Language Arts (19 page)

“Mother, this is insane.”

“What's insane about it? Wouldn't you like to get away? Where's Cody?”

“Upstairs, with the therapist. They just got started.”

“Fine, I'll stay until his lesson is over; I can pack his things while I'm waiting. Your father and I have all sorts of fun activities planned. We'll have a lovely time.”

“Mother, I just don't think you and Daddy understand how complicated our life is right now. I know you're trying to be helpful, but—”

“I understand perfectly, Alison.” Eulalie's voice was stern. She exchanged a frustrated look with Charles as he came into the living room carrying a tray bearing a teapot, a French press, two cups, and a plate of Walkers shortbread, Eulalie's favorite. “And that is exactly why you and your husband need to get away. Thank you, Charles.”

Charles sat on the arm of the sofa next to Alison; he tried to pull her close, but her body was resistant, taut. He knew that her protestations weren't entirely related to Cody and the remodel; she was surely just as anxious as he was about the prospect of spending time alone together, attempting adult-to-adult conversation over a good meal and a bottle of wine, and, maybe, possibly, having undistracted, unrestricted sex.

“Eulalie,” he said, “this is an amazing offer. Thank you. What do you think, Ali? It sounds like everything's worked out.”

Alison sipped her tea, frowned.

“Come on,” he said, keeping his voice dispassionate, as if he really didn't care one way or the other, when in fact he was so elated by the idea of having his wife to himself for a few days that it was all he could do to keep from pulling her into a Bogart-Bergman lip-lock. “Cody will be fine.”

“Of course he will,” Eulalie chimed in. “You mothers today: so protective. My Lord, your father and I went out at least twice a week when you children were little. It's so important for a marriage.”

Eulalie and Victor Forché—like Rita and Garrett Marlow—came from a generation of couples who did not consider themselves subordinate to their children but rather stepped out, regularly and often, regardless of the state of their unions and for no other reason than to have
fun,
choosing to put their identities as husbands and wives in front of their identities as fathers and mothers. Alison, however, epitomized a more current trend: on the rare occasions she and Charles went out, their babysitters were vetted with a scrutiny typically reserved for Supreme Court nominees and paid three dollars in excess of the current minimum wage. Charles knew he needed to interrupt this line of persuasion as soon as possible.

“It would be great for Cody too, don't you think? Getting away from all this?”

Alison considered. “Okay,” she said, getting up, her intonation conciliatory but skeptical. When Eulalie started to stand as well, Alison made a preemptive gesture. “You stay here, Mother. I'll get Cody's things together.”

My wife,
Charles thought fondly,
genius, legal advocate, fierce fighter, acting like a petulant tween who's been unjustly grounded instead of a thirty-one-year-old woman who's been gifted with a responsibility-free weekend.
But then, Ali remained a case study in regression whenever her parents were involved.

Forty-five minutes later, their bags were packed and they'd said a brief goodbye to Cody. (
Don't linger,
Eulalie advised,
don't make a big production out of it.
) Alison handed over a pamphlet of written instructions pertaining to Cody's care—which, Charles felt sure, Eulalie would mostly ignore—and they were off.

The trip did not begin well. On the way, they argued—as parents typically do when cut loose from the distracting and role-defining presence of their children. Weekend traffic slowed the journey to a crawl. When Alison fell silent, Charles sensed an impending, irreversible decline in her spirits; he feared the weekend was doomed.

“Do you remember the last vacation we had?” he asked. “Just the two of us?”

“We've never had a vacation.”

“Yes, we have.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about our prenuptial honeymoon in New York. The day I proposed?”

“Oh,” she said, her mouth softening.
“That.”

They'd lingered in Alison's Cathedral Row studio apartment for hours, but eventually, famished, they went out. They ended up going into a Morningside Heights deli and designing a deluxe gift basket.
It's for some friends who just got engaged,
Charles explained.
They're planning on having a big family.
The deli owner smiled broadly, tucked in a box of menorah candles (
Free with big spending!
he said in heavily accented English), and then proceeded to shrink-wrap and beribbon their purchase. On the way back, they sat in the garden of St. John the Divine, decimated most of the roast chicken, couscous salad, and bialys, and then made out madly until a pair of territorial peacocks chased them away.

“That was a good day,” Alison said.

It was nearly nine by the time they left the restaurant in La Conner. The B&B was a few miles out of town, situated on a prairie next to a barley field, with a misty view of Mount Baker to the north and tidelands to the west.

Their room had a fireplace flanked by shelves holding the complete works of Shakespeare in small, exquisite, separately bound editions; volumes of poetry; a bouquet of flowers; a basket of fruit and chocolates; a bottle of wine.

They lit a fire.

They slipped into the skins of younger, softer selves.

They found each other again, in that room, in that house bordering a fruited prairie.

And that was how they got their daughter.

•♦•

Dear Emmy,

How are you, sweetheart? How are midterms going? It feels like a long time since I've written, probably because I've had an atypically full dance card this week.

In fact, this will be a short letter; I have an appointment at the Seattle Center later this morning and have to leave in a few minutes.

Your mom and I saw a film the other night—the first time I've been to a movie in a while. It was about a family dealing with autism, a good film, very heartfelt. Your mom loved it. So did everyone else, from what I could gather.

I hate to sound cynical, but good God—they shoved every possible cliché into the narrative. Which is not to say that it wasn't spot-on accurate, clichés being based in truth after all. But really, it got to be a bit much:

1. Scene of PWA escaping due to negligence, leading family members on a frantic chase culminating in near tragedy but ultimately comic—check.

