“No thank you please,” Frank said. He opened his eyes. “I see you changed your mind about the skirt,” he added, and closed them again.
“You have to move him,” Miss Peppe told me. “We aren’t allowed. His mother is so small, I don’t know how she manages it. She said she’d tell you that you might have to come pick him up before the day was out.”
I replayed the morning in my head and realized that Mimi had said that very thing. I knelt beside Frank again. “To pick you up, Frank, I’m going to have to put both my hands on you,” I said.
“That will be all right,” he said. “Until you master the art of levitation.”
BY THE TIME I got to the car, mastering the art of levitation seemed like a great idea. Carrying a fourth grader impersonating a statue is like trying to get an armload of two-by-fours from the checkout counter at Home Depot to a parking spot in the farthest corner of the lot without using one of those orange metal carts. My arms were shaking when I put Frank down to unlock the car. Frank brushed off his jacket, hopped into the backseat, and strapped himself in as if it was just the end of another of our adventures.
“Thanks for all the help, Frank,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” he said. He held his monocle to his right eye socket and regarded me through it. “You’re sweating.”
“It’s hot,” I said. “And you’re heavy.”
“Not according to the charts at my pediatrician’s office, where I rank somewhere in the fiftieth percentile for weight among boys in my age group. That places me firmly in the ‘average’ category.”
When I didn’t respond, Frank added, “If the warm weather inspires you to change clothes again today, consider the Bedouins. They dress in flowing black robes to maximize air circulation on their skin. The heat absorbed by the fabric rises, taking body heat with it. That’s why I opt for dark suits even in the warmest weather.”
“Thanks for the advice,” I said. “So if your suit was keeping you so cool and comfy, why didn’t you walk across the playground yourself?”
“Because you were carrying me.”
“I DON’T WANT to go home yet,” Frank said when we turned into his street. I peered through the windshield to see if any of Mimi’s stalkers were huddled by her gate. It hadn’t happened often, but it had happened.
The point is, whenever we came home to a lurker I’d drive on past, park at the end of the block, and let Frank play with my cell phone until the poor slobs got bored with the vigil and left. This time, however, I didn’t see anyone waiting.
“Why?” I asked.
“I’d rather my mother didn’t know I left school early.”
I pulled over and turned around to look at him. “Do you think she’ll be angry?”
He shrugged. “She worries. Her worried face scares me more than her angry face.”
I could understand that, though I was surprised he did. “What do you want to do instead?” I asked.
“Let’s find a playground.”
“I thought you hated playgrounds.”
“I love playgrounds except for the times when I hate them. The times I hate them are summertime, during the school year after three P.M., and on weekends.”
“Too many kids?”
“Too many big kids.”
“Fair enough,” I said, and hung a U-turn. This was the kind of adventure I’d been waiting for. Museums are fine in moderation and I’ve had some refreshing naps at the opera, but I was kind of desperate to see for myself how Frank interacted with other children. Even if it was just the pre-K brigade.
“You hungry?” I asked after we got out of the car and walked past a hot dog cart at the edge of the parking lot on our way to the sandpit.
“Not really.”
It was getting close to lunchtime, so I bought each of us a hot dog anyway. We sat on a bench together while Frank wolfed down both his and mine. Then he bounded up and began circling the field of play, clockwise, monocle gripped in his right eye socket and hands clasped behind his back. He peered at the sky and muttered about the Kaiser, not the sandwich roll I’m guessing, while platoons of sweet, pudgy babies got pushed in those little swings that look like inverted leather biplane helmets and legions of toddlers dug tiny ramparts in the sand.
By the time we left the playground it was evident Frank had marshaled a successful campaign inside his head against the forces of evil, armed only with hope, pluck, and the ragtag playground troops circumstance had dealt him. Also, I saw that his preferred mode of interacting with other children was not interacting with them at all. The little kids, the ones who weren’t too busy hitting each other on the head with plastic shovels to notice Frank, were thrilled to have such a colossus walking among them. That the colossus wasn’t about to get down in the sand and play with them didn’t diminish their excitement in the least.