Instead, I went to the front window and leaned recklessly out, the sidewalk below drawing me dizzyingly toward it. It was early spring, and the trees in the park were just beginning to unfold the fresh green of their leaves. There weren’t many people on the block. No one else was in a slicker: it wasn’t raining. I could easily see the small yellow figure, the pointed hood—which he had always refused to wear before—addressed upward, to me. He was walking slowly, for someone with such a fierce purpose, and I wondered if the world now seemed larger, noisier, more arbitrary, than he had remembered it upstairs in our kitchen. I watched him until he reached the corner, and I saw him turn dutifully down the next side of the block. Then I waited, watching the clock, leaning out the window over and over, until finally I saw him again, coming from the other direction. He was at the far end of our block, making his steady way up the sidewalk toward the canopy over our door.
I was standing outside it when the elevator door opened to reveal him. His face, in the golden shadow, was meditative and pleased.
“I’m back,” he announced.
He was back, unharmed, and proud. That was what I had intended. But at what risk! I still wake up in the night with the nightmare vision of someone stepping toward him on the sidewalk, taking Jock’s trusting hand and leading him away. A stranger taking possession of this child who occupies my heart. Oh, God, I think at two o’clock in the morning, my limbs locked with tension and fear, how could I have let him go?
It is a puzzle to me, this memory, a riddle about freedom and safety, independence and responsibility. I don’t know the answer to it. When I zipped up Jock’s pale yellow slicker and sent him into the world, I meant him to know he could turn from me, that he was free. But I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have taken that terrible risk. When I think of it now, it seems as though his survival was a miracle, an extraordinary and undeserved piece of luck. It seems dangerous, that luck, something I may have to pay for later.
Now Margaret asked, “Are you going to the parents’ meeting on Tuesday?”
“I think so,” I said. “But we have tickets for the opera that night. So if we go to the parents’ meeting, Gilbert will have to give the tickets to his secretary.”
“Who likes Wagner, I’m sure. So, what will you do?”
“Negotiate,” I said.
“Who will win?” asked Margaret.
“It depends,” I said. “I always say we should go to those meetings, but I don’t even know how important they are. You know you should go, but why? At the last parents’ meeting we listened to Tommy Grimshaw’s mother tell us how sorry she felt for herself, and how difficult her ex-husband is.”
Margaret smiled. “I know what you mean,” she said. “But I think you do it for solidarity. We’re all in this together. Anyway, I go because I want to know everything the teachers know. I want to know everything they think about my kid. I want to know what their theories are and what they suggest. I may not do what they suggest, but I want to know what it is.”
Actually, Margaret did need to know what the teachers thought about Willie: he was a discipline problem, and in constant trouble at school. But she was right, too, about solidarity: that’s what mothers owe each other—support, complicity, humor. I felt ashamed that I was willing to offer so little, that I was so lazy and insular. I was chastened by Margaret’s response, the fact that she was determined to do things properly, to take part, to be involved.
“You’re much more responsible than I am,” I said. “I still have the feeling that kids grow themselves up, that it just happens.”
“But you’re probably right,” said Margaret cheerfully. “They probably do. I’m wildly overresponsible. What can I say?”
“What does Frank think?”
“Who knows what Frank thinks? I’m so crazed about taking charge of everything that he backs off. Who knows what he’d be like as a single parent?”
“Wouldn’t it be awful if our husbands brought up our children?” And we laughed at the thought, full of shared horror.
“Nan Wallace was on a flight home from the Caribbean last winter. It was just after she and Steve had gotten married, and her kids were with their father. The plane started bumping, which Nan hates. It got worse and worse and finally Nan grabbed the stewardess and said, ‘Could you please tell the pilot to quiet this plane down? If it crashes, there are two wonderful children in New York who will have to grow up with their father.’”
We both laughed again, and I said, “It’s a chilling thought, isn’t it? But why? It’s not that the fathers don’t love them.”
