Jennifer Haigh

by Condition

  Dear God.

  Clothed, she could face the world. But nobody had seen her naked in years. She remembered with a pang the way Frank used to undress her, the hungry way he'd looked at her. Keep the lights on. Let me see you. After the divorce, with Donald Large, she'd been more reserved. She was forty then, and already self-conscious. His words had reassured her, a steady stream of sweet compliments that soothed like a gentle rain. And there was this: his own body was far from perfect.

  Perhaps that's why she'd chosen him in the first place.

  They'd met at an antiques show in Hartford, Connecticut. Both had arrived early, before the doors opened. Donald offered her espresso from his thermos, his breath steaming in the cold. He was twenty years older, but still handsome. She learned that he lived alone, widowed and childless, in an antiques-filled house in Cos Cob. From the outset they were inseparable. Thinking of him she remembered the clear blue skies of autumn, long drives on Sunday afternoons. On pleasant fall days they drove deep into Vermont and New Hampshire, browsing, sometimes buying. They traveled in Donald's van, outfitted with built-in shelving to accommodate their purchases. Always Paulette took the wheel. Unlike her ex-husband, Donald considered her a fine driver. He did not bark instructions or clutch the dashboard or tap insistently with his right foot, as if hitting an invisible brake. Instead he napped or read to her, poetry or essays, the editorial page of the newspaper. They spent long days at the shows, tireless in their enthusiasm.

  Afterward they retired to a lovely country inn, to nap before dinner, to read or daydream or simply talk. It had struck Paulette, then, that this was the marriage her younger self had wanted. Donald was softspoken and thoughtful, loving and refined. He dressed wonderfully—corduroy trousers and beautiful sweaters, soft leather shoes he bought each summer in Italy. He petted and praised her, and never criticized; he cherished her exactly as she was. He loved her for more than her body. How sad, how cruelly funny that she'd met him now, when her older self had different needs.

  At first they made love occasionally, and later not at all. She'd been shocked to discover, a year into their relationship, that he'd had two heart attacks, that he injected insulin twice a day. If he'd told her these things at the beginning, would she still have fallen in love with him? He'd asked her this once near the end, as she drove him to the hospital for dialysis. Of course, dear, she said softly. He had deceived her, and now he wanted reassurance that she hadn't minded. She had no choice but to give it. He was a sick man.

  Would she have fallen in love with him anyway?

  Paulette had no idea. He hadn't given her a chance to find out.

  Now the thrill of undressing for a man was lost to her forever.

  She allowed herself to imagine it, a young man like Gil Pyle caressing her withered breasts. Why on earth would he want to? And even if he did, how could she bear to be seen in this condition?

  In that moment the truth dawned on her. No one would ever touch her again.

  To live another twenty or thirty years untouched and unloved: it seemed impossible that this was what nature intended. Her whole life Paulette had believed in a natural order, nature a loving mother, wise and provident. Yet aging and childbearing were natural processes.

  There was no escaping it: her ruined body was nature's work.

  Nature was not kind.

  She realized, of course, that not every life unfolded as hers had.

  Couples could grow old together. Paulette remembered Frank as he'd looked on Christmas Eve, his eyes hooded, his red hair dusted pink.

  Age hadn't spared him either. But Paulette had known him young and handsome, his athlete's shoulders, the square cut of his jaw. In her mind the two pictures blended together. The result was something infinitely kinder than what a stranger saw.

  Paulette thought of Rand and Barbara Marsh, Wall and Tricia James: couples her own age, couples who'd endured. After so many years, did these husbands and wives still look at each other, still want each other? Perhaps that was what nature intended. No woman of fifty-six should have to undress for a new lover. She should be spared that anguish.

  There was nothing wrong with nature's plan. It was Frank and Paulette who had failed.

  Late fall, a raw November. A steady rain soaks the dormant lawns of Newton, Massachusetts, where Scotty and his sister have been taken, as they are every Sunday, to visit their grandparents. They have kissed Mamie, answered the usual adult questions about classes and teachers. Now they are watching televison.

  (Where is Billy in all of this? He is often missing from Scott's recollections of childhood. Was his brother often elsewhere? Or did Scott's memory simply edit him out?)

