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“They taper off,” he said vaguely. “I think I read that in Spock. He'll be using two forks again by the time he's seven.”
They had stopped on the top step.
“He's pushing awfully hard on those readers, too,” she said. “I know he wants to learn how, to please us… to please you,” she added reluctantly.
“To please himself most of all,” Jack said. “I haven't been pushing him on that at all. In fact, I do wish he wouldn't go quite so hard.”
“Would you think I was foolish if I made an appointment for him to have a physical? There's a G. P. in Sidewinder, a young man from what the checker in the market said-”
“You're a little nervous about the snow coming, aren't you?”
She shrugged. “I suppose. If you think it's foolish-”
“I don't. In fact, you can make appointments for all three of us. We'll get our clean bills of health and then we can sleep easy at night.”
“I'll make the appointments this afternoon,” she said.
“Mom! Look, Mommy!”
He came ru
Jack put an arm around her. “It's all right. The tenants who didn't fly away have been shaken out. I used the bug bomb.”
She looked at the large wasps' nest her son was holding but would not touch it. “Are you sure it's safe?”
“Positive. I had one in my room when I was a kid. My dad gave it to me. Want to put it in your room, Da
“Yeah! Right now!”
He turned around and raced through the double doors. They could hear his muffled, ru
“There were wasps up there,” she said. “Did you get stung?”
“Where's my purple heart?” he asked, and displayed his finger. The swelling had already begun to go down, but she ooohed over it satisfyingly and gave it a small, gentle kiss.
“Did you pull the stinger out?”
“Wasps don't leave them in. That's bees. They have barbed stingers. Wasp stingers are smooth. That's what makes them so dangerous. They can sting again and again.”
“Jack, are you sure that's safe for him to have?”
“I followed the directions on the bomb. The stuff is guaranteed to kill every single bug in two hours' time and then dissipate with no residue.”
“I hate them,” she said.
“What… wasps?”
“Anything that stings,” she said. Her hands went to her elbows and cupped them, her arms crossed over her breasts.
“I do too,” he said, and hugged her.
16. Da
Down the hall, in the bedroom, Wendy could hear the typewriter Jack had carried up from downstairs burst into life for thirty seconds, fall silent for a minute or two, and then rattle briefly again. It was like listening to machinegun fire from an isolated pillbox. The sound was music to her ears; Jack had not been writing so steadily since the second year of their marriage, when he wrote the story that Esquire had purchased. He said he thought the play would be done by the end of the year, for better or worse, and he would be moving on to something new. He said he didn't care if The Little School stirred any excitement when Phyllis showed it around, didn't care if it sank without a trace, and Wendy believed that, too. The actual act of his writing made her immensely hopeful, not because she expected great things from the play but because her husband seemed to be slowly closing a huge door on a roomful of monsters. He had had his shoulder to that door for a long time now, but at last it was swinging shut.
Every key typed closed it a little more.
“Look, Dick, look.”
Da
Da
His finger traced slowly under the words in the reader. Above them was a picture Wendy half-remembered from her own grammar school days, nineteen years before. A laughing boy with brown curly hair. A girl in a short dress, her hair in blond ringlets one hand holding a jump rope. A prancing dog ru
“See Jip run,” Da
“Not so close, doc,” Wendy said quietly. “You'll hurt your eyes. It's-”
“Don't tell me!” he said, sitting up with a jerk. His voice was alarmed. “Don't tell me, Mommy, I can get it!”
“All right, honey,” she said. “But it's not a big thing. Really it's not.”
Unheeding, Da
“See the… buh. Aw. El. El. See the buhaw-el-el? See the buhawl. Ball!” Suddenly triumphant. Fierce. The fierceness in his voice scared her. “See the ball!”
“That's right,” she said. “Honey, I think that's enough for tonight.”
“A couple more pages, Mommy? Please?”
“No, doc.” She closed the red-bound book firmly. “It's bedtime.”
“Please?”
“Don't tease me about it, Da
“Okay.” But he looked longingly at the primer.
“Go kiss your father and then wash up. Don't forget to brush.”
“Yeah.”
He slouched out, a small boy in pajama bottoms with feet and a large fla
Jack's typewriter stopped, and she heard Da
“Goodnight, doc. How'd you do?”
“Okay, I guess. Mommy made me stop.”
“Mommy was right. It's past eight-thirty. Going to the bathroom?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. There's potatoes growing out of your ears. And onions and carrots and chives and-”
Da
Jack's typewriter began its irregular bursts again.