30 Feet Strong

by Hannah Paige

  She waved her hand aside, “Ah, you worry too much. Ask Lee, he said I should be walking, it gets the baby kicking and outta here. So I’m staying vertical ’till the day I can see my own feet again. They feel like two puffy tamales down there.” She laughed, bracing her back with one hand, while refilling a woman’s wine glass with the bottle in her other.

  Ian shook his head and sat down across from Lee, who took a long pull from his beer then yelled over Ian’s head, “Quite twisting my words around, Tina!”

  “Be quiet and drink your beer!”

  Lee laughed, trading his beer for a French fry.

  Ian took a sip from his own Corona and heard it spit out a satisfying ‘ppff’ as he popped it off of his lips to return to the table.

  “So, Lisa has a boyfriend now,” Lee led the conversation.

  Ian raised his eyebrows, “Oh?”

  Lee didn’t look pleased to share that his seventeen-year-old daughter had started dating, “She’s decided that since she’s ‘almost eighteen’ now,” she’d turned seventeen on May 27th, “she can date a senior. Who’s eighteen?”

  Ian took in a deep breath. He felt for his friend and had always told him that he was here for him to act as a sounding board for the single dad—Ian hadn’t been the only one who had lost someone ten years ago—but when it came to parenting advice, Ian was lost. He’d wanted kids, sure, but he’d always thought that he needed to wait for the right person. And she had already come and gone.

  “Yikes. Well, you knew this was bound to—”

  Lee held up a finger, cutting him off, “Don’t give me that ‘she’s growing up, there’s nothing you can do’ crap. I pay the rent. I buy her clothes. I am her father, for God’s sake, of course there’s something I can do.”

  Ian shrugged, “No, of course, you’re right. You could always lock her in the basement, or the attic. I remember helping you move some storage boxes up there last summer, it’s roomy.” He gave him a thumbs up and Lee let his head fall down on the table, banging it softly against the wood surface.

  “Oh, God, you’re right. You’re absolutely right, there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Hey! Lee! You break my table with your fat head, I throw you out, comprende?” Tina hollered from the bar.

  Lee heaved his head up to a vertical position, “Let’s talk about you instead. What makes you want to bang your face against the table? Hmm, let’s see.” He pondered it for a second, then arrived at the thought, snapping his fingers, “Isn’t your dad’s birthday coming up?”

  Ian groaned and Lee chomped on a couple more fries, satisfied that he’d struck a chord.

  “It’s tomorrow, isn’t it? You going to call him?”

  A long time ago, Ian confided in Lee about the mess that had become his ‘family’ in the past ten years. They’d met under such stressful conditions that no conversation topics were off the table as the two grew closer.

  Ian chugged down more beer, welcoming the sting in his throat, “Honestly? Probably not.”

  Lee turned around in his seat to face Tina, “Hey, Tina? Your dad still around?”

  Tina nodded, “Papi? ’course.”

  “And do you see him often?”

  She shook her head, frowning as she dosed out a round of shots, “No, not in a year or two. He’s still south of the border, but I call him every Sunday.”

  Lee returned to Ian, “See? Tina calls her dad.”

  Ian glared at his friend, “I’ll bet Tina’s dad calls her Miha and manages to remember how old she is too. They probably have the same favorite ice cream flavor.”

  “Boohoo, so your dad doesn’t call you on your birthday. Be the bigger man and call him.”

  “It’s not just birthdays, Lee.”

  “What? The career, ‘you’re a major disappointment’ thing? Sooner or later we all disappoint our parents. My dad wanted me to learn to play piano like a good little Korean boy.”

  Ian frowned, picturing the baby grand that took up most of Lee’s living room, “Lee, you’ve been playing since you were seven. You still play.”

  Lee raised his eyebrows, pausing before taking a drink, “Ah, but I wasn’t very good when I was little, which was disappointing to my father.”

  That got Ian to chuckle, which, he guessed, helped the situation a little, but not really. Ian stood up from their table. “You never cease to remind why you’re a peds doc.” He slapped a hand down on Lee’s shoulder, “Kids are the only ones who will put up with you and your shitty social skills.” Before Lee could give an argument, Ian started to leave the table.

  “What, I have to pay for your drink too?” Lee called.

  Ian laughed without turning around to face him and pushed the door open, “Never said we were going Dutch!”

  And the bar’s door closed behind him. The muffled sound of slurred voices and the occasionally slightly-too-loud-cackle that accompanied tequila shots seeped through the windows behind him and out onto the sidewalk outside. He walked the seven blocks back home, passing a pack of theater junkies with their heads bowed low, devouring scripts in their hands. As he got closer to home, he saw the homeless kid settling down for the night on a stoop. He pulled a ratty green jacket up over his shoulders. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen or so, maybe not even that old.

  Chuck was gone by the time Ian unlocked the coffee shop door, then let it close behind him. His shift had probably ended hours ago, but when Ian jogged up the stairs to his apartment he saw a note had been scribbled and taped on the door:

  Baloo was a ball! Went to the park at two after I got off work. He did his business, tried to eat some grass, and sniffed a poodle’s butt. Seeya tomorrow!

  – Chuck

  P.S. Still can’t believe you haven’t put a lock on this thing, a little risky, don’t you think?

  Ian opened the door, calling out, “Baloo! Hey, buddy, I’m home!”

  No response.

  Ian left his briefcase in one of the kitchen chairs and shuffled into the bedroom, kicking his shoes off along the way. He planted his hands on his hips at the sight of his dog sprawled out at the top of his bed, the terrier’s head resting on Ian’s pillow. Baloo barely lifted his head and blinked at Ian with his best ‘can I help you?’ look on his face.

