The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy

     “The story’s pretty much the same,” she said. “Except it hasn’t got such a happy ending.” She pulled a battered blue-covered paperback book from her back pocket and looked around to see if she might get caught with it. “That part at the end where they all get together for dinner and everybody’s happy again isn’t in here at all.” She gave me a big wink, tapped the book with her index finger, and said, “But there’s a lot of other stuff in here that isn’t in the other one.”     “Oh, yeah?” I said.     “Yeah,” she said. “Just listen to some of this.” She flipped to a page with a folded-down corner. “Oswald says, ‘What dost thou know me for?’ And Kent answers, ‘A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats—’”     “What’s an eater of broken meats?” I asked.     Spike glared at me.     “Ohhhh!” I said. “Sure. Sure. I know.” I gave her a knowing wink, although all I’d gathered from the look she gave me was that it must be another thing that a fourth-grader should know, like the times tables, and that it was probably something I shouldn’t say in front of my parents.     “It gets better,” she said. “‘—lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, cynical rogue—’”     “Wow,” I said. I wanted to ask about a couple of items in that list, but instead I raised an eyebrow in the way I’d observed adults doing when they wanted to acknowledge something but didn’t want to explain it to me.     Spike went on. “‘—beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel b***h—’”     “Hey—hey—uh—Spike,” I said. “We’re kind of close to my father’s gas station. Maybe you should keep your voice down.”     “Oh, sure,” said Spike. She looked around. “Come here, come here,” she said, backing into some bushes alongside the railroad tracks that ran beside my father’s Esso station. “You’ve got to hear this one.” She flipped to another page.“The Fool says,“‘She that’s a maid now, and laughs at my departure,“‘Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter.’”     At this Spike burst into a deep, rumbling laugh and gave me another knock on the shoulder. “You get it?” she asked.     “Oh, sure,” I said. I started laughing uproariously. I screamed, “‘Unless things be cut shorter!’” I had no notion in the world what might make it funny, but I exploded in another paroxysm of laughter, and tears began to run down my cheeks. I had to lean on Spike for support. “‘Unless things be cut shorter!’” I howled again.     “Yeah, well, it is pretty funny,” said Spike. She pushed me away from her and shoved the book into her back pocket again. She pushed her way out of the bushes and began walking off. I followed, repeating, “‘Unless things be cut shorter,’” and chuckling.     “Hey, is this your father’s gas station, right here?” Spike asked.    “Yeah,” I said.     “You think your father would give us a Coke?” she asked.     “Sure!” I said.     We drank our Cokes and watched my father look for a leak in a tire. I sneaked a sidelong look at Spike and marveled at how badly I had misjudged her. I had expected, almost from my first day in Mrs. Graham’s class, that Spike or one of the boys in her gang would want to beat me up sooner or later. Instead, here we were drinking Cokes and telling jokes, and she seemed to want to be pals.     By the time we got to my house, we had our arms thrown over each other’s shoulders and were singing “The rain it raineth every day,” like a couple of miniature drunks.     “You want to come in and have a cruller?” I asked her.     “Nah, I’ve got to get home.” she said.     “Oh, okay,” I said. I looked at her and hesitated, then finally decided to speak my mind. “You know, Spike,” I said, “before I got to know you, I was afraid that you were going to beat me up or something.” We both laughed. Spike looked at her shoes and scraped them back and forth on the sidewalk. “A lot of kids think you’re some kind of monster,” I added.     “She cannot be such a monster,” muttered Spike.     “But you’re not,” I said. “You’re nice. You’ve just got a bad reputation.”     Spike looked up at me and shrugged. “I’m a kid more sinned against than sinning,” she said.     “Well, I’ll see you in school tomorrow,” I said.     “Yeah,” said Spike. She started down the walk. I started up the front steps. “Oh, hey,” she called. “I almost forgot.”     She walked back toward me, and I walked down the steps toward her. When we reached each other, she grabbed the front of my jacket in her fist and twisted it so that her knuckles dug into my chest. She put her face close to mine, so that she was looking right into my eyes, and when she spoke, her spit sprayed onto me.     “I really want to play Cordelia,” she said. “And if I don’t get the part, I’ll break your foot with a brick.”

