The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

9

From his birth, Eric was like that nursery rhyme: when he was good, he was very, very good, and when he was bad, he was horrid. All that was missing was the little curl right in the middle of his forehead. His hair was as black as Joan’s, but the same texture as Martin’s, straight as a pasture of reeds, not a curl to be found.

When the daughters of the former Pregnant Six came over for playdates with Daniel, it was Eric who absorbed their attention, whom they insisted on mothering, ordering Daniel around in supercilious tones—“Bring me his blanket,” or “He needs a new bottle, make sure you warm it up right”—while Eric cooed in their arms, wrapped long blond or brunette or pale red hair around his chubby fingers. He was angelic with the girls, never screamed when he was their make-believe baby. But with his own mother he screamed, jags that lasted for hours when he wasn’t hungry, or thirsty, or wet, or dirty, or ill, or hurting, or teething, and Joan couldn’t figure out if it was because the world seemed to him a frightening place, or if it was simpler than that—mere frustration that he could not yet make himself understood. When he would finally lock his lips together, the silence itself rang, as if a bomb had decimated all the sounds in the world, leaving nothing behind.

Daniel was usually a good sport and played the game of happy family while Joan and some combination of Augusta, Carla, Dawn, Emily, Meg, and Teresa watched a version of the future unfold. But sometimes, when he grew tired of heeding commands, he disappeared, and Joan would find him in his room, at his white desk, a notebook in front of him, a pen in his hand. During one of those afternoons, he started a story about Henry refusing the kind offer of another squirrel family to join them. “Come be with us,” the mother squirrel said. She was fat and round and her fur was brown. “No, I’m not interested in having any brothers and sisters, not anymore. Being on my own is much better.” Joan silently agreed.

When the weather was nice, the women sat outside at Joan’s old writing desk. Purchased in a secondhand store for twenty-five dollars when she was eighteen and new to New York, there was no longer room for it in the house, but she had not wanted to set it out on the curb, dumped into a garbage truck. It hurt her to use the table this way, on which she had written so much, now stained from sweating glasses of iced tea and wine and gin and tonics and soda cans, but at least she could sit at it, her bare toes kicking at the cool grass she and Fancy had planted. Listening to the women’s delight with how their eldest daughters so naturally cared for Eric, Joan would wish just one little girl would refuse to hold him, would say she had different dreams for herself, did not want to waste her time learning how to mother, that it was a skill she would have no use for. But such was unlikely, for as smart as Augusta, Carla, Dawn, Emily, Meg, and Teresa were, they were vocal about their maternal fulfillment, their satisfaction in having children, “Even better than we imagined it would be,” they frequently said, in earshot of their daughters. “Don’t you think so, Joan?” they asked her, and although Joan smiled, never did she nod her assent.

Once, her life had been completely fulfilled by a different kind of striving, that did not involve watching children interact and hearing ecstatic mothers describe their crushes with motherhood.

It always came as a shock to her then, that she was no different from any of them: a formerly famous writer now a stay-at-home mother, taking a yoga class two towns over twice a week, reading to Daniel, listening to his stories, trying to find a way in with Eric, a four-day weekend twice a year with Annabelle Iger in New York, happily hearing her rail against marriage, against children. Joan’s failure to produce the first novel demonstrated, Iger said, the norm’s destructive, debilitating effects. The way Iger held Martin wholly responsible would give Joan a sense of malevolent glee.

One cold afternoon, when the daughters of Augusta, Teresa, and Dawn were playing their usual game with Eric and Daniel in the nursery, and the women were in Joan’s kitchen, cups filled with hot coffee, plates filling up with slices of Reine de Saba, the chocolate almond cake Dawn was testing on them before offering it at Boulangerie de Rhome, the news of the day was that, in Vermont, a social worker was shot to death with a rifle by a mother fearing she would lose custody of her children. Meg and Teresa pressed their hands to their mouths, as Dawn said, “I’d do the same thing, shoot anyone who tried to take my kids from me.” Joan nearly said aloud what she was thinking: she loved Daniel, she did love Eric, but sequential hours at a desk of her own, in a room of her own, with the ideas, or at least one idea, flowing, having a brief respite from custody, from mothering, from Daniel’s after-school questions about everything, from Eric’s screams, would not be half-bad.

At two, Eric’s first word was not Mommy, Daddy, Daniel, Fancy, grass, bath, or candy, or any variation thereof, but no. And it was not a general no. It took Joan and Fancy several days to understand what Eric was trying to refuse, and even Daniel, who could decipher Eric’s grunts and waving hands easily, was confused.

