A Theory of Expanded Love

by Hicks, Caitlin;

  God was still on my side.

  Chapter 10

  lost boys

  June 18 – Yesterday the Supreme Court said that public schools are forbidden to say prayers in the classroom or read the Bible. Too bad for their souls, but we are exempt because we are a Catholic school. I saw an ad in the paper that said if you want to be an actor, sign up here. I would LOVE to be an actor! But Daddy and Mother say, “Hollywood is full of sinners, so forget about it, Annie.”

  I am in so much trouble. We left Dominic behind at Disneyland. It was hours before we even noticed he was missing. It was all my fault, but I won’t get spanked tonight because it’s too serious; everyone is rung right out from crying; we can’t help thinking about Dominic all the time, and Mother is just shaking from it. But I know exactly when he got lost. Right after I told him how great he looked up on that wall pretending he was a statue of the Pope. I was so sick of having to be responsible for all the little kids! I already had the twins to watch out for. So I tried to ditch Dominic. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, save my soul. He’s so gullible. Once he had his arms outstretched, pretending he had on one of those triangular pope hats, I told him to close his eyes, and then I ran around the corner and put his leash in Bart’s hands. I said, “Not it! Dominic’s your charge. Not it!” I tore out of there, dragging the twins, Markie and Buddy, behind me. I don’t know how long Dominic stayed on that wall, playing Pope Statue. Where was his guardian angel, anyway? It’s times like this when you count on those guys. But since they’re conveniently invisible, they can go AWOL any time they like and no one can tell if they’re on duty or not.

  Can you imagine how many kids get left behind at Disneyland every year? There have to be a few of them. Among all those hundreds of cars in the parking lot, there’s probably enough to form a club. Maybe the club could be called “The Left Behinds” or “Disney Orphans.” How many of the stories could possibly have a happy ending? I’m repeating myself, I know, but the weird part is, when we lost Dominic, it was hours before we even realized he was gone.

  We had our guard down because the little kids were in harnesses to protect against this very thing. Ever since Mother had more than three “under her feet,” she and Daddy had straps that fit around our shoulders and clipped together at the back. Whenever we were in public together, they walked us like dogs. People stared, but nobody got lost.

  But not today! Everyone blames me for losing him. I was distracted by Clara in one of the stalls. She was sobbing. Gulping sobs while her charge, Luke, stood patiently outside the toilet, attached by the leash under the door.

  •••

  We had met at the restrooms after lunch, before going on any more rides, like we agreed in the beginning.

  “Think of Christmas,” Dominic kept repeating to the twins, trying to convince Markie and Mattie that they could fly like Peter Pan. You can tell the twins anything; they’re just four-years-old, not very tall, and even more gullible than Casper the Friendly Ghost.

  “You can fly, Markie!” Dominic enthused.

  When I came out of the ladies’ room, Dominic was sprinkling invisible fairy dust over Markie’s head. Mattie stared wide-eyed up at his twin, balancing on the wall. He was next in line to try. The toes of Markie’s little shoes perched at the edge of the wall and he looked waaay down at the ground, his small body quivering with the courage he was gathering to leap off.

  “All you need is trust and a little bit of pixie dust,” Dominic goaded. “You can fly! Markie, you can fly!”

  “Stop!” I said, running to the wall. “Markie, don’t jump!” I yelled, holding my arms out to him. His little body lifted up and fell into my embrace. I grabbed on tight. Whew. That would have been broken legs.

  “I can fly!” Markie exulted.

  “Dominic!” I frowned, struggling to keep my balance against Markie’s squirming torso. “Someone’s going to end up crying!” I was still thinking about Clara in the toilet stall, her pants at her ankles, weeping.

  Dominic loves capes; he had a towel remnant around his shoulders, so after I put Markie and Mattie on the ground safely, I told Dominic that he looked like Cardinal Stefanucci. He was still standing on the wall when I said, “Pretend you’ve just been elected.” That’s when I put his leash in Bart’s hands and ditched him.

