Counting by 7s(48)

Quang-ha shoots him a look of total disbelief, but I’m the one who says: “Really?”

Dell nods. I say:

“Are you training for something?”

Dell says:

“I’m going to be joining some teams in the spring and I want to be in shape.”

Quang-ha is giggling now. Not laughing. Giggling. It’s different. It is suppressed and high-pitched and contains an element of disbelief.

I’ve never heard Quang-ha giggle.

It must be a very unusual sound, because the next thing I know, Mai is out of the bedroom and standing in the hallway.

“What’s going on?”

Quang-ha starts to answer, but he can’t. He is a giggling mess.

Somehow, this form of high-pitched laughter is contagious, because Mai is now giggling. She’s watching her brother, and whatever he’s doing is spreading.

Dell has had enough.

He gets up from the couch and goes into the kitchen.

I follow him.

We stand there. We can still hear the giggling in the other room. I say: “Are you really planning on running?”

Dell mumbles a form of yes. But then adds: “But I’m not going to join any kind of team in the spring. I made that part up. I’m just going to run for myself.”

I don’t think that’s strange because almost everything that I pursue is for my own understanding or amusement.

I believe having an audience naturally corrupts the performance.

I might be self-justifying.

But I say:

“I think that is a great idea.”

Dell says:

“Let’s go water the sunflowers.”



The next afternoon, Dell does run.

He makes a big show of it, coming in dressed in what looks like a costume, not an athletic outfit.

Quang-ha starts the giggling thing again.

I manage to say:

“Good luck out there.”

And then Dell’s gone.



He comes back in bad shape.

He’s soaked in sweat and he’s as red as can be.

And he was only gone eleven minutes.

I don’t keep track of time anymore and I don’t count, but I saw the clock on the stove when he walked out the door.

I just happened to be looking in that direction when he came back.

I say:

“How was it?”

Dell is breathing very, very hard. He holds up a hand. It’s the international signal for stop.

I give him time to regain a somewhat regular breathing pattern. Finally he says: “Very tough. I might be a little out of shape.”

From the couch I hear the return of the giggling.



I write a five-page paper on Mark Twain over the weekend for Quang-ha.

He is very resistant to certain aspects of learning.

I believe that he understands a lot of what is being taught, but he has no interest in doing the work that comes with the assignments.

Maybe he’s just too tired from his late-night TV viewing.

I don’t think Pattie realizes that once she’s asleep, he turns the thing back on.

He somehow got himself a headset, so the sound just goes right to that.

I know because I spend a lot of the nighttime awake.



Quang-ha is clever enough to delete the first paragraph of the Mark Twain paper and go through the computer file and misspell a dozen words before he prints it out.

But it wasn’t enough because he comes home today in a very bad mood.

He’s being moved out of his English class and put into some kind of Honors/AP program.

I will not take the blame for this.





Chapter 44





Pattie had to find something for Willow to do.

It was the only way to keep her from staring off into space.

She didn’t like the look on her face when that happened.

The girl was so still. Like a statue.

Or a dead person.

In the nail salon she could scare the customers.

So Pattie gave Willow the lease agreement for the salon, and the kid actually read it. She pointed out three areas with inconsistencies, and made a document for Pattie to use when she next met with the landlord.

It was impossible not to be impressed.

When Pattie casually said that she wished she had room to add another manicurist, Willow made a floor plan of the nail salon that optimized the space, moving the front counter and three of the four manicure stations. This opened up room for a new chair and foot spa.

Pattie immediately took action.

And the crazy thing was that it felt less crowded, not more, once they added the new person.



But the kid was obsessed with disease and infection.

She saw problems that didn’t exist, and it grated on Pattie’s nerves.

She finally told Willow to just write down all of her anxieties.

The next day, when Willow handed her a detailed report on the incidence of infection from manicure and pedicure treatment, Pattie got angry. She had never had a single complaint from a customer with a health problem.

Pattie avoided the twelve-year-old for the rest of the day, sending her back to the apartment early.

But then that night Pattie had a dream.

It was a gruesome nightmare in which her clients all keeled forward, face-first, onto the manicure desks.