Rules for Moving (ARC)

by Nancy Star

  told Francesca. Several of her minions began repeating

  her words in a loop without pause. Lane wondered if the

  girl had made up this rule, or if she was repeating some-

  thing her teacher had said. Francesca could be difficult,

  but that was no excuse for anyone, especially a teacher,

  to make a rule of exclusion.

  She glanced at Henry, who remained focused on his

  fort. Judging by its height, she guessed he’d been at it

  for some time. She wondered whether this was a good

  thing, her son diligently locking himself in behind a tall wall. She didn’t dwell on it because Francesca’s crying

  now turned into sobs. She sounded bereft. She waved her

  hand in the air, as if she were desperate for Madam, who

  was still reading, to call on her.

  Once again Lane was reminded how despite all the

  noise that came out of Francesca’s mouth, she had tiny

  hands; the hands of a child. She was a child. A child being teased so hard, she was turning into a puddle of misery.

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  Lane called out, “Francesca, are you okay?”

  At the sound of her voice the children froze, except

  for Henry, who hearing his mother speak in a classroom

  where mothers were not allowed, stood up so suddenly

  his fort collapsed around him. Several children laughed

  at the sight of Henry surrounded by tumbled blocks.

  Francesca’s small hands turned into hard fists and she

  let out a scream. The children blithely put their fingers

  in their ears and waited for it to pass.

  Madam looked alarmed. Apparently she didn’t know

  Francesca. Perhaps Francesca took another language.

  Spanish or Chinese.

  “Arrête!” Madam shouted, bolting up from her trance.

  She noticed Lane in the doorway. “Who are you?”

  It was then that Miss Oppido walked in, with Miss

  Fiske hurrying behind. Lane saw the two of them take in

  the scene: Madam screaming, “Arrête!” Francesca shrieking full blast. Henry ashen-faced in the middle of his collapsed fort. Children with fingers plugged in their ears.

  Lane frozen in the doorway.

  Miss Oppido clapped her hands. “What on earth is

  going on here?”

  Francesca stopped screaming.

  Madam walked over to where the principal was stand-

  ing. “One minute the children were playing quietly. The

  next minute a girl was screaming and this woman was

  standing in the doorway, yelling.”

  Miss Oppido turned to Lane. “Why are you here?”

  “To pick up Henry.”

  “You can’t do that,” Miss Fiske chided her. “Just show

  up and take your child. We have rules about pickup at

  dismissal.”

  Miss Oppido swiveled on her pumps. “Follow me.”

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  Lane followed the principal down the hall and out

  the double doors of the school to the bullpen where

  the parents whose children didn’t take the bus wait-

  ed. Lane scanned the crowd of people she didn’t know

  and people she’d briefly met whose names she’d already

  forgotten.

  For a moment, conversations stopped, the parents tak-

  ing note of the mom being escorted out of the building

  by the principal. Then it started up again. It seemed to

  Lane that everyone was engaged in animated conversation

  with a dismissal-time buddy. Everyone but her.

   h h

   h  h

  They were both quiet in the car on the way home, but

  as soon as they got inside Henry asked, “Do you need

  to cry? If you need to cry, you should. Otherwise you’ll

  get stopped up, right?”

  He paid such close attention to everything. “I don’t

  need to cry. But thank you for asking. That’s sweet. I

  have a question for you.” She touched his head, felt his

  curls, felt his warmth and asked, “Have you been hug-

  ging Francesca?”

  Henry looked at his shoes. “Yes.”

  She nodded. “So, hugging is a great thing when both

  people want to hug. But if one person does and the other

  person doesn’t, it’s not okay.”

  “I know,” Henry said. “I don’t like it when people

  hug me. Unless it’s you.”

  “Exactly. I love when you hug me and I love to hug

  you. You can hug me anytime you want. But today I

  learned that Francesca doesn’t like it when you hug her.

  So you have to stop.”

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  “I don’t want to hug her. I only hug her because she

  told me to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She told me that she’d stop telling Mabel you kid-

  napped her if I hugged her. So I did. Then I heard her tell Jasmine you kidnapped her, so I ran over and hugged her

  again, harder, since the first time I hugged her it didn’t work. Then she got mad and she told Miss Fiske. Miss Fiske gave me a talk about, Do I Know What Personal Space

  Is and Do I Know Hugging Francesca is Inappropriate.”

  She took in how he slowly said the word, Inappropriate, making sure he got every syllable right. “Did you tell

  Miss Fiske that you hugged Francesca because she asked

  you to?”

  “I wanted to but my mouth didn’t work.” Henry

  studied his feet for a moment and then asked if he could

  go draw.