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.

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* 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.

15

ALTHOUGH work on the play seemed to go along pretty well, I couldn’t shake the conviction that King Lear was going to get me into some kind of trouble. I had the kind of indistinct foreboding that, on a sunny day, warns a clamdigger on Bolotomy Bay that a storm is approaching.     It was a gloriously sunny day, an unseasonably warm day for December, almost a balmy day, when Spike walked home from school with me.    “Hey, Peter! Peter!” she called. “Wait up!” When she reached me, she was a little out of breath. “It’s such a nice day,” she declared, flinging her arms toward the sky. “What do you say I walk you home?”     “I don’t know,” I said. Spike had never had much to say to me before, and I had had hopes that it might be possible for me to get through the entire fourth grade without coming within arm’s reach of her.     “Come on,” she said. “You and I can have a nice talk.” It sounded like a command to me, so I followed her. She walked off, singing “The rain it raineth every day.” When I caught up to her, she raised her arm and I thought she was going to knock me on the ear, but instead she flung her arm across my shoulder and gave me a friendly squeeze.     While we walked along, scraping our shoes on the sidewalk and chatting about this and that, I thought to myself, “Gee, this Spike is pretty nice. It just goes to show that you shouldn’t judge people by reputation or appearance.” I almost thought of sharing this observation with Spike, but when I tried putting it into words, it came out as, “You know, Spike, you’re not the rat that everybody thinks you are,” and so I decided to keep it to myself.     “Hey, Pete,” said Spike, knocking me on the shoulder, “a penny for your thoughts.”     “Huh?” I said.     “What’re you thinking about so hard? I bet you haven’t heard a word I said.”     “Oh, uh, nothing,” I said. “Just, uh, nothing.”     “‘Speak,’” she said, chewing her gum enthusiastically and giving me that big grin again.     “Nothing,” I said.     “‘Nothing?’” she said, widening the grin so that I could see the gum again and giving me a knock on the shoulder.     “Nothing,” I said.     “Hey! That’s great!” she said. “That was perfect. Maybe you ought to play Cordelia!”     “Huh?” I said. Then I realized what she was getting at. “Oh, I get it,” I said. “Act I, Scene I. Yeah. Very good.”     “Sure,” she said. “I’ve been practicing. I think I’d be a pretty good Cordelia myself. What do you say?”     “Cordelia?” was what I said.     “Yeah,” said Spike. She poked me in the stomach with her forefinger. “I’m going to try out for the part—and I sure hope I get it.”     “I don’t know—” I began, without knowing how I was going to finish.     “Hey, listen,” she said suddenly. “I bet you haven’t seen the real King Lear, have you?”     “Uh, no,” I confessed. “Is it different?”

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.

14

CLARISSA took to her work with wholehearted determination, though she seemed to have no confidence in her abilities at all. Whenever I gave her a job to do, she would begin stroking her muff and looking at the floor. She’d tell me that it sounded much too hard for her, but that she knew how much I was counting on her, and so she’d try, so long as I’d agree not to be angry with her if she couldn’t do the job the way it should be done. Then she would go off and do the job and come back for another, just as uncertain as ever. I was pleased to see that she had such pluck despite her fears, and I felt that working on the play was really doing something for Clarissa—she was getting to know lots of the kids in the fourth grade, for one thing. In no time at all, Clarissa had recruited a technical director, a property manager, a publicist, stagehands, a prompter, and so on.     She actually made an asset of her timidity, especially when she was recruiting someone for a job. One afternoon I watched her, clipboard in hand, walk up to a group of kids in the hall and say, her eyes wide, her voice quavering, “I need six stagehands, but you don’t want to be stagehands, do you? Probably not. I don’t blame you. I do need six stagehands, though, and I need them right away. I don’t know why anybody would want to do it, really. There’s no glory to the job. You’ll have to work long hours, and you’ll get dirty and sweaty. While the other kids are taking bows, you’ll be backstage, out of sight. You’ll stand there with the applause ringing in your ears and a lump in your throat, thumping one another on the back, and the only satisfaction you’ll get is knowing that you’ve done something fine, really fine.” She brought her muff up to her face and rubbed her eyes with it. Then she swallowed hard, stood up straight and said, “It’s just not worth the trouble, I guess.” She started to walk away, but the boys and girls quickly surrounded her, climbing over one another trying to sign up.

