The Book of Baby Names

by Prentiss, Norman

  In the past, Deborah encountered similar demands from parents of formerly homeschooled kids. They were reluctant to surrender the total control over their child’s environment. On one level, such demands grew out of genuine concern for their kid’s welfare, and a real fear their child might not succeed in a new school setting. At the same time, there was usually an underlying dread that the child would succeed—as if integration in a mainstream school would be a cruel insult to their previous efforts at home.

  Her guidance counselor friend at a high school she supervised in the late-eighties put it more bluntly: “Homeschooled kids are like space aliens. No sense of how to behave around peers. And 99% of their parents are nutjobs—religious wackos.”

  Many occasions over the summer Deborah was tempted to call Mrs. Carlisle a nutjob—or at least gently express that Mill Creek might not be the best place to enroll Nicholas. As a non-denominational private school, Mill Creek welcomed students of all religious beliefs, and she couldn’t allow prospective parents to interrogate family members in their small community. Unfortunately, the school’s financial health dictated her response: after an encouraging spike in enrollments the previous decade, they’d hit a lull over the past several years and now couldn’t afford to turn away tuition dollars—whatever the source. In this particular case, the compromise Deborah offered was an assurance that she and the boy’s teacher would monitor for any troublesome interactions, and they could certainly make classroom adjustments if Mrs. Carlisle learned from Nicholas of any problems.

  The seating arrangement, at least, had solved itself. Nicholas’s behavior created its own buffer, and students willingly kept their distance.

  He mashed his pencil tip against an index card, retracing an outlined circle. “I’m partly a visual learner,” he said to the teacher without looking up, “but even I think we’re spending too much time on these flash cards. I’d rather we finished Gulliver’s Travels—the real version with four voyages, instead of just the two in our picture book. I like the part with the horses—and no, Kimberly, I haven’t read everything, don’t be ridiculous—where the horses are smarter than all the people.”

  This aside to Kimberly addressed a comment the girl had just shared with friends. Nicholas was able to listen and respond, even as he talked over another student’s remarks—an unconscious rudeness that helped him to monopolize discussion.

  “I’ve always wondered how to pronounce the names of the horses,” he continued. His head lolled back and forth slightly above his stocky shoulders, in time with the circling motion of his pencil. “In print the name has lots of H’s and Y’s and N’s, but how are you supposed to pronounce it?”

  “I don’t know, Nicholas.” The teacher’s words fit neatly together, an obviously familiar phrase. At this age group, fifth-grade students typically think their teacher knows everything, and yet none of them acted surprised when Ms. Shultz admitted ignorance.

  Deborah stood and walked to the boy’s side of the classroom. Over his shoulder, she saw the thick lead outline he’d traced around each pasted circle on his top flashcard. “7 times 7” was written neatly in the upper right corner. With a felt marker, Nicholas now made each of the circles into pinwheels, seven red lines spinning out from each ash-gray center.

  Eventually the boy’s commentary ceased, welcome relief to teacher and students alike, so it took a while for anyone to notice the shy voice Nicholas used to ask his next question: “May I go to the bathroom?” —Then, quieter yet more urgent: “Ms. Shultz, may I please go to the bathroom?”

  * * *

  Deborah waited a few minutes after Nicholas left the room. She didn’t want to reveal to him, or to the entire class, that Nicholas was the sole object of her recent visit. She expected to run into him once she finally stepped into the main hall, but the corridor was empty.

  Closed doors muffled the sounds from each classroom she passed. The hall displayed an unnatural, expectant calm, poised to erupt into chaos when bells rang to announce morning recess. Such school-day rhythms burrowed into Deborah’s administrative routine: long stretches of calm interrupted by regularly paced explosions of exaggerated crisis.

  She listened outside the Boys’ room. At first all she heard was the faint drip of a leaky faucet. Then she heard a choking, gagging sound, echoed off the ceramic tile.