  Bart was hanging around the door to the women’s restroom, waiting for a skinny blonde who just went in. His pants were sticking out in the front; he musta had a carrot in his pocket. I put Dominic’s leash in his hand and said, “Not it!”

  That’s the last I remembered of Dominic.

  •••

  As I lay in bed, picturing Dominic’s big ears against his recently shaved buzz cut and panicked about him going missing, I got the feeling that someone was at the door to our bedroom.

  Jeannie and Rosie, over there, exhaling in tandem from their beds, were sound asleep. I was just drifting off, too drowsy to wonder who could possibly want what after everything today. I waited for a voice. Whoever it was stood there, as if listening. Footsteps quietly walked over the floorboards. Towards my bed. Suddenly I was wide-awake, even though my eyes were slammed shut. I froze. Then I knew this person was standing right next to my bed. I could have opened my eyes up to see who it was, but I didn’t. I wanted to see what was going on, and my curiosity got the better of me.

  Hands pulled back my covers and began touching my chest and doing little squeezes where my breasts were. I shifted under the covers, like I was going to turn over. The hands stopped, but stayed. Slurping sounds with my mouth, and more shifting around, to suggest I was in danger of waking up; I turned over. That worked; the footsteps retreated.

  I waited in the dark, what the heck was that? My heart was beating in my throat. I felt a strange glee that I had been witness to something forbidden. At the same time my chest burned red with embarrassment. I held my arms around my torso, to hide. My thoughts raced: the person who did this had no idea he was being observed—even though my eyes were shut. I was sure it was a sin what he had done. What was he thinking? I was barely allowed to touch my own breasts, and they’re on my body! Had this person done this before? Maybe he thought he could get away with it, but this would be the last time! I wasn’t a Tattle Tale per se, but I remembered something Our Lady of Fatima said. “More souls go to hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other reason.”

  I had to do something right away.

  I rolled off my bed and stepped quietly downstairs, trying to avoid the creaking step. The house had quieted down and I could only hear water rushing in the shower. There was a light coming from Mother and Daddy’s bedroom. I padded down the hallway and peeked in. Daddy stood over the basin in their adjoining half bath and reached for Old Spice from the shelf over the sink and poured some into his hands, then patted his cheeks. So it was Mother in the shower. I walked back down the hall and waited until she turned the handle on the door.

  “Mother,” I said, as she stepped out, steam wafting into the hallway. Her head was wrapped in a turban towel, like a tower.

  “What are you doing up?” Little wet wisps of hair curled up around her neck. Her face was flushed from the hot water.

  “I’ve got to talk to you,” I whispered.

  “You’re in enough trouble already. Just go to bed now,” she said, shaking her head.

  She walked ahead of me; I stopped. It would be so easy to go back to bed. I felt queasy in my stomach. I knew I had to tell her this.

  I followed her flopping slippers and her quilted red bathrobe that covered her large bottom. In comparison to mine. I’m only saying in comparison to mine. I’m a skinny runt and she’s grown thirteen babies in her body. She has a right to have a big butt. Daddy pulled his bathrobe around him as he stepped out of his room. When he saw Mother he opened his arms and gave her a big, long hug. She rested her head on his shoulder, quietly sobbing, I think. I waited until they separated.

  Daddy looked down, passing me as he went down the long hall away from their bedroom,
to the bathroom. I was surprised he didn’t take this opportunity to give me a lecture about Dominic. I imagined him using the word shirking.

  “Goodnight Daddy,” I called after him, as if to say things would seem better in the morning. In the bedroom I sat down with Mother on the side of her bed. She kicked off her slippers, and I could see the varicose veins on the side of her feet by her ankles, just below her pink nightgown. Somehow the familiarity of that reassured me. She’d know who it was, or she’d know how to find out. She’d have a talk with him. He’d go to confession. God would forgive him. No one would go to go to hell over this.

  “I was almost asleep,” I told her once she got in her room, “but I was really awake. Someone came into my bedroom and put his hands under the covers.”

  “Alright, Annie,” she said, taking her hair down off her head. “It’s been a big day.” Like I’d been making it up.

