“I will,” yelled Patty. She skipped inside.
Then they drove around to the other side of William Bradford Elementary and Tommy got out of the car.
“Don’t forget,” his mother said. “Piano lesson today. So take the bus home.”
“Today?”
“It’s Tuesday.”
Tommy sighed. “I hate hate hate hate hate piano lessons.”
“Everyone hates hates hates hates hates piano lessons when they’re young. But when you’re older, you’ll thank me for making you take them now.”
“No, I won’t,” said Tommy.
“Oh, Tommy, I love to hear you play,” she said. “Especially the Bach. I want to cry when I hear you play the Bach.”
“Me, too,” said Tommy, “but not for the same reason.”
“I want to cry because it’s so beautiful,” she said.
“I want to cry because of the crappy thing you’re doing to me,” Tommy said, and he slammed the car door, and even though he knew she was watching him, he didn’t turn around, and he didn’t wave, and he didn’t yell back that he was going to have a great day. Not even when he heard the squeal of her wheels, which meant she was as angry as he was.
Good.
But that was the last time he saw his mother. And he never told his father, and he never told Patty, that it wasn’t the ice on the road. He was the reason she was driving too fast, he was the reason she couldn’t stop in time, he was the reason she...
He was the reason.
And he was the reason she began to disappear from the house, room by room. He was the reason her portrait of their family came down from the living room. He was the reason her portraits of her children came down from the front hall. He was the reason their father packed away her clothes, and her favorite books, and her music on the piano rack.
Tommy hadn’t touched the piano since then.
Their father hadn’t painted since then.
And Patty.
He was the reason.
Every time Tommy heard the squeal of tires, he wanted to run out into the road to stop her.
Every time he heard a car door slam, he began to cry.
Every time someone said how proud his mother would be of him, he knew she wouldn’t be.
And he hated hated hated hated hated Johann Sebastian Bach.
Hated.
When Tommy and Patty got home from school, Mrs. Charlene Cabot Lumpkin, wife of Lieutenant Governor Lumpkin, real estate developer, president for eight years running of the Women’s League of Plymouth County, and corresponding secretary (soon to be vice president) of the Mayflower Society, had driven to their house in her yellow Mazda and was standing in their living room—along with Officer Goodspeed of the Plymouth Police Department. Officer Goodspeed’s face was looking pale, but on Mrs. Charlene Cabot Lumpkin’s face there was more makeup than Tommy had ever seen on any one woman in his life. Parts of her were bright red. She smelled of sweet chemicals.
She glanced at Tommy and Patty, then turned back to their father.
Her long nails—red-light red—clacked as she moved her fingers.
“This house is an eyesore,” Mrs. Lumpkin said. “It has been an eyesore for three hundred years.”
“These are my children, Mrs. Lumpkin, Tommy and Pa—”
“How nice to meet you,” said Mrs. Lumpkin. “Tell me, which of you helped your father pull up the yellow flags? Or did you do it all by yourselves?”
“I already told you what happened, Mrs. Lumpkin. Tommy and Patty, this is Officer—”
“Yes, you did,” Mrs. Lumpkin said. “The flags all disappeared, just like that.” She snapped her red-light fingers and her nails clacked loudly. “Magic,” she said. “And tomorrow morning, just like that”—more snapping of fingers, more clacking of nails—“they’ll all be back in the ground.” She looked around at the three of them. “Let’s hope they stay there,” she said.
Patty took Tommy’s hand and held it tightly.
“Perhaps then,” said their father, “when the yellow flags go back into the ground, they won’t be on our land. If you remember, Mrs. Lumpkin, we own down to the high-water mark, and—no, excuse me, let me finish—we own down to the high-water mark, and we will not be selling. ”
“Fair market value, Mr. Pepper. That’s what Lumpkin Realtors offered.”
“No, Lumpkin Realtors offered well below fair market value, and I refused—and I would have refused even if Lumpkin Realtors had offered fair market value, or double fair market value, or triple fair market value.”
