Little Children E-Book

Tom Perrotta

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 500

Beschreibung

A group of parents, trapped in middle-class stability, deal with marriage, kids and their suburban life in very different ways. Todd, the handsome stay-at-home-dad - the one all the playground Moms admire in a silent look-but-do-not-touch fashion. He's trying (for his wife's sake) to pass his bar exam although he blatantly doesn't want to be a lawyer, and in a desperate attempt to reclaim his youth joins a midnight touch-football team.and starts a passionate affair with Sarah. Sarah is a lapsed feminist who isn't quite sure how she ended up being a traditional wife. She's the kind of mother who (shock horror) is capable of forgetting her daughter's snack, and in a moment's rebellion dares to kiss Todd in front of the mother's group.

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR TOM PERROTTA

‘Beautifully modulated narration … His lines have a calm and unshowy clarity’ Stephen King

‘Extraordinary … At once suspenseful, ruefully funny, and ultimately generous’New York Times Book Review

‘Witty and downright devilish’Time Out

‘Made me laugh so hard I had to put it down … An effervescent new work … A gentle, sparkling satire’Entertainment Weekly

‘A fast-reading, wholly engaging novel’Booklist

‘Darkly comic with a mischievous eye for absurd and intimate details’Washington Post

‘Offers a generous serving of laugh-out-loud moments’USA Today

‘Funny, sad, realistic, irreverent, and very readable’Library Journal

Little Children

TOM PERROTTA

In memory of my father, Joe Perrotta

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

PART ONE Decent People Beware

BAD MOMMY

THE SKATEBOARDERS

THE PROM KING

THE COMMITTEE OF CONCERNED PARENTS

BLUEBERRY COURT

RED BIKINI

WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?

PART TWOMadame Bovary

SEX LOG

ELECTRICAL STORM

NIGHT GAME

BOOK GROUP

DREAM DATE

PART THREELovebirds

TRUANTS

CHURCH ON SUNDAY

REASONS IT MIGHT BE TRUE

BULLHORN

PART FOURMeet Me at the Playground

SWING ME

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About the Author

Copyright

‘I have a lover! I have a lover!’ she kept repeating to herself, revelling in the thought as though she were beginning a second puberty.

– Flaubert, Madame Bovary

PART ONE

Decent People Beware

BAD MOMMY

The young mothers were telling each other how tired they were. This was one of their favorite topics, along with the eating, sleeping, and defecating habits of their offspring, the merits of certain local nursery schools, and the difficulty of sticking to an exercise routine. Smiling politely to mask a familiar feeling of desperation, Sarah reminded herself to think like an anthropologist. I’m a researcher studying the behavior of boring suburban women. I am not a boring suburban woman myself.

‘Jerry and I started watching that Jim Carrey movie the other night?’

This was Cheryl, mother of Christian, a husky three-and-a-half-year-old who swaggered around the playground like a Mafia chieftain, shooting the younger children with any object that could plausibly stand in as a gun – a straw, a half-eaten banana, even a Barbie doll that had been abandoned in the sandbox. Sarah despised the boy and found it hard to look his mother in the eye.

‘The Pet Guy?’ inquired Mary Ann, mother of Troy and Isabelle. ‘I don’t get it. Since when did passing gas become so hilarious?’

Only since there was human life on earth, Sarah thought, wishing she had the guts to say it out loud. Mary Ann was one of those depressing supermoms, a tiny, elaborately made-up woman who dressed in spandex workout clothes, drove an SUV the size of a UPS van, and listened to conservative talk radio all day. No matter how many hints Sarah dropped to the contrary, Mary Ann refused to believe that any of the other mothers thought any less of Rush Limbaugh or any more of Hillary Clinton than she did. Every day Sarah came to the playground determined to set her straight, and every day she chickened out.

‘Not the Pet Guy,’ Cheryl said. ‘The state trooper with the split personality.’

Me, Myself & Irene, Sarah thought impatiently. By the Farrelly Brothers. Why was it that the other mothers could never remember the titles of anything, not even movies they’d actually seen, while she herself retained lots of useless information about movies she wouldn’t even dream of watching while imprisoned on an airplane, not that she ever got to fly anywhere?

‘Oh, I saw that,’ said Theresa, mother of Courtney. A big, raspy-voiced woman who often alluded to having drunk too much wine the night before, Theresa was Sarah’s favorite of the group. Sometimes, if no one else was around, the two of them would sneak a cigarette, trading puffs like teenagers and making subversive comments about their husbands and children. When the others arrived, though, Theresa immediately turned into one of them. ‘I thought it was cute.’

Of course you did, Sarah thought. There was no higher praise at the playground than cute. It meant harmless. Easily absorbed. Posing no threat to smug suburbanites. At her old playground, someone had actually used the c-word to describe American Beauty (not that she’d actually named the film; it was that thing with Kevin what’s-his-name, you know, with the rose petals). That had been the last straw for Sarah. After exploring her options for a few days, she had switched to the Rayburn School playground, only to find that it was the same wherever you went. All the young mothers were tired. They all watched cute movies whose titles they couldn’t remember.

‘I was enjoying it,’ Cheryl said. ‘But fifteen minutes later, Jimmy and I were both fast asleep.’

‘You think that’s bad?’ Theresa laughed. ‘Mike and I were having sex the other night, and I drifted off right in the middle of it.’

‘Oh, well.’ Cheryl chuckled sympathetically. ‘It happens.’

‘I guess,’ said Theresa. ‘But when I woke up and apologized, Mike said he hadn’t even noticed.’

‘You know what you should do?’ Mary Ann suggested. ‘Set aside a specific block of time for making love. That’s what Lewis and I do. Every Tuesday night at nine.’

Whether you want to or not, Sarah thought, her eyes straying over to the play structure. Her daughter was standing near the top of the slide, sucking on the back of her hand as Christian pummeled Troy and Courtney showed Isabelle her Little Mermaid underpants. Even at the playground, Lucy didn’t interact much with the other kids. She preferred to hang back, observing the action, as if trying to locate a seam that would permit her to enter the social world. A lot like her mother, Sarah thought, feeling both sorry for her daughter and perversely proud of their connection.

‘What about you?’ It took Sarah a moment to realize that Cheryl was talking to her.

‘Me?’ A surprisingly bitter laugh escaped from her mouth. ‘Richard and I haven’t touched each other for months.’

