“Hello, Peter,” Clarissa said, so softly that when I responded I spoke in a whisper.
“Hello, Clarissa,” I said. I held my hand out. To be honest, I didn’t just hold my hand out, I reached for her hand. I didn’t intend to shake it; I wanted to hold it. She hesitated for the briefest instant, and then she gave her right hand to me. I held it between both of mine. She kept her left hand on the muff.
“You can call me Clare if you want to,” she said.
Tiny droplets of sweat formed on my upper lip. I stammered when I spoke. “Oh, th—that’s okay,” I said. “I th—think Clarissa is beautiful.”
She blushed. So did I. I heard Spike mutter, “Oh, brother.”
With the introductions over, Mrs. Graham went back to what the class had been doing before I arrived.
“Peter,” Mrs. Graham said, smiling at me, her cheeks glowing, “we’re just practicing our times tables.”
“Oh, great!” I said, smiling right back at her, smiling with all my heart, ready to do anything to show this woman how happy I was to have been allowed into the fourth grade, to be in her classroom, to sit beside Clarissa, to have my heart ache like this. But even as I said it, a chill spread through me. I had no idea what she was talking about. I had never heard of the times tables before in my life. I smiled, but the sweat continued to form on my lip, and when I wiped it off with the back of my hand, it came right back again. When my turn came to do whatever I was supposed to do, I was going to make a fool of myself in front of all the kids that I had just met, and worst of all in front of Clarissa. My happiness would end as quickly as it had begun.
I tried not to do anything that would betray my anxiety, but something—my irregular breathing, the sweat on my lip, or the mad, twitching smile that I was struggling to maintain—must have given me away. When I glanced sidelong at the boys and girls around me, I saw that they were glancing sidelong at me, and from the moue Clarissa wore, the way she was stroking her muff, I thought she must know that something was wrong.
“Peter?” Suddenly I realized that Mrs. Graham was calling on me. I looked up at her.
“Yes?” I said.
“Do you know the answer?”
I didn’t even know the question. I had been so firmly in the grip of my fears that I hadn’t even noticed what was going on. I said, “Uh, well—”
Some tiny movement caught my eye. Maybe Spike hadn’t done anything more than move her hand, but I saw it, and glanced ever so briefly at her desk. I saw, on a piece of paper, where her hand rested, the number 54. Another tiny movement caught my eye. On a piece of paper on Veronica’s desk I saw the number 58. I was on the horns of a dilemma, but not for long. I didn’t want to do anything that was going to offend Spike, so I decided on that basis alone to take the answer that she offered.
“—fifty-four,” I said. I tossed it off as if it had been nothing.
Mrs. Graham looked at me for just long enough before she spoke so that I could tell, though no one else probably could have, that she knew how I had gotten the answer.
“No, Peter,” she said. “That’s not right. Seven times eight is fifty-six.”
I blushed. “Oh! That’s right,” I said. “I guess I just forgot.”
Without turning around, Spike shrugged her shoulders and covered the number she had written. Veronica looked genuinely puzzled.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” and “Take the Long Way Home,” the first seven novellas in Little Follies.
You’ll find an overview of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.
🎧 129: “Hello, Peter,” Clarissa said, ...