Chapter Sixty
It was already too late. After Puck had opened our door to do a little dance and then run off again, at least shutting the door behind him, he returned later to inform us that the snow was still falling, after which he plopped himself on the floor with the backup fitted sheet for his little bed [which he was rapidly outgrowing] to… festoon… with color…
“I’m going to use this to toss Donkey and Buck up in the air,” he informed me, as magic markers rolled across the floor.
He transferred his project to the kitchen table over strawberry-blueberry yogurt and banana. The Bear was suffering from a throbbing headache in the other room. I brought him water and a BC powder…
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“Fine. Puck is drawing a color chart on his bed sheet.”
The Bear nodded, painfully…
“You always need one of those,” he replied, pulling the covers back over his shoulders. “I know I do.”
The new plant was pure carnage now. I fancied saving it. Maybe installing it with Red Beard in the library where The Bear would be working for the day. Good thing, too. Traffic was at a slow crawl on the highway, and sugar fluff still falling from pale skies… Around the time The Bear left for class, leaving the forgotten loaf of bread on the stoop as he went, I could hear Puck rummaging in the blankets and pillows in my room…
“Puck, you are not allowed to get into the pillows.”
“Ok, Mom.”
“Put them back where you found them.”
“Ok, Mom.”
Some shuffling…
“I couldn’t put them all back exactly right. Sorry old fella.”
Yes, he was speaking to me.
Clunk, clunk, clunk…
Puck was stomping around his rooms, super hero chucks [no longer at all white] in plastic-and-rubber roller-skates…
“This is gonna scare Crackers to much!” he declared, as I helped him on with the apparatus, his bright hazel eyes wide open, anticipating the results.
I’m sure she was. She isn’t the bravest specimen I’ve seen in a cat. The skates didn’t last as long as I had originally thought though… I almost forgot to mail off the adoption renewal forms. Puck watched me in the act of papers…
“What is that for?”
“Your baby brother in Colombia.”
“Well. I will like it whether it is a boy or a girl.”
“That’s good.”
“And if it’s a girl, she will grow up to be a woman.”
“That’s right.”
“I like girls more than womens. I like womens more than boys.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because they’re natural.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they don’t like boys’ stuff. But girls’ stuff is disgusting.”
Francis dropped by for a few minutes between madrigals, then we left ourselves. I wasn’t sure hanging out in a sweaty gym of inflatable balloon houses for two hours was my best idea of how to spend a Friday evening. But considering that movie night had been postponed due to alternative social activities [I heard mention of bowling]… my options weren’t exactly expansive. We drove out at 4:15 to Pump it Up right around New Town, the same place we’d been a year earlier, in soft-falling snow. Earlier, Puck had adamently informed me that he most definitely wanted me to hang around with him for the party. That was before he had considered this idea…
“Moooom! You’ll make me have a small amount of cake!”
“You don’t even like cake.”
“Yes, I do! I like the cream on it!”
I didn’t stay for the party. Instead, the former news-anchor Miss Florida [maybe; I haven’t confirmed that; or as Puck confusedly informed me – “Mom! She’s not Miss Florida! She’s Miss Shandi!”] mom of young Julie shooed me off to go enjoy myself for a couple of hours, shopping or whatever. So I drove to a park, sat in the snow [in the car], and read a book. Perfect quiet. I also accidentally found myself right across from the neighborhood where Great Grandma Jewel spent her last months. I hadn’t been there in nine years. Somehow it didn’t seem that long.
Puck sat in the backseat unraveling the kite from his gift bag after a circus of many screaming children had induced a hoarse throat and pink-frosting-stained cheeks. He had already pulled out the container of Dubble Bubble and the homemade iced airplane cookie. Sometimes I just like to ask him questions…
“So, Puck. How old am I?”
“Nope!”
“What’s that?”
“You’re not old at all! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!”
The Bear finished a panel interview on hell and wandered out for Culver’s butter burgers, fries, cheese bites, apple juice for me, and soft-baked Schnuck’s bakery cookies… And Crackers ate Puck’s kite.
Adoption Status: Down: 3 years, 6 months; To Go: 2 years, 9 months