The other mothers traded uncomfortable looks, and Sarah realized that she must have misunderstood. Theresa reached across the picnic table and patted her hand.

‘She didn’t mean that, honey. She was just asking if you were as tired as the rest of us.’

‘Oh,’ said Sarah, wondering why she always had so much trouble following the thread of a conversation. ‘I doubt it. I’ve never needed very much sleep.’

Morning snack time was ten-thirty on the dot, a regimen established and maintained by Mary Ann, who believed that rigid adherence to a timetable was the key to effective parenting. She had placed glow-in-the-dark digital clocks in her children’s rooms, and had instructed them not to leave their beds in the morning until the first number had changed to seven. She also bragged of strictly enforcing a 7 p.m. bedtime with no resistance from the kids, a claim that filled Sarah with both envy and suspicion. She had never identified with authority figures, and couldn’t help sensing a sort of whip-cracking fascist glee behind Mary Ann’s ability to make the trains run on time.

Still, as skeptical as she was of fanatical punctuality in general, Sarah had to admit that the kids seemed to find it reassuring. None of them complained about waiting or being hungry, and they never asked what time it was. They just went about the business of their morning play, confident that they’d be notified when the proper moment arrived. Lucy seemed especially grateful for this small gift of predictability in her life. Sarah could see the pleasure in her eyes when she came running over to the picnic table with the others, part of the pack for the first time all day.

‘Mommy, Mommy!’ she cried. ‘Snack time!’

Of course, no system is foolproof, Sarah thought, rummaging through the diaper bag for the rice cakes she could have sworn she’d packed before they left the house. But maybe that was yesterday? It wasn’t that easy to tell one weekday from the next anymore; they all just melted together like a bag of crayons left out in the sun.

‘Mommy?’ An anxious note seeped into Lucy’s voice. All the other kids had opened Ziploc bags and single-serving Tupperware containers, and were busy shoveling handfuls of Cheerios and Goldfish crackers into their mouths. ‘Where my snack?’

‘I’m sure it’s in here somewhere,’ Sarah told her.

Long after she had come to the conclusion that the rice cakes weren’t there, Sarah kept digging through the diaper bag, pretending to search for them. It was a lot easier to keep staring into that dark jumble of objects than to look up and tell Lucy the truth. In the background she heard someone slurping the dregs of a juice box.

‘Where it went?’ the hard little voice demanded. ‘Where my snack?’

It took an act of will for Sarah to look up and meet her daughter’s eyes.

‘I’m sorry, honey.’ She let out a long, defeated sigh. ‘Mommy can’t find it.’

Lucy didn’t argue. She just scrunched up her pale face, clenched her fists, and began to hyperventilate, gathering strength for the next phase of the operation. Sarah turned apologetically to the other mothers, who were watching the proceedings with interest.

‘I forgot the rice cakes,’ Sarah explained. ‘I must have left them on the counter.’

‘Poor thing,’ said Cheryl.

‘That’s the second time this week,’ Mary Ann pointed out.

You hateful bitch, Sarah thought.

‘It’s hard to keep track of everything,’ observed Theresa, who had supplied Courtney with a tube of Go-Gurt and a box of raisins.

Sarah turned to Lucy, who was emitting a series of whimpers that were slowly increasing in volume.

‘Just calm down,’ Sarah pleaded.

‘No!’ Lucy shouted. ‘No calm down!’

‘That’ll be enough of that, young lady.’

‘Bad Mommy! I want snack!’

‘It’s not here,’ Sarah said, handing her daughter the diaper bag. ‘See for yourself.’

Fixing her mother with an evil glare, Lucy promptly turned the bag upside down, releasing a cascade of Pampers, baby wipes, loose change, balled-up Kleenex, books, and toys onto the woodchip-covered ground.

‘Sweetie.’ Sarah spoke calmly, pointing at the mess. ‘Clean that up, please.’

‘I … want … my … snack!’ Lucy gasped.

With that, the dam broke, and she burst into piteous tears, a desolate animal wailing that even made the other kids turn and look, as if realizing they were in the presence of a virtuoso and might be able to pick up a few pointers.

‘Poor thing,’ Cheryl said again.

Other mothers know what to do at moments like this, Sarah thought. They’d all read the same book or something. Were you supposed to ignore a tantrum and let the kid ‘cry herself out’? Or were you supposed to pick her up and remind her that she was safe and well loved? It seemed to Sarah that she’d heard both recommendations at one time or another. In any case, she knew that a good parent would take some sort of clearheaded action. A good parent wouldn’t just stand there feeling clueless and guilty while her child howled at the sky.

‘Wait.’ It was Mary Ann who spoke, her voice radiating such undeniable adult authority that Lucy immediately broke off crying, willing to hear her out. ‘Troy, honey? Give Lucy your Goldfish.’

Troy was understandably offended by this suggestion.

‘No,’ he said, turning so that his body formed a barrier between Lucy and his snack.

‘Troy Jonathan.’ Mary Ann held out her hand. ‘Give me those Goldfish.’

‘But Mama,’ he whimpered. ‘It’s mine.’

‘No backtalk. You can share with your sister.’

Reluctantly, but without another word of protest, Troy surrendered the bag. Mary Ann immediately bestowed it upon Lucy, whose face broke into a slightly hysterical smile.

‘Thank you,’ Sarah told Mary Ann. ‘You’re a lifesaver.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Mary Ann replied. ‘I just hate to see her suffer like that.’

Not that they would, but if any of the other mothers had asked how it was that Sarah, of all people, had ended up married, living in the suburbs, and caring full-time for a small child, she would have blamed it all on a moment of weakness. At least that was how she described it to herself, though the explanation always seemed a bit threadbare. After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Most people just fell in line like obedient little children, doing exactly what society expected of them at any given moment, all the while pretending that they’d actually made some sort of choice.

But the thing was, Sarah considered herself an exception. She had discovered feminism her sophomore year in college – this was back in the early nineties, when a lot of undergraduate women were moving in the opposite direction – and the encounter had left her profoundly transformed. After just a few weeks of Intro to Women’s Studies, Sarah felt like she’d been given the key to understanding so many things that were wrong with her life – her mother’s persistent depression, her own difficulty making and keeping female friends, the alienation she sometimes felt from her own body. Sarah embraced Critical Gender Studies with the fervor of a convert, taking from it the kind of comfort other women in her dorm seemed to derive from shopping or step aerobics.

