“When you come back, remind me to tell you about the new principal at Katie’s school,” Jeanette said. “He’s a big, tall fellow, and he has the shortest little Chinese wife.”
I nodded several times and held up my empty glass, as if to offer proof that I wasn’t walking away because I found them intolerable.
On the deck, I passed Dena and Charlie Blackwell just as Dena set her fingertips on his forearm.
I thought. Once inside the house, I used the first-floor powder room, and on my way out, I almost collided with Tanya, the older of the Hickens’ two daughters.
She held up a hardcover book. “Will you read this to me?” It was
the one where Madeline falls in the Seine and is saved by a dog.
I looked around. There were a few adults in the kitchen, including Kathleen Hicken, Tanya’s mother, but we were out of their view, and I doubted anyone would notice my absence. “Sure,” I said.
We sat on the living room couch, Tanya next to me. She was a fair-haired little girl with a bob and large brown eyes. “Do you know my name?” I asked. “I’m Miss Alice. And you’re Tanya, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“And how old are you?” I asked.
“Five and one quarter.”
“Five and one quarter! Does that mean your birthday is in April?”
“It’s April twenty-third,” she said. “Lisa’s birthday is January fourth, but she’s only two years old.” Lisa was the Hickens’ other daughter.
“My birthday’s in April, too,” I said. “It’s on the sixth, seventeen days before yours.” I opened the book and began reading: “ ‘In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines—’ ” I paused. Tanya had squirmed closer to me, as if hopeful that she might be able to climb inside the book. It was an impulse I understood well. “I bet you know what comes next,” I said, and I repeated, “ ‘In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines—’ ”
“—‘Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines,’ ” Tanya said.
“ ‘They left the house at half past nine / In two straight lines, in rain or shine. / The smallest one was—’ ”
“—‘Madeline,’ ” Tanya cried.
I turned the page, which featured an illustration of Madeline falling over the bridge. “Uh-oh,” I said.
“She doesn’t drown,” Tanya told me reassuringly.
We kept reading, and when we got to the next page, Tanya added, “They name the dog Genevieve.”
She continued to inject these comments, either editorial or explanatory—“The fat lady is mean,” “Genevieve has puppies”—and when we’d gotten to the end, she said, “Will you read it again?”
I glanced at my watch. “All right, and then I should go back out and talk to the grown-ups. Your daddy’s grilling the meat for dinner, isn’t he?”
“I’m having fish sticks with tartar sauce.”
“Doesn’t that sound fancy,” I said.
As if comforting me, helping me to not be intimidated, Tanya said, “No, tartar sauce is like mayonnaise,” and I decided that I liked her even more.
We had neared the end of our second run-through of
when Charlie Blackwell appeared in the archway of the living room. I looked up, made eye contact with him, smiled, and continued reading. It didn’t seem that what Tanya and I were doing required explanation, and besides, I believed that the secret of interacting with children—or it appeared to be a secret, based on the behavior of some parents—was that all you did was talk to them in a normal way. You didn’t let yourself be distracted by someone else, you didn’t perform above their heads, using them as a prop, nor did you coddle and indulge them. You paid attention, but not inordinately.
He didn’t leave, though. I could feel him standing there watching us, and when we got to the last page, he set down his beer can and applauded. This applause concealed the sound of Tanya farting, which I was glad for, because she seemed self-aware enough, despite her age, that farting in front of a tall, unfamiliar man might have embarrassed her. “I have to go potty,” she murmured, and slid off the couch, darting around Charlie Blackwell in the threshold.
“I scare her off?” He had a bit of a drawl, not the flat Wisconsin accent but something at once twangier and more educated.
“I think she had somewhere to go,” I said.
“Then I guess you just lost your excuse for hiding out.” He took a sip of beer and grinned.
“I’m not hiding out. We were reading a story.”
“Is that right?” He was undeniably handsome, but his bearing was cocky in a way I didn’t like: He was just over six feet, athletic-looking, and a little sunburned, with thick, dry, wavy light brown hair of the sort that wouldn’t move if he shook his head. He also had mischievous eyebrows and a hawk nose with wide nostrils, as if he was flaring them at all times. This lent him an air of impatience that I imagined enhanced his stature in the view of some people—implying that he had other, more interesting places to go, that his attention to you would be limited.
