Intentions by Deborah Heiligman Page A

kiss, he and his parents moved south because his dad got assigned a residencydown there. His mom was pregnant. They were happy, of course, and Jake was thrilled when he found out it was going to be a little brother. I always wanted a little sister, so I understand. I wonder why my parents never had another kid.
    So Dr. Schmidt was out of town at a conference when Jake’s mom went into labor, and he couldn’t get back in time. Not that that would have made a difference, Jake told me emphatically. The baby’s cord was wrapped around his neck and the doctor did an emergency C-section, but it was too late. Baby Jason was deprived of oxygen for so long that he came out severely mentally retarded.
    Who even knew that stuff still happened?
    Jake told me that his brother was adorable, and had he been who he was supposed to be, he would have been, Jake swears, a genius. “I could see it behind his clouded eyes every once in a while,” Jake told me, “the glimmer of superintelligence.” I don’t know how he could tell, but I trust him.
    Jake’s parents were devastated, of course. Jake’s mom wanted to move back here, but his dad felt it would be bad to leave, like a statement that it was the hospital’s fault. So they stayed, and Mrs. Schmidt devoted herself to taking care of Jason. And Jake. Jake says that he barely remembers life before Jason, except our kiss, of course—
    “How many people did the homework?” Math Teacher asks.
    I do not raise my hand. I quickly look down so Math Teacher does not catch my eyes.
    Jake told me his parents did their best to give him as much attention as Jason, though, of course, they couldn’t possibly. Hisbrother couldn’t do anything at all. He had to have everything done for him. God, what kind of life did that leave for the rest of them? Poor Jake.
    Two years ago Jason got meningitis. Jake’s parents had already decided they wouldn’t do “heroic” measures if Jason got sick, like you say you won’t for old people. But when the time came and he was near death, they ignored all their plans and did everything they could to save him. He died anyway.
    “I always thought it would be a relief,” Jake told me. “But it wasn’t. It was so horrible, so horribly sad. Our house was crazily empty without him.”
    After the funeral and shivah , they realized they couldn’t stay there, in the house where Jason had lived, or in the community where they were known as Jason’s family. So they moved back here.
    “So that’s it,” he told me. “Now you know it all.”
    “I doubt it,” I said. I reached up, ran my hand down his cheek, up through his hair, and down his back, his wonderful, strong back. And I gave him a good kiss.
    “Rachel,” he said. “Rachel, Rachel—”
    “Rachel! Are you there?”
    Oh no. That’s not Jake. It’s Math Teacher.
    “Could you please repeat the question?” I say in my most polite Good Girl voice.
    “I asked you which of these integers”—he is tapping the blackboard with his pointer—“would fill in this sequence properly?”
    First I have to remember what an integer is. I think it’s a number, and yeah, there are some numbers in a row on the left, with a space, and four other numbers on the right.
    With a gut-wrenching epiphany I know what it feels like for Randy to look at a page filled with letters that seem like undecipherable scribbles. Not a single thing makes sense to him. From what Mrs. Glick said, he can recognize an a and an n , a g, s , and t , just as I can recognize those scribbles as numbers, but he can’t put them together to read angst . Not that he’d know what that word means. Shit, he can’t even put together d and o and g to make dog or god . As far as I can tell, car is the only word he recognizes besides his own name. I have got to help that poor guy learn to read. When I look up at the math board I see:
total gibberish.
    I feel stupendously stupid. The tears start to well up in my eyes. I shake my head.
    “Please