by Ivy Pembroke
“Just making sure,” said Ellen, as Jack showed up at the back door, tail wagging. “Oh, look,” Ellen said. “Your dog is here.”
Sam sighed again and let Jack in and called for Teddy. “Teddy! Jack is here for dinner! Hello, Jack.”
“Jack comes for dinner every night?” asked Ellen.
“I’m fairly certain Jack shows up for dinner every night at every house on the street. But I’ve told Teddy if he wants to pretend Jack is his responsibility, then he has to feed him every night.”
“How’s that working out?” asked Ellen.
“He comes if I shout for him long enough. Teddy!”
“Coming, coming!” called Teddy, thundering down the stairs. “Hi, Jack!”
Jack bounced happily all over Teddy in his usual greeting.
Teddy went about filling Jack’s dog bowl with Jack’s food.
Ellen looked at Sam. “He has a dog bowl. And food.”
“He does,” Sam agreed.
Jack trotted over to the shelf where Sam kept a squeaky toy squirrel for him, because Teddy had insisted, and picked it up and trotted back to his food and put it next to him.
Ellen said, “He has a toy. On a special shelf.”
“He does,” Sam agreed.
Ellen looked back at Teddy and said, “So. Teddy. I hear you’re going to meet your new teacher. Coo coo.”
Teddy looked dark as he put Jack’s food away. Jack meanwhile attacked the food as if he’d never eaten before in his life, even though Sam would bet money he’d just eaten at at least two other houses on the street. He said, “I don’t know why I have to go special by myself to meet the teacher.”
“I keep telling you: it isn’t a punishment. They’re trying to be nice and friendly.”
Teddy gave him his why-am-I-surrounded-by-hopeless-grown-ups face. “I have to go to school, before it starts, and meet with a teacher. It’s punishment.”
“He has a point,” said Ellen.
“You’re not helping,” Sam told her.
Ellen looked unrepentant.
Jack came running back over to Teddy, licking his face in gratitude for the food.
Teddy brightened, grinning, and said, “All done already, Jack? Maybe you can stay over, sleep here tonight?” He looked at Sam hopefully.
“No,” said Sam. “You know Mr. Hammersley will miss him if he spends the night here.”
Teddy’s face fell and he obediently let Jack out, then trudged up the stairs back to his bedroom.
Sam remarked, “The sad thing is, I don’t even know if Mr. Hammersley cares if Jack shows up every night, and maybe we should just take over responsibility for Jack, but also Jack is the street dog and I feel like I made enough waves trying to have a party and make everyone be friends.”
“So everyone isn’t friends now?”
“Well, we wave to each other when we see each other in the street. But we did that before.”
“You should make friends online,” said Ellen. “That’s what most people do.”
“I could hang out with Mr. Hammersley. He’s home all the time, except—oh, wait, I kind of snapped at him when he insulted my party food.”
Ellen blinked at him. “I thought Mr. Hammersley didn’t come to the party.”
“He didn’t. I thought I would be a nice neighbor and bring him a plate of food. It didn’t go over well.”
Ellen gave him a sympathetic look and then said, “Aww, my little brother, do you need a hug?”
“No,” denied Sam. Then, “Okay, I’ll take a hug.”
Ellen grinned and gave him a hug. “You’ve been here less than a month. You’re doing fine.”
“Thanks.” Sam released the hug and put the kettle on. “I’m seriously considering getting Teddy a puppy, since the thing with Jack is weird and he seems to like dogs so much.”
“A puppy? I thought you didn’t even want Jack because it was too much to take care of.”
“It’s true,” Sam said. “But, I don’t know.... Did you see the look on Teddy’s face just now when he saw Jack? I like that look. I’d like to get that look on his face more often.”
Ellen smiled softly at him and said, “I don’t blame you. It’s a cute look. Now you know why I pester you about dating.”
“What? No, that’s a different thing.”
“It isn’t at all. He looks like you, and that look on his face is what you look like when you’re happy, and I like that look on you, and I kind of miss it. You’d like that look on his face more often? Now you know how I feel.”
