The Kingdom of Childhood (24 page)

Around the side of the furnace building, he heard the snuffling and footsteps of an animal. The shock of it jarred him, and when he snapped his head to look toward the sound, the
flashlight clattered to the ground and rolled away. He scrambled after it. Sweat stung at the corners of his eyes. The footsteps came closer, and as Zach groped for the light and pointed it in the direction of the noise he saw a tall grayish-white figure, much larger than a human, with a glinting blackness perched behind it. He screamed, pure fear pumping into his veins, heart accelerating so rapidly it thudded in his ears. His feet at first refused to obey his mind’s frantic command to move, but as he collected himself enough to take two steps back, the light shifted, and staring back at him were a mounted police officer and his very unimpressed horse. “Son,” said the officer in a low drawl, “what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Zach exhaled, all at once, all the air left from his screaming. “Jesus Christ. I thought you were the Bunny Man.”

The officer smirked. “You wish.”

“You are such an idiot,” said Fairen. “I can’t believe you mistook a horse for the Bunny Man.”

She was sitting on the molded plastic chair beside him in the orthopedics unit of Holy Cross Hospital. The slow-ticking clock said it was two in the morning. His left arm lay swaddled in a black splint. They sat waiting for his discharge papers, and Fairen had just now dared to ask him for the details.

“I was freaked,” Zach replied. “Sometimes when you’re looking for something, you know, you just see what you’re expecting to see instead of what’s really there.”

“But you were
trying
to find a cop.”

“Yeah, but I was pretty disoriented.”

“I’ll say.” She traced a finger along his good arm. “We’re damn lucky they’re not charging us with trespassing, especially with you coming on like such a goober.”

“Hey, I got help for Tally. Cut me some slack.”

“I
am
cutting you slack. You have no idea how hard I’d be razzing you if you
hadn’t
helped Tally.”

Someone from the nurse’s station called his name, and he was handed a packet of papers. Fairen had called his father, and he was on his way. In the meantime there was nothing to do but wait, with Fairen to keep him company. He could think of worse ways to spend an evening.

“Your shoe’s untied,” she observed as he sat down.

He held up his splinted wrist helplessly.

“Oh, yeah.” She bent to tie it for him. “Does it still hurt pretty bad?”

“Not as bad as before. The Percocet helped.”

“What’s Scott’s beef with you, anyway? The way he went off on you was completely mental.”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

“I swear, he and Tally are made for each other. Between him coming after you like a pro wrestler and Tally hallucinating she saw needles in that shaft, they’re like the king and queen of overreactions. This was just supposed to be a simple tour of a historical site, for research purposes. It’s not even their project, and they had to go muck it up.”

She traced the Velcro bands of his splint, lightly, where it rested on his leg. He said, “Thanks for everything. For taking me to the hospital and calling my folks and all that. And for doing three-quarters of the project. I guess I should mention that part, too.”

“It’s no problem.”

“Well, I won’t forget it. I’ve had better nights than this one, that’s for sure.”

She ran her hand along his inner thigh. “Me, too.”

For what seemed like the first time in hours, he smiled.

“What are you doing Monday night?” she asked. He
glanced at her, and she added, “The school’s doing Advent Spiral tomorrow, but I thought maybe you and I could do something over break. Not with the whole crew. Just us.”

“I don’t even now if my folks will let me go to the Spiral, after this. I’ll probably be grounded.”

“I doubt that. I already covered for you. Told your folks it was all Tally’s fault. She called Scott in a panic from the elevator shaft and he dragged us all there to rescue her. You’re a hero.”

He laughed. “That’s awesome. I hope they bought that.”

“They did. Monday I’m supposed to be going to the Wicker Man Festival at the lake, with my cousin. Celebrate the start of vacation. We already have tickets, but I can get you an extra one. I have connections.”

“That sounds cool.”

She smiled. “Awesome. It’ll be good to spend time with you again. On a regular date. Act our age this time.”

