Childhood

2. Childhood

All of John’s memories of his childhood seemed to revolve around walking; not walking anywhere in particular, never reaching any destination, just walking next to his mother or father, or both, holding their hands. Even as a child, his thoughts became clearer when he walked. The time when John and his parents did most of their seemingly aimless walking was also the time when John was beginning to ask questions about the world and life. That was why he always preferred walking with his dad - Scott was much better at coping with John’s endless stream of questions. When he had been an infant, John had been easier for Anne to handle, but the more he grew, the more she distanced herself from him. She found it difficult to know what to say to her child, and whenever the two of them were alone she always felt awkward.

“Your mommy loves you very much,” Scott said to his son on one of their strolls. “But sometimes it’s hard for her to relax. She’s always thinking about the shop, you see.”

“Yes, but, why,” said John, wondering what it was like to think about the same thing all the time, “why doesn’t she just stop thinking about the shop?”

“It’s not that simple, John,” Scott said. “Sometimes you can’t help what’s on your mind.”

“Like when?”

“Well, when you’re running a business, for example, or when you’re in love with someone.”

“Being in love,” John said, contemplating the meaning of the words. “What’s that like?”

“Gosh, son, it’s - it’s wonderful. When you’re in love, it’s like nothing in this world can bring you down - upset you, I mean.”

“How do you get in love?”

“Fall in love, you fall in love,” Scott corrected him. “Falling in love isn’t something you do on purpose. What happens is that you meet someone, you get to know that person and maybe, just maybe, you fall in love. You can’t just decide to fall in love - you either do or you don’t.”

“Have you fallen in love sometime?” John was intrigued.

“Why, Johnny, I’m in love with your mom. That’s why we got married, and why we had you.” Although he had a lot to learn about love, a vague idea was forming in his head. He decided the reason his mother was so uneasy around him was that all of her love was being used up on his dad. He wasn’t sure how to solve this problem - how would you go about refilling someone’s love? - o, for the time being, he settled for the sparse conversations he shared with his mother over dinner.
     

From an early age, John excelled at school - much thanks to his father’s habit to read to him and his own habit of asking innumerable questions. Like his parents he was an avid reader and could often be found in the school library, a stack of books by his side and his head buried deep in a novel. When he was a child, he liked reading the books about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn; his favorite book was Around the World in Eighty Days, a book that he read and re-read so many times the pages started falling out. Every afternoon when the school bell rang, John packed up his books, met up with Scott outside the main gates and - as they always did in John’s fragmented recollections of childhood - they would start walking. The walks he shared with his dad offered more valuable lessons than school ever would. No teacher ever told him what it was like to fall in love, for example, and if he hadn’t known about being in love he would never have been able to understand why his mother was so distant.

“How can you give someone who’s run out of love more love?” he asked Scott once.

“What do you mean, ‘run out of love’?” Scott asked, perplexed.

“If a person gives all their love away to one person, won’t they run out of love to give to others?” Scott looked at his boy, this beautiful little creature, and wondered how he thought of all his questions. He tried to remember himself at John’s age, and that’s when he realized John wasn’t like other boys - he was old beyond his years. Other boys his age did not spend their days reading books and thinking about love; at the same time, there was something quintessentially childish about thinking of love as something quantifiable, something you have a limited amount of and that you dole out in different sized portions to people around you.

“You can’t run out of love, John,” he said. “Inside everyone there is an unlimited amount of love - it never runs out, your heart makes more all the time.”

“Oh.” John was obviously disappointed by this answer.

“I suppose that if you wanted to help someone make more love,” Scott said, trying to restore John’s smile, “what you should do is love them even more. Love begets - ‘begets’ means ‘creates’ -love begets love.”

“Love begets love,” John repeated and nodded at one of his most profound realizations ever.
     

Anne and Scott often talked about John when he had gone to bed. Scott was beginning to worry about John, not because he was occasionally a precocious child, but because of all this refilling someone’s love might be related to Anne’s tendency to keep him at arm’s length. If John was feeling unloved by his mother, wouldn’t he be scarred for life? Anne disagreed - despite being the one who had told Scott about Freud to begin with - and said that John had always been a peculiar child. In fact, she thought it was a good thing that he was thinking about these kinds of things already; their son was looking for answers for questions most people didn’t ask until they were well into their teens.

“Look, what if- what if the reason he’s asking these questions is because he thinks…” Scott didn’t want to finish the sentence; Anne was very sensitive about her parenting skills.

