Peter Taylor

The service was almost over, and Peter Taylor was not satisfied. He did not feel it had been a successful morning. Something was in the air.

There were Sundays when, during a sermon, he could feel the individual attention of each and every person focused so intently on his words that their combined concentration became almost a tangible thing. He often felt this—that he could stretch out his hand with a swift sure move and capture it, then hold it out as a gift to God: the fluttering and wary intelligence of these believers.

Once, when he had been speaking on the Trinity, he had announced that for him Jesus Christ was as real and actively present in his everyday life as his car or house or family. The congregation as one had been shocked at these words, and their usual colorful quietness had gone white, tense, and electric. He had had one awesome moment of feeling at the center of their fierce and hopeful regard before someone sneezed, someone else shuffled, and the tone of the room dropped back to normal. And of course almost immediately some of the more conservative members of the group began to shift uncomfortably on their pews, obviously anxious lest Peter lapse into some sort of unseemly evangelical spiel.

Those moments of unified consciousness were rare. Still, most Sundays were better than this one. Today everyone seemed to be so twittery. They sat with their heads cocked dutifully in his direction, but their eyes were glazed. Clearly they were occupied with their own thoughts. Some people stared out the windows or up at the carved moldings. Even Wilbur Wilson, who could always be counted on for almost fierce attentiveness, kept fidgeting about in his pew like a bored child. During the end of the sermon, which was supposed to have been uplifting and even cheering, Suzanna Blair’s face had slowly grown more and more woebegone, as if she had been hearing him preach about some sort of hell—and in the back of the church his own son Michael stared at him with a stony and unremittingly black stare.

The congregation rose to the opening chords of the organ music and raised their hymnals before them; they seemed to sigh and rustle with relief as they stood. They began to sing “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” and as they did, Peter let his eyes and his thoughts rest for a moment on Michael. His greatest fear was that there really was a God who would chastise him for not ministering well enough to his congregation, or for interpreting Him and His words incorrectly. But in this fear was a kind of hope—that if he prayed, thought, read, worked hard enough, he could perhaps do some part of it right. So in a strange way his fear made him optimistic, energetic, eager. So much yet remained to be done and seen.

But his greatest sorrow was of a different quality, for his greatest sorrow was that he had somehow failed his elder son. This seemed a permanent and enduring emotion, for he felt that even God was more forgiving and less judgmental than Michael. And with God there would be—God willing—more chances, days and months and years of new chances, to redeem and distinguish himself as a minister. But Michael was seventeen now, planning to leave home at the first opportunity. Peter’s time of really influencing Michael was almost over. He had only a few more chances, and this knowledge carried with it not relief, but despair.

This was not what he had intended; it was never what he had intended. He had planned to provide for his children a love so broad and vast and sturdy that it would stretch under and around them all their lives, as naturally and endlessly as the earth beneath their feet and the air they breathed and moved through. This had been one of the major efforts of his life. Peter felt he worked every day to build and strengthen this benevolent domain. He wanted his children to be happy and secure. But for some reason his elder son had always refused to make himself at home within the province of Peter’s love. This was most obvious now, when Michael had attained some sort of physical manhood. He was taller, and weighed more than Peter. In the past year Michael had hulked through life like some science fiction hero of adolescent fantasy, with eyes like laser beams that could cut in one searing instant through the parental bonds of love. But this hauteur had not begun in adolescence—it had begun years and years ago, and Peter could remember the exact moment of that first chilling knowledge.

Peter and Patricia had had happy childhoods and intended the same for their own children. They worked hard, read the best child-rearing books, hugged, kissed, cuddled, held their tempers but disciplined firmly. They forgave readily, and spent countless hours biking with or reading to or rocking or making cookies with or somehow being with Michael and his younger brother and sister. Michael had had colic as an infant, temper tantrums as a baby, and nightmares as a child, but by the time he reached school age, he was a handsome and winsome little boy who was respectful to teachers, good at sports, academically bright. His younger brother and sister, Will and Lucy, had adored him in spite of their normal childish spats, and Michael had, in his own rather undemonstrative way, always equally adored them. He had loved and needed his mother with a ceaseless, fierce, shy passion. But his father he had judged from the start.

Michael was six when Peter first began to notice what he later came to call in his own private thoughts Michael’s Stuffed Animal Stare. It was a look Michael favored only his father with. Peter might suggest that Michael eat with his fork instead of his fingers, or insist that he brush his teeth, or hang up his coat, some trivial task, and Michael would turn to look at him with eyes that had gone blank as buttons, remote, aloof, removed, dispassionate. The first time this had happened, Peter had knelt down and taken his unwilling son into his arms.

“Why, Michael, what’s the matter?” he had asked, alarmed.

“Nothing,” Michael said, his beautiful eyes still cold, his tiny body rigid in refusal, and Peter was as deeply hurt at that moment as he ever was in his life.

Later that night, as they lay holding each other in bed, Peter told Patricia about this, but she had only smiled.

“Well, darling,” she said, “he’s a boy. He’s starting to rebel. I guess he’ll be rebelling against you now for the rest of his life.” She had actually seemed to find this somehow rather sweet, and in turn Peter was reassured.

But when Michael was seven, a more dramatic and somehow prophetic event had occurred for what seemed very little reason. Michael and Will and Lucy had been in their basement playroom playing house one night after dinner. Peter had gone down to inform all three children that it was time for bed. Will and Lucy had immediately set up their normal whine. “Oh, no, Daddy, just let us play a few more minutes, we’ve got a good game going, please, Daddy—”

But Michael had instantly gone red with rage, burst into tears, and yelled, “I hate you! I hate you! You think you can boss everything! I wish you were dead! I wish you were killed in a car accident!”

