flurry of small icy snowflakes. She made her way toward the corner of the parking lot that bordered woods, but he stopped where the asphalt did and refused to step into the brush. Something felt off about her. He knew she felt hurt and possibly angry and, undoubtedly, full of anxiety, but he sensed a harder edge that made him cautious. Not that Judy posed a danger to him—she was barely over five feet tall, for Pete’s sake—but there was a bobcat energy to her that he didn’t care to incite.

  She turned at the tree line, giving up on luring him further, and tucked her hands in her sleeves. She had looked relatively normal when she came into the workshop, but already her face was blotchy with tears. He felt taken aback by how foolhardy she was, out here where anyone could see them. He wasn’t going to entertain this very long. She could take a hit for it, but he had no intention of doing so.

  “You’re done,” she accused.

  He shrugged. “Yeah, I am.”

  “You’ve taken up with Fairen.”

  “Is there something wrong with that?”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised,” she spat. “You wanted her all along.”

  He felt his lip curl. “Who cares whether I did or not? And since when do you give a shit about what I want? I say no, and what do you do? You blockade the goddamn door.”

  She pushed the heels of her hands across her cheeks. Shaking her head, blinking down at the ground, she said in a hopeless voice, “I ought to turn you in for what you did to me that day. I never…invited you to do anything that…violent.”

  He bristled and felt something inside him turn. “You go ahead and do that,” he retorted. “You’re going to do—what? Accuse me of rape?”

  “Maybe I will.”

  Snorting a laugh, he recoiled, taking a step backward. “Go for it. Get right on it. Bet you they’ll find evidence for it all over the fucking place. Bet Russ is sleeping in some of it right now.” He shook his head. “Maybe I’ll turn myself in. Would that simplify it for you?”

  She lifted her face in a delighted smile, as if he’d just told a great joke, her eyes bright. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  �
��Damn, you’re big with the threats all of a sudden. Why can’t you just let it frickin’ lie? It ran its course. Get over it, move on.”

  Her shoulders heaved with an enormous sigh, and she took two steps forward to lean against a tree. She looked exhausted. He almost felt sorry for her.

  “Couldn’t we just be together one more time,” she proposed in an even voice, “so the time in the den doesn’t have to be the last memory?”

  When pushed, pull. He shook his head. “No.”

  She shifted her gaze sideways, toward the line of cars. “Maybe we can drive someplace after school, just discuss it?”

  “No.” She wanted to blow him, anybody could have guessed that. He wasn’t even the smallest bit tempted. It wasn’t out of the question that he’d find his orgasm interrupted by an icepick in his chest, like in the movies. Not a turn-on.

  She nodded, resigned. “Can I hug you goodbye, at least?”

  “No,” he said a third time, but she was already coming toward him, arms outstretched, and there hadn’t been a great distance between them to begin with. Stiffly he allowed him self to be hugged, and with a quick economy of movement she slipped her retreating hand into the front of his pants. He grabbed her by the wrist.

  “I said no,” he told her.

  Her smile was brittle. She’d only managed to get her hand between his jeans and boxers, and with his hand clenching the tendons in her wrist, her cold fingers flailed like a mouse caught by the tail.

  “I hope she enjoys it,” she said. “It’s wonderful.”

  She retreated and walked past him into the school, her body small beside the hulking frame of the workshop. Zach turned toward the building, looking around guardedly for faces in the windows; finding none, he ran a hand through his hair, the snowflakes melting at his touch into pinpoint cold. With a low grumble in his throat he made his way back toward the workshop, hiking his jeans higher on his hips, to face the forge.