Meanwhile, I lay in bed thinking about the old man’s phone call and my mom talking about him and sort of defending him, but all that did was make my head feel worse, so I tried thinking about something else.
When I was little, if I had a headache or an earache or a fever, all I had to do was let out one squeak and Mom was in my room like a shot. Then it would be a hot towel or ear drops or ground up baby Aspirin, whatever she figured I needed. Usually worked too. And she’d stay there until I fell asleep again.
She told me once she’d wanted to be a nurse. Couldn’t afford to go to school to become one. Sometimes I think it must suck to have this thing you really want to do with your life, and you don’t get the chance. She doesn’t complain or even talk about it except that once, but I sometimes see her staring off out the window, not really looking at anything, and I wonder what she’s thinking about.
I figure Mom would have been an awesome nurse — she loves to do things to help people, and if anybody we know gets sick, she’s the first one over there with a casserole and a magazine for the sick person to read. Same kind of stuff that she did for me when I was younger.
Mom works for an accounting firm. Does some bookkeeping and receptionist stuff. She goes crazy at tax time. Gets home late pretty well every night for about a month, and I get to practise my cooking skills. I make killer Pizza Pops, chicken noodle soup, and peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Most of my meal preparation doesn’t involve actually turning on the stove. Even the soup is a microwave creation.
It’s weird but she never watches any of the doctor shows on TV. No ER reruns, none of them. I don’t either, but with me it’s because I hate watching shows about sick and dying people. I figured the way Mom likes to look after sick people, she’d be into every medical show on television, but it’s just the opposite.
Maybe it starts her thinking about how she wanted to be a nurse and never got to be one.
9
The rest of that school year was pretty forgettable. I’d kind of lost interest after the phone call from the old man and the change to my summer plans. I did pretty good in English, social, and French. Okay in math and science. Kicked in phys ed. And that was it. End of tenth grade.
I tore up my list for the Summer of the Huffman. And gave up on Jen Wertz.
Shit.
Summer Part One
1
The old man pulled up to the house in a Dodge pickup. Black, dually crew cab. Not a bad truck except that it looked like he washed it every three, four years at the most. We wouldn’t be picking up any girls in this tub. Not that we would’ve done any better in a Maserati. My girl, the lovely Jen, wasn’t actually aware I was alive, and my summer wasn’t likely to change that. And the old man, last time I checked, likes ’em young. The only dental hygienist in town was like fifty and wielded that cleaning thingy like a pickaxe.
So, no, I didn’t need a fortune cookie to tell me babes weren’t in my future. Which meant it didn’t matter that the Dodge had little “Wash me” notes finger-scribbled into the dirt that was layered up on all four doors.
I was sitting on the front step holding a copy of Catch-22. I hadn’t actually opened it and wasn’t sure I would since it didn’t fit in with the summer this one had become.
The old man didn’t try to hug me, so at least he wasn’t stupid. Didn’t shake my hand either or even say much. Climbed out of the truck, nodded to me on the way to the front door of the house, and said, “Throw your stuff in the back seat.”
I did that. My “stuff” was the duffle bag I’d found in the basement and my school backpack. Then I went back up the sidewalk, put Catch-22 in the mailbox (I’d let Mom figure that one out) and sat back down on the front step. Mom had made blueberry muffins, so I figured he’d be a while talking to her, drinking coffee, and eating muffins. I liked where I was — outside, far from all of that. Far from him.
I thought about my first impression of him. Pretty well all of it was a surprise since I really didn’t know what he’d look like. He was pretty tall. And skinny. See, right away I was wrong. I guess I expected a bald, fat, slobby-looking guy, dirty T-shirt, ass crack showing over his jeans whenever he bent over. The only part I had right was the T-shirt, and it wasn’t dirty.
If he’d shaved that morning, he hadn’t done a very good job of it, but his hair was neat, no Hank’s Auto Parts ball cap, a little grey but not much. He was wearing jeans, but they were clean and new-looking, crease down the front of each pant leg. Looked younger than sixty-two. Maybe fifty-two. Still, no kid.
That’s about all I had time to notice in the time it took him to get from the Dodge to the house.
I was right. He was in the house for quite a while. When he came out he was carrying a pretty good-sized brown paper bag. “Lunch,” he said. “Your mom’s looking after us.”
I stood up as Mom came out onto the steps right behind him. She was smiling, but her eyes were wet. I wondered if he’d said something to make her feel bad. Or maybe she was just sad because I was going away. It popped into my head that the longest I’d ever been away from my mom was day camp. A couple of times we’d camped out overnight, which made it two days and a night that I wasn’t home. So this was a big deal, I guess.
She hugged me like it was a big deal and said a couple of things in a squeaky voice. Be good, look after yourself kind of stuff. Eat lots of zucchini. Trying to lighten things up. We’d already done all the reminders — don’t lose the passport, don’t let the old man pay for everything (I wasn’t sure about that part — the whole thing was his idea), and try to look like I was enjoying myself. (I wasn’t sure about that part either.)
I held onto the hug a couple of seconds longer than usual. “You take care too. I’ll phone, okay?”
She stepped back, but kept her hands on my arms. “Okay? You better phone, mister.” She smiled again. I smiled back at her and turned to go down the steps. The old man sort of waved and started down the sidewalk toward the truck. His boots clicked on the pavement like there was something metal on the bottom. I thought about calling, What are you — fourteen? But I kept my mouth shut, probably the better idea.
He went around to the driver side of the truck, climbed in, and started it up as I was getting in the passenger side. I looked back at the house, and Mom was waving. I nodded at her, hoping I was letting her know that everything would be okay. And then we moved out — ready to get my summer started.
“They got car washes where you live?” I guess I wanted him to know right from the get-go that I wasn’t happy.
I don’t think he got that, though. He just laughed and floored it. “They got ’em, but ol’ Betsy’s allergic to water.”
The truck has a nickname. I’m about to spend half my summer holidays with the old man and Betsy the pickup. Can’t get better than that.
2
“Think of it as a buddy movie.” That’s what the old man said about an hour into what turned out to be the most boring drive in the history of the automobile.
I didn’t bother to tell him that we weren’t buddies and that this wasn’t a movie, but I did mention that it was the most boring drive in the history of the automobile. I mentioned that a few times.
Country music, a thousand miles of bald-ass, dick-all prairie, and rain that started about an hour into the journey. What buddy movies had he been watching?
I figured out real quick that the old man wasn’t a big conversationalist. Which was okay for the first while since I was working on what Mom calls the teenager pout. The teenager pout doesn’t come with sound effects. In fact, silence is a big part of the pout. It’s designed to make any thinking, feeling adult within several city blocks feel like crap.
If the old man felt like crap, he was amazing at hiding his pain. He sang