Imperfect Spiral (5 page)

She never did back off. And Adrian left me last February, marooned at home and in high school.

But he is here now.

“Isn't anything just left alone?” I say. “Just, a terrible thing happened. Let it be. No customized signs ordered off a website. No wondering what if someone had done something different. No police investigations. Just let it be.”

I cover my face with my hands so tears don't splash on Adrian's laptop.

“Okay,” Adrian says. “It's okay. A terrible thing happened. It happened to you, too. You're allowed to cry.”

The thing is, I don't cry. The laptop is in no danger.

“But you know that people will not just let it be,” Adrian says. “A kid gets hit by a car on a neighborhood street. It's not the type of thing people can just let be.”

“It's not?” I say mournfully. Of course I know he's right.

“No,” Adrian responds. “Even in the ER Friday night, there was Mrs. Raskin ranting that she knew something like this was going to happen because there aren't streetlights on Quarry Road.”

“But—”

“And Mr. Stashower complaining because there's no crosswalk at Quarry and Franklin.”

“But that doesn't have anything to do with anything!” I say.

“And?” Adrian says. “All I'm saying is—there will be polemics.”

“
Polemics
?” I say.

“Yeah. People will be huffing and puffing over what could have prevented this accident.”

Polemics
. Wouldn't Humphrey have liked that word? Well, it isn't quite up to the level of showiness that he favored. Maybe if I turned it into something longer.
Polemicist. Polemicization
.

“And you're going to need to be tough, and not take the huffing and puffing personally,” Adrian adds.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

I will pertinaciously perambulate around the periphery of the polemical piffle.

Humphrey wasn't a linguistic prodigy, although he could recite a prodigious number of words that began with the letter
p
. Those words, Mrs. Danker explained to me at the end of my second week of babysitting, began as a diversion. Humphrey had become obsessed with certain one- and two-syllable
p
words that his parents preferred not to hear over and over again.

“So,” Mrs. Danker said, “Tom started this thing where he taught Humphrey these long, sophisticated
p
words, which, he convinced him, were better, because—bigger is better, right? And it worked.”

At the start of my third week on the job, I was surprised to find Mr. Danker at home. It was late in the morning, and I'd expected that he would be at his office.

“Hi, Mr. Danker,” I said.

“Hello,” Mr. Danker said. He called up the stairs. “Clarice, the—she's—the sitter is here.”

I heard Humphrey's little feet in his cute little Converse high-tops running on the uncarpeted upstairs hallway floor. Then, softer, padding down the carpeted steps, followed by Mrs. Danker.

“You really don't need to take me,” Mrs. Danker said to her husband. “I've been driving myself just fine. It's no big deal.”

“I know I don't need to. I want to. It's your birthday, and I'd like to spend time with you.”

I wondered: Was Mr. Danker a dad with a thing about quality time, too?

“In the waiting room?” Mrs. Danker said.

“We'll go for a nice lunch afterward,” he said.

When Mrs. Danker came home from radiation, she didn't usually eat. It wasn't that radiation made you sick, Mrs. Danker had told me. It wasn't like chemotherapy. It just made her feel a little whipped. After she rested for an hour or so, she usually ate something small and cold. A yogurt. A little container of cottage cheese. She liked cold red plums.

But here was her husband trying to do something special for her birthday. So she smiled and said, “That would be lovely.”

Mr. Danker hung behind as Mrs. Danker went out to the car.

“Young lady,” he said to me, “would it be asking too much for you to go to the mall with Humphrey and pick out a gift
from him for his mother's birthday?” He held out two twenty-dollar bills.

“Yes!” Humphrey said.

“For Mommy,” Mr. Danker said. “Only a gift for Mommy. This is not a time for a present for Humphrey.”

“I know,” Humphrey said, his eyes cast down.

“Humphrey had a bit of trouble last night concealing his disappointment when his mother received gifts at a little birthday get-together we had,” Mr. Danker said. “He was under the mistaken impression that he should receive gifts, too.”

“Aw, Humphrey,” I said. “Weren't you happy for your mommy?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled.

“Humphrey, what do we say?” Mr. Danker said. “What do we say to answer in the affirmative?”

Humphrey continued looking at the floor, but he clearly knew the answer. “Yes,” he said.

Wow
, I thought.
In the affirmative
. I wondered if Mr. Danker preferred “yes, sir,” like Marissa's father. But he didn't press Humphrey on that.

“And when you go to your cousin's birthday next weekend, Humphrey, who is the only one who is going to get presents?” Mr. Danker asked.

Humphrey blew out a sigh. “Juliet,” he said.

“Don't be bummed, Humphrey,” I said. “When it's your birthday, who's going to get all the presents?”

That got him to look up. “I will!” he said.

“That is not precisely the expectation or lesson that I'm trying to reinforce here,” Mr. Danker said.

Now my eyes were on the floor, too.

Mr. Danker continued. “Humphrey's aunt brought him a monogrammed handkerchief, just like the kind that I carry. And, Humphrey, what was your reaction?”

Humphrey didn't respond.

“Son?”

Another big, audible sigh. “I said it wasn't a real present. And I cried.”

“Yes,” Mr. Danker said. “And crying when someone gives you a present is not an appropriate reaction, is it, Humphrey?”

“No,” Humphrey said to the floor.

