A Map of the World (16 page)

“Afraid?”

“I’m a tall person with the reputation for having a needle in hand. The youngest ones are nervous because they believe I’m going to give them a shot, even though of course I don’t do that at school. Some of them know me because I’m one of the shot ladies at the free clinic.”

“That’s quite a label to live with.”

I wanted to go to sleep against the locker. The officers would never know the half of it. Robbie had the unbounded energy of someone who is chronically angry. He used to come in my office, stand at my desk, and stare at me. Maybe there doesn’t seem much harm in being stared at, but I could have told the officer about how I never knew what he was thinking, or what would come next. It unnerved me so much I often had to leave the room and dance, a few tight little steps, outside of the office. It was what he wanted, for me to come undone. If I asked him what was troubling him he’d stare at me. If I asked him to let me take a look at his throat or his ears he’d stare, and if I said, “Well then, go back to your room,” he would stand and stare. If I ignored him and went about my duties he might still stand and stare, derision in the affected blankness of his face, and then he often made an inaudible but clearly derogatory comment about my movements or clothing or style. If I suggested that we take the short walk down to the principal’s office so that Mr. Henskin could examine him he’d shrug and start off, as if he were the one who was taking me for punishment.

I didn’t want to think about him, wouldn’t think about him because I had other sad affairs with which to occupy my mind, as well as the setting of the sun and my trip down the highway to get home. “I have to go,” I said to the officers. “My husband has chores and I—”

“Just a few more questions, please, Mrs. Goodwin. The more we know about Robbie the better we can assist him.”

“What sort of trouble is it?” I thought to ask.

“We aren’t at liberty to comment, I’m afraid,” she said. “We were hoping you could tell us if you noticed any signs at the end of the year, if he seemed anxious, if there were any behavior changes you noted.”

I tried to remember. I shut my eyes, falling into a gray sleep. “No
more than usual,” I whispered. I didn’t care if they couldn’t hear. They’d have to come so close they’d have to hold me to listen. “The parents send him day after day to school sick,” I maundered. “He’s a baby, really, at five, even at six. The parents are legally entitled to school and the school is obligated to care for him. Robbie went to the Latch Key program too. He was in that building twelve hours a day sometimes, from six to six. It must have felt like a cage to him, a dumping ground, a kitty carrier. I don’t think they let you dream in those places.” I opened my eyes and looked at the two of them, and again I felt like laughing, because they were listening so intently to my aimless thoughts.

“What kind of sickness did he have?” Grogan asked.

“Sore throats, ear infections, the common cold, allergies, bee stings, influenza, chicken pox, skinned knees. He had strep throat about five times last year. I had the feeling that his mother was, well, sloppy about medication.” I was being only too kind. “Strep throat can be quite serious,” I said, frowning like a concerned health-care worker.

I had once gone to the guidance counselor about him because I could never get him to take his Suprax. He spit it up in my face or on the floor and I know for a fact that one bottle of about six ounces costs fifty dollars. Mrs. Watson, her dyed beet-red hair pulled severely into a bun, was a broad, square woman with all the softness and curves of a Sherman tank. She was supposed to be a resource person, but she was always thundering at the children and the staff alike, as if what you’d come for and what she had to give away was something bitter, for your own good. She said to me, “Go back to your office and make him take it. It’s medicine, he needs it, you are responsible for making sure he gets it down.” David Henskin was an older, remote person who also gave the message that we were to take care of our own problems. I used to have nightmares that Robbie missed his medication and died standing by my desk.

“Robbie destroyed my idea that I could help, or make a difference,” I said, apparently out loud.

“How do you mean?” Grogan asked.

If she knew Robbie at all she would know what I meant. It was obvious the way he spat at you, called you names, busted you to pieces. It occurred to me only then that maybe they knew what I had done. Of
course! They had come to question me because I had slapped him once, last year. I had nearly convinced myself that it hadn’t happened but Grogan saw—she knew. She was shrewd behind her Tupperware Party face. Stay calm, be calm, I ordered. It hadn’t been too hard, that slap. I had hit him and that actually was the truer reason I hadn’t gone to the principal, for fear Robbie would tell. I had been composed since that day months before, when I had struck him across the cheek. I had been sure that I would be fired, that I was finished, that my license would be revoked. I had waited, day after day, week after week, month after month. He had stared at me with such scorn, stared until I walked over to him and slapped him back and forth. He had stood with his arms at his side, continuing to stare, as if I hadn’t gotten anywhere near him. I hadn’t told anyone about it, not even Howard.

