Fruit (11 page)

“Beth, you know I don’t drive.”

“Don’t be smart,” my mom said. “You know what kind of rolls I’m talking about. You forgot to get them, didn’t you?”

“Guilty,” Uncle Ed said.

“Oh for god’s sake, Ed. I ask you to pick up one thing for me. Well, we just won’t have rolls tonight. And if anyone asks why, I’ll look at you and you can do the explaining.”

“I’ll take the heat,” Uncle Ed said. “Fair enough.”

“But you better start tying a string around your finger or something, Ed. I mean it.”

“Where are the kids?”

Nancy and I were sitting in the living room. “Oh god,” she whispered.

“In the living room, watching
TV
.”

“What’s in the news?” Uncle Ed asked when he walked in. He was wearing a Detroit Red Wings baseball cap and a red Hawaiian shirt.

“Not much,” Nancy said.

“Not much,” I said.

“Where’s Christine?” Uncle Ed plopped down in the brown velour chair with a grunt.

“In her room.”

“Where’s your dad?”

“Downstairs.”

“What are you watching?”

“Some movie.”

“Wonder what that football score is now.”

“Do you want to check?”

“Maybe just for a minute.”

It’s the same every Sunday. Uncle Ed always manages to get the television turned to whatever sports game is on that afternoon. And it never is “just a minute” because a half hour will go by and then my mother will call “Supper!” and he’ll look up, kind of surprised and say, “Is it dinnertime already?” But no one really minds if he gets the
TV
because it means he talks less.

I was a bit nervous that he was going to bring up
Janice Appleby, but he didn’t say anything to me. Sometimes, I feel bad about being embarrassed by Uncle Ed. I mean, it’s not his fault he’s the way he is.

“You can’t get a leopard to change his spots,” my mom said once. We were all waiting for Uncle Ed to show up for dinner. He was forty-five minutes late and the chicken in the oven had shrunk to the size of a chickadee. “If only Ed wasn’t Ed, things might have turned out all right for him.”

She always says that if Uncle Ed lost weight, he could find someone else to do his laundry.

“Not just cooking and cleaning and things like that,” she said. “But someone to take care of him, too. Emotionally, I mean. Someone to say ‘Ed, you put down that fork,’ or ‘Ed, are you having sugar with your coffee or coffee with your sugar?’ God knows I’m tired of doing it. And I shouldn’t have to do it in the first place.”

“Why didn’t Uncle Ed ever get married?” I asked her once.

“Mother smothered him,” she sighed. “The sun just rose and set on Eddy, there was no doubt about that. Now look how he’s turned out. Can’t cook for himself. Can’t clean. Can’t even wash a towel. And not a wife in sight for miles. And then, of course, there’s the other thing.”

“What other thing?”

My mom looked at me hard. “Nothing,” she said. “I’m just talking nonsense. But just promise me you’ll never let yourself become like him, Peter. I mean it.”

I kept trying to think of ways to get out of my appointment with Dr. Luka, but it was a dead end. There was no way of getting out of it unless I died and I didn’t really see that happening any time soon.

The night before my appointment, I decided I had no choice but to go with untaped nipples and keep my fingers crossed. Considering Dr. Luka was so old, it might not be too hard to confuse him, anyway.

“Take my sweatshirt off? Dr. Luka, I just put it back on!”

My appointment was at 4:30 p.m. so I had just enough time to come home, peel off the masking tape, and rub some of my mother’s skin lotion on my nipples.

“You can’t shut us up this easily,” they said.

“Take a hike,” I said.

My mother ended up coming with us because she wanted to go to Zellers. You can only get to Zellers by making a left-hand turn, so she doesn’t get there too often.

“I have to get a dozen glass ashtrays,” she said. “We’re making candle holders at the next U.C.W. meeting. I don’t know how you get a candle holder out of an ashtray, let alone twelve of them. However.”

Having her with us made me more nervous, but she promised she wasn’t going to interfere.

“You won’t even know I’m there,” she said.

Mrs. Luka was on the telephone when we arrived. She waved a monkey arm at us and mouthed “Come in!”

The office was hot and smelled like old people. It wouldn’t kill either of the Lukas to crack open a window once in a while.

