Sputterpub's Blog

They were taking a walk, as usual. William and Angie walked whenever they were together. Often they had her dog with them, pulling on the leash even though the retriever was seven now and old enough to behave, but on this evening they were alone.

It’s easy to walk in Berkeley. And it’s obnoxious to drive. So a perambulation is a sensible choice. And while a conversation over a good meal is one of the best shared experiences ever, William and Angie were disagreeing a lot lately, and disagreeing dialogue is best conducted while walking. It sure doesn’t go with digestion. And when you’re walking it’s natural not to look in your companion’s face, which makes it easier to speak your mind.

Their path was mostly level, shaded, and quiet. The environment created a calm noncombative atmosphere. But emotions were rising like columns of mercury in old thermometers. Neither would remember this walk fondly.

William is tall, thin, and ungainly. He’d remind you of Ichabod Crane except that he has a handsome face and a thick head of naturally compliant silver hair. Angie is 5’4″ to his 6’5″ and sturdy. She has ballet and horseback riding and a posture-obsessed father in her background, as well as no car, so she walks with purpose and grace. Her hair is also silver, but with unruly curls and a readiness to frizz in the ambient humidity.

They made a comical pair as they paced the small-squared, root-canted sidewalk, William lagging a little when searching for words and then darting forward as Angie paced ahead. The man had always been impulsive and sometimes reminded Angie of her dog except William was bipedal and longer-limbed than a giraffe. Angie had no trouble finding words to express herself, but the older she got, the more she realized that only she was listening to her.

The subject was William’s older boy. He had two sons named Nathaniel and Jeremiah, aged 13 and 7, whom he loved to distraction. He was into attachment parenting without ever knowing the term, so the boys had gotten used to cuddling and wrestling with him. They’d never had a bedtime. William allowed them to eat what they wanted, when they wanted. He rarely disciplined them. He never noted when his kids bothered other people, like when they climbed furniture at a neighbor’s house, or rampaged in the front yard after dark. He believed in letting them loose their natures freely. If someone complained about his boys, they were uptight assholes. If someone didn’t voice a complaint, then William assumed they had none.

William’s ex-wife was almost as lenient, but not quite. He met and married Susannah while they were both involved in a cult/commune, lived in a tent with Susannah’s 8 year old daughter while pregnant with Nathaniel and in a trailer while gestating Jeremiah, split up when each progressed to a different cult, and continued untraditional after divorce.

William was between cults when he met Angie. He presented himself as done with them, but that turned out to be an inaccurate self-description. He’d been introduced to rock-climbing shortly after Susannah kicked him out, and he got into big walls like (what else?) a religion. Angie even learned to belay him. She didn’t get into climbing partly because of her lifelong fear of heights, but mostly because she valued her fingernails and already had a troublesome neck (you can’t climb, at least as a beginner, without craning your head upward).

Neither was speaking as they walked the block they were then on. Angie was gathering her words and William must have sensed the seriousness coming on, because he was silent like a kid about to be lectured. On a pleasant walk he would regularly inject nonsequiturs into the air. He’d usually begin with “Right…” like he was resuming a topic, and then plunge into whatever factoid was floating in his head, about the Masai, or geology, or black hole astronomy. There were no “Right’s” coming out of him just then.

“William,” Angie began as they turned a corner and stepped over the treeroot-thrust slabs of sidewalk before them, “I have something to say about Nathaniel.”

He was silent.

“David tells me he’s been dropping acid most days, even on the few when he attends school.” David was Angie’s son, six months older than Nathaniel and with the perspective of a peer.

“I know.”

Angie stopped and goggled at him. “You know? What are you doing about it?”

“He told me. We talked. He said he was done with those drugs.”

“William. He’s 13.” This was not the first time Angie had tried to make William take Nathaniel’s age seriously.

“So?”

“You act like he’s 23. Or even 33!”

“He told me he was done with the drugs. Nathaniel doesn’t lie to me.”

