Sputterpub's Blog

Peter thought Lilah was going to go camping with him over spring break. For the last three years they’d gone together to Death Valley, and they’d been planning to do it again. The wilderness is the arena of Peter’s competence. He and Lilah had their best times away from population. But as the time for their trip grew closer, so did Lilah’s feeling that she shouldn’t go. She realized that right then Peter couldn’t appear competent to her. If she went with him she would fight with him. She told him so: “I can’t go with you now. If I go I’ll argue with you. You should go with Saul instead. You two can have some meaningful time together.”

Peter’s attempt to persuade her to just-go-and-not-argue was brief even for him. So he asked Saul and a day later he had his son’s reply. Lilah was first surprised that he offered the trip as an invitation, and then she was surprised at herself for being surprised. Saul’s answer: “Gee, Dad…sounds great. Love to camp with you sometime, but that’s not a convenient week. It’s spring break, you know? A lot of my friends go to school, and their parents won’t let them party on school nights. So break is my opportunity to get together with them…And since I’m not going to school, you and I can camp just about any time. So I’ll take a rain check, okay?”

That wasn’t the end of it. Lilah isn’t sure how it came about, because she saw less and less of Peter, but it turned out that Saul and Peter did go to Death Valley for three of the nine days of break. Peter reported the trip to her with some satisfaction. They’d had some good hikes and some talks. Saul agreed to try school again; this time in Berkeley. The high point of the trip was the night they camped at the end of a canyon. They had a good fire and Peter shared a bottle of Moutai with Saul. Moutai is 106 proof alcohol made from wheat, sorghum and water. They probably drank 375 ml. Saul was then 13½.

Lilah and Peter last saw each other a few weeks afterward, and last spoke a month after that, when Peter returned from another Portals weekend and sought more clarity. Lilah’s disrespect for him had finally reached a level even he could not ignore, and he turned quietly away. She was careful not to summon him back. She had decided not to call Social Services; she thought they would be disruptive at best. She had tried to be heard every way she could. She didn’t want to stay around any longer and watch.

She was friendly but careful during their final phone call. She said she was sorry that Saul found middle school so frightening, but she was glad that Peter and Saul had “made a commitment to get him educated.” She listened when Peter told her how much he would prefer it if Saul went to a private high school, but Saul wanted independent studies at Berkeley High. That would be an odd choice for a freshman, Lilah thought, but she didn’t even understand how the boy could go to high school without completing eighth grade. She thanked Peter for the call. Four months passed before she heard of him again.

That’s not to say she didn’t think of him. Scarcely a day passed without her thanking Whomever for getting Peter out of her life. She saw him in his pickup truck at least six times but he never noticed her, which was typical of his inattention. Once she even called him, to relay a message left on her machine. It was from someone begging off a Portals program, so she knew he was still doing that. And when she called the phone was answered by Zeke, so she figured he and Valerie still lived there. Zeke told her Peter wasn’t home, offered to take a message, and said “you got it” in response to her words, but she knew Peter wouldn’t get it. She chuckled a bit at Peter the Portals recruiter, who set up a telephone message system where the caller is deceived into thinking he has communicated.

She even thought of him at back-to-school night. She wondered for a moment if Saul could be enrolled there, and she looked around the auditorium for Peter as the opening speech ended. There was a crowd, but she figured she’d see him if he were there. She didn’t see him. He wasn’t there.

The preliminary address that night, before the parents started the circuit of classrooms, was about the hideous coincidence of three student deaths in the few weeks since school had begun. Two kids were killed in car accidents. One student at east campus was stabbed to death. The principal talked about how deeply the faculty and administration were affected, and how readily social and mental health services were available. The audience was quiet. The deaths were unrelated, and the school certainly wasn’t to blame, but the loss of any youngster is a devastation.

On Friday evening Lilah’s son greeted her with solemn news. That morning they’d had the death of a fourth student reported to them. A freshman taking independent studies. He had been missing four days before his body was found, floating face down in the marina. His name was Saul something.

“Sam,” Lilah began, “do you think it could be Peter’s son?”

Sam’s face crumpled with concern. “I thought there was something familiar about this. And there’s a weird message from Mary.”

Lilah went downstairs and pressed the white button. The answering machine whirred and played the voice of Sam’s old therapist. “This is for Lilah and Sam. Hi you guys. It’s Mary. I just heard some disturbing news and I thought about you. I hope you’re doing okay. If you want to talk, call me.”

