Wonderboy

by Fiona Gibson

  “It kind of swims,” I explained.

  “Where does it swim?”

  “Into the woman,” I whispered.

  The lady had peeled off the Battenburg’s marzipan layer, and was now rolling it into a ball between her thumb and forefinger.

  “Yes,” Tod said, “but how does it get into the woman?”

  I said that we’d better go home as it looked like rain, although the sky was clear blue and cloudless.

  “Does it go in her fer-gina?” he shouted.

  I jumped up from the bench. The woman broke the cake into four squares—two pink, two yellow—and flung them down on the path.

  Unprotected fishy intercourse will now be happening, on a daily basis, in my impressionable son’s bedroom, and we haven’t even got around to naming the parents.

  “Fishy?” I suggest over breakfast. “Fishy and Dishy?”

  “That’s stupid,” snorts Tod. This is the boy who, when presented with a cuddly dog one Christmas, racked his brain for a name until our decorations had been put away for next year, and finally came up with Dog.

  “Bill and Ben?”

  Tod gapes at me as if to say, why?

  “Fuckwit and Arse,” I murmur, delving into the fruit bowl to find acceptable lunchbox components and discovering only peaches shrouded in blue fur.

  “What?” Tod asks. “What did you say?”

  I feign deafness and remind myself that it’s hardly fair to take out my ill humor on Tod, when it’s Marcus who appears to have forgotten Valentine’s Day. Who cares about a corny institution that propels intelligent adults into Hallmark shops to buy teddies bearing the message I Wuv You? Presenting an adult with a soft toy is an offence that should carry an extremely stiff penalty, like being forced to eat the thing, plastic eyeballs and all.

  I don’t need a card to reassure me that I am adored by my husband. I did notice, however, that Marcus failed to open the fuchsia envelope I placed on his bedside table this morning, and that his parting shot before leaving for work was to remind me to call the drain man because something bubbles up into the shower every time we flush the loo, which suggests that we have a plumbing problem. This, I felt, was hardly in the spirit of Valentine’s Day.

  We set off for school. Tod is dawdling, trying to peek into other people’s front rooms. He stops before the middle cottage in a terrace of three, and jams his binoculars against the front window.

  “That’s so rude,” I hiss, tugging his jacket.

  Inside the cottage a man slowly raises himself from an armchair and shuffles toward the window. He has two black thumb smudges for eyebrows, which wiggle angrily. Tod grins and waves.

  I drag him onward, past the hairdresser where Tina’s son Harry is sucking a lolly. It’s a whistling lolly, which he blasts as we stride past. Tina has the smug flush of a woman who has just received roses. She is certainly being taken for dinner tonight to a restaurant where desserts come with a heart-shaped dribble of raspberry sauce.

  At the school gate, Tod kisses me goodbye and mooches away to assume his usual position, squashed next to the main entrance. Chetsley Primary has a system to help newcomers settle in. An older child—a “buddy”—is supposed to help them make friends. Adele, Lucille’s ten-year-old, is Tod’s buddy. She stands now among a group of similar-size girls, her calves bulging above white ankle socks, her face flatly unwelcoming. I hope she exhibits more enthusiasm in her majorette displays.

  The bell sounds. Miss Cruickshank ushers children in through the door. Her hair is a pinkish gray puff. She waves and beckons me over. The children are indoors now, the playground empty and speckled with the beginnings of rain. “Mrs. Skews,” she begins. Being Mrs. Skews makes me feel ancient. Call me Ro, I think, or even Rowena. “Could you pop in sometime,” she says, “for a chat?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Around two today?”

  My eyes are fixed on the marble cake swirls of her blouse. I have never seen her wear the same one twice. Jumble sales are, I suspect, entirely stocked with Miss Cruickshank’s discarded blouses. This one is certainly a fire hazard. I want to ask, “What’s this about?” but she has hurried in from the drizzle, banging the heavy blue door behind her.

  Back home, I intend to call Dampblasters to find out when someone will inject our back wall with foul chemicals, but can’t motivate myself. Why does Miss Cruickshank want to see me?

