The Kingdom of Childhood (22 page)

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.”

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.

From the kitchen, I stared at the back of his head. I drummed my fingertips on the counter. Earlier I had snagged Zach in the parking lot and told him I would meet him in the church lot at seven; when Russ changed his plans, I’d been forced to make a dangerous phone call which fortunately Zach, and not either of his parents, had picked up. The longer Russ sat in front of
Three’s Company,
the more I seethed. What right did he have to cancel the class they paid him to teach, for no reason at all, and throw all my plans for a loop? And so what if those plans weren’t exactly kosher? It wasn’t as though
he
planned to spend time with me, ever, or consider that I might deserve a husband who did more than take up space. Were it not for the fact that my lover was sixteen years old, I might rub the fact of him in Russ’s face just to make the point that my life as a woman hadn’t ended the day he fell in love with his thesis.

I headed upstairs to the master bathroom and began drawing myself a nice hot bath. If I couldn’t have Zach, I could at least have that. Then I noticed the pill bottles cluttering the sink: the Nembutal, the Xanax. These days he took them by the handful, right in front of me. The quantities were appalling. I was sure he was in imminent danger of an overdose, but nothing ever happened.

I picked up the bottle of Nembutal. This was the one he took in the evening, to counteract whatever the Dexedrine
had been doing all day. I shook three capsules into my hand, then four. Then six.

The water had filled the tub halfway. I shut it off, let it drain and returned to the kitchen. Russ was still watching television. The laugh track rose and fell in waves, although Russ sat mute, his stocking feet perched on the coffee table. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table with the newspaper. When the first cup was finished, I poured myself another.

Eventually the sound of a commercial came on: an arthritis remedy, targeted depressingly at people our age. Russ got up and went to the bathroom. Very quickly I slipped into the living room and, one two three, dumped out all six caplets into his soda can. By the time the toilet flushed, I was back at the kitchen table reading the articles of impeachment against President Clinton.

Six might have been too many. Or, it might have been too few. I didn’t know. Also, I didn’t particularly care. As long as he fell asleep long enough to serve my purposes, I couldn’t bring myself to care when he woke up, or if.

When Zach picked up the phone, he heard Judy’s voice on the line for the second time that evening.

“Can you come over?” she asked. “Right now, or very soon?”

He sighed hard against the phone. “You already told me we were off for tonight.”

“I know, but the house is clear after all.”

“Judy…” He gritted his teeth together hard enough to send a needle of pain through his jaw. “We talked about how we’re taking a break, remember?”

She answered with a scoffing laugh. “Oh yes, I seem
to remember you told me that right before you got in bed with me.”

He had been afraid she would point that out. “Well, I’ve got plans,” he countered. “I’m meeting Scott and people in an hour.”

“Oh?” asked Judy. “Where are you going?”

Zach bristled. “I dunno. Hang out. It’s to finish up our history project.”

“An hour is plenty of time,” Judy said. Her voice turned husky. “There’s a lot you and I can do with just fifteen minutes.”

He slid his back down the kitchen wall and rested on his haunches. “I dunno,” he said again. He craned his neck to look for his mother and then dropped his voice. “You know I feel weird hanging out with Scott right after we screw.”

“Oh, you can work past it. You have before.”

“I don’t know if I’m in the right mood.”

“Zach,” said Judy, her voice starting to take on the wheedling note he hated, “
please
just come by. I promise I’ll make it worth your while. I’ve been thinking about you since the minute I got up this morning. You wouldn’t believe how much trouble I went to to get the house clear.”

He rested his forehead against his hand and breathed out a slow sigh. This was the obstacle he had faced for weeks. As with any destructive habit, kicking sex with Judy was fraught with moments of almost evangelical determination, periods of refreshing apathy toward her, and then worming little slivers of weakness where he thought,
what’s one more going to hurt?
It had almost gotten him that afternoon; after school she had grabbed his upper arm in the parking lot and all but ordered him to show up at nineteen-hundred hours. He had grunted a reply but not exactly agreed. Temple’s warning had forced him to view his actions through a new lens, and the wider
angle showed a Zach who made dumb mistakes, failed to see around corners, planned for the hypothetical but not the obvious. Even so, the temptation stalked him. He told himself he would stand her up, but his inner voice didn’t sound as convinced as he wished it did.

And so after she called to cancel that evening, he had told himself it was an opportunity and he was done with her, really done this time. He did round after round of crunches, push-ups, and chin-ups in the basement, drank a liter of spring water, practiced judo on the heavy boxing bag, and stripped down to his underwear to admire himself in the full-length mirror. It was a good body, it worked well, and he was proud of it. Fairen had complimented it many times. Judy couldn’t leave it alone. He wasn’t going to be especially tall and his babyish face still didn’t match his build, but he felt happy with what he had. He took a shower to wash off the exercise sweat, jerked off while he was in there, and collapsed into bed for an hour-long nap, feeling physically and sexually sated independent of Judy McFarland.

And now here she was again, pleading with him across the phone line. She shifted to stroking his ego, throwing a little dirty-mouthed phone-sex talk in there for good measure, then moved in with a side assault of guilt. She had moved continents to make the house available. She hadn’t denied him, had she, when he showed up unannounced the previous Monday? And she would do anything he asked, which she knew, with him, could mean quite a lot.

“Okay, okay,” he finally told her. This was the part Rhianne didn’t understand, the part that had less to do with his hormones than with his patience. “I’ll walk over. Give me twenty minutes.”

