“I know just the thing,” Frank said. He disappeared for a minute and returned rolling his mother’s big rubber yoga ball.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.
“You can stand on it,” he said. “I’ve done it. It’s exciting.”
“I don’t want exciting, Frank. I want stable.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m boring that way. Listen. Bring me that chair over there instead. Please.”
Once the plastic was up, I said to Frank, “Now go to bed.”
“I’m not sleepy yet. I’m cold.”
“You’ll warm up in bed.”
“I’ll warm up, but I won’t go to sleep.”
I thought about all the times I’d heard Frank knocking around in the middle of the night. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s build a fire then.”
Frank’s eyes lit up. “Where?”
“In the fireplace, idiot.” Bad. I know. I was tired. “I’m sorry, Frank. I’m the idiot, not you.”
“I know,” he said. “My IQ is higher than 99.7 percent of the American public. For some reason it makes the children at school laugh when I tell them that. Can you explain the joke in that to me?”
“There isn’t one. Some kids laugh at people smarter than they are to make them feel stupid.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why do they think laughing at me will make me feel stupid?”
“Because they’re stupid,” I said.
I’d never lived anywhere that had a fireplace before, so I was more excited than an adult person ought to be to put my Girl Scout training to use arranging the logs and twigs from the alcove by the fireplace on top of wads of crumpled newspaper. “Now, matches,” I said. “Where does your mother keep them?”
“I wish I knew,” Frank said. “She hides them from me.”
I believed that. “How about candles? I could light one on the stove and use it to start the fire.”
“She hides those, too.” Of course she did. I’d never seen one anywhere, ever. Not even a lousy birthday candle. “You could call her and ask,” Frank said.
“Your mother is in the hospital,” I said. “I’m not calling her. Let me think. You know what? We could light a twig on the stove and—”
“You cannot walk through this house carrying a stick that’s on fire,” Frank said. “My mother has said that to me at least a million times.”
I was tempted anyway, but knew I shouldn’t be modeling bad behavior for a lit firecracker like Frank. Also, without meaning me ill, it would be the first thing he’d tell his mother when he saw her again. “I guess we can’t have a fire then,” I said.
“I have an idea,” Frank said. He disappeared down the hall. I gave chase as he beelined to the laundry room drawers where—Eureka!—he found a nine-volt battery and a roll of wire. Then he beat it back to the living room, where he took the round-tipped scissors from his bathrobe pocket—when did he palm those?—and cut a couple of pieces of wire, wrapped one around each of the batteries’ terminals, and touched the loose ends against each other. The touch produced a spark that made the paper catch fire.
“You’re a genius, Frank,” I said. “How did you think of doing that?”
“Oh, I do it in my room all the time,” he said.
WE WATCHED THE flames reduce the logs to ember, then ash. I was so afraid of nodding off that I would have taped my eyelids open if there’d been any tape left. This had been the longest day of my life. How did Mimi function if all her nights were like this? How did Frank? One night alone with the kid and I was practically reduced to ash myself.
When Frank piped up with, “I’m tired now,” I jumped the way mothers catapult from chairs when their toddlers say, “I need potty.”
“Off to bed then,” I said, giving him the bum’s rush to his bedroom.
“I don’t sleep much in my room. If you want me to sleep, put me in my mother’s bed.”
I sighed. “All right.”
In Mimi’s room I pinned him tight under her blankets. “Go to sleep,” I said.
“You aren’t leaving me, are you?”
“Do you want me to sit here until you fall asleep?” The thought of staying awake any longer made me want to cry.
“I thought we were having a pajama party. You have to sleep in here with me.”
“I’m not sleeping in your mother’s bed without her permission. It’s not polite.”
His face went blank. Blanker, I should say. Tired as I was, I hurt for him. “How about this?” I said. “I’ll sleep on the couch in the family room. I’ll be close enough to hear you if you want to talk. That’s what makes a pajama party a pajama party, you know. Being able to talk to somebody else until you fall asleep.”
“That may be so. But what you may not realize is I have a hard time falling asleep. And when I fall asleep, I wake easily. And since I slept some in the tub already—”