“Oh, no. Of course they love them. It’s just that they don’t know anything. They don’t know anything,” said Margaret firmly. “They have no clue. They’d get everything wrong.”
“But wouldn’t they learn?” I pictured Gilbert widowed, bravely quelling his grief, earnestly attending school meetings, soberly walking Jock to school.
“Please,” said Margaret. “Frank knows every corporate law precedent going back to 1900, but he can barely remember what Willie’s name is. The two of them living alone together would be a disaster.”
Willie and Jock were in the middle of some sort of contest. Their heads were lowered over their bowls, and they were staring intently at each other, slurping from their soup spoons, and laughing raucously. Still staring fixedly at Jock, Willie said, “Daddy knows my name.”
Margaret looked at him, irritated. “Of course Daddy knows your name. That was a figure of speech.”
“Daddy knows my name,” Willie repeated, “and I want to live with him. I’d like to live alone with Daddy.” He put a huge spoonful of soup in his mouth. At once he lapsed into a high cackle. The soup, deliberately or accidentally, it was hard to tell, came spraying out in a wild fan, all over the table and over Jock. This was a declaration of mutiny, and Jock, of course, began laughing as well, rocking dangerously on his high stool and kicking his feet.
“Oh, Willie!” said Margaret. “Look what you’ve done.” She was really cross. She stalked to the sink and got the sponge. “Get down off your stool,” she snapped, “Willie, get down. Now.”
Willie still did not look at her. He got down off the stool and then put his hands on the table. He began little springing jumps, kicking himself off against the floor, as though he were going to heave himself up and sit in the middle of the soup-sprayed surface. He was flopping his head from side to side and laughing wildly. Jock was doing the same: hysteria had set in, the last refuge of the child-about-to-be-punished.
“Willie, look at me,” Margaret said, kneeling in front of him, the sponge in her hand, trying to mop the soup off his shirt. But Willie would not look at her. He kept flopping his head from side to side, and laughing.
“Jock,” I said, “stop laughing and come over here.” Jock shook his own head wildly, closing his eyes. “Jock,” I repeated, and without looking at me, still with his eyes shut, he slid off his stool. He began making his way over to me, holding out his hands like a blind man. He wobbled and staggered, deliberately missing my stool, while Willie screamed with laughter.
I grabbed Jock by the arm and pulled him over next to me. “Jock, stop,” I said sternly, but I wasn’t really cross.
Willie was still flopping his head back and forth, and he had closed his eyes too. Like Jock, he feigned blindness, groping with his hands in front of him. He touched Margaret’s face, roughly bumping her nose, and he screamed joyfully.
“Eeeyeww! What is it?” He went into high-pitched giggles. “What weird, squishy thing is this?” He bumped Margaret’s face again, rudely.
“Willie,” Margaret said, angrily. She grabbed him by the shirt and shook him. “Stop it. I mean it.”
Willie’s hand strayed away from her face, but he did not open his eyes, and he did not stop his laughter, shrill and false.
Margaret now took hold of his shoulders, and her voice rose. “Willie, stop it. Stop it right now.”
Willie’s eyes were still pinched shut. He sh
rugged his shoulders violently, away from his mother’s hands, and began jumping wildly up and down, his voice in a high whine. “Eeeyew,” he said, over and over, “eeeyeww, what is it? Is it human?”
By now Willie and Margaret were deep inside the thicket that they had created and shared: thorny, isolate, barbaric. Within it, each of them struggled fiercely to destroy the authority, the reality, of the other.
Margaret grabbed Willie’s shoulders again and shook him, hard. He went limp, wobbling bonelessly. I felt sorry for both of them, both so angry, now so committed to their struggle. But Willie was being so awful, so wild, so arrogant, so contemptuous, that part of me felt just like Margaret. There was a part of me that felt mean, tyrannical, swollen. Part of me wanted that child subdued, wanted him shaken until his teeth chattered, until his will was broken and he stopped his derisive whine. I knew the feeling, all parents do, of the rage that threatens sanity. I knew why there was child abuse. We’ve all come close.
