Three weeks in a row, he failed his mathematics tests. The subject was geometry, for which he had no use, and his mind was beginning to wander outside the confines of the town. This week, it was possible he was meant to be a hobo. He was learning from his friends how to read hobo language. Secretly he had put the marks on his porch that meant “Nice woman lives here,” but so far no hoboes had appeared at the door.

Emily had been cleaning the house with lavender soap. She had read in a women’s magazine that most ladies used lavender products, and so the table was oiled with lavender, the dishes squeaked from lavender essence. When Leland opened the door, he smelled the blast of lavender. She was sitting in a kitchen chair. His last three geometry tests were in front of her, squared neatly. There was a full glass of milk and a plate with two cookies.

“Sit down,” Emily said.

He had a list of excuses prepared, but he didn’t begin them. Instead, he put his bookstrap down and sat as asked, face impassive, almost—at age eleven—weathered.

“Are you angry with me, Lee?”

An instinct as primitive as hunting mastodons made him neither nod nor shake his head.

“Because you know how to do geometry. I imagine it like this: you sit down to take the test, and instead of all the numbers and angles and formulas, you just think about ways to punish me. I can almost see it on your face. I think it simmers in there, and you want to hurt me by failing your mathematics tests. Have a cookie.”

He picked up the iced sugar cookie and chewed. He listened to his mother narrate how she thought his day went. She imagined him strolling past shopkeepers’ houses, striking a stick against the gate, thinking lovely thoughts on the surface, for he was a genuinely good boy, she said, but underneath, she thought he was churning with resentments that, if not checked, would become bitterness when he was an adult, and, for now, yielded poor results in geometry.

“I can see you on your wedding day, Lee,” Emily said, “ready to kiss your bride, but if I’m there, I suspect that deep in your heart will still be—”

“Where’s my father?” Leland asked.

The story stopped. She looked startled. She had actually been guessing quite well, almost perfectly.

She kissed him on the forehead, announced it was late (it was only four-thirty), and left the room. He looked up at the wooden planks in the ceiling, listening, feeling his heart constrict. He wanted to find something she liked, a rock he would paint for her. He wanted to do a funny voice that would make her laugh. No two times had she told it the same way.