Solving for M

by Jennifer Swender

  “Happy birthday to you!” she sings. “Happy birthday to you!” Dee Dee joins in. “Happy birthday, our dear Mika! Happy birthday to you!”

  “I made us each two,” Chelsea whispers, taking the fanciest cupcakes out of the container. They’re decorated with colorful sugar flowers. “We get one now and one in math.”

  Dee Dee reaches around and pulls a present wrapped in newspaper comics out of her backpack. She hands it to me. “You don’t have to wear it,” she says with a shrug.

  I unwrap it. It’s a T-shirt that says: EARTH Without ART is Just EH.

  “No, I love it,” I say. I pull it on over the shirt I’m wearing. Dee Dee gives me a thumbs-up.

  Then we eat our fancy cupcakes and go to math.

  Mr. Vann is waiting at his desk. “Prime-number ages demand a certain recognition,” he says. Then he reaches into the top drawer and takes out one of his famous tea candles and a pack of matches.

  He lights the candle, but he doesn’t eat it. I do. (I make sure to blow it out first.) And even then, I don’t pop the whole thing in my mouth. I nibble around the wick. (It is white chocolate, by the way.)

  Once everyone arrives, Mr. Vann tells us to open our books so we can start a new unit.

  “Think of a set as a collection,” Mr. Vann begins. He opens his desk drawer and starts pulling things out—a straw hat, the box of matches, a spinner from the game Twister, another pack of paper plates.

  “How might we define this set?” he asks.

  I look at the collection on his desk. The only words that come to mind are “totally random.”

  I guess it’s no use asking Mr. Vann why he keeps those particular things in his desk drawer, or why he decided to start chapter eight today. Just like it’s no use asking the cells in my mom’s leg why they decided to get all wacky a few months ago. Or even longer than that. The doctor said the spot on my mom’s leg was probably “bad” for a while.

  It’s also probably no use asking Mom why she didn’t go to the doctor sooner. It’s like she got the estimation wrong, rounded up when she should have rounded down, or maybe the other way around.

  * * *

  —

  “Am I being punished?”

  It’s the first thing I hear when I get home from school. Not Happy birthday! or Surprise! Or even How was your day, Mika? Mom keeps asking Grandma Beau the same question, over and over.

  I was hoping we would get a pizza and maybe some ice cream at least, but Mom seems to be having one of her “difficult spells,” as Grandma Beau calls them.

  “Punished for what, honey?” I hear Grandma Beau say. The voices are coming from my mom’s room. “Have you taken the new prescription?” she asks. The new prescription isn’t for the cancer, or even for the headaches. It’s for the panic.

  “Is it because I was a lifeguard? Should I not have been on the swim team? Would I have been better off rotting my brain in front of some video game?” Mom asks. Her words are coming out so fast, they get all pushed up against each other.

  “Have you given any more thought to that support group?” Grandma Beau asks calmly. “Maybe that could help with some of these questions.”

  “What did I do wrong?” Mom asks. Then she starts to cry.

  I hear Grandma Beau go into the bathroom, open the medicine cabinet, then fill a glass of water.

  After a few minutes, it gets quiet. Grandma Beau shuts the door to Mom’s room and comes into the kitchen.

  “It’s you and me, kid,” she says.

  “Just the two of us,” I mumble. I walk over to the fridge and open the door.

  “No, I mean we gotta go,” Grandma Beau says, grabbing her purse. “Dentist time.”

  “What?” I say.

  I shut the fridge door and look at the to-do list. The date at the top is from like three months ago, but scrawled across the rest of the page, it says: Don’t forget—Mika—Dentist Feb. 2 in Grandma Beau’s messy writing.

  “Who makes a dentist appointment for someone on their birthday?” I ask.

  “Sorry,” Grandma Beau says. “I didn’t know it was on the books. They just called yesterday to confirm, and by then it was too late to cancel.”

  I tear the sheet off the pad and crumple it up in my hand.

