LITMIR.BIZ

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Preferably a spot, an angle, where she won’t be aware that he’s keeping an eye on her. Because Mrs. Delancey is very careful about not playing favorites, and she’s already giving him special time, what she calls ‘one-on-one’ sessions, when he’s supposed to be out on the playground.

      One-on-one. He likes that phrase because he sees it as one raised to the first power, or one times one, or one divided by one, all of which result, amazingly enough, in one. You can’t escape one—no matter where you go, it leads you back. It stands alone but takes care of itself. According to the book, one is not a prime, although Noah hasn’t quite figured out why not, if it is only divisible by itself and by one, which it is. That’s the first definition, right? So why make an exception? Mrs. Delancey explained that once upon a time the number one was considered a prime, but in modern math the primes begin with two, the only even prime number.

      Noah intends to pursue this further, the next time he has a chance. The next time he has Mrs. Delancey one-on-one. Right now she’s concentrating on getting her students seated and behaving.

      “Bethany! Christopher!”

      That’s all it takes, just their names announced with a certain tone, and both kids stop what Mrs. Delancey sometimes calls ‘skylarking.’ Skylarking being okay at recess, even at certain times in class, but never at assembly.

      Noah has often been guilty of skylarking, or worse—right here in the gymnasium, in fact—but this morning he vows to behave himself, not wanting to embarrass his homeroom teacher in front of the principal, Mrs. Konrake. Often called Mrs. K. Who stands by the gymnasium doors in her dark mannish suit, her prim, pursed mouth a little pink O, as she oversees the assembly. What she lacks in stature—in heels she’s not that much taller than the biggest fifth grader—Mrs. K makes up in voice power.

      If most people have voices like car horns, Mrs. K is a big truck. An 18-wheeler. When she honks, you pull over just to get out of the way. First graders have been known to wet their pants upon being sent to her office. There are even rumors of a spanking machine, something with paddles and a big crank handle. Noah, who has spent some considerable time in Mrs. K’s office, has never seen such a machine and knows from his own experience that when it gets down to one-on-one—those magic numbers again—Mrs. K is actually pretty nice, and her office voice is much less threatening than her hallway voice. As if she has different horns for different places.

      When all of the students have been seated, Mrs. K raises her right hand for silence and waits until all one hundred and fifty-seven students have raised their hands to indicate compliance. Aside from the squeaking of the wooden plank seating, the resulting quiet is remarkable. As Noah’s dad used to say, you could hear a germ fart.

      “Thank you,” says Mrs. K. “As was explained to you in your homerooms, this morning we have a very special event. Chief Gannett has taken time out of his busy schedule to give us his presentation for the D.A.R.E. program. He’ll be telling you about drug abuse resistance education, and the new Web site for kids, and a lot of very interesting stories from his own experience as a police officer. Let me stress that this is very important and that we are very fortunate to have Chief Gannett with us today. I’m confident that you will give him your full attention, and that when the time comes for questions you’ll be polite and respectful. So without further ado let’s put our hands together and give our guest a great big Humble Elementary welcome!”

      The chief has been waiting patiently, looking very somber and formal in his dress uniform. He’s the only man Noah has ever seen who wears white dress gloves. It reminds him of a cartoon character, because in cartoons the hands look like gloves. Thinking of the chief as a variation on SpongeBob or Goofy makes Noah smile. His secret, you’ll-never-guess-why-I’m-laughing smile. He stares into his folded hands, grinning to himself and fighting back a giggle.

      The giggle wins when the clown suddenly enters the gymnasium. Noah knows he’s not a real clown—there’s no rubber nose or makeup—but like all of the other children he can’t help but laugh when the man with the little janitorial cart bumps through the gym door. Because at that precise moment the police chief has stepped behind the podium and is testing the microphone by tapping it with one of his white-gloved fingers. Tap, tap, tap. There’s something comical about the contrast between the somber, formally dressed policeman and the disheveled-looking man hurriedly pushing the little cart right out onto the gymnasium floor. The man pushing the cart has a pinched look on his face, as though he’s smelling something bad. A fart maybe. That’s funny. He’s wearing earbuds and bobbing his head to the beat, and that’s funny, too, because no one else can hear the music. Even the mop sticking up from the cart looks comical, as does the fact that one of the cart wheels is spinning wildly around.

      The children laugh uproariously.

      Noah notes that Mrs. Delancey is smiling, too. So maybe the sudden entrance of the funny man with the cart is part of the D.A.R.E. presentation. That’s how it looks. The puzzled expression on the policeman’s round face appears to be exaggerated, as does Mrs. Konrake’s look of stern consternation. It’s all part of the entertainment, like at a circus or a TV show, with everybody playing his or her part.

      The funny man reaching into the funny cart for some sort of funny prop. The nice policeman reacting hastily, awkwardly, fumbling at his belt.

      A loud popping noise like a balloon exploding, or a really loud party favor.

      Noah is studying Mrs. Delancey when it happens, so at first he has no idea why the shrieks of laughter have turned into shrieks of screaming.

      8. A Very Dangerous Word

      I’m in the library discussing books with Helen Trefethern when the first siren goes by. Helen runs our little two-room public library with a velvet fist, and she almost always has suggestions on what books Noah and I might enjoy reading together. Stormrider was her idea.

      “There’s a bunch more books in that series,” she tells me. “And if he gets sick of spy stories and wants something funny, you might try Hoot. Really smart and sassy, and it will make you laugh out loud. I think Noah will like it—he’s a tough one to pick for—but I’m certain you’ll love it.”

      Helen is about my mother’s age—or the age my mom would be were she still alive—and a real Humble native with family roots that extend back a century or more. Unlike most of the local best and brightest who go away to college—in her case Syracuse—she had returned to marry and raise a family. Her husband had passed away a year or so before we lost Jed, so that was another thing that bridged the age difference and made me think of Helen as one of my trusted local friends. As opposed to my old New Jersey posse, who have no idea why I vanished, or where I might have gone.

      “So how’s he doing?” she asks. With her it’s not a casual question—she really wants to know.

      “Better,” I tell her, with great relief. “New year, new teacher, it’s really made a difference.”

      Last year Noah went through this disruptive behavior phase, mostly by acting the clown. They told me—very pointedly—that you can’t teach a classroom of children when they’re howling with laughter because my son has attached erasers to his ears like headphones, or when he is making ghostly noises from inside the air ducts. He always had the tendency to go his own way, right from kindergarten, and for a couple of months after the accident it got worse. Much worse. There were many calls from the principal requesting that I take Noah home, which of course I did. What I would not agree with was the advice offered by the school district’s child psychologist, who thought my son’s behavioral problems could be improved with psychotropic drugs. A cocktail of Ritalin and Paxil. As if grief can be erased by a pill. And even if it can, would you really want to?

      The psychologist pushed, but I stood my ground and this year has been better. This year Noah has a crush on his homeroom teacher, and if you think that makes his mother jealous, you’ve no idea how relieved I am that my brilliant little boy has been trying to impress Mrs. Delancey with his good behavior.

      It helps that Irene Delancey

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