A Watershed Year

by Susan Schoenberger

  When they pulled up to her duplex, Louis was on the porch. She looked at her mother, who, it was obvious, had called to let him know they were coming. In Lucy’s mind, Mat’s homecoming—his first view of his new room, his new life—should have been separate from her own with Louis. Now she had no choice but to merge them.

  “Hey, welcome back. I bought some groceries,” he said as Lucy and Mat came up the stairs. Hands behind his back, he bent slightly at the waist as if he were a butler. “And this, young man, is for you.” He pulled from behind his back a large Spiderman action figure and showed Mat how to push a button on the back that made Spiderman’s wrist fling out, as if he were about to let out some string.

  Mat grabbed the Spiderman and ran inside as Rosalee slowly climbed the stairs, cradling Bill the kitten in her hands. Lucy kissed Louis briefly and turned to go inside.

  “Lucy, wait,” he said, taking her by the wrist. He kissed her again until she pulled away. She wanted to be the one to lead Mat around the house, introduce him to the rooms, give him the Tonka truck and the stuffed penguin.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just feel like I need to be inside, helping Mat get adjusted.”

  But she had missed the moment she had dreamed about for months. Mat was already in his room, playing with the large yellow truck.

  “Did he like it?” she asked her parents, who were admiring the room. “What did he say?”

  “His little face just lit right up, didn’t it?” Rosalee said, turning to Bertie. “He went straight for the truck.”

  “Straight for it.” Bertie’s hands were folded over his belly, and he rocked forward on the balls of his feet. “All boy.”

  Lucy tried to shake off her disappointment. She opened the blinds, grateful in the full disclosure of the sunshine that she had decided against the sponge effect.

  “Tell Louis to come in and see how much he likes his room,” she told her mother. “He helped me with the bathroom wallpaper.”

  Rosalee left but returned a few minutes later. “He’s not here,” she said. “And his car is gone.”

  “He left?” Lucy said.

  She wandered back into the living room and noticed that Louis had left a gift on the dining-room table: a Felix the Cat clock with a tail that swung back and forth to mark the seconds. Its whiskers were the hands. She had almost forgotten she had told him about the spare key. In fact, the time they spent together—such a short time ago—had no bearing on her present reality. She felt postpartum, if that was possible, passionately wrapped up in the details of caring for a child. At the same time, she didn’t want Louis to leave. She just wanted him to wait.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, after Mat had put Bill the kitten to sleep in a cardboard box and had gone to bed in his new room, clutching his old monkey and his new penguin, Lucy sat down at her computer and reread all of Harlan’s e-mails. She counted the days remaining—eight—until his June edition and realized that Harlan was one of the few people in her life who wasn’t fed up with her. And then she wondered how much that mattered, given that he was dead.

  Before going to bed, she resolved to win them over in order of priority. Mat would be first, then Louis. She would get in touch with the dean, hoping she still had a job, and then she would deal with Paul and Cokie—whom she hadn’t had the energy to see since she got back—and finally, the hagiographers, who might be hardest of all. Yulia… well, she owed Yulia nothing but needed her services as a translator. That one she’d have to figure out as she went along.

  She woke up early the next morning and slid her hands along the walls in the darkened hallway to check on Mat. He had seemed so tiny when she tucked him in the night before, almost lost in a twin bed that was twice as big as his cot at the children’s home. She reached out to smooth the covers, then realized he wasn’t there and felt the panic rising in her chest. She turned and, in the dim light, saw that the bathroom door was open. She found Mat on the floor, fast asleep on a towel with yards and yards of blood-spotted toilet paper scattered around him. A wad of it was bunched up near his face, apparently to staunch a nosebleed. He held his monkey tightly in his sleep.

  She soaked a washcloth in warm water and gently wiped the dried blood from around his nose. He stirred and pushed the washcloth away, but his eyes stayed closed. Before he could wake up completely, she picked him up and cradled him in her lap, his stubborn little head resting warmly in the crook of her arm. Her throat hurt, a sense of shame coalescing there, because she had failed. He counted on no one but himself.

  “Why didn’t you come find me?” She rocked side to side, a sleep-inducing metronome. “I just want to help you, sweet boy… I only want to help.”

  sixteen

  * * *

  In the days that followed, Lucy trailed Mat around, half hoping for another nosebleed to show him how useful she could be. One morning she woke before Mat and made her way quietly to the kitchen to call Angela, whose special talent was to sweep away the cobwebs that prevented Lucy from thinking clearly. The tail on the Felix the Cat clock brushed a loose flap of wallpaper as she dialed the kitchen phone. Angela answered after the fourth ring.

  “What time is it, six o’clock?”

  “I thought you got up early for yoga.”

  “Not this early.

  Lucy sat down with the phone at the dining-room table. She felt strangely awake, even before her coffee. She could see through the living-room window that the sun was up, spreading a soft orange glow around the complex.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just having some issues with Mat. I’m not sure we’re connecting enough,” she said. “He treats me like a teacher, or maybe more like a babysitter.”

  “What are you feeding him? Is he eating?” Angela yawned loudly into the phone.

  “He’s eating a lot. I’m actually cooking dinner, Angela. Three things on the plate.”