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.

13

I ALSO ENGAGED the help of Matthew Barber. Matthew wasn’t enthusiastic at first. In fact, he was convinced that the production was going to be a farce.     “Peter,” he said, “all of you are going to look like a bunch of idiots when this hits the boards.”     “‘Hits the boards’?” I asked.     “That’s theater talk,” he said. “You’re not very familiar with the theater, are you?” he asked.     I thought of reminding him about my success as an elf, but from the way Matthew’s mouth was twisted I could tell that it wouldn’t go very far toward making him think that I was “familiar with the theater.”     “No,” I confessed.     He shook his head and let out a long sigh. “I’ll never understand school,” he muttered. “Look, Peter,” he said, looking me in the face and putting his hands on my shoulders, “it’s not going to be easy, you know. You can’t just have a bunch of kids running around the stage like madmen and fools. This is a very complicated play.”     “Oh,” I said, “we’re using a simple version, just for kids.”     “I should have known,” he said. “But that doesn’t make any difference. It’s complicated no matter how simple they make it.     This didn’t make any sense to me, but I nodded my head gravely, as if I recognized that it would be impossible not to agree.     “You’ve got to create an atmosphere of gloom,” said Matthew. “At the end, we’ve got to see that Lear has lost everything. You see? Did you read the play?”     “Oh, yeah!” I said. I was hurt that Matthew would think I hadn’t.     “Well, don’t you see what I’m talking about?”     “Well—”     “Worst of all,” said Matthew, “he loses the illusion that his daughters loved him. Only when he’s blind does he finally see the truth. Then he understands that Goneril and Regan think he’s just a crazy old fool.”     I nodded my head in the way that adults did when they meant to indicate by the nodding, “Too true, too true.”     “There’s no fool like an old fool,” I offered. I had heard my parents say this from time to time, and considered it an example of the kind of painfully acquired wisdom that adults laid claim to.     Matthew looked at me incredulously. “‘No fool like an old fool,’” he repeated. “Oh, God, this is going to be just horrible,” he said. “All right, Peter. You really need my help. I’ll do it.”     “Great!” I said. “I knew you’d help me out, Matthew. We’re going to have great fun with this, you’ll see. Here.”     I gave him a copy of The Story of King Lear and His Daughters. Matthew sneered at the book, but he did help me. In his heart of hearts, he must have been convinced that the play was doomed to failure, but part of him had decided to challenge fate on my behalf, to try with everything he had in him to make it a success for my sake. He had an apparently endless supply of ideas for staging the play, and yet he had no real enthusiasm for what he was doing. He would suggest things to me, or explain things to me, or listen tirelessly to my questions, all the time wearing a look that said, “We haven’t got a chance in the world of pulling this off.”     “The way I see the play is this,” Matthew announced one day. “Lear is in the clam-processing business. He owns a big plant. He’s worth a lot of money.”     “Matthew—” I said.     “He knows he’s going to die soon, so he wants his daughters to take over the family business.”     “Matthew,” I said, “we have to use these scripts.”     “Oh, yeah,” said Matthew, “we’ll use those scripts, but we’ll put the kids in costumes that make them look like people in the clam-processing business, and the scenery—”     His eyes lit up, and something almost like a smile formed on his lips.     “—the scenery will look like Babbington!”     “Matthew,” I asked, “couldn’t we just do it the regular way? Couldn’t we just do it the way people usually do it, the way the book says to do it?”     Matthew gave me a look of profound disappointment. “Peter,” he said, as if he were explaining something to a child, speaking as slowly and simply as he could, “you asked for my help, remember? This is our only chance to make something out of this. And it’s my big chance. This is going to make me famous in the fourth grade.” He paused and went right for my weak spot. “It might even make me happy.”     “Matthew,” I said, “I think this is going to get me into a lot of trouble.”

