When I had stretched out, as low as I could get, Harlem said, “Got your head down?”
My head was not down. I had set my face on my palms, bracing my weight on my elbows, as though I were lying on a bed and talking with friends. Now Harlem wanted me to give up my last vestige of uprightness, to put my head down flat. It seemed a significant change. All this no longer seemed funny; it seemed disturbing. It was humiliating.
I dropped my head all the way down. My elbows were tucked tightly against my ribs, and my cheek was set on my fingertips, which were right on the tops of Fred’s shoes. The shoes were black wingtips. They were dry and dusty, with deep cracks in them. I could feel the leather, smooth and fine: they were expensive.
“Got to get you right down,” Harlem said. There was no emotion in his voice. “You down now?”
“Yeah,” I said.
I was down. I was entirely down. My nose was nearly flat on Fred’s shoes. I could smell the leather, acrid and sandy. I could smell Fred himself, the innocent sweaty smell of his dark skin. He wore no socks. I thought of Harlem’s clean, carefully chosen socks. I thought of Harlem’s shoes, buffed and polished. I thought it was strange for Fred to have bought such expensive shoes and then let them turn dry and cracked, to wear such expensive shoes without socks.
Then for some reason I remembered saying good-bye to Harlem at the end of the summer. I remembered complaining to him about having to go off to college. I remembered teasing Harlem about his coming down here, to the sun, escaping winter. Now this no longer seemed funny. Now the memory made me uncomfortable, though nothing had changed.
The car had begun to move now, but very slowly, almost gingerly. No one was talking, and the chortling laughter had stopped. The four men were quiet, and we were driving as carefully through that clean, peaceful neighborhood as if it were a combat zone, full of mines and snipers.
Then, in the silence, as though this thought had been rising slowly through my consciousness, as though it had been months working its patient way upward toward this moment, those same months when I had been rising toward my sense of freedom, I understood about the shoes.
Fred hadn’t bought this pair of expensive black leather wingtips. They were second-hand, they had been given to him. They had belonged first to someone else: a rich white golfer. Fred couldn’t afford those shoes; he couldn’t even afford socks.
Around me, the men were sitting in complete silence. No one moved, and I could feel from their rigid legs, their silence, their seriousness, that there was fear in the car.
I closed my eyes and lay still with the men. I was hardly breathing, and my nose was set against Fred’s dry, cracked shoes. I lay without seeing, barely drawing in breath, as though this might keep me from something terrible, from finding out something I didn’t want to know. But it was too late: I had already begun learning their shadowy secret. I was already moving into a part of Harlem’s nighttime world where I had never been. It was a part I had never known about, a place I could not bear to think about, could not bear to see.
King of the Sky
I stood, that day, before the deep closet in the front hall, taking off my coat. The small domestic view gave me modest satisfaction: an orderly row of neat shoulders, our various selves. There was Gilbert’s sleek and dressy herringbone tweed, his grimy tan trenchcoat, my velvet-collared Chesterfield. No bright colors, nothing exciting, but everything was well made, clean, looked-after. Among the others I hung my everyday self, the dull green loden coat that I wear all winter—to the supermarket, to the small local museum where I volunteer three days a week, and on the twice-daily trips I make from Gramercy Park, where we live, to Jock’s school, four blocks south.
“Come on, Jocko, take off your things,” I said, turning back to the hall.
Jock, who is nine, didn’t answer. He was in the middle of something private. His red boots still on, his jacket flung open down the front, he was kneeling next to a needlepoint-covered chair and aiming his gun-shaped hand at something in the distance. His eyes were focused, not on our meekly flowered wallpaper, but on a muddy battleground somewhere. He was talking urgently under his breath, and between the bursts of hissed and whispered words were periodic explosion noises.