Sam considered Ellen, and thought how, well, put that way, he had a hard time arguing with her. He took a deep breath and said, “I’ve been here less than a month. At least let me get Teddy into school before I start going on terrible dates.”
“And when will you start going on spectacular dates?”
“Is that a thing that happens? I’ve never once been on a spectacular date.”
Ellen gave him a look. “You were married.”
“Yeah, we didn’t date.”
“Of course you dated.”
“Not like that. We were in the same group of friends and then we were like, ‘Hey, we like each other,’ and then we got married.”
“Don’t tell women that story. That makes you sound like the least romantic man on the planet. How did you ever get Sara to marry you?”
“Green card issues,” deadpanned Sam.
“You’re a horrible man,” said Ellen. “No wonder you never had spectacular dates.”
* * *
It wasn’t that Sam was nervous about meeting Teddy’s teachers. But it was that Sam wanted to make a good impression. It hadn’t bothered him in years that his hair wouldn’t lie flat—why would that bother a grown man?—but he felt suddenly the way he had when he’d been Teddy’s age, with his mother futilely running a wet comb through his hair and despairing of his ability to look serious.
“Look serious,” Sam told his reflection in the mirror. Maybe he needed reading glasses. That would help.
Sam wanted to ask Teddy if he thought a suit was overkill for meeting Teddy’s teachers, and then he thought it wasn’t fair to drag Teddy into Sam’s ridiculousness, so he pulled himself together and decided on jeans and a shirt, which he thought walked the line of “I respect your station as teachers of my child, but I am also a chill, relaxed, fun person who won’t be stirring up any trouble.”
“Bloody hell, pull yourself together,” Sam told himself under his breath, swiped at his hair uselessly one last time, and then went to collect Teddy.
Teddy looked roughly as enthusiastic as if Sam were coming to collect him to get a root canal.
“Let’s pretend to be a child who knows how to smile,” Sam suggested.
“I just hate this,” Teddy complained. “We never had to do this at home.”
“This is home now,” Sam reminded him.
“No, it’s not. It’s just the place where I’m different. I’m so different I have to go talk specially to the teachers without any of the other kids. Everyone knows how different I am as soon as I open up my mouth. That’s what this place is.”
Sam looked down at him and took a deep breath. Because if he was nervous and he was the parent, he couldn’t imagine how Teddy felt.
Sam crouched down to be on Teddy’s level. Teddy looked at him, mouth drawn tight in displeasure.
And Sam said, “You’re amazing.”
Teddy’s mouth twisted in even greater displeasure. “Dad—”
“No. I’m not saying that because I’m your dad. I’m not even saying that because it’s a pep talk. I’m saying that because I’m not sure I could have done at your age what you’ve had to do at your age. You’re amazing. And good things are right in front of us, right? Right around the corner. I bet you are going to have a fabulous teacher and you’ll go to school and everyone will find your accent super-exotic. And you’ll get all the girls. Or boys. However you roll. It’s all good.”
“Dad, I’m eight,” said
Teddy, but he said it in his my-dad-isso-ridiculous voice, and that voice was better than the deep displeasure that had just been creasing his expression.
“Oh,” Sam said. “Right. That means I can still do this to you,” and pulled him into a tight cuddle. And then he said, “How’d you like to get a dog?”
Teddy pulled away from the hug, eyes wide and bright. “Jack?” he asked eagerly.
“No. Jack’s the street dog. A different dog. A new dog just for you.”
Teddy looked confused. “But . . . Jack is my dog. I just want Jack.”
“Jack’s the street dog.”
“Right. And that’s what’s great about him. Jack belongs to all of us. He’s the only thing that belongs to all of us. I don’t want to take him away from that. He likes belonging to the whole street. I just want him to get to stay at our house, too, sometimes, if he wants. I don’t want to change him. I don’t want something new. Everything I have is new.”
