Imperfect Spiral (32 page)

I'm in some kind of verbal corner.

“Where did you—? Oh. That Doris Raskin,” Mrs. Danker says. She rolls her eyes. “I know she means well.” I find some people use this expression when they're holding their noses about someone. I don't correct Mrs. Danker's impression that it was Mrs. Raskin who told me about her cancer history.

“It wasn't for nothing,” Mrs. Danker says. “Having Humphrey for five and a half years was not for nothing.”

Yeah, no.

“Tell me, Danielle,” Mrs. Danker says. “Tell me about Humphrey and you.”

She sits across from me in a chair.

“I hope you know he loved having you in his life.”

Her hazel eyes are softly inviting.

“What was his last day like?”

Finally. The question I've been waiting for. From the person I've been wanting to hear it from, although I didn't know that until just this second.

“'S up, Humpty?” I asked.

Humphrey looked up at the ceiling. “The lightbulbs,” he said.

“Ha!”

“A spiderweb,” he added.

“Really?” I said.

Humphrey pointed to a corner of the kitchen.

“Hmm,” I said. “A cobweb.”

“A spiderweb,” Humphrey said.

“Whatever.” I rolled a newspaper into a baton and took a swipe. The ceiling was higher than I thought. “Be my spotter, Humphrey,” I said, moving a chair from the kitchen table to a point beneath the cobweb.

“Huh?”

“‘Huh?'” I mimicked him, but not in a mean way. “Make sure the chair stays put while I'm standing on it,” I said. “So I don't fall. That's being my spotter.”

Standing on the chair, I swatted down the cobweb.

“Mission accomplished,” I said. “Now what?”

“Dinner?” said Humphrey.

It was only four thirty, and Humphrey usually ate at six. But he was hungry, so why not?

“This way,” Humphrey said twenty minutes later as he dug his spoon into SpaghettiOs, “we won't have to come in for dinner. We'll be able to play and play and play and play. We'll play until … until … we'll play until …”

“The first star?” I prompted.

“Until the first star and also … until …”

“You throw a perfect spiral?” I said.

“Until the first star and a perfect spiral and …”

“Until you want dessert?” I tried.

“Until the first star and a spiral and I want dessert and until …”

“It's almost bedtime?”

“Until the first star and a spiral and dessert and bedtime and until … we explode!”

“Until we explode!” I said. “Now that's really something to look forward to.”

After finishing his SpaghettiOs and chicken tenders, Humphrey decided he preferred to have dessert immediately—one
less reason to come in from playing a single second earlier than absolutely necessary.

“Berry or orange?” I asked, peering into the freezer at the juice pops.

“Borange,” Humphrey said.

I chose berry for Humphrey, and took orange for myself. A Popsicle-chewer, rather than a Popsicle-sucker, Humphrey was done in three minutes.

“Can I have an orange one now?” he asked.

“One Popsicle,” I said.

“But I didn't really want the berry one,” he said. “I wanted borange, remember? You only gave me the berry part. Now I need the orange part.”

“You just ate dessert, Humphrey,” I said.

“Sometimes I get Second Dessert,” Humphrey reminded me.

“Right. When First Dessert is a piece of fruit. You just ate a whole Popsicle.”

“A fruit juice pop,” Humphrey corrected me. “It's healthy.”

I sucked on my own orange fruit juice pop. “This discussion is over.”

“Maybe later,” Humphrey said.

By five thirty we were heading out the door. “To the park, right?” I confirmed.

“Yup.”

“Then what're you waiting for? Come on, slowpoke!” I ran to the end of the driveway.

“You're the slowpoke!” cried Humphrey, catching up to me and passing me. He made it to the front yard of the next-door neighbor, when I called to him.

“Hold on, Humphrey,” I said. “I forgot something. It's kind of important to our mission tonight.” I keyed in the code to the garage and ducked in as the door was opening. “Now we can go,” I said.

“Throw it!” Humphrey said, seeing the football I had retrieved.

I looked up and down the street before I let it fly.

“Kind of wobbly!” I called out.

