by Victor Allen
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Kenny’s mother was sitting in the combination kitchen/dining room reading Good Housekeeping when Kenny got home from school. The radio played in the next room and skeins of classical music rolled with subdued majesty into the sun dappled dining room. Only Kenny would think of the cheerful, yellow sun outside the window furiously burning through six hundred million tons of hydrogen fuel per second at its core to light and heat their humble home. The floor and table were crosshatched with the shadows of the window frames that lay like horizontal slats on the floor. A crack ran across the corner of one window pane and broke the sunlight up into a prism which lay like a pyramidal rainbow on the cracked and stained linoleum.
His mother smiled when Kenny walked in. A slanting bar of shadow crossed her face like a black bar. A whole chicken -a small one- thawed in the sink, and the pot of beans Kenny knew had been simmering all day squatted on a stove burner, fuming.
“Hi, honey. You just getting home from school?” Nancy’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she tucked a stray tress behind her ear. There was a lot more gray than just a few weeks ago. It was something he hadn’t told Mr. Norton, but his mother’s leukemia had been gaining the upper hand.
“Just getting home,” Kenny said. She hugged him. When he drew away he saw that she wasn’t smiling anymore, but looking at him curiously
“Something wrong?”
Looking at his mother, Kenny remembered a time when he was six years old. They had lived in the city then and Kenny recalled the time his father would work long hours and he wouldn’t see him for days at a time. It was a few days before they had moved to where they now lived, and he and his mother had gone shopping uptown.
Kenny had fished a lonesome quarter from his pocket and put it in one of those vending machines that were like bubble gum machines but dispensed prizes instead of candy. He had gotten a capsule with a plastic diamond ring in it. There wasn’t even a paste stone in the setting, just a six-sided hollow lined with aluminum foil. But when Kenny held it up to the sun it had twinkled and glittered so much that it hurt his eyes. To him it was real, so bright and shiny and dazzling that he couldn’t keep it for himself. He had given it to his mother, who didn’t have a diamond then -who didn’t have a diamond now -and she had put it on her finger. The sun sparkled and glinted on it and Kenny had felt frenetically frightened and protective. Frightened that some mugger might spy the precious stone and attack his mother just to have it. He had spent the rest of the day hovering anxiously around her, a little, six year old kid giving menacing looks to any prying passers-by that had looked at the ring.
A lot of years had passed since then and his mother no longer wore the ring, but Kenny didn’t know when she had stopped. The memory, so long locked away like an ornament in a cedar chest, came to the surface and made him feel both shamefaced and proud. The ring had never lost its glitter for Kenny. He could see it even now. Bright and sunny, burning with a chrome fire.
“I’m okay,” Kenny answered. “I was just thinking you might like to have a diamond ring.”
“I guess all women would like to have a diamond ring. A big one at that. Your father does the best he can.” She had never told Kenny that all the money his father made went to pay for medical bills. She didn’t have to.
“Is there something you want,” she asked.
“A star,” Kenny answered promptly.
Nancy laughed. “A star! Well, I can’t manage that, but I did find something for you today.”
She went into the next room and came back with a package in one hand and the other hand behind her back.
“What do you think of this?”
Kenny took the offered package and opened it. Inside was a pair of blue jeans, a pair that actually fit. He looked up and his mother held out a paperback book in her other hand.
“I think you’ve wanted it for a while,” Nancy said.
Kenny took the book, Physical Space Explained, and looked at it, amazed. No dog-eared corners, cracked spines, or yellow, musty pages.
“Why don’t you,” Nancy suggested, “try on your blue jeans and see how they fit. Then you can read your book.”
“Okay, mom. Thanks. Love ya much.” Kenny took his swag and nearly floated to his room, eager to have space explained. Nancy went back to reading, thinking about how little it took to make Kenny happy.