Tapestry of Fortunes A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,149
I tell Mark this.
“All right. Go on over there and tell them you need what I called about this morning. And then we’ll have lunch.”
“Burger King?” I say.
“Is that what you like?”
“I thought that’s what you guys ate all the time.”
“I like those tofu roll-ups,” Mark says. “But I could do a Whopper.”
We sit at a small table by the window at Burger King. Mark is telling me about the time he got kicked out of his Catholic school for falling in love with a nun.
“Are you serious?” I ask.
He nods. “She was real young. And I saw one day that there were all these little hairs escaping from her wimple. I thought, whoa! that’s a woman under there! Before that, I thought they … I didn’t really think they were women. I thought they were a kind of separate species.”
“So you saw her hair and fell in love?”
“Well, not right away. What happened was, I was a pretty good artist. And she used to take me outside, up on a hill, and let me draw. And she would just sit with me, read, sometimes she’d read out loud, it was nice. And then one day we started holding hands, hugging a little.” He shrugs. “Kissin’ … Anyway, somebody saw us and I got expelled and she got fired. Never saw her again.”
“How old were you?” I ask.
“Twelve.”
“Twelve!”
He takes a sip of his Coke. “Yup. I got a son coming up on twelve now. I look at him sometimes, you know? He doesn’t tell me anything anymore.”
“I know,” I say. “They stop.”
“Right around ten, they start getting pretty quiet.”
“It’s true.”
“Makes you kind of miss the days when they ran around with their pacifiers, their little tummies hanging over their diapers. ’Member that? Those little belly buttons?”
I smile at him. What a good man.
Mark crumples up his bag. “Ready to go back to work?”
“Yeah.” In the truck on the way back, I look at my hands. Two blisters starting. I couldn’t be more proud.
29
“I can’t do this stupid homework,” Travis says. “I hate Mr. Houseman. He’s stupid!”
“Let me see,” I say, and stop peeling potatoes. At the kitchen table, Travis is holding his forehead in his hands, his usual way of conveying anguish.
He looks up at me, frowns. “You’re no good in math!”
“Well, just let me see. And for your information, I got an A in algebra.”
“This is not that,” he says.
And it isn’t. I don’t quite understand what it is. Something close to geometry, though, and I still remember taking my geometry midterm when I was a sophomore in high school. I passed the time by drawing designs for evening gowns on the back of the exam; everything on the front of the page only annoyed me.
“I’m afraid you’re failing this class,” my teacher had told me later, sadly. He was speaking in a very quiet voice. A whisper, really.
“I know,” I had whispered back.
“Why don’t you come in after school a few times a week? I’ll give you a little extra help.”
“Okay,” I’d said, thinking, oh please, no. But I had gone and Mr. Seidel had patiently drawn angles and worked through proofs, explaining at each step what he was doing and why. For my part, I had watched his hand as he wrote, admiring his neat penmanship, looking carefully at his wedding ring, wondering what his wife was like. When he finally looked up and asked me if I understood, I responded with a blank gaze. He’d given me a D– as an act of remarkable kindness.
“Can one of your friends help you?” I ask Travis.
“No.”
“Well, call Dad, then. He’ll know how to do it.”
“He’s on a stupid business trip.”
“Oh. Right. Well, then, I’m sorry, Travis. I don’t know what to tell you. I guess you’ll just have to talk to your teacher tomorrow.” I go back to the potatoes, out of enemy territory. I’m so glad I’m finished with school. If I were told to go home and spend my evening doing homework—in five subjects, no less!—I’d start screaming.
“Can I call King?” Travis asks.
Of course. Why hadn’t this occurred to me?
“Sure. It’s 247-8893.”
“You know it by heart?”
“Yes,” I say. And then, “I mean, it’s an easy number.”
Travis goes into the family room to make the call. He hates his math class, and I don’t blame him a bit. But he’s going to have to get through it, or he’ll end up like me.
“King knew how to do it,” Travis says, coming back into the kitchen. “It’s easy.”