"You know only the word—you can't define it and have yet to experience it."
"I know more than the word—a guy wanting some fun from rubbing his smelly penis against somebody else's naked body—white liquid comes out."
She was surprised to hear such a perfectly barbaric definition that few adults would care to espouse and she looked on him admiringly. "Did one of your friends say that?"
"Yes," he lied.
"Out of the mouths of babes," she said. "Come on. Just cheer up and let's enjoy our time together."
"Where are you going?" he demanded.
"I don't know. I'm just looking at houses. If there is one shaped like a
Reese's Peanut Butter Cup let me know and we'll go inside."
As she began to hum a tune on the radio random ideas pillaged through her perspectives like unwanted guests her belongings: she wondered why it had so far been a futile prospect to get her son to befriend the boy with the unmemorable name; she thought that since both boys were champion sneaker squeakers little else was needed beyond imagination and good will for children to declare friendship; she pondered how despite the disposition of Mr. Petulant and the forthcoming departure of the man with the unmemorable name, she was still glowing from her time in the coffee shop; how her painting needed some feral red brush strokes to increase its beauty and complexity; how each night her exalted ideas imploded to recurrent nightly dreams of Candyman riding in the white silk of her bare skin; how her recurrent dreams of Candyman were not only of his physical touch but ones in which he made her perceptions coruscate in the gleam of moonlight; mornings wondering whether the real truth of her life was just those meager sordid yearnings for sexual intimacies; that potential conclusion that intellectualism was nothing but one's own pretentious wish to appear to herself as more than motion and rampageous sexual urgings, hatreds, and fears that were vital to the survival of the species — this all flitted through her mind a second before she struggled to regain control of her car.
Nathaniel's hands were grasping the steering wheel and there she was trying to counter this jerk of the car to the right and contend against his Freudian death wish. The memories of the many versions of Nathaniel at various ages fleeted through her mind. What he was doing now was clear. Why he was doing it was unfathomable in her consternation. A couple of seconds later the car darted over a triangular cement slab and onto a yield sign. Like the car beaten down in inertia, they were as sedentary as death and as inanimate as rocks. They stayed this way for half a moment and then, when meaning to ask him if he was all right, she reached over and slammed him hard on his face with one of her strong German polar bear paws and his head slammed against the door. He took the knock with tacit defiance and locked in whatever whimpering existed within. It was one of his last Halloweens as a boy and perhaps his last time dressed for trick or treat and it had come to this.
With the car towed off to the mechanic, she hated him for a week and then it slowly abated, lost and tangled within new neurons, new electronic circuits with thoughts successfully attempting to understand his bitterness, and with new emphasis to forgive and forget. But he, on the other hand, hated her for her 7 days of cold Antarctic ponderings at the dining room table and in her director's chair. Betty wouldn't even talk to him by the orders of General Sangfroid and, finding it hard to swallow food or understand anything on the television beside images running amuck, he hated his mother with incremental emphasis and duration. Knowing this, she began to consider taking him to the airport to send him away.