Peter had stared at his son, stunned, for one long moment, then he had crossed the room and yanked Michael around and swatted him good and hard on his jeans-covered bottom.

“Don’t you ever say that to me again!” Peter had screamed. He had turned Michael around then, placed a hand on each small shoulder, and gripped him tight. “Do you hear me? Don’t you ever say such a thing again. That’s a terrible thing to say to anybody. That’s the worst thing to say. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Will and Lucy, then five and three, had burst into tears at the sight of their father in such a rage, but Michael only went very still. He did not cry out when he was spanked, nor did his father’s words bring the sign of a tear into his dark and secretive eyes. This had sent Peter into an even wilder fury, a truly desperate state, for he wanted some acknowledgment from this child of his that he had not meant what he said, that he did love his father—that he did not wish him dead.

“Well, I’ll move away if that’s what you want!” Peter had shouted, knowing even as he spoke that this could be too irrational and incredible a threat for even the young ones to take seriously. He flung himself from Michael and stomped across the room to the bottom of the basement steps. “I’ll pack my suitcase and move far away and you’ll never see me again!” he cried.

“No, Daddy, no,” both younger children had wailed, and run to him, faces strained with real panic. Peter felt a surge of shame as his younger children grasped his legs, attempting to keep him from going, but his eyes were riveted on his elder son, who had started this insane scene, and who stood now so stony-eyed, unmoving, and adamantly mute that Peter knew in one chill moment that this son would never beg him to stay, and that there really was some substance to his seven-year-old hate.

But Peter did not deserve this hate, he felt, and he did not hate his son, although at that moment he was so furious that his hands clenched at his sides and he longed to cross the room once more, to slap that sullen, blank-eyed look from Michael’s face. Lucy and Will continued to scream. Patricia came rushing down from the second floor, where she’d been taking a bath. She had not even taken time to wrap her wet hair up in a towel, and water dripped in rivulets down her blue bathrobe, making dark streaks from her shoulder to her breast. She stopped at the top of the basement steps, hand grasping the banister, eyes wide with fright, searching the room for some awful sight.

“What happened? Is someone hurt?” she asked.

“Daddy’s running away from home!” Lucy wailed.

“Michael wishes I were dead,” Peter said.

He realized immediately how immature he sounded, standing at the base of the steps, tossing his complaint of wounded pride up at Patricia like that. But he could think of nothing he could say that would make it better. He felt temporarily helpless, Michael’s words had hurt so much.

“Everyone’s tired,” Patricia said. “Come on, Michael, Lucy, Will, it’s time for bed. No more messing around.”

Her normal, patient, irritated voice calmed them all, and the children, relieved that the scene was over, went with unusual silence up the stairs to get ready for bed. Still, Peter stood at the foot of the basement steps, caught in his confusion and misery.

“You must come say good night to them, you know,” Patricia said softly before she shut the basement door.

Peter sat down on the steps for a few moments and tried to think the scene through. What had happened? Why? How could his son say such a violent thing to him with so little provocation? Good God; he was thirty-eight years old, and a minister, and in an instant he had let his own seven-year-old son reduce him to a rage of insecurity and doubts. What should he do now? What would a perfect father do? What would God want him to do?

He waited until the children had brushed their teeth, put on their pajamas, and been tucked in bed by Patricia. Then he went up to the bedrooms. He spoke first with the younger ones, telling them he was sorry he had frightened them, that he loved them and would never leave them, never run away, that he wouldn’t say such foolish things again. Both Will and Lucy, in the privacy of their own rooms, went teary-eyed, and wrapped their arms around him, and snuggled up against him, and Peter felt the blessed bliss of mutual love.

So when he went into Michael’s room, he was calm. He had decided that Michael could not have meant what he said, and he was ashamed that he had reacted so angrily. He did not want Michael to be frightened of his own anger, his own words. He wanted to hold his son, to reassure him.

“Well, son, let’s make up,” he said, approaching the side of Michael’s bed, smiling down at him. At that moment Peter had nothing but goodwill and love for his son in his heart.

But Michael lay rigid in the bed, eyes cold. “Not yet.”

Not yet? What in hell did that mean, and how in the world had Michael come to possess such arrogance?

“All right, then,” Peter said, suddenly berserk with despair, “let’s fight. Are you ready? Come on, tough guy, get out of bed and let’s fight.” He rolled up his shirtsleeves and yanked the covers off his son, exposing the slight severe body in the blue-and-white-striped pajamas. “Come on, come on, you little creep, you don’t want to make up? You want to fight? You want to hold a grudge because I sent you to bed? Get up and put your money where your mouth is!”

Michael sat up in bed, his skin bloodless, white as chalk, his face set.

“Peter?” Patricia said, coming to stand in the doorway.

“Please,” Peter said, nearly choking in desperation, “let me handle this.” He turned back to Michael. “Well, kid, ready to fight?” He made a fist and advanced on his little boy.

Michael’s face flushed then, and he burst into tears. “No, Daddy,” he said. “Please.” He hid his face behind his arm.

“Oh, God,” Peter said, tears coming into his own eyes. He collapsed on the bed next to his son and just sat there a moment, stunned. Then he pulled Michael toward him, and Michael did not resist, but lay there in his arms, a heavy, awkward, ungenerous bundle. “Michael, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have hit you. I love you. I love you. I don’t understand why you’re acting this way. I love you.” He talked on and on, rocking Michael, rubbing his back, until the little boy’s sobs abated. Finally he said, “Are you all right now? Can you go to sleep?”

