Little Children

by Tom Perrotta

  After that he was at a loss. It wasn’t even nine o’clock, and he didn’t have a fucking clue what to do with himself. He couldn’t just sit around the house all night, making prank phone calls, could he? It would have been easier if he was a drinker. Then he could at least go out and get plastered, then come staggering home to sleep it off. If that had been his problem, everything would have been so goddam simple.

  “Hey, Ma,” he said, as if she were standing right there beside him, “I think I’m gonna go out for a while.”

  Lewis didn’t even look up when she returned to the living room, taking a seat on the other end of the couch and picking up the copy of Family Circle that had just arrived in the mail.

  “What are you reading about?” she asked after a moment or two, unable to tolerate the silence.

  “Las Vegas.”

  “In National Geographic?”

  “It’s a history of the city. How it’s evolved since the fifties.”

  “That’s not right,” she said. “You’d think National Geographic would have better things to report on. The rain forest or something.”

  “It’s actually very interesting.”

  At eight-thirty, she put down her magazine and told him she was going upstairs to get ready. He grunted, still absorbed in his article.

  She took a long bubble bath, closing her eyes and breathing deeply, trying to clear the clutter from her mind and will herself into a sexy mood. She’d recently come across an article (Five Zesty Ways to Spice Up Your Marriage!) that recommended fantasizing about partners other than your husband, and decided to give it a whirl. Bruce Willis didn’t work, for some reason, and neither did Brad Pitt, but that was probably because he was in dire need of a haircut and a shave, and, quite possibly, a hot shower. But then, out of nowhere, she found herself thinking about Tony Soprano, a man she found completely repulsive, with his big hairy belly and gutter mouth, the way he bent that girl over a table with his pants around his ankles, a cigar clenched between his teeth as he pounded away.

  Disgusting.

  She yanked the drain plug, forcing the image out of her mind, wishing Lewis had never convinced her to get HBO. After she brushed her teeth and dabbed some perfume on her neck, she slipped into a pink satin slip with a lacy bodice, ran a brush through her hair, and stepped into the bedroom, pausing to let herself be admired.

  Her husband should have been sitting on the bed in his glasses and boxer shorts, nodding in fervent approval, but he wasn’t there. A queasy, almost desolate feeling came over her as she contemplated the undisturbed bed, the clock on the end table reading 9:02. She headed straight downstairs to see what was keeping him.

  “Honey?” she said. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “You know what?” he said. “Why don’t we give it a rest?”

  “But it’s Tuesday. It’s our date night.”

  He stared at her for what felt like a long time. There was the oddest look on his face, like he pitied her for something.

  “I really don’t feel like it.”

  Mary Ann gulped. It took an enormous effort to remain composed, to keep the tremor out of her voice.

  “You don’t love me anymore.”

  Lewis didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be giving her statement some serious consideration, as if he hadn’t thought about it in a while.

  “Our son is four years old,” he said. “You have to stop talking to him about Harvard.”

  Hands clammy and heart pounding, Sarah pulled into the Rayburn School parking lot at seven minutes after nine, not nearly as late as she’d feared. She kept her headlights on, their dusty beams shining on the deserted playground—the seesaw and slide, the play structure with its swaying bridge and festive little gazebo, the fateful swing set—waiting in an ecstasy of suspense for Todd to step out of the shadows, the sight of him always so startling to her after even the briefest of separations, the way he had of seeming so matter-of-factly present and so utterly fantastical at the same time.

  At eleven after nine she shut off her headlights. It’s all right, she told herself, he’s only ten minutes late. She had to make a conscious effort to ignore the flutter of panic in her belly, the little voice reminding her that he’d never been late before. It was something they’d joked about at the Town Pool, the invariable pattern of their relationship—the boys always early, the girls always late.

  But maybe it was a good thing, this little break in protocol. This way Todd would owe her an apology, and he’d be that much less likely to hold it against her that they weren’t going to the beach after all, that they’d be stuck in her house with Lucy, still trapped within the suffocating borders of Bellington and parenthood.

  “What we doing?” Lucy inquired.

  “Waiting for Todd,” she replied. “He should be here any minute. He’s going to sleep over at our house tonight.”

  Lucy didn’t seem unduly troubled by this answer. Sarah had never really been able to figure out just how much she understood—even in her limited three-year-old capacity—about her relationship with Todd. All through the summer, she had just accepted whatever happened as if it were well within the natural order of things. When they were hanging out with Todd and Aaron every day, that was fine with her. When they stopped, she asked about it once, and seemed to find her mother’s explanation—Aaron’s grandma wants them all to herself—completely satisfactory. Sarah couldn’t help hoping that Lucy would show the same flexibility toward the much larger changes that were about to shake up her life, but she couldn’t quite suppress the suspicion that she was being a bit too passive as a parent, not doing enough to prepare her daughter for the immediate future.

  “Honey,” she said. “Do you like Aaron?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “He’s a nice boy, isn’t he? You play so well together.”

  “He likes cars,” Lucy said, a trace of contempt in her voice.

  “Would you like him to be your brother?”

