The Reign of Arlette

When I pulled into the driveway on Friday afternoon I was relieved, as always, to see that our house was still standing. There it was: a gray-shingled, weather-beaten farmhouse, its chimneys still upright. What I worry about each week, while I’m in the city, is not arson or hurricanes but the fact that my two children are spending the summer here, parentless.

I parked the car and walked up the uneven flagstone path, across the scrubby lawn. Huge old lilac bushes crowded in shifting green masses beside the doorways, and the ancient sugar maples stood around the house like peaceful giants. I went in the back door and into the big sunny kitchen. It was empty and silent.

I love this house. I think of it as mine, though it actually belongs to Willis. He bought it when we were married, six years ago. During his first marriage everything was owned jointly, and during his divorce he regretted it. This time, everything is in his name. I don’t care. I work for a foundation. I’ve never made much money and I never will. My first husband, Walter, was not generous, and the children and I went through some hard times when I was single. I am lucky to be married to someone who is generous, and I don’t care whose name the house is in. Willis gives us a good life, and I’m grateful, on any terms, because of Nicko and Belinda.

In past years, the children went to summer camp, and their father and I split the rest of their vacation time between us. But this year Nicko is sixteen and too old for camp, and Belinda is twelve and has discovered horses. Nicko found a job out here, and Belinda found a stable. Nicko is really too old for a babysitter, but he’s a lot too young to be left alone with Belinda all week in Bridgehampton. So I hired someone to be me—someone to buy the groceries, do the laundry, drive the children where they needed to go, and call the repairman when the dishwasher broke. I wasn’t worried about rules; my children aren’t rebellious. Nicko’s shy and hasn’t many friends. He’s never had a girlfriend; he’s never even had a date. Belinda hasn’t hit adolescence yet, and she loves everyone. So I didn’t want a policeman, I wanted a mother. I wanted someone who would keep the house sailing peacefully along before the wind, with Nicko and Belinda safely inside it.

I looked around the kitchen: it was clean and serene. The gray-and-white checkerboard floor was swept, the butcher-block counters were smooth and empty, the geraniums in the bay window had been watered. I felt a sense of great peace and relief: today was the start of my own vacation, and for the next two weeks I’d be here full-time. I felt as though I’d completed some arduous task and was receiving my reward.

I went to the back stairs and called up. “Nicko? Belinda?”

There was no answer, and the house felt empty. I went out to the tiny cottage where Arlette lives. This is just two small rooms, side by side, looking straight out onto the back lawn. It has no privacy, and I called, to let Arlette know I was coming. When I reached it she was standing at the screen door.

I had imagined very clearly the person I would find to look after the children: a woman in her thirties or forties, maybe a teacher, with the summer free. Maybe divorced, a little down on her luck. Someone like that would be appreciative of the job, even grateful to be there, and her gratitude would spill over onto my beloved children. Maybe she’d be plump and messy-haired, indifferent to appearances, someone with a great sense of humor and a great heart. Someone who would think it a pleasure to live in our pretty house in Bridgehampton, with my two wonderful children, for the summer.

I didn’t find anyone like that. For months I couldn’t find anyone at all, and by the time I found Arlette it was only two weeks before vacation began, and I was desperate. The idea of gratitude had somehow shifted, and it seemed by then as though she were doing me a favor.

Arlette is twenty-five and French. She has short dark hair, a pointed nose, and a heavy accent. She is thin, chic, and alarmingly cool. When she answers a question her eyebrows rise disdainfully, as though she can’t imagine why you had to ask. I find her unsettling, but she does everything I ask. The larder is always full, the laundry hamper always empty, the children are taken where they need to go. I can’t complain, but she wasn’t what I’d had in mind.

“’Ello, Jan, how was your trip?” asked Arlette politely. She was wearing two very thin gold bracelets and a bikini.

“Not too bad, actually,” I said. I was still in my office clothes, now hot and grubby after the drive. Arlette looked cool and sleek, as though she’d done nothing all week but lie out at the pool.

“Good,” Arlette said, and waited, her head cocked. She gives out nothing, Arlette, she answers only the question. This makes it hard for me to feel that we are friends.