She enlisted at the Women’s Center and spent the second half of her college career in the thick of a purposeful, socially aware, politically active community of women. She volunteered at the Rape Crisis Hotline, marched in Take Back the Night rallies, learned to distinguish between French and Anglo-American feminism(s). By senior year, she had cut her hair short, stopped shaving her legs, and begun attending Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual dances and social events. Two months before graduation, she dove headlong into a passionate affair with a Korean-American woman named Amelia, who was headed for med school in New York City in the fall. It was a thrilling time for Sarah, the perfect culmination to her undergraduate voyage of self-discovery.

And then – suddenly and with astonishing finality – college was over. Amelia moved back to Westchester to spend the summer with her family. Sarah stayed in Boston, taking a job at Starbucks to pay the rent while she figured out what to do next. They visited each other twice that summer, but for some reason couldn’t recapture what had so recently been an effortless rhythm of togetherness. On the day before Sarah was supposed to visit her in her new dorm, Amelia called and said maybe it would be best if they didn’t see each other anymore. Medical school was overwhelming; she didn’t have the space in her life for a relationship.

Sarah had nothing in her life but space, but she didn’t get involved with anyone else for almost a year, and when she did it was with a man, a charismatic barista who did stand-up comedy and said he liked everything about her but her hairy legs. So Sarah started shaving again, got fitted for a diaphragm, and spent a lot of time in comedy clubs, listening to tired jokes about the difference between men (they won’t ask for directions!) and women (they want to talk after sex!). When she tried to explain her objections to humor based on sexist stereotypes, Ryan suggested that she extract the metal rod from her ass and lighten up a little.

Along with dumping Ryan, applying to graduate school seemed like the perfect solution for escaping the rut she was in – a way to recapture the excitement of college while also making a transition into a recognizable version of adulthood. She cultivated an image of herself as a young professor, a feminist film critic, perhaps. She would be a mentor and an inspiration to girls like herself, the quiet ones who’d sleepwalked their way through high school, knowing nothing except that they couldn’t possibly be happy with any of the choices the world seemed to be offering them.

Within a couple of weeks of starting the PhD program, though, she discovered that she’d booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren’t any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession’s glutted with tenured old men who won’t step aside for the next generation. While the university’s busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a book. And then, if you’re unusually talented and extraordinarily lucky, you just might be able to secure a one-year, non-renewable appointment teaching remedial composition to football players in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the Internet’s booming, and kids we gave C pluses to are waltzing out of college and getting rich on stock options while we bust our asses for a pathetic stipend that doesn’t even cover the rent.

Sarah could see that it was all true, but she didn’t really mind once she adjusted her expectations. Graduate school didn’t have to lead anywhere, did it? Wouldn’t it be worthwhile just to spend a couple of years reading and thinking, reawakening her mind from a long stupor induced by too many espresso drinks and lame one-liners? She could just get her master’s, maybe teach in a prep school after that, or join the Peace Corps, or even figure out a way to climb onto the Internet gravy train like everybody else.

What did her in was the teaching. Some people loved it, of course, loved the sound of their own voices, the chance to display their cleverness to a captive audience. And then there were the instructors like herself, who simply couldn’t communicate in a classroom setting. They made one point over and over with mind-numbing insistence, or else they circled around a dozen half-articulated ideas without landing on a single one. They read woodenly from prepared notes, or got lost in their muddled syntax while attempting to speak off the cuff. God help them if they attempted a joke. The faces looking back at them might be bored or confused or hostile, but mostly they were just full of pity. That’s what she got from her two semesters of teaching: enough pity to last her a lifetime.

Broke and demoralized, Sarah quit school and landed back at Starbucks, this time with a seriously diminished sense of herself and her future. She was a failure, a 26-year-old woman of still-ambiguous sexuality who had just discovered that she wasn’t nearly as smart as she’d thought she was. I am a painfully ordinary person, she reminded herself on a daily basis, destined to live a painfully ordinary life.

As if to illustrate this humbling lesson, her old lover Amelia walked into Starbucks one chilly afternoon that fall. She looked absolutely radiant, with a strong-jawed Korean husband standing proudly beside her, and a plump, wide-eyed baby strapped to her chest in a forward-facing contraption. The two women recognized each other right away. Amelia froze in the doorway, exchanging a searching look with Sarah across the length of the floor.

Sarah smiled sadly, trying to acknowledge the strangeness and emotional richness of the moment, but Amelia didn’t smile back. Her face – it was fuller, less girlish, with a touch of fatigue around the eyes – didn’t betray the slightest sign of desire or regret or even simple surprise. All Sarah could find on it was a familiar look of pity, as if Amelia were just another bored freshman who didn’t know what the hell the teacher was going on about. She whispered something to her husband, who cast a quick, startled glance at Sarah before mouthing the word, Really? Amelia shrugged, as if she didn’t understand how it was possible that she even knew this pathetic woman in the green apron, let alone that they’d once danced to Aretha Franklin in their underwear and collapsed onto a narrow bed in a fit of giggles that seemed like it would never stop. At least that’s what Sarah hoped Amelia was remembering as the perfect little family retreated out the door, leaving her to fake a smile at the next person in line and explain for the umpteenth time that there was no such thing as ‘small’ at Starbucks.

That, she would have explained to the other mothers, was my moment of weakness. Except that it wasn’t really a moment. It lasted all through that winter and into the following spring, which was when Richard stepped up to the counter one tedious morning – he was a regular, a middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed beard and an air of quiet authority – and asked if she was having as bad a day as he was, which for some reason felt like the first kind thing anyone had said to her in years. And that was how she’d ended up at this godforsaken playground.

Sarah knelt down and began slowly gathering up the vast assortment of crap that had been disgorged from the diaper bag. She knew she should have asked Lucy to help – at three, a child was old enough to begin taking responsibility for the messes she’d created – but asserting this principle was hardly worth the risk of provoking another tantrum.

Besides, the less help she got, the longer she could stay on the ground, away from the accusatory faces of the other mothers, letting the sharp edges of the woodchips dig even deeper into her kneecaps, inflicting a dull pain Sarah thought she probably deserved and might even begin to enjoy in a second or two.

Her copy of The Handmaid’s Tale was lying cover down, on top of The Berenstain Bears Visit the Dentist, and the sight of the two books filled her with an odd sense of shame. She felt a sudden burst of kinship for those medieval flagellants who used to walk through town, publicly thrashing themselves to atone for their sins. Pretty soon she’d be packing a whip in the diaper bag.

