Where Love Goes (10 page)

“I bet there’s going to be lots of kids there,” she says. “Not like the kids in my class. Nice ones.”

He says they’ll put in a load of wash at the Laundromat on the way. Maybe he’ll take her out to McDonald’s after. Either that or he might just bring along his twenty-two and rustle up a wild turkey or two for their vittles.

I
n the one-room schoolhouse, a little girl asks her mother if this was the kind of classroom she attended in the olden days. At the front of the room, an older child—eight years old, maybe nine—holds a pointer in the direction of a map of the United States as it would have looked in the year 1843, when Laura Ingalls Wilder attended a school like this. Then he waves it at his friend. Watching him, Claire makes a note to herself to replace the pointer with a less sharp implement. How could she have forgotten what happens when you give a little boy a long pointed stick?

They’ve got a good turnout at the museum today, and they needed it, too. The United Way decided to take the children’s museum off its list this year, which has left Claire thirty-eight thousand dollars short in meeting her budget. Already she has had to let her part-time secretary go, and her only full-time staffer. These days she has to rely on volunteers and Veronica, her half-time clerical person, to help her run the place. For the construction of the pioneer exhibit that has been unveiled today she hired a couple of carpenters and a designer, but that still left a lot of loose ends Claire had to handle herself. Last night, for instance, she was up until three preparing the materials for one of the activities in the Try It Room: simplified samplers for kids to stitch and bring home. Now she leans against the rough-hewn boards forming the walls of the Pioneer Room, wearing her long calico skirt and a high-collared blouse and a gingham mop cap. It is one of those rare moments when she gets to stand back for a moment and simply survey what she does here, and she’s feeling good about it. All around her are happy-looking children and parents.

A boy she knows well, Roland, is rubbing his face in the sampler supplies at the moment. Claire has never asked Roland’s mother what his problem is, but she assumes he’s autistic. Sometimes when he comes here he is animated and friendly, other times he may not respond at all when Claire speaks to him. He may even bite. His mother is a taut, frantic-looking woman who brings him here almost every day. She always comes in carrying a
People
magazine and a thermos of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and sits in the Parent Resource corner, reading, while Roland careens around the museum. At various times Claire’s volunteers will comment to her that somebody really should say something to Roland’s mother about this. “We’re just not set up to provide babysitting services for kids like him,” one of them said to her just the other day, on an occasion when Roland had been emitting a strange, high wail for a good hour.

“She looks exhausted,” Claire said. “Let’s leave her alone.”

Today when Claire sits down beside Roland he is evidently in one of his affectionate moods. He climbs into her lap and begins to nuzzle against her breasts as if he wanted to nurse. Roland is probably ten years old, although it’s hard to tell. One thing’s for sure: He’s not stitching any sampler.

“Tell you what, Roland,” she says to him. “Let’s go churn some butter.” She takes his hand and leads him into the pioneer kitchen, where there’s a butter churn set up, and a pitcher of cream. She pours some in.

Often the museum is practically empty when he comes here, but there are many other children in the Pioneer Room today, on account of the unveiling. Roland looks anxious. He can’t see his mother.

“It’s all right,” Claire tells him. “She’s just in the other room. But you know me. I’m Claire.”

It occurs to her that he may not recognize her with this hat on. She takes it off, and a look of recognition comes over him.

Claire sits Roland in front of the churn and places his hands on the paddle. She puts her own hands over his and moves them back and forth. “Churn, churn,” she says. She has learned from other times with Roland that repetition is always comforting to him.

“What’s the matter with that kid?” a boy is asking his mother. “The one with the thick glasses?”

“Churn, churn,” says Claire. “We’re making butter, Roland. When we’re done, we’ll put some on a piece of bread and give it to your mother. One for your mother, one for you.”

Up in the loft bed, a bunch of little girls are playing with rag dolls. “My baby’s prettier than your baby,” one of them says. “Nu-uh,” her friend tells her. Now they are debating the question.

“He’s a re-tard,” another girl says to her mother. “I saw him here one other time. He bites.”

Roland appears to be totally absorbed now in his butter churning. Claire takes the girl who has called Roland a retard aside. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt his feelings,” she says. “But if you call him that, you will.”

