Little Children (3 page)

I must have been like this
, Todd sometimes thought.
I must have been one of them
.

The afternoon his mother died, Todd and his friends had been throwing snowballs at cars. The roads were slick, and a station wagon that they ambushed skidded and jumped the curb across the street, plowing over some garbage cans and scattering trash all over the Andersons’ front lawn. Most of Todd’s buddies fled the scene, but he and Mark Tollan remained crouched behind some leafless bushes, snickering into their gloves as the middle-aged driver jumped out of his car and began shouting plaintively in the January twilight.

“Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted?”

When he got home an hour or so later, chilled and exhilarated and starving—he was always starving in those days—the first odd thing Todd noticed was that the house didn’t smell like food. The second thing was the presence of his father, who usually returned from work later in the evening, sitting on the couch in a weirdly rigid posture, with what looked like an ominous expression on his face. Even before his father spoke, Todd knew for certain that he’d been busted, though he wasn’t sure how. Had the driver recognized him somehow? Had one of his friends confessed? Had some neighborhood adult witnessed everything?

“Sit down, son. I need to talk to you.”

“Is this about the car?” Todd asked.

His father was taken aback. “Did someone tell you?”

“No, I just had a feeling.” Todd braced himself for a scolding, but his father fell into a peculiar silence, as if he’d forgotten they were having a conversation. “It was my fault, Dad. I should have known better.”

“What are you talking about?” His father spoke softly, but there was tension in his voice, as if he were making an effort to remain calm. “It was an accident. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

The powerful sense of reprieve Todd experienced quickly turned to confusion. For some reason, his father began talking about his mother in an awkward, almost mechanical monotone. Driving home from Sears. Treacherous conditions. Lost control on an exit ramp. Broke through a guardrail. Wrapped the car around a tree trunk. This was the phrase that had lodged itself in his memory, though in retrospect he couldn’t believe that his father would have evoked such an awful image at that particular moment.

“I’m sorry, Todd. That’s what happened. I just got back from the hospital. The doctors did everything they could.”

“Does Janie know?”

“We’re gonna pick her up at the airport in an hour.”

We predicted it
, Todd thought. Ever since he could remember, he and his sister Janie—she was seven years older, already a freshman in college—had been teasing their mother about what a bad driver she was. She was always checking her makeup while she drove, puckering her lips and appraising herself in the rearview mirror. She would take her eyes off the road for extended periods to rummage through her purse or change the station on the radio.

Look where you’re going
, they used to tell her.
You’re gonna kill somebody.

Probably just myself
, their mother would say, in an oddly cheerful voice.

“What are we gonna do?” Todd asked.

His father seemed momentarily at a loss. He looked at his hand for a few seconds, as if hoping to find an answer scribbled on his palm, then softly patted Todd on the shoulder.

“We’re going to keep moving forward,” his father said, his voice regaining some of its normal authority. “Nothing’s going to change. I want you to keep living your life as if this never happened. It’s what your mother wants, too.”

Todd was so relieved to find out there was a plan that it never occurred to him to question its wisdom. Two days after his mother’s funeral he played in a youth league basketball playoff game and scored seventeen points. The day after that he was back in school. When a teacher asked how he was doing in that compassionate voice they used, Todd always said
Fine
so firmly and emphatically that no one ever pressed him to make sure if he was really okay, or maybe needed to talk to someone about what he was going through.

All through high school and college, Todd did exactly what his dead mother and quickly remarried father wanted from him, excelling in the classroom and on the playing field, impersonating a successful, well-adjusted kid who had somehow absorbed a terrible blow without missing a beat—starting quarterback, dean’s list, social chair, lots of girlfriends, accepted into three of the five law schools he’d applied to.

It was only later, after he was married and the father of a newborn son, that he began to suspect that there was something not quite right, something unresolved or defective at the core of his being. And it must have been this something—this flaw or lack or whatever the hell it was—that kept his arm glued to the mailbox while he watched the skateboarders every night, desperately hoping that they’d notice him for once and say something nice, maybe even invite him to step out from the shadows and take his rightful place among them.

“HE SHOULD JUST BE CASTRATED.”

