The Kingdom of Childhood (5 page)

His grin was lascivious. “That’s what they tell me.”

Pointedly I ignored his remark. I asked, “How are you getting home?”

“I told my mom I’d call her when I’m done.”

“Do you have a cell phone?”

“No, I’ll call from the front office.”

I gestured to the windows that looked out on the empty parking lot. “Everybody’s gone.”

He grimaced. “Well, that could be a problem.”

“Come on, I’ll give you a ride.”

“I guess I’d better take you up on that.”

I helped him tidy up the room, stacking the playhouse pieces on a shelf and sweeping up the considerable pile of dust. If he could devote this much time and care to a school project, then perhaps the bazaar tasks would be more painless than I had come to anticipate. The immaturity I had witnessed in
our earlier meetings appeared to be mostly for show. About some things, at least, he seemed more focused and thoughtful than Scott, who would be eighteen in short order. Not that Scott was a good stick to measure by.

As Zach climbed into the passenger seat of my car, I picked bits of cat hair from his shirts—a T-shirt featuring a photo of the Earth behind the legend “Love Your Mother,” worn over a thermal undershirt that appeared to attract pet hair like a lint roller. “How many cats do you have?” I asked.

“One. Is it that big a deal?”

“I don’t want it to get all over the car. My husband’s allergic.”

He sat still, tolerating my grooming. “That’s a sign of evil.”

I laughed. “Why do you say that?”

“Cats are the servants of the moon goddess. Only evil people can’t tolerate them. It’s like garlic and vampires.”

I grinned and examined his expression to see if he was serious. “The moon goddess, huh?”

He smiled. “It’s just something my mom says. It’s a joke.”

“I don’t know about that. You haven’t met my husband. She might be onto something.”

His laugh was embarrassed. “I didn’t ask.”

I fell silent, a bit chagrined to have crossed some invisible line in complaining about Russ. The sound of the radio filled the car, traffic and weather. Once the discussion of the news resumed, it took me several moments too long to pick up on the deejay chatter: the Starr Report, in gory detail. My fingers flew to the preset buttons.

“Don’t worry about it,” Zach said, not fooled by my sudden interest in Top 40 music. “You can’t get away from it. They’ll be talking about it on this station in about ten seconds.”

“I can try.”

He chuckled. “You sound like my mom. She’s super
laid-back, and even she freaks out every time they talk about it on the news. Which is every minute of the day, in case you’ve missed it. Personally, I think it’s hilarious to hear a news anchor say ‘oral sex.’ It’s like the best prank ever.”

“Except it’s not a prank. At all.”

“No, but it’s still funny. The stuff the Starr Report says Bill Clinton did—have you heard it all? He’s the president of the United States, and I’m sixteen, and
I
think some of it is really juvenile. Like the stuff with the cigar? Come
on.
”

“It’s quite a letdown. I was a big Clinton supporter. Now I don’t know what to think.”

“My folks were, too.” He fidgeted with the air vents. “Were. Are. Whichever. I think it’s dumb to go after him over something that stupid. When you think about it, you
have
to laugh.”

I slowed for a stop sign. “At the absurdity, perhaps. At the jokes, no.”

“Why not? They’re funny.”

“They’re inappropriate.”

“Bill Clinton and Al Gore go to a diner for lunch,” he began.

“Zach,
no.
”

“They read the menu and the waitress comes over and asks the president if he’s ready to order. Clinton tells her, ‘Yeah, I’d like a quickie.’”

“Zach,” I warned.

“The waitress says, ‘A quickie?! Sir, given the problems you have had lately with your personal life, I don’t think that’s a good idea at all. I’ll come back when you’re ready to order from the menu.’ As she walks away, Gore leans over and says, ‘Bill, it’s pronounced
Quiche.
’”

The smile I had been forcing myself to restrain won out. I giggled.

“That’s a good one,” I admitted.

He drummed his index fingers against the dashboard. “Thank you. Want to hear another one?”

“No. Please, spare me.”

He gestured toward the window as I approached his house. “You can pull into the driveway.”