“Willie, listen to me,” Margaret said, talking through her teeth. “Listen to me. If you don’t stop this, right now, this minute, you are spending the rest of the afternoon in your room. Alone. Jock will have to go home. Now stop it!”
There it was, the big threat. I try not to use it, because Jock always rises to the challenge. And following through on it is always inconvenient. Now we all waited, suspensefully: everyone’s afternoon hung in the balance, Jock’s and mine and Margaret’s, to say nothing of Willie’s. But Willie never hesitated.
He yanked himself away from Margaret again and began springing up and down into the air, crouching, and then shooting up into the air. His eyes were still screwed shut, and over and over he made violent explosion noises. He was a rocket, a cannonball, a space ship, a bullet, anything but a submissive child.
“All right,” said Margaret, furious, “all right. Is this what you want?” But she didn’t move. “Is this what you’re trying to do? Stop it, Willie, I mean it,” she said.
He bounced up, landed, crouched, and launched himself again, unimpeded.
Margaret stood up now and shook her head. It was as though nothing had happened, no wildness, no threat, no feeble retreat. She cleaned the soup off the table and sat down again at the table, ignoring the boys.
“Honestly,” she said to me, “it’s like having lunch in the lion house.”
Jock watched, interested: this is not what would have happened at our house. And I watched, unhappy: Margaret’s strategy baffles me. It seems that if you don’t follow through, there’s no point in making threats at all. It seems to me you’re just teaching a child that there’s no risk to rebelling. But I said nothing to Margaret. No matter what she says about all of us being in this together, I know that you never tell another mother what to do. And besides, how do I know I’m right? Why is my instinct better than hers? What about letting Jock go off on his own, at five years old, in New York City? What kind of sage and responsible act was that? No, we all make our own mistakes; we all act crazily, indefensibly. We are saved by time passing and by miracles, not by the interference of our friends.
But Willie was not to be denied a climax. Behind Margaret, in a dazzling throwaway gesture, he upset his bowl, sending heavy split pea soup in a great floating wave onto Margaret’s back, soaking her elegant silk blouse.
“All right!” she shouted. “All right, Willie! That is enough! You come here with me.” This time she took Willie’s arm and yanked him along behind her, out of the kitchen. Again, Willie relaxed all his limbs and let himself be dragged, limp, letting gravity declare his reluctance.
When they were gone, Jock and I looked solemnly at each other.
“Poor Willie,” I said. “He doesn’t seem very happy.”
Jock shook his head, but he would not speak to me, he would not take my side against his friend. He sat silent and mournful, taking small spoonfuls of his soup, his head down. I drank my tea. When Margaret came back, she was brisk and glowing, her cheeks pink with fury. She had changed her shirt and put on a thin cashmere sweater. I wondered if you could ever get split pea soup out of silk.
“Sorry,” she said, sitting down again. “I’m sorry, Jock, but Willie forgot his manners and he forgot the rules. He’s going to stay by himself for a while and think about them.”
“When can Willie come out?” Jock asked. He seemed very small and quiet. It was now hard to imagine him laughing raucously, kicking his legs under the table.
“Willie has to stay in his room until his father comes home,” Margaret said brutally. She picked up her mug of tea in both hands and brought it to her mouth. It concealed her face except for her eyes, which were blazing. She looked wild, distraught, and I thought she was close to tears.
Jock’s face fell. His afternoon was emptied of color, and he played dejectedly with the cracker on his plate. He crumbled it messily, rubbing at its soft pale crispness until it collapsed in bits. I wanted to comfort both of them, but I could think of nothing to say to Margaret.
Finally I said, “Well, Jocko, you and I will go to the park, if you like, or we can go home and I’ll play a game with you. Whatever game you like.” He glanced up at me, weighing this offer soberly, though we both knew it didn’t make up for his afternoon with Willie.
I waited before I moved, but Margaret didn’t look at me, or answer, so I thought she was letting me know that she didn’t want to talk about whatever she was feeling.