  Tod isn’t fitting in.

  He won’t speak.

  Bigger boys are picking on him.

  He is exhibiting an over-fondness for images of dead people wrapped in bandages.

  He is a genius and must be moved immediately to the year above. Miss Cruickshank wants to congratulate me on raising such a gifted, articulate child.

  I call Marcus, who says, “You’re worrying too much. She just wants a chat.”

  “Yes, but what about? Teachers don’t just chat, not at two o’clock, when they’re supposed to be in charge of twenty-six kids.”

  “I’m pretty busy,” Marcus adds. “Call me later, after your meeting.”

  “You think it’ll be a meeting? Like, a formal thing?” I picture Miss Cruickshank with a clipboard, on which she has attached her agenda entitled: Worrying Things About Tod.

  “It’ll be fine, darling,” he says.

  “It must be something urgent.”

  “Ro, I’m with a client. Let’s talk later.”

  He thinks I’m a fussy mother. Even Tod bats me away as if I’m a wasp. That’s what happens when you have an only child. They hog all your brain space, permeate every cell. I never planned to have just one kid. When Tod turned three, broodiness started to rise in my throat. I couldn’t gulp it back down. It was Nappy Rejection Day that made me decide to suggest we have another baby.

  My attempts to force Tod into pants had resulted only in perpetual wee smells, and a humiliating incident when a nugget of solid matter rolled out of his trouser leg and on to the mottled gray carpet in the doctor’s waiting room. Everyone fell silent and stared as I picked it up with a paper towel from the loo. Then one spring afternoon, at an art installation in Victoria Park, Tod toilet trained himself.

  Anna, my old boss, had dragged us along. A friend of hers with an aubergine crop had erected nylon structures, like enormous, billowing knickers, on the scrubby grass. Tunnels led from one silken tent to the next. The idea was, young babies and children would be stimulated by the colors and wafting fabrics. Most babies were whimpering miserably or bellowing to be liberated from the tents. Tod ran through the tunnels, losing himself. I found him glowing beneath red silk, trousers bunched at his ankles as he ripped off the nappy.

  “No Pamper,” he roared. “Big boy now.”

  Later I told Marcus that, with Tod having reached this developmental milestone, we should think about having another baby.

  He said, “Why?”

  “I want one,” I said, as if it were as simple as buying a jumper.

  He shook his head. “I just think Tod’s…enough”

  “I don’t want him being an only child.”

  “It’s Suzie,” Marcus said suddenly. “You want to be like Suzie.” She had two children by this point, and her third was pushing her belly outward and causing her to crave boulder-size jacket potatoes. “There’s this pressure,” he ranted on, “to keep reproducing, like we’re animals.”

  “We are animals,” I pointed out.

  “Let’s just focus on Tod. We can give him everything he needs.”

  Suzie suggested that I stab a hole in my diaphragm. I couldn’t, even if I’d wanted to. On Marcus’s insistence, we had started using condoms by then. “It’s not fair,” Suzie insisted, “that he decides how many children you have, when you’re desperate for another.”

  “I’m not desperate,” I lied. The truth was, Marcus could spout sensible reasons why having another child was a bad idea.

  And my reasons were simple: want, need.

  Suitable attire for meeting Miss Cruickshank: a simple, coord
inating outfit to lend an air of efficiency. I flap through black trousers with their blackness washed out, and spy the charcoal-gray trouser suit Marcus bought for me. When I first tried it on he said it made me look sexy in a smart, extremely capable sort of way, and was so excited about this sexy/capable combination that he pulled me into bed and missed octopush.

  My strappy black sandals haven’t been out of their box since we left London. They are certainly unsuitable for walking to school. For one thing, we’re usually running. Together, though, the suit and heels create a pleasingly grown-up, if rather job interviewish, effect.

  I comb my eyebrows, examine my teeth and smile broadly at my reflection. The molar dentist again. Don’t look so tense, fussy mother. It’s just a chat, that’s all.

  chapter 8

  How To Make Friends

  Miss Cruickshank has a sturdy bosom like a sandwich loaf. The room she shows me into has too many chairs upholstered in bobbly oatmeal and not enough daylight. I peer at her through the gloom.