Mary Ann made this declaration with magisterial calm, as if there were no possibility of another point of view on the subject. Cheryl and Theresa nodded in wholehearted agreement. The “he” in question was Ronald James McGorvey, a forty-three-year-old former Catholic school custodian and convicted sex offender, who had just moved in with his elderly mother at 44 Blueberry Court, a modest cul-de-sac Sarah and Lucy passed every day on their way to the playground.

Sarah studied McGorvey’s shadowy face—he was a plump man with wiry, thinning hair and an anxious expression—on the badly photocopied handbill spread out on the picnic table. It was one of hundreds that had popped up all over town the past couple of days, stapled to telephone poles, tucked under windshield wipers, slipped beneath front doors.
DECENT PEOPLE BEWARE!!!
the headline blared.
THERE IS A PERVERT AMONG US!
The fine print explained that McGorvey had been charged repeatedly with indecent exposure and was “reputed to be a prime suspect in the still-unsolved disappearance of a nine-year-old Rhode Island girl in 1995.”

“Quick and clean,” Mary Ann continued. “Just chop it off. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about notifying the neighbors.”

“You know what else you should do?” Sarah suggested, employing the same take-no-prisoners tone as Mary Ann. “Nail his severed penis above the entrance to the elementary school. You know, as a warning to the other perverts.”

Recognizing sarcasm when they heard it, Cheryl and Theresa chuckled politely. Mary Ann fixed Sarah with an icy glare.

“You think this is funny?”

“I just can’t believe you want to castrate a man for indecent exposure.”

“If that’s what it takes to protect my children, then so be it,” said Mary Ann. “And besides, he’s probably a murderer.”

“He’s a suspect. In this country it means that he’s innocent until proven guilty.”

“He’s
been
proven guilty. Why do you think he was in prison?”

“So? He did his time. He paid his debt to society.”

Sarah was surprised to hear herself taking such a narrow, legalistic view of the situation. Back in college, she’d been an enthusiastic proponent of the hard-line antipornography position staked out by Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, and had written a well-received sociology term paper on “The Normalization of Abuse: Patriarchy and Marital Rape.” She certainly wouldn’t have objected if one of her Women’s Studies professors had recommended the castration of incorrigible sex offenders. But her dislike of Mary Ann had become so strong that it trumped all other considerations. If Mary Ann had spoken out in favor of kindness to animals and small children, Sarah might have felt tempted to take up the cause of cruelty.

It wasn’t her opinions per se that were so irritating, it was the smugness with which she expressed them. Underlying Mary Ann’s every utterance was an obnoxious sense of certainty, of personal completeness, as if she’d gotten everything she’d ever wanted in the best of all possible worlds.
This?
Sarah always wanted to ask.
This is what you wanted? This playground? That SUV? Your stupid spandex shorts? Your weekly roll in the hay? Those well-behaved children who cower at the sound of your voice?

“Snip, snip.” Mary Ann made a scissoring motion with her index and middle fingers. “Problem solved.”

“Some countries chop off the hands of shoplifters,” Sarah pointed out. “Maybe we should do that, too.”

“Probably cut down on shoplifting,” Mary Ann said, drawing appreciative laughter from Cheryl and Theresa.

Sarah had no illusion that she’d gotten the better of the exchange, but it didn’t matter. The important thing was that she was speaking up, no longer letting Mary Ann intimidate her into silence and implied agreement. After last week’s incident with the rice cakes, Sarah had more or less decided to switch to a new playground—as soon as she located one within walking distance that offered some promise of reasonable human contact—and this decision had liberated her from the thankless task of pretending to fit in with the other mothers.

“My brother used to expose himself,” Theresa said suddenly. “When we were teenagers. He’d do it in my bedroom, or in the backseat of the car, even at the dinner table. He always figured out a way to do it so that no one could see what he was up to but me.”

“Didn’t you tell anyone?” Cheryl asked.

“No.” Theresa shook her head, as if puzzled by her own answer, “I didn’t want to get him in trouble. Or maybe I was scared someone was going to blame me. I don’t know. It didn’t stop until he went away to college.”

“That’s revolting,” said Mary Ann. “Did you ever confront him?”

