Posted: Apr 28, 08 7:50am
PULLING HAIR
By Westerly
These three kids who tumbled off the school bus have stopped to engage just opposite my driveway. They’re involved in that old boy-girl ritual that seems not to have changed since my day. We’d pull their hair just to hear them scream, and they’d swing at us, wild with indignation. It was a reaction all right – stirred the blood.
Today’s boy is snatching at the girl’s top notepad. It falls, and the other girl, her second, makes the save while the target girl kicks at his knees. The boy dances back laughing, dances around her, grabs at something else. They are maybe 12 or 13, Zach’s age, wearing clothing that seems too big for them and hats on crooked. The wind slaps at their hair and jeans, and it enlivens them. Under the unsettled sky, the fresh and lovely target girl could be a glass of orange juice on a gray day, and I understand. I know the boy wants the girl to notice him noticing her, and the girl is familiar with the plot.
I catch this scene during a snack break from my home office, while popping my burrito into the microwave, and it takes me back to my last visit with my son Zach. He is beginning this same dance of the genders and all the rest of it. My chest tightens for what he’s up against because I know all about it – that leap from childhood to grown-up ways without getting swept away and pulled under – and I wish I knew what to tell him. He tells me about this girl in his sixth grade – one of those new names – McKenzie or McCulloch? I should have listened more. He gets a lost and helpless look just saying her name out loud. I gather she doesn’t know he’s in this world. I remember that feeling, like the bottom is about to drop out of your stomach, and I tell him that. He speaks to me in a new way now, just this past year, with the openness you use with a stranger you’ll never see again. He doesn’t see me as often as I would like, and I imagine he thinks his embarrassing secrets will be forgotten by the next time I claim him for a weekend of making up for lost time. Or maybe, maybe he really trusts me with his life.
“What do girls want, Dad?” he asks me. He assumes I can fill him in, but I can’t even bluff.
“You’re asking me? You’re asking a twice-divorced man, Son, remember?” I chuckle as if it’s a small thing quickly left behind, just a rough patch, but I want to say don’t ask me, for the love of God. You’d think he’d know about this making an ass of yourself to get their attention. Hasn’t he figured that out yet?
My last ex- was Zach’s mother, and he sees that we are friends. At least she will come to the door in person when I pick him up – from the back door because the digs her new hero is paying for has a rotting front porch. Do I celebrate that? No, I do not. I loved that woman. She’ll walk slowly and unruffled to the door, lifting her chin, and pressing her fine, generous lips into a welcoming smile when she hands Zach over. Over her shoulder I’ll see an explosion of baby toys or laundry spilling from a basket. By the look on her emptied face I know she is doing the best she can with it all, like a person who has settled on her last dice roll and is sticking to it.
I have learned a few things about relationships and not others. I have learned that stable is better than hot. You keep trying to find the two things in the one woman and it never happens. I have learned women communicate with a system of supersonic clicks and whistles and turned backs, crossed legs, mouth-sets and eyebrow-raises that mortal males cannot decipher; and therefore you don’t know what’s being expected of you half the time. I could tell my son that when a fight starts you’re better off keeping your big mouth shut or better yet, leaving the scene – without slamming the door, without laying rubber, and sure as hell without getting drunk. Remove your muddy boots at the door. Just do it. I could say it won’t kill you to do dishes with them once in a while. Sometimes they rub their fingers sexily along your face as you set the cups in, with a promise in the air. I should have told him that.
The burrito is ready for a small plate, and I intend to pile on all the sour cream I desire. There’s no one here to care about my health and well-being and I am feeling like a boy myself, eating my pudding before my meat, and getting away with it.
Across the street, the girl’s books are falling, and she is shrieking with loony laughter. They land in a heap and the wind begins flipping the pages. The other girl, a lesser goddess than our long-legged target girl, stands between her and the boy, shielding her friend with her outstretched arms. The boy – and I notice now, he is a slightly built boy with everyday features - is laughing and slapping his forehead: What a jerk I am. He scoops up the books and makes a fake run, cueing her to chase him. And there she goes. Lucky boy! He’s grinning big now, as he hands over the books. He’s happy with the way it’s turning; and so the dance begins. I wish I could give them the script and save them the time, except I have never gotten that script down solid, myself, and I’ve never heard of anyone who has.