“Vell, how are you today?” Mrs. Luka said when she
hung up the phone. “Little Peter, I have not seen you in a very long time. Vhat grade are you in now? Five?”

“Eight,” I said.

“Oh yes. Vhy don’t I go and tell the doctor you are here?”

When Dr. Luka came out to get me, I thought about a movie I saw once about an Egyptian mummy who comes back from the dead.

“Valk this vay, young man,” Dr. Luka said. He turned to my parents. “You can vait out here. There are some magazines on the table if you like.”

Once I got into Dr. Luka’s office and sat down on the examining table, I started to get a little nervous. What if he asked me to take off my jacket?

“Now Peter, vhy don’t you take off your sweatshirt and your pants and lie back on the table?”

I froze. Dr. Luka was shuffling around, looking for his stethoscope. “Why?” I asked. It was a stupid question, I know, but it was the only thing I could think of.

Dr. Luka turned around to look at me. “So that I can examine you,” he said.

“Oh. Can I keep my T-shirt on? I mean, it’s just a bit cold in here.”

“Sure, sure,” Dr. Luka said. “Vhatever makes you happy.”

I pulled off my sweatshirt, stepped out of my rugby pants, and laid back, resting my hands over my nipples.

After tapping me on the knee a few times with his hammer and listening to my heartbeat, Dr. Luka told me to step onto his scales.

“Pardon?” I asked. I was so worried about my nipples that I didn’t even think that Dr. Luka might want to weigh me. I couldn’t remember the last time I stepped on a scale, especially while there was another person in the room.

“It vill only take a moment,” Dr. Luka said.

I kept my eyes closed the whole time I was on.

“Okay, Peter. Vhy don’t you put your clothes back on? I’m going to bring your parents in here for a minute.”

When my mom and dad were sitting down in the room, Dr. Luka pulled out my file. “Peter is thirteen years old. And he veighs two hundred and four pounds. If you don’t change his eating habits, I guarantee you there vill be health problems in the future.”

My mother laughed her fake laugh. “Dr. Luka, Peter is a teenager,” she said. “And you know how teenagers eat. I can’t monitor him at all hours of the day. Besides, it’s natural. Every other teenager I know eats French fries and fast food and hot dogs. Why should Peter be denied that? I don’t think it’s very fair to ask a teenage boy to live off yogurt and celery sticks, do you?”

The more she went on, the higher her voice got. My dad sat there and said nothing. I wanted to disappear. Dr. Luka just kept looking at his papers.

“Fatness runs on my side of the family,” my mom said. Her voice was hurting my ears. “Come to our family reunion, Dr. Luka! You’ll see!”

Things got worse on the car ride home.

“Why is everything my fault?” my mom asked my dad.

“No one said it was anyone’s fault, Beth.”

“The doctor didn’t have to. I could see it in his eyes. Blame the mother! Blame the mother! Why not? Everyone else always does. Look at how Nancy treats me now.”

My mom said that because something’s different about Nancy. She broke up with André a few weeks after my mom’s birthday dinner at the Conch Shell and bought a Jane Fonda record. I watched the other day as she poured a packet of Sugar Twin into her tea.

“Those chemicals aren’t good for you,” my mother had said.

“Neither is obesity,” Nancy said and went back to her room.

“It’s not my fault he doesn’t play sports,” my mom said to my dad. “You should take him golfing more often, Henry. That’s what a father does with his son.”

I almost died when she said that. She turned to me in the back seat.

“You just need to exercise more, dear,” she said. “That’s all. Less time in front of the
TV
and more time out playing with your friends.”

“I’d have a boy friend right now if it wasn’t for you,” I felt like saying. But I didn’t want her to know about Andrew. She’d be on my case all the time, asking me if I called him. So I bit my tongue.

“Beth, I don’t think the solution to this is golf,” my dad said.

“Well what
is
the solution, Henry? Assuming there is some kind of problem to begin with. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Peter. He’s my little angel.”

“There you go again,” my dad said as we pulled into the driveway.

“What do you mean?”

“Smothering him. Making excuses for him. Setting him up just like you know who.”

“Who?” my mother asked. “Who?” She sounded like an owl.

My father didn’t say anything. He just got out and left the two of us sitting in the car.