“Once,” said Theresa. “About five years ago. We got a little drunk, and I asked him about it. He remembered it as a onetime thing, a stupid joke or something. But it happened a lot. Not every day or every week, but just enough that it always seemed like a possibility.”

Sarah couldn’t help herself. “He should have been castrated.”

“It’s not the same thing,” Mary Ann snapped. “He wasn’t doing it to strangers.”

“Not that we know of,” said Cheryl.

“He’s married now,” said Theresa. “His wife’s pregnant with number three. And of all my siblings, he’s the one I get along best with. Just goes to show.”

Goes to show what?
Sarah wanted to ask, but she didn’t have a chance. Cheryl abruptly reached across the table and grabbed Theresa’s hand.

“Look.” She spoke the word softly, but with urgency.

“What?” Theresa glanced instinctively toward the play structure, where Courtney, Isabelle, and Lucy were taking turns on the baby slide. “Where?”

“Over there,” said Cheryl. “The Prom King.”

“Oh my God.” Theresa smiled as if she’d just received good news. “He’s back.”

Sarah followed the other women’s gazes over to the swing set, eager to finally get a glimpse of the Prom King, the handsome and mysterious young father who had been a regular at the Rayburn School playground for several weeks this past spring before abruptly dropping out of sight. His departure had left a gaping hole in the emotional lives of Cheryl, Theresa, and Mary Ann. Barely a day went by without one of them speculating wistfully about the reason for his absence and the likelihood of his return.

“Maybe he got fired,” Theresa said, lowering her voice the way people did when discussing a shameful subject.

“You don’t even know if he had a job,” Mary Ann pointed out.

The Prom King knelt down to unbuckle his son, a slender little boy wearing a pink-and-purple jester’s cap, from the right side of a double stroller. A large stuffed bear was strapped into the seat on the left. With the ease of someone performing a familiar action, the Prom King lifted his son into the air and dropped him into the toddler swing, which resembled a black rubber diaper hanging from two chains.

“Maybe he just needed a vacation,” Cheryl said.

“A vacation from what?” Mary Ann sounded vaguely exasperated.

“From being Prom King,” said Theresa.

“It’s a dirty job,” Cheryl added with a chuckle. “But someone’s got to do it.”

As ridiculous as the nickname sounded, Sarah had to admit that it seemed oddly appropriate. The Prom King was tall and well built, with a shock of blond hair falling surfer-style across his forehead. There was something generic about his good looks, a pleasantly bland quality that reminded her of those cheerful men who modeled jockey shorts in the Sunday supplements, smiling confidently with their arms crossed on their chests, or pointing with fascination into empty space.

In any case, it was easy to see why he’d made such an impression. Most of the men who showed up at the playground during the workday were marginal types—middle-aged trolls with beards and potbellies, studiously whimsical academics who insisted on going down the slide with their kids, pinch-hitting grandfathers providing emergency day care, sheepish blue-collar guys who wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, the occasional cooler-than-thou hipster-with-a-flexible-schedule. But there was no one even remotely like the Prom King, who looked like he’d wandered off the set of a daytime soap to bring a little bit of glamour into the lives of bored young mothers.

“What’s he do for a living?” Sarah asked.

No one had any idea.

“He must have had some kind of job,” Sarah pressed on. “Before he got married.”

“I’m sure he did,” agreed Mary Ann. “He just didn’t discuss it.”

“What about his wife? What’s she do?”

“We didn’t really talk to him,” Cheryl explained.

“We don’t even know his name,” Theresa added.

“Really?” All this time, Sarah had imagined herself as taking the Prom King’s place at the picnic table. That was the way it had been presented to her by the others:
He left, and a few days later you showed up
. “I thought you said he was a regular.”

“It was awkward,” said Theresa. “It wasn’t like he was one of the girls.”

“He made us nervous,” said Cheryl. “You had to think about what you were going to wear in the morning, put on makeup. It was exhausting.”

“You went to all that trouble and you still didn’t talk to him?” Sarah couldn’t hide her amusement. “What is this, seventh grade?”

“We don’t come here to flirt,” Mary Ann said primly. “We come here to look after our children.”

“My God,” said Sarah. “What year is this? It’s possible to talk to a man without flirting.”