  “If he’s eating, sleeping, and playing, then he’s okay. How’s your place holding up?”

  The rasp of the clock’s tail against the loose wallpaper set Lucy’s teeth on edge.

  “It’s falling apart, is that a good sign? The paint is chipping, and one of the baseboard covers is loose. You know my green desk chair? I’ve had it for ten years, and yesterday it fell to pieces. And the back of my couch already has this gray stripe across the back from where he runs his hand along the upholstery.”

  “Sounds normal to me.”

  Lucy didn’t mention the rattling doorknobs or the lost remote control or that Mat had discovered a loose corner on the fish wallpaper in his bathroom and had ripped out a piece the size of a slice of pizza near the baseboard. With that in mind, she walked over to the cat clock and tore off the small flap of wallpaper brushing against Felix’s tail. She felt relieved.

  “So you think he’s okay?” she said.

  “I think he’s adjusting. How’s his English?”

  “He’s learning ten or twelve new words a day, and he’s putting together some short sentences. I’m not a linguist, but I think it’s amazing.”

  “Listen to you. You sound like a mother.”

  She did sound like a mother, but was that enough? An oral approximation of parenthood? It still felt more like taking care of Mat than parenting, supervising him rather than raising him. “Raising,” when she thought about it, was such an interesting word to apply to a child, implying some sort of lifting action that she just didn’t think she was getting. Literally he still wouldn’t let her pick him up without screaming, and emotionally he stayed beneath the surface. Her little submarine.

  “Did you hear about the kitten?” She opened a cabinet and found a box of animal crackers. She ate a lion, which tasted slightly stale.

  “What kitten? Aren’t you allergic?”

  “Yulia gave it to him. And Mat has paid no attention to it since we left my mom’s, so it follows me from room to room. I carry around a bottle of nasal spray and a box of tissues. Does Vern like cats?”

  “I’m not taking your cat, but yes, Vern likes anything
with fur. I let him have a guinea pig once, and the smell nearly killed me. What does Louis say about Mat?”

  Lucy said nothing. She could hear Angela sigh into the phone.

  “I guess I should call him,” Lucy said.

  “What happened? I saw him before you came back, and he was all excited to see you—said he bought you a clock or something.”

  Angela’s words brought on one of those disorienting moments when Lucy realized her life was a topic of discussion among other people. She was always surprised that people cared enough to talk about her and simultaneously sure they didn’t approve of her choices.

  “I’m going to hang up with you and call him.”

  “I’d wait a few hours, but yes, you should call him. As for Mat, hon, I think he’s fine. You have to tell me when I can come over and meet him. But next time you call, wait until six forty-five.”

  “Okay, and sorry again. You’re the best.”

  She hung up just as Mat came down the stairs in his pajamas. He climbed onto a chair at the dining-room table and looked at her expectantly, as though his meal should have been ready and waiting for him.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead,” she said. “Want some breakfast?”

  “Juice,” he said, pointing at a purple plastic cup on the counter.

  She smiled, feeling such pride in his language acquisition, although he still wouldn’t address her directly, preferring to stick with naming inanimate objects. He appeared to think his yellow room, the hovering dark-haired woman looking after him, this kitchen, this home were transitory, not the end of a journey, and she didn’t know how to convey the message except to be there, day after day, crafting the meaning of family for both of them until it became as natural to him as the language.

  Two scrambled eggs, a piece of toast, and a cup of orange juice later, he climbed down from the chair and went to the living room to play with his Matchbox cars, running them around a plastic mat with roadways imprinted on it. The kitten wandered into the kitchen, and Lucy filled a bowl with water. Her nose began to itch and she sneezed, upsetting the bowl before she could place it on the floor. She threw some paper towels on the floor, refilled the bowl, and went back to the phone to call Louis.

  “Can we forget the other day?” she asked when he picked up the phone. “I’m asking you to block it out, forget it ever happened.”

  “You’ve waited a week, Lucy. It’s already in my long-term memory.” He sounded only slightly annoyed with her.

  “I’m sorry. I was just so conflicted, because as much as I wanted to see you, I needed to be inside with Mat. I don’t know why it mattered to me so much, what he thought of his room…”

  She paused, giving Louis a chance to say that he understood, but he remained quiet. She would have to give him more, peel back the layers until he found her sufficiently exposed. She sneezed into the phone.

  “Can we just go out and talk about all this?” Louis finally said. “I hate the phone. Do you have a cold?”

  “Allergies. I’m not sure I can leave him yet. We’re still adjusting.”

  “Just go out with me tonight, and I’ll give you as much time as you need. Don’t you think that’s fair?”

  Something in his voice told her she couldn’t turn him down without sending him away for good. She had a sudden image of him standing with Ellen in the tulip garden, smiling from beneath her newsboy cap.

  “All right. I’ll call my mother. I’ll meet you somewhere.”

  “Good. Seven o’clock. You know that French place on South Charles Street?”

  “You can’t afford that place.”

