43.
Ziggy was still crying when the babysitter knocked on the door. He’d told Jane that three or four kids (she couldn’t get the facts straight, he was almost incoherent) had said that they weren’t allowed to play with him.
He sobbed into Jane’s thigh and stomach, where his face was uncomfortably wedged, after she’d sat down on the bed next to him and he’d suddenly launched himself at her, nearly knocking her flat on her back. She could feel the hard pressure of his little nose and the wetness of his tears spreading over her jeans as he pushed his face against her leg in a painful corkscrewing motion, as if he could somehow bury himself in her.
“That must be Chelsea.” Jane pulled at Ziggy’s skinny shoulders, trying to dislodge him, but Ziggy didn’t even pause for breath.
“They were running away from me,” he sobbed. “Really fast! And I felt like playing Star Wars!”
Right, thought Jane. She wasn’t going to book club. She couldn’t possibly leave him in a state like this. Besides, what if there were parents there who had signed the petition? Or who had told their children to stay away from Ziggy?
“Just wait here,” she grunted as she unpeeled his limp, heavy body from her legs. He looked at her with a red, snotty, wet face and then threw himself facedown on his pillow.
“I’m sorry. I have to cancel,” Jane told Chelsea. “But I’ll pay you anyway.”
She didn’t have anything smaller than a fifty-dollar note. “Oh, ah, cool, thanks,” said Chelsea. Teenagers never offered change.
Jane closed the door and went to phone Madeline.
“I’m not coming,” she told her. “Ziggy is . . . Ziggy isn’t well.”
“It’s this thing going on with Amabella, isn’t it?” said Madeline. Jane could hear voices in the background. Some of the other parents were there.
“Yes. You’ve heard about the petition?” she asked Madeline, trying to keep her voice steady. Madeline must be sick of her: crying over Harry the Hippo, sharing her sordid little sex stories. She probably rued the day that she’d hurt her ankle.
“It’s outrageous,” said Madeline. “I am incandescent with rage.”
There was a burst of laughter in the background. It sounded like a cocktail party, not a book club. The sound of their laughter made Jane feel stodgy and left out, even though she’d been invited.
“I’d better let you go,” said Jane. “Have fun.”
“I’ll call you,” said Madeline. “Don’t worry. We’ll fix this.”
As Jane hung up, there was another knock on the door. It was the woman from downstairs, Chelsea’s mother, Irene, holding out the fifty-dollar note. She was a tall, austere woman with short gray hair and intelligent eyes.
“You’re not paying her fifty dollars for doing nothing,” she said.
Jane took the money gratefully. She’d felt a twinge after she’d given it to Chelsea. Fifty dollars was fifty dollars. “I thought, you know, the inconvenience.”
“She’s fifteen. She had to walk up a flight of stairs. Is Ziggy OK?”
“We’re having some trouble at school,” said Jane.
“Oh dear,” said Irene.
“Bullying,” expounded Jane. She didn’t really know Irene all that well, except for their chats in the stairwell.
“Someone is bullying poor little Ziggy?” Irene frowned.
“They say that Ziggy is doing the bullying.”
“Oh rubbish,” said Irene. “Don’t believe it. I taught primary school for twenty-four years. I can pick a bully a mile off. Ziggy is no bully.”
“Well, I hope not,” said Jane. “I mean, I didn’t think so.”
“I bet it’s the parents making the biggest fuss, isn’t it?” Irene gave her a shrewd look. “Parents take far too much notice of their children these days. Bring back the good old days of benign indifference, I reckon. If I were you, I’d take all this with a grain of salt. Little kids, little problems. Wait till you’ve got drugs and sex and social media to worry about.”
Jane smiled politely and held up the fifty-dollar note. “Well, thanks. Tell Chelsea I’ll book her up for babysitting another night.”
She closed the door firmly, mildly aggravated by the “little kids, little problems” comment. As she walked down the hallway she could hear Ziggy still crying: not the angry, demanding cry of a child who wants attention, or the startled cry of a child who has hurt himself. This was a grown-up type of crying: involuntary, soft, sad weeping.
Jane walked into his bedroom and stood for a moment in the doorway, watching him lying facedown on the bed, his shoulders shaking and his little hands clutching at the fabric of his Star Wars quilt. She felt something hard and powerful within her. Right this moment she didn’t care if Ziggy had hurt Amabella or not, or if he’d inherited some evil secret tendency for violence from his biological father, and anyway, who said the tendency for violence came from his father, because if Renata were standing in front of her right now, Jane would hit her. She would hit her with pleasure. She would hit her so hard that her expensive-looking glasses would fly off her face. Maybe she’d even crush those glasses beneath her heel like the quintessential bully. And if that made her a helicopter parent, then who the fuck cares?
“Ziggy?” She sat down on the bed next to him and rubbed his back.
He lifted his tear-stained face.
“Let’s go visit Grandma and Grandpa. We’ll take our pajamas and stay the night there.”
He sniffed. A little shudder of grief ran through his body.
“And let’s eat chips and chocolates and treats all the way there.”
Samantha: I know I’ve been laughing and making jokes and whatever, so you probably think I’m a heartless bitch, but it’s like a defense mechanism or something. I mean, this is a tragedy. The funeral was just . . . When that darling little boy put the letter on the coffin? I can’t even. I just lost it. We all lost it.
Thea: Very distressing. It reminded me of Princess Diana’s funeral, when little Prince Harry left the note saying “Mummy.” Not that we’re talking about the royal family here, obviously.