The Kingdom of Childhood

by Rebecca Coleman

  A shadow of worry crossed her face. “Will his mother be there?”

  “I guess. I dunno.”

  “Zach…you know how I feel about unsupervised parties.”

  “It’s not a party. It’s just some people at his house. But I’ll double-check, okay?”

  She looked satisfied with the answer. “Will Fairen be there?”

  “Mom. I don’t know.”

  “Tell me just one thing,” she coaxed. “Did it end badly?”

  He gave a small laugh that sounded more like a sigh. “I don’t know where any of that stuff starts or where it ends.”

  She nodded, her expression serious, thoughtful. “That’s very wise of you to see it that way.”

  “I didn’t handle it all that wise.” He bent forward and rested his forehead against her knee. Her soft hands stroked his hair. Closing his eyes, he emptied his mind of everything but the way her hands felt, how gentle, how warm.

  “There is nothing lost or wasted in this life,” she quoted in a whisper. “What is real always was and cannot be destroyed.”

  He breathed a sigh against her calf and felt the warmth of his breath double back to him. Hearing the words of the Bhagavad Gita calmed him. All his life she had doled out its wisdom to her students for meditation, and word by word he had absorbed it. Now it knitted together, ever so little, the edges of the wound Fairen had opened in him.

  She said, “You’ll learn, Zachary Xiang.”

  14

  Russ left for Iceland at the beginning of November, carrying with him the large black suitcase that had caused so much trouble not long before. Two other professors from his department went with him, and so there was no ceremonial send-off at the airport; instead, I came home from work and found his bags gone from the foyer. In the past I would have felt slighted at the lack of a proper goodbye, but now I only felt numb. Later in the week, as I tidied up from dinner and prepared to head out to the open house Dan had scheduled, Scott casually mentioned he would be spending the night at Zach’s. As soon as the words left his mouth I knew he was lying. Zach had been in my classroom only hours before. It was the sort of thing he would have mentioned.

  At the open house I spotted Zach sitting on the stage with Temple, his colorful eurythmy robe still on, biding time after the evening’s performance. It amused me that his teachers had recruited him for the demonstration of the technique—the “art of expressive movement” he had been learning, like all of his classmates, since grade school. Most likely they had singled him out because he was a new student and thus an easy target for what most of his classmates would avoid at all costs. But, too, he was probably good at the dancelike movements it required. His body moved with a leonine grace, that I knew well; it was one of the most attractive qualities he possessed.

  I beckoned to him from my place near the entrance, and he hopped off the stage. When he was near enough not to be overheard, I asked, “Would you like a ride home?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, isn’t that a little strange,” I teased. “I was told Scott is spending the night at your house.”

  His eyes darkened with confusion. “No, he isn’t.”

  “I know.” The corner of my mouth twitched upward. “I assume he’ll be at Tally’s, or in a motel, or something. Who knows. He’s eighteen now, and don’t you forget it. But what he told me was that he would be at your place.”

  Zach shook his head, not catching on. As if speaking to a child I enunciated, “He won’t be home.”

  “What about Russ?”

  “In Iceland until Tuesday. I told you that yesterday.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  I tipped my head, feeling the hunger in my eyes barely contained. “You can call your folks from my place,” I whispered. “Tell them you’re spending the night at Scott’s.”

  He winced. “I hate to lie to them, Judy. You know that.”

  “It’s not a lie at all.”

  A sigh grumbled deep in his throat. “Judy.”

  “I can just take you home if you prefer. It’s entirely up to you. I only thought, it’s not every day that Scott enables this sort of thing. Usually you consider him something of a—what’s the word you use? Buzzkill?”

  He managed to snicker and roll his eyes at the same time.

  “I need to finish talking to these parents in the hallway,” I said. “Meet me at my car in twenty minutes and let me know the plan.”