“I think we’ll get going,” I said to her. “Sorry this happened, but don’t worry about it. I’m sure we played a part in it; it wasn’t all Willie.” I wanted to make her feel less isolated, less frantic, but she shook her head.
“Oh, don’t you worry about it,” she said, walking us to the front door. “It wasn’t Jock’s fault. Willie has to learn what the rules are, that’s all.” Her face was stiff now, her head was up, and she had her hands deep in the pockets of her trim black pants. She looked very cool, very much in charge.
“Well, don’t let it get you down. God knows, it happens all the time,” I said, shaking my head slightly, as though Jock spent all his daytime hours shut in his room. But Margaret looked politely uncomprehending, as though she didn’t know exactly what I was talking about. I couldn’t think of any other way to reach her, and it seemed clear that she didn’t want to be reached. So we left her alone, in her apartment, with Willie on the other side of a grimly closed door.
I should have stayed with her, I see that now. She had said, We’re all in this together. What support was I giving her by leaving her alone, by letting her pretend that everything was all right?
What happened was that Willie decided to escape. The new window bars were being installed that week, and in Willie’s room the old ones had been taken out and the new ones set in place. They were only set there, they hadn’t yet been bolted into the window frames, but only the sculptor knew this. The bars looked solid, but as it turned out, a bold nine-year-old could dislodge them.
Willie opened his window wide. It was cold outside—it was December—and when he opened the window he must have paused at the damp winter wind that swept into his room. Like Jock, he bundled up dutifully before he set out, as his mother would have asked. He got a sweater from his bureau and put it on by himself, backwards, the label under his chin. His room overlooked the terrace, and when he climbed out onto his windowsill, the terrace must have looked inviting. It was diagonally beneath him, not directly below, but on the way there were window sills, ledges, cornices, safe things to grip. The climb would have looked dangerous but feasible to Willie, and it was both. There were places he could cling and balance as he clambered down and sideways through the singing air, the wind holding him against the building, until he had sidled far enough over to drop the last few feet onto the terrace.
This is the part that is hard to think about. The French doors to the living room were locked. Willie stayed on the terrace, maybe shivering, maybe hoping and not hoping to see his mother. She passed the living room several times that afternoon, but s
he heard nothing, she saw nothing. She tries to remember, now, if she might have heard something. If he had called, if he had knocked, would she have heard? But she heard nothing. Perhaps, when she passed, he was there. Perhaps when he saw her he hid, sobered by his climb, fearful at last of her rage. Perhaps he had been sobered by what he had done: going out into the real world, he had felt himself flattened against the cold brick side of the building, he had felt the terrible singing call of the drop, the rush of the sidewalk, nine stories down. Perhaps, after this, he had lost his nerve; perhaps the thought of facing her rage as well was too much for him. But he was there on the terrace for a while. He left a plastic superhero there, balanced on the sill outside the French door, waiting for it to open. He didn’t knock on the door, he didn’t shout out loudly for his mother to let him in. He made no demands. For some period of time he stayed alone out there, in the wind, his sweater on backwards. Maybe he played for a while with the superhero, under the lowering December sky. But it’s hard to imagine him playing, it’s hard to imagine him, by then, as anything but subdued.
At some point Willie decided to climb back up. He was trying to undo his mistake, to be good. He was trying to put himself back where Margaret wanted to find him; he had thought better of his escape. When Margaret finally knocked at his door, calm, her heart no longer closed against him, her rage no longer in charge, Willie wanted to be sitting in his room, the window shut, the sweater off.
He clambered first up onto the broad parapet. There he stood, his sneakered feet tiptoed and teetering as he stretched for the first window ledge. But climbing up is very different from climbing down, and this time the ledge was slightly too high, slightly too far, for his grip to hold his weight.
We are not in this together. The things that separate us are terrible and irreversible. What lies now between me and Margaret will lie there forever, a chasm nine stories deep.
Asking for Love Page 25