“That’s sick,” said one of the girls.
“Only a few tufts of silky fur and the faint echo of her meow,” Bruce said, placing his hand over his heart.
DeReese laughed and said almost the exact same thing his sister Suzanne had said all those years ago: “He almost got hisself killed trying to save a cat.”
Bruce put on a face of sorrow. “There’s always someone standing by to criticize any act of human kindness.” Then he clapped his hands sharply. “Okay, more than enough of all that. Whose idea was it to waste all this time anyway? Let’s get started.” He nodded his head in Maggie’s direction. “We’re glad to have you with us, Maggie Trump. We’ll find a place for you in the fairy troupe.” Already Bruce was wondering if he should let her try the long speech at the opening of act 2, which none of the other fairies had been able to do justice to, though all of them had tried. The lines needed a light, lyrical quality, and he had a feeling that Maggie Trump might be able to do it.
* * *
It was almost five o’clock when Bruce walked with Elizabeth out to the parking lot. Rehearsal had gone especially well that afternoon, and though Bruce was wishing he could take full credit for Nate Bianchi’s improved performance as Bottom, he suspected there were more factors at work than his little inspirational talk with the boy beforehand. For one thing, it was obvious that Nate was not following the admonition to forget about his audience but, rather, had been uncommonly aware of his audience that day, particularly of the newest little fairy, who, not being involved in act 5, had remained in her chair on the front row, absorbing every detail of the rehearsal.
She was a great audience member, responding openly and warmly to everything—nodding, smiling, laughing out loud several times, even clapping her hands after Puck’s “Good night unto you all” at the end. For some reason the whole mood of the rehearsal that day had been more buoyant than usual. The air in the music room had seemed cleaner and crisper, conducting the sound waves at an invigorating clip. Everything fell into place smoothly, no lapses of memory.
And Nate—well, the transformation was remarkable. He seemed to turn a corner midway through his first speech, during which he addressed first the night and then the wall. It was as if he had suddenly found himself on a scary carnival ride and had finally decided to settle back and enjoy it. Maggie wasn’t the only one who laughed when he delivered his lines to the Moon as the ill-fated Pyramus, and then discovered Thisbe’s mantle on the ground: “How can it be? Oh, dainty duck! Oh, dear! Thy mantle good, What, stained with blood!” And he had it exactly right. Not just close, but exactly right, with precisely the perfect blend of solemnity and humor.
And Bruce wasn’t sure how he knew Nate was performing for Maggie, but he knew it. Maybe it was the single sideways glance Nate had shot in her direction the first time she laughed, or maybe it was simply the vast extent of his improvement, which couldn’t be laid to anything as mundane as a pep talk from an adult. But still it mystified Bruce—so the kid had had this capability in a deep well inside him all along, but suddenly it had bubbled up to the surface when a girl’s face lit up with pleasure at the sound of his voice?
To see such early evidence of womankind’s magical powers blew him away. He wanted to laugh and cry both. “Oh, Nate,” he wanted to say, “you’re in for a lifetime of it, buddy. Retreat, hunker down, regroup! Let yourself start caring what a woman thinks, and you’ll never be your own man again.”
But surely his talk with Nate had to be at least partly responsible for the change, he argued. He wasn’t willing to give it all up to Maggie. Both he and Elizabeth had witnessed Nate hanging around after rehearsal, however—something he never did. They had seen him rummaging around in his backpack, pretending to look for something but obviously filling up time until Priscilla and the other fairies had finished talking to Maggie and left. They had seen him follow Maggie and Tamara out into the hallway and trail after them, then suddenly feel the need for a long drink at the water fountain when Maggie said good-bye to Tamara and stopped at her locker.
“Wouldn’t you hate to go back to those days?” Elizabeth had said to Bruce after they watched Maggie catch sight of Nate and call out something to him, at which exact point his thirst was immediately slaked and he pretended to notice her for the first time, then hastened in her direction. The thought of Nate Bianchi and a girl made Bruce realize all over again how life continually turned all your expectations wacky. And though he groaned and nodded at Elizabeth’s question, he actually remembered thoroughly enjoying the adventure of those days.