I parked behind a little convertible with its canvas top up. LIVE FREE OR DIE, read its license plate above the number. He hitched his backpack onto his shoulder and I watched him meander up the sidewalk, the hems of his jeans raveled where they brushed the ground. He was so lanky they barely stayed on his hips. When he unlocked his front door and the light from the foyer glowed suddenly in the gray dusk, he turned toward me and waved goodbye. I held up a hand in acknowledgment and watched as he slipped inside, shoulders hunched, hair hanging in his eyes.

ZXP, his backpack said.

I did wonder what that X stood for.

Vivienne Heath called me on Friday night to inform me that Zach wanted to use the workshop over the weekend. Could I come in to unlock it for him and to supervise?

“For a few hours,” I conceded, already resentful of giving up even that much of my Saturday. “In the morning, because I have plans later. Can he be there at eight?”

To my surprise he was. When I arrived he was already sitting on the workshop steps, backpack slung over his shoulders, headphones on his ears. He said nothing when I let him in and got right to work, moving around the shop with a familiarity that made him look like a very young professional. I sat on a stool with my newspaper and coffee, and read.

As he worked, he sang to himself. It seemed almost unconscious, and when I stole a glance at him, I saw him briskly
measuring and marking as he sang. Apart from the rest of the madrigal choir, I was struck by the beauty of his individual voice. It had the pure, clear-spring quality of a child in a boys’ choir, partnered with the faintly raspy undertone of a voice only recently changed. It wasn’t the voice of a rock star, even if rock was what he was singing—a sad song, bittersweet and mournful.

“That’s a very depressing song you were singing,” I said when he pulled the headphones down, letting them rest around his neck. He sat down at the adjacent side of the table from me and hoisted up his backpack.

He smiled. “It’s Ben Folds Five. I didn’t realize you were listening.”

“Is that the name of the song, or the band?”

“The band. ‘Brick’ is the name of the song.” He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a notebook, a bottle of green tea and an organic granola bar. Flipping the notebook to a schematic drawing of the playhouse, he examined it while swigging from the tea bottle. He unwrapped the bar and took a bite. It was no wonder he was in such good shape. When Scott was younger I had fed him exclusively out of natural-foods stores, but since adolescence he would only eat like that if the pantry offered him no alternative. Maybe Zach was in the same boat.

I pointed to the initials on the front pocket of his backpack. “What’s the X for?”

He grinned and took a drink of his tea. “I’m not telling you that.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “Why should I?”

“It’s probably for Xavier.”

“It’s not Xavier.”

“That’s the only boy’s name that starts with X.”

He bit into the granola bar. With his voice muffled by granola he replied, “No, it’s not.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

I waited until he swallowed for my answer. Then with a sly expression he asked, “If you’re so curious, why don’t you just look it up in my file? You’re a teacher, aren’t you?”

“Because I don’t want to go nosing around in your business.”

“Nose around all you want. I’m an open book.”

I sipped my coffee. “I don’t know any teenager that’s true for.”

“You do now.”

“Come on, just tell me.”

“What’s in it for me?”

I considered the question. In his eyes and at the corners of his smile I could see a hint of the mischievousness that, for him, had always preceded an off-color remark. Before he could crack a joke in that vein I replied, “Coffee.”

“What kind of coffee?”

“Whatever you want. Starbucks.”

He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Starbucks is corporate.”

“Well, it’s what we’ve got around here. This is the ’burbs, not New Hampshire.”

“Tell me about it,” he said. “What about with a black-and-white cookie? I love their black-and-white cookies.”

“I don’t know about that.” I took a drink of my own corporate latte. “Steiner might not approve.”

He laughed. “Seriously, are you buying me off?”

I nodded. He gauged my seriousness and replied, “It stands for Xiang.”

“That starts with a
C.
”

“No. In Chinese, the
X
can make a
ch
sound. It means ‘arising.’ Or ‘spreading his wings to fly.’”

I gave him an admiring look. “Does it really?”

He nodded. He looked a little proud. “Zachary Xiang Patterson,” I said, carefully pronouncing each crisp word.

“I have the coolest initials on the planet.”

