said.
Anna remembered signing off with high amusement on the promise to contribute thirty-five hours of volunteer work to the school. The day after the May Fair, Clean-Up Day, she’d shown up with her own vacuum cleaner, as per instructions, and vacuumed the hell out of every room. The following day, a Monday, she had sent Eva back to the swings.
“Nice day,” she’d said to one of the mothers, and while that first approach had gone entirely unrewarded, others hadn’t. Slowly, purely through the forgiveness built into the matrix of every woman with small children, she had found her place.
At the old blinking light, Anna put the car into neutral, checked her phone for reception, saw something out of the corner of one eye, and turned to catch the boy streaking past her like an arrow shot by a jealous god. Off the seat, beautifully balanced on the pedals of his mountain bike—shirt unbuttoned, body offered recklessly to the sun—he saw her and he hit the brakes, coming to an abrupt stop as she drove past.
She crossed the intersection and a few minutes later found herself parked outside the grocery store in a world flattened to the single dimension of Richard Strand’s son. She dialed Ree’s number.
“The boy was on a bike,” she said.
“A bike?”
“A bike.”
“Like, a bicycle?”
“Yeah, a bicycle.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“The boy is ambulating. The boy should stay home.”
“Have him arrested.”
“The boy should remain indoors .”
“Have him shot. No, wait, shoot him yourself. Go to Walmart, get a gun, and shoot him.”
Anna took out her car key and ran it hard and fast into the cool metal of a post. “I’ve done everything right, Ree. I’ve behaved impeccably. I’m minding my own business, I’m driving across town, and suddenly, there he is. On a bike .”
“I’m telling you, shoot the motherfucker. That way he won’t be riding his bike no more.”
Anna hung up, checked her watch, and called Mia, who was never home.
“I saw him,” she told the machine. “He had his shirt undone, flapping behind him in the wind. What happened to decency? What happened to the social protocol? Since when do people get to ride around with their shirts undone? And you’re never home. You realize you’re never home?”
It was hours before she could begin to see that Dr. Roemer was right, that it was all in her mind. Out of her fevered fantasy, out of her endlessly turning mind, had come a projection of need so strong she had galloped to the kitchen less than a week before, grabbed a piece of paper, and written in breathless, jagged strokes, I want you so much my mouth hurts . Had her mouth really hurt? It was hard to tell but it was easy to see, as she rolled up to the old blinking light on her way back, the arbitrary creation of the arbitrary need.
At the light she covered her face with both hands, appalled by the morning’s violent spasm. A boy flying past on a bike belonged to the world and to godlike the laughter of children through the leaves, the tumult of water over stone, the languor of summer. Let the boy ride his bike, thought Anna, let the boy go; and suddenly, for the first time in weeks, she felt her soul grow still and expand into a state of measurable freedom.
She drove the rest of the way home whistling badly out of tune, stopped by the post office, picked up a stack of bills, and covered the short distance to her house. There, propped against her gate, was a bicycle. A gray bicycle slashed through with red, a pedal still slowly turning.
Anna got out and stared, silence settling like dust over the bicycle, the dirt road behind her, the house before her, and every little thing in between: the weeds pushing blindly through flagstone and gravel, the undecipherable progress of a beetle on the gate, the acrobatics of two white butterflies engaged in play. Heart pounding, she pushed the gate open.
He was sitting bare-chested on the step by her front door, elbows
Anna remembered signing off with high amusement on the promise to contribute thirty-five hours of volunteer work to the school. The day after the May Fair, Clean-Up Day, she’d shown up with her own vacuum cleaner, as per instructions, and vacuumed the hell out of every room. The following day, a Monday, she had sent Eva back to the swings.
“Nice day,” she’d said to one of the mothers, and while that first approach had gone entirely unrewarded, others hadn’t. Slowly, purely through the forgiveness built into the matrix of every woman with small children, she had found her place.
At the old blinking light, Anna put the car into neutral, checked her phone for reception, saw something out of the corner of one eye, and turned to catch the boy streaking past her like an arrow shot by a jealous god. Off the seat, beautifully balanced on the pedals of his mountain bike—shirt unbuttoned, body offered recklessly to the sun—he saw her and he hit the brakes, coming to an abrupt stop as she drove past.
She crossed the intersection and a few minutes later found herself parked outside the grocery store in a world flattened to the single dimension of Richard Strand’s son. She dialed Ree’s number.
“The boy was on a bike,” she said.
“A bike?”
“A bike.”
“Like, a bicycle?”
“Yeah, a bicycle.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“The boy is ambulating. The boy should stay home.”
“Have him arrested.”
“The boy should remain indoors .”
“Have him shot. No, wait, shoot him yourself. Go to Walmart, get a gun, and shoot him.”
Anna took out her car key and ran it hard and fast into the cool metal of a post. “I’ve done everything right, Ree. I’ve behaved impeccably. I’m minding my own business, I’m driving across town, and suddenly, there he is. On a bike .”
“I’m telling you, shoot the motherfucker. That way he won’t be riding his bike no more.”
Anna hung up, checked her watch, and called Mia, who was never home.
“I saw him,” she told the machine. “He had his shirt undone, flapping behind him in the wind. What happened to decency? What happened to the social protocol? Since when do people get to ride around with their shirts undone? And you’re never home. You realize you’re never home?”
It was hours before she could begin to see that Dr. Roemer was right, that it was all in her mind. Out of her fevered fantasy, out of her endlessly turning mind, had come a projection of need so strong she had galloped to the kitchen less than a week before, grabbed a piece of paper, and written in breathless, jagged strokes, I want you so much my mouth hurts . Had her mouth really hurt? It was hard to tell but it was easy to see, as she rolled up to the old blinking light on her way back, the arbitrary creation of the arbitrary need.
At the light she covered her face with both hands, appalled by the morning’s violent spasm. A boy flying past on a bike belonged to the world and to godlike the laughter of children through the leaves, the tumult of water over stone, the languor of summer. Let the boy ride his bike, thought Anna, let the boy go; and suddenly, for the first time in weeks, she felt her soul grow still and expand into a state of measurable freedom.
She drove the rest of the way home whistling badly out of tune, stopped by the post office, picked up a stack of bills, and covered the short distance to her house. There, propped against her gate, was a bicycle. A gray bicycle slashed through with red, a pedal still slowly turning.
Anna got out and stared, silence settling like dust over the bicycle, the dirt road behind her, the house before her, and every little thing in between: the weeds pushing blindly through flagstone and gravel, the undecipherable progress of a beetle on the gate, the acrobatics of two white butterflies engaged in play. Heart pounding, she pushed the gate open.
He was sitting bare-chested on the step by her front door, elbows
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