Chapter 12

Ron sat at the kitchen table with Mattie and stacks of pennies and dimes. “What is thirteen?” he asked. Mattie puzzled over the coins and slid a dime and a penny toward her. “Think about it -- try to visualize it.”

Mattie slid two more pennies toward her. “This.”

“Right! Thirteen is ten and three. What if you add eight to thirteen?”

Mattie bit her lip and, one at a time, slid eight pennies toward her. “There.”

“How many pennies?”

She counted. “Eleven.”

“If we have more than ten pennies, what do we do?” Mattie counted ten pennies from her pile, slid them back and retrieved a second dime. She looked up at him. “Very good. How many dimes?”

“Two.”

“And how many pennies?”

“One.”

“If you have two in the tens’ place and one in the ones’ place, what number is it?”

Mattie furrowed her brow in thought. “Twenty-one,” she finally said.

“Bravo! I think that’s enough for now. I can tell you’re getting tired.”

“You can feel it?”

“No, Mattie. I know from your eyes glazing over and the burnt rubber smell coming from your ears that you’ve had enough for now. Mattie -- I can’t feel your feelings the way you feel mine. I can’t feel anybody’s feelings. You have a special ability to do so. So does April, but I lack it.”

“Oh...”

“In fact, your ability is so very rare ... I bet I could count the number of people who have it on one hand. Three of them are in your family -- you, April and your grandma. Think about that.”

“Okay.”

“That makes you pretty special. I’m proud of you, Mattie.”

“I know.”

“You can put your correct answers in your coin jar, and then you can read or watch television.”

“Okay...”

Ron scooped up the remaining change and dumped it into an empty coffee can. He heard the front door open and April stepped in. “Have any luck?” he asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I bought a dress.”

“Can I see it?”

“No. I don’t have it. You get to see it on our wedding day.”

“Where is it?”

“Gloria has it. It needs some alterations. I just got back from your dad’s place. Gloria is a talented seamstress.”

“So, Gloria is doing the alterations?”

“That’s right.” April regarded Mattie sitting in front of the television. “I hope you spent time with her on math.”

“We certainly did.”

“I think it was genius of you, how you got her to memorize her addition and subtraction tables.”

“Yeah, I had her write them out in words instead of numerals. She’s pretty good at memorizing words. Then I used flashcards to train her to associate numbers with the words, and then to write them using numbers. Today we’re working on 2-digit numbers using coins -- dimes for the tens’ place and pennies for the ones’ place. I let her keep the coins when she comes up with a correct answer.”

“You’re adding a reward element, too.”

“She’s doing all right, but it’s drill, drill, drill. We have to face it -- she’ll never be a Liebnitz.”

“She doesn’t need to be. If we can get her through high school without having to repeat a grade due to her math scores -- that will be a major victory, Ron. I’m really envious. I wish I had someone like you in my life when I was her age.”

“You have me now. Better late than never. I think I understand Mattie’s ... and, your difficulty with math. You both have difficulty thinking abstractly and mapping the abstract onto the concrete.”

“Mapping? I don’t understand.”

“Numbers by themselves are abstract concepts. For example, what does three mean?”

“One, two, three,” April held up three fingers.

“What you just did was to map the abstract notion of three onto your fingers. Three fingers is a concrete notion. Both you and Mattie are excellent thinkers in the concrete -- when you have physical things to relate to. Your brains just don’t know how to think abstractly.”

“I get the gist of what you’re saying,” she replied. “It still is over my head. What you’re doing with her definitely is helping. She’s passing her math quizzes, now.”

“Maybe she’ll catch on as she gets older. I was pretty poor at math at her age. I hated the memorization and the drills. When I was in seventh grade, it all gelled for me. It was like the clouds parted and the sun came out. I began to understand the underpinnings of math.”

“Well I never had such an epiphany,” April replied, “and I wouldn’t hold hope that Mattie will, either.”

“That’s okay. I love you both ... despite your faults.” He kissed her lips.

April faced him resting her arms on his shoulders and holding the back of his head. “You know ... if I hadn’t been reading you, I wouldn’t have known what to make of that last remark.” She kissed his lips. “I love you, too.”

“Tell me about your day with Gloria.”

“I think in a previous life Gloria was a wedding planner. She wanted to take me shopping for a dress. I told her I didn’t want a traditional wedding dress -- something I’d only wear once. I also said I wasn’t sure I wanted to wear white. She took me to a place that features vintage clothing.”

“Like Goodwill?”