“Yes,” Michael said.

“Do you want a drink of water? Do you need to go to the bathroom?”

“No,” Michael said. “I’m all right. I’m just tired.”

“All right, then, son. Go to sleep. Good night. I love you.”

“I love you, Daddy,” Michael said.

Peter tucked the covers around his son, kissed his cheek, and left the room. He felt like a monster. He felt he had wrung the words “I love you” out of his son. He had needed terribly to hear those words, but he wondered what it had cost Michael to say them—and why, dear God, it had cost him anything at all.

From then on it was never clear and easy. Michael remained a good, smart, likable child, popular with friends and teachers, quick to learn, good at sports, a fine son. There were even times when Peter could see Michael working to break through whatever barrier it was that kept him from giving to his father the spontaneous love he gave to everyone else. At those times Peter felt deep pity for his son. He went along, doing the best he could, showing his love for Michael in every possible way, refusing to give up, hoping that someday it would change.

Peter took the duties of his ministry very seriously, and he believed that one of his major responsibilities was a symbolic one: he should present before the community an exemplary life. He should try to be wise, serene, and benevolently judicious—whether he was or not. And he was very good at helping others with their personal problems; he had a gift for it. It was only his own family, and more precisely just his elder son, whom he could not handle. So because he felt it would be a failure on his part to ask for advice from anyone, he tried to learn the secrets of fathers surreptitiously.

He volunteered to help with Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, soccer, and baseball Little League. He covertly watched and listened to the other men as they dealt with their sons. He was surprised at the range and varieties of fathering. Some men were brusque and even officious. Some were warmly affectionate, given to gentle cuffing of their sons now and then because it was the only way they had to touch their sons’ bodies. Some were so absentminded about it all that the sons in response danced attendance on their fathers. Well, Peter thought, there’s an idea, and for the next few months he tried to be distant and aloof—in a kindhearted way.

But Michael didn’t even seem to notice. His attitude certainly did not change. Finally Peter went back to his old ways, because it was too much of a strain otherwise. He hugged Michael when he could and tried not to mind that he was not hugged back. He visited Michael’s room at night, just as he visited Lucy’s and Will’s, to tuck them in, kiss them on the forehead, ask casually, “Everything okay?” in case there was a problem that could be discussed best in the quiet of the night. Will and Lucy would sometimes confide in him their secret fears and worries, and sometimes they would simply blither on about the happenings of the day or ask how space shuttles worked—anything to keep from having the light turned out and sleep imposed. But Michael always, always answered, “Yes, everything’s okay.” There were nights when Peter had wanted to grab his son, shake him furiously, and cry, “No, everything is not okay! You’re a secretive, ungenerous, unloving child, and that is NOT okay!”

Peter read books on child rearing. He memorized entire passages from Dr. Spock: “The child after six goes on loving his parents deeply underneath, but he usually doesn’t show it much on the surface.… From his need to be less dependent on his parents, he turns more to trusted adults outside the family for ideas and knowledge. If he mistakenly gets the idea from his admired science teacher that red blood cells are larger than white blood cells, there’s nothing his father can say that will change his mind.”

Peter recited this passage to himself like a mantra the year that Michael began to hero-worship Chet Elliott, the man who coached the soccer league Michael played in. Chet was a handsome young man and a great coach, and that was all that Michael could see. Only Peter and the other adults in Londonton knew about Chet’s adult life—he was a garage mechanic who at thirty showed no signs of marrying. He spent every evening in local bars, drinking to a loud-mouthed, happy-hearted excess and eventually taking to his apartment whatever local girl wanted to go—and there were plenty who wanted to go, because Chet was handsome. He was easygoing, sauntering, quick to laugh, unambitious, unconcerned. He was also a wonderful, hardworking coach, because he loved games, and without even meaning to, without really thinking about it, he instilled all the best values into the boys he coached. He taught them how to play hard and fair, how to balance competition with sportsmanship, how to demand the most from their growing bodies. Then he went off at night to get drunk and slaphappy, and once about every six months he ended up in the doctor’s office with a venereal disease. But the boys he coached didn’t know what Chet did with his nights, and the fathers could see no sign that Chet’s nights ever affected his coaching, and so they kept him on—it was, after all, a voluntary, non-salaried job. They were grateful to have him. The boys adored him, and Peter liked him very much; everybody did, it was impossible not to. But it was a hard year when Michael had Chet for a soccer coach, because no one had ever before aroused in Michael such openhearted exuberant adoration.

He sang Chet Elliott’s praise morning, noon, and night. When he had free time, he went to the Gulf station and hung around watching Chet fill cars with gas or tinker under the hoods. One night at dinner, Michael stated that when he grew up, he was going to be just like Chet Elliott.

“Good, dear,” Patricia had replied, smiling. “I hope you’ll still live in Londonton. Then I won’t have to worry about my car ever again. I’ll just let you take care of it.”

Peter just stared at Michael, then asked Lucy a question about her school field trip. He was trying to put Michael’s claim into perspective. Michael was a child, and his crush was a child’s crush, and it was all part of growing up. But Peter was wounded, for Michael had never once said that he wanted to grow up to be like his father. And Chet Elliott—he wasn’t the sort of man Peter would ever want his son to be. He didn’t even have children of his own. He had no education, no sense of personal destiny and responsibility. Other than his sex, Chet Elliott had nothing in common with Peter.

