Sucking Up Yellow Jackets

by Jeanne Denault

  “I can see why it occurred to you.” He paused to write on something in a folder in his lap. When he looked up his eyes narrowed slightly as though he were trying to see me clearly. “Why six children?”

  “His family life was pretty grim. He didn’t get along with his brother or his mom and his father was away a lot of the time, and Pete once mentioned how lucky the six kids were in the family two doors away because there was always someone they could turn to for help when their parents turned weird and gave them a hard time.”

  Chapter 16

  I had regular in-class meetings with Max’s teachers. The school had interior courtyards so the children could have the benefit of outdoor air—sulfur fumes included—without escaping. I was in the courtyard one visiting day. Max was behind me stacking large wood squares. His teacher was describing his normal school day. Every few seconds she flicked her glance up, clearly a nervous tic. It was disconcerting. I fought the impulse to look around. I didn’t want to embarrass her. One of the boys whined and yanked her skirt. “Why can’t I do it?”

  The teacher adopted a super-patient voice that verged on long-suffering. “Now, Josh. What did I tell you yesterday?”

  “It’s not fair. How come he gets to do it?”

  “Because he proved he can do it without falling.”

  Feeling dread, I didn’t want to turn around but I did. Max was going hand over hand along the gutter. He was already ten feet from the block ramp he had built to reach the gutter.

  Josh shrieked with frustration, kicked the blocks into a heap and threw himself on the flagstones in a full-fledged tantrum.

  Max looked at the scattered heap of blocks. For the first time he seemed to grasp that his swinging feet were a long way from the ground. He looked at me with mute appeal. I moved toward him. The teacher stopped me. “No, Max has to figure this out himself.” She looked up. “Max, what did we do when Josh kicked over the blocks yesterday?”

  “I jumped into the sand pile.” He was cringing. He hated getting sand in his clothes.

  The teacher nodded. “That’s right. Go to the sand pile, curl up in a ball and drop. Remember to roll when you land.”

  I did my best to keep my face encouraging. I fervently hoped the teacher knew what she was doing. I also hoped their insurance would pay Max’s hospital bill if he broke a limb. We were strapped just paying the tuition.

  Josh stopped kicking and screaming, climbed up on the picnic table in the middle of the courtyard, unzipped his fly, pulled out his penis, announced he had to pee RIGHT NOW and did. The teacher looked at him. “Josh, we discussed this yesterday. You know where we empty our bladders. It isn’t in the courtyard.” She motioned to her assistant. “Molly, as soon as Josh is finished would you please take him to the lavatory so he can wash his hands?”

  By the time the teacher turned back to Max, he was above the large sand pile in the corner. He stared down at it then looked at me hoping I would over-ride the teacher. It was hard but I said, “You can do it.”

  The teacher nodded with approval. “We’re teaching him consequences. He has a problem with the concept.”

  The psychologist had said we should encourage Max to follow his own instincts and do our best to stop telling him he was wrong when he behaved in ways we couldn’t predict. Every time Max went beyond the parameters we considered appropriate for his behavior, we were to acknowledge his right to make some of his own rules and back off unless what he was doing could cause him to get hurt or harm someone else. This may have worked in a controlled and finite school setting but was harder than it sounded out in the real world.

  The concept drove my mother-in-law wild. She didn’t have a permissive bone in her body. She was a strong believer in immediate harsh punishment. She told us we were ruining him. She may have been right but I hadn’t noticed what we did or didn’t do made much difference to Max. He liked approval, particularly from Pete but not enough to alter his behavior.

  Being permissive with Max yet expecting the other kids to follow rules just made the other kids resent him even more. It might have had some benefit in the long run but seemed to increase the havoc in an already chaotic family. So we went back to doing our best to help Max follow the norms that would be expected in the real world. We weren’t too successful.

