“The series?”
He scoffs at me. “The World Series, Miss Miller.” He looks up, thoughtful. “You know . . . it’s funny that they call it the World Series, if they don’t even play baseball all over the world.” He shrugs. “I’ve never thought about that before.”
I smile again. “Neither have I, actually.”
“Anyway,” he goes on, turning back to me. “My favorite player is Willie Mays. He’s colored, and some kids at school say you shouldn’t like him because he’s colored, but that’s just stupid, if you ask me.” His eyes narrow. “If a player can hit the ball, who cares what color his skin is? Not me. You should see Willie Mays hit. He can send it screaming out of Candlestick Park—that’s where the Giants play, in San Francisco.” Greg looks up at the twilit sky. “I would give anything—anything—just once, to sit in a major-league ballpark and see Mays hit a home run.”
“Anything,” I repeat, scribbling in my notebook. “Wouldn’t that be something?”
Two nights later, I knock on the Hansens’ door. Greg answers.
“I’m sorry the pictures are so basic,” I tell him as I hand him a set of stapled, handwritten pages. “I’m no artist. But I thought you’d enjoy this story anyway.” I smile. “And even if the drawings are terrible, it’s nice to have some pictures to go with the story.” Unlike the first books I tried to read with him—the books by Beverly Cleary, and the Hardy Boys stories—in the book I’ve written for Greg, I have included drawings, minimal as they are, on each page.
Greg shuffles through the pages. “It’s about baseball,” he says, scanning the artwork and maybe—maybe!—even the words.
I nod.
“It’s about Willie Mays.” He turns page after page. “I know how to read his name from the headlines in the sports section of the newspaper. You wrote a story about Mays . . . and . . . and . . .” He looks more closely at the pages. “And my name is in it, too.” He looks up. “What am I doing in the story?”
“Well.” I smile. “I guess you’ll have to read it to find out.”
“I’ve never seen a book about baseball that I could read.” Greg is beaming. “And I’ve never seen a story that had Willie Mays and me in it.”
I reach into my dress pocket and pull out another item: a stack of about twelve index cards. I have punched a hole in each card and tied them together with a string. On each card, I’ve written a single word: bases, pitcher, strike, catcher. For each word, I’ve drawn a picture—again, terribly basic—that illustrates what the word means. “These cards will help you read the book,” I explained to Greg. “If you get stuck on a word, look in this stack of cards and see if you can find it. Once you learn to recognize these words every time you see them, reading will get easier, because you won’t have to stop to think about words you already know.”
He takes the card stack I hold out to him, closes the book, and puts both items under his arm. “Thank you, Miss Miller,” he tells me. “I can’t wait to get started on this.”
His words are music to my ears.
Besides the joy of teaching a child to read, there is another benefit: for more than a week now, the dreams have disappeared. Each night of that week, I sleep well, solidly, like a stone, without any dreams.
During the day, my energy level skyrockets. I hustle around the store, rearranging everything and creating a fall display in the window: leaves that I cut from red, yellow, and brown construction paper and scatter artistically (or so I tell myself) about the window shelf, best sellers that I set up in display racks, and a banner I’ve made: COLD WEATHER IS COMING! COZY UP WITH A GOOD BOOK!
Frieda rolls her eyes and tells me I’m getting downright annoying. “I liked you better when you were as grumpy as me,” she says.
“I’ll take it into consideration,” I reply.
Greg tears through his book in a single day. “I read it start to finish,” he tells me proudly. “The words on the cards really helped. I know them all now. After I read the book, I read it again, and then I read it to my mother. She . . .” He looks down, sheepish, his face reddened. “She said she was really proud of me.”
“I’m proud, too,” I say. “Very proud.” I put my hand lightly on his shoulder. “Shall I write another one?” I ask. “Would you like that? I can make more cards, too. We can add to your collection of words you know.”
“I would love that,” Greg replies. “Thank you, Miss Miller. Thank you very much.” He rewards me with a big smile, then hops enthusiastically across our shared porch and goes inside his own house, cheerfully banging the door behind him.
Chapter 9
And then, after over a week of dreamless sleep, my nighttime visions return.
We are out of the house again, Lars and me. Goodness, we socialize a lot in this fanciful world. In my real life, I go out in the evening two or three times a month, perhaps. Every now and then I go see a movie with old friends from my teaching days, but many of those friends have to plan weeks in advance to get a night out of the house without their husbands and children. Frieda and I dine in a restaurant now and again, and once in a while we attend a book signing at one of the bigger bookstores or department stores around town. These stores are always the venues for such events; our little bookshop does not attract celebrity authors—or even noncelebrity ones, for that matter.
But most evenings I’m at home, curled up on the sofa reading or watching television, Aslan at my side. Thinking about this, I wonder if my subconscious wishes I spent more time dressed up and running around, like I do in my dream life.
In any event, I find myself standing next to Lars at a cocktail party. He is in a suit and tie, and I am in a satin party dress—coral-hued, a color I actually like quite a bit in my real life, too—with a sweetheart neckline, a full skirt, and a wide bow at the waist. It reminds me of something I saw Jackie Kennedy wearing in Life not long ago; clearly, when doing my clothes shopping in this world, I follow the First Lady’s trends. On my feet, I am wearing pointed heels in the same shade as the dress.
Music is playing from the speakers of a gleaming hi-fi stereo cabinet in the corner of the room. The Kingston Trio is singing about how they don’t need booze to be high; apparently, seeing their woman smile does the same thing for them as a good stiff drink.