While they waited around for everyone to clear out of the hallway and head home, Bruce felt a strong desire flood over him, a wish so powerful it made him ache inside. Really two wishes. First, he wished he could go back to those days and start all over with girls and do it right this time. And second, he wanted to call after Nate and pull him aside for another talk, this time about real life instead of acting. He wanted to say things to this boy that he wished someone had said to him as a thirteen-year-old.
He wanted to exhort him to be careful, to watch his step with girls, to guard his mind and his hands and his mouth so that he didn’t have to live with hundreds and hundreds of regrets later on. He wanted to tell him that a girl’s body was something you didn’t mess around with, that he must regard it as sacred and never treat it as a toy, that he should control his natural curiosity, all those male urges to explore and conquer, and save them for one woman way down the road of life, somebody he wanted to spend his whole future with, somebody who would be the mother of his children.
How his old friends would laugh at him now, he thought as he went back to his classroom to pick up his briefcase. He, Bruce Healey, who had made a career of exploring and conquering, now talking up abstinence and monogamy.
“Great rehearsal today,” Elizabeth said a few minutes later as they were leaving the building together. “I wonder what got into Nate.”
“Oh, I had a few words with him,” Bruce said, then laughed and shook his head. “Life is full of mysteries I can’t begin to explain.”
He pictured Nate, struggling to fill up his expanding body with some semblance of manliness. He saw him walking down the hall beside Maggie, so small and weak in comparison, yet in some ways the less vulnerable of the two. He imagined Nate glancing down at Maggie, his heart thudding at the smile on her upturned face, suddenly wishing he could . . . what? Bruce knew only too well the kinds of things boys wished. Again, he wanted to snatch Nate away and lecture him, maybe bind and gag him for a few years.
He wanted to tell him how horrible it was to bear the weight of sins of the flesh, to try to squelch images of things he never should have seen and done, to feel beaten down at the thought that he didn’t deserve a woman’s love and trust when he had sailed so thoughtlessly through so many conquests. God might forgive a multitude of sins—and Bruce firmly believed in God’s inexhaustible grace—but where would he ever find a woman who had that kind of enormous capacity to forgive? “Squander your youth,” he wanted to say, “and you’ll have a lifetime to make heavy payments.”
He knew he could never initiate such a talk with Nate or any other boy, though, for once he started, he wouldn’t be able to stop. He would end up grabbing the boy’s shoulders and shaking him till his teeth rattled in his head. He would rant like a wild man: “I know what you’re thinking about, but stop it! Don’t do it! Don’t you dare lay a finger on a girl! You’ll be sorry for the rest of your life if you do this evil thing! Find a school just for boys and go there!” They would lock him away for sure, either in jail or the loony bin.
He remembered watching Maddy in the backyard with Kimberly recently, being struck with the awful thought of somebody trying to harm her. He had stood there wondering how Kimberly and Matt would ever be able to send her away from home when she reached school age, to a place where boys were lurking everywhere with their lustful eyes and itchy hands. He could well imagine himself following her to school, then later hiding in
the backseats of cars when she went out on dates, carrying a very sharp knife with him at all times. He couldn’t bear the thought of attending her wedding someday, having to stand by and see some pea-brained boy put a ring on her finger and promise to love and cherish her forever, then watching them get into a car and go off to live together. How did parents weather such sorrow?
He had been ashamed of himself later for the way he had let his imagination run wild that day, like a girl’s, and had even dreamed another awful dream that night with no satisfying conclusion, only a series of blunders on his part as he fought to get to Maddy, who was somewhere out of his sight, crying, “Help, Unca Buce! Help!” He had awakened with a start and slowly raised a hand to feel his face, hoping it wasn’t wet. Surely, surely he hadn’t reached the point of crying in his sleep.