I gazed at the black-markered initials again, a code I could suddenly read. Then I admitted, “I probably wouldn’t have guessed you were part Chinese if I hadn’t met your mother.”

“I am, though,” he insisted. “Feel my hair.”

With a short laugh, I declined the offer. “That’s okay.”

“Seriously, feel it.” He bent his head toward me. Reluctantly I stroked it, as if he were a puppy. The choppy edges of his haircut belied the texture, which was silky, slippery. “It’s the same as my mother’s,” he said.

“Softer than it looks.”

“Yeah. I have Asian earwax, too.”

I grinned. “What’s the difference?”

“It’s flaky instead of goopy. And I don’t stink when I sweat.”

Bemused, I considered whether I could remember evidence to the contrary. “Is that supposed to be an Asian characteristic? That sounds like a myth.”

“It’s not true for everyone, but it is for me. And it’s a good thing, too, because you ought to smell my dad sometime, when he gets working. He’s like an NFL locker room after a game.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Thanks for the warning.”

“So when do I get my coffee?”

“I’ll take you and Scott out after Madrigals on Monday.”

“What about tomorrow? My mom told you I’m working here all weekend, right?”

I sighed. “No, she didn’t tell me that. Does that mean I’m babysitting you tomorrow, too?”

He shrugged with unconcern. “I thought you were.”

“Then I guess I am,” I told him ruefully. “But the coffee will still be Monday.”

“I can live with that.” He hiked his headphones back onto his ears and hopped off the stool, heading back toward the playhouse with the bottle of tea in his hand. Today he wore a black T-shirt, almost outgrown, with no thermal beneath it. When he reached for the trim pieces on an upper shelf he revealed a stomach that was smooth and faintly muscular, divided, below his navel, by a narrow line of black hair.

I looked away.

Even the Style section of the newspaper was crammed with items about the repercussions of the Starr Report. Zach was right—it was unavoidable. I turned the offending sections over so he would not be inspired to perform another comedy routine. Instead, I picked up the Travel section.

Escape from D.C.,
it said.

I rolled my eyes and glanced at Zach. He squatted by the jigsaw and twirled the smallest plywood pieces past its blade, his fingers hovering just at the edge of the plastic guard. The neat muscles of his biceps leaped and danced.

I turned my attention back to the escape from D.C.

That night I had a dream.

In it I was a child, walking out to the garden to pick blueberries. The trees on either side of the path were green and full; straight ahead, the fallow field unfurled like a moonscape of brown earth. At the blueberry bush I squatted and began plucking berries from the bottom branches, where they ripened first, eating greedily. The juice left purple splotches on my fingertips and the hem of my dress.

Suddenly I heard a voice, a man’s voice speaking German in a friendly way. I looked up and there stood Zach Patterson on the other side of the bush, smiling and talking to me. I
understood him perfectly, and even as I dreamed some small part of my mind marveled at my understanding. Instead of answering I kept eating, gorging myself on berries, letting the overripe ones fall onto the toes of my sandals.

You’re getting very messy, Judy,
he said, a teasing reproof, still speaking in German.

I glanced at him carelessly and said nothing.

He came around the bush and crouched beside me. He wore the clothes of a farm boy—boots and stonewashed jeans, a ratty green T-shirt. When I felt his fingers beneath my chin, I swallowed. He brought his face to mine and kissed me on the mouth, soft-lipped, sensuously. But I was only a child.

I squatted still, let him kiss me like a man kisses a woman, and felt the doom of knowing I would be in trouble. Beside him I felt so small.

He parted my lips with his tongue. I understood English and, miraculously, German, but I had no word for this feeling in my belly, the hidden warmth in hidden cells awakening, this current coming to life along a skipping path. And yet, fused with the warmth was a pattering fear. Fear that crammed down into my stomach just above where the current swirled and roiled. Fear that trembled my mouth but did not close it, welcoming the surety and heat that his brought, the way his hard jaw steadied mine.

To taste another’s mouth is to enter their body.

And so into my belly he went, where the blueberries lay hidden away: the cavechild fruit, made by nature, devoured by fantasy.