No meant no more reading to Eric at bedtime, no more big books, no more children’s books, no reading at all, refusing that which was essential to Joan. However, if promised a red lollipop, he would listen to a story of Daniel’s. He seemed to like the little gray squirrel, but the lollipop had to be in sight at all times, otherwise he stuffed his little fingers into his little ears and turned his face to the starry blue wall.

If the color blue, among other things, encouraged efficiency and communication, then Eric excelled at combining those two traits, efficiently communicating his needs and his wants without linguistic prowess.

No more reading came first, then No diaper. “No diaper,” Eric said to Joan when she was changing him one morning. “No diaper,” he said to Fancy that same day, when she was doing the same thing. He tugged at the diaper, pushed it down, figured out how to get one leg free, then the other, then ran through the house naked from the waist down, his chunky little ass so low to the ground.

“He’s done with diapers,” Daniel said to Joan.

“I get that, love, but he’s only two. Barely potty-trained. He’s not ready to make that decision for himself,” and Joan diapered Eric again.

“No diaper,” Eric yelled in the middle of the night, abandoning sleeping straight through, a trick only recently mastered, until his demand was honored. It was three in the morning, and everyone was gathered around his crib. Martin said, “He knows his own mind. So let’s try underpants. Maybe he’s telling us he knows more than we do.”

Apparently he did, and Joan thought his name was proving itself—he was ruling his own world, setting the guidelines by which he was willing to live. Superheroes ran across his bottom from then on. Somehow, he had trained himself.

The week Eric left diapers behind, Daniel said, “How old was I when I stopped wearing diapers?” Joan thought, then said, “Almost three. Right, Fancy?” And Fancy nodded. “So does that mean Eric is smarter than me?” The corners of his mouth turned down, his eyes, too, were drooping like some old hunting dog, like the oldest hunting dog in the world. “Of course not,” Joan said. “Everyone lives their life on a different schedule. Eric is early in this area, you were right on time.”

Eric was, however, very slow to talk. He gathered up one word at a time, then ran with that word as if it were a kite on the end of a long rope. At three, his favorite word was sandbox. Led to the sandbox, he would spend happy hours alone building battlements, bridges made of fallen branches and twigs, forts with his own shirt and pants, holes filled with water from the hose that he figured out how to uncoil and turn on. Usually, he did not destroy what he created.

If blue fostered intelligence, then Joan had her doubts, both about the efficacy of colors employed this way, and about Eric. At four, his mouth was a receptacle for items other than food—bobby pins, pennies, paperclips, buttons, crayons, the sundered hoof of Fancy’s stuffed giraffe. At four and a half, he began eating sand, clumps of dirt, chewy leaves, flowers plucked from the gardens, his baby teeth masticating it all. At nearly five, he was also sucking on pebbles, mashing pen caps of cheap ballpoints down, like some steel-toothed machine, until he bit through the plastic. It was as if his refusal to breastfeed had manifested into an unquenchable oral fixation. Martin issued his professional determination that it was a phase he would outgrow.

But when Fancy found a sliver of bark between his front teeth, his tongue green from leaves, teeth marks scratching the surface of a rock he had in his pocket, she brought her concerns to Joan, and Joan couldn’t keep herself from yelling at Eric. “Why are you eating all this crazy stuff?” and Eric, calm with that irritating half-smile on his lips, said, “I just like how it feels in my mouth.” She left Fancy with Eric outside on the swings and went inside, to a living-room shelf where she found Martin’s Diseases and Disorders and searched its pages for a disorder that might explain why he was stuffing strange things down his gullet, if it indicated some kind of mental disturbance, and there it was:

Pica

Nutritional theories attribute pica to specific deficiencies of minerals, such as iron and zinc.

The sensory and psychological theories center on the finding that many patients with pica say that they just enjoy the taste, texture, and smell of the item they are eating.

A neuropsychiatric theory is supported by evidence that certain brain lesions in laboratory animals have been associated with abnormal eating behaviors, and it is postulated that pica might be associated with certain patterns of brain disorder in humans.

Psychosocial theories surrounding pica have described an association with family stress.

Addiction or addictive behavior has also been suggested as one possible explanation for pica behavior in some patients.

Treatment: Education about nutrition. Psychological counseling. Behavioral interventions for children with developmental disabilities. Closer supervision of children during play. Child-proof homes and play environments.