“No,” I said, “I have to go now.” I couldn’t abide the dark hallway, or the men on the school board, or Robbie and his mother, or Mrs. Watson and Luther Tritz and pretty Grogan and handsome, dumb Melby.
Bless me, Grogan, for I have sinned
.

“Are you okay?” Grogan asked. “You didn’t look too good at that meeting.”

I hadn’t noticed them in the cafeteria, but they must have been watching. They had been spying, because they wanted to get me. I’d slapped Robbie and been so careless Lizzy had drowned. “I’m not well,” I said. I felt woozy and I had to touch the wall with both hands to stop it from whirling.

“I’m sorry to keep you standing,” she said. “Why don’t we sit on the bench at the end of the hall there. This really won’t take too much longer.”

“I can’t stay!” I shouted. “I’m sick, don’t you understand?”

“We just have a few more things—”

“I’m having a complete nervous breakdown! Do you want to know the truth? I’m having a complete nervous breakdown and no one will let me do it in peace and quiet.” I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. “Oh God,” I cried, as the floodgates burst.

“What’s the matter with you?” Grogan asked sternly.

“I hurt everybody!” I sobbed. I was thinking of Nellie just then,
thinking what an ungrateful wretch I was. I started to run away backwards, and then I turned and hurtled through the door. When I got to the car I jammed the keys in the ignition and screeched away. The sound, the howling coming from my mouth, was such a strange, loony noise, I had to stop making it to listen, to know that I was calling for Howard.

Chapter Eight

——

W
HEN
I
GOT HOME
the sky was not yet dark, but a luminous blue, the color and quality of neither day nor night. A few stars, a planet, were shining. I went upstairs to our room, undressed, and got into bed. Over the burr of the fan I could hear my heart beating its muffled private thumps. I had had a run in with Mrs. Mackessy once, before I’d smacked Robbie. I could talk myself into thinking I hadn’t really hurt him, make small adjustments to the picture to alter the angle of my hand and the force of the stroke. I had also convinced myself that the scene with Mrs. Mackessy didn’t amount to anything fearsome. She had come to pick up Robbie at noon, to take him away early. He had been sick to his stomach all morning and naturally no one had been home or within reach. I was sure that he’d been ill earlier, before he got to school. I had sat with him for three hours, swabbing his hot forehead, holding him while he vomited. He was too miserable to struggle, too worn out for mischief, and for once he seemed to know that he needed me. He didn’t have the strength to lie down after he’d sit up to retch, and I’d have to set him back in place, on the cot.

My rage at Robbie Mackessy’s mother had smoldered as I tended her boy. I can truthfully say that I felt for the child, who had seemed to me, on
so many occasions, to already be ruined and well beyond rehabilitation. Mrs. Mackessy had sent him to school sick because she didn’t care much about him, because she assumed he was the school’s problem and not hers. At noon, from my office, I saw her slowly getting out of her car, smoothing her dress, tossing her head so that her golden mane fell down her back. I watched her walk down the hall in an intricate gait like a horse that has spent its life learning dressage. She picked up her little feet and set them carefully down starting at the toe and working through to the instep and heel, all the while turning her head from side to side, her hair flicking back and forth over her shoulders. She was fifteen minutes late to pick him up so she could take him and dump him elsewhere. She was the manager of a steak house in Blackwell, no doubt a complex job involving hiring and ordering food, arranging schedules, as well as hostessing. That day she was wearing a conservative boxy blue dress with thick red piping around the collar and cuffs and hem. She had gold sandals with straps that crisscrossed, Jesus sandals in gold lamé.

“What’s he got?” she demanded.

“The same thing that was wrong with him when you sent him to school,” I said.

She pressed her lips together, and narrowed her eyes to look at me.

“When you have children,” I went on, trying to sound professional and dispassionate, “occasionally you have to think of them first, before yourself.”

She stepped toward me and said into my face, “You mind your own goddamn business.”

I smiled as hard as I could. “It’s your negligence that keeps me employed,” I said. “I suppose I should thank you, Mrs. Mackessy.” It was pointless to fight with her, I knew, but I had waited too long, itching for battle. Robbie had finally fallen asleep and she breezed past me, into the cubicle to get him.

“He’s dehydrating,” I called into the inner room. “If you are interested in the life of your child you’d better get him to a doctor.” I went closer in and I said then what I never should have. I said, “If he keeps coming to school sick I’ll report you to—It’s not right, that he’s always so run down. I’ll do that, Mrs. Mackessy. I’ll report you.”