  Zach wadded his filmy eurythmy robe into a ball and leaned over to grab the slippers he’d stashed away at the edge of the stage curtain. Temple had wandered off to speak with a teacher, leaving Zach alone on the stage. He felt deeply irritated at Scott using him, of all people, as a cover story. Without Zach’s knowledge or consent Scott had involved him in a lie. It was especially galling in light of the way Scott constantly razzed him in public about his supposedly pathetic sex life, then depended on Zach to facilitate his own. He had half a mind to take Judy up on her offer just for spite. Not that Judy would care what his reason was, so long as he was in her bed.

  He watched the few remaining little kids play with the picturesque toys the teachers had set out—a basket of knitted dolls, a set of nesting arches in rainbow colors, wooden figurines in the shape of characters from nursery rhymes. Dr. Beckett’s kid lay on his stomach stacking the animals from “The Musicians of Bremen,” seemingly oblivious to the wilder boys around him. Atop his corduroys and simple red T-shirt he wore a golden Michaelmas cape. The sight of it tugged at Zach a little bit, evoking a memory of being six and happy, standing before his teacher in a cape just like that one as his teacher presented him with his rough-cut Michaelmas sword. Zachary, you have polished your sword so strong, so bright. Use it only for the right. The Waldorf rhymes came back to him easily, carrying all his childhood memories on their words. Enjoy it while it lasts, kid, he thought to himself. Not very long ago that had been him, stretched out on the floor with a fistful of animals, and the land of make-believe was the only place he needed for a boost of courage, strength and might.

  He caved at the last minute, jogging across the parking lot to catch up with Judy just as she climbed into her Volvo. She reached across to pop open the passenger door and started the car. He glanced at the gas gauge and noticed it was nearly at the empty mark. Briefly he considered pointing this out to her, then thought better of it.

  “So where are we going?” she asked, and didn’t seem surprised by his answer.

  Without Scott present at the house, Zach decided to be nosy. He had always enjoyed exploring other people’s houses, sometimes overstepping the bounds of good guest behavior. Judy, somewhat to his surprise, did not jump on him as soon as they walked in the door, and as she cleaned up the kitchen he felt free to roam. He had been in her bedroom several times before but always under the gun for time, in an elevated state of arousal before he even arrived, in a rush to leave as soon as they were finished. But tonight there would be no such restrictions, and the long stretch of time felt luxurious.

  In the bathroom he found the drawer where Scott stored a selection of hair products that would make any girl proud. He flipped through the oldest photo albums, tuning out Russ’s face and analyzing the looks of a much more youthful Judy. She had been cute back then, although no more his type then than she was now. He preferred blond and elegant to dark-haired and elfin, but, of course, Judy’s looks had little to do with why he felt drawn to her. Her foot on his erection when he’d thought he was the one running the show: that’s why he was with her. Because he could swim down into her desire as long as his breath would hold, and never find the bottom. And yet, at the top, the pool shimmered glassy and still. It was sexy as hell.

  Avoiding Scott’s room and Russ’s office, he made his way around the top floor to the bedroom, where he crouched down and viewed the tattered cardboard boxes and dust bunnies under the bed. The night table drawer held a plastic comb, a few hair elastics and a copy of Anaïs Nin’s Little Birds.

  “Look at you, getting al
l up in my business,” she teased from the doorway. A wineglass, nearly empty, dangled in her hand.

  He turned around and grinned, only slightly embarrassed. “You’ve hardly got anything interesting in here.”

  “You just haven’t been looking in the right places.”

  “And none of the normal stuff.”

  “Normal stuf?” Her brows knitted. “Like what?”

  He stood up and hiked himself onto the bed. “Birth control. Candles. Those strips that go on your nose to stop you from snoring.”

  She laughed. “Neither Russ nor I snore. I keep my birth control pills in my purse so Russ doesn’t find out about them. And I’m not a candle girl.”

  “Why not? I thought every girl was.”

  “Not me.” She sat beside him on the duvet. “When I was little I had to read a book about a girl who plays with a match and sets herself on fire. The Dreadful Story of Pauline and the Matches, it was called. I can still remember nearly the whole thing.” Her gaze shifted to the wine swirling in her glass. In a singsong voice she chanted, “‘It’s very, very wrong, you know. You will be burnt if you do so.’”

  “That’s a children’s book?” He grinned. “Nice.”

