The Cradle

by Patrick Somerville

  He went into the bathroom to take a shower. For a long time he let the water run down onto the top of his head and down his back. Then, the other feeling strong, he looked at the white plastic showerhead and let the water spray him right in the eyes. He twisted it so the water moved to his neck, then, as an afterthought, he took hold of the showerhead and ripped it out of the wall with all his strength.

  The tiles broke loose and clattered down to his feet as he continued ripping at the pipes. Water sprayed up onto the ceiling, and the crumbles of grout got down between his toes. He pulled more, silently watching the metal bend and new beams of water appear. At the edges of his vision, he saw a bright white. With one last yank, he pulled the pipes out all the way down to the handles and to the bathtub spigot at calf-level. He dropped them. He stepped out of the tub. He leaned down and turned the handles until the water was off, then reached to the wall for a towel and dried off.

  II

  O jungle

  O jungle, are you anything but a provider

  of contrast, of camouflage? The greens maddening

  in the heat, the collective breath of frond

  and orchid and spider. O jungle, are you anything

  but a giver, a foe? Closely you gather your trees,

  your species, and you eat them alive, you mark

  their graves with flowers so terrible in their beauty,

  the birds rattle in their hollow skeletons.

  O jungle, you offer your regrets in your teeming

  floor, your squawking quaking canopy; you tell us

  it’s a trade, that for this, blood for blood. O jungle,

  you are the great interpreter of flesh, lover-true

  in your patience.

  —RENEE OWEN

  9

  “Is it big? Small? I’m still not getting a good picture.”

  “It’s right in the middle. I’ll send you a picture as soon as I find out how we can use email in this place.”

  “You know what I was thinking the other day?” Renee said. “I was thinking how unlike you this is. This is more like me. I’m supposed to be the klutz.”

  “Yeah, well,” he said, “not this time.”

  Adam was wounded. What did wounded mean? Wounded meant he had tripped and fallen down a flight of stairs as he left a bar set up for soldiers in the Green Zone.

  Why he was even allowed in and whether or not he had been drinking, Renee didn’t know. She didn’t care. He had broken his ankle and was in Germany now. His cast, according to him, was medium.

  “You know, in some other time,” she said, “this would be your ticket out of there.”

  “I didn’t get drafted, Mom,” he said. “I’m not looking for a ticket.”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “But I knew people who found ways to hurt themselves to get out of the draft. Your father even had a friend who convinced the army doctors he was schizophrenic.”

  He didn’t say anything. She should have known better than to bring up any of these stories with him. She knew he found them distasteful. She had found herself, though, in the last week, feeling a different kind of calm. Since Adam had his accident—it took a few moments of calm, deliberate explanation to a hysterical speakerphone audience of both her and Bill when he first explained it—a deep and nagging worry had been put on pause. It was a three-week window. He would have to go back, and he had many more months to serve, but for a few weeks she would be allowed to breathe and think of other things.

  “I know you talk more to your father about these things,” she said, “but he’s out of town, so this time it’ll have to be me.”

  “You’re not about to give a sex talk.”

  “I’m only talking about what you do. With your days. What you did before you were hurt.”

  “You mean, when I’m in the field?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I guess.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to know any of that stuff.”

  “I’m not sure whether I do or don’t. There’s some balance I need. I don’t know.”

  “I can’t really tell you anything anyway,” he said. “It’s okay, Mom. I’ll be fine. It’s a lot more dangerous in other places.”

  “Do you feel as though you’ve—you’ve learned things?”

  “Learned things?”

  “Whatever it was,” she said. “What you wanted to know when you first decided to go.”

  Adam was quiet. Finally, he said, “I don’t know. Some. Some good and some bad. I’ll tell you more when I’m back, okay? I’m not really sure what I think.”

  “Okay,” she said. “When you’re back, I’d like to hear much more.”

  “All right, Mom. I’m gonna—”

  “Wait, wait,” she said. “Just wait. When you’re back there, back in the war, will you just promise me that you’re still doing whatever you think is right? Just promise me that you’re still thinking, Addy?”

  “Of course, Mom.”

  “But what I mean is that sometimes when you’re there with many people, or when people have expectations for you, you think that means you have to stop thinking. Just promise me that you’re still making choices, okay? Addy? That you still have your own sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. Not someone else’s but your own?”

  “I think I might get court-martialed for promising you that.”

  “You absolutely have the right to—”

  “I was joking. Chill, Mom. I promise. I always do have that sense. And I won’t stop thinking.”

  “Trust your instincts.”

  “Okay. I gotta go.”

  “I made them. I am responsible for those instincts.”

  “Okay, Mom. Good-bye. I love you. Tell Dad I’m fine.”

  “I love you, too.”