Jack was new, too, but Sam didn’t point that out. Sam supposed that, relatively, Jack was the oldest thing Teddy had right now. Jack and Bob the flamingo.
“Okay,” said Sam. “I’ll go talk to Mr. Hammersley about if we can keep Jack sometimes.” He wasn’t looking forward to it, but he’d go do it.
* * *
They met Pen on their way to the school. She jogged in place, her hair bouncing on her head, and panted, “Hiya, you two! Where are you off to?”
“Teddy is going to meet his teacher and take a tour of his new school,” Sam said.
“Fun!” Pen said brightly. “Can’t wait to hear all about it!” As if they got together for coffee all the time. She jogged off with a wave.
Teddy said, “That was embarrassing. Let’s not tell too many people I’m doing this. I don’t want the whole street to know.”
Sam shook his head and rolled his eyes.
But that was why, when they met Diya Basak and her two children, he said preemptively, “Teddy and I are just walking around. No destination in mind. Just wandering.”
Which made them sound like they were casing joints to rob or something equally suspicious. Teddy gave him a look that said that his stupidity had surpassed even the levels that Teddy expected him to achieve.
Diya Basak, after a second, said, “Well, I am taking the children to shadow a veterinarian. Sai wants to be a veterinarian.”
Sai looked roughly as happy to be shadowing a vet as Teddy did about going to school.
Pari looked excited, though. She said to Teddy, “I am going with him and I am going to see lots of dogs and cats.”
“Good for you,” Teddy retorted.
“Lovely seeing you,” Sam said brightly, and moved Teddy off before a brawl could break out right in the middle of the street. “You two really need to call a truce.”
“We just don’t like each other.”
“Couldn’t you make an effort? Be a little less belligerent?”
“Not everyone needs to like everyone else, Dad,” said Teddy. Sam heard Ellen telling him that he needed to have everyone like him, and thought maybe there was truth to that, and maybe Teddy had a point.
They met no more neighbors and arrived at the school, where David Sullivan met them.
He was wearing a suit. Damn it, thought Sam.
“You must be Mr. Bishop,” said David Sullivan, shaking his hand.
“Please, it’s just Sam,” said Sam.
“And this must be Theodore.” David smiled at Teddy and held out his hand.
Teddy shook it and said, “Teddy, please,” and didn’t say it rudely, so that was good.
“Welcome to Turtledove,” said David. “Coo coo.”
Sam looked uncertain. Was he supposed to say it back?
“Yeah, I know, it’s ridiculous,” said David. “The teachers are always telling me I have to stop saying it. Anyway, let’s walk down to your classroom and meet your teacher, and you can stay with her, Teddy, and she’ll tell you a bit about the structure of the class, and you and I, Sam, can go over some of the information we need to know to ensure Teddy’s smooth transition.”
“Sounds good,” said Sam, unreasonably panicking that maybe he wouldn’t know all of the necessary information, which was ridiculous, but being back in a school was making him flash back to not having properly studied for exams.
The school was a lovely old building, and Sam liked how bright it was, how large the windows were, letting in light in every classroom they passed. It would be a pleasant place to go to school, Sam thought. He was happy with it. Teddy would like it here. He had a good feeling about this place.
It was just as he was thinking about what a good feeling he had about the place that they turned the corner into the classroom and David Sullivan said something like, “Teddy, this is your teacher, Miss Quinn,” but Sam wasn’t really paying attention anymore, because the woman sitting behind the desk, with her dark red hair pinned into place with a pencil, was the woman he’d last seen brandishing a carrot and walking away from him in a supermarket.
Sam had been to the supermarket since then, of course. He had always experienced a small anticipatory thrill that he might run into the woman again. He had also always experienced a sick feeling of dread that maybe he would meet the woman again and she wouldn’t remember him. From the shocked look on the woman’s face, she definitely remembered him.
They looked at each other and said, in perfect unison, “It’s you.”
David Sullivan looked between them, looking infinitely pleased. “Oh, good, you already know each other.”
“Not really,” said Sam dazedly. “She likes carrots.”