He nodded and examined his wrist. “I can’t even tell you how good that sounds.”

When I came to bed late that night I sat on the edge of the mattress cautiously, as though Russ might flop over like a corpse in a movie, arms splayed, eyes fixed. But beneath the covers it was warm. I leaned over him and tipped my ear toward his face. He snored faintly, the same as always.

I turned my back to him and bunched the covers beneath my chin. My scalp still felt sore where Zach had pulled my hair. My skin burned from the friction that had lasted just long enough to rub me raw. He was often rough, but normally a little apologetic about it, and when he took it too far I found subtle ways to turn it around. This time I didn’t dare, suspecting he was doing what he needed to do to make it work. I could bite my lip through an encounter that felt more than a little like rape, or I could have nothing.

I took the rape.

I thought of him out somewhere in the night with Scott, free-spirited and cheerful, the way he had been when I had first met him. I pictured him with his foot up on a chair in some fast-food restaurant, the razor-trimmed edges of his
black hair framing his smiling face, purged for the night of all his tension. He was with them, but in some secret place in his mind he was remembering the moments with me. I felt perversely grateful for that.

With Russ dozing peacefully behind me, I drifted off to sleep.

And then the phone rang.

“Why are you at the hospital?” I asked Scott groggily.

He rattled off some story I could only understand in pieces: an elevator accident, Tally was a little bit hurt but hardly so, a police escort, Temple was in trouble.

“What kind of trouble?”

“For bringing us to Pinerest Hospital.”

“I thought you said you were at Holy Cross.”

Scott growled into the receiver. “Damn it, Mom, I don’t think you listened to a freakin’ thing I said.
I need you to pick me up.
Do you get that part?”

“Scott, there’s no reason to be surly about it. I can barely understand you.”

“Yeah, story of my life.”

At the hospital I found Scott easily, sitting in a molded plastic chair near the exit, alone. He didn’t look to be in any way injured, which relieved me, considering how little I’d managed to put together from his phone call. I asked, “Where’s Tally?”

“Her folks picked her up.”

“And they didn’t offer you a ride?”

“They’re not exactly happy with me right now.”

I sighed. “What about the rest of your friends? Was anybody else hurt? Does anyone need a ride home?”

“No.”

In the car I pieced the story together slowly, using
yes-and-no questions that forced Scott to produce answers. Finally I asked, “So how did you manage to get help?”

“We sent Zach out.”

“Oh, so Zach was there.”

“Yes, Zach was there,” he said peevishly. “Zach is always around when you need him.”

I slowed for a red light. “Well, even if the police aren’t charging you with trespassing, I think we’ll need to have some consequence. You should have had better sense than to go to a place that dangerous.”

“A
consequence
. Gosh, I didn’t realize you were still playing that game.”

“What game is that?”

“The mom game. You haven’t even asked for my grade report from last month. I got my SAT scores in October, and my boot is still sitting by the fireplace.”

“Is it my job to put your boots away now?”

“I put it there for St. Nicholas Day. It was over a week ago. I put out my boot for you to put candy in like you always do, and it’s still sitting there with nothing in it.”

I chuckled, but an immediate wave of remorse seized me. Scott was right. Every year of his life I had filled his boot with candy and little toys, or, in recent years, a gift card or two. Always the candy was special and unusual: barley lollipops made in antique molds, hand-pulled candy canes, marzipan animals from Germany. It was the joyful, noncommercial version of Christmas that I delighted in more than the shock and awe of Christmas morning. This year it had not even entered my mind.

But I turned to look at the tall boy beside me, with his five o’clock shadow and his broad shoulders, and I said, “I thought you’d gotten a little old for that sort of thing. You spend nearly all your time these days holed up in the den with Tally, and
don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing in there. I don’t think that girl has ever bothered to say hello, but I’m hearing plenty from her, believe you me.”

“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.”