Nobody's Fool

many North Bath families, she considered herself something of a reluctant expert on the local gene pool and its predictable eddies. “The mouth and chin mostly,” Miss Beryl said. It had occurred to her that she might have insulted the girl by recognizing Zachary Donnelly in her features. “And I’m relieved to learn that I didn’t allow you to use the term ‘puke’ in my classroom.”
    â€œYou wished you had at the time,” the girl recalled. “I said I was sick and needed to go to the can so I could puke. You didn’t think much of the word ‘can’ either. You said I could just stand there until I came up with ‘synonyms suitable for a decent audience.’ ” She mimicked Miss Beryl rather effectively here, without malice.
    Miss Beryl vaguely remembered the incident now. And Janey Donnelly
had
looked like a boy, her hair chopped severely, her features and carriage and language all distressingly masculine. Where the other eighth-grade girls had all been experimenting with makeup to vulgar excess, Janey’s pale features were sadly unhighlighted.
    â€œI got ‘bathroom’ right away,” Janey recollected, “but I puked before I could come up with “regurgitrate.’ ”
    The young woman was clearly enjoying herself, and for some reason Miss Beryl was less angry with her. “Regurgitate,” she corrected.
    â€œWhatever,” the girl said, having turned her attention to her daughter.
    â€œHow about it, Birdbrain? You want some cookie or not?”
    No response.
    â€œJust the ear, huh? How about we take a couple for later?”
    Janey Donnelly took two of the cookies, wrapped them in a napkin and deposited them in her purse. “This okay?”
    â€œI insist,” Miss Beryl said.
    â€œI guess they probably miss you over at the junior high,” the girl continued. “I don’t know who they got to be the hard-ass after you quit.”
    Miss Beryl couldn’t help but smile. “It’s my understanding that they decided to do without one.”
    Janey Donnelly shrugged. “Too bad,” she said. “I still like to read stories, in case you’re interested. I never get the chance, but I like to. I bet Birdbrain here will like it too if she ever learns. She’s nuts about anything she can do on her own, aren’t you, Two Shoes?”
    â€œHow old are you, Tina?” Miss Beryl said to the child, who was still staring at her with one eye.
    â€œShe just turned five,” her mother answered. “Kindergarten in the fall, though I have my doubts. School in the fall, right, Birdbrain? No more Mommy’s earlobe then. We’ll have to sit you next to somebody with big ears, huh. Put the desks right together.” Then, to Miss Beryl, “If life ain’t an adventure, what the hell is it?”
    The young woman consulted her watch. “Would it be okay if I used your phone? It’d just be local.”
    Miss Beryl gestured to the phone, the same one the girl had previously insulted. “Sorry there’s no place to sit. I used to have a chair over there,” she told the young woman. “Something happened to it.”
    â€œThat’s okay,” Janey assured her, turning to face her daughter and gently removing the little girl’s thumb and forefinger from her earlobe. “Why don’t you just sit here and look at these magazines, okay? You listenin’ to me, Two Shoes? See all the pretty magazines the old lady’s got here? Look at all the pictures. You look ’em all over and when I come back you can tell me which one’s your favorite. How’d that be? Maybe we could find you a pair of scissors so you could cut out pictures like you do at home. How’d that be?”
    She opened one of Miss Beryl’s magazines to a two-page insert of holiday pastries and set it on the little girl’s lap. “Oh boy,” she said. “Those there look yummy, don’t they? We could eat all of them, just the two of us, huh? You look at all these pictures for a minute while Mommy makesa phone call, okay? I’m just gonna be right over there by the door, okay? Right where you can see me, okay? That okay with you?”
    During this entire performance the little girl’s expression never changed, though she did finally consent to look at the picture before her. “You let Mommy make her phone call, then we’ll go