Eric didn’t seem to have developmental difficulties, or an obsessive-compulsive disorder, the sandbox was regularly raked, there was no lead paint in the house, none, as far as she knew, in the dirt. He was the youngest member of a loving family, and chewed a children’s multivitamin every single day. What stress could he have?

That night, Joan showed Martin the pica entry and said, “I think our youngest son might be suffering from this.”

They had a heart-to-heart with Eric in the living room. Martin on the couch, Eric on the ottoman, Joan in the comfortable armchair some distance away. Triangles were the only thing she remembered from junior high geometry, and if a line were drawn from Martin to Eric, Eric to Joan, Joan to Martin, they were the three points of an obtuse triangle, and she, way out there, was the longest side, the point at the end of ninety degrees.

“Eric, do you feel compelled—is something making you eat dirt, sand, pebbles, leaves, twigs, sticks, stones, grass, and anything else that people don’t usually eat? Something inside that’s telling you to eat those things? Voices, or just a hunger you can’t explain to yourself?” Martin asked.

“No,” Eric said.

“No what?” Martin asked.

“I don’t hear voices and I eat real food when I’m hungry.” It wasn’t an explanation, but it was something.

“Will you stop eating dirt, sand, pebbles, leaves, twigs, sticks, stones, grass, and anything else you know doesn’t belong in your mouth?” Joan was impressed Martin could reel everything off twice in the same order, although surely he did the same thing, with medical terms, in the operating room.

“Yes,” Eric said. “It’s just for fun anyway.”

“Will you promise not to have that kind of fun anymore?” Martin asked.

“Yes. No more fun,” he said. “Can I go?”

Martin nodded and Eric ran from the room, his bare feet stomping on the hardwood floor. He had Martin’s loud walk.

“Pica crisis averted,” Martin said. “Next.”

And it was true, the crisis disappeared or never truly existed; still, it seemed strange to Joan that Eric would have eaten any of those things in the first place, and she wondered what went on his head.

10

A fair came to Rhome the first weekend of August, setting up in a huge field where the hay had been sickle-mowed, leaving behind a flat, golden carpet. The field was ten miles past the Mannings’ neighborhood, now called Peachtree by almost everyone. It was hot and sunny, the cloudless sky a rich blue. All of Rhome seemed to have turned out, as well as a good part of the populations of the towns on either side of it, for the fair was bustling when Joan and Martin and the boys arrived. White and beige tents dotted the landscape and booths had been set up and were doing a brisk business selling local produce, home-made jams and preserves, cheeses made from cows and goats and sheep from the nearby farms, wine bottled from Rappahannock County and Shenandoah Valley grapes. For the kids, there were Italian ices and sno-cones to lick, cotton candy to pull apart, and rides—a Ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, a small roller coaster, a riding ring where old horses were taking the youngest for slow rides, round and round. The aroma of barbecue was in the air.

Joan assessed the crowd, lighting upon the most interesting: young men turning white T-shirts into art, pinching the material tight and rubber-banding each section until they looked like porcupines being dipped into huge steaming vats of colored dyes; the young woman with a bird’s nest of purple hair sitting at a potter’s wheel, slamming down hunks of clay, her hands moving nearly as fast as the wheel, cups, vases, plates, bowls, trays, appearing like magic; the elderly man in a worn blue linen suit, a jaunty straw boater on his head, a smeared palette tight in his hand, painting a mammoth canvas of people on a beach staring out at an ocean where a sailboat bobbed in the distance, though he himself was standing in a mowed field; the handsome young man at an old-fashioned school desk, a manual typewriter in front of him, a stack of paper to the side. He had long pony-tailed hair and round wire glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, and his sign read: $5 GET YOUR OWN PERSONAL SHORT STORY. Joan absorbed these people and something clicked inside of her.

Daniel brought her back, tugging at her hand, saying, “I want to go exploring. I’ll take Eric with me, but I’ve got so much to see and you and Daddy are walking too slow.” He was a serious, responsible boy.

“He’ll pull you every which way,” Joan warned Daniel, wanting him to take Eric, thinking a good mother would let her older son run free, not obligate him to watch over his younger brother.

Martin touched her shoulder. “Let them go,” he said, and she wondered why he would think she wouldn’t.

Martin handed Daniel ten single dollar bills. “For whatever you guys want,” he said. “Meet us at five at the entrance, okay? There’s a lot of people here and it would be tough to have to search for you.”

