by Lee Thomas, Gary McMahon, S. G. Browne, Michael Marshall Smith
Be all which as it may, and despite my pompous such-is-life declaration, Kathy was right. I didn't want anyone hassling my kid. Much more of it, and words would need to be spoken.
* * * * *
I picked Ethan up the next day, and remembered to ask him about his day as soon as we got into the car. Ethan proved surprisingly well-informed on his own doings, and filled me in on a variety of Montessori-structured activities he'd undertaken (neither Kathy nor I truly understand what Montessori is about, but we believe/hope that it's generally agreed to be A Good Thing, like lower CO2 levels and being kind to dogs). There was no mention of Arthur Milford. I thought about asking a direct question, but decided that if Ethan hadn't deemed him worth mentioning, there was probably nothing to say.
Ethan went to bed easily that night, in the unpredictable way he sometimes did. We had a laugh during bath-time, he brushed his own teeth without being asked, and then – after quite a short reading – he drifted off to sleep before I was even ready for it. I sat there for five minutes afterwards, enjoying the peace of quietly being in the same space as someone you love very much. There's usually a hidden edge to the observation that nothing's as beautiful as a sleeping child (the point being it's all too often nicer than them being awake), but the fact is... there really isn't. To watch your son, asleep in his comfortable bed, with a tummy full of food that you made him, and a head full of story, arm gripping a furry polar bear you can bought him on a whim but to which he'd taken as if they'd been separated at birth... that's why we're born. That's why everything else is worth it.
Yet sometimes I get so angry with him that I don't know what to do with myself. And he knows it. He must do.
About six hours later I woke slowly in my own bed, dimly aware I could hear a noise that shouldn't exist in a house in the middle of the night. By the time I'd opened my eyes, it was quiet. But as I started to relax back into oblivion, I heard it again.
A quiet sob.
I hauled myself quickly upright, staggered out of bed. Kathy lay dead to the world, which was unusual. She generally sleeps on far more of a hair trigger than me. She evidently was really tired, and I blearily regretted my snipe before dinner the evening before.
I went into the hallway to stand outside Ethan's room and listen. Nothing for a minute, but then I heard the sound again. I opened the door.
Before I even got to the side of his bed, I could tell how hot he was. Children beam their heat out in the night, like little suns. I squatted down and put my hand on his head.
"Ethan," I said. "It's okay. It's just a dream."
He sobbed once more, very quietly.
"Ethan, it's okay."
He opened his eyes suddenly. He looked scared. Scared of me.
"It's daddy," I said, disconcerted. "Just daddy, okay?"
His eyes seemed to swim into focus. "Daddy?"
"Yes. It's okay. Everything's okay."
Ethan's eyes swiveled. "Is he still here?"
"Who?"
"Arthur Milford."
The back of my neck tickled. "No. Of course not."
"He was here. He came up the stairs and stood outside my room saying things. Then he came in. He stood by my bed and said he was going to..."
"No, he didn't," I said, firmly.
"He did."
"Ethan, it was just a dream. No one's in the house apart from you and me and mummy. Nobody can get in. The doors are locked. The alarm system's on."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure," I said. "I did it myself. I promise you. It's just the three of us, and everything's okay."
Ethan's eyelids were already starting to drift downward. "Okay."
He was asleep five minutes later. I went back to bed, and lay there for an hour before I could get under again. Once I've been woken, I find it hard to get back to sleep.
The next morning I was irritable, and snapped pretty badly at Ethan when he made a laboriously annoying job of putting on his school shoes. I shouldn't have, but I was tired, and for fuck's sake – he should be able to put on his own shoes.
But as I watched him and Kathy walk down the path toward the car, the wailing over and a new détente being hammered out between them, I realized that at some point after coming back to my bed in the night, I'd raised the Arthur Milford Awareness Level to DEFCON 2.
* * * * *
On Thursday evening Kathy has yoga, and so The Ethan Going To Bed Show featured daddy in a co-starring role (or supporting actor, more likely, my name below the title and in a notably smaller typeface) for the second night in a row. Bedtime did not, of course follow the same course as the night before. That's not how the shorties roll. Like some snappy young boxer on the way up, they'll pull you in, fake like they're running out of steam, and then unleash a brutal combination that will leave you glancing desperately back at your corner, as you take a standing eight count. I'm getting better at rolling with the punches, shifting the conflict to safer ground and letting the passion defuse, but that night I went back at Ethan like some broken-down old scrapper who knew this was his last chance in the ring, and wanted to go out with a bare knuckles slugfest.
He wouldn't eat his pasta, instead deliberately distributing it over the floor – meanwhile looking me steadily in the eye. He wouldn't come upstairs. He wouldn't get into the bath, and then wouldn't get out, and broke a soap dish. I had to brush his teeth for him, and did it none too gently. He wouldn't get into his pajamas because they "always itched" – the very same pair that he'd cheerfully gone to sleep in the previous night. He wouldn't get into bed, instead breaking out of the room and stomping downstairs, wailing dismally for Kathy, though he knew damned well she was out.
