Dead Letters(72)

“Okay, kids. It’s Monday. Everybody know what that means?” Ms. Prescott said.

“Letter day!” we all hollered in frenzied anticipation. There is no explaining why this whole process was so much fun, but it was extremely titillating. The puzzle of that closed door, the jelly-kneed expectation of having some foreign body appear behind it, dragged there against its own volition, even if you knew what came next in that limited queue of letters. We could scarcely contain ourselves.

“That’s right!” Ms. Prescott cooed, rabble-rousing. “So, what letters have we done so far?” My hand shot into the air. “Ava?”

“Aybee?ceedee?eeeff?geeaitch?ayejaykay?ellemen?ohpeekewar?esstee?youvee?dubbleyou?exwyezee!” I expelled in a single breath.

“Almost! You’re getting ahead of yourself there a bit, though. That’s all the letters. What was the last letter we did?” A few hands poked up, Zelda’s included.

“Zelda?” Ms. Prescott pointed. I can only assume that she was giving us both a chance to perform in front of our parent, rather than intentionally fomenting sibling rivalry. But Zelda smiled slyly, with barely a glance at me.

“P. And before that O. And before that N.”

“That’s right!” Ms. Prescott congratulated her. Marlon beamed.

“So what’s next, guys?”

“Q!” someone shouted from the back.

“Hey, what are our rules? We raise our hands, right?” Our teacher sternly arched her eyebrows. “Let’s all say it together. What letter are we doing today?”

“Keewww!” we all responded.

“And today, we have a very special visitor.” Ms. Prescott looked fondly at my father with an expression that suggested he was indeed very special. “Ava and Zelda’s dad. And what’s your name?” she asked him, in the same tone she used to address us, then immediately blushed because she realized how ridiculous she sounded.

“My name is Marlon!” my father announced, batting not one eyelid. “And I’m here to get the letter Q on the hook!” He produced a collapsible fishing pole from his pocket, and we all squealed. This was new! Normally the parents just made a show of pulling the letters out of the closet while a profoundly unhelpful Elmo cheered them on. Fishing! We’d never fished for letters! Ms. Prescott looked amused and concerned; she must have been wondering if there was a hook on that line, and whether she was legally liable if Marlon accidentally snagged somebody’s lip or cheek.

“Well. Goodness. Let’s go to the closet, then,” she said, unwilling to be disagreeable in front of Marlon. We knew the drill, so we remained glued to the carpet while Ms. Prescott walked over to the door. She knocked once, then twice. “Elmo?” she called.

“Is that you, Ms. Prescott?” she answered herself in a decent ventriloquist version of Elmo. This may have been her single most important skill as a teacher.

“Yes! Do you have a letter for us today?”

“Why, yes, yes, I do!”

“I have a friend here to help us get it out. His name is Marlon, and he has a fishing pole!” Normally parents were introduced by their last names, a “Mr.” or “Mrs.” But my father had easily bypassed those formalities.

“Wow, a fishing pole! That sounds great.”

“Are you ready for us to open the door, Elmo?”

“You bet!”

Ms. Prescott theatrically flung the door open and leaned in, scooping up the Elmo puppet in a practiced move.

“He’s in the back of the closet, Ms. Prescott,” Elmo informed her. “He doesn’t want to come out!” (The letters were always masculine.)

“Well, that’s why I brought my friend Marlon!” she answered herself, eyes blazing in excitement. We could tell that something about this ritual thrilled her too.

“Okay, Elmo, you ready for me to go fishing?” my father asked Elmo, with a big, slow wink at Ms. Prescott. She blushed again.

“You bet, Marlon!”

“Okay, here I go!” He made an elaborate gesture of casting his line into the closet. For a moment it looked like he hooked something, and he frowned in exaggerated concentration. But then he reeled in the line again. “That’s one slippery letter!” he informed us. He cast again. Again, it looked like a sure thing, and he even strained dramatically, pretending to pull on something. But no. “Got away again!” Marlon wiped his brow. “Jeez, maybe I should just give up. What do you guys think—should I call it a day?”

“Nononononono!” we screamed in delight.

“Okay, okay. One more try.” He leaned back and cast his reel into the closet another time. For one breathless second, we thought he’d missed again, and the suspense was killing us. But then the line went tight, and Marlon was pulling, and the plushy, oversized letter Q emerged from the closet. Marlon reeled it in and grabbed it firmly. In his hands, the letter looked as though it were squirming, trying to escape. “I got him!” he said. Then the letter lurched away from him, making a break for it, before it careened back around and smashed into his torso. Marlon looked for all the world as though he had stepped on a banana peel as his feet went out from under him, and he fell to the ground in a slapstick parody. We giggled uproariously. Marlon had kept his grip on the rebellious letter, though, and he sprang back upright athletically, putting the letter Q in a headlock. When he smiled over at Ms. Prescott, she looked back at him with an expression of worship.