“Well, what’s been going on all week,” I asked. “Did the repairman ever come?”

“The repairman came yesterday,” she said. “The deesh-washer works.”

“Amazing,” I said.

Arlette nodded. “Amazeeng, but true.”

I am never quite sure when Arlette is being funny. I smiled now, in case she was, and asked what I really wanted to know. “And where are the kids?”

“Belinda’s at the barn, an’ Nicko ’as gone to the ’ardware store wis Willis.”

“I’ll pick up Belinda,” I said. “What are Nick and Willis doing at the hardware store?”

“I seenk Willis want’ some new cleepers for the ’edge. I told him to take Nicko, Nicko would know which are the best.”

Nicko has been working at a garden center, so he ought to know about clippers. Still, Willis has never asked his advice about anything before. I tried to picture the two of them standing at the counter, companionably side by side, discussing heft and calibration, blades. I was pleased and touched to hear that it had been Arlette’s idea. Maybe I had misunderstood her, I thought, maybe I wasn’t giving her enough credit.

When you’re a single parent, you feel solely and wholly responsible for your children, as though you were refugees, making your way through a war-torn landscape. You feel protective in a fierce, constant way. A relentless vigilance lives in you like a heartbeat. You are never not aware of where your children are, or of the dangers that surround them. You feel that you are your children’s carapace, their shield against the world.

I’ve worked full-time ever since Nicko started school. And whatever the arrangements were, whoever was looking after him and Belinda, however carefully I’d planned, I’ve always worried, from the very beginning. How could you not? And when you come home and find your child happy, bathed, asleep, you feel awash with gratitude to the baby-sitter. You also feel, secretly and uncharitably, resentful of her for doing such a good job. For the better she is, the less he needs you. So, as you take the sleeping baby, you notice that his pajama top is on inside out, and you purse your lips in annoyance. You make a small noise of irritation to let her know about her mistake.

This response is unkind, but so are some of hers. Sometimes, when your son begins to whimper in your arms, the baby-sitter says ingenuously, “Oh, that’s the first time he’s cried all day.” You say nothing, but you hate her. She says, “Here, let me take him,” but you turn away, with him in your arms. Her words send a dagger deep into your heart, reminding you that you have been absent for your son, and perhaps your presence is no longer what he needs.

But if I had been absent, now I was back. The reign of Arlette was over, and my own had begun. I felt relieved and, now that I was taking the throne, magnanimous. I was ready to forgive Arlette her coolness, to believe I had misjudged her. I was happy, and in this mood I asked her to come to dinner with us that night.

“We’re taking the kids to Pete’s,” I said. “Would you like to come along?”

As I spoke, I wondered about Willis.

He has a horror of invasion, and at the start of the summer he had gloomily predicted that Arlette would appear at breakfast every morning full of loud Gallic chat, and a horde of her radio-playing friends would hang around our pool. So I had carefully explained the rules to Arlette: she was always welcome at the pool, but her friends were not. No loud radios, and so on. As it turned out, all that was unnecessary. In the mornings, when we were there, Arlette took her mug of breakfast coffee back out to her house. We saw very little of her, in any case: a large group of blond friends with sunglasses picked her up and brought her home from wherever it was they went.

I thought Willis wouldn’t mind, now—the danger of invasion was past. It was the end of the summer, and too late for anything to go wrong. And anyway, Arlette would probably refuse—she’d have plans with the blond people.

But to my surprise, she nodded composedly and said she’d love to ’ave deener wis us. I felt rather flattered that she would choose us over the blonds.

I changed my clothes and went off to pick up Belinda. I found her in the deep summer gloom of the barn. She was standing on a box, brushing a big chestnut horse on cross-ties. Another girl was on the other side of the horse, brushing it too. I called out to Belinda. She stepped off the box, set it carefully by the wall, picked up her dusty black hard hat, and came out. She’s skinny, now, growing, with long spindly legs, and was wearing the tan jodhpurs she’s worn every day this summer. She has freckles, short brown hair, absolutely straight, and a quiet, abstracted manner.

