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A freckled speckle in a spangly sea, Nadia floats on her back and paints cloud pictures. She squishes cloud fluff into cloud fishes, fluff fishes.

Under the clouds of fish, boys and girls splash and laugh and play. Fast swimmers in fancy goggles streak by. Mothers prod little ones to dip their feet. Showoff types cannonball, vault from the diving board, freefall. All around Nadia the thingflecked patch of bluegreen that is the city pool in springtime rumples and unfurls like a kaleidoscope come alive.

Is. Like. If you say like, that is something; but if you say is, that is something else. But what is the difference? She cannot remember. Slidey, slippy things, words. You do things with them but they do things to you.

She might have missed the old man but for a bobbing green kickboard caught in his wake. Into the water he slips, at the deep end that belongs to the fast swimmers. Sliding between the swells he strokes. Smooth, not a plish plash, like someone who used to know how to swim fast. Away from the deep he comes, towards her float of purple plastic. His silent ripples open out and melt into hers, like a secret whispered.

Like. Is. Squishable stuff.

Billy squishes bread and cupcakes and mashed potatoes into softly spiraling mountains and twisty gulches. Billy’s juice lagoons spread and seep like melted candles. Billy’s plate at dinnertime is an alien landscape.

But that is not here. Here are the clouds of fish and the rippling bluegreen. Here are the rumples and things. Here is Nadia’s sea.

Why, Nadia does not know or think. If you open the part-curve of a question mark inside yourself you might never come out again. The mark of a question is an ear, dotted. A part-curve of seashell swoop that catches at the end.

But when suddenly, falls a ball of yellow from the sky (zip zip it had zoomed, as girls and boys played catch by the poolside; but there was one who could not catch, so upsy daisy down from the sky it came), Nadia reaches out and gives it a nippy push, a thrust of yellow from her patch of sea to his. And a Hey.

Hey, she says.

A question, tossed into his stream.

The sea is limned by asphalt jetties and chain-link overhangs, and all of them are but goggle-eyed goldfish going round and round, maybe sputtering golden and burning bright but still blazing fast away. But one, one ponytailed sparkle-eye, floats in the rush and bumps into his.

Hey.

The old man who has broken stroke to sweep the silly yellow ball away finds a stray kickboard trailing

at his side, and also a girl and a question, and a reason to hold. He catches the kickboard in one hand and raises himself up to look at the girl on the float of purple plastic who does not slide her gaze past his, but stares into him.

In the old man’s eyes Nadia sees smudgy grey-green and sadness. In the pool of blue there is the absence of spark. Not like someone holding a secret but someone who is a secret. Like someone tucked into the wrinkled shadow of his smudgy self. But he raises his head and does not pretend-look but looks, back.

When someone looks at you in the eye, really looks at you, there is the constant threat of drowning. It is like

being knee-deep in a tangle of birthday streamers or a tub of peanut butter or a deeper-than-deep pool of sadness that is so deep you can’t pull yourself up again. It is like a wrinkle so far in you can’t even begin to straighten it out, because if you tried all you would do is pull out the threads of yourself, too.

It is like not knowing where the blue ends and where you begin.

Not here but on a day of blue skies and yellow sunshine was when Billy was born. He came out smart-looking, not red and wrinkly like Molly’s or Ellen’s babies. He wasn’t too fat. Sam H. was, Sam H.’s mom said. And also Billy had hair, gingery hair like Mama’s.

Once not long after Billy came home, Nadia sneakily stuck her finger between the bars of his crib. If you do that at a zoo your fingertip might get bitten off: look, don’t touch. But Billy had no teeth yet. Instead he curled his itty bitty fingers around her big finger, so that inside of her it was like a great big red balloon, swelling up bigger and bigger into the sky.

Billy is blue skies and yellow sunshine.

That is the story of Billy, back then.

The waves lap, the swimmers swim, and Nadia says to the old man, to begin, nice and slow so he does not shy away, “It is a nice day.”

