Chapter 7 And the Winner Is…
And the Winner Is….
“REALLY?” MARCELLE said, disbelieving and ecstatic. “You guys really like it?”
Allegra and Luca had dressed up to come to the campus and announce the winner on the Friday before finals week, and Isaac was so, so proud of his class and his friends.
His class had been excited and polite and all smiles as the people who had mapped out a pixel drawing for the blankets all stood up and showed off their pictures to the rest of the class.
Each entry had gotten extra credit and a vinyl sticker of a heart-shaped ball of rainbow yarn with knitting needles stuck in it.
The kids loved a good sticker—they went on laptops, binders, water bottles, and seriously, they were one of the purest rewards Isaac could give.
After the sharing phase was over, Isaac explained to the class that, while all the designs were awesome, for the contest, they’d developed criteria for judging.
“This doesn’t mean the pictures that didn’t match the criteria were bad in any way,” he told the students.
“It just means that since Allegra and I have to make the blanket, it needed to be something we wouldn’t hate by the time we were done, and something that a baby could use.
” He chuckled. “You guys, some of you had pictures that would need thousands of squares, and frankly, I’m not that dedicated to this project. ”
The class laughed like it was supposed to, and Isaac was hopeful there would be no hard feelings.
Isaac named the kids whose pictures had met the criteria, and they stood up proudly, while Allegra and Luca walked by each kid and told them something they’d really loved about their drawing, while giving out another tiny prize—a tiny square (Allegra’s first efforts) on a key ring.
The kids had gotten excited about that too, and it could have been because it was the last week of school before finals, but Isaac liked to think that it was also because he had nice kids.
And then they’d named their winner.
Marcelle was practically floating.
“You really like it?” he asked for probably the twelfth time.
“It’s great,” Luca said. “I love the rainbow fish and the little boat—it’s super cute without being too intricate.”
“It’s so fun,” Allegra said to the boy. “I love your sense of design—and it feels like you know little kids, right? Like you know they don’t like things too complicated, but they love color?”
Marcelle gave a modest little smile. “I got four brothers and sisters—two sets of twins. I go home to watch them all the time. They’re so much fun. I made a copy of this to put on the fridge so they could see it.”
Isaac wanted to clutch at his chest. He’d known Marcelle’s homelife had its challenges, but hearing him talk about his siblings with so much pride made his eyes burn.
This was why he loved teaching. Not the steady paycheck Todd had said was adequate, and not the summers off.
It was just nice, as a human being, to see the best of human beings as they launched into the world.
Isaac had to settle everybody down then to give them last-minute reminders about the final next week, and to congratulate everybody who’d entered the contest for extra credit all over again.
As the last bell rang and the kids ran out excitedly, Isaac stopped Marcelle before he disappeared.
“Hey,” he said. “I know the ultimate prize was supposed to be having your blanket made—and we’ll do that! But I wanted to give you something for you since we’re keeping the blanket.”
Marcelle took the gift certificate and looked suspiciously at him. “What’s this?”
“It’s a gift certificate for the local art supply place, with another one for a basic craft store. Luca and Allegra contributed too. We figured this way you could get the super-nice art supplies and all the plastic beads you could ask for.”
Marcelle grinned at them, practically glowing. “Solid, Mr. B. This is solid. Thank you so much—you guys, wait until I tell my mom!”
He went tearing out of the classroom, and Allegra sank down into Isaac’s comfortable chair while Isaac and Luca rested on desktops facing her.
“Wow,” she said. “That was intense. I can’t believe you do that five periods a day. Wow.”
Isaac laughed. “Yeah, well, I was exhausted my first two years. By the time I had tenure, I knew I’d earned it, because I’d stopped sleeping through my weekends.”
“I bet.” Allegra shook her head. “But they were so great! I can see why… you know. Teaching’s such a passion.”
Isaac grimaced. “Well, you did see them on their best day. I pulled the kids who’d participated in the extra credit out of their other classes for this—it was pretty celebratory.”
“What’s a worst day like?” Luca asked perceptively.
Isaac shook his head. “Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope… not gonna talk about a worst day.”
At that moment Roxy bounded in.
“Oh my God!” she crowed, and Isaac nodded.
“Right?”
“Like, way amazing!”
“Right?”
“Like, they got—”
“So excited!” They both said in tandem, and Isaac wondered if he was glowing like she was.
