Miss Maple and the Playboy. Cara Colter
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had to bite back a desire to snap at his nephew for being so ungrateful for the kindness offered, but when he looked at Miss Maple, she was looking past the words, to the way Kyle was hugging the book. She said, not the least ruffled, “You keep it anyway. Your uncle might enjoy it.”
Ben looked at her sharply, to see if there was a barb buried in the fact Miss Maple thought he might enjoy a stupid book, but nothing in her smooth expression gave her away.
He felt that little flutter of excitement again. He recognized it as a man with a warrior spirit exploring brand-new territory, where there was equal opportunities for success or being shot down.
“I like the tree,” Ben said, thinking, Flattery will get you everywhere.
“Thank you,” she said. “We made it last year as our class project.”
It must have shown on his face that he thought that was a slightly frivolous use of school time, because she said haughtily, “We use it as a jumping-off point for all kinds of learning experiences in science, math and English. ‘What is learned with delight is never forgotten.’ Aristotle.”
After they left the school, Ben took Kyle for a burger.
“Your teacher didn’t seem that old to me,” he said. Of all the things he could have picked to talk about, why her? A woman who quoted Aristotle. With ease. Whoo boy, he should be feeling warned off, not intrigued.
Kyle didn’t even look at him, he was so engrossed in his new book. “That’s because you’re not eleven.”
Leave it. There were all kinds of ways to make conversation with an eleven-year-old. How about those Giants?
“She didn’t seem all that ugly, either.”
The burgers had arrived, and Kyle was being so careful not to get stains on his new book that he barely would touch his dinner.
“Well, you haven’t seen her face when you don’t hand in the homework assignment.”
“It would be good if you handed in the homework assignments,” Ben said, thinking Kyle was lucky to have a teacher who was so enthusiastic and who actually cared. He remembered “the plan.” “If you do it for a month without missing, I’ll get us tickets to a Giants game.”
Kyle didn’t even look up from his book.
On the way home they stopped in at the hospital to see Carly, but she was sleeping, looking worn and fragile and tiny in the hospital bed. Pretty hard to interest a kid whose mom was that sick in a Giants game, Ben thought sadly. Still, he didn’t know how to comfort his nephew, and he felt the weight of his own inadequacy when they got home and Kyle went right to his room without saying good-night and slammed his bedroom door hard. Moments later Ben heard the ominous sounds of a musical group shouting incomprehensibly.
He suddenly felt exhausted. His thoughts drifted to Miss Maple and he didn’t feel like a warrior or a hunter at all.
He felt like a man who was alone and afraid and who had caught a glimpse of something in the clearness of those eyes that had made him feel as if he could lay his weapons down and fight no more.
The Top-Secret Diary of Kyle O. Anderson
Once, when I was little, my mom told me my uncle Ben was a lady-killer. When she saw the look on my face after she said it, she laughed and said it didn’t mean he killed ladies.
It meant women loved him. Now that I live with him, I can see it’s true. Whenever we go anywhere, like the burger joint tonight, I see women look at my uncle like he is the main course and they would like to eat him up. They get this funny look in their eyes, the way a little kid looks at a puppy, as if they are already half in love, and they haven’t even talked to him.
I know where that look goes, too, because I’ve seen it on my mom’s face, and I’m old enough to know simple problem math. Love plus my mom equals disaster. It probably runs in the family.
I like diaries. I have had one for as long as I can remember after I found one my mom had been given and never used. It had a key and everything. Having a diary is like having a secret friend to tell things to when they get too big to hold inside. I stole the one I am using now because it has a key, too, and I didn’t want anyone to laugh at me when I bought it, though afterward I felt bad, and thought I could have said I was buying it for my older sister for her birthday. Which is a lie because I don’t have an older sister. I wonder which is a worse bad thing, telling a lie or stealing?
There’s lots of things people don’t know about me, like I don’t really like to do bad things, but it kind of keeps anyone from guessing that I’m so scared all the time that my stomach hurts.
My mom is going to die. She weighs about ninety pounds now, less than me, and I can see bones and blue veins sticking out on her hands. There’s a look in her eyes, like she’s saying goodbye, even though she still talks tough and as if everything’s going to be okay and she’s coming home again. Anybody, even a kid, can see that that’s not true.
Not that I feel like a kid most of the time. I feel like I’ve been looking after my mom way longer than she’s been looking after me.
Not that I did a very good job of it. Look at her now.
My mom is not like the moms in movies or storybooks. She drinks too much and likes to party, and she falls in with really creepy people. Her boyfriend right now is a loser named Larry. He doesn’t even go visit her in the hospital unless her welfare cheque has come and he needs it signed. Uncle Ben moved her to the hospital closer to us, so, gee, Larry would have to take the bus and transfer twice. At least he never hit her or me, which is different than the last one, who was a loser named Barry. That is the sad poem of my mom’s life.
Here is another secret: even though I am scared of her dying, I am scared of her living, too. I try not to let my uncle know, but I like it at his house. It’s not just that it’s nice, even though it is, it’s that everything is clean, and he always has food, even if it’s dorky stuff like bananas and apples and hardly any cookies or potato chips.
I feel safe here, like I know what’s going to happen next, and there aren’t going to be any parties in the middle of the night where people start screaming at each other and breaking bottles and pretty soon you hear the sirens coming.
It’s weird because one of the things I’m scaredest of is that my uncle won’t like me. What will happen to me if he sends me away? And even though that makes me so scared I want to throw up, I am really mean to him. My mom was always mean to him, too. Whenever he turned up, even though he always had groceries for us, she’d yell at him to get lost and it was too late and we didn’t need him, and then as soon as he left, she’d slam the door behind him and say, “Why can’t he ever say he loves me,” and cry for about a week. Which is kind of how I feel after I’m mean to him, too.
He bought all new stuff for my room at his house, and he let me have his supercool TV set and stereo. I never had new stuff before—a brand-new bed and sheets that were so new they felt scratchy the first night I slept in them. It made me want to cry that he bought them just for me, and that he left the television set in there, even though he doesn’t even have one in his own bedroom. It kind of made me hope maybe I was staying for good, but I am old enough to know that hope is the most dangerous thing. Maybe that’s why I acted mad instead, and told him how lame the cowboy were.
My uncle Ben used to be a marine. He’s big as a mountain, and he’s probably killed all kinds of people. Maybe with his bare hands. I can’t be a crybaby around him.
At my new school everything is new and shiny, and you don’t have to go through a metal detector at the front door. The library has lots of books in it, but I’m trying not to care about that too much, either, in case everything changes. You don’t want to put too much faith in a place with a corny name like Cranberry Corners. It’s not even real. Do you see any cranberries around here?
It is the same with Miss Maple, like she is too good to be true. She does really