“Thinks what, Scott?” she hissed. “Just say it.”

“What if he thinks you don’t love him?”

“I love him more than anything in the world, you know that!”

“I know that, but does John?”

“Why would he have any reason to doubt my love for him?”

“I don’t know,” Scott said, “but he’s asking all these questions about love. I’ve told him you love him, but I don’t think it matter how many times I say it if he can’t see it in you.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Anne asked in despair.

“Just tell him you love him - give him a kiss and tell him you love him.”
     

After they had this conversation, Anne, in an awkward manner, tried to show her son how much she loved him. John was a very affectionate child - he had no problem telling people how he felt about them; he was also an attentive child. He noticed his mother felt uncomfortable sharing her feelings around him, and her affectations were definitely forced. If Anne knew her son was still not convinced of her love for him, she pretended she didn’t notice it; their relationship continued to be strained. John was always trying to act according to what his father had taught him - ove begets love - but it was hard when he didn’t get anything in return from his mom. Precocious as he was, he spent many hours trying to understand what love was. It was something his dad and (supposedly) his mom felt for him, and for each other - presumably the love they felt for each other was different than the love they felt for him, and if that was the case there must be lots of different kinds of love (this opened up a whole other can of worms that he decided to put aside for the time being); it was infinite in that a person could never run out of it; if you gave more of it away, you would get more of it in return.

“Love begets love,” he whispered to himself every night before falling asleep, as a reminder. He was back to thinking his mother’s love had somehow run out, that she had squandered it away on his dad (not that his dad didn’t deserve it, but John thought that surely he deserved some of it, too). His father had been very clear that a person was always full of love - it was unlimited, he had said. If you run out of love, your heart makes more. Then why did his mother struggle so much with loving him? If she had an unlimited supply of affection dwelling in her chest, what was it that was holding her back? John narrowed it down to this hypothesis: his mom chose to use the love that was meant for him on other things, like books and numbers, because of something he had said or done. What this might have been exactly, John didn’t know.
     

On Saturdays, John accompanied his mother to Greenwich Books, so that Scott could have a sleep-in and the day to himself. As usual, they walked there. Walks with Anne didn’t really welcome questions from John; instead, they walked in silence. Anne would let John unlock the door to the shop and, when she was ready for customers, he would turn the sign on the door, so that the side that said, ‘Come in, we’re open!’ faced the street outside. That was about as much excitement he got on a Saturday; sometimes, he would sneak a book down from one of the shelves and read it in the back of the shop, but this was against Anne’s rules and if he was caught she would scold him for it. There was not much else to do except watch the customers come and go.

“That man looks very rich,” John said one Saturday morning. The man in question was certainly wealthy-looking, with a swanky suit and highly polished shoes.

“Never judge a book by its cover,” Anne told him and added, as an afterthought, “and always ask a man if he’s married.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you can never tell what a person is like just by looking at him.”

“I know that part!” John said impatiently. “I meant the other part, about asking if they’re married.” Anne furrowed her brow.

“You’ll understand when you’re older.”

“You always say that.” He kicked his legs back and forth restlessly, sighing unhappily. “Can I go home?”

“Not on your own, Johnny. It’s not even noon, anyway.”
     

For what seemed like hours, John sat on his chair and stared sulkily at his mother, this woman who had decided not to love him. He thought about leaving the shop anyway, defying her rules, but he wasn’t entirely sure he knew the way home and he wanted to see his dad again, which he mightn’t if he got lost in New York City. Melancholically, he rested his chin in his hands and stared gloomily at passers-by on the street outside. To pass time, he started imagining where they were all going - especially those who seemed to be in a hurry. He imagined they were all part of some Jules Verne-type competition, where they had to get from point A to point B in a set amount of time, but only after completing a list of near impossible tasks. While he imagined them wrestling with tigers and climbing the façade of the Empire State Building to the very top, he was vaguely aware that Anne was talking to someone. It took him a moment to realize they weren’t speaking English, but German. John knew only a few words of German - hello, good bye and so on - that his mother had taught him. He had no idea what his mom was saying to this stranger, but they didn’t seem to be getting along. Their conversation ended abruptly; Anne shooed the stranger out of the shop, flipped the ‘Come in, we’re open!’-sign so that it said ‘Closed’ and dragged John outside.

“Who was that man?” John asked, jogging to keep up.

“He was someone I knew a long time ago,” Anne explained curtly.

