The Kingdom of Childhood

had first met him. I pictured him with his foot up on a chair in some fast-food restaurant, the razor-trimmed edges of his black hair framing his smiling face, purged for the night of all his tension. He was with them, but in some secret place in his mind he was remembering the moments with me. I felt perversely grateful for that.

With Russ dozing peacefully behind me, I drifted off to sleep.

And then the phone rang.

“Why are you at the hospital?” I asked Scott groggily.

He rattled off some story I could only understand in pieces: an elevator accident, Tally was a little bit hurt but hardly so, a police escort, Temple was in trouble.

“What kind of trouble?”

“For bringing us to Pinerest Hospital.”

“I thought you said you were at Holy Cross.”

Scott growled into the receiver. “Damn it, Mom, I don’t think you listened to a freakin’ thing I said. I need you to pick me up. Do you get that part?”

“Scott, there’s no reason to be surly about it. I can barely understand you.”

“Yeah, story of my life.”

At the hospital I found Scott easily, sitting in a molded plastic chair near the exit, alone. He didn’t look to be in any way injured, which relieved me, considering how little I’d managed to put together from his phone call. I asked, “Where’s Tally?”

“Her folks picked her up.”

“And they didn’t offer you a ride?”

“They’re not exactly happy with me right now.”

I sighed. “What about the rest of your friends? Was anybody else hurt? Does anyone need a ride home?”

“No.”

In the car I pieced the story together slowly, using yes-and-no questions that forced Scott to produce answers. Finally I asked, “So how did you manage to get help?”

“We sent Zach out.”

“Oh, so Zach was there.”

“Yes, Zach was there,” he said peevishly. “Zach is always around when you need him.”

I slowed for a red light. “Well, even if the police aren’t charging you with trespassing, I think we’ll need to have some consequence. You should have had better sense than to go to a place that dangerous.”

“A consequence. Gosh, I didn’t realize you were still playing that game.”

“What game is that?”

“The mom game. You haven’t even asked for my grade report from last month. I got my SAT scores in October, and my boot is still sitting by the fireplace.”

“Is it my job to put your boots away now?”

“I put it there for St. Nicholas Day. It was over a week ago. I put out my boot for you to put candy in like you always do, and it’s still sitting there with nothing in it.”

I chuckled, but an immediate wave of remorse seized me. Scott was right. Every year of his life I had filled his boot with candy and little toys, or, in recent years, a gift card or two. Always the candy was special and unusual: barley lollipops made in antique molds, hand-pulled candy canes, marzipan animals from Germany. It was the joyful, noncommercial version of Christmas that I delighted in more than the shock and awe of Christmas morning. This year it had not even entered my mind.

But I turned to look at the tall boy beside me, with his five o’clock shadow and his broad shoulders, and I said, “I thought you’d gotten a little old for that sort of thing. You spend nearly all your time these days holed up in the den with Tally, and don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing in there. I don’t think that girl has ever bothered to say hello, but I’m hearing plenty from her, believe you me.”

“At least Tally likes guys her own age,” he muttered.

I took my eyes off the road to glare at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shook his head, his eyes squinting in disdain. “Come on, Mom. You aren’t fooling anybody.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Silence iced over the car. After a minute I said, “Go on. If you’ve got some nonsense you want to throw at me, throw it.”

In my peripheral vision I could see him staring at me, the tightness around his eyes still prominent. When he spoke, disgust tinged his voice. “Mom,” he said, “I don’t use condoms.”

It took me a moment to put together what he was telling me.

“Well,” I replied, turning onto the exit toward our house, “you should.”

Scott went straight to his room, without a good-night or a thank-you to break the silence that had descended after our abbreviated conversation. It was three in the morning. Wide awake now, I turned on the gas beneath the teakettle and glanced into the living room. There was his blue-and-white ski boot, tongue pulled forward, askew by the fireplace. I had no idea how I had managed not to notice it. But then, maybe I should not have underestimated the lapse in my attention. Fallout from it seemed to be everywhere.