“Which is why we have filed for an easement so the town can assert ownership and finally make reasonable progress on our housing needs.”
“And so Lumpkin Realtors can make a more-than-reasonable profit. Don’t preach to me, Mrs. Lumpkin. I know the messenger. Tell your surveyors to keep your flags off our land.”
Tommy’s father put his hands in his back pockets. Tommy wondered if he did this to keep himself from strangling Mrs. Lumpkin.
“Fine,” Mrs. Lumpkin said. “If you want your eyesore for a little while longer, fine. Between you and the beach will soon be the PilgrimWay Condominiums. We’ll only lay out the easement. But you can’t stop progress, Peter. It’s for the good of the town.”
“This isn’t for the good of the town, Charlene. It’s for the good of Lumpkin Realtors.”
“It’s the same thing,” said Charlene Cabot Lumpkin, and she turned to leave.
“And, Charlene,” said Mr. Pepper, “you still have not paid for your portrait.”
Mrs. Lumpkin showed her very white teeth. “Your wife’s work was shoddy, Peter, and I do not pay for shoddy work. That portrait doesn’t look a bit like me.”
Mr. Pepper shook his head. “No,” he said, “I don’t think that’s it. I think it looks too much like you. But you didn’t want a portrait, Charlene. You wanted a tribute.”
“Didn’t you know, Peter?” Mrs. Lumpkin showed her very white teeth again. “That’s the same thing too.” She left. The only part of her that remained was the sweet chemical smell.
Patty went to open the front windows.
Officer Goodspeed took off his hat and scratched his head. “She gives me a headache,” he said.
“Tommy,” said his father, “did you move the flags?”
“Not a single one,” said Tommy.
“Patty?”
She was opening a second window. She shook her head.
“It wasn’t me, either,” said Officer Goodspeed.
Their father snorted a laugh. “I guess this means that there’s someone else on our side,” he said. “I wish I knew who.”
“Can they really take our land?” said Tommy.
Their father walked across the living room and helped Patty open the last window. He looked out at the blue sea: the waves, the gulls, the distant mountain range of clouds. “I think we all need a snack,” he said.
“A snack would be just right,” said Officer Goodspeed.
The surveyors were on the beach the next morning. Tommy and Patty walked past them on the way to the bus stop. They tried not to look at them.
On the bus, Cheryl Lynn Lumpkin asked Tommy, as loudly as she could, “When are you getting out of your shack, Tommy? Or did it fall down last night? I’d ask your sister, but she’s not—”
Tommy stood up and held out his hand toward her.
Cheryl Lynn’s face whitened.
She didn’t talk for the rest of the ride to William Bradford Elementary.
Tommy got off on the first grade side and watched Patty go in. “Have a great day!” he called. She waved. He wished she would yell back, “I will!” He wished she would, just once, just once, skip inside. But she didn’t.
And she didn’t look like she was going to have a great day, either.
Tommy walked around William Bradford Elementary to the sixth grade door, fingering the chain through his shirt. It had rained last night and the air was scrubbed clean and smelling enough of the ocean that h
e thought of seawater up his nose and the taste of brine and the feeling of sand all over him and the squish of seaweed underfoot and the roar of a high whitecap busting toward him.
Sitting on a scratchy blanket with Patty, his father. His mother.
His mother.
James Sullivan was standing by the door to the sixth grade hallway, tossing his authentic Tom Brady-signed football up and down.
“Hey, Pepper,” he called.
Tommy stopped fingering the chain. He looked up.
“Go long!”
Tommy dropped his backpack and went long as James Sullivan lofted a spiral—a wobbly spiral, but still a spiral—across the parking lot toward the recycling bins. Tommy sprinted over the pavement, through a long and deep puddle, and barely caught the authentic Tom Brady-signed football on the tips of his fingers, so that James Sullivan, and Patrick Belknap, watching from the sixth grade window, and even Alice Winslow, who was also watching from the sixth grade window, started to clap. It was that spectacular a catch.