“He’s kind of intimidating,” Theresa insisted. “It’s hard to explain.”

Sarah glanced at the Prom King, who was having some trouble squeezing the stuffed bear into the swing next to his son’s. Once he got it jammed in to his satisfaction, he began pushing both swings, as though the child and the stuffed animal held equal claims on his attention.

“What’s with the double stroller?” Sarah asked. “Does he have another kid?”

“We’ve only seen the one,” said Cheryl.

“He’s a cutie,” added Theresa. “That crazy hat.”

Maybe they lost a child
, Sarah thought, wondering if the Prom King might actually be a tragic figure. How thoughtless it would be, whispering and giggling about a man carrying a terrible weight of grief on his shoulders. On the other hand, he seemed fairly lighthearted at the moment, imitating a series of barnyard animals as he wove a figure eight between the two swings. The imitations were surprisingly realistic—he did an especially good chicken—and he performed them at high volume, with a lack of self-consciousness that was rare in an adult male. Lucy seemed to find this appealing, and she wandered over from the sandbox for a closer look.

“Mommy!” she called. “Swing me!”

Normally, Sarah tried to discourage Lucy from going on the swings. She tended to get hypnotized by the motion, and convincing her to stop invariably turned into a complex negotiation full of threats and bribery, and culminating in an inevitable tantrum. But right now that seemed like a small price to pay for the chance to show the other mothers that it was possible to treat a good-looking man as if he were an actual human being rather than some sort of two-dimensional sex object. She rose slowly from the bench, feigning weariness.

“Okay, sweetie. I’ll be right there.”

“Wait,” Theresa whispered. She had her purse open and was groping for something inside.

“What?” said Sarah.

Theresa held up her wallet, smirking like a schoolgirl.

“Five bucks if you get his phone number.”

The little boy observed Lucy with a certain amount of skepticism as she swung in near unison beside him. Then he turned to Sarah, his expression unexpectedly serious for someone wearing a floppy velour cap outfitted with real bells.

“Her how old?” he inquired.

“Lucy, honey?” Sarah coaxed. “Tell the nice boy how old you are.”

Lucy shook her head, refusing as usual to do anything that might enable a social interaction to unfold smoothly, without awkwardness or unnecessary effort.

“I three!” the little jester shouted, undeterred by Lucy’s silence. He jabbed the corresponding number of fingers into the air.

“His birthday was in February,” the Prom King added, smiling pleasantly at Sarah. Up close his features were more distinctive than she had anticipated—the eyes set a bit too close together, two of his bottom teeth overlapping slightly—the imperfections adding a helpful touch of humanity to the package. “Still working on the potty training, though.”

“Tell me about it.” Sarah chuckled. “Lucy turned three in April. Isn’t that right, honey?”

Lucy would neither confirm nor deny this assertion. She just stared at the boy, her expression composed of equal parts amazement and horror.

“She can be a bit shy,” Sarah explained.

“Not Aaron,” said the Prom King. “He’s a real talker.”

“My grandma lives in New Jersey!” the boy proclaimed, unable to contain this exciting fact a moment longer. But then his eyes narrowed and his mood turned somber. “She not have a swim pool.”

“His grandmother in Florida has one,” the Prom King reported.

“Do you like to swim?” Sarah asked the boy.

“I don’t like sharks,” he said. “They eat you up.”

“Don’t listen to him. He loves to swim. We go to the Town Pool almost every day.” The Prom King held out his hand. “I’m Todd, by the way.”

“Sarah.”

“I haven’t seen you here before.”

“I’ve only been coming for a few weeks. I used to go to the playground with that old, creaky merry-go-round? The one by the ice-cream place?”

Todd knew it well. He and Aaron liked to rotate playgrounds every few weeks for the sake of variety. Though, he had to say, some places were friendlier than others.

“You’re the first person who’s ever talked to me here,” he said, glancing in the direction of the other mothers, who were staring back with undisguised curiosity, as if Sarah and Todd were images flickering on a movie screen.

“I think you make them nervous,” she said. “They’re not used to running into good-looking men at the playground.”

Oh my God
, she thought.
I can’t believe I’m flirting with him
.