  Lane blinked her dry eyes. “Want to do something

  together? Maybe bake cookies.” She suddenly realized

  they didn’t have ingredients to make cookies. “We’ll

  have to go to the store first but that could be fun. Or we could go for a bike ride.” She suddenly remembered she

  didn’t have a bike. “You could go for a bike ride while I

  run beside you. Or we drive to the nature preserve. Want

  to go for a hike?” She wished she had hiking shoes, or a

  bike, or ingredients for cookies.

  “No thank you. I’d like to draw.”

  “Can I draw with you?”

  “I think today I’d like to draw alone.”

  “Of course. Have fun.” She watched as Henry disap-

  peared to draw in the living room. Watching him go,

  her body felt heavy. Heavy-hearted. She found her phone

  and called the only person she had to whom she would

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  share that feeling but Shelley didn’t pick up. She checked the time. Of course she didn’t pick up. In England it was

  the middle of the night. Who was she kidding? Even if

  it were the middle of the day, Shelley never picked up.

   h h

   h  h

  After dinner Henry asked, “Do we have anything special

  for dessert?”

  Another regret. She should have stocked up on snacks

  and desserts. There was nothing. She was not keeping up.

  She was just getting by, getting through her day, meeting

  Henry’s bus on time, giving Summer enough of what she

  needed so that she would have nothing negative to report.

  But things were falling through the cracks. And it wasn’t

  just special snacks and desserts and ingredients for cookies.

  Earlier in the day she noticed they were down to the last

  package of toilet tissue. Except f
or one pair of socks with a heel so thin it was transparent, all of Henry’s socks and underwear were sitting in the laundry room sorter, waiting for her to do a wash. There was now only enough milk in

  the refrigerator for a single bowl of cereal. Tomorrow Lane would have to make do with drinking her coffee black.

  Maybe there was something for dessert she’d missed.

  She opened the freezer hoping for a forgotten pint of ice

  cream but they hadn’t been in the house long enough for

  ice cream to be forgotten. “Sorry, buddy. We’re all out.

  There’s nothing for dessert.”

  “Wait.” Henry ran over to the counter and found a

  paper plate covered with foil. “What about this?”

  Lane had forgotten about her neighbor Karin’s biscotti.

  “Would you like one? Do you like caramel?” Henry nod-

  ded and took one and Lane did the same.

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  “I like it,” she said. She wasn’t totally lying. She liked the salty caramel flavor. But the biscotti was stale. Still, better than nothing, she thought, until her last bite when her tooth broke.

  Unlike Lane’s sister, Rory the dentist always answered

  her phone. “Come on over. I’ll take a look.”

  It didn’t take long for Rory to assess the situation. “It’s an avulsion. But don’t worry. I can take care of it. Want

  to come in my car? Or we could meet at the office. It’s

  just ten minutes away.”

  “You mean now?” Lane asked and Rory nodded. “It

  can wait till morning. I’m not—”

  “If you want to save that tooth, don’t wait. It’s really

  not a big deal. I end up at my office one night a week

  at least. Sometimes two. You’d be surprised how often

  people have dental emergencies.”

   h h

   h  h

  Lane drove to Rory’s office so she could have more time

  to convince Henry that just because he’d come up with

  the idea of having biscotti for dessert, it didn’t mean it was his fault that her tooth broke. “That tooth’s been

  bothering me for months,” she told him. “I shouldn’t

  have ignored it. That’s on me, not you. Okay?” His nod

  was not convincing.

  She’d failed him again. She failed him every day.

  Every day in a different way. Today because she’d bitten

  down on a biscotti with a tooth she’d been neglecting.

  Now, instead of getting into pajamas and listening to a

  Tell Me That Story he was being schlepped to the dentist.

  The tooth was not the problem. The problem was there

  wasn’t a single person she felt comfortable calling to ask 243

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  to stay with Henry for an hour while she took care of a

  dental emergency. Her shoulders sank. She’d lived with

  this fact her whole life. Everyone in her family knew it.

  She did not know how to have friends. Which was fine

  when Lane was single and fine when Lane was married

  to the friendliest person she’d ever met and fine when

  Henry was born and Aaron was there to pick up the slack.

  But Aaron was gone and it wasn’t fine anymore.

  She looked in the rearview mirror. Henry, gazing out

  the window. No matter how many times she failed him,

  he never complained.

  After they got out of the car, she noticed Henry didn’t

  have his sketch pad. “Did you leave your sketch pad at

  home? We can go back and get it.” She was wondering

  how much Rory would mind the delay when Henry

  interrupted her thoughts.

  “It’s not at home. I don’t have it anymore.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged.

  The front door of the single-story office building

  swung open. “Welcome to my world,” Rory said.

  Henry entered first, with Lane right behind him, into

  Rory’s waiting room. Spotlights were pointed to a wall

  covered with photographs of children’s faces, rows of

  stapled Polaroids memorializing first-visit smiles, joyous and expansive, bashful and forced.