“You expect too much from Michael,” Patricia said one night.

“I expect him to love me,” Peter replied.

“He does love you, in his own way,” Patricia said.

“When I was his age, I followed my father around like a shadow. I thought my father was God.”

“Michael is different from you. You are different from your father. Peter, you know that Michael has a stubborn streak in him. The more you ask, the less he’ll give.”

“But why? Why?”

Patricia wrapped her arms around Peter as if he were the child. “I don’t know, honey,” she said. “I wish I did know. I know how he hurts your feelings. Oh, children are just the hardest things. I think all we can do is love Michael, and let him be.”

Peter had done his best to do just that: to love Michael, and to let him be. Still, he was always on the alert, hoping for a change, even a slight one, and as the years passed, the burden of his relationship with his son settled on him like a weight on his back. He could not turn easily to any other thing or person: that burden was there, weighing him down, hindering him always just that little bit.

The year Michael turned sixteen was a horror. Michael got his driver’s license and proceeded to smash up his mother’s car, then his father’s, and then a neighbor’s. It was only through the kindness of the neighbor, who refused to press charges against Michael for “borrowing” his car, that Michael avoided being arrested.

Then the Defresnes caught him naked with their naked daughter in their TV room at midnight one night. The Moyers found him with their son and three other boys drinking and smoking pot in the basement underneath their son’s electric-train table. Bartenders called to say they’d done him the favor of kicking him out of their bar because he was obviously underage. Peter had to love his son and not let him be; he had to discipline him, punish him, and set down some stringent rules to protect him from himself.

He found Michael a job as a dishwasher in a local restaurant. He drove Michael there at seven o’clock on Friday and Saturday nights and picked him up and drove him home at one in the morning. He let Michael play sports, and he let him attend any school function that others attended, and he let Michael drive to these, but only with Peter seated in the front seat next to him. He did not let Michael date or even go to movies with friends for several months after the car accidents. Gradually Michael seemed to settle down, although Peter feared the boy was merely hiding his rebelliousness until a future time. And if Michael had been cool toward his father before, he was no longer so. Now he hated his father with a fury, and let him know it. His contempt for his father seemed so deep and strong that it was finally an integral part of his personality and showed in the very stance of his handsome body, in every stare from his cold, judgmental eyes.

God, what a mystery this son was! Peter felt helpless, doomed. Lucy and Will remained loving, tolerant, affectionate children, and their relationship with Peter was full of easy love. He could not understand, he could not think it out—why it should be so different, so difficult between himself and Michael.

At least this summer Michael had calmed down a bit and stopped acting like a hood. He had gotten a job with a local landscape contractor, and the strenuous outdoor work seemed to have a healthy effect. Michael seemed to, in his own jargon, mellow out. He became punctual, reliable, and almost miraculously talkative. At the breakfast or dinner table, he talked voluntarily about the work he did, the people he worked for, or he told jokes he had heard from the contractor and his crew. As Peter watched this son of his, who seemed to grow larger and certainly more tanned every day, it appeared to him that, perhaps for the first time, Michael was happy. And Peter was glad for this happiness, and sorry that it had taken so long in his son’s life to arrive. Because he was afraid that this happiness might be a temporary thing, a delicate china teacup accidentally set down on the hood of an idling car, he was very careful to do nothing that might provoke any changes. It bothered him that almost every night after dinner Michael took off for solitary walks by himself. He told no one where he was going, or rather, they knew, but only vaguely. He always said that he was just going for a walk, around the town, or along the river. They could hardly follow him to see if this was true. And he always returned home at the time they demanded, and he never asked to use the car, and he seemed to spend almost no money. He was never seen with the troublesome bunch Peter was so wary of—so Peter thought that it could be possible that Michael was only walking around the town, enjoying the summer nights, perhaps thinking about his future.… Peter let Michael be. It was the gentlest summer the family had ever had together.

But when Michael started back to school, things changed. Peter and Patricia were not aware of it right away, because on the surface things remained fine. They let Michael drive the car on weekend nights, and he always returned home at an early hour, with the car undamaged. Some weekend nights he didn’t go out at all, but stayed home watching television with the family, or reading by the fire. His happiness, though, had disappeared; he seemed to have lost it. But he was as calm and cooperative as he had been that summer. They had had no reason to worry about him until, just this week, the principal of the high school had called and asked them to come in.

Michael had been in school only six weeks, but the principal said that it was already apparent that if he continued as he was, he would fail every class. He was innately intelligent enough, there was no doubt about that. He had scored very high on the IQ tests, and there was probably no limit to what he could do if he put his mind to it. And he was no longer the discipline problem he had been in his junior year in high school. He didn’t instigate minor classroom rebellions or smoke pot in the restrooms or act in an insubordinate manner. He was always polite, even courteous. But he did not do his work. He did not pay attention. He would not care.

The principal of the school, Dan Ford, was a friend of the Taylors—he attended the Episcopal church, but he had lived in Londonton as long as the Taylors, and they knew one another from parties and community functions. They had goodwill toward one another, and because of this, Dan was taking special pains to present the information carefully to the Taylors.

“I have to tell you, Peter,” Dan said, “this kind of behavior often indicates that the child is not getting enough attention from his parents. That the parents are not spending enough time with the child.”

“If we spend any more time with him,” Peter said drily, “we’d have to sleep in bed with him at night.”

“I know,” Dan said, laughing. “I know. You and Patricia couldn’t be better parents. That’s why I feel at a loss as to what to suggest to do. Perhaps Michael should see a psychiatrist. But you certainly do need to do something.”

