Also Known as Elvis (10 page)

“She's tired all the time,” I mumble.

“Yeah, I hate that. I hate that I haven't been able to help you guys out more. It's been tough finding work. But now that I have this new job and . . .”

And now instead of The Talk, I am getting The Pitch. The Sales Pitch. How he's become a responsible citizen, living in the Land of Opportunity (even though I heard in current events last year how half the major industry in Rochester has tanked) with
awesome
buddies who do
cool
stuff. Like he's got this one buddy (I wonder if he has any friends who are women or don't like being called buddy) who has this
sweet
cabin cruiser they take out fishing on the lake sometimes and this other buddy who's
from New Orleans and is an
excellent
cook, who's teaching him how to make
amazing
stuff like Cajun deep-fried turkey and dirty rice.

“Sweet,” I say.

“Awesome,” I say.

“Excellent,” I say.

And he just keeps going on and on, not hearing me, which isn't a totally bad deal because I sneak in an order for another vanilla shake and seasoned curly fries and he doesn't even notice. I'm not sure what he's getting at. Is he going to try to sell me a boat? Does he think I'll be impressed that he knows how to make dirty rice, whatever the heck that is? Will he ever mention Bobblehead Gerri?

None of the above. He winds it up with, “So I'm really going to try to do better for your mom and you guys. I know it's been tough. I mean, geez, here you are having to work at the Candy Kitchen, for cryin' out loud, and you're, what, twelve?”

“Thirteen,” I say, “and I happen to like working at the Candy Kitchen.”

“No, it's great,” he goes, laying down some
bills on the table, including, I notice, a generous tip. “Free ice cream and all that.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, that's why I do it. Free ice cream.”

Back in the car, I catch him glancing at his watch, like,
Okay, how many more hours do I have with the kid and what am I going to do with him?
Maybe that's not what he's thinking; maybe it's what I'm feeling about him, who knows. He starts up the engine, fastens his seat belt, then pulls out his phone and checks for messages.

Even with the AC on, I'm feeling the heat. I take off my jacket, ball it up in my lap, and wonder why I even wear it anymore. Why the hell I still care.

Before I started wearing my dad's jacket, I looked like your basic nerd with bad-boy aspirations. I hunched up my shoulders and kept my head down and my hands shoved in my jeans pockets. My hair flopped in my face. I mumbled a lot.

What? What did you say?

That's
what I heard all the time.

I
said
, I mumbled a lot. The only time I didn't mumble was when I wanted to get in a good wisecrack. Then I made sure I could be heard.

I acted tough, but that's all it was: an act. I didn't dress the part until my dad left and I found the one leather jacket he'd left behind hanging in the back of his and my mom's bedroom closet. I put it on right away, checked myself out in the mirror on the back of the closet door, and liked what I saw. After glopping up my hair with some mousse I found in
the bathroom, I ran grooves through it with a comb so that I looked like I belonged in a street gang.

Okay, maybe a street gang from fifty years ago, but still . . .

My mom pretty much had a heart attack when she got home from work that night. “Go wash your hair!” she snapped. “And take that jacket off. We're throwing it out. You look like . . .”

She never finished her sentence, but I knew the end of it:
BJ. You look like BJ. You look like your dad.

When I refused to take off the jacket or stop slicking back my hair, she threatened to:

1. ground me

2. take away my allowance

3. make me clean the cellar

4. make me live in the cellar

5. cut off my air supply

Nothing worked.

So one day she said, “I've made an
appointment for you with Dr. Leslie, the therapist I've been seeing. He's been helping me and I think he can help you, too.”

“Whatever,” I mumbled.

“What? What did you say?”

Two days later I was sitting in a swivel chair across from this guy in a sweater-vest with a clipboard on his lap.

In my head I gave him props for the swivel chair. The sweater-vest and clipboard? No
way
was I talking to this dude.