  She heard the click on his end. She pressed off and leaned back into the wicker of the kitchen chair. Hand down on the table, she reached for her mug and slowly sipped at the rest of her tea. He sounded well. He wasn’t home and he wasn’t safe, but he sounded well, a third way that was the best she could hope for.

  It was 7:30 in the morning. April 14. Bill was away in Miami for three more days. He was probably already at meetings, so she decided to call him later on. She had a reading to go to at nine anyway. So funny, the life of a children’s author. Everything happened at the crack of dawn. The ghost of Truman Capote was only beginning to snort cocaine by the time most children’s authors were finished with their social engagements.

  Adam still didn’t know; she and Bill had decided to wait to tell him. He was due back in July for leave, and they could tell him then—either that, or they could tell him later, when his tour was through. Whenever that would be. It was impossible to tell. She had chatted with many mothers whose sons had been sent back again and again. Renee just hoped it was late enough, that the feeling had turned so far against the war, soon it would be all but over. No winning, no losing. Just over.

  As for Bill, his reaction to the news of her other son (“Well, where the fuck is he?”) had been mixed. She had been right, at least, to think the news would hurt him. It did. Hawaii had been hard. In Hawaii Bill had, a few times, left her alone in the room and gone to the bar or taken walks alone. But he had come around, too. He had always known about Jonathan, this other love from the past. That wasn’t the problem. Bill was an adult human being and knew that love happened more than once, at different times. The secret, though. Not telling. That was what hurt him. What he asked her, again and again, was this: have I ever done a thing to make you think I would not have understood?

  That wasn’t the point, as she had tried to tell him.

  She roused herself, took a shower, dressed in what she’d laid out for herself on the bed. It was warm enough for a skirt—spring was coming through, stronger than expected, and outside the snow was gone and the grass was damp and breathing. She had another cup of tea, watched the news on the kitchen television, ate a banana, and left the house. She was annoyed about this reading, but the owner of Butt
erfly Books was a friend, and despite not having a new project to promote, she’d agreed. It was only just down the street. Afterward she was going to drive into the city and see her mother for lunch.

  Adam didn’t know. Bill knew. What about her? That question seemed to have no answer. The relief, after telling Bill, had been monumental. To think she would have gone her whole life and never said a thing. In a little more than one month she had become a changed person: lighter, freer. It seemed as though Bill was on his way to making peace with the news. So maybe those were the only questions for her: what do you think, what do you know, what do you want to know? She had accidentally taken amphetamines and had freed herself.

  Waiting at a stoplight, she thought of the notebook stuffed in a drawer in her office. She had not read it over. She didn’t know whether or not it was even legible. Her mind’s eye, still in the office, turned to the bulletin board and to the white cards, now tacked in a different order altogether. She had made no progress.

  She was twenty-five minutes early for the reading, and still Butterfly Books, only a few storefronts down from Dunkin’ Donuts, was packed tight with children. Diane greeted her with a cry and a hug at the register. Another employee, Jane, came to chat. The children played together in the open space in front of the podium. Most of the parents mingled near the seats, sipping coffee, murmuring to one another, browsing, occasionally lifting their heads and focusing in on the swamp of moving limbs and screeches and saying things like “Do not. Do not. Do not. Do not. Do not. Do not. No. No. No. No. No. No. Put it down. Put it down. Good. Better. Put it all the way down, though” or “If you give it back to her, she will probably stop screaming” or “Your pants are missing” or “If you actually do eat that, Buddy, you’ll get the runs.” Renee’s bad feeling about the reading fell away with all the energy. She loved this.

  “Do you know what you’ll be reading from?” Diane asked her. “We have everything out on the table there,” she said, pointing.

  “I thought maybe something from one of the Fiona and Samuel books?” she offered. “It’s been so long since I’ve read from any of those.”

  “Oh goody,” said the other woman, Jane. She clapped her hands together softly, up in front of her face. “I just love those books.” She shook her head adoringly. “It’s just so wonderful that you can come in and do this. For all these children.”

  “Oh, it’s so easy,” said Renee.

  “I’ve written four or five books myself. Would you ever be able to read any of them?”

  “Jane,” said Diane, “that is what we call out-of-bounds. Remember?”

  “It’s fine,” Renee said. To Jane, she said, “Actually, why not? I can probably read one. Just bring it in and I’ll pick it up next time I come.”

  Jane, triumphant, turned to look at Diane.

  “Yes,” said Diane, “good work. But now you should go clean the bathrooms.”

  Jane, less triumphant, went to clean the bathrooms.

  “Sorry,” Diane said, leading Renee across the room to the table of books. “I knew she was going to do that. I’ve known since the day I hired her she was going to do that.” Diane smiled. “Hiring is very difficult. You’re such a star.”

  “It’s fine,” Renee said. “I will read it. Truly.”

  “That’s nice of you, but you really don’t want to. She has one with talking office supplies.”