  In her high school position, she would have needed to ask a male teacher to investigate. With this age group, there wasn’t the same respect for bathroom modesty—a young child’s immediate safety was the overriding concern.

  She quickly announced herself—“Principal Lewis entering the bathroom”—then pushed the door inward.

  She heard a quick flush of the toilet. Nicholas kneeled inside an open stall. He faced away from the toilet, a confused expression in his eyes. A lump of brown paper towels lay wadded up beside him, other loose sheets scattered around on the floor. Nicholas absently lifted one of these sheets, used it to wipe at the corner of his mouth.

  “Were you sick, Nicholas?”

  No response.

  She stepped closer and looked over him into the bowl. “Did you throw up?”

  Silence.

  She held out her hand. “C’mon. Let’s go see the Nurse.”

  “I don’t want the Nurse.” Nicholas shook his head and held stubbornly to his place on the floor. The untucked flaps of his oversized shirt spread lightly about him on the tile.

  “Nicholas, if you’re not feeling well you have to see the Nurse.”

  The boy spoke over her words: “I need to talk to my mother.” Then, speaking by himself: “I’d like to borrow your phone again.”

  “I’ll call her myself. Now come along: into the main office.”

  “Let me clean up first, please.”

  “I’ll wait outside.”

  She stepped into the hallway and flipped open her cellphone. Mrs. Carlisle’s number was still onscreen as the previous call, so she pressed “redial.”

  “I knew something like this would happen,” Mrs. Carlisle said, yet the tone of her accusation wasn’t as aggressive as Deborah expected. “Send him home.”

  “You’ll have to come get him.”

  “I don’t drive. And as you know, the boy’s father is away.”

  During their fourth summer meeting, Mrs. Carlisle admitted her husband’s job-related travel was the primary reason she reluctantly chose to consider Mill Creek Dayschool—her son required more care than even she could provide by herself.

  “Perhaps I could drive him,” Deborah offered.

  “Would you?”

  Only this once, she thought, wary of the precedent.

  Nicholas stepped sheepishly from the Boys’ room just as Deborah completed the call, and she waved him ahead of her towards the office. Once there, she motioned for him to sit in one of the guest chairs across from the receptionist’s desk.

  “Audrey, I’ll need you to tell this young man’s teacher that he’s not coming back to class today. I’d also like a legal-sized mailer—one of those padded envelopes?”

  In an efficient series of moves, Audrey wheeled her desk chair to the left, reached into the supply cabinet, then slid back and handed an envelope to Deborah.

  “Thanks.” She looked at Nicholas, who held his hands in front of his stomach as if afraid he might be sick again. “Better give me one of those plastic grocery bags also, just in case.” Then, to the boy: “I’m taking you home in my car, but wait here a minute.” She took out her key ring and readied the small key to her file cabinet. “I have to get something from my office first.”

  * * *

  The Carlisles lived in a small rented house on the north-west edge of town, a few blocks from the grown-over site of a closed Sonic drive-in restaurant. A dormant Ford pickup was parked on the neighbor’s front lawn, its covered truck bed serving as toolshed, kitchen cabinet, and toy chest. Deborah assumed these parents hadn’t passed their interview: their children most surely were forbidden
to play with Nicholas.

  The front steps and windows were sloppily painted, smears of white flecked onto the glass around the frame. Surface fixes only—signs of a lazy landlord who hoped for a decent first impression, then abandoned the property once the lease was signed.

  Nicholas stayed behind on the front lawn as she knocked gently on the wooden edge of the screen door. Quiet footsteps approached from inside, and after the twist of a deadbolt and the slide of a latch chain, Mrs. Carlisle greeted her from the open doorway.

  At the sight of his mother, Nicholas rushed up the three porch steps; he nearly pushed Deborah aside as he opened the screen door, dodged under his mother’s arm and into the house.

  A fairly sudden burst of energy from the boy who’d sat quietly most of the drive, face turned aside and forehead pressed to the passenger-side window.