I swiveled. He jabbered on about how my mom was concerned that I wouldn't take off the leather jacket and why wouldn't I take off the leather jacket and maybe I should stop swiveling now. I continued to swivel.

Finally he said, “Do you like to play chess?”

“Not really,” I told him.

A big victory smile lit up his face. He got me to talk!

“Checkers?”

I shrugged.

We ended up playing checkers for the rest of the session. And the session after that. And the session after that. Once a week for forty-five minutes I played checkers with a middle-aged guy in a sweater-vest who let me win. How much was my mother paying for this?

I figured that playing checkers was better than swiveling to the point of getting dizzy or having to look past him at his stupid degrees hanging crooked on the wall or at his wife and kids laughing at me from their happy family photo-op photo from Disneyworld.
It's a small world after all, ha ha, splash splash.

One time he noticed me glancing up at that picture, and that made him think it was okay to talk about families. Pretty soon I was talking about mine, and eventually he got me to tell him that I wore the jacket all the time because I thought maybe if I did, my dad would come back home. I don't know if I actually believed this or if I was saying it so he'd leave me alone.

“We call that magical thinking,” he said, tapping his clipboard with his pen.

“Who's ‘we'?” I mumbled.

“What?” he asked. “What did you say?”

I repeated myself in a slightly louder voice, just enough so he could hear me but not without having to lean forward and drop his clipboard on the floor.

“Let's keep the focus on you,” he said, picking up his clipboard. I caught sight of a doodle of a duck before he returned the clipboard to his lap.

That was my last session with Dr. Leslie. He told my mother that she shouldn't worry, that I was just working through my grief over my dad's leaving, and that I'd stop wearing the jacket when I was ready.

He clapped me on the shoulder as we left his office. “I'm here for you if you need me,” he said.

I wanted to tell him that I didn't need him; that I had friends to play checkers with who didn't charge by the hour. But I didn't say that. I could see in his face that he really wanted to help, and in a way he
already had. He got my mom to back off and let me keep wearing my dad's jacket.

“Thanks,” I told him in my loud wisecracking voice, even though this time I wasn't making a wisecrack. I was totally being sincere.

“Whoa, check out that pooch!”

I have no idea what my dad is talking about. Pooch? Really? Who says pooch? All I know is that the Ranger has jerked to a halt, fast-forwarding me from my memories of Dr. Leslie and his swivel chair to the parking lot of Betty & Pauls, where my dad is pointing at something across the street.

“Huh?” I go.

“There, there!” he says, all excited.

When I follow the direction of his finger, I get excited, too.

“Holy tomato!” I say. I have no idea where this comes from.

Anyways, what I say isn't important. What I
see
is.

“That dog looks just like—”

“Penny!” my dad practically shouts. “I know, I know! It's amazing!”

“Do you think it
is
her? I mean, it could be, right?”

My dad burns rubber across the street without even looking both ways, which is bad. Lucky for us there are no other cars around. Pulling up alongside the girl who's walking the dog (Penny? our Penny?), he honks the horn and powers down the passenger window.

“Hey!” he calls out.

The girl turns and looks at us, a little scared. She's maybe eight or nine.

“Where'd you get your dog?” he goes.

“What?” she says. “Penny” pulls at the leash, eager to keep moving.

“Your dog is really cute,” my dad says. “Just wondering where you got her.”

“Him,” the girl calls back. “He's a boy. We got him at the shelter.”

“He's a boy?” I ask. How could Penny have turned into a boy?

“Uh-huh. His name is Oscar.”

All of a sudden, Oscar stops looking like Penny.
He's smaller and his ears are too pointy. And he doesn't know who we are.

Not ready to give up, my dad asks, “How old is he?”

“He's two,” the girl answers. “Um, I think I'd better go. My mom says I shouldn't—”

“Right. That's cool. It's just that, we like your dog, is all.”

The girl breaks into a big smile. I remember smiling like that. It comes from knowing you have the best dog in the whole world and some stranger stopping to tell you that they see it, too.

