Also Known as Elvis (13 page)

“Well, aren't you a gentleman,” she says.

I bow and tell her, “Well, I guess I rightly am.”

She then throws a dirty, wet rag at me. “Although,” she says, “I don't know that a
gentleman would tell a lady not to get her panty hose in a twist.”

Throwing the rag right back at her, I go, “Who said anything about a lady?”

Steffi dodges the rag and it flies past her to land at the feet of Mrs. Miller, the only customer at the moment. Mrs. Miller is about a hundred years old. She comes in every afternoon right at three for a bowl of chocolate ice cream with whipped cream on top. It takes her about a half hour to eat the bowl of ice cream, because she says, every time we put it down in front of her, “I intend to savor every bite.”

“Mrs. Miller!” I go, running to pick up the rag. “Sorry about that.”

Mrs. Miller doesn't speak until the spoonful of ice cream she's just put in her mouth dissolves. “No harm done,” she says, wiping her mouth as she does after each bite. “You young people are a barrel of monkeys. You're my entertainment.”

What can I say? You've got to love Mrs. Miller.

By the time five o'clock rolls around, Steffi and I
have wiped down every surface at least three times; filled every salt and pepper shaker, every ketchup bottle, every napkin holder; washed out every rag; and come up with a list of 127 songs we'd have on our jukebox. It's been such a slow day, Donny tells me to take tomorrow off and just come in for a few hours on Saturday.

Steffi finds Mrs. Miller's glasses on the seat of the booth where she was sitting and says she'll take them to her, because Mrs. Miller lives just a few buildings down, in an apartment over the hardware store.

“It always smells like sawdust and soup,” Steffi tells me as if she's taken Mrs. Miller's left-behind things to her more than a few times.

“Sawdust and soup, sawdust and soup,” I belt out in my best Patsy Whiny voice, “I got my mem'ries o' sawdust and soup!”

That's when my dad walks in.

“Forget the electric guitar,” he goes. “What you need is a banjo, boy. Yee-haw!”

“Banjo Boy!” Steffi calls me, which gets her and
my dad laughing. Then she stops cold, catching herself, because this is my dad, after all.

“The stinkin' deal,” I say to her.

Nodding, she turns to wipe down the counter a fourth time as my dad swings his arm around my shoulders and we head out the door.

My dad's game sucks. Usually, he bowls in the 200s. Tonight, his middle name could be Gutter Ball.

Joe, talking to me in my head:
That's two names.

Me, talking to Joe in my head:
It's two
words.
Now get out of my head.

In the real world, I say, “Dad, you feelin' all right?”

He just grunts and mumbles something about having things on his mind.

Halfway through the second game he says, “Let's get out of here, Skeezo. Want to go take another look at that Yamaha?”

“Sure!” I say, even though it means leaving in the middle of whupping my dad's butt.

On the way over to the mall, we stop for gas.

“You fill it up,” he tells me, tossing me his credit card. “I gotta run inside for a minute. You want anything?”

“No, thanks.”

Standing here pumping gas, I bop my head to the chord progression I learned the other day. I can't help wondering if my dad is maybe going to buy that Yamaha for me. To get my mind off something I both want (the guitar) and am not so sure I want (my dad being the one to get it for me), I think how cool I must look with my greased-back hair and my black leather jacket, bopping my head to guitar riffs, pumping gas into a banged-up pickup truck. I am one cool dude. Just to look even cooler, I spit.
So
cool. I spit again. This time all that comes out is a pathetic
ppppt
noise and a dribble of saliva on my chin. It's amazing how fast you can go from hoping everybody's checking you out to praying to be invisible.

I'm wiping off the spit with my jacket sleeve when I notice my dad inside the gas station, talking on his phone. He's pacing back and forth, chopping the air with his left hand like he's making points or something. Maybe he's talking to his lawyer. Maybe my mom.

Back in the truck I get restless waiting for him. Before I know it, I'm poking around the glove compartment. Glove compartments are like umbrella stands. Who uses them for gloves? Who
wears
gloves, except in the winter, when the only time you'd put them in a
compartment
(weird word) would be after you were wearing them outside and they're all packed with frozen chunks of ice and snow? And then they'd melt all over everything and . . .