2. Scene of PWA smearing feces everywhere—check.

3. Scene of PWA masturbating in public—check.

4. Scene of PWA freaking out in public as misunderstanding and/or insensitive onlookers are either appalled or interfering—check.

5. Scene of PWA and family coming to blows, hurtful words spoken, combatants injured, dishes broken, walls punched—check.

6. Scene of forgiveness—check.

7. Scene of triumph—check.

8. Scene of bittersweet acceptance—check.
The End.
Credits roll.

I couldn't help but wonder how a mainstream audience would respond to this film. They'd probably depart feeling good about the experience, the acquisition of insight and sympathy infused with laughter. Having purchased this bit of karmic goodwill—and with no need to revisit the subject until the statute of limitations on compassion expires—they could then feel free to spend their next moviegoing bucks on something like
Die Hard 6
.

•♦•

“Okay, I think I've got everything I need,” Mike Bernauer said, collecting his notes. The six of them were gathered around a circular table in the Center House food court, which, at some point in the years since Charles was last here, had been rechristened the Armory and redecorated by someone whose aesthetic ran to sleek and sophisticated and who obviously disdained any color but an exceptionally morose gunmetal gray. “Thanks again for doing this.”

Mike was a tall, friendly guy with a strong Chicago accent who was probably around Charles's age. One of the first things he'd asked after they'd settled in was what they did for a living. One was an investment banker, one worked for a computer software company, one was an Eastside art-gallery owner/mom heavily involved in philanthropy, and Astrid(a)—not surprisingly—had become a neurosurgeon. With the exception of Charles, they all seemed to have lived up to Mrs. Braxton's expectations: wealthy, high-achieving pillars of the community. Of course, Mike had located and/or chosen only the five of them; perhaps the other students in Mrs. Braxton's class were somewhere up in the Okanagan manufacturing meth, although, when Charles thought about it, that too required no small amount of mental acuity and ambition.

“One last thing: our photographer would like to get a few shots outside, and then we're done.”

“When will the article be out?” the banker asked.

“Probably sometime early in the new year. It'll be in the
Pacific Magazine
section of the Sunday paper.”

They headed out, the photographer snapped pictures of the group in front of a couple of iconic locations, and then they were free to go. It wasn't even noon.

“Whatever happened to Mrs. Braxton?” the computer fellow asked as they were about to part ways.

“She passed, back in . . . let's see . . .” Mike consulted his notes. “I did manage to get a phone interview with her daughter . . .”

A
daughter?
Charles was thunderstruck. He'd never considered the possibility that Mrs. Braxton had a family.

“Yeah, here we go . . . Patricia, only child, told me that her mother taught in the Seattle school system right up to retirement; she received a special award for her service a couple of years before she died, age eighty-five, in 1996.”

Charles was only half listening. He was still thinking about Patricia. He wondered what
her
handwriting was like.

“Nice to see you all!” the banker said, handing out his business cards.

“Can't say that I remember any of you, but this sure was fun!” the computer guy shouted.

“I hope to see you all at the auction!” the Eastside mom/art dealer added.

Astrid turned to Charles. “Which way are you headed?”

“I'm in the stadium lot.”

“Me too. I'll walk with you. We didn't really get a chance to catch up.”

They made their way past the former location of the Fun Forest, where city kids used to be able to get a taste of messy, gooey, thrilling, and, yes, slightly sordid carnival life. The Fun Forest had recently been bulldozed into oblivion to make room for the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum—a disheartening state of affairs, in Charles's opinion, exemplifying the current ethos that exposing young people to a fragile, pristine, humorless, and hands-off environment of
culture
was preferable to the gut-dropping rush of riding a roller coaster.

“I know you're an English teacher,” Astrid said, “but that's about it. Where do you teach?”

“City Prana. Do you know it?”

“Capitol Hill?”

“Right.”

She nodded. “We looked at that one for the kids but ended up at Lakeside. How long have you been there?”

“My whole teaching career, basically, so . . . since around 1990.”

“That's a long time.”

“How about you? Did you get your medical degree here?”

“No, I went away, to Johns Hopkins, and I really didn't want to end up back here, but . . . well . . . you know. The Northwest kind of
imprints
on you. Like on the salmon.”

“I get it.”

“So? What else? Family?”

“Divorced. Two kids.”

She chuckled. “Sorry. It's just that, at our age, that's pretty much the way we summarize our lives. At least for a few more years, until we start listing our ailments. Amicable?”

“Now, yes. Not at first. You?”

“Divorced. Three kids.”

Charles laughed, or tried to.

“You changed your name,” he remarked.

“Hell yes. Wouldn't you? I sometimes think I married my husband as much for the chance to escape my maiden name as anything. How old are your kids?”

“Seventeen and almost twenty-one. Yours?”

“My oldest is thirty-five, a pediatrician, and about to make me a grandmother,
finally.
Young people today seem to take their time when it comes to procreation.”

“Very true,” Charles murmured.

They walked on in silence for a while.

Surely she was going to ask him. Surely that was the real reason she wanted to speak with him in private.

“Well, this is me,” she said as they arrived at her Audi, spotlessly clean, liberally stickered:
MY CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT LAKESIDE; PROUD STANFORD PARENT
;
COEXIST
.
“It was good to see you again, Charles. I wish you all the best.”

“You too.”

Was he relieved or troubled? Charles wondered as he walked to his car. Had Astrid forgotten the most significant experience they'd shared that school year? The cast of characters involved?

He supposed it was possible. Not everyone had the proclivity, as he did, to be imprinted by the desert of exile instead of the garden of home.

By mid-October, Mrs. Braxton had granted favored status to a single student. No one was more surprised by her selection than the designee himself.