Mrs. L

So I decided to try to remember the mothering models from my own childhood, as I keep thinking about the way all the mothers I know are perceived by all the children I know, and why, and how this will change as the children grow up. With really small children, I think most adults are sort of lumped together in the category of "adults," with some seeming nicer and some seeming stricter and some of no interest whatsoever. But as kids get older they are increasingly aware of parents, their own and other people's. I remember being around eleven or twelve and starting to assess the mothers of my friends, the mothers in particular, as unfortunately many of the dads were just shadowy figures who showed up for the big play and stood awkwardly at the back of the gym in their suits and expensive shoes.

And I remember the way some kids talked about their moms, too. I had a friend who was embarrassed by hers, and I knew this, even then. I had a classmate whose leaned on her too much for companionship, and I knew this too. And on one summer weekend right around this time I learned that one mother of my acquaintance was a drunk, a scary, mean one who passed as a regular mom at school pick-ups and other occasions, and I think this really hit home the notion that there was a whole range of mothers out there, and that I was extraordinarily lucky in mine.

I do feel a little perturbed when I think about some of the mothers I idealized at this time. They tended to be quite unlike mine, much as some of my friends around this time were quite unlike me. There was one in particular; I'll call her Mrs. L. She was young--she was probably just over 30 when I met her, if that, which is unfathomable to me now. She was blonde and pretty, like my mom, but flirty and trendy, unlike mine. Her husband, too, was extremely young, and both parents were sporty and outdoorsy in a golf and skiing kind of way mine were not. In fact, those are the qualities that were valued in this household: physical attractiveness, youth, sportsmanship, skiing prowess. There was no practicing the piano, or participation in the town library reading competition. Come to think of it, I am pretty sure neither the mom nor the dad had gone to college, and education was not a particular value either.

I thought Mrs. L was glamorous and gorgeous and fun. I can unwind a whole scene from a winter Saturday morning before we all went skiing when she opened a giant can of Spaghettios with an electric can opener and blithely spooned it into colored bowls for her four children and me, while wearing pale pink ski pants, her hair like the Barbie heads her daughter had upstairs: white blonde and styled in a flip. In what was hardly a coincidence, neither Spaghettios nor Barbies were found in my household, so a mom who looked like one, serving the other, for breakfast, before skiing, must have seemed like an alien creature to me. In fact, in my reel of this memory my mouth is a little bit open, in shock and awe, I suspect, as I watch Mrs. L flit about in her pretty kitchen.

Anyway. I am no Mrs. L. I am my mother's daughter, like her in some ways, unlike her in others, but formed in her household, under her care, exposed to her values and ideas. I wonder if Lily and Annika will have Mrs. L's and who they will be, and what they will see in them that they don't see in me, and--I guess ultimately what all this wondering is about--what kind of mothers they will be themselves, some day, if they choose to be mothers. And what I--and the work of these days of raising them--will have to do with it.

The Gloss of Time

Parenting young children leaves so little time for self-reflection. It is immediate, active and often chaotic, and when it is not, there is everything else to be done. But every once in a while I find myself wondering what my children will think of me, now, when they are grown. In other words, how will they remember me at this time in my life?

As I lay in bed beside Lily tonight, reading her goodnight story and letting my mind wander as much as I could while reading, I found myself thinking about the surprise party my mother threw for my father when he turned 30. This is one of my earliest, if hazy memories. When my dad turned 30 I was just 3. I don't remember seeing photographs of this event, and it's not the subject of family lore, so I trust my hazy memories more than I do those of the morning my father cut off his finger in the lawnmower, for example, which I really only "remember" because we have talked about it so much.

This party, though. It was winter; my father's birthday is at the end of November. I remember the door opening: a blast of cold air and a black sky. It was night, which maybe I remember because it must have been late for me to be up? He had been at a basketball game, or playing basketball; I remember basketball, but maybe I am conflating memories here. There was an awful lot of basketball in those days. Was there a poker table with a green felt top? My mother's hair was very blonde and flipped out at the ends. My father's hair was dark and thick. The clearest image is of his face, a crinkling around the eyes, a smile.

That's it. I don't remember guests or music or food or even being allowed to stay awake and watch; I don't know if I was. But to think now that they were 30--almost a decade younger than I am now--and that I was a fully actualized little girl with the capacity to notice my father's smile, remember it, is both thrilling and terrifying to me. Today, for example, right now as I sit at my desk, I am afraid that I will be crystallized in Lily's mind in these hideous black culottes that are stretchy and were tolerable to those who know me well during my last trimester and C-section recovery but are long overdue for a trip to an incinerator. Will she remember me with my unbrushed hair pulled back into a messy bun with a stretched-out elastic and purplish circles under my eyes? (The last time I saw my father he kept saying, "Is there something wrong with your skin? Under your eyes?" until my mother finally heard and snapped, "I think she's tired, Joel," shutting him up.)