  The evening after the school visit where Max did his handover-hand along the drain and dropped into the sand box, I told Pete how I had spent my day. He looked at me with a disgusted expression. “That’s what goes on in the normal nursery division? I guess we should be glad Max isn’t in the ‘sub-normal’ or ‘really whacked-out’ nurseries.”

  I knew his comment wasn’t politically correct but I couldn’t help laughing.

  Chapter 17

  The agency where Pete worked had a client whose major product was ice cream. From April until September this account generated enough work to keep an artist working full-time. Each year the agency had to decide which artist would be pulled from his regular accounts to handle this. It was an unpopular assignment. The head art director for the ice cream account was the heavy-drinking man whose work I had finished at the dinner party in Levittown. After testing me with a few more freelance projects, he asked me if I could take on a large portion of the artwork for the ice cream account this year.

  I was delighted. I lined up baby sitters I knew I could trust, enrolled Max in the day camp recommended by the nursery school and felt like a person with a past and a future.

  My favorite part of the day was lunch. The idea that I could eat when and what I wanted was heady. No more peanut butter and jelly or toasted cheese and tomato soup lunches. I had a drawing board and phone line at the agency and my regular board at home.

  Like Cinderella, I had a non-negotiable curfew. I left at three o’clock to collect Max at camp, took the baby sitter home and made dinner. The first week or so this made the art directors uneasy but I always took home any pending jobs and had them done and delivered the first thing in the morning, so they relaxed.

  The first time I spent the night cradling the head of a child with stomach flu, it took all my will to go through my normal morning routine, dress properly and show up at the agency without commenting on my all-nighter-with-sick-kid exhaustion.

  When I first started working, Pete had said, “Don’t ever discuss your problems with the kids at work. You’re suspect already because you’re a woman with a family working in a man’s job. No matter what goes on at home, show up with a smile on your face and a positive attitude. That’s what men do.”

  That turned out to be wise advice. Any time I complained to Pete about being overwhelmed, he shrugged and said, “You don’t have to work . ” I knew he was right. I was the one going against the norms of the time.

  I should have spent more time figuring out the significance of his insistence that he was the only one who had to work outside the home. But I didn’t. I just worked harder and took pride in the fact that I made it look easy. 1958 was not a time when women won points for working outside the home unless they were widowed. The sad thing about the era was that the women were their own worst enemies. I was fortunate I worked in a field where there were more or less set prices for different jobs no matter who did them. Salaried women fared far worse even if they were the only provider for the family. Gender discrimination was a fact of life. In the late fifties the ceiling holding women ‘in their place’ was made of government-approved cast iron.

  The need to please had been beaten into my marrow from the moment the doctor grabbed my heels, lifted me up as far as the umbilical cord would stretch and said, “You have a little girl.” Even when I was so tired I had to concentrate so I didn’t walk into walls, I felt compelled to cook the way I always had to prove I wasn’t neglecting my family. A well-cooked meal was the only accomplishment Pete ever praised. This spurred my efforts. No take-out or pre-packaged food in my house. My macaroni and cheese began with an impeccably smooth white sauce. We had pies and puddings I made from scratch for dessert: the p
uddings were topped with custard sauce or real whipped cream, the pies with ice cream.

  I knew this was a failing on my part. Why did I need to make the point over and over that I hadn’t lowered my standards just because I was working long hours?

  I had never heard the term super mom. I don’t think it had been invented in the late 1950s. I sometimes wonder now if I would have needed to keep proving I was very good at all the expected womanly attributes if Max had been just another normal little boy instead of an off-the-wall child who was noticed, criticized and automatically assumed to be raised by an uncaring, incompetent mother. In the time period stretching from 1950 to well into the 1980s, fathers weren’t factored into the blame equation for difficult children unless they were gutter-draping drunks or child beaters. Every psychologist’s diagnosis from profound autism to schizophrenia was blamed on the mother’s alleged coldness and secret lack of love for her children. It was this ‘secret’ bit that got mothers coming and going. A woman could appear to be the most instinctively warm, maternal person imaginable and still qualify as a ‘refrigerator mom’ because some man with a doctorate in psychology or psychiatry had decided mothers were the root of all mental aberrations.

