Rebecca Coleman - The Kingdom of Childhood

Then I thought of Zach in my kindergarten classroom. Not once. Many times.

I thought of everything he had told me about his family. Everything I knew about his body. I thought, these people are true believers.

And then I thought, it can’t be.

Before school began I slipped into the main office in pursuit of Zach’s student file. My surreptitious search turned it up quickly, the only P in the bunch, marked with a yellow tape flag that indicated it was one of the files missing either a vaccination record or a signed exemption. The only health-related paperwork it contained was the birth history survey filled out by his mother, describing in lyrical prose his home birth in rural New Hampshire. If I wanted to know whether Zach was our latest case of measles, I would have to ask him myself.

As soon as my last morning student left with his mother I tore out of the parking lot at a speed unbecoming of a kindergarten teacher. Once on Zach’s street I slowed to a crawl, scanning his driveway and the curb in front of his house for cars. Both his mother’s sporty little Volvo convertible and his father’s green pickup truck were gone. I parked one house down to be on the safe side and crunched through the dry leaves that covered his lawn. When I knocked on the door I felt a moment of wild fear that his mother was home after all, but just as I backed away from the door it opened, and there he stood in the living room’s muted light, wearing a gray T-shirt and baggy pajama pants. His jaw and upper lip were stubbly with the beginnings of a beard that matched his hair, and he wore glasses with thin, black-wire frames. The effect was jarring. He looked ten years older.

“Hey,” he said, opening the screen door. His voice sounded lower and raspier than usual. “What’s up?”

“Your mother said you were sick. I wanted to, you know, check in.”

“Kind of dangerous for you to just show up like this, isn’t it?”

I folded my arms over my chest. “I can’t check in on Scott’s friend?”

His laugh, accompanied by a curled lip and half-rolled eyes, frightened me. “You’re lucky my mom’s not here,” he said. “She went to see the midwife because she’s worried the baby’s not kicking enough. Kinda ironic, huh? She’s paranoid about the baby, and then you show up.”

I winced a little, and he sighed. “C’mon, it’s cold out. You’d better come in.”

I stepped into the foyer. Newspapers lay strewn on the dining room table, and a basket of laundry overflowed on the sofa. A cat meowed at me from atop the pile, but didn’t come over to investigate.

“Doesn’t look like Luna likes you,” Zach said as he walked toward the kitchen. I took a few tentative steps in the same direction, watching as he picked up a blue-glazed mug and drank from it.

“Are you feeling better?” I asked politely.

He nodded, still drinking. “I’ll be back on Monday.”

I followed the rest of the way into the kitchen. “I was afraid you had the measles.”

This time he shook his head. “No way. I’ve had my shots.”

“Have you really? I wasn’t sure. I checked your file,” I said, then immediately regretted the confession. “It was flagged for missing an immunization record,” I added, as if my nosing around had been merely a clerical matter.

“Really? My mom must not have gotten around to turning it in yet.” He nodded to a blue homeopathic-remedy tube on the counter. “She’s got me on phosphorous. She tried three others and none of them worked. I’ve also been ordered to drink a truckload of Yogi Tea.”

“Is the phosphorous helping?”

“I guess.” He downed the rest of the tea and turned toward the sink. On the counter was a cutting board with a half-sliced lemon on it, and a teddy bear-shaped bottle of honey. As he rinsed the mug, he said, “If you want anything out of me, now’s not a great time. I haven’t taken a shower in two days.”

I balked at his assumption. “I wasn’t thinking that. You’re sick.”

He shrugged, his back to me. His shoulders, thinly covered by the ancient T-shirt, looked slight. “I was sick on Friday, too. Didn’t seem to bother you.”

“I had no idea you were sick. You never said a word.”

He set the mug on the drainer and turned to face me.

“I had a fever of a hundred and one. You were in my lap. ”

“Zach,” I hissed, horrified to hear him say it aloud. “I’m sorry . But I just came to check on you because I was concerned. Don’t make it sound like I only care about one thing. That’s simply not true.”

He leaned back against the counter, and suddenly the vague swagger of his posture, the way the window framed his strong, lean body, conspired to make me feel as if I were ten years old. “Name a second thing,” he suggested.

I replied with a nervous laugh. “What do you mean?”

“What I said. Name a second thing.”

He looked at me, his hands braced against the counter behind him, and waited on my answer. I hesitated, and not because I didn’t have a second thing to name. Since the week end of the marathon playhouse construction, I had turned the puzzle of my attraction to him over and over in my hand, held it to the light, examined its every facet. He was good-looking, but Scott had plenty of friends who were more conventionally attractive than Zach, and none had ever tunneled into my mind the way Zach had. As a lover he had proved himself more competent than I would have expected from one so young, but that alone would never lead me to take the risks I took for him. No, the reason was something else entirely—that his very being tugged at my mind as though anchored somewhere in its darkest depths, and that the act of seducing him, regardless of whether he reciprocated the plea sure, calmed a place inside me that had never been calm. But I could put none of that into words. I only knew the power of the way my mind stirred at the thought of him, recoiled at the notion of losing him, and loved him with the hollow, groveling love a hostage has for her captor.

So I said, “I can’t answer that. I don’t know why I’m doing this at all. I don’t get a thrill out of the risk, that’s for sure. And I’ve certainly never felt attracted to a teenager. Not as an adult.”

His laugh was quick and harsh. “You’re doing a good job faking it.”

“So are you.”

“I’m just taking what’s available.”

“Then maybe you only care about one thing,” I suggested. “Or perhaps we both have reasons we’re not owning up to. I could take a stab at what mine might be. And maybe for you it’s about all the time you spent imagining that yoga student going to bed with your mother. But regardless, I’m not thinking about anything else when I’m with you. Are you thinking about your mother when you’re with me?”

“No,” he said curtly.

“Then we’re on the same page. You call the shots here, Zach. You decide when enough is enough. I made a mistake last week, and I’m sorry. But if I was any good at thinking straight when I’m with you, then we wouldn’t be in this situation, would we? If you’re fed up with it, fine. Tell me to my face, and then stop asking me for rides home. You can’t come looking for me after school and then get angry with me when I feel the same way. You have to just say, ‘No, Judy, I’m not doing this anymore.’”

He took a deep breath. “No, Judy, I’m not doing this anymore.”

My heart lurched, but I said, “Fine. Then I’m not offering anymore, and you’re not asking.”

He looked at a point over my shoulder. “What if I slip up?”

“I’m not a prostitute, Zach. Make up your mind and let me know what you decide.”

The cat wandered into the kitchen and curled around his legs. Sighing, he slipped his fingers up under his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.