“Hi, Bell,” I said, and kissed her. She let me, and smiled sweetly: she’s still unselfconscious, and I don’t embarrass her yet. I’m grateful for this.

Driving home I asked her how the week had been.

“Okay,” she said. “We did cavalletti today, which is so boring. And I still haven’t got my diagonals right. But Ann said I was doing much better at the canter.”

“Good,” I said equably. “And how about at home? With Arlette?”

“Okay,” said Belinda, looking out the window.

“Do you like her?” I asked baldly.

“She’s fine,” Belinda said, shrugging. “She’s kind of weird, actually.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. She’s just so, you know, like …” Belinda lost interest and trailed off.

“So what?” I said.

“Oh, fussy about everything. Everything has to be, like, just exact. And the way she talks! Nicko and I call her Lee Fwog.” She turned back to me. “Not in front of her,” she reassured me.

I laughed. It was what I had hoped would happen: Nicko and Bell had looked after each other, and Arlette had looked after the house. My children were safe, and I was happy. I was happy to be back, happy that Bell was doing better at the canter, and happy about Willis and Nicko.

Willis and I have been married for six years, but Willis and Nicko are not yet friends. One Saturday morning in June, Willis and I sat in the kitchen over coffee and the Times. In the silence, the first noises from upstairs were conspicuously audible: the creakings of the floorboards and the heavy footsteps overhead as Nicko got up. Finally he came thundering down the steep back stairs and appeared in the doorway. He was barefoot, in faded blue jeans with the inevitable rip across the knee. He had on a wrinkled football jersey, too big, from a school he does not attend. In spite of his noisy descent, he came into the kitchen quietly, his eyes covered by his dark-blond bangs, and his shoulders hunched. He moved gently, his eyes lowered, as though he were trying to escape attention.

“Good morning, Nicko,” I said, loud and cheerful. Partly, I wanted to establish the tone, and partly, I truly was delighted to see him. I am delighted every time that I see Nicko, now that his life is so divergent from ours, now that he has left home forever. They never really live at home again, after fourteen. First it’s boarding school, then it’s college, then it’s Life. So I treasure the times I have with Nicko, and each morning my heart lifts, the way it did years ago, when he was tiny.

In those years, I used to come in to Nicko’s room early, as soon as I woke up. I’d push the door open silently, in case he was still asleep. But Nicko was already awake, always, waiting for me to start his world. He’d be already up, standing in his crib in his pale-blue footed pajamas, his diapered rump plump and bunchy. He’d tiptoe bouncily along the mattress, talking earnestly to himself in rapid and fluent Baby, peering alertly around his room. When he caught sight of me, his face would light up. He’d lunge toward me, grab the crib railing, and give a long indrawn gurgle, a backwards crow, like a tiny exuberant cockerel. I’d feel the same way, a crowding excitement in my throat, at the sight of this creature whom, at that moment, I longed for physically, desperately, as though we had been separated for years.

Things were different now, of course.

“Morning, Mom, morning, Willis,” he said, not looking at us. He slid into a chair without pulling it out from the table, as though he were barely there. He brushed his hair out of his eyes and it fell back at once. Willis looked up from his paper and smiled majestically.

“Good morning, Nicholas,” he said. Willis is a splendid-looking man, with wide shoulders and a thatch of glossy dark brown hair, which is turning gray in a distinguished manner. He speaks slowly and very precisely, almost theatrically, carefully articulating each word. He looked at his watch. “Not quite the record, this morning,” he said. “But still in training, I see.”

Nicko smiled without looking up. He didn’t answer.

“Well, yes, we’re still working on it,” I said, sprightly, trying to counteract the edge in Willis’s voice. “We’re trying for a solid thirteen hours.” Actually, I don’t see why Nicko shouldn’t sleep late on weekends. “Now, what would you like, Nicko? Cereal? Eggs?” I went to the stove, ready to cook up a storm.

Willis spoke before Nicko answered. “What are your plans for the weekend, Nicholas?” he said, still with his calm half-smile. “Besides training for the Olympic Sleep-Ins? Any ‘job interviews’ lined up?” He put the words in quotes, as though this was an absurd concept.