  “There’s some books over there,” Rory told Henry.

  “And LEGOs over there. Believe me, you’ll have more

  fun playing here than watching your mom’s tooth get

  drilled. Or pulled. Hopefully not pulled. Ready?” she

  asked Lane.

  “You want to come in with me?” Lane asked Henry.

  “Or play out here?”

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  Henry sat down at the box of LEGOs, making his

  choice clear. He looked forlorn. Lane pressed her lips

  together and forced herself to follow Rory into the exam

  room.

   h h

   h  h

  Between the sound of the drill and the noise of the in-

  strument hooked over the side of her mouth to suck out

  her spit, Lane didn’t realize Rory was speaking through

  her mask at first. It was only when she dropped her mask

  that Lane understood she’d just been asked a question.

  The Novocain made it hard to speak. “Pahdon?”

  “Do you think it could have anything to do with the

  video?”

  “Pahdon?” Her body felt heavy with regret. It had taken so long for the Novocain to work—“Very sensitive

  nerves,” Rory concluded—that Lane’s reserve of neutral

  conversation had been exhausted. Still, she regretted

  sharing that she was upset about her visit to the principal and unnerved by the teachers’ complaint that Henry was

  hugging too much.

  “I’m just guessing,” Rory said. “I don’t really know…”

  She went back to drilling. When the drill stopped she

  finished her thought. “But it just seems like maybe it could be connected to the video. I know everyone has to be

  super careful right now. Which is good. But for a little

  hug to get blown up like that. All I’m saying is, maybe

  the teachers saw the video and it made them think, okay,

  maybe Henry hugging is not a one-off thing. You know?”

  Lane didn’t know. She had no idea what Rory was

  talking about. But before she could admit that, Rory’s

  mask was back up and her foot was tapping a pedal Lane

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  couldn’t see. The drill shrieked on. The room filled with

  the smell of burned tooth. Lane closed her eyes and tried

  to concentrate on remembering to breathe.

  “Spit.”

  Lane spit and watched her blood-tinged spittle circle

  down the small drain.

  “Here.” Rory handed her a tissue so she could blot

  her mouth dry. “Could it be that the teachers think hug-

  ging is a problem for the family? Like, in some families

  people drink too much and in some families people hug

  too much? I’m just thinking out loud.”

  Before the drill started up again Lane touched Rory’s

  arm. “Wha oo you mean?”

  Rory had no trouble understanding. “I mean, is it pos-

  sible Henry’s teachers saw the video of you on YouTube

  and connected the dots? Connected them wrong.”

  “I ohn’t oh wha you mean.”

  Rory laughed. “Okay. After I get this tooth fixed up,

  I’ll show you what I mean.”

  When they were done, Rory shepherded Lane into

  th
e small office where she discussed root canals and suspicious growths on the phone with endodontists and throat

  surgeons. It her took about a minute to find what she was

  looking for on her computer. It took longer than that for

  the video to load. “Here we go.” She swiveled the screen

  toward Lane.

  It took a moment for Lane to understand what she was

  seeing: a video taken by one of her parents’ neighbors in

  Florida, one of the people who’d held up their phones to

  capture the moment when she’d embraced the driver of

  the recycling truck. She could hear it in the background,

  people chanting, “Hug. Hug. Hug.”

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  “How did you find this?” The thought hit her hard.

  “Did you google me?”

  Rory laughed. “I wish I had time to google peo-

  ple.” She stopped to think about it. “I guess someone

  googled you. Who first showed this to me?” she won-

  dered aloud.

  First showed it to her. More than one person, then.

   h h

   h  h

  Doctor Bruce was booked solid for the next few days

  but he offered to squeeze her in for a short video chat.

  Before the call, Lane sat quietly at the desk in her home

  office, repeating, Do Not Sound Defensive. Do Not Sound Defensive. The last thing she needed was for Doctor Bruce to take the school’s side. Doctor Bruce told her there was only one side. Henry’s side. A lot of people said that, but it never felt like any of them meant it.

  The therapist didn’t bother with small talk. “What’s

  going on?”

  “There’s been a problem at school.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  Being careful to sound concerned but not angry, she

  recounted the meeting with the principal. She described

  the atmosphere in the room at the meeting as hostile. She

  told him the nurse was alarmed by the wound that Henry

  got when his zipper caught on his throat. She shared what

  Henry had told her about Francesca asking him to hug her

  and how the school reported that behavior as troubling.

  She admitted her discomfort at her discovery that someone

  had googled her and shared with her neighbors a video of

  her hugging the recycling truck driver in Florida. Finally 247

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  she reported what Henry told her, that his teacher had

  taken away his sketch pad.

  The doctor had been sitting perfectly still until she

  said that. He shifted and his eyes narrowed. “Why would

  she do that?”

  “She said it’s become a distraction. That all the chil-