Peter and Patricia drove home from the meeting in stunned silence. During the past six weeks, while Michael had been so politely failing his courses at school, he had shown almost exemplary behavior at home. He had, it was obvious, learned the necessary behaviors that kept the surface of the family life smooth: he was courteous, civil, obedient; he helped with the dishes and housework when asked, carried in the groceries, carried out the trash. Now they would have to probe beneath this accommodating surface, and they were afraid of what lurked below. They were afraid of the process of investigation, as if cutting through to the truth would wound their son, or set off some delicate mechanism that would cause him to explode.

But it was not Michael who exploded.

As soon as they got home, they called Michael into the living room and told him what the principal had told them. They told him that if he continued this way, he would not only lose all chances of getting into a decent college, he would also not even graduate from high school.

“That’s okay,” Michael had said calmly. “I don’t want to go to college. The only reason I’ve been going to school is to keep you guys from freaking out.”

“But, Michael,” Patricia said, “you have to go to college.”

“No, I don’t,” Michael said, with that cool, controlled tone that always made Peter want to shake his teeth out. “I don’t have to go to college. I don’t even have to graduate from high school. In Massachusetts, as soon as you’re seventeen, you can quit school without your parents’ permission.”

Peter rose and walked out of the room.

Now he stood at the pulpit of the church, staring out at the congregation, and at his elder son, who had his hymnal raised dutifully before him, but who did not sing. Five days had passed since Michael had made his announcement, and Peter had still not decided what to do about it. His instinct was to do nothing, for he feared that anything he did or said at this point would be wrong. Peter felt explosive with righteous indignation, and he knew in his mind that he was right to feel this way. But he also knew that he could not face his son with his emotions, not when Michael was so cool and Peter was so hot. They might break and lose each other, like hot liquid poured into a cold glass.

Each night for the past five nights, Peter had waited until everyone else in the house was asleep, then he had pulled on his old corduroy robe and padded barefoot down the carpeted stairs, through the hall, and into the privacy of his study. He could not sleep, and he could not think while lying down, but he did not want to inflict his insomnia on anyone else, so he did not turn the light on in his study, but merely paced about the room in the dark. There was enough light coming in the windows from the moon and the streetlight to illuminate the room sufficiently so that as he walked he did not bump into any furniture—but he had nothing to illuminate the problem which drove him to this pacing. He came to the conclusion that his failure toward his son was not one of commitment or devotion or love, but simply of imagination. He could not imagine his son.

If Peter believed anything, it was that a person as privileged by life as he was, and in turn as Michael was, should use his God-given capabilities to help the world along. It didn’t matter how—Peter honestly didn’t care if Michael became a doctor, philosopher, naturalist, actor, scientist, or poet. But he should become something. Peter thought that any child who had been raised in such a loving home, with such an affluent life with so many advantages, owed the world—owed Fate—a debt. What made life worth living if not helping the world? Man must look past himself to live. If he serves only himself, his soul shrivels and dies. Peter believed this as firmly as he believed in God, and if there was any one value he had tried to pass on to his children, this was it. In fact, for Peter this belief was not an intellectual one that could be instilled, but an integral way of life, as natural and necessary as breathing air. Yet his elder son did not in any way seem to live or believe this. He did not want an education; he did not want to discipline and train himself in order to go out in aid of the world. Peter truly could not imagine what kind of person this boy was, who had flourished so perversely in his house, as odd and inexplicable as a solitary penguin thriving in a hot jungle.

When all was said and done, it appeared to Peter that he and Patricia had accomplished nothing more, with all their best efforts, than to keep Michael’s body alive. There were no signs that they had in any way touched his mind and soul.

Peter had managed one more conversation with his son since the discussion with the principal of the high school, and that conversation had been pretty much of a deadlock. No, Michael was not planning to go to college. Yes, his decision was absolute, final; he had given it much thought. Yes, he intended to finish high school, he supposed, if only to keep his mother from being upset. No, he didn’t know what kind of work he’d do after high school. Did it matter? He just wanted something that would give him enough money to move out of his parents’ home and live in his own apartment. No, he wasn’t taking drugs. No, he wasn’t depressed. Yes, he was sorry to cause such pain, especially to his mother, but the honest truth was that he just didn’t want to go to college. He didn’t like studying. There were other things he’d rather do. Oh—work with the landscape contractor. Or with Chet Elliott down at the garage. He was pretty good with his hands and liked that kind of work.

During this conversation Peter sat still, vowing to remain calm in spite of his amazement. He couldn’t have been more dismayed if Michael had suddenly begun speaking a foreign language.

“Well, son,” he said finally. “I guess you know I’m deeply disappointed by all this.”

“I know,” Michael said, and his voice was flat. As he spoke he did not in any way expose his feelings, neither distress nor triumph at hurting his parents in this way.

“I hope at least you’ll finish high school,” Peter said after a pause. “Your mother and I really want you to bring your grades up so that you can graduate.”

“I know you do,” Michael said, and proceeded, in silence, to stare his father down.

Peter did not know what to do. He spent his nights pacing his study and his days attempting to appear normal, as if that would make things fall into their normal places. But life was suddenly weighted. Everything resonated.

Just last night the family had been gathered around the dining room table for dinner, and it was a comfortable enough dinner. Lucy and Will filled the air with gossip and laughter and minor complaints about homework and ice skates. Patricia had served a thick fish stew with homemade bread and a green salad, and after the meal all five Taylors leaned back in their chairs for a moment, enjoying a full and agreeable silence. Then the children rose to clear the table while Patricia brought in homemade apple pie and ice cream for dessert. Peter watched Patricia cutting and serving the pie, handing the plates around to her family, and the three children talked, and the moment seemed calm.

