Sorry You're Lost (14 page)

“Dad, it's okay. Here, take a sip of water.”

The manager smiles at Sabrina and her parents. They smile back. Her dad removes his black coat and helps his wife out of her beige one. He hangs them up on the rack. “Right this way,” says the host.

I look away.

“Dad, I'm going to the bathroom.”

Before Sabrina can see me or my dad can tell me to sit back down, I hustle to the bathroom and lock the door. I wish this were a movie and I wish I were a trained member of the Secret Service, but I'm not. I try to make out an exit strategy through the bathroom, but there is no air-conditioning vent to pop out. No escape behind the paper towel rack, or behind the cracked toilet and out through the pipes.

Crumpled paper towels on the floor with footprints. Water on the sink. A flickering light. I feel dirty and then dirtier, because above the sink I see the blue sign,
EMPLOYEES MUST WASH THEIR HANDS
, which is obviously an admission that employees
don't
wash their hands—or at least had a history of not washing them.

How comforting to know the employees at Hunan Pal need a reminder to wash their hands after doing their business. The restaurant should just come out and say it: “Our employees don't always wash their hands. We wish they did, but they don't. Sometimes, after they wipe, they get distracted. They think about the day's errands, relationships gone sour, the score of the game, a new ingredient to add to your chow mein. Hey, they're only human. We'd fire our employees for poor hygiene, but we're all pals here at the Hunan Pal and like to keep it light. Enjoy your meal.”

I need to get out of here and I don't just mean the bathroom. I walk with my head down the whole way back to our table. I must look like a pouty kid after a tantrum, but I can't make eye contact. I count seven stains on the green carpet before I plop into my seat. When I look up, the manager is headed our way. A smile is plastered to his face. “Ah, Mr. Murphy, good evening, sir. The Chinese menu again?”

My dad nods.

“Not a problem, sir. How are you this evening?”

Another nod.

“We're good!” I tell him, loud enough for Sabrina to hear. “We're really good. Swell, even. So swell we're swollen. We're swelling swellness. Oozing it, actually. Thank you for asking.”

The manager bows and points to the Chinese menu in front of my dad. “Having difficulty deciding what to order?”

I touch his arm. “Hunan chicken is good, Dad. It's spicy and crunchy and delicious. We should get that.”

He takes another sip of water.

The manager takes out a pen and pad, his first mistake.

“Something good,” my dad grunts. “Give me what the Chinese eat.”

“Give me what the Chinese eat isn't
technically
an order,” the manager points out, which makes my dad raise his voice and other parents gawk and their kids once again whisper, “Look at how fat he is, Mommy.”

“JUST BRING ME WHAT I WANT!” my dad thunders.

I don't want to, but I steal a peek at Sabrina. She's looking at us. Everyone is looking at us. Especially the young grandson with the blue turtleneck. He's having a good ol' time. And I can no longer look up. The napkins on the table are red and the silverware is shiny. I turn them over in my hand.

Ten years pass. We are graying and aging at the speed of light.

When the food arrives, my dad sends it back, telling the waiter, loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear, that the food is too hot or too cold or too burnt or simply not good. I don't know exactly what he says because I've been trying to plan an exit route to minimize humiliation, but I haven't yet come up with any ideas.

“Dad, it's fine,” I beg, my eyes fixed on the tablecloth.

“Are you paying? Because if
you're
paying, I'm content to eat what's in front of me, but if
I'm
paying, my food should be the way I want it, understand?”

My dad stands up.
Dad, NO! WAIT!
The words grab at my tongue, but it's too late. My dad stands up. And so does the table.

Glasses tip over, fall over, spill, crash, break. The Chinese menus slide down the table into small puddles of water on the floor. The manager grabs hold of the back of his head. I think he rips some hair out, but I don't want to look—at him, at his hair, the laughing children, Sabrina, or my dad, now storming out the door to a chorus of bells. But as I've said, it's hard not to look when you've told yourself not to, and though my face is flushed and I wish myself a sudden painless death, I could use a bit of assurance that Sabrina won't gab about the night's incidents to anyone.

