by Han Nolan
I tried to make myself as scarce as possible. School had ended. I had taken my final exams, got my As for the year, and said good-bye to some teachers I prayed I'd get to see again the next year. I spent a lot of time playing basketball down at the school, or hanging out back at the creek with Tim Seeley, either fishing or pitching stones. When I got hungry or needed a rest, I went to the Seeleys' house, not mine. I felt like Pap, running off every day, but I didn't think anyone would miss me.
Mam had started taking driving lessons from Dr. Mike. She had gone back to work, so they met in the evenings three times a week. Mam even managed to squeeze a dinner into the deal, leaving me and Pap to fend for ourselves. Pap never thought about food unless someone called him in to eat, so I didn't concern myself with giving him dinner anymore; it was Mam's problem.
Then one night, coming home from the Seeleys' and feeling good about just sitting around having a real father-son-type conversation with Mr. Seeley, I discovered Pap sitting outside in his beach chair staring up openmouthed at the Nativity set, his back hunched forward, his hands dangling off the armrests. I remembered what he'd said to me the night I'd gone out to talk with him when Mam was in the hospital—"I'm all alone now"—and seeing him sitting there I felt his loneliness, and my own guilt at having been so happy to spend the evening with Tim and his father. I sat down on the concrete next to him. "Have you stopped roaming, Pap?" I asked. "I hope so. I've missed you."
Pap sat quiet for a minute, and then he said, shrugging, "I'm tired is why. That's all. I'm tired."
I looked at his face in the pale light of the Nativity, and he looked so serious, as if he were considering something deep, as if he were Mr. Seeley, and I felt more guilty than ever because I had wished earlier that night what I had wished a hundred times before, that Mr. Seeley, and not Pap, were my father.
Although Pap claimed he was staying home more because he felt tired, I wondered if Pap felt jealous of the amount of time Mam spent with Dr. Mike. I noticed that he didn't hug Dr. Mike when he saw him, and Pap hugged everybody. He hugged me just about every time he saw me, even if we had been apart for as little as five minutes.
Dr. Mike would ride up in his sporty BMW and honk the horn for Mam. He never came inside our house. At first Pap used to come out to greet him and try to talk to him through his car window. He even asked if the doctor would teach him how to drive.
"I can ride a bicycle, you know."
"Yes, Patrick, I'm sure you can," Dr. Mike said, running his hand over one of his curly eyebrows as though trying to smooth it down.
"Yes, I can, but you don't think so, and I know that you don't, but I can too ride a bike and I'll show you."
Pap ran to fetch his bicycle out of the garage and Mam came out of the house ready for her driving lesson.
Dr. Mike put the car in Drive and I told them to hold on, adding for Mam's benefit that Pap said he wanted to show Dr. Mike that he could ride a bike.
Dr. Mike sighed and Mam, looking first at him and then at me, said, "Tell Pap I'll watch him when we get back. Mike only gets a couple of hours, and it's so nice of him to spend them teaching me how to drive." Mam set her hand on Dr. Mike's leg—just for a second, but I caught it.
Dr. Mike pulled away with a nod of his head, and out came Pap on his bike. He raced down the street after them, his baseball cards sputtering in the spokes of his wheels. He called, "Hey, wait for me!" and Mam stuck her head out the window and said how great he looked and that she'd be home in a couple of hours.
After that, Pap stopped visiting with Dr. Mike when he drove up, and if Pap happened to be sitting in his beach chair at the time, he didn't bother to turn around and wave. He didn't even startle when Dr. Mike sounded his horn.
I tried to talk to Mam about the driving lessons and dinners, to question her about what was going on between her and Dr. Mike, and Mam said I read too much into things. "You watch too much television," she said.
"I don't watch any television, and you know it. Your saying that just shows how guilty you are. You're reaching, Mam. Pap knows what's going on, and if he knows then so does everyone else."
"What? What do you think is going on?" Before I could answer she said, "I'll tell you what's going on. I'll tell you what it's all about"
She started breathing hard and making this wheezing sound, gulping in air every few words.