  “Thank you for bringing him home.” Mrs. Carlisle was a small woman, about a head shorter than Deborah. She wore a long, simple dress, the color if not quite the shape of a potato sack; it stopped just short of her ankles. Mrs. Carlisle hesitated, her thin arm stretched across the doorway, then she dropped the arm and stepped back. “Would you like to come in?”

  Once the child was delivered directly into a parent’s care, Deborah’s responsibility ended. Still, she’d planned to speak briefly with Mrs. Carlisle—although she remained uneasy about how much to discuss. Deborah held the padded envelope to one side, gripping it tightly by the unsealed top. With her other hand she propped open the screen door and stepped inside.

  The house had a faint animal smell, as if a residue from dogs owned by previous tenants. Small area rugs covered brief patches of the hallway, with rough wooden floorboards visible everywhere else.

  She followed Mrs. Carlisle into the front room. Padded wing-back chairs edged against three sides of a rectangular table. Nicholas already sat in an unmatched chair, set back from the table’s empty side. Between his chair and the table was a small wheeled cart—one of those old-fashioned typing stands, with a hinged flap raised on each side to hold pages. Instead of a typewriter, the stand was covered with stacks of books. Deborah recognized a surprisingly fancy edition of Gulliver’s Travels atop the nearest stack, with gold leaf on the page edges. Other books appeared beneath or crowded alongside, names obscured or faded from their spines. The textured leather binding of the thickest, Bible-sized book had small indentations along the spine, evenly spaced like teeth marks.

  Deborah realized she was in the boy’s alternate schoolroom—probably also the dining room and the family room. Heavy green curtains hung from the double window facing the front lawn, closed to shut out the neighbors and the rest of the world. Consistent with this philosophy, no television or radio appeared in the room, and no signs of newspapers or modern magazines. The only electrical appliance, a frill-shaded floor lamp, stood next to Nicholas’s chair.

  The boy twisted sideways against one arm of his chair, as if attempting to press himself between the cushions. He glanced at them over the top of the shortest stack of books.

  Mrs. Carlisle pointed to the chair at one head of the table. “Have a seat, Principal Lewis.”

  Deborah sank into the chair, the padded envelope balanced uneasily in her lap. When she sat straight, the chair’s wings acted like blinders; she had to lean forward for a clear view of Nicholas behind his small fortress of books. Oddly, Mrs. Carlisle sat at the far opposite end of the table. She seemed taller in that chair, as if she sat on a telephone book; Deborah decided the slight woman didn’t weigh enough to press down the springs beneath the cushion.

  “Not sure what came over him.” Deborah raised her voice to span the twelve foot length of the table. “Nicholas was fine in class, maybe a little agitated. Then he excused himself to use the bathroom. I think he was sick in there, but he refused to visit the school Nurse.”

  “I’m glad you called me.” Mrs. Carlisle kept her eyes on Deborah, her voice modulated at the same level as she posed a question to her son: “Were you sick, Nicholas?”

  “No,” he said. The boy’s stomach growled almost immediately, exposing his lie. Deborah leaned forward and saw Nicholas rub at his side, clearly still sore from the bout of vomiting. Nicholas looked to his mother, who would not return his gaze. Droplets of sweat were visible on the boy’s forehead.

  Deborah noticed that Nicholas sat apart at home, just as he did at school. Was the distance his choice, or his mother’s? She wondered if today’s interaction was typical. She’d assumed Nicholas was vocal and precocious at school because he was accustomed to constant attention at home. But now his mother seemed strict and aloof.

  An awkward silence blanketed the room. She felt sorry for Nicholas, wanted to help him somehow. His stomach growled again, loud in the silence.

  “Houynhnyms,” Deborah said suddenly.

  Nicholas sat up straight. “What?”

  She pointed to his top book. “Gulliver’s fourth voyage. I think you’re supposed to pronounce it ‘win-ums,’ like the whinny of a horse.”