“He was negotiating with beetroot,” said Teddy’s teacher, not taking her eyes off Sam. Which was really rather nice, and it was really rather annoying that her boss was here and they were supposed to be doing something official and helpful relating to his son.
“I’m sorry?” said David quizzically.
Which seemed to break the woman out of the moment. She broke eye contact and shook her head and stood and said, “I’m sorry. Where are my manners?” And then she looked at Teddy and smiled brightly and held out her hand and said, “I’m Miss Quinn.”
“I’m Teddy,” Teddy said. He looked endlessly amused by this whole situation.
“Very nice to meet you,” Miss Quinn said.
“I’m Teddy’s dad,” inserted Sam.
“I assumed.” She offered her hand. “Nice to meet you as well.” Sam would have liked to imagine that there was a spark as their skin touched, but actually they were standing in a primary school classroom in front of her boss and his son, which had a dampening effect on sparks.
David seemed to decide that he was just going to ignore how oddly they were behaving. “Well, Teddy, Miss Quinn will answer any questions you have about the classroom.” David turned to Sam. “And you and I should go and do our boring paperwork now.”
“Right,” Sam said. “Yes. The paperwork. Let’s do that.”
* * *
Libby Quinn watched Beetroot Man walk out of her classroom. He glanced over his shoulder at her as he left. And she looked from him to his son, who looked a great deal like him: same unruly sandy hair, same eyes trapped between blue and green, slightly more freckles across the nose.
“Teddy,” she said, deciding the best thing to do right now was to be completely professional and stop behaving like she’d never seen an attractive man before. “Welcome to Turtledove.”
“My mum’s dead,” was how Teddy responded to that.
Libby blinked. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“In case you were wondering if my dad was single. He’s, like, very single.”
The thing about this conversation was that, unfortunately, it wasn’t exactly unusual. She had lots of divorcees in her classroom parents. She was frequently the subject of matchmaking efforts. And she had a standard response to matchmaking efforts. She said, “That is very sweet of you, but my heart is too full of my students for anyone else.” Which wasn’t t
rue. Which was a lie. But she usually didn’t feel how much of a lie it was because she usually didn’t run into the man she’d been unable to get out of her head in the middle of her classroom. She usually didn’t meet men she was unable to get out of her head.
Teddy Bishop, as he was listed on her classroom roll, looked exactly as dubious at that claim of hers as he should have.
She cleared her throat, feeling self-conscious, and pulled at the chain she wore around her neck, twisting the charm on it. It was a habit she had, that she did constantly, and she knew it but she couldn’t help it.
She said, “Well, we’re here to answer any questions you might have about the classroom. So let’s get to it, shall we? What can I tell you?”
* * *
Sai Basak could not remember a time before Emilia moved to the street. Their families didn’t really talk, but Sai was aware of Emilia. And, of course, then they were in school together. And then they were friends. And then they were dating. And Sai knew this was not something his parents would look favorably upon. Sai knew he was supposed to focus on his studies and his future career, exclusively. That had been impressed upon him by his parents very firmly: no distractions like girls. But Sai liked Emilia. Sai loved Emilia. She was funny and clever and sweet. She was brilliant. So Sai had started dating Emilia, in secret, and he’d had the idea of saying he was going to the library and spending every day with Emilia, and that, too, had seemed brilliant, except that now it had ended up with him here, at the vet’s office, surrounded by an enormous number of animals.
Pari was asking a million questions and the vet was answering all of them gamely, and then she said, “Actually, we’re about to have a look at a sweet pup, if you’d like to see.”
And so they were ushered into a small room, and there was a terrier in its owner’s lap, and the vet pulled out the most enormous needle Sai had ever seen—
—and that was apparently, he was told later, when he fainted.
* * *
Sam forced himself to be serious and responsible and take his time answering all the questions David Sullivan asked him, because, after all, this was about Teddy’s education, which meant it was also about Teddy’s future, and so, really, Sam had to take this seriously.