I steal a glance. She doesn't look angry or judgmental or annoyed. Just, well, sad.
Don't tell anyone,
I say with my eyes, but I'm not sure she understands.

February never got my memo, so why should she?

*   *   *

Outside the restaurant, my dad walks aimlessly across the parking lot. Beads of rain stick to the ends of his wispy hair, like someone sprayed the water out of a bottle.

I jog up to him and put my arm around his wide shoulders. His clothes smell. “Don't worry about it,” I say. “The employees don't even wash their hands here.”

He doesn't answer.

“Seriously, Dad. They don't wash their hands here. They admitted it in the bathroom. You should've seen the sign. It's a low-down dirty establishment any way you slice it. We're better off without them. Hey, you in the mood for fried chicken?”

He leans over with his arms against his legs, as if he's out of breath. “You okay, Dad? Seriously, you okay? I'm not mad. Are you okay? C'mon, stand up straight.”

On his way up, he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and says, so softly I barely hear it, “I miss her.”

Then he looks away from me, across the parking lot. All I can see are one sideburn and the side of his eye, wet and distant. “I—I miss her,” he says.

I do, too.

So I tell him: “I do, too.”

 

THE WAY IT WAS

It's spring. Not just any spring day, though. My tenth birthday. Spring Training has ended and the season has started and the Phillies have a home game with over 40,000 screaming fans and I am one of them. It's my first game, so the grass is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Greener than the greenest green. Greener than a neon highlighter named “The Greenest Green Ever Invented.” The chalk lines are as straight as rulers, the dirt looks clean, and I can't wait to tell everyone about this incredible thing called “the wave,” and then spread it to my fourth grade class, and then to other grades, and then to the world. It's
that
cool.

From the second level, the players look bright and important, and their arms have muscles in places I've never seen muscles in before. I'm wearing a red Phillies shirt and a Phillies hat. In my hands, another Phillies hat, this one miniature-size and filled with vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup. “Nothing better than a sundae on a Sunday,” my dad says, diving in for a spoonful.

“Da-ad,” I whine, though I know I shouldn't. “Da-ad, that bite was huge! You said you wouldn't take a daddy bite.”

He shrugs. “It was a daddy bite. But Daddy's paying.” He rubs my head and squishes my hat and I can't help but smile. “It's your birthday—if you want another, we can get another. You can take a daddy bite from my ice cream.”

I look up at him. “Thanks,” I say, and I don't mean about the ice cream. I mean about the game. I tell him that.

He rubs my head again, then turns back to the game, so I do, too. I'm out of ice cream but it doesn't matter. Chase Utley is up to bat and the bases are loaded and the field is still green. I hope the game goes into extra innings so we can stay longer. Somebody should tell the players that they can play longer if the score is tied. And someone should tell the guy who starts the wave that I'm ready for another round.

*   *   *

It's summer. A few months later. We're watching home movies. My mom is next to me on the sofa. We're sharing a large blanket with a tiger on it because the air conditioner is turned up high. Even though it's freezing, my dad is in the kitchen eating his third ice cream sandwich. He has taken more than a few daddy bites. But he's not joking or laughing about it. “Stupid paper wrapper,” he mutters. “Always getting stuck to the sandwich.”

My mom fast-forwards to her favorite scene: she's in a red rocking chair, cradling me as an infant, rubbing the top of my head while singing about how I am her sunshine.

I want her to finish the song but my dad is making too much noise crumpling up his wrapper. My mom presses Pause and we both tell him to “Shhhh.”

He looks confused. “What? I'm not allowed to throw out my garbage?”

“Honey—” she starts, but my dad has already stormed out of the room.

“Mom?” I ask.

“Yes, my sunshine?” She rubs the top of my head and I let her, even though I'm now ten years old, nine years older than I am in the home movie.

“What's wrong with Dad?” I ask.

“He's sad,” she says.

“Why is he sad?”

She closes her eyes.

“Mom?” I ask.

