Breakfast with Neruda

by Laura Moe

  Being inside the school library always reminds me of Rick. I first met him ages ago in the elementary school library. Back then we were in sixth grade at the old 4–6 school, and he was a dorky red-haired new kid with braces, and I was a dorky semi-new kid who wore secondhand, sometimes smelly clothes. Among our classmates we were odd ducks. It was bad enough Billy Meeks and his cadre of bullies tormented me. They’d done it since I moved here a few months before, and I heard Michael Faggot, or Faggot Flynn yelled as I passed by them in the hallways. Physically, they never touched me, though. Not since I kicked Billy in the balls after he spit on my brother on the playground. But he and his friends burned with animosity toward me and anyone else they knew they could pick on: poor kids, nerdy kids, and new kids. One day this skinny redheaded kid with a mouthful of braces walked into Mrs. Peterson’s fourth-period sixth-grade language arts class. I noticed the look Billy Meeks shot to Jason Stoddard, as if they were marking him as their territory. I knew the new kid was a goner as soon as I saw him, and Meeks and Stoddard had him in their sights, aiming their rifles at him from the deer stand.

  Mrs. Peterson told us to line up to go to the library for our biweekly visit. Every two weeks on Friday before lunch, one of the secretaries opened the doors to the library, and she snapped at us to sit down and stay quiet. If we wanted to check out a book, we had to wait for the secretary to boot up the computer at the desk. The school once had a librarian, but when she retired, the school didn’t replace her. The only other time we got to use the library was on rainy days after lunch or when Mrs. Peterson insisted they let her class visit. I was secretly in love with Mrs. Peterson.

  I sidled up to the new kid in line and said, “Hey, I’m Michael.”

  “Rick,” he said. He shook my hand.

  Just then Billy purposely shoved me against Rick with his shoulder, knocking us both against the wall. “Oh, so sorry, your major Faggotism,” Billy said. He leered at Rick, then me. “I see you finally found a boyfriend.”

  On the way down the steps, Rick asked, “Who is that?”

  “The school asshole. Or at least the biggest asshole in sixth grade.”

  We purposely sat far away from them in the library, but Billy and Jason shot us looks the whole time. I sat with Rick at lunch at the table where other misfits sat: a couple of gamer guys, a boy who always picked his nose, and two girls from band who only talked to each other. None of us were friends, per se, but in the lunchroom, if we sat together, the sheer number of us somehow protected our group. We were safe until we got released to the dreaded playground. Every day I prayed for rain so we would be allowed to either go to the library or the gym.

  I never went to the gym; it was an open savanna for bully targets. The other geeks and I always opted for the library, and those twenty minutes were kind of a slice of heaven for me. Even though the magazines were old and the pages of the paperbacks yellowed, being in the company of the printed word made me feel whole. It still does. So even though I suck at science and math, my English teachers have always loved me.

  But this day was not one of those lucky rainy days. The new kid and I were destined to meet our dooms on the playground with the other losers. Somehow I knew Rick the Redhead would be the chief target today. He was new, a distraction, new blood. Like on the savanna, fresh blood provided temptation.

  “Listen,” I told Rick, “these kids are going to mess with you.”

  “Yeah, I kind of figured that,” he said. “It’s the redhead thing. And the braces.”

  “And you don’t weigh much more than a sack of potatoes.”

  He laughed. “You’re one to talk.”

  “Too bad we don’t have superpowers.” I said. “Or swords or laser beams.”

  “True, but I have a better weapon,” he said. “Just watch.”

  As if on cue, Billy and his tribe sauntered over to the corner of the building where Rick and I stood. They were careful to watch for the teacher on duty, made sure she was not watching. “Hey, Ugly,” Billy said to me. “Aren’t you going to introduce us to your new faggot friend?”

