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  For Willa

  THE ERLKING

  It is just as Kate hoped. The worn path, the bells tinkling on the gate. The huge fir trees dropping their needles one by one. A sweet mushroomy smell, gnomes stationed in the underbrush, the sound of a mandolin far up on the hill. “We’re here, we’re here,” she says to her child, who isn’t walking fast enough and needs to be pulled along by the hand. Through the gate they go, up the dappled path, beneath the firs, across the school parking lot and past the kettle-corn stand, into the heart of the Elves’ Faire.

  Her child is named Ondine but answers only to Ruthie. Ruthie’s hand rests damply in hers, and together they watch two scrappy fairies race by, the swifter one waving a long string of raffle tickets. “Don’t you want to wear your wings?” Kate asked that morning, but Ruthie wasn’t in the mood. Sometimes they are in cahoots, sometimes not. Now they circle the great shady lawn, studying the activities. There is candle making, beekeeping, the weaving of God’s eyes. A sign in purple calligraphy says that King Arthur will be appearing at noon. There’s a tea garden, a bluegrass band, a man with a thin sandy beard and a hundred acorns pinned with bright ribbons to the folds of his tunic, boys thumping one another with jousting sticks. The ground is scattered with pine needles and hay. The lemonade cups are compostable. Everything is exactly as it should be, every small elvish detail attended to, but, as Kate’s heart fills with the pleasure of it all, she is made uneasy by the realization that she could have but did not secure this for her child, and therein lies a misjudgment, a possibly grave mistake.

  They had not even applied to a Waldorf school! Kate’s associations at the time were vague but nervous-making: devil sticks, recorder playing, occasional illiteracy. She thought she remembered hearing about a boy who, at nine, could map the entire Mongol empire but was still sucking his fingers. That couldn’t be good. Everybody has to go into a 7-Eleven at some point in life, operate in the ordinary universe. So she didn’t even sign up for a tour. But no one ever told her about the whole fairy component. And now look at what Ruthie is missing. Magic. Nature. Flower wreaths, floating playsilks, an unpolluted, media-free experience of the world. The chance to spend her days binding books and acting out stories with wonderful wooden animals made in Germany.

  Ruthie wants to take one home with her, a baby giraffe. Mysteriously, they have ended up in the sole spot at the Elves’ Faire where commerce occurs and credit cards are accepted. Ruthie is not even looking at the baby giraffe; with some nonchalance, she keeps it tucked under her arm as she touches all the other animals on the table.

  “A macaw!” she cries softly to herself, reaching.

  Kate finds a second baby giraffe, caught between a buffalo and a penguin. Although the creatures represent a wide range of the animal kingdom, they all appear to belong to the same dear, blunt-nosed family. The little giraffe is light in her hand, but when she turns it over to read the tiny price tag stuck to the bottom of its feet she puts it down immediately. Seventeen dollars! Enough to feed an entire fairy family for a month. Noah’s Ark, looming in the middle of the table, now looks somewhat sinister. Two by two, two by two. It adds up.

  How do the Waldorf parents manage? How do any parents manage? Kate hands over her Visa.

  She says to Ruthie, “This is a very special thing. Your one special thing from the Elves’ Faire, okay?”

  “Okay,” Ruthie says, looking for the first time at the animal that is now hers. She knows that her mother likes giraffes; at the zoo, she stands for five or ten minutes at the edge of the giraffe area, talking about their beautiful large eyes and their long lovely eyelashes. She picked the baby giraffe for her mother because it’s her favorite. Also because she knew that her mother would say yes, and she does not always say yes—for instance, when asked about My Little Pony. So Ruthie was being clever but also being kind. She was thinking of her mother while also thinking of herself. Besides, there are no My Little Ponies to be found at this fair—she’s looked. But a baby giraffe will need a mother to go with it. There is a bigger giraffe on the table, and maybe in five minutes Ruthie will ask if she can put it on her birthday list.

  “Mommy,” Ruthie says, “is my birthday before Christmas or after?”

  “Well, it depends what you mean by before,” Kate says unhelpfully.

  Holding hands, they leave the elves’ marketplace and climb up the sloping lawn to the heavy old house at the top of the hill, with its low-pitched roof and stout columns and green-painted eaves. Kate guesses that this whole place was once the fresh-air retreat of a tubercular rich person, but now it’s a center of child-initiated learning.