“That was a rush, Isaac,” Roxy finished breathlessly.
“Not gonna lie. We gotta do that next year. And you gotta take pictures of the blanket you finish. It’ll be amazing.
In a million years, I never thought they’d get so amped up over your sticks-and-string thing.
I’m boggled.” She turned to Allegra. “And you must be the lucky recipient of the blanket. Congratulations!”
Allegra gave her a shy smile. “Thank you. You must be Roxy—Isaac talks about you a lot. And the kids, uhm, Falcon, Pigeon, and Sparrow?”
Roxy grimaced. “Yeah. My husband—I mean, I get having a passion, but not once has Isaac suggested naming the kids something like Worsted or Acrylic. Sadly, I’m not married to Isaac, so….”
“Falcon, Pigeon, and Sparrow,” Allegra said, nodding like it made total sense.
Isaac and Roxy called the kids by their middle names, which were a little better.
Justice, Patricia, and Anne. When Isaac had learned that the third one—also his goddaughter—would be named “Sparrow Anne,” he’d glared at Brian and said, “Just so you know, when she runs away, she’ll be at my house, and we’ll be filling out change-of-name forms. But you do you. ”
Todd hadn’t been there, of course, because Isaac had known Brian would laugh at that but Todd would have been mortified.
“Brian wanted to go into the forestry service so badly,” Roxy said wistfully. “I wonder, sometimes, if we’d been on an isolated hill in the middle of The Devil’s Woodland Anus, if he would have let me name the boy Brian Junior.”
“If you have a fourth and he names it Vulture, I’m abducting that child before you sign the paperwork,” Isaac said, meaning it. He felt like it was the least he could do.
“I’d slip the kid out the back to keep him from having that name,” Roxy said, nodding. Then she glanced up at Allegra. “And lucky you, you can name your little up-and-comer something sane.”
Outside, the sound of kids pelting by and chattering had died out, and Roxy looked wistfully out Isaac’s window and sighed.
“You guys,” she said, “It is almost the weekend, and thanks to Isaac, I’ve got a babysitter tomorrow night so I can have a date with my husband. But right now, I’m dying for a drink with my friends. You guys game?”
“Not your teacher friends?” Luca asked.
Roxy shrugged. “Isaac and I are sort of a matched set. That a problem?” She tilted her head at Luca, and for a moment Isaac had a flashback to when Todd had told Isaac not to call Roxy at home more than twice a week because it wasn’t socially appropriate.
They’d had to coordinate their calls, and they’d gotten really good at texting, because Todd didn’t want to feel bad about Isaac’s social life.
“Not a problem at all,” Luca said, smiling. “I didn’t want to get in the way. I know when I take my crew out for a drink, we get very… I can’t think of the word….”
“Groupie,” Allegra said.
“That’s not the word.” Luca stared at her.
“Clannish,” she said instead.
Luca grimaced and glanced at Isaac and Roxy. “Okay, that’s sort of the word. But this isn’t like intruding on a group,” he amended. “This is like having a drink with friends.”
“There you go.” Roxy smiled at him and then glanced at Isaac and raised her eyebrows.
Isaac gave her a flat look, although secretly he was very pleased that she seemed to enjoy Luca and Allegra’s banter. “Of course I’m coming,” he said. “I thought we agreed that I’m not dead yet.”
She shrugged. “You were a little dead for a while. We’ve gone out very few times in the last year.”
Isaac shook his head. “She was preggers,” he told them. “Knocked up. Quickening. With child. I may have been dead, but on the days I was ready to go out, somebody was gestating.”
“Uh-oh,” Allegra said. “We’d better go soon, or gestating will be my excuse. I don’t want alcohol, of course, but I could eat you all under the table right now.”
Roxy grinned at Isaac. “It’s like you brought her here just for me.” She helped Allegra out of her chair and linked arms with her. “Come on, sweetie. I’ll tell you bibles full of truth about the one thing that will make the two of them run screaming in horror.”
“Hoohas,” Allegra said soberly, and Luca and Isaac both shuddered while the two women laughed their way out of the building.
DINNER AND drinks—all nonalcoholic, because for all her talk, Roxy was still nursing the youngest one, and Luca didn’t want to knock back a beer while his sister couldn’t, and Isaac didn’t want to feel like the only heel getting buzzed—was far more fun than Isaac had anticipated.