Schroder: A Novel

by Amity Gaige

  “Oh, Meadow. That kills me. We should find you a school that can handle a child like you. A gifted child. You’re gifted.”

  Her face clouded. “I don’t want a new school. I like my school.”

  “Why do you like your school if you can’t be yourself there?”

  “My friends are there.”

  “Then you should skip a grade. Something.”

  “I don’t want to skip a grade. Then I wouldn’t be in class with my friends.”

  “Why are you punishing yourself for being smart?”

  “You always say that. You always say that. You always say the same things! I listen to you, but you don’t listen to me!”

  She crossed her arms and snapped her head toward the window. Just like that, I had lost hold of her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Beneath us, the bus engine labored in a lower gear. We passed a sign for Albany, New Hampshire, but neither of us made a joke about it.

  “You deserve a better father. But instead you got me.”

  She looked down at her lap, her eyes glassy. Then she tilted her head just a touch to the side, as if accepting a counterargument from her more dutiful self, giving me—because she couldn’t help it—yet one more benefit of the doubt.

  “Listen,” I said. “It would take too long for me to apologize for everything. It would take my whole life. And we’ve only got”—I checked my watch—“two hours and fifteen minutes until we get to Boston. Which parts do you want to hear about?”

  She looked up, out the window. “I want to hear about the times you were happy.”

  I nodded. The bus turned toward someplace called Tamworth.

  “I’ll tell you about happiness,” I said. “The time I was most happy in my life was when I met your mother.”

  She smiled but did not turn her head.

  “Now, every little thing about your mom and me is true. No take-backs.”

  She turned now, her gums showing. “Tell me.”

  “We met because a boy fell out of a tree.”

  “You’re teasing.”

  “Am not. A boy plopped out of a tree and broke his wrist, and your mother was helping him. Everybody—everybody was watching—and I saw her and I fell in love with her on the spot…”

  All the way to Nashua, I told her about it. The gifts of tea and apricots, the honeymoon in Virginia Beach, the tidal pools, your pregnant cravings, your enormous belly, her birth, how she didn’t cry when she was born, the pretty music of her favorite mobile, the birth of Stinky Blanket, the smell of calendula oil, winters, branches, and good silences.

  A middle-aged woman got on in Nashua. She wore a white cardigan and store-fresh jeans and carried her purse clamped between breast and elbow. From the looks of her, I hoped she’d content herself with a seat farther up the bus. But after rejecting the other seats for some reason or another, she settled down diagonally from us.

  After a while, I noticed this woman staring at us. I looked at her, and she smiled tightly and returned to her magazine. My blood went cold. Here was exactly the sort of zealot who would watch television shows in which regular people are encouraged to help apprehend fugitives.

  “Heading to Boston?” she asked finally, creasing her magazine against her leg.

  I tried to ignore her.

  “Are you heading to Boston?” she asked, louder.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said are you going to Boston.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “You don’t have any games or anything for the little girl? You don’t have any pencils or paper for her to draw on?”

  “No. Games? I—no, I don’t.”

  The woman cocked her head backwards in chagrin. “Such a long trip. A long time for a little girl to sit with nothing to do.” She began to dig in her purse. “Let me see if I have something for her to draw with. Would you like a colored pencil, sweetheart? Ugh. All I’ve got is a pen, and nothing to draw on.”

  “We’ll be all right,” I said, relieved.

  The woman shrugged. “Still.”

  “Thanks for your concern.”

  “Still. It’s a long trip without anything to do.”

  I turned and looked at Meadow, who was grinning. I winked at her.

  “Hey, Daddy,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  She waved me closer. “You know what that lady doesn’t know about us?”

  “What?”

  Then she brought her face very close to mine, just like she used to do before she got her glasses, and put one hand on my shoulder. “She doesn’t know how big our imaginations are.”

  RAPUNZEL

  We stood outside of South Station, wearing matching green shamrock baseball caps that I’d bought at a kiosk. I grabbed Meadow’s hand.