  * * *

  Ruthie’s own school is housed in a flat prefab trailer-type structure tucked behind the large parking lot of a Korean church. It’s lovely in its way, with a mass of morning-glory vines softening things up, and, in lieu of actual trees, a mural of woodland scenes painted along the outside wall. And parking is never a problem, which is a plus, since at other schools that can be a real issue at dropoff and pickup. At Wishing Well, the parents take turns wearing reflective vests and carrying walkie-talkies, just to manage the morning traffic inching along the school’s driveway. Or there’s the grim Goodbye Door at the Jewish Montessori, beyond the threshold of which the dropping-off parent is forbidden to pass. For philosophical reasons, of course, but anyone who’s seen the line of cars double-parked outside the building on a weekday morning might suppose a more practical agenda—namely, limited street parking does not allow for long farewells. To think that the Jewish Montessori was once the school Kate had set her heart on! She wouldn’t have survived that awful departure, the sound of her own weeping as she turned off her emergency blinkers and made her slow way down the street.

  But she had been enchanted by the Jewish Montessori, helplessly enchanted, not even minding (truth be told) the ghastly tales of the Door. Instantly she had loved the vaulted ceiling and the skylights, the Frida Kahlo prints hanging on the walls, the dainty Shabbat candlesticks, and the feeling of coolness and order that was everywhere. On the day of her visit, she’d sat on a little canvas folding stool and watched in wonder as the children silently unfurled their small rugs around the room and then settled into their private, absorbing, intricate tasks. She’d felt her heart begin to slow, felt the relief of finally pressing the mute button on a chortling TV. How clearly she saw that she needn’t have been burdened for all these years with her own harried and inefficient self, that her thoughts could have been more elegant, her neural pathways less congested—if only her parents had chosen differently for her. If only they had given her this!

  But the school had not made the least impression on Ondine. Every Saturday morning for ten weeks, the two of them had shuffled up the steps with eighteen other applicants and undergone a lengthy, rigorous audition process disguised as a Mommy & Me class. Kate would break out in a light sweat straightaway. Ondine would show only occasional interest in spooning lima beans
from a small wooden bowl to a slightly larger one. “Remember, that’s his job,” Kate would whisper urgently as Ondine made a grab for another kid’s eyedropper. The parents were supposed to preserve the integrity of each child’s work space, and all these odd little projects—the beans, the soap shavings, the tongs and the muffin tin, even the puzzles—were supposed to be referred to as jobs.

  Ten weeks of curious labor, and then the rejection letter arrived, on rainbow stationery. Kate was such an idiot—she sat right down and wrote a thank-you note to the school’s intimidating and faintly glamorous director in the hope of improving Ondine’s chances for the following year. Maybe a few more spots for brown girls would open up? She had never been so crushed. “You’re not even Jewish,” her mother said, not a little uncharitably. Her friend Hilary, a Montessori Mommy & Me dropout, confessed to feeling kind of relieved on her behalf. “Didn’t it seem, you know, a bit robotic? Or maybe Dickensian? Like children in a bootblacking factory.” She reminded Kate about the director’s car, which they had seen parked one Saturday morning in its specially reserved spot. “Aren’t you glad you won’t be paying for the plum-colored Porsche?”

  Kate wasn’t glad. And she did take it personally, despite everybody’s advice not to. Week after week, she and her child had submitted themselves to the director’s appraising, professional eye, and, for all their earnest effort, they had still been found wanting. What flaw or lack did she see in them that they couldn’t yet see in themselves? Even though Kate spoke about the experience in a jokey, self-mocking way, she could tell that it made people uncomfortable to hear her ask this question, and she learned to do so silently, when she was driving around the city by herself or with Ondine asleep in the back of the car.

  * * *

  “Can I get the mommy giraffe for Christmas?” Ruthie asks at the end of what she estimates is five minutes. She stops at the bottom of the steps leading up to the big green house and waits for an answer. She wants an answer, but she also wants to practice ballet dancing, so she takes many quick tiny steps back and forth, back and forth, like a Nutcracker snowflake in toe shoes.

  “People are trying to come down the stairs,” her mother says. “Do you have to go potty? Let’s go find the potty.”

