By the time I staggered up, Jeff had pulled the boys apart. He handed the shrieking kid to a big-faced woman, who moved forward, the girl with Helen’s braid holding her leg. The woman clamped Will’s shoulder. “Say you’re sorry.”
“Say you’re sorry, Will,” I warned. Lola would’ve known what to do. She prided herself on her instincts. I didn’t seem to have any.
The woman looked at me with a beam of accusation. “Lookedit. Knocked his tooth loose.” Her fingers pried open his mouth, wiggled the tooth. “That’s bone!”
“Was defending his mom,” Jeff said.
Paul dusted Will off, then lifted him onto his shoulders. Good.
“You okay, bud?” Jeff said to the other kid. Jeff stared at the mom, whose face fell trapezoidal. “Our guy shouldn’t have hit, but your guy shouldn’t have tied her shoelaces.”
Helen murmured agreement. Still, it would’ve been different if Bing had been beneath our boy’s windmilling arms. The fight had been almost beautiful to watch. Paul had his arm out; like me, inclined to apologize.
“Hey, I worry Bing’s too timid,” Jeff said. “I fought when I was a kid.”
Back at their house, Lola jumped up from where she’d been watching TV, looking caught. Their fireplace poofed on with the turn of a knob, giving real, lifting flames. In no time Jeff put a glass of wine into my hand.
“I will go now,” Lola called, from the door.
Helen stepped over things, handing us plates of warm take-out food, with big napkins. “Look,” she whispered. Our boys were finally playing together. It was as if that was something we’d made. I didn’t know it then, but this was our happiness, kids on the floor, intent on a tower of blocks. After a while Helen lifted Bing to his crib and I put Will in his stroller, wrapped in a borrowed blanket. He closed his eyes and started sucking. Behind us on chairs, the guys were laughing.
“Walking down the aisle, she’s thinking, The last blow job I ever have to give.”
Paul would never say that. But he shook his head. “Think about it every day.”
“Try every hour,” Jeff said.
Helen sighed. We all laughed. That somehow made it better.
William slept in his stroller, his hand on his delicate ear, as we walked home. Behind branches, our windows glowed. Lola had turned on lights. I had that full-day feeling as I undressed Will and slipped him into bed. But the weekend ended with a sighing quality.
Tomorrow, it would all start again—Paul gone until next Saturday.
Lola
COINS
“Come on comeon comeon comeon comeon. Come to Lola. I have something for you.” Because he is very angry.
Today it is the mother he was hitting. She has her hand over her eye and I dab ice, the way I do his boo-boos. She lets her face in my hands. Then I take him away. But Williamo, he is strong. I cannot so easily hold. And Lola told a lie. I do not have anything. So I make promises. “Some-a-day,” I whisper, “I will bring you home with me. And there we will make the ice candy.”
He lies still, not any longer fighting. His bones fall in a pattern, like the veins of a leaf.
“I will put you in my pocket and feed you one candy every day. You will be happy. Because the ocean at our place it is very blue. The sky higher than here. And the fruits that grow on trees, very sweet.” Jackfruit, durian, lanzones. Attis. Santol.
“In my pocket I will give you one lychee. You can bounce for a ball.”
“If you were a kangaroo you would have a pouch,” he grumbles, better now, slower the heart.
Through the window I see my employer. She looks like she has too much assigned to her; she cannot complete it all before she dies. She holds the ice and paces, talking long-distance to a woman who reads books about the raising of children. When my employer becomes upset she calls this friend. My employer has the American problem of guilt. But you should not be guilty to your children. It is for them that you are working! Then I remember that check for a