“Actually, you do have an interview, don’t you?” I said to Nicko. He was silent, looking at his plate, so I turned to Willis. “He has an interview at the Green Thumb Nursery. They told him they need someone full-time, for the whole summer.”

“Ah,” said Willis. “Do they need someone on the electric guitar, or are we branching out into other fields of endeavor?”

“Not electric guitar,” I said quickly, putting butter into the frying pan. “I think they said they needed a bass, but Nicko’s really nearly as good on bass as he is on guitar, aren’t you, sweetheart?” There was a pause, and when I saw Nicko wasn’t going to answer, I said, “You do want eggs, don’t you, Nicko? Fried or scrambled?”

Nicko finally spoke. “Scrambled,” he said. He didn’t look at me.

I hope things will get better between them, and this summer I’ve been hoping it especially. Nicko is taller each weekend. He is taking on the height and the silhouette of a young man, but his fresh skin, his silky hair, his bashful sweetness, his awkwardness, all remind you where he still is: boyhood. He is on the edge of manhood, on the cusp, but he is not there yet. He is still tender and vulnerable, and I would like to protect him forever, from everything.

I can’t, of course, protect Nicko from much of anything, not from the edge in Willis’s voice, nor even from his own father. Nicko’s father, Walter, hasn’t spoken to him since February, when Nicko had lunch at Walter’s apartment. Walter has remarried, and he and his new wife, Marilyn, have a new baby. Nicko was excited about having another sister, and he smiled whenever he talked about Vanessa. The lunch was to celebrate her birthday, and he bought her a present. It was a bear in a flowered sundress, quite expensive, and he chose it himself, and paid for it. Belinda had gone to stay with a friend that weekend, and Nicko went to his father’s alone.

After the lunch, Nick came back earlier than I’d expected. I heard the front door slam, and I listened for him to come along the hall. I didn’t hear him so I called out.

“Nicko?” There was no answer, and I went to find him. He was in his room; he must have tiptoed past our door. He was on his bed with his shoes on, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling.

“Hi, Nicko. I didn’t hear you go by. How was the lunch?”

“Okay.” He didn’t look at me.

“What went on?” I asked cheerfully. “Was it a birthday party, with Vanessa’s friends? Or just the four of you?”

“Just the four of us.” He still didn’t look at me.

“And?” I said. “Was it fun?”

“No,” said Nicko. “It was shitty.”

I waited for a moment. “What happened?”

Nicko turned his face toward the wall and made his hand into a fist. He pressed his fist against the wall. “Just shitty.”

I waited again. Nicko is not a talker. “Want to tell me about it?” I asked.

“No,” he said, pushing his fist against the wall again.

I waited, but he didn’t say anything more, so I said, “Well, I’m sorry,” and turned to go. When I was in the doorway, Nicko spoke.

“I guess I won’t be seeing Dad anymore.”

“You mean for a while? Why? Are they going away?”

“No. I mean I guess I won’t see him at all.”

This time I walked over to the bed and sat down. I didn’t say anything, I just waited. Nicko rolled over on his side, away from me, and began picking at the quilt, pulling at the tufts on it.

“At the beginning it was fine,” he said. “I got there, and Vanessa was running all over the place like crazy. She was all dressed up and she looked really cute. She had a pink ribbon tied in her hair, and it made her hair stand up like a little waterfall. When I came in she shouted ‘Nicko! Nicko!’ and she made this gurgling noise in her throat, she was so excited. I carried her around and we chased the cat. She liked that, and she waved her arms all around and laughed and yelled.” Nicko paused, pulling at the tufts.

“And how was Marilyn?” I asked.

“She was okay. She was nice when I was carrying Vanessa around. She was smiling a lot. But she doesn’t usually look at me. She looks at Dad, or she looks at Vanessa. She doesn’t look at me.”

I hated Marilyn for this. “So then what happened?”