  * * *

  —

  At least the hygienist makes a big deal about it being my birthday. She gives me like five free toothbrushes and a whole handful of mini tubes of the toothpaste with the blue sparkles in it. And luckily, I don’t have any cavities.

  “Did Mom forget it was my birthday?” I ask Grandma Beau on the way home. I still have that funny taste in my mouth from all the fluoride. It makes me feel like I’m not myself.

  “It’s not that she forgot,” Grandma Beau finally says. “She just didn’t put two and two together.”

  Maybe Mom should try coming to Mr. Vann’s class. Maybe her math is rusty because she hasn’t been doing a lot of work lately. Actually, she hasn’t been doing a lot of anything lately. And then she feels bad because she’s not working. Then she starts to worry. Then she starts to panic. Then she starts to cry.

  I know Grandma Beau has started paying for groceries and shampoo and things like that. And I think my dad’s child support is enough to pay for part of the mortgage and things I might need. I guess it could also pay for an after-school art class, but that idea has kind of faded away.

  I look out the window and start playing my new game. If I see a yellow car in the next five minutes, things will be back to normal soon. If we make the next two stoplights, everything will be okay.

  “How about some birthday soup?” Grandma Beau suggests when we get home. “And I promise we’ll do something special this weekend.” Grandma Beau reaches into her purse and pulls out a tiny present. She puts it in my hand.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  Then Grandma Beau gets busy chopping vegetables.

  I open my gift. It’s a tiny ceramic moose baby. Maybe the mom moose and baby moose got separated in the craziness of Grandma Beau’s big box of treasures, or maybe they got separated before that. I put the baby next to its mom on my desk. Then I hear the phone ring.

  “Mika,” Grandma Beau calls from the kitchen. “Can you get it? My hands are full.”

  I jog back to the kitchen and pick up the phone. It’s Jeannie. After she finishes an operatic version of “Happy Birthday,” she asks to speak to my mom.

  “Mom!” I call. “Jeannie!”

  Mom picks up in her room. Through the phone, I can hear that she’s crying again, or maybe she never stopped. It sounds staticky and strange, like she’s very far away and not just in the next room. Then she asks Jeannie, “What do people do?”

  I’ve heard her ask Grandma Beau the same question. I’ve heard her ask my dad. I’ve heard her ask the doctors. “What do people do?”

  She asks all the grown-ups. But she doesn’t ask me.

  Math Journal Entry #15

  Create a few sets. Don’t forget to “brace” yourself. Then find your subsets.

  Remember to use numbers, words, and/or pictures.

  (Also remember to bring in a “set” of Valentines for the class next week.)

  “Who’s up for sharing?” Mr. Vann asks.

  He keeps looking at the clock like he can’t wait for class to be over. It’s the Friday before February vacation, and Mr. Vann seems more excited than any of the kids to get the day over with.

  Nobody raises a hand. It’s quiet.

  Dan is absent again. He loves to “shave,” as Mrs. Poole calls it. He manages to shave off a day or two on either side of a vacation. I’m not sure where he went this time.

  My mom, of course, made my flight to Orlando for Saturday morning. No shaving for me.

  “Who would care to share?” Mr. Vann tries again. “Because sharing is caring
.” Everybody groans.

  “Have we forgotten this a mere twenty-four hours after such protestations of love and affection?”

  Yesterday, Mr. Vann let us have a Valentine’s Day party. We got to make mailboxes out of paper lunch bags, and Chelsea brought in cupcakes with little candy hearts on top.

  Then we passed out our Valentines. But they had to have some kind of math message, like Without You, I’m < 0 or You are as sweet as π. My favorite was the one from Dee Dee. She had the symbol for pi saying: I’m just not rational when I’m with you.

  “Fine,” says Mr. Vann. “We shall create subsets out of the set of all of you dear thinkers. Then you shall share your sets and subsets with each other within your respective subsets. And due to the fact that in exactly four hours and twenty-nine minutes, I will be on a nonstop airplane heading due south, you may feel free to choose your own subsets.” Mr. Vann pulls a straw beach hat out of his desk drawer and plops it on top of his head.