“Hey, I heard a joke,” Michael said. “Jesus is crucified and goes to heaven, see, and he walks through the Pearly Gates and goes up to God. He says, ‘Hi, God!’ But God is looking real sad, so Jesus says, ‘Hey, God, what’s the matter? You sure do look sad.’ God says, ‘I am sad. I’ve made a son. I created him with my own hands. And now he’s dead.’ Jesus says, ‘Hey, God, you’re wrong. I’m your son, and I’m not dead!’ God looks at him. Jesus holds out his arms and says, ‘Father!’ And God holds out his arms and says, ‘Pinocchio!’ ”

Everybody laughed. Will, who was thirteen, even went into one of the laughing fits which had come on him at adolescence; he laughed so hard that tears streamed down his face and he had to be pounded on the back. Peter laughed, too, amused at the joke and wondering immediately if he could somehow work it into a sermon, when he was struck by a fresh doubt: had Michael been trying to tell him something? Was Michael saying that fathers, even God, were incapable of recognizing their sons? Did Michael mean that Peter would prefer a wooden marionette to him? It was exhausting. Everything was fraught with significance.

Last night, for the fifth night in a row, Peter had waited until his house was dark and silent, then he rose from his bed, took up his robe, and went downstairs to his study. He could see by the moonlight that his study held peace. The afghan was folded neatly over the back of the leather sofa, his papers lay in neat piles at right angles to one another on his desk, and in the center of his desk, on the leather-rimmed blotter, lay his sermon, typed and corrected and waiting for Sunday morning. Peter stood for a moment, surveying this domain, his domain, his ordered sanctuary of a room which sat in the middle of his house like a staunch desert isle set down in a turbulent sea. He crossed to the window, and looked out at the world, and wondered if he was growing old. Why else should it calm him to be awake at night, when the house was silent and everything inside and out all muted into shades of gray? He had begun to appreciate the world at night, and in the winter, when snow made the world white, and in the summer, when everything was green. He liked seeing the world all of a piece, unified by color, unfurling away from him in a banner of visible unity. This flashy season, fall, disturbed him. In the daylight he could see the fields around Londonton stretching away from the town like a rumpled patchwork quilt: here a block of green, there a block of bronze, over there a forest of deciduous trees brandishing branches of crimson, scarlet, orange—colors of warning, colors of alarm. This fall did not make Peter feel nostalgic, nor did it make him feel chilled at the thought of the coming winter, the symbolic season of death. It made him think instead of how variegated the world was, how myriad and uncontrollable were the possibilities of life. How dangerous life was. He wanted to tuck away his family, all of them, into his house, and surround the house with snow so that they were all shut in, warm and safe. He wanted nothing golden glinting in the distance, beckoning his son away so soon. But surely these were an old man’s thoughts?

“Peter.”

Peter turned to see Patricia standing in the doorway in her blue cotton summer nightgown.

“Come in,” he said. “Join me. I can’t sleep.”

Patricia shut the door behind her. She crossed the shadowy room and stood at the other end of the long casement window. “What are you looking at?” she asked.

“The world,” Peter said. “I keep thinking how vast and dangerous it is. I’m afraid to let Michael wander out into it.”

Patricia laughed softly. “Peter,” she said, “Michael wants to get an apartment in town and work at a garage. I would hardly call that wandering out into the vast and dangerous world.”

“Why is he doing this to us?” Peter asked, and he softly hit the windowsill with his fist.

“He’s not doing this to us. He’s just doing it.”

“I want him to go to college.”

“I know you do. He knows you do. But it’s his life.”

“What does that mean—it’s his life? Who gave it to him? When did he gain control of it? Legally, I suppose it will be his life when he’s eighteen. Then he can get married, own land, be drafted. But I suppose if you want to get realistic about it, it was his life when he turned sixteen and got a driver’s license. Well, I guess if he has the right to go out and kill himself in a car at sixteen, he should have the right to ruin his life at seventeen.”

“If you’re going to look at it that way, Peter,” Patricia said, “then it was his life the day he learned to walk.”

She left the windowsill and crossed the room. “I think we both deserve a drink,” she said, and picked up the brandy decanter.

Peter was quiet for a moment, occupied with his thoughts, but he watched Patricia as she poured the brandy into glasses, and he could not help but notice how in the darkened room the light from the window caught and glinted off the cut glass, off the golden liquid, off Patricia’s pale and shining hair. Patricia brought him his glass, then went to the leather sofa and sank down in one corner of it, drawing her bare feet up under her, pulling the afghan down about her in a nest.

“It’s getting cold,” she said. “I’ll have to get out all our winter nightclothes. I need my good warm nightgowns.” She fussed about, wrapping the afghan over her shoulders, and it seemed to Peter as he watched that there was something ageless and endearing about his wife curled up like that with the afghan draped around her like a shawl. As she rearranged herself and the cover, her bare arms, neck, and feet shone smoothly, a wealthy substance, glossy against the muted leather and wool. She sat there smiling up at him, vivid, gleaming, real.

“It seems harder for me than for you,” Peter said. He sat down at the other end of the sofa, and sipped his brandy. What he wanted to do was believe that she was magic, eternal, that if he threw himself before his wife now and implored her, she could make things change.

“You expect more of him than I do,” Patricia said. “You want so desperately for us all to get things right.”

