Chapter Thirty-Two
The windows had frosted over in ice forests in the night. Puck squished Crackers in his arms at the breakfast table paraded with bananas, peach yogurt, and honey dew, which elicited only wild gold-eyed meows of protest. Puck took this response to mean only one thing…
“Come on! You wanna wrestle?”
The tin foil from the honey dew bowl went on his head at some point as a hat, which didn’t bother me because the melon was now practically disappeared by now anyway. I walked into the other room. The Bear was sitting on the bed tying his shoes. Puck, still in space jams, sat on his shoulders, legs tucked around in front, singing through the days of the week with his dad. As The Bear loaded up his book bag, Puck waited, sitting on my dresser to wave him off. I heard the clack of pens in peanut butter jars…
“What’s going on in there?” I asked.
“I’m just working on Fall Over Baby.”
“What’s that?”
“My company. I need to work on it.”
“What does your company do?”
“It just tells how much weight you have. Like… four plus four is more than a pencil.”
We were playing Wahoo in the hour. After all, it was an “off day”. I remember calculating it, back in grade school, all the annual days we got off class. Not because I didn’t like school, but because I liked to calculate…
- Fridays [yes], Saturdays, and Sundays, of course
- Every fourth week
- Junes and Decembers
- All holidays and family birthdays
This amounted to approximately 125 school days per year, leaving us still working several grade levels above our age and always completing the necessary state-required annual hours by around March each school year. It was the life.
Joe had been biking 58 mph in his room on the rollers and “crashed” off at 43 mph, leaving a melted skid in the carpet, as he relayed to me on IM…
“It still smells in my room,” he said.
I reviewed the final draft of our updated home study before eleven while Puck blew little bubbles for Crackers; she didn’t know what to think. I was hoping we’d only have to go through all of that once more if prospects improved south of the border. Meanwhile, up north, our windchill sat at 5. We watched a white van come to Tasha’s house to take away the hospital bed. The doors shut with a thud. Hospice had been very good to her mom, Tasha said. Even coming out near the middle of the night, the lady admiring Tasha’s 70 year-old handmade quilt while she waited with Tasha for the last hour. I switched Itzhak Perlman on after lunch, one of Puck’s old favorites…
“Put it on repeat, Mom!” he declared, wide-eyed. “This is so beautiful!”
He started dancing and humming along. Flailing limbs in too-small NIKE sweatshirt and already-fading jeans. Pepper seeds still on his orange-stained cheeks. Francis called…
“I’m 20 minutes early for madrigal practice. Does Puck want to play for a little while?”
Did he even have to ask? Puck will drain any minute of family time to the last ounce. They chatted about stuff as two police cars tagged each other down the road.
“Well, off to ten minutes of singing,” Francis sighed, sticking hands in his jean pockets.
“Ten minutes?”
“Yeah. I have to be at work at three. Plus I didn’t know I had to be in two madrigals. I have to dance, too.”
He shook his head. Oh the Home-Schooled-High-School-Choir-Male Problems. Puck scratched out some fun with a Motorola box, Hot Wheels cars, and screws to hold down the lids. Ramping, while I read of English Pilgrims in Holland packing up bushels of meal, dried peas, oatmeal, prunes, raisins, currants, oil, vinegar, and lemon juice for The Crossing. Prickly Pilgrims who boxed their children’s ears for smiling in church and frowned on the Dutch girls wearing bright blue dresses and wooden shoes.
“Did you notice the new boy at church, Mom?” Puck asked, more interested in present day issues.
“I didn’t. Did you talk to him?”
“No… because his cheeks looked a little weird… But when we played a balloon game, I gave him one because he couldn’t catch one. I didn’t say anything to him about this cheeks though. That would have been rude.”
Small inner sigh of relief. Kindergarteners, no matter how you explain things to them, always run the risk of why-did-you-ever-say-that. The Bear called me as we finished dinner.
“Hey, so…”
I could already hear it in his voice. Something was up.
“Ruby called me a little while ago, and there are police in the area searching for a… crazy guy carrying a gun. They evacuated the church and he’s been around our neighborhood.”
“How do they know he’s crazy?”
“He’s naked.”
Oh. I checked the bolt on the door and shut the kitchen shade, which suddenly felt like a gaping eye staring in our faces. There were no mysterious knocks on the door or taps on the window, though, and when Carrie, Joe, and Rose turned up half an hour later, the police and flashlights were gone. Kids Snippets, fajitas in the oven…
“Can you make me one of those, too?” Joe asked.
Rose pulled Crackers down from the top cabinet and elicited a three-way tug of war for the fuzzball between Carrie and Joe.
“I can’t stay as late this time,” Joe said. “I’m racing with Thunderbird. He’s going skiing in Colorado with Annamaria and his dad this weekend. He offered for me to come too but I’d have to share a room with Annamaria, so I passed.”
The smoke detectors screeched as the non-burned fajitas were removed from the oven…
“Collette! Help!” Rose crinkled up her nose as Carrie wiggled her toes on her shoulder.
Then we watched two episodes of a Netflix series at Carrie’s suggestion – the ridiculous non-hit from the 90’s – “Eerie, Indiana”.
“Joe, scoot over so I can stretch out on the couch,” Carrie instructed, wiggling her toes on his shoulder, too.