told Francesca. Several of her minions began repeating
her words in a loop without pause. Lane wondered if the
girl had made up this rule, or if she was repeating some-
thing her teacher had said. Francesca could be difficult,
but that was no excuse for anyone, especially a teacher,
to make a rule of exclusion.
She glanced at Henry, who remained focused on his
fort. Judging by its height, she guessed he’d been at it
for some time. She wondered whether this was a good
thing, her son diligently locking himself in behind a tall wall. She didn’t dwell on it because Francesca’s crying
now turned into sobs. She sounded bereft. She waved her
hand in the air, as if she were desperate for Madam, who
was still reading, to call on her.
Once again Lane was reminded how despite all the
noise that came out of Francesca’s mouth, she had tiny
hands; the hands of a child. She was a child. A child being teased so hard, she was turning into a puddle of misery.
238
Rules for Moving
Lane called out, “Francesca, are you okay?”
At the sound of her voice the children froze, except
for Henry, who hearing his mother speak in a classroom
where mothers were not allowed, stood up so suddenly
his fort collapsed around him. Several children laughed
at the sight of Henry surrounded by tumbled blocks.
Francesca’s small hands turned into hard fists and she
let out a scream. The children blithely put their fingers
in their ears and waited for it to pass.
Madam looked alarmed. Apparently she didn’t know
Francesca. Perhaps Francesca took another language.
Spanish or Chinese.
“Arrête!” Madam shouted, bolting up from her trance.
She noticed Lane in the doorway. “Who are you?”
It was then that Miss Oppido walked in, with Miss
Fiske hurrying behind. Lane saw the two of them take in
the scene: Madam screaming, “Arrête!” Francesca shrieking full blast. Henry ashen-faced in the middle of his collapsed fort. Children with fingers plugged in their ears.
Lane frozen in the doorway.
Miss Oppido clapped her hands. “What on earth is
going on here?”
Francesca stopped screaming.
Madam walked over to where the principal was stand-
ing. “One minute the children were playing quietly. The
next minute a girl was screaming and this woman was
standing in the doorway, yelling.”
Miss Oppido turned to Lane. “Why are you here?”
“To pick up Henry.”
“You can’t do that,” Miss Fiske chided her. “Just show
up and take your child. We have rules about pickup at
dismissal.”
Miss Oppido swiveled on her pumps. “Follow me.”
239
Nancy Star
Lane followed the principal down the hall and out
the double doors of the school to the bullpen where
the parents whose children didn’t take the bus wait-
ed. Lane scanned the crowd of people she didn’t know
and people she’d briefly met whose names she’d already
forgotten.
For a moment, conversations stopped, the parents tak-
ing note of the mom being escorted out of the building
by the principal. Then it started up again. It seemed to
Lane that everyone was engaged in animated conversation
with a dismissal-time buddy. Everyone but her.
h h
h h
They were both quiet in the car on the way home, but
as soon as they got inside Henry asked, “Do you need
to cry? If you need to cry, you should. Otherwise you’ll
get stopped up, right?”
He paid such close attention to everything. “I don’t
need to cry. But thank you for asking. That’s sweet. I
have a question for you.” She touched his head, felt his
curls, felt his warmth and asked, “Have you been hug-
ging Francesca?”
Henry looked at his shoes. “Yes.”
She nodded. “So, hugging is a great thing when both
people want to hug. But if one person does and the other
person doesn’t, it’s not okay.”
“I know,” Henry said. “I don’t like it when people
hug me. Unless it’s you.”
“Exactly. I love when you hug me and I love to hug
you. You can hug me anytime you want. But today I
learned that Francesca doesn’t like it when you hug her.
So you have to stop.”
240
Rules for Moving
“I don’t want to hug her. I only hug her because she
told me to.”
“What do you mean?”
“She told me that she’d stop telling Mabel you kid-
napped her if I hugged her. So I did. Then I heard her tell Jasmine you kidnapped her, so I ran over and hugged her
again, harder, since the first time I hugged her it didn’t work. Then she got mad and she told Miss Fiske. Miss Fiske gave me a talk about, Do I Know What Personal Space
Is and Do I Know Hugging Francesca is Inappropriate.”
She took in how he slowly said the word, Inappropriate, making sure he got every syllable right. “Did you tell
Miss Fiske that you hugged Francesca because she asked
you to?”
“I wanted to but my mouth didn’t work.” Henry
studied his feet for a moment and then asked if he could
go draw.
