“But he already is perfect,” Karen said. “It’s my duty to see that he doesn’t shrink down to averageness the way the rest of us have.”
“Maybe you should go back to work, too,” I said. “We could use the money.”
“Who would stay with Perley?” Karen asked.
“When’s the last time you talked to anyone at the clinic?” I asked.
“It won’t be hard for me to pick up shifts when I’m ready,” Karen said. “They’re always shorthanded. Don’t worry.” But she wouldn’t look at me.
“I just want you to have something else to focus on,” I said. “I want you to have fun. And I want Perley to have fun, too.”
“Fun. What is fun?” Karen asked. I waited, then tried to laugh.
“I’m not joking,” Karen said. “What’s fun? Fun is the last thing on my list. Fun can suck it.”
“We used to have fun,” I said. “What about when we met? Remember the sumac tree?”
“That wasn’t fun,” Karen said. “That was something else.”
I got that itchy feeling in my ears, my nose was warm, the tears spilled over, but Karen wouldn’t relent.
“This isn’t a game,” she said. “We’ve got important things to prepare for. We have a chance out here. We have a chance to make sure Perley gets the proper training. We aren’t going to be around forever to protect him. You think things are going to last the way they are? Not likely.” We heard Helen sit up. Then, under the gap at the bottom of the partition, her light came on. I tried to stifle my sobs with the pillow.
“You want my opinion?” Helen asked, sounding as if she were there in the bed with us.
“No,” Karen said.
“Lily overindulges, and you overtrain,” she said. “What the kid needs is to be ignored. Just leave him alone and let him figure things out for himself.”
“I don’t overindulge,” I said.
“Oh please,” Helen said. “You won’t even tell him not to hit people. You reward him when he pinches you. You’ve been giving him chocolate chips on the sly, not that it’s any of my business.”
“Childless people always think that the secret to parenting is to leave your children alone,” Karen said to the partition.
“It’s worth trying,” Helen said. “He loves it when I do it.”
“You’re dreaming,” Karen said.
* * *
Perley had a name for Helen: Mean Aunt. It was true what she said. She mostly ignored Perley and he loved it. He followed her around all day. When she’d go into the woods to collect wild foods, he’d hurry along with his rolling baby walk, trying desperately to keep up. But she’d disappear up the goat path to the ridge. Perley was soon swallowed by sedges and sassafras saplings, unable to see his way back to camp. Karen trailed behind, hoping he’d turn to her. Instead, Perley waited for Helen, making a game of hitting a tree with a stick to pass the time. If Karen approached him with a tool she’d carved so that the two of them could practice what she called a skill-based activity, Perley would wave his stick at her until she left him alone. When Helen came back down the goat path, her bucket full of whatever she’d harvested, she never greeted Perley, but he would screech with joy, abandon his game, and follow her back to camp. When I first heard Perley call Helen Mean Aunt, I felt a lurch of hope on Karen’s behalf. But no. He said it as if he and Helen had an understanding, an inside joke. It was a title of pure affection.
“Mean Aunt,” he’d say, hugging her around the ankles as she processed acorns, his eyes tenderly closed.
“Let go of me,” she’d say. “I’m busy. Go hug your mom.”
“Come over here,” Karen would say. “Come to me, Perley.” But he wouldn’t.
It’s what Karen had wished for. Because it wasn’t that Perley didn’t like Karen. It was worse than that. Perley loved her. Perley knew that she would always be there, and so she wasn’t there, except as part of the patient landscape. Oh, I could see it caused her pain.
* * *
I could never stay angry, not even about the snakes. “Don’t worry,” I whispered to Karen, as the light on the other side of the partition went dark. “Helen doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” I climbed into bed. I couldn’t sleep with a snake, but I also couldn’t sleep without Karen. She was still my person, my warm one, my buddy, my pack, the woman