“Where are we going?”

“Home.” John had a multitude of questions he wanted answered, but something in his mother’s expression seemed to warn him not to ask them. When they came home, they found Scott in the kitchen pouring himself a cup of coffee.

“What- why are- it’s only noon,” Scott said, taken aback.

“John, go to your room,” Anne snapped. John opened his mouth to protest, but a warning glance from Scott made him bite his tongue and wander off to his room.
     

What had happened was this: while John was busy daydreaming, a man recognized from Vienna - a man she recognized very well indeed - had come in to Greenwich Books. They were both equally stunned to see each other there. Anne had thought she would never see Andreas again, and she had been quite happy she wouldn’t. It had taken her a long time to get over the events of her last night in Vienna; when she had come to New York, she’d had to start all over from the very beginning, and she had only been glad to forget her life in Austria. In the back of her mind she knew that Austria and its people continued their lives without her, but she had thought that she would be free of it forever. Yet, here was Andreas, the man who had in effect driven her out of the country, and when he stepped into her bookshop, it was as if all of Vienna had come with him.

“Heavens above,” he said. “Is it really you, Fräulein Anne?”

“That’s Frau, to you,” she answered coolly.

“So you’ve married.” He nodded towards John. “And this is your son?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“Never you mind.” He nodded again.

“Do you work here?” he asked.

“I own this shop with my husband.”

“I see, I see.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Don’t worry, Frau Anne,” he said with a bemused look on his face. “I haven’t come looking for you. My wife-” They both flinched almost imperceptibly. “-and I moved here after the war. Vienna has changed, changed terribly.”

“I see.” There was a pause. “She’s still married to you. She must be mad.”

“Maybe so.” There was another pause. “Anne, I am very sorry for… for what happened. I shouldn’t have tricked you into bed with me.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.” She wanted to say something about how he had ruined her life, but with her son by her side and a loving husband waiting at home, she felt that her life wasn’t really ruined at all.

“I’m sorry about what happened to your father, too " Wilhelm Schmitt was your father, wasn’t he?” She nodded. “Yes, I thought so. What a dreadful way to go. You must have been beside yourself with grief.”

“Well, yes, I suppose.”

“Suicide is such a selfish act,” Andreas said.

“S-suicide? What are you talking about?” (Remember, Anne hadn’t been told the truth of how her father died " she had been fed some lie about a heart attack.)

“That is how your father died, isn’t it? They said he put a gun to his head.” Upon hearing this, Anne’s first instinct was to rush home to Scott.
     

John, of course, didn’t understand what was going on, and was too deeply immersed in his own thoughts to even care. He was trying to make sense of what his mom had said about never judging a book by its cover, and always asking a man if he’s married. The first part of the sentence he had no problems understanding; his dad had been telling him not to be judgmental of other people for a long time. But he couldn’t understand why whether or not a man was married was such an important thing to know. Maybe it meant something different, like how the proverbial book was really a person, and the proverbial cover was the appearance of said person. He was wondering what the symbolism might be, when the word ‘suicide’ drifted into his room from the kitchen. It was a word he had heard before, or maybe he had read it somewhere; either way, he couldn’t quite remember what it meant. He got his dictionary down from the shelf and looked it up.

“The intentional taking of one’s own life,” he read to himself under his breath. The thought made him shiver - who would do such a thing? How would you even do it? Any thoughts he had been having about the marital status of men were at once forgotten. Instead, he started thinking about how someone would kill themselves, and, more importantly, why someone would want to kill themselves. He had only a vague idea of what death meant. As far as he could understand, it meant your heart stopped beating and your lungs stop breathing, but what happened after that was still unclear. He decided he would ask his dad about it.

“Dad?” he said tentatively when they were, again, walking. “Why do people do suicide?”

“Commit suicide, John, people commit suicide,” Scott corrected him automatically before realizing what his son was asking him. “Johnny, how do you know what suicide is?”

“I don’t know, I just do,” John said and shrugged. This was his go-to response when he didn’t want Scott to know where he got his ideas. It came out in a rapid flow, so it sounded like one word: idunnoijusdo.

“Did someone at school tell you?”

“No.”

“Did your mom tell you?”

“Not exactly.” Scott thought he must have overheard him and Anne talk about Wilhelm.

“Well, Johnny,” he said. “It’s hard to say why some people commit suicide. They could do it for a lot of different reasons.”

“Like what?”

