by Torey Hayden
In all the years and with all the children I had had, this turned out to be one of the most joyous parties I’d ever participated in. There were no fights, no tears, no disappointments, nothing to dilute the pleasure. As with the Nativity play, it came as close to a completely happy occasion as was reasonable to expect.
This gave me pause to wonder. At one point midafternoon, when the others were slipping hats and coats from the dressing-up box on one another, laughing and squealing and posturing in front of the mirror, I found myself apart, watching them, and I pondered this matter. Why this group? Why should they be so extraordinarily gifted at catching happiness? They were a motley crew by anyone’s standards, a duke’s mixture of backgrounds, ages and circumstances. There were no especially bright stars among them, no one with outstanding promise. Yet, of all the groups I’d been with throughout the years, it was this small, diverse band who seemed most able to shuck off troubled individuality and come together as a perfect whole.
After the party, Ladbrooke and I were left with the mess. And there was one. We’d gotten pretty high spirited by the end, and there were spills and scraps of food and popped balloons everywhere. I went down to Bill’s closet to get a dustpan and broom. Ladbrooke climbed up on the table to start taking down the decorations.
“That was really good fun,” she said to me, when I returned.
“Yes, Shemona loved it. Did you see the way she was dancing, there at the end?”
“It was the first birthday she’s ever had. She told me that.” There was a brief pause while Ladbrooke stretched up to get a streamer just out of reach. She still couldn’t quite get hold of it, so she jumped and snagged it. “They seemed to eat the cake okay. I was worried. I don’t know what got into me, thinking I could make one.”
“It was okay. It tasted good.”
“Well, it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?” she said. “I really wanted to do something special for Shemona. And it wouldn’t have been the same if I’d just gone out and bought a cake. You know what I mean?”
I nodded.
Ladbrooke smiled down at me. “I had a good time, making that cake. I was up till all hours. You ought to have seen me, there with all the pans out and everything. Consuela thought I’d lost my ever-loving mind. She kept saying, ‘I can do it, Mee-sus.’ I should have let her. But I was having fun.”
She jumped down from the table. Pausing beside me, she leaned down, picked up one of the fallen crepe-paper streamers and began to wind it up. “All the time I was doing it, I was thinking of Shemona, of how excited it was going to make her. I mean, you’d have to make a cake for a kid like that, wouldn’t you? You couldn’t buy it.” Then Lad fell silent. She continued to wind the streamer, but more slowly. “I really like Shemona,” She said softly.
“Yes, I know.”
She stopped what she was doing altogether then and just held the streamer. She was standing very close to me. If I’d shifted feet, we would have been touching. “I’m going to tell you something really horrible,” she said quietly.
“What’s that?”
“I love Shemona.”
“That’s not so horrible.”
She began to reel in the streamer again. “It is,” she said after a considerable pause, “because I think I love her more than I do Leslie.”
I glanced over at her and smiled, but she wasn’t looking in my direction.
“If it were anybody else but you, I don’t think I’d even dare say that aloud. It’s horrible to admit, even to myself, because Leslie is my own child.” She paused. “It’s just that … it’s just that … well … Shemona’s so normal. I looked at her and I see … what? I see myself. I remember being five and six so clearly. I remember all those feelings. It’s so easy to want to do things for her, to make her happy. It makes me feel good. You understand any of that?”
I nodded.
“But then I just wither with guilt. Because Leslie never makes me feel like that. I mean, my cat’s more responsive to me than Leslie is. I feel like she doesn’t care if I’m there or not. It could be anybody getting her food for her or wiping her butt. But then … I don’t know.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said.
“That’s because you don’t have any children.”
“No. It’s because I expect they’re entirely normal feelings. And there’s nothing particularly wrong with them.”
The streamer had tangled at the end, and in the process of shaking it out, Ladbrooke shifted her weight. She was still standing very close to me, and this change of position pushed our upper arms into contact. For the first time, she did not instantly jerk away. She remained against me for a moment. Turning her head, she gazed down at our arms, then she shifted only very slightly to separate us by an inch or two. She continued to gaze in that direction, so I looked down too, wondering if she saw something there. Ladbrooke remained stone still, the streamer motionless in her hand.
Several seconds’ silence followed before she glanced up at me briefly, an unreadable expression in her eyes. Then once again she looked down at the space between us.
“I’ve never touched another woman,” she said. Ladbrooke spoke with such quiet awe that it made her sound as if she’d just tried to rape me. She glanced back at my face and caught my surprise. This appeared to disconcert her, and she moved away from me.
“I’ve never liked women to touch me,” she said, her voice still quiet.
I regarded her.
“I’ve never liked women.”
I didn’t reply.
“I’ve never liked being a woman,” she said softly. “When I was pregnant with Leslie, I prayed she’d be a boy. I never wanted a girl. I think maybe if she’d been a boy I could have coped better. I think I might have known more what to do with her, if only she’d been a boy.”
I continued to watch her.
She turned away. Laying the streamer on the table, she walked around and to the window. Putting her hands deep into her pockets, she leaned forward and gazed out. A silence grew up between us. Taking out a chair at the table, I sat down. I pulled over the half-wound streamer and started doing it myself.