  “Mother, he put his hands on my body.”

  She stopped and looked right into my face.

  “You said his hands.”

  “I didn’t open my eyes, so I don’t know who it was.”

  “How do you know it’s a he?”

  “I think it was a he. Why would a she do that? A she already knows what breasts feel like.”

  “Alright, Annie,” she said again, drying her hair with the towel. “You go to bed now. Say your prayers.”

  Like I hadn’t been saying my prayers? It was too creepy, and I didn’t feel like going back to my bed.

  I couldn’t sleep. Who was it? It could have been Paul, John-the-Blimp, or Bartholomew. I had to be a really bad sin, because almost everything about the body is a sin. Especially the breast parts. Maybe someone else, like your husband, can touch them after you’re married in the church, like Daddy grabs Mother, and every act is a sacrament, so it’s okay. But until that day, it’s strictly off limits.

  •••

  Earlier in the day, we had been screaming down the Matterhorn and then we were driving home from the land of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck; I had a window seat in the back and I was counting the dashes on the freeway, 63, 64, 65, 66, trying to be the first to get to 100, but being slowed down by Madcap who was at 79, 80, 81 and thinking about Clara and what was wrong with her to cry like that in the restroom stall in the middle of the Magic Kingdom? I glanced at the back of Clara’s head sitting in the seat right in front of me. Her hair told me nothing.

  Then Daddy pulled off at a Texaco gas station just before Madcap got to 100. The heavy metal door of the restroom swung shut behind me. It was disgusting as usual, the small room smelling sour, the dirty tile floor piled up with paper towels, the cracked toilet seat. The water was cold and the soap, small white crusty granules that melted in your hands.

  In the bus, Mother counted heads. Then she did the list, and I heard that panic overlay in her voice, naming every single child as she looked at all our faces. “Paul, Clara, John, Margaret, Bartholomew, Annie, Jeannie, Dominic.”

  “Dominic, where’s Dominic?” No one said a word, but we looked at each other. No Dominic anywhere.

  Mother and Daddy always said that when they had another child they didn’t have to divide their love into an even smaller parcel because of the new baby or have less time to pay attention to the rest of us. No, a new baby meant there was more love to go around. I think it was their response to a nosy lady in the parish who thought Mother had too many kids after Rosie was born. It was one of those bits of logic that at first seemed great. But if you thought about it, it was like, “Yeah! That makes sense! Maybe. Kind of.” I called it A Theory of Expanded Love. In my mind, it was a just theory, because a new baby, except when it was sleeping or sucking on the bottle, had to get attention right away or it would start to cry. So everybody else got shunted to the background, too bad, tough luck. “I’m over here sterilizing bottles or feeding the new baby, or changing its diaper. Shut up. Do the dishes. Get out of here, I need a nap.” You yourself might have once been a darling newborn, but right now you were a toad or a cockroach, just something useless and in the way and maybe even ugly. Daddy loved to brag about how many children he had because it added to his accomplishments. Now he was the father of thirteen kids, and all the old, “You’ve got how many kids?” “What, your own Mess Hall?” jokes came out again. The new baby made everyone else invisible while Mother became more irritable, had less time, got less sleep and needed more help. Adorable at first but ultimately a big shift in the order of things. A new baby meant you were on your own; you had to figure it out because Mother and Daddy for sure weren’t going to be there for you—they were too busy with the new baby! The other idea they had was, “Always count heads before you leave to go anywhere” and “Don’t ever leave the kids in the car. Even for a minute.” That day, they proved themselves wrong on all counts.

  “Dominic is missing,” Mother announced, a fact that had already occurred to us. But her saying it made it dreadful. Daddy had a crazy look; his eyes lit onto each one of us.

  “Is he in the restroom? Clara! Could he be in the restroom?”

  “No,” said Clara, “I looked in both.” She shook her head.

  “Who had Dominic?” We cowered, no one daring to speak. “Who had Dominic?” he bellowed.

  “Bart did,” I squeaked. “I gave him to Bart at the restrooms near the Matterhorn.”