  Pete counted on my need to be an impressive cook. He often brought the men in his group home for supper when they had to work late. The men were funny and appreciative. I enjoyed the meals but found the clean-up daunting when I had to wash dishes and ready the kitchen for breakfast before I could even start the hours of work waiting on my drawing board. No one ever offered to help. Pete was a charismatic alpha male and this was his home turf. Any man who felt awkward about leaving me with a mess was intimidated by Pete’s implied message that men in his house didn’t do dishes.

  Some ornery part of my mind knew the whole terrific cook routine was feeding into an agenda Pete had in mind. I began small rebellions. One evening after putting in a day working at the agency, I cooked and served Pete and two men from the office a crab and fresh mushroom quiche and steamed new asparagus with hollandaise sauce. When I had cleared the plates and poured coffee for everyone, I brought out a still warm lemon pudding cake then sat down and put my napkin back in my lap. Pete looked at me with the bereft expression of a little boy who had just discovered his Christmas present was mittens his mom had made and said, “Didn’t you make poured custard?”

  I looked at him and wondered what was going through his mind. Not wanting to embarrass the two guests, I just said, “No. I never make it with lemon pudding cake. There’s heavy cream in the fridge if you want.” I started eating my pudding.

  He frowned and said, “I would like cream, if that’s all you have.”

  Knowing he expected me to get up and get the cream, I said, “It’s behind the milk.” And took another bite of pudding. He never did get the cream. But we all paid for my brief rebellion.

  He and the two men went back to the office. I was asleep on the couch when he came home. He didn’t answer when I said, “Hi.” The next morning he was still not speaking to me. I just hoped he would get out of the house without lashing out at the kids. Max was down in the basement watching TV by the time I dragged myself downstairs. He liked to watch Sunrise Semester. I figured as long as he wasn’t watching horror movies, I had no objection to morning TV. He seemed to have lost interest in escaping now that he had an outlet in nursery school and camp but I didn’t push my luck. I didn’t unlock the doors until I heard Pete getting out of the shower.

  We had only one bathroom so I always showered, dressed and had breakfast ready by the time Pete appeared. Morning wasn’t his best time of day so I rarely said anything.

  Since I had to pick up the baby sitter and take Max to camp, Pete always left before I did and walked or took the bus. His feet appeared at the top of the open stairwell dividing the living and dining rooms. Freshly showered and shaved, he walked down to the first floor with a measured step. The scent of bay rum followed him into the kitchen. Damn! He was a great-looking man. I would have loved to stroke his smooth cheek but I checked my impulse. Even if he weren’t feeling crabby this morning, he hated affectionate moves unless they were a precursor to sex.

  I handed him the cup of black coffee I’d poured when I first heard his step on the stairs. He took it without acknowledging me then grabbed the plate with his freshly buttered English muffin still hot from the toaster.

  Max said, “Dad, the sun makes corphil in leaves. This gives trees energy.”

  Pete’s face twisted into a sneer. “Where the hell did you get that piece of misinformation?”

  Max’s face still had the wonder of an explorer who had just found treasure. I realized he hadn’t picked up on Pete’s contempt yet but he would before Pete got through with him. “The man on TV said that.”

  Max’s innocence made him too vulnerable. I had told Pete his criticism made Max feel devastated. The poor kid was only four years old. Why couldn’t Pete give him the credit he deserved? But Pete couldn’t seem to help himself. “Stop saying stupid things. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Corphil, for Christ’s sake. If you’re going to spout shit you don’t know anything about at least learn to say it right. It’s chlorophyll, not corphil.”

  Coming from Pete’s mouth corphil sounded like a four-letter word. A stunned look crossed Max’s face.