And that's just the physical. Will she recall our ongoing exchange de jour, where she ignores me or does something she's not supposed to do, I reprimand or call attention to the ignoring or misbehaving, she bursts into tears and yells, "Just stop yelling at me, Mama. Just stop all the yelling," as though my being pushed to the brink has nothing whatsoever to do with her and is rather causing her undue distress? Will she remember that? Will I?

The funny thing is that I sort of think she won't. Not really. And I'm not sure I will either. Memory is so cagey. It condenses everything and then filters it out as it chooses, selectively, of course, in slices. And my memories of my parents are mostly scenes: this party, and then more clear and concrete scenes as I get older, and they do: the time my mother poured a cup of water on my father's head in the old kitchen, my father weeding in the garden, my mother sitting with her friend on the patio in front of the house, scraping wallpaper off of the walls. I remember many times they were kind: my father bringing me a Fribble when I had mono and a painful sore throat, my mother staying up late, late, late on a work night to help me finish a report on Clipper ships. (Why? Why Clipper ships?) And I remember fights: my father wandering the grounds of my high school because I was five minutes late to meet him, my mother, cold, refusing to get involved in a sibling battle, a stolen headband, idiocy.

But I realize, as I write this, that my memories are kind, less judgmental than I imagine I felt at the time, feel so often now. I remember the atmosphere more than the incidents, the sense of being loved. That, I think, is finally something to strive for.

Earlier today I read Lily the first four chapters of Stuart Little, and I was going to write about that--and about how she keeps asking me questions like, "But is Madeline real?" as she tries to figure out the line between truth and fiction (like the rest of us, I suppose), but then as I was sort of absent-mindedly sketching it all out in my head, I had another thought.

A close friend who lives very far away and has been reading this blog sent me an e-mail a few weeks ago that said, among many other things, "But I suppose it's not really much of a reflection of your life at all," about the blog, and she is right. If something I write here is about my life, it is one scene from a day of thousands, one eye cast upon one incident or thought or conversation, in a day that contained multitudes. In that way, it sometimes feels disingenuous to write about my life here, although of course it is often my chosen subject matter. But what occurred to me today is that it is an especially inaccurate, lopsided way to write about parenting.

So much of what I read about parenting annoys me in some way, and the way it most frequently annoys me is that it feels dishonest, even phony or stagy. And when I was plotting out my little sketch about me and Lily sitting in the reclining chair, each having our own experience with Stuart, I realized I was doing it too. Not that the experience of reading Stuart Little with Lily was not special or memorable, for it was. But it is also true that as I was reading, I was thinking about the New Yorker article I just read about the writing of Stuart Little, and trying to remember something funny Katharine White said about one of the book's critics, and that I was using this ability I have developed thanks to much less enjoyable books that I am sometimes forced to read to keep reading out loud while maintaining a totally separate train of thought of my own.

This, of course, flies in the face of "being in the moment" with your child, the holy grail of modern parenting, and a state which, in theory, I totally espouse. However, I also think that caring for an infant is often stultifyingly boring, and spending hours on end with a four-year-old sometimes can be viewed as a form of torture. While it did not surprise me to learn that the sound of a newborn wailing is sometimes piped into cells as an effective means of torture in prison camps, if I believed in torture I'd suggest instead an overtired preschooler whining on a loop while being, say, treated to a special lunch in a nice restaurant or being bought new shoes.

I could go on, elaborating on my theory that playing Go Fish or Chutes and Ladders as an adult qualifies as an actual glimpse into hell, or how much I loathe the fact that I have to change my clothes pretty much every time I pick up Annika, which quadruples the laundry and forces me to break out certain items of clothing that predate the Clinton administration, but that is as boring and stagy, in its own way, as the "precious moments" that I so want to avoid.

I guess my point is that I am setting myself a kind of a challenge in writing about parenting this week, and in general. Is there a way to encapsulate both the fact that Lily said, as we closed the Stuart Little book, "I really love that his family acts like he's just like the rest of them even though he's actually a mouse. Which is really weird," as well as the fact that her companionship can stimulate the intense, desperate need for an alcoholic beverage? The fact that Annika can throw her arms around me and plan an open kiss on my cheek that brings tears to my eyes and makes me feel that I need never do another thing in my life and that carrying her around the apartment when she wimpers at being put down makes me feel like brain cells are actually dying as the life I want to be living sails by like a boat on the Hudson?

