Please Don't Come Back from the Moon (20 page)

"It's okay," Ella said. "He's just not in our lives and we're okay with that."

"I've never even seen him," Rusty said. "Except when I was little."

Everyone nearly choked when he said that, his voice so young and sad and stretched out with longing.

"Sometimes that's for the better," Mack said. He still had some priestly instinct in him and was good at diffusing situations. "You've turned into a very smart and polite young man."

"I know," Rusty said.

It wasn't too bad of an afternoon. After dinner, Ella helped Mack with the dishes, Kolya and Rusty watched football in the family room, and my mother and I brought Christmas decorations up from the basement. Mom liked to decorate the house in a timely manner for each holiday, and the day after Thanksgiving seemed to be some urgent deadline in her world. I was glad that she wasn't working two jobs anymore. She seemed to have the energy she had when I was very young. As we untangled a mess of Christmas lights, my mother said, "Ella is beautiful and charming and smart. I'm glad you found her. And Rusty is too cute for words."

We had another round of pumpkin pie and coffee and then I drove Ella and Rusty home. I walked them to the door of the trailer, and Lucky the Dog started barking like crazy, so I came in to pet him. Ella asked me to stay while she got Rusty into bed, then she came back to the kitchen wearing an old plaid robe and gray flannel pajamas. This was the first time I'd seen her in this outfit, and in some ways, it was sexier than the short, shimmery nightgowns she wore in bed. Her hair was back in a ponytail and she came over and sat on my lap.

"Michael," she said. "I love you too."

"What?"

"A few weeks ago, after the party, you said you loved me and I didn't say it back."

"Oh, that," I said, trying to sound offhand.

"When you're a parent, I think you tend to give your love away a little less easily. It's hard to explain."

"That's okay," I said.

"But I do love you," she said.

I said it back.

"Will you stay the night?" she said.

"Sure," I said. I told her that I would take Lucky for a short walk and that I would meet her in the bedroom. She made a joke about the sexy flannel lingerie she was wearing for our first sleepover. I admitted that it would be nice not to have to drive home anymore, half asleep and lonely, at three in the morning.

Lucky and I walked slowly. He'd been inside almost all day and he wagged his tail and leaped around like a flea on a string, pissing on every tree and mailbox he passed. When we got back to Ella's place, I heard shouting. Lucky started to growl. The couple across the street was having a real knock-down-drag-out. it didn't feel right that Rusty would grow up in this kind of place, in a run-down trailer with people yelling "Fuck you" and "You fucking whore" every thirty seconds while he tried to sleep. Next door, some young hipsters were standing around a barbecue with cans of beer, still trying to get their turkey cooked. I went inside, latched the screen, and turned all three bolts.

When I got to the bedroom, Ella was still awake. She sat up in bed and helped me get undressed.

"I've been thinking," she said, "maybe we should do this anyway. We should make signs and try the sit-down strike without Nick."

"Are you serious?"

"What do I have to lose?" she said. "Right? One bad job? But what if it works? This could be something."

I loved her then, even though I knew she was only trying to keep me from crashing. She wanted me to be happy. I nodded. "What do we have to lose?"

I called Nick that night—Sunny answered the phone—and told him that we still planned to picket the mall at seven o'clock the next morning. We would urge all the other mall workers to join us. "We'll either see you there or not," I said.

"It's not going to work, Mikey," he said. "If I thought it might, I'd be right there beside you. But it won't. It just will not work."

"You don't know that!" I said.

"This time I do."

THE NEXT MORNING
, Ella and I stood at the main entrance of the mall, near the food court. Rusty was with us, all bundled up and fairly interested in the signs we had made. This spot had been the designated rallying point. We put our picket signs behind some garbage cans and waited to see if anybody would join us. Walker Van Dyke and about eight other guys showed up and looked at the three of us.

"This is it?" Walker said.

"So far," Ella said.

"Nick bailed on us," somebody else said.

"Well, he's not the only guy that matters," Ella said.

I couldn't think of anything else to say. Rusty looked a little scared. He held my hand. A Channel Two news truck slowed down in the parking lot and watched us for a minute. Then Walker and the other guys talked among themselves and decided they had better show up for work.

