The Kingdom of Childhood Read online

  Rhianne had said nothing further before she left me that morning. She didn’t need to. She had said enough.

  After she left my classroom to tend to her three imaginary children I retreated to the bathroom, where I threw up three times. Coffee splattered on the rim of the toilet bowl, on the tile, on my jumper. I rested my forehead against the cool tile wall until I heard a knock and a small voice saying, “Mrs. McFarland, I have to go pee.”

  I called in the music teacher to watch my children for the day. Then, except for a detour to the workshop, I went home, where I retired to the floor of a bathroom reserved for my own use. And there I stayed, my hands sweaty on the porcelain, staring into the water.

  The water in the sink floated with my mother’s underwear, broad polyester panels that undulated like jellyfish between the dollops of Fels-Naptha foam. Next to it, shucked aside at a careless angle, sat the box of matches. The old wooden radio, elegant and well-dusted, blared out a melody at high volume: baby don’t leave me ooh please don’t leave me all by myself. The matches smelled of sulfur. The flame, in its small way, held the whole spectrum of color. It’s very, very wrong, you know, said the rhyme in my schoolbook, and even at ten my nerves tingled at the thought of it, perhaps because I was my father’s daughter.

  Each doorknob was cold bronze. Turn, turn; and then again, turn. The irony: I knew before I opened it what I would see, and instead I saw nothing. But it burned into my mind anyway, skipping right over the part I could reach and embedding itself in the deepest recess, a stone falling into a pool so fast and so smoothly that the surface records barely a ripple. And now, having dived much too deep into that part of the water lately, I could brush against it without meaning to. There it was: two adults nude and sweating, Kirsten’s head hanging off the edge of the bed, her braids loosened and flopping against the mattress, a sloppy metronome. My mother’s pillow wedged beneath her back, my father’s face snarled like that of a barbarian from a warlike tribe, hideous and rude and dismal to behold. The smell of it was thick in the air, her arousal and his, entirely foreign to my senses. And if the language of that nation sounded to me like the original speech of humanity, then here was that which came before language—the voice at the core of every human in the world, when the breath moves in concert with the drive to continue the species.

  Forget about it. Banish it. God help you that you should look upon such a scene and realize that someday you will want it, too.

  I thought the horror was in what I saw, but I was wrong. The horror came as I realized that, for what he had done, the child in me was right to blame him entirely, and the adult in me blamed him not at all.

  Russ stayed in his upstairs office the entire evening, and for once I did not resent his absence.

  Once my stomach ran out of things to throw up I sat down at the table with a cup of weak chamomile tea dribbled with honey and Rescue Remedy. I thought about the day Zach and I had felted balls for the craft sale, standing at this same table, apart in body but our desires, no doubt, the same. I had felt powerful then, exalted by him, an object of mystery. I had the power to grant any wish he might dare to utter. Now I was garbage to him. The kind that smelled.

  There was a hard knock on the door, and I rose to answer. I felt relatively sure of who it would be, and was not surprised.

  She said, “I’m not done talking to you.”

  I stepped aside to let her in.

  She entered my kitchen and stood beside the stove, her arms crossed over the front of her overalls. Her russet hair was ponytailed back. I looked past her to the teakettle on the back burner and checked to see if the gas was on.

  In an indignant voice she demanded, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  I said nothing.

  “How could you?” she snapped. “You. Princess Fairy Pixie-dust. Miss Wear Your Woolens So You Don’t Catch a Chill. Explain yourself.”

  I wondered if Russ would hear her and come down to see what the commotion was, if it became a commotion, which seemed likely. I dearly hoped he would not. I felt competent to handle an angry midwife, especially in the kitchen, but less sure of how to manage Russ. Most likely he would turn up the Ken Burns Jazz Collection and think harder about fish.

  Her face darkened with frustration at my silence. More loudly, she asked, “How could you fuck a sixteen-year-old boy?”

  I replied, “How does anyone fuck anyone?”