“I think mostly these people are very, very sad.”

“When I’m sad, I don’t want to do - I mean, commit - suicide.”

“What do you do when you feel sad?”

“Usually, you give me hugs and kisses.” Scott couldn’t help but smile.

“That makes you feel better, doesn’t it?”

“Every time.”

“People who commit suicide are so sad that they think nothing will ever make them feel better,” Scott explained. “They think the only thing that will stop them from being sad is to die.”

“What are they sad about?”

“Oh, I don’t know " maybe they lost their family, or their job, or maybe they had their heart broken,” Scott pondered.

“Is there really no way to make their sadness go away?”

“Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t.”

“It must be awful to be that sad,” John said. He looked pensive. “What happens when you die?”

“I really don’t know,” Scott answered truthfully. “No one knows what happens when you die. Some people think you go to heaven. Other people think you’re born again, into a different life as a different person. And some people think nothing really happens at all.”

“What do you think?”

“It’s not important what I think. What do you think?”

“Gee, dad, I don’t know.” John furrowed his brow.

“Someday you’ll get an idea of what you think happens,” Scott said. “You’ll never know for sure until you’re dead - that’s a long, long way off, of course.”
     

As it happened, it wasn’t long until John had to ask himself, in a much more serious manner, what he thought happened after death. It would be a long time before he made his mind up about what it was he believed, of course; figuring out matters of life and death is a lot to ask of a child. The day death first made itself known to John was a Monday. It was an off-day from the very start. Usually, Anne would leave early in the morning for her keeping of numbers and sorting of books, and Scott and John would sit down and have breakfast together before they walked to school. Scott would make his son pancakes or French toast, while complaining theatrically about what a spoiled child John was; this always made John laugh heartily, because Scott’s complaints were so absurdly over the top and silly, it was impossible not to laugh. They would chat happily while eating, occasionally telling each other not to hog the maple syrup. Mornings were John’s favorite part of the day; you can probably imagine his disappointment on this particular Monday, when he was greeted by a bowl of cereal and his mother’s frown instead of his dad’s delicious pancakes.

“Where’s daddy?” he blurted out, forgetting to say good morning to his mother.

“In bed,” Anne said. “He’s come down with a cold, or flu, or something.”

“But who’s going to take me to school?”

“I will, obviously.” She looked at her watch. “Eat your breakfast, Johnny - I’m already running late.”
     

As you know, walking was when John liked asking questions; as you might also remember, Anne wasn’t too fond of answering questions. This morning, John was thinking about the mechanics of flying; he had been looking at illustrations of the anatomy of birds, as well as brushing up on the history of human aviation. Unlike a lot of boys his age, he wasn’t interested in how airplanes might be used in war - he was only interested in what it might be like to fly, to float above the earth and look down on the trees and houses below. He had seen maps of New York, and thought it was amazing how the streets and avenues made a grid; how fantastic mustn’t it be to see the network of roads with your own two eyes? If Scott had been walking John to school that morning, there would have been plenty of opportunities to ask questions, and John was sure his dad would have given excellent answers.

“Mom, what do you think flying is like?” John asked.

“I don’t know, John, I’ve never flown,” Anne said.

“But can’t you imagine what it might be like?”

“No, I can’t.” She looked at her watch again, and they marched on at a faster pace.

“What’s wrong with daddy?” John almost broke into a run trying to keep up with her.

“I don’t know, Johnny, maybe flu, or just a cold.”

“Will he be better again soon?”

“That depends on what’s wrong with him.” They stopped; they had reached the school. Anne, as always uncomfortable with displaying her affection, awkwardly ruffled her son’s hair. (Scott always kissed him on the top of his head.) “Well, I’ll pick you up after school. Bye, now.” With that, she turned around and hurried down the street. (Scott always waited until John had gone inside before he left.)
     

With the morning he’d had, it was impossible for John to pay attention in any of his lessons. It had been a while since he had been confronted by his mother’s apparent dislike of him - mostly because he had avoided her as much as possible, hoping they wouldn’t find themselves in too many awkward situations - but now they had been thrown into one of those awkward situations that made John’s mind race. He couldn’t understand what it was about him that his mother disliked so much (he didn’t know how much she really did like - love him, nor how much she’d worried he didn’t know). He did well at school, although he didn’t have that many friends, but neither did his mother, so that couldn’t be it. They both loved books, so it wasn’t that they didn’t have any interests in common. There were, of course, his questions - Anne didn’t like it when John asked so many questions. It seemed like a stupid reason not to like someone, but - even at such a tender age - John had a feeling there were a lot of people in the world who hated other people for reasons more stupid than that.

