“No, Mom,” he says importantly. He takes the car from her hand. “You have to go up this ramp”—built of magnetic tiles—“and then you crash the building and you get points.” He goes on explaining the point system, but her interest in it isn’t strong. She puts her mouth on his jawline, where she knows he’s ticklish, and kisses him. “Mom,” he says, giggling. “Come on, Mom.” His voice has that tone of pleased annoyance perfected by little boys with doting mothers. “I need to do this, okay?”
“Okay,” she says, rocking back on her heels. “You do it.” She hoists herself up by a chair and then sits in it, watching him play. He is too precious to her. He is the only thing that breaks the silence. Already she can feel how someday that will be a burden to him.
“Milo,” she says, but he doesn’t hear her over his own noise, or he ignores her. She doesn’t want to ask this question. Or maybe she does want to ask it, because she’s hoping he’ll say no, and then she can stop feeling guilty for making him so alone. Do you really want to go to school? Please say no. “Milo,” she says again.
There’s a preschool in the Episcopal church in Sewanee. She knows because they have a sign outside and a large, rambling playground that always draws Milo’s eye. She parks the car on the street, and she and Milo walk up to the school, she holding tightly to his hand. He cried the whole drive over because he’d dropped one of his cars off the front porch and into a bush, and Jennifer had been unable to find it. But he’s happy and skipping now. Children can be so very, very sad, and then that sadness can be so quickly forgotten. She wishes she knew that trick. Afraid of the tears returning, she tells him as they walk that he might not be able to go right away, there might not be room. She wonders if that’s what she’s hoping for. He’s so happy right now, but she isn’t. She doesn’t want him to go to school. The thought of it tightens her throat.
They do have room, though, and seem delighted at the arrival of a new pupil. If she’ll fill out the paperwork, he can start that day! At this news Milo drops his shyness—he buried his face in her hip while she talked to Miss Amber—and bounds over to the water table, where two little girls in enormous blue smocks are pushing around plastic boats. “This one is the fastest!” he says, pointing, with his cheerful assumption that people will like him. One of the girls says, “No, this one is,” and Milo calls over to Jennifer: “Mom, the water’s pink!”
“Cool!” she says, insisting on her own enthusiasm.
She lingers for quite some time even after she’s filled in every blank and signed her name to the check. Milo seems to have friends already, potential invitees to his birthday party. He is talking to two other boys, looking down at his Spider-Man shirt, which he holds out toward them, pinched on each side. Trying not to hover, she isn’t quite close enough to hear their conversation, and she wonders what he’s telling them. Tommy was the one who introduced him to Spider-Man.
Miss Amber comes over to her wearing a sympathetic smile. “See?” she says. “He’s doing great.”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t worry at all,” she says. “He seems like a very adaptable little boy.”
“He is,” Jennifer says. Miss Amber thinks, or is pretending to think, that she’s lingering out of concern for Milo. She doesn’t want to disabuse her, so she says, “Well, just call me if he needs me,” as matter-of-factly as she can manage. When she hugs Milo goodbye, he clings to her, the fabric of her shirt bunched tightly in his little fists, and she feels a surge of relief—he doesn’t want to stay, he’ll come away with her, they can go. But across the room another child calls his name, and just like that Milo is gone.
Out on the street, she blinks into the sunlight. She has no idea what to do with her freedom. How did this happen? The day began as every other day in Sewanee has, and yet suddenly she is alone. She has no job. She has no friends, and can’t make any, because friends want to hear your story. Where you came from and what you’re doing here. Why Milo has no father. Why she is so very alone.
Don’t Leave Me