“Now, Humphrey, will you look at me and say good-bye?” Mr. Danker said.

Humphrey looked up. “'Bye, Daddy.”

Mr. Danker reached down and ran his hand across Humphrey's crew cut. “We'll see you later.”

We took a bus to the mall. I wished I'd asked Mr. Danker what he had in mind for this present. Cologne? Fancy hand cream? Stationery?

A window display at a swimwear boutique caught Humphrey's eye.

“Look!” he said.

Bikinis galore. Oh, sure. Just the thing.

Next, the cheapo toy store with a window full of plastic.

“I think Mommy would like a robot,” Humphrey said.

The high-end toy store.

“That train set would be perfect,” Humphrey said, his eyes following the cars as they chugged along. “Mommy loves trains.”

We drifted into one of the nice department stores. There had to be something. Here were women's—whatevers. I wasn't sure what to call this stuff, and there was so much of it. Loungewear? It was all slinky, velour-ish suits. I looked up and saw a sign:
ACTIVEWEAR
.

“Come on, Humphrey,” I said. The round clothing racks of activewear were so close together, and Humphrey was so small, that I couldn't see him. “We're moving on.”

No answer. I walked around some of the displays. “Humpty Dumpty?”

I pushed my way through two overflowing displays. A third one quivered. Wait. Unless that rack was alive, it had no business quivering. Unless.

I found Humphrey nestled between two velvet leisure suits. He was holding the purple fabric of the jacket between the index and middle fingers of his right hand, and holding—no, clutching—one of the purple pant legs in his left hand.

“Humphrey!” I exclaimed.

He was absolutely in rapture. “These give me tears,” he said.

The pantsuit could not have been uglier. But when I reached out to touch the fabric, I understood. It was a flower petal, only sturdier. But not too sturdy, not rigid—it was a flower petal that draped and flowed. It was beautiful to the touch, and Humphrey, sensitive Humphrey, who, Mrs. Danker had told me, needed the tags cut out of his shirts so they didn't bother his neck, was practically moved to a tearful trance by the softness.

“It is really soft and nice,” I said.

“And it's beautiful,” he said. “Can we get it?”

Oh. This was really not a good look for Mrs. Danker. She was old, but not so far gone as to be velour-leisure-suit-wearing old.

I looked at the tag. Saved. “It's too expensive, Humphrey,” I said. “We can't spend this much on your present for your mom.”

“Pl-ea-se?” This was Humphrey's whiny voice. But it was offset by the way he clasped his hands, as if in prayer. “Are you sure?”

I was sure.

“When it's my birthday,” he said, “remember to tell my parents about this. I would like it.”

“Humphrey,” I said, “this isn't for you. It's a pantsuit for a big lady. A big
old
lady.”

“I don't have to wear it,” he said. “I just want to have it.”

We chose a picture frame, stopped in the food court for lunch, and caught the bus back to Quarry Road. Walking back to the Dankers' house, I asked Humphrey when his birthday was.

“December seventeenth,” he said.

“Not too far from now,” I said encouragingly, thinking that
it must feel like an eternity to him. “Mine is in December, too, the twenty-eighth.”

“We're almost birthday twins!” he said.

“We can have our own private party,” I said.

“My birthday is the next birthday in our house. Mommy's is today. Daddy's was before. Next is me!”

“Sometimes people don't give you the greatest presents, though,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“But you also get great presents, too, don't you?”

“Yeah.”

“So then,” I said, “if you get a present that's disappointing to you, you could say to yourself, ‘That's all right. I'm going to get great presents, too.'”

He hesitated. “Yeah. But sometimes the disappointment just pops out.”

“Maybe practicing would help. Maybe if we practiced getting the worst, stupidest, crummiest presents in the whole world, you would remember to just say ‘thank you' and know you'll end up with great presents, too.”

He stopped and looked at me as if I were crazy. “That's silly.”

“Just an idea,” I said.

“Okay!” Humphrey said.

“Okay,” I said. “Humphrey, I'm your aunt Cruella, and I'm giving you this lovely, lovely gift of”—I reached into my purse for a tissue—“this wonderful tissue!”

“Oh!” he said. He looked puzzled.

“So you accept it politely and say, ‘Thank you so much, Aunt Cruella,'” I prompted.

“Thank you so much, Aunt Cruella,” Humphrey repeated.

“Because you know you're going to get something you really want from someone else,” I said.

“Yeah!”

“All right,” I said. “I'm your uncle Frankenstein, and I say, ‘Hey there, young whippersnapper, here's a gift for you,' and I give you”—I found a ChapStick in my purse—“this. What do you do?”

“Accept it politely and say, ‘Thank you, Uncle Frankenstein!'” Humphrey yelled.

We practiced with a crumpled sheet of paper, a piece of thread, a hairbrush. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

“One more, Humphrey. I'm Mr. Mushy Misery, and I am pleased to present you with this gift of”—into my purse again, for another tissue—“a used, but very elegant handkerchief! It's even monogrammed with your very own initials! What do you do, Humphrey?”

He didn't hesitate. “Give it to Daddy.”

The day after the condolence call, Monday, Mom and Dad go to work. Normally I would be due at the Dankers' at eleven fifteen. Now my schedule is wide open. I'm not sure what to do with myself.