The girl’s mother shakes her head. “If you don’t mind my saying so,” she tells Claire, “I don’t think it’s right to let kids like him in here with normal kids. He could hurt someone.”

“This room is supervised at all times,” Claire says. “Many children act inappropriately now and then. We’re here to make sure that everybody treats each other with respect and consideration.”

“Well, I’m just saying you’d probably do a lot better with this place if you didn’t let the retards in,” the mother says. “Next time maybe we’ll go bowling.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” says Claire. Right now she wishes she could just go sit in the Parent Resource corner herself for an hour or two. Make that a month.

Roland has begun to emit his high-pitched wail again. Only this time it sounds joyful. When Claire goes over to him, she sees his churn is filled with butter.

“Look what you made, Roland,” she says, putting her arms around him. Roland is practically singing now, he’s so excited. “Butter,” she tells him. “You made butter. And all by yourself, too.”

She breaks a piece of bread off the loaf that is sitting on the trestle table and spreads Roland’s butter on it with a round, dull knife. Roland puts his face down on the bread and begins to chew. Now he has buried his face in her skirt.

She wraps her arms around his head and holds him like that for a couple of minutes, thinking how long it has been since anybody kissed her. Even her own children.

O
ver in another corner of the Pioneer Room, Tim and Ursula have been pretending that Ursula is Laura Ingalls, heading out to get a doctor for her mother, who is about to have a baby. Tim is Charles Ingalls, her father, racked by grief and fear for what will become of them all if his wife dies and leaves him with four motherless children, not to mention the new baby and their horse, Star, who is also about to give birth. Outside, a blizzard has left snow so deep it comes almost to Laura’s waist. But what can Charles do? Somebody has to get the doctor or his wife will die.

“Don’t worry, Pa,” Ursula/Laura tells him. “I can make it to Doctor Baker’s. I won’t let Ma die.”

“Be sure to carry your lantern, Laura,” Tim/Charles tells her. But the truth is, his attention has wandered from their game. He has been watching this woman in a long pioneer outfit, sitting at the butter churn with a boy who appears to have some kind of mental problem. There’s something about her that makes it difficult for him to concentrate on what his daughter is saying.

“But, Pa,” Ursula/Laura says. “We have no wood left for the stove. How can we keep Ma and Baby Brother warm while I’m gone searching for Doctor Baker? We may have to burn my doll.”

“Okay,” he says. The woman is holding the boy and rocking him very gently now. She is whispering something in the boy’s ear. Tim wishes he could hear what she says. Her long skirt covers her hips and legs, but he can tell she’s got a long, lean body, although her breasts are surprisingly round and full, in that bodice-fitting white blouse she’s wearing.

“No, Dad,”
says Ursula, impatient. “That’s not what you’re supposed to say. You’re supposed to say you’ll burn your favorite rocking chair, that your father gave you right before the ox stepped on him. Then you’re supposed to wrap me in these furs and send me out in the night to get the doctor. And you don’t know there’s a raccoon right outside the door that has rabies.”

Tim has long since stopped trying to follow this. He is mesmerized by the woman. There is a way she tilts her head as the boy nuzzles up against her that seems so wonderfully tender. She is spreading butter on a piece of bread for him now. She gets a little on her fingers and licks it off.

Over by the butter churn, the woman in the pioneer outfit is stroking the head of the boy, who seems to be singing. Tim has to find out who she is.

Ursula/Laura has found a baby doll someplace, which she has wrapped in a pillowcase and brought to him. “Here you are, Pa. My new baby brother. But I have very sad news to tell you. Ma died.”

“Good,” says Tim/Charles.

Ursula moans. “That’s not what you’d say, Dad. Don’t you get it? You’d be sad. Your heart would be broken.”

The boy is kissing her wildly on the mouth. Watching him, with his thick glasses and his funny black work boots, Tim feels this crazy jealousy. I want her, he thinks. He imagines what it might be like to kiss her himself. To touch that neck.

“I give up,” Ursula tells him. “You’re no fun to play with. I’m going to check out the rooms downstairs.” She sets down the baby doll and heads down the stairs.

So Tim is alone now. Amazingly enough, so is the woman. The strange boy in the thick glasses has also disappeared, carrying his butter-slathered piece of bread. This is Tim’s chance.

