The Kingdom of Childhood

In spite of himself, he laughed. He rubbed a hand down his face and said, “We’re not doing cars anymore, remember?”

“I remember. And as for Ms. Valera, I think you’re just reading too much into whatever she said to you. She thinks you’re bent out of shape because Fairen is toying with you. I told her myself.”

He felt the ghost of a smile rise to his face. “Seriously?”

“Yes. A while back she asked me if I knew why you’re having those issues in class. She figured since you and I spend so much time together, I might know. So I told her. You want Fairen, but she’s a tease. It eats you alive.”

This time the grin broke through, small but genuine. “Good call. That explains it, yeah.”

“Thank you. I specialize in fairy tales, remember.”

He looked off toward the window. The lacy curtains let in just enough light to show the dark-blue twilight sky of winter. Soon he would need to be home for dinner. In his panicked state he had expected he and Judy would agree to an urgent lockdown of their relationship, an easy out, brought on not by rejection but by necessity. The thought had been soothing, in its way. The affair, however guilty or forgivable, however abhorrent or deliciously forbidden, had burned through its fuel and needed to fall, empty, to earth. Yet in this room with her he had not expected to be reminded of all the things he genuinely liked about her: her quick wit, her ability to listen and be calm, the sensuality that thrummed just beneath the surface of her small uptight form. He liked her better, wanted her more, when she kept her grace—a shell of no enclosing a liquid center of yes.

“You need to relax,” she said. “Stop sweating the small stuff. Could I offer you a foot rub? Because it seems like something’s blocking your chi.”

He rubbed his palms against the edge of the dresser and acknowledged the comment with the wicked grin it deserved. She waited for his response, and finally he said, “I came here to say I think we ought to take a break for a while, until people stop sniffing around.”

“I thought we already were taking a break,” she parried. “I haven’t seen hide or hair of you for a week.”

He considered that. “Has it been that long?”

“It has. Since the bazaar. When I found you tossing your cookies, very literally, next to the trash cans, and you begged me to go down on you to cure your tummy trouble.”

“Yeah. Temple noticed we slipped away.”

“What do you mean, ‘slipped away’? We were back inside of half an hour. And that raises Temple’s suspicions? I would think a progressive boy like him would have higher standards than that.”

He drummed his knuckles against the dresser and stared at the carpet. She slid off the bed and came to him, cupping his face in her hands. He met her eyes and let her kiss him softly on the mouth.

“But we can take a break whenever you want to,” she whispered. “You call the shots, remember. Are you leaving right away? Or are you staying a few minutes longer?”

“I didn’t bring anything with me.”

She nodded. “It’s your call, then.”

“We’d better not.”

She nodded again, but as she took a step back he reached for her upper arms and kissed her again. Then again; and of course she did not stop him, and of course he did not want to stop. A tumult of conflicting thoughts rushed forward in his mind, then fell like lemmings off the edge of the cliff past which he knew, good or bad, right or wrong, he was going to do this.

What is it about her? he wondered hopelessly. What did she offer him that he couldn’t find elsewhere? Why did he persist in seeking her out, thinking of her, wanting her, when she was exactly wrong for him in nearly every way? Why was he willing to be this adversary to Scott, to Russ, to his own father—to scatter principle to the four winds and scuttle off to hunt what was forbidden?

But that question was its own answer. Because it was forbidden. Because fucking a woman in a crashing plane is a thousand times more exciting than in the bedroom of a nice home.

It occurred to him, as he crawled onto the bed and nestled himself into the welcome of Judy’s body, that he suddenly understood all he needed to know about his mother’s affair. That it had nothing to do with him. Nothing to do with his father. Nothing connected to it but the drumbeat inside her that called her to the atrocity. It was comforting to understand, at last, his own irrelevance. In the moment of this realization he felt a momentary spark of sympathy for her, before other feelings overwhelmed him and snuffed it out.

24

Maggie called while I was untangling a knotted thread with my teeth, working on a dream pillow that had gone all wrong. Right away I knew this was not going to be a pleasant phone call. Maggie never called to chat.

“You can use my room for storage or whatever,” she said. “I’m not coming home for Christmas.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m going home with my friend Elise. I’ll be in Hagerstown. I’ll give you the number so you can call me or whatever.”

“Maggie.” I sat on the edge of the bed and rested my forehead against my hand. “We’ve got the tree up already and everything. I’m counting on you coming home. It won’t feel like Christmas if you’re not here, and it’s hard enough already this year.” I did not attempt to go into detail as to why.

“I want a real Christmas,” she replied, her voice attempting a breezy note but leaking venom nonetheless. “One with Jesus in it. Elise’s family goes to church and all that stuff. I need to experience this for myself.”

“You know perfectly well there’s Jesus in our Christmas,” I said, feeling my blood pressure rising with each word. “God only knows they’ve been hammering Jesus into your brain at school since kindergarten. I make those damn salt-dough nativity scenes with my kids every year. I know.”