I guess we shall see. But I do think it's important to paint as complete a picture as possible, for my own sake as well as for the sake of anyone reading.

Let It Be...Without Me

Note: No post yesterday on account of house being struck by lightning. I hope that's the only time I'll ever be able to use that excuse.

I recently had an exchange with an American parent living in Europe about the differences between the ways Europeans and Americans parent. We came to the joint conclusion that while many Europeans worship the child, many Americans today are fetishizing childhood in a way that, to me, seems detrimental to the child.

There are so many manifestations of this fetishization. For one, there are the baby and toddler "classes" that simply did not exist when I was born. I am not talking about piano lessons or drawing classes for older kids. I am talking about "enrichment activities" for pre-verbal children, sometimes babies who cannot yet walk. These classes are religiously attended where I live, and in the cities where many of my friends live, and I confess that I myself signed up for a handful of these classes when Lily was a toddler, largely out of my inability to listen to the voice in my head that told me they were inane. Or, a louder voice: that of my mother, who allowed and encouraged us to take all the classes we wanted when we were old enough to choose and desire them--and lord, we did--but who finds this new trend about as silly as taking $400 and ripping it up into confetti.

And although it has taken me a few years, I now both trust my instincts as a parent more, and have gathered sufficient empirical evidence to have determined that there is quite a bit of truth to the confetti argument. I wonder what would happen to this generation of children if their parents could just learn to step back?

Today, while playing out on the lawn by herself, Lily occupied well over two hours engaged in a game of her own devising. She took two small tents from the shed and placed them near each other on the lawn. She took a row of small chairs and footstools and set them up in rows. She had a cavalcade of dolls and animals arranged in various postures and locations, as well as countless other small objects she'd collected around the house and yard. There was scotch tape involved, and water. There was a full size stroller and two doll strollers she'd managed to connect with elaborate knots. All of the dolls and animals were dressed; those who didn't have ready-made clothes were wearing clothes she'd made with paper and leaves.

Every so often I would look out the window, amazed by how the world she was creating took shape. Not once did she ask me for help, or my opinion, or my feedback, or my praise. Once she appeared to be finished with the construction aspect of the project, she began to play. After a very long while, I made my way out in the yard, over to where she was playing. At first, she didn't even notice me. And then: "Oh, hi Mama. Do you by any chance want to be the bus driver?" Really, how could I say no?

Annika, if I am tempted to bring you to Baby French or Art for Tots or any other activity you cannot yet pronounce, I will buy you some more blocks, books or paints instead. And be the bus driver every once in a while. Although I suspect you won't need me to very often. There's somebody just waiting for you to be old enough to jump on the bus.

Thoughts on Babies and Dogs

Yesterday, with Annika in the Baby Bjorn, I was walking the dogs--two full-size collies--when a couple of women stopped me at the corner. They were speaking to each other in another language, German, I think, and didn't speak much English. After a few confusing minutes, during which it became clear their intentions were friendly, I finally realized they wanted to photograph the dogs.

This had actually happened once before, and although I find it odd--sort of like the way I find tourists photographing stationary objects such as the tree at Rockefeller Center odd--I see no reason to say no, so I stopped and let them take their pictures. When they were finished they thanked me, and one of them, struggling over the words and speaking loudly, the way I do when I attempt to use my French, said something along the lines of: We don't usually see anything like this in our country.

A neighbor, a guy I know who lives on my street, happened to be walking by as she said it, and he laughed. "We don't either," he said to the women. "That's just Amy."

I relay this anecdote as a conduit. I cannot count the number of times people, many of whom are related to me by blood or marriage and some of whom are strangers with opinions they feel the need to share, have made comments about the insanity of my choice to have those dogs. And it is my choice, in that I knew all along that I would be the one to feed and walk them, to nurture them on a daily basis, as--quite simply--I am the one who is always home.

The funny thing is that not for an instant have I ever minded the daily care of the dogs. They get fed twice a day, walked three times a day during the week, and every once in a while require a trip to a groomer or vet. Although there are times, such as when it is raining or cold, that I would prefer not to walk them, the work itself is simple, entirely physical in nature. And in return for their food and walks, as well as the easy physical affection I bestow upon them, these dogs give me the unconditional love pets are famous for, their own brand of uncomplicated affection, and loyal companionship around the clock. Whenever I get one of these "What were you thinking?" comments, I always smile to myself, knowing that I have the better end of the deal.