  “By God, Boston has a smell,” I said. “Do you smell that? It’s kind of boggy or peaty. Not gassy, like New York.”

  It was a windy, late afternoon, but the sun still shone on Boston. I’d planned to go straight to Dad, but once I stepped out into Boston, I thought of everything that my real past now offered up in a fascinating if slightly down-market passel of attractions. Hell, this was way better than an aristocratic country-club childhood on the Cape—this was Boston, seat of Colonial America, home of the Red Sox. We wandered into the city’s small but festive Chinatown and walked with throngs of tourists along Essex until I caught the splinter of someone’s gaze, someone looking at us wrong. I turned down toward Harrison Ave. toward Kneeland, which felt safer. I was not safer in Boston than I was in the wilds of the Northeast Kingdom, but I felt safer, because Boston was the city of my youth, and when I was still quite young, over no objections from my father, I often took the T all the way to town from Savin Hill, not far, not far at all.

  We went out of our way to stop in front of the John Hancock building and let its mirrors make us dizzy. We walked all the way to Copley Square and stared at the library, whose facade glowed as bone white as any Coliseum with the last afternoon light. There we bought roasted cashews from a cart and sat eating them amongst the drunks and the pigeons. We walked into the Copley Plaza Hotel and pretended we were guests. We tried to count the crystals on the chandelier. I inquired about the cost of staying overnight and, flipping through my billfold, thought better of it. The paucity of my funds turned a screw of anxiety. I’d lost a thousand bucks behind a le Carré novel on a shelf in Vermont. I knew time was running out. I knew this was our grand finale. I wanted her to have anything she wanted.

  After a scoop of ice cream for her and some Canadian Club for me in the Ivy Room, we set off again. Trekking down Boylston Street, Meadow began to lag behind.

  “Daddy. I’m tired.”

  “Tired? What do you need? You need to do the Dew?”

  “We’ve been walking a long time.”

  “Come on,” I said. “You’re fine. You’re on fire. We’re almost to the Common. Don’t you want to ride the swan boats? You haven’t visited Boston until you’ve done that.” I squinted at the sky. The boats had probably stopped running for the day.

  “And then can we go to Grandpa Otto’s house?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll get there soon.”

  “All right. Can I ride your shoulders, Daddy?”

  “Sure, Butterscotch. Up we go.”

  And I was her camel, and we were crossing the Sahara, and she laughed when I ran beneath the willows, galloping through the swarms of strolling people across the stone bridge of the lagoon in the Public Gardens, saying, “Pardon me, excuse me, pardon me, camel behind you.” We slipped into line just as the attendant drew the cordon closed behind us, and we rode on the last swan boat of the day, sliding across the lagoon trailed by a line of sooty-looking goslings.

  It was dark by the time we reached Beacon Street. We walked along the northern border of the Common while I tried to orient myself. A man stood under the streetlight dressed as a turn-of-the-twentieth-century valet. Two pale gray horses waited behind him, wearing
red paper cones on the crests of their heads.

  “Excuse me. Are we near the T stop?” I asked the man.

  “Not too far. You can cut across right there to Park Street Station.”

  “Is that the Red Line? Green?”

  “Both.”

  “Does the Red Line still go out to Savin Hill Road?”

  “Sounds right, bud. Is that in Dorchester?”

  “Yeah. I haven’t been home in a long time.”

  I watched Meadow edge up to the horses. They swung their blinkered faces toward her. The nearer horse’s hindquarter shuddered as she touched it.

  “Hey, what about you?”

  “Me?” the man asked.

  “Can you take us to Dorchester?”

  “Are you kidding? You don’t know much about horses, do you?”

  I smiled. “No, I don’t. How much would it cost me?”

  “It would cost you the price of a new horse.” The man laughed. “That’s a new one, though.”

  “Just wanted to make a big entrance, I guess.”

  The man was still laughing good-naturedly. “That’s a new one, bud. Thanks.”

  Now Meadow leaned her head against my side. “Are we going to see Grandpa Otto now?”

