Connie called about nothing that night, and Jim didn’t call about something. Without any warning he showed up nearly half an hour early. It was nothing personal; in his perpetual fear of forgetting or being late, SuddenJim often arrived early. He tended to push everything, to fidget everywhere, eagerly, boyishly, naggingly. Connie found it attractive, probably in contrast to her dour husband Duane. To Deirdre it was exasperating. She thought she spent time with Jim because her character was ready to develop that next step, the step that would enable her to say no to a sweet puppylike male, dancing on her doorstep singing wordlessly “Let me in. Oh let me in. Let me in and I will be happy. Let me be happy.”

So Jim showed up early, looking eager to be happy, fidget/dancing on her doorstep like he needed to go to the bathroom. Deirdre had to get dressed and drag her son to the school pageant, and Jim and Connie were coming along. They wanted to come. Neither Deirdre nor Ian understood that.

“Why are we going to this thing again, Mom?” Ian asked through the knit cotton of his favorite black T-shirt as he pulled it over his head. Next he’d be putting his hooded sweatshirt on, pulling the neck up so he spoke through that cloth, letting the stretched cuffs fall over his fingers. Ian would chew on his hood strings as he talked to Jim, to his Aunt Connie or Uncle Duane, poking his thumbs through the holes in his cuffs, shuffling.

“Some people like this stuff, Kiddo,” Deirdre answered. “Lights and noise and all. Jim seems to thrive on it. Something about hating school when he was a kid, y’know? He wants to like school now. And I guess we have to go because I would have gone if you hadn’t gotten kicked out of the assembly: I would have been proud to watch you perform.”

“I’m sorry,” but they both understood he said it just to make his mother stop talking about his misbehavior. And Deirdre knew she wouldn’t have wanted to attend the Christmas pageant even if Ian hadn’t fucked up and gotten suspended. Again.

She looked at his hair, peroxide-orange over dark-brown, remembering their coloring session earlier that week. Jim didn’t approve: thought somehow the consequences for Ian’s misbehavior ought to be hair hell. Deirdre didn’t mind coloring his hair. They talked while the bleach worked; she well remembered being a kid, so she always gave her son information. “You’ve got to like yourself,” she told him. “There’s no point in retrospective guilt, but I use what I call prospective guilt to guide me.” Ian uplooked a question at her through his lashes. “I mean that I imagine how I’ll feel about myself tomorrow, or next week, or next year – whatever’s appropriate – when I decide about my behavior today. I always choose the thing that will make me like myself more in the future. Because there’s nothing better than liking yourself. And nothing worse than disliking yourself,” and she saw that heartbreaking answering glint then in his eyes. She watched his face congest but he held back the tears.

“And Aunt Connie’s coming to the pageant,” she resumed, “partly for love of you but also because she’s lonely. Uncle Duane has to fly tonight.” Duane was a navy pilot, nearing his 25-year retirement mark, and it was true that he was working that night, but he was due in any time. Connie always tried to make Duane sound exciting – career navy pilot and all – but her husband was a humorless boring bitter man. He was an undiagnosed dyslexic and he never learned to read well, so he’d hated school as much as Jim did. Connie claimed he was very bright, but Deirdre thought you wouldn’t know that by knowing Duane. And although she bragged he was bright to others, Connie nagged him like he was a forgetful child, so that Deirdre and Ian preferred seeing Connie or Duane alone to visiting them together.