  Renee picked the second Fiona and Samuel book, published in 1995. She ran her finger across the bright red cover. The Case of the Upside-Down Man. She remembered inventing most of the story at Adam’s bedside. He’d read the first book and had asked her for more. The Upside-Down Man, a nice Southern gentleman named Mr. Grover Tillweed, woke up one morning with his feet attached to his wrists and his hands attached to his ankles and no idea how it could have happened. His only thought was to go to Fiona and Samuel, local amateur detectives, for assistance with his case. She opened the book to the middle of chapter one and read:

  “I have heard you young Yankees do some special, special work in this town,” Grover Tillweed said, adjusting his monocle with his shoe. “You see here now that my only inglorious choices are to walk on my hands or stand upside down like so. This is simply unacceptable for a man of my stature, children! I am confounded. Will you help? I can pay you for your services with either one bar of gold or one wish, magically contained within this cherry-wood box.”

  He reached up into his pant leg and produced the box in question. Fiona and Samuel discussed, then accepted.

  “Yes, that one’s fun,” Diane said, nodding. “They’ll love it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t know it, too. There’s nothing wrong with some restorying, right?”

  “How long, do you think?” Renee asked.

  “Oh, just twenty minutes should be fine,” Diane said, flapping her hand. “Will you answer some questions afterwards?”

  “Of course.”

  Diane quieted the children and introduced Renee. The children looked awed and clapped and yelled when Renee came to the podium. They had no idea who she was, probably. But she knew the amazement that was in their eyes: shock that a human being had done these things and existed and was here.

  “Hello, children,” Renee said, smiling out at them. “How are you all today?”

  Screams.

  Renee read happily through an early section of the book, even doing the Southern accent for Mr. Grover Tillweed. When she was through with the section, she took a sip of water and looked out at the crowd. She noticed him then. A boy—a teenager, though, not a child. He looked sixteen or seventeen. He caught her eye only because it was so strange to see someone his age here, now. Parents, yes; children, yes. Not this age. He wore a black sweatshirt and a gray winter cap and stood all the way at the back of the crowd, leaning against the windows. He had no expression on his face. Just a calm stare and dark eyes.

  “Now on to the woods!” Renee said.

  She read from chapter twelve and felt less comfortable. Fiona and Samuel had been trapped in a net, and she felt the children’s concern—why was it that this empathy left our hearts, ever?—for their safety. She decided to skip the wolf and instead went on to the caves, which turned out to be less threatening. That was where they met the other brother and sister, the children in rags who had first gone out to simply hide but who had gotten lost and had now been alone in the forest for weeks.

  At the end of the reading, she looked up, said, “Thank you,” and smiled out at the applause. The dark boy was gone. The space where he’d been was back to only a window and the road.

  “Now, children,” Diane said, hustling up to the podium with her elbows out in a comic power walk. “And parents. I believe Ms. Owen will answer any questions you might have?”

  Some children asked about the rest of the story. One girl asked for Renee’s favorite color. One young father asked her whether she had any new books on the way, and if so, whether they could preorder them. That got a nice chuckle.

  Renee spotted one more hand in the back, a young woman wearing a bright pink sweater. Renee pointed, and the woman smiled nervously and said, “Hi, Ms. Owen. Um. My name’s Tracey, mother of two. Okay. I teach Sunday school here in town, at St. Clement? I totally love this book and I love, just, all of your books. My kids love them, I read them when I was little, too. And so since I’m active in the church, my question is that I’ve always wanted to know whether you’re a Christian, and whether the ideas in the books about good and evil and all that stuff come from, like, Christ?”

  “Oh my, yes,” Renee said immediately, answering this question for the thousandth time in her life. She had not been to church in forty-seven years. “I think you can absolutely say that they do. Good and evil in all of my books would agree with almost any universal understanding of good and evil we humans have been able to come up with. That includes Christ.”

  Smiles.

  The woman had a follow-up question. “Do you think you write the books so all those ideas—so children who re
ad your books can learn those ideas and incorporate them into their lives? Or is it more just, like, a story? I guess what I’m asking is whether you think children’s literature’s central purpose is to teach?”

  “I certainly want children to internalize these ideas,” Renee said, nodding. “Ideas about more than good and evil, too. About fun, happiness, friendship, dignity, strength. Many different lessons, I think.” She paused, thought. “I don’t know about the central purpose,” she continued, “and what it is when I write, but I know I want these things to come through.”

  Adam. She wrote the stories for Adam, of course. As another way of showing him what she thought about the world.

  She waited silently and stared straight ahead. She looked at all the people in the crowd. She looked at Diane.

  The woman nodded and seemed happy with the answer. A few other people raised their hands.

  She had believed every word of praise, every review, every parent’s note of thanks, as though she had...as though she’d actually meant to tell these things to the public, as though all along she had not been screaming these stories out. All the words weren’t to make an army of children.