It is late, past midnight, and Bash watches those two, and the other guests, their smiles and laughter caught in candlelight. He uncorks another bottle for their pleasure, lights a few more of the citronella candles to keep the bugs away.
Tomorrow, he will hide among them, gathered on the graveled walk of the hotel, suitcases beside them, headed to the airport, leaving Italy behind. He has saved enough to disappear like this, to fly across the sky, to take the large highways and the small roads to the place he read about, that rural valley where others are gathering, where he might finally make good on his long-cherished dream to cease taking orders, to turn those words in another direction, to grab hold of them for himself, to write the book he’s long had in his mind.
A honking horn returned her suddenly to the kitchen, to the ticking clock on the wall showing her she was out of time. Then she was shoving her work back into the box hidden in the closet, covering it with the old coats, grabbing her car keys and racing down the hill to pick the boys up. Daniel wasn’t smiling when he walked out of school, but in the car, he sort of leaned over the seat and gave her a quick kiss on her cheek. She was delighted, and relieved, and she called over her shoulder, “Who wants to go out for pizza tonight?”
* * *
Thursday afternoon, she put away early her pen, her pad of notes, the draft-in-progress of the novel. She was averaging about fifty-five pages a day, reading it through and marking it up. At this rate, it would take her all of the following week too before she was ready to start writing again.
She looked at the long supermarket list and missed Fancy, and wondered if she had made a mistake in not hiring another nanny. She had been spoiled by Fancy, often not seeing the inside of a supermarket for weeks at a time. It was all up to her now, and Martin was coming home the next day from China and the fridge was mostly empty, and the weekend weather forecast said it would be nice, and Martin would want to grill both evenings. Daniel would take himself to the glen and read while his father was basting and flipping the meat, calling out, “Rare, medium rare, medium, well done,” in a kind of singing rhyme, and Eric would stand next to his father, his ready helper, the extra set of tongs in his hand, waiting for a chance to show Martin he knew what he was doing.
She tossed into the grocery cart breakfast and school lunch staples, along with meats for grilling, gallons of ice cream, and in the pharmacy aisle, a box of baby aspirin. It was September after all, school was back in session, and it never took any time before one or both of the boys had the sniffles, a sore throat, a slight fever, and in Eric’s case, the dramatic moans of a child who wanted to stay home from school.
The boys were on the sidewalk when she pulled up to the school. Eric was jumping from square to square and Daniel had a book raised to his eyes. She honked and they piled in and were off, Eric jabbering about his day, about the boys he played with at recess, the math teacher he liked, and that everyone in his class had to take a test on Monday.
“The Q test,” he said, and Joan glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Do you mean an IQ test?” He nodded.
“I took that test,” Daniel said. “Was I in second grade like Eric when I took it, Mom?”
She nodded and said, “I think you were.”
She had missed the notice the school must have sent. She carried in the mail each day from their mailbox, but had not opened a single piece, just sat down at the kitchen table and went back to work. She would have to search the pile for the notice, see if there were special instructions about it. She couldn’t remember if there had been any when Daniel took that test.
They pulled into the garage, and Joan said, “I’ll pay you both two bucks to unload the groceries and put them away.”
Daniel snorted, and Eric, looking up at his big brother, snorted too.
“Five,” Daniel said, and Eric said, “Five,” and Joan laughed and said, “Fine.”
* * *
Joan woke Friday morning to Daniel yelling, “Mom, Mom, MOM, MOM!” and she threw off the light duvet, yanked the door open, and ran out, and there was Daniel showing her the empty bottle he found behind the living-room couch.
The kitchen clock read 6:30 and Daniel was crying. Eric was on the couch kicking his feet.
She had left the boxed and sealed bottle of baby aspirin bought at the market the previous day on the kitchen counter. She had forgotten to put it away.
“Goddammit,” she yelled, ignoring Daniel’s shock that she was swearing, thinking of all the crap Eric used to put in his mouth, that conversation Martin had with him when Joan feared he was suffering from pica, and now Eric, seven and old enough to know better, had torn open the box, peeled off the plastic safety wrap, opened the childproof bottle, stabbed through the silver shield, and eaten all two-hundred and fifty peach-colored baby aspirin tablets.
“What the hell were you doing?” Joan yelled at Eric, but it was Daniel who answered, still crying, saying, “Mom, I’m so, so sorry.” Eric looked at her calmly and said, “I was watching cartoons.” As if that answered the question, made sense.
“Daniel, call Trevor, ask if his mother can pick you up. Tell her you’ll be outside at eight forty. Watch your brother until I throw on some clothes. Make sure you eat breakfast when we’re gone. Make yourself lunch.”
Gastric lavage, that’s what Eric endured, a flexible tube inserted into his mouth, down his esophagus, coming to rest in his stomach. Saline flowed through the tube, then up it all came, hundreds of dissolved aspirins, regurgitated, the cornflakes, milk, and sugar he’d also consumed at dawn, the process repeated twice until nothing was left inside.
