Free The Full Cleveland by Terry Reed Page B

past the neighborhood boys.
    Then, out of the blue, Mickey asked me, “Hey, what did you do all day anyway, with that cast on your leg? I’d kill myself if I had to just sit in a chair.”
    â€œMe? Nothing.” It reminded me of my injury though, and how my knee hurt, and I rubbed off all the makeup and took my crutch and went to my bed. “I sat here too.” I meant, not just in a chair.
    â€œSee? I’d die. You sat on a bed and a chair.”
    I shrugged, “It’s not so bad. You can read a book. You can write a letter.”
    Mickey brightened. “You wrote a letter? Who to? A love letter?”
    I didn’t really know what to call it, so I didn’t answer. You know, you don’t want to lie. But my silence made her suspicious.
    â€œIt better not be to Thomas.”
    I shook my head it wasn’t, but it just made her more curious.
    â€œReally. Who’d you write it to? Was it Thomas? It was, wasn’t it?”
    â€œ No.”
    â€œYou did so! You wrote it to Thomas!”
    â€œI wrote it to my grandfather!”
    Mickey blinked at me in the mirror. “But. But I thought both your grandfathers are dead.”
    â€œWell, they are.”
    â€œThen … then how did you write them a letter?”
    â€œIn my head. I just wrote it in my head.”
    â€œBut…”
    I wasn’t too crazy to explain it to her further. But she was kind of waiting to hear it, you could tell. She was staring at me pretty hard in the mirror. I said, “Relax, I just wrote it in my head.”
    She still just stood there staring at me, though. But eventually she asked, “Well, then which one did you write it to?”
    â€œMy father’s father.”
    â€œThe one who gave you this house for a dollar?”
    I nodded. “I really liked him. Besides, I owed him a thank-you note.” I was wearing the pearls, and took them out from under my tee shirt to show her. Of course, I had already told her all about them on the phone.
    Mickey nodded they were nice, and went back to applying makeup. But after that, she kind of kept one eye fixed on me through the mirror.
    Then I remembered what else I’d done today. I felt so close to Mickey by now, what with all the talking we’d done, I thought I could say anything. Even ideas that were all messed up and just half formed. “I also thought about what to do about poor people.”
    Mascara wand stopped midair, Mickey said, “Who? Who’s poor?”
    â€œPoor people. They’re everywhere. I almost fixed the problem though.” I grinned at her via the mirror. “I thought so long and hard about it, I almost gave the whole world a makeover.”
    She carefully closed the mascara wand, not to clump it. “That sounds like fun.”
    â€œI’m not kidding. I actually solved world poverty. But then the doorbell rang and the mailman came. And now I have to start all over again.”
    â€œOh boy.” She opened the mascara wand again. I guess she’d decided to start that all over again.
    â€œThe thing I think about poverty is, I’m not so sure it should be, like, acceptable. You know what I mean?”
    But then, having said that much, I couldn’t even begin to remember my original solution to the problem. I began to feel that the idea I’d had about making everyone rich now might elude me forever. I began to blame it on the post office. I began to wonder how many brilliant solutions to global problems had been lost because of the post office. Because the world is full of mail trucks screeching up driveways, doorbells piercing into the void, men in blue suits delivering bad news, wrecking your hopes and dreams, ruining everything.
    â€œI mean, Mickey, nothing’s black and white, right? So why does poverty always win?”
    No, that wasn’t what I was trying to say either, not at all. I was never going to remember the solution now. But then I thought I