It had taken Carol’s father, Bart O’Toole of O’Toole’s Plumbing, several afternoons of wriggling and climbing through that tight little crawl space to replace the corroded valves and update the pipes that had caused the flood beneath Gas ’n Donuts. During those days, Carol came to the shop with her father, and as he worked she managed to slink, one stool at a time, ever closer to Lydia and Raj’s booth, and eventually began joining them on their daily walks to the library.
At first, Tomas had celebrated Carol’s arrival into his daughter’s life, convincing himself that any attention for Lydia was better than none, but it wasn’t long before he understood that this Carol was the Carol—the holy terror he’d heard stories about since Lydia’s earliest days at Little Flower—and that his cherished library had now become her new territory. One afternoon, he found a photocopy of a girl’s squished ass on the floor next to the Xerox machine, followed shortly after by a copy of a five-dollar bill jammed into the cash slot of the Coke machine. Another time, over the course of a single day he caught the kids spinning folk albums backwards on the record player, booby-trapping shelves so the slightest touch would bring a tumble of books crashing down, and cutting coupons out of 1950s-era magazines (We’re gonna get a sweet deal on cake mix! he heard Carol exclaim). But perhaps most upsetting was that with Carol’s arrival, Raj didn’t seem to hang around as much. Tomas had found him more than once reading alone on the basement beanbags, looking so solemn and disheveled that it was impossible to miss what was happening: the boy was being replaced.
For weeks Tomas had been trying to err on the side of optimism when it came to Lydia’s infamous friend, but this wishful thinking would end one weekday morning in the fall as he was eating toast and reading the newspaper at the kitchen table. Lydia had been uncommonly quiet that morning, ducked behind a box of Raisin Bran, slurping her cereal in a trance.
—You about ready for school?
The messy crash and plunge of Lydia’s spoon came to a halt.
—i need your signature.
Tomas folded the newspaper over and looked at Lydia. He resettled his horn-rims with a blink and scratched his beard.
—You need my signature? What does that mean?
Lydia slid up from the table with her head down and jogged over to the hook by the front door where her backpack hung. A moment later she jogged back and handed Tomas a pink piece of paper. Still head down.
—What’s this?
—read.
Tomas knew what it was; he just couldn’t believe it had come from his daughter. Across the top its heading read Discipline Sheet, and further down it explained that Lydia Gladwell of 4th Grade, Room 2 had been found guilty of both Behavioral Problems and Disrespect for Authority. Under the Comments section, Sister Antoinette wrote simply, Inappropriate games during lunch. Last warning.
Tomas cleared his throat and lifted his chin.
—i got in trouble yesterday for playing a game.
—You and Carol?
—and raj.
—But this was one of Carol’s games?
Lydia’s neck shrunk into her shoulders.
—Was this one of Carol’s—
—yeah.
One of Carol’s games. Tomas took a sip of tea and braced himself as Lydia explained that they were playing something called Don’t Swallow Your Spit. Apparently the rules were simple: you kept your mouth closed and you pretended you were sucking on an invisible Life Saver and you didn’t swallow your spit. She and Raj and Carol had been playing this at the lunch table in the cafeteria, breathing through their noses and making faces at each other as their mouths welled with warm runny saliva, when Sister Antoinette lumbered their way. Raj and Carol managed to jump up to clear their trays before the old nun reached them, but Lydia got stuck at the table, and when Sister Antoinette snapped at her about making such a horrible face while people around her were eating, Lydia couldn’t take it anymore. Her mouth burst open. The sound was a wet wallop. Spit slid all over her hands and uniform and the tabletop. Sister Antoinette made Lydia stay behind and wipe all the cafeteria tables with a rag and some vinegar-smelling brown water that, Lydia told her dad at the breakfast table, was far more foul than a giant mouthful of spit.
Tomas lowered his newspaper and leaned into his elbows. Lydia seemed pale as she stirred through her soggy cereal. A puddle of foody milk sloshed out of the bowl.
—Do I need to make you stop playing with Carol?
—raj was there too.
—I’ll sign it, he said. But no more of Carol’s games, understand?
Lydia chewed on a braid of her hair and nodded, but he could tell she didn’t really mean it.
There at the table, Tomas could feel his little girl drifting from him, and he began to feel desperate to pull her back. His eyes wandered the kitchen. Their yellow fridge was so covered with Lydia’s drawings that he’d lately taken to taping them on the kitchen walls, and now he thought it looked obsessive, even trashy. Somewhere buried beneath all that paper was an old photo of Rose, Lydia’s mom, and Tomas found himself missing her so much that his jaw hurt.
—Come with me, he said.
He guided Lydia into his room. From the top shelf of his closet he retrieved a gunmetal box and, for the first time in her life, showed Lydia the letters and cards he and Rose had exchanged for Valentine’s Day and their anniversaries. Lydia read each thin penciled note and thick colorful card. Inspired by her focus, Tomas reached deep into his closet and dragged down their honeymoon photo album. And from his old cookie tin of tie clips and wheat pennies, he even unearthed Rose’s ruby ring, still taped in its wad of hospital gauze. As he unfolded it and placed the ring in his daughter’s palm he imagined her someday-fiancé (a studious boy with wire-rimmed glasses who could kick in some teeth when the occasion called for it) coming to ask for her hand.
—can i have it? Lydia asked.
—Sure, when you get married. At thirty-five.
—deal!
Lydia smiled and was careful as she folded the gauze back around it, and even ran into the bathroom and clipped off a new piece of medical tape to swaddle the gauze and ensure the ring wouldn’t fall out. He’d rarely seen her so reverent.
—Things will get better, he said mostly to himself.