Father Christmas (13 page)

Molly turned to John, silently inviting him
to offer a theory. He didn’t trust himself to come up with any good
ideas, though. With a small shrug, he declined her invitation.

Turning away, Molly addressed the group as a
whole. “Here’s what I think is happening. It has nothing to do with
the toys, but everything to do with sharing. Melissa is envious of
the time and attention her brother is getting. She can’t come right
out and admit that she’s jealous of him, so she exercises what
little power she has—over her playthings.”

“
In other words, it’s
sibling rivalry playing itself out,” Gordon summed up.

Molly smiled. “One thing
children have a great deal of trouble sharing is attention. We
notice this quite often during class time: if a teacher is working
with one child, another will come over and demand her attention,
even if the first child
needs
the
teacher right then and the second child doesn’t.”

“
Okay, so that’s the
diagnosis,” Gordon allowed. “But I still don’t know how to get
Melissa to let her brother play with her old push-toys.”

“
You have to give Melissa
what she’s really asking for: not her push-toys, but parental
attention. She’s feeling a little neglected, Gordon. Lots of times,
when a child is having trouble sharing, it’s a cry for attention.
In fact—” she circled the group again with her gaze “—when children
have problems sharing things, it’s nearly always a symptom of
something else. They feel overlooked, or they want attention.
Sibling rivalry is often an issue.”

“
My son’s an only child,”
the stocky man in denim observed. “No sibling rivalry, but he still
won’t share.”

John shifted on the hard
floor, interested to hear how Molly would analyze the man’s
situation, which reflected his own. “One thing about only
children,” she said, “is that they don’t really get into a sharing
habit. At school they have to share, but every toy at home belongs
to them alone. The adults in their lives aren’t competing for the
Legos or the
Goodnight, Moon
book. Only children should invite playmates to their house as
often as possible. This enables the child to develop the sharing
habit. We need to teach all our children, whether or not they have
siblings, that the ability and willingness to share is a life skill
that will make things go better for them. We teach certain values
in school, and one of those values is that our own world is a
better place if we can make it a better place for others. In a way,
generosity is a very selfish practice.” She smiled, and several of
the fathers smiled with her.

“
Another issue that leads
to sharing problems is control,” she continued, shooting a brief
but knowing glance John’s way. “If a child feels he has no control
over the major events in his life, he’ll try to control his
possessions.” Her gaze returned to John and stayed
there.

“
So what do you do?” he
heard himself ask. “How do you fix that?”

He hadn’t meant to participate in the
discussion. He was there to listen and learn, not to mouth off
about his own problems. That he would expose himself to these men,
all of them strangers, puzzled him. What was it about Molly that
had prompted him to speak up?

Her smile. Her eyes. The way she elicited
trust.

“
Naturally, you can’t give
a child complete control over his life,” she said, her voice gentle
to soften the harsh truth. “There are things
we
can’t control in
our
lives. Part of growing up means learning to accept that some
things are beyond our control. Kids learn every day that they can’t
control much of anything in their lives.

“
One thing you can do to
give a child a sense of control is to establish that certain things
are exclusively his. For instance, his shoes. Children don’t share
shoes. Or a special glass that he always gets to drink his milk
from. Or curtains for his bedroom. Let your child pick out the
curtains. Hang a bulletin board in your child’s room and let that
be all his to decorate. Even if he shares a bedroom with a
sibling,” she added, including the other fathers, “let him or her
have that bulletin board. And a few toys, which are that child’s
and no one else’s. Not even visiting friends can play with those
very special toys. Not unless the child permits it.

“
Giving your child the
chance to control a few things will make him feel less powerless in
the grand scheme of things. Having complete ownership over a
particular teddy-bear is not going to bring an absent parent back,
or earn him respect among his peers, or any of a million other
things he might want. But it will give him a modicum of control
over his life.”

She continued, elaborating, offering other
ideas, luring other comments from the fathers. John leaned back
against the divider wall and absorbed her wisdom. What she said
made sense. Even if he’d told her nothing about his life and
Mike’s, it would have made sense. He hated to admit that coming to
the Daddy School was a good idea, but it was.

The discussion was still going strong when a
toddler stampede down the stairs alerted the Daddy School
participants that two hours had passed. Children spilled into the
room, charged through the open gate into the Pre-Kindergarten area
and leaped into their fathers’ arms, yammering about what they’d
done upstairs. There had apparently been a huge pillow fight, with
balloons and beach balls and all manner of bulky but harmless
weaponry. The children were exhilarated, breathless and
giggling.

“
It’s a mess up there,”
the teacher said apologetically to Molly. “We got a little of it
cleaned up, but the time got away from us.”

“
That’s all right.” Molly
stood and smiled at the teacher. “You did a great job, keeping them
occupied up there. I’ll finish the clean-up.” She waved and shouted
a farewell to several of the fathers as they wrestled their
youngsters into thick winter jackets and woolen caps.

Like the other kids, Mike babbled about the
Great Pillow War. “We got big pillows!” he exclaimed. “With stuff
like in the foam pit. Everybody hit everybody! It was great!”

“
I’m sure it was,” John
murmured, his gaze chasing Molly as she bent to help one child with
a zipper, then stood and conferred with a father, then spun around
to acknowledge another child, who was tugging on the back of her
sweater. “Is it very messy upstairs?”

“
No mess,” Mike swore,
which meant it must be a major disaster.

It wasn’t John’s disaster, of course. But it
didn’t seem fair for Molly to get stuck cleaning it up all by
herself.

Damn it—fair had nothing to do with his
inclination to help her straighten things out in the aftermath of
the pillow fight. The truth was, he didn’t want to leave the
Children’s Garden yet.

He didn’t want to leave Molly yet.

