A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

Spell for Me

1978

"I'm Mrs. Borowski from the LaSalle Foster Care facility," the middle-aged woman announced as she marched across the Oriental carpet toward the receptionist, a shopping bag from Woolworth's over her arm. Gesturing toward the young eleven-year-old who trailed along behind her, she added coldly, "And this is Harry Styles. He's here to see Dr. Theresa Wilmer. I'll come back for him after I finish my shopping."

The receptionist smiled at the youngster. "Dr. Wilmer will be with you in a little while, Harry. In the meantime, you can sit over there and fill out as much of this card as you can. I forgot to give it to you when you were here before."

Self-consciously aware of his shabby jeans and grubby jacket, Harry glanced uneasily at the elegant waiting room where fragile porcelain figurines reposed on an antique coffee table and valuable bronze sculptures were displayed on marble stands. Giving the table with its fragile knickknacks a wide berth, he headed for a chair beside a huge aquarium where exotic goldfish with flowing fins swam leisurely among lacy greenery. Behind him, Mrs. Borowski poked her head back into the room and warned the receptionist, "Harry will steal anything that isn't nailed down. He's sneaky and quick, so you better watch him like a hawk."

Drowning in humiliated anger, Harry slumped down in the chair, then he stretched his legs straight out in front of him in a deliberate attempt to appear utterly bored and unaffected by Mrs. Borowski's horrible remarks, but his effect was spoiled by the bright red flags of embarrassed color that stained his cheeks and the fact that his legs couldn't reach the floor.

After a moment he wriggled up from the uncomfortable position and looked with dread at the card the receptionist had given him to complete. Knowing he'd not be able to figure out the words, he gave it a try anyway, tongue clenched between teeth, he concentrated fiercely on the printing on the card. The first word began with an N like the word NO on the NO PARKING signs that lined the streets—he knew what those signs said because one of his friends had told him. The next letter on the card was an a, like the one in cat, but the word wasn't cat. His hand tightened on the yellow pencil as he fought back the familiar feelings of frustration and angry despair that swamped him whenever he was expected to read something. He'd learned the word cat in first grade, but nobody ever wrote that word anywhere! Glowering at the incomprehensible words on the card, he wondered furiously why teachers taught kids to read dumb words like cat when nobody ever wrote cat anywhere except in stupid books for first graders.

But the books weren't stupid, Harry reminded himself, and neither were the teachers. Other kids his age could probably have read this dumb card in a blink! he was the one who couldn't read a word on it, he was the one who was stupid.

On the other hand, Harry told himself, he knew a whole lot about things that other kids knew nothing about, because he made a point of noticing things. And one of the things he'd noticed was that when people handed you something to fill out, they almost always expected you to write your name on it...

With painstaking neatness, he printed H-A-R-R-Y S-T-Y-L-E-S across the top half of the card, then he stopped, unable to fill out any more of the spaces. He felt himself getting angry again and rather than feeling bad about this silly piece of paper, he decided to think of something nice, like the feeling of wind on his face in springtime. He was conjuring a vision of herself stretched out beneath a big leafy tree, watching squirrels scampering in the branches overhead, when the receptionist's pleasant voice made his head snap up in guilty alarm.

"Is something wrong with your pencil, Harry?"

Harry dug the lead point against his jeans and snapped it off. "The lead's broken."

"Here's another—"

"My hand is sore today," he lied, lurching to his feet. "I don't feel like writing. And I have to go to the bathroom. Where is it?"

"Right beside the elevators. Dr. Wilmer will be ready to see you pretty soon. Don't be gone too long."

"I won't," Harry dutifully replied. After closing the office door behind him, he turned to look up at the name on it and carefully studied the first few letters so he'd be able to recognize this particular door when he came back. "P," he whispered aloud so he wouldn't forget, "S. Y." Satisfied, he headed down the long, carpeted hall, turned left at the end of it, and made a right by the water fountain, but when he finally came to the elevators, he discovered there were two doors there with words on them. He was almost positive these were the bathrooms because, among the bits of knowledge he'd carefully stored away was the fact that bathroom doors in big buildings usually had a different kind of handle than ordinary office doors. The problem was that neither of these doors said BOYS or GIRLS—two words he could recognize, nor did they have those nice stick figures of a man and woman that told people like him which bathroom to use. Very cautiously, Harry put his hand on one of the doors, eased it open a crack, and peeked inside. He backed up in a hurry when he spot those funny-looking toilets on the wall because there were two other things he knew men used weird-looking toilets. So he entered right away and did his routine.

Conscious of time passing, he left the bathroom and hurriedly retraced his steps until he neared the part of the corridor where Dr. Wilmer's office should have been, then he began laboriously studying the names on the doors. Dr. Wilmer's name began with a P-S-Y. He spied a P-E-T on the next door, decided he'd remembered the letters wrong, and quickly shoved it open. An unfamiliar, gray-haired woman looked up from her typewriter. "Yes?"

"Sorry, wrong room," Harry mumbled, flushing. "Do you know where Dr. Wilmer's office is?"

"Dr. Wilmer?"

"Yes, you know—Wilmer—it starts with a P-S-Y!"

"P-S-Y... Oh, you must mean Psychological Associates! That's suite twenty-five-sixteen, down the hall."

Normally, Harry would have pretended to understand and continued going into offices until he found the right one, but he was too worried about being late now to pretend. "Would you spell that out for me?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"The numbers!" he said desperately. "Spell them out like this: three—six—nine—four—two. Say it that way."

The woman looked at him like he was an idiot, which Harry knew he was, but he hated it when other people noticed. After an irritated sigh, the, woman said, "Dr. Wilmer is in suite two—five—one—six."

"Two—five—one—six," Harry repeated.

"That's the fourth door on the left," she added.

"Well!" Harry cried in frustration. "Why didn't you just say that in the first place!"

********************