There are minor fits from Mitch and Missy before school. Mitch is upset that a snow day wasn’t called; he had planned, he explains, to spend the entire day setting up a toy train layout in the basement. “And now it’s ruined!” he cries, his face flushed, his voice heightened with an uncharacteristically dramatic lilt. “My whole day—it’s ruined!”
To my surprise, it’s Michael who offers words of comfort. “It’s okay, Mitch,” he says gently. “The weekend starts in two days. You can make the layout then.” He doesn’t look at Mitch, but he sidles a bit closer to his brother. He continues speaking, his voice soft. “I’ll help you.”
Missy, for her part, is angry that she must wear boots to school. “They’re ugly,” she proclaims, her perky nose turned up disdainfully at her cherry-red fur-lined boots. “They’re horrid boots, Mama. I need new ones.”
I shake my head. “We just got these a few months ago,” I say firmly. “They’re perfectly fine. They’re warm, they fit you, they’ll keep your feet dry. Put them on.”
Reluctantly, she pulls on one boot and then the other, glaring at me the entire time. I shrug, not giving in.
Lars, Mitch, and Missy leave the house at eight. Since kindergarten, when Mitch and Missy started attending the elementary school a few blocks away, Michael and I have walked them to school most mornings, and walked back in the afternoon to pick them up. It’s been a few years since Mitch and Missy were in nursery school, when the separation disturbed Michael so much; he has matured enough by now that he expects and can handle these daily transitions. Nonetheless, on snowy days, Lars generally drives Mitch and Missy the few blocks to school. These are more of those household facts that I suddenly know, without any discussion of them.
After they are gone, I stand in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen, holding the swinging door open with my shoulder and taking a look around. My eyes find Michael’s slumped form; he is seated wordlessly on the living room couch, staring at the floor.
“Michael.”
He does not look up.
“Michael,” I repeat, crossing the room and standing in front of him. “It’s time for your lessons.”
This gets his attention. He does not make eye contact with me, but he does speak. “We have not done lessons in over three months, Mama.”
“Well.” I stride back into the dining room, to the small desk by the wall. It’s dust-free; even if it’s not been used recently, Alma undoubtedly keeps it as clean as everything else in the house. I reach inside and pull out an opened notebook. A scrabbled line of capital A’s is penciled on the page. The line falters to the right, and the last letter is only partway done—just the first slanting line of the A, nothing more.
I stare at the notebook for a while. My thoughts turn to Greg Hansen, to the stapled-together books I crafted for him in the other world. The awkward pictures I drew for him. The set of index cards tied together with a string.
“Michael.” I set the notebook on the desk, walk back to the couch, and sit beside him. “You know I’ve asked you to learn the letter A. Can you tell me some words that begin with A?”
“Apple,” he says dully, and then he closes his mouth.
“True.” I nod. “But let’s think about some more interesting A words. What about . . . wait a minute.” I run upstairs; I know exactly what I am looking for and where to find it. I go directly to Missy’s room and pull the Picture Dictionary for Young Readers off the bookshelf. Hurrying down the stairs, I turn to the front of the dictionary, to the A section.
“Here’s a word,” I say, putting the book down on the sofa between us. “Above. That means something that is on top of something else, like this . . .” I dash over to his desk, pick up a pencil and his notebook, and bring them back to the couch. Leaning over next to Michael, I draw an airplane flying over several tall buildings. Beside the drawing, I write ABOVE in capital letters. “You see, the airplane is above the city. Above.”
I wait, breathless. Michael studies what I’d written and drawn. “Above,” he repeats softly.
“Yes,” I go on. “Every word, each word has a meaning, and if you remember what it means and can picture it in your mind . . . and you can picture the letters that make up the word . . . why then, you’ll be able to read that word every time you see it. Let’s try another one.” I turn the dictionary page slowly. “Here’s one that I think you know,” I say. “Add. Like adding numbers together.” In the notebook, I write 1 + 1 = 2, and under that I write ADD.
“Add,” Michael echoes me. “Add, that word is add.”
“Yes. That’s exactly right.”
“What’s the book you’re looking through, Mama?” he asks. “Can I see it?”
“Of course.” I lean back, allowing him to study the pages.
“Here’s one I know,” he says, pointing at anchor—with, handily, a drawing of an anchor right next to it. “That says anchor, doesn’t it? Like a ship’s anchor.”
“Yes!” I cry. “Yes, it does, Michael. You’ve got it!” I can’t help myself; I pull him—notebook, dictionary, and all—onto my lap and squeeze him with all my might.
He screams and pulls away from my grasp. “Too tight! Too much!” he yells, and runs up to his room.
Yikes—I ruined it, I think. Nice going, Katharyn.
And then I smile. I don’t care. He has learned. He has learned something, and I am the one who taught him. I sigh and lean against the back of the sofa, hugging the dictionary to my chest, bathed in happiness.
After a while, I go up to the boys’ room and coax Michael back downstairs. “I don’t want to read anymore, Mama,” he says, as I lead him gently to the desk in the dining room. “Reading tires me out.”
“Okay.” I can see there’s no point in pushing it. I need to take this slowly. If I want it to happen at all, if I want Michael to learn to read, then I need to take it in baby steps.
“Let’s do some math instead,” I suggest. “Can you count?”
“What a funny question, Mama.” He sits at the desk and begins to count aloud. He makes it to one hundred in less than three minutes. I interrupt to tell him he can stop.
“What about adding?” I ask. “Do you know two plus two?”
“Mama.” He rolls his eyes. “I know two hundred and two times two!”
“Really?” I smile. “And what is that?”
He sighs, bored. “Four hundred and four.”
“Okay,” I say, turning away from his desk. “Let’s work on money instead.”
“Real money?” he asks eagerly.
The excitement in his tone makes me smile once more; he is so rarely enthusiastic about anything. “Sure,” I reply. “Real money. Come with me.”
We raid the coin jar in the kitchen, the one perched on the windowsill. Sitting at the kitchen table, we count every coin. I am astounded by his concentration, and how easily he grasps the denominations, adding the amounts in his head. “Thirty-three dollars and sixteen cents!” he says triumphantly when we’re done.
“That’s a lot of moolah.”
“What’s moolah, Mama?”
“Money.”