Educating Simon (13 page)

He opened the door to his apartment and walked into a short hallway. “That's my room,” he said, pointing to the right, “and that's Mommy's office.” He pointed to the left. Out of politeness, I didn't look into either of them. Past Toby ahead of me I could see a room full of light and a huge bay window that did, indeed, have an amazing view of the city. Toby jumped and landed amid beige and gold pillows on a love seat built into the window.

“See? Isn't this magnificent?”

“Really lovely,” I said, hoping that was enthusiastic enough.

Behind me I heard a woman's soft Irish brogue say, “Welcome, Simon. I'm Colleen.”

I turned, surprised; Toby's mother's name is Abby, or so the file said. But then I saw this woman was quite young, perhaps early twenties. “How do you do,” I offered.

She gestured towards the kitchen. “I'm the Jill-of-all-trades here, during the day. I've made some biscuits and lemonade for you to keep your energy up. Let me know if you need anything.” She was lovely: black hair in a pixie-like cut and that clear, pale Irish skin. Startling blue eyes. If I didn't believe Toby to be gay, I'd have expected him to be head-over-heels about her.

Behind her and around the corner of a supporting column I could see the bar that separates the kitchen from the dining area and sitting room, a platter of biscuits and lemonade in a pitcher waiting there. Toby bounced over. “Cookie?”

“I've just had lunch. Perhaps in a little while.”

“Cookie. From the Dutch
koekje, k-o-e-k-j-e,
diminutive of
koek,
or cake, from the Middle Dutch
koeke, k-o-e-k-e.
”

“Of course.” What was I going to do with this child? How could I help someone who'd taken the trouble to learn the etymology of a word he won't even be asked to spell competitively? “Where will we work, then?”

He clapped his hands. “I love it! Only English people say that.”

“Say . . . what?”

“You said, ‘Where
will
we work, then?' Using ‘will' there instead of ‘shall' or ‘should,' and finishing the question with ‘then' is
so
English!”

I looked over at Colleen, wondering if he subjected her to this scrutiny. She lifted an eyebrow, smiled, and turned towards the kitchen. I would guess he does.

“And the answer?” I prodded.

“My room. Come on!” More bouncing, and I was thinking he could live in a flat—condo—only if it were built as well as this one; otherwise the downstairs neighbours would be complaining constantly. I followed Toby, hoping he'd calm down soon; I needed to get along well with this child, and so far I wasn't even sure how I'd manage an afternoon with him.

His room was a bit of a gender-bender. The canopied bed, which by default for canopied beds in girls' rooms everywhere really should have been covered with white or pink or yellow, was denim blue, and what should have been a ruffle around the canopy edge was more of a flat panel. The bureau and desk were a clean design, possibly cherrywood; but instead of model airplanes or plastic dinosaurs scattered about, I saw sweet little trinket boxes made of wood or stone—including a vivid green malachite specimen—some with carving or mother-of-pearl inlay. I was afraid to ask what was in them; the answer would have taken the rest of the afternoon and no doubt would have required much faked enthusiasm.

On the desk was a bright pink pencil cup with several colourful pens and pencils, including one with a troll head, its bright yellow hair combed up into a sculpted swirl. The bookcases above and beside the desk were filled with books, and on the desk surface I saw reference materials for the spelling bee and a huge dictionary.

The hardwood floor was mostly covered by a dark blue Chinese oriental rug, but on top of this beside the bed was a circle throw rug, in a sculpted floral pattern of rose and cream.

The overall feeling I got was that this “boy” is, as Ned had guessed, royalty. It was as though someone had laid the room's design foundations for what would be appropriate for a boy, and someone else had added touches suitable to a girl to mitigate the masculinity. Surely, his parents know. . . .

“I read fifty dictionary pages a day,” he informed me, a smile on his androgynous face. “That's
almost
good enough. Some kids read sixty or seventy. And some have read two dictionaries, cover to cover. I have to get up to at least sixty-five.”