When he arrived at the house she opened the door slowly, lifting a silencing finger to her lips. As he stepped into the
foyer, she gestured toward the ceiling and mouthed,
he’s upstairs.

Who?
he mouthed back.

Russ.

Without really meaning to, he rolled his eyes. In a low voice he said, “You told me nobody was home.”

Judy waved her hand to dismiss his concern. He followed her to the den, where she closed the door and turned the lock. He looked at Scott’s math book on the table with papers shoved in it and remembered what Judy had said about Scott’s preference for hooking up with Tally on that very sofa. Beside it sat the Christmas tree, bright rainbow lights shining.

“He’s sleeping,” she whispered. “He’ll be up there all night.”

Zach leveled an irritated gaze. “What if he comes down to get a snack or something?”

“He won’t. Trust me.”

And then she unbuttoned her shirt and put her arms around his neck. He felt her teeth on his earlobe, the warmth of her breath. She eased his vest from his shoulders and let it fall to the floor. As she ran a finger beneath the neckline of his shirt to kiss his collarbone, he stared at the twinkling lights and the jumble of ornaments made of construction paper and curling ribbon. An awkwardly woven straw Star of Bethlehem. A ceramic ballet slipper. Zach had no particular attachment to Christianity—when his mother discussed the subject, she always quoted the Dalai Lama saying
my religion is kindness
—but he was enough of a child of his culture to think there was something deeply screwed up about having illicit sex in front of a Christmas tree.

“Let’s go down to the basement,” he said.

“It’s a mess. All the Christmas stuff is pulled out of storage.” She nuzzled his neck, her hands slipping to his waist, the small
of his back. “Boxes. Furniture moved around. God, you feel good.”

She undid the top button of his jeans, and as if by reflex he pushed her away. He didn’t feel the least bit aroused by her. He looked toward the closed door and said, “Listen, I’m just not in the mood.”

Her laugh was uneasy. “You came over, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but I changed my mind. I think we ought to stick to what we decided. Take a break.”

“You don’t mean that.”

He bristled. “No, seriously, I really do. And it sort of pisses me off that you think you can bring me in here when your husband’s sleeping upstairs and I’m not going to mind. Maybe it’s honor among thieves or whatever, but that’s some scummy shit.”

She lifted her brows in a placating way and hooked a finger in his belt loop. “It didn’t even enter my mind,” she explained. “Russ and I live separate lives. He doesn’t care what I do. And right now he’s too drugged up to notice.”

Zach met her eyes. “Drugged up?”

“Nembutal. He goes through it like candy. It amazes me that he keeps breathing.” She took advantage of his surprise to sidle up to him again, her warm hand sliding up into his hair, her mouth dipping to kiss his neck. He felt the edges of her teeth, gentle for a moment, then unexpectedly—yet not unpleasantly—painful. He grimaced and pulled in a slow breath. Judy never bit. She was afraid of marking him. Yet this time she did and wouldn’t let go, and finally he clawed a hand into her hair and pulled her back.

She winced, and he kissed her on the mouth. Under normal circumstances the bite would have won him over, but not here or now. He said, “Seeya.”

Disbelief edged her voice. “You’re not really leaving.”

He lifted his vest from its place on the carpet and shrugged it back on. “I gotta meet up with Scott and people.”

She shifted a few steps to the left. Now she was standing in front of the door, complicating his exit route. He was certain it wasn’t accidental, and that pissed him off.

“Just spend a few minutes with me, since you’re already here,” she implored. Her hazel eyes, so placid when he had first met her, stared back at him full of determination. The softness of her voice and the appeasing set of her mouth did nothing to fool him into believing she would leave the decision to his good judgment. He remembered the night she had stroked his feverish back before taking advantage of him, and he knew she had no intention of letting him leave until she got what she wanted. As he glowered at her, Rhianne’s face, framed by night and white with cold, flashed into his mind.
She’s manipulating you,
Rhianne had said.
Coercing you.
The anger that had already kindled in his gut now flared fully to life.

“Are you gonna hold me hostage?” he demanded. “Is that what that’s about?”

She shook her head. “I just want to be with you. That’s all.”

He moved toward the door, and she backed against the doorknob, reaching to loop her fingers into the waistband of his jeans as though that were the reason for his approach. She tugged loose his thermal from his pants and slid her hands up his chest.

“I know you don’t have much time,” she whispered.

He leveled his condescending glare on her and felt all his tumultuous thoughts reduce to a single sentence:
just get out the fucking door.
She broke away her gaze and nuzzled his neck, softly this time, her hands roaming everywhere despite his utter lack of response. He closed his eyes and fantasized about Fairen. Of her body, her face, the way she sneered at people
who perturbed her, her dirty mouth. Then his eyes snapped open and, abruptly, he spun Judy to face the wall, shoved her skirt up, and did what he needed to do.

A handful of her hair fell from his fingers, once he was done.

He opened the door immediately and zipped up as he walked through the kitchen. His down vest was still on, and heat spiked on the back of his neck. He heard her footsteps behind him, the slight pat echoing each thump of his sneakers.

“Zach,” she said.

He turned at the front door and looked at her. With one hand she rubbed the back of her head. Her shirt still hung open, revealing the strip of black satin at the center of her bra that reminded him of a semibreve rest on a musical score.
Pause and breathe,
the universe seemed to be telling him, and the wisdom resonated just now.

She smiled with an affection than looked almost pained. “Thanks for coming over,” she said. “It’s always good to see you.”