“Harvey said that you told him his dad is coming home soon. He also said that he hears you crying at night because there’s a ghost in your house, and that he wets the bed.” He pauses and waits until she looks at him again. “He says that he’s saving his money for the Smile Train, and for you to go to a motel on a honeymoon. That he’s scared of the ghosts and all the killers in the world, that Peggy can’t hear and he wants to get her what old people stick in their ears to make them hear better. And, last but not least, that he has a turd collection.” He shakes his head and laughs. “Oh, and he also has quite a wealth of knowledge about murders, and knows a lot of dirty jokes.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve heard some of those. Lizzie Borden and a horse walk into a bar.”

“Well, the one today was a little more risqué than ‘Hey, why the long face?’”

“Oh?”

“One about a blow-up doll and the virgin? Except he said ‘the Virgo.’”

“Oh no!” She shakes her head and puts out her hand to stop him, in case he was even thinking of saying the punch line; his face is flushed and he is not making eye contact with her. “Please don’t go there.” She could just imagine Harvey with a mustache, there in the center of a group of kids.

“So you’ve heard it?”

“No, but I can only imagine. I am so sorry,” she says. “I am so embarrassed.” She covers her face with her hands, her shoulders still shaking, first laughing and then crying.

“I’ll probably get a call from a parent or two,” he says. “There have been a lot of calls. One kid is scared to watch television because he’s afraid that the Menendez brothers will kill him, and another told her mother she is scared of little people flipping their car over if they have to stop at a red light. Things like that.”

“I am so sorry,” she says into her hands. “I am so very sorry.”

“I really think I can help,” he says. “You know, spend some extra time with Harvey after school, maybe give him a job as my helper?”

“I did this to him. I did this. I gave him all these terrible fears and problems.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” he says. “We all do the best we can.”