What About Math Club?

I never imagined it would be this warm on New Year’s Day, even out west at Aunt Sarah’s place.

The view from my new room isn’t just beautiful, it’s serene. Cornell Road and the stately houses across the street, and the woods and hills beyond – it’s like one of those idyllic storybooks I used to read in grade school and imagine my life was in one of those imaginary towns, instead of my dirty and gritty hometown with all its unemployment and gangs and worse.

Little did I know then that I would get my wish before I was even into high school. And all it would take was losing everything.

Enough self-pity, I remind myself, and I turn away from the morning sun blossoming over Cornell Road and back to the vision board I’ve barely started. Maybe the first goal I should set for myself is wondering why I get so down in the mouth when everything is so much better now. As I sit back down at my desk – or really Aunt Sarah’s desk, as is nearly everything in my new room except for my clothes – I can already imagine what Mr. Sanchez would have to say about that. Leave the past in the past, Andrew. You’re a bright boy with a great future if you can leave all that behind you.

“Make high honors all four quarters,” I write on a green post-it note – my favorite color. It feels like cheating when I’ve already done it once, but then I remember eighth grade and making high honors first quarter and getting two D’s third quarter. Mrs. Leastrom’s red hair flashes through my memory and I let out a silent yelp and pound the desk, and Aunt Sarah’s room comes back into focus. I re-read the post-it note and decide it really is a perfectly good start – or really, not a start, a goal that everything else can reach for. I paste it in the center at the top of the blue posterboard, right under the first syllable of VISION in the ANDREW’S VISION BOARD I’ve written in gold and purple outliner pen. With that done, I dig out the book of colleges Mom gave me before she went away and cut out a couple of pictures of majestic buildings from some big northeastern colleges she’d love me to end up at. Mr. Sanchez will love that too, I’m quite sure.

Mr. Sanchez is kind of a square old guy, the kind where you’re not surprised he became a guidance counsellor, but he seems to like me and I don’t want to let him down. Actually that fits just about everything about my new school and my new life out here. My grades are up, I’m not gorging myself on junk food anymore, and Aunt Sarah and Uncle Drew have been better hosts than I could have hoped for. They haven’t told me how Mom’s doing, but I’m not even sure if I want to know.

I look at the photos I’ve posted to the board, and imagine myself a few years down the road in a letter jacket chatting up a girl – rather a woman, a really intelligent woman, like Mom or Aunt Sarah – in a preppy sweater and skirt, and remind myself high honors alone won’t get me there. I draw three lines from the first note and add three yellow post-its: “Join school newspaper.” “Join French Club.” “Join yearbook committee.” It’s too late to join the band and I’m no athlete, but there are so many other options…although those three are the only ones I can think of for the moment, I do leave room for more post-its to add later. I scrawl a surprisingly good drawing of the Eiffel Tower and a few proofreader’s marks and an open book with last year on the cover in big numbers.

I imagine Mr. Sanchez saying it before I can stop it: What about math club? I jump up from the desk and take another look outside, but it’s too late. An old truck is trundling down Cornell Road but I see Mrs. Leastrom’s Subaru. Now I’m in the passenger seat with her grinning hungrily at me at every stop sign, which never actually happened if I recall correctly – she just drove me to her house out in Candia, eyes on the road. But I see her drooling at me as if all set to devour me all the same.

I didn’t even know she drove a Subaru until she had already…well…devoured me, if you will. Months into the “affair,” as she’d called it, and I didn’t know what else to call it. Don’t tell me I was raped. I was, but don’t tell me I was. I got enough of that from my mom when she threw me out of the house, saying she couldn’t even stand to look at me anymore.

“Write to Mom once a month.” I don’t really want to, but I turn back to the desk and force myself to write that on a plain white post-it note, really a great analogy for my feelings about the whole thing. It’s got to be done. It’ll please Aunt Sarah, for one thing, and right now I owe her everything. I put the white note over on the right-hand side of the board, an island of white in the blue, where it’s not connected to anything but it can’t be missed. Aunt Sarah won’t tell me how she’s doing but she did tell me Mom was delighted with how I was doing at school, so I owe her that much. She’s doing pretty well in that place they sent her to as well, at least that’s what Aunt Sarah tells me, but I really don’t want to know any of the details.

I flip through my notebooks and magazines and junk for a picture to go with “Write to mom once a month,” but of course nothing fits. Maybe a picture’s worth a thousand words, but sometimes you only need six words.

Six words.

“Is there anything I can do?”

That was what I’d asked Mrs. Leastrom the day I learned I was running a C in math. With a 95% average on the tests, I hadn’t seen any need to do the homework – until now.

“Well, Andrew, I don’t think there’s time to make up all the missing homework you owe me. But I do have another idea. Meet me after school in the gym, by the girls’ locker room?”