  “You did not,” Bartholomew said.

  “I did too! I put his leash in your hand!”

  “Liar!”

  “You’re the liar, Bart!”

  “I never had his leash!”

  “You were staring at that girl with the slimsy legs!”

  Bartholomew burst out of the bus, walking around in a frenzy. “Dominic’s nine, he doesn’t need a leash!” He was fourteen, lanky and pimply, too big for his clothes. His voice sometimes high and sometimes big and low, Bart was full of a buzzing energy, like he had a bee in his bonnet.

  I personally know he was looking at a girl, I saw him stare at her with his mouth open. I put that leash in his hand, saying, “You’re it! Dominic’s your charge!” Now, pressed on all sides by warm legs and within bad breath distance of Madcap and Jeannie, I pushed my way out the open door of the bus. Bart was pacing, looking at his feet.

  “Don’t forget about the big boobs!” I yelled at him, jumping onto the asphalt. He looked up at me and rushed at me, pushing me to the ground.

  “What were you doing?” Daddy yelled. Bartholomew shrugged. “Where did you last see him? Bartholomew! Answer me!”

  “In the restroom! He was with Annie. Annie was dragging around with the twins. I thought maybe Dominic was helping her with the twins,” Bartholomew said.

  “He didn’t say anything to me!” I yelled at Daddy. “You lost him!” I screamed at Bart.

  “It’s your fault!” he screamed back at me.

  “Get back in the car,” Daddy barked in his Commander-in-Chief voice. We shut up and took our places. He turned on the ignition, shifted gears, and gunned the gas. My hands were vibrating and tears streamed down my cheeks. No one said a word. We could practically hear each other’s thoughts. Or at least the breathing. Baby Jude had no idea; he was the picture of fidgety, but then he noticed there was something not right. He looked from face to face, searching for what was wrong. It was more silent than I have ever experienced in the company of my brothers and sisters all together. Ever.

  The red light before we went on the freeway went on for hours. Then Mother pulled out her rosary from her purse. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, she began. All our voices soberly chorused those words we know so well. After just one Hail Mary, it was such a comfort; it felt like we could actually save him.

  And while we were reciting, I pictured Dominic on the Jungle Ride with his high forehead and green eyes. He was moving his ears like the elephants do, and we were laughing. He’s skinny on the top but squarish on the bottom with short legs—his body is a giraffe; his ears are an elephant.

  I remembered him
at home, naked in his white skin, his swinging pee-pee between his pathetically skinny legs, wanting to go down the back of the bathtub twice in a row for the Jiffy Bath. He’s a bit too old for the Jiffy Bath, but I let him slide down since he was already soaped up. A slide down the back bathtub wall is only a few seconds. I was so glad right now that I let him. It could have been his last fun moment. Did someone steal him? He was a desperate character, always trying to please everyone. Someone could have easily lured him away, just by paying attention to him. Oh, Dominic.

  I imagined Dominic back at Disneyland, lanky and lost among all those hundreds of hairy-legged daddies in shorts. I thought he’d be missing us. I thought he’d be crying and lost.

  But he was not.

  We finally arrived at the Disneyland parking lot. Mother and Daddy locked us up in the car, took five steps, and came back to get us. It would have literally been Purgatory, and I’d never have to atone for another sin if we had to stay in there, waiting. But they realized their mistake. Mother opened the doors, barked orders as we spilled out; we were to look after our charges, and everyone was to stay on the leash. “The family that prays together, stays together,” Daddy said. Then we said a prayer to Dear St. Anthony, who is, after all, the perfect saint for this kind of situation, as he is the patron saint of lost causes. We invoked the Blessed Mother and St. Jude. Then we hurried, all of us running with little steps together; our immediate goal being the ticket booth, which glowed against the darkening sky, like a beacon up there.

  Daddy talked to the ticket booth lady, who had a blonde beehive hairdo, and she got on the phone while we pressed our faces against the glass. We had a while in the cool dusk, hemming and hawing outside the ticket booth, watching her mouth as she spoke words we couldn’t hear into the phone.