  Lucy giggled nervously. She seemed to think Sarah was playing some sort of game with her.

  “Him not my brother.”

  “He might be.” Sarah turned in her seat and looked her daughter straight in the eyes, hoping by this to make her understand that they were having a very serious discussion. “Someday. Not your real brother, but your stepbrother. That means we would all live together in the same house, at least some of the time.”

  “I don’t like that.” Lucy sounded angry.

  “Sure you will. It’ll just take a little time to get used to it.”

  Lucy shook her head in ferocious denial.

  “Not get used to it.”

  Sarah decided not to push it. You just had to take these things one step at a time. Given enough time and love, kids would adapt to anything. And Sarah couldn’t help thinking that, however Lucy felt about it right now, she’d be better off in the long run with Todd as the father figure in her life than she would be with Richard.

  “Mommy?” Lucy asked a couple of moments later. Her voice was soft and tentative, as if she’d been thinking things over.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Can you swing me?”

  “Sure,” Sarah said, before she’d even realized what she was agreeing to. “But just for a little while, okay?”

  Todd had left his house at nine o’clock sharp, but he got sidetracked at the library. The skateboarders were out, and he stopped for a minute to see how they were doing. To his surprise, they greeted him like an old friend as he assumed his once-familiar post by the mailbox.

  “Dude,” this gruff-voiced kid called out. “Where the fuck you been?”

  “We missed you,” another one added, somehow managing to sound sarcastic and sincere at the same time. “We thought you didn’t love us anymore.”

  “Yeah,” said G., the skinny leader of the pack. “Thought maybe we were boring you.”

  “Not at all,” he explained, oddly flattered by the attention. “I’ve just been going through some weird shit.”


  He hadn’t watched them for weeks, not since before the bar exam, and was amazed at how much they’d improved in the interim, as if they’d all gone to skateboard camp or something. Kids who’d looked like beginners in June were whipping around like experts. The ones who were good then had blossomed into virtuosos, though G. remained in a league of his own.

  As always, there was something hypnotic about the spectacle of the boys on their boards, the steady flow of riders gliding past him, each following the one before in almost metronomic regularity, the insistent hum of wheels on pavement. They were improvising these overlapping figures in the street, six of them weaving in and out of each other’s paths, crouching and standing like human pistons, shifting directions on a dime with these abrupt pivots and trick spins, performing nimble, almost monkeylike, maneuvers with their feet, flipping their boards into the air, then landing gracefully on top when they reconnected with the ground.

  He knew Sarah was waiting, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to leave. Every time he did a gut check, it always felt like he needed another minute or two to clear his head, to gather up his courage for the big and terrible step they had agreed to take together.

  He’d meant it on Thursday when he told her that they should run away together, meant it like he’d never meant anything in his life. In that sublime moment, the two of them lying on their backs on the fifty yard line, gazing up at the star-studded emptiness of space, the words had emerged from his mouth with a conviction that startled both of them. He remembered the thrill that had passed from his fingers into hers, then back again, an electrical current filling him with the conviction that a life with Sarah—a life rearranged and made whole—was not only possible but absolutely necessary.

  Four days had passed since then, four strange and painful days during which this conviction had been tested in a hundred different ways. It started first thing on Friday, when Kathy shook him awake at eight o’clock in the morning and told him that they were going away for the weekend, just the two of them, to the same inn in the Berkshires where they’d spent their honeymoon.

  “I’m taking the day off,” she said, running her hand over his forehead as if checking for a temperature. “We need a little time alone.”

  He could have said no, of course, could have told her right then that he’d made other plans for his life, but he was still in too much of a daze to put up a struggle.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, raising himself up on his elbows and blinking away the harsh morning light. “Whatever.”

  “Don’t get so excited,” she told him. “It’s not good for your heart.”

  By the time they left, shortly after noon, he had decided that maybe the little trip wasn’t such a bad idea. One way or another, he was going to have to get through the next few days, and at least this way he’d be able to spend a couple of them without his mother-in-law breathing down his neck. Not to mention the fact that he was finding it extremely difficult that morning to look Aaron in the eye. It was almost a relief to leave him standing on the porch in his bathing suit and jester’s cap, waving good-bye along with his grandmother.

  “What a cutie,” Kathy said, looking wistfully over her shoulder as they pulled away. “I kinda wish he was coming with us.”

  They had been driving for about an hour in companionable silence—they’d always traveled well together, just as long as Kathy wasn’t driving—when she suddenly reached forward and turned down the stereo. He could feel her eyes on him, the tension gathering.

  “Just tell me one thing,” she said. “Do you love her?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  She laughed, sounding a little more amused than he might have expected.

  “Let me know when you decide, okay?”

  “It’s not funny,” he muttered.

  “Oh, that’s right. I almost forgot.”

  They hiked and swam after checking in, then ate a sunset dinner on a terrace overlooking the lake. It was all so pleasant—so much like their idea of a good day—that Todd had to keep reminding himself that he was leaving her, that their marriage was over. He only drank one glass of wine at dinner and refused a bite of her chocolate mousse cake, as if he no longer had a right to it. Before bed, she asked him if he’d like her to try on some new lingerie she’d bought for the occasion, but he said no, he’d prefer it if she didn’t.

