by L. A. Fields
“Tongue,” she said, “so disgusting.”
Mike laughed, got the glass of water he must have come in for, and walked out again. Nadine put down Noah’s dinner, moved the picture aside as she did so. The smack had made Noah flinch. One of the eggs had a big brown scrawl right through it, ruining the whole thing.
Noah ate his dinner quickly, could taste nothing in his mouth except the salt of Nadine’s palm and the form and shape of his food.
When done, Noah said with as much authority he could muster, “I’m taking my picture to Mommy.”
Nadine excused him with a wave. He could hear her murmuring in German he didn’t know yet, a sound that mingled with the tap and clack of dishes in the sink. She was cleaning up before she went home. Noah ascended the stairs to find his mother.
It was impossible to know if she was sleeping from the doorway of her room. She was always in bed, always breathing deeply and seemingly restful. Sometimes she had a book over there, some headphones plugged in, and sometimes she was sleeping, any time of the day or night, it didn’t matter.
Noah walked in quietly with the picture held facing him. She opened her eyes when he approached, and smiled.
“I made you this.” Noah handed over the picture, irritated but trying not to show it in front of her. “This part was an accident, but I made it for you.”
“Thank you, I love it.” She looked more at him than at the picture as she said this. She patted the bed beside her. “Hop up.”
Noah did. Mommy’s bed always had sort of a sour-sweet smell, like a not-quite-gone-over cantaloupe, but Noah didn’t mind. He crawled over her so he could curl up in the space closest to the wall, but was careful not to put any of his weight on Mommy’s body.
Like robin’s eggs, Mommy was delicate.
4
WHEN RAY WAS FOUR YEARS AND eleven months old, he was taken to his first baseball game at Wrigley Field. It was meant to be a present for his fifth birthday, since he was ‘practically five’ according to Dad. He became practically a lot of things after that.
“I’m practically asleep,” he would say when his nanny asked him why he wasn’t in bed yet.
“I’m practically done,” he would assure when someone pointed out at dinner that he hadn’t touched his vegetables.
“I’m practically grown up!” he would shout when the real grown-ups saw through this ploy, and forced their will on him anyway.
Ray’s Uncle Sid took him to his first Cubs game, after his father got them both tickets. It was a scheduling nightmare to clear a whole day just to treat one kid, so birthday treats happened whenever they were most convenient, with whomever was available at the time.
The cratered space of the stadium was the biggest thing Ray had ever seen, the diamond-patterned grass of the field reminded him of a snake, and the sun and air seemed different up in the seats than it did on the streets, seemed freer. Ray envied that.
Ray was five years and one month old the second time he went to a baseball game, and by this time he had learned how to lie. No more practically anything, things either were or weren’t, according to Ray’s word. In the past few weeks his teeth had gone unbrushed, his bed unmade, his vitamins hidden in his mouth to be flushed away later, unswallowed. All his life he had been so beholden to the truth, angered by it, insistent on it, but it turned out lying was so much faster and easier, and no one yet suspected him.
Getting into the car after the second game, Uncle Sid asked Ray which game he had liked better.
Ray said, “I’ve only been to one.” It wasn’t a lie that could get him anything he wanted, as far as he knew, but it was always good to practice. In fact, just then he was in the back seat, only holding his seatbelt across his body, not fastening it. He could get away with anything, if he wanted to.
“You don’t remember coming here before?” Uncle Sid asked. Ray thought for a moment he was turning around to look at Ray in total disbelief, but he was only backing out.
“No,” Ray told his Uncle Sid’s jowly face.
“You don’t remember how we could see into the dugout, or that big hot dog with the sparklers on it? You don’t remember those sparklers?”
“No.” Ray absolutely remembered those sparklers. He was disappointed that they hadn’t made a reappearance this time, but last time was a special occasion, and today was just an occasion. He hadn’t gotten a baseball cupcake with a candle sticking out of it either, come to think of it. This game was definitely less exciting than the last.
“Well, that’s too bad,” said Uncle Sid. “It would have been a really nice memory.”
