The Stolen Child

“Dad, I’m tired of it. Sick of practice, practice, practice. Tired of wasting my Saturdays. I think I should have a say over my own life.”


He drew a deep breath and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. The rest of the Days understood the signal. Quiet all the way home. That night I could hear them talking, make out the ebb and flow of a loud and emotional confrontation, but I had lost all ability to eavesdrop from a distance. Once in a while I’d hear a “goddam” or “bloody” explode from him, and she may have cried—I suppose she did—but that’s it. Near midnight, he stormed out of the house, and the sound of the car pulling away left a desolation. I went downstairs to see if Mom had survived the ordeal and found her calmly sitting in the kitchen, a shoebox open on the table before her.

“Henry, it’s late.” She tied a ribbon around a bundle of letters and set it in the box. “Your father used to write once a week while he was over in North Africa.” I knew the story by heart, but she unwound it again. Pregnant, with a husband overseas at war, all of nineteen at the time, she lived with his parents. She was still alone at the time of Henry’s birth, and I was now almost as old as she had been through the whole ordeal. Counting my life as a hobgoblin, I was old enough to be her grandfather. Untamed age had crept into her heart.

“You think life’s easy when you’re young, and can take almost anything because your emotions run so strong. When you’re up, you’re in the stars, and when you’re down, you’re at the bottom of the well. But although I’ve grown old—”

She was thirty-five by my calculations.

“That doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be young. Of course, it’s your life to do with what you choose. I had high hopes for you as a pianist, Henry, but you can be whatever you wish. If it’s not in your heart, I understand.”

“Would you like a cup of tea, Mom?”

“That would be grand.”



Two weeks later, during the afternoon before Christmas, Oscar Love and I drove into the city to celebrate my newly won independence. Ever since that episode with Sally, I’d had a question or two about my capability to have intercourse, so the trip was not without apprehension. When I lived in the forest, only one of those monsters could do the trick. He had been captured too late in his childhood, at the cusp of puberty, and he gave the poor females nothing but trouble. The rest of us were not ready physically to perform the act.

But I was ready to experience sex that night. Oscar and I tipped back a bottle of cheap wine. Thus fortified, we approached the house at dusk as the girls were opening up shop. I would like to report that losing my virginity was both exotic and erotic, but the truth is that it was mainly dark, rough, and over much more quickly than I had expected. She was fair-skinned and past her glory, the crown of platinum hair a come-on and a ruse, and among her several rules for the duration, no kissing. When I displayed a tentative uncertainty as to where and how to go about the act, she grabbed me with her hand and pushed me into position. A short time later, all that remained was to get dressed, pay the bill, and wish her merry Christmas.

When morning came with gifts around the tree and the family lounging in pajamas and robes, I felt on my way to a brand-new life. Mom and the twins were oblivious to any change as they went about their cheerful tasks, offering genuine affection and consideration of one another. My father, on the other hand, may have suspected my debauch of the night before. Earlier that morning, when I came home around two o’clock, the living room smelled of Camels, as if he had been waiting up for me and only gone to bed when Oscar’s car pulled into the driveway. Throughout that drowsy holiday, my father moved about the house the way a bear moves through its territory when it smells the presence of another male. Nothing said, but wayward glances, brusqueness, a snarl or two. For the rest of our time together, we did not get along. A year and a half remained in my high school career before I could get away to college, so we circled one another, barely exchanging a sentence on our rare encounters. He treated me like a stranger half of the time.

I recall two occasions when he stepped out of his inner world, and both times were unsettling. A few months after the scene at the winter recital, he brought up the matter of the woman in red and her strange story. We were tearing down my mother’s henhouse, having sold the birds and gotten out of the egg and chicken business after turning a handsome profit. His questions arrived in the intervals between the prying crowbar, squealing nails, and tearing lumber.

“So, you remember that lady and her story about the boy and the deer?” He ripped another plank from the frame. “What do you make of that? Do you think such a thing could happen?”

“Sounded incredible to me, but I suppose it might have happened. She seemed pretty sure of herself.”

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