“Well, let’s just keep driving.”
I was hungry too and finding myself in a not particularly good mood. The day wasn’t working out quite as I had planned. We had wandered from one thing to another, with none of it being very special. I became aware of wanting to impress Sheila. I wanted to win her over.
“There! There!” Sheila called out, interrupting my thoughts. “There’s a pizza place.”
Sure enough, there was. And like the rest of the day, it was nothing special. I thought of the old days and how my boyfriend Chad and I had taken Sheila out for her very first pizza after the hearing that had kept Sheila out of the state hospital. The place we went into now had none of the jazz-piano atmosphere of that pizzeria; this was just a branch of one of the faceless pizza chains found everywhere.
Too hungry to care, I stopped there and we went in. Placing our order at the counter, we then located a quiet table in the corner. Sheila pulled off her baseball cap, letting her long, crinkled orange hair spill down over her shoulders, and she sat down.
“I thought you might like to see some pictures from our class,” I said, opening my handbag, “so I dug some out.”
“Like, cool. Let’s see.”
“They’re from that picnic we had on the last day. We went over to the park. Do you remember that park? It had that duck pond and the little stream.”
Taking the photographs from me, Sheila bent over them, studying the faces. “Who’s this kid?”
“Emilio.”
“What’s wrong with him? Is he handicapped?”
“He’s blind,” I said.
“Oh, yeah, the blind one. What did you call him in the book?”
“Guillermo.”
“Oh, yeah, I know who you’re talking about now.”
Tongue protruding slightly between her lips, Sheila remained intent on the photos. “I think I remember that park,” she said slowly. “Did it have trees that bloomed or something? They had a really sweet scent? Because I seem to remember that.”
“Yes. The locust trees.”
“Who are these girls?” she asked, handing over one of the pictures.
“Don’t you recognize her? In the middle? That’s you. That’s Sarah and that’s Tyler, but that there is you.”
“Really? God, is that me? Shit.” She craned forward to study it more closely in the dim light. “Shit. Did I really look like that?” She looked up in amazement. “My dad doesn’t have any pictures of me when I was little …”
My heart sank. She didn’t even remember herself. Watching her as she bent back over the photos, I felt so lonely. What was I doing here with this punky-looking adolescent? This wasn’t Sheila. This was just some kid.
The pizza came just in time. We had ordered a huge one, loaded with everything save the proverbial kitchen sink, and we both tucked in enthusiastically. For several moments our attention was focused on the food.
“I’ve had so much fun today,” Sheila said as she maneuvered most of a full slice of pizza into her mouth. “You know, I think it’s brilliant that you live so close by now.”
“Good, I’m glad.”
“It’s just like the old times, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said, probably not too convincingly.
Sheila’s expression grew rather sheepish. “I’m sorry I don’t remember more about when I was in your class.”
“Well, you were little.”
“Yeah, but I can tell I’m, like, a real disappointment to you.”
“Of course not!” I said a little too heartily. “You were very young when we were last together and nobody remembers much from that age.”
“But you want me to, don’t you?”
“Yes, if I’m honest, I suppose I do, but just because it was a meaningful year for me and it was you who made it meaningful.”
This disarmed her. She smiled. “Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“You liked working with little kids, didn’t you?” she said.
I nodded. “I still do.”
“It showed.”
Silence came then and we went back to our food. Then Sheila looked up.
“Can I ask you something, Tor? It’s from the book.”
“All right.”
“How come you didn’t marry that guy Chad?” she asked.
“I was too young. I wasn’t ready,” I said. “If I had, it wouldn’t have worked out.”
Pensive over her pizza, Sheila picked at it, ferreting out the olives and eating them with her fingers. “Too bad,” she said. “It would have made for a brilliant ending to your book.”
“Probably, but this was real life.”
“Real life never follows the script, that’s the problem,” she replied. “You and him getting married and adopting the little girl. That’s how every single person who reads it is going to want it to come out.”
“Yes, I know, but it isn’t how it did come out.”
“Yeah, I know.” She smiled faintly. “But you know, his eldest daughter? The one called Sheila? Well, that’s right. She should be called Sheila, but by rights, she should have been me.”
The summer program at the clinic had been my idea. I had always felt there was a better chance of effecting change when I was with a child several hours a day, day in, day out, rather than in just one or two hourly sessions, which was one of my original reasons for choosing teaching over psychology as a career. This was borne out to me at the clinic, which was the first place I’d worked that stuck so strictly to the fifty-minute “psychiatric hour.” I felt there must be some other way.
My office partner, Jeff, was intrigued with the idea of working with children in a different setting from the therapy room; so together we developed the idea of a morning summer-school program to run for eight weeks in June and July. We made plans to use a nearby school that was normally vacant over the summer, and from the clinic client list, we began to handpick the children we felt would benefit most. Because of the experimental nature, we decided to keep the number modest. It was just Jeff and I supervising, and I thought it was best to start