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.

12

MRS. GRAHAM’S FIRST SUGGESTION was that I read King Lear. I did. The school used a simplified, abbreviated, optimistic adaptation called The Story of King Lear and His Daughters, published as part of a series called Classics Made Suitable for Boys and Girls. I read and reread the play, and I tortured my parents with recitations from it at the dinner table, at bedtime, first thing in the morning, and on any occasion that seemed to invite me to quote a line or two.     Mrs. Graham next suggested that I choose an assistant director. I think that what she had in mind was that I would choose a boy from the class, and that by working closely together we would become friends. But she could see from the speed and eagerness with which I said, “Clarissa Bud,” how much I wanted to have her working with me, for during the time that we had spent together repeating the times tables we had grown quite close, and I was certain that Clarissa was not merely someone who made my heart ache but somebody I understood, someone I could trust.

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.

11

I BEGAN MY WORK as director the very next day, full of enthusiasm but with no idea at all of what I was supposed to do. Mrs. Graham called me to her desk while the other students were working on some very tricky multiplication problems that she had written on the blackboard. I began to think that being a director was quite nice. Patiently and with a great deal of pleasure, she explained what my duties would be.     This became the pattern for the next couple of weeks. I would spend part of each day standing beside her desk, listening while she coached me in low, murmuring, conspiratorial tones, tones so low, so murmuring, and so conspiratorial that there were times when I couldn’t figure out what she was saying. I didn’t want to tell her that I couldn’t hear her at those times, so I would just nod my head and hope that I wasn’t missing anything really important.     She never told me directly what I should do. She suggested. I pretended to think the suggestion over and then agreed that it was exactly what should be done. I was as nervous throughout all of this as I have ever been about anything, but I was most nervous—most frightened—in the early days, and what I feared most was that when I actually began directing the fourth-graders I would do something so outrageously foolish, so third-grade, that it would ruin my chances of being accepted by them forever.     In those hours I spent standing beside her desk, Mrs. Graham and I developed a mutual understanding that was quite uncanny. I was soon able to anticipate her gestures so well that I could snatch a chair from in front of her before she barked her shin on it and move her vase out of harm’s way whenever she swept her arm out to make a point. She took a protective attitude toward me, an attitude that she might have taken toward a timid and skittish kitten. I began bringing a chrysanthemum or two each day to add to the bunch of flowers in Mrs. Graham’s vase. This turned out to be a continually changing bunch. Each day she added some fresh flowers and threw away a few of the oldest.     “Do you know why I keep these here on my desk?” she asked me on the day that I first brought her the chrysanthemums.     “Because they look pretty?” I suggested.     “Because they smell pretty,” she said. She leaned toward me and spoke in her conspiratorial mumble. “This classroom stinks,” she said.     I can recall the odor of the room, the odor of chalk dust, ordinary dust, the smell of wet wool that came from the coats and sweaters spread out to dry on the big steam radiators below the windows, the waxy smell of crayons left to melt on the radiators, and, quite prominently, the smell of those wonderful hard-salami sandwiches that Spike used to bring every day in a brown paper bag: thin slices of aromatic salami on spongy white bread with lots of butter. About midmorning, when the smell of Spike’s sandwiches reached my desk, my stomach would begin to growl and my mouth would start to water. The memory alone is enough to make me want to break for lunch.

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.

