Read Online Till the End of Tom by Gillian Roberts - Free Book Online Page B

table and not being hungry was the thing. But I’m trying to understand. I just won’t tolerate them missing the bowl, is all.”
    I looked at her, not sure whether to laugh or cry, and most definitely not sure of what to do about this situation. “May I ask why you came to me?”
    She shrugged. “You seem like you care about things. Not everybody does.”
    I was flattered, but even so, it wasn’t as if I could rationally expect help from the administration. I couldn’t even imagine myself going into Havermeyer’s inner sanctum and saying, “We need to talk about vomit.” Did an uglier word than that exist?
    This was emotional, psychological, not academic. That was the counselor’s province, although the divisions were ultimately meaningless. A girl binging and purging, thinking always about what she weighs and what she can or cannot eat and how she’ll get around the chemistry of hunger, can’t devote her attention to learning grammar. A depressed child doesn’t learn, a frightened child doesn’t learn. There is, for better or for worse, a mind-body connection.
    I hoped Rachel Leary, our counselor, would know what a school could and should do in this situation. She had three daughters now herself, and even though two were still in diapers, it was never too soon to think about the problem, because they might grow up to have teachers as oblivious as I’d been.
    Or so I was going to tell her. And then I was going to leave her with the problem, turn my back, and bolt out of her office and away from this entire topic.

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    Six
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    Y O , Plucky!” Ozzie Bright had clipped out a news story and he handed it to me within seconds of my entering the office. “For your scrapbook,” he said.
    I was touched. Ozzie was a man of a school so old he barely acknowledged that women had entered the workplace. In the several months I’d worked there—for Mackenzie, not Ozzie—he’d barely spoken to me, and then, only when I’d directly addressed him or asked a question. “Thanks,” I said, flattening out my voice, demonstrating that I was not a flighty female ready to burst into tears at this show of consideration. “Gotta get to work now.”
    I’d scored points with Ozzie for that exchange. I always did when I made myself sound like the world-weary, emotionally void private eye in a thirties mystery.
    “It’s a bitch you don’t get paid for the work,” he said. “Freelancing doesn’t mean free, you know.”
    I hadn’t thought of the cup-retrieval as freelancing.
    “But good you mentioned the agency,” he added.
    I hadn’t done that, either. My home phone gives the cell phone number in case of emergency and that, in turn, gives our names as part of the Investigative Office of Ozzie Bright. While Sasha was visiting, I had refused to answer the phone at all last night, couldn’t stand the idea of more wedding agitation, but I had apparently supplied my caller with enough information anyway.
    “Misspelled it though,” Ozzie said before closing the door of his cubicle.
    I looked at the news story. The reporter had written “Brite.” First Plucky, then Brite. Strike two.
    I hadn’t done anything here except talk to Mackenzie and run out of the place the day before, and I had stacks of boring but necessary filing on my desk—reports, expense vouchers, printouts—plus bills and statements to prepare. I put the news clipping in my desk drawer and got to work, pausing only to kiss and greet Mackenzie when he showed up. I liked the days when we were both in the same place at the same time, even if we inevitably wound up doing our separate tasks.
    I was preparing a bill for yet another hapless middle-aged man trying to find his first love when I heard the knock on the outer door of the office.
    This does not often happen. Things have changed since the days of noir when the dame with the gams slithered into the office and hired the shamus. Most people phone their orders in because most wants are simple: find