Land of Dreams: A Novel (3 page)

I watched Tom skip ahead, a cold, fat sun sitting square in the sky ahead of him, and I felt a shot of gratitude for him, for my health to enjoy him and, briefly, for the symphony of circumstance and coincidence that had been my life thus far and had led me to this peaceful place.

My reverie was broken by the figure of our stout postmaster, Conor, running along the path toward me, a look of panic across his face.

“Ellie,” he gasped with exertion, “Ellie—it’s Leo.” He finally caught his breath. “The school has telephoned to say you must call them immediately—he’s gone missing.”

C
HAPTER
T
WO

Leo was boarding in a good Catholic school upstate. For his first two years he had been attending as a day pupil, and had stayed with my friend Maureen Sweeney and her family in Yonkers during the week, then come home to the city on the weekends. Leo had made the decision to board full time at the beginning of the last school year, dividing his free weekends between Yonkers and Fire Island. He had made friends with a new boy called Julian Knox—a privileged, sporty and, I thought, rather ill-mannered child from California, but Leo liked him and their friendship made my rather sensitive and introverted son seem keen to be a greater part of school life. Because Tom was a bright and attentive child, his elementary school teachers had agreed to allow me to educate my younger child at home sporadically, until he was ready to follow Leo to St. Aloysius. This new routine in my son’s education enabled me to spend more time working on Fire Island, which suited me very well.

I missed my eldest son, and of course I worried about him sometimes, but I called him every third day from the post office (which had the only telephone on the island) and Leo always assured me he was happy. I had spoken to him the day before yesterday and he had seemed fine. A little subdued perhaps—but surely all teenage boys are susceptible to strange moods, and it had been a difficult year for all of us.

As soon as Conor’s words were out, I immediately began to run toward the post office. Conor, in his mid-fifties and not the least bit agile, trotted behind me, breathlessly filling me in on the details.

“He didn’t turn up for his Latin class, then they arranged a search of the whole school, before making the call. They think he’s been missing since last night!”

We ran into the post office. Conor asked for the connection and handed me the earset.

“Conor, can you ask Dan to get the boat ready at the dock for me? I need him to get me a taxi to take me into the city, as well.”

“I’ll organize it,” he said. He hopped back along the path at a fat man’s trot.

Tom was already in the small wooden building, poking about at the jars of sweets behind the counter. He jumped when I came rushing in and instinctively said, “Sorry!” My heart cracked at the sight of my youngest child—what had happened to his brother? What had I let happen to Leo? But I had no time for sentiment now—I had to find out what had happened, and get back to the mainland and find Leo.

“You go outside for a few minutes, Tom,” I said, “and help Conor find Dan.”

I didn’t even greet the school secretary when she answered the phone, just said my name.

“Ellie Irvington, Leo’s mother . . .” That’s who I was—the bad mother of the bad boy who had run away. She put me straight through to the principal’s office.

“Mrs. Irvington, I have been trying to reach you . . .”

Bastard man! Don’t you dare make me feel guilty! Where is my son? What have you done with my son? You were supposed to be looking after him!

“I’m so sorry. I’m not at home in the city; this is the—a friend’s phone. Sorry if that’s confusing.”

Jesus, what’s the matter with me? Give him a piece of your mind!
In truth, I felt so hysterical that I had separated from myself: the furious, terrified mother in me had given way to the calm pragmatist, keeping the terrible confusion of panic at bay.

“There has been a development. I think you had better come in.”

“Have you found him?”

“Erm—no. But one of his friends, Julian Knox, thinks he may know where Leo has gone.”

“And where is that?”

“I would rather you spoke to the boy yourself . . .”

“Could you please give me some idea?”

“Los Angeles. We think Leo may have gone to Los Angeles. Really, Mrs. Irvington, if you could just make your way over here and we can—”

Los Angeles. My stomach did a somersault.

This past summer my lean, handsome sixteen-year-old had outgrown the isolated idyll that I had created for us on Fire Island. When he asked to spend the summer of his sixteenth birthday holidaying with Julian Knox and his family at their home in California, it was Maureen (whose own son was not much older than Leo and was already working) who advised me to let him go.

“You have to let Leo have his independence, Ellie,” she said. “If you try to hold on to him, he’ll only rebel.”