On Sunday I brought a stack of my students’ old watercolor paintings and worked alone for an hour, cutting them down to greeting-card size and folding them in two, before Zach turned up. Annoyed, I was prepared to offer him a few choice words for wasting my time, but one look at his face silenced me. His headphones were already on, aggressive music buzzing through, and he wore the same jeans and T-shirt from the previous day, now much worse for wear. He nodded an acknowledgment and got to work fitting the trim onto the structure, wielding the screw gun as though he might also use it on the first person who dared get in his personal space.

I felt safer at the table, cutting out cards. It was just as well; I found it difficult to look at him without superimposing dream-Zach onto real-Zach, and standing face-to-face with the kid would surely be stranger still. When he squatted down to drill a piece of trim into place, I was struck by how accurate my mind’s calculation of his body had been. The proportions of his shoulders and arms, the tapering of back to waist, even the almost springlike ease with which he fell to his haunches
and rose again: the dream seemed to rest over him like a transparency, and as he moved, his body fell perfectly into place behind the memory. I remembered my sudden, irrational unease at Dan Beckett’s imploring gaze, and wondered at my mind’s penchant for collecting the hidden beauty of obnoxious men.

I reached into my canvas school bag for twine and scissors just as the screw gun let out a high-pitched whine that indicated it had slipped. I looked up in alarm to see Zach throw it out the window of the structure, then roll onto his back and clutch his face with both hands.

“Mother fucking fucker,” he said, loudly but in a level voice.

I ventured toward the house. “Is everything all right?”

“No. I just spent an hour putting this shit on backwards.” He slid out of the house and ripped off his headphones. They hung around his neck as he sat up, his knees against his chest, and rubbed his eyes. “And I got sawdust in my contacts.”

“You didn’t have your safety glasses on?”

“No,” he snapped. “I was too occupied with messing shit up to remember them.”

I sat cross-legged on the floor beside him. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m just tired of this. I didn’t get enough sleep, and then I overslept, and my mom came in like the Wrath of Khan to get me up. I didn’t have breakfast.” He wrapped his arms around his knees and rested his forehead against them. I rubbed his back in a firm, comforting way, and he leaned his whole huddled form against me. His skin was drum-tight over those lanky bones of his, with not an ounce of fat for padding. “I’m
starving,
” he repeated. “I’m never going to make it ’til one. My mom’ll be picking up my corpse.”

As if on cue, his stomach rumbled audibly. “Okay,” I said. I patted his shoulder. “Come on. I’ll get you fed.”

He lifted his head and looked inordinately happy. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, we’ll run out to 7-Eleven. But then I’m off the hook for Starbucks. Come on.”

At the store he trailed me silently inside, branching off to the Slurpee machine, where he took the largest cup they sold and filled it with layer upon layer of frozen slush in lurid colors. His snack selections were more conservative: two sticks of cheddar cheese, an apple, and a tube of chocolate-covered sunflower seeds. Like most of my students, he probably considered those a decadent junk food. He had likely been trained from birth to consider the other items on offer, like gummy candies and Nestlé-brand chocolate bars, tantamount to ingesting drain cleaner.

“That looks vile,” I informed him once we were back in the car, nodding to his Slurpee. “What would your mother say?”

“Whatever. I’ve seen what’s in
your
fridge.”

I strapped my seat belt and shot him a wry look. “I beg your pardon.”

“Beg all you want. Anyway, it’s good.” He tipped the cup toward me. “Try it.”

I gave a short laugh. “That’s okay.”

“Go on. I don’t have cooties.”

The purple straw practically touched my nose. I met his eyes, then took a drink. It felt like a quick slip through a rabbit hole of time, sharing a straw with a friend of sorts, as though I were a high-schooler myself. “It’s not bad,” I conceded.

The cup retreated, and he offered a mild, satisfied grin. The straw went back into his own mouth, his knee wedged
against the dash as if he owned the place. As I backed out of the parking space I asked, “What’s wrong with my fridge?”

“You’ve got all sorts of crap food in there. Hot dogs and pepperoni and that cheese dip that comes in jars. You
never
run out of Coke.”

“
You
drink it.”

“Yeah, but not at home. My mom won’t buy that stuff, and the main reason is because you teachers tell her not to.”