Lane blinked her dry eyes. “Want to do something
together? Maybe bake cookies.” She suddenly realized
they didn’t have ingredients to make cookies. “We’ll
have to go to the store first but that could be fun. Or we could go for a bike ride.” She suddenly remembered she
didn’t have a bike. “You could go for a bike ride while I
run beside you. Or we drive to the nature preserve. Want
to go for a hike?” She wished she had hiking shoes, or a
bike, or ingredients for cookies.
“No thank you. I’d like to draw.”
“Can I draw with you?”
“I think today I’d like to draw alone.”
“Of course. Have fun.” She watched as Henry disap-
peared to draw in the living room. Watching him go,
her body felt heavy. Heavy-hearted. She found her phone
and called the only person she had to whom she would
241
Nancy Star
share that feeling but Shelley didn’t pick up. She checked the time. Of course she didn’t pick up. In England it was
the middle of the night. Who was she kidding? Even if
it were the middle of the day, Shelley never picked up.
h h
h h
After dinner Henry asked, “Do we have anything special
for dessert?”
Another regret. She should have stocked up on snacks
and desserts. There was nothing. She was not keeping up.
She was just getting by, getting through her day, meeting
Henry’s bus on time, giving Summer enough of what she
needed so that she would have nothing negative to report.
But things were falling through the cracks. And it wasn’t
just special snacks and desserts and ingredients for cookies.
Earlier in the day she noticed they were down to the last
package of toilet tissue. Except f
or one pair of socks with a heel so thin it was transparent, all of Henry’s socks and underwear were sitting in the laundry room sorter, waiting for her to do a wash. There was now only enough milk in
the refrigerator for a single bowl of cereal. Tomorrow Lane would have to make do with drinking her coffee black.
Maybe there was something for dessert she’d missed.
She opened the freezer hoping for a forgotten pint of ice
cream but they hadn’t been in the house long enough for
ice cream to be forgotten. “Sorry, buddy. We’re all out.
There’s nothing for dessert.”
“Wait.” Henry ran over to the counter and found a
paper plate covered with foil. “What about this?”
Lane had forgotten about her neighbor Karin’s biscotti.
“Would you like one? Do you like caramel?” Henry nod-
ded and took one and Lane did the same.
242
Rules for Moving
“I like it,” she said. She wasn’t totally lying. She liked the salty caramel flavor. But the biscotti was stale. Still, better than nothing, she thought, until her last bite when her tooth broke.
Unlike Lane’s sister, Rory the dentist always answered
her phone. “Come on over. I’ll take a look.”
It didn’t take long for Rory to assess the situation. “It’s an avulsion. But don’t worry. I can take care of it. Want
to come in my car? Or we could meet at the office. It’s
just ten minutes away.”
“You mean now?” Lane asked and Rory nodded. “It
can wait till morning. I’m not—”
“If you want to save that tooth, don’t wait. It’s really
not a big deal. I end up at my office one night a week
at least. Sometimes two. You’d be surprised how often
people have dental emergencies.”
h h
h h
Lane drove to Rory’s office so she could have more time
to convince Henry that just because he’d come up with
the idea of having biscotti for dessert, it didn’t mean it was his fault that her tooth broke. “That tooth’s been
bothering me for months,” she told him. “I shouldn’t
have ignored it. That’s on me, not you. Okay?” His nod
was not convincing.
She’d failed him again. She failed him every day.
Every day in a different way. Today because she’d bitten
down on a biscotti with a tooth she’d been neglecting.
Now, instead of getting into pajamas and listening to a
Tell Me That Story he was being schlepped to the dentist.
The tooth was not the problem. The problem was there
wasn’t a single person she felt comfortable calling to ask 243
Nancy Star
to stay with Henry for an hour while she took care of a
dental emergency. Her shoulders sank. She’d lived with
this fact her whole life. Everyone in her family knew it.
She did not know how to have friends. Which was fine
when Lane was single and fine when Lane was married
to the friendliest person she’d ever met and fine when
Henry was born and Aaron was there to pick up the slack.
But Aaron was gone and it wasn’t fine anymore.
She looked in the rearview mirror. Henry, gazing out
the window. No matter how many times she failed him,
he never complained.
After they got out of the car, she noticed Henry didn’t
have his sketch pad. “Did you leave your sketch pad at
home? We can go back and get it.” She was wondering
how much Rory would mind the delay when Henry
interrupted her thoughts.
“It’s not at home. I don’t have it anymore.”
“Why?”
He shrugged.
The front door of the single-story office building
swung open. “Welcome to my world,” Rory said.
Henry entered first, with Lane right behind him, into
Rory’s waiting room. Spotlights were pointed to a wall
covered with photographs of children’s faces, rows of
stapled Polaroids memorializing first-visit smiles, joyous and expansive, bashful and forced.