“Oh, no. This place has a curated collection of high-end clothing from the twenties through the eighties. Gloria has a real eye for style. She spotted a white sundress from the seventies that was my size. It had a lace halter top that was a bit too see-through and it was a bit tight around the waist, but Gloria thought she could fix those by lining the top with some white satin and letting out the waist.”

“Those were the alterations you mentioned.”

“Right. Otherwise the dress is perfect. I can wear it in warm weather and it has an A-line cut that hides...”

“That flatters your figure,” he remarked.

“We went shopping for shoes and I bought a pair of white stockings.” April reached into her purse. “I had a chance to try out this...” She held up a Mastercard.

“Your big-girl credit card.”

“With a not-so big-girl five hundred dollar credit limit.”

“You need to establish a credit record,” he replied. “This is a start.”

“Gloria thought it was brilliant to schedule our wedding between Christmas and New Years. My folks are coming for Christmas and spending the week. The schools will be on break, so when we go on our little honeymoon, they can bond with Mattie.”

“You won’t miss any work and I’ll check with my boss ... yep, I can get those days off. I signed up to use the condo’s common lodge that day.”

“Gloria is arranging a catered reception at the lodge and she’s found a baker for the cake. It will be an intimate event -- nine in all ... ten if you count the officiator.”

“Who is officiating?”

“One of Gloria’s neighbors is a Unitarian minister and she will be glad to perform a non-religious ceremony.”

“It’s nice of Gloria to pitch in,” he remarked.

“I love her, Ron. She’s more than happy to do it. I think we’ve given her a mission. I go over there next weekend for a fitting. She also wanted to work out what we could bring for Thanksgiving. She’ll roast a turkey and Connie is bringing her sausage and cornbread dressing. I said I could bake a pecan pie.”

“Do you have a recipe?” he asked.

“You know how I am with recipes. If I tried to follow a recipe, the results would be ... I don’t know what, but nothing resembling a pecan pie. This is one in my repertoire. My mom taught me how and once I learn something I never forget it.”

April approached Ron at his workstation. “Now I have a big-girl’s credit card bill,” she said and flattened a piece of paper on his desk.

Ron reviewed it. “A balance of two hundred seventy-nine dollars,” he remarked. “Was that from your shopping trip with Gloria?”

“Yeah ... Dress, shoes, stockings ... and a few other items. It adds up.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It says I owe a minimum of eleven dollars and eighty-seven cents.”

“You can pay the minimum, the whole balance or anything in between. Do you want my recommendation?”

“Please.”

“I always pay an amount that’s less than the outstanding balance but at least double the minimum. The credit bureaus like that behavior. They don’t like to see someone consistently paying the minimum or consistently paying off the entire balance. Someone who pays more than the minimum is exhibiting good credit management ... in their eyes, at least.”

“So, would thirty be a good payment?”

“That would be an excellent payment. If you pay thirty a month, this balance will be paid down in ten months. Do you know your bank account balance?”

“I check it on the ATM each time I make a withdrawal. Last I checked it was about one thousand seven hundred”

“That’s not a bad balance.”

“I know. I’ve never had that much money in my life. It says here I can’t send cash.”

“You should never send cash. You can write a check -- your account is a checking account.”

“I’ve never done that before.”

“No time like the present to learn. Do you have your checkbook?”

“I’ll go get it.” April went to the built-in planning desk in the kitchen, opened the drawer and retrieved it. “Here,” she said.

Ron flipped it open. “It’s one of those carbon-copy style. That’s good -- you get an automatic check record.”

Ron walked her through the process of writing a check. She tore it from the booklet, slipped it into the envelope along with the payment slip and sealed it. Ron took the envelope from her and ran it through his postage meter. “There,” he said. “Just drop it into the outgoing mail.”

“I’ll do it now,” she said.

“Wait ‘til Monday. I don’t like checks sitting in the outgoing mail over a Sunday.”

“Okay -- I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Some other time I’ll help you set up your online banking. That way you can check your account for any unauthorized activity. I check my account daily.”

“Yes, some other time. Right now my head is full of numbers.”

He leaned back and stretched. “Time certainly is marching on,” he remarked. “Thanksgiving is out of the way. We have the Christmas tree up and your folks arrive next week.”

“I can’t wait and I know Mattie is over the moon to meet her grandparents.”

Ron and Mattie readied her room for her grandparents. “Let’s get everything nice and neat,” he said. “We can put your summer clothes in this tub and make room in your drawer and closet for our guests.

Mattie dumped armsful of clothing into the tub. “Place looks pretty good,” he remarked. “I’ll take this to the basement. They should be here any minute.”