I Am Not Joey Pigza

by Jack Gantos

  I was thinking about all of this and not fully paying attention to what I was doing, which was a mistake on my part. I got up to the top of the pyramid okay and leaned forward a bit and tilted the pillow but not so much that the rings could slide off. I turned left, then right, and the crowd oohed and aahed, and then I began to step down and that’s when the Scotch-taped hem let loose and I caught my other foot on it and fell forward with the pillow held out in front of me as I belly flopped into the aisle. The crowd gasped and the rings bounced into the air and rolled away under the pews, where they curled around and around in circles far from me. I couldn’t move because the wind was knocked clear out of my lungs and my head rang like a gong.

  Unfortunately the ceremony was only delayed for a few moments. The rings were quickly found and two men hoisted me back up onto my feet and the pillow was thrust back into my hands and the rings placed on the pillow while some thoughtful lady rolled up my pant legs, then the music picked up where it left off and I limped forward as if I were going to stand before a firing squad where I was delivering by pillow the very bullets that would soon kill me. At that moment I wished I were dead. It didn’t help that when I made it to the altar Dad glanced down at me and whispered, “You are a chip off the old block.”

  And then the reverend cleared his throat and turned to the audience with upturned arms. “Welcome, friends,” he announced with a wide smile on his face. “Please rise.”

  Everyone stood and stared at us.

  “Forgiveness,” the reverend continued while reading from a sheet of paper, “and the rebirth of romance and love are the chosen themes of this glorious renewal. So let us all witness this heartfelt ceremony that melts away blame and enmity as Carter and Fran Pigza embrace their new lives as Charles and Maria Heinz. Let us all forgive and forget the past and give praise to the never-ending healing power of true love.”

  I looked over at Mom just in time to see her pull a small piece of paper out of her bouquet of flowers. She glanced at it and stepped forward. “Charles Heinz,” she said nervously, “in front of my friends and family I want to forgive you for all the hurtful things you have said and done to me as Carter Pigza.”

  “And I,” Dad said in a loud voice as he stepped forward, “want to forgive you, Maria Heinz, for all the hurtful things you have said and done to me as Fran Pigza.”

  Then Mom took a deep breath and spoke. “I forgive you for leaving me when I was pregnant with our son, Freddy.”

  Suddenly all of Mom’s lady friends squeezed together like a chorus and sang out, “She forgives!”

  Then Dad announced, “I forgive you for all the times you called me a lifelong loser.”

  Dad’s friends cried out, “He forgives!”

  Mom followed with, “I forgive you for trying to run me over with your motorcycle last year.”

  “She forgives!” sang Mom’s chorus.

  “And I,” Dad said, “forgive you for throwing my signed Roberto Clemente ball at my face and nearly blinding me.”

  “He forgives!” the men declared.

  Mom forgave him for stealing my dogs, flushing my meds down the toilet, pulling his mother out of her own coffin, and much, much more. He forgave her for threatening him with an electric knife, setting his clothes on fire, and stealing money from his wallet when he was drunk.

  The two choruses of friends went back and forth as the lists of things they each forgave grew longer and longer. My mouth must have dropped open and stayed open for the entire ceremony as I gaped back and forth and listened to each new unkindness that needed forgiving.

  At one point Dad hesitated and I thought he had finally run out of things to say, but then Dick leaned forward and whispered in his ear and Dad suddenly shouted at Mom as he pointed at her, “Oh, I forgive you for making me quit drinking.”

  “He forgives!” Dad’s choir sang out.

  It was at that moment I thought the accusations were overpowering the forgiveness and wondered if listing all these awful things they did to each other might be stirring up too many bad memories.

  But before Mom could add another horrid incident to her list, the reverend wisely stepped forward and loudly said, “The rings, please!”

  I nearly forgot I had them, and as I raised the pillow he snatched them up and hurriedly put one on Mom and one on Dad then turned to the audience and said, “I now give you the renewed and renamed Maria and Charles Heinz, and son Freddy.”