“Perfect!” Humphrey yelled at the same time, because he caught it.

Humphrey kept sprinting ahead as we walked along Franklin Avenue.

“I told you you're the slowpoke!” he called over his shoulder.

“You need to wait for me,” I said. “When we make the turn on Quarry Road, we have to walk together.”

“I know,” said Humphrey. He waited.

Some kids passed us on Franklin, walking in the opposite direction.

“Hey,” they said.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hey,” said Humphrey in that special not-little-boy voice he reserved for interactions like this one, with older kids.

They looked familiar to me, although I didn't really know them. They were a few years younger than me. Probably going
to the pool, farther back in the neighborhood, to one of the Friday night cookouts they had to attract kids.

“Hay is for horses,” Humphrey said when the kids were out of earshot. “That's what my father says when I say ‘hey.'”

“Hay is for haystacks,” I said. “Haystacks are for needles. Needles are for sewing.”

“What?” Humphrey said, delight at this new game breaking out all over his face.

“Sewing is for buttons. Buttons are for—”

“Clickers!” Humphrey said.

“Good one, Humphrey,” I said. “I wouldn't have thought of that.”

“More!” Humphrey said.

“Clickers are for televisions. Televisions are for—”

“Cartoons!” Humphrey said. “Cartoons are for kids. Kids are for playing. Playing is for fun. Fun is for Humphrey. Humphrey is for Danielle. Danielle is for—”

He had run out of steam. “What are you for, Danielle?”

“I'm for you, Humphrey,” I said.

I hadn't played the game in ages. Adrian made it up; at least, I thought he did. One day, as we sat at the kitchen table working on homework, he started tapping the eraser end of his pencil on the table. He picked up another pencil and got a rhythm going. This was before he actually took up drums. Mom was making dinner—so it must have been a Sunday. Adrian was in fifth grade. “Pencils are for writing,” she said.

He kept tapping. “I know,” he said. “Pencils are for writing.
Writing is for letters. Letters are for alphabets. Alphabets are for languages. Languages are for words. Words are for songs. Songs are for singing. Singing is for listening. Listening is for music. Music is for rhythm. Rhythm is for drums. Drums are for tapping. Tapping is for pencils. And pencils are for writing.”

“Now go ahead and put that kind of genius into your homework, Adrian,” Mom said. “And I'll be thrilled.”

But homework didn't really call for that kind of genius. So it just remained Adrian's game, which he and I played to pass time on car trips, as we sat in the backseat, or just to fend off boredom. The idea was to get back to the original statement, whatever it was. Pencils are for writing. Hay is for haystacks. Or not. It was fine just to blab on for a while.

“Now why don't you give me the ball while we're walking on this street. I don't want it to accidentally pop out of your hands.”

“I won't drop it, Danielle,” Humphrey said. “I can carry it.”

When we reached the park, Humphrey made a break for the playground.

“Hurry to the spaceship!” he called. “It's about to take off!”

I ran the rest of the way up the hill to the scrubby little playground. I mean, I wouldn't want to miss takeoff. I didn't remind Humphrey that since I was the spaceship's rocket fuel—I'm the one who always sent the roundabout spinning before jumping on—it wasn't taking off until I got there.

And … we were there. Humphrey waited until the roundabout came to a complete stop before carefully stepping off.

“I always have to get used to the zero-gravity conditions on Thrumble-Boo,” he said.

Today Thrumble-Boo had zero-gravity conditions? Okay. He picked up and put down his feet in big, exaggerated steps, and I followed his lead.

“We're back, Bumble-Boos,” he said. He climbed on top of the faded blue bumblebee. He really was almost too big for these springy ride-on critters, something that I hadn't noticed before.

“We come in peace,” I said, copying Humphrey's usual greeting.

“They know that by now,” he said, and bounced around on the bumblebee for a while.

“I just realized something,” Humphrey said.

“What's that?”

“You know how we always say they're aliens?”

“Friendly aliens,” I said.

“Yeah. But we're on their planet. We're on Thrumble-Boo. On Thrumble-Boo,
we're
the aliens, not them. We're aliens!”