It became a topic of conversation that night at dinner, the question of when kids formed their first lifelong memory. Among the adults it was asked: what was everyone’s oldest memory?
“I was four or five,” Mother said, touching her hair and neck excessively, the way she did whenever she drank out of the tulip glasses that were for grown-ups only. “I tried to run away through my window and I pushed the screen out? Then I just sat down and cried in the mirror thinking I had broken it and that my mother was going to hate me. My father came around and snapped it back in without telling her though. Or maybe he did tell her, I guess it wasn’t as big a catastrophe as I thought it was then.”
“I remember stealing a toy race car from some kid in the first grade,” said Dad. “Who was that weird kid who always wore the shirt with Saturn on it?”
“You mean the kid who later beat you for valedictorian, Al?” Sid said. “Yeah, I’m really sure you forgot his name.”
The adults all laughed, and Dad made his hand into the symbol Ray’s brothers told him meant bird. Ray made his own bird, with much difficulty, in solidarity and salute. This got his brothers laughing too, and Mother swatted at Dad as she cupped her other hand around Ray’s and told him, “That’s not a nice thing to do.”
Sid started telling his own story about a youthful bike crash that gave him his one crooked tooth, and Ray sat in the midst of all this commotion, ecstatic.
Dinnertime was always so boring, usually involving conversation about news or business, or what the older boys did at school, but this? Laughter, volume, focus on Ray the likes of which he usually only got when he was in trouble . . . this was awesome.
This would be his first memory.
5
WHEN NOAH WAS SIX YEARS old, he was enrolled in Our Lady of the Snowfall, an all-girls Catholic school nine blocks from his family’s home. Well, there was one other boy in attendance, but he was older, and he and Noah didn’t associate. It was a circumstance that had come about in a lot of little ways.
Noah’s au pair had run him through every pre-school test there was, had taught him concepts up to second grade comprehension before he was old enough for kindergarten, and it was time—she insisted—that he start getting real schooling so he wouldn’t lose the advantage he had because of all her hard work. Everyone was agreeable to the idea of starting the boy in school, even Noah, but his mother didn’t want him going too far away. She didn’t want him crossing streets or taking buses, she didn’t want so much of their time together to be eaten away by meaningless travel. School was good for him, but lengthy transport? She desired that be kept to a minimum. Noah’s father insisted on the best school they could find: highest test scores, newest facilities, best college placement years down the line for the kids. Only one school met all of their requirements.
Sure, Snowfall was all girls, but it was in the process of (very slowly) integrating boys. It was Catholic in foundation and insisted on school-wide moments of prayer three times a day, but religious classes were not mandatory if the family chose to opt out. It cost quite a bit of money, but so it should! There were nutritionists in the cafeteria, former Chicago police guarding the grounds, and PhDs throughout the faculty. Snowfall was proposed, considered, accepted. At six years old Noah started second grade classes, and thus began the most peaceful period of his life.
Were the girls mean? Yes, sometimes, but mostly to each
other.
Were their questions very intrusive? Yes, but they did value honesty.
Was Noah in high demand during recess? Absolutely, he was (for once in his life) incredibly popular.
“We’re playing princesses! You have to be the king,” screamed the bossiest girl, Jessica, on the very first day. “Here’s your crown.” The crown was two spiky, branching twigs tucked behind his ears. “This is your cape.” She tied the sleeves of someone’s red jacket over his shoulders. “Go to the top of the jungle gym and you judge the princess contest for who gets to marry the prince, okay?”
Noah stood on the top platform of the metal play structure, gripped the safety rail’s smooth candy-colored coating, and looked out over what felt to him like acres of a wood-chip carpeted kingdom, voting up or down with his thumbs. The power of it, the towering height, the way the girls all listened to him even if they didn’t like what he decided, because he was special. It was clear to him right there and then that being special was the best way to be.