"When Mary died, I didn't know—I didn't know what I was going to do. I don't know how to care for your father and you all by myself. I told you that. When I got sick I was so depressed, lying in that hospital bed. I'm always sick, always lying in some bed. I felt so desperate, I couldn't get well. To tell you the truth, I don't think I really wanted to get well, and then Mike—Mike saw—he knew what was happening, and he brought me the magazine, the one with the contest in it He talked me into entering it He gave me something to look forward to, and I told him I couldn't—I couldn't do it, I didn't know how, and he said, Til be there.' Just like that That's all it was, but I knew he meant it, and not in any wrong or sexual way, JP. He said, Til get you through it. You don't have to worry.' And that's all this is. In a month or so he'll stop coming by altogether. But right now he's teaching me how to drive and he's just being there for me for a while. He's just being a friend."
Mam's voice had quieted down the more she spoke. When she spoke of Dr. Mike her voice got soft, and I tried not to read anything into the change in her tone. The wheezing had stopped, but then she got herself all excited again, the veins in her neck bulged out, and she said, "And I've heard enough about how stupid that contest is. Let me dream, JP! Why can't you just let me dream? What does it hurt anybody? Does it really hurt you for me to say we're going to win? If we don't win, we'll move somewhere else, but that dream has been the sole joy in an otherwise dismal spring. Let me have my dream!"
And so I did. I said nothing more about the contest or Dr. Mike, but I felt hurt that it was Dr. Mike and not me and not Pap who had made her happy, who had brought her her only joy in an otherwise dismal spring.
Chapter Five
ON SATURDAY MORNING, July 31, the day before the announcement of the winner, Mam couldn't sit still. She paced the floors from the kitchen through the living room to my porch and back to the kitchen. She answered the door when no one had rung the doorbell and kept dialing a number on the phone and hanging up halfway through, forgetting who she wanted to call. We were all on edge, even Pap, and when he came in from the garage and joined us at the kitchen table for lunch, he spotted the soy sauce bottle still on the table from the night before and, without thinking about it, shook it as if he were mixing salad dressing. The cap was loose and Mam had removed the little plastic piece inside that prevented her from pouring out too much (Mam loved soy sauce on everything), and the soy sauce flew out of the bottle and splattered all over the kitchen. It hit the lace curtains and the area rug, and seeing this, seeing the mess everywhere, Mam jumped up from the table and yelled at Pap for the first time in her life.
"How could you be so stupid? Look what you've done! This isn't our house anymore. We sold it. Can't you keep a room tidy for one minute? Must you wreak havoc everywhere you go? Digging up our yard and costing us a fortune, tracking in creek mud every day that I've got to clean up, over and over. Get out! Get out of the way and let me clean this up. Both of you!"
Pap had jumped out of his seat and was standing in the midst of the mess and Mam's tirade with his body hanging forward, his arms limp, his head drooping. Mam had said to get out and he just stood there, crying.
I got up and hugged him. I told him it was okay, it was an accident. His arms still hung at his sides. I twisted around to Mam and said that I'd buy some new curtains. I still had money left over from working at the skating rink over the Christmas holidays, money I had been saving to buy a computer, but it could wait.
"They're from Grandma Mary's Country Curtains catalog," I said, my voice a monotone. "I'll order us a set." I turned back to Pap, who had leaned his forehead down on my shoulder.
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Mam came up to the two of us. "I'm sorry. Patrick, I'm sorry." She placed her arms around us, and Pap lifted his head. Sweat trickled down to the end of his nose.
"I hate you today," he said, wiping at his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. "I don't want to be here anymore." Then he pulled away from us and left the house. Mam and I followed his movements through the windows, watching him walking toward the creek.
I turned to Mam. "Nice going," I said. "I hope winning that stupid house is worth it." Then I left and headed for the Seeleys' house.
As I approached their front yard I saw Tim sitting on his steps talking with, of all people, Bobbi Polanski. I had never used the word hate much—Grandma Mary had always said it was an ugly word—but if ever I felt the emotion it was with Bobbi. She was a year ahead of me in school, two years older in age, and the neighborhood dictator. To get on her bad side was to find yourself the butt of her jokes and insults, and often in the creek fighting for your life. She was the only person I'd ever known who got kicked out of Saint Ignatius, and back when it had happened, rumor had spread around our fourth-grade classroom that Bobbi had said the/word to Sister Elizabeth.