  The answer didn’t appear to satisfy her. “Do you know who’s been supplying him with condoms all these months?” she asked. “Me. Because it’s the job of adults to teach teenagers to be responsible. That’s what grown-ups do.”

  “You’ve done an admirable job.”

  She picked up the jar of comb honey beside the stove and flung it at me. It missed my arm and hit the refrigerator, sending an amber trail trickling down the white. The jar rolled across the floor with an undulating glassy sound, dispensing with bits of comb that flecked the tile.

  “I ought to turn you in,” she yelled, and now I felt real fear, more of Russ than of her. “I told him I wouldn’t, but I’m very tempted. Someone needs to hold you accountable, even if he won’t.”

  “I don’t believe he told you anything,” I said quietly.

  “Oh, he sure did.”

  “I don’t believe you. I think you’re just guessing in the dark.”

  She leaned forward from the waist, her eyes large, face jeering. “You’re wrong. I was shocked. I would never have guessed a Sylvania teacher would do such a thing. To a boy.”

  At that moment the chain inside me broke. “He’s not six years old,” I shouted, my hands in fists at my sides, my neck arching toward her. “He’s not a child. He knew what he was doing and he came after it like he had a free pass to fucking Disneyland. He wouldn’t be taking all your precious condoms if he wasn’t dying to use every last one of them. And who are you to him? Nobody at all. Just another adult he likes to talk to about sex. And you’re jealous. You wish you’d had the nerve.”

  Her lip curled like a dog’s. “That’s bullshit. How dare you. You’re so twisted you don’t even know what it is to feel protective of somebody who’s young.”

  “Oh, I know what that’s like. But my kindergartners aren’t barging in and dropping their pants in my classroom two minutes after dismissal. Which is what your little angel has been doing for months. He doesn’t want to be protected. He wants to be blown.”

  She rested her hands low on her hips and came toward me. “You need to turn yourself in.”

  “I’m not turning myself in for anything. I’ll turn him in first for ripping half my hair out the last time I victimized him.”

  Her face was inches from mine. I could see every puckered pore along her cheekbones, every haphazard eyelash. “Turn yourself in or I will.”

  I cuffed her ear with my open hand and shoved her as hard as I could, sending her stumbling backward into the stove. As she winced, I grabbed the glass sphere Bobbie had given me, delicately streaked with color and hanging in the window by a thread, and flung it at her. She ducked, and it shattered against a cabinet in a spray of shards.

  “You’re insane,” she shouted. “You need to be evaluated. There’s something wrong with you, Judy. I mean it. I’m calling a psychiatric transport on you.”

  “Go ahead,” I yelled back. “Be my guest. Make sure they’ve got a rape kit.”

  She stared into my eyes for a long moment, then brushed past me and out the door.

  29

  On the night of the Wicker Man Festival, Fairen came by to pick up Zach, her small white car turning sharply into the driveway with a grace he had to admire. They stopped to get sandwiches, then sat in the car for a long time, heater blasting, making out. For once he didn’t mind the setting one bit. It wasn’t half bad, this business of hooking up in cars, if one respected the limitations of the space. The frustration of wishing he could take her elsewhere had its own peculiar excitement.

  Once at the lake they ducked through the trees and e
ntered the park, where the party was already in full swing. To the right a band played in an amphitheater; straight ahead, in the lake itself, scaffolding supported a high platform on which the wicker man was suspended. It looked less like wicker than like blocks of straw held together with metal bands, and, Zach guessed, the burn would be fast and messy; chunks would probably fall off, necessitating the midlake location. The pyrotechnics guys, two shadowy figures moving around a control box, looked like they were making the final preparations.

  Fairen set down her backpack and unfurled a quilt onto the cold ground, a little distance from the amphitheater. She waved to a couple in the crowd, dancing to the modern-Celtic music coming from the stage, heavy on the drums. “Want to dance?”

  “Not yet. Maybe when the burn starts.”

  “Oh, c’mon. Don’t be inhibited.”