  The audience clapped and the balloons somehow got stuck in the net, so Dick climbed up onto the altar with the long-handled offering basket and swung wildly at the net until he ripped it open and the balloons drifted down and my parents marched out to the song “We Are the Champions,” and then as they exited the church the pigeons were let loose and a couple people had to wipe nasty white splotches of pigeon poop off their heads and shoulders. It was a sight that got me laughing really hard, and at that moment I realized another surprise—I was having fun despite myself. After I realized this I began to think the entire ceremony was so cool, especially when they danced down the steps and Mom smiled her great big giddy smile. If this was what made her happy then it was good enough to make me happy, too. I waved at her with both my arms overhead and she winked back at me and blew me a kiss. Then on the sidewalk she turned and threw the bouquet over her shoulder and instantly there was a huge scuffle of wild-haired women on their hands and knees as Maria and Charles Heinz hopped up and into their Hummer limo, which zoomed off with about ten thousand crushed diet soda cans tied to the back bumper along with a few loaves of white bread.

  “Come on, Freddy!” Dick hollered from his pickup truck. “I’m taking you to the reception!”

  “I’m Joey,” I said.

  “Whatever. Just get in the truck,” he ordered.

  I pulled up my pants and ran down the steps and into his front seat and slammed the door shut. He mashed down on the gas and I was glad I had my helmet on as my head snapped back and hit his gun rack.

  “Some rewedding, huh?” he asked, and took a swig from a whiskey bottle. “Want some? ’Cause it’s a booze-free zone for me when I get there. I’m not allowed to drink in public.”

  I passed, and he finished the bottle and flipped it out the window and into the back of the truck.

  “The rewedding was great,” I said because I was thinking of Mom’s smile, which was so wide and so big it kept me from thinking about all the negative thoughts I had. It was a magical smile and I was definitely under her spell. Of course I understood that her smile was the result of the two of them redoing their wedding vows, so I had to think that he did her some good. But was that the same as there being some good way down deep inside of him? I didn’t know for sure, but I hoped so because only time would tell.

  At the reception I watched as they danced, and he danced so smoothly, as if he really were some rich guy named Charles Heinz. And then he stood on a chair and gave an amazing speech about how Mom was the greatest woman in the world, with the most forgiving heart and the most angelic face, and that he was the luckiest man on the planet. When it was her turn to speak she said that she never would have guessed she’d marry the same man twice, but she figured that the second time around was the ticket to lifelong happiness and that if you couldn’t forgive a person for changing for the better then you didn’t deserve to be forgiven for your own mess-ups because “It takes two to tangle.”

  Everyone clapped and whistled and raised their glasses for a ginger-ale toast. I should have been full of good cheer, too, but when they cut the cake some ugly part of me wanted Charles Heinz to go mental and be his old nasty self and threaten my mother with the rewedding cake knife in his hand until the police came and dragged him away. But nothing bad happened—in fact, at the end of the night I had to admit that the only bad things going on were the bad thoughts deep inside of me. The rewedding and the cheerfulness everyone felt was all about them, and I was like a grumpy little troll all hunched up in a corner thinking bad thoughts while dressed in a white tuxed
o and sucking on a sour pickle.

  4

  TO DINE FOR

  “Good morning, sleepyhead,” Dad said as he gave my shoulder a shake. When I opened my eyes he handed me a can of Diet Coke. “Drink this. It will get your motor running.”

  “Mom doesn’t let me drink that,” I replied. “It makes me hyper. I can only have chocolate milk.”

  He leaned forward and made a sneaky-looking face. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” he whispered, “so drink up. We have a huge day ahead of us.”

  Now that he was the big man of the house again I did what I was told and drank it down. It did get me going because a few minutes later I jumped out of bed, got dressed, and dashed into the kitchen.

  “What’s for breakfast?” I shouted. “I’m starving!”