By the time I'd recaptured him, harsh words had been spoken on both sides. I had been designated an "idiot" and a "doofus," and been informed that I was no longer loved. I had likened his behavior to that of a significantly younger child, and had threatened to inform the world at large of this maturity shortfall: his friends, grandparents and Father Christmas had all been invoked as potential recipients of the information. I'd said he was being childish and stupid, and had even called him the very worst word I (or you) know, though thankfully I'd managed to throttle my voice down into inaudibility at the last moment. So he hadn't caught the word. The anger had sure as hell made it though, though. The anger, and probably the pitiful level of powerlessness, too.
I did however finally manage to get him into bed.
He lay there, silently. I sat equally silently in the chair, both of us breathing hard, wild-eyed with silent fury and sour adrenaline.
"Arthur Milford was mean to me today, too," Ethan muttered, suddenly.
I was still pretty close to the edge, and the "too" at the end of his pronouncement nearly pushed me over it into somewhere dark and bad.
I took a breath, and bit my tongue. "Mean in what way?" I managed, eventually.
"In the upstairs corridor. On the third floor."
"Okay – so now I know where the alleged event occurred. But how was he mean? In what actual way?"
"Why are you being so mean to me tonight?"
"I'm... Just tell me, okay? What did he do?"
"He pushed me again. Really hard. Into the wall. And then... against the window."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Did you tell a teacher? Like I told you?"
"No."
"Why? That's what you've got to do. You have to tell a teacher."
"He said... he said that if anyone told a teacher about what he was doing, he'd throw me out of the window for sure."
"Really? He actually said it this time?"
"Yes."
"But you've just told me about it – so why not a teacher?"
"Arthur said telling you di
dn't matter. You can't do anything. Only the teachers can."
"I see. How interesting."
I decided then and there that I'd had quite enough of Arthur sodding Milford. I'd like to think this was solely because of the evident discomfort he was causing Ethan, during both waking and sleeping hours, but I know some of it was due to pathetic outrage at hearing myself thus dismissed. As a parent, you often encounter moments when you feel impotent, and may often be genuinely unable to affect events. I had to take crap from my own child, evidently: that didn't hold true for someone else's. It was time for Arthur, and his parents, if necessary, to learn that the world did not stop at the school gates.
As Ethan and I moved on to talking about other things, gradually opening doors to each other once more, and calming down, I silently determined that the Arthur Milford situation had finally reached DefCon 1.
* * * * *
I got to the school a little after two o'clock. My appointment would mean that I'd have time to kill in the area afterwards, before picking Ethan up, but it was the only time the headmistress/owner would deign to see me. It's a small school, privately-owned, and to be fair, I imagine Ms. Reynolds is pretty busy. I was shown to a little office, part of the recent extension on the ground floor, and given a cup of coffee. I sat sipping it, looking up through the glass roof at the side of the building. Two further stories, grey brick, with long bands of windows.
Schools, even small and bijou ones like this, all feel the same. They take you back. I knew that when Ms Reyholds arrived I'd stand up slightly too quickly, and be excessively deferential, though she was ten years younger than me and effectively ran a service industry, in which the customer should always be right. None of that matters. School is where you learn the primal things, the big spells, the place where you become versed in the eternal hierarchies and are appraised of our species' hopes and fears. Being back in one as an adult is like returning in waking hours to some epic battleground in the dreamscape – even if, like me, you had a pretty decent time during your formative years.
It was quiet as I waited, all the little animals corralled into classrooms for the time being, having information and cultural norms stuffed into their wild and chaotic heads.
Eventually the door opened, and the trim figure of Ms. Reynolds entered. "Sorry I'm late."
I stood. "No problem."
She smiled briefly, and perched at an angle on the chair on the other side of the desk. I tried hard not to take against her posture, and the way it signaled a confident belief that this was going to be a short conversation. I sat back down, square-on to the table.
"So. How can I help?"
"I wanted a quick word. About Ethan."
"I'm sure it's temporary," she said, briskly. "I honestly don't think it's anything to worry about."
"What is?" I asked, thrown. "Worry about what?"
"Ah," she said, smoothly covering a moment of confusion. "I talked with your wife about this, yesterday, at the end of school. I assumed she'd mentioned it to you."
"Mentioned what?"
"Ethan's schoolwork. It's taken a dip recently, that's all. Nothing major. It happens with most of them, the boys. From time to time. But we're aware of it, and we're working with Ethan to lift things back up. I can appreciate your concern, but I really..."
"That's not why I'm here."
"Oh. So..."
"I am concerned if there's an issue with his work," I said. I was also a little ticked that Kathy hadn't mentioned it to me when she got back from yoga the night before. "But I wanted to talk about the bullying."
"Bullying?"
"For the last week, maybe two, Ethan's been talking about being bullied."
Ms. Reynolds swiveled to sit square in her chair. It was clear I'd got her full attention now. "If that's the case, it's a very serious matter," she said.
