Teddy considers my question gravely, and I await his answer solemnly. “Yes, Mom, I think I would like to stay. I could have a pony, and go to school in the very same school that Daddy attended when he was a boy my age. And when Bix gets better, he’s gonna teach me to run the big tractor. And I’ll be a man, not a little sissy.”
His eyes light up as he finishes this speech. No doubt the thoughts please him, but it disturbs me a little to hear them couched in phrases fresh from Grandpa’s mouth.
“Well, I suppose we’ll probably stay then,” I say lamely. A cruel temptation rises in me. It would be so easy to say, “Too bad your poor puppy will be all alone this summer. Too bad your Tonka trucks have to sit on their shelves and get dusty, too bad Eddie-down-the-road will have no one to swim with him in the gravel pit this summer. But I guess a pony is worth it. I hope our Bruno puppy doesn’t run away because he’s so lonely. I hope no one breaks into our cabin and steals all your toys. I hope mice don’t chew up your stuffed animals.” I could show them how it’s really done, how you twist a kid’s head until he doesn’t know what he wants, how you scare him and torment him into wanting what you want him to want.
But you don’t do that to children you love, and that is how I know they don’t really love Teddy. By the way they use him to manipulate Tom and me. Perhaps tonight I will point that out to Tom, open his eyes to how we are being used. Or perhaps tonight I will step in front of a speeding locomotive and halt it with my upraised hand. Teddy finishes eating and carries his dishes unsteadily to the sink. He lifts his hand in silent farewell, the ultimate in cool, and I respond in kind. He grins suddenly and flashes past me and out the door, is gone faster than a red fox disappearing into tall grass. He will do whatever it is small boys do all day when their mothers are careful not to bother them. I will not spoil things by asking what it is he rushes off to do. Whatever it is, it belongs to him. A boy needs time on his own.
But what if he is not on his own? I begin to tot up the time he spends at home with me, as opposed to the time he spends at Grandma’s big house. Well, they have the television. Add a lot of time on that score. And they have a full-stocked refrigerator, and a freezer that Auntie Steffie keeps full of Fudgsicle bars and Eskimo Pies. A major draw. And no one imposes discipline on him. If he becomes unbearable, they simply send him back to me. More and more, I slowly realize, I am becoming the punishment, the place you are sent when you’re bad. I’m the “take a bath, pick up your toys, brush your teeth, go to bed” person. The candy-givers live next door.
I realize my teeth are clenched so tightly that my jaw aches. I have been polishing the same spot of table for the last five minutes. I rock back on my heels and raise my cold hands to my sweaty forehead. Try to calm down, I tell myself reasonably. Every day you get further and further out. These are not wicked evil people. They are simply run-of-the-mill grandparents, enjoying their grandson during the first long visit they’ve had since he was born. All grandparents love to spoil their grandchildren, love to give them candy and privileges, toys and ponies. If Mother says no, ask Grandma, says the T-shirt. I smile ruefully to myself. Calm again. Real.
What is coming over you, I ask myself soothingly. What makes you think these wild things? What ignites your territorial fury, what sets you off so quickly these days? A shiver of cold fear touches me. What is happening to me? Lately I see only the worst in anyone’s motives, including Tom, Tom who I love above all else, beyond all reason or safety. If I can doubt Tom, who is left for me to believe in? What has happened to the safety of our marriage? We never quarrel, we never nag each other, we laugh together, and he holds me warm at night. He is tall and handsome and strong and he loves me. I know this is so. But sometimes it seems that whenever his parents come into the picture, we are at each other’s throats. What is becoming of my serenity, the inward peace I have so carefully cultivated? I feel pieced together, like a shattered china cup mended with the wrong glue, knowing that the next time they fill me, I will again shatter, scalding all within reach.