Daniel held up his wrist, showed his father his watch, the birthday present he had chosen for himself last year. He was obsessed with time lately: how much time had elapsed between one event and another, how much time had gone by since the beginning of the world, since he had written his last Henry story, since he had given Joan a story to read, since he began reading the latest big book he was reading, how little time was left before he was late to a friend’s house, before he started fifth grade, before his tenth birthday in late December, before he was all grown up.

On the way home, the boys bounced off the backseat, chattering about the rides they had ridden, everything they had eaten, the new tie-dye T-shirts they were wearing, the clay vase painted yellow and white that Joan was holding in her lap, bought from the girl with the bird’s-nest hair. Bounding into the house, the boys said they were full, they did not want dinner, and did not argue when Joan said, “Baths! Alone or together, whatever you want, but you both need to wash your hair.” Wonderfully worn out, they were asleep long before their usual, well-guarded bedtimes.

Joan fixed salads with tomatoes and cucumbers from their own garden. She held up a bottle of wine, and Martin shook his head, “Work,” he said. She opened the bottle anyway, poured herself a glass, and they ate at the kitchen table, the windows all thrown open. The sun was just setting, it was nearing eight, and Martin was on his way back to the hospital. “I may sleep there tonight,” he said, which he sometimes did when he was worried about a patient who was not doing well. He kept a clean suit, shirt, and tie in his office. He never told her the names of his patients, gave her only brief précis of who they were. This one that he was worried about was Japanese, a grandfather, father, husband, a lover of the tea ceremony, and Joan had named him Mr. Kobayashi.

Martin grabbed a couple of apples from the bowl on the counter, kissed the top of Joan’s head, and shut the back door quietly. She heard his new car rev up, a Mercedes, all black. Years of driving secondhand Toyotas, he adored his car like a mistress, teaching the boys how to wash and wax on a couple of weekends. He had gotten the top-of-the-line sound system installed. Once he was beyond Rhome, he had twenty miles of pure highway, always racing beyond the speed limit, blasting the music, the windows down, screaming the lyrics.

The kitchen was clean and Joan was back at the table, her typewriter, silently retrieved from Eric’s closet just minutes earlier, plugged in for the first time in five years. She had dusted it off, checked that the cartridge still had ink, which it did. She had found reams of paper in that closet too, had taken one. Ripping off the wrapping around five hundred sheets of virgin paper had felt like love to her, overwhelming, never-going-to-happen-again love. She was thrilled Martin had gone back to the hospital to watch over Mr. Kobayashi. The idea had come to her in one fell swoop during the afternoon, because of the fair, and she had to start to get it down.

There was a potential novel there, she knew. She felt its commanding logic, both internal and external, powerful enough to keep her tethered to home, to silence the fears that she would never write again, eliminate the horrid daydream in which she sometimes indulged, about simply walking away from this alternative life she was living, filled with its soft poetry and hard tediousness, its spectacular, love-ridden times measured against meaningless hours and days and weeks and months, a life where her past accomplishments were long forgotten, where she was called, most often, Joan Manning, leaving her tongue-tied and wishing she could say, “I’m not Joan Manning, I’m Joan Ashby, the writer.” That indulgent daydream about leaving all this behind. Leaving the children, Martin, the house that was too small, the great stretch of land that was, like the house, in her name alone, where she used to think she would set up a writers’ colony. Leaving it all behind and never returning, stepping back into her original skin, where she was only, foremost, supremely, the writer Joan Ashby, no longer tied to the person she still mostly loved, the children they had made together that she loved with unequal force.

She thought about the boys in their beds, before their existences entirely fell away, their breathing no longer her concern. There was only the hum of the overhead light and the refrigerator, and then only the words in her head rushing onto the page.

We were young, and some of us were beautiful, and others of us were brilliant, and a few of us were both. Citizenship demanded only an ability to create, to use our minds and hands and bodies in unforeseen ways. We believed we knew more than those who had tried before us. Their experiment had failed, but their hard lessons would serve as our guide. Passionate, arrogant, certain we would not falter, or deceive, or betray ourselves, that we would not blacken our lives with whitewashed expectations, our presence here, in this arcadia, proved we had slipped the ropes and chains of expected, normal life. We considered everything. Except everything. By its very nature, everything resists corralling; it is far too expansive. You think you’ve avoided every last trap, but what you hadn’t considered, what you never could plan for, it is that which trips you up.