Abra’s birthday party was in the Stones’ backyard, a restful sweep of green grass with apple and dogwood trees that were just coming into blossom. At the foot of the yard was a chainlink fence and a gate secured by a combination padlock. The fence was decidedly unbeautiful, but neither David nor Lucy cared, because beyond it was the Saco River, which wound its way southeast, through Frazier, through North Conway, and across the border into Maine. Rivers and small children did not mix, in the Stones’ opinion, especially in the spring, when this one was wide and turbulent with melting snows. Each year the local weekly reported at least one drowning.
Today the kids had enough to occupy them on the lawn. The only organized game they could manage was a brief round of follow-the-leader, but they weren’t too young to run around (and sometimes roll around) on the grass, to climb like monkeys on Abra’s playset, to crawl through the Fun Tunnels David and a couple of the other dads had set up, and to bat around the balloons now drifting everywhere. These were all yellow (Abra’s professed favorite color), and there were at least six dozen, as John Dalton could attest. He had helped Lucy and her grandmother blow them up. For a woman in her eighties, Chetta had an awesome set of lungs.
There were nine kids, counting Abra, and because at least one of every parental set had come, there was plenty of adult supervision. Lawn chairs had been set up on the back deck, and as the party hit cruising speed, John sat in one of these next to Concetta, who was dolled up in designer jeans and her WORLD’S BEST GREAT-GRAMMA sweatshirt. She was working her way through a giant slice of birthday cake. John, who had taken on a few pounds of ballast during the winter, settled for a single scoop of strawberry ice cream.
“I don’t know where you put it,” he said, nodding at the rapidly disappearing cake on her paper plate. “There’s nothing to you. You’re a stuffed string.”
“Maybe so, caro, but I’ve got a hollow leg.” She surveyed the roistering children and fetched a deep sigh. “I wish my daughter could have lived to see this. I don’t have many regrets, but that’s one of them.”
John decided not to venture out on this conversational limb. Lucy’s mother had died in a car accident when Lucy was younger than Abra was now. This he knew from the family history the Stones had filled out jointly.
In any case, Chetta turned the conversation herself. “Do you know what I like about em at this age?”
“Nope.” John liked them at all ages . . . at least until they turned fourteen. When they turned fourteen their glands went into hyperdrive, and most of them felt obliged to spend the next five years being boogersnots.
“Look at them, Johnny. It’s the kiddie version of that Edward Hicks painting, The Peaceable Kingdom. You’ve got six white ones—of course you do, it’s New Hampshire—but you’ve also got two black ones and one gorgeous Korean American baby who looks like she should be modeling clothes in the Hanna Andersson catalogue. You know the Sunday school song that goes ‘Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight’? That’s what we have here. Two hours, and not one of them has raised a fist or given a push in anger.”
John—who had seen plenty of toddlers who kicked, pushed, punched, and bit—gave a smile in which cynicism and wistfulness were exactly balanced. “I wouldn’t expect anything different. They all go to L’il Chums. It’s the smart-set daycare in these parts, and they charge smart-set prices. That means their parents are all at least upper-middle, they’re all college grads, and they all practice the gospel of Go Along to Get Along. These kids are your basic domesticated social animals.”
John stopped there because she was frowning at him, but he could have gone farther. He could have said that, until the age of seven or thereabouts—the so-called age of reason—most children were emotional echo chambers. If they grew up around people who got along and didn’t raise their voices, they did the same. If they were raised by biters and shouters . . . well . . .
Twenty years of treating little ones (not to mention raising two of his own, now away at good Go Along to Get Along prep schools) hadn’t destroyed all the romantic notions he’d held when first deciding to specialize in pediatric medicine, but those years had tempered them. Perhaps kids really did come into the world trailing clouds of glory, as Wordsworth had so confidently proclaimed, but they also shit in their pants until they learned better.
11
A silvery run of bells—like those on an ice cream truck—sounded in the afternoon air. The kids turned to see what was up.
Riding onto the lawn from the Stones’ driveway was an amiable apparition: a young man on a wildly oversize red tricycle. He was wearing white gloves and a zoot suit with comically wide shoulders. In one lapel was a boutonniere the size of a hothouse orchid. His pants (also oversize) were currently hiked up to his knees as he worked the pedals. The handlebars were hung with bells, which he rang with one finger. The trike rocked from side to side but never quite fell over. On the newcomer’s head, beneath a huge brown derby, was a crazy blue wig. David Stone was walking behind him, carrying a large suitcase in one hand and a fold-up table in the other. He looked bemused.