‘Maybe you should make a checklist,’ Mary Ann told her. ‘Tape it to the door so it’s the last thing you see before leaving the house. That’s what I do.’

I am not long for this playground, Sarah thought. She looked up and forced herself to smile.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That’s a really helpful suggestion.’

THE SKATEBOARDERS

Eighty-one … Eighty-two …

Kathy called from the cell phone around four, when Aaron was napping, and Todd was nearing the end of his third and final set of push-ups.

Eighty-three …

‘Hi,’ she said, the answering machine broadcasting her staticky voice throughout the downstairs. ‘How are my two favorite boys? Did you have fun at the pool?’

Eighty-five …

‘Todd, I’m not going to be home until six-thirty. One of the POW interviews ran late, and I’ve been playing catch-up all afternoon. Sorry about that.’

He groaned, trying not to break rhythm … Eighty-seven … he’d been hoping to get a run in before dinner … Eighty-eight … leaning to the left … Eighty-nine … better straighten out …

‘The hamburgers and Smart Dogs are in the fridge, you just need to make the salad and marinate the peppers and eggplant in some of the good olive oil. All right, I guess that’s it. Be a good boy for Daddy, Aaron. Mommy loves you. Bye.’

Ninety-two … his arms were shaking … Ninety-three … really wanted to go for that run … Ninety-four … fucking POWs … Ninety-five … Smart Dogs, what a stupid name … Ninety-six … gonna be hell to pay in a few years … Ninety-seven … when all these kids wake up and realize that they’ve been eating these crappy vegetarian hot dogs … Ninety-eight … two to go … Ninety-nine … all you, baby … One hundred … Yes!

He sprang from the floor, his body humming from the surge of bliss that three sets of a hundred push-ups each never failed to inspire. Sure, there were lots of things in the world that sucked. Kathy working late, for instance, screwing up his exercise plans. How she was always so tired when she got home, and guilty about being away from Aaron all day. And the way she acted like it was all Todd’s fault, which it was, to a certain extent, but what was the point of reminding him all the time?

On the other hand, lots of things didn’t suck. Long summer days with nothing to do but hang out. Afternoons at the pool, surrounded by young mothers in their bathing suits. And the way his body felt right now, the blood pumping into the muscles, the excellent soreness in his triceps. And when Aaron called out for him just then, right on time, there was something beautiful about that, too, the way a little kid needed you for everything and wasn’t afraid to say so.

‘Hold on, little buddy,’ he said. ‘I’ll be right there.’

Most mornings Aaron woke up bright-eyed and affectionate, bursting with puppyish energy for the new day. Afternoon naps, necessary as they were, tended to produce the opposite effect. He emerged from his bedroom dazed and sullen as a teenager, his jester’s cap flattened and comically askew, sodden diaper hanging halfway to his knees. Even the most innocent question – Would you like a snack? – could send him over the edge, into a screaming fit or bout of heart-broken sobbing. Months of trial and error had taught Todd not to say a word. He just set Mr Crabby into a chair, handed him a sippy cup of milk and an Oreo, and cranked up Raffi in Concert on the boom box.

While Aaron zoned out at the table, Todd started his dinner preparations, drying the lettuce in a spinner and whipping up a fresh batch of balsamic vinaigrette. Then he got out the cutting board and set to work chopping the eggplant and peppers into grillable chunks.

‘Tingalayo!’ he absentmindedly sang. ‘Run, my little donkey, run!’

‘Daaaddy.’ Unlike Raffi, Aaron was bitterly opposed to sing-alongs. ‘You stop.’

‘Sorry. I forgot.’

If someone had told him ten years earlier that he would one day be a full-time househusband grooving to children’s music while he fixed dinner, Todd wouldn’t have been able to recognize himself in the image. He was a frat boy jock back then, a big fan of Pearl Jam and Buffalo Tom. Raffi wasn’t even on his radar screen, and now the guy was the single biggest musical presence in Todd’s life. He and Aaron listened to the live album at least twice a day. It was the soundtrack of their summer, no less central than Nevermind had been for Todd and his Deke brothers during the spring semester of sophomore year. It had gotten to the point where he knew Raffi’s between-song patter word-for-word, and could recite it along with the CD.

‘Boys and girls, do you know the song about the five little ducks?’ Pause, while the audience roars its assent. Then a mischievous chuckle. ‘Well, this is a different one.’

Unlike a lot of parents he encountered, who claimed to despise the music their kids made them listen to, Todd wasn’t afraid to own up: He liked Raffi. The music was infectious, the guy himself gentle and unassuming. There was no posturing, none of the bullshit theatrics that made rock stars so wearying once you reached a certain point in your life. Raffi wasn’t going to get strung out on smack, abandon his wife and little daughter, then blow his brains out, just to make some sort of point about what a drag it was to be rich and famous.

‘Daddy?’ Aaron was holding his index finger in front of his nose and sniffing it with a dubious expression.

‘Yeah?’

‘Well …’

‘What is it?’

‘Somefing smells like poop.’

‘Oh, Aaron. How many times have I told you—’

‘I didn’t touch my diaper,’ he said, shaking his head in fervent denial. ‘I really, really didn’t.’

Train Wreck was an activity perfectly suited to the mentality of a three-year-old boy. This brutally simple game, which Aaron had devised himself, required nothing more than pushing two engines (Gordon and Percy from Thomas the Tank Engine) in opposite directions around a circular track set up on the living room floor, and making happy chugging noises right up to the moment when they met in an inevitable head-on collision.

‘Spdang!’ Aaron shouted. This was the sound effect that always accompanied the crash. ‘Take that, Gordon.’

‘Ouch,’ Todd groaned, as his engine tipped onto its side. ‘That hurt, Percy.’

Aaron laughed uproariously at Todd’s aggrieved tone and half-assed British accent. If they’d staged a hundred train wrecks, he would have shouted Spdang! a hundred times and cracked up with undiminished glee at Gordon’s hundredth declaration of injury. (Todd was always Gordon, and Gordon was always the injured party.) That was one of the sweet, but slightly insane things about being three: Nothing ever got old. If it was good, it stayed good, at least until you turned four.

For whatever reason, Todd didn’t mind the brainless repetition of Train Wreck half as much as he minded reading certain books five or six times in a row, or playing multiple rounds of some stupid game like Candyland. Maybe it was a guy thing, but there was an undeniable satisfaction to be found in the spectacle of two solid objects smashing into one another.