“
Steiner
said not to,” I corrected. “Nourishing foods and nourishing fluids. It’s our job to implement that within the school. We don’t have to practice all of it at home.”

He shook his head and grinned around the straw. “Lie.”

I glanced at him with some offense. “No, it isn’t.”

“Yes, it is. You’re supposed to do it all and you know it.” Tipping his head to face me, he added, “Can I ask you something?”

“Not if it’ll get me fired.”

“Is it true that you kindergarten teachers really believe in gnomes?”

I snickered. “That’s a trade secret. Officially, we do.”

“My grade-school teacher always swore up and down that she did. And I know Steiner said they really existed. But I always wondered if the teachers actually buy it.”

I twisted my mouth to one side and considered how to answer. “I don’t believe in very much,” I explained, “and I certainly don’t believe in little fat men in pointed hats running around with rakes and spades. But I do believe in spirits in general, mischievous ones included. What Steiner said was that if you don’t make spiritual progress during your physical incarnations, you come back as a gnome. So maybe we all have a little bit of that gnome in us, that aspect that carries grudges or won’t forgive.” I shrugged. “It’s not an original idea, that the lesser spirits get banished to the wild. The ancient Irish
believed spirits lived in bogs, you know. In Denmark they seem to find mummies in the peat all the time, sometimes with ropes around their necks. It usually seems to be connected with water, for some reason. Don’t ask me why.”

“Ms. Valera talked about that type of thing. This Roman guy, Tacitus, he wrote that in Germany they used to put the prostitutes in the bogs. Then they wedged them in there with stakes. It was supposed to be so their souls couldn’t get up and wander around.”

I chuckled. “Sounds very German, indeed.”

“Yeah, we have to write a group report based on it. Except ours has to be on Maryland, and I’m in charge of the crime and punishment section, and it’s nowhere near as interesting.”

“Maybe you should talk about our laws against interracial marriage,” I suggested, edging my tone with humor. I slowed for a red light and added, “It was still illegal here when I was a girl. I hear it obscures the ancient wisdom, or something like that.”

“That’s me,” he joked. “I like to complicate things for you white people. If it wasn’t for me, you
would
believe in gnomes. But I sit down in your car, and
wham
.” He spread his arms wide, whacking me in the arm with his Slurpee cup. “You’re off the path. No longer drinking the Kool-Aid.”

“My coworkers will find out, and I’ll lose my job.”

“Oh, I won’t tell on you. I’ll just use the information for blackmail.”

“Is that the worst you can find on me?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, is it?”

I smiled privately.

“Ooh,” he said. “Maybe it’s not. I’ll have to find out all the dirt on you.”

“Dig away, kiddo.”

He jabbed me in the arm again, then in the waist, again
and again until I laughed out loud. And for a moment, for the first time in perhaps my entire life, the things I guarded made me feel mysterious instead of dreadful.

With Zach’s belly full of apple, cheese and various food dyes, he seemed to be in much better spirits. Hours of work stretched ahead. With a glance toward the parking lot that was empty except for my car, I told Zach I would be back later that afternoon, then crossed my fingers and hoped no injuries or fires would occur in the meantime.

“I can handle it,” he said, his voice edged with glee.

I ran my errands, stopping by Russ’s college to pick up stacks of brochures for Sylvania School’s College Fair the following week, then took myself to the dining hall and picked up a sandwich that came with a handful of brittle, inedible potato chips. On my way around the circuit I paused at the bakery counter and ordered two cookies: one chocolate chunk, one black-and-white.

The weather was lovely, crisp but not yet cold, and so I carried my foam container up the hill to the benches that surrounded the reflecting pool. As I ate I watched the skate-boarders coast up and down the concrete terracing, grinding on the giant sundial, all bold energy and stumbling grace. A few looked old enough to be college students, but most did not. They all wore close-fitting T-shirts and baggy jeans hitched even lower on their hips than Zach’s. Their bodies looked solid as stones. Nothing moved but muscle and sinew; and they seemed so careless about it, as if it were nothing to move through life in a package so neat and dense and perfect. I ate my cookie and smiled forgivingly when a skateboard ran up against my ankle, and one of them, a young man with a headful of wavy golden hair, jogged over and said, “Sorry, ma’am.”

