The Forgetting Time(9)

Marissa, the head teacher, a woman brimming with natural cheer or caffeination, spotted her at the window and waved her arms as if she were marshaling an airplane, mouthing Can we talk?

Janie sighed—again?—and plopped on the bench in the hallway under a row of construction-paper jack-o’-lanterns.

“How’s it going with the hand-washing? Any progress?” Marissa flashed an encouraging smile.

“A little,” she said, which was a lie, but better, she thought, than “Not at all.”

“’Cause he had to skip art again today.”

“That’s too bad.” Janie shrugged in a way she hoped didn’t denigrate the macaroni project. “He seems okay with it, though.”

“And he’s getting a little…” She scrunched her nose, too polite to go further. Just say it, Janie thought. Dirty. Her son was dirty. His every exposed bit of skin was either sticky or smudged with ink or chalk or glue. There was a red smudge from a Magic Marker that had been on his neck for at least two weeks now. She’d done her best with wipes and coated his hands and wrists with hand sanitizer, which seemed to seal in the grit, as if she had laminated him.

Some kids couldn’t stop washing their hands; hers wouldn’t go near a drop of water without a battle. Thank god he hadn’t hit puberty yet and started to stink, or he’d be like the homeless man in the subway you could smell coming from the next car over.

“And, um, we’re cooking. Tomorrow? Blueberry muffins? I’d hate for him to miss that!”

“I’ll talk to him.”

“Good. Because—” Marissa cocked her head, her brown eyes welling with concern.

“What?”

The teacher shook her head. “It’d be nice for him, that’s all.”

It’s only muffins, Janie thought, but didn’t say. She stood up; she could see Noah through the little window. He was in the dress-up area, helping Sondra pick up hats. She playfully dropped a fedora on his head, and Janie winced. He looked adorable, but the last thing they needed right now was head lice.

Take off the hat, Noah, she silently willed him.

But Marissa’s voice was chattering in her ear. “And, listen.… Can you ask him not to talk about Voldemort so much in class? It’s disturbing to some of the other kids.”

“Okay.” Take. It. Off. “Who’s Voldemort?”

“From the Harry Potter books? I mean, I totally understand if you want to read those books to him, I love them, too, it’s just that … I mean, Noah’s advanced, of course, but they aren’t really appropriate for the other children.”

Janie sighed. They were always making the wrong assumptions when it came to her son. He had a miraculous brain that picked up information seemingly from the air—some stray comment he had heard once, perhaps, who knew?—but they always tried to make it mean something else.

“Noah doesn’t know anything about Harry Potter. I’ve never even read the books myself. And I would never let him watch those movies. Perhaps another child here told him about them, one with an older sibling?”

“But—” The teacher’s brown eyes blinked. She opened her mouth again to say something and then seemed to reconsider. “Well, listen, just tell him to lay off the dark stuff, okay? Thanks so much—” she said, opening the door to a mosh pit of four-year-olds covered with blue paint and macaroni.

Janie stood in the doorway, waiting until Noah spotted her.

Ah, this was always the best moment of her day: the way he lit up when he caught sight of her, that crooked, face-splitting grin as he tumbled forward, taking a running leap across the room and hurling himself into her arms. He wrapped his legs around her waist like a monkey and placed his forehead right against hers, looking at her with a merry gravity all his own, as if to say, Oh, yes, I remember you. It was her mother’s eyes looking back at her, and her own eyes, too, a clear blue that looked quite nice thank-you-very-much on her own face, but on Noah, surrounded by the profusion of blond ringlets, took on another dimension entirely, so that people always did a little double take upon looking at him as if ethereal beauty, located in a boy child, was some kind of trick.

His capacity for joy always stunned her, something he taught her merely by looking in her face.

Now she stepped outside with Noah into the darkening October afternoon and felt the world telescoping momentarily to the small figure bouncing on his toes beside her. They walked hand in hand beneath the trees, rows of brownstones flanking the sidewalks as far as they could see.

The phone buzzed in her pocket, bringing her back, suddenly, to Bob, that invisible collection of traits (deep voice; delighted laugh) that hadn’t yet knitted together into a whole human being.

“Feel like I know u already. Weird?”

“No!” she texted. “Same here!” (Was this true? Maybe.) Should she xo? Or was that too forward? She settled for a single x. He responded immediately: “XXX!”

Oh! She felt a current of heat run through her body, as if she’d swum into a warm patch in a cold lake.

They walked by the café on their corner, and the scent drew her in; she decided to fortify herself for the conversation ahead. She pulled Noah inside.

“Where we going, Mommy-Mom?”

“I just want a coffee. I’ll be quick.”