The Speculist

As she was thinking about this, something completely unexpected happened. There was a knock at the door. Myra got up to answer it (wondering who in the world it could be and hoping that it wasn’t the Jehovah’s Witnesses again.) She opened the door to find four children standing before her. Children she knew.

Oh, my, yes.

She knew them.

All but one of them, anyway. There was Judy, the black girl who was a Mongoloid besides. Myra remembered that she wasn’t supposed to use that word, though she couldn’t recall who had told her not to. But it was no matter. She couldn’t recall a good many things these days, and had decided not to let it bother her. Anyway, the girl was somehow not a Mongoloid anymore. Myra had never seen anything like that before. And here was Todd, also Mongoloid and deaf; only not any longer. And a boy that she didn’t know. And Grace, of course.

Baby Grace.

A year older. These were her children, children from the home. Changed somehow, but still the children she had known and cared for. For them to just show up like this at her doorstep, apparently healed of their infirmities…well if that wasn’t evidence of the New Heaven and the New Earth, then she didn’t know what would have been.

She let the children in. She sat them down and poured them all some lemonade. She wanted above all to hear what Grace had to say. Little Grace, who had been her heart’s darling. Just like her mother before her, who had been so dear to Myra. At some level, Myra knew that she was leaving out a considerable amount of unpleasantness by remembering things this way, but she wouldn’t have cared about that even if she could. It seemed that there was someone who was always trying to make her feel guilty about all those things that had happened. Someone who had blamed her for everything. But now she was free from that: she really and truly could not remember who her accuser was.

And she was glad.

Because she had loved Grace, there was no question of that. And her mother, what was that girl’s name? Geraldine? Jody? It didn’t matter. Myra knew that she had cared for the girl and tried her best to do right by her. It wasn’t her fault that things had come to a bad end. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.

Some things just couldn’t be prevented.

Try though she might to get Grace to talk to her, Myra found that it was Judy and Todd who seemed to have the most to say. Judy was always a talky girl. Never quite so much as…some of the others, perhaps, but still quite talky. Todd was a surprise, though. He never could talk before. He couldn’t even hear. And yet now here he was and he could. And he did.

Myra wished, in fact, that he would talk a little less, so that she could finally get a word in with Grace. But he just kept right on with a long and complicated story about how the Superintendent was trying to shut the home down. This did not come as a surprise to Myra, not at all. Superintendent Jepson (she had no difficulty remembering that name) had always been a small-minded and vindictive little man. She had struggled with him for years over the issue of allowing her children to attend classes at what he called his school.

Of course, it wasn’t his at all, was it?

It was a public facility; it belonged to the city. The children from the home had as much right to attend the Special Needs school as any other child in town. Only a heartless bureaucrat like Jepson would fail to acknowledge that, would lead successive school boards in barring her children from access. So it was no surprise to learn that he had taken the next step and was now moving to have the school closed.

Still, the details of it all were rather confusing. Myra tried to listen attentively to what the boy was telling her, but it was difficult. Her mind kept wandering onto other subjects, mostly memories of her time at the home. She hadn’t thought much about the home lately and now the memories were flooding back. It was odd, but it seemed that there were quite a few memories missing, even more than should have been missing, and this troubled her. Plus, the boy was hard to follow in his own right. His sentences were long and complicated. And he would occasionally use words that Myra couldn’t quite remember.

He reached the end of his explanation and then asked Myra whether they could count on her for her help and support.

She told him that they could, of course they could, no question about it. Whereupon the boy produced a checkbook and asked her to write out a check as he had described.

Myra stared at it blankly.

“I’m sorry, young man,” she said after a moment, “Todd. But why did you say you need me to write a check?”

“To make sure that the home’s funds aren’t confiscated,” said Todd. “Once we have the money in cash form, we’ll move it into an escrow account where it will be safe until a court can rule in our favor.”

Myra looked at the checkbook again. She didn’t know what to do.

“You see, Miss Baker,” said Judy, “it’s like Todd said. We’ve all undergone a new experimental treatment and that’s why we’re doing so well. Now that we’re cured, Mr. Jepson says that there’s no reason for the home to stay in operation. So he’s trying to get us shut down. We think he’s going to make a grab at the money in the home’s accounts, and we need to stop him from doing it.

“I see,” said Myra, and she did. She smiled at Judy. Why couldn’t the boy have put it so simply?

“All right, then,” she said, taking the checkbook and pen from Todd’s hands.

“Who do I make this out to?”

“Just make it out to Cash,” said Todd.

She looked at him, puzzled.

“It’s just to save time,” Judy explained. “That way, whoever can go to the bank first can cash it.”

“Fine,” said Myra, smiling once again. “And what was the amount again?”

“Eight thousand dollars,” said Judy, before Todd could speak.

Myra dutifully wrote out the check and detached it from the checkbook. She handed it to Todd. She made a note on the check stub and a full entry in the register in the back of the book. Just as she had done so many times before.

“My goodness,” she said, handing the checkbook back to Todd. “That must be the biggest check I ever wrote.”

“Thank you Miss Baker,” said Grace, who had been quiet to this point. She hugged Myra.

Myra was pleased.

“Why, you’re welcome, darling.” She ran a hand through Grace’s short blonde hair. “Such a big girl now, and so pretty. Your mother will be so happy to see you.”

Grace pulled back.

“My mother?”

A tremendous wave of sorrow washed over Myra. Why had she said that? What could she be thinking? The little girl’s mother — Jolene, that was her name — had been sent off to the state home years before. Myra remembered now. The flag; the disappearance. The girl’s unexpected rise and fall. The child would not be seeing her mother any time soon, might never see her. An echo sounded from somewhere deep in Myra’s obscured memory:

“I just meant…” Myra began, but she didn’t know what to say. For a moment there, it had seemed that she was in a place where everything had been made right. And in such a place, surely the little girl would see her mother again. But it was just some trick of the mind.

“Miss Baker just meant that your mother would be real proud of you, Grace,” said Judy. “And we all know that.”

“Yes, that’s it,” said Myra.

Grace looked from Myra to Judy and back.

“Thank you for helping us,” said Grace.

Todd stood up, placing his empty glass on the coffee table.

“I’m afraid we have to be leaving, now,” he said. “Thank you very much for your help, and for the lemonade.”

“Leaving? But you only just got here. And I have so much I want to ask you.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Baker,” said Judy, also rising. “We’ll just have to come back and see you again. We can do that now that we’re better. But we have to get back to the home and take care of things.”

The children started for the door and Myra reluctantly followed. She opened the door for them. They said their good-byes and departed. Myra watched them as they left.

“Wait,” she called after them, just as they were making their way through the gate of her chain link fence. The children stopped and turned to face her.

“I just have to know one thing,” she said. She gestured in the general direction of the mountains. “Do you children have something to do with all this?” she asked.

Judy smiled.

“What do you mean, Miss Baker? What could we possibly have to do with that?”

Of course, Myra thought. Of course. What had ever possessed her to ask such a silly question?

“I mean. Does all this have something to do with you?”

“Mount Evans is a long way from here,” said Todd.

Myra nodded. Of course, of course.

But as they turned and walked away, she caught a glimpse of that quiet boy, then one she had never seen before.

He looked surprised that she had asked. Maybe even a little scared.