Spdang!

Ouch.

The game ended abruptly with the sound of a key turning in the lock. Aaron let go of Percy and scrambled to his feet, staring at the opening front door as if something too wonderful for words were about to be revealed.

And Kathy was wonderful, of course, even at the end of a long workday, releasing a tired sigh as she dropped her overloaded tote bag onto the floor. She was the kind of woman who always surprised you with the realization that she was just as lovely as you remembered, though it hardly seemed possible in her absence.

‘Mommy!’ Aaron gasped, ripping off his jester’s cap and flinging it over his shoulder. ‘You’re back!’

‘My little boy,’ she said, dropping to one knee and holding her arms out wide, like a poster of Jesus Todd remembered seeing in a Sunday school classroom many years before. ‘I missed my sweetie so so so so much.’

Aaron sprinted across the floor into his mother’s arms, burying his face against her chest. She stroked his fine hair so tenderly that Todd had to look away. He found himself staring at the engine in his hand, as if there were a personal message for him in Gordon’s peevish expression.

That hurt, Percy.

‘You got some color, didn’t you?’ Kathy shook her head unhappily as she examined Aaron’s adoring face. ‘Did Daddy forget the sunscreen again?’

After dinner on weeknights, Todd studied for the bar exam at the municipal library. He could have easily done this at home – he and Kathy had set up a comfortable, relatively soundproof office in their small sunroom – but it had become a psychological necessity for him to get out of the house on his own for a couple hours a day. Walking briskly past the shops on Pleasant Street, Todd savored the sensation of being a free adult out and about on a warm summer evening, unencumbered by a stroller or the tyrannical demands of a three-year-old.

Besides, he had trouble concentrating in the home office. He was distracted by the knowledge that Aaron and Kathy were somewhere nearby, giggling or cuddling or whispering endearments to one another, not giving him a second thought. As touching as it was, there was also something alienating about the explosion of mother/son passion that lit up the apartment every night. It was as if Todd became a nobody once Kathy got home, just some stranger inexplicably taking up space in the house, rather than a loving parent who’d devoted his whole day – his whole life – to ensuring his son’s safety and happiness.

The thing that always killed him was the jester’s cap. All day long Aaron treated it like his prize possession – he ate, played, and napped in the cap, and would burst into tears if you so much as suggested he take it off to go in the pool – but the moment Kathy stepped into the house it came flying off like some worthless piece of trash. Todd was pretty sure it was Aaron’s way of announcing that the entire day up to that point – the Daddy part – had been nothing more than a stupid joke. Now that Mommy was back, the real day could begin, the precious few hours before bedtime when he didn’t feel the need to say a toddler’s version of Fuck You to the world by walking around in a jingling pink-and-purple hat.

Todd knew he shouldn’t take it so personally. It was ridiculous for a grown man to feel slighted by a little boy’s attachment to his mother. He’d studied psychology in college and was well versed in the nuances of the Oedipus complex and the concept of developmental stages. He knew that Aaron would outgrow his all-consuming attachment to his mother in a few years; by adolescence he might even pretend not to know Kathy if she passed him in the mall. But all that was in the future. In the present, Todd felt jealous and excluded and even a little bit angry, and the only cure for it was to get the hell out of the house.

The skateboarders were out in front of the library, and Todd stopped in his usual spot to see what they were up to. There were four of them tonight, boys between the ages of ten and thirteen, dressed in knee-length shorts, baggy T-shirts, and fashionably retro sneakers. They wore helmets, but left the chin straps unbuckled or loosely dangling, rendering them more or less useless as protective gear. A few days earlier, Todd had pointed this out to the king of the skateboarders, a scrawny, loose-limbed daredevil known to the others as G, but the kid had responded with one of those blank looks they specialized in; he hadn’t even bothered to shrug.

Graceful and fearless, G was a natural athlete who seemed to possess an almost mystical connection with his board. He jumped stairs and curbs, surfed metal railings and retaining walls, and almost always landed on his feet. His more earthbound friends limited themselves to practicing the most basic maneuvers, though more often than not they ended up sprawled on the ground, moaning softly and rubbing their sore butts.

Todd wasn’t sure what kept him coming back here night after night, watching the same group of kids performing the same small repertoire of stunts over and over again. Part of it was genuine interest, a kind of remedial education in what had become an essential boyhood skill. He had never learned to skateboard himself – as a kid, he’d been more focused on organized, competitive sports – and wanted to be able to instruct Aaron when the time came, the way Todd had been taught by his own father to ride a two-wheeler. About a week ago, he’d gone into Jock Heaven, intent on buying a board for himself, but he’d chickened out at the approach of the salesman, as though it were somehow unseemly for a thirty-year-old man to be purchasing a skateboard for his own use.

If Kathy had seen him loitering here beneath the beech tree, one arm resting on top of a green mail storage box, studying the skateboarders like some sort of self-appointed Olympic judge, she would have offered a simpler explanation – i.e., that he was procrastinating, jeopardizing his own professional future and his family’s long-term financial prospects. And she would have had a point: The only thing worse than having to retake the bar exam was having to study for it again, like an actor memorizing lines he knew he’d forget the moment he stepped onstage. But if all Todd had wanted to do was waste time, there were a multitude of other ways to do it (he knew them all). He could read magazines in the library, surf the web, browse the stacks. He could buy an ice-cream cone and eat it with luxuriant slowness while sitting on a park bench, or feed a bagel to the bad-tempered ducks over at Greenview Pond. He could even wander over to the high school and watch the varsity cheerleaders practice their routines, which were a helluva lot sexier than they’d been back in Todd’s day. But he didn’t do any of that. He always just came here.

Todd had been watching G and his friends for weeks, sometimes for as long as an hour at a stretch, but he’d never received the slightest acknowledgment from any of them, not the most grudging nod or muttered hello. They had a walled-off, wholly self-contained attitude toward the world, as if nothing of importance existed outside of their own severely limited circle of activity. They kept their eyes low and communicated in grunts and monosyllables, barely looking up when one of their number nailed a difficult landing or took a particularly nasty spill, or even when some cute girls their own age stopped to watch them for a while, whispering and giggling among themselves.

I must have been like this, Todd sometimes thought. I must have been one of them.

