Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

Lorraine checked her rearview and silently cursed her judgment, taking Sahara in the middle of the afternoon. By the time she'd seen this was the wrong decision, it had been too late. Now she was stuck, halfway up the overpass, unable to tell what color that traffic signal was. She guessed it didn't matter. Listlessly, she flicked the switch for her turn signal.

Halfway down the backseat, Newell was hunched over something or other, sulking maybe, perhaps manipulating a handheld stylus, playing one of his games. Was it possible he was immersing himself in the pages of some comic book? Perish the thought. He'd just come from a comic book store, absurd to think he'd be looking at a comic book. At least then he'd be reading. Lorraine adjusted her rearview mirror.

“Quit staring,” he said.

She chalked it up to his age. Almost twelve and a half, the boy liked to brag, as if the six months made a difference, as if anyone besides his mother cared. That stretch where he would rather drink urine than sit up front with her. Like Muhammad coming down from the mountain if he deigned to argue about which radio station's commercials he wanted to hear. Whatever he was doing back there, it was sure to ruin his posture, keep him preoccupied for a little while.

“What? Quit it.”

Jesus. She was never going to get into that lane.

Within sight yet impossibly far away, the intersection's two nearest corners were anchored by convenience stores, while its two far corners were occupied by gas stations. The convenience stores had gas pumps, the gas stations had mart attachments, and each of their bright color schematics promised pleasure and reliability, a smile with your receipt or your money back — if you could manage to make it three blocks.

“Momz?”

…

“Mamasita?”

“So you're talking to me now?”

“Come aww-hhn. ”

“You know the rules.”

“Please. Pleeeeezzze.”

“The doctor says—”

“ FPhhf. ”

“And your teachers—”

“ FFFFfffphhhfffft. ”

“Well,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “I think skim milk is tasty.”

“Knock yourself out, then. Don't let me stop you.”

“Besides, it looks to me like you're already sugared to your hyperactive little jowls.”

“MOM.”

She could not help but laugh a little, feeling a small measure of satisfation, and eased her foot, for a pulse, onto the gas. “What's the matter, sweetie, the way you dish it out—”

He was brooding, pushing his hand on his cheek. Was he really checking to see if he had jowls? The possibility was so cute that Lorraine felt her heart break.

“You know, maybe if you'd stop being obnoxious, you might be allowed to get Slurpees.”

“YEAH. Maybe I'll do that. OKAY. And maybe I'll grow lips on my butt. I won't need a Slurpee then. I'll spend all day kissing my own—”

“Language.”

A rancher with a comb-over had been checking her out for a while. From his secondhand Ford, he waved her into the lane. Lorraine thanked him with a dip into the shallow end of her endless reservoir of forced smiles. Still good-looking enough to set hayseeds and horny teenagers drooling, it was true. Her palm guiding the steering wheel, she flashed a glance at herself in the rearview mirror, and immediately fixated on small truths she could not avoid: eyes that stayed rigid around the corners; cheekbones that used to smile easily through kick steps, now puttyish.

“You know, Newell, you don't have to get anything.”

“What do any of us have to do? Huh, Ma?”

“Don't be smart.”

“Rilly. Why are we here?”

A terse smile. She kept her foot flexed on the brake. Was it the worst question?

“We are here,” Lorraine said, “because your perfect mother made the mistake of turning onto this road in the middle of the afternoon. That is why we are here.”

“He could have taken me home, you know.”

She felt an aftertaste in her mouth, perhaps the onset of car nausea, and dutifully flicked the console, turning the air-conditioning system to a lower setting. A look in the rearview showed her son was actually staring back, waiting on an answer. She puckered her lips, checked her lipstick.

“How many times have I told you—”

He answered with a snort.

“Well, maybe if you explain it to me again? He's old enough to drive, but still hangs out in comic stores?”

“Maaa.”

“How about we change the subject. How was this week's… drawer? Did he do the… autographs? Like you wanted?”

“I don't even care about him. Bonerbite's lame. You should see the stuff Kenny's been doing.”

“Something else, Newell.”

“Serious, though. It's awesome. And he's cool to me. I don't—”

“I said…”

A vacant lot between two of the strip malls on the near side of the street: tumbleweeds and jetsam and landfill; a chipped fiery bird painted across the weathered hood of an orange Camaro, a small black-and-red for sale by owner sign taped to the tinted windshield. One one thousand, Lorraine counted, a trick that allowed her to control her anger. Two one thousand. With a measured, almost forced cheeriness, she said: “You understand there's a dramatic age difference between you and Kenny.”

The boy kept staring out of the window. A strong vein down the side of his neck tensed.

“He's nice enough, Newell. I'm not disagreeing with you, honey. But I don't think I'm being unreasonable, wanting to know where you two are going tonight.”

Broken glass sparkled in random constellations; the outline of tract homes and subdivisions through the background was faint, but undeniably present, the purple mountain ranges apathetic across the far distance.

“Newell?”

…

“At least explain why I'm so out of line, then.”

…

“A phone number. Where his mother can be reached.”

His silence broke softly, with the declaration: “He doesn't have parents, Mom.”

“Oh…”

“Yeah.”

“I'm sorry, honey. I didn't know.”

“He's a mutant sewer dweller.”

“NEWELL.”

“A total perv.”

“YOUNG MAN.”

“Serious. He's gonna take me out tonight and abuse me.”

“THAT’S ENOUGH—”

A snort. A cackle. The boy slapping his knee. “He told me so. Burgers, then anal penetration.”

1.6

Anal rape was actually the phrase Lorraine would first remember, though she also would recall hamburgers had been involved in some strange way. Certainly, Newell's spoken words would not be her foremost memory of the day he went missing (that honor would go to the phone call, received deep in the night, those screams, malicious, cackling, a celebratory spew of profanities). However, throughout the ensuing months, as Lorraine obsessed, she would, in a tedious and meticulous and thoroughly roundabout manner, reconstruct the entire sentence in all its snotty glory, with every one of the untold layers of torment that words contain.

Burgers, then anal penetration, would remain a sticking point for her, leaping out from her reflections of that afternoon's gleaming heat. Though Lorraine had immediately reacted in the car, firmly putting an end to Newell's little rebellion, when she looked back on it, she was vexed by how much there had been for her to clamp down on — the ugly fact of her child saying such an obviously inappropriate sentence; the uglier fact of her child disrespecting her, blatantly challenging her; and because her boy— her son —had even been capable of saying something so wrong.

Then again, why should she have read more into it than the obvious? It was a crude joke, nothing more, uttered during one of those rock-and-a-hard-place meltdowns that every parent and child get caught in. A kid hears things from older kids. He repeats things from off cable. That doesn't mean he knows what he's talking about. How the hell could he? A child's world is a ripe grape waiting to be tasted. His youth is eternal, his life an adventure in which he is the hero and the star. A child imagines what the future will be like, naturally, but he sees only swashbuckling adventures, true love, hundred-room mansions atop seaside cliffs. His contemplations must be informed by the viewpoint of youth, and therefore, by their very nature, must be flawed in the most beautiful and optimistic ways. The real meanings of words, the weight of consequences, adulthood, with all its responsibilities and implications, is as impenetrable to a child as martian trigonometry. That is one of the beauties of youth. And it is why someone has to be there, vigilant.