For the past twelve hours, we had struggled to get the word to everybody that the strike was still on. We had woken people up in the middle of the night and tried to get them to listen to us. But it was hard to reach everybody, and without Nick and his dynamic, feverish leadership, nobody wanted to go out on a limb. Most of the workers looked at Ella and me and Rusty on their way into the mall and kept on going. A few of Nick's most ardent Knights of Labor showed up with signs made on poster board—
MALL WORKERS UNITED
and
FAIR WAGES NOW
—but dropped them in the garbage cans when they saw nobody else had joined us. Ella and I didn't inspire them and instill confidence in them the way Nick did. Nick was a man of many gifts. Nick had vision.

"You've got to have vision," he used to say, whether he was playing a prank on the principal or hitting on the hottest woman in the room or organizing a mass labor protest. "You've got to have vision, man."

A few minutes before eight o'clock, Nick appeared. He gave us nothing more than a glance and a nod, not even a discreet thumbs-up or an appreciative grin. His hands were plunged into the pockets of his denim jacket. He was wearing a navy blue watch cap. His shoulders were full and hunched, and his neck was slumping, pushing his head out in front of his body. He looked like his father. From his back pocket, his Liberty Bell Subs apron and hat waved like flags.

"Well, maybe you should go in to work too," Ella said. "We might as well not be the only two people who lose their jobs, eh?"

I was due in at nine o'clock, but Ella wasn't due until four. We decided that she would bring Rusty to work with her and I would take him home, feed him dinner, and put him to bed.

"Might as well," I said.

"Nick's just trying to be a good father," Ella said. "You know that, right?"

I nodded.

"Believe me, I wish Rusty had a father like him."

"I know all that."

"These things never go like you imagine they'll go," she said. "Dreams never do." She waited a moment, watching my face to see if I really was starting to cry. I cried all the time. I cried more than my mother and Kolya. I hated myself for always crying. What the fuck was wrong with me? I was going to have to go to a doctor and have my tear ducts removed.

"I know everything you're saying," I said.

"What's really bothering you then?" Ella said.

She was looking at me like she really wanted to know. People hardly ever look at you like that, like they really want to know the answer.

"I lost him. He's not the same guy," I said. "He'll never be the same guy again."

What she did then was take both of my hands and pull me against her.

"Well, you still got me," she said. "That's enough, isn't it?"

"It is," I said.

I held her. She held me.

I wanted it to be enough.

But it didn't feel like enough, not yet.

It wasn't even close.

I
WENT OVER TO MY
mother and Mack's house for Sunday dinner. I'd just gotten off the early shift at the radio station, and I'd been up since 3 a.m. I should have gone home and slept.

Mack had made his famous pork roast. He and my mother had recently become Lutherans. They seemed happy to be back in God's grace in a church where the fall of a priest was more of a happy occurrence than an irredeemable sin. While he heaped meat and potatoes and carrots on my plate, he was telling Kolya and me about the brilliant, hopeful message they had heard in church that morning.

"This minister is really wonderful," my mother said.

I was staring at my plate, shoveling food in my mouth, and letting everybody else talk. I drained my second beer and got up for my third. My mother's eyes were on my back as I went to the fridge, and her eyes were still on me when I sat back down and flipped open the can.

"Kolya, maybe you want to tell Mikey your news," my mom said.

Kolya looked across the table at me. He took a huge drink of milk. He was a real lummox now, had failed his final year of high school because of his ADHD, and was now the biggest and oldest kid in school. He was six foot four and two hundred forty-five pounds. He played halfback on the football team, captained the swim team, and was a star pitcher for the baseball squad. I wondered if he dreamed about finding the bullies who used to pick on him before he had his growth spurt and inflicting a stern and swift justice.

"He won't care," he said. "He'll have some problem with my decision."

"Oh, now," my mom said.

"Boys," Mack said.

"Try me," I said.

"I've enlisted in the army," he said.

"Oh, you stupid shit," I said. "How could you?"

"See?" Kolya said.