He moved against the tide of departing
fathers and children, like a fish swimming upstream to spawn. At
last he reached Molly, who was waving farewell to the Daddy School
students. “Mike and I will help you tidy the upstairs room,” he
volunteered.

She peered up at him, her smile fading
slightly. “You don’t have to do that.”

“
I didn’t say I had to.”
He shrugged, refusing to let her discerning eyes daunt
him.

She studied his face for a long moment, as
if reading an involved message in it, a message he would have
preferred her not to interpret. Then she lowered her gaze to Mike.
“Do you want to help your dad and me clean up?”

“
Yeah!” Mike bellowed,
breaking from his father’s clasp and clambering back up the
stairs.

Molly eyed John with amusement. “He doesn’t
do that for me,” John muttered. “He never wants to help clean up at
home.”

“
Then I’ll take this—” she
gestured toward him “—as a personal compliment.” Laughing, she
pursued Mike up the stairs.

John headed after them. At the top of the
stairs he assessed the room. It wasn’t too awful, but it needed
work. Some furniture was overturned, and soft, squishy balls and
balloons were strewn about the center of the room. Tufts and scraps
of foam rubber littered the floor.

“
Michael,” Molly
instructed him, “what I want you to do is gather up the little
pieces of foam and add them to the foam pit, okay? Your father and
I will handle the heavier stuff.”

Mike romped across the room, gathering
fistfuls of foam, dropping half of what he picked up en route to
the foam pit. He seemed to be having a grand time, which bemused
John. The kid never cleaned up his messes at home, not without
being nagged and scolded. Even then, John sometimes didn’t have the
strength to force the issue. He just couldn’t bear to get into a
battle of wills with Mike after a day spent tussling with suspects
in the interrogation rooms, or on the streets.

He wondered how Molly managed to motivate
Mike. She’d barely even asked him to pick up the foam, and he was
off and running. Maybe, like his father, Mike had developed a soft
spot for the teacher.

John glimpsed her righting chairs in the
kitchen area. The fluorescent ceiling fixture caused her hair to
shimmer, as if someone had threaded filaments of pure light through
the dense brown locks. Her cheeks were pink, not the vivid shade
he’d seen when she’d been outdoors in the wintry air, but a tawny
pink, the color of health and high spirits. The color a woman might
blush during a peak moment of sex.

Shoving aside that notion, he scooped up the
assorted balls and tossed them into a tall mesh-sided bin. Then he
helped Molly put the rest of the furniture back in order. Once that
was done, they lent their efforts to Mike, gathering up the last of
the tattered foam and returning it to the foam pits. While John
worked, a million thoughts crowded his mind, things he’d like to
say to her, things that couldn’t be said. Things about her eyes and
her smile and the magic she seemed able to work on his son. Things
about control, about the lack of it. Things about how smart she
was, scary-smart, smart enough to make him feel like an idiot when
it came to Mike.

“
Oh, gee, it’s late,” she
said, checking the wall clock, which indicated it was twelve
thirty. “I shouldn’t have kept you. I appreciate the
help.”

“
No problem.” He plucked a
few stray shreds of foam from the floor and handed them to Mike,
who dashed over to the foam pit and hurled them in.

“
Michael must be starving.
You’d better go get him some lunch.”

“
How about you?” John
asked, deciding he was in a brave—or maybe a foolish—mood. “Do you
want to join us for lunch?”

She opened her mouth and then shut it,
obviously taken aback. Okay, so he was a fool. He’d overstepped.
She was going to say no.

“
Actually, I brought some
cheese, crackers and fruit to eat here,” she explained. “I was
going to give the kids a snack, but I got so caught up in the
class, I forgot. I don’t feel like taking all that food home. We
could have a picnic here, if you’d like.”

As soon as she spoke, she looked
apprehensive. In fact, she looked pretty much the way he felt—as if
she feared her question marked her as a fool.

They could be fools together, and then their
foolishness wouldn’t matter. “Hey, Mike,” he called to his son, who
was wiggling between the ropes to climb into the foam pit. “You
want to have a picnic here with Ms. Saunders?”

“
A picnic!” Mike climbed
out of the pit and raced over to where Molly and John were
standing. “A picnic! I want a picnic!”

“
I guess the answer is
yes,” he said, turning back to Molly.

She smiled up at him. Her smile convinced
him that saying yes might not have been such a foolish move, after
all. Something about the warmth of her smile, the generous curve of
her mouth and the mesmerizing glow in her eyes made it impossible
for him not to smile back.

MOLLY WASN’T SURPRISED
when Michael fell asleep. Afternoon naps were a typical part of a
two-year-old’s daily routine—and even if they weren’t, she knew
Michael would have run out of steam sooner or later, given that
he’d been functioning at turbo-speed for so long. His idea of
cleaning up the play area had entailed a great deal of running in
circles, jumping up and down, throwing foam scraps around the room
and bellowing gleefully. When Molly had unpacked the food she’d
brought, he’d been too keyed up to sit still while he ate. He would
gobble some cheese, squirm in his chair, eat a bit more and charge
around the room, shrieking and giggling. To have the entire second
floor of the Children’s Garden practically to himself—without
having to share
anything
with any
other children—was too exciting to accept calmly.

But eventually he’d tired himself out. He’d
been explaining, in adorably garbled English, how cheese came from
cheese cows who made it in their bellies and it came out instead of
milk, when all of a sudden, in mid-sentence, he’d curled up on the
floor with his little butt in the air and his thumb in his mouth,
let out a weary sigh and closed his eyes. And that was that.

While he’d been awake, Molly and John hadn’t
eaten much. They’d been too distracted by the child, and too busy
trying to get him to settle down and have his lunch. But once he’d
come to an abrupt halt, and John had carried the sleeping boy to a
carpeted area out of the bright light for his nap, the adults could
relax.