After a while I collected my trash and left. Something in side my chest felt pinched, bunched up and tied with a tight string. I think it was the place in my heart where the joy of youth had once been: a phantom pain.

Zach met me at the entrance to the workshop. His thumbs were hooked in the pockets of his jeans, and he was smiling. Before I had even fully crossed the parking lot, he called, “It’s done.”

“You finished it?”

He grinned and nodded. “I did. Finally.”

I held out the paper sack. “And here I thought you’d need sustenance to get through the last stretch.”

“Hey, I don’t mind.” He took out the cookie and ate a quarter of it in a single bite. “Black-and-white,” he said approvingly, spitting crumbs. “You came through after all.”

“So let’s see what you’ve got.”

I followed him through the door, past the tables scattered with tools and the hulking shapes of metal saws. The air smelled of clean, fresh wood, and motes of sawdust danced in beams of light near the windows. In the very back it sat, at the very midpoint of the back wall, Lilliputian but still so large it amazed me that Zach had built it on his own. Gingerbread trim scalloped the roof’s edges and the flowerbox below the front window. All around its base was fiberglass stone, rolling so naturally that it appeared stacked by hand. The artificial tree that he had attached to its back, arching above the acorn-covered roof to shade it with leafy branches, made it look even more impressive. I flipped open the topmost Dutch door and peeked inside at the tightly joined corners, the fairy-sized wooden box attached beneath a window to hold secret treasures.

“It looks perfect, Zach,” I told him. “You did a top-notch job.”

“Thanks.”

“The school should get a lot of money for it. You ought to be proud.” I walked around the sides, admiring his work. “It’s actually worth all the grief and misery I put up with.”

He shot me a cheesy, achingly innocent grin. In a singsong voice he said, “Thank you, Mrs. McFarland.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Aren’t you going to look inside?”

I regarded the small space with amusement. “I’m a little big for it, don’t you think?”

“Naw. You’re pretty little for an adult. And it’s bigger on the inside. You’ll see.” He crouched down and crawled inside. Squatting on one side, he stuck his head out the door and said, “See, I fit. And I’m about a foot taller than you.”

“Not even close, shorty.”

“Whatever. Come on in.”

I got onto my hands and knees and squeezed into the doorway. He was right—once inside, the height of the roof afforded a bit more room, and I could kneel comfortably. Still, it was sized for five-year-olds. I felt a bit claustrophobic.

“Fee fi fo fum,” said Zach.

“This must be what Snow White felt like among the dwarves,” I said.

“Are you calling me short?”

“Not in here. In here, you’re huge.”

“Why, thank you. My reputation precedes me.”

I giggled. He grinned at his own joke. I shifted my weight forward, accommodating my aching knees, and suddenly Zach’s hands were on my upper arms, and his face was moving very close to mine, his lips parted, eyes half-closed.

I did not resist. What I felt was not surprise, not
repugnance, but a sense of déjà vu: conjured to life was the image of him in my dream, kissing my child-self as if I were a woman. Even the first touch of his lips felt familiar; but then the kiss deepened, and his tongue touched mine, and everything changed. The warmth in my hips was liquid and instant and I welcomed it like an old friend. I twisted my fingers in his belt loops and pulled him to me. His groan of approval set my mind afire with a singular thought:
follow this through, as far as it takes you.
What I had mistaken for idle attraction now revealed its face: I wanted all of him, and monstrously so.

His mouth moved down my neck, and as I tipped my face upward to allow him, he slid his hands under my shirt and lowered his face to my breasts. Sawdust speckled his black hair, dusting my hands as they meandered to his shoulders and arms. When he rose to meet my mouth again his eyes were hazy and unfocused. The taste of his mouth, the smoothness of his taut wiry body beneath my hands, the scent of his skin—all thrilled me with their unfamiliarity, their sudden intimacy. I circled my thumbs into the waistband of his jeans and cursed the playhouse for being too small to afford space to lie down.

And then the door rattled. A woman’s voice called, “Zach?”