  To distract her, he chose to deliberately misinterpret her meaning, and leaned in to kiss her. She laughed and kissed him back, and after a little more of that he playfully wrestled her down onto the quilt. A pine bough sheltered them somewhat, but people were everywhere, and so he contented himself with the sort of kissing that didn’t quite qualify as public indecency.

  A whoop went up from the crowd, and Zach looked up to make sure it wasn’t a reaction to him and Fairen. Instead he saw a tongue of flame lapping at the leg of the wicker man. He rolled himself back up to a sitting position, and watched as the legs, and then the torso, gradually caught fire. Fairen moved across him, sitting backwards on his lap briefly and taking a moment to kiss him again before standing up and reaching out her hand.

  “It’s started,” she said. Her smile was almost persuasive. “Come join me.”

  “I liked what we were doing.”

  “There’ll be more of that later. C’mon.”

  He grinned and hesitated, trying to think up a new way to lure her back. But then, behind her, he saw a woman walking swiftly toward them, wearing a down vest much like his own. As she came closer he realized it was Rhianne.

  “There you are,” she said, clearly exasperated. “Zach, can I have a word with you privately?”

  He immediately stood up, and Fairen shot him an odd smile and a small wave. “Catch up with me in a minute, okay?”

  “Sure thing.” She walked off, and he asked Rhianne, “Is my mom in labor?”

  “No. She’s fine. I’m glad I found you. Seems like every kid from Sylvania is here.” She took a deep breath. “Zach, listen to me. You have to break things off with Judy McFarland right away.”

  His eyes widened at hearing her name from Rhianne. Immediately he felt the gut-level panic he had feared for months at being found out. He said, “I already did. There’s nothing going on anymore.”

  “You’re sure she understands that. Because that woman’s not stable, Zach. She’s dangerous, and she might try to say you raped her.”

  He shook his head. “She won’t really do that. She’s just upset and got her feelings hurt. I didn’t do anything to her that she didn’t want me to do.”

  “Well, you need to be prepared for what she might accuse you of, if she’s crazy enough to try. Which she might be. She hit me and shoved me into her stove.”

  “Really?” He half laughed, and Rhianne gave him a look of alarm. “Glad it’s not just me. She gets pissy when you tick her off.”

  “I’d get a restraining order if I were you.”

  Now his laugh was outright. He felt impatient to get back to Fairen. “You’ve seen her, right? She’s about the size of a twelve-year-old. I’m not worried about it.”

  “I think you’re underestimating her.”

  He shrugged and let his gaze wander over her shoulder. “People mouth off when they’re mad. Word getting out about what happened is the last thing she wants, trust me. It’ll blow over.”

  Fairen was wandering back toward him, her gaze curious, her purple ski vest swinging stiffly in the cold air. Her flaxen hair was backlit by the wicker man in a halo of yellow. The drummers in the circle stepped up the rhythm into a near frenzy, hands striking drumskin with a force he could feel in the ground.

  “Come on,” she yelled, gesturing with a broad arc of her arm. “You said you’d dance with me!”

  He offered Rhianne an apologetic nod and walked over to where Fairen stood, smiling and dancing, her hair aglow in the light of the burning.

  I needed to get my head together, as Scott said. To sit and think.

  I drove out to the lake, where I imagined I could park in the shadowy little spot where Zach and I had often stopped, and look out at the water, and talk myself back into a clearer frame of mind. Beneath those trees I could consider the full arc of our relationship. There I could follow the trail of memories from our first covert, intoxicating visit to that space to the last, when I climbed onto his lap and felt his skin blazing hot around me, delighting in it for the last precious moments before the just universe would begin to confront me with every sorry truth about who I was. Before it dismantled the playhouse my mind had built, hoping it would serve as a for tress.

  But the parking lot was jammed full of cars. I had never seen it so full. I heard music not far away and realized there was a festival going on. Gradually I remembered seeing the posters around town, a straw effigy burning in some sort of Celtic winter ritual. I parked my car illegally on the painted stripes beside a handicapped spot, and left my motor running.