  “Are you sure? It seems like a waste to drive all the way out here and not even make love.”

  “I’m kinda tired,” he explained.

  “Fine,” she said, pretending not to care. “Suit yourself.”

  He caved on Saturday morning, when she woke him with a long sloppy kiss and guided his hand between her legs. Before he even had a chance to remember why it wasn’t such a good idea, he was hard, and she was straddling his prone body, smiling down at him with an expression that mingled triumph and apology.

  “This isn’t so bad, is it?” she whispered.

  “It’s okay,” he conceded.

  Actually, it was way better than okay, a greatest hits medley of their entire relationship, Kathy reprising every mind-blowing bedroom move she’d ever performed for him, vividly illustrating the cornucopia of pleasures he was on the verge of giving up. It was an amazing performance, marred only by the slightest trace of smugness on her face, a cool erotic confidence that he couldn’t help resenting on behalf of Sarah, whose undeniable enthusiasm for sex was often accompanied by a strange, almost adolescent clumsiness, as if she were acting on the basis of vague schoolyard rumors and half-remembered passages from dirty books, rather than years of hard-won adult experience.

  A heavy silence descended upon the room when they were finished, Todd staring up at the ceiling with a profound sense of melancholy, trying to process the realization that this was it for them, that he and Kathy would probably never make love again. As if reading his mind, she rolled over and punched him in the arm as hard as she could.

  “You shithead,” she said.

  “What?” he replied, trying to look casual as he massaged his tricep.

  “You think I don’t want a summer boyfriend? You think I don’t want to spend my days at the pool, holding hands with some cute guy I just met yesterday? How come you get to do that, but I have to spend my time in a smelly VA Hospital, listening to old men explain how they lost their legs?”

  “I thought you liked your job.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I like it or not, does it? I’m gonna have to do it regardless, unless somebody else in this family has a better idea.”

  Todd had nothing to say in response. He didn’t have a better idea. All he had was a debt to Kathy he’d never be able to repay. Especially now, when he was on the verge of declaring bankruptcy.

  “She’s not a summer girlfriend,” he muttered, more to himself than to his wife.

  Kathy laughed, as if she were enjoying this in spite of herself.

  “And let me tell you something else,” she said. “Summer’s just about over, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  There was a sour taste in Larry’s mouth as he walked up to the front door of 44 Blueberry Court. The thought of what he was about to do sickened him. If he could have done otherwise and still figured out a way to live with himself, he would have been a very happy man.

  But there was no choice for him. He had lived through something like this once before with the Antoine Harris shooting, and he had learned his lesson. Hard as it was for even his close friends to believe, Larry never really regretted pulling the trigger in the food court that awful afternoon. He had made a tragic mistake, of course, but he would go to his grave knowing it had been an honest one. In his own mind, he’d seen a man with a gun, not a kid with a toy, and he’d reacted accordingly, the way any cop would. No matter how many times he’d turned it over in his thoughts, he could never see his way out of firing that fatal shot, not unless he’d been an entirely different person.

  But he could have apologized. He could have i
gnored his lawyer’s advice and presented himself to the family, told Rolonda Harris how heartsick and sorry he was for her unimaginable loss and for his own part in causing it. Maybe she wouldn’t have believed him. Maybe she would have slammed the door shut, or called him an evil racist, or even spat in his face, but so what? At least he would have tried, and trying would have been better than keeping silent, acting like the boy’s death meant nothing to him, like all he cared about was saving his own skin.

  Still, apologizing to Rolonda Harris was one thing, and apologizing to Ronnie McGorvey another. Rolonda was an innocent woman whose worst nightmare had come true. Ronnie was Ronnie, a repulsive human being who dragged his mother into a mess she had nothing to do with. If it hadn’t been for him, Larry would have had no reason to be standing on the poor woman’s front lawn, shouting into a bullhorn at two in the morning.

  You killed your mother, Larry could have argued. You did it, not me.

  But he wasn’t going to go there, wasn’t going to let himself sink into that futile swamp of blame-shifting and self-justification. Ronnie would have to live with his own conscience, if he even had one, and Larry would have to do what he could to accept responsibility for his own undeniable role in May McGorvey’s death.

  He rang the bell, steeling himself for the moment when Ronnie appeared in front of him. He wasn’t going to shake hands or make small talk. All he was going to do was look the pervert in the eyes and say, I’m sorry for your loss. Just that, not another word. And then he was going to turn around and drive home.

  He rang a second time, but still no one answered, even though all the downstairs lights were on. If this had been any other house, any other errand, he would have given up right then. But it had cost him too much to get this far; he couldn’t bear the thought of having to do it all again tomorrow. He tried the knob, pushed the door open just enough to stick his head inside.

  “Ronnie? It’s Larry Moon. I’m not here to hurt you.”

  Maybe he was sleeping. Larry remembered how bone-tired he’d felt after his own father’s death. He’d collapsed right after the funeral, slept for almost twenty hours.