Often these days when he thought about all the things that could go wrong in life, he found himself wondering at length about heaven, trying to conceive of a place of eternal peace and light and joy, a place on the other side of this world where he would be welcomed and would stand redeemed, where he would know and be known. There was a time when he had laughed about the concept of heaven, saying he’d be bored to tears in such a place. That was before he understood that heaven was a place “where no tears will ever fall,” as the hymn said, one of the ones written by the blind woman.
“So how does that sound?” Elizabeth said. “You hungry?” Suddenly Bruce realized they were standing next to Elizabeth’s car. The parking lot was almost empty. Only one other car was still there besides his and Elizabeth’s.
“Well, I was going to try jogging for a little while tonight,” Bruce said, “but food sounds better.” He had no idea what it was she had suggested.
“Okay, then, we’ll meet you there. Is six okay?”
“Sure,” he said. “And where did you say that was?”
She smiled and shook her head. “C. C.’s—you know, the barbecue place over in Filbert?”
“Oh sure, sure.” He opened the door for her. “Sorry, I was just thinking about something.”
“Oh, I know all about that little male habit, believe me,” she said. “I get the same look from my husband—that vacant stare while I’m in the middle of saying something terribly important.”
“Yeah, well, cut us some slack,” Bruce said. “We can’t multitask as well as you women can.”
“Tell me about it.” She laughed. “I bet you can’t find things in the pantry or refrigerator, either—that’s another masculine deficiency, you know.”
She was right, of course. Bruce recalled the time he had cut his hand back during the summer and couldn’t find a Band-Aid anywhere in Kimberly’s house, the time he had gone over to Celia’s to beg one. Later, when he had complained to Kimberly, she had opened the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and pointed right to them.
“Okay, okay, enough,” he said to Elizabeth now. “Quit picking on us. What I was thinking about was this. How do you feel about separate schools for girls and boys?”
“What? Well, when? You mean middle school or what?”
“Everything—nursery school, elementary, middle, high school, college, grad school, the whole works.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Well, it’s an idea. Not a very good one, though. I wouldn’t want to teach only girls.” She got in her car and looked up at him. “What a boring educational experience. No men or boys around . . . to make fun of.” She closed her door and waved good-bye.
33
This World of Toil and Snares
On the Tuesday evening before Thanksgiving, something occurred which, though it lasted only seconds, Bruce knew he would never forget. He knew he would replay it endlessly, probably expanding and embellishing it a little each time. On the one hand he wished he had a videotape of it so he could watch it over and over, could play it in slow motion to observe every detail of the way it actually unfolded, but on the other hand he knew his imagination would supplement his memory to produce a version far more entertaining in the long run.
The gist of it was this: One minute Matt, Kimberly’s husband, was getting out of a car at the front curb, calling to Maddy, who had been sitting on the front steps waiting for half an hour, “Come here, sweetie,” and beckoning to her from the open car door. And the next minute, before anybody could react, Celia was whirling out of nowhere, swiftly bearing down on Matt, her arms raised like Moses ready to strike the rock. All this Bruce and Kimberly were watching through the bay window inside.
The Incident—that’s how he would always refer to it from this day forward—showed Bruce yet another side of Celia. He knew it was a story they would be telling for years to come. Thinking about it later, he supposed Celia could rightly be called the protagonist in the anecdote, while Matt would be the antagonist, and Maddy—well, she would have to be the source of conflict, the motivation for the action.
And what fine action it was. It would make a great movie scene. From Celia’s angry righteous advance, with the terrible swift sword of her tennis racket raised above her head, to the initial shocked yelp emitted by Matt when he comprehended her intent and lifted his arm to ward off the first blow—what a nugget of high drama.
It was certainly understandable that Celia wouldn’t have recognized Matt. Even though she knew by now that Bruce wasn’t Maddy’s father, she didn’t know that Matt was. The rare times when he was at home, which hadn’t been for a long time now, he didn’t spend much time out in the yard, and because their two driveways weren’t adjacent, she wouldn’t have seen him getting in and out of the car.