“So then we had lunch. By then Vanessa was tired, I guess, and she started whining and kind of whimpering. She sat in her high chair and spat out her food and waved her hands like no, no, every time Marilyn tried to give her something. Marilyn stopped talking to anyone, she just kept wiping the spit off Vanessa’s chin and bringing the spoon up again with more, and Vanessa would start to cry and put her lips in a pout and spit it out again. The food was getting on her dress, even though she was wearing this bib.” Nicko paused again. Now he was stabbing at the quilt with his finger, over and over.

“I thought I’d try to help out. I’d been such a big hit before, carrying her around and chasing the cat, and I thought I could cheer her up again. I hadn’t given her the present yet. It was in the front hall with my coat. I thought it was for after lunch, with the cake. So I leaned forward and said, ‘Vanessa, I have a surprise for you.’ She opened her eyes, and I leaned really close to her and I made a face, to make her laugh. She smiled, so I went on making these faces and then she started to laugh. I thought Marilyn liked it. She didn’t say anything, but she scraped some more food out of the jar and Vanessa had her mouth open because she was smiling and the spoon went right in. And instead of crying and spitting it out, Vanessa laughed, and then started to chew and swallow. I thought Marilyn and Dad liked what I was doing. I stood up and made more faces, and Marilyn fed Vanessa. When I saw the jar was empty I thought Vanessa was through, so I stood up and reached across the table and picked her up right out of her high chair.

“But I didn’t know she was sort of strapped into it, there was this, like, harness, underneath the bib, that attached her to the chair. I was leaning over, trying to swoop her across the table, and the chair was pulled over. It fell into the table and knocked over the water pitcher, and Vanessa started to cry because the harness was hurting her shoulders, and she was kicking her feet in among the plates and all the food, and she knocked over everything else, the plates and her milk glass and my Coke. It was a mess.”

Nicko stopped again. I put my hand on his shoulder and rubbed it a bit.

“But everyone could see it was all just a mistake?” I said.

“Marilyn looked at me like I had gone after the baby with an ax. She grabbed Vanessa out of my hands and said, ‘Nicholas, that is enough. I’ve had it with you. All you’ve done since you arrived is upset Vanessa. You nearly had her in hysterics over the cat, then you upset her so much that she wouldn’t eat, and now you’ve destroyed everything on the table. Just leave Vanessa alone. Don’t touch her. Don’t even talk to her.’”

“She couldn’t have said that,” I said.

“Then Dad said, ‘Nicholas, would you come into the library with me for a minute.’ So I went in there and he said all this stuff about how I wasn’t considerate to Marilyn, and I only used their house in Southampton like a hotel, and how I only thought of myself, and I never offered to help or anything, and how it was Vanessa’s birthday and I hadn’t even brought her a present.”

There was another long pause. I went on rubbing Nicko’s shoulder. I could see his face in profile. He has long, straight eyelashes, and they brushed his cheek each time he blinked.

“And so?” I said.

“So I left,” said Nicko. “I left the present in the hall.”

Since then, Nicko hasn’t heard from his father. I called, of course, to tell him what I thought of his behavior, but Walter hung up on me.

There’s nothing I can do; it drives me wild. All I want to do is make my son happy, keep him from pain, and I can’t even do it at home, in the most private part of his life. Willis says I’m overprotective, and maybe I am. But it was my idea to get divorced; it’s because of me that Nicko doesn’t live with his father, that he lives with Willis, and that Walter takes out his rage at me on Nick. All I can do is try to make things go well for Nicko however I can. How could I not be overprotective?

But that evening in late August I felt normal, I even felt successful, as a mother. I felt the summer had gone well for Nicko and Bell.

Standing in the crowded doorway at Pete’s, I felt proud of all of us: Willis, solid and dignified, his blue eyes gleaming under his flamboyant graying eyebrows. Nicko, clean and tanned and wonderful, his blond hair freshly washed, his jeans miraculously holeless. Belinda was wearing faded but clean jeans and a loose cotton sweater. Arlette, of course, dressed up the rest of us: cool and elegant in a very short, very tight jersey dress and her gold bracelets. And I felt light and happy that we had at least managed this peculiar sort of family group, all of us bound to each other by these odd strands of commitment, affection, and good will.

