Gordy R--

“That’s where Gordy R-- lived; nobody liked him much,” Mom said, pointing to a house as we walked by it. I had never heard of Gordy R--. I didn’t know if he was young or old, if people didn’t like him because there was some neighborhood scandal – maybe something as bad as suspected pedophilia –  or maybe he just wasn’t very friendly, didn’t participate in neighborhood functions.

Gordy was Mom’s brother’s age and they all had gone to school together. They had lived about a block apart. Gordy was bullied at school. He might have been a bit overweight, Mom thought. His mother worked, and so Gordy would go to Mom and Uncle Carl’s house after school.

“We’d ride the bus together, and Gordy would always need to go to the bathroom right when we got home, number two,” Mom said. Someone who did that would have a hard time winning points with people.

The grass was really bright green, and the sky was grey and getting darker. Mom was pointing out the names of all the flowering trees: apple, crab apple, magnolia, redbud, dogwood. It rained on us a little, and in one lap around the neighborhood, we counted four cement geese and one penguin.

“It’s kind of sad about Gordy,” Mom said. “He couldn’t help it.”

Wasn’t it something that could have been helped? He could have gone number two at school? He could have changed his diet?

“Maybe he couldn’t because he was being bullied. And after school we had to catch the bus.”

Oh, right. I guessed that was true.

“I guess the moral of the story would be don’t have a mother that works,” Mom said.

“How would you spell ‘Gordy’?” I asked her.

“Don’t you be writing about him,” she said.