I make another little space in my self. There, I tell myself, you’ve seen the problem. Well, it’s simply solved. Just start fresh, today, turn over a new leaf, be a better person, refuse to be prey to these feelings. Make a resolution, right now. No more nagging. No more emotional arguments. Decide all on logic. Show Tom a little more affection, make him love you again. Support your husband in this thing he needs to do. He perceives staying here as the payment of a debt, as evening out with his folks for all they have done for him. How can I begrudge him that? He needs to do this thing, to make peace with himself.
I make a hot cup of tea to calm myself. Tea bag in the cup. Water in the kettle. Kettle on the stove. Put the dishes away while the kettle heats. Pour the steaming water into the cup. Breathe in the comforting aroma of brewing tea. Remove the bag. Put in the sugar. Sit in the chair by the window. Concentrate for just a few moments on these very simple movements, let them be a ritual of serenity. Breathe deeply and unwind.
I sip my tea and shut my eyes for a moment. The old familiar images rise to my mind. Think of a black room, completely dark. A small shining white thread stretches across the floor of the room. That is my idea of sanity. If I can spend my whole life walking through that dark hall, balancing on the white thread, never breaking it, then I will remain normal. Be accepted. But it is such a temptation to just relax, to let go, to fall from the sharp and cutting edge of rationality into the deep warm blackness of my own world.
Pan comes from my blackness. I know that. Pan had to come from the blackness. When I had decided I wanted to be real, all those years ago, I had banished him to that blackness, to the hidden closet of my mind. Traded in a bizarre illusion for a real life, for Tom and later Teddy. I had left the old loneliness behind, and with it I had abandoned the dreams I had fabricated for dealing with it. Pan, my imaginary companion, had been a defense mechanism, a tool for dealing with isolation. And now he is back. What does that mean? Forget it. Just forget it for now. Turn to the matters at hand. Chores to do, a life to lead. I sip at my tea. It’s cold.
The rest of the day slips past me just as elusively. I do housework. That is all there is for me to do. There are no vehicles free for me to drive to town, and one does not drive to town frivolously, not when Mother Maurie is keeping track of the gasoline. The gardens outside the houses belong to Mother Maurie and are faithfully tended by Ellie. One must not walk through the planted fields lest one crush the new plants. There are the woods, of course, beyond the chicken yard. But there is nothing there for me, and no reason to go there.
So I do housework. Generic tasks. Sweeping the same floor I swept yesterday, dusting the same shelves, cleaning the same bathtub. I fix a careful lunch for myself at noon. Tuna-fish sandwiches, cut into triangles, a handful of potato chips, a pot of tea. Tom will not be home for lunch, he is discussing business at the big house. Teddy is with him. I eat my tuna in careful bites, wondering what would happen if I went over there, if I knocked on the door and walked in. Would they all look up from the big table in astonishment, wondering who had come to disturb them at their meal, who had come breaking into a family’s time together? Ridiculous. They’d smile and greet me, make a place for me at the table. But there’d be the question, from Mother Maurie, most likely. “Why, Evvie, how nice! And what brings you over today?” And I would have no answer, would die before I said, “I’m lonely, I want to see my husband, I want to watch my baby eat.” Those reasons are not good enough for practical people like the Potters. I have no real reason to go over there, nor desire to sit through a noon discussion of hydraulic hoses and whether the stock of gaskets is sufficient. It would be pointless to go over there, and silly.
After lunch, I have my lunch dishes to wash, and to dry, and to set carefully away. It is good to be busy. After the dishes, I read a romance. This one is about pirates. Their captain is actually a kidnapped nobleman who has won the respect of the pirates and becomes their captain by his skill with a sword. All he wants is to regain what is rightfully his, and he sets out to recapture one of his own ships, now carrying the loutish cousin who arranged to have him kidnapped so he could inherit the pirate captain’s rightful place. Also aboard is his loutish cousin’s beautiful and willful fiancee, Desiree. She has raven tresses and a bee-stung lower lip. She pouts beautifully, and doesn’t wish to marry the loutish Alfred, but has been forced into it by her father, who thinks only of money. David, of course, captures