  I put my hand on the top of her head. I’d let it get too late, far later than Dad would possibly be up. I could say now that I’d had a presentiment, that I wasn’t ready to face what awaited. But the truth is, I was just happy to be back—to be back home—and even the memory of myself as an outcast and a monster seemed exaggerated, merely the same way everybody feels, on some level, at that age. I looked down at my daughter, who stood belly out, rubbing her paunch. It was her—it was returning with her—that made me feel I’d outstripped all that.

  “Unfortunately,” I said, “Daddy lost track of time. I know Grandpa Otto and I know he goes to bed early. Tomorrow we’ll go. Bright and early. Besides, we’re not ready. Your clothes are looking a little pooped out. We’ve got to buy you a new dress.”

  A faint smile. “A new dress?”

  “A fancy new dress, don’t you think? With hoops and bows. And a muff. So you can meet your grandfather in style. I’ll take you to Filene’s. It was—or it used to be—right off the Common. Excuse me.” I pointed, asking the driver, “Is Filene’s still this way?”

  “You mean Macy’s? On Winter Street? It’s a Macy’s now.”

  Satin dresses with multiple petticoats. Velvet cloaks with silver toggles. Dresses with hoops. Dresses with matching gloves or coin purses. Meadow ran around the racks before she was calm enough to touch anything. At that hour, the children’s department was empty, with one or two weary saleswomen neatening the inventory. I nodded and tried to look unassuming, but when I saw Meadow pressing one of the dresses against herself and smiling, I couldn’t keep myself from bellowing, “Try it on!”

  I was studying a brochure of Boston hotels when she emerged.

  “Will you look at that,” I said, trying not to tear up.

  The dress was turquoise and hung just below her knees. The top of it was satin, but there was a shimmery netting over the skirt, the faux crystals of which glinted beneath the department store track lighting. The apron of the dress was as flat and smooth as her chest, cinched at the waist by a silver buckle. Over this, she wore a short matching turquoise jacket. The effect of the dress was somehow made sweeter by the dingy ankle socks she had not thought to remove in the dressing room.

  “Your grandfather is going to love you,” I murmured. “He’s going to think you’re the bee’s knees.”

  She was turning back and forth before the three-way mirror, not listening, her shoulders pinched forward, chin tucked under. Three Meadows, three turquoise dresses. Three fathers, looking on. Three red eyeglasses and six dirty socks, three manes of peroxided hair. I’m not sure if I’ve ever loved her more.

  “I look like Rapunzel. Don’t I? Don’t I look like Rapunzel finally, Daddy?”

  EMERGENCY

  I’d gotten used to the silence between us, Laura. I knew it was cruel not to call you, to tell you that Meadow was all right, that it wasn’t as bad as you were thinking. But I was used to your absence, and we were both used to cruelty by then, I mean the casual cruelty of people dismantling their life together. Odd, how there’s so much deliberating before a divorce. Such a lot of shilly-shallying, nobody wanting to be the bad guy. But then once the declarations are made, the lines are drawn, a desperate power grab commences, and there’s no more chivalry, no more nuance, no more delicacy. Only winning or losing.

  I sat in that hotel room staring at the telephone. I wanted to call you. Not because I was scared and knew I was in deep, and not even because I knew it was the right thing, but because I wanted to talk about Meadow with you. I wanted to talk to the only other person who had the same investment in Meadow as I did. I wanted to talk about small things, about how she swam in her clothes, or about her habit of starting sentences with adverbs like actually or technically. I wanted to tell someone stories about what she did or said and have that person respond with the same rush of tenderness that I felt when these things were happening in front of me. I wanted to tell someone about the turquoise dress. She was wearing it now, complete with dirty bobby socks, as she ate a package of Fritos in front of the television, straddled on the floor. I wanted to tell someone how glamorous and incongruous she’d looked wearing her gown in the lobby of the Best Western.

  Instead, I put the telephone back in its cradle. I lay down on the bed and crossed my hands over my chest and got very quiet. It was over, our marriage. I could not be married to Meadow’s mother anymore. I could not be married to that notion. I couldn’t call you anymore to talk about the small things.