Grandma Mary was the only one who felt sorry for Bobbi. She said it was a real pity, that Bobbi was a "smart wee thing," and she told me to be sweet to her because Bobbi had led a hard life. That was when I learned about her father. He'd always been scary looking to me, but I didn't know until then that he beat her—not that anyone had ever been able to prove it. Grandma Mary had called a state social worker once and had asked the worker to come out to the Polanskis' house, hoping she could get Bobbi's abusive father arrested, but Bobbi wouldn't admit anything to anyone and after two more visits the social worker never came back.
Grandma had warned me to be nice to Bobbi, but it was hard when she'd made it her life's mission to goad, tease, and otherwise make my life miserable.
Our most recent run-in with each other had occurred a few days before Mam had come home from the hospital. It was nighttime, well past dinner, and I hadn't seen Pap all day. Finally, when he did come home he stood in the kitchen doorway with his shoulders hiked and his arms held away from his soaking-wet body. He smelled of beer, but he didn't seem drunk, only cold and upset.
"Pap," I said to him, trying to sound calm, "whoever you're spending your time with isn't a nice person to you. I think you should make some new friends, but what do you think?" I added that last bit to keep him from responding with, Yer not me mam!
"He isn't a friend anymore to me, 'cause he's dead anyway."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, the anxiety in my voice obvious.
"That Pauly Stinson boy fell over dead," Pap said. "I told her he was dead, but she says no, he's just passed out, but I don't think so."
"Who? Who, Pap? Who were you with? It's important, because we want to be sure no one is in trouble."
Pap stepped inside the kitchen and closed the door. "Pauly Stinson, I already said it was him already." He kicked off his shoes and water ran out of them.
"You been in the creek?"
"Yup. He tried to baptize me when I said I already been baptized, but he baptized me again and held me under the water a real long, long time. Maybe six hours I was under there, is how come I'm wet and all." He pulled off his shirt and wrung it out on the kitchen floor.
I reached forward and grabbed the shirt out of Pap's hand. I tossed it in the sink, saying, "Pap, you're making a mess on Grandma Mary's floor."
"Well, she won't mind," he said, tiptoeing out of the puddle he'd made.
I grabbed a sponge and got down on the floor to sop up the water. "Did you push Pauly Stinson in the creek?"
Pap sat down on the floor next to me and wiggled out of his pants. The dark hairs on his skinny white legs lay flat, as though they had been stroked with a comb.
"He was already in the water, 'cause when he baptized me he got in the water so he could hold me down good and long."
I took Pap's hands in mine and looked in his eyes. "Pap, tell me, when did Pauly fall over? When did he look dead?"
"After he baptized me with water he baptized me with beer and he was laughing and I was laughing and then he stopped laughing 'cause she was yelling at him and then he just fell over." Pap nodded. "He just fell over and he didn't say anything. He just fell over like me mam. Just like me mam." Pap looked at his feet, still in the wet socks covered in mud. He wiggled his toes.
"Who, Pap? Who was yelling at Pauly?"
"That pretty Bobbi girl that you don't like but I do and so does me mam."
"Bobbi Polanski was there?"
"Yup, and she said he's not dead, just passed out But I don't think so." Pap shook his head.
I stood up. "I'm going to go talk to Bobbi. You stay here, okay?"
"Hey, yer not me mam, you know!"
I pointed my finger at Pap and exploded. "Stay here! You don't go anywhere. Just do it, Pap!"
Pap got onto his knees and crawled away from me. I left before I saw where he went. I stormed out of the house, intent on wringing Bobbi's neck. It was one thing giving me grief but another thing entirely to pick on Pap. How low could a person sink?
I didn't go to Bobbi's house. I knew it was too early for her to be there. Her father worked the late shift. He wouldn't be home until three in the morning, and her mother always went to bed early. That gave Bobbi four more hours to roam the streets.