I set my bag down and got a good grip on the dictionary. Toby hadn't said how he wanted to proceed, but I reckoned I might as well dig in. There was an upholstered chair, blue with a soft rose-coloured throw, and I sat there, opened the book towards the back, and dropped my finger.
“Schadenfreude.”

Toby stood before me as though on stage already. “Language of origin, please?”

“German.” I didn't need to look at the book to know this.

“Is it from
Schaden,
harm or damage, and
Freude,
joy?”

“Yes.” I knew this, too. I was surprised he did, though.

“Definition, please.”

I consulted the dictionary for this one; this book is the bee's official version, and what I say should match what Toby will hear in the competition. “Delight in another's misfortune.”

“Are there alternate pronunciations?”

Not that I knew of, but I looked to be sure. And I saw that whilst I had given the word its genuine German pronunciation, there was another that was more anglicised. I said that as best I could, knowing I was massacring the wonderful Germanic sounds.

“Spelling, please?” I looked up from the book, and Toby giggled. “Just kidding! Can I have it in a sentence, please?”

“The girl's schadenfreude at hearing her main competitor misspell
arrhostia
gave her pangs of guilt.” I knew he was asking every question he was allowed by the bee's rules, though I was sure he knew the word.

“Schadenfreude.” He used the fingers of his right hand to scribble on his left palm. “Schadenfreude.
S-c-h-a-d-e-n-f-r-e-u-d-e.
Schadenfreude.”

“Ding!” I gave the sound indicating an error, and his jaw dropped. “Just kidding!”

More delighted laugher. “I knew that! Another word. Something really unusual.”

It went on like this for nearly an hour. I did my best to trip him up, and once—with the word
Ugaritic
—I did stump him. He put an
e
before the
u
and turned the
a
into an
e.
He demanded to see the word.

He stared at the page for perhaps twenty seconds. “I was going to tell you your pronunciation was wrong,” he said, “but this kind of thing happens a lot, where the phonetics make a letter sound like something else, and you just have to know the word or the derivation so well that you can get it right anyway. Stuti Mishra lost to Snigdha Nandipati because she didn't know that there should be an umlaut over the
a
in
schwärmerei.
That makes the
a
sound like an
e
when it's said aloud, and that's how Stuti spelled it.” He handed me back the book and picked up a notebook. “I keep lists of everything I miss.”

“Toby, what would be most helpful for you?”

“Actually, this is great. On my own, I can't fake myself out with pronunciation the way you just did.”

“My accent isn't getting in the way?”

He smiled, shook his head. “Nope. Time for cookies and lemonade?”

“Tell me the derivation of lemon first.”

“I . . . I can't do that.” He looked almost ashamed.

I smiled at him. “I can't, either. I doubt they'll ask you that one.” I opened to lemon in the dictionary. “From Middle English
limon,
through Old French, Italian
limone,
from Arabic and originally from Persian.” I closed the book. “Now we know.”

“It might come in handy for some word that has the same root. Thanks!” He made another entry in his “mistakes” notebook and then bounced out of the room.

Colleen must have put the pitcher of lemonade in the fridge; the ice cubes floating in it had barely melted when she brought it to the dining table. Just as I was sitting in a chair, a movement under a table on the far side of the living room caught my eye.

A cat! A beautiful, sleek, all-black cat. But what was wrong with its ears?

“Who's that?” I asked Toby, nodding towards the animal.

“Shangri-La. We call her La La. Isn't she pretty? She's my mom's cat.”

La La sat several feet away as if to allow me to admire her, her huge, round, amber eyes trained on me. The ears were folded forwards entirely, very nearly giving the appearance that she hadn't any. “What happened to her ears?”

Toby laughed. “You should know!”

“Why is that?”