But of course, heavy is the head that wears the crown. He witnessed tantrums the likes of which he had never thrown himself—hysterical, drenched in real tears. He had to suffer the indignity of being demoted from king to prince for the wedding ceremony to Jessica (he had picked her because he knew her best, and because she seemed like precisely the wrong person to slight). Jessica pulled three tissues from a pack in her lunch box and fixed them around her head with a polka-dotted headband for her veil. The favored girls in her hen clutch became bridesmaids and her frenemies became groomsmen (if they didn’t stop playing entirely). Noah had to hold hands and recite vows for the rest of recess, but it wasn’t so bad. At least he wasn’t being made fun of, or ignored, or stripped and examined as his brothers had told him might happen.
“You know girls don’t have anything down there,” Mike told him in the weeks approaching his first day.
“It’s flat and smooth,” confirmed Sam, “just take the clothes off one of their dolls sometime, we’re not making this stuff up.”
“They’re going to want to see your Thing,” they assured him.
Mike nodded sagely as they had the last of these talks the night before Noah’s first day. “It’s just a natural curiosity, but like, they’re not going to ask, they’re just going to tackle you at some point, probably.”
“And you know, one by one they’re not that strong,” Sam added, “but they’re all going to be older than you, and there will be a lot of them where you’re going.”
“Yep, you’re going to be on their turf, Noah, so just . . . be prepared.”
Both boys patted him fraternally on the shoulder before walking out of his room and bursting into laughter. For all their warnings, Noah guessed they thought it was pretty funny that he was about to be humiliated and exposed.
But no one wanted to look at his Thing; its secret presence did cause the girls to treat him differently than they treated each other, but the Thing never had to be verified or even spoken of, much to Noah’s relief. It didn’t occur to him until well after he got home that his brothers had been lying to him. And he didn’t think to ask for the real facts until weeks into the school year, walking home with Nadine on a mid-week day.
“Do girls have Things?” he asked her abruptly, so abruptly that she hissed between her teeth before answering him, an indication of her displeasure. He had also pointed at his own crotch, so she wouldn’t misunderstand him.
“No,” she said.
“They really are flat down there? Like dolls?” He had investigated some of the dolls in the play area at school—sure enough, be they made of cloth or plastic, every one had nothing but a smooth plane of nothing.
“Not flat. Girls have two holes like you only have one. Your brothers know that for sure.”
“Oh. I thought they were lying,” Noah told Nadine, hoping she wouldn’t think he was stupid.
“Schweine,” she mumbled as she patted Noah’s head kindly. “They lie but you don’t. You’re a good boy.”
Noah nodded. Good, yes, and possibly the best. Being the only boy those first few years made it very hard not to be the best one. It gave him a taste for it.
6
WHEN RAY WAS NINE YEARS old, he became an older brother. His next older brother, Eric, was starting high school. The brother above that, Allen, was about to graduate high school. Enter Tommy: squalling, pink, hot, heavy, awful, and he wouldn’t be interesting enough for Ray to interact with for years. It was like someone sank a bowling ball into a bathtub full of warm, resting water; he displaced everything in Ray’s perfect life.
Ray’s playroom? It became a nursery once more, and Ray was encouraged to play outside. The babying he was used to? Robbed from him, he was expected to behave significantly better than ever before. Ray’s nanny became Tommy’s nanny, and Ray? He got a tutor instead.
“Who is she?” he demanded of his mother when an interviewing visit was announced.
“Keep your voice down,” his mother told him with the quiet, foreboding voice she used only in malls, grocery stores, and grandma’s house—it was the you-will-not-embarrass-Mommy-in-front-of-other-adults voice. Ray despised this voice. It meant his mother was completely immune to all his tricks and charms.
“I don’t want her! I don’t need a tutor!”
“Hey, the baby is sleeping, can you get him under control?” Ray’s father asked. He was here to meet the tutor lady, Tracy, and make sure she fit in well with their family goals. He kept checking his watch, adjusting his tie; he had somewhere to be very soon. ‘Family goals’ was Ray’s mother’s phrase. Ray’s father didn’t believe he was required for this particular chore. He was impatient. Mother was irritated. Ray was inflamed with injustice.