  In spite of the crowd, I stared out at the water and called up my memories. In my mind I could still see the urgency in Zach’s movements the first time we stopped here, hear the ragged sound of his breathing that seemed magnified by the deep silence around us, like a voice calling across a field on a snowy day. I remembered the bone-deep comfort of wrapping my arms around his body and pressing my face against his belly, and knowing there was no chance he would send me away, because the car was mine, and the keys were in my pocket, and I had something he very much wanted.

  I sighed brokenly and pushed my hair back from my forehead. Through the windshield I watched a couple making out, and envied them their passion, their indifference to the crowd around them. The young man turned the girl onto her back and climbed over her, and quite suddenly, from the shape of his arms and shoulders and the angle at which his bangs fell, I realized it was Zach. I exhaled hard in surprise, and then, as he kissed her from above, cupping her breast with his free hand, I felt a tightness gathering around my heart. How easy it must be to be done with me when he had the willing blonde. The lawyers’ daughter, the one forever kissing boys on the playground, the girl with her bent knees now on either side of Zach’s hips.

  I pushed in the cigarette lighter.

  A breeze blew at the stand of pine trees in front of me, and through their wavering branches I caught sight of the straw man beginning to burn above the water. The man was unrealistically silent, but the crowd screamed for him. The flames spun around the body like a swarm of bees. I pulled a Martinmas lantern out from the box on the floor behind the driver’s seat, wadded in the cleaning cloth for my sunglasses, and dug into my purse for the vial of Bach’s Rescue Remedy. Its maker purported the flower essences were blended specifically to help in traumatic situations, and whether or not they worked as claimed, I was certain the alcohol tincture would function reliably.

  I doused the cloth in Rescue Remedy and stepped out of the car. When I dropped in the cigarette lighter, the instant blaze shifted the lighting such that I could see my reflection in the car window: hair long and wild, expression blank, eyes dark hollows that disappeared into my face. The image was strangely soothing. I had become nobody, only a caricature, a cautionary tale of the body gone terribly awry. I was a book of moral lessons, and children had reason to fear me.

  The wind had calmed. I stepped toward the trees, but to my dismay Fairen was gone. Now Zach stood speaking to a woman who, as I drew closer, appeared to be Rhianne. She gestured to him with broad, adamant strokes of her hand, and although he kept his distance and shook his head, I felt a chill that counter
ed my burning hands. Then Zach stepped around her and walked toward the dancing group, hands in his pockets, leaving her standing beside the blanket in a disgruntled posture.

  I sighed and set the lantern on the asphalt. The flames leaped well above its rim, but I doused it with my leftover cup of coffee, and it sputtered out.

  Then I jammed my keys in the ignition and headed back home.

  When I returned to the house there was an ambulance sitting in the driveway, all its red lights whirling. The front door stood open. I gathered my purse and walked up to the door, where a medical technician in a blue uniform greeted me and told me Russ was dead. I felt anxious and a bit surprised. Scott had found him, they told me; and only then did I realize this explained why Russ had not come downstairs during my disagreement with the midwife. The two medics told me the police would arrive soon, as a matter of routine, so I sat in the rocking chair and waited for them. While I waited I wound balls of yarn, as I often asked my students to do during quiet time.

  When they arrived they appeared surprised to see me there. The one policeman said, it doesn’t seem to come as much of a shock to you that your husband is dead in his office. So I said, Officer, my husband has had a drug problem for a long time now, and I warned him that eventually he would probably die without treatment. So I suppose you could say I feel a bit resigned.

  What sort of a drug problem, said the other officer, and I said, prescription drugs of all kinds, I can show you the bottles if you like. And so I did. They said, do you have the original prescription for these, and I said, what do you think?

  There’s no reason to get snotty, he said. And that’s when I saw Scott standing in the doorway, with a look on his face of absolute shock and dismay. I could see his heart was breaking. So easily had I come to take the addiction for granted that I had forgotten Scott didn’t know. And I felt very relieved that when it finally happened—almost exactly as I had anticipated, facedown on his laptop with vomit in the keys—it had been none of my doing. Because of course it could have gone very differently.