  “Meet me at seven.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  AFTER CALLING HER MOTHER to babysit, Lucy looked outside and saw a stunning blue sky that told her to get away from the phone. Fresh air had never seemed important to her before, but now she saw why parents needed to shoo their kids out the door. Her reason told her otherwise, but she actually sensed a depletion of oxygen when Mat got bored with his Matchbox cars and started running around the living-room couch in circles. She decided to find a playground.

  They started their search near the campus, but teenagers clearly ruled the nearby playgrounds, mostly skateboarding boys with terrible posture and sullen girls with facial piercings. Lucy got on the beltway and drove toward an exit where she had seen a spectacular playground from the highway. It was one of those elaborate wooden structures with towers and rope bridges and swings and slides. Another new concept: “playscape,” suitably big enough to explain its semantic connection to “landscape.” As they approached the entrance, she realized she knew nothing about the protocol. Was she supposed to follow Mat around so he didn’t get lost in the maze, or was she supposed to find a bench and stay there so he could find her?

  She decided to follow him for a while, but she lost him as soon as he disappeared into one of the tubular slides. She caught a glimpse of him entering a bright red tube but didn’t see him come out the other end.

  A blond woman wearing flowered overalls approached her as she peered into one end of the tube. “Did you lose one? That red slide branches, and the other part comes out near the rope ladder.”

  “Thanks,” she said, “I’m new to this.”

  The woman smiled as though it were obvious. The other mothers wore T-shirts with jeans or shorts or overalls that were adult-sized versions of the overalls on their children. Lucy looked down at her short-sleeved sweater, peasant skirt, and leather sandals and felt as if she were back in Russia, so obviously was she a foreigner. The other mothers had insulated bags with juice boxes and snacks in individually rationed baggies or plastic containers. They brought magazines and cameras and water bottles and bags of extra clothes. She wondered if there were instructions on the Internet.

  And what did you talk about with the other mothers? The weather? Harlan had always been good at the kind of chatter meant for complete strangers. She once stood in line with him at the DMV and watched him write down a recipe for Swedish meatballs from a truck driver wearing an IKEA sweatshirt. The previous summer, when his hair was gone, Harlan had discussed chemotherapy with a breast-cancer survivor as they waited at the Inner Harbor for the fireworks on the Fourth of July. But he wasn’t there to help Lucy, and she felt his loss again, a surge of grief that subsided only when she heard someone yelling.

  “Someone get him down. He shouldn’t be up there.”

  In the fraction of a minute that Lucy had lost sight of him, Mat had climbed along the outside of one of the tubular slides. He was perched three-quarters of the way up and couldn’t seem to go up or down. She looked around for help, but everyone else was immobile, staring at Mat as though their collective vision could keep him from falling. So she ran over, hitched up her long skirt, and began to shimmy up the outside of the tube, bracing herself on the plastic ridges that surrounded it every three feet or so. The hot plastic scorched the bare skin of her legs and gave off a petroleum smell that made her eyes water. What she would do when, and if, she reached him was still a mystery.

  “It’s okay, Mat. I’m coming. Just stay where you are.”

  She could hear him whimpering as she inched closer. Her sandals had a slick bottom, and she finally kicked them off to grip the tube with her bare feet. Mat emitted little yelps of fear that struck her right in the center of her chest, the very place where the loneliness had started before Harlan died. When she reached him, she grabbed a fistful of his shirt, and he looked at her, terrified, searching her eyes for reassurance that they both wouldn’t fall twenty feet to the ground.

  “Just hold still, buddy,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. Every mother and child on the playground had gathered below the tube to look up, shielding their eyes against the sun. She yelled down to them, “Could someone call 9-1-1?”

  She told Mat the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” stopping every so often to wipe the sweat from her top lip on the sleeve of her shirt. She was fairly sure he wasn’t following the story, but
he seemed to quiet down, the words binding him in place. By the time she reached the third bowl of porridge, a fireman had propped a ladder against the slide. He took Mat down first and then helped Lucy climb onto the ladder. Once on the ground, she dropped to her knees and held Mat to her, close against her chest, refusing to let him pull away.

  “Blessed, blessed ground,” she said, touching the playground’s dusty surface with one hand, still hanging onto Mat with the other. “You’re all right. Everything’s all right.” She gripped the back of Mat’s head and pulled his face down to her shoulder. She couldn’t sort out what she was feeling: fear, anger, shame, all three at once.

  “I’m sorry, Mat. I should have been watching you.” When she loosened her hold on him, he avoided her eyes and ran toward the fire truck where the firefighters were letting children take turns climbing into the driver’s seat. She walked over, still trembling, and thanked two of the firemen profusely. They accepted her thanks, nodding along and smiling, but they seemed to be eyeing her skirt and her bare feet and her mass of unruly hair and adding that impression to the circumstances. She hadn’t watched her child very carefully, had she, or they wouldn’t have been called in. An amateur.

  One of the firemen hoisted Mat into the fire truck to ring the bell. She watched him there, blithely clanging away, unfazed by the terror of five minutes before. The adrenalin rush had left her completely spent. When the fire truck left, she retrieved her sandals, circled the playscape, and coaxed Mat back to the car with the promise of some candy she now kept in the glove compartment. She drove home shaking and exhausted. They had been gone for less than two hours.