Chapter 10: Wheels on the Bus

The preschool autumn concert was on Friday at ten, and the theme was vegetables.

Box 1147 had been Daphne's since college. I had barely slept since Wednesday night.

I had not called her. I did not know what I would say if she answered.

Ivy was a carrot and Rory was a head of lettuce.

Teddy had asked to be a mushroom, and he informed us he was a very serious mushroom.

I sat in the third row of the gym on a child's folding chair.

My mother sat on my left, and the seat on my right was empty.

Then Rafe came down the row in a dark coat with a camera in his hand, and the seat was not empty.

"I was told there's a lettuce," he said.

"Rory won't stop talking about the lettuce."

"Is it a good lettuce?"

"It's a very green lettuce."

He sat.

His shoulder pressed mine, and it stayed there.

I should have shifted. I didn't.

He smelled like cold air and cedar, and I looked at the stage and tried to remember how to sit normally.

A voice said, "Is this seat taken?"

My mother and I both looked up.

Rafe's mother stood in the aisle in a camel coat with her handbag in front of her, alone, no lawyer, no pearls.

"Mother," Rafe said.

"I would like to see my grandchildren be vegetables."

She said it very stiffly.

My mother looked her up and down, and then moved her own purse off the next chair.

"It's an hour," my mother said. "There's a lot of singing."

"I've survived worse."

"You haven't heard 'The Wheels on the Bus' sung by a mushroom."

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