Dicey's Song (12 page)

Then Dicey heard what she had just said, and she felt her face burn hot. Now Gram was smiling.

“I mean, how it feels to want to. I mean — I don't know — I'm much too young,” Dicey wailed.

“That's all right then,” Gram said. “You would ask if you had any questions.”

Dicey nodded.

“Because I get the feeling you're not too pleased about growing up,” Gram said.

Dicey looked out over the tall marsh grasses, blowing in the wind. If the wind blew, the grasses had to bend with it. She wondered how they felt about that. “It's just,” she said to her grandmother, “I have the feeling that I know who I am, only I'm not any more.”

M
R. LINGERLE stayed to have supper with them, stayed for music after supper, stayed even after Sammy and Maybeth had gone upstairs to bed. Dicey regretted having built a fire, when she came back into the living room to see him sitting in front of it. He leaned toward the crackling logs with a dreamy expression on his face. Gram was coming out of the kitchen with another cup of coffee for the man. She looked at Dicey and shrugged her shoulders. What did that mean? Dicey wondered.

Mr. Lingerle took the cup and said, for about the tenth time, “I should be going.”

“Have I thanked you properly?” Gram asked him.

“For what? For staying out here today? I enjoyed myself. Didn't I, James?”

“I think he did,” James assured his grandmother. He and Dicey were playing a game of parchesi on the rug in front of the fire. Dicey's right side felt hot, and her left side felt cool, and that reminded her of every other time she had sat in front of fires. She kind of liked the way fires went to extremes: either it was too hot or too cold. It had been the same way with the big kerosene stove they used the heat their drafty cabin back up home, in Provincetown. She rattled the dice in her cup and let them roll out onto the board. James looked at her roll and then studied the board to see what moves her men might make.

“James,” Gram spoke. He looked up. “Dicey and I were talking about Maybeth today, and we thought you might have some ideas.”

Mr. Lingerle put down his cup, so fast the china clattered. “I'm sorry, I didn't realize,” he said. He started to push himself up, out of the chair. “I've stayed too long, I was just too comfortable, I'd better be going.”

Dicey knew she shouldn't have been surprised at his quick perception of what Gram was saying; but she was. She kept making the same mistake, she guessed, thinking that because he was heavy and clumsy in his body, he was the same way in his mind. She should have known better, from listening to his piano playing, if for no other reason, or the way he joined in with harmony when they sang. Or the way Maybeth trusted him, she reminded herself.

Gram answered Mr. Lingerle. “You might as well stay. You know Maybeth, so you might be able to help.”

He hesitated, rocking up and back to get out of the chair, then sitting back, then lurching forward again.

“I thought about it, young man, before I brought up the subject.”

“If you wanted me to leave, you'd say so, wouldn't you?” Mr. Lingerle asked. He answered himself. “Yes, you would. I don't know you well, but I know you that well.”

Gram just waited for him to finish. “Now, about Maybeth,” she began. She told them what Maybeth's teacher had said, and the notion she and Dicey shared about Maybeth not being able to learn the way this school taught reading.

While Gram was talking, James quietly picked up the pieces and dice, the cups and the board, and put them back into their box. Dicey didn't say a word. Neither did Mr. Lingerle.

“She said Maybeth is flunking?” James asked at last. “She said that?”

“Not exactly. She said, at this rate, Maybeth could never complete the work for third grade.”

“It's only November,” James protested. “How can she know? What's she like, anyway, this Mrs. Jackson?”

“She's perfectly ordinary. Except, she's one of those people who think that if you just work hard enough, everything will go your way,” Gram said. “That's why Maybeth puzzles her. Upsets her.”

“What's
wrong
with Maybeth, anyway?” James demanded.

Dicey thought she knew what he was thinking — that Maybeth was like Momma. “Nothing's wrong with her,” she said quickly. “You know that and I know that, James.”