In third grade, boys’ fantasies are almost entirely violent. Mayhem and death lie at their cores, and all require the powerful and satisfying sound of an explosion. This noise is something all boys—and few girls—can do properly. It begins at the moment of detonation: the cheeks balloon slightly, and a deep gargle at the back of the throat produces a muted rumble. The lips part slightly to allow the sound loose into the world, and the vibrating root of the tongue and the arched roof of the palate produce a series of slow reverberations. The echoes continue deep in the throat, distant and sinister. Their majestic pace, their diminishing volume, their final lapsing into an elegiac silence, all suggest the end of everything. Nine-year-old boys need to suggest—particularly to their mothers—their dangerous capacity to end everything.
I knelt on the rug next to Jock’s small, supple body. Ignoring me, he leaned on the chair seat and sighted along his extended finger, one eye closed for accuracy. I faced the pale clear skin of his cheek, the faint purple delta of veins at his temple, the fragile translucent whorl of his ear. Jock has Gilbert’s high forehead and pointed chin, and his own silky gold-brown hair, which lies flat and fine against his skull.
I began easing his boots off. Jock allowed this, stretching out each leg in turn for me to grasp, but he continued to ignore me and what I was doing. It is as though the least hint of connection or cooperation with this large domestic female would destroy the secret, other, real life that Jock has so carefully created. I don’t insist on recognition. I don’t care. As long as Jock allows our worlds to function peaceably side by side, and occasionally to interlock, I don’t complain. I have other parts to my life besides the part that contains him—why shouldn’t Jock? And for him, it is a desperate matter, his independence.
When our things were off we got back on the elevator. We were going to the ninth floor, to visit Willie, who is one of Jock’s best friends, and Willie’s mother, Margaret, who is one of mine. We all live in an old building on the north side of Gramercy Park. It’s a quiet neighborhood; the avenue stops there, and there’s not much traffic. The park itself is small and elegant, and merely the sight of it—always a pastoral surprise among all that urban geometry—seems to slow the tempo. It’s a peaceful, old-fashioned place, and our building is peaceful and old-fashioned as well. Our doormen are hushed and attentive, the lobby and halls are clean and well-ordered. It’s safe, and we don’t lock in the daytime. On nine I pushed open our friends’ heavy front door and called out hello.
“Come in,” Margaret called back. “We’re in the kitchen.”
Jock set off at a run. Margaret’s apartment is bigger than ours, a duplex, with a terrace over the park outside the living room. Margaret has a great eye and has wonderful things; I ambled slowly down the long, book-lined hall, through the big square dining room with its modern mahogany table. I was admiring, as I always do, her style: the enigmatic nineteenth-century paintings, the complicated Oriental patterns underfoot. Margaret thinks of things that would never occur to me: she’d found a sculptor who worked in iron and commissioned him to make wonderful ornamental bars for the windows. The new ones were just being installed, and I could see fanciful baroque designs across every view.
In the big white kitchen Margaret was sitting on the tiled floor with Willie, wrestling with one of his boots. Margaret is tallish, long-boned, long-waisted, precise in her movements. Her hair is glossy blond and perfectly straight. She wears it blunt-cut, just below her jawline, and parted exactly in the middle. A small tortoise-shell barrette on either side holds it neatly in place. Margaret works nearly full-time as a lobbyist for an environmental group, and she was still dressed for the office. She was in a dark green long-sleeved buttoned-up blouse and black pants: very elegant. Margaret always looks elegant, in a qu
iet way. It’s all in the details: black suede shoes, a high silk collar, a dull gold chain. Margaret likes details, and she’s good at them. I’m told she’s brilliant at work; lobbying means taking charge, planning strategy, changing people’s minds. She’s assertive and effective: I admire her for that; they’re things I’m not.
Willie is Margaret’s only child; she always said she couldn’t manage with any more. He looks just like her, with the same pale skin, the narrow, brilliant blue eyes, and the sleek cap of blond hair. Temperamentally, however, they are fiercely opposed: Margaret demands order, Willie chaos.
Willie was lying on his side, propped up on one elbow. He was using his hand as a fighter plane and making jet-engine noises. Jock ran over to him with a nine-year-old’s eccentric gait, haphazard and lurching. As he reached Willie, Jock knelt and skidded to a stop on his knees, his hands on his thighs. Willie gave him a sidelong glance and went on with the air war. Neither spoke.
