Lisa poked me. I bent down. Ms. Gray, she whispered into my ear, there is nothing to draw that’s beige.
Ducks? I whispered back.
She rolled her eyes and walked away. Later that day, as I was leaving, I found the crayons stuffed in my jacket pocket along with a folded drawing of a duck done in rich metallic greens and blues.
I am a rich kid now, Ann declared right before she left, looking a little nervous.
I wanted to give her a hug but wasn’t sure it was allowed. She leaned into me awkwardly. I squeezed her shoulder, hard.
Just remember you are good at math, I said.
After Ann left, I brought my box of supplies to my apartment and put them under the bed for some other day. Then I went back to the school, and skulked outside until Lisa was done. I saw Danny in between classes and he smiled at me. Hello Ms. Gray, he said, the most polite I’d ever seen him. He had the clear eyeballs of a good milk drinker, a future star quarterback. I waved once from the front doorway to Benjamin, who was busily combing his hair and dumping salt and pepper into a bowl full of water to prep for a demonstration about magnetics. He said he’d come by later. I told him I was taking Lisa to the movies
and then the hospital, and Of hopefully he could meet us after. BANK ROBBERY! had finally switched, and now they were playing a musical about New York City. Lisa had liked my 3 note and I’d found one in my mailbox two days later, with twigs taped together in the shapes of a 5 and a 6, and a piece of paper that said Okay.
When she was all done with her classes, Lisa put on her backpack, took my hand, and we started over toward the park. I told her that the stitches on her forehead made her look like addition:… and she smiled. Plus plus plus, she said. I want to start on division now, she said.
We walked past the Stuarts’ old house. Joanna off swimming somewhere. We walked by Mrs. Finch’s old house. We walked by my parents’ house. We walked by Mr. Jones’s house. He was out watering his lawn, wearing a 2o. I waved. How are you doing Mona?
he asked. Pretty good, I called, and you? He’s 2o, announced Lisa. That’s right, said Mr. Jones, winking. I squeezed Lisa’s hand. Will the store be open later? I asked, and he said: Sure thing, and Lisa said: I didn’t sleep well last night. So I’m about 11 today. Mr. Jones nodded firmly, and my heart brimmed with both of them.
We reached downtown, and I bought our tickets at the box office.
Lisa suggested we sit in the park, since there was an hour or so before the movie started. It was about three-thirty and the sky was a nice easy blue. I gave her a few dollars to buy us ice cream and she went across the street while I looked at the ducks moving around on the dirt-the electric green of the mallard’s neck, the egg brown feathers of his lady.
Lisa returned with two cones: a chocolate for me, a purplish one for herself.
What’s yours? I asked. Chocolate raspberry?
It’s raisin, she said, sitting back down next to me.
I took a lick of mine. It swept a line of chocolate onto the roof of my mouth.
Raisin? I said. They have raisin-flavored ice cream?
She counted the change into my hand. I threw it in the duck pond.
Yes, she said. She blew some air out her mouth and said she was mad at Elmer because he always drew the same house picture and never anything else.
Raisin, I said, still taking that in.
We settled into the bench and watched the woman walk her scraggly dog and the man with the briefcase go into the candy shop, Lisa was mostly quiet. She had a new tic, touching the stitches on her forehead back and forth, like a xylophone. She was barely eating her raisin ice cream. One short lick at a time. And Lisa was not a slow eater. Poor raisin, she sang, bringing it up to her mouth and then holding it out in front of her like it smelled bad; no one ever buys you, she said. Do you like raisin? I asked.
No, she said, but I do like raisin-bran cereal. I laughed at her.
I don’t want raisin ice cream to go out of business, she added, looking a little annoyed at me. I gave her another two dollars and told her to go back and get what she really wanted. She came back in a few minutes with a blob of chocolate fudge for herself.
She still gripped the raisin in her left hand. The chocolate disappeared in a few minutes and the raisin drooled a line of dark purple down her wrist.
She held the cone tight.
You want? she offered.
I shook my head. No thanks. I’ve never been a big raisin fan, I said, even in its regular form.
”’“‘sible s”94 Of It’s not bad, she said. She took another lick. She’d barely made a dent. It’s good, she said.
You can throw it out, I told her, it’s fine with me. You don’t have to be polite, I don’t mind.
I was squinting at the new brochures facing out of the tourist office window when I said that, and not at Lisa, and so when I turned back a minute or so later, I was surprised to see her eyes had filled and were spilling over, glittering with water. She spent a few minutes wiping her face, Oh Lisa, I said, what is it? I put a hand on her head. She cried for a little while, tears racing lines down her cheeks. After a few minutes, she spoke up. You can’t throw out raisin ice cream, she said.
By now, the cone was melting in on itself, gloppy globules of purple-brown. Lisa kept sniffing. A green duck walked by. Across town, Ann’s family was packing up their boxes into big moving vans. The hospital loomed over the trees, a vase of toothless daisies.
We still had a good half hour until the movie started.
What do you want to do? I asked. We could go to the drugstore, I said. She shook her head. We could go to the candy shop, I said.
She shrugged. She was still clutching that ice cream cone.
We could do some long division, I said. Do you know any math stories? she asked.
She tucked up her legs beneath her on the bench, and licked a little ice cream off her wrist.
Math stories? I said.
She nodded, yawning. She had raisin all over her hands now.
I leaned back and thought for a second, looking at the archway of trees around us. My mother’s tourist office. The watery blue of the sky. The hardware store, closed.
I knocked on the bench. She knocked back, staring up at me, eyes vivid and livid and limpid.
I know a math story, I said then.
Lisa balanced the raisin ice cream cone on the bench. She stretched out into a good listening position, resting her head on my leg. I put a hand down and smoothed the bumpy lumps of her hair.
Okay, I said slowly.
She looked up at me, blinking, expectant.
A couple of ducks floated by on the duck pond, tucked into green and brown ovals. My throat clogged up.
And I backed out.
It was a pond of addition frogs, I said suddenly. There were twelve frogs in one pond and fourteen in another. How many frogs were there total?
I didn’t look down at Lisa.
She gave a gentle hiccup in my lap.
That’s the math story? she muttered. That’s not a story.
Twenty-six.
She pulled a scrap off her raisin cone and threw it into the pond where it floated along, uneaten. Then she turned on her side, curling her
body up on the bench. I would be meeting her mother after the movie. We had a plan to go buy a Gravlaki address at the hardware store and bring it up to Mrs. Venus’s unnumbered room and present it to her. It’s important to have a number on your door so Elmer can know where you live. Lisa was excited about it.
She said we could all eat hospital dinner together and maybe if I was lucky she would show me how to skid down the hallway in my socks.
Don’t you know any other stories? she asked, on my lap. Better ones?
I moved my hand over her hair, slow. Through the trees, a tiny albino eyebrow of moon waxed high and far on the blue.