“Yes, my sunshine?”

“Do you wanna finish the movie?”

She smiles, presses Play.

*   *   *

It's Tuesday, September 12th, still technically summer, but fifth grade started a week ago and I'm as mad as a fire-breathing dragon. So is my mom. We're both as mad as fire-breathing dragons, and the temperature inside my mom's car is as hot as a fire-breathing dragon's breath.

A gas attendant is sweating through his backward hat, filling up a red car to the left of ours. I'm in the backseat, wearing mesh shorts. My legs are sweaty and stuck to the cracked leather seats. My mom won't turn around and look at me because I'm the one that turned her into a fire-breathing dragon, which makes my legs even sweatier, and the gas attendant won't look at my mom, which makes her breath even fierier, but I don't care that she's angry because I don't understand why she won't listen to what happened to me at school and why I came home late.

My day was going fine, just fine. Manny and I played paper football during lunch, we had a substitute in history class, and my English teacher, who has a great sense of humor, said
I
have a great sense of humor and announced that I wrote the best and funniest similes and metaphors in the entire grade, but then in science Mike Whitman got assigned as my lab partner, and instead of doing the experiment he flung rubber bands across the room, and the teacher, Mrs. Skidich, kept us both for detention. “You are lab partners,” she said. “The key word being ‘partners.'” I said that I didn't choose my partner, which I thought was a great point, but Mrs. Skidich raised her right hand, her symbol for silence. “Sometimes, Denny, in life, we have to do things we don't want to do,” she said. “Sometimes we have to take responsibility for our actions.”

“But they weren't my actions!” I yelled, which I thought was another excellent point, but Mrs. Skidich got so angry—“offended,” she said—at the level of my voice that she kept me for thirty minutes longer than Mike Whitman. I said it wasn't fair—I didn't even yell it—but she raised her hand and said, “Sometimes, Denny, life isn't fair.”

The gas attendant with the backward hat is finally walking over to our car. His biceps look swollen, like they got stung by a whole family of bees on a family picnic in Stingsville. The gas attendant doesn't go to Stingsville. He goes to Blueberry Hills High School. It says that on his school football shirt. I wish I were in high school, where students pick their own lab partner and teachers don't raise their hands like queens to silence students.

Stupid Mike Whitman. Stupid Mrs. Skidich. I hope they're both having miserable afternoons. I hope their cars run out of gas on the side of the road and their legs get so sweaty that they get permanently stuck to the seats. And when the police arrive, they'll say they need to use the Jaws of Life to separate their sweaty, stuck legs from the seats. And when Mike Whitman and Mrs. Skidich put up a fight, the police will tell them, “Sometimes, in life, we have to do things we don't want to do. Sometimes we have to take responsibility for our actions.”

“What can I get you, ma'am?” the gas attendant asks.

I wish I were big and strong with swollen bee-sting biceps so that I could pound Mike Whitman's face in. I wouldn't hit Mrs. Skidich because I don't hit females, but I'd yell loud enough to wake a whole family of bees way out in Stingsville.

“Fill it—” My mom's voice is cracking like cracks on the street would if they could talk. “With regular.”

I know she's upset, more upset than she normally gets about picking me up late from school, but I don't want to ask her what's wrong because she should've listened to my story before blaming me. She should've asked me what's wrong.

Stupid Mike Whitman and Mrs. Skidich, that's what's wrong. And my mom not listening to my story. Well, now
I'm
not listening to
her.
The battle is on, like we're playing Battleship in the middle of an important battlefield and I have the coolest battle scars ever invented, and I will outlast my mom and not ask what's wrong.

My mom is making crying noises. I think it's a real cry, but maybe she's just trying to win the battle. I lean forward and put my ear against the back of her seat and listen closely. It's definitely a real cry. She sounds like a sheep would if a sheep could cry like a human mom, and I'm happy about this because it means that she's probably really mad at Mrs. Skidich for ruining her afternoon, and then my mom will be on my team, Team Mad at Mrs. Skidich, and everything will be okay.