A Shiver of Wonder (14 page)

David moved to fetch the adult-sized chair
that she had indicated with a grin. How many children had received
the same amiable invitation over the years Mrs. Jenkins had been
teaching here? “Please, call me David,” he said aloud.

“Carol Jenkins,” she replied. They shook
hands over her lunch of carrots, sliced peppers, and crackers with
a hummus dip. Her hand was soft yet firm, her grip solid and
comfortable. “So tell me, what brings a neighbor of Clair’s to
Shady Grove Elementary School?”

David would have become flustered at having
to yet again explain his curiosity regarding Clair, but there was
something in Mrs. Jenkins’ eyes that made him feel as though she
were already somewhat aware of what he might say. Her gaze was even
but rapt, belying her straightforward words.

“I suppose I just want to talk about her,”
he said. “With someone who knows her. Outside of our building, I
mean. She can be a bit… unusual, for lack of a better word. The
things she says, sometimes I find them haunting my thoughts. I know
that things she’s said to other people have made a… a difference.
In their lives. In the way things happen to them.” He shook his
head. “Sorry! This is all coming out in a jumble.”

Mrs. Jenkins hadn’t shifted her gaze one
jot. “What has she said to you?” she asked quietly.

His hands shot into the air. “Oh, lots of
things! Starting from when I first met her. She knew my
girlfriend’s name, the pronunciation of it, which is unusual. I’d
never seen Clair before, and she’s never told me how she knew that.
She never really answers
any
question I directly ask
her.”

A knowing look melded with a touch of a
smirk lit up the teacher’s face. “She never does, does she? Answer,
I mean.”

“So she’s the same here?” David asked
eagerly. “Does she say things to you or to others that seem…
profound? And yet at the same time, they’re vague, and normal, and
– ”

Carol’s hand had moved forward to gently
touch one of his, breaking off his inquiry. “Let me tell you a
story,” she said, her voice quiet and earnest. “It will help you
understand my own feelings for Clair. It might help you understand
more about who she is, too.”

David sat back in his chair. “Okay.”

“My daughter died six years ago.” And after
uttering this, Carol closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath.
“A playground accident, right here at the school. Stupid, really.
Nobody’s fault. She just… fell. And because she fell on her head,
at exactly the wrong angle, she… died. Instantly, thank God.”

“I’m sorry,” David muttered into the silence
that followed this. “Truly. That’s… terrible.”

She nodded. “It is. It was.” Her eyes
fluttered open, and he could see beads of wetness in them. “I
wasn’t on the playground. I was right here, at this desk. Eating my
lunch, just as I’m doing today. Two of the other teachers, they ran
to come get me, but she was already gone. Her body was lifeless,
dead.” A tear began to roll down one cheek. “It was the worst day
of my life. Ever. Nothing could… possibly be as bad as that day, as
that day when I lost my angel, my sweet, sweet daughter.”

David remained immobile, afraid to comment
again, uncomfortable with the idea of leaning forward to offer the
pallid comfort of touch, considering that he had only just met
her.

“No one talks about it anymore. None of the
other children even
know
about it except for the few that
might have heard from their parents or older siblings. But she
knew. Clair knew. I could tell, from the first day she was in my
classroom.”

Carol opened a drawer of her desk and pulled
out a box of Kleenex. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and then
placed the used tissue in a wastepaper basket in the desk’s
kneehole.

“How did you know?” David asked in a low
voice.

Her head shook. “I… I just did. The way she
looked at me, it was as if… it was as if she could read everything
there, see all of my thoughts.” Carol’s eyes met his. “I can’t
explain it, even to myself, but I knew. And sure enough, a couple
of weeks later, she talked to me about it.”

David found himself tensing, moving forward
with a shiver of anticipation.

“She told me that the purple skies would
bring relief. It was a few minutes after school had ended, and I
was straightening up, putting things away. She had come back into
the classroom without my even noticing, and I turned, and there she
was. ‘Clair,’ I asked her, ‘what did you forget?’ But she just
walked up to me and took my hand.”