The next morning’s newspaper had details. It was Peter’s Saul. He never came home from the Saturday midnight movie. His body was discovered Wednesday morning by a woman rower, but it wasn’t identified until Thursday, when Peter filed a Missing Person report. The police said there were no signs of foul play.

Peter is miserable right now. He’s almost immobilized with guilt. But his is a quick mind and a resilient nature. It won’t be very long at all before Peter has reinterpreted events so that he isn’t responsible for any of them.

Peter had invited Lilah to dinner that night. They had a reservation at a good restaurant. She was just about ready to go when he arrived at 6:30, but he wanted to make a phone call. She half-attended as she fed her dog, and she heard the monotonous tones of him recording a message for Saul. He was shaking his head at the end.

“What’s the matter?” Lilah asked while she clipped the kibble bag shut. “Saul not where he should be?”

Peter mumbled something. He sidled past her to hang up the phone. “No,” he said aloud. “And I’m a little irritated. Last time this happened we agreed that he’d call.”

“Last time what happened?”

“He didn’t come home.”

“Are you telling me Saul didn’t come home last night?”

“Yes.”

“Well…when was the last time you saw him?”

“Saturday afternoon.”

“Peter. It’s Monday night now. Saturday was two days ago!” Lilah began to feel exasperated.

As usual Peter responded with what seemed like increased calmness. “I know that. I believe he was seen today. I know he’s okay.”

“Well I’ll call the restaurant.”

“Why?”

“To tell them we’re not coming. It’s nice to let them know, or they may try to hold our table.” If her words had been feet they would have stamped.

“I don’t see any reason not to have dinner. What do you want to do instead?”

“We could search for Saul…”

“I told you he was seen today. He was in Danville. Who knows where he is now.”

“I can’t believe how calm you are, Peter. I’d be beside myself.”

“I was pretty shook up the last time it happened. He didn’t come home from the movie and then didn’t even call until Wednesday night. It turned out he was helping a runaway friend.” Lilah had to ask a question or two before Peter continued.

“Saul met Zeke at the theater, and started helping him with props. Valerie is Zeke’s girlfriend. They’re both 15, from Danville, and have dropped out of school. Zeke is dyslexic and has ADD. Valerie’s parents decided that Zeke was a bad influence on her; they tried to keep Valerie in school and away from Zeke. So Valerie ran away. Her parents called the cops. Zeke and Saul were helping Valerie evade the authorities. That’s why Saul disappeared.”

“So this is the second time Saul has not come home from that movie?”

“Well, no. Actually, there was one other time, but he was only gone till Sunday.” Peter then told Lilah the story that involved Judith. “Come to think of it,” he concluded, “I think Valerie was running then, too.”

“Could it be happening a third time?”

“I suppose yes. But Saul should call me. I took him to LA for the Portals teen program, and we got a lot straight after that. I’m really disappointed that he hasn’t called. But let’s get going or we will lose that table.”

Peter heard from Saul two nights later. He chose to believe the story that there were no telephones available before then. He was comforted to hear that there’d be no more disappearing because Valerie no longer had to run. Her parents had declared her “incorrigible.” They wouldn’t be looking for her any more. Peter consented when Saul asked him to let Valerie and Zeke move in with them. He sponsored their handfasting ceremony. He also recruited Zeke’s 32 year-old mother and 48 year-old grandmother into Portals. He began working on teen tuition for Zeke and Valerie as well.

He thought things were settling satisfactorily. He and Zeke and Valerie and Saul lived together pretty well, or would if he could ever figure out a way to get the kids to clean up after themselves, or take a phone message, or watch over Warren, or stop arguing. As it was, they paid more attention to their video games than to the clutter around them, and they seemed to want to be outside smoking cigarettes when they weren’t playing video games. Although Saul had already had enough sex for his first case of crabs and enough drugs to have stories about breakfast acid before his rare school days, Lilah was more shocked about the tobacco than anything else. The image of Saul with a lit filterless cigarette between his small fingers would hang forever on her memory walls. Peter disregarded her comments about it. Meanwhile Zeke and Valerie thought Peter was cool, especially once he started buying eggs and mayonnaise and white bread in quantity; they lived on fried egg sandwiches. They didn’t even mind paying rent after Peter gave Zeke some jobs to do and some wages, although Zeke’s disabilities got in the way of his working as much as they had disrupted his schooling, so the labor-and-rent schemes didn’t last long.