At the table, I leaned back in my chair, relaxed and happy, and turned to Nicko.

“So,” I said. “Tell me about the week. What’s been going on?”

Nicko looked out from under his bangs and smiled. “Oh, yeah. It’s been a pretty exciting time out here.”

“Yes?” I said.

“Well, the high point was really Thursday.”

“Thursday?”

“The repairman came,” Nicko said. “He fixed the dishwasher.”

Everyone laughed. “Very funny,” I said, laughing too.

“I had a better time than Nicko,” Bell said. “I jumped three feet two. And I was the only one Ann let do it.”

“You didn’t tell me that, Bellie,” I said, pleased.

“I forgot,” said Bell, smiling into her glass.

“That’s terrific,” I said, and then I pushed at Nick’s shoulder. “And what about you? Come on, Nicko. Give me the scoop. Tell me things I want to know.”

“What do you want to know?” Nicko asked. He was grinning, we all were.

I knew better than to ask about Nicko’s job, which is a touchy subject, and I had alternate questions ready.

“Well,” I said, “did you see Harry?”

Harry is a schoolfriend from New York whom Nicko never sees. I keep hoping that Nicko will acquire friends. I want him to be part of a big, roving herd of kids, boys and girls, rowdy and cheerful and warmhearted, surging in and out of one another’s houses, shouting and thrashing in the pool, tracking water through the kitchen, going out for pizza and on to the movies. This is my dream.

“No, Ma, didn’t see Harry,” Nicko said, shaking his head. “Sorry. Didn’t see Harry, again. Another bad week for me and Harry.”

“Nicholas, you’re torturing your poor mother,” Willis said, jocular. “Call Harry, and put her out of her misery.”

Nicko grinned. “Sorry, Ma. Maybe you should call Harry,” he offered.

“Right,” I said. “I’ll call him right now. Give me a quarter,” I said to Willis, and everyone laughed.

But in the end, of course, I couldn’t help myself.

“So how are things going at the nursery?” I asked, very casually, and Nicko stopped smiling and looked down at his beer.

“Okay,” he said.

“Did you work every day?” I asked.

Nicko shook his head, not looking at me.

Arlette spoke up. “Oh,” she said contemptuously, “they are no good, at that nursery.” Her mouth was pursed critically. “They do not tell the truth. They tell Nicko to come in, yes, we need you, then they say to go ’ome, we don’ need you. Sometime’ Nicko go in at ten, ’e come ’ome at two. Sometime’ they say no, don’ come in at all.” She shook her head. “Puh,” she exhaled dismissively, and with one disdainful breath she banished the nursery forever from her universe.

I don’t know what’s going on at the nursery. I don’t know whether Nicko isn’t working hard enough, or whether they lied to him to begin with, but it hasn’t gone well. I was struck by Arlette’s contempt for the nursery and her loyalty to Nicko. Her attitude infected Willis, who ordinarily sides genially against Nicko, whatever the issue.

Now Willis said, “You know, that really is rather shocking,” as though that were the first he’d heard of it. “Didn’t they say they wanted you full-time?”

Nicko shrugged his shoulders and nodded. “That’s what they said, all right,” he said.

Willis shook his head. “Shocking,” he said again, setting the weight of his disapproval against the enemy.

“Shockeeng,” Arlette echoed primly.

“Shockeeng,” Belinda said, grinning in a nice way, and we all laughed, including Arlette.

Dinner was a success, and by the end of it I was feeling even more affectionate toward everyone, particularly Arlette. I forgave her everything—her coolness, her near-insolence, her bikini—for her defense of Nicko. Now I was glad she’d been there with him all summer: if Nicko didn’t have a big, loose group of friends, at least he had one fiercely loyal one.

When we stood up to leave, someone called from another table. “Arlette!” It was a girl with very red lipstick and long blond hair, very straight.

Arlette looked around and gave a brief neutral wave.

“That was a great party!” called the girl.

Arlette said, “Ah,” noncommittally, and kept moving.