  “I’m just dancing!” Ruthie says. “You’re hurting my feelings.”

  “You have to go potty,” her mother says. “I can tell. And Daddy told you: no more accidents.” But Ruthie sees that she is not really concentrating—she is looking at the big map of the Elves’ Faire and finding something interesting—and Ruthie will hold the jiggly snowflake feeling inside her body for as long as she wants. This will mean that she wins, because when she doesn’t go potty regular things like walking or standing are more exciting. She’s having an adventure.

  “It says there’s a doll room. Does that sound fun? A special room filled with fairy dolls.” Her mother leans closer to the map and then looks around at the real place, trying to make them match. “I think it’s down there.” She points with the hand that is not holding Ruthie’s.

  Ruthie wants to see what her mother is pointing at, but instead she sees a man. He is standing at the bottom of the hill and looking up at her. He is not the acorn man, and he does not have a golden crown like the kind a king wears, or the pointy hat of a wizard. She has seen Father Christmas by the raffle booth, and this is not him. This is not a father or a teacher or a neighbor. He does not smile like the brown man who sells popsicles from a cart. This man is tall and thin, with a cape around his neck that is not black or blue but a color in between, a middle-of-the-night color, and he pushes back the hood on his head and looks at her as if he knows her.

  “Do you see where I’m pointing?” Kate asks, and suddenly squats down and peers into Ruthie’s face. Sometimes there’s a bit of a lag, she’s noticed, a disturbing faraway look. It could be lack of sleep: The consistent early bedtime that Dr. Weissbluth strongly recommends just hasn’t happened for them yet. A simple enough thing when you read about it, but the reality! Every evening the clock keeps ticking—through dinner, dessert, bath, books, the last unwilling whizz of the day—and, with all the various diversions and spills and skirmishes, Kate wonders if it would be easier to disarm a bomb in the time allotted. And so Ruthie is often tired. Which could very well explain the slowness to respond; the intractability; the scary, humiliating fits. Maybe even the intensified hair-twirling? It’s equally possible that Kate is just fooling herself, and something is actually wrong.

  Tonight she’ll do a little research on the internet.

  Slowly, Kate stands up and tugs at Ruthie’s hand. They are heading back down the hill in search of the doll room. They are having a special day, just the two of them. They both like the feeling of being attached by the hand but with their thoughts branching off in different directions. It is similar to the feeling of falling asleep side by side, which they do sometimes, in defiance of Dr. Weissbluth’s guidelines, their bodies touching and their dreams going someplace separate but connected. They both like the feeling of not knowing who is leading, whether it’s the grown-up or the child.

  But Ruthie knows that neither of them is the leader right now. The man wearing the cape is the leader, and he wants them to come to the bottom of the hill. She can tell by the way he’s looking at her—kind, but also as if he could get a little angry. They have to come quickly. Spit-spot! No getting distracted. These are the rules. They walk down the big lawn, past the face-painting table and some jugglers and the honeybees dancing behind glass, and Ruthie sees on the man’s face that her mother doesn’t really have to come at all. Just her.

  She has a sneaky feeling that the man is holding a present under his cape. It’s supposed to be a surprise. A surprise that is small and very delicate, like a music box, but when you open it, it goes down and down, like a rabbit hole, and inside there is everything—everything—she has wanted: stickers, jewels, books, dolls, high heels, pets, ribbons, purses, toe shoes, makeup. You can’t even begin to count! Part of the present is that she doesn’t have to choose. So many special and beautiful things, and she wants all of them—she will have all of them—and gone is the crazy feeling she gets when she’s in Target and needs the Barbie Island Princess Styling Head so badly that she thinks she’s going to throw up. That’s the sort of surprise it is. The man is holding a present for her, and when she opens it she will be the kindest, luckiest person in the world. Also the prettiest. Not for pretend—for real life. The man is a friend of her parents, and he has brought a present for her the way her parents’ friends from New York or Canada sometimes do. She wants him to be like that, she wants him to be someone who looks familiar. She asks, “Mommy, do we know that man?” and her mother says, “The man with the guitar on his back?” But she’s wrong, she’s ruined it: he doesn’t even have a guitar.