“What’s wrong with that? Of course I expect a lot. And I do all I can to provide every kind of assistance I know.”

“Yes, that’s true. You are wonderful that way. But do you think you might be a little limited in your views of what is right?”

Patricia smiled as she spoke, and she raised her glass to her lips. The afghan fell from one shoulder, exposing the bare flesh of her arm and neck and the soft blue cotton of her nightgown rode up a little, so that the smooth stretch of her leg gleamed.

Peter realized that he had not looked at his wife for a while. Their bodies were as familiar to each other as all the other daily things which dwelt where they belonged within their lives. And as he looked at Patricia, he saw how she had changed. She was forty-five, and still slim in her clothes, but her body had taken on a roundness and a soft solidity. He touched her knees carefully, then ran his hand up and down her leg for the warmth and the comfort.

“It’s possible, you know,” Patricia said, smiling at him from the other end of the sofa, “that your father wanted certain things of you. Perhaps he wanted you to stay on the farm, to follow in his work. Perhaps he was puzzled when you went off so readily into the dangerous world. Perhaps he was hurt because you left the farm so easily. That beautiful, safe home.”

Peter listened to his wife, but now the words were less important than her hushed, beguiling tone. It was almost as if she were singing him a song. Absentmindedly, he ran his hand from slender ankle up the swell of calf, over a silken knee and up her thigh. Here, at the apex of her legs, was a concentration point of body heat, and as naturally as any animal moving toward warm comfort, he extended his arm just a little farther until his hand came to rest in the heated hollow between her legs. She was naked. The sweet surprise of this made his heart thump. He pushed his hand against the furry swell of her crotch, and pushed again.

“Hey,” Patricia said, so softly that it was more an exhalation of breath than a word.

“Hey,” Peter replied, with equal softness.

They smiled at each other in silence, and suddenly there they were: just Peter and Patricia, who loved each other. In one sleek and generous second, everything else in life fell away, leaving them alone in all time and space. Peter put his brandy snifter on the floor, turned to Patricia, and carefully pulled her hips down toward him, moving at the same time so that he could kneel on the sofa between her legs. Patricia held her arms up to him and he unsnapped the waistband of his pajamas and slid them down his hips, then gently lowered himself down over her. They moved together, moist and murmuring, smiling at each other, looking in each other’s eyes, pleased, happy.

Finally Peter just lay there, curled between Patricia’s legs, his head on her breast, her arms wrapped around his back. She stroked his arms and shoulders and smoothed his hair.

“I love you,” he said.

“And I love you,” she answered.

They fell asleep like that in the shadowy room. At some point in the night they shifted positions so that Patricia could cover them with the afghan, but they didn’t really wake up until the strong morning light brightened the room. Then they sat up, feeling cramped from the strange positions. Patricia’s shoulders were chilled, and so were Peter’s feet. But they were happy.

“Well,” Peter said, adjusting his pajamas and robe.

“Well, yourself,” Patricia said.

“I’ll make coffee.”

“I’ll go shower and dress, then come down and make breakfast. It’s only seven-thirty. There’s no rush.” Patricia rose and stretched. “Oh, my aching back,” she said. “I’m getting too old for this.”

“Oh, no you’re not,” Peter replied, and wanted to embrace her again, but did not, because he felt suddenly and strangely shy, and strangely smug.

He had moved through the kitchen this morning like a traveler who has come home after a long and arduous journey. Each pedestrian household thing shone cleanly, and he felt great gratitude toward his wife for putting their house and their lives together with such grace. He dug a measuring cup into the ground coffee beans like a man digging into a treasure, and when the coffee was brewed and the rich aroma filled the air, he just stood in the kitchen, smiling at the toaster and the butter dish, a man happy with his life.

Patricia came into the kitchen, wearing a quilted robe, her hair freshly shampooed. She smelled of herbs and perfume.

“Ummm, coffee,” she said.

Peter took down two mugs, poured the coffee, handed a mug to his wife. “I think you seduced me last night,” he said.

Patricia smiled. “Why, Peter, what a thought!”

“Did you have any ulterior motive?”

Patricia measured a spoon of shimmering white sugar into her mug. “Well,” she said, smiling at him, “perhaps when I first came down to the study I did think of distracting you from your worries about Michael. There are three other people in this family who want your attention, you know. But believe me, my love, after a while I wasn’t thinking anything at all.”

Patricia set her mug down on the table and came over to wrap her arms around Peter. They stood there for a while, just nestling against each other.

Then Peter went upstairs to shower, and as he stood under the steaming water, he felt brisk and hearty and confident: he felt he had regained perspective on his life. He knew there could be no mother more fierce in her love and protection of her children than Patricia. He knew that the health and happiness of her family was her main concern. During the eighteen years of their marriage there had been times when they had argued and disagreed, and even weeks at a time when they had been too angry at each other to make it through with more than a pretense of civility. But they had always trusted each other. They had an honorable marriage.

In the past few months, as Peter realized he was approaching his fiftieth birthday, he had come to view his marriage, when he stopped to think of it at all, as a finished thing, a fine accomplishment, almost a tangible object that he and Patricia had built together. Something, say, as useful and well matched and necessary to their lives and their children’s lives as their walnut dining-room table and chairs. Now he saw that they were not finished, not set in any limits. No. He had seen Patricia through fresh eyes last night, or she had been a new person, or both: she had been a subtle, glowing temptress, and he had been an ardent lover, with a passion both renewed and new. How grateful he was for the variety and complexity of people’s lives. And he hoped he could manage to extend to his elder son, and to his other children, this new generosity of understanding. He wanted to be brave enough to give them freedom, to let them be whatever they wished to be.