His big brown eyes gleamed black when he said, “Mom, what’s the big deal? They tasted like candy. Plus, I got out of going to school today.”
* * *
Martin did not experience the fear, or the panic, or the guilt Joan felt. And after the fact, the way Eric told the story, it was almost funny, showing his father Friday night, just home from China, how he had munched the aspirin as if they were SweetTarts, how long the tube had been that went down his throat.
This, she thought, is what I’ve been worrying about all week, the arc of tragedy I was waiting for.
She had spent all summer encouraging both children to heed their own paths, to not blindly follow another child’s wrongdoing, to not jump off a figurative cliff just because one of their friends did, and, well, Eric apparently was following his own path, a child who did not think ahead, who was immune to consequences. He did not have pica, there was no definitional phagia for the mass consumption of baby aspirin, but listening to Eric bragging to his father about his bravery, that the gastric lavage had not scared him at all, that he had not cried even a little, Joan shuddered and she felt a chill, and wished he suffered from pica, at least then there would be a logic to it.
That sense of recollection and déjà vu she felt after their first day of school, it wasn’t about Daniel and his questions that came out of nowhere about her life as a writer, but how she had felt when Eric refused to nurse, squirmed in her arms, chose no as his first word, refused books, then diapers. From his entry into the world, Eric dictated the progression of his life. Punching against parental boundaries and limits was to be expected, in teenagers, but a seven-year-old evincing so early a predilection for risky behavior? Was she reading Eric accurately—that he was thrilled by the events he created?
She was at fault for leaving the aspirin out, but she would not allow herself to feel guilty about her work. The last four days spent engrossed in her pages could not have undone all she did over the summer. For three months, she had been fully present, both sons had known she was right there with them, thinking of nothing else, most of the time, but them. Yes, she was back to work, but they didn’t know that—she had been there at breakfast, at school drop-offs and pick-ups, at after-school snack time, at dinner, at bath time, at bedtime. Had Eric sensed her waning attraction for motherhood, her desire to have gorgeous time without them? Why couldn’t Eric have devoured all those
aspirins during one of the rare times Martin was on duty?
Seeing her husband with their youngest son, not taking him to task the way she thought Martin should, she imagined one of Daniel’s contests—which parent knew more about their children? She would win, hands down. Did Martin know that Eric was a boy who loved to take shortcuts, to simplify, to make things easy; that he preferred his room sparse and bare, could not abide Daniel’s room, with its towers of books, his collection of bound Henry stories that Joan was still making for him, his swim goggles and swim cap and baseball glove never put away, his swimsuits hanging from the knob of the closet door; that Eric liked puzzles, and building intricate LEGO constructions that he immediately dissasembled after showing Joan and Daniel his creations, all the pieces back in their plastic containers, neatly tucked under his bed; that he preferred to be on his own, could keep himself entertained, liked only math in school, doodled numbers that he could not explain to Joan, had no interest in athletics as Daniel did; that he spoke in full, well-made sentences and talked softly until he yelled; that once, he said he wished his name were Thomas; that he could be stingy with his hugs and his kisses, but every so often, he would seek Joan out and hug her so tight, she felt the air emptying out of her lungs; that an interest in reading had never kicked in, but he still allowed Daniel, every once in a while, to read him a Henry story at bedtime, leaning against Joan, allowing her arms around him, while Daniel sat at the bottom of the bed and read them the squirrel’s newest adventure, until Eric pushed free, and said, “Enough cuddling for one day. Enough reading.” No, Martin did not know these things, and despite never having wanted motherhood, despite the 250 aspirin Eric had ingested, she knew she was a goddamn great mother.
Eric had milked the escapade for sympathy, asking for ice cream for dinner, saying that his throat hurt, which it probably did, which she hoped it actually did, and Martin, yawning from jet lag, had spooned the ice cream into a big bowl.
“I don’t blame you at all,” Martin said later that night, after the boys were in bed.
And Joan thought, You’d better not.
Her husband was asleep in seconds, and Joan left their bed, threw on a light sweater, retrieved from the front closet another chunk of Words. She went out into the backyard and got to work at her old desk, wishing she were back in her old East Village apartment, when the table was still untarnished, and she was solely herself, a woman apart, a writer at work.
14
Way before dawn on Monday, Daniel tiptoed out of his bedroom, past his brother’s room, into the living room, where he slipped a book of short stories free from its place on the shelves, tiptoed back to his room, hid that book in his backpack, slept for another hour, got up, got dressed, ate breakfast, and waved to his mother when she drove away from school. At nine, when the bell rang, when Daniel was supposed to be in homeroom with Miss Nilson, he was in the library, sitting behind the last stacks, opening his backpack, pulling out that book, and opening it to the first story called “Deep in the Valley.”
He read the first paragraph:
She rents the motel room for a few days. The clerk at the desk, a boy, is nice enough. He smiles but does not make dumb polite chatter. He does not ask to see her driver’s license. She is used to showing her license because she looks so young, older than a teenager, but not quite a woman. She knows she looks perpetually suspended, otherworldly, not fully grown, though she’s thirty-three. She signs the receipt in her cramped handwriting. The clerk’s silence seems right to her. She is near now. Probably no one ought to talk to her.