After the girl and her dog walk away, I roll up my window and we just sit there for a few minutes, gazing out through the windshield, thinking about Penny.

“Remember the time she snuck up on the back porch and ate that stack of baloney sandwiches we'd set out?” my dad says with a chuckle. “Your mom was so pissed.”

It comes back to me. “Yeah. We were going out to the lake to have a picnic for somebody's birthday.”

“Uh-uh. It wasn't a birthday, it was just a Saturday. We did that a lot. Pack up some sandwiches, head out to the lake, and hang out for hours. Don't you remember that time you got sunburned so bad you wouldn't even let me carry you to the car?”

“No,” I tell him, because I don't remember getting sunburned or my dad carrying me or not carrying me. I don't even remember going out to the lake on ordinary Saturdays. I thought it had to be for something special.

We're still looking out the windshield, keeping our eyes straight ahead. “It was best when we had Penny,” my dad says, all quiet-like. “Tossing the Frisbee around for her to catch.”

“Or throwing sticks into the water and watching her go after them and bring them back,” I say. The times with Penny, those are easier to remember somehow.

My dad heaves a big sigh. “She was a great dog all right. I hate that she had to stay out back in that kennel all the time. She should have been in the
house with her family, where she belonged. Hell, she could have had all the baloney sandwiches she wanted, if it was up to me.”

We get quiet for a long time, just the sound of the AC keeping us company.

“I still can't figure how she got out of that kennel and ran off like she did,” my dad says. My eyes fill up with tears, and I have to turn my head to the side window. No way can I let him see me like this. No way can I tell him what I know.

“Well, that's water under the bridge,” he says, pulling slowly out onto the street. “It sure would have been nice if that was her today, though, wouldn't it, Skeezo? Sure would have been nice to see her again.”

I nod my head so slightly it's like a mumble. As we drive along the familiar streets of Paintbrush Falls, the radio soft in the background, I'm surprised at how much I'm liking this. Him calling me Skeezo. Us talking about Penny. Just driving around together like we used to when I was a kid, the two of us, not knowing where we were going because where we were going
wasn't the point. And then I start hating that these good feelings are slipping in through cracks I didn't even know were there. I don't
want
to like this. I don't want to like him.

After a while, he leans in and turns up the radio. “These guys are awesome,” he says. “Listen to the drums. Man, if I could play like that . . .”

“You play drums?” I ask. First I heard.

“Yeah, look behind my seat,” he says.

I do, and there's what looks like a snare drum.

“You in a marching band?”

He laughs. “Yeah, right. Me, in a marching band. That's a good one. No, I'm in a rock band. One of my buddies started it up a couple years back, and then about six months ago his drummer left town and—”

“Since when are you a drummer?” First he's wearing a tie, now he's a drummer. Seriously, who is this dude?

“I don't know. A year or two. It's something I always wanted to do, but who had the time or the money, and with three kids . . . not that I'm blaming
you guys, it's just . . . I don't know. We got married so young, I never had a chance to do the stuff I wanted to. I had the Beast, sure, but your mom was always . . . no, I'm not going there. I don't blame her. It's just . . .”

He slaps his hand on the steering wheel and shakes his head. “It's just that I got this chance to play the drums and I'm doing it, man. That's all. I'm doing it. And hey, I'm not bad. Still learning, but getting better all the time.”

“So where's the rest of the drum thingy?” I ask.

“Kit. It's called a kit. It's back home. I need to replace one of the nut boxes on the snare. That's why it's in the truck.”

He looks over at me and we both crack up. I know we're thinking about what kind of joke we can make out of “nut boxes.” I forgot that my dad and I think alike sometimes.

“I want to play the electric guitar,” I tell him.

“Are you serious? That's what Gerri plays! She's in the band.”

“Is that how you guys met?”

My dad sighs. “Your mom told you?”

“Yeah. So when were
you
going to tell me?”