“There’s some books over there,” Rory told Henry.
“And LEGOs over there. Believe me, you’ll have more
fun playing here than watching your mom’s tooth get
drilled. Or pulled. Hopefully not pulled. Ready?” she
asked Lane.
“You want to come in with me?” Lane asked Henry.
“Or play out here?”
244
Rules for Moving
Henry sat down at the box of LEGOs, making his
choice clear. He looked forlorn. Lane pressed her lips
together and forced herself to follow Rory into the exam
room.
h h
h h
Between the sound of the drill and the noise of the in-
strument hooked over the side of her mouth to suck out
her spit, Lane didn’t realize Rory was speaking through
her mask at first. It was only when she dropped her mask
that Lane understood she’d just been asked a question.
The Novocain made it hard to speak. “Pahdon?”
“Do you think it could have anything to do with the
video?”
“Pahdon?” Her body felt heavy with regret. It had taken so long for the Novocain to work—“Very sensitive
nerves,” Rory concluded—that Lane’s reserve of neutral
conversation had been exhausted. Still, she regretted
sharing that she was upset about her visit to the principal and unnerved by the teachers’ complaint that Henry was
hugging too much.
“I’m just guessing,” Rory said. “I don’t really know…”
She went back to drilling. When the drill stopped she
finished her thought. “But it just seems like maybe it could be connected to the video. I know everyone has to be
super careful right now. Which is good. But for a little
the teachers saw the video and it made them think, okay,
maybe Henry hugging is not a one-off thing. You know?”
Lane didn’t know. She had no idea what Rory was
talking about. But before she could admit that, Rory’s
mask was back up and her foot was tapping a pedal Lane
245
Nancy Star
couldn’t see. The drill shrieked on. The room filled with
the smell of burned tooth. Lane closed her eyes and tried
to concentrate on remembering to breathe.
“Spit.”
Lane spit and watched her blood-tinged spittle circle
down the small drain.
“Here.” Rory handed her a tissue so she could blot
her mouth dry. “Could it be that the teachers think hug-
ging is a problem for the family? Like, in some families
people drink too much and in some families people hug
too much? I’m just thinking out loud.”
Before the drill started up again Lane touched Rory’s
arm. “Wha oo you mean?”
Rory had no trouble understanding. “I mean, is it pos-
sible Henry’s teachers saw the video of you on YouTube
and connected the dots? Connected them wrong.”
“I ohn’t oh wha you mean.”
Rory laughed. “Okay. After I get this tooth fixed up,
I’ll show you what I mean.”
When they were done, Rory shepherded Lane into
th
e small office where she discussed root canals and suspicious growths on the phone with endodontists and throat
surgeons. It her took about a minute to find what she was
looking for on her computer. It took longer than that for
the video to load. “Here we go.” She swiveled the screen
toward Lane.
It took a moment for Lane to understand what she was
seeing: a video taken by one of her parents’ neighbors in
Florida, one of the people who’d held up their phones to
capture the moment when she’d embraced the driver of
the recycling truck. She could hear it in the background,
people chanting, “Hug. Hug. Hug.”
246
Rules for Moving
“How did you find this?” The thought hit her hard.
“Did you google me?”
Rory laughed. “I wish I had time to google peo-
ple.” She stopped to think about it. “I guess someone
googled you. Who first showed this to me?” she won-
dered aloud.
First showed it to her. More than one person, then.
h h
h h
Doctor Bruce was booked solid for the next few days
but he offered to squeeze her in for a short video chat.
Before the call, Lane sat quietly at the desk in her home
office, repeating, Do Not Sound Defensive. Do Not Sound Defensive. The last thing she needed was for Doctor Bruce to take the school’s side. Doctor Bruce told her there was only one side. Henry’s side. A lot of people said that, but it never felt like any of them meant it.
The therapist didn’t bother with small talk. “What’s
going on?”
“There’s been a problem at school.”
“What kind of problem?”
Being careful to sound concerned but not angry, she
recounted the meeting with the principal. She described
the atmosphere in the room at the meeting as hostile. She
told him the nurse was alarmed by the wound that Henry
got when his zipper caught on his throat. She shared what
Henry had told her about Francesca asking him to hug her
and how the school reported that behavior as troubling.
She admitted her discomfort at her discovery that someone
had googled her and shared with her neighbors a video of
her hugging the recycling truck driver in Florida. Finally 247
Nancy Star
she reported what Henry told her, that his teacher had
taken away his sketch pad.
The doctor had been sitting perfectly still until she
said that. He shifted and his eyes narrowed. “Why would
she do that?”
“She said it’s become a distraction. That all the chil-