  “Oh, yes. It’s from the one I told you about in the woods that day.” She swallowed the last of her wine. “At the end there’s nothing left of her but a pile of ashes and her little red shoes, and only the cats mourn her. It gave me nightmares for weeks. It seemed like the most horrible thing in the world, the worst death. Because of it I’ve never been much a fan of fire.”

  “That’s weird. They use candles at school all the time.”

  “Sure, and I’m okay with it as long as it’s contained. I do think fire can be beautiful in a terrifying sort of way. I just wouldn’t choose to put it around my house when I’m trying to relax.” She threw him a tight smile. “Or where it might get knocked over. I’d find that inhibiting, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I suppose so.”

  She nodded and looked thoughtful. “I imagine it’s where people got the idea of God. Something beautiful and warm that you feel drawn to, but powerful enough to devour you. It’s human nature to identify the natural world with ourselves, and vice versa. We imagine that if a human could channel the powers of nature, then there’s someone to whom we can plead our case, who could contain a disaster. But I’ve never seen that work very well.” She hopped down from the bed. “I’m going to take a shower. There’s plenty of food in the kitchen if you’re hungry. All the additives and high-fructose corn syrup you could ever want.”

  He grinned. “I’ll be all right.”

  He stepped out the back door, killing time as he waited for her, into the yard bordered by a wooden privacy fence and plenty of trees. A few wrought-iron armchairs were scattered near a table that had once held an umbrella; he sat, polishing off a Coke from her refrigerator. Nothing was stopping him from getting into her wine, but he had considered and discarded the idea quickly. He still felt paranoid that Scott would turn up, and that fight stood a better chance of being fair if Zach was sober.

  At one end of the yard stood a little playhouse, dilapidated and festooned with chipped paint and a few scraggly vines. He supposed it had once been the property of Scott’s sister. The one he had built was far more elaborate and better constructed. He thought back to the challenges of the joinery, the pain-in-the-ass of replacing all the gingerbread after he’d put it on backwards. He thought back to the kiss. The instant before she moved, he knew she would, and then it happened all at once: her body rising, her hands on his face, and then her mouth astonishingly on his own: this teacher, this mother, this minor flirtation like a tavern puzzle he’d been toying with at a party. Weeks later, in the woods, there had been no way to decipher who was seducing whom; but in the playhouse, he knew perfectly well.

  Not that it mattered now. He put a foot up on another chair and slouched down to look at the sky: Orion hanging above the treetops, Ursa Major, Venus’ pale blue glow. The absence of mountains still bothered him. Without their buffer the Earth seemed too close to the sky, arching toward it like a slavering dog on a leash, nudging impolitely into the territory of God.

  From inside the house he heard the squeal of pipes. He glanced up at the second story, the light in the bathroom window broken by her intermittent shadow as she walked back and forth. By the time she got to him her combed wet hair would be curling slowly as it dried; her skin would smell of strawberry lotion, her mouth of wine. It was a mystery to him why Russ left her alone. His best guess was that Russ was having an affair of his own, which helped Zach assuage the guilt that nudged at him. Lying to his parents, on the other hand: try as he might, he couldn’t quite stop feeling like shit about that. But as he rose up through the deep of childhood and into the shallows of adulthood, it seemed that on the surface these shiny lies swirled like gasoline and, sooner or later, stuck to everyone. He pictured his younger self barefoot in his rolled-up jeans, hopping from rock to rock across the slow Saco River in the shadow of his mother’s studio. The trees drooped an extravagance of green summer leaves high above his small dark head, the silver water swirled past stones rounded as toys, and somewhere not far past the singing insects and waving grass she was lying and lying, lying to his father, to him, lying with another man on a mat beneath her chalk-written quote from the Bhagavad Gita that read, Observe your discipline, and arise.

  Even her.

  He twisted off the tab of his Coke can and plunked it into the opening. Inwardly, he reprimanded himself for the melodrama of his thoughts. In truth, by the time his mother started screwing around with Booger, he was at least fourteen and spending his time on less innocent pursuits than catching minnows in the Saco. The problem with vague knowledge such as his own was that it caused her affair to stretch back infinitely far and infinitely forward, allowing every memory of being booted from the studio to take on a sinister sheen, forcing him to wonder whether she still kept her heart divided for that jack-off in the Lennon shirt. But now, of course, he was hardly in a position to criticize her.

