They were seven dollars each but three for fifteen. Lucy spent almostten whole minutes debating whether she should buy three of them—the tiger shark, the great white, and the hammerhead—or only one. Finally, she picked up all three and carried them to the counter. What the hell, right? It was fifteen dollars, and deep down she knew she could blow all two thousand dollars out of her wish fund, and it still wouldn’t heal his broken heart or hers. Not like she was going apartment hunting or car shopping anytime soon.
No, she couldn’t justify a two-hundred-dollar LEGO set, but she could let herself buy him all three sharks.
“Do you have free gift wrap?” she asked.
The girl raised an eyebrow. “You want me to gift wrap three little sharks?”
“If you don’t mind. Please?”
“Sure thing,” the girl said. “These for your son?”
Lucy swallowed the knot in her throat again.
“It’s for a little boy in my school,” Lucy said. “He’s going through a hard time, and he doesn’t get a lot of presents.”
“You a teacher?” she asked as she put the sharks into a cardboard box. Lucy pointed at the blue dinosaur paper. Christopher would like that better than the paper with rainbows on it.
“Teacher’s aide at Redwood.”
“Do you know riddles and stuff?”
“Riddles? I guess,” Lucy said, confused by the question. “We do a unit on jokes, puns, and riddles with the kids every April.”
“Do you know this riddle—Why is a raven like a writing desk?” The girl wrapped the paper around the box.
“Yeah, of course,” Lucy said. “It’s from eitherAlice’s Adventures in WonderlandorThrough the Looking-Glass. I can’t remember which one.”
“You know the answer?”
Did she know the answer? Once, long ago, someone had asked her the same riddle as the setup to a joke. There wasn’t a solution, at least not according to Lewis Carroll.
“There isn’t a real answer,” Lucy said. “It’s a Wonderland riddle. Everyone’s mad in Wonderland.”
“Hmm,” the girl said. “Bummer.”
“Why do you ask?”
“People were talking about it online,” the girl said. “I’ve been trying to figure it out all day.”
“Good luck.”
The girl put the wrapped box into a brown bag with a handle and a purple turtle printed on the front. It was a nice gift for fifteen dollars plus sales tax.
But the pirate ship,she thought as she left the store,would have been a lot nicer.
—
By the time Lucymade it to school, they were singing the final songs—“De Colores” followed by “The Farmer in the Dell” in English and Spanish. Whenel quesowas finally standing alone, the first bell rang, and it was the Rapture all over again. In seconds the classroom was empty but for Lucy and Theresa.
“How’d it go?” Theresa asked Lucy as they both started on cleanup duty.
“Don’t ask,” Lucy said, trying not to cry.
Theresa gave her a quick hug. “I was afraid of that.” She was a woman wise enough not to turn it into a long hug, or Lucy really would start crying again.
Lucy took a shuddering breath and tried to pull herself together for the third or fourth time that day.
“It’s okay. You’ll get there. Just keep saving your pennies.”
