Just Another Kid (40 page)

“Ages ago. In January, I think.”

Ladbrooke was silent a moment. “You know, Torey, I’m always amazed at some of the things you get people to tell you.”

I set the loaded box on the floor.

“I never thought Tom would ever tell anybody about that. Even his mother doesn’t know.”

“Is it true?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Leslie’s John’s child.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think it was the diabetes that really confirmed it for us. Neither Tom nor I have any history of that in our families, but John’s a diabetic.”

I looked over. “There’s still the long shot that she might be Tom’s, isn’t there?”

Lad shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She briefly glanced over. “You see, mostly, Tom’s impotent.”

“Oh.”

I went back to my packing. We didn’t speak for several minutes.

“Is it going to make any difference to Leslie’s future?” I asked. “I mean the fact Tom isn’t her true father.”

Ladbrooke shook her head. “No. He’s her true father. Maybe his genes aren’t hers, but his heart is.”

She frowned down at the things in her lap. “I want her with me. She
is
my daughter, and I do love her. When I go, whenever that is, I want to take her, but I keep wondering if that’s right. Do I want her just because I know it’d destroy Tom? Or do I really think it would be best for Leslie? Do I really think I’d be the better parent? I feel like I
am
a better mother now than I was. I know more what to do. I can control her better. So maybe that’s not so far out. Maybe I am the better choice. But then, maybe not. Tom adores her. She adores Tom. And Consuela. What would happen to her relationship with Consuela? Consuela’s like family to Leslie. She’s been there practically all of Leslie’s life, and I’ve got to admit, she’s probably given Leslie more stability than Tom and I put together.” Ladbrooke looked over. “How do you decide these things, Torey?”

“I don’t know.”

She shook her head slowly. “In some ways my life seems so much better. I mean it. It really is. But in others, it’s gotten worse. Well, no, not worse. That’s not the word I’m looking for. Harder. It’s gotten so much harder. I see all the sharp edges now.”

A
nd then it was the end. As was my tradition, we had a picnic on the last day. I arranged for packed lunches for the children instead of the usual hot ones sent from the neighboring school. Ladbrooke and I supplied pop and potato chips. Mrs. Lonrho sent cookies. Dirkie’s foster mother sent delightful little treats made to look like monkeys with candy eyes and licorice whip tails.

Most years I held the last-day picnic in a nearby park, but here there was no nearby park, and I thought that if we had to go to the trouble of packing everyone into cars, we might as well go somewhere worth the trip. So Lad and I decided to take the children out of town about ten miles to a historic fort once used by the cavalry to defend the area against Indian attacks. Nestled up in the foothills of the mountains on a broad plateau, it was surrounded by a large recreation area. So once everyone had arrived on Friday, we packed up the picnic things and loaded Lad’s and my cars full of screaming, wriggling children.

The day was not as sunny as the previous few weeks had been. It was overcast with high, thin clouds and, although it was still very warm, a strong westerly wind was blowing.

The kids were all heady with end-of-school freedom. This had been a good place to bring them because it was spacious enough to absorb their energy. They ran, screaming and yelling, back and forth across the hillside.

The children’s excitement evoked enough recollections of my own childhood exhilaration over the last day to keep me in high spirits as well, but there was still one part of me always standing back. I kept watching them, all of them, Lad included, as if from a great distance, as if looking down the wrong end of a pair of binoculars and seeing not just the warm, windy present, but all the days and weeks and months telescoped together. At one point, Shemona came running up to me, and I was very aware of seeing her not as she was, in her pastel-striped sundress and bare feet, but as she had been, clutching Curious George in the Nativity play, swinging with Ladbrooke on the playground swings, dancing to “The Top of Cork Road” with Geraldine. Again and again and again throughout the day that happened to me. All the little moments of the year came crowding in around me like so many tiny ghosts.

For all her traumatic anticipation of the day, Ladbrooke appeared to be feeling only the joy of it. She was as free spirited as the children were. She had a marvelous way of being able to loosen up and completely throw off the usual shackles of adulthood, and this day proved to be one such occasion. She absolutely delighted the children with her silly behavior. She showed Shamie how to throw his Frisbee into the wind to make it come sailing back. She boosted Shemona, Mariana and even Dirkie up onto the ramparts of the old fort. At lunch we had small containers of Jell-O, and Ladbrooke did horribly rude things with hers, such as blowing into it with a drinking straw, the kinds of things an eight-year-old would have been scolded for. The kids loved it, of course, and laughed so hard that Geraldine sprayed the table with a mouthful of pop. Later, Ladbrooke took out a ridiculous-looking hat and presented it to me from all of them. It was a blue baseball cap with fox ears sticking out of the top of it, and she insisted on my wearing it throughout the rest of the day, popping it back on my head whenever I took it off.