  Ruthie doesn’t see who her mother is talking about, or why her voice has got very quiet. “Oh wow,” her mother whispers. “That’s John C. Reilly. How funny. His kids must go here.” Then she sighs and says, “I bet they do.” She looks at Ruthie strangely. “You know who John C. Reilly is?”

  “Who’s John C. Reilly?” Ruthie asks, but only a small part of her is talking to her mother; the rest of her is thinking about the surprise. The man has turned his head away, and she can see only the nighttime color of his cape. She sees that there is something moving around underneath his cape, like a little mouse crawling all over his shoulders and trying to get out. She is worried that he might not give the present to her anymore. She is sure that her mother has ruined it.

  “Just a person who’s in movies. Grown-up movies.” Kate’s favorite is the one where he plays the tall, sad policeman; he was so lovable in that. Talking to himself, driving around all day in the rain. You just wanted to hand him a towel and give him a hug. And though something about that movie was off—the black woman handcuffed, obese and screaming, and how the boy had to offer up a solemn little rap—John C. Reilly was not himself at fault. He was just doing his job. Playi
ng the part. Even those squirmy scenes were shot through with his goodness. His homely radiance! The bumpy overhang of his brow. His big head packed full of good thoughts and goofy jokes. Imagine sitting next to him on a parents’ committee, or at Back-to-School Night! She’d missed her chance. Now he and his guitar are disappearing into the fir trees beyond the parking lot.

  Kate sighs. “Daddy and I respect him a lot. He makes really interesting choices.”

  “Mommy!” Ruthie cries. “Stop talking. Stop talking!” She pulls her hand away and crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m so mad at you right now.”

  Because another girl, not her, is going to get the surprise. The man isn’t even looking at her anymore. He liked her so much before, but he’s changed his mind. Her mother didn’t see him—she saw only who she wanted to see—and now everything is so damaged and ruined. It’s not going to work. “You’re making me really angry,” Ruthie tells her. “You did it on purpose! I’m going to kick you.” She shows her teeth.

  “What did I do now?” her mother asks. “What just happened?” She is asking an imaginary friend who’s a grown-up standing next to her, not Ruthie. She has nothing to say to Ruthie; she grabs her wrist and marches fast down the hill, trying to get them away from something, from Ruthie’s bad mood, probably, and Ruthie is about to cry, because she is not having a good day, her wrist is stinging very badly, nothing is going her way, but just as her mother is dragging her through the door of a small barn she sees again the man with the surprise. He has turned back to look at her, so much closer now, and when he reaches out to touch her she sees that he has long, yellowish fingernails and, under his cape, he’s made out of straw. He nods at her slowly. It’s going to be okay.

  Inside the barn, Kate takes a breath. It actually worked. Nothing like a little force and velocity! Ruthie has been yanked out from under whatever dark cloud she conjured up. Kate will have to try that again. The doll room, strung with Christmas lights, twinkles around her merrily. Bits of tulle and fuzzy yarn hang mistily from the rafters. As her eyes get used to the dim barn and its glimmering light, she sees that there are dolls everywhere, of all possible sizes, perched on nests of leaves and swinging from birch branches and asleep in polished walnut-shell cradles. Like the wooden animals, they seem all to be descended from the same bland and adorable ancestor, a wide-eyed, thin-lipped soul with barely any nose and a mane of bouclé hair. They are darling, irresistible; she wants to squeeze every last one of them and stroke the neat felt shoes on their feet. Little cardboard tags dangle from their wrists or ankles, bearing the names of their makers, faithful and nimble-fingered Waldorf mothers who can also, it’s rumored, spin wool! On real wooden spinning wheels. What a magical, soothing, practical skill. Could that be what she lacks—a spinning wheel? She glances down at Ruthie—is she charmed? happy?—and then looks anxiously around the room at the sweet assortment of milky faces peeking out from under tiny elf caps or heaps of luxuriant hair. Please let there be some brown dolls! she thinks. And please let them be cute. Wearing gauzy, sparkly fairy outfits like the others, and not overalls or bonnets or dresses made of calico. A brown mermaid would be nice for once. A brown Ondine. She squeezes her daughter’s hand in helpless apology, for even at the Elves’ Faire, where all is enchanting and mindful and biodegradable, Kate is again exposing her to something toxic.