“All right,” he agreed, looking down at his hands. “It's just — besides, she's making friends, isn't she?”

“She's slow,” Dicey said. “We've always known that. Slow at school.”

“Because she's shy,” he pointed out.

“Not only shy,” Gram told him. “But that, too. What we want to know is, do you have any ideas?”

“Ideas?”

“About what to do about Maybeth,” Gram repeated patiently.

“Oh sure, but nothing any good. She could go into a special school. Or, we could take her out of school and have tutors. It's only seven years until she can quit. We could work harder with her, helping her — but she works so hard already. Poor Maybeth,” he said.

“You can do better than that, James,” Gram snapped at him.

He looked up, hurt and surprised. He started to answer, then stopped himself. His eyes went back to the long shelf of books behind the desk. “You're right,” he said. “I'm sorry. All right, let's think about it. The basic problem is reading, isn't it?”

“Right now, yes,” Gram said.

“Maybeth isn't learning how to read. Now, what does that mean? It means —”

Dicey let out a gust of exasperated air. What was James doing now?

He looked at her and shook his head to stop her saying anything. “It means she reads slowly, can't remember what she has read, out loud or silently — because she hasn't understood the words — because of her mistakes, and because if you go so slowly —. It must be like, if you try to walk in slow motion. You always lose your balance.”

He stopped speaking then. He was staring hard at his hand spread out on the rug. The light from the flames made shadows that moved across his face. Gram got impatient: “Well?”

“I'm thinking,” James said. “Let me think. Because what all that means — Maybeth sees the words with her eyes, but she doesn't connect them in her brain right away, the way I do. The question is, why the connection isn't made. So that, if we want to solve the problem, we have to work on the connection part of it.” He raised his face and smiled at them all.

“I don't understand,” Dicey said.

“Look. Maybeth can talk, can't she? So she knows the meanings. She can see, so she can see the words. But she doesn't make the connection.”

When he put it that way, Dicey thought she could understand. But she didn't see that it helped them any.

“OK,” James said eagerly. “Now listen. The way Mrs. Jackson teaches, and I guess the whole school system, is to look at a whole word and recognize it. Maybe that's it, maybe that's what we should do.”

“What do you mean?” Gram demanded.

“Well, Maybeth sees the whole word, but that doesn't make sense to her because she can't remember it, as a word. But we know she can remember the letters. Maybe she should be working on reading the letters, not the whole word.”

“But she can read some whole words,” Dicey protested. “I've heard her.”

“Yes, but not as many as the other third-graders can. That's where the slowness comes in.”

“Do you mean we should go back to the beginning with her?” Gram asked. “Do all the lists again?”

James shook his head, hard. “No. I mean we should try another way. I have to think more about it, I don't know anything about the subject, I'll have to go to the library. But that's what I think would work for Maybeth. Another way.”

“I don't know,” Gram said doubtfully.

Dicey had a sudden memory, of Millie reading
cornflakes
for
corn chips.
“You mean, what Maybeth does is sees — like the beginning of the word, and then she guesses?”

James nodded.

“And she's not a guesser by nature,” Dicey went on. She didn't know exactly what James had meant, but she could see how it would work on Maybeth, this guessing. “It would make her nervous, and she'd always be waiting to be caught in a mistake, and she wouldn't hear what she was reading, so it would be hard for her to understand what she was reading. Maybeth likes — knowing how to do what she's doing. When she gets nervous, and scared — she can't think about things.”

Gram looked over at Mr. Lingerle. “Do you have anything to add?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Except to say that I never found Maybeth stupid. But you know that already.”

“We do,” Gram said, “but sometimes we get to doubting. It's good to hear. All right then, James, you'll do some reading on the subject. In a hurry.”

“I'll do it when I can, as soon as I can. I've got my job and all,” James said.

Dicey felt her mood of hopefulness fading as she remembered that James was good at ideas but not so good at following them through. She made a mental note to remind him.