“Hi, Margaret,” I said. “Hi, Willie.”
Willie ignored me, his puffed-out cheeks full of sound.
I would have ignored his ignoring, but at once Margaret said, “Willie, say hello to Mrs. Jamieson.”
Willie did not look at her. He made more powerful jet-engine noises and set his plane on a dangerous course past his shoulder.
“Willie,” Margaret said again. Willie ignored her. His eyes were fixed on his hand: this was aerodynamically flattened, and his fingers were split into wings. His engines revved, reaching a higher and higher whine.
“Willie,” Margaret said ominously.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, wishing I hadn’t said hello to Willie in the first place. But now Margaret ignored me.
“Willie!” Margaret said again, her voice peremptory. Willie heard in it the end of the negotiating period. He looked up at me for a split second.
“Hi,” he said, not quite insolent, his eyes flicking off my face at once. His voice returned to combustion engines.
“Hello, Mrs. Jamieson,” Margaret said.
“Mrs. Jamieson,” Willie added airily to his flying hand.
Margaret shook her head, her lips tight. She looked at me grimly. “We’ve been having a wonderful time today. We’re in such a good mood,” she said.
Margaret’s views about boys are different from mine. Willie’s resistance drives her crazy. Of course, Willie’s resistance might drive me crazy, too. There’s something manic about Willie, something locked and frantic and driven. He lunges toward crazy, and then so does Margaret. They goad each other on. The more one insists, the more resistant the other turns, and though their goals are different, their methods are the same. They seem sometimes like two halves of the same fierce and indomitable personality, trapped in the same skin, battling for control.
I always thought it was just a phase. I think people are better parents at some ages than at others. I’m probably at my best right now, with a nine-year-old. Though I adore him, though I know he adores me, with Jock I can sleepwalk through my days, each of us in our own world. When Jock is a teenager, and I have to pay attention and get into the real issues, I’ll probably be terrible. But I always thought that when Willie became an adolescent, Margaret would come into her own. Once she was freer to work, once she could return to her own world, she’d encourage Willie to inhabit his. She’d admire his independence, she’d support his originality. She’d pull back and he’d relax. That’s what I thought. All this conflict seemed temporary; they would just have to live through it.
Now Margaret yanked at Willie’s second boot. Willie, loose-limbed, uninvolved, came along with his foot, and was pulled smoothly toward her on his back. Strands of his sleek pale hair lifted magically from his head, as though he were freefalling through space. Jock had joined him on the floor, and at Willie’s involuntary slither they both began to laugh, the low irresistible belly laugh of the supine. It made me laugh too, that loose, jellyish gurgle, but Margaret didn’t even smile. She ignored them, sliding her hand inside the boot and finally worming out the foot. Her face was dark and her mouth set, as though the resistance of the boot, the tactile cling between rubber and leather, was Willie’s fault, part of his stubbornness.
She pulled the boot off at last and shook her head. “God!” she said, and put the boots side by side next to the wall. She stood up, wiped her hands on her black pants, and smiled at me. “Okay,” she said briskly, and moved over to the big gas range.
“It’s all airplanes here this week, we’re all pilots. Willie’s King of the Sky,” Margaret said, turning on the flame beneath the kettle. “I don’t know why. Before that we had police shootouts and drug runners, but suddenly it’s all airplanes. Do you have airplanes, or is it only us?”
“We’re a mix,” I said. “We have some comic book heroes, airplanes, and a lot of space ships.”
“I’m glad we’re not Exterminators anymore, anyway,” said Margaret.
“Terminator,” Willie said loudly, from flat on his back, still not looking at her. “Terminator.”
“Terminator,” said Margaret. She looked at me and quoted wryly from an imaginary report. “Mrs. Welch can’t seem to keep track of her son’s interests. She belittles him by forgetting the names of his favorite toys.”
“What a name, anyway, Terminator.” I said. “Why don’t they just come right out and name them Death, or Hatred?”
“The kids would love it,” said Margaret. “They’d all want one.”