“He makes you look good, Sullivan,” Patrick Belknap hollered.
“Kick off, Pepper,” called James Sullivan, and Tommy kicked off, dropping the ball and punting it end over end until it bounced up in front of James Sullivan, who grabbed it and began to run toward Tommy as though he were headed for the end zone at Foxboro, which probably he thought he was.
Tommy ran through the long and deep puddle again—once your sneakers are wet, it doesn’t much matter if they get wet again—and James Sullivan cut back so that Tommy had to cross the stupid puddle one more time, and when James Sullivan reached the end of the parking lot, he held up the authentic Tom Brady-signed football as if someone should hand him a trophy. “Touchdown!” he cried. “Touchdown with no time left. Sullivan fakes Pepper out of his wet socks and he wins the game! The fans go wild!”
Tommy went and picked up his backpack. “Real wild,” he said. He clapped once.
Inside, the class bell rang.
“Kind of wild,” James Sullivan said, and headed back.
But he stopped at the long and deep puddle.
“Hey,” he said.
Tommy turned around.
“Look at this,” said James.
Tommy went back. He looked down into the long and deep puddle.
In the still water, a sunny beach shimmered. Tommy could see the bright light heating everything up. Colored umbrellas propped in the sand. People sleeping beside radios and picnic baskets. A woman spreading suntan lotion on her legs. Two boys running down to the waves. And just coming up from the water was—Tommy looked closer—was a kid who looked like him. Wearing his Ace Robotroid bathing suit. Holding his Ace Robotroid sand pail and shovel. Quickly Tommy looked for the familiar striped umbrella. It was there, driven into the sand crookedly, and beneath it were Patty and his father and...
“That’s wild,” said James Sullivan. “It’s like colors moving in there.”
Tommy bent closer.
His mother?
His mother! And she saw him running, his pail full of seawater and starfish. She was getting up. He remembered this. She was going to come down to look at the starfish.
He remembered this!
She came out from under the shade of the umbrella.
And that was when the Southwest Side bus turned the corner of William Bradford Elementary and began to cross the parking lot, faster than usual because it was a little late.
James Sullivan looked at the bus. “Hey, Pepper,” he said.
The bus driver honked.
“Pepper,” said James Sullivan.
The bus driver honked again. Twice. Then again.
James Sullivan grabbed Tommy Pepper’s arm.
“Just a second,” Tommy said. His mother had almost reached him.
The bus honked again.
Tommy started to kneel down toward the puddle.
He didn’t hear what James Sullivan heard: the engine shuddering and the brakes shrieking and the tires sliding against the asphalt. He didn’t hear Alice Winslow and Patrick Belknap and even Mr. Burroughs yelling from the sixth grade windows. And he didn’t see James Sullivan dropping his authentic Tom Brady-signed football.
But he felt James Sullivan jerk him up and away from the puddle.
The bus rolled past, sloshing and spilling the water across the parking lot, and squishing James Sullivan’s authentic Tom Brady-signed football with its front right tire and throwing it under the rear left tire and ripping open almost all the seams, and missing Tommy Pepper’s butt by not much.
When Tommy looked back, the puddle was all gone.
“Are you crazy?” hollered James. “Did you want to get run over?”
It was all gone.
“Didn’t you see that bus?” yelled James Sullivan.
Everything was gone.
James Sullivan bent down to pick up the corpse of his Tom Brady-signed football, but Tommy walked over to the sixth grade door and went inside. He hung his jacket in his locker, put his books up, and went into Mr. Burroughs’s classroom, where everyone turned to look at him.
He sat down at his desk.
“Tommy?” said Alice Winslow. “Oh my goodness. Tommy?”
He put his head down on his hands. He closed his eyes.
He didn’t even see James Sullivan come inside.
It was the kind of day when you hope, you really, really, really hope the teacher puts on a long movie. It doesn’t matter what the movie is. As long as it takes up most of the morning and most of the afternoon, it will do.
