“Are, too. You look green.”
“It’s the reflection off your clogs.”
“Very funny.”
“I thank you,” Mary said, channeling Feet.
CHAPTER FOUR
M ary walked to her last meeting, through the forty blocks that seemed to define her. South Philly was a small town in a big city, where everybody knew everybody else, if they weren’t first cousins. Twilight was coming on, and a coppery sun, useless as a penny, dropped behind the flat asphalt roofs. Satellite dishes and loopy TV antennae made a familiar silhouette against the darkening sky, crisscrossed with sagging phone and cable wires. Old brick rowhouses lined skinny streets parked with older cars, and blackened gum and grime pitted the sidewalks.
Mare, don’t you get it? Nothin’ you’re sayin’ will work.
Soft light filtered through gauzy sheers in the front windows, which displayed plastic flowers, Virgin Marys, and little Italian and American flags, as each family declared its identity in its front window, a bumper sticker for the home. It had been this way for as long as Mary could remember. The new immigrants-Vietnamese, Korean, and Mexican families-displayed their stuff, too, proving that tackiness was universal.
The man is an animal, and you’re talkin’ law!
Mary’s heels clack-clacked on the pavement, a clatter behind her thoughts of Trish. She hadn’t been able to reach her and prayed she’d be safe tonight. Suddenly a front door swung open on her right, interrupting her thoughts. The bluish gray head of elderly Elvira Rotunno popped out, followed by her flowered dress and an apron, accessorized with terry-cloth slippers. She was one of Mary’s clients, and her hooded eyes lit up behind rimless trifocals. “Mare, you here to see Rita?” Elvira hollered.
“Yes.” Mary stopped at her steps. “You know, her name is Amrita, not Rita. She’s Indian, not Italian.”
“I know that, so what?” Elvira waved her off. “She’s an Indian religion where they think God is an elephant. It’s okay by me. I got a cat, and he thinks he’s God.”
Mary let it go. “Great talking to you, but I’m late.”
“I know. You were supposed to be here a half hour ago, but Rita won’t mind. I tol’ her, you’re better than Matlock.” Elvira pointed up with a knotted index finger. “See my new awning? It’s beautiful! You saved me twelve hundred bucks. You didn’t let ’em take advantage.”
Mary smiled. “Thanks, Elvira.”
“Mare, why’n’t you stop in, have somethin’ to eat after you’re done with Rita? Dom’s not workin’ tonight, and I got tiramisu.”
“I can’t, thanks. ’Bye now.” Mary kept going. She was never getting fixed up again and especially not with Dominic Rotunno, who still lived at home and was trouble from the third grade. Maybe she should resign herself to a life of celibacy. Sister Mary DiNunzio, Esq.
He bites me during sex. He likes that. It turns him on.
She reached Amrita’s house, walked up the stoop, and rang a black metal doorbell. The front window contained a child’s diorama inside a gray-and-orange Nike box. The scene showed Noah’s ark, and a McDonald’s French-fry container, cut in half, served as the bright red ship for animals of molded plastic. Green camels and pink lions from the dollar store. The front door opened, and Amrita let her in with a weary half smile. A dental tech, she was still in her scrubs, decorated with smiling molars in red sneakers.
“Sorry I’m late.” Mary stepped inside.
“No worries, I just got in myself,” Amrita said, in her Anglo-Indian lilt. She and her husband were Londoners, transferred to Philly because of his job. She brushed back a black tendril and tucked it into her long ponytail. “How are you, Mary?”
“Fine. And you?”
“Crazy busy.” Amrita’s eyes, wide set and almond shaped, flickered with fatigue, and her generous mouth turned down slightly.
“How’s Dhiren?” Mary asked, and Amrita gestured behind her as she shut the door. A boy in a striped T-shirt and tan shorts flopped on a patterned couch, and his head of wavy dark hair was bent over his Game Boy. His legs, dark skinned and skinny, dangled over the couch. He was nine years old, a fourth-grader at the local public school, where he was going under.
“Dhiren, say hello to Ms. DiNunzio,” Amrita said, but the boy kept playing. “Dhiren, I won’t tolerate such bad manners. Please.”
“Hello, Miss DiNunzio,” Dhiren answered in his cute accent, but he didn’t look up. Amrita frowned, about to rebuke him when Mary put an arm around her shoulder.
“Let it go. I want to talk to you first. By the way, why didn’t you warn me that Elvira’s trying to fix me up?”
“I expected you could handle the situation. Run screaming, my advice.” Amrita smiled, motioning Mary through the dining room to the kitchen, the standard layout for rowhomes. They entered a cozy kitchen, smelling of fish and cooking oil, and Mary pulled up one of the wooden chairs around a small table, with two places marked by yellow plastic mats.
“Did you eat?” Amrita opened a refrigerator plastered with Dhiren’s crayoned dogs and giraffes, from before it had all gone wrong.
“Yes, thanks,” Mary lied. Amrita had enough to do without serving her dinner.
“Tea, then?”
“Yes, thanks. Just plain is fine.” Mary pulled a file and a legal pad from her briefcase. “We still haven’t heard from the school district.”
“I assumed so.” Amrita filled a mug with water, scuffed to the microwave on the counter, and pressed the button after she put the mug inside. “They just wear one down. That’s their strategy.”
“It won’t work with me. I thrive on rejection.” Mary was losing sleep over this case. Dhiren could barely read and write.
“I don’t know why they make it so hard.” Amrita stood by the microwave, and inside the mug turned around and around, a spinning shadow behind frosted glass. “The child cannot read. This, they know.”
“I understand, but we need them to test him. They have a legal obligation to identify him and initiate the testing.”
“They should simply hand him a book. Watch him struggle, like I do.” Amrita punched the button to open the microwave door. “My parents have been saying it for years. He’s dyslexic. They know, they are physicians, both.” Her voice was edged with an anger that came off as haughty, but Mary knew better.
“The tests measure IQ, cognitive ability, and achievement.” She had been boning up on special-education law. “If there’s a significant disparity, they’ll find him eligible for special ed and pay for the right school.”
Amrita frowned. “I told you his IQ. It’s 110. Very high. Obviously, he should be reading better. He should be writing better. His writing is unintelligible.”
“I know that, too.” Mary had Dhiren’s papers, with words that faced backward or looked like alphabet soup. “But they won’t take our word for it, and they won’t give him an IEP without the tests.”
Amrita plopped a teabag into the cup. “I never make a proper cup anymore. This will have to do. Don’t tell Barton.”
“I won’t.”
“So what do we do, Mary? What is our plan?” Amrita fetched a spoon from the silverware drawer and the mug of tea, its paper tag fluttering like the tiniest white flag. She came to the table and set the spoon and mug down, the tea releasing a humid cloud.
“We’ve requested the testing, so they have sixty days.”
“In the meantime, Dhiren suffers.” Amrita sat down heavily in the opposite chair.
“There’s another way, but it’s expensive. We can do an independent evaluation, but it costs. Three thousand dollars.”
“We can’t afford that. Can’t you get us somebody sooner, cheaper?”
“I’ll look around.”
“Let’s crack on, then.”
“Will do.” Mary got the gist of the Briticism and noted that Amrita made the decision without Barton. A software programmer, he traveled for work and wasn’t Indian, which Mary sensed had strained the relationship with Amrita’s parents. “Now, tell me how Dhiren is.”