She was nervous as well. She shifted restlessly back and forth, from foot to foot. All the while she kept her back to me.
“Have I ever talked about my mom?” she asked at last.
“Not much.”
“She died a couple of years ago. When I was thirty-one.”
“Oh.”
“We were a small family—just my mom, my two brothers and me. She kept marrying and divorcing, so there were fathers occasionally, but not usually. They never lasted. Usually, there were just the four of us.”
I finished the streamer and taped the end. Then I surveyed the table, still cluttered with the aftermath of the birthday party. Rumpled napkins, dirty paper plates, empty cups were everywhere.
“And then she died. Cancer of the stomach. I remember my younger brother, Kitson, calling me and telling me. He’d been with her at the end. I can remember hanging up the phone afterward. I hung it up and thought to myself, well, that’s that. I didn’t cry. I didn’t even feel bad, really. I guess if anything, I felt relief, because at last all the hassles were over.”
She turned around and looked at me then. Hands still deep in the pockets of her jeans, she leaned back against the radiator and studied my face.
“I did feel bad, after it sank in, but mainly for myself, because suddenly I felt old. Mortal, you know? There was no generation above me any longer, no one standing between me and death. But as for my mother herself, I must confess, I felt absolutely nothing.”
Ladbrooke paused then, her expression growing introspective. She looked down in the direction of her shoes. “I suppose I must have loved her once, but I don’t remember when. By the time she’d died, I’d long since stopped. I hadn’t seen her in years. All we ever had in common was my father’s last name.”
Silence washed in around us. I was wondering what had brought up this powerfu
l bit of memory, whether it had been such a minor thing as bumping against my arm, or if it was more directly connected with Ladbrooke’s uneasy feelings about Shemona and Leslie. Or both.
Once again she studied me in that very thorough, unabashed way she had. As always, I found myself having to look away, unable to maintain such long eye contact.
“You know, you’re actually the only other woman I’ve ever known. I’ve never had any women friends, not even any girlfriends when I was younger. We didn’t invite kids home, Bobby, Kit and me. You never knew what my mother was going to be up to, so it was just safer not to. Consequently, I never really had friends. I had my brothers, but that was about it.
“And you’re so different from my mom. It’s not at all like I expected it to be. It’s so different. I’ve never been close to a woman before.
“I was never close to my mother. My brothers were closer, but I never was. She never touched me. She never put her arms around me. She said women didn’t do that kind of thing with each other. She said it turned her stomach to think of kissing another woman on the lips. I can remember once trying to kiss her like that. I was maybe ten or something, and she was absolutely disgusted by it. She didn’t like to kiss me. She didn’t like having to touch me.”
Lad shifted feet. She shifted again, then boosted herself up to sit on the radiator. She leaned forward, elbows on knees, chin in hands. Her gaze scanned the room for several seconds, regarding the table, the shelving, the kids’ work on the bulletin board. The very soft, rhythmic thud of her jogging shoes swinging against the side of the radiator filled the silence.
“When I was younger, when I was in my early twenties, I used to think about it constantly. I had this professor in my senior year at college. I didn’t know her or anything; I never saw her outside class or her office, but I really liked her. She helped me a lot getting into graduate school, and I really liked her. And I remember wanting to touch her. It scared the hell out of me, because I thought I must be a lesbian or something. And I wanted her to touch me. You know, just touch me. You know, put her hands on me. And it scared me shitless.”
Ladbrooke paused. Lowering her hands, she regarded them. “I used to try and picture my mother taking care of me when I was a baby. You know, picking me up, holding me, playing with me. I mean, she must have done it. I was just a baby and there was no one else there. But I always wondered if she did it like I remember her doing with Kitson, if she held me like that. Or if it was different because I was a girl.”
She was sitting on her hands. “It was probably like me with Leslie. Tom is right, you know. About the way I treated Leslie. He isn’t exaggerating. I’ve been a terrible mother. Because, you see, I couldn’t hold her. I really couldn’t. And I couldn’t bear the thought of nursing her, of having her touch my breasts. I took care of her and stuff. Of course I did. I mean, you have no choice with a baby. But thank God for Tom, for what he did for her, because I just couldn’t make myself hold her. I couldn’t just pick her up to hold her. I had to put her down, to get her away from me, even if it made her cry.”
Chapter 26
April. The long Easter weekend occurred only a few days into the month. I had an old friend from my days in Minnesota coming for the three-day break, and I was anticipating his arrival enthusiastically. We’d been colleagues in Minneapolis. He’d worked as one of my research assistants on my elective-mutism project, and we’d shared almost three years together on the front line. It had been a good, wildly workaholic period in my life, when all I’d lived for were the kids and the research. Tim had been a major part of the fond memories I had of those years.
The school day had just ended when Tim arrived. It was Thursday afternoon before Good Friday, and after taking the children down to their rides, I’d gone into the teachers’ lounge to run off some material for the following week on the ditto machine. When I returned to the second floor, there was Tim, standing in the hallway outside the classroom. I whooped joyfully when I saw him, and he responded with a booming hello, his deep, masculine voice echoing loudly in the empty hall. Then he caught me up in a bear hug that lifted me right off the floor.