That is called making polite conversation, when you say something nice about the weather and ask about work and the children. You do it at parent-teacher conferences and in the dentist’s office and in line at the supermarket. Mama is no good at it. When grownups look her up and down, eye her slim figure and smooth face too young for a mother of a big girl like Nadia and a big boy like Billy, she straightens up and talks about taxes, or fossils and fuels, or white houses and other grownup issues of the day. Mama forgets about the polite part.

The old man blinks but does not slip away. He drapes his arms around the green kickboard and paddles a little. “It’s a nice day at that,” he says at last.

Nadia rolls her eyeballs in secret. It was an awful lot of think-time for such a silly answer. There are too many things to say in the world to waste time saying things twice over. She pulls her sea-sprinkled ponytail into a point like an exclamation and says, for his information, “Hey mister, you should watch out when you’re swimming into the deep end. That part belongs to the fast people or the highschoolguys.”

It is okay to talk about other things after you end polite conversation. Mama doesn’t understand that part either. She wants to keep talking about the goddamned Feds.

Yesterday at the post office Billy talked to the post-officeguy about muffin crumbles. Nadia tried to fix things by talking about the cold front. The postofficeguy laughed and raised one eyebrow at the other postofficeguy. Nadia wished she knew how to do that but when she looked in the mirror she only looked squinched up and cross-eyed.

The old man does not laugh but does not say anything right away, either. He thinks slower than molasses, maybe. Finally one side of his mouth quirks up, just a little, and he says, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers?”

Even if it is a question it is an answer, at least. “Sometimes. Billy talks to strangers all the time, though. His mouth runs away from him all the time. Mine runs away only sometimes.”

Nadia stops. She had forgotten. Or at least, her brain had tried to remember to forget. But even on a purple float in the sea of bluegreen it was not apart from everything. The old man does not ask about Billy, though.

Instead, he blinks and a spark flickers in his face. The spark is a curve in his mouth and a wrinkle around his eyes and a chuckle that comes bubbling out like seafoam fizzing and popping all around the two of them, Nadia and the old man.

Everything had changed too, when the toaster popped.

At the stove Mama was cooking dumpling stew that Nadia secretly hated, because she didn’t like to see soggy bits floating in her bowl. At the table Gramma was fixing a hole in Nadia’s dress that was an accident, honest. From the armchair Grampa was telling a story about fly fishing that no one was really listening to. On the rug Nadia was scratching a mosquito bite on her elbow that looked like the state of Michigan.

The toaster: ping pop. Billy: ping pop. Ping pop. Hahahaha. Hahahaha. Ping pop. Ping pop. Hahahaha.

Ping pop and whirl, loopy loop.

Whirlyswirly stir, stir, stir crazy.

Sometimes Baby Billy gets mad, a kind of mad that seems too big for an itty bitty baby. But everyone gets mad,

sometimes. Mama gets mad when Nadia and Billy lose the TV controller or don’t go to bed or accidentally kick weedkiller into the tulip patch. It was Billy and it wasn’t an accident, but Nadia pretended. Mama pretended too, probably.

But Mama didn’t get mad this time. Gramma stopped

fixing and Grampa stopped fly-fishing and everyone stopped not really listening to fly fishing.

Ping pop.

Ping pop.

Hahahaha.

Everything changed except Nadia still hates dumpling stew.

Usually she has no trouble but it is hard to think of what to say, with the old man who swims sadly and speaks slowly but looks into her. Maybe it is hard for him too. Maybe that is why he is so molasses slow. So she bites the bullet (what bullet? and where? and why? but people do fancy things with words anyway) and tells him about her day so far. That is the sort of thing grownups usually want to know about, anyway. “This morning I woke up and looked out the window at the sky and made my bed and went downstairs for breakfast. Today it was eggs and biscuits. How about you, mister?”

He looks interested, almost, at this. Funny, the sorts of silly things grownups care about. “My wife used to make damn good biscuits.”

“Mama makes damn good biscuits too. Cheddar and butter and cream. She says her cholesterol can just chuck it in the can.”

