Donal set it face-down on the placemat and then picked it back up. He pressed the button on the side and the screen lit blue and he flinched like it had bitten him. Maisie peeled the last section of clementine and didn't laugh, just walked over and put her sticky hand over his big one and moved his thumb to the right spot.
The controller had more buttons than Donal's old TV remote, little colored circles he couldn't name yet, and Maisie pressed the yellow one first because yellow was her favorite. The cartoon world opened into a field of enormous mushrooms, purple and swaying - and Donal made a sound low in his throat - not a word, just a sound - and leaned forward on the bench. Maisie's braid swung against his arm when she turned to check his face. He was already watching hers.
The thunk came four times, five, the little figure bouncing off the same stone corner like it had forgotten and remembered and forgotten again. Donal's thumb moved the same way each time, the way he'd always turned the key in the Volvo that stuck - the muscle sure of itself and wrong. He set the controller on the placemat and put both hands on his knees. From the kitchen came the sound of the refrigerator door, the plastic knock of the juice pitcher, Maisie's bare feet on the tile.
Maisie set the juice cup on the placemat and crouched beside his knee, not in front of the screen but beside him, her two thumbs up like small pale flags. He watched them instead of the mushrooms - the way the left one barely moved, just a breath of pressure, the right one rolling slow. On the screen the little figure stepped out from the stone corner and the purple mushrooms gave way to something wide and yellow-bright, and neither of them said anything about it. His hands stayed on his knees and Maisie's braid swung forward and she didn't look at him, just kept her thumbs up until he reached over and tried.
The grocery receipt had a smear of something orange near the tally - and Maisie's fours looked like nines, and Donal asked her to read the number out loud just so he could hear her say eleven. He died the last time walking straight into a purple mushroom he could have sworn wasn't moving, and Maisie doubled over the pencil, her braid falling across the receipt, laughing with her whole ribcage. Donal laughed too - a sound that came from somewhere below his sternum, and the refrigerator hummed, and the afternoon light had moved all the way across the placemat without either of them noticing.
The receipt was still on the placemat when he came back from the car, one corner bent where Maisie's elbow had rested. He smoothed it flat with his thumb, the orange smear - the eleven marks in pencil, her fours that looked like nines. His flannel shirt had a breast pocket with a button he never used and he slipped the receipt in there and pressed the button closed. The controller sat beside the juice cup with its colored circles facing up, yellow and red and green, and he left it there.
The next Sunday he came in holding a clementine in each hand and set them both on the placemat before he sat down. Maisie looked at them, then at him - and he shrugged one shoulder and picked up the controller himself, the yellow button already under his thumb. She peeled both clementines anyway, section by section, and when he walked his little figure straight off a ledge she handed him a piece without looking up, just held it out beside his elbow - and he took it.
He brought a notepad the third Sunday, a yellow legal one with the top curled from the glove box, and he wrote down the names of things as Maisie said them - the ledge, the bounce, the way to hold the left thumb - his handwriting going careful and slow the way it did on checks. Maisie spelled nothing for him - just said the words again when he asked, and once pointed at his hand instead of answering. The notepad sat on the placemat beside the controller and she picked it up once, quiet, and read what he'd written, and set it back without saying anything. He didn't ask her what she thought and she didn't tell him - and the afternoon light came through the window and made a long bright stripe across his handwriting and her name wasn't in it anywhere but it was in all of it.
He came the fourth Sunday and Maisie was already on the bench, the controller in her lap, and she slid over without being asked, just moved her whole body six inches to the left so there was room. He sat down and the notepad was already open to a new page, the top curled back - and he'd written one word at the top in his check-writing hand: *ledge*. Maisie looked at it and then looked at the screen and said, without turning, try the yellow one first, and he did, and the little figure landed.
He lost twice before Maisie got there the fifth Sunday - the notepad open, the controller warm from his hands, and when she came in still wearing her coat she saw both and didn't say anything, just hung the coat on the chair back and sat down and held out her hand for the controller the way you'd hold out your hand for a hammer someone was using wrong. He gave it to her. She played one round without speaking, her left thumb doing the thing he'd written down as *breath of pressure* - and then she set it in his lap and pulled the notepad closer and added something below *ledge* in her fours-that-looked-like-nines, a word he had to turn the pad to read: *wait*. He read it twice and nodded and didn't write anything else, just picked up the controller and tried the yellow one, and the field opened wide, and Maisie pulled her coat off the chair and settled in beside him.
He showed up the sixth Sunday with a second notepad - a smaller one, spiral-bound, and set it on the placemat in front of Maisie's side of the bench. She looked at it and then at him and he said nothing, just uncapped his pen and held it out. She took it and wrote something on the first page, tore it out carefully along the spiral teeth - and folded it once and tucked it under the juice cup like a check under a saltshaker. He waited until she picked up the controller to unfold it, and when he read it - *your thumb is better on the left* - he pressed it flat against the placemat with his palm and left it there where they could both see it.