"Boys," Mack said.

"Michael, we happen to be very proud of your brother. He feels very strongly about this."

"Not enough action in Northville, huh? You stupid shit."

"This is an important step for your brother," Mack said.

"Of course, we'll worry about him," my mother said.

"He's a stupid stupid stupid shit," I said. "After everything I've taught him."

"Fuck off," Kolya said. "You've never taught me shit. You're a pussy."

"Typical absent-father macho bullshit," I said.

"Did you learn that in college?" Kolya said. "You pussy."

"Everybody stop," my mother said.

It was October. It was 2001. The nation, including the crowd at my mother's dining room table, was stunned by tragedy and awash in patriotic fervor. I set down my fork and napkin and left.

"I told you," I heard Kolya saying. "He's got major fucking problems."

"Watch your language," Mack said. "Let's just finish this nice dinner."

"It is wonderful," my mother said. "I don't know how you do it, Mack."

I WAS WORKING AS
the writer for the morning drive-time slot at a twenty-four-hour news radio station. The previous summer, after I'd finally finished my bachelor's degree at Dearborn, I had quit the bookstore, where I had clawed my way up to weekend supervisor. Mack had helped me land an internship at the station.

The internship was minimum wage, and it was weird to be a twenty-six-year-old working with a bunch of nineteen-year-old kids home for the summer from schools like Michigan and Northwestern and NYU. But when one of the station's writers quit in late July, Roger Rhodes, the general manager, called me into his office.

"You want a promotion?" he said.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Herschel quit. Herschel made sixteen bucks an hour as a morning drive-time writer. But he had experience. How old are you?"

"Almost twenty-seven," I said.

"Herschel was thirty-seven, fifteen years of radio under his belt."

I nodded.

"Times are tough," the general manager said. "Really bad. Worst ever. I might have to let some people go. Can you do his job for nine bucks an hour?"

I'd recently heard that you should never accept the first salary you were offered. "How about ten dollars?" I said.

"Get out of my office," he said. "I got other interns to choose from. You're just the oldest and your copy is clean, but that doesn't mean everything."

"Nine dollars is fine," I said.

"Good. Be here tomorrow morning at four. Gunderson is your producer. Report to her."

The first few weeks, the job felt too good to be true. I had to crank out more than two dozen new stories in an hour, but radio stories were swift and compact. True, they weren't exactly hard-hitting, Pulitzer-contending pieces, but sometimes the pleasure of being able to compress the announcement of a tax cut or the initiation of a military campaign into eight sentences that could be read in thirty seconds was a thrill. I made sure all the nineteen-year-olds knew I was no longer a fucking intern. After working retail and other shit jobs for years, I was pleased to have a title: news writer. At nine fifty-two every morning, my name was announced on the air during the credits: "Our writer this morning is Michael Smolij." My mother tuned in to hear it. So did Ella, when she wasn't at work. And I was actually making money by writing. I started at four o'clock in the morning, but I usually showed up early just to read the wire stories from overnight, so I could crank out copy even faster than they could use it. It's embarrassing to admit it now, but for those first few weeks of work, it was hard for me to sleep. I was that excited.

IT WAS A MONDAY MORNING
. I woke up at three, showered and dressed in about ten minutes, and drove down Warren Avenue to Telegraph Road. I stopped at Three Brothers for some coffee and then moved toward the freeway. All along the street, the Arab-owned party stores and gas stations flew giant flags and crudely drawn banners urging God to bless America.

Gina Gunderson was smoking outside the station's entrance when I pulled up. She was wearing a blue Michigan sweatshirt and gray sweatpants, and her gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was too thin, and in the morning, despite a shiny set of blue eyes that hadn't aged, she sometimes looked a little skeletal. The good thing about radio was that you could wear jeans or sweats and nobody gave a shit, and you didn't have to comb your hair or work out or wear makeup like the TV idiots down the hall. This circumstance attracted the overweight, the bad-skinned, the prematurely bald, the chain-smokers, the yellowed drunks, and the chronically fatigued to the radio newsroom, and I liked being with them. It took the pressure off.