  I rolled over and faced the wall. Cartoon voices quarreled from the TV, and Meadow guffawed. I could hear luggage wheels squeaking down the hallway. I tried to focus on what I had committed to doing by coming to Boston.

  Dad, I thought. My father. Vater. How to prepare for you? I wondered if he would look the same. I wondered if his English had improved. I wondered if he’d remarried, if maybe he had finally reciprocated the attentions of the Caribbean woman who lived in the apartment below ours and who adored my father despite his comical stiffness in her presence. I did not wonder if my father would be angry with me for my long silence. I did not want to flatter myself with the thought that he would be angry about it. In fact, the more I thought about him, the more certain I became that he would not be changed at all, and the happier I grew about that, whereas when I was a boy, I wanted him so badly to be different.

  I was disoriented when I awoke, fully dressed atop the made bed. It was late, but the television was still playing, volume off. Jets of damp air came through the vents below the window. Meadow was sitting upright across from me in her bed, still in her dress, looking stricken.

  “What is it?” I said.

  She looked at me hazily but did not answer.

  “What is it?”

  I stood and leaned in to her face and took her by the shoulders. After a long pause, she drew a shallow breath.

  “I’m fine,” she wheezed. Her breath sounded broken.

  I stood up.

  “What?” I said. “OK.”

  I turned in a circle, trying to remember where we were.

  “We’re in Boston,” I said.

  “I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine.”

  This time, the words left her spent, hanging slightly forward.

  “You are fine,” I said. “Of course you’re fine.”

  I turned on the lamp by her bedside.

  “No.” She squinted. “Turn it off, Daddy. Too bright.”

  “You’re right,” I said, obeying, leaving us again in the flickering darkness. “I bet you, if we sit here, and I tell you a long, interesting story, you’ll be able to breathe normally and fall right back to sleep. All right? Scoot over. And sit up straight. That always helps you breathe, doesn’t it? To sit up?”

  She mustered a smile, and
I fluffed the pillows all around her.

  Dear God, I thought. Not this.

  “My story,” I said, “is called ‘The Camel of Boston Common.’ ”

  I waited. I could hear her rasp in the darkness. Stay calm, I told myself. Staying calm would be my only important function. Her affliction—can I call it that?—was something that had manifested itself when she was about four, somewhere during the final act of her parents’ marriage, and perhaps for this reason, I never thought of her asthma as entirely physical. I mean, I related to it metaphorically, the threat of spiritual suffocation. Which is not to say I ignored medical solutions. I’d been there when the treatments were prescribed—a small albuterol inhaler to which she immediately affixed glittery stickers. Not a serious case, the pediatrician had said. Could be a lot worse. But she should keep this with her at all times.

  “Once upon a time, there was a camel who got lost in Boston. He—uh—he had never been to Boston before, so he did not know that the people of Boston are prejudiced against camels. In fact, there was a shoot-to-kill order on camels—an obscure law that camel activists had tried to repeal but kept falling short of the votes they needed given the cronyism and general anti-camel sentiment in Faneuil Hall. How are you doing?”

  With a wheezy inhalation, she nodded.

  “OK? Great. OK. So this camel—his name was Alal—had gotten bizarrely, totally lost in Boston, separated from his, what, his herd. But everywhere he went, people were so rude to him, calling him Humpback and Goat-Hoof, and nobody would tell him which way to the Sahara. Somewhere around the corner of Boylston and Arlington he spied a nice little patch of grass. This was, as everybody knows, Boston Common.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes, Butterscotch.”

  “Can I have my inhaler?”

  I swallowed the stone in my throat. “As you may remember,” I said, “your inhaler is in your backpack. Which is in Vermont.”

  She turned her head toward me, her cheek pressed against her hand, and sighed like a very old soul.

  “We can get you a new inhaler, of course. But we can’t get a new one right now. I mean, it’s three o’clock in the morning. We’ll find a pharmacy first thing in the morning.”