Language Arts (24 page)

•♦•

Charles looked forward to the Saturdays when his parents left shortly after breakfast and were gone until the wee hours; long days, to be sure, but Catherine kept them interesting and varied. They took walks to the drugstore or rode bikes if the weather was nice. If it was cold and rainy, they played gin rummy and Parcheesi, built with Legos, read books. Once, Catherine taught him the recipe for Charlie's Chicken of the Sea Surprise, a casserole that alternated layers of canned tuna, Campbell's Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup, and potato chips. (Years later—before Alison put the kibosh on processed foods—Charles taught Cody to make this dish, rechristened as
Cody's
Chicken of the Sea Surprise.)

This Saturday, however, his parents were hosting a tailgate party at the house from ten o'clock until twelve thirty, so Catherine would be arriving later.

A little after eight thirty in the morning, while Charles was still lingering in bed reading comic books, he heard the front door open and close; there were heavy footsteps in the foyer accompanied by the sound of labored breathing, and then his mother's voice erupted from the kitchen:

Damn it!
she yelled. Damn it,
Garrett! What the hell did you do?

. . .

What?

The responses to her tirade were too quiet to understand.

. . .
You're lucky you didn't kill yourself!

. . .

Did you have to start before they got here? Look at this! We're going to run out of gin before they even get here.

. . .

Stop that.

. . .

I said,
Stop it!
I'm going to have to go to the liquor store.

. . .

Are you crazy? You can't drive. Goddamn it, they'll be here in an hour.

It turned out that, after downing a few drinks, Garrett Marlow had decided that the front yard needed mowing. He'd stumbled into the deep well of one of the daylight basement windows. Fortunately, the lawn mower hadn't fallen in with him.

Charles's mother left him with strict instructions to take the olive cheese puffs out of the oven the
moment
the timer went off; she then snatched up her handbag and rushed out.

Garrett Marlow limped a meandering path out to the patio, collapsed into one of the lounge chairs, rolled up his pants, and stuck his injured foot into the big Coleman cooler that was already packed with ice and beer. After turning the radio to the pregame broadcast, he sat back and closed his eyes.

The timer went off. Charles pulled the olive cheese puffs out of the oven, burning his hand in the process.

Hey, Charlie! Make me a drink, will you, now that your mother is gone?

After calling out the instructions for rimming a glass with salt, Garrett Marlow talked Charles through the rest of the process, including the celery-stick garnish.

Well, look at that,
he said.
You just made your first bloody mary, Chuck. Bravo.

Having fulfilled his responsibilities, Charles retreated to his room.

A few minutes later, there was a knock on his door; his mother poked her head in, her face pink and sweaty, her lipstick worn off.

Charles, I need you to come out here and do the things your father would be doing if he weren't such a useless SOB.

Garrett Marlow spent the duration of the party with his foot in the cooler, wearing his purple-and-gold hat with the
W
on the front at a jaunty angle, holding court while his wife and son served as caterers. At one point, emerging from the kitchen with another tray of olive cheese puffs, Charles discovered that Mrs. Helmsdorfer was snuggled into his father's lap, nuzzling his neck.

Mr. Helmsdorfer didn't seem to mind.
Shit, Garrett!
he bellowed.
You're gonna get frostbite, leaving your leg in there so long. You'd better pull that thing outta there or we might have to cut it off!

For no reason Charles could think of, the adults found this wildly funny.

•♦•

After winning the certificate of merit, Charles was awarded the role of fourth-grade teacher's assistant. He hadn't bargained on this result; it was one he'd soon come to rue.

Mrs. Braxton now expected him to stand at the blackboard not only during penmanship practice but also during lessons in world studies, reading, science, and spelling. This allowed her to patrol the room as she lectured—slowing her speech and emphasizing words or phrases that she wanted transcribed on the board—and exert her fierce, up-close-and-personal vigilance over the class in a nonstop manner.

The Republic of Congo, the Soviet Union, Puerto Rico, Cuba . . .

Other perks followed:

She had a desk and chair set up beside hers. It was not an adult desk, nor was it the cramped, standard-issue all-in-one chair/desk that everyone else inhabited. Charles wondered if it had been stolen from some poor unwitting sixth-grader, possibly a former certificate-of-merit holder whose penmanship had lapsed.

She bestowed upon him with unprecedented liberality the much-coveted hall pass so that he could fetch supplies, refill her coffee cup, and deliver messages. This freedom would have been exhilarating had it not been won at such a cost.

Bradley's and Mitchell's contempt ratcheted up several notches.

Astrida Pukis continued to emit an embittered loathing that abated only during math, when she exerted her dominance during blackboard multiplication races.

Class morale plummeted. The students of room 104 began to look haggard—

Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev, Cape Canaveral, the Iron Curtain . . .

—with the exception of Dana, who seemed to expand under these conditions, maintaining his snaggletoothed insouciance even as his white suits became grimier and his fingernails continued to grow unchecked, accumulating a yellowish, gritty opacity.

Underdeveloped country, gross national product, crop rotation, drought belt . . .

As the de facto class clown, Dana provided the only leavening element during those long, grim days.

Montgomery, Alabama; Anchorage, Alaska; Phoenix, Arizona . . .

Charles now understood that his tenuous social position—which had been compromised from the very beginning, when he'd shown up on the first day of school without Donnie Bothwell at his side and then exchanged words with Dana McGucken—was now cemented: he was a toady, a sycophant, a Jewish policeman in the Warsaw ghetto.

It is of course not always the case that teachers' pets become social outcasts. Had Mrs. Braxton been more popular, less feared, it's possible that being anointed as her favorite would not have carried such a stigma.