He read the second paragraph:
The room is sort of okay, beiges and pinks, with a flat king bed. It is a motel, but the mini-bar is stocked. There is a binder filled with information about tourist attractions, a Bible in one nightstand on sticky floral contact paper, a local phone book in the other. Neither is quite the Book of Life she thinks, and unpacks her bag. She walks down the quiet hall to fill the plastic ice bucket, hears the hum of the ice machine, aware that the hall is not fresh, the paint faded, stale smells of fear and desolation, but she has lived in much worse. She has lived in places she tries to forget. She plunges her hands into the ice when memories of those places squiggle her brain.
He read the third paragraph:
She knows where she is going because there is nowhere else to go, nothing else to try, no other beliefs to believe. She no longer imagines that she can be like everyone else, that she can live her life as they do. She is thinking clearly now—about how she has always been inside a box. Inside a little box that has no floors, no doors, no windows, only walls that are closing in on her, relentlessly pressing toward the center, where she stands, where she has long stood. It won’t be long before she is sealed up for good, and no one will ever know she was once here.
Unlike Daniel, who inhaled and read on and remained in the library where he was not supposed to be, Eric was where he was supposed to be, at his desk, in his classroom, with his teacher, Mr. John, at the blackboard, on which was written in large chalky letters, IQ TEST DAY.
Mr. John explained they would each be administered the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, a sixty-five-minute test that would generate a Full Scale IQ representing each child’s general intellectual ability. It would also provide primary index scores in verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and processing speed, that represented each child’s abilities in discrete cognitive domains.
None of what Mr. John said made any sense to Eric, or to his classmates, and everyone rolled their eyes at everyone else, but they cheered when Mr. John said they could draw or read or do whatever they wanted, quietly, very quietly, until it was their turn and their name was called.
At twenty minutes after ten, the school secretary walked Eric to the auditorium, where a long desk and two chairs were set up beneath one of the basketball hoops. A nice lady sat down and told him to sit down. She asked him lots of questions: about the meanings of words, and about similar words. She had him solve lots of puzzles: for the words she was looking for, for what was missing from pictures, for what symbols went together, for what shapes went together, for what word or symbol or shape he would choose to fill in various blanks. She had him put red-and-white blocks together making patterns he liked, and while he did that, she read him a long line of numbers he had to try to remember so he could repeat them, and he did that easily, reeling them right off, forward and backward. Everything she had him do he thought was great fun and very easy. “Good job,” she said. “You’re all done.”
The school secretary led him back to Mr. John’s class, and the whole way, he thought if school was like that test, he wouldn’t hate school as much as he did.
By eleven thirty, he was out on the playground, playing dodgeball because the line for tetherball, which he preferred, was too long.
* * *
From nine forty until two forty, Joan sat at the kitchen table reading and editing and making notes on and about Words.
* * *
At three, she was parked outside of the school, waiting for her children to emerge, which they did five minutes later.
* * *
By three thirty, they were home, and the boys were eating a snack.
* * *
At four, Martin came home early from the hospital, still jet-lagged from China, feeling that his presence had been missed, that he needed to be around much more, that Eric required a watchful eye, despite his being good all weekend.
* * *
At four fifteen, Martin was in the backyard, and the three Manning men were tossing a football around, or rather Martin and Daniel were tossing a football around, and Eric was complaining that he did not want to play, that football was stupid, and why couldn’t they get a computer.
* * *
At five, Joan forced Eric to take a bath and wash his hair.
* * *
At six, the family ate in the backyard, fish that Martin had barbecued and no one particularly liked.
* * *
At six thirty, Joan brought out bowls, spoons, the gallon of Mint Chocolate Chip, the squeeze bottle of chocolate syrup.
* * *
At seven, Daniel went into the house, went into his room, pulled the book from his backpack, moved quickly down the hallway, looked out the living-room windows where he saw his parents had not moved from the table. Eric was in their father’s lap, their mother was lifting a glass to her mouth.
He slipped the collection, called Other Small Spaces, back into its place on the bookshelves. His mother’s name had not been written on the flyleaf because her name was printed on the title page, and on the spine, and in raised letters on the front cover that he could run his fingertips over.
He did not write his own name on the flyleaf as he always did. He didn’t want to, not since the first day of school when Miss Nilson altered his world.
On that first day, he’d read his story aloud, and Miss Nilson asked him to stay past the bell, and she said, “You must feel like the luckiest boy to have such a talented writer for a mother. I’ve read her books and all of her other published stories. You must be so proud, knowing that your mother’s work has been read by so many, that she has received such big prizes for her writing. I can only imagine your family’s dinner conversations. And look, you’re following in her footsteps.”
He had not known about any of that. He had not known his mother was a writer, was famous, that he was not the only writer in his house.
And that night, when he questioned his mother, she admitted she had published two books, but she had said nothing, nothing at all, about winning prizes and awards, and said no when he asked if she was writing now.
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby Page 16