Peter went deeper into Portals. He enrolled in the Partner Program, a two-year session about teamwork, and he had to put in weekly time at workshops. Saul said he had gotten enough out of the teen program that he didn’t need to continue with Portals; he wouldn’t agree to take another seminar with his father. That was a big disappointment for Peter, but then it was convenient to have Zeke and Valerie around, as company for Saul when Peter was away. It became less convenient a little later, after Valerie began to suspect Saul’s trustworthiness. She fed him a false secret and he passed it on. So she was vindicated but Saul was infuriated. His level of affectation rose. He began to wear mascara and assert that he was immortal. He tried to mesmerize Lilah’s dog and other domesticated animals. He claimed he no longer experienced cold, not since he’d first slept under a bridge some months before.

Meanwhile, Lilah was wondering if she should call in Social Services or something. She watched as Peter surrounded himself with disabled teenagers. He wasn’t even trying to get Saul to go to school. She talked to him about liability. She urged him to communicate with Valerie’s parents. She even gave him the directory of special schools from Sunset magazine. Finally she referred him to the best psychologist she and Sam had ever met. That almost worked. Peter liked Mary. At first Saul liked her; he saw her for two sessions and then he just stopped.

Ostensibly, Peter called because he was seeking his stuff. That was a transparent device; the only items he’d left at Lilah’s were some ratty old exercise clothes. Peter is inattentive to apparel. He is accustomed to leaving bits of himself behind as he blunders forward. Lilah knew he didn’t want his coffee-marked sweatpants or tank top.

They saw each other and it wasn’t unpleasant, so they did it a second time, and then each considered the relationship differently. Peter wanted to deem them a couple again; to the extent that she acted like they weren’t, he compromised and adjusted to permit her actions. He shrugged a lot. He wished she would support his deepening commitment to the Portals program.

Lilah was careful to allow him no physical intimacy. That hadn’t been a particularly satisfying part of their former relationship as far as she was concerned (pleasant and not malodorous was the best she would say) – she didn’t want it back. She never invited him to spend the night. She tried to keep him downstairs even though the best place to watch TV was from her bed, away from kids in the living room. Her friends asked her why she continued to see him – she asked the same thing herself – and she said she thought she still enjoyed their talks and walks; she said she was interested in the welfare of his sons. Lilah was an indulgent parent but selfish enough to set limits. Peter was a rabid believer in aggressive expressive love, and his delight in his kids’ actions was so thorough that it was interpreted as unconditional approval no matter what they did. Saul and Warren were masters of their own destinies, with regard to sleep and all behavior. Each was small for his age, delicate of feature, often dirty and always tired. Peter was their fountain of love and approval – or like a perpetual big brother, a willing conspirator in all play.

Saul now lived full-time with Peter. Seven year-old Warren continued to stay mostly with his mother (except for every other weekend), but Saul had moved from Judith’s to Peter’s less than a month after Lilah stopped seeing him. Judith’s feelings were so hurt about this that she rarely spoke to Saul. Mother and son were civil to each other, but neither sought the other’s company.

Saul wasn’t going to school much. He was supposed to be attending eighth grade at a middle school in Albany, but he wasn’t there more often than he was. He and Peter had already met once with the principal and the school counselor, and Saul had entered into and immediately violated the behavior contract that always arises from such a meeting. Peter has an anti-school bias he has never concealed from his children. School was not good for him. Lilah suspected he supported Saul in insolence. She was sure that Judith acted more parental; after all Saul was only 13. School attendance was probably one of the issues that made him want to move in with his dad.

Lilah didn’t get these items in any narrative form. Peter wasn’t ever likely to narrate; his conversation was more like talking to himself out loud. He tended to interrupt a silence with the phrase “Oh, yeah…” as if he were continuing some dialogue, and then launch into a nonsequitur, any nonsequitur (there are an infinite number of nonsequiturs). This irritated Lilah but she tried to view it as a disability she should accommodate and she mostly succeeded at that, except when it seemed to be the sort of baiting that Peter, a bright middle child, would have perfected while growing up. He was so informed and organized about astronomy, geology, anthropology – so retentive with those stories – that his incoherence about people sometimes seemed to be an act. That winter Peter told her bits and pieces, mainly when Saul’s behavior was so bad that he couldn’t avoid talking about it, and so Lilah’s concern grew with her amazement.