“Moonlight swimming! Love it! Thanks!” called the girl, but this time Arlette just waved, like a queen signaling the end of an interview.

When we were outside I asked, “Who was that?”

“Jus’ a girl from out ’ere,” Arlette said vaguely, shrugging. “I don’ really know ’er very well.”

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“I seenk Susan,” Arlette said, remote, as though Susan were from another universe. Arlette got in the back with Nicko and Belinda. I got in front with Willis. I said nothing more. I didn’t want to question Arlette now, in front of everyone. In fact, I didn’t want to question her later. Whatever had happened had happened, and now I was here it wouldn’t happen again. There’s no such thing as a perfect au pair, and there were worse things than one moonlight swimming party. I didn’t want to make retroactive accusations: Arlette’s reign was over. She had done her job, and the summer was ending.

At home, I got out of the car and stood still for a moment, basking in the summer darkness and the full moon. Arlette climbed out noisily behind me and slammed the door.

“We’re going to the movies,” she announced, and added insultingly, “if zat’s all right.”

“The movies?” I said. I felt ambushed, flattened. I had thought the evening was over, for one thing: it was quarter of ten. I thought that Arlette would say good night, and go off to her house. I thought that Willis and I and the children would mooch around for a while, reading or talking or listening to music, inside, in the library, or out on the porch. And then we would all go to bed. Arlette made me feel as though I had just given a dinner party and then been told that everyone was going on afterward to a restaurant.

I also felt hurt that Willis and I were not included: I had thought we were friends. I had felt, at dinner, as though we—Willis and Nicko and Bell and I—were opening our circle to Arlette. I thought that the five of us had established a core of friendship, acknowledging that we took pleasure in one another’s company. And I even felt rather generous about this, as though we were offering Arlette something special. Now it turned out that she and my children had their own circle, and that it was even smaller and more exclusive than ours.

“Oh,” I said brightly, trying to conceal all this. “All right.” I turned to Nicko. “What are you going to see?”

But Arlette answered. “Lace Two,” she said, or maybe it was “Lay Stew,” or maybe “Les Stoux.”

I looked again at Arlette. Her face was closed and expressionless, and she seemed now hostile and alien. The name of the movie hung in the air between us like a coded challenge that she had thrown out contemptuously, knowing that I dared not answer it. The incomprehensible words seemed proof of my ignorance, my exclusion from their world.

“Fine,” I said, more brightly, nodding, cowardly. “Don’t stay out too late,” I added, and then wished I hadn’t.

“Don’ worry,” said Arlette condescendingly. They all climbed at once into my car, as though this had been planned. As she drove out the driveway Arlette waved, the gold bracelets sending a brief scornful gleam into the night.

I went to bed at once, feeling forlorn, and fell asleep even before Willis came in. I woke up later, in the dark room, full of urgent certainty: I knew at once that it was very late, and that the children weren’t back. Willis was solidly asleep, and I got quietly out of bed and tiptoed down the hall in my nightgown.

Nicko’s room was silent and empty. The bed was flat, unoccupied, untouched, the pillow still covered by the patterned bedspread. Nicko’s muddy leather boots lay on their sides by the closet door, where he had kicked them off after work. The clock by his bed said twenty past four.

I looked into Belinda’s room. She lay in her bed, her face set deep into her pillow. I turned on the light.

“Where’s Nicko?” I asked. Her face was crumpled furiously against awakening, and she rubbed her hand hard against her mouth. She shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she got out.

“Did he come home from the movies with you?”

She stared at me. “The movies?” She was blinking, hard.

“Did Nick come home from the movies with you?”

“Yes,” she said, and set her face back deep into the pillow again.

I went downstairs. My car stood in the driveway, innocent, shining faintly in the moonlight. Unaccountably, my heart began to pound. There was no wind, and the maples towered overhead, black and remote. Barefoot, I tiptoed gimpily across the gravel, wincing at the sharp stones. The noise I made seemed deafening: the gravel crunching, and my own breathing. At Arlette’s door I knocked firmly. The raps were horrifically loud, like rifle shots in the stillness.

“Arlette,” I said, speaking quieter than in a daytime voice, but not in a whisper, “Arlette.”

At once she was there, on the other side of the screen door. I could see her white robe, a pale glimmer in the dimness.

“Yes?” she said rudely. “What ees eet?”

“Where is Nicko?”

“I don’ know,” she said.

“Did you bring him home?”

“I brought ’eem ’ome. I di’n tuck ’eem eento bed.” Her tone was like a slap in the face.

“Well, maybe you should have,” I said, furious, “because he’s gone. He’s not in his room.”

Arlette shrugged her shoulders.

“If you don’t know where he is I’m going to call the police,” I said.

“Did you look in ze bassroom?” Arlette asked coolly. “Why don’ you look in ze bassroom.”

I hesitated, and Arlette pressed her advantage. “Go an’ look, why don’ you,” she urged. “Probably ’e ees jus’ zere.”

I went back to the house and pounded upstairs. Nicko was not, of course, in the bathroom, but when I went back downstairs I found him standing in the driveway. He was wearing only his jeans. It was cold, and he was shivering, his arms crossed on his chest.

“Nicholas,” I said, stiffly. “Where have you been?”

Nicko put up his hand, palm flat, as though to keep me from charging. “Mom,” he said, awkward, preliminary.

“What?” I said.

“Look,” he said, “I have something to tell you.”

“Here I am,” I said. “Tell me.”

Nicko hesitated and swallowed, and shifted his bare feet on the stones. He crossed his arms on his chest again and tucked his hands underneath his armpits, for warmth. I didn’t move or suggest that we go inside. I didn’t say a word.

“Mom, I know you’ve been looking for me.”

I didn’t answer.

“Well, I was here all along.” He paused. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this. Because I know it will disappoint you. The thing is, I was up in the top of the garage,” he said. “I was smoking.” His voice dropped awkwardly.

“Smoking.” I stared at him. “You were up in the top of the garage smoking,” I repeated.

Nicko nodded hopefully.

“In the middle of the night,” I said. “All alone. For four and a half hours.”

He nodded again, less hopefully.

“And that’s where your shirt is, and your shoes,” I said, merciless. “If we go up there right now we’ll find them.”

Nicko didn’t answer, and dropped his eyes.

I was filled with fury. I was outraged at Arlette, this arrogant, mendacious young woman, this duplicitous hussy. She had coolly used my life for her purposes: my car for her friends, my pool for her parties, my son for her sex. I had hired her to look after my children, and she had taken my money and corrupted my son. She had stolen the body of my child.

I was even angrier at Nick, my flesh and blood. He was lying to me, to his mother, his greatest ally, his partner against the whole world. All his life I have taken his side. I thought of him coming downstairs at breakfast, seeing Willis check his watch.

Now Nicko stood on the cold gravel, curling one bare foot over the other for warmth. He looked down at the ground, his shoulders hunched. He was shivering, waiting for me to answer his lie, waiting for the wave of my rage to break over him.

But I was too angry to speak. Fury had taken me over: I was ready to kill Nicko. I wanted to attack him physically. I could understand, right then, in the cold wild center of that wave, how mothers could kill their children, how they could go on and on hitting.

I stood there, blazing, murderous. I could hear my own breathing, the passage of air into my nostrils. I swelled with my own power, I could feel it gather inside me. Over us the maples moved in the darkness, murmuring. Around us the night was cold and dark, and I could feel something in me rising.

Nicko’s arms were crossed on his chest. The moonlight struck the top of his head and his shoulders, but his face was dark. Only his silhouette was clear, the shape and size of his body. In the shadows he looked much larger, taller than I thought he should. His silhouette looked like a man’s, which angered me more, since I knew he was not.

“Mom,” Nicko said, “I’m sorry.”

His voice was gentle, and that sound—gentleness—was terrible. It was like a wave breaking over my own head; it quenched my rage and turned it to cold dread. For gentleness is what you hear in a lover’s voice when he tells you he is leaving, gentleness is what you are offered when there is nothing else left. When you hear it, you know the worst has come, and in Nick’s voice I could hear that it was not Arlette’s reign that had ended.