They fell in love with her. Each day illuminated some new aspect of her character that caused the children of the Friendship School third-grade class to wonder what strange creature had landed in their midst. Ordinary marvels abounded. She seemed to know just which questions to ask Mrs. Patterson to make their lessons clear and discussion lively. A pop quiz produced the unexpected result of perfect scores all around, an anomaly that puzzled the teacher well after her second cocktail that evening. A spelling bee dragged on past its appointed hour with no child left out, not even the recalcitrant boys who usually could not accommodate the spelling of their own names correctly. When Mrs. Patterson asked for volunteers for a dramatic reading, a surplus of eager hands shot up. The teacher took note of it all, the swift change in mood since the girl's arrival, the tonal difference between the dregs of post-Christmas school and the unexpected froth before spring. Sworn enemies buried their slingshots. There were no acts of violence, no bullying of the meek, no random or wanton vituperation of the ruling clique. A kind of harmony descended, and the other children recognized the changes brought by the new girl, who astonished them all by her simple and earnest desire to learn. Her crooked smile bestowed a spark of glee to January, as if she were lit within and could cast off gloom. She made fast friends with Sharon Hopper, Gail Watts, and Dori Tilghman, and brought them small treats of peanut butter cups or extra oatmeal raisin cookies or, once, old doll clothes rescued from the Quinns’ hidden troves. During indoor gym, she was the only third grader who could shoot a basketball through a hoop hung ten feet high, and the force of her throw in dodgeball made every boy wary. And yet everyone could sense an innate gentleness in Norah, a lack of malice in word and deed, and more than any other quality, this they regarded as true virtue and were drawn to, even against their own selfish natures.
Mrs. Quinn, too, fell for her. Charmed by the girl and glad for her company, she felt at ease around Norah at once, as if the child embodied a second chance at being the mother she had always intended to be. The very sight of the girl's ragged hair or fogged glasses gave Margaret a thrill, and when the boy began coming around, she felt blessed beyond what she deserved. Unnerving at first, the sound of their two voices quavered in the house, the murmur about homework and classes and other third-grade girls and boys, the edgy debates over play the squeals and shouts and laughter. The shock of the television or radio at four in the afternoon. What was it that Erica used to rush home for at that age? The vampire soap opera? Dark Shadows? The signs of their presence littered the ordinary complacency—coats on the hooks, boots puddling by the door, newspaper comics read and discarded. Two plates of crumbs, glasses filmed with milk. Skin of banana, bright coils of tangerine, core of apple, skeleton of grapes. Margaret was forever picking up their detritus, reordering her custom.
And yet, when Norah was off at school, the absence of commotion unsettled the new equilibrium. She wandered from room to room hearing the echo of childish laughter, anticipating a thump through the ceiling, a flash on the stairs, the front door yawning open and banging against the wall, heralding their arrival, and she welcomed them home each day with quiet relief, the joy in her heart bound by the briefest of smiles. As often as she wished them out from underfoot, Margaret also ached for them when they were gone.
Following the hot chocolate or an apple cored and quartered, they attacked their homework. Sean knew, by some gyroscope of the left brain, every mathematics answer, the difference at once among igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks, the dates and places of every Pennsylvania battle in the French and Indian War. Norah knew the magic of vanishing-point perspective, where the shadows fell in art by placement of the sun, how to draw without hesitation the confluence of the three rivers—Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela—and to distinguish in illustration what Sean would have drawn as identical flowers or birds. They helped each other through suggestion, competitive questioning, and cajolery.
Work completed, play began. Ever since the smoke rings and his baffled reaction, she had slowed the pace, lured him into her confidence with more ordinary games, and he savored her attention and company. Norah preferred the outdoors, even in the dead of January, rolling out snowmen, cracking long icicles from the eaves and leaping away when the points threatened to impale, breakneck sledding, snowball fights, the stinging thrill of being cold beyond caring. For his part, Sean preferred to be warm and at the table, just the two of them, where he could teach her games. He revealed the trick of tic-tac-toe, unlocked the stratagem of checkers, the playful thinking of chess, so that in two weeks’ time she unseated the master as often as she lost. Not having any siblings of his own, Sean brought over every game he had been given but rarely had the chance to play They solved the mysteries of Clue, mastered the Rube Goldberg mechanics of Mouse Trap, and engaged in marathons of Monopoly, lasting hours over the course of several days. Once they tired of his games, they pillaged the closet upstairs and, hearts afire, played the game of Life, backgammon, and once, for nostalgia's sake, an Uncle Wiggily But treasure lay in the attic, beneath a film of dust.
In a bright and brittle box lay Tip It, a balancing act. Players had to remove a single colored ring from one of three stacks while keeping balanced a plastic acrobat—they called him Mr. Tipps—who stood on the tip of his nose at the top of the pole, itself balanced on a fulcrum. Depending upon luck and destiny, the winner was the one who avoided spilling Mr. Tipps and sending the entire contraption crashing to the floor. At five in the afternoon, they had reached the crucial moment yet again. Sean had already won three times in succession and had taken a yellow disk away, just barely managing to keep the fellow from falling. Silence and cunning overtook any notions of sportsmanship; he passed the spinner to her with glee, and she, equally certain that any move was doomed, flicked the arrow and sent it circling madly around to blue. She picked up her plastic fork and pointed it at him.
“You know you're going to win no matter what I do. Why do you keep torturing me?”
“Just go,” he said, then caught himself, swallowed, and smiled. “You never know. If you're real careful…”