  Scotty and Gwen are planted in front of the old Philco, a heavy cabinet model. Their grandparents are the only people alive who still have black and white. The set is kept in what Mamie calls the sitting room, a small second-floor bedroom at the rear of the house. The TV is hidden away like an unmentionable relative—blinded by syphilis, crippled by some shameful defect. Papa and Mamie were of a generation that found television extraneous. It had arrived in their middle age, and they were unwilling to reorder their lives around it. The parlor had so many other uses—bridge, reading, drinking. A television would simply have gotten in the way.

  That Sunday afternoon, Scotty lies stretched out on the uncomfortable old sofa, what Mamie calls the divan. Gwen sprawls on the floor, close enough to change the channel when they get bored. The TV has rabbit-ear antennae and receives four channels, five on a good day. This is not a good day.

  The choices are few and grainy. A cooking show, a football game, an old man preaching a sermon. Sunday movies are ancient and nearly always boring, soldiers or cowboys or detectives wearing hats. Once in a while they find a monster terrorizing Japanese people. Mothra is Scotty's favorite.

  They stumble upon a movie already in progress. A blond girl lies sleeping, satiny sheets pulled demurely to her chin. Her lips are dark; a marceled wave dips over one eye. A stranger approaches her bedside, a man swathed in a black cape. Like the girl, he wears red lipstick. He creeps closer. The actress is a blond ingénue, her name relegated to obscurity. Bela Lugosi bends toward her. With a great flourish he buries his face in her neck.

  At that moment, in his grandparents' sitting room—threadbare oriental rug, doilies on every flat surface—Scott experiences his first little-boy boner. (That such a thing is possible at eight—Ian's age—will later astonish him.) He feels an odd euphoria, a lifting and a lofting. He is not aware of wanting anything. He wouldn't know what to want.

  "This is boring," says Gwen, reaching to change the channel.

  "No!" Scotty springs from the couch and pounces on his sister.

  At eight he is already bigger, but she is quick and feisty. She wriggles furiously, her white throat arching.

  "Get off me, you little freak!"

  He does not break the skin, but still he bites in earnest. The next day a purplish mark appears like a smudge on her skin.

  Darling, what happened? their mother asks at breakfast.

  Nothing, Gwen says with what will become her trademark opacity.

  Her flat tone discourages further questions. His sister is not a crybaby, a trait Scotty honors. Gwen can keep a secret.

  It is the beginning of his career as a biter. Around boys he is reasonably well-behaved. It is girls who provoke him. At Pilgrims Country Day no third-grade girl is safe, though some are safer than others: Carolyn Underwood, with her eczema; Madeleine Hopewell, whose fingers are always in her nose. His teacher Miss Terry tries to contain him, which only aggravates the problem. Miss Terry is young and pretty; her behind jiggles when she writes on the chalkboard. The jiggling, her blond hair, her pale blushing skin that reminds him, mysteriously, of strawberries. All this agitates him.

  Many years later, summoned to a bright classroom at Walker Elementary School, he remembered the jiggling behind of Miss Terry, how he would have given anything to bite her neck. His son's teacher, Ms. Lister (they
were all Ms. now) would prompt no such impulse. She was a pale, doughy young woman who managed to look both overfed and undernourished. Her lank hair, pulled back with a barrette, seemed to be thinning. There was a crusty white residue at the corners of her mouth. On a good-looking woman this might seem sexual. On Meredith Lister it suggested toothpaste, or a vitamin deficiency.

  Listerine, he thought. Listeria. Yet compared to the classrooms of his childhood, Ms. Lister's looked quite aseptic. At Pilgrims the rooms had been drafty, the wood floors creaky. Each classroom had its own cloakroom, a word that had delighted him. He would have loved, like a studious young Dracula, to go to school in a cloak.

  "Thank you for coming," said Ms. Lister, shaking his hand and Penny's. Meeting in the classroom was an indignity that seemed calculated: the shamed parents squeezed into desks sized for eight-year-olds.

  Penny was able to pull this off with a modicum of grace, her deerlike legs pliable from daily yoga; but Scott hadn't touched his toes in ten years. Even as a high school athlete he'd never been limber. Now—at six feet, one-ninety—he had nowhere to put his limbs, no conceivable way of extricating himself when the ordeal finally came to a close.

