“Just in case of what, Mad?” Elizabeth had asked her once, finding the child huddled outside at night covered in a tarp, rain coming in from every direction, a piece of rope in her hands.
Mad had looked up at her mother, surprised. Wasn’t it obvious that “just in case” wasn’t an option but rather the only option? Life required preparedness; just ask her dead father.
Although, honestly, if she’d been able to ask her dead father anything it would have been how he’d felt the first time he saw her mother. Was it love at first sight?
* * *
—
His ex-colleagues too still had questions for Calvin—like how he managed to win so many awards when he never seemed to be doing anything. And what about sex with Elizabeth Zott? She seemed like she’d be frigid—was she? Even Madeline’s teacher, Mrs. Mudford, had questions for the long-gone Calvin Evans. But obviously asking Madeline’s father anything was out of the question, not just because he was dead, but because in 1959, fathers had nothing to do with their children’s education.
Amanda Pine’s father was the exception, but that was only because there was no longer a Mrs. Pine. She’d left him （and quite rightly, Mudford believed）， followed by a loud and public divorce where she claimed the much older Walter Pine was not fit to be a father, much less a husband. There’d been an embarrassing sexual connotation to the whole thing; Mrs. Mudford didn’t like to think of the specifics. But because of it, Mrs. Walter Pine ended up with everything Walter Pine had, including Amanda, whom, as it turned out, she hadn’t actually wanted. And who could blame her? Amanda wasn’t the easiest child. Thus Amanda went back to Walter, and Walter came to school, where Mrs. Mudford was forced to listen to his poor excuses regarding the contents of Amanda’s highly unusual lunch boxes.
Still, while conferences with Walter Pine were irritating, they paled in comparison to the sessions she had with Zott. Wasn’t it just her luck that the two parents she liked least she saw the most? Although admittedly, that’s how it always was. Child behavior problems started at home. Still, if she had to choose between Amanda Pine, lunch thief, and Madeline Zott, inappropriate question asker, she’d take Amanda any day.
* * *
—
“Madeline asks inappropriate questions?” Elizabeth said, alarmed, during their last meeting.
“Yes, she does,” Mrs. Mudford said sharply, plucking lint from her sleeve like a spider attacking its prey. “For instance, yesterday during circle time, we were discussing Ralph’s pet turtle, and Madeline interrupted to ask how she might become a freedom fighter in Nashville.”
Elizabeth paused as if trying to understand the underlying issue. “She shouldn’t have interrupted,” she finally said. “I’ll speak to her.”
Mrs. Mudford clicked her teeth. “You misunderstand me, Mrs. Zott. Children interrupt; that I can deal with. What I can’t deal with is a child who wants to change the discussion to civil rights. This is kindergarten, not The Huntley-Brinkley Report. Furthermore,” she added, “your daughter recently complained to our librarian that she was unable to find any Norman Mailer on our bookshelves. Apparently, she tried to put in a request for The Naked and the Dead.” The teacher raised one eyebrow, her eyes zeroing in on the E.Z. machine-stitched above the breast pocket in a slutty-looking cursive.
“She’s an early reader,” Elizabeth said. “I may have forgotten to mention that.”
The teacher folded her hands together, then leaned forward threateningly. “Norman. Mailer.”
* * *
—
Back in the kitchen, Elizabeth unfolded the note Harriet had given her. On it screamed two words in Mudford’s handwriting.
VLADIMIR. NABOKOV.
* * *
—
She placed a serving of baked spaghetti Bolognese on Madeline’s plate. “Other than show-and-tell, did you have a good day?” She’d stopped asking Mad if she’d learned anything at school. There was no point.
“I don’t like school.”
“Why?”
Madeline looked up from her plate suspiciously. “No one likes school.”
From his position beneath the table, Six-Thirty exhaled. Well, there it was: the creature didn’t like school, and since he and the creature agreed on everything, now he didn’t like school either.
“Did you like school, Mom?” Mad asked.
“Well,” said Elizabeth, “we moved a lot, so sometimes there weren’t schools for me to go to. But I went to the library. Still, I always believed going to a real school could be lots of fun.”