“You’re early,” I said, when he put me down.
“Yeah. The traffic was all right. I wanted to come up and see your room. Hoped to see your kids.”
“Sorry, they’re all gone. They get out at 3:30.” His eyebrows twitched with sly interest. “Who’s she?” He jerked his head toward the classroom door. “The Valkyrie.”
I grinned. “My aide.”
Tim rolled his eyes. “How do you get them? Where do you find people that look like that? You’re always going around with a horde of tall, blond women behind you.”
I laughed. When I’d worked in Minnesota, I’d had another research assistant, who, if anything, was taller and blonder than Lad. She, like Tim, had been with me several years. Cindy and I had been christened “the Amazons” by one of the more roguish male psychiatrists in the department, and the nickname had dogged us the rest of our time together.
“I hardly had a horde, Tim. You’re thinking of Cindy, aren’t you? She makes one. Lad makes two. That’s not what I’d call a horde.”
He grinned. “I only wish I had your knack. That’s horde enough for me.”
“She’s married, Tim. Forget it.”
Opening the classroom door, we went in. I introduced Tim to Ladbrooke, who was working at the table. They’d already met, because he’d come into the classroom while I was downstairs, and she’d aimed him in the direction of the teachers’ lounge, but he was quite happy for a formal introduction.
I sat down at the table to staple the dittoes together, as I needed to have them ready before I could leave. Tim meandered around the room, looking at the children’s work on display and asking about them. Lad, I noticed, didn’t go back to work. She’d been designing some math worksheets for Shamie and now just sat with the pencil and ditto master lying in front of her. Finally, she shuffled them all together.
“I think I’ll go now,” she said.
“Don’t feel like you have to leave, Ladbrooke,” I replied, surprised. “Tim’s just a friend.”
Ladbrooke rose from the chair. “No. I need to get home. I’ve got tons to do.”
I looked up at her. I hadn’t meant the day to end like this. Not having anticipated Tim’s arrival in the classroom, I’d left things between Lad and me until the end. I needed to talk to her to make arrangements for the long weekend. We were still getting together every Sunday, and this was going to be the first major disruption to that routine since the February binge. She’d stayed dry since then, so I wanted to make definite plans to get her through the three-day break. I’d had no intention of letting her get away without settling this matter.
She put her things away in the filing cabinet and went to get her jacket. Tim was aware something was going on; he glanced back and forth between us. Finally, I got up.
“If you’ll excuse us a minute,” I said to him, and went out into the hallway with Ladbrooke. I shut the door firmly behind us. “Look, what do you want to do about this weekend?” I asked her.
She had a reserved expression on her face. There was distance between us. I’d noticed that on other occasions when I’d had friends stop by the classroom. “I can make it okay this weekend,” she said.
“Let’s get together.”
“Sunday’s Leslie’s birthday. Tom’s mother’ll be down.”
“Well, Saturday then.”
She shook her head. “No, let’s just leave it. I want to try it on my own. I’ll be okay.”
“You’re not going to interrupt anything, Lad. We can go out if you don’t want to come over with Tim there.”
“It’s just three days, Torey. I can manage. Don’t make me feel like I can’t.”
Silence came between us, and we regarded one another for a long moment. Then Ladbrooke zipped her jacket and turned. “Anyway, I’ll see you.”
I reached out and caught hold of her arm. “If there�
��s any sort of problem at all, call me, Ladbrooke.” Her muscles tensed under my grip, but I didn’t let go. “I mean it. This is platonic between me and Tim. If you call me, you won’t be interrupting anything.”
She nodded but remained poised to go.
I kept my hold a moment longer, wanting to tell her not to do anything stupid, not to ruin all these weeks of hard work, but I held my tongue. It wouldn’t sound as if I had much faith in her, if I said that. So I let go and just said good-bye.
When I came back into the room, Tim looked over, his expression questioning. That’s always been his most striking characteristic: He never missed a thing.
I shrugged. “It’s a little different this time. She isn’t Cindy. She’s one of the kids.”
It was a great weekend. I hadn’t seen Tim in almost three years, but back together, it was almost as if we had never been apart. We spent the entire three days reminiscing like a couple of little old grannies, reconstructing and reliving the years we’d spent sharing a cramped, windowless office that had still borne the scars of its former life as a shock-treatment room.
Ladbrooke never rang. Except for talking about her situation with Tim during a conversation on Sunday afternoon, I hadn’t thought about her throughout the long weekend. And even when Tim and I had been discussing her, it had been in a detached, professional manner, the way one does when sharing case notes with a colleague. I hadn’t had time to think of Ladbrooke herself at all, until Monday morning, when it occurred to me as I was standing in front of the mirror and brushing my hair that I hadn’t heard from her. The thought was accompanied by a sinking feeling. I just knew I wasn’t going to see her when I got to school.
But I was wrong, because there she was, looking particularly well scrubbed with her long hair pulled back into a ponytail and her sleeves rolled up. From the extent to which she had her work spread around her at the table, she’d clearly been in for some time before my 7:30 arrival.
“You look busy,” I said, and took off my jacket to hang it on the hook.