The Kingdom of Childhood

home. You can’t come looking for me after school and then get angry with me when I feel the same way. You have to just say, ‘No, Judy, I’m not doing this anymore.’”

He took a deep breath. “No, Judy, I’m not doing this anymore.”

My heart lurched, but I said, “Fine. Then I’m not offering anymore, and you’re not asking.”

He looked at a point over my shoulder. “What if I slip up?”

“I’m not a prostitute, Zach. Make up your mind and let me know what you decide.”

The cat wandered into the kitchen and curled around his legs. Sighing, he slipped his fingers up under his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“I’m glad you’re feeling a little better,” I told him. “That’s all I came to ask.”

He squeezed his eyes shut tight and gave them a final rub. When he looked at me, his eyes were tired. In an edgy voice, one I couldn’t read at all, he said, “Thanks for stopping by.”

19

By Friday morning Zach felt better, his mother’s mystery teas and phosphorous tablets having worked their magic. He shaved off his week’s worth of beard, blinked his contacts back into his eyes, worked some goop into his hair, and almost looked normal again.

Almost. Something didn’t seem the same. He shook his hair from his eyes and peered closely at himself in the mirror, just as he had a week ago, after the crappy night with Judy. For once his skin was clear, but the difference was more than that; the angles in his face looked sharper. He pulled up his shirt and examined his midsection. His stomach and chest looked the same, but his face suggested he had lost a few pounds. Not surprising, given the fever that had sapped his appetite as well as the fact that, under stress, his stomach had a tendency to return anything delivered to it. He fixed himself a cup of chai and a bowl of granola with milk, and, when it all stayed down, he figured it was time to get back to the grind.

Back at school, his friends were glad to see him. A few girls in his class even hugged him. As he settled into the morning’s Main Lesson he tried to focus on the teacher to gather in all the information he had missed, but as usual, Dante’s Inferno failed to hold his attention. His gaze wandered toward the windows, to the trees shedding the last of their crackling brown leaves into the chilly wind. Distantly, at the end of the building which housed the Lower School, the voices of children echoed from the playground. He watched the little kids chasing each other and digging in the sand with their red metal shovels, the teachers in barn jackets walking among them, their heads all covered.

None of the teachers was Judy. These children were older, second-and third-graders probably, but still his mind meandered to the kindergarten classroom: its miniature town of wooden buildings scattered on the floor, the beeswax gnomes pressed against the window glass, the protective inward curve of the rose-colored walls where the corners would be. Its windows overlooked the playground on one side, and on the other, the garden. The first time he had come to her, after the day in the woods, she had not drawn the shades. Anyone could have seen them. So blinded had he been by what he wanted, so surprised by the ease of acquiring it, that he had not considered the danger. Neither had she; they had never discussed it, but he had read a lot into her foolhardiness that day. Since then, she had made a habit of drawing her shades at dismissal time.

He bided his time through Spanish, and then, as lunchtime arrived, gathered his books and hustled past the multipurpose room. By now Judy would be outside with her morning class. She caught his eye as he approached, a small figure dwarfed by her canvas jacket, her face half-hidden beneath her kerchief. Sexless creatures these teachers were, bland to the point of invisibility. He knew better, of course, but in some sense he enjoyed the illusion of it: that she was a blank canvas onto which he could scribble everything he had ever wanted to do to any woman, that she set out the raw material of story or craft but his imagination gave the spark that brought it to life.

“You’re better now,” she observed. “All shipshape.”

“All shipshape,” he agreed. Her face was impassive. He added, “My voice is still a little rough, so I’m skipping Madrigals tonight, but I feel fine.”

She nodded. Then she asked, “Where are we?”

“The Lower School playground.”

“Come on, Zach, you’re a more abstract thinker than that.” Her gaze burned into him, but, unsure of what she meant, he gave no reply. She asked, “Are you still upset with me?”

He shook his head. Upset was the wrong word. He didn’t offer up any that felt more accurate. Numb. Hard. Resentful. He felt duped by a bait-and-switch maneuver: led in by the illusion that their affair was based on primal, mutual need, only to discover, when he felt none, that she would take from him anyway. Her apology had taken the edge off his anger, but it also proved a point that made him feel gloomy and helpless: he could have her the way she was, a dark star of desire for him, or he could have her not at all. If his time with her had taught him one thing, it was that he had been keeping his own set of desires on one hell of a choke chain, and he had little motivation to try to order the animal back into the cage. But he didn’t have to be nice about it.

“Come by my classroom when everyone else is at Madrigals,” she said, her voice a low monotone. “I’ll give you a better apology then.”

“I don’t want that.” At the moment it held no appeal to him. To be vulnerable to her, needy of her willingness, in her debt. He wanted to establish to her how he felt about her now, and that wasn’t the way.

She shot him a nervous glance. “What do you want, then?”

“Russ is teaching tonight, right? I’ll meet you at your house. I’ll tell my folks I’m going to the library or something.”

She frowned. “During Madrigals? That’s not very convenient as far as timing goes.”

“I don’t care.”

Her lips tightened in disapproval, deepening the lines at the corners of her mouth. The edges of her Russian- grandma headwrap fluttered in the wind. “You’re still angry. This is your way of getting me back.”

“No. This is my way of getting laid. It’s been over a week. I don’t want a BJ. I want a bed.”

She sighed. “Well, I guess I ought to be grateful you’re still coming to me for that.”