“
Baah
, we're aliens!” I clowned. “With our weird … what's this?” I touched my head. “Hair!
Aagh
! Alien hair! And our scary—look at this!” I held out my hand. “Long bony things.
Aah
! Fingers!”

“But we're not invading their planet,” Humphrey said. “So we're friendly aliens, too.”

I agreed. After we climbed around on the mountain—also known as the jungle gym—we went back to the spaceship and spun our way back to Earth.

“Football?” I asked.

In answer, Humphrey grabbed the football off the ground and ran as if going out for a pass.

“Look, I caught it!” he said once he was about twenty-five feet away.

Ha. Ha.

He threw the ball back to me, a wobbly, sideways effort that fell a few feet short. We played catch—our version of catch, in which I threw a variety of types of passes and he tried to catch them and run them back to me. At this point in the summer, he caught a lot more than he missed. And after weeks of throwing, my passes were nearly all perfect tight spirals.

“Okay.” He panted, running a long pass back to me. “Time to practice throwing.”

I don't know why it was so hard for him. He was a little guy, but his hands were like puppy paws: big for his age. He tried, throw after throw. You've never seen such a wobbly football. Earlier in the summer, I actually thought maybe it was the ball, so I brought one from home, one of Adrian's. Nope. Wobble wobble, no matter which ball we used.

I adjusted his fingers on the ball, first one way, then another. Wobble wobble. I suggested pretending different things: Pretend you're launching a rocket. Pretend there's nothing in your hand. Pretend there's a hot potato in your hand.

I really didn't know what I was doing.

“Humphrey,” I said, “I am not a football expert. We are going to have to get your instruction from someone who knows what they're talking about.”

He plopped down on the grass. “A little more,” he said, and stood up. “I'm going to throw—to throw
myself
in the air.” He attempted another throw.

Less wobbly. A lot less wobbly.

“What'd you do there, Humphrey?” I asked.

“I threw
myself
into the ball,” he said.

He did. All this time, he'd been throwing only with his arm. Now he put his whole self behind it, and the throw was much stronger. This must be Throwing 101, but football is not my subject.

“Do that again,” I said. “Really put your body into it. Make your shoulders part of your arms. And step into it, like you're walking toward me.”

He threw a spiral. Not real tight, not perfect, but a spiral.

“I did it!” Humphrey yelled.

“Do it again!”

A spiral. And another. One imperfect but very nice spiral after another.

“I did it!” He was practically dancing. No, he was totally dancing. I joined him.

“Congratulations, Humphrey!” I said.

“This is the greatest day of my life!”

We threw some more, and he didn't lose his newly discovered
touch. Then we played our Marco Polo–like Thrumble-Bumble game.

“Oh! Humphrey!” I said. “I need to check the time.”

It was 7:10. The first star that night, I had found out from some star-tracking website, was going to be Venus—low in the western sky, even before the sun set.

“Okay, now don't look at the sun,” I said.

“It could burn your eyes out of your head,” Humphrey said.

“Something like that.”

We stood and stared at the sky.

“A UFO!” Humphrey exclaimed. “I see a UFO!”

No. That UFO was Venus. And only Venus. The first star tonight.

“Yes!” Humphrey shrieked. He looked at Venus steadily, wanting to make sure, I think, that it was actually hanging still in the sky and wasn't a UFO. Then he surveyed the skies; there were no other stars out.

“Now I've seen the very first star,” Humphrey said. “This is the greatest day of my life.”

“I thought it already was,” I reminded him. “Or are you already all ho-hum about throwing spirals?”

“No. It's double-great now.”

We needed to start walking home.

Right before the path into the park meets the shoulder of Quarry Road, Humphrey squealed.

“Look!” He pointed.

A frog.

“I love them,” Humphrey said.

He approached the frog carefully and knelt down. He was completely entranced.

I didn't get what there was to love about a frog.

“Did you ever touch a frog's belly?” he asked me.

“Um. Not recently.”

His hand darted out, and he was holding the frog.