Eleven

The letter from my parents came at last. Two letters, actually. They were there on the front hall floor in front of the mail slot when I came home from school. They arrived in a single plain white envelope. This time it had been mailed from Little Rock, Arkansas. They had undoubtedly written the letters somewhere else and passed them on to someone they trusted, to pass on to someone else, to pass on to still another someone to mail. Maybe the chain was five people long, maybe it was ten people long. None of them had to be members of Air, Water, Earth, just sympathetic supporters. None of them would live in Little Rock. None of them would know any more than the person behind and the person ahead in the chain.

I held the envelope up to the light. An ordinary envelope of the kind that came in a box of one hundred. I turned it over several times, studying my neatly typewritten name. And I imagined Hal, with his blazing grin, or Laura, red hair tucked into a kerchief, going into a typewriter store. Maybe she would be wearing a wig, the way she had that time, years ago, when that man who called himself Uncle Marti had taken me to see her for an afternoon.

In the typewriter store, Laura would check out various typewriters. She’d put the envelope into one of them and type my name and address. Then she’d shake her head regretfully. No, this typewriter was not exactly what she was looking for. And she’d stuff the envelope, as if without thought, into her pocket, and walk out.

I tore the envelope into bits, burned the pieces in the bathroom sink, and flushed away the ashes. For eight years, two or three times a year, I had done the same thing. Except the year I was twelve. That year, when I burned the envelopes, I also burned the letters, burned them unread. Didn’t they always say the same thing? “My dearest son … We miss you … Your job is to go to school, learn and grow … Someday you will understand … Someday you will fully realize why we … We love you, but …”

That year I hated everything, my uncle, school, most of all my parents. I drew up lists of accusations against them, starting with You left me, going on from there, but always coming back to You left me.

Why did you set that bomb? Didn’t you know what was going to happen? How could you be sure no one was in the lab? Why didn’t you think about that? You left me. You don’t love me. You love your stupid politics. You left me.

My voice was changing and so was I. I cut my heroes, Laura and Hal, down to size. They were dumb and stupid, they were selfish and crappy, and if they ever came back, they’d be sorry for the rest of their lives because I wouldn’t ever go to live with them again. I imagined the scene, I saw Laura crying and Hal pleading. Son, son, at least talk to us. But I wouldn’t say a word, I’d walk out on them and I wouldn’t come back until they were gone.

Every day I wore the baseball cap Drew had given me and every night I repeated, I’m Pete. I’m Pete. I’m Pete Greenwood. Pete Greenwood, school-skipper, baseball fan, a regular kid. Pete-not-Pax.

One warm spring evening I was out with Drew and some other boys. We passed our old elementary school and began throwing stones at the building. “Watch this one, you guys!” Direct hit. A spiderweb of cracks spread across a window. “Run!” someone yelled. “Come on, Pete, come on!”

They ran, but I walked. I strolled jauntily, as if nothing could ever bother me. In reality, I was in a state of shock, my heart shaking in my chest as I waited for the patrol car to pull up beside me and the police to spring out. You’re under arrest! Me first. Then my parents. The logic was inescapable. My arrest would lead directly to theirs. I saw them being led into court in manacles, I saw their sad, reproachful eyes and the judge leaning down. I sentence you both to life imprisonment …

When I got home I was in a sweat and couldn’t eat. I went out again. It was dusk, the stores were closing. I walked past the city parking lot, the bank, the newspaper building, walked as fast and purposefully as if I were looking for something. Yet I didn’t know what it was or where I was going until I found it.

Behind the post office, which bordered on the Interstate, I climbed over a railing and half-slid down a muddy bank into a patch of scrubby woods. As soon as I stepped in, I knew this was why I’d left the house—to find this wedge of trees, this place out of time. Faint paths crisscrossed it like pencil markings. Birds and squirrels racketed. I stood under an enormous beech tree on the roots that spread out like gray crippled fingers over the ground and looked up through the canopy into the sky. The Interstate laced over, above, and around the woods, the world woven over me, but unable to reach me. The hum of traffic filtered through the trees. I lay down on the ground, clutching at the beech roots, and cried and swore to Laura and Hal that I didn’t hate them, I didn’t, I didn’t.…

After that day I started reading their letters again, reading them and saving them, but it was never quite the same as it had been before. Because now, always, somewhere in the far, back reaches of my mind, the other thoughts, the questions and accusations, were always there, always waiting. I didn’t want them. I pushed them away, I resisted. Sometimes I was successful. Other times not. More and more I was unsuccessful—the questions came and I sensed something in me demanding that I face those questions, demanding that I answer them for myself. Why did you leave me? Why did you set that bomb? What made you turn from demonstrations to bombs? Didn’t you know what might happen? How could you be sure no one was in the lab? You thought about so much—why didn’t you think about that?

Now, after all the energy I’d put into being mad at my parents for not writing, I didn’t read their letters right away. I threw them into my desk drawer and went out, not going anywhere, just walking and trying not to think. A boy in a red-and-black checkered shirt, plugged into an enormous silver radio slung over his shoulder, boogied past me. Buses rumbled down the street and the smell of exhaust fumes linked with the smell of fried food. Downtown smells. I liked being downtown, moving through the crowds, nobody looking at me, nobody noticing me. A safe feeling. I walked for a long time, went past the Nut Shoppe, but kept going. Today wasn’t the day to go in there.

I didn’t read the letters when I got home either. Gene and I ate supper and he went out, and I went upstairs to do homework. In the middle of studying theorems, I slammed the book shut. I couldn’t concentrate and I wouldn’t be able to until I read my parents’ letters.

I read my father’s letter first.

Dear Pax,

Another year has passed. You’re sixteen now, nearly a man. I know custom says manhood doesn’t come until your twenty-first birthday, but in your case, I cannot believe this. You’ve been through things that an ordinary boy hasn’t. I know it’s made a difference—matured you, made you wiser, grown you up faster. You have experienced, endured, survived—as have I. Life is a struggle, but we are armed for it. We are strong and become stronger while the forces opposing us must grow weaker with time because they are against the tide of history.

I haven’t been able to be an ordinary father to you, but I think of you and about you the way any father does. I want you to believe this. Life has separated us, but we are still father and son. These have not been easy years for any of us, but we will come out stronger for them. Of that I am convinced. Now, on your birthday, I raise a cup to you, my son. Salud!

All my love,

Hal

And beneath his signature, with a little flourish, the word Dad.

I read his letter several times. The house was quiet, the windows closed, outside sounds muffled. After a while, I unfolded my mother’s letter.

Dearest boy,

Happy birthday, dear one. This year I want to send you a poem that has often comforted me, in the hope that it will mean something very special to you, too. It is from the book The Prophet by the Syrian poet Kahlil Gibran.

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

Do you understand what I’m saying? I am now and always will be your mother and I love you as I love my life, but you are not mine, you do not belong to me, you are your own person. We are separated, it’s been many years, too many years, and yet this poem comforts me, tells me that although I haven’t been able to be an everyday mother to you, we will both come through these times, these trials, with our love and respect for each other intact. Happy birthday, my darling. I send you more love than you can imagine. May we be reunited soon.

Your mother,

Laura

Later, in the shower, a memory, like a dream, came back to me … showering with my father, he was shampooing my hair, my head came just to his belly button … and outside the bathroom, my mother, laughing, calling, Are you two going to be in there forever?

Sixteen? A man? My own person? Clinging to the slick wet tile I was a child again, a little boy, shivering and close to tears.