  We both ignored him, and he shoved me into the wall. I expected to feel a fist in my face, but as soon as Billy lifted his arm to punch me, Rick let out a bloodcurdling scream that could have been on the soundtrack of A Nightmare on Elm Street. He wailed so loud the entire playground stopped, and everyone looked. I put my hands over my ears. I was surprised the screeching didn’t break glass. Billy and his friends also covered their ears and backed way, but the teacher on duty caught Billy’s arm and asked what was going on.

  “N . . . nothing,” Billy said. “He just started screaming.”

  “Billy, I am not unfamiliar with your reputation,” she said. “Are you bothering these boys?”

  “No ma’am,” he said.

  Rick had meanwhile stopped wailing. How could such a small guy make such a big sound?

  As he and I walked back inside the building, I asked him how he did it. “It’s easy. You just push the air up through your diaphragm, in your stomach. You don’t use your throat at all.”

  “Where did you learn that?”

  “Singing lessons,” he said. “It’s how singers and stage actors project their voices.” It turned out Rick had a variety of sound effects he knew how to use. He could mimic livestock and sirens. He was also quickly snatched up to be the chief tenor in the school choir.

  Billy stopped picking on Rick and me after that, and once we moved on to the big Junior/Senior High building, where kids from three elementary schools filtered into the 7–12 school, Billy had a whole new crop of nerds to pick on. He himself got bullied by high school kids.

  Miraculously, Rick and I outgrew our skinny dorkiness. By high school, we had started to look like humans instead of pogo sticks with hair. I still looked forward to visiting the library, but Rick kind of moved on. He used his extra time in the band and choir rooms, honing his music skills, and later, scamming me out of a girlfriend.

  • • •

  For the next couple hours Earl and I stack chairs on a flat cart, move them into the hall, clear the cart, and reload. Every time I go to the hallway I look for signs of Shelly. Is she even here today? Is she avoiding me?

  I picture her sitting at home, laughing about what an idiot I am to her parents. “He quotes poetry. Can he be any more lame?” Or maybe she calls a friend and tells her, “Let me tell you about my worst day ever. Remember that idiot guy who tried to blow up the school? Well, I went out with him a couple times, and he is such a dork.”

  “Hey kid,” Earl says, “get your head out of your ass, and help me move this furniture.” The tables and chairs are heavy and wooden. Together we lift the tables and carry them one by one out to the hallway. “Sons of bitches weigh more than we do,” Earl grumbles.

  After twenty tables and eighty chairs, Earl wipes his brow and says it’s time for a coffee break. We saunter down to the lounge and I see a plate of peanut butter cookies. I don’t want to appear greedy, but this is my breakfast, so I grab three and practically inhale them.

  Earl hands me a steaming cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Didn’t want you to choke on all them cookies.”

  “Yeah, I uh, didn’t have time for breakfast.”

  I take one more, and Hess walks in, trailed by Shelly. “Hey,” she says.

  I want to shout at her, yell that I spent the morning imagining the worst possible scenarios, but she sits next to me, smiles, and all is right in the world again.

  “I figured out why you like The Shadow of the Wind so much,” she says.

  “Yeah?” I bite into a cookie and pretend her presence isn’t playing a beatbox in my chest.

  "Besides the wonderful writing, engaging characters, and the shroud of mystery, you’re Julián Carax.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The character Julián Carax in Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind is a boy who never knew his father, and he spends his life tryin
g to find him. Carax writes a book he calls The Shadow of the Wind, which Daniel Sempere discovers in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books,” she says. Shelly touches my arm. “In a way, Carlos Ruiz Zafón wrote your story, too.”

  Her fingers send electric currents through my skin. “Huh,” I say. “I never thought of that.”

  Shelly and I drive to Burger King for lunch. She has started smoking again, but as a healthy diversion, she orders the veggie burger, which she claims does not taste like a Nike insole. I still opt for a double cheeseburger. We share a large order of fries.

  “I think we should try to find your father,” she says.

  “I don’t even have a name,” I say. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “Have you ever seen your birth certificate?”