  “So,” she says, smiling. “Tod.”

  “Yes,” I say, aware of my breathing and blinking. The desk that separates us is scattered with pamphlets entitled “All About Me.” Each one has a child’s drawing of a face on the front, and a name. Joely has drawn herself with shifty eyes, peering sideways, and yellow plaits that curl outward as if stiffened by wire.

  “Tod is a very bright boy,” Miss Cruickshank begins. “He takes great care over his work. So particular.”

  I wonder if Joely’s mother is ever summonsed to sit on this oatmeal chair and wait for the but.

  “His artwork is excellent,” she rattles on. “I assume you do a lot with him, Mrs. Skews.”

  “Well, we tried swimming but he wasn’t…and his bike, there’s a problem with balance. The stabilizers should be off by now, but last time we tried—”

  “Art,” she says gently. “Painting, drawing. I imagine he’s had a lot of encouragement in that area.”

  “Yes,” I say, staring at the pink ribbons that secure Joely’s plaits. “Tod draws a lot, mostly mazes. He’s very interested in—”

  “But he doesn’t mix,” Miss Cruickshank butts in. “He doesn’t play with other children or even talk to them.” She finishes this with a little laugh. Imagine, a child who doesn’t like children!

  “He’s not used to being around lots of kids. He’s an only child.”

  “But he had friends, at his last school?”

  “Heaps,” I protest.

  Miss Cruickshank is trying to smile but her top lip is too short for her mouth. She looks like she’s sucking on an invisible straw. “Social development is an important aspect of school,” she adds.

  What does she expect me to do? He’s just selective, that’s all. I was like Tod, as a child. Natalie’s bedroom buzzed with babbling girls competing to style the hair of Dolly Delicious, a hideous severed plastic head that came with waxy lipsticks and glittery hair bands. It seemed too busy in that room, and confusing. Whenever I did Dolly Delicious’s makeup, she just looked cheap.

  “Tod seems happy at home,” I say firmly. “And we’ve only lived in Chetsley for six weeks. He hasn’t had time to make friends.”

  “You’re right,” she says.

  Of course I am—I gave birth to him.

  “But it might help if he socialized outside school. Maybe you could invite one of his classmates for tea.”

  “We’ll do that,” I say.

  Miss Cruickshank knocks the “All About Me” pamphlets into a tidy pile. I interpret this gesture as my cue to leave the room, and embark on my Help Tod Make Friends project.

  First come the flowers, a startling combination of orange and purple bursting from a cellophane cone. Behind them, clutching the outlandish bouquet, is Marcus, pink around the cheeks, saying, “Darling, I totally forgot, I’m so sorry.”

  “Forgot what?”

  He drops the blooms on to the kitchen table and blinks at my suit and heels. “Valentine’s Day. Have you been for an interview?”

  “What? No, just that meeting at school.”

  “Have you been to my school?” Tod calls from the living room where he’s dismantling a deceased clock radio and examining the circuits. He charged out of school with a heart-shaped biscuit studded with Jelly Tots (for me) and lips speckled with sugar. Sweet-overload had made him jumpy, and I’d hoped that picking apart the radio’s interior might calm him down.

  “What meeting?” Marcus asks.

  “I told you, Miss Cruickshank wanted to see me.”

  “Why?” Tod yells.

  “To tell me…how well you’re doing.” Tod appears in the kitchen with Marcus’s Phillips screwdriver, which he has decided to name Phillip.

  “Really?” Marcus says. “That’s great, Tod.”

  I peel the cellophane from the flowers and wonder what to put them in. None of our vases is large enough to accommodate this dramatic display. In the utility room I find a bucket, half fill it with water, and dump in the blooms.

  Marcus has also brought me a card that reads, You’re Cute, Kiss Me, I Like You. The card is supposed to play a tune when you open it, but something’s gone wrong with its workings and all that comes out is a strangled peep.

  Still, it’s the thought that counts.

