When We Were Animals(35)

Lola King lives next door. She is from New York and has very little patience for the provinciality of our burg. She has befriended me. She brings her lawn chair to my yard and sets it up next to mine. She also brings a pitcher of frozen daiquiris and two frosted glasses and even paper umbrellas to stick in the top. Her husband got into some sort of trouble back East.

“Cocktail time, darling,” she says, a cigarette dangling between her lips.

The other neighbors don’t approve. Particularly Marcie Klapper-Witt, who lives three doors down from me. She wears sunglasses so we cannot see that her judgmental gaze is always upon us. Lola raises her glass to toast her.

I smile and am delighted.

The children run in circles. They draw on the pavement with oversize chalk. They shoot at one another with water guns that look like colorful missile launchers. My son is among them, and to watch him is to acknowledge how impossible it is to stay one thing for your entire life. Much of the time I stare at the clouds.

My son is four years old. He will not run wild and naked in the streets when he becomes a teenager. He will not hack away at the old, tired physical world just to watch it bleed. He will drink to excess with his friends. At most, he will urp up his dinner, drunkenly, on front lawns and then escape in shame. He will fumble awkwardly at the apparatus of girls’ bodies. He will be stubborn and recalcitrant. He will slam doors. But he will not run savage through the night, coyote-like, enamored of his own power to sunder and tear. He will not drink hot blood. This town is a very safe town. We have a neighborhood watch, a community league, and I am on the PTA.

But he does bite, my son. He has a problem with biting. According to the other mothers, he is too old to be biting.

Marcie Klapper-Witt brings my son before me one day. She has his arm clasped in her fist, up by his shoulder. His elbow is bleeding, and he is crying.

“Mrs. Borden, your son bit my daughter,” says Marcie Klapper-Witt.

“He did?”

“Yes, he did.”

“But his elbow is bleeding.”

“Fancy pushed him down after he bit her. To get him off her.”

Fancy Klapper-Witt wears a tiara everywhere she goes. Her favorite thing is posing for pictures.

“Did he hurt her?” I ask.

“He bit her. He’s really too old to be biting. You should look into that, Mrs. Borden. They won’t let him into kindergarten.”

“I’m very sorry, Marcie,” I say. “It won’t happen again.”

Lola smiles up at the other woman.

“Cocktail, Marcie? It takes the edge off.”

But Marcie Klapper-Witt marches off without saying another word.

I lean forward to talk to my son.

“Marcus, did you bite Fancy Klapper-Witt?” I ask.

He nods.

“Do you hate her?”

He shakes his head.

“Do you like her?”

He nods.

“Do you like her so much you want to eat her all up, like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood?”

He nods.

“That’s what I thought.”

He sniffles. The tears have made streaks through the layer of dust and grime on his face. The blood from his elbow is smeared across his forearm.

“Does your elbow hurt?”

He nods.

“Here,” I say. “Look.”

I use my thumb to take some of the blood from his elbow and paint it in two horizontal bands across his cheeks.

“Now you’re a warrior, Marcus,” I say. “Do you want to see?”

He nods.

The tray Lola brought the daiquiris on has a mirrored bottom, so I hold it up for him to see.

He is pleased by this and goes off to play again.

Lola turns to me.

“No Neosporin?” she asks.

“What?”

“For his elbow. Aren’t you worried about infection?”

I shrug.

“Bodies can withstand a lot of damage,” I say. “If you lean on them, you’re surprised how much they can take.”

Lola laughs and clinks my glass with her own.

“Darling,” she says, “you are a shooting star among drudges. You’re just so ethereal.”

I can feel my mouth grinning, though I am embarrassed.

“Well,” she goes on, “that little Fancy bitch had it coming. I guarantee it won’t be the last time in her life that some man tries to take a bite out of her.”

I stare at the clouds and listen to the cicadas make their repetitious song, and when the sun starts to go down, all the mothers gather their children into their houses. Lights come on in windows all up and down the street.

Lola calls her own children to her.

“Come on, brats! Assemble!”

Then she, too, goes indoors.

I’m the only one left outside when my husband comes home. He parks in the driveway and climbs out of the car. Our son is asleep on the lawn, curled up on the grass like a house cat.

“What are you doing out here?” Jack says.

“Enjoying the evening,” I say.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“Not to speak of.”

“Do you want to come in now?”

“I suppose so.”

But the answer to his question is really much more complicated than that.