Then Mr. Kalman comes face-to-face with Mom.
“Did I convince you?” he asks.
Mom thinks for a minute. Then she says, “I still believe kids need to do their homework to compete. But while I might not agree with the message, I’ve never seen my children work so hard for anything.”
She means we did a yeoman’s job. Maybe, for now, that’s all that matters.
14
A New Face on the Sign
We spend the rest of the day hanging around the courthouse, waiting for the judge’s decision.
Around three o’clock, word comes that he won’t decide until tomorrow at the earliest. So we all go home.
We’re driving into our neighborhood when I see that house for sale, the one where I gave out fresh-baked cookies to the young couple with one kid and another on the way. Only something’s different about that house. Not the house, but the sign out front.
There’s no picture of Mom. Instead there’s a picture of another real estate agent in Mom’s office. A man with a mustache named Tim O’Riley.
“Mom,” I say, “what happened to your picture?”
She glances at Tim O’Riley’s face as we go by.
“I’m no longer the agent for that house, honey.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t work for the company anymore.”
“What do you mean? You won top sales five years in a row.”
“Well, someone else can win it next year.”
The car is quiet as we pass the school and turn onto Otsego Street. It’s quiet as we pull into the garage. Everyone gets out except for me and Mom.
“Did you lose your job because of me?”
“No, Sam. I lost my job because I had a disagreement with my boss.”
“Over what?”
“He thinks that the lawsuit is bad for business.”
I feel like Livingston Gulch slithered into the car.
After dinner that night, I don’t just clear the dinner dishes; I put them in the dishwasher. And I wipe the table, take out the trash, and make the next day’s lunches for Sadie and me. I even cut the crust off my almond butter and Nutella sandwich because that’s how Mom does it.
Then I fill a bucket with sudsy water.
“What are you doing, Sam?” Mom asks.
“Getting ready to wash your car.”
“Honey, it’s almost your bedtime.”
“I know.”
“My car’s not that dirty.”
“I saw a few smudges.”
“Really, it’s nothing I can’t wipe clean tomorrow.”
“Better if I wipe it clean tonight.”
She puts a hand on my shoulder. She’s a mom and knows what’s up. “Sam, it’s not your fault I lost my job.”
“You said so yourself. Your boss thinks the lawsuit is bad for business. That means you got fired because of me.”
I carry the bucket the rest of the way into the garage.
Later, on my way to bed, I stop by Sadie’s door and ignore the sign.
“Sadie,” I say, knocking loud this time, “can I come in?”
She doesn’t say no.
I push open the door, go in, and sit on her bed. There are too many dishes and too much laundry for me to sit on the floor.
“You did great today,” I say. “What you said about correlation being different from cause. Even I understood.”
“Thanks, Sam.”
“I’ll bet you get it from your mom.” She looks at me. “She was a lawyer, right?”
She nods.
“I think about her sometimes,” I say. “About meeting her. I know that’s impossible because if I could meet your mom, Dad never would have met Jenny and then I never would’ve been born. But still . . . I wish I could meet her.”
“You can meet her, Sam.”
Sadie gets real quiet for a second. She looks at me as if she’s trying to decide something.
“Close your eyes,” she says.
I close my eyes and hear Sadie’s floor creak as she walks across it. Then I hear a sound and I guess she’s taking a book from her shelf. I hear pages flipping and then Sadie’s voice.
“Okay, you can open your eyes.”
I do, and I see she’s holding a piece of paper in her hands.
“She wrote me a letter every year on my birthday,” Sadie says. “This is the last one I got. You can get to know her a little from this.” She reads it aloud.
DEAR SADIE. TODAY YOU TURN FIVE; FIVE IS A JUMPING-OFF NUMBER. SEE THE LEDGE ON TOP? FROM THE TOP OF FIVE YOU LEAP INTO THE NEXT PART OF YOUR LIFE. INTO KINDERGARTEN. TYING YOUR OWN SHOES. AND LEARNING HOW TO READ. AND ONCE YOU CAN READ, YOU GET TO LIVE MANY LIVES AT ONCE. YOURS AND ALL THE WONDERFUL LIVES IN STORIES. BUT BEFORE YOU LEAP INTO FIVE, HERE’S A MEMORY I HAVE OF YOU WHEN YOU WERE TWO. IT’S OF YOUR FAVORITE GAME.
AT THE PARK, WE USED TO PLAY HOW HIGH? I WOULD PUT YOU IN THE SWING AND PUSH YOU UP, JUST A LITTLE, AND ASK, “HOW HIGH DO YOU WANT TO GO, SADIE?” AND YOU’D SAY, “HIGHER.” SO I’D PUSH YOU UP A LITTLE MORE.
“THIS HIGH?” I’D SAY.
“HIGHER!”
I’D LIFT THE SWING SOME MORE.
“THIS HIGH?”
“HIGHER!”
I’D HOIST YOU SO HIGH IN THAT SWING THAT YOUR DROOL WOULD DRIP ON MY FOREHEAD.
THEN I’D LET GO. YOU WOULD FLY THROUGH THE AIR SQUEALING AND KICKING. THE WHOLE SWING SET SHOOK WITH YOUR LAUGHTER.
“AGAIN!” YOU’D SAY.
REMEMBER, SADIE BELLE, THERE’S A SPIRIT INSIDE YOU THAT WANTS TO FLY HIGH.
LOVE,
MOMMY.
Sadie turns the letter around for me to see her mom’s handwriting. Then she folds it up and tells me to close my eyes so she can put it away.
When I’m allowed to open them again, I realize something and say, “Both moms are telling you the same thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your mom and ours. They both want you to fly high.”
I have a hard time falling asleep again. I think about Mom losing her job and how that must feel. Maybe if we lose the case, her boss will ask her to come back and she can get top sales again. I think about Sadie fighting with her and how that must feel. What if she’s right? Sadie’s been too distracted by the case
