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“Yes, at this point, he is. But he can’t be all those things.”
“Why not? Why on earth wouldn’t you want to encourage him to embrace all his interests? He’s ten, for f—Pete’s sake.”
“He’s ten, yes. But next year, he’ll move to the middle school, and that’s where students begin really preparing for college. Jax will do better if he focuses more narrowly and hones one or two interests to excellence.”
Marcella kept her attention focused on her son’s work until she felt she could speak to his teacher without shouting or swearing. Because she was fucking furious. But this school was important. Their diploma was like a key to open doors that might well stay locked for Ajax otherwise. She didn’t want to cause trouble for him here.
“Listen. I hear what you’re saying. But Ajax is getting straight As. He loves school, and he’s involved and happy. He took a whole thematic approach to this ‘portfolio,’ when all the others I see just say ‘Bobby’s Work,’ or whatever. Clearly, he’s not like other kids. Why don’t we just let him be, let him love all the things he loves. Maybe his interest will narrow on its own. Or maybe we’ll start to see his limits and then we can help him decide if he wants to focus on fewer things. Or maybe he’ll be the world’s first archeologist/doctor/athlete/scientist/rock star/artist. Maybe he’ll surprise you. But I won’t be surprised in the least.”
Mrs. Hewson gave her a thin smile. Marcella was feeling scrappy, so she might have been imagining things, but the rhetoric she heard behind that bloodless slash was that Mrs. Hewson thought Marcella was being uppity.
But all the teacher actually said was, “Yes, perhaps he’ll surprise us. And as you say, he’s doing very well right now.”
~oOo~
After the conference, in which there had been no argument and Marcella deserved a cookie for that, she went to the Lower School rec room, where Ajax was playing with other kids whose parents were conferring. He was at the air hockey table with a girl Marcella didn’t know, so she stood near the doorway and watched without announcing her presence.
Large, glass-enclosed bulletin boards hung from every wall in the room. One was devoted to posters and notices about school events and rules, but the others were full of student work. Students were also allowed to write on the walls in this room, so long as they stayed school-appropriate, and each summer the walls were painted so students could start fresh again the following autumn. A bucket of Sharpies sat on a bookcase near the door.
It being the very beginning of November, only a couple months into the school year, there was still plenty of blank space, but several dozen students had written on the wall already. Marcella took a look.
Most were just goofy kid things—their names in bubble letters, sketches of cats and dogs and flowers. A few kids were obviously talented artists, but most were just stick figures or otherwise childish doodles.
She came across a fairly competent motorcycle and recognized it as Ajax’s work. The bike he’d drawn didn’t look like any particular model, but beneath it were the words HARLEY FAT BOY—MY DAD’S MOTORCYCLE.
My dad’s motorcycle.
My. Dad.
Eight had been in Ajax’s life for a matter of weeks. To Marcella’s knowledge, he’d never called Eight ‘Dad.’ He hardly even called him Eight. He seemed to prefer to call him Eight Ball—and there was a wary distance in his choice to use the more ‘formal’ version of Eight’s road name.
Dad.
That word rocked Marcella hard, but she couldn’t decide whether it upset her or something else. It was good, right, that he was thinking about Eight as his dad? Despite who Eight was, Ajax was feeling more comfortable with the idea of him, and the idea of them sharing something.
But oh, if it all fell apart.
“Mom?”
She turned around. Ajax stood there, smiling.
“Hey, tiger. I was just looking at your drawing. It’s good.”
“Thanks. I like that bike. Do you think he’d let me ride on it?”
The thought of her son on Eight’s big beast made her queasy, but she tugged on one of his locs and said, “We’ll have to talk to him about it.” Deciding to take the bull by the horns—as it were—she asked, “I see you wrote ‘Dad’ here. Is that how you’re thinking about him?”
Studying his drawing, Ajax gave a little shrug. “Maybe? Is that okay?”
“What feels right to you is okay, Ajax.”
“It’s nice, being able to talk about my dad like other kids do. Do you think he’d let me call him that?”
Marcella still didn’t know how it made her feel. She should be glad, that Eight was in this, that he wanted to stick, and that his presence was filling a hole in her son’s life—as it clearly was.
Shewasglad.
But it was all still so damn tangled. So many things could go wrong. Eight could bail, just because it was too much for his stunted humanity. This relationship thing they were trying could blow up andthatmight make him bail.