By now you may be wondering what, if anything, this has to do with parenting. If not for this past week, I would have a hard time knowing myself. But I never realized before how much the daily care of a baby has in common with the daily care of a dog. This was thrown into relief for me by virtue of the fact that Lily spent this past week with my parents in Massachusetts, leaving me--for the first time in years--alone with a baby for more than a couple of hours. Spending a full day with Annika requires feeding, airing, the facilitating of sleep, along with somewhat mindless narration and play. But the lack of emotional entanglement, of arguing, negotiating, manipulating and being manipulated, explaining, elaborating, enhancing, and calibrating in this week without a four-year-old around has made me realize that it is the mental work required of raising an older child that leaves me spent, not the excruciatingly dull, robotic work of unfolding diapers and filling bottles, over and over again.

I miss Lily. In fact, I feel bereft, a word I've never before used to describe my emotional state. But today, when I entered the living room and found three pairs of eyes, three nonverbal beings awaiting their lunches, I must confess my mind felt clean and clear.

Tomorrow, Lily returns. I think I'd better go rest up.

A Quick Note

I made a decision today while I was working on Saving Scout and decided to write about it briefly in lieu of posting what I wrote today; I will post the next segment of the book when I have ten more pages or so. My decision is to let myself run with the parenting entries for a solid week and see how it goes. I have been really conflicted about the many parenting entries I have recorded here because they are not linked in any way to any current, active projects, but that is not to say that they couldn't be, and based on some of the feedback I have been getting and the way I feel about some of the work, maybe they should be. Regardless, I am going to stop feeling guilty or self-indulgent when I write about parenting or my children for one solid week and let the chips fall where they may. It is possible that the work is trying to tell me something and that I need to listen to it. I am so wary of alienating those who don't have or aren't interested in kids, as well as becoming one of those women who turns toward kids as a fallback subject due to a disengagement with the world at large. But I have a tendency to let fear inhibit what I write, and I'm a little tired of trying to figure out what other people want or don't want to read about and second guessing every notion that comes into my head. One week. Kids. Parenting. Bring it on.

Saving Scout, changes and new pages

Saving Scout
By Amy Wilensky

The day they moved in his grandfather was rainy and cold. An omen, thought Andy, as he watched grimly from his bedroom window on the second floor. First, a van turned into the driveway and pulled up to the house near where the ramp had been installed leading up to the rarely used side door. Then, the driver and a young guy wearing some sort of uniform—a nurse, Andy figured—got out of the van and said something to Andy’s mom, who was standing with her arms folded tight across her chest, her back to the van. She shook her head no. He could see her hair swing with the force of it.

“Andy?” his dad yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “Can you come give me a hand?” Andy stood up. His legs ached from crouching, so he pulled one foot back for a stretch, then the other, as though preparing for a run. He wished he were going for a run; he felt a nearly irrepressible urge to run down the stairs, past his cowardly father, past his angry mother, past the van from the hospital and down to the river, where the air would be colder, bitter, even, and his palms wouldn’t feel sweaty and the tears forming in the corners of his eyes would sting in a way that felt good, like the way running did when he’d run so long that he could no longer feel his legs, his feet roll one after the other on the pavement.

“Coming,” he yelled back, with a final glance out the window. He caught the back half of the wheelchair, a glimpse of his grandfather’s shock of white hair.

Andy had been surprised when his mother had told him his grandfather, her father, would be coming to stay with them. His mother had never been close to her father. At thirteen, Andy had probably met the man a dozen times, if that, at relatives' weddings, a tense family reunion at a cousin’s in California, once in New York City, when he and his mother had taken the train in from Boston because his grandfather had been giving a lecture at NYU.

Andy knew his grandfather was a (**WHAT) professor, and he knew that he had cancer, was dying, he thought, from the snippets of conversation he’d overheard late at night, when his parents thought he was sleeping and felt safe to argue, their voices becoming sharper and louder as the arguments intensified.

“I thought he was dying,” Andy had in fact asked his mother, when she’d broken the news, and for a moment he thought he saw her eyes flicker, the suggestion of sadness. But then she’d tilted her head, almost imperceptibly, and he decided he'd imagined it: a trick of the light.

“He is,” she said. He’s coming here from the hospice. He’s lived longer than they thought he would, and he can’t stay any longer. He’s coming here to die.”

Andy could tell she regretted it as soon as she’d said it, but she didn’t apologize. She was sitting at the kitchen table, her now cold breakfast coffee nearly untouched in front of her, and she reached up one hand and rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. Andy looked away, out the window over the sink at the back yard where he could see the skeleton of his old swingset by the trees that divided their yard from the neighbors’.

“That’s good to know, Mom,” he said, as sarcastically as he could manage. “Thanks so much for sharing.”

