I delayed my return to work for a few more weeks. I needed to make sure the children were adapting well to their new school setting. One day I decided to go in anyway, just to regain my bearings. I spent the whole morning wandering the hallways of our company, repeating the same phrases on a loop to anyone who asked, without immersing myself in any of the projects suggested to me. My head was empty. I had forgotten how to do my job. After wasting the whole morning, I went down to the coffee maker. Two young colleagues whose names I didn’t know were just finishing their cappuccinos, standing at the high tables. I gave them a quick wave before making my selection on the machine. With my little cup in hand, I hesitated to join them. I told myself it was the thing to do, but didn’t really want to. Lacking the courage to feign interest in them, I smiled politely at them and left.
“That’s her: Gregory’s wife.”
I hadn’t fully turned the corner, but they couldn’t see me. I flattened myself against the wall and waited for them to continue.
“Is she older than him?”
“I don’t know… Dave told me I was going to have to show her how to use Revit, because it turns out she only knows AutoCAD.”
“What is she supposed to work on if she can’t use the software?”
“On whatever she wants, I suppose. She is the boss, after all, like Greg.”
“That’s crazy, when I’ve been here three years and they still only assign me the shit projects.”
I spent the afternoon holed up in my office, rolling my chair between the drawing table and the computer. At two-thirty, I escaped to go pick the boys up from school. The firm that bore my name no longer belonged to me.
“Oh, you’re Vanya’s mom, right? I’d like to have a word with you.”
In a friendly but firm gesture, the teacher took me aside. “We had a little incident… It seems Vanya was inspecting another boy’s anus.”
That’s the word she used: anus. It seemed as strange to me as my son’s actions.
“But why would he do that?” I spoke to the teacher, but watched Vanya, who stood casually beside me.
“I don’t know. The other little boy complained afterwards that Vanya had looked at his private parts.”
Anus, private parts. The vocabulary embarrassed me as much as the situation.
“Has he ever been to a psychologist?”
I gritted my teeth. The teacher asked me to have a talk with Vanya to make sure it never happened again.
“Were you curious? Did you want to see if he was made like you? Did you touch it?”
On the walk home, I tried to get some clarity on what had happened, but Vanya didn’t seem to understand my questions. The day was grey and cool and I had forgotten his coat at school. Vanya held Daniil’s hand as they walked. I changed my tone, trying to make him understand the gravity of the situation: “That’s not right, Vanya, you can’t undress your friends.”
“He’s not my friend.”
I dropped my shoulders. “But why did you look at his bum?”
Vanya hesitated, appearing to think this time. “I wanted to see if he tasted like Daniil.”
He turned, smiling, toward his brother, as I stopped in my tracks, paralyzed on the sidewalk. The twins passed me as they continued toward the house. I didn’t want an explanation. I didn’t want to know.
“All kids fool around like that,” said Gregory sharply when I told him the story.
“If that was the case, the school wouldn’t have recommended a psychologist.”
“Listen, it’s very clearly an attempt to get your attention. Even though they’re at school, the boys still need you.”
“You think they’re doing this because I went back to work?” Despite everything, it was a relief to think they needed me.
“Emma, I think your place is at home now. You’ll remain a full partner, of course.”
He negotiated, but it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t need to convince me; I had relinquished my career over five years ago, and the mourning period was long since over. The prospect of being a stay-at-home mom suited me perfectly, in the grand scheme of things.
When I found a note in their bags the next day, I was sure it was another problem. Instead, it was a permission slip for a trip to the Royal Ontario Museum. The school was looking for parents to volunteer to accompany the classes. I was happy to be able to participate in the outing. We had a family membership, and had often gone to see the dinosaur skeletons on our afternoon excursions. I’d read them the signs and they’d play question games on the touch screen. A single room could occupy us for hours.
The morning of the trip, I dressed the boys in bright colours in order to be able to find them easily in the crowd of children, something I did whenever we went out like this.
In the schoolyard, the children waited excitedly. The activity combined the two second-grade classes, making sixty children and six adults, including the parent volunteers. We would take the subway.
They had put me in charge of a group of ten children, mostly boys. Watching them run down the escalators and step dangerously close to the subway trains, I wondered if the school hadn’t assigned me the most difficult ones. Or did I just have no authority over children?
The trip consisted mainly of a series of routines: snack, bathroom, lunch, snack, bathroom. The twins had learned so much more during our visits. The whole outing seemed like such a waste of time compared to my lessons. For the moment, my main concern was avoiding disruptions, especially by one of my children. Easily identifiable by their red and yellow shirts, Vanya and Daniil were fairly well behaved through the tour. A trip through the games room concluded the visit. We warmly thanked the girl who had acted as our guide and the group prepared to head back to school.
We