Furthermore, since The Incident occurred after five o’clock, it was already sliding toward dusk and therefore getting hard to see. Besides all this, Matt had, for some reason, decided to grow a beard over the months he was in Germany, which made him look older and, combined with his olive complexion, a little sinister in Bruce’s opinion, like one of Saddam Hussein’s relatives.
“Think about it from her perspective,” Bruce was telling Matt moments after it happened, after he and Kimberly had rushed out of the house to set things right. “Let’s go through the whole scenario,” Bruce said to Matt, who was still wincing and flexing his wrist. “This nice neighbor looks out her window and sees a strange man—” Celia interrupted him. “Oh, okay, this nice neighbor is getting things out of her car when she sees a strange man pull up at the curb next door. Then she sees the man open the car door—” Again Celia interrupted. “Oh yes, and it’s not a car she recognizes, since the strange man rented it and drove it home from the Atlanta airport. And she then sees the strange man motion for someone to come, and she sees Maddy walking toward him—” Another interruption. “Yes, walking slowly toward him, a little shyly as though she’s not exactly sure of herself.”
“And then the man says something, and the—” Celia interrupted again. “Oh, so she actually hears him say, ‘Come here, sweetie, I have something for you’—that makes it even more suspicious to her—and so the nice neighbor, having heard about such men in the news, grabs the nearest thing she can get her hands on, which happens to be her tennis racket, and rushes out to save the little girl, disregarding her own safety and any potential damage to her expensive piece of sporting equipment.” Bruce didn’t really know whether the racket was all that expensive, but it sounded better that way.
“This nice neighbor,” he continued, “has no idea that the whole thing has been planned at the suggestion of the strange man himself, who happens to be the little girl’s father returning home after a long absence and wanting to see if his daughter will know him, or that the little girl’s mother is watching from inside.” He doesn’t add, “or that the little girl’s uncle is also inside, though he has strongly objected to being part of this tender little homecoming scene and plans to make himself scarce as soon as he has given the strange man a quick perfunctory handshake and helped him carry in his bags.” Bruce realized he should probably drop the word strange now, since it had somehow metamorphosed into meaning odd rather than
simply unfamiliar.
So he couldn’t blame Celia one bit, Bruce said. In fact, he said, they ought to thank her. “Oh yeah, sure, way to welcome me home,” Matt said, “thank somebody for almost breaking my wrist.” He was half smiling as he said it but was still massaging his wrist gingerly.
“I’m thanking her for coming to Maddy’s aid,” Bruce said, almost adding, “You know, Maddy, your daughter, who has quintupled her vocabulary since the last time you saw her.” By now Kimberly was showering Matt with kisses and hugs, though the hugs were somewhat compromised by her rotundity and by Matt’s concern over his wrist. Kimberly was laughing and crying at the same time and flapping her hands around, overcome with so many emotions she couldn’t even put words together.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, Madison, totally bewildered, had leapt into the arms of the closest person and the one who must have seemed to be most in control of his senses, which was Bruce. Evidently she wasn’t quite convinced yet that the bearded man really was the same daddy who had left her almost four months earlier, had sent her a stuffed bear from Germany, and talked to her on the telephone every week.
Meanwhile Patsy Stewart had materialized in her front yard during all this, wearing an apron over her knit pants and holding what looked like a wooden spoon in one hand. Whether she had merely rushed out of her kitchen without thinking or whether she had armed herself to help Celia, it wasn’t clear. At any rate, she remained rooted in one spot like a pointer marking a pheasant.
Bruce smiled at Celia, who looked humiliated now that she realized her mistake. He had to hand it to her—she sure wasn’t afraid to get involved. He knew it was the kind of image destined to appear over and over in his dreams—Celia, quivering with courage and outrage as she raised her racket to strike again.
She was trying to stammer out an apology to Matt, who wouldn’t even look at her, who was still rotating his wrist, then gently shaking it, apparently to see if his hand was going to fall off. Bruce wanted to give him a swift kick and tell him to stop acting like a baby, to be a gentleman and listen to this brave woman’s apology, then accept it graciously.
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