  Mom was sitting at the table with her chin propped up on her folded hands. She looked a little green and winced when I shouted. Her work friends had set up a private champagne bar in the ladies’ powder room and she may have had too much fun at her own rewedding party. But not Dad. Since he had quit drinking he was full of energy this morning and in a great mood because this was the day he was going to unveil Mom’s “unbelievable” rewedding gift.

  “How about some scrambled eggs diner style?” he asked me, as he hovered over the stove top with a frying pan in his hand.

  “You bet,” I replied.

  He began to crack the eggs into the pan and talk excitedly at the same time. “The gift I have for you is incredible,” he said to Mom. “And it is big. Very BIG!” He waved the spatula over his head, flicking bits of half-cooked egg onto the floor.

  Pablo and Pablita began to lap them up.

  “Then how come you didn’t give it to me on my rewedding day?” Mom asked. She sounded a bit annoyed.

  Dad added some cheese and chopped-up ham and green peppers to the pan and worked them into the eggs. “Because,” he joked, “I didn’t want you forgiving me just for my money.”

  “Clever,” Mom commented dryly. “You really have me figured out.”

  I didn’t want them to get grumpy with each other after being remarried less than twenty-four hours, so I blurted out, “I really had a lot of fun at the rewedding.”

  “It was the best,” Dad said warmly, and smiled at Mom as he set the eggs in front of me. She smiled back and blew him a kiss, but when she got a whiff of the eggs she pushed them away and stood up.

  “I better get dressed,” she said, and went up to their bedroom.

  “Me, too,” Dad added, and he followed her up the stairs.

  I wolfed down the eggs and got myself ready, and in a few minutes we all left the house and walked down the front steps toward the car. The limo rental people had reclaimed the Hummer at dawn so we piled into what Dad called the “Heinzmobile,” which was a President’s Edition black Lincoln. The trunk was big enough to hold the Oval Office inside, and I thought that if I knocked on it Honest Abe himself would pop out and recite the Gettysburg Address.

  “I like American cars, son,” Dad announced. He turned the key and the engine backfired. The sound hurt my head. Maybe the car was haunted by John Wilkes Booth.

  “When a car wears out,” he continued, “you just throw it away and get another. Only in this country can we leave our past parked in a junkyard and drive off in a shiny new life. Tell me, where else in the world can you do that?”

  “Do they have junkyards in Hawaii?” I asked.

  He didn’t hear me because he had ducked under the steering wheel to grab Pablo, who had gotten wedged under the brake pedal. When Dad came up he blindly handed him back to me. Pablo was upside down and wiggling his arms and legs like a crab. Pablita was sleeping on Mom’s lap with her paws over her ears.

  “Oh!” Dad suddenly cried out. “Guess who said this: ‘Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.’”

  I had no idea.

  He glanced at Mom. “Take a guess,” he offered.

  “God?” she said reluctantly, sounding tired.

  “Nope. Freddy, your turn.”

  “The Hulk?”

  “Nope. Here is a hint. He’s one of our greatest presidents,” he said, nearly chirping with happiness.

  “Roosevelt?” Mom guessed, and then groaned as if talking was the same as being punched in the stomach.

  “Nope.”

  “Washington?” I said. I really had no idea.

  “Nope.”

  “Just tell us,” Mom snapped. “I’m not feeling up to a pop quiz!”

  “John F Kennedy” Dad blurted out. “J.F.K.! He knew the power of change.”

  “And look where it got him,” Mom replied under her breath, and gazed out her window at nothing in particular.

  I thought maybe we were going to drive out to the new Diamond Warehouse store at the outlet mall and pick up a diamond the size of a fist to replace the tiny one Dad had given Mom before I was born. She told me she had pawned that one a long time ago and only received ten dollars for it because it was a “diamond chip.”

  “Like a tortilla chip?” I had asked, trying to imagine a ring that was also a snack.

  “No,” she replied, “it was like the size of a toenail clipping—probably one of his own.” Back then she had laughed scornfully at the thought of him. I now wondered if she remembered telling me about the diamond chip or if bleaching her past had already erased all her old disappointments.

