“Maple,” Theo Jr.said, in the voice of a small person who was about to say something more important than his mother.
“Heather,” I said. “Pancakes?”
“Pancakes,” she said. “And a coffee. From thegoodplace.” She looked at the cup of gas station sludge on booth four. The gas station coffee. The coffee that had been sitting there for four minutes like evidence. “Did Mira do that to you again?”
“She did.”
“Mira.”
Mira waved from the booth. She looked entirely too satisfied.
“Pancakes,” Theo Jr.said louder. He was not loud by temperament. He was loud by determination. “Maple. I havenews.”
“News?”
“Yes.”
“Hit me.”
He took a deep breath. He had practiced this. The breath was the breath of a rehearsed speech. He held up one mittened hand, fingers spread, like he wanted me to count something off them. Like he was counting off his accomplishments.
“Mr.Grumpus fixed my bike wheel.”
I went still.
I went very still.
I was, at that moment, holding two plates and a coffee carafe and a jar of strawberry jam, and I set all of them very carefully down on the counter so I would not drop any of them, and I said, in my most reasonable voice — the one I use when I am on the edge of something and need to pretend I’m not — “Theo Junior. Honey. Who is Mr.Grumpus.”
“You know who Mr.Grumpus is. He lives in your grandma’s apartment. The hockey man.”
I closed my eyes.
I opened them.
“Did you give him that name.”
“Yes.”
“Theo Junior.”
“Mom said it was rude but it was already happening so it stuck.” He said this like he was explaining a scientific principle. Like the name had adhered to Knox Kovak the way they do, inevitable and irreversible.
Heather, behind him, was nodding. “It already stuck. I am sorry, Maple. I tried to stop him. I said, ‘Theo Junior, we don’t name people things like that,’ and he said, ‘Mom, his face decided it,’ and what do you do with that logic. What do you do with a five-year-old philosopher.”
I tried, very carefully, to keep my face in the shape of a face.
“Theo,” I said, to Theo Jr., very gently. “Mr.— Mr.Grumpus fixed your bike wheel.”
“Yes.”
“When.”
“Yesterday after my nap. He came over. He looked at it. He took it inside his garage?—”
“My garage.”
“Your grandma’s garage. He took it in your grandma’s garage and there’s tools in there, Maple, did you know? There’s lots of tools. And he had a pliers and a thing and he made the wheel —unbendy.That’s the word. He made it unbendy. And he put it back on. And he said to me,that’s how.And he gave it back.”