  “No.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “In Columbus, I think.” The thought of going through my mother’s house, rummaging through the stacks of crap to find my birth certificate makes me lose my appetite. “I think my mom lost it in one of our moves,” I say.

  “Well, even if your mom doesn’t have your certificate, we can get a copy of it online from the records office.”

  “Don’t I need an adult’s permission?”

  She tweaks her brow at me. “I can get anything. If I can’t, I know people who can.”

  I give her a doubtful look.

  “My dad’s a lawyer,” she says. “I know about this stuff. All we need is your full name, date of birth, and city where you were born.” She ruffles through her giant purse and pulls out a pocket-sized notebook and pen. “Do you have to work after school today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Give me your info and I’ll look it up for you.” I write down my name, date of birth, and Social Security number for her. “Good thing I’m not worth anything, or I’d worry about you stealing my identity.”

  She snorts. “You’re probably some eccentric millionaire like Howard Hughes who lives in squalor.”

  “I wish.”

  She looks over what I have written. “I’ll have to give an actual address,” she says. “Not the parking lot of Rooster High School.”

  “Very funny,” I say, and write my mother’s address. “I use my mom’s address for mail,” I say. “I’d better tell my sister so she can intercept the mail. My mom might freak if she knows I’m looking for my dad.”

  “Parents are freak shows.”

  “That they are,” I say. I stop writing. “Listen, can we wait until tomorrow to do this? I’d kind of like to be the one to do the search. It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s just . . . I’ve waited a long time. This is kind of important.”

  She considers this for a second. “I totally get that.”

  I park in a shady spot behind the building. Shelly gets out and runs toward the fence separating the football field from the parking lot. She grasps the barbed wire and stares out at the field. “Look,” she says.

  I follow Shelly down to the fence, and ask, “What are you looking at?”

  She points at the ducks walking on the tarmac. I lean my elbows over the fence and gaze at the pair of ducks tottering across the AstroTurf.

  “Odd,” I say. “The school pond is way out on the other side of the school property. They walked a long way to get here.”

  “You and I are kind of like those ducks,” she says. “An odd pair of misfits, way out of our leagues, but without enough sense to know it.”

  “I think we know it; we just don’t know enough to care.”

  She leans against me. “Caring what inconsequential people think of you is a ginormous waste of a life.”

  “Am I a person of consequence?”

  “Right now, you’re the person of consequence.”

  I slide an arm around her and hold her closer. “Ditto,” I say.

  “We’re two halves of some ancient coin,” she says. “Money that no longer has any value, but contains a long and ragged history.”

  Chapter Seven

  Annie calls as I walk back into the building and asks me to stop by the townhouse as soon as possible. “Mom bought you something,” she says, “and I’m afraid if you don’t come get it right away, she’ll find a place for it inside the house.”

  “How big is it?”

  “It’s a bunch of small stuff, but if she puts one more thing in here I think I’ll suffocate.”

  I worry about my sister. Last year she had bronchitis twice, and I know it has to do with whatever bacteria are simmering under the filth. “What is it? Does Mom remember I live in a car?”

  She laughs. “She knows that. She got you some camping equipment.”

  “Oh. Actually, that may come in handy,” I say. “I’ll be over right after school.”

  “It should still be in her car, but if she tries to bring it in the house I’ll keep it on the back porch. That way you won’t have to come inside.”

  “Thank you. You’re my favorite sister.”

  I miss living with my siblings. I don’t miss the crazy days of spending the nights in strangers’ homes, or the revolving door of my mother’s husbands and lovers. But I miss the camaraderie between Jeff, Annie, and me. We squabbled as kids, tried to get one another in trouble, and called each other some of the foulest words not in the dictionary, but nobody else was allowed to call us names. Once when Jeff and I were walking back home from playing softball down the street, we came upon a group of girls taunting Annie, calling her things like “a half-breed jababbi.”