  “So sorry to disturb you. Don’t mind me, I’ll just work around you,” he threw his dirty clothes on the end of the bed and hopped in the shower.

  When he got out, Baloo had migrated to the foot of Ian’s bed and had his head resting on Ian’s pants. Ian went to the dresser by the window that looked out into the bustling street. A faint glow from the nearest store’s signs leaked through his window. He pulled out a clean shirt and a pair of boxers, throwing them both on, then turned on the stereo. Ian hadn’t kept much of what was left in the apartment when Jill no longer needed it, but the stereo he had kept, along with the stack of CDs that had come with it. Neither the aged boombox nor the collection had been moved from where their previous owner had plopped them on the dresser, crooked.

  The current CD—he knew exactly which one it was—took a second to load and clicked around a couple times, trying to grasp the first track, then the guitar plucked through the speakers and soon the lyrics joined the tinny, comforting sound of the opening strums, ‘Well I walked up to her and asked her if she wanted to dance. She looked awful nice and so I hoped she might take a chance.’

  Ian could listen to Al Jardine all day: a personal favorite member of the Beach Boys, in Ian’s opinion. He sprawled out on his bed, leaving the music playing, and drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Two

  Ian usually looked forward to his day off. If he was lucky, it corresponded with Lee’s day off and he would join his family for the day, or if his kids were at friend’s houses—or at school—they would have a guy’s day. They’d catch a ballgame or get a beer somewhere. Lee liked to pick out beautiful women at restaurants, sometimes at Tino’s, but he and Ian both knew that Lee would never actually approach them.

  Th
is week was different. Ian wanted to work. He wanted to do anything that meant he didn’t have to think about what he should be doing: calling his father. Jackie would have called him in a heartbeat, Ian thought, swirling a spoon around in his coffee. He hadn’t thought of his sister in ages, maybe even years. For the past ten years, he had made it his goal to be more social, seize life for every flicker of joy it was willing to give to Ian. That process included doing his best to block out his family, who only provided painful memories.

  He looked behind him at Baloo, “What do you think?”

  Baloo lifted his head off of his paws and Ian nodded, “Go for a walk and avoid our troubles? Yeah, I agree.”

  He hooked Baloo up to his leash and they trotted outside into the late morning. They were a block down, still a ways away from the park, when Ian stopped on the sidewalk. People breezed by him, sidestepping around him as he stared at the crowded spot on the corner. The homeless boy was there with his bucket of newspapers, same as every morning. But he wasn’t alone, which made this morning different.

  Another little boy, short and pale, with thin, blonde hair lying flat on his head, was with him. His face was pristine, not a spot of dirt on him. He had a new leather jacket in his arms and was extending it to the dirty teenager, who was shaking his head. Ian couldn’t take his eyes off the scene that everyone around him seemed to be passing by without a second glance. None of them stopped to look and once upon a time, he’d been one of them.

  “Take it. It’s too big for me. I accidentally bought the wrong size. It would be a waste for me to just toss it out. Please, I want you to have it,” Ian heard the clean boy say.

  The teenager, his face dyed the color of an extinguished match from missing too many showers, bit his cracked lower lip and took the jacket. He tossed his own green garment down beside his newspaper bucket and pulled his arms through the jacket that fit him perfectly.

  “Thank you, by the way. No one’s ever this nice to me, they just push by me. None of them even acknowledge me, let alone give me new clothes.”

  The little boy shrugged, “Don’t blame them. They don’t know any better. Some people can’t see what they have right in front of them.”

  “Another homeless kid?” he spat bitterly.

  “An opportunity to help someone, to make their own lives a little better.”

  The teenager frowned, losing the message that astounded Ian.

  The little boy smiled, his eyes shifting to his feet, “Hey! You think we’re the same size shoe? My mom says I have big feet despite my somewhat stout stature. She says it’s a sign that I’m going to grow up to be a tall man, but I’m not sure if that’s true.”

  The teenager scoffed, looking between the boy’s gleaming white tennis shoes and his own sneakers with his big toe sticking out the front of one shoe and the rubber siding peeling off the other. “Yeah, right. What do you care, anyway?”

  The boy shrugged, already untying the laces on his left shoe, “Let’s see if we are.”

  The teenager rolled his eyes then indulged the little boy and tugged off his own shoes, pulling on the pair of clean ones. Ian felt his jaw drop right alongside the teenager’s as the homeless kid’s feet slipped into the white pair.

  “Hey, they do fit! Look at that, we’re the same size. I know I’ve got little feet, but dude, your feet must be huge.”

  The boy finished lacing up his ‘new’ pair of shoes, as best he could, though they barely clung to his socked-feet, and stood back up.

  “I told you we were the same size,” he smiled, not boasting, but more basking in the joy that he had helped create. The teenager was grinning, wiggling his toes in the new shoes. Ian bet, based on that ear-to-ear look of astonishment, that he’d never had a pair of shoes that clean, or that intact, in his entire life.

  “Well, I’ve gotta run. Maybe I’ll catch you later,” the boy said and started to walk away from the teenager.

  The homeless boy looked up, realizing what had just happened, “Wait, you forgot your shoes!” He had one shoe already pulled off his foot, ready to return to its owner, but the tidy little boy was gone, with the ratty pair of shoes still on his feet.

  Ian left the homeless adolescent there, grinning at the new pair of shoes and jacket he’d stumbled upon today, and went in search of the little boy. Unfortunately, he must have gotten swept up in the endless stream of people bustling along the Manhattan streets and had disappeared, out of sight.

  Frowning, Ian tugged Baloo along and continued on their walk to the park. When