This is how my mind works when it's restless.

After pushing aside a bunch of papers, I spot a photograph. I pull it out and there's my dad standing with his arm around a woman. A really pretty woman, with lots of curly blond hair and big earrings and lips. She's got on a fuzzy pink turtleneck sweater, but even so you can see she's got . . . well, she's got curves in the right places, as my grandpa used to say right before my grandma would hit him and tell him he was disgusting. My dad has this woman pressed up tight against him and you can tell there's nowhere else she wants to be; they're
both looking right at the camera, smiling the kind of happy, proud smile that that girl walking Oscar had when we told her we liked her dog.

No question. This is Gerri.

I get a kind of sick feeling in the pit of the stomach, and right away I know why: I never once saw my dad look this happy in any of the pictures he was in with my mom. I never saw him this relaxed. With my mom, he always looked like he was half there and half somewhere else. Kind of the way he looked when he was bowling tonight.

I go back to nosing around the glove compartment, telling myself I'm not looking for anything in particular and knowing that's a lie. A picture of us—me and Megan and Jessie, our mom and our dad—that's what I'm looking for. That's what I want to believe he keeps in his glove compartment. A picture of his family, right in there next to the one with Gerri. But big surprise. I come up empty-handed.

Or almost empty-handed. I do find the registration for the Ranger. It's in Gerri's name. This isn't
my dad's truck. It's not even his glove compartment.

“Got you something,” I hear, as a package of Twizzlers comes flying in through the open driver's-side window. I click the glove compartment closed as quietly as I can and stick the photo of Gerri and my dad in the inside pocket of my jacket.

“Long time in the john,” I say, ripping open the Twizzlers.

“I had to make a phone call,” he says. “Thanks for getting the gas.”

“No worries,” I tell him.

“Ha! That's a good one. No worries. Good luck with life, pal.”

He grabs a Twizzler, sticks an end of it in his mouth, and says, “Let's go eat. Then I'll drive you home.”

So much for the Yamaha.

• • •

I convince him to go to the food court at the mall, figuring that maybe after we eat he'll be in a better mood and I can steer him over to Strings 'n' Things.

We're sitting there halfway through our pizza when I hear, “Oh, my goodness, it's Skeezie!”

There is only one person I know who says, “Oh, my goodness.”

“Hey, Zachary!” I call out.

Zachary and Kelsey are waving from the fountain in the center of the food court. They look like a couple, except they're not because:

1. Kelsey is Bobby's girlfriend.

2. Zachary was voted Most Likely to Be Gay Even If He Doesn't Know It by pretty much everybody who's ever met him.

“Who's that?” Dad asks as they start coming over.

“Friends from school,” I say. “Kelsey and Zachary.”

“
That's
who you were going to play video games with tonight?” he asks. I can see his face register the fact that Zachary, in his Hawaiian shirt and
I LOVE GYMNASTICS
baseball cap, is my only other
guy friend besides Bobby and Joe. Put another check in the MY SON IS GAY column.

When I introduce them, Zachary goes, “I can't
believe
you're Skeezie's father. You look so young.”

“Uh, yeah,” says my dad, who probably thinks it's beyond weird that one of my “buddies” would compliment him on his looks.

I ask Kelsey if she's heard from Bobby, and she shakes her head no.

“I can't wait for him to come home. Just two more days,” she says, crossing her fingers like that's going to make the time go by faster.

Zachary starts talking about this movie they just saw and the stuff they bought at the dollar store after the movie and how they're meeting up with Kelsey's parents over at the new Chinese restaurant at the other end of the mall, and I catch my dad texting under the table.

“Now, son,” I say in this deep, stern voice, “I thought we agreed you weren't going to text during meals.”

Zachary guffaws in this totally doofus way he
has, and my dad looks at both of us like we're from another planet.

“I'll be back,” he says, and heads off toward the men's room.

No sooner is he out of sight than I hear another voice call my name. But this one isn't saying, “Oh, my goodness.”

“Yo, Tookis! What're you doin'? Stealin' Joey's boyfriend?”