  "This visit is long overdue," she said. "My fault. Ian has had behavioral problems since September, but I've been so swamped I haven't had time for conferences. We have a new principal this year, and with all the standardized testing—"

  "Say no more," Scott said warmly."I understand. I'm an educator myself."

  She looked at him with grateful eyes."So you know, then. Where do you teach?"

  "At Ruxton."

  "Oh." Her smile faded."That's private, right? I mean, sort of."

  Sort of.

  "And you do lots of testing," she added.

  "Exactly," Scott said smoothly. "So I understand how disruptive that can be."

  He had her. She was overworked, underpaid and starved for appreciation, a condition Scott knew all too well. A little empathy, a little appreciation from parents would go a long way toward softening her attitude. Suspending an eight-year-old was disproportionately harsh, the act of a desperate woman. Yet it was an impulse Scott understood.

  On a daily basis, he experienced such desperation himself.

  "Great," said Penny. "But the thing is, Ian's really upset. He feels like a little criminal. I don't know what to do with him." She paused.

  "Just coming here today, you know? You wanted to see both of us, which I understand, but where is Ian supposed to go? We had to get a sitter, and you have no idea—"

  "Honey." Scott shot her a warning look. Their difficulties with babysitters—none, to date, had agreed to a return engagement—would do nothing to help Ian's case. If Penny would keep quiet and let him handle it, they'd be home in ten minutes.

  Ms. Lister folded her hands. "I'm sorry to inconvenience you, Mrs. McKotch, but I don't think you understand. We're not talking about normal misbehavior. Ian is showing symptoms of a much larger problem."

  She paused a moment to let this sink in.

  "But he's trying," Penny insisted, as though she hadn't heard.

  "He's at the computer all evening. I make him show me his homework every night before he goes to bed. And he's amazing on the computer. You should see the way he clicks around. He knows more than I do."

  Please shut up, Scott thought. He saw them both clearly through Ms. Lister's eyes: the father clueless and disengaged, an affable bullshitter. The mother whining and defensive, raising a misunderstood genius. He and Penny were the kind of parents teachers hated. The kind he himself hated.

  "Maybe so," said Ms. Lister. "But I never see this homework. He manages to misplace it somewhere between home and class." She counted on her fingers: "Ian is easily distracted. Disorganized. He shows poor impulse control. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar."

  "All of it," Scott said with feeling. "All of it sounds familiar."

  Penny shot him a fierce look.

  "I thought so," said Ms. Lister.

  "Wait a minute. I have no idea what you're talking about," said Penny.

  The teacher leaned forward in her chair. "I think Ian should be evaluated for attention deficit disorder. And perhaps depression and anxiety as well."

  Scott blinked. He's eight, he thought.

  "Ian's always been a happy boy," said Penny, responding to the word depression. Scott had learned long ago not to overload her; she processed ideas one at a time. Whether she was stupid or simply very focused was a question that plagued him. After all these years he still wasn't sure.

  "Maybe he's depressed because you keep throwing him out of class," Penny said."He's so embarrassed. He won't say so, but I can tell. "

  "If that's true, I'm sorry," said Ms. Lister. "Ian can be very sweet, when he wants to be."

  This was true. Scott thought of his son as he'd been the night before, fast asleep in front of the television; the boy clinging to his shoulders as Scott carried him to bed.

  "When he acts up, it's because he's frustrated," said Penny. "He's having a hard time with math. I think he needs extra help."

  Ms. Lister nodded manically. "Exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying: extra help. But I have twenty-four other children to consider.

  There's a limit to what I can do." Her fingernails, Scott noticed, were bitten to the quick. He felt a rush of sympathy. Charged with a class of twenty-five Ians, he would chew his fingers bloody.

  "Do you have any suggestions?" he asked.

  Ms. Lister turned to him."These are common issues, as I'm sure you know. Parents deal with them in a variety of ways. Medication is one option—"

  "Forget it," Penny said."No way is Ian taking drugs. No way."

  The teacher raised her hands, as if in self-defense. "That's your call, of course. No one can decide that for you. I will say, though, that until Ian is evaluated, I can't have him back in my classroom."