The afternoon his mother died, Todd and his friends had been throwing snowballs at cars. The roads were slick, and a station wagon that they ambushed skidded and jumped the curb across the street, plowing over some garbage cans and scattering trash all over the Andersons’ front lawn. Most of Todd’s buddies fled the scene, but he and Mark Tollan remained crouched behind some leafless bushes, snickering into their gloves as the middle-aged driver jumped out of his car and began shouting plaintively in the January twilight.

‘Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted?’

When he got home an hour or so later, chilled and exhilarated and starving – he was always starving in those days – the first odd thing Todd noticed was that the house didn’t smell like food. The second thing was the presence of his father, who usually returned from work later in the evening, sitting on the couch in a weirdly rigid posture, with what looked like an ominous expression on his face. Even before his father spoke, Todd knew for certain that he’d been busted, though he wasn’t sure how. Had the driver recognized him somehow? Had one of his friends confessed? Had some neighborhood adult witnessed everything?

‘Sit down, son. I need to talk to you.’

‘Is this about the car?’ Todd asked.

His father was taken aback. ‘Did someone tell you?’

‘No, I just had a feeling.’ Todd braced himself for a scolding, but his father fell into a peculiar silence, as if he’d forgotten they were having a conversation. ‘It was my fault, Dad. I should have known better.’

‘What are you talking about?’ His father spoke softly, but there was tension in his voice, as if he were making an effort to remain calm. ‘It was an accident. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.’

The powerful sense of reprieve Todd experienced quickly turned to confusion. For some reason, his father began talking about his mother in an awkward, almost mechanical monotone. Driving home from Sears. Treacherous conditions. Lost control on an exit ramp. Broke through a guardrail. Wrapped the car around a tree trunk. This was the phrase that had lodged itself in his memory, though in retrospect he couldn’t believe that his father would have evoked such an awful image at that particular moment.

‘I’m sorry, Todd. That’s what happened. I just got back from the hospital. The doctors did everything they could.’

‘Does Janie know?’

‘We’re gonna pick her up at the airport in an hour.’

We predicted it, Todd thought. Ever since he could remember, he and his sister Janie – she was seven years older, already a freshman in college – had been teasing their mother about what a bad driver she was. She was always checking her makeup while she drove, puckering her lips and appraising herself in the rearview mirror. She would take her eyes off the road for extended periods to rummage through her purse or change the station on the radio.

Look where you’re going, they used to tell her. You’re gonna kill somebody.

Probably just myself, their mother would say, in an oddly cheerful voice.

‘What are we gonna do?’ Todd asked.

His father seemed momentarily at a loss. He looked at his hand for a few seconds, as if hoping to find an answer scribbled on his palm, then softly patted Todd on the shoulder.

‘We’re going to keep moving forward,’ his father said, his voice regaining some of its normal authority. ‘Nothing’s going to change. I want you to keep living your life as if this never happened. It’s what your mother wants, too.’

Todd was so relieved to find out there was a plan that it never occurred to him to question its wisdom. Two days after his mother’s funeral he played in a youth league basketball playoff game and scored seventeen points. The day after that he was back in school. When a teacher asked how he was doing in that compassionate voice they used, Todd always said Fine so firmly and emphatically that no one ever pressed him to make sure if he was really okay, or maybe needed to talk to someone about what he was going through.

All through high school and college, Todd did exactly what his dead mother and quickly remarried father wanted from him, excelling in the classroom and on the playing field, impersonating a successful, well-adjusted kid who had somehow absorbed a terrible blow without missing a beat – starting quarterback, dean’s list, social chair, lots of girlfriends, accepted into three of the five law schools he’d applied to.

It was only later, after he was married and the father of a newborn son, that he began to suspect that there was something not quite right, something unresolved or defective at the core of his being. And it must have been this something – this flaw or lack or whatever the hell it was – that kept his arm glued to the mailbox while he watched the skateboarders every night, desperately hoping that they’d notice him for once and say something nice, maybe even invite him to step out from the shadows and take his rightful place among them.

THE PROM KING

‘He should just be castrated.’

Mary Ann made this declaration with magisterial calm, as if there were no possibility of another point of view on the subject. Cheryl and Theresa nodded in wholehearted agreement. The ‘he’ in question was Ronald James McGorvey, a 43-year-old former Catholic school custodian and convicted sex offender, who had just moved in with his elderly mother at 44 Blueberry Court, a modest cul-de-sac Sarah and Lucy passed every day on their way to the playground.

Sarah studied McGorvey’s shadowy face – he was a plump man with wiry, thinning hair and an anxious expression – on the badly photocopied handbill spread out on the picnic table. It was one of hundreds that had popped up all over town the past couple of days, stapled to telephone poles, tucked under windshield wipers, slipped beneath front doors. DECENT PEOPLE BEWARE!!! the headline blared. THERE IS A PERVERT AMONG US! The fine print explained that McGorvey had been charged repeatedly with indecent exposure and was ‘reputed to be a prime suspect in the still-unsolved disappearance of a nine-year-old Rhode Island girl in 1995’.

‘Quick and clean,’ Mary Ann continued. ‘Just chop it off. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about notifying the neighbors.’

‘You know what else you should do?’ Sarah suggested, employing the same take-no-prisoners tone as Mary Ann. ‘Nail his severed penis above the entrance to the elementary school. You know, as a warning to the other perverts.’

Recognizing sarcasm when they heard it, Cheryl and Theresa chuckled politely. Mary Ann fixed Sarah with an icy glare.

‘You think this is funny?’

‘I just can’t believe you want to castrate a man for indecent exposure.’

‘If that’s what it takes to protect my children, then so be it,’ said Mary Ann. ‘And besides, he’s probably a murderer.’

‘He’s a suspect. In this country it means that he’s innocent until proven guilty.’

‘He’s been proven guilty. Why do you think he was in prison?’

‘So? He did his time. He paid his debt to society.’

Sarah was surprised to hear herself taking such a narrow, legalistic view of the situation. Back in college, she’d been an enthusiastic proponent of the hard-line anti-pornography position staked out by Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, and had written a well-received sociology term paper on ‘The Normalization of Abuse: Patriarchy and Marital Rape’. She certainly wouldn’t have objected if one of her Women’s Studies professors had recommended the castration of incorrigible sex offenders. But her dislike of Mary Ann had become so strong that it trumped all other considerations. If Mary Ann had spoken out in favor of kindness to animals and small children, Sarah might have felt tempted to take up the cause of cruelty.