10

THE TIMES-TABLES BUSINESS left me skittish, afraid each day that something else was going to come up in Mrs. Graham’s class that I wouldn’t know, and that I’d have to put myself through another crash program. Whenever Mrs. Graham began a new lesson with the words “Now, class,” I would reach for my camera and start chewing on my lower lip and praying that she wouldn’t want us to learn anything I didn’t already know. Mrs. Graham could see that I was anxious about something, and she became convinced that I was having trouble making friends among the fourth-graders.     She called me to her desk one day while the rest of the class was at work on a page of multiplication problems. I had finished early, but the work had required so much mental finger-counting that my head hurt.     “Peter,” she said. “How would you like to have some fun and really get to know the boys and girls in the fourth grade at the same time?”     Her cheeks glowed. She was so excited by whatever she was leading up to that I immediately became excited and eager myself.     “You bet,” I said.     “Well, each year the fourth grade puts on a production of King Lear, and this year I’m in charge. I thought that you might like to be the director,” she began.     From the frozen smile on my face Mrs. Graham reasoned that I didn’t know what on earth she was talking about.     “It’s a play,” she said. She examined my face for some sign that I was keeping up with her. She didn’t find any, so she elaborated. “The boys and girls put on costumes and act it out on the stage in the auditorium.” She examined my face again. “Have you ever seen a play?” she asked finally.     “No,” I said, “but I know what you mean.” I did have an idea of what she meant. After all, the annual production of King Lear was an event of long standing, and I had heard people talk about it. I had been an elf in a Christmas pageant, and I knew that a play was something along the same lines but longer and more elaborate. It wasn’t ignorance that had frozen the smile on my face, it was a tiny thought that had taken root in my mind while she spoke. It was the thought that King Lear was going to turn out to be a lot like the times tables.     “I think that you should be the director!” she said. “It will be just wonderful. You’ll get to know nearly all the other fourth-grade boys and girls that way.”     “Gee,” I said, “that would be great!” I meant it. It would be nice to get to know the other fourth-graders. “What should I do?” I asked.     “It won’t be hard, Peter,” said Mrs. Graham. She reached out to pat me on the shoulder, and her elbow struck the vase of flowers on her desk. I lunged toward it and caught the vase with one hand, just as it left the desk top on its way toward the floor. It was quite a feat, I thought. I hardly even spilled any water. When I set the vase back on the desk, I felt that I had in some measure repaid Mrs. Graham for the kindness she was doing me by putting me in a position to get to know the other fourth-graders. “Thank you, Peter,” she said, so off-handedly that the vase might never have fallen. “I’ll help you with all the work you’ll have to do.” She smiled at me, and a warm spot spread around my heart. She reached toward me again, and I reached for the vase at the same time, so that when her elbow struck it I already had a firm grip on it, and it barely moved. She patted me on the shoulder and said, “Everything is going to work out just fine.”

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.

9

IN ONE MISERABLE WEEK, I did learn to answer questions about the times tables more quickly than Mr. Beaker could snap his fingers. I also learned to snap my fingers, and I learned that the pattern on the wallpaper in my room repeated every eleven inches and that the meals my mother made lost all their restorative power when they were handed through my door on a tray, the puddle of gravy around my potatoes already dark and rubbery at the edges. However, I didn’t really learn the times tables very well at all. I memorized them as I might have memorized lines for a performance, and it worked pretty well. I was able to satisfy Mr. Beaker, impress Clarissa during our “practice” sessions, and please Mrs. Graham. But as soon as I had put on my performance, the lines began to slip away from me. Later, when I needed to know one of the products that had, while my mind was occupied with something else, crept into the dark unknown, never to return, I would reconstruct it from one of the ones that remained or count it out on my fingers, at least in my mind.

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.