“I don’t like her!”
“You haven’t even met her yet,” Father said, sitting down just as the doorbell rang, on one of the chairs no one ever used because they faced nothing but the front door.
Ray’s mother took a firm but even clamp on Ray’s upper arm, the kind of hold that hurt but wouldn’t leave bruises, and brought him with her towards the door.
Ray twisted his own arm violently, an animal in a trap that must lose a limb or be clubbed to death by an approaching hunter. His mother’s face came close to his, her mouth opened to scold him, but she hesitated for a moment at his unreasonable ferocity, and in that hesitation Ray was able to escape.
Ray dangled all his weight off his arm, which forced his mother to lower him to the ground lest he twist it right off, and let him go.
Ray shot up off the ground as everyone moved into place around him, his mother to the door with a soul-shaking sigh, his father to the balls of his feet, robotically happy when greeting another employee. Ray’s well-behaved brothers, including baby Tommy in the arms of a woman Ray now considered a traitor, filed down the stairs as Ray himself rushed up, and into his former playroom.
He delivered a smack to his rocking horse for being there, vigilant, but never moving to help. He snatched his telescope from its stand by the sunny window, returned to the ground, and army-crawled back into the hallway. He could hear his parents apologizing to this tutor, this Tracy, before he was close enough to see through the banister. He poked the telescope out through the slats to get a good look at this new lady. He needed to get the measure of her before she got the jump on him.
Ray first got this telescope a year before. He used it like a theater prop for the first two months he had it, half the time not even looking through the lens when he held it up to his eye, playing detective or pirate or sniper. It came with a tripod and was probably meant to stay installed and stationary, but Ray preferred to take it with him bike-riding and tree-climbing. He carried it around like a baton.
When Ray finally realized its intended purpose, it was like he’d invented it all on his own. It’s just that he hadn’t seen anything interesting enough in the real world to want a good look at it—didn’t know how to hunt or stalk yet, didn’t know how to spy—until this stranger wa
lked into his house, looking for him.
“Raymond is being a brat right now,” his mother said to a tall woman with glasses on a chain around her neck and a large backpack that looked wildly out of place on an adult. “These are our other boys.”
Ray watched them shake hands, coo at the baby some, and start talking child-rearing as the grown men fled in three separate directions.
Eric came up the stairs and swatted Ray on the head when he spotted him in his crow’s nest at the top of the steps, messing up the boy’s neatly parted hair.
“Mom’s gonna kill you if you don’t go down there soon,” he said. “Take your homework with you if you want to avoid punishment, you’re supposed to start with her today.”
“I don’t want to!”
Eric snorted at him, and before shutting himself back into his room, told Ray, “That didn’t save me and Allen and it sure as hell won’t help you. Now go study.”
Ray took in an outraged breath, one that reached all the way to the floor, where his knees were getting carpet burn. He knew his brother was right; the longer he left his mother making excuses for him, the sorrier he would be.
Defeated and bitter, he let fall his telescope and got his school folders from his room. The trudge downstairs was as grim a march as he had ever taken. He walked into the dining room just as he heard Tracy saying, “It’s never too early to prepare for college,” and looked her square in the eye.
“There’s our young man,” Tracy said with a nod. He nodded back at her. “Sit down, we have a lot of work to do.”
7
WHEN NOAH WAS ELEVEN YEARS old, the number three woman in his life got fired.
It was a given variable that Nadine would have to leave eventually, because of course Noah would grow up and no longer need anyone governing him day to day. His brothers had sloughed off their care-takers by the time they entered middle school, so once the summer of his eleventh year was upon Noah, he expected Nadine to move on. To another kid, maybe, or to another city, or maybe go home to Germany where her sister still lived, maybe get married. She was in her thirties by this time, and she talked often to Noah about her married friends, the age stats of her peer group, women who had gotten married at nineteen, at twenty-three, at twenty-six . . . at some point already. “I am around suited young men all day,” she would say about Noah and his brothers, snatching at their cheeks for a pinch, “but I am never married.”