it up. He continued doing Babette’s daily tasks, and I joined him if he needed a partner, and he seemed to actively like my company … but he never tried to kiss me again or take anything to another level.
It told myself it was fine. I tried to focus on the upsides.
Babette was doing better—and making (mostly failed) attempts to learn how to cook. Alice—her fiancé still deployed until mid-summer—joined us lots of nights. We played board games at Babette’s kitchen table, and gossiped about our coworkers, and analyzed Duncan’s progress.
It was good to settle into a little holding pattern, I decided. It gave me some time to practice self-care. That seizure that had been threatening never did come, and I wanted to keep it that way. I meditated, took walks by the water, and got plenty of sleep. It started to feel like maybe things could find a way to be okay.
* * *
Until one day Tina Buckley showed up in the library. My library.
“I need to talk to you,” she said. “It’s about Clay.”
I stopped.
“He’s having trouble with his reading.”
This got my attention. Sweet Clay, with his big, owl-like glasses, was one of my most voracious, enthusiastic readers. I could not imagine him having trouble with his reading. With Clay, in fact, the challenge was finding enough books to keep him busy.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“He’s had a book on his nightstand for a week, and he’s barely read any of it.”
That definitely didn’t sound like Clay. “What’s the book?” I asked.
Tina looked straight at me and said, “The Sound and the Fury.”
I coughed. “I’m sorry, what?”
She nodded. “Yes. He did fine with Of Mice and Men, but he’s faltering with this one.”
“Clay read Of Mice and Men?” I asked.
Please note: we were talking about a third-grader.
“Yes,” Tina says, “and he aced his reading comprehension quiz. But now it’s like he’s backsliding.”
I had to step back.
“Why,” I asked then, “is your third-grader reading Steinbeck?”
Tina gave me a look. “You’ve seen him. You know what he can do. His father and I think he needs to be challenged.”
“Challenged … by Steinbeck?”
“His dad and I want him reading the classics.”
“In the third grade?”
“He can handle it.”
“Maybe he can. But should he have to?”
It wasn’t shocking to talk to a parent who was pushing difficult reading on her kid. Parents at this school did that all the time. No matter what culture or socioeconomic group they came from—and we had a wide variety here—they were all, uniformly, people who valued education. They were hard-working, driven, goal-oriented people, and most parents, I’ve found, have some level of anxiety about their kids’ relationship with reading. It’s beyond common for parents to equate reading with success—and difficult reading with more success.
I spent a lot of time trying to convince overeager parents that harder didn’t always mean better. So a conversation like this wasn’t all that surprising.
What was surprising, though, was that this was (A) Max and Babette’s daughter (who should know better), talking about her (B) third-grader and his interest—or lack thereof—in (C) reading Steinbeck.
Steinbeck.
“We also have another issue,” Tina said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Last night, I found some disturbing materials in his backpack.”
I frowned. What were we talking about? He was a little young for Playboy.
“Disturbing how?” I asked.
“I found them—but I hid them in the pantry behind the cereal boxes before his father could see.”
“Hid what?” I prompted.
Tina took a breath, then let it out. She leaned in a little closer. Then she whispered, “Garfields.”
I frowned. Garfields? “I don’t understand,” I said.
She nodded, like we were on the same page. “Four compilations. The big, fat ones.”
I knew about those Garfields. He had checked them out yesterday. I’d let him go one book over the limit, even. “What’s wrong with Garfield?”
She looked at me like I was nuts. “It’s cartoons.”
“Not animated cartoons, though. Not Porky Pig.”
“Close enough. His dad and I want him reading real books.”
As far as I was concerned, any book was a real book. “So … no comics? No graphic novels? No Archies?”
She made a disgusted face. “Good Lord, no. His dad doesn’t want him reading kid stuff.”
“You do realize that Clay is a kid?”
Tina glared at me. “Look, my husband went to Princeton—and so did his father, and so did his grandfather. Kent is very concerned with making sure that Clay also goes to Princeton. And from every study he’s seen, reading can really give a kid the competitive edge.” Then she added, “Real reading, we