The Global Idea of ‘The Commons’. Отсутствует
my nephew, Kitty, my only nephew.”
“Perhaps a good boarding school then?”
“No, Paul’s been through an awful lot. He’s the kind of kid that does not do well without a mother. He’s rather fragile and needs a good deal of support.”
“Oh no, Ben. Oh no, oh no. I don’t know a damn thing about mothering. I don’t know a damn thing about adolescents. In fact, I was a lousy adolescent; everybody said so. How could I be of any help to him? Besides, it will all fall on me, every damn bit of it. When are you ever available, I’d like to know? Please Ben, please. I don’t want this in my life.” Hysteria was forming in her throat. “I just can’t do it,” she screamed. “I just can’t do it!”
“Oh, Kitty, Kitty. You’re putting me between a rock and a hard place. There are things in life one has to do,” he said calmly. “Like it or not––this is one of them.”
* * * *
Paul came up the walk lugging two bulging backpacks and an exhausted looking Teddy bear. A tall gangling sort of boy with an angry complexion, and sad gray eyes. Kitty managed a chirpy welcome. He responded with a growl, and dropped his backpacks by the stairs. She took him up to his room. A lovely room that looked out on mostly hardwoods. When she pointed this out to him, he disdainfully glanced out the window. And it was quite clear to Kitty––he would have been just as happy with a slag heap.
Mealtimes became stressful. The easy banter between husband and wife soon evaporated. Ben bent over backwards in an effort to make conversation. Paul’s responses were limited to shrugs and monosyllables. He spent his meals hovering over his food, pushing it this way and that, scowling, as if suspicious they might attempt to poison him.
Paul lolled about listlessly for a week or so, and Ben, not knowing what to do, enrolled him in the local junior high school. His first day there, Kitty spent pacing up and down. She agonized about her fate and obsessed on their future, which at the moment appeared to be black as pitch. At four o’clock she could hardly breathe as she waited for him to walk up from the bus stop.
When he walked through the door, her fingers were tightly crossed behind her back. She said, “How was it?”
“Shitty,” he said. He climbed the stairs and slammed the door behind him.
Kitty’s heart sank. It was already May. How was she ever going to get through the summer? How was she going to endure three sultry months of Paul lying around, flipping channels and drinking endless colas? She begged Ben to send him to a nice camp, up in the Poconos, maybe, or how about Vermont? Ben diplomatically approached him. The boy’s answer was a resolute, “Fuck camp.”
“Are you going to allow him to talk to you like that, Ben?”
“We’re going to have to be patient, Kitty. Please remember he’s a kid whose mother abdicated her responsibility early on. In many ways, I suppose, he sees himself as an abandoned child. From what you’ve told me about your mother, I would think you might be able to understand that. And Jerry, well, you knew Jerry. His heavy drinking, an endless string of housekeepers, not to even mention his numerous female attachments. You couldn’t exactly call it a structured home life, could you? And now––his father dies in a car crash. Be fair, Kitty. This isn’t easy.”
* * * *
In mid-May Mr. Chandler came around and rototilled, but Kitty felt too paralyzed to plan a garden. Meditation proved impossible. Deep breathing didn’t help. The whole house seemed to be engulfed in an atmosphere of gloom. As May drew to a close she began to realize she would have to take refuge in her garden, or be strangled by her own relentless rancor.
Then one late June morning, when she was down on her hands and knees, tucking soil around some baby lettuces, a shadow cast itself across her busy hands. Startled, she looked up and saw Paul standing there and, eying a hoe lying by her side, a grisly thought flitted through her mind: Oh God, he’s going to try to kill me.
“What are those?” he said.
“Lettuces,” she sputtered. “Little innocent baby lettuces.” She feared she might have to defend them from his flip-flops.
“Beautiful,” he said.
“What?”
“How long before they’ll be ready to eat?”
Glory Hallelujah, he actually formed a sentence. “Not long at all. Would you like to set in the rest of the row?” she asked, as she tried to still her quivering hands.
“Yeah, sure. I got nothin’ better to do.”
And oh, his hands––those elegant long fingers so gentle as he caressed the tiny plants and tucked the earth around them. And how beautiful his straight and strong young back, as he hovered over them.
“You want to do a row of peppers, Paul?”
He also did two rows of tomato plants and a row of cucumbers.
“Well,” said Kitty, more calm now. “It’s well past noon. You don’t by any chance like salads, do you?”
“You don’t, you know, eat meat, do you?” Paul said.
“No, not for twenty years. Not since I lived in a commune in California.”
“You lived in a commune in California? Cool. I don’t like meat either. My father ate raw steaks. It used to make me want to puke.”
“Well, nobody’s making you eat meat here, Paul.”
“Yeah, but Uncle Ben fires up the grill every single night. I don’t want to, you know, offend him or nothin’. See, when I was a little kid we hit a deer. My father, as usual, was speeding, and it splattered all over the place. There was blood and bits of flesh all over the hood and windshield. And I will never forgot those terrified eyes as he lay there dying. It actually made me sick. I know it’s stupid, but no matter how I try I can’t get rid of it. My father even sent me to a shrink, but no go. Every time I face a piece of meat I think of that poor animal.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Paul, he doesn’t care,” Kitty said. “We learned years ago, the hard way, that we had to respect each others’ peculiarities or call it quits.”
They stood at the kitchen counter, shoulder to shoulder. They peeled, chopped, grated, and sliced. They mashed avocados and squeezed lemons.
When Paul had swabbed up the remainder of the vinaigrette dressing from his bowl, he said, “You gonna eat what’s left on the counter?”
The next thing Kitty knew she was seated on the sofa with Paul’s body slumped across her lap. His tears flowed freely, falling on her overalls. He sobbed, he truly sobbed––and she had never felt so elated in her entire life. She had a strong inclination to stroke his hair, but hesitated, fearing he would jump up and scream “fuck off.” But she was overcome by an unaccustomed tenderness, and touched his head ever so lightly, surprised to see that it seemed to comfort him. She proceeded to stroke his head, like she stroked and patted Geraldine.
Is this how a mother feels when they hand her that first newborn? Some unaccustomed feeling, noble and unselfish was welling up inside her.
After awhile Paul sat up, looking horrified. “Sorry,” he said, “Oh God, gees, I’m really sorry.”
“No, no, don’t feel sorry. You don’t have to feel sorry.”
And before long they were sitting shoulder to shoulder on the porch swing, mulling over Kitty’s seed catalogs.
“It’s never too early to plan for next year,” she said. “And Paul, who knows? Maybe between us we can convert your uncle Ben, and get rid of that nasty old grill altogether.” She began feel all swoony, like you feel when you are falling in love.
And for the first time since he arrived––Paul smiled at her.
THE THIEF, by Bev Rees
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