“I’ll report
you,”
she snarled, coming past me with Robbie slung over
her shoulder. She turned, almost cracking her son’s head in the molding of the door. “I’ll get you put away if anything is the matter with him.”

It had been October, and I’d gone home at noon to help Howard harvest the corn. I remember how he scolded me for driving the tractor dangerously fast, and how cross I had been for several days, waiting for something to happen in the aftermath of Mrs. Mackessy’s threat. I hadn’t done anything wrong in my job except for disliking them so much. There was more than enough bad feeling between both of us to make me feel uneasy.

A wind was coming up again, and the branches from our maple tree were scraping against the house. I put the pillow over my head, wanting to sleep without seeing and hearing Mrs. Mackessy. I had hit Robbie Mackessy in December because he had stared and stared at me in such a hateful way. He had absorbed the blow. It was as if the sting had gone right to a spot inside where he stored his wounds. He had stood by my desk and for the first time he looked like a lovable child. He had been perfectly still as I struck. When I stepped back his cheeks were dewy, pink, and he smiled. Later on last summer I remembered that smile again, and it seemed that he must have known how much that single blow was going to hurt me. He smiled on and on as if the slap had been a kiss. He smiled as if he was going to take it home to his mother and then watch: She would prance down the hall, doing a high step, lifting her skirts, foaming at the mouth, fully confident in her ability to win the prize.

I was thinking the wrong kind of thoughts again. I should try to get well and be positive; I should think of the ravenous green worm who all of a sudden finds himself making a cocoon, drops off to sleep, and wakes a butterfly. Perhaps that was death, nothing more alarming than complete transformation.
Keep in motion. Think of beauty!
“Keep in motion,” I whispered. “Keep in motion. Keep in motion.”

I was almost asleep when Howard appeared in the doorway. I was dimly aware of him coming toward the bed, sitting down, and then putting his hand on my thigh. I rolled toward him, wondering how to explain the little debacle down at the school-board meeting.

“You got back early,” he said. He stretched out next to me, with his boots on, moving his hands down my spine and over my rump. “How’d it go?”

I bit down hard on the foam pillow and said through my teeth, “Disaster.”

He began kissing the nape of my neck, and he said so fondly, between the kisses, “How many times have I told you to chew with your mouth closed?”

He smelled of motor oil and he was literally breathing down my neck. I wasn’t going to cry. I was going to ask him to stop trying to make me get well. I was not going to cry, and I was going to tell him about Grogan and Robbie, about Mrs. Mackessy, about Theresa down in the orchard. He might have thought I was waiting for him, the way I used to in the old days, waiting in bed in my black negligee, with my sultry, standoffish look that meant only one thing. I was wearing a white tank top and I was face down so that he could not see my expression. He was lifting my shirt in the back, routing out my breasts from underneath me when I turned and pushed him over with my pillow.

“Come on, Alice,” he said, popping up and laughing. “You don’t have to beat me to make me want you. I miss you. We need to play.” I made a mental note to tell Theresa about him someday if we spoke again: Howard and I could be mortal enemies, but in the interest of sex we could frolic for half an hour and then resume guarding our fortresses. It was like the Germans and the Russians playing soccer on the battlefield on Christmas Day. I lay back thinking I was going to start crying after all, not ordinary tears, but a new brand, each the size of a small fresh water lake with vacation bungalows neck to neck. He was kissing my eyelids and my cheeks. I found my mouth moving against his in what I suppose was a kiss. I needed to tell him about Grogan, about how I wasn’t sure why I was shivering even now, but that there was a specific reason which would undoubtedly be evident sooner or later. I put my hands in his thick, coarse black hair that was like some ancient medicinal holy stuff that could staunch blood and cause other general healing wonders. Maybe when he slept I could pull out a clump and wear it in a locket around my neck. It might make me well overnight. I felt as if the weight of Howard’s heavy head was on my mouth. He had me now, as he kissed me, the weeks of sorrow and weariness and the dull ache after comfort, all of that pressure was on his lips, moving against my mouth. I remember the
feeling coming over me, slowly, slowly, that this was how it went, the way down under the water, sinking and sinking, past the murky seaweed, looking up to the surface, looking up into the paddling feet of a turtle. I relaxed and I saw the moon come through the water and glare at me. My hair was floating in front of my face, just beyond the kiss, and my outstretched hands pawing the water were like someone else’s, gesturing me to come closer. If we could stay that way forever; if we could stay filled to the brim and floating toward the darkness, never suffocating or dying …