We all explored the fort, waded in the reservoir, chased endlessly after things being blown away by the gusty, persistent wind. Then, finally, the end of the day approached. The children were still all wildly tearing up and down the broad hillside where the picnic ground was situated, terrorizing the ground squirrels that lived in burrows amid the sagebrush and buffalo grass. Since we needed to leave soon in order to get back in time to meet the children’s rides, Lad and I had begun clearing up and putting things away.

Coming around to the side of the picnic table where I was, Lad loaded a handful of paper plates and cups into the cardboard box we were using to transport our belongings. Then she paused.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to do,” she said to me, and smiled.

Before I could ask her what, the children were on top of us. Squealing with excitement, Mariana slid under the picnic table and came out between us. Dirkie bounded up over the top of the table.

“Hey, you guys, cool it,” I said.

They were all laughing.

I looked back to Lad. “You were saying?”

“I was saying, there’s something I want to do before we leave.” And she stepped over to put her arms around me in a friendly hug. But as she reached me, Mariana exploded up from under the picnic table again, bumping headlong into us. All three of us went down with a bump on the grass.

“Dog pile!” screamed Geraldine, when she saw us go down, and every single one of the children piled on top of us.

“I got you! I got you, Teacher!” Dirkie screeched.

“Me too! Me too!”

I was at the bottom of the heap, flat on my back, the prickly buffalo grass coming up in a yellow clump beside my face. Slowly, one by one, they began to get off. We untangled ourselves until only I was still lying on the ground, with Shemona sitting astride my legs. She moved up to sit on my stomach. Leaning forward, she put a hand on either side of my face. She brought her face down very close to me, so that our noses almost touched.

“I love you, Miss,” she said with an easy, confident smile. “Miss Hayden. Torey Hayden. That’s your name.”

I nodded. “And I love you too, Shemona.”

She was still smiling. “Yes, I know it.”

Ladbrooke had separated from us, and I saw her over at a nearby picnic table, talking to a man there. He was a tourist, quintessentially dressed for the part in madras shorts, sunglasses and a terry-cloth fishing hat. I rose and dusted myself off. When she saw me get up, Ladbrooke looked over.

“You all stay there a minute,” she called. “I’m going to get him to take our picture. All of us together.” She held up her camera.

“Did you hear that?” I said to the children. “Don’t go wandering off now.”

Dirkie was cramming cookies into his mouth. He wasn’t even bothering to take bites of them. One, two, three he shoved in whole.

“Hey!” Shamie cried, annoyed. “Those aren’t all yours.” He pulled the box from Dirkie’s hands.

“Me too. I want one,” Mariana said, and grabbed the box from him.

“Come on, you lot, don’t fight,” I said. “Ladbrooke wants to get a picture.”

“I want to sit next to you, Teacher,” Dirkie said.

“
I
want to,” Mariana said, pushing Dirkie aside.

“Hey now, let’s get this organized,” I said. “There’s room for everyone.”

“No, there isn’t. I want to sit here, but he’s in my way.”

“You get up on the table. You too, Geraldine. We can’t all sit in a line, anyway.”

“Where’s Ladbrooke going to be sitting?” Shamie asked. He had the box of cookies open again.

“Lad and I’ll sit here on the bench. You there, Shamie. Shamie, please put those cookies away. Now you there, Dirkie. Leslie here. And Shemona in front. Geraldine and Mariana, you two up there behind me and Lad.”

“I have to go to the bathroom, Miss.”

“Hold it, all right? This won’t take that long.”

“Here, Miss, put this on.” Shamie took the cap with the fox ears from the cardboard box.

“Oh, I don’t think I’d better wear that,” I replied. “Ladbrooke wants a nice picture of us.”

“No, Miss, please wear it.”

“Yes, Miss, do,” said Geraldine.

Mariana grabbed the cap from Shamie’s hands and bounded up onto the picnic table to reach over and place it on my head. “You’ll look nice with this on, Teacher. It makes you a foxy lady.”

Ladbrooke’s camera, like everything else about her, was not straight-forward. The man from the other table couldn’t understand how to operate it. He couldn’t figure out Ladbrooke’s light meter and kept pointing the camera skyward to get a reading.

The children grew restive as we waited. Leslie sat down on the ground and refused to get up. Mariana popped the box-eared cap on and off my head half a dozen times. Shemona reminded me with some urgency that she needed to use the toilet. At last the man seemed to understand what he needed to do, and Ladbrooke joined us. She squeezed in between Shamie and me on the picnic bench and pulled Shemona in closer.

“Leslie, stand up,” I said. She wouldn’t. So I reached down and pulled her up, taking her on my knee to keep her from complaining.

“Are you ready?” the man asked.

“Just a minute. Here, move in a bit, Dirkie,” Lad said.

The man with the camera brought it up and focused it. “Get closer. I can’t see you all.”

We squeezed together. Lad put her arms around Shamie and me.

“Are you ready?”

“Is my hair okay, Teacher?”

“It’s fine, Mariana. Just keep your head down so that the man can see you in the viewfinder.”

“Okay. Now, are you ready?” he asked.

“Smile. Everybody, smile.”

Click
.