The Kingdom of Childhood (17 page)

“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?”

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.

“She’s determined to do things her own way,” I replied. “Come hell or high water.”

“Ah, the folly of youth. Maybe we pushed it all too hard. Crammed our views down their little throats. But Scott doesn’t seem to be any worse for wear. Just Maggie.”

I didn’t answer right away. After a minute I said, “Scott doesn’t care one whit about anybody.”

“It’s just his age. They’re all self-centered at that age. Give him a few years and he’ll probably become a civil-rights lawyer.”

I grunted in reply.

He offered a mild scowl I could see only at the edge of my vision. “You take everything too personally, Judy. If somebody gives you a negative answer, for whatever reason, it’s like from your gut you react as if it must be about
you
. If Scott’s unfriendly, it doesn’t mean he hates you and everything you stand for. It probably just means all the room in his brain is taken up with cars and boobs. To look at it any other way, it’s narcissistic.”

I snorted a laugh at that one. “I’m a narcissist,” I said in a mocking tone. “
I’m
a narcissist.”

“And there you go, right there,” he continued. “A little constructive criticism, and you’re giving me that slit-eyed glare like you’re going to set me on fire.”

“That’s not funny.”

He shifted in his seat. “It wasn’t intended to be.”

When we arrived at the police station, I hung back and allowed Russ to do the dirty work. Maggie, sullen and uninterested in communicating either explanation or apology, stepped out from the cell when the guard unlocked it but said little to
either of us. On the drive back to her dorm Russ regaled her with stories of his own jail stints for civil disobedience, but she only stared out the window and toyed with the necklace she wore, a gold cross smaller than a pinky nail.

After a while I cut him off. “You’re not exactly encouraging her to avoid this situation in the future,” I chided. “How about telling her what a criminal record will do for her job prospects?”

“At least she’s standing up for what she believes in,” he replied. “And no employer’s going to turn her down because she got arrested for protesting. That’s a rock-solid American tradition right there. Thomas Jefferson would heartily approve.”

I heard Maggie shift in her seat. Turning to Russ, I asked, “Are you planning to ask Thomas Jefferson for a loan to pay for her lawyers?”

“You don’t need lawyers if you can sweet-talk the cops into not charging you in the first place. Why don’t you offer a little of your motherly wisdom on that one?”

I offered him an icy glare before I turned away. Behind me Maggie asked, “Mom, did you get arrested for protesting, too?”

“Yes,” I told her. “Several times.”

Once Maggie had been safely returned to her dormitory, Russ and I drove down the main strip until we found a motel that catered mainly to alumni who were rabid college-sports fans. Team paraphernalia decorated the lobby, along with a display of brochures for caves, natural bridges, old-fashioned train rides and outlet shopping centers. I thought of Zach and his friends back home in Sylvania setting up the bazaar without me, the darkened and nearly-empty school thickening the camaraderie between them, the temptation to exploit
the school’s shadowy corners with the adults in short supply. I thought of the way Fairen Ambrose, my wry little kindergartner grown up into a fair-haired and foul-mouthed swan, seemed always to have her gaze turned the same way mine did. Eventually she would quit holding back, and that worried me. Zach was neither particularly discerning nor difficult to please.

Russ accepted the key cards, and I followed him down the sidewalk to a room with a dull green door. Inside I set my overnight bag on the luggage rack and locked myself in the bathroom to take a shower. We would need to set off early the next day to make it back to Sylvania in time for the bazaar, which began at eleven. Already it was past midnight, and after only a few hours of sleep the driving would probably fall again to me, because Russ would likely still be conked out on Nembutal. Not that he had told me this—I had picked up a prescription drug guide to figure out what exactly my husband was doing to himself. Whether the dosages applied to drugs purchased over the internet from Mexico, I had no idea.

I undressed and leaned into the mirror to evaluate the depth of the dark circles beneath my eyes. That was when I noticed a fan of fingertip-shaped bruises a little above my left breast. I looked at the right and saw an identical set of marks. Reflexively my hands lifted to touch them. They were unmistakable: eight purplish prints and, nestled in my cleavage, a lighter, smaller one for each thumb.

The memory rushed back to me in a jumble of images: myself lolling in euphoria, and Zach above me, freed from the constraints of patience, allowing all his subdued frenetic energy to surge into his muscles at once. Anger, still lingering, gave his passion an edge that was a little selfish, a little sadistic; I didn’t mind. Once he had dutifully attended to me
he seemed to disappear into himself, black bangs swinging, breathing heavily through his mouth. His bottom teeth were exposed by his grimacing lower lip. At the time, the grip of his fingers hadn’t hurt at all. The endorphins pumping through my veins were to thank for that.

I checked the lock on the door and got into the shower. When I came out of the bathroom, I expected to find Russ knocked out in one of the full-size beds. He was in his pajamas and on the bed, all right, but with his glasses on, watching the news on the small TV.

“Poor Bill,” he said. “They caught you red-handed, sucker.”

I took a container of hand lotion from my overnight bag and smoothed a dollop onto my hands. When I folded down the coverlet on the other bed, Russ asked, “What are you doing over there?”

“Going to sleep.”

“In
that
bed?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

He held out his arms to indicate the breadth of the bed in which he sat. He had already removed the bedspread, of course; hotel bedspreads, to Russ, were flower-print petri dishes. “You never sleep in a different bed at home.”

“We have a king. These are full-size.”

“Ah, so what? Don’t be a stranger.”

Unintentionally, I snorted a laugh. “Russ, really.”

He pushed himself down the bed on the heels of his hands, then spun sideways to face me. He rubbed a knuckle against my knee and said, “In college we used to make do with a twin.”

“I’d never want to do
that
again.”