“You dress like this all the time, or do you work here?” Tim asks her.

“Oh,” she says, putting an odd-looking cap back on her short, boyishly cut head of thick brown hair. “I’m the director here. Big deal, right? Staff of one and a half.”

“You’ve done a great job,” he says. “My daughter loves it here. We just finished reading
Little House in the Big Woods
. I’m divorced.”

She laughs.

“You think that’s-funny?” he says. “I’d say you’ve got a weird sense of humor.”

“Not a bit,” she says. “Believe me, I know firsthand. My name’s Claire.”

She’s divorced too. He feels his heart lift. “Tim,” he says, offering his large hand. With no further deliberation he asks her if she’d like to have dinner with him. Tonight for instance.

For a moment she just looks at him with a puzzled expression.

“Believe me, I’m not some nut who goes around picking up women in children’s museums,” he says. “I’m not some butter churn fetishist or anything.”

“I have kids—” she says.

“Me too,” he says. “Kid, I mean. One. Seven. I mean one kid, seven years old. She’s in your Mineral Room at the moment most likely. She has this thing about pyrite.”

“It’s not like mine need sitters anymore,” she says. “I just don’t go out that much.”

“Me, I’m out playing pool and carousing with loose women every night,” he says.

She finally smiles. She has a gap between her front teeth. He imagines what it would feel like to place his hand at the back of that long neck of hers.

“I won’t be finished here till six or six-thirty,” she says. “I guess I could call my children and tell them to order a pizza for themselves tonight.”

“I’ll get a sitter for mine,” he says. “Pick you up here?”

P
ete is on the phone with Jared when his mother calls to say she won’t be home for dinner. “Hold on a sec, will you, Mom?” he says. “I’ve got someone on the other line.” It’s Jared, recounting the plot of the new Christopher Pike novel,
Bury Me Deep
.

“Guess what?” he tells Jared. “My mom’s not coming home for a while. Why don’t you bring over your dad’s
Playboy Playmates
video and that pack of Red Man?” The two of them have taken up chewing tobacco in secret lately.

“So I was thinking you and your sister could send out for a pizza,” his mother tells him. “Unless you need me, of course.”

“I’ll be fine,” he says. Sally isn’t home. Since Travis got his license, the two of them are off driving all the time.

“You can rent a video if you want,” she says. “There’s money on my dresser.” This must mean she’s going out on a date. Otherwise she wouldn’t feel so guilty.

“You haven’t seen
Free Willy
yet, have you?” she says. “That’s supposed to be terrific.” His mom is always trying to get him to watch these wholesome, family-type movies.

“Good idea, Mom,” he says. He and Jared have watched the Playmate video three or four times already, but they’re usually so worried about one of their parents walking in on them they just fast-forward to Miss September. They haven’t ever had a chance to see the whole thing straight through.

“Can I talk to Sally?” his mother asks.

He tells her she’s out. She and Travis probably drove over to the post office to buy a stamp. They won’t be heard from for hours.

“Well, at least I’ve still got my boy,” she says. “For a few more years anyway, right, honey? I’ll be home before bedtime,” she tells him.

O
ver Spanish omelettes at the Two Brothers Diner, Tim tells Claire he’s a biologist, teaching at the college and working on a book about the effect of fluctuating saline levels in estuaries on the mussel population. He has full custody of his daughter; she’s with him nearly all the time, except on the rare occasions when his parents take her, but they live in Ohio and they don’t have a lot of patience with kids anymore. Claire tells him her kids go to their father’s almost every weekend, but that isn’t always easy, either.

“The pickup times are hard,” she says, “but going to get them Sundays at our old house is the worst. They’re always in a weird mood when I pick them up—grouchy and hypercritical. On the drive home they always seem to need to find fault with me for a million little things. It’s as if they’ve swallowed some kind of toxic substance and they have to vomit up all this bile before they can be okay again.”

Tim tells Claire about what it was like with Joan, and over the year since he’s been on his own with Ursula. “I can handle the laundry and the cooking and my job at the college and all that,” he says. “The part that gets to me is no matter what I do, I can’t be a mother for my little girl. And she never stops wanting one.”