  One girl reached out and yanked Annie’s hair. Jeff and I glanced at one another, ran full speed, and knocked those brats down. One of the girls’ mothers scrambled over and split us all up. The girls claimed we started it. Annie was crying too hard to say much. Jeff and I stuck to our story. Mom just shrugged it off, and told the woman to keep her damn kids the hell away from us. As fractured as we are as a family, I would kill for each of them.

  • • •

  At the end of the day, Shelly asks, “What’s up? Wanna do anything?”

  “I have to work later, but first I need to stop by my mom’s and pick up something.”

  “Want company?”

  “No!”

  She gives me a questioning glance.

  “I mean, it won’t take long.” Some secrets are best left unearthed. Shelly likes me now, but one false move will send her running. Besides, I have other layers of secrets she can scavenge over. “I wouldn’t have time to get you home and get to work on time.”

  “Okay. Maybe next time.”

  “Yeah,” I say, meaning never.

  We head out the door, and as I walk to my car, Shelly looks at my grimy pants and says, “You can’t wear those to work.”

  I shrug. “It’s okay for the theater. Khaki and olive are okay. Just no jeans.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she says. “You can’t go in to work looking like something on the bottom of the laundry basket.”

  I shrug. “I don’t have time to worry about it now. I don’t have any clean pants.” I glance at my filthy cargo pants. “This is all I have. I’ll change my shirt when I get there.”

  “Give me your dirty clothes. I’ll take them home and wash them.”

  “You’ve already done more than enough for me.”

  “We’re friends, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess we are.”

  “Friends take care of each other. Someday you’ll repay the favor.” She winks, and I give her a grin. I hand her my pillowcase full of wadded up clothes. “Give me those pants too.”

  I’ve learned it’s easier not to argue with Shelly. I crawl into the back of my station wagon. The only other clean thing I have is a pair of cargo shorts. I shuck off my trousers and slide into the shorts.

  Shelly holds on to my filthy ones like they’re nuclear waste and dumps them inside the pillowcase. She kisses me quickly on the lips and says she will see me in the morning. “Don’t forget, we have an important date tomorrow.”

  I stop by Tim Hortons
on the way to the townhouse and get a box of Timbits with Jeff’s discount. He tells me to say hi to Mom for him. I park behind my mom’s wreck of a car in front of the townhouse and walk to the back porch. Annie is sitting in her lawn chair with her feet propped on top of an inverted plastic bucket, reading from The Arabian Nights. Annie’s legs have grown long and lean, and today her hair is woven into a thick braid down her back. When she wears her hair down it’s wavy and wild.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey.” She sets the book next to her. “Did you know some of those stories are pretty racy?”

  “Really? Your dad never read those to us,” I say.

  “Or if he did, we didn’t understand what they meant.”

  The cushions my sister sleeps on are put away, the sheets and blankets tucked inside a duffle bag. The dresser where Annie keeps her clothes is free of anything on top. The condition of the porch would not alert neighbors or authorities that there is a problem inside the home.

  I hand her the donuts. “Ooh, my favorite.” She opens the box and pops one in her mouth and hands me the box.

  I pick out two chocolate ones. “Mom home?” The back door opens and my mother steps outside. She is dressed in her nurse’s aide uniform, her long blonde hair pinned up in back. She works in a nursing home and the old folks adore her. For all her issues, our mom is a good listener and a gentle soul.

  She still resembles the young bleached blonde from old pictures, but now her face is lined from cigarettes and life. Mom walks over and squeezes me into her, and I squeeze her back. She holds me out at arm’s length. “You look good, son. You must be eating regularly.”

  “It’s all that free popcorn.”

  She studies my face. “Are you in love?”

  I blush. “Mom!”

  “You’re embarrassed, so it must be true. What’s her name?”

  “We’ve only gone out a couple times.”

  “Jeff told me he saw you with some Goth chick the other day,” Annie says. “Who is it?”

  “I . . . uh . . . don’t think you’d know her.” I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know Shelly’s last name. Did she tell me and I don’t remember? “Jeff says hello.”