But it was the kind of day when Mr. Burroughs wanted to study the ancient Indo-European culture that gave rise to all modern languages, because it was over-your-head exciting. “Polis,” he said. “Polis is the word for ‘city’ in ancient Indo-European. Can you think of how the word polis has survived into our own language today?”
No one said anything.
Tommy stared at the posters of Fenway Park over the whiteboard.
“Has anyone ever been to Indiana and driven through its central city, Indiana...” He drew out the a for a long time.
No one said anything.
Tommy stared at the posters of Ted Williams and Tony Conigliaro and Carlton Fisk between the windows.
“Indiana polis? Or has anyone even flown to the city next to St. Paul? Minnea polis?”
Tommy stared at the the baseball in the glass case on Mr. Burroughs’s desk—signed by Carl Yastrzemski.
“Tommy, where does Superman live?”
Tommy turned his head.
“Where does Superman live?” said Mr. Burroughs.
“The North Pole. But pole isn’t the same word as polis.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Mr. Burroughs.
“Does pole come from polis?” said James Sullivan.
“No, it doesn’t. At least, I think it doesn’t,” said Mr. Burroughs.
“So what does it matter where Superman lives?” said Alice Winslow.
“He lives in Metro polis,” said Mr. Burroughs.
“I thought it was the South Pole,” said Patrick Belknap.
“No,” said Mr. Burroughs.
“Wasn’t it Krypton?” said Jeremy Hereford.
Mr. Burroughs ran his fingers through his hair.
Tommy bet he wished he were showing a long movie.
It was the kind of day when the cafeteria served Tuna Delight. With white cheese. And two asparagus spears. And a brownie baked sometime during the ancient Indo-European period, in some polis very far away.
It was the kind of day when low clouds came in over Plymouth Harbor and shrouded the school with a mist that deepened until it began to pour, so instead of lunch recess, everyone stayed inside and read—except for James Sullivan, who stood by the windows and stared at the rain, holding the carcass of his authentic Tom Brady-signed football.
It was the kind of day when in Mrs. Low’s Music Appreciation class, Mrs. Low played the Bach piece, the actual Johann Sebastian Bach piece, that Tommy used to practic
e. She played it much better than he did, and it was still awful. When Mrs. Low asked him why he had his hands over his ears, he told her that he had a headache—even though it was because the music was so rucca—and she asked Tommy if she should send him to the nurse, and he said no. Then she asked him if she should send him to Mr. Zwerger’s office, and he said no. Then she asked him to take his hands away from his ears, and he did.
It was that kind of rucca day.
When Tommy picked Patty up at the first grade door, he could tell right away it had been that kind of rucca day for her, too. She dragged her backpack behind her and she didn’t even try to keep her hair brushed from her face. She just let it fall across her eyes. She hardly smiled when she saw him.
“I know,” he said, and squeezed her hand.
She squeezed back—a little.
“Do you want to go back home on the bus or along the beach?”
She looked up at him.
“The beach it is, then,” he said.
Another squeeze.
So together they walked down along Water Street again, past Plymouth Rock and toward the shore. The rain had stopped and a cool breeze came off the water and blew at Patty’s hair, sometimes so hard that she had to close her eyes against it. But Tommy barely felt it. He looked down at the beach and he could see it all: the sunlight, the striped umbrella, the Ace Robotroid pail, the shovel, his father, and right there—right there—his mother getting up. The sun was warm. Everything illil.
Patty tugged at his arm.
“Patty,” he said, “do you remember the last time we were...”
And immediately, her eyes filled with tears. Immediately. Just like that.
What an idiot he was. What an idiot! He squeezed her hand again, and together they clambered onto the rocks leading to the seawall. They climbed all the way out, the low waves murmuring against the stones, and they tried skipping the clamshells that the seagulls had dropped at the seawall’s end. Then back to the beach, and Tommy stood while Patty bent at the edge of the water, picking up white stones, dropping them, picking up more, and every so often putting one in her pocket to keep.