  It has taken me three days to select a child for Tod to befriend. I have stalked mothers and their offspring to school, sizing up potentially suitable matches, and quizzed Tod on who he likes in his class. He just said Miss Cruickshank, which wasn’t the right answer at all.

  “Do you like that boy with the massive forehead?” I asked. He looked at me blankly. “Or that blond girl who wears a fur coat?”

  “Tabitha,” he mumbled.

  I hoped that he wouldn’t choose Tabitha. Despite her Dalmatian fur coat, and matching gloves, scarf and hat, the child is always complaining to her mother that she’s cold. “Am coe-wuld,” she whines in the street.

  Tod has never expressed any interest in Harry, but if I waited for Tod to choose his own friend, he’d be heading for university and the damage would have been done. I chose Harry because Tina once cut Tod’s hair, which means that we know them, and he doesn’t appear to possess any worrying traits, apart from a fervent attachment to a whistling lolly.

  Before inviting a child to tea, you need to ask permission. I spotted Tina this morning, marching stiffly with Harry as he strained to admire a display of miniature teapots in the grocer’s window.

  “Could we have Harry for tea?” I barked into her ear.

  She looked startled, as if I was a stranger demanding money. Harry pressed his back against the shop window. His mouth trembled, as if he were nibbling ants. “That’s kind of you,” Tina blustered. “Would you like that, Harry?”

  He didn’t reply, but here he is now, clutching Doctor X, Action Man’s foul-looking opponent. Doctor X has a Mohican hairdo and veins bulging from his upper arms. Perhaps Harry thinks that Tod will steal it if he lays it down on the table. I call Suzie, hoping for tips on handling other people’s kids, but am met by her stultified tone on her answering machine.

  Harry can eat, at least. He forks in spaghetti, splattering his school polo shirt with globules of sauce. He has a fuzz of grayish brown hair, like mouse fur, and sullen eyes that flit about the fixtures and fittings of our kitchen.

  Tod eats his spaghetti painfully slowly, sucking in one strand at a time. Both boys are silent.

  I feel like a matchmaker, trying to ease two social outcasts through painful first-date procedures. I fire questions at Harry: “Aren’t you lucky, having a mum who can cut your hair?”

  “Yeah,” he says, licking his fork.

  “I can’t do that,” I rant on. “I tried once, didn’t I, Tod? Chopped the fringe so short it didn’t match the rest of his hair. He looked like a TV screen.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Tod mutters. Harry shoves away his empty bowl and stares at me, mournfully.

  After our jolly tea, I suggest, “Want to show Harry your b
edroom, Tod? You could check if the fish have had babies yet.”

  “Can I draw?” Tod asks.

  “Of course you can. Do you like drawing, Harry?”

  “Nah,” he says, through a stuffed mouth. “I’m going upstairs.”

  He’s up there now, creeping from room to room. There’s the occasional bang, like a drawer being slammed shut. I should follow him, make sure he doesn’t tamper with the wires at the back of the fish tank or spy Marcus’s octopush kit spilling from its zip-up bag and tell his mum: “They have rubber flippers in their bedroom.”

  “Go up and see if Harry’s all right,” I tell Tod.

  “I don’t want to.” He’s hunched over the kitchen table, drawing an underwater scene. The fish have row upon row of tiny scales. Filling every fish with scales is going to take him all night.

  “Then play Action Man with him. Do something.”

  He looks up from his drawing. “Why?”

  Harry reappears in the kitchen, chewing on something. What’s he guzzling now? There’s nothing to eat upstairs, except fish food and maybe a collection of ancient toast crusts under Tod’s bed. Should I make him open his mouth and show me?

  “Let’s do homework,” I suggest, eagerly. Harry yawns at me. It’s okay, he still has a mouthful of spaghetti. “Lego?” I suggest. “I’ll get the Lego out.”

  “I’m drawing,” Tod murmurs.

  Harry wanders over to the kitchen bin, opens his mouth and lets the spaghetti fall out. “Spaghetti’s pasta,” he announces. “Pasta’s wheat. I can’t have wheat because I get this thing where my stomach blows up and I can’t go to the toilet.”

  You still ate a bowlful, greedy tyke.