8

I HAD FIGURED that if anyone could teach me the times tables quickly, it was Mr. Beaker. I was right. Mr. Beaker instituted a crash program in the times tables that very evening. He and Eliza drove up in a gleaming new Starliner, which Mr. Beaker had bought for Eliza’s birthday. Eliza took all of us for a ride, and then we walked around and around the car until there was no longer enough light for us to see well.     “It’s getting pretty dark,” said my father, “we might as well go in. How about a beer, Dudley?”     Mr. Beaker and Eliza and my father and I went inside, but my mother stayed outside, sitting at the wheel of the car, humming a tune. Finally, my father opened the back door and called out to her, “Ella, come on inside now. Come on in and have a beer.”     She didn’t answer him, and he stood in the doorway for a while without saying anything else. Then we heard the car door close, and my mother’s footsteps on the driveway, and then my father moved to one side and my mother came into the kitchen. She was smiling, almost laughing, acting bubbly and girlish. She seemed to me to have gone nuts out there, sitting in the car in the driveway. She hugged my father and rumpled my hair.     “Well,” said Mr. Beaker with a let’s get-down-to-business air, “I’ve come to the conclusion that Peter can learn all he needs to know of the times tables in six days.” He spread a chart out on the kitchen table. We all stood around the table, looking down at the chart. “You see, it is really only necessary for a student at the start of the fourth grade to know the times tables for the numbers one through ten.” He chuckled with pleasure at the clever and efficient way he had tackled the problem. “Of course, the one-times table is trivial, so we can count that as finished right off the bat!” He was having a wonderful time with this. He made a large check mark beside the number 1. My father reached into the refrigerator and took out a couple of beers. He opened them and handed one to Mr. Beaker. “Would you like a beer, Eliza?” he asked.     “Yes, thanks, Bert,” said Eliza.     “How about you, Ella?” my father asked.     “Oh, not a beer,” said my mother. She turned to Eliza and said, “Let’s have something more fun than a beer.” She turned back to my father. “Make us an Old Fashioned, Bert,” she said. My father sighed and began working on a couple of Old Fashioneds.     “Well,” said Mr. Beaker, “The two- and ten-times tables are very easy, so we’ll start with those. Peter should be able to master those tonight—”     He paused and looked at me.     “—if he can keep his mind on the task at hand. I’ll have more to say about that later. Now the four- and five-times tables are really just versions of two and ten, so we’ll take care of those tomorrow night. On Wednesday evening we’ll do three and six. On Thursday we’ll do seven, which is a real rogue.”     He stopped to chuckle and to take a sip of his beer. My father set the Old Fashioneds in front of my mother and Eliza.     “On Friday, we’ll do eight, which will be almost like a vacation. And then on Saturday we’ll do nine, which is probably the toughest of them. On Sunday, we’ll review them all.”     Mr. Beaker stretched, as if the work were over. For him, it nearly was.     “Voila!” he said. “Next week, Peter will go in there knowing the times tables as well as any of them.”     We were all pleased. I felt a new confidence. I was grateful for Mr. Beaker’s help. Then he said, “Now, Peter, let’s go to your room.”     Puzzled, I followed him to my room, where I sat on the edge of the bed and he stood in front of me. He handed me a piece of paper on which he had printed the two- and ten-times tables. “Peter,” he said, resting a hand on my shoulder, “if you’re going to learn these by next week, you’re going to have to focus your attention on the times tables and nothing else. Do you understand what I mean?”     “Yes,” I said.     “We have to be sure that you’re going to focus your attention on the times tables and nothing else, do you understand?”     “No,” I said.     “Peter, you’re going to have to stay in your room until you have memorized these times tables and can answer any questions about them like that.” He snapped his fingers.     “What about supper?” I asked.     “Your mother will give you a plate in here,” he said.

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.

7

WHEN I GOT HOME I spent an hour sitting at the kitchen table talking to my mother about everything that had happened. My glass of milk and the cruller my mother had given me—a kind of which I was passionately fond, a thin fried cruller made of a yeasty dough twisted into the shape of a large pretzel and glazed, thickly, with sugar paste—lay untouched on the table while I went on and on. I hadn’t intended to mention the times tables at all, but when I got to the end of the day and remembered Mrs. Graham’s idea that Clarissa and I “practice” together, it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t want Clarissa to see me fumbling through the times tables. I had to learn them before we began practicing them, so that I could pretend to learn them quickly with Clarissa’s help.     “I have to learn the times tables right away.” I said. “All the other kids know them already, and I don’t. I don’t even know what they are, except that they’re arithmetic.”     “Well, I guess your father and I could teach them to you,” said my mother, with little enthusiasm.     “You know,” I said, picking up my cruller and using it to emphasize the good sense of what I was going to say, “Mr. Beaker could probably help me out.”     “Oh, yes!” said my mother, brightening. “That’s just the right idea! I’ll give him a call right now.” On her way to the phone, she gave me a hug and said, “You’re a good boy, Peter.”

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.