Thirteen

"How was your day, sweetie pie?"

God, Herb hated it when she called him that. Thank God no one else ever heard it. What grown man wants his mother calling him sweetie pie? But hey, add it to the list of annoying things he had learned to live with, almost didn't even notice anymore. When you've been sharing quarters with your mother for fifty-three years (not counting the time he was away at college) it was a little late in the game to start complaining about pet names. Especially now, what with her in decline and all.

Margaret Willow was where she always was when Herb got home from work, sitting in her recliner with all the buttons—up, down, vibrate—built into the armrest. She still had trouble figuring out the TV remote, usually because she wasn't pressing the buttons hard enough with her feeble fingers, but she'd mastered everything the chair would do. She could tilt it back, lean it forward, even have it massage her legs or back. And when she wanted to get up, the chair would lift her up partway. Herb imagined if it had a faster setting, she'd be shot out of the chair like a Bond villain being ejected through the roof of 007's Aston Martin.

The television, volume high enough to rattle windows, was tuned to a station that ran reruns of crime dramas from the seventies and eighties. Any hour of the day, you could catch a Murder, She Wrote or a Hawaii Five-O or a Matlock or a Barnaby Jones and it didn't matter how many times she might have seen an episode, Margaret wouldn't remember it. It had not always been that way. She was losing her memory—short-term and long.

Margaret didn't watch the news anymore, wasn't computer-savvy, and Herb had canceled newspaper delivery to the door more than a year ago. So she was blissfully unaware that four days earlier someone had come to his place of work with plans to blow him up. Martians could have landed in Darien and Margaret wouldn't have known about it, at least not until one of them walked into the living room, took her remote from her, and turned off Columbo.

Herb knew she'd have been upset had she known. The real challenge had been acting like nothing had happened. That panic attack at school was not the first. At least he didn't have to fake being happy or cheerful at home, because Herb was never happy or cheerful.

"Fine, Mother," he said, in answer to her question about how his day had been. He came through the front door with a take-out bag in one hand and his school briefcase in the other. "What's new here?"

"McGarrett is chasing this guy who has a rooster and who choked a little girl to death when he stole a fish from a koi pond," she said.

"I brought Chinese."

She smiled. "Oh wonderful. I hadn't quite figured out what to do for dinner tonight." His mother hadn't figured out what to do for dinner since the second Bush was in the White House. "Don't forget extra soy sauce for the rice."

"Okay, Mother."

He set the briefcase on the kitchen table and the take-out bag on the counter. He got out two plates, took out the containers, pried off the lids, and spooned out the food. Take-out was a treat. Most nights he came home and made dinner for the two of them, just as he had for the last twenty-two years, ever since his father came down for breakfast one morning, prepared himself a bowl of Shredded Wheat, and dropped dead.

Herb had never lived on his own. He'd never married, never had a girlfriend, and after his father passed he wasn't about to leave Mother to fend for herself. It was a safe, comfortable existence, living here. His parents had already paid off the mortgage on the house, so it was certainly an economical existence, too. Despite her declining mental faculties, Margaret still did the laundry. She could load a washing machine and put in the right amount of detergent like there was some muscle memory at play. Herb had offered to take on that job but she insisted on doing it. If it made her happy, what the hell, and there wasn't anything laundry-related that might trigger a catastrophe, so long as he remembered to clear the lint filter. But he wanted to keep her away from the stove, didn't want her vacuuming the stairs on unsteady legs.

Herb brought her dinner to her in the recliner, setting it on a board placed across the arms. He took a nearby chair so they could eat together.

"How was school today?" Margaret asked, nearly shouting to be heard over the television.

Herb shrugged. "People don't like me."

Margaret's face fell. "Don't say that. Of course people like you. You're a wonderful boy." She bit into a chicken ball. "I don't understand why you would say a thing like that. You're the nicest boy any mother could have."

She popped the rest of the chicken ball into her mouth, chewed a couple of times, and started to cough. Herb waited to see whether she'd resolve the problem on her own, or if he'd have to jump up and Heimlich her.

She stopped coughing, speared another chicken ball with her fork, and went at it.

The phone rang. It sat on a small table next to Margaret's chair. "I'll get it, Mother," Herb said, but she was already on it. They'd hung on to a landline because Margaret wasn't good with cell phones. She couldn't figure them out, and forgot to charge them. Herb had to remind her constantly to hang up on spam calls. He'd made sure she had no access to credit cards so she wouldn't become a victim.

"Hello?" she said. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"Mother?" Herb said, now on his feet, holding his hand out for the phone.

"Oh yes, just a moment." She looked up at Herb and said, "It's for you." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "It's a lady."

Margaret, even at this late stage, never gave up hope that Herb would find someone.

He took the receiver from her, motioning for her to turn down the television volume, and said into the phone, "Yes?"

"Oh hello," said the woman. "I wasn't sure this was the right number, but there's only a couple Willows in the book. Is this the teacher?"

He could barely hear her. Margaret hadn't yet quieted the television. "Yes. Hang on, I'm going to take this on the other line."

He put down the receiver and told his mother he was going to continue the call in the kitchen. When he got there and picked up the receiver on the wall-mounted extension, he shouted, "Hang up now!"

He listened, heard the click, closed the door between the kitchen and the living room, and said, "Sorry."

"Was that Mrs. Willow?"

"That's my mother. Who is this?"

"This is Violet Kanin? Andrew Kanin's mother? He says you and Andrew were talking today?"

Well, well, he thought.

"Yes. Yes, we were."

"I thought, before I take this any further, I would talk to you, since Andrew brought up something I wasn't aware of, and I wanted to confirm it with you before I talked to Mr. Boyle or the principal."

Herb smiled inwardly. "Go ahead."

"This book Andrew's been told to read—is it okay if I talk to you about this? Is that appropriate? I didn't want to bother Mr. Boyle, at least not yet, because he's been through quite an ordeal and we're all grateful for what he did."

"He sure is something, isn't he?"

"But this book has made Andrew uncomfortable and I've started reading parts of it and I really don't know how anyone could justify putting it on the curriculum. Not only does it deal with very distressing subject matter, but it's very ungrammatical in places. I suppose the author did that deliberately for some literary effect, but if we're trying to teach students proper spelling and sentence structure, this certainly doesn't seem like the way to go about it."

"I hear you," Herb said.

"Andrew said you told him he could opt out of studying it. So if I wrote a note to Mr. Boyle and explained our position, that would take care of it?"

"I think it would," Herb said, and then thought about what he wanted to say next. "Unless you want to take a look at the broader issue."

"The broader issue?"

"Well, let's say you don't want Andrew to read this particular book. What will the next one be? Will it be even more objectionable?"

There was a silence at the other end of the call.

"Hello?" Herb said.

"I hadn't thought about that."

"I guess—and you don't have to do this if you don't want to—but I guess if it were me, I might talk to some of the other parents and see what they think. And when you've formulated your position, as a group, you could decide what to do then. Whether to talk to the teacher in question—I'm speaking generally here, not singling out Mr. Boyle—or whether to take it up with the principal or the school board."

"I see," Violet Kanin said.

"Listen, I'm just tossing out ideas here. It really has to be your decision. And if you don't mind, it's probably best if we keep this conversation between ourselves. The last thing I would want is to be thought of as interfering."

"Oh, I totally understand. Thank you so much."

"Not a problem. Happy to help."

He ended the call and went back into the living room. His mother looked at him expectantly.

"Well?" she asked coyly. "Who was that?"

"Just somebody."

"A friend?"

Herb smiled. "Maybe so, Mother. Maybe so."