Saul went to the Saturday midnight movie every week by then, and sometimes he didn’t come home at all. Lilah learned that he had refused to go with his mother one Saturday night when she came to pick him up outside the theater. Judith had then called Peter for help, which is something she would only do in desperation, and Peter told her he’d take care of Saul. He sent her home to Warren. But Saul wouldn’t go with Peter either. Peter ended up leaving Saul at the theater and didn’t see the boy again until Sunday afternoon.

“What could I do?” Peter asked Lilah when he told her about that night. “Force him into my truck?”

“Yes!” Lilah was emphatic. “I’m not advocating abuse. You just grab him, hug him firmly, and sit on him, if necessary, until he gets some sense.”

There was no point to Lilah’s emphasis. By the time Peter gave her the story the events had occurred months before. In fact, he only told because Saul was then missing again, and longer, and he was filling her in on precedents.

Coincidentally, Duane made the decision to try to get home at just about the same moment that SuddenJim knocked on Deirdre’s door. Connie had been nagging Duane about how important it was for him to be home that night, for their as-ever-childless Christmas eve. So even though the admiral opted to stay in Las Vegas, Duane decided to fly home in the nasty weather, filed a flight plan, took off alone into the stormy dark. While Deirdre opened her door to jolly old Jim, Duane taxied and lifted off toward lightning.

Deirdre thought about sending Jim home but would have felt small-minded doing it. She sent him instead into her TV room, where he played some video games. She tried to recover her lovely solitude but the mood eluded her. Eventually she answered the door to Connie, gathered her scarf and her son together, pulled Jim away from the game, and left for the pageant.

They walked. Three blocks downhill slipping a little on wet sidewalks that had iced up in the cold night air. Left and level for another two blocks, but into a face-chapping wind. Around the corner, gust-sheltered, happy to get into the school auditorium just ahead of the rain. They walked to four seats together, pulling off gloves and tugging scarves loose from their throats.

Abundance of wool. Red mufflers and blue hats. Poofy nylon jackets in spinnaker colors. Rosy cheeks even on African skin. The place sparkled with December.

The music was awful. Flat out of tune. Deirdre and Ian squirmed a little in their seats. Jim and Connie were sedate with satisfaction. They sat hunched slightly forward with smarmy grins on their faces.

From out of nowhere, between a marginal rendition of “Silent Night” and a gathering of the whole troop for what was to be “Jingle Bells,” came a tearing crash, a thudding shudder…lights out…screech…

Hole in the sky. Metal glinting. Smashed and sliding. Screaming…

Connie and Jim were stunned. Unhurt they sat in dazzled amazement. It was Ian who leapt to action. He raced to the stage, pulling classmates away from the smouldering wreckage. Before the remains of the plane ignited he and a few others had evacuated that stage. Deirdre ran to help. Past ripped metal, sliding on blood, to cushion the heads of terrified children.

Duane died on impact. Long afterward, when they analyzed the flight recorder and replayed his last words, some of them suspected suicide. But the plane was clearly hit by lightning. It’s almost certain Duane would have looked for an uninhabited area in which to crash. There’s no way he would have aimed for the school; it was tragic that he hit the auditorium. His final words were garbled and must have meant something else. Must have been two partial sentences or something.

Three teachers died along with Duane, and a dozen parents in the audience were injured. The music instructor, the man who kicked Ian out of the production for passing around those kitchen matches (“bringing a weapon to school,” were the words on the suspension report), was decapitated by the port wing. Miraculously, no kids were hurt. But Ian got them all away. He and a few others. Deirdre helped.

Ian was a bit of a hero. He learned how it felt to admire himself. It was easy and obvious for Deirdre to mark his evolution from that night.

And Deirdre? she tried to reserve judgment. But she watched Connie and Jim motionless in the auditorium that Christmas eve, and she knew then that they were full of shit. The worst kind of solidarity, she couldn’t help thinking. Certain images wouldn’t leave her memory. The sight of Ian running to help, sliding to his knees, pulling with small bulging man-muscles, his face shining and intense. The blank look on her sister, like she was coming out of a dream. Jim’s big blue eyes blinking as he sat immobile, blinking like he was surprised by light. The remains of the music instructor.

Deirdre grew a little more knowing. She smiled a lot and although she spoke more softly, from then on she tended to hum “whatever” and do whatever she wanted to do.

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.