“Oh give me a break.” Angie knew Nathaniel pretty well. The boy was into Goth culture. He was hanging around on the fringes of an older crowd, scrabbling every which way for acceptance. He smoked, had enough sex to acquire crabs, and told tall stories to adults and peers. Nathaniel was undersized and fine-featured; the mascara and black nail polish made him a poster child for pedophiliacs.

Angie had already described to William her conversation with her son, the summer before, when David thought he got to decide which parent he’d live with. “No you don’t,” she told her boy then. “Your shoulders aren’t big enough for that decision.” She’d explained to David then (and William later) that no matter which parent David picked, he’d feel bad for the other one. And he wasn’t old enough to handle that bad feeling. Angie was. She’d pick, and David could just park his negative judgment on her, instead of on himself.

“You don’t seem to understand the value of rules for children,” she stated as they continued walking. “You think giving your kids complete freedom equals love, but it actually produces chaos and confusion. Kids need something to push against, to test, to ultimately grow through.”

William said nothing for a minute. His pace picked up a little stridency. Then he uttered “If you love me, you’ll support me.”

Angie was stunned. She nearly sputtered. Beside the fact that she didn’t love William the way he meant the word, she didn’t understand how to acquire the condition he described. She and William had fundamental disagreements about how to raise kids. She’d have to agree with him, to support him, while he permitted his child to skip school and run with older kids, sleep under bridges or wherever, refuse to get in his father’s truck when William came to pick him up after the Saturday midnight movie. How can you make yourself agree with someone when you disagree? Isn’t that like trying to will yourself to believe in something?

As far as Angie is concerned, there’s no subject more serious than raising David. He didn’t ask to be born – he owes her nothing. But she owes him the ability to have a flourishing existence of his own.

Angie and William are members of the baby boom. There was an epidemic of narcissism among the parents of their cohort. The greatest generation felt ripped off by WWII. The veterans of that war, whether in the armed services or on the home front, all thought their youth was stolen, all were determined to get payback, and formed the first communities of suburban, alcohol- and pill-abusing, divorcing and adulterous provisional adults.

Angie noticed. She was female and a first-born. She watched parents abnegate their responsibilities. But William was a middle child and a boy. Such ideas never occurred to him. He disliked school and so he supported Nathaniel’s disdain for it. He concluded that all his kids needed was love.

Their conversation closed with William’s declaration about love and support, and their walk ended soon after. They were approaching Angie’s front door when the wheedling began.

“Can I come in?”

“Oh. Uh, I’d really rather have some time alone.” William didn’t speak, so Angie padded her statement. “I have some office work to do.”

“I won’t bother you. I’ll read or play a video game till you’re done.”

This happened often. It sometimes seemed to Angie that she was into this relationship in order to learn how to say no. Both William and Angie were introverts, but where Angie required a certain quantity of solitary time, daily, William had developed an ability to be alone in a crowd. Maybe it was the cult/commune experience, but he was expert at being not-present in a room that contained other people.

“Really, William. I need some time by myself tonight.”

He mumbled something.

“What?”

“You’re always so controlling…”

“What?!” Angie was genuinely boggled. William normally wasn’t confrontational.

“I said you’re a controlling person. Too controlling.”

“Oh goodnight,” Angie said. She turned her key, pushed the door open, and went inside without a backward look.

Controlling, she thought. Fuck him! Angie didn’t tell William what to do. She didn’t forbid him anything. She’d been married twice, and hadn’t flourished. She was finally single, with a room of her own, into self-control, yes, and vigilant about guarding the boundaries of her sanctuary. Are moats and drawbridges controlling?

At that moment she understood that she had to end the relationship. She wasn’t the person he wanted, but that didn’t matter to her. She understood then how stupid it is to tell yourself that you’ll continue in an inauspicious relationship as a form of “practice.” That’s not how love works. And as for friendship, she knew that William was headed for disaster. She’d tried to help him see childcare more broadly, but he was recalcitrant. She didn’t want to be around to witness the consequences.