  “Oh,” Nicholas said with a distracted smile. “Thank you. A lot of names in these books, I can’t pronounce. But I recognize them when I see them in print.”

  She looked back at Mrs. Carlisle. Her pinched face didn’t react to her son’s animated remarks. Across the distance, Deborah thought she noticed the woman’s nostrils open and close, open and close, like the twitch of a rabbit.

  “Are you sick now, Nicholas,” his mother asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said, but he was doubled over again, rubbing a hand between his left side and the edge of the chair.

  Mrs. Carlisle continued to stare at her, and Deborah felt compelled to offer an explanation. “I think he saw something that upset him today.” The moment she spoke, though, she realized it would be folly to show her the evidence. Why had she brought the thing into the house?

  “I know what upset him, Principal Lewis.” The woman’s nose twitched again, as if she could sniff the dead creature through the unsealed envelope. Deborah half-consciously ran her thumb and forefinger along the envelope’s folded crease.

  “No,” Deborah said. “I don’t think you do.”

  “Nicholas, I thought I told you to throw that away.”

  “I did!”—spoken in an “Aw, Mom” whine, as if he’d merely forgotten to brush his teeth before bedtime. He straightened up in his chair again, for a brief instant not cradling his stomach. The flap of his untucked shirt caught against the chair’s left arm and lifted slightly—exposing a lump of paper towels pressed against the boy’s left side like a bandage, held in place by the waistband of his trousers. Dark stains in the brown paper matched the shape of a boy’s cradling fist.

  “I worried about sending him away from home,” she said. “Someone in his condition, you understand.”

  No, Deborah didn’t understand. She wished she were back at the school office, meeting privately with the boy’s mother and responding to her unusual requests and complaints. Easier there to say yes or no or maybe, to recast impossible demands into something more realistic, to bring the interview to an immediate close if it grew uncomfortable.

  A wet belch sounded from the boy’s direction. “Excuse me,” Nicholas said. Instead of covering his mouth, both hands moved to cover the improvised bandage.

  “The dead ones come out first,” his mother said, meeting Deborah’s gaze with a maddening calm.

  “What?” Deborah pressed a hand against the lump in the padded envelope, as if she could keep it, the awful idea of the thing, sealed inside.

  The boy’s stomach growled again—a deep rumble, with a high-pitched trailing squeak. Deborah didn’t lean forward to look, didn’t strain to see any rips in the sodden bandage, or pink talon-tipped limbs that might have wriggled through a moist opening.

  “The others from the nest come a little later,” the frail, confident woman continued.

  “Usually a lot later,” Nicholas said.

  “Yes.” A
slight smile pushed faint creases into her pinched face. “That’s why I didn’t ask you to send him home right away. I thought we had more time.”

  Deborah tried to stare Mrs. Carlisle down, too stubborn to acknowledge the full meaning of the words. She considered the usual concern of overly religious parents—that their kid might be exposed to liberal, corrupting ideals. Perhaps, in her own twisted sense of morality, Mrs. Carlisle had damaged her son’s personality to protect other kids from his influence.

  Nicholas probably never even met his father; his mother may have encountered him only once, and even then may not have dared to face him. She wondered if Mrs. Carlisle’s boy could pronounce his father’s name, or if he could at least recognize it in print, hidden somewhere in the most ancient of his books—guttural consonants, missing vowels, horrible eliding apostrophes.

  She tried not to count the wet drops against the floorboards, refused to register the taut scratch of small talons into the upholstery along the back of her chair.

  A quick glance revealed Nicholas pressed tight and motionless to the side of his chair, torso turned away and his head bent sickly over the chair’s arm. A thick wet line arced away from the front of the chair then diffused into small droplets along the floorboards—paint from a soaked brush, blotted, smeared, then lifted from the canvas in a slow, dwindling trail.

  Then Deborah heard the boy’s stomach growling again. This time the sound came from behind her.