  Dee Dee and Chelsea hurry over to my desk.

  “I did something about the matter and antimatter from black holes,” Dee Dee explains. She has a million mathematical formulas all over the page in her journal. It’s probably worth about a zillion bonus points, but I don’t understand any of it.

  Mr. Vann paces the room, peeking out from under his straw hat and eavesdropping on our conversations. He looks down at the page from Dee Dee’s journal. I assume he’s about to give her the zillion bonus points, but instead, he reminds her that variety is the spice of life.

  “Remember, Dee Dee,” he says as he walks away, “there is more to the universe than just…the universe.”

  Chelsea seems to have anticipated Mr. Vann’s advice and decided against making sets and subsets about her notebooks. She did something about cooking and the ingredients you need for different recipes. “I’m coming to your house for dinner,” I say as a joke.

  Meals at my house have pretty much disappeared. Mom used to make such a big deal about us sitting down at the table to eat. Even if it was “just the girls.” But now I usually bring my plate to the couch and eat in front of the TV.

  “Super!” Chelsea says with a smile. “You can both come.”

  “I’m in,” Dee Dee says with a nod. “Okay, Mika, your turn to share because remember—sharing is caring.”

  I look down at the page in my math journal.

  “My mom,” I start, “went to this support group for people who have the kind of cancer she has, but all the other people were old men. So she’s her own subset.”

  “Makes sense,” Dee Dee says. “Cancer’s just more common in old people.”

  “So then she went to a women’s support group, thinking that it couldn’t be all old men. But all of those women had breast cancer.”

  Chelsea blushes a little when I say breast, but Dee Dee doesn’t care. I always thought Dee Dee would become an astrophysicist or something, but I can see that she would also make a really good doctor. She doesn’t get all embarrassed about that kind of stuff, and she’s good at talking to people.

  I think my dad is a good doctor when it comes to the science-and-being-smart part, but he’s not the best at the talking-and-listening-to-people part.

  I see Dee Dee peeking at the picture of the Onesies in my next example. “So we’ll make our own set,” she says matter-of-factly.

  “What do you mean?” Chelsea asks.

  “Our own set,” Dee Dee says, like saying it again explains what she means. “But we’ll need a name.”

  “Like the Onesies?” I ask. “My friend Ella, she’s in this group called the Onesies.”

  “I’ve seen them,” Chelsea says. She fidgets with the top button of her sweater.

  “They talk a lot about clothes and TV and who likes who,” I say.

  “Who likes whom,” Chelsea says. She smiles apologetically.

  “Thanks,” I say. “Who likes whom.”

  “Some of those girls were in my class last year,” Dee Dee says. “I used to think if I wore a dress once in a while, they’d like me.”

  This is weird because Dee Dee doesn’t seem like the kind of person who worries at all about who likes whom.

  “We could be the Twosies,” Chelsea suggests weakly.

  “Nah,” says Dee Dee. “Let’s give it some time. Then we can come up with a really awesome name.”

  “How about the Please Get Outta Heres?” Mr. Vann calls over to us.

  We look up. Everybody else is gone. I didn’t even hear the bell that sounds like a horn, and Chelsea and I are probably going to be late for gym. But I don’t care.

  I quickly draw a big empty circle on the next page of my math journal. It’s a space for our new set. I’ll fill it in later.

  * * *

  —

  Only Grandma Beau brings me to the airport on Saturday. Mom’s “just not up to it.”

  When I land in Orlando, a short three hours and ten minutes later, Katie’s there to pick me up. She waves to me with a rolled-up poster covered in plastic.

  “It’s a poster,” she says, taking my bag from me and handing me the roll. “Well, obviously it’s a poster. I thought you might want to put it in the guest room. I mean, your room. But no worries if you don’t. Sorry your dad couldn’t be here. He got called in to the hospital. Are you hungry? You must be hungry.”