The Knoxes were respectable people—the father was a wealthy California-based businessman of some kind, and they were good Catholics, hence their setting up home in New York so that their son could attend St. Aloysius, where his father had been educated. The snobbish, sentimental ideals of Catholic respectability didn’t concern me, but I admit that I don’t know if I would have let Leo go off on his own to stay with a gang of eccentrics like me! Julian’s mother had sounded nice enough when I spoke to her on the telephone, so I accepted their invitation that my son spend the summer with them. There was no reason I could find for objecting, except that Leo’s rejection, him wanting to be with other people that summer, had stung me dreadfully. Leo was sensitive to my feelings—too much so at times—and I could see he was torn at leaving us, but that he really wanted to go. His worry at upsetting me hurt almost as much as the rejection itself, so I sent him off with a smile and an envelope of money, and a promise to stay in touch throughout the two-month break.

Gloria Knox had picked them both up on the last day of term and they had taken the train from Penn Station. I had not even gone to wave him off. He had sent a postcard shortly after they arrived, detailing their adventures on the seventy-two-hour journey, the excitement of nights spent in the sleeper carriage, seeing real cowboys through the window of the train—and letting me know that he had arrived safely and had his own “suite” at the Knoxes’ house, that they had a pool the size of the entire garden in Yonkers and three servants. He telegrammed just once, to ask for more money, as he had spent much of his allowance on new clothes. My eldest son was peculiarly fashionable about his dress—a habit that he had inherited more from me than from his father.

“Leo’s not coming home this summer?” Conor had asked, when I wired my son money from the post office on Fire Island.

“No,” I answered.

I felt the failure of myself as a mother in his absence almost as keenly as the absence itself.

“You have to let them go eventually, Ellie,” Conor had said, repeating Maureen’s sentiment.

“Of course,” I had agreed, but inside I disagreed with them both. Leo was too young for me to let go of. I had felt a hole in my heart all through the season. I rang California a few times from the post office, but Leo was out every time I called. Once or twice I woke up in the night and panicked myself into believing that something was wrong. Then I would calm myself by concentrating on Tom and throwing myself into my work.
Everything is fine; Leo is safe, staying with a good family,
I kept telling myself. When I picked him up at Penn Station a week before school started again, I all but fell on him with relief, but as he stepped off the train my little boy appeared taller and more sophisticated than when he had left. It was too awful to contemplate that he had moved away from me in spirit as well as body, so I spat on my hankie and rubbed an imaginary stain from his tanned cheeks and pretended that no time had passed.

In that last week before he had started school and moved back into his Yonkers weekly routine with the Sweeneys, Leo gave me a simple account of his two months in Los Angeles and assured me that nothing of any particular interest had happened. No special adventures, and certainly nothing untoward—I was assured at least of that.

His insistence that the summer had been entirely without event convinced me that he was holding something back from me. But boys always have secrets from their mothers—that is nature at work. Even so, while common sense told me all was well, my intuition suggested otherwise.

Leo’s running away was a disaster, but not a surprise. This was some dark dread come to pass; the fact that I had intuited it made me angrier with myself for not having acted, and more determined to get him back.

I should never have let him go last summer. He was only sixteen and still too precious; I should never have let him out of my sight!

“No, there is no time for me to make it north of the city. I need you to bring the Knox boy over to my apartment in Manhattan, so that I can question him myself. It will take me—” I did a quick calculation—“less than two hours to get there myself, so you will have plenty of—”

The headmaster let out an officious laugh. “I’m afraid that is out of the question, Mrs. Irvington. I could not possibly leave the school in the middle of a working day to chase into the city!”

“And yet you allowed my son, at sixteen years of age, to walk straight out of your school?”

“Well now, Mrs. Irvington, that was hardly my fault . . .”

Now I was mad.

“It most certainly was your fault, as the Police Department will agree when I report you for child negligence—and I am sure the other parents will be most perturbed to hear of the lack of security prevalent in your school, especially given the exorbitant fees you charge, to ensure us of our sons’ moral and physical safety. You have a car, I presume?”

“A driver, but . . .”

“Good—then I expect to see you at my apartment, with the boy, in just under two hours. Your secretary has my address.” And I hung up.

I was shaking as I put down the receiver and stood for half a moment taking in the news. I suffered a mother’s curse of knowing my children inside out. There was nothing they could do or say that I did not intuit as soon as it became apparent; everything bad that happened to them was easily foreseen, after the event; everything bad that happened to them I would choose to interpret as my own fault.