Suddenly: A splash! Sea invasion! All hands on deck!

One of the highschoolguys almost falls into the water. A leash skips through the sky before its woolly wearer plunges into the water. Out of the splash pokes a tufted poodle head. Under a purple umbrella highschoolgirls poke each other and giggle. The highschoolguy gives a mean look at the poodle and pretends he is not looking at the highschoolgirls, especially the one with yellow hair and a pale-blue bathing suit. The doggy shakes his head and whirls seadrops every which way, barking a loud smiley bark at all the other specks in the sea. He does not mind that some of them are not smiling back and none of them are barking back.

Nadia sends a friendly splash the poodle’s way. The old man winks at her, almost.

“Do you have a dog, mister? I don’t but I want one. But Mama says no it would be too much on top of everything.” When Mama said this Nadia had thought of the song called On Top of Spaghetti. Everything changed when someone sneezed. Although they got meatballs out of it so it was all gravy.

A long time passes again before the old man takes his turn in the conversation once more. He leans on the kickboard and scoops the yellow ball from the water and tosses it into the air. “I do have a dog, at that.”

“Really? What’s its name? If I had one I would name it Sally, I think. Then it would be funny when I said Sally sells seashells at the seashore and everyone would smile.”

The old man looks far away from her into the water and says, softly, “Anna.” He pretends he is looking at Nadia, but his eyes are pointed in the wrong direction and there are rumples in the pool of blue.

Words, slippy slidey words, tumble: “Her name is Anna, and every morning when I wake up she jumps up from her bed and smiles and says hello. When I go downstairs

she gallops after me, barking her good morning bark. Sometimes she runs so fast her feet get tangled up in each other. Then she just rolls down, one great big ball of sleek black. But even then she keeps wagging her tail, all the way down.”

Why he looks so sad when he is talking about a silly dog with a pretty name and a good morning smile Nadia does not know, because when she thinks of silly animals like

woollywet poodles and seashell selling Sally it makes her laugh. But the old man does not smile and does not look, and in the pool of blue, wrinkles close in on Nadia too.

Everything is going swimmingly, Mama had said, as they walked through the big building that was quiet and glossy white. Mama tried to do a wink at Nadia and she tried to do a wink at the whitecoat who talked in a low, stiff voice and looked sternly at them, Nadia and Mama. But as they crossed through the hallway and walked up the stairs the whitecoat only did an eyebrow squinch. He did not do a wink back. Not even half.

The room the whitecoat led them into was not glossy white but had striped bars of sunbeam stretched across a woolly rug, and dollies and toy cars and teddybears sitting smilingly on the shelves. De-vel-op-men-tal and Be-hav-i-or-al Pe-di-a-trics, it said in small letters between a bear and a yarn-haired dolly with button eyes.

Pe-di-a-trics is like whitecoats who look deeply at your breathing when you have a cough and give you lollypops (grape or cherry, you pick) and medicine that sticks going down but makes you all better. Nadia is a good reader for her grade. When she brings home worksheets with happy faces and gold stars on top Mama is proud. She gives Nadia hugs that make her feel like rich hot chocolate going down.

In the sunbeams were bears and dollies but Billy was sitting away from it all swinging his legs into the sky. On the ledge in the window of the hospital where Mama had taken them, even though everything was going swimmingly, Billy twisted his fingers into wings and swung his legs through the air.

Billy, Mama said, and her face turned white. Billy.

Billy, they all said. But no one made a move because they were afraid of what might happen. And Nadia’s baby brother only swung his legs and squinched his eyes into the sun and said, ping pop.

She smiles and splashes in the sea too, but is not little and woolly. Anna is big and sleek. Her ears are droopy and her tail is long and silky and waggles furiously when she is happy. Anna is happy every day, but she is happiest of all at the seashore where he brings them, Anna and Emma.

Some birthdays ago, he couldn’t remember exactly how many, Emma, unchallenged queen of biscuits, clapped her hands across his eyes and led him into the kitchen. A surprise was waiting in there for him, she announced with a girlish wink.

