Page 12 of The Life of Chuck

On the last day of sixth grade, Miss Richards—a sweet, hippy-dippyish young woman who had no command of discipline and would probably not last long in the public education system—tried to read Chuck’s class some verses of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” It didn’t go well.

The kids were rowdy and didn’t want poetry, only to escape into the months of summer stretching ahead.

Chuck was the same, happy to throw spitballs or give Mike Enderby the finger when Miss Richards was looking down at her book, but one line clanged in his head and made him sit up straight.

When the class was finally over and the kids set free, he lingered. Miss Richards sat at her desk and blew a strand of hair back from her forehead. When she saw Chuck still standing there, she gave him a weary smile. “ That went well, don’t you think?”

Chuck knew sarcasm when he heard it, even when the sarcasm was gentle and self-directed. He was Jewish, after all. Well, half.

“What does that mean when he says ‘I am large, I contain multitudes’?”

That made her smile perk up. She propped one small fist on her chin and looked at him with her pretty gray eyes. “What do you think it means?”

“All the people he knows?” Chuck ventured.

“Yes,” she agreed, “but maybe he means even more. Lean forward.”

He leaned over her desk, where American Verse lay on top of her grade book. Very gently, she put her palms to his temples. They were cool. They felt so wonderful he had to suppress a shiver. “What’s in there between my hands? Just the people you know?”

“More,” Chuck said. He was thinking of his mother and father and the baby he never got a chance to hold. Alyssa, sounds like rain. “Memories.”

“Yes,” she said. “Everything you see. Everything you know. The world , Chucky. Planes in the sky, manhole covers in the street. Every year you live, that world inside your head will get bigger and brighter, more detailed and complex. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” Chuck said. He was overwhelmed with the thought of a whole world inside the fragile bowl of his skull.

He thought of the Jefferies boy, hit in the street.

He thought of Henry Peterson, his father’s bookkeeper, dead at the end of a rope (he’d had nightmares about that).

Their worlds going dark. Like a room when you turned out the light.

Miss Richards took her hands away. She looked concerned. “Are you all right, Chucky?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Then go on. You’re a good boy. I’ve enjoyed having you in class.”

He went to the door, then turned back. “Miss Richards, do you believe in ghosts?”

She considered this. “I believe memories are ghosts. But spooks flapping along the halls of musty castles? I think those only exist in books and movies.”

And maybe in the cupola of Grandpa’s house, Chuck thought.

“Enjoy your summer, Chucky.”