  I tried to distract Pete. “Do you want more coffee?” He put the half-full cup of coffee on the top of the brick wall separating the kitchen from the dining room and walked out without replying. As usual, he bent and nuzzled Seth before he left.

  I automatically went through the normal early morning routine all the while wondering why I had married a man with such a mean streak. I drove Max out to camp on auto-pilot while I tried to decide if I even realized before we were married that he had this capacity to deliberately hurt people.

  Everyone had the capacity to lash out if provoked beyond some set point but they usually recognized they had gone over a line, felt guilty and tried to make amends. Pete seemed to be unaware of the consequences of his nastiness. Or was this assumption of his innocence just my attempt to excuse his behavior?

  I eventually had to face the fact that I had seen his cruel sarcastic side before we were married. But it was always directed at me. And for some reason I made the choice to see the wit, not the cruelty. Directed at my child, I saw only the cruelty.

  Chapter 18

  Pete had always dreamed of owning a sailboat. A man he worked with grew up around boats, loved sailing and nurtured the same dream. The two men joined forces and bought a Comet, a sixteen-foot racing sloop with a movable centerboard. It was a sleek boat easily sailed by two people. Pete insisted it was something the whole family would enjoy. He and the friend hauled the boat to a mooring on the bay side of Long Beach Island on the New Jersey shore. Because it was a small racing sloop that would be affected by even a minor number of barnacles, the boat had to be dropped into the water and hauled back out and hosed off each time it was taken out in the saltwater bay. It had a shallow draft when the centerboard was up but still drew enough water so it could only be launched and pulled out of the water at high tide. When it wasn’t in use, it sat on a trailer in a boat parking lot with a tarp lashed around it.

  High tide came at ridiculous hours of the day and night. I got sea-sick on a porch swing unless I was the one pushing it so I was not dying to go sailing. And the kids were too young to have any interest. They did love the beach but even this wore thin fast when one of the kids needed a lavatory and nothing on the island was open. There weren’t even thickets of bushes that were not in someone’s yard.

  When it was warm enough to get out of the car, Seth dug in the sand. Max threw horseshoe crabs back into the bay the poor creatures had just spent hours wriggling out of and Linda and I stared at each other in bored frustration.

  It took me a lot of middle-of-the-night-trips to Long Beach Island nestled in the back seat of the Beetle with three sleeping children to convince Pete I was not being a spoilsport w
hen I pointed out Comets were not family-friendly day sailors. I finally made him understand it was okay to go sailing without the family in tow. I could see I was blasting another dream he had nurtured. He had one last try at making the boat a family affair and shanghaied Max into going sailing. Max was thrilled. For once he didn’t have to compete for Pete’s attention. The man who co-owned the boat thought Max was delightful. It looked as though it would be a perfect day for everyone.

  One of the well-known aspects of the bay between Long Beach Island and the mainland was the freaky aspect of wind directions. These changed frequently without warning or logic. The two men launched the boat without any problem and sailed back and forth for a few hours. Then one of the area’s freak storms blew up. Because the tide had dropped by this point the water at the ramp was too shallow to get the boat out of the water. Comets were sensitive boats. This was part of the reason they were fun to sail but they were no good in high seas. The two men lashed Max to the mast and spent the next few hours desperately trying not to get swamped and sink. Max was thrown from side to side and understandably certain the boat was about to sink. He shrieked in a high thin wail because he couldn’t make these two dumb men understand this very obvious fact. Lashed to the mast he couldn’t jump overboard and swim to shore. He was way on the far side of abject terror. Tacking desperately and using every bit of skill they possessed, the two men finally sailed the boat through the narrow slip before the next high tide had run back out. They untied Max, hauled the boat out of the water, washed it and battened it down. Too exhausted to sluice themselves off, they arrived at the house an hour and a half later still coated with rime. White and stiffened by hours of salt spray, every hair stood out. They looked like the old men with bristling eyebrows who frequented the Irish bar on the corner.

  Max was still shaking.