Her desire to kick the sun god house had been, in part, from the very desire to cling to it. She wanted to keep Nathaniel in a state preserved from society's lies, guile, opportunism, greed, and barbarity. She also wanted this private and personal experience with him that no one had shared since Aten's extinction in Egypt many thousands of years earlier.
From her most selfish inclinations she wanted his companionship to avoid a loneliness that was so stagnating on her energies. Common sense told her that he was a separate person and that his young and curious being, enveloped in the freshness of experience that was part of childhood, did not exist to free her from moments when the world just looked old and musty; and yet there were times when feelings did not succumb well to common sense. More altruistically, she wanted to keep him from having to witness Turkish beheadings and other real world models that would vitiate ideals to the realization that it was every man for himself. And yet he would be entering school soon: all innocence in a bubble had to finally break.
She took him and the cat to the area where one could rent out inner tubes. After paying for one, she re-staked the cat and pushed her son onto the waters where both son and mother were assailed by the rays of the sun. "Nathaniel," she said, "No more of that looking up into the sky like a dreamy baboon. Just watch the waves whisking us around." As she felt the undulations, she forgot about the Entity and vaguely recalled that sexual exhilaration with MF. Moments of Frenzy lived with one no longer than any of the passing winds against one's face. They were pleasant sensations, boosts of fuel, giving one a positive outlook toward more tangible encounters. With the exception of the best one, they were never remembered. But, rising up and down with the waves, she was not remembering any encounter, but rather the best one.
In later days and weeks she avoided work and clients more than she should have done and took Nathaniel to Niagara Falls, tiny falls in rural Ithaca, and on little rides in amusement parks in different areas of the state. Except for the local falls, which were free, she just said, "Charge please" and handed out a credit card to venders, ticket salesmen, and hotels. She handed them her bit of plastic although she knew this action would make her, even more, into a slave of her own brothel. She wanted to take him to Lake Placid in the Adirondack Mountains too but common sense prevailed. She had second thoughts about the matter for she knew that she needed to cut back on her spending. She had done these other things with him from a gluttony to celebrate those rare whole days when mother and son were fully together because she knew that they would not be endless. In short it had been a desire to hold onto him. The poet, Lucretius, was in her head. It was he who said, "The generations of living things pass in a short time, and like runners hand on the torch of life."
He was now nearly the age of six and the near emergence of the school year agitated her progressively. The vacations could not last forever and had not lasted forever. One reality after another budged into a human's life pushing the former one into a surreal dream. For an hour, each night, she would lock herself in her room, change into a black negligee, write her fears in a journal by the light of a candle, and often find her thoughts discombobulated by the sound of his voice.
"Gabriele," he whined one night behind the door. She ignored him in the hope he would go away. She was trying to perfect the doggerel she had written in her journal the previous night. "Don't yell/for you can tell/I am myself/ to no one else/ and like an ocean that says I am,/ an ocean by the name of Pam/and an unmarried feminist named Sam,/ I am so large that you can't see all of me even if you are traveling in a Pan AM./I just slap my waves on the shore./ I behave according to my inner nature and don't ask for more./ I am an ocean and so sometimes with my unfathomable depth it seems as if nothing touches me/ but it does you will see./ Water evaporates from me./ Sailors sail in me./ It is my glee/although I'm sometimes saddened by what is me." She rather liked the alliteration and the variations of the feet. She thought that her word choice was rather masterful although she wondered if the rhyme scheme wasn't a bit excessive.
"Gabriele. Will you play checkers with me?" he said through the door
"I'm working," she said mildly
"There's nobody in there with you."
"I'm thinking. Thinking is working."