  As we drove a few miles out of town we passed by chain restaurants, tourist motels, and farm stands, and when we stopped at a red light in front of Dutch Wonderland Family Amusement Park, Dad said offhand, “That would be a nice property to own.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. In the distance a line of roller-coaster cars clacked up a hill of tracks, and when they plunged down the other side I could hear people scream. It made my head throb.

  “Now that I’m a small business man,” he said smoothly as we continued down the highway, “I’d like to work my way up and own some blue-chip money-making properties.” When he said that, Mom perked up and draped her arm over the seat where she made the big-money gesture by rubbing the tips of her thumb and pointer finger together. She winked slyly at me as if behind Dad’s back she and I were in on something sneaky together, but that only made me nervous so I turned away and looked out the window at farmhands piling hay bales onto an old flatbed truck.

  Just then we fishtailed off the highway and onto a rutted gravel parking lot which was skinned-looking where the black dirt showed through.

  “Voilà!” Dad shouted after he hit the brakes and we skidded to a stop. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

  I was wrong about the rewedding gift being a diamond. It was an old silver roadside diner, and it looked like a dented-up can lying on its side with a wide ribbon wrapped around it and tied in a bow by the door.

  Mom must have read my mind in more ways than one. “Why, it looks like a giant beer can waiting to be recycled,” she remarked, and I noticed she now rubbed her ring finger with her thumb where she thought the big diamond would have fit.

  Dad smiled broadly. “This old can is worth a lot more than a nickel,” he said. “It’s a gold mine!”

  Mom made a mock angry face. “I’d rather just have the gold,” she said.

  He didn’t take the hint. Instead, he sprang out of the car with the dogs chasing behind and began to run toward a hand-lettered sign on the front door that read:

  OPENING SOON

  UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT

  MR. AND MRS. CHARLES HEINZ & SON

  “Come on!” he hollered, waving madly at us to follow him. “Wait until you get a glimpse of your future.”

  We didn’t have to wait long. As soon as he unlocked the front door the dogs dashed in and he directed us toward a mustard-colored booth he must have been using for an office because it was covered in neat piles of receipts and stacks of loser lottery tickets. Mom and I slid along the worn vinyl seat and Dad sat across the enamel tablet
op from us. The sun shone in through a row of thick green-tinted windows. I glanced around at the half-dozen identical booths and the long greenish coffee counter with matching stools on polished chrome poles and the shiny griddle for cooking and the small open window where you could holler food orders in to the kitchen chef in back. Everything was neat and tidy and in its place just the way Dad liked it, and there was so much to see and do I just felt like jumping up and taking orders and cooking and serving and cleaning and counting all that money. I could feel it in my bones that I was born to run a diner. I glanced at the dogs, and from the way they were sitting next to the table watching Dad with their bugged-out eyes I could tell they were as excited as I was.

  Dad rapped his knuckles on the table to get our attention. “It won’t look like a beer can for long,” he explained while squinting cleverly and tapping his finger against his temple. “No, sir. After I won the money an old friend helped put together a marketing plan so I wouldn’t blow my nest egg. Now, follow my thinking. What is the busiest insect in the world?”

  “Roach?” Mom guessed, glancing suspiciously toward the kitchen.

  “Bee!” I blurted out.

  “Right on!” Dad said, and gave me a high five. “So we are going to call this place the Beehive Diner. Just think of it painted in black and yellow stripes with a bee face painted on one end and a pointy stinger on the other. I can even have some black wings made out of steel mesh and rivet them to the body.”

  I had to admit, this part of his plan sounded pretty good.

  Mom began to say something but Dad quickly held up one finger to stop her. “Stay with me, Maria! Think of the menu. We can have the Queen Bee Burger, Peanut Butter and Royal Jelly, the Busy Bee on a Bun for the man on the run, a Beehive Breakfast Special served with Honeycomb cereal and Beebrain Coffee which will put a Bee in your Bonnet. The deal of the day could be the Bee-fore and After, where you get an appetizer, main course, and dessert. I mean, really, the bee possibilities are endless.”