It wasn’t her opinions per se that were so irritating, it was the smugness with which she expressed them. Underlying Mary Ann’s every utterance was an obnoxious sense of certainty, of personal completeness, as if she’d gotten everything she’d ever wanted in the best of all possible worlds. This? Sarah always wanted to ask. This is what you wanted? This playground? That SUV? Your stupid spandex shorts? Your weekly roll in the hay? Those well-behaved children who cower at the sound of your voice?

‘Snip, snip.’ Mary Ann made a scissoring motion with her index and middle fingers. ‘Problem solved.’

‘Some countries chop off the hands of shoplifters,’ Sarah pointed out. ‘Maybe we should do that, too.’

‘Probably cut down on shoplifting,’ Mary Ann said, drawing appreciative laughter from Cheryl and Theresa.

Sarah had no illusion that she’d gotten the better of the exchange, but it didn’t matter. The important thing was that she was speaking up, no longer letting Mary Ann intimidate her into silence and implied agreement. After last week’s incident with the rice cakes, Sarah had more or less decided to switch to a new playground – as soon as she located one within walking distance that offered some promise of reasonable human contact – and this decision had liberated her from the thankless task of pretending to fit in with the other mothers.

‘My brother used to expose himself,’ Theresa said suddenly. ‘When we were teenagers. He’d do it in my bedroom, or in the backseat of the car, even at the dinner table. He always figured out a way to do it so that no one could see what he was up to but me.’

‘Didn’t you tell anyone?’ Cheryl asked.

‘No.’ Theresa shook her head, as if puzzled by her own answer. ‘I didn’t want to get him in trouble. Or maybe I was scared someone was going to blame me. I don’t know. It didn’t stop until he went away to college.’

‘That’s revolting,’ said Mary Ann. ‘Did you ever confront him?’

‘Once,’ said Theresa. ‘About five years ago. We got a little drunk, and I asked him about it. He remembered it as a one-time thing, a stupid joke or something. But it happened a lot. Not every day or every week, but just enough that it always seemed like a possibility.’

Sarah couldn’t help herself. ‘He should have been castrated.’

‘It’s not the same thing,’ Mary Ann snapped. ‘He wasn’t doing it to strangers.’

‘Not that we know of,’ said Cheryl.

‘He’s married now,’ said Theresa. ‘His wife’s pregnant with number three. And of all my siblings, he’s the one I get along best with. Just goes to show.’

Goes to show what? Sarah wanted to ask, but she didn’t have a chance. Cheryl abruptly reached across the table and grabbed Theresa’s hand.

‘Look.’ She spoke the word softly, but with urgency.

‘What?’ Theresa glanced instinctively toward the play structure, where Courtney, Isabelle and Lucy were taking turns on the baby slide. ‘Where?’

‘Over there,’ said Cheryl. ‘The Prom King.’

‘Oh my God.’ Theresa smiled as if she’d just received good news. ‘He’s back.’

Sarah followed the other women’s gazes over to the swing set, eager to finally get a glimpse of the Prom King, the handsome and mysterious young father who had been a regular at the Rayburn School playground for several weeks this past spring before abruptly dropping out of sight. His departure had left a gaping hole in the emotional lives of Cheryl, Theresa, and Mary Ann. Barely a day went by without one of them speculating wistfully about the reason for his absence and the likelihood of his return.

‘Maybe he got fired,’ Theresa said, lowering her voice the way people did when discussing a shameful subject.

‘You don’t even know if he had a job,’ Mary Ann pointed out.

The Prom King knelt down to unbuckle his son, a slender little boy wearing a pink-and-purple jester’s cap, from the right side of a double stroller. A large stuffed bear was strapped into the seat on the left. With the ease of someone performing a familiar action, the Prom King lifted his son into the air and dropped him into the toddler swing, which resembled a black rubber diaper hanging from two chains.

‘Maybe he just needed a vacation,’ Cheryl said.

‘A vacation from what?’ Mary Ann sounded vaguely exasperated.

‘From being Prom King,’ said Theresa.

‘It’s a dirty job,’ Cheryl added with a chuckle. ‘But someone’s got to do it.’

As ridiculous as the nickname sounded, Sarah had to admit that it seemed oddly appropriate. The Prom King was tall and well built, with a shock of blond hair falling surfer-style across his forehead. There was something generic about his good looks, a pleasantly bland quality that reminded her of those cheerful men who modeled jockey shorts in the Sunday supplements, smiling confidently with their arms crossed on their chests, or pointing with fascination into empty space.

In any case, it was easy to see why he’d made such an impression. Most of the men who showed up at the playground during the workday were marginal types – middle-aged trolls with beards and potbellies, studiously whimsical academics who insisted on going down the slide with their kids, pinch-hitting grandfathers providing emergency day care, sheepish blue-collar guys who wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, the occasional cooler-than-thou-hipster-with-a-flexible-schedule. But there was no one even remotely like the Prom King, who looked like he’d wandered off the set of a daytime soap to bring a little bit of glamour into the lives of bored young mothers.

‘What’s he do for a living?’ Sarah asked.

No one had any idea.

‘He must have had some kind of job,’ Sarah pressed on. ‘Before he got married.’

‘I’m sure he did,’ agreed Mary Ann. ‘He just didn’t discuss it.’

‘What about his wife? What’s she do?’

‘We didn’t really talk to him,’ Cheryl explained.

‘We don’t even know his name,’ Theresa added.

‘Really?’ All this time, Sarah had imagined herself as taking the Prom King’s place at the picnic table. That was the way it had been presented to her by the others: He left, and a few days later you showed up. ‘I thought you said he was a regular.’

‘It was awkward,’ said Theresa. ‘It wasn’t like he was one of the girls.’

‘He made us nervous,’ said Cheryl. ‘You had to think about what you were going to wear in the morning, put on makeup. It was exhausting.’

‘You went to all that trouble and you still didn’t talk to him?’ Sarah couldn’t hide her amusement. ‘What is this, seventh grade?’

‘We don’t come here to flirt,’ Mary Ann said primly. ‘We come here to look after our children.’

‘My God,’ said Sarah. ‘What year is this? It’s possible to talk to a man without flirting.’

‘He’s kind of intimidating,’ Theresa insisted. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

Sarah glanced at the Prom King, who was having some trouble squeezing the stuffed bear into the swing next to his son’s. Once he got it jammed in to his satisfaction, he began pushing both swings, as though the child and the stuffed animal held equal claims on his attention.