"It's the case."
She frowned. "One of the teachers did notice a mark on his arm this morning. Very minor. It looked as though someone had gripped his arm. Is that what you're referring to?"
Her eyes were on me. There was probably no way she could know that the mark, which I'd noticed myself when helping Ethan to get dressed that morning, was the result of me shoving him into bed the night before. Not so very hard, but children's skins are sensitive.
And my own father raised me to tell the truth.
"No," I said. "That was me."
"You?"
"There was a disagreement over getting into bed last night. I ended up guided him into it."
She nodded, a minimalist raise of the chin. "So then what are you referring to?"
"One of the other boys has been picking on him. Muttering things in after-school swimming class, calling him stupid. Shoving him in the corridors."
"Ethan told you this?"
"Yes. And this boy's even threatened to throw Ethan out of a window."
"Throw him out of a window?" Ms Reynolds now looked stricken. "When? When did this happen?"
"Last Monday. And again yesterday." I'd forgotten, for the moment, that this threat hadn't actually been made on Monday – only implied, or intuited (or fabricated) by Ethan. It didn't matter. Yesterday, it had been said. "I'm not happy about this. At all."
"Well of course not," the headmistress said, putting her hands out flat on the table in front of her. "And who does Ethan say is doing all this?"
"Arthur Milford," I said, feeling heavy satisfaction as I handed up the name. Not just at finally stepping up to the plate on behalf of my son, but also through disproving what Arthur had told him – that it was only teachers that could do anything about a situation.
Learn this, you little shit: stuff that happens in the outside world counts, too.
"Arthur Milford?"
"Yes."
"It can't be," she said.
"I'm sure he behaves perfectly when teachers are around."
"No, that's not what I mean. I mean... we don't have an Arthur Milford at this school. Are you sure that's the name?"
"Absolutely sure. I've heard it every day this week, including in the middle of Wednesday night, when Ethan had a nightmare about this boy coming into his room and threatening him. Kathy's heard the name too."
The teacher looked baffled. "We did have an Arthur Ely in the school, a few years ago, who was quite big, and boisterous, but he left well before Ethan joined us. And there was a Patrick Milford, I think... Yes. He was here even before Arthur. But again, he's moved on. There's no Milfords here now. No Arthurs either."
"That's the name Ethan used."
"I'm afraid... he may just have made it up. Or one of the other children did."
"What – and the fact there have been kids here with very similar names is just a coincidence?"
"No. Making something up doesn't mean it isn't real. I know this is hard to hear, but... Their parents, everything out there in the world... They're important, of course, you're important. But still not as real to the children as what happens in here."
I nodded, remembering the thoughts I'd had while sitting in the chair waiting, and how it had been when I was a child. "Facts, too," she went on. "Children can get them muddled up. Or half-hear things. Or add two and two and make twenty eleven and a half. Perhaps Ethan got shoved, by accident. Or he and another boy really aren't getting on – or perhaps he's having arguments with a someone who is his friend, and so Ethan doesn't want to use his real name. Children remember the names of those who have gone before. Perhaps they use them, too, sometimes. Like mythological figures. I spend all my working hours in this place, but it doesn't mean I understand everything that goes on."
"So you don't think anyone's actually bullying Ethan?"
"I really doubt it – and not just because we do a lot to make sure this kind of thing doe
sn't happen. None of the other boys or girls have said anything. None of the teachers, either. But trust me, I'll look into it. The moment you've gone. And if there's anything – anything at all – to be concerned about, I'll call you right away. I promise."
"Thank you," I said. I didn't know what to feel. A little foolish, certainly.
She stood up, and reached out her hand. I did the same, and we shook.
"I hope I haven't wasted your time."
"No time spent talking about a child is wasted," she said, and I felt a little less silly. "But do you mind if I offer you a piece of advice?"
"Go ahead," I said, assuming it would be some way of helping Ethan move past this, or of helping him to get his schoolwork back on track.
"Do be careful about... the ways in which you have physical contact with your son."
I froze, indignation and guilt melting together. The room seemed suddenly larger, and very cold. "What do you mean?"
She looked steadily at me. Her eyes were clear, and kind, and for a moment she didn't looked like a teacher, or Ethan's headmistress, just a woman who meant well and cared about her charges a great deal.
"I know what it's like," she said. "What they can be like. I don't have a child of my own, not yet, but I spend a lot of time with them. Which is why, every day after I leave here, I go to the gym and get it out of my system for an hour. I kickbox. I'm not very good, but boy do I give those punch bags a thump. And then I go home and have a gin and tonic that would make most people's eyes water. That information is not for general consumption, okay?"
"Okay," I said, smiling.
"Loving children can be hard work. But it's what we do. I know you love Ethan, very much. I'm just saying... be careful. Because of the assumptions others might make, if they see a mark on him. And also because of how you feel, about yourself, and about how he'll feel too. Boys need strong fathers. Men who are strong, and kind... and not full of anger and guilt."