  All I’d had was orange juice and a tiny bag of pretzels on the plane.

  “Actually,” I tell her, “I’m really hungry.”

  Katie steers me toward a restaurant right there in the airport. Mom would never let us eat in the airport. “Not a good value,” she would say. “Captive audience means inflated prices.”

  Katie looks around for the hostess stand.

  “Are you sure?” I ask her. “I mean, I can wait until we get to your house.”

  “You’re human,” Katie says with a smile. “You need to eat. Besides, we’re not going straight home.”

  The hostess seats us, and Katie orders us each an iced tea.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she says, looking over the menu. “But the kids’ meal looks really good. I say go for it while you still can.”

  After we order, Katie reaches into her very large handbag and pulls out a plastic shopping bag. She sets it in the middle of the table. Then she pushes it toward me. I take the bag and look inside. There’s a bathing suit and a tie-dyed beach dress.

  “Couldn’t help myself,” Katie says with a smile. “Plus, we have a lot of swimming to do this week, you and me. I hope they fit. If not, we can exchange.” She reaches for the tag on the swimsuit and looks at it closely.

  “It was snowing in New York,” I say.

  “Which reminds me,” Katie says, pulling her phone out of her bag. “Call your mom, please. Let her know you’re here safe.”

  I dial, but it rings and rings and then it goes to voicemail.

  “Hi,” I say. “I’m here.” I hang up.

  Katie picks up the poster from where it’s leaning against my duffel bag. She hands it to me. I pull off the plastic wrap and unroll it.

  “I know you’re a big Monet fan, and it’s not a Monet,” Katie says with a fake frown. “It’s Matisse. But I saw it and I liked it.”

  The image is a figure, reaching up. Everything about it is uneven, but strong at the same time, solid. The background is bright blue, and there are yellow stars all around. At least, I think they look like stars. The figure is solid black with a red circle where its heart would be.

  “I like it, too,” I say.

  After lunch, Katie and I go to the Orlando Science Center.

  “It’s so on our way home,” Katie explains, “we kind of have to go.”

  After looking at some dinosaur bones, Katie says we should “hit the gift shop.” I find a package of astronaut ice cream for Dee Dee and a tiny box of gem
stones for Chelsea.

  Then we get tickets to see a 3D movie about the ocean. The theater is super air-conditioned and dark, and the seats are really comfortable. You can lean way back in them. I watch the fish swim toward me. Without even meaning to, I reach out to try to touch them.

  Behind the plastic glasses, it’s easy to forget about everything. It’s easy to feel fine.

  * * *

  —

  When I get to my dad and Katie’s house, my dad’s on the phone. He gives a wave and holds up a finger, which is code for “Be right there.” Then he points to the phone and mouths, “Your mom.”

  Katie helps me bring my things to the guest room. Their dogs, Willie and Fritz, follow us and jump up on the bed. They nearly crush two really pretty gift bags that are sitting there with about a million ribbons tied to the handles.

  “Belated happy birthday,” Katie says. Then she tugs on the dogs’ collars. “Get down, you two monsters.” But instead of getting off the bed, the dogs just lie down on top of it.

  “I suggest keeping your door closed,” Katie says, scratching Willie behind the ears. “Or you will have friends.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. I sit down next to Fritz. He’s warm and panting and stretches over to lick my face.

  “Time to open your presents,” Katie says, sitting down next to me. She seems very excited. “Oh, I hope you like it.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for my dad?” I ask. I can hear him in the hallway still talking to my mom. But the “Mika’s here” part of the conversation has ended. Now I hear things like “remember Felicia from med school?” and “new cutting-edge trial” and “advanced genetic targeting.”

  “Well, you can open the one from me,” Katie says. She pulls a gift bag out from under a dog and puts it on my lap.

  Inside is a set of professional-looking colored pencils and a big blank book. The cover says: Creativity Takes Courage.