“She's a Scottish fold! Her father is a British shorthair, and her mother is a folded fold. The original fold was a white British shorthair named Susie who lived on a farm in Scotland.” He went on at length about how it took geneticists decades to figure out how to breed for the cartilage weakness in the ears without cartilage weaknesses elsewhere, which would result in deformed kittens. It seems the doctor who finally solved the puzzle had been from just outside Boston.

La La stretched, walked nearly to the table, and sat, watching me. Almost to myself, I said, “I love cats.”

“You can pet her if you want.”

“I'll let her get used to me first.” In fact, I had to remind myself not to stare at her, which she would have interpreted as confrontational. I allowed my eyelids to lower just a bit, and she did the same. Excellent. Now I just needed to wait for her to make the next move. I turned my attention to the lemonade.

More to make conversation than anything else, trapped as I was at this table with this child, I asked about his parents, where they work, that sort of thing. His father does something in finance for Blue Cross Blue Shield, and his mother is a junior partner at some law firm specialising in environmental law. I took this in and filed it away, not knowing whether I'd ever need to know it; I might not ever even meet these people.

Toby babbled on for a bit about his past conquests at spelling bees, relating some of the words others missed, detailing a couple of close calls he had when he was given a word he didn't know.

“I gather that the strategy is to know as many words as possible, then,” I asked, “rather than merely having enough background to try to figure out how to spell them when you're standing there?”

Toby nodded, swallowed some biscuit, and said, “You still ask all the questions you can, just to be really, really, really sure, because there's no going back. I mean, you can start the spell again, but you can't change any of the letters you've already given. So taking your time helps you be sure it really is the word you think it is. 'Cause, I mean, you have to know so many, you know? The similar words start to blur together.”

“And so my calling out words to you is the best way for me to help you?”

“Yup. Some coaches do other stuff, like test you on etymology. You could do that, if you want. Like, tips for when the word comes from Latin, which means the middle vowels are usually
i,
there is no
k,
that sort of thing.”

“And Aztec words often end in
tl.
”

“Right! So that stuff is good. But the practices . . . That's the best. Especially when the pronunciation can cause problems. Like
schwärmerei.
You just have to know the word. The more words I miss with you, the more I'll learn.”

He was telling me my task was simply locating words that are as unusual as possible, and words that sound the least like they're spelled. “That seems almost too easy. For me, that is.”

“It's time-consuming, though. You'll help me, right?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I had no choice, but I caught those words before they could escape. “Of course.”

“All the way through to the contest?”

“The end of May, correct?”

“Coaches get to come and watch. It's near Washington, D.C. You'll come, won't you?” I hesitated just a little too long; no one had mentioned this to me. Toby's face fell, and he reached for another biscuit. “It's okay. You don't have to.”

“I might. I just didn't know it was an option.”

“You like me, right? I like you.”

Eleven, is he? Seemed more like five, emotionally. I leaned on my cultural roots to avoid a declaration. “Now, Toby, you know I'm English, yes? You know how reserved we English are. I don't know of any reason I wouldn't—”

“Because if you do, I'll tell you a secret. A really important secret.”

This wasn't part of the deal. “I can't promise to tell you one back.”

He blinked. “I hadn't thought of that. Okay, you don't have to. Can I tell you?”

How would I stop him? “If you like.”

“You won't tell anyone?”

This gave me pause, even though he'd already called it a secret. “Does anyone else know?”

He looked around, furtive, even a little scared. “Nobody.”

This might not be such a good idea. “Are you sure you should tell me?”

“I have to tell someone! I'll explode!” His hoarse whisper had a note of desperation in it.

“Why not your parents?” He made a face I couldn't quite interpret, let alone describe, but he didn't say anything. “All right, then. We can't have you exploding.”

He leaned forwards, looked around again, opened his mouth, and evidently decided he was still too exposed. Out of his chair, he leaned towards my ear, cupped his hand, and whispered, “I'm a girl.”

This revelation caused some lightbulb to go on in my head. On some level, it made perfect sense. But is he biologically a girl dressed like a boy, or a biological boy with a girl trapped inside?