Page 15

The truck has cooled. The raised seam in the steering wheel presses beneath my thumb.

“What did he say?”

Tova looks through the windscreen.

“I need the whole answer.”

“He said you sound like a broken radio.”

I look at her.

“When?”

“When you came last week. You called across the courtyard because I forgot my coat.”

I remember her turning around too quickly. I thought I had embarrassed her by existing in front of her friends, which is the ordinary humiliation of having a mother, and I had been almost pleased about it.

“He does your voice now,” she says. “He walks past the table and says things like you.”

“How often?”

She looks at the ice pack.

“Tova.”

“Every day.”

The steering wheel is colder than it was a minute ago, which is not possible.

“Your teacher knows?”

“She told me to ignore him.”

“And you did?”

“For three weeks. Then I told her again.”

“And?”

“She said he’d get bored.”

I have met this woman. She has a laminated sign about kindness above her whiteboard and a cardigan for every month of the year, and she has decided that my daughter is one half of a disagreement between children. She will retire out of that building having never been wrong about anything, because she has arranged her working life so that nothing in it is ever hers.

Tova finally looks at me.

“He’s not bored.”

No. He is not. He has a free thing that works every day and not one adult in that building has given him a reason to put it down.

I press my thumb into the seam on the wheel.

“Why did you not tell me?”

She looks at the suspension form on my lap.

“Because you would’ve come in.”

“Yes.”