The next day was Sunday, and Dicey had a whole afternoon to work on the boat. It was a cool afternoon, but in her new jeans she was warm enough. Sunlight came in through the opened doors, a broad beam of yellow light. Dust motes danced lazily up and down in the light. Dicey stood, pulling the scraper across the curved planks. She was singing to herself, “When first unto this country, a stranger I came.” She wasn't thinking about anything in particular. She was wondering vaguely how long she should give James before she reminded him and wondering how long Mr. Chappelle would take correcting their essays, how long before she got her essay back. Sammy came in and stood beside her. She broke off the song, and her thoughts. She hoped he wouldn't stay too long, because she had been enjoying her mood.

“Gram's teaching Maybeth how to knit,” he reported.

“Is she.”

“I just said so,” Sammy pointed out.

“Yes, you did,” Dicey agreed.

“Can I help you?”

“Isn't there wood to cut?”

“Gram said Miss Tieds says I'm good.”

“So I heard,” Dicey said. She hadn't looked at him yet and she didn't plan to. He stayed for a few seconds, as if waiting for her to say something, or do something, then he turned sharply away. He turned so sharply, his shoulder shoved against Dicey's. The blade of the scraper dug into the wood.

“Sammy!” she yelled. “Watch out what you're doing!”

He was already by the barn doors, standing in the stream of sunlight. He turned back to face her, and the sunlight glowed around him.

Sammy had gotten taller, in his legs especially, she thought. His hands were on his hips and his face was hard. It was as if he was daring her.

Daring her to do what? Start a fight, probably. She stared at him, and he stared at her.

Then Dicey began to remember. She remembered Sammy's sturdy brown legs walking, all that long summer long, keeping up with the bigger kids. And she remembered Sammy, memory going backwards, like flipping through a photograph album, until she came to a vague picture of the little baby Momma brought home from the hospital. Their father had walked out by then, he'd left pretty soon after Momma told them that Sammy was coming. Because she was the oldest, Sammy was Dicey's responsibility. She was the one who changed his diapers and fed him cereal on a spoon when Momma was at work. She was the one who watched him sleeping in the night until Momma got home. She was the one he'd splashed water all over in his baths in the dishpan, slapping at the water with his chubby little hands, and his eyes laughed.

His hands looked strong now, and you could see the bones running from his wrist to his fingers. His eyes weren't laughing now, they were as flat as his mouth. Their colors didn't shine out at her.

No wonder, she said to herself, still looking back at his expressionless face, feeling for a minute as if she were Sammy and hearing the conversations they'd just had as he might have heard it. Or, she corrected herself, the conversation they hadn't just had.

“Can you find me some sandpaper?” she asked him.

“Why?” he asked, without moving. It was as if he wanted to stay angry.

“So I can sand this place smooth. And then” — Dicey thought fast and it seemed like a good plan — “if you really do want to help — ”

“I do!” he cried, running back to the work bench. “I can!” he cried.

“The next thing, after scraping, is sanding. We'll have to sand it down about three times, three different times. The book said.”

“Why so many?” He passed her a square of sandpaper.

“I dunno, it just said that was the best way to do it. I'm planning to do this job the best way, start to finish.”

“Good-o,” Sammy said. “If you show me, I could sand where you've already scraped. I could be careful.”

“Yes, I think you could,” Dicey said. His eyes had colors shooting out of them again, yellow flecks and green, that made up the hazel color when they mixed in with the brown. He hadn't grown so tall after all, she noticed, measuring him against her body. Not up to her shoulders yet. They settled down to work.

Sammy worked like Dicey did, without hurrying, without dawdling. They got into a kind of rhythm, working together. Dicey told herself, I should have remembered this about Sammy.

“I like these new jeans,” she remarked. “Don't you?”

“Umhnm,” he said. “I guess you and Gram had a good time. Do you think she'd take me for a bus ride and out to lunch? Ever?”