The miracle of a mother’s devotion is the way that one’s heart grows larger to accommodate the enormous emotions children cause. My heart was now beating so fast, and felt so huge, that I feared it would explode in my chest. At the same time I knew that if that happened I would never find my son, so I put the lid on my emotions and concentrated on making haste.

I would have run straight to the dock and Dan’s waiting boat, except that when I looked down I realized I wasn’t wearing any shoes. So I ran back to the house and straight up the stairs, my heels hardened from a summer spent barefoot, and immune to splinters. I dragged a large carpetbag out from under my bed and started to throw things in haphazardly. What did I need? Clothes—for me and Tom. There was no need for me to take all this. I could pack when I got to Manhattan. I would have to get a train to Los Angeles. A flight would be quicker. Should I go straight to the station? Why was I bothering to pack a bag? Clothes: I needed something for Tom to wear. Shoes: I was still barefoot. Keys: the keys to the house; the keys to the studio. They were always left open. I had better lock up, if I was leaving. Leaving—I should never have come here. I should never have sent Leo back to that school. I was panicking now. All my thoughts came tumbling down on top of one another like the clattering chaos from a dropped kitchen drawer.

I forced myself to stop and take a deep breath, then put a smart coat on over my working clothes, and some city shoes from under my bed; they pinched, as if they didn’t belong to me, so I grabbed some thick stockings from a drawer, along with a pair of pants and some boots for Tom, and threw them all in the bag.

I ran down the stairs and grabbed the keys from the hook where they had been hanging, untouched, for the best part of four months, then left.

At the front gate I called, “Tom!” My words fell flat on the silent dunes, sucked into oblivion by the vast mass of sea and sky. I felt a flicker of rage at my youngest son, already knowing that he was going to hold us up, then remembering that he was with Conor. I had to calm down. I would get nowhere in this flustered state.

Calm . . . I needed to stay calm. Tom was doubtless with Conor and Dan, waiting for me on the dock by now. I had his shoes and a sweater in my bag; I just kept running.

Everything will be fine,
I kept repeating in my head, over and over.
Tom and I will find Leo and we’ll be back—yes, back, all three of us, together, in a few days, then we can decide what to do next.
St. Aloysius was clearly the wrong school for Leo. He had probably just fallen out with his friend and had run back to see Bridie and Maureen in Yonkers. Perhaps he had gone to the apartment in Manhattan? He had a key. He could have gone there. Yes, he was surely in the apartment in Manhattan.

Except in my gut I knew that he wasn’t. He was on his way to Los Angeles. On the other side of this vast continent—on his own—for some reason that I knew nothing about.

As I arrived at the dock Dan already had the engine running on the converted clam boat that acted as the island’s only off-season taxi. He was standing, waiting to help me on. Tom was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is that little scoundrel? I’ll skin him!” I shouted, “TOM! TOM!”

I was beside myself.

“Relax,” Dan said, putting his big hand on my shoulder. “He’s with Conor—I saw them a minute ago.”

Dan was a rugged forty-five, from the Midwest, and younger than his New York lover, Conor. The two of them were Cherry Grove mainstays. Men living openly as lovers was both illegal and dangerous, and when I first moved onto the island I had been somewhat alarmed by them. I had not lived a sheltered life, and as an artist had met people of all predilections and backgrounds. However, homosexual behavior was never expressed by anything more than subtle implication. So I feared, not for the moral safety of my sons (it was my own belief that people should be allowed to live as they chose, and love whom they chose), but that we might get caught living among people openly engaged in criminal activity. As time went on, however, Conor and Dan seemed to me as settled and respectable as any ordinary married couple; Conor wore an apron and kept house, while Dan fixed the roof slates, and the peculiarity of their both being men had come to seem completely irrelevant to me. They could not bear the pretense of not being together all the time, so they lived on the island twelve months a year, making a good living from the post office shop and taxi service during the summer, with Dan supplementing their winter income with some taxi work in the city. It was their friendship that had sustained my longer stays, and their practical support that made it possible for me to stay on the island through the winter. My sons adored them and I was grateful, in the absence of their father, for Leo and Tom to enjoy the company of these kind and unusual men. Conor and Dan had built a happy life out of the impossibility of two men being in a marriage, and in doing so had made my own dream of remote, artistic motherhood a possibility. I respected them, and respect was hard to come by for men of their type—so they loved me and my sons like family.