Kevin Hennessey is heading right toward us; his big brother Cole is with him. If you think Kevin is trouble, let me tell you: Cole is a disaster.

“Nice hat there, Faggory,” Kevin says. “Pays to advertise.”

Kevin is of the belief that only gay guys are into gymnastics.

If Kevin always has a smirk on his face (and he does), Cole looks like he could be one of those dogs out at the shelter that are just salivating to rip you apart.

I'm not sure where I get the nerve, but I look Kevin right in his smirking face and say, “How
are things at St. Andrew's? They teach you anything about human kindness yet?” Both Kevin and Cole were pulled out of public school this year. Let's just say they weren't known for their polite behavior.

“Don't be a fag,” Cole goes.

“Too late for that!” Kevin cracks.

“Nice talk for a couple of Catholic schoolboys,” I say.

That's all it takes. Cole steps forward and shoves me. “You insulting my religion, fag?” he snarls.

I know enough not to shove back. I stand there holding his stare, just hoping he can't see that I'm one heartbeat away from peeing my pants.

“Um, I think maybe we should be going,” Zachary says quietly. “I mean, we're supposed to be meeting Kelsey's parents.”

If Zachary was hoping to slip away unnoticed, it's not working. Cole turns and grabs him. “Aww, ain't that sweet? ‘We're supposed to be meeting Kelsey's parents.' What're you two, gettin'
married? I don't think they're going to like it, their daughter marrying a faggot.”

If I thought I was going to pee my pants a minute ago, Zachary looks like he is going to pass right out. His face has turned white. I can't see Kelsey, but I can hear her next to me, making these little whimpery noises in her throat. I know I should do something, but I can't move. The worst thing is, and I hate myself for saying it, but I'm glad the attention is on Zachary and not me.

Cole must be reading my mind, because he says, “Don't think I've forgotten about you, faggot.”

“Who you calling faggot?”

No, that's not me finding my courage. That's my dad, who's suddenly on the scene, grabbing Cole by the shoulder and swinging him around so they're face-to-face.

“You calling my son a faggot? You call anybody a faggot, maybe you should start by lookin' in the mirror!”

Cole shoves my dad now. Hard. “Bring it on, old man!” he goes.

My dad regains his balance and shoves back. “You want a fight, boy? I'll give you a fight!”

“Dad!” I shout. “Don't hit him! He's a kid. You could get arrested.”

“Who made you such a Goody Two-shoes?” my dad says, his face all red and puffy with anger. “Come on, Skeezo, defend your friend. Defend yourself! Or let me do it! Jerks like this, you got to stand up to them or they'll run all over you!”

While my dad's distracted talking to me, Cole swings. My dad ducks and comes back, ready with a swing of his own. But before he can deliver it, we hear a whistle and a security cop shouting, “Break it up! Stop it right now or I'll take you both in!”

I shut out the whole blame game that follows. I just want to get out of here as fast I can. Away from my friends seeing my dad act the way he did. Away from them knowing he acted the way he did because I'm a loser who backs down the minute things get scary. Away from Kevin and Cole, who acted the way they did because they are sick with hate and I don't get that and never will.

I'm a long way from the cool dude who was pumping gas just an hour ago.

• • •

My dad and I ride home in silence.

A million things are going through my brain. But the one that keeps beating out all the others is the thought that he's ashamed of me for not fighting back.

When we pull up in front of the house, he cuts the engine. Clearing his throat, he says, “Listen, Skeezie, maybe it's not the best time . . . or maybe it is, I dunno . . . but there's something I've been wanting to say to you. It's been on my mind all night.”

“Is this ‘the talk,' Dad?” I go. “You gonna tell me how to be a man?
Fight
like a man? Be tough?”

He reaches over and lays his hand on my shoulder. “What are you talking about? No. It's nothing like that. What I did back there, that was stupid. Are you kidding me? That's not standing up for yourself. That's laying yourself down in the gutter with the other bums. And I shouldn't have used
that word. Just because he did, that's no excuse. That was disrespecting you and your friends. No, that's not what I want to talk to you about.”