“Andy,” she said, as he pushed his own chair back and got up, walked over to the sink. There was a red bird, a cardinal, at the top of the slide, which Andy hadn’t been on in years. Occasionally, he’d go out and sit on one of the swings if he needed to be alone, but the slide, no. It was yellow, falsely cheerful it seemed to him now, as he watched the bird fly out and up, over the row of pines. A baby toy. He didn’t know why they were holding onto the swing set anyway. Probably neither one of them wanted to deal with getting it hauled off to the dump.

“Forget it. I’m fine,” he said, walking out, leaving her sitting there with her head in her hand.

After helping his father get his grandfather settled, Andy walked out into the backyard, past the swingset, all the way to the pine trees. He sat in his favorite spot against the trunk of the largest one, where he could not be seen from the house. He put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. The rough bark dug into his skin, but he didn’t move. He wondered how long it would take his grandfather to die. To be honest, he didn’t even seem that sick, he seemed exactly the same as he had the last time Andy had seen him, about six months before, when his father had made them drive to New Jersey, where the * facility was.

“You’ll regret it if you don’t,” his father had hissed to his mother through clenched teeth in the front seat of the car. Andy had almost said, “I’m not actually deaf,” but had decided against it. The tension was thick enough, and besides, he didn’t really care. He knew that his mother hadn’t wanted to come. He didn’t quite get their thing, why she hated his grandfather so much, or exactly what was so bad about his grandfather. It’s not like he was taking Andy to Red Sox games or calling him to ask about school or anything, but he was always friendly, polite. Andy had known from as far back as he could remember that the man had little interest in him, but he had his father’s parents, who were like television sitcom grandparents, seriously: rosy cheeks, candy dish, presents to celebrate his half-birthdays let alone the real ones, lasagna and tossing the football around in the yard. It was almost too corny sometimes, but it was nice. It was enough. Couldn’t his mother see that? Or maybe it didn’t have anything to do with him.

That visit had gone badly. After about ten minutes of sitting on a threadbare chair in the big open room full of other dying old people that smelled like citronella and vanilla and something much less pleasant all at the same time, Andy had stood up and walked out, and nobody had noticed, or at least nobody had said anything at the time. He’d walked out back where there was what the nurses called a “garden” but looked like a parking lot with a few also dying geraniums in cracked pots.

“Four to a room seems crowded,” his mother had muttered one afternoon, looking over a brochure or something, and his father had said, ironically as it turned out, “What? You’d rather have him come here?”

After another half hour or so, Andy’s mother emerged from the entrance, where Andy was sitting on the bench playing an incredibly boring game on his cell phone. He looked up; his father was behind her, and he shook his head at Andy in a kind of a warning, which Andy decided to take. He got up, and the three of them walked to the car in total silence, which lasted all the way back to Massachusetts, through three states, although his father found a terrible radio station, the kind where they played classical music and then talked about it in the most excruciating way possible, so there was at least some sound to cover the awful silence.

They’d never talked about it again, Andy realized, as he got up and dusted bark and dirt from the back of his sweatshirt and jeans. In fact, the subject of his grandfather had not come up at all since that day, until his mother’s announcement, and now this. It didn’t seem real; he knew he was going to have to remind himself that his grandfather was actually living there for at least a week until the idea took hold. Unless, of course, the man decided to emerge from the bedroom.

Later, lying in bed with the covers over his head, Andy had described the afternoon to his friend Mia, who called most nights once she knew he was in bed. It was a routine they had developed over the course of the previous year, and on the nights when she didn’t call, for whatever reason, Andy always fell asleep feeling vaguely unsettled, as though he weren’t sure what had happened to him had really happened without the opportunity to tell Mia about it.

When Andy was finished, had told about the awkward pushing of the wheelchair up the ramp that his father--as it turned out--had not properly installed, about the way his grandfather had even more awkwardly hoisted himself out of the chair, onto the bed, and then turned on his side so his back was to them, and that Andy had seen (for the first time in his life) tears in his grandfather's eyes, Mia was silent.

"Well?" he finally said. She cleared her throat.

"There's not much to say," she said. Andy was annoyed. Mia was the kid the teacher had to ask NOT to raise her hand. She never had nothing to say.

"Can you believe my mother actually said that?" he pushed. "To me? It's like: Deal with it. You're the grown-up." His face felt hot, remembering. Although for some reason he hadn't said this to Mia, the thought of his grandfather dying right there in their house, where Andy could see him, could discover him, made him feel queasy and a little bit scared. He kept imagining the scene, him stumbling over the wheelchair blocking the doorway only to feel a chill in the room, confront his grandfather’s blank, frozen stare.