  "You're kicking him out?" said Penny. "It's a public school. You can't just throw him out."

  "True," Miss Lister agreed. "But this situation has gone on long enough that we need to look at other options. A special-needs classroom, for example."

  "Ian's not retarded," said Penny.

  Just, Scott thought. Shut. Up.

  Ms. Lister glanced at her watch. "All I'm saying is that Ian may need more help, or a different kind of help, than any public school can offer." She took a brochure from her desk drawer and handed it to Penny. Scott leaned close to take a look, nearly capsizing his desk.

  "Whoops," said Ms. Lister, reaching out to steady him."Fairhope is an independent school in Fairfield County. An old classmate of mine teaches there. They've gotten incredible results with kids like Ian. If you're dead set against medicating, it's something to consider."

  Penny handed Scott the brochure. The photos reminded him of Pearse: the stone buildings, the grassy lawns and towering trees. He turned it over, scanning downward. The information he sought was in tiny print at the bottom of the page. More zeroes than he would have thought possible.

  "Good luck to you," said Ms. Lister, rising. "I wish you and Ian all the best."

  They drove home in silence, Penny at the wheel. It was a peculiarity of their marriage Scott couldn't account for: anytime they were in a car together, Penny always drove. This marked them different from every other couple he knew. What it meant, he had no idea. He was the sexual instigator, and the breadwinner. Not a very successful one, it was true; but what bread they had, Scott had won.

  Penny's silence was damp and heavy; he sensed a storm approaching. Scott waited, his senses heightened. After ten years of marriage he was like an old geezer who ached from humidity, who felt the weather in his bones.

  "I can't believe you," she said at last.

  Scott felt his muscles relax, a palpable easing of tension. Like the punishments of his boyhood, fights with Penny were never as bad as waiting for them.

  "You sold Ian down the river. You just agreed with everything she said. Is that how you defend your son?"

&n
bsp; "Defend him from what, Pen? Getting an education? A teacher who's concerned and wants to help?"

  "She wants to put him on drugs, Scotty. You call that help?"

  He took a deep breath. "Ian's in trouble. He can't get through a school day without freaking out. And the tantrums, the bullying. You told me yourself that Nathaniel Moss won't play with him anymore."

  "Nathaniel is a spoiled brat."

  Stay on target, he told himself. "I agree: Nathaniel is spoiled.

  But what about the way Ian torments Sabrina? The hitting, the hair pulling—" He paused."The biting."

  "I give him time-outs," said Penny.

  "I know: you're doing everything you can. But how bad does it have to get before we admit it isn't working? That we need professional help?"

  "You sound just like Ms. Lister," said Penny.

  "Well, maybe she's right. It was pretty decent of her to spend half an hour talking to us. After the day she puts in, she wants to go home and mix herself a good stiff drink. Not sit in the classroom with two hostile parents."

  "Hostile? When was I hostile?" Penny ran a red light, narrowly missing another minivan coming from the opposite direction. The schools had just let out; at this hour Quinnebaug Highway was like a bumper-car ride, with Plymouth Voyagers standing in for rubberized cars.

  "He's always been a happy boy," Scott mimicked. "Maybe he's depressed because you kicked him out of class. Was that necessary, Pen? How is she supposed to take us seriously after a comment like that?"

  "Take us seriously?" She looked at him in wonderment. "I don't care if she takes us seriously. Why do you care what she thinks?" She hit the brake."That's what this is about for you. What it's always about.

  What will people think? "

  "What?" He stared at her, genuinely baffled. It was the conversational equivalent of a squealing U-turn in rush-hour traffic.

  "You're ashamed of us," said Penny."Of Ian, and me, and us."

  Not this again, he thought. Ever since they'd moved to Connecticut, it had been a recurrent theme in their arguments. As near as Scott could figure, the charges stemmed from two incidents in the winter of 1995: 1. While shopping for a new couch at an off-price furniture outlet called Rooms Unlimited, Penny had screamed at Sabrina and Ian to stop jumping on the demo mattresses, in a voice that made several heads turn. When Scott had asked her, in a calm, well-modulated voice, to stop cawing like a fishwife, she had stormed out of the store.