"That's okay," said Bernie. "It'll be okay."
We weren't sure where he had picked up that becalming phrase, probably from us, as we tried to talk ourselves out of the awful lucidity certain days afforded. The whole mirthless dwindle of things would suddenly pull into focus, the crabbed, moneyless exhaustion that stood in for our lives, and Maura and I would both start the chatter, the cheap pep: It's okay, it's going to be okay, we'll get through this. When Bernie repeated these bromides, he sounded seventy years old. It broke your heart, as did about forty-three percent of the things Bernie said and did. About twenty-seven percent of the things he said and did made you want to scream and banish him to his childproofed room, or do much more heinous and ingenious things, just so he'd get the point, whatever the point could be with an almost-four-year-old, but still, to bury him alive and then save him at the last minute, or tell him that the state had passed a law against ice cream and he would go to prison if he even thought about it, because they now had the technology to detect illegal mint-chocolate-chip cogitation, had, in fact, the chips for it, seemed, if not conducive to his development, at least on some level deserved. Thirty percent of what Bernie said and did was either on the bubble or else utterly inscrutable, just the jolts and stutters of a factory-fresh brain working out the kinks.
"Pedagogical conflicts?" said a voice behind me. Aiden's mother stood with her boy, her red bun blazing in sunlight.
She was sky-charged and goddessy in her pantsuit.
"I know," I said, "like, what the hey?"
I was glad I'd remembered to shucksify my vocabulary in the company of children. I hoped it imparted the care with which I could also create a fluttery motion with my tongue around Aiden's mother's bunghole. I was falling in love with her on the spot, on the sidewalk. I wasn't even an ass man, or ass person. I liked breasts, and the word "burgundy."
It must have been the way she'd said "pedagogical."
"It's a bunch of baloney," said Aiden's mother.
You could tell she was sassy, the skeptical sort. She had opinions. She'd be the first to tell you she had opinions.
"I agree," I said.
"They've got no right. We trusted those little brats with our brats."
"Who are the brats, Daddy?" said Bernie. "I'm not a brat."
"It's just irresponsible," I said. "This isn't the end of it."
"If you're talking about messing those yuppies up, I'm in. Pedagogical, my behind."
Bernie and Aiden slipped from their respective parental grips and commenced conversation about an action hero, something not quite human that maybe transformed or transmogrified but in any event could easily exsanguinate any mother or father or adult guardian, which was the crucial part, the takeaway, as TV commentators put it. It would have been hard to tell, witnessing the boys together now, that one had recently tried to bite off the other's penis. The flipside to the fickleness of children was their ability to transcend grudge, adjust to new conditions. Innocence, cruelty, rubbery limbs, amnesia, successful nations were erected on these qualities.
"Say 'pedagogical' again," I said, a little dreamily.
"Excuse me?" Aiden's mother took a step back.
"I mean, say it ten times fast," I said. "I can't. Why is the school closed? Those crazy kids. I was really looking forward to school today. I had my activity nodes all planned out. I was going to play office."
"Were you now?"
I'd won her back. It had been years since I'd flirted. I felt as though I were snorting cocaine, or rappelling down a cliffside, or cliffsurfing off a cliff of pure cocaine.
"I had a memo all planned out."
"Well," said Aiden's mother, "there's no way I was going to play office. Not when I have to go to one. I was really counting on making a house out of pipe cleaner. Maybe a four-bedroom, three-bath, Italian-style villa."
"That could be tough, with pipe cleaner," I said. "Milo."
I stuck out my hand.
"Denise."
"His legs are the motorcycle, they become the motorcycle or the airplane, but he can't fly like Superman," said Bernie.
Sometimes with peers, and with us, Bernie acquired an authoritative tone that charmed. Autodidactic vigor is darling in a little boy. Give him forty years, though, a beer gut, leather vest, bandanna, granny glasses, and picture him the sad knob known as the Professor in a biker bar off the thruway, the arrogant but harmless turd humored for his historical factoids about extinct warrior societies and mots justes about the bankruptcy of liberal democracy, humored, that is, until a severe, silence-craving patron, maybe some psychotic who made his living garroting people's wives and business partners for high three-figure fees, suddenly didn't find the Professor's disquisitions edifying, kicked his neck in, then it wasn't so charming. Which is why I tended not to picture it.
"I saw him fly on TV," said Aiden.
"He's not real," said Bernie.
"Who? Iron Hawk?"
"No," said Bernie, and I started to cringe. "Superman. He's not real."
"Yes, he is," said Aiden.
"No," said Bernie. "He's just a story people tell to make themselves feel better. That's what my daddy says."
Denise shot me a look.
"It's true," I said.
"I guess it is." She laughed.
Now the Happy Salamander door opened and a bearded young man peered out. This was Carl, a Salamander founder, the heavy theorist with the barn. I'd met him once at a school picnic. Was he Blue Newt Faction? We'd have to tread carefully.
"Hey, guys," he said. "Probably be better if you didn't loiter here."
"Loiter?" I said.
"Right."
"We came to drop our kids off at school."
"I'm sure you read the sign on the door," said Carl.
"I'm sure you have our reimbursement checks cut," I said.
"You tell him, Milo," said Denise.
"Excuse me?" said Carl.
"We're paid up through June."
"Us, too," said Denise.
"There's still a month and a half left of school."
"Yeah, look," said Carl. "This isn't about money, okay? The whole project has been ripped apart. There are former comrades out there spreading intolerable lies about our methodologies. Reputations and friendships are in tatters. And you're worried about reimbursement?"
"Damn right I am," I said.
"We just wanted a nice pre-K for our kids," said Denise. "Blocks and hugs. That's all. We didn't demand Mandarin, or even tumbling. Blocks and hugs. An ant farm."
"And we wanted to give your children the most wondrous educational and social experience ever devised. But we blew it. It's that simple. It's a tragedy. I'm going back to grad school. I don't need this shit. Screw budgets, overhead, trying to compensate for the inadequacies of parents like you. I'm going back to grad school and then I'm going to teach rich kids in Brooklyn. I'll write books. Fuck you, reimbursement. Of course you'll get your reimbursement. But also, fuck you for not contributing, for not helping to make this work, for being a coward in the battle for your children's minds and souls."
"Going back to grad school?" I said. "Didn't you get your degree already?"
"There are many versions of that story, my friend."
Carl shook, his beard wet with spit. He wiped it with the sleeve of his stained French sailor shirt.
"Can we talk to Maddie?" I said.
"Yes," he said. "Maybe it's better if you talk to Maddie."
He disappeared into the house and in a moment Maddie poked her head out.
"Sorry about that. Carl's taking this hard."
"So are we," I said.
"The Blue Newt Faction is talking about starting again. Maybe upstate. If you're interested. The others, I don't know what they will be doing. But we would be delighted to take Bernie back if we get something together at some point. Aiden, too."
"Would you board them? With the milk cows?"
"Excuse me?"
"We live here, Maddie," I said. "This school is near our houses. Are you suggesting we all move to a little town upstate? Will there be a cheese collective we can all work at?"