Again, Mia was quiet, but then she said, in an uncharacteristically quiet voice, "It's got to be terrible for your mom." Mia and Andy's mom had never quite clicked. Andy suspected his mother thought it was strange that his best friend was a girl but not his girlfriend. A lot of adults teased Andy about this, but he had expected more from his mother. He’d tried explaining that things weren’t like his mother’s junior high days anymore, with dates at the roller rink and holding hands behind the gym at school. There were girls he liked, and girls he was friends with, and they didn’t necessarily overlap. But Mia was different, and his mother didn’t get it. For the first few months of their friendship, whenever Mia called, or came over, his mother would ever so slightly raise her eyebrows with a little smile that made Andy want to crawl out of his skin.

Once she had said to him, "You know, in a few years I think Mia's going to be quite attractive," and Andy had seethed, said in his head: You know, just because you and dad don't like each other doesn't mean I can't have a friend who's a girl. But he hadn't. And after a while, with no reaction, she'd stopped. Suddenly Andy was feeling annoyed with Mia. What kind of a friend defended the enemy? She was supposed to be on his side. What else was the point? (TOO NEG)

"You know what?" he said. "Forget about it. You're right, she's just stressed out, and the whole thing's not a big deal. I won't even see him. He eats in the bedroom. On a stupid tray. Now can we please talk about my science project?"

Andy's science project had become the bane of his existence. He hated science. It was his worst subject every year, and this year was especially bad because his teacher, Mr.Gallagher, hated him. Whenever he expressed this complaint, Mia went off on her list of theories about Mr. Gallagher--he sidelined in Internet porn, he bought vintage GI Joe dolls on ebay, and on and on--Andy got the distinct feeling she was skirting around the reality of the situation, which was that Mr. Gallagher really didn't like Andy, and they weren’t sure why.

"I've got to say, you're in serious trouble," she said now, back to her old self. "I can't really imagine how you think you're going to pull this off in four days. There's no time to build it, to get the materials." Every year, the eighth graders at their school were given the same assignment: to design, build and demonstrate an invention that actually worked. Mia had constructed a lie detector test that measured the subjects heart rate based on a series of questions. It had a monitor, and extensive research conducted in part at a police academy in the city, where her mother’s college roommate worked in administration. It was not only a guaranteed A, it had impressed even Mia herself, who had not been sure, in the final weeks, that she could pull it off. She’d used Andy as a guinea pig. It was scary how well the thing worked.

“Well, that’s very helpful,” said Andy, as sarcastically as he could manage, considering his temples were starting to throb. He wasn’t jealous of Mia, exactly She deserved an A. She’d worked like a dog all spring. But still. She didn’t seem very sympathetic. “That’s why I called you, actually. So you could remind me how much trouble I’m in. I almost forgot.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “You’re right. Have you thought about going in to see him, asking him—begging him—for help?” It was one of the things Andy liked most about Mia: she was an eternal optimist. He knew that if he made an appointment during Mr. Gallagher’s office hours, the man would be waiting for him like a spider in her web. He’d only lectured them every day for months about “managing their time” and “spreading out the workload.” Each day Andy had carefully written the same note in his school-issued planner: Start Science project. And each night he had crossed it off, telling himself that he’d begin, for real, the following day.

“Won’t work,” Andy said, glumly. “Have you forgotten that he already, well… hates me? I need a project, and I need one fast, or I’ll fail science, and they won’t let me run track. High school will be even more miserable than we think it will be.” He could hear Mia rustling around in what he assumed was a kitchen cabinet, probably for a late-night snack. On top of everything else, she was a night owl, could work until midnight, or later, without getting tired. And she had a wicked sweet tooth. “What is that?” he teased. “Frozen snickers bar?”

“Ice cream sandwich,” she mumbled, her mouth full. “But don’t change the subject. You’re right. If you can’t run, then you might as well not even be in school.” Mia hated running, always said she didn’t see what the point was unless you were being chased, but she knew how much it meant to Andy. For the past few years she had been waiting at the finish line with her dad as Andy approached the old Presbyterian church in the center of town after the annual 5K. She was holding a bottle of cold water for him the last time around, and Andy’s mother had said, “Well, isn’t that sweet,” in a way that had made Mia feel like an idiot. “Let me think about it. Okay? I’ll make myself a goal: project idea within 24 hours.”

“That sounds great, Mia,” Andy said. And it did. For the rest of the evening, Andy felt optimistic for the first time in a long time. Mia would save the day: find him a project, provide him with all of the research and help him execute the invention. Dr. Gallagher loved Mia; she was the best student in the class. Maybe she could even go with him to the meeting, wait outside the office, make him look good. He thought about calling back to ask her but decided against it. He could ask her on the way to school the next morning. It wasn’t like he was going to forget.