“By that measurement, a full is luxurious.”

I peeled down the blanket and top sheet. “What’s luxurious
is a full night of sleep, which I’m not going to get anyway. And I have a full day tomorrow, with the bazaar.”

“Hell, I’ll come by and give you a hand. You make the sacrifice, I will, too. Call it teamwork. How does that sound?”

“Fantastic,” I said dryly. “What a way to recruit volunteers. Mind getting the light?”

“Not at all.”

He got up to hit the switch, and I climbed under the stiff covers and rolled onto my side. Light from the security lamps in the parking lot glowed around the curtain, but I felt so exhausted it would hardly bother me. I rearranged the pillow and closed my eyes. Then Russ climbed in beside me.

I didn’t move. I felt too surprised to react. When was the last time he had tried to have sex—had it been this year, or the previous one? Despite the conversation, I had assumed he was making a nominal attempt to come on to his wife so he could tell himself it was her fault he wasn’t getting laid, in service to his ego. Never mind his complete disinterest in the act itself.

But he didn’t seem disinterested now. He tried to roll me onto my back, but I wadded the blanket into my hands and refused to budge. In response, he nuzzled my neck and pulled up the back of my nightgown.

“
No,
Russ,” I said, and elbowed him away.

“Why not?”

“Because I need sleep.”

“But we’ve got a hotel room all to ourselves.”

“Russ—we always have a whole bedroom all to ourselves.”

“Yeah, but at home I’m always wrapped up in the dissertation.” He rubbed my arm. “I’ll be quick if you want me to be. Or slow if you prefer.”

“No. Leave me alone.”

I writhed away from him, but he grabbed my elbow and
pulled me back. As I tried to jerk my arm away, I wriggled onto my stomach, but he held on and moved as I did. His weight on my back, with my face against the scratchy sheet, made me feel half-suffocated. He must have heard my struggled breathing, because he rose up on one arm to make room for me to stretch my neck.

“Now, Judy,” he said, his voice placating but his fingers still tight above my elbow, “you know I’d never
make you
do anything.”

I took several deep breaths and swallowed.

“So I’m
asking
you to be nice to me. Because I work my ass off, and you’re my wife, and it would be awfully damn considerate if you’d allow me the privilege of having sex with you on the rare occasion my schedule permits.”

I relaxed a little, and in turn, he eased his grip. When I turned onto my side he curled up behind me, and after that I didn’t protest any further. I stared at the band of light around the window and tried to ignore Russ, who didn’t seem to notice, or care.

The streetlights still shone halos of yellow against the charcoal sky when we climbed into the car the next morning, groggy and unsettled, as if the previous night’s events had embarrassingly revealed just how far gone our marriage was. Perhaps it was only my own perception; Russ, loaded up on medications, could no longer be depended on to display a reaction that meant anything. This time he took the driver’s seat, and I did not complain. My exhaustion was probably as debilitating as whatever state he was in, and he could throw back his black coffee much faster than I could.

Neither of us spoke for the first thirty minutes or so, allowing National Public Radio to hold up its end of the conversation unassisted. Two Congressmen, one Democrat and
one Republican, argued over the impeachment proceedings, and for once I thought Russ’s jazz CDs might be welcome. I thought back to Zach’s opinion of the whole thing—that the president had been betrayed, his private business hung out so his enemies could make an example of him, that it was frivolous and absurd. Zach’s interpretation was simplistic, but naturally I appreciated his take that privacy trumps all else. I slowly sipped my coffee and gazed out the window at the low blue hills, hazily beautiful against the yellowing grass of autumn.

“So when are you going to stage an intervention?” asked Russ.

I turned in surprise to look at him, and then, finding his small smile unreadable, stared back out at the road. “Your business is none of mine,” I said.

He chuckled. “Sure it is. I pay the bills. I stay at this damn job so our kids can get tuition remission.” He let go of the wheel long enough to hold up his left hand. “I keep the ring on.”

“How kind of you.”

For a moment he met my eye and scowled. “I’ve never known you not to have an opinion about something. I keep waiting to come home and find you and Scott and my boss and whoever else sitting around in a circle ready to haul me off to rehab.”

“Do you want me to?” I asked, cool-voiced. “Because to this point I was under the impression that Scott and your boss were the last people you would want me to tell.”

“They are. I’m just surprised you haven’t done it anyway.”

“You sell me short,” I told him. “You always have.”

His mouth pulled into a slow, thin line. “I married you,” he reminded me. “In spite of everything.”

“In spite of
nothing
. I rest my case.”

“Bull
shit,
” he countered. “Marty didn’t fare so well. Did I hold that against you? No. And damn well I should have.”

“What happened to Marty was an accident.”

“Like hell it was. And it damn near took out the entire dormitory. People who pass out drunk don’t spill vodka over their entire bed. They also don’t light cigarettes after they’ve passed out. I gave you benefit of the doubt then, because I knew you wouldn’t stage something that evil. But I wonder now and then.”

“You
wish
now and then,” I corrected. “I was innocent when I had what you wanted, and twenty years later, when I’m entitled to half your retirement, I’m guilty. Drunks do things like that all the time, and Marty was one of them. It was terrible what happened to him, but I can’t say I’m sorry. He was abusive.”

“You think everyone is abusive. You think
I’m
abusive.”

“I beg your pardon. You strong-armed me into bed last night and nothing burned down. I wouldn’t consent to you abusing me. I’m above that.”

“Lucky me. Did you enjoy it?”

“No.”

He snickered. “I would have stuck around for you if you’d asked.”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

His expression, focused distantly on the road, was placid. “You’re probably having an affair. Even when you’re pissed as hell, it’s not like you to turn down an orgasm.”