I was only human, male and thirteen years old, as I heard again and again in court later on. And I had the day to imagine all sorts of bizarre fantasies, nearly all of them involving Mrs. Leastrom ordering me to undo her bra just for starters. None of those served to lessen my shock when she actually did give me that order in the girls’ locker room.

I realize my fists are clenched so tightly my fingernails are all set to draw blood. I unclench them and open the window and drink in the clear, cool air – just a bit too chilly to open the window, but warm enough to remind me Mrs. Leastrom isn’t just in jail, she’s thousands of miles away. It’s just enough for me to regain control, and I pick up the orange post-its. “Join Math Club and stop letting math trigger me.” Mr. Sanchez has seen my file, he’ll understand. He’s been kind enough not to ask me anything about it, another reason why I want to please him. I draw an elaborate square-root sign and flip through the magazine on top of the pile, looking for a picture of someone sleeping peacefully. It takes three magazines but I find a mattress advertisement that fits the bill. Now the vision board is about a third of the way full and I’m once again feeling almost grown up in Aunt Sarah’s guestroom.

My room, she tells me I should call it, and I guess I should.

“Make my room feel more like home,” I write on a bright blue post-it that contrasts nicely with the darker blue board. I post it just under the photograph of the sleeping woman, and only then do I realize it is a woman. Without missing a beat, I grab up the pink post-its and write, “Get over my fear of girls.”

“Fear of girls” really isn’t quite right, but I don’t know what else to call it. Mr. Sanchez will understand.

I’m no girl, Andrew. A little girl would never know how to do this…

A deep breath and this time I do leave the window open. The bracing air is most welcome. It’s back to the magazines, and I find an ad for a private academy down south somewhere with a clutch of girls in school uniforms a lot like I was imagining for college, and nothing like the garish dresses Mrs. Leastrom schooled me in pulling off her. Mom always used to tell me if I spoke up in class more and didn’t act so aloof, the girls would love me. Just one of way too many things I learned she was right about since I’ve been out here, or maybe it’s just that none of the girls here know just why I moved here.

Another blue post-it, “Read at least two books each semester by people who aren’t like me.” I draw a line to it from “Get over my fear of girls.” Mr. Sanchez probably won’t get the connection, but I don’t care. Then I imagine every English teacher I’ve ever had saying “people who aren’t like me” is too vague, but Mr. Sanchez isn’t an English teacher. Besides, I’m not sure just what I mean either. If nothing else, more books by women would get me more grounded about women.

I stand up and read the board at a glance. It’s all so short term. What about next summer? I don’t want to impose on Aunt Sarah and Uncle Drew and right now I don’t even care when Mom is going home. Back to the green post-its, where all my favorites go. “Get a scholarship to some summer camp.” Too vague, so I paste three more green notes to the right with arrows from the first one. “Language camp?” “Computer programming?” “Science?” I’m already a committed humanities-nerd, but my science grades have been good enough for it to be an option anyway.

Now only the lower left-hand corner remains. How many more ways could I make the case for “I’ll do better in school and do right by Mom”?

All at once, I’ve got it. “No TV except on weekends,” I write on an orange post-it, and sketch a television set with a bullet-hole in the screen. I’ve lost all track of the shows I used to watch since I came here, and only now do I realize I haven’t even missed them. Maybe that’s because it was the TV that got us caught, maybe not. Either way, I’m blindsided by the flashback to the day she was fondling me in her living room with some daytime soap on, both of us stark naked and the television turned up too loud for her to notice when her husband came home early.

A violent shake and I yelp out loud this time, remembering his boot clobbering my back and throwing me into the wall. At least the pain was fleeting before I passed out. I’m on to remembering waking up in the hospital with the cops glowering at me when Aunt Sarah comes rushing in. “Andrew?”

I don’t remember standing up from her desk – my desk – but I must have, as I’m up by the time she arrives to throw her arms around me. “Another flashback?”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Sarah.”

“Don’t say that! You know we don’t mind. What was it this time?”

“Mr. Leastrom.”

“That bastard never did apologize, did he?”

“I guess I can’t blame him.”

“You’ll never convince me he didn’t know what his wife was, Andrew, and he could see you were just a kid.” She’s still holding me and rubbing my back. “Listen, want to go to brunch at Sandy’s? Your uncle and I are leaving in about ten minutes and you could use the fresh air.”

“Oh, Aunt Sarah, I – ”

“Don’t say you couldn’t, Andrew! You can! Supporting you is between your mother and me, and we’ll worry about that when she’s better.”

“Is she improving?”

“Yes, and that’s still all I’ll tell you.” She releases me but she’s still smiling. “See you downstairs?”

“Sure,” I say. “I’ve just got one thing left to add to the board,” I say, pointing, and she’s decent enough not to look too closely at it.

“Wonderful.”

As soon as I’m alone again, I take a green post-it and write in all-capitals: FIND A WAY TO THANK AUNT SARAH AND UNCLE DREW. I feel no need for visuals as I paste it just under the destroyed TV set.