As it was, however, because Mrs. Braxton's leadership style recalled that of the Old Testament Jehovah, her preferential treatment brought into high relief the sufferings of the poor and unfortunate: God's un-chosen people.

In the classroom, Charles occupied the pinnacle seat, but once removed from that setting—in the cafeteria at lunchtime, on the playground during recess—he sank to the bottom, into the special hell reserved for certain elementary-school children: the leper colony of the tribeless.

•♦•

There was always something terribly hollow and disturbing about the end of the broadcast day. Seeing the rippling American flag in black-and-white and hearing “The Star-Spangled Banner” made Charles feel as though the world had ended. Still, he felt compelled to remain and watch until the flickering test pattern appeared and the airwaves went silent.

After turning off the TV, he brushed his teeth and turned the back-porch light on and off three times; that was Catherine's cue, and she emerged from her boyfriend's car within moments, waving to him as he drove away. Charles never did meet him, but Catherine revealed that he was twenty-seven years old, rolled his own cigarettes, and worked for the railroad, bare-bones facts that only enhanced his mystery.

How was the movie? Scary?

Uh-huh.

What was it tonight?

The Mummy.

Oh, I've seen that . . . That
is
scary. You didn't mind watching alone?

No.

After firmly tucking the covers around him, Catherine leaned down to pet Charles's hair. Her small gold crucifix dangled close enough that he could move it with his breath.

Did you say your prayers?

Yes.

Good boy. Good night. Sweet dreams. Sleep tight.

She left the door slightly ajar so that a long thin spindle of gold from the hallway illuminated Charles's room. It must have been Catherine Ryan's experience, having mothered many of her siblings, that young children are solaced by light and connection.

When Garrett and Rita Marlow got home, Charles always woke up.

Did you have any problems?

Was he good?

Pleasantries were exchanged.

How much do we owe you?

Thanks so much.

Charles's door was still open, admitting that yellow ribbon of light.

See you next week.

We'll watch till you get home.

He pictured Catherine walking home to her large, sleeping family.

Good night!
Garrett and Rita Marlow called.
Thanks again!

He pictured his parents, side by side, waving woodenly, their faces fixed in atrocious, mummified smiles.

The front door closed. They were entombed.

His mother would tiptoe down the hall and close the door to his room. It was a thoughtful gesture, uncharacteristically tender, but did she seriously believe that a closed door would shield him from what always happened next?

. . . fucking tramp . . .

. . . selfish bastard . . .

. . . you and your big mouth . . .

. . . arrogant son of a bitch . . .

That's how it was for couples like the Marlows: they attended tailgate parties, dinner dances, hospital-benefit headdress balls. They played pinochle and golf; they went bowling. In summer, they sunned themselves on backyard patios or next to country-club pools; in winter, they hosted fondue parties by the fire.

When they got home—and somehow they did, blood-alcohol levels notwithstanding—they paid the babysitters, looked in on the children. The next morning they woke up with hangovers, told their kids it was the flu.

They steadfastly maintained an active social life even if they hated each other, even if what played out between pre-party preparations and the next morning was a horror show.

Charles was carrying another load up from the crawlspace; in spite of his efforts, the boxes seemed to be
multiplying.
(
Because if there are boy boxes and girl boxes,
he heard Emmy say, following up on her earlier question,
that means that boxes can have babies, right?
) Arriving in the living room, he was startled by a series of loud, insistent knocks on the front door.

He offloaded onto a plat of open floor space near his office and removed his respirator before opening the door.

It was Alison.

“I didn't see you pull up,” Charles said. “Have you been here long?”

“A few minutes.”

Rain was coming down, torrential, with no sign of abatement, but she remained on the front step, grasping her coat at the center back collar and pulling it up and over her head so that it formed a small, ineffective shelter.

“Sorry,” Charles said. “I was doing laundry.”

“You ready?”

She stood beyond the protection of the roof overhang, at the farthest edge of the porch landing, her expression fearful, as if this were the entrance to a house infected with some biblically lethal contagion—cholera, leprosy, Ebola—and under quarantine. Asking her to come inside would be pointless; Alison hadn't stepped foot in the house since she'd moved out.

She peered past him.

“What's with all the boxes?”

“What? Oh. I've been doing some . . . you know,
purging.
I'm . . .
thinking of having a yard sale.”

“Now?”

“No. Of course not. In the spring, maybe. It will take a lot of organizing.”

“Well, if you find anything of mine, get rid of it. If I haven't used it in a decade, it's nothing I need.” She started backing away and down the steps, as if even
speaking
in such close proximity to the house was hazardous. “We should get going. The first place is up near Snohomish. Not that far, but traffic might be bad in this weather.”

•♦•

So stupid, to have forgotten to wear boots.

They'd barely arrived and already Charles's shoes and the bottoms of his khakis were soaked and muddied. The other parents on the tour were all wearing appropriate footwear. He felt like a fool.

The first of three planned visits of the day was to Foxglove Farm, an ICF.

“I don't think this rain is going to stop any time soon,” the executive director said once they were all gathered at the main building entrance, “so we might as well start outside and then make our way in. There will be coffee, tea, and hot chocolate waiting for you at the end of the tour, so I promise you'll all have a chance to warm up and ask questions then. Would anyone like an umbrella?”

The tour participants included one singleton mom plus three other parental units besides Charles and Alison. As they all trudged through the field to the outbuildings, Charles wondered about the couples, if any of them were like him and Ali: divorced, but reunited under these circumstances, collaborating on their children's distant futures when everything else about their marriages had eroded.