“How was school?” Anne asked when she came to collect John. Neither of them mentioned the fact that she was ten minutes late. (Scott was always ten minutes early.)

“Fine,” John said curtly. “How’s daddy?”

“I don’t know, I’ve been at work all day.”

“Will he be able to take me to school tomorrow?” Anne looked a little hurt.

“I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
     

Whenever they walked anywhere, Scott would hold John’s hand. John loved holding his father’s hand. Scott’s hand represented to him everything that was safe, warm and familiar. Whenever he felt his dad’s big, soft hand close over his little hand, it was like nothing in the whole world could ever hurt him. There was gentleness as well as power in that hand that soothed him and strengthened him at the same time. Needless to say, Anne’s hand didn’t provide the same comfort - Anne’s hand didn’t provide much at all, as she didn’t offer it for him to hold. They walked silently side by side; John was soon lost in thought. He had returned to the grid of New York’s streets. It still fascinated him that someone had come up with such an ingenious idea, and why anyone would build a city any other way was beyond him. It wasn’t until he visited Europe that he learned to appreciate the nooks and crannies of its ancient, irregular cities; I am, yet again, getting ahead of myself - Europe is still a while away.
     

It was while John had his head in the clouds that death decided to rear its ugly head. Looking back, John would think it had all happened so fast; it had happened very fast, but Anne had seen it all in slow motion. They had come to a pedestrian crossing, and while Anne stopped for the red light, John kept walking. He was so entrenched in his daydreams that he didn’t hear his mother calling for him to turn back - he didn’t see the school bus that was headed his way. Anne did see the bus, that didn’t seem to be breaking, and did what any mother would do: she ran into the street, grabbed John by the arm and pulled him out of the way.

“Why don’t you listen to me?” she cried hysterically, both angry with him and relieved he was out of harm’s way. “Damn it, John, you’re going to get yourself killed!”
     

And then, she was gone. In her relief over John’s survival, she had forgotten why she had been afraid for his life in the first place: the not-breaking bus. The bus driver hadn’t seen the two of them step into the street; he was busy trying to get some students in the back of the bus to calm down after someone had started a fight. John didn’t understand what had happened; people were screaming and cars were stopping, and his mother seemed to have disappeared. Someone put an arm around him and led him to the curb, where they sat down. She quickly realized that John hadn’t understood that his mother had been hit by the bus; she explained as carefully as she could that his mom wouldn’t be coming home with him.
     

A policeman took John home that afternoon. Scott, who opened the door in a t-shirt and boxer shorts, seemed to understand what was going on before the policeman had even said ‘hello’. He put his hand out for John to hold - John gratefully grabbed it and held it tight. Something was terribly wrong, he could tell - it wasn’t just that his mom wasn’t coming home today, it was more like his mother wasn’t coming home at all. Scott told him to go to his room while he talked to the policeman. It was only after a lot of persuasion that John let go of his dad’s hand and went to lie on his bed for a while. He seemed to have lost all perception of time, so he didn’t know how long he had waited when Scott came into his room. Scott laid down next to John and put his arms around him; he was crying.

“Mommy isn’t coming home again, is she?” John said.

“I’m afraid not,” Scott said. He took a deep breath. “Your mother died, Johnny.”
     

John and Scott shared the same bed for a long time after Anne’s death. They needed each other, needed to feel each other’s presence in order to feel some sort of security. For a while, the two of them stayed cooped up in their apartment. Greenwich Books remained closed, and John didn’t go to school. Scott was so relieved that his little boy hadn’t comprehended what he had seen; the time would come when his little boy wouldn’t be so little anymore and he would need to talk about what he’d witnessed, but for now all John needed was to be a child (even though being a child wasn’t easy when your mother had just died). At night, when John was fast asleep, Scott would watch his face - is sweet, innocent face that had so much of Anne’s features in it -in the moonlight that came through the window. Sometimes, he stroked his cheek. Other times, he smoothed over his hair. Nighttime was when he cried - really cried. He had loved Anne very much; they had been good together, a happy family. Anne had loved him, too, and she had loved John, despite her poor efforts to show him that. Scott had always told her she needed to show John that she loved him, and she had at last done just that - for what is giving your life to save someone else if not the greatest act of love there is?