  He stood up and stretched, feeling the shock of cold air against his stomach, the pleasing shiver along his spine as his muscles relaxed. He could use a shower himself, and would probably get around to it before the night was over, but he knew Judy wouldn’t care one way or the other. If anything she seemed to prefer him like this: nostrils flaring, tongue tracing his collarbone, it had some kind of feral draw for her. Inevitably she would press her face against his belly and, shoulders curling as she inhaled, proceed to tell him that he smelled amazing before promptly demonstrating that she wasn’t just saying it to be polite.

  Through the kitchen wall behind him, he heard the whistle of the sink turning on and off: Judy rinsing out her wineglass. He pressed each fist against the opposite hand, cracking his knuckles, and then headed in through the back door, where the decorous click of the latch was lost in her warm hello.

  15

  The chirping of birds outside the window told Zach it was nearly morning. He lay beneath Judy’s duvet with his hands folded beneath his head, eyes focused on the slant of light from the streetlight that played against the ceiling. Beside him Judy breathed the slow rhythm of deep sleep, but Zach had lain awake every moment of the long night, occasionally drifting into a state of uneasy exhaustion that was not the least bit restful.

  Someone could come home. He couldn’t shake the feeling. Scott and Tally could have a fight; Russ, who never seemed to communicate with Judy anyway, could return early from Sweden or wherever he was. Whenever he managed to talk himself down from such concerns, other thoughts, some even more insidious than getting caught, crept into his mind.

  Booger, for example. He pictured the guy’s skinny pale legs, the way his arrogant gaze rested on Zach when he entered his mother’s classroom, his narrow cyclist’s hips in his snug black exercise pants. Everything about him—his manner, his looks, his simpering New-Age-i-ness—was repellent. Had Zach hated all of those things before
Booger made his appearance, or did he hate them all because they were aspects of Booger? Whichever it was, he couldn’t help but imagine all the things Scott would despise about him, for the same reason, if he knew. Zach would become the measure of repulsiveness, fitted into the same category of Scott’s mind where Booger now resided in Zach’s.

  He listened to the twitter of the birds and sighed quietly. The dawn chorus—a poetic name for a truly obnoxious phenomenon. He gave up on sleep and softly pushed back the duvet, moving slowly so as not to wake Judy.

  She rolled over anyway, regarding him with eyes that were large and suddenly bright in the dark room. “You’re getting up already?”

  “I can’t sleep.” He pulled on his jeans and immediately felt a measure of relief. He was dressed now, more or less. That in itself was absolving.

  “There are muffins in the kitchen.”

  “I’m all right. I’ll eat when I get home.”

  “Are you leaving already?” Her voice was skeptical. “I’ll drive you home if you give me a few minutes to wake up.”

  His laugh was short and abrupt. “I don’t think I want my folks looking out the window and seeing that.”

  “They won’t be up at this hour, will they?”

  “I’ll walk. It’s cool.”

  She sat up, leaning on one arm. In the darkness she looked incredibly young. The shadowy light smoothed the fine lines of her face, catching in the whites of her eyes and the rounded edges of her teeth, giving her a doe-eyed, vulnerable look; her disheveled hair looked thoroughly black, unlaced with silver. Perhaps it was her nightclothes that sealed the effect: she wore an old T-shirt and, beneath the duvet, flannel-print pajama pants, like any girl his age. She was so damned small.

  She asked, “Will you do something for me before you go?”

  He lifted his shirt from the floor and looked at her with nervous impatience. His mouth felt cottony, his stomach empty, and, lacking new contacts or anything with which to clean the old ones, his eyes stung with dryness and fatigue. Most of all, he needed space. He felt a little ill with the gluttony of the previous night, a little dizzy and overindulged. It was not unlike gorging yourself on a giant ice cream sundae: past a certain point, you sort of felt like you wanted to puke.