She fixed tea for us, and soup and crackers for the boys, and we all sat at the butcher-block table. The boys were on stools across from each other. They were involved in something, staring intently and mirthfully into each other’s eyes as they ate. Pasita, Margaret’s Colombian housekeeper, was doing the laundry. We could hear the steady lunging drone of the washing machine, and the faster, ringing sound of the drier. Pasita sat behind us at the ironing board, her arm moving smoothly back and forth over the clean cotton. Next to her was a pile of ironed clothes, white and crisp. Outside it was cold and windy, and the bare-limbed park trees showed light dustings of snow, but in there the air was steamy and warm. It felt entirely safe.
I grew up in New York, on East Seventieth Street. When I was little, in the afternoons, it seemed that all of Park Avenue was full of children walking home from school. The girls walked with their mothers, their hair in messy braids, their socks drooping around their ankles. The little boys, noisy, daring, walked without parents, dressed in blue blazers, carrying knapsacks. The doormen kept a watchful eye on them. The doormen had authority and would call out sternly to a group of rowdy boys, “That’s enough, now! Settle down,” as they passed noisily by on the sidewalk. And the boys eyed the doormen and did not answer. They did, for the moment, settle down. They knew that they were part of a neighborhood, that their parents had friends in those buildings, that they were part of a watchful, strict, benevolent network that commanded and protected its children.
But things have changed, though doormen still call out to rowdy boys, on upper Park Avenue and here in Gramercy Park. The world outside that network is more threatening now, and our children are at risk in a way I was not.
When I was little, accidents were the gravest danger to children. There was, at that time, a tacit agreement among grownups that children were to be cherished. Strangers risked their lives to save other people’s children, pulling them heroically from burning houses, out of rivers and wells. That has changed. Now a stranger approaching a child is an enemy; children are targets. Now there are grown-ups and teenagers who harm children, deliberately. That fact is always, always, at the back of my mind, of all parents’ minds.
When Jock was five, he and I had a fight. He stood in the hall outside his room and yelled up at me, a small fiery figure in brown corduroy pants and a striped cotton jersey, his slipping-off socks dragging beyond his toes. He shouted that he hated me, and I shouted back that I didn’t care: these were loud, angry, pulse-pounding moments. I was outraged that he should challenge me, and I towered ang
rily over him. Compared with him I was immense, giantesque. My huge hands on my wide and powerful hips mimicked and ridiculed his own, his small hands set bravely on his narrow hips.
“I don’t care that you don’t care,” he finished shrilly, and whirled away from me. He stalked angrily into his room and slammed the door. He stamped his feet with each step, but in socks, on the carpet, his small feet made only faint thuds.
I went into the kitchen to calm down, and a few minutes later Jock appeared in the doorway. He was wearing shoes, and his yellow slicker. The peaked hood was pulled up over his head, casting a deep, glowing shadow over his face.
“I’m running away,” he announced.
I was no longer angry; I was ready to make up. I looked at him, this small defiant golden figure, and I was struck by how powerless he was. Children have control over nothing in their lives; everything is determined by us, who claim to have their best interests at heart. But who’s to say we do? We have our own best interests at heart, as always: self-esteem, authority, convenience. It seems so unfair to these tiny people, who stand up to us so bravely, who struggle so hard to be real, to make us know that they are real.
I said, “All right.”
Jock stood still, uncertain.
“Forever,” he warned.
He had thought I would argue. He watched me carefully, for a trick, for a second thought.
“If you want to run away, you can. I can’t stop you,” I said docilely. “But don’t forget you aren’t allowed to cross the street.”
“I know that,” he said crossly. He still watched me, and I smiled at him.
“I love you,” I added, and at that he regained his dignity and turned proudly away. He walked to the hall door. I stood in the doorway and waved as he got into the elevator, his arms crossed on his chest, his elbows cradled in his palms, the peaked hood shading his small brave face.
What I should have done was follow him; I know that now. I should have gone down right after him in the next elevator. I should have shadowed him around the block, stepping quickly into doorways like Sherlock Holmes when Jock turned around. But I had some notion of playing fair, and I thought I should not invade his adventure.
Asking for Love Page 24