The next morning, when Andy woke up, he was still in a guardedly good mood. It was a warm day, a spring day, and he had track practice after school. The only part of his day he was NOT looking forward to was his meeting with Dr. Gallagher. For once, he was showered, dressed and ready early enough to have actual breakfast, as opposed to grabbing a bagel thrust at him by one of his parents as he sprinted past them out the front door. When he entered the kitchen, however, he was taken aback when he realized that only his grandfather was seated at the table, the new table—high enough for the wheelchair to be pulled up to and then under it. Apparently the dying man still had an appetite. Or at least a desire for human interaction.

“Good morning, Andrew,” his grandfather said, in his new, shaky voice. Andy didn’t really remember his old voice, but his mother kept saying how different he sounded, how unlike how she remembered him, that Andy had started to think “new voice” every time his grandfather opened his mouth. As for the “Andrew,” he didn’t take it personally. The man wasn’t trying to bug him. His grandfather simply didn’t know that nobody else called him that.

Andy rummaged around in the cabinet until he found a box of cereal. Before junior high, he’d had cereal every morning. He and his dad, also a runner and an early riser who liked to jog at dawn when it was still cool, and the sidewalks clear, would sit together and eat, their spoons clinking against the china bowls, as the sky grew light behind them in the kitchen window, and Andy’s mother slept upstairs.

“Hey,” he said, not rude, not friendly, just neutral. He’d decided that was going to be his tone with his grandfather: neutral. It was fitting, a reflection of how he actually felt about the man. To be totally honest, he didn’t even know him well enough to feel sorry for him. I mean, it was obvious that things weren’t good. Even if his mother hadn’t over-shared, he would have sensed this, caught a whiff of death as he passed what had been the den, would surely be the den again before too long. He had not actually seen his grandfather get out of the chair, although he knew that he could, barely; his mother had told him so.

“School today?” his grandfather asked. Andy was surprised. Were they going to have an actual conversation? He sat across from his grandfather and stirred his cereal, drowning the dry pieces on top.

“Yup,” he answered. “Regular day.” Although of course it wasn’t. He hoped Mia had had one of her famous middle-of-the-night revelations; she kept a notebook by her bed solely for recording them. He could just see it: her sitting up in bed, reaching out for the notebook with a huge grin on her face, having just conceived of the best science project ever for him, possibly even better than her own. He would know soon enough.

“Do you take the bus?” his grandfather asked, as though to a stranger, making conversation. Andy checked his watch.

“Nope. I walk. And my friend’s going to be here any second, so I’ve got to run.” He wolfed down the last few bites as his grandfather watched in silence. He thought about picking up the bowl and slurping the rest of the milk, but then thought better of it as his grandfather picked up his napkin and patted gently around his mouth. Andy noticed how thin and veiny the skin on his face was. You could almost see through it. Andy got up. “So I guess I’ll see you later,” he said, although he suspected he would not. His grandfather had requested dinner on a tray in his room the previous evening, which Andy had thought would please his mother—no change in routine—but instead had seemed to annoy her. There was no reason to think tonight would be any different. And besides, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have time to eat dinner. He’d need to be finishing up his science project.

As soon as he reached the curb, he could tell that Mia was distracted. She barely looked at him as they started walking the ten blocks to school. It was chilly for March, and their breath made little clouds in front of their faces as they walked. For a few seconds Andy just watched the puffs of breath form: gas to solid, sort of, he thought. That was a science project, wasn’t it? No. “So?” he finally said.

“So what?” said Mia, quickening her pace. Andy felt his chest tighten a bit.

“My project? What’s our idea? I know you have one.” Mia stopped walking, abruptly. Andy stopped too.

“No, Andy,” she said, speaking very slowly, as though he didn’t speak English and she was trying to give him directions to somewhere important. “I do not have a project for you. I guess you are just going to have to do the work yourself this time.” Andy’s face felt hot, in spite of the temperature. Mia was so rarely annoyed, he didn’t know what to do, how to react. For a moment he forgot all about the science project. They started walking again, even more quickly than before, thanks to Mia’s pace. Maybe she wasn’t a runner, but she sure could speedwalk

“Okay,” he said, trying to remain calm. “What’s going on? You sound, well, a little weird.” Mia gave him a look he couldn’t quite decipher.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Nothing I feel like talking about right now.” She didn’t say it, but the words “with you” hung in the air. The school appeared in front of them then, an old-fashioned brick building with odd, tacked-on 1970s additions in dark wood with slanted roof panels. Andy flipped open his phone. They had two minutes to get to homeroom.

“If you change your mind—“ he said, letting the sentiment drift off.