There, between the kitchen table and battered cupboard that he had made by hand back when they weren’t living on more than a lick and a prayer from paycheck to paycheck but were happy because they were young and full of hope and had each other, wagging its tail in dizzy circles was a fluffy black puppy who barely cast a shadow but smiled a doggy smile like the biggest rainbow in the sky.

Anna, Emma said, meet Anna. She came with a name already but that name will belong to us and she will too.

It isn’t a lie but it isn’t everything, what Nadia tells the old man about her morning. She doesn’t tell him about the spangly glitter mountains and glossy pools of paste. She doesn’t tell him about the grippy kiddy scissors or the fat gluesticks made just right for short chubby fingers. She doesn’t tell him about the seashell rims of paper plates.

She doesn’t tell him that at Billy’s school they don’t do

spelling bees but they do arttime, with snacktime right before as a precaution. But that was a wasted effort, Nadia saw this morning, because there five out of the ten boys and girls sat, dipping their fingers and licking away.

Everyone, this is Billy’s big sister.

A big girl waggled her fingers. A little boy flung his arms around her and tugged at her sweatshirt strings. But mostly the boys and girls sat and paid her no mind. Some stared through her and some stared all around her. Nadia was a silhouette, outlined by dotted lines like the kind you follow and snip with fat grippy scissors.

Billy busily dipped and licked. He wiped his hands on the curly hair of the girl next to him and said, haha. She squealed and arched her back trying to get away, shaking her brown curls so hard her face turned red. But Billy’s prints didn’t shake loose. And all the while he just dipped and swirled and licked and said, haha. Haha. Haha.

Behind Nadia Mama gave her a gentle push. Go on, she said. Say hello. But Nadia didn’t care if it was Billy’s

birthday and Mama had bought cupcakes with blue and

yellow sprinkles. She didn’t care if Mama had tipped her head and a spark had lighted in her eyes and said Nadia could come too, and they would make a day of it, the three of them, a day at the park or the zoo or maybe the boardwalk by the beach. She didn’t care, and she didn’t want to think of pastelicking and stringpulling and dotted outlines and being a silhouette, and so she stepped back, accidentally smudging Mama’s shiny shoes, and ran away.

That is the story of how she came to be a speckle in the sea that was really only the city pool inside a chain-link fence next to a grocery store and a used-car store, on this day in springtime.

It didn’t come out to much, all their big hopes, wide hopes, their lots and lots of hopes. They lived on flapjacks and string beans and biscuits from tin cans, with paychecks that came only once in a while. But they were damn happy anyway, he and Emma. They scraped by, settled for little hopes, did for a long time. And then came Anna, and then it was he and Emma and Anna, a circle that held all of them together, safe and tight.

But when the circle broke it broke hard, and it didn’t matter that Emma lived a good life and said everything she wanted to say and passed peacefully and went to her reward. Now it was just him and Anna, barely casting a shadow even together. And what did it matter, the sadness and the drowning, if the tide rolls and the circle breaks and all shadows melt away?

All around Nadia and the old man ripples push into each other, one after the other, and when she blinks they melt.

It is like when she was little and she and Mama raced raindrops in the car. How it worked was, you picked a

raindrop and showed it to the other person so they knew you weren’t cheating. Then they showed you theirs. Then you watched them race. The raindrop that got to the bottom of the window fastest was the winner. But sometimes your raindrop bumped into other raindrops and got swallowed up, or maybe yours did the swallowing, it was hard to tell, and so you had to start all over again.

There are still raindrops and she and Mama still ride in cars but they don’t play the game anymore, now.

When you can’t fit everything you are feeling into words, it bubbles and froths in your stomach, whirls inside of you around and around. It is like a helicopter kind of feeling, like everything is buzzing whirling going loop de loop around and around, and you can’t stop it, can’t figure out what’s going on because if you open your eyes and look too deep something might shake loose, and everything from inside of you will come bursting out.

