“Five more minutes?” Taylor took the toothbrush out of his mouth and stared pleadingly up at Nora. “Please? I’ll be good.”
“I already let you stay up five more minutes,” Nora told him. “I let you stay up ten minutes later than Zac.”
Taylor spit out the toothpaste. “Five more minutes?”
Nora sighed. “No. It’s time to go to bed.”
“Tim never maked me go to bed,” Taylor pointed out.
“Hmm.” Seven years of living with Dan had done much to develop Nora’s sarcastic side. “Are Tim and I the same person? I’d better look in the mirror and check.” She peered into the mirror. “No, I’m not Tim.” None of this made much sense, but she’d pull it together somehow. “I’m not Tim,” she repeated, decisively. “Anyway, tomorrow’s a school day. Do you want to be tired at school?”
Taylor shook his head. “I never get tired.”
Nora raised an eyebrow. “Uh huh.”
“I don’t!” Taylor protested.
“If you do not sleep, you will not grow.” Again, Nora found herself sounding vaguely like Dan. “Do you want to be the only person in the nursing home with all your baby teeth?”
Unexpectedly, Taylor’s lower lip quivered and his eyes filled. “Don’t talk about that!” he wailed.
“About what?” Nora asked.
“Everybody else gots loose teeth, but not me!” Taylor burst out. “In my class. Everybody!”
Nora took a deep breath and put her arms around him. She had not anticipated this. “Taylor, everybody’s teeth fall out at different times. Yours will come out soon.”
“But what if they don’t?” Taylor wailed. “What if none of them ever fall out and all of Zac’s fall out and I’m the only one that has all my TEETH!”
“Oh, honey, that’s impossible,” Nora told him. “That can’t happen to anyone. Don’t worry about it.”
“I am worried.” Taylor’s sobbing, which had ebbed for a moment, then built to a crescendo. “And if they never fall out the Tooth Fairy will never come, and sometimes she leaves people money and she won’t leave me any and when it’s time for somebody’s birthday, I won’t be able to buy them a present!” He stopped for breath. Nora thought for a moment. If she put him in bed now, he’d wake Zac up and she’d have them both on her hands.
“Okay, honey,” she said. “Come on downstairs with me and have a cup of cocoa and calm down.”
Taylor nodded, wiping his eyes. Nora realized she was playing into his hands, but decided she didn’t care. She peered through the doorway of the boys’ room at Zac. A little over fifteen minutes after she’d put him to bed, he was sound asleep. God bless you, she thought. Thank heaven.
It was kind of a companionable feeling, however, to sit next to Taylor on the couch, the two of them drinking cups of hot chocolate. Nora was reading the newspaper; Taylor was reading the book he’d brought home from the library that day. “I sat by the lake,” she heard him whisper to himself. “I looked at the sky. And as I looked, a fly went by.”
She smiled to herself. Taylor looked up, beaming. “I’m really good at reading,” he said. “In the blue reading group.”
Nora was suitably impressed. “Wow,” she said.
“We get to read hard words,” Taylor explained. “Compound words. That’s two words put together. Like playground. That has play and ground. And Taylor.”
“Is that a compound word, too?” Nora asked.
Taylor nodded, seriously. “Yeah, it has the word Tay in it. Tay is me. And lor is the end of it. That’s a different word.”
“Oh.” Nora squeezed her eyes shut and felt her face flush with suppressed laughter. “I didn’t know that.”
Taylor was overjoyed that he’d been able to tell Nora something she didn’t know. “Aren’t you glad I teached it to you?”
Nora nodded. “Very glad.”