“Don’t pay any attention to him, Peter,” my mother said, “he’s just grouchy from shift work. It happens. Oh no! I forgot about getting the ashtrays!”

She ran into the house to get my father. I got out and went straight to my room, shut the door, and stuck my desk chair under the knob. I should’ve been happy that Dr. Luka didn’t discover my nipples, but I wasn’t. All I kept thinking about was what Dr. Luka had said when he stopped adjusting the scale.

“Vow.”

Two hundred and four pounds. I reached between my mattresses and pulled out a list I had made when I turned thirteen last year. I had written down all the things I needed to change in order to become a new and improved Peter Paddington.

1) Lose weight.

2) Buy more clothes.

3) Learn how to play sports.

4) Try to look Mr. Hanlan in the eye.

5) Get a boy friend.

6) Smile more.

7) Be vague.

8) Get tanned.

9) Act confident.

10) Lose weight.

And here I was, almost a year later and I hadn’t managed to do one thing on the list. In fact, the list only got bigger. I grabbed a pen.

II) Get normal nipples.

“You think getting rid of us is going to turn you into the ‘new’ Peter Paddington?” my nipples asked.

“It’d be a start.”

“Give us a break,” my nipples said. “You made us this way in the first place.”

“I did not!” I said. “I’m innocent.”

“That’s a bunch of baloney. Let’s see. Who was it checking out the men’s underwear section in the Sears catalogue last night?”

“I need new underwear,” I said. “How do I know what kind to get unless I see what the latest styles are?”

“Face it,” my nipples said. “We’re going to be together for a long, long time. You might as well get used to us.”

I got out the masking tape and shut them up. I was so angry at my evil nipples. Who did they think they were, anyway?

I needed to do something to take my mind off things so I decided to play the Mirror Game. The Mirror Game is kind of creepy, so I only do it when there’s someone else home. I never do it late at night, either. To play the Mirror Game, I turn off all the lights and close my curtains and light the candle I keep in the right-hand drawer
of my desk. I sit in front of my mirror and put the candle beside me. The trick is to keep staring at yourself without blinking. Once you blink, you lose your concentration and have to start all over again.

After a while, everything will start to get cloudy. Then I’ll see other people’s faces. Sometimes, I see the face of an old woman. Sometimes, an old man. There’s a guy with a dark beard that shows up sometimes, too. One time, I think I saw the Devil, which creeped me out pretty good.

Once, I told Christine about the Mirror Game. She said that the faces I saw were proof of reincarnation.

“Your soul goes into another person that’s being born at the same time and you live your life as someone else,” she said. “Anyone with half a brain knows it’s true.”

“Can a man come back as a woman?” I asked.

“You could come back as anything — a tree, an eagle, even a fly. You just never know.”

I don’t know if I’d like to come back if I had to be a boring old tree. Or if I had to be a fly and eat dog poop all day. If I had a choice, I’d like to come back as a fashion model or an Athlete Group boy.

Christine told me that in a past life, she was Joan of Arc.

“Why do you think I’m so petrified of fire?” she asked.

Maybe Christine is right and the Mirror Game shows me all the people I once was. Or maybe they’re the people I’m going to be. I was thinking about that while I sat staring at my reflection, wondering if I was anyone famous, too. Then, I started to see someone in the mirror. It was a face worse than the Devil. And before the
Hawaiian shirt got any clearer, I blinked really hard to break the spell and blew out the candle. I stayed in my room for the rest of the night and didn’t come out once, not even when my mom knocked on my door to tell me she had made peanut butter cookies.

“Your favourite, Peter.”

I said thanks and told her I’d be out in a little while.

“What are you doing in there?” she asked in this fake-happy voice.

“Nothing,” I said and waited for her to walk away. She didn’t. I could hear her breathing on the other side of the door. I sat there, quiet as I could, staring at the door knob. I knew that if I saw it start to turn, I would lose it on her. I’d scream at her to stop going through my drawers and stop calling me her “angel” and stop
LISTENING AT MY DOOR WHEN ALL I WANT IS PRIVACY
!

But the doorknob didn’t turn. After a couple of minutes, I heard the floor creak as she walked back down the hall.

From now on, when I need to take my mind off things, I’m using my Ouija board.

six