This is what Nadia said to the lady at school, once a long time ago. The lady opened her eyes wide behind her square spectacles and scribbled something on her notepad. She had poor penmanship. Also she was wearing a fuzzy green sweater so Nadia hadn’t known any better then. The words had just streamed out of her mouth, running away from her. It was like slurping spaghetti, you don’t really mean to do it but sometimes the slippery noodles just get slurped into your mouth by accident, and you can’t sit there with half a noodle sticking out of your mouth so you do a slurp on purpose, just a little one as politely as you can. But somehow you always get caught.

Anybody can be a whitecoat, Nadia knows now, and you have to say things are going swimmingly and do a

happywink, even if all you can come up with is a half squinched wrinkle and you are drowning, inside.

But the old man is not a whitecoat because he says things twicely too, and kicks slowly but does not swim away, and tells her something from so deep inside that the

sadness shows from inside out. There are too many things to say in the world to waste time saying things twice over but sometimes the raindrops melt and the toaster pops and the world turns over and you just have to try again.

So Nadia looks the old man in the eye and says, “It’s like this, mister. When you miss school to go to your little brother’s school on his birthday because your mama thinks it will be a happy day for everyone if you bring him a

surprise, it doesn’t matter that the surprise is cupcakes with frosting and sprinkles and a day of it together. It doesn’t matter because it makes no difference to your little brother, who looks through you and around you and only thinks with words of his own. But still you are his big sister and it is like you are mixed up into one person, like when you mix bananas and flour and sugar and it all comes out into yellow muffin crumbles.”

When she breathes it is like everything is blurring together, the sea and the sky and the pool of blue, and even if she blinks the lines between have melted away.

The old man who is still except for his eyes, is still listening. So she takes a deep blue breath and tells him about yellow muffin crumbles, which is what Billy said to the postofficeguy. Yellow muffin crumbles hahaha, hahaha.

But it was not a lie and the postofficeguy should not have laughed. If Billy had said tangerine peel or asparagus or grasshopper pie, that would have been a lie. But muffin crumbles was not a lie and people who do not understand should not laugh.

This is the story of Nadia and Mama and Billy making banana muffins, one day:

Nadia peeled bananas and shook white wonderlands of flour and sugar into a big blue bowl. Mama chopped bananas and dusted them with spices like crumbled jewels. She hummed under her breath and smiled big and wide, not her whitecoat smile but her real, pretty Mama smile. On the linoleum Billy squished pictures in yellow dough. Banana-clay valleys in the diamonds, banana-clay mountains on the stripes. Billy twisted banana-clay in his hands and it was like he was mixing banana muffin batter too.

This is what Billy meant, when he told the postofficeguy about the yellow muffin crumbles.

Even when you can’t fit everything you are feeling into words, it is important to say things.

The fast swimmers and shiny goggles swim swiftly in the deep. The highschoolguys splash the highschoolgirls. The boys and girls by the poolside zip a new yellow ball through the air. The woollywet poodle chases his tail, round and round, merrily down the stream.

The spark breathes and blinks, and he cannot help but breathe and blink too. And begin to think:

Seventeen thousand times in a day, humans blink.

Blinking is like washing your eyes.

Eyes are windows to the world.

When you blink and open your eyes again it is like

washing the world.

When you blink everything begins again.

Anna was little and fluffy but now she is big and sleek. Anna’s favorite thing to do is chase seagulls and kittyhawks. Anna’s favorite place in the whole world is the seashore.

Is.

Is.

If you say is that means it is still going. If you say is that means the world is still turning over and when you blink everything can start over again.

Even when you can’t fit everything you are feeling into words, it is important to say things.

So:

This is the story of banana-clay batter, that is not a lie.

This is the story of blinks and winks and specks and things, that rumple and unfurl and can begin again.

This is the story of paste prints and cloud fishes, and blue skies and yellow sunshine.

This is the story of Nadia and Mama and Billy, that Nadia told to the old man in the sea.