“Yup. Whatever,” said Mia. “I’ll see you at lunch.” She adjusted her backpack and ran into the school ahead of him. Andy stood on the courtyard for a moment, letting hurried students and teachers stream past him, occasionally knocking into him with a bag or a book. For once, the cockeyed, goofy building seemed ominous. At the very last second, as the last bell chimed, he ran in, too. It was unavoidable. Skipping out would just make it worse.


By the time sixth period rolled around, Andy had worked himself into a state. He waited until everyone else had filed into the classroom, then slipped in at the last possible second, into the seat by the radiator that nobody ever wanted, as it sputtered hot water and hissed periodically, making it hard to hear Mr. Gallagher, who believed in “notebook checks,” meaning that one actually had to take notes. Good ones. But the seat had one distinct advantage. It was in the back right corner of the classroom, about as far as it was possible to sit from Mr. Gallagher’s desk at the front of the room by the door.

“So today,” Mr. Gallagher began, “I’m going to go over the checklist for your invention projects. You should be basically done, but there are a few details I want to make sure we’ve reviewed, and of course, I will also take all of your last-minute questions. I don’t need to remind you how important this project is. It will be 75% of your grade this semester.” A few students opened their notebooks. Everybody took out the project instruction handouts. Silvia Dragun, the best student in Andy’s section, immediately raised her hand.

“Mr. Gallagher?” she began. Andy rolled his eyes. Silvia was so predictable. This would be the question designed to show how on top of things Silvia was. He and Mia had once decided that Silvia was the kind of person who would, ten years down the road, sit in job interviews telling people that her negative trait was being “too much of a perfectionist.” “I was wondering if you wanted our bibliographies to be annotated.” Even Mr. Gallagher looked taken aback. Andy was pretty sure most of the class didn’t even know what that meant. He did, because Mia had taken a class at the community college during the summer and had explained it to him. But even Silvia knew that annotated bibliographies were not generally required of junior high students.

“A regular bibliography, per the handout, should suffice, Silvia,” Mr. Gallagher said, sounding—was it possible?—a little bit weary. Andy surveyed his classmates. There was nobody in the room, he knew, who did not have a finished, or nearly finished, project at home. There were no slackers in this group. It was a fast track class, the “smart kids,” as the other kids called them. Silvia may have been the most annoying, but she had plenty of competition in terms of the work. Andy’s chest felt tight. He was doomed.

By some miracle, Mr. Gallagher left Andy alone in class. He asked a couple of kids to elaborate on their progress, which took up the first part of class, and when he opened the floor to questions, the brownnosers took over, following in Silvia’s illustrious footsteps. Andy sat back and watched the show, at first impressed in spite of himself by the projects his classmates had taken on. The dumbest kid in the class, Bobby Smythe, had built a miniature working cotton gin, based on Eli Whitney’s original. Mr. Gallagher’s eyes grew wide, as Bobby explained how he’d actually managed to improve upon one of the great inventions of the industrial revolution. Great, thought Andy. Even Bobby’s going for the A. But Mr. Gallagher didn’t so much look in Andy’s direction. It was as though he’d actually managed to make himself invisible. Now that would be a project, thought Andy.

As soon as the bell rang, however, Andy’s luck ran out. “Mr. Morris?” said Mr. Gallagher, pointing at Andy with his glasses, which he’d removed and was wielding like a weapon. A very bad sign, thought Andy. This was a sort of tic they’d observed in the teacher before; the glasses came off and were waved around for emphasis only when he was in a very bad mood. Andy met his eyes. “Please follow me to my office.”

When they were sitting in Mr. Gallagher’s tiny, hot office space, which he shared with two other science teachers, Mr. Gallagher finally put his glasses back on. Andy tried to look calm, but his mind was reeling. He couldn’t think of a lie. He could barely think of his own name.

“Andy.” Mr. Gallagher’s eyes were cold. “As far as I can tell you have done no work thus far on your invention project.” Andy opened his mouth, unsure of what he was going to say, but Mr. Gallagher held up his hand to stop him. “I suspect you are planning at some point to ask me for an extension.” Andy felt a glimmer of hope. Was he about to buy a little more time?

“Well,” Andy said, drawing out the word. “If I had just a few more days I could probably—“ Mr. Gallagher took off his glasses again.

“The answer is no. Your work this semester has been sloppy and often late. The rest of the class has been working hard on their projects, and I am not going to make an exception for you. If you don’t turn in a project with the rest of the class this Friday, you will fail science.” The teacher stood, waiting for Andy to join him. His face hot, his eyes welling up with tears he would not let Mr. Gallagher have the satisfaction of seeing, Andy rose too. “You may go,” said Mr. Gallagher, waving his glasses in the direction of the closed door.