‘What’s with the double stroller?’ Sarah asked. ‘Does he have another kid?’

‘We’ve only seen the one,’ said Cheryl.

‘He’s a cutie,’ added Theresa. ‘That crazy hat.’

Maybe they lost a child, Sarah thought, wondering if the Prom King might actually be a tragic figure. How thoughtless it would be, whispering and giggling about a man carrying a terrible weight of grief on his shoulders. On the other hand, he seemed fairly light-hearted at the moment, imitating a series of barnyard animals as he wove a figure eight between the two swings. The imitations were surprisingly realistic – he did an especially good chicken – and he performed them at high volume, with a lack of self-consciousness that was rare in an adult male. Lucy seemed to find this appealing, and she wandered over from the sandbox for a closer look.

‘Mommy!’ she called. ‘Swing me!’

Normally, Sarah tried to discourage Lucy from going on the swings. She tended to get hypnotized by the motion, and convincing her to stop invariably turned into a complex negotiation full of threats and bribery, and culminating in an inevitable tantrum. But right now that seemed like a small price to pay for the chance to show the other mothers that it was possible to treat a good-looking man as if he were an actual human being rather than some sort of two-dimensional sex object. She rose slowly from the bench, feigning weariness.

‘Okay, sweetie. I’ll be right there.’

‘Wait,’ Theresa whispered. She had her purse open and was groping for something inside.

‘What?’ said Sarah.

Theresa held up her wallet, smirking like a schoolgirl.

‘Five bucks if you get his phone number.’

The little boy observed Lucy with a certain amount of skepticism as she swung in near unison beside him. Then he turned to Sarah, his expression unexpectedly serious for someone wearing a floppy velour cap outfitted with real bells.

‘Her how old?’ he inquired.

‘Lucy, honey?’ Sarah coaxed. ‘Tell the nice boy how old you are.’

Lucy shook her head, refusing as usual to do anything that might enable a social interaction to unfold smoothly, without awkwardness or unnecessary effort.

‘I three!’ the little jester shouted, undeterred by Lucy’s silence. He jabbed the corresponding number of fingers into the air.

‘His birthday was in February,’ the Prom King added, smiling pleasantly at Sarah. Up close his features were more distinctive than she had anticipated – the eyes set a bit too close together, two of his bottom teeth overlapping slightly – the imperfections adding a helpful touch of humanity to the package. ‘Still working on the potty training, though.’

‘Tell me about it.’ Sarah chuckled. ‘Lucy turned three in April. Isn’t that right, honey?’

Lucy would neither confirm nor deny this assertion. She just stared at the boy, her expression composed of equal parts amazement and horror.

‘She can be a bit shy,’ Sarah explained.

‘Not Aaron,’ said the Prom King. ‘He’s a real talker.’

‘My grandma lives in New Jersey!’ the boy proclaimed, unable to contain this exciting fact a moment longer. But then his eyes narrowed and his mood turned somber. ‘She not have a swim pool.’

‘His grandmother in Florida has one,’ the Prom King reported.

‘Do you like to swim?’ Sarah asked the boy.

‘I don’t like sharks,’ he said. ‘They eat you up.’

‘Don’t listen to him. He loves to swim. We go to the Town Pool almost every day.’ The Prom King held out his hand. ‘I’m Todd, by the way.’

‘Sarah.’

‘I haven’t seen you here before.’

‘I’ve only been coming for a few weeks. I used to go to the playground with that old, creaky merry-go-round? The one by the ice-cream place?’

Todd knew it well. He and Aaron liked to rotate playgrounds every few weeks for the sake of variety. Though, he had to say, some places were friendlier than others.

‘You’re the first person who’s ever talked to me here,’ he said, glancing in the direction of the other mothers, who were staring back with undisguised curiosity, as if Sarah and Todd were images flickering on a movie screen.

‘I think you make them nervous,’ she said. ‘They’re not used to running into good-looking men at the playground.’

Oh my God, she thought. I can’t believe I’m flirting with him.

Todd nodded thoughtfully at her analysis, neither blushing nor trying to deflect the compliment. When you were as handsome as he was, Sarah supposed, there wasn’t much point in pretending to be surprised when other people noticed.

‘I guess it is a little odd,’ he admitted. ‘There aren’t as many stay-at-home fathers around here as I thought.’

‘What does your wife do?’ Sarah asked.

‘She’s a filmmaker. She’s doing a documentary on World War Two veterans. You know, the Greatest Generation, all that stuff.’

‘Saving Private Ryan,’ said Sarah.

‘Tom Brokaw,’ agreed Todd.

‘Anyway, I think it’s great that you’re here. There’s no reason why men can’t be primary caregivers.’

‘I finished law school two years ago,’ Todd volunteered, after only the briefest hesitation. ‘But I can’t seem to pass the bar exam. Failed it twice now.’

‘That’s a hard test.’ She shook her head. ‘I remember all the trouble John F. Kennedy, Jr had with it.’

Todd felt the twinge of sympathy he never failed to experience when people mentioned JFK, Jr in an attempt to make him feel better, as they almost always did. It was bad enough that the poor guy had to lose his father and die in a tragic plane crash; did he have to go down in history as the patron saint of failed bar exams as well?

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s just whenever I think about it I’m filled with this unbelievable feeling of dread. It’s like one of those bad dreams, where you suddenly realize that you forgot to go to math class all semester, and now it’s time for the final.’

‘Maybe you just don’t want to be a lawyer.’

He seemed momentarily startled by this suggestion. ‘Well, maybe I’ll get my wish. Kathy and I agreed that I’m going to take the test one more time. If I mess up, I’m going to have to find something else to do with my life.’

He seemed so matter-of-fact while delivering this confession, not at all embarrassed by the fact of his failure. Most men weren’t like that – Richard certainly wasn’t. She wondered if Todd was always this forthcoming, or if he found her for some reason to be an unusually sympathetic listener. Either way, there was nothing the least bit intimidating about him. If anything, he seemed a little lonely, all too ready to open his heart at the slightest sign of interest, like a lot of the young mothers she knew.

‘I couldn’t help noticing your stroller,’ she told him. ‘Do you have another child?’

‘Just Aaron. We got that at a yard sale. The extra seat comes in handy for carrying groceries and stuff. At least it used to, before Big Bear started joining us.’

‘Lucy won’t even go in a stroller. We have to walk everywhere. It takes us half an hour to go three blocks.’