I found her, as I did the afternoon Pap spilled the soy sauce, hanging over the railing of the Seeleys' front steps with a cigarette pinched between her fingers and talking to Seeley as if the two of them were great friends. Seeing them together infuriated me even more, and I clenched my fists and called out to her from down the street.
"Polanski!"
She and Seeley looked up at me, watching me approach.
"I figured you'd come looking for me, O'Brien. Nice zit," she said when I reached the steps and she could see me under the stoop light.
"Named it after you, Polanski," I said, my jaw set tight. "Now, what did you and Stinson do to my father?" I could feel my nostrils flaring like a bull's and I felt like one, as if smoke were coming out of my nose. When I said the word "father," my voice broke and I felt tears stinging my eyes. It made me even angrier. I asked her again, louder, no break in my voice this time, "What did you guys do to my father?"
Seeley looked at the two of us and said, "Hey, what's going on? What happened?"
Bobbi took a drag off her cigarette, then flicked the butt at me. "I just saved his life, pus-face."
She backed away from the railing and turned to leave, and I charged, tackling her onto the Seeleys' lawn.
Seeley stood up. "Hey!"
I sat on top of her stomach and pinned her arms back as if I were wrestling one of the guys, one of the stronger ones.
She kneed me in the back and I fell forward over her, but I held on, squeezing her wrists.
"Is Pauly Stinson dead?" I yelled in her face.
"No, you moron!" She spit at me, and I squeezed her wrists harder.
"Tell me what happened!"
"You won't find out this way," she said, bucking me off her with both her knees ramming into my back and both her arms jerking to the left, throwing me off balance. She twisted herself out from under me in one slick move and gave me a good kick in the ribs.
"Hey!" Seeley called again.
"I saved your father's life!" Bobbi shouted at me. "I found Stinson holding him under the water and I saved that retard's life." She drew in her breath, and I realized she was crying. "And don't you ever"—she kicked me again—"ever touch me. Nobody touches me!" She screamed this last bit and kicked me one more time before Seeley yelled for her to cut it out and finally pulled her away from me. I stayed on the ground tucked in the fetal position until I was sure she'd left. Then, without saying anything to Seeley, I limped on back home.
So that afternoon when I headed down the street, wanting to get away from Mam and the soy sauce, and found Bobbi hanging over t
he railing of the Seeleys' steps once again, hate and shame rose up in me so fast I stopped dead in the road and whipped around without saying a word and headed toward the creek. I couldn't run the risk of wanting to hit her again. As angry as I was, I felt guilty for attacking her—not that I didn't think she deserved it, but I hated the way I'd lost control that night.
I had always prided myself on being in control of my emotions, and my life. It's what I did best. I set a course for myself and I followed it: Get straight As, take every honors course, make the honors society, become class valedictorian, and attend Princeton University. These were my goals and never had I strayed until that night. I hated what she made me do.
Later, when I returned to the house, I found Pap and Larry sitting on the roof in the midst of the Nativity set.
Even from that distance I could tell Pap had a sunburn.
"Pap, you're frying up there."
"Hey, JP, it's Larry is here, look."
"Hey, kid," Larry called down, not looking at me but at the top of the Virgin Mary's head.
"Hi, Larry. What's up?"
Larry chuckled and smiled at me. "We are. Why don't you come up and join the party?"
"What's going on?" I asked, wondering if Larry was high.
Pap stood up and raised his arms and face to the sky. "I'm the Three Wise Man!" he called out.
I ran closer to the house. "Pap, sit down. You'll fall. Larry, make him sit down."
"Hey, down there," Pap said, "yer not me mam, you know, and I'll be doing what I please, 'cause yer not me mam."
Larry tugged on Pap's arm and Pap sat down. Then he called down to me, "Larry's a Three Wise Man, too, and so can you be if you come up here."
"Yeah, come on up," Larry called down. "You've got to see this."
"See what?" I asked, coming around to the side of the house where the trellis leaned against the freshly painted wall, its legs sunk into the ground much deeper on the left than the right I shook it "Is this thing safe?"