But now he sang the last stanza of the hymn, and although he saw Patricia, standing there, he also saw Michael, whose face was set, whose handsome eyes were fixed with their Stuffed Animal Stare. Immovable, sullen son! Peter had to look away. Michael might be one of the most important people in his charge, but he was not the only one, and if he were to allow Michael the freedom he desired, then he, Peter, would have to allow himself an equal freedom of thought. After all, his furious concern was doing little good.

So Peter let his eyes rest on Patricia until the anger subsided and the joy returned.

Then he turned his gaze to the other people in the church, his congregation.

Something was wrong with Wilbur Wilson. All the other members of the church were standing, singing this final hymn, but Wilbur had stayed seated in the pew, his head bowed—in prayer? illness?—his body curved. Beside him Norma Wilson stood turned sideways, holding her hymnal dutifully in her hands, but her eyes were cast downward, as if she did not dare stop her vigilance for a moment. Then Wilbur looked up at Norma, and nodded, and Peter breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps he was only sick, perhaps he had a touch of flu.

In another pew, Suzanna Blair stood with her hymnal in one hand, and with her other hand, she was buttoning her jacket around her. She had put the first button in the wrong buttonhole, so the jacket hung crookedly. She seemed to be awkward now, ill at ease. Peter renewed his resolve to ask Judy Bennett to speak with Suzanna, to offer help.

Judy Bennett stood in the front pew, her head held high as she sang the closing lines of the hymn. On either side of her stood her husband and son, like a pair of tall male bookends, but Peter suspected it was she who supported them rather than the other way around. Peter admired the symmetry of the trio as they stood there, such healthy, clear-eyed people, and he felt a twinge of envy that the Bennetts’ son had fit himself into their lives so well. He wondered what it was they had done right where he as a father had gone wrong. How had they managed to raise a son who stood at their side with such content?

Liza Howard had already put her hymnal in its wooden rack in front of her, and now she stood with her hands raised, holding the collar of her mink coat up against her neck and face. She was staring, dreamy-eyed, at Johnny Bennett, and a sleek fat-cat smile played on her lips. Slowly she rubbed her chin into the silky collar of her fur coat. Steadily she gazed at Johnny Bennett, with slightly lowered eyelids: a sinister, compelling look. My God, she is bewitching, Peter thought, and just then Johnny Bennett, pretending to bend to put his hymnal in the rack, turned slightly and looked back at Liza. Peter could not see Johnny’s expression, but he could see Liza’s: her eyes flashed in recognition and she slowly opened her mouth and touched the tip of her pink tongue to her soft pink upper lip. Her smile widened. Johnny turned back to face the front. He had been turned toward Liza for only a few seconds. But Peter could see from his vantage point how Liza stood now, eyes glittering. She and Johnny were conspirators; there could be no doubt. But what could Peter do about it? What should he do? For now, he tried to focus on the rest of the congregation while his thoughts cleared.

Leigh Findly was sharing a hymnal with her daughter Mandy, but neither woman was singing. Mandy was half turned to look toward the back of the church, her body tense, and Peter could see enough of her face to tell that she was biting her lip. She was searching out someone—who? Beside her, Leigh looked down at her daughter with smiling curiosity, then, as the last word of the hymn was sung, nudged her. Mandy started, looked up at her mother, and the two women shared a quick affectionate glance before turning to the front and staring up at Peter with expectation. He could sense from their attitude of forced composure that the moment the service was over they would lean into each other and laugh.

Behind him, Reynolds’s voice swelled powerfully and held the last note of the hymn. That man had the breath and stamina to outlast the organ, Peter thought. He was grateful for Reynolds’s presence in the church, and in fact he always kept Reynolds and his knowledge and critical intelligence in mind when he wrote his sermons. It kept him from getting sloppy. Peter couldn’t imagine why Reynolds needed to talk to him today, but it pleased him to think that he might be able to be of some help to this solitary man. “A matter of grave concern,” Reynolds had said when he asked Peter if they could talk after church. Well, Peter was not worried. Reynolds was a grave man, his problem was probably intellectual.

The hymn ended. The organ music swelled, faded, died. The members of Peter’s congregation looked up at him for one brief moment, then bowed their heads as he raised his arm to give the benediction. Peter saw them all then, old and young, rich and poor, glad and worried, and he loved them. Suddenly a longing flared up inside him, and he wanted to tell them that they were beautiful, that as they stood before him, they seemed ensconced within the church like precious vessels, and that all the objects man holds dear—velvets, jewels, perfumes, silks, silver, gold, houses, and even land—were thin and meager substances compared to their own persons. It was a miracle that the vast electric energy of their minds and hearts could be contained within a fabric so smooth and complete as skin. They really were true miracles, each one of them, and in his mind, he bowed down before them all. He loved them, these members of his congregation, he loved them, body and soul. He wished he could keep them just as they were at this moment. He wished he could keep them safe and happy forever.

Instead, he lifted his hand high in blessing and spoke the usual ceremonial words: “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with us now and forevermore. Amen.”

In their loft, gathered around the organist, the choir very softly sang the choral amen. Mrs. Pritchard’s plump fingers began to press out a gentle postlude, Handel’s Allegro. Peter Taylor walked down the five steps from the chancel and passed down the red-carpeted center aisle of the church, to be at the door to greet the congregation when they filed out. The members of the First Congregational Church of Londonton raised their bowed heads slowly, as if awakening from a dream, and moved politely from their pews out into the day.