“And that is when she said it,” David
murmured, knowing that it was so.

Carol nodded. “Yes. Exactly. She had even
drawn me a picture of what it would look like: a pale yellow moon
rising over the hills above town, the sky a light purple, with
stars blinking everywhere.”

“And did it happen? Did you see it?”

Another nod. “A week later, on a Thursday
night. Thank goodness the next day was a teacher in-service day. I
don’t think I could have come in if the students had been here. But
I stepped outside around eight fifteen, looked up, and there it
was. My husband and I live on Maple, just below downtown, and I’d
wondered how she knew that I could see the hills, but… Oh, David.
My heart just about stopped.”

David inhaled, slowly, trying to take all of
this in. “How did she… How did you know that the purple skies Clair
mentioned were connected with your daughter?”

Mrs. Jenkins smiled, as simultaneously it
appeared as if she were about to crumble. Her voice was little more
than a whisper. “That was the other thing she said, when she was
holding my hand. ‘She’s all right,’ she told me. ‘She’s really all
right.’ And as I stood there, gazing into that beautiful, beautiful
night sky, exactly as Clair had drawn it, I was truly and finally
able to let go of all the pain I had held onto for six years. I
began to cry, and it began to flow out of me, into the heavens,
onto the grass. I fell to my knees, and the more I cried, the
better I felt. She was really all right, and I knew it,
I knew
it!
The burden was lifted off of me. And even if my husband
couldn’t understand me or what had just happened to me, that night
was the first night’s sleep I’d had in years when I didn’t wake up
and want to just die in the morning, or just crawl back into bed
and stay there until kingdom come.”

Carol reached for another tissue, and David
looked away from her, toward the windows that overlooked the
playground. He couldn’t see much more than the continuous bobbing
of heads, but the muted cacophony from outside had been a constant
since he’d entered Room 126.

“On Monday, when the children came back,”
she continued, “the first thing she did was smile at me. Just that.
But I could tell that she knew it had happened.” Carol blew her
nose into the tissue, and David once again turned toward the desk.
“She’s a special girl,” she added. “A very special girl.”

The second tissue was tossed as well. She
wiped her eyes, and then folded her hands about her lunch as she
cautiously met his gaze. “She worries, you know. I believe she
worries about her… gift.”

David blinked. “How do you know?”

She glanced toward the ceiling. “It was a
week and a half ago, I guess. Our discussion was about morals.
Fables, and characters in the stories that face a choice. It’s
usually clear which choice is the correct one, but sometimes a
little more effort has to be made. Especially when the children are
this age. Clair… well, Clair raised her hand and asked how a person
knows if they are good or bad.”

“A fantastic question,” David said.

“I agree. But this is the first time since
she arrived in my class that she’s willingly raised a hand, or
spoken up without being asked something directly. ‘What do you
mean, Clair?’ I asked her, trying not to give away the fact that my
heart had begun to pound. She merely repeated herself: ‘How can
someone tell if they’re a good person or a bad person?’ ”

“The crux of every fable,” said David. “How
the characters react to a situation relays to the reader whether
their choices are good or bad.”

“Exactly. A wise choice indicates that the
character is good. A poor choice signals the opposite. Though
obviously in some cases, the characters learn from their mistakes,
and become good by the conclusion.”

“So what did you tell her?”

Carol shrugged, exhibiting a wry expression.
“I made a complete hash of it. A fifth grade class would have eaten
me alive, but first graders? They’re far more forgiving,
fortunately. I tried to answer her question in regards to the fable
we’d just been reading,
The Ant and the Dove
. But the whole
time, as I kept looking at her, I just kept wondering how she’d
known the things she had told me. After rambling on for a bit, I
could tell that I’d lost the entire class, including Clair. But you
can’t ever let on to that. I wrapped it up, tied a bow on it, and
then asked if everyone understood what I’d been saying.”

“Twenty nodding heads?”

“Eighteen. The nineteenth was Clair, who
looked disappointed in me.”

David chuckled. And then his demeanor turned
serious. “There was a murder in our building a few days after
that.”

“I know. She told me, and then it was all
over the Courier.”

“I…” But suddenly, David realized that he
couldn’t relay his suspicions regarding Clair, Janice and Heck to
Mrs. Jenkins. “I was glad that she talked to you about it. That she
was able to. Mrs. Rushen – the woman who takes care of her – I
don’t sometimes know if she’s…” He foundered for a few seconds
while searching for the right words. “…able to see all that Clair
sees.”

“I’ve met Mrs. Rushen,” said Carol, “and I’m
pretty sure that she can’t see what Clair sees.”

“Her first name is…” began David.

“Patricia. She’s quiet, but she’s gotten
Clair to school on time every day, and she’s waiting for her each
afternoon at three. That’s more than I can say for some of my
actual parents.”

“So she’s not Clair’s mother?”

Carol smiled. “No. But you already knew
that. What you
didn’t
know was her first name, and I
probably shouldn’t have told you. But it slipped out before I could
stop myself.”

“Sorry,” David grinned. “May I ask one more
silly question?”

“This is certainly a good place for
them.”

“Is Clair’s last name Rushen?”

Her head shook. “No. It’s not.”

“And I can’t ask what it is?”

Another shake. “You can ask, but I’ve
probably broken half the rules in the school code today, so I’m not
going to go there.”

“It’s a game we play. Clair and I. She wants
to know my girlfriend’s last name, I always ask if she’ll tell me
hers.”

An amused glimmer appeared in Carol’s eyes.
“Something tells me she’s won that game, and a long time ago,
too.”

“Yeah.” David nodded. “Yeah, I’ve had that
feeling.”

“May I ask what it was that she said to you?
That brought you here to see me?”

Again, David understood that a simple
response was undoubtedly the best response. “She told me yesterday
that I would know myself. One day, soon. But what Clair says to
people is anything but cut and dried. I’m not sure what to expect,
but I’m hoping for something that’s not… frightening, I
suppose.”

“You should expect to know yourself, David.
And maybe it will be as simple as that,” Carol said with a
smile.

David stood, and placed his chair back where
it had originally been. “I’ve taken up your entire lunch break,” he
said, “but thank you. Thank you for telling me so much, for talking
with me.”

She rose as well, and moved toward him.
“Give me a hug,” she ordered.

David complied, and was stunned by the
strength with which she enfolded him. It was over almost as soon as
it began, though, and she was again back by her desk. “It was good
to meet you,” she said. “I can see why Clair enjoys talking with
you. Your girlfriend is a fortunate woman.”

Embarrassed, David nodded goodbye to her,
and then turned and strode out into the hallway.

~*~*~*~*~

Three-quarters of the way back to the
school’s lobby, a door opened on David’s left. It was Clair,
heading inside from the playground.

Nobody was with her. The pair was alone in
the hallway.

“She’s nice, isn’t she?” Clair said as she
halted before him. David noted that her saddle shoes looked
entirely appropriate in this venue.

The door clicked shut behind her, but David
discovered that he had no ability to reply. All he wanted to do was
to ask yet again how she KNEW so many things that she shouldn’t
know, and to engage in a normal back-and-forth conversation seemed
ridiculous.

“I knew you would like her,” Clair added
with a smile. Her right foot tapped once, twice, the sound echoing
down the lonely corridor.

“How did… What are…” he managed to get out,
but suddenly she was inches away, and her hand was gripping his
once more. The heat that flowed from her was astounding!

“Four things that you love, you will lose,”
she said in that ordinary tone of voice that was so terrifying for
its normality. “But one of them could be yours again. And I hope
for that, David, I do.”

And then a bell began to scream, and all
around them, doors started slamming open as the hallway filled with
children, practically pummeling each other as they scrambled toward
their classrooms.

Clair and David were their own island in the
center of this, all else flowing around them. And then the bell
ceased, and she took one step backwards. Her smile returned,
hesitant and frangible. “Goodbye, David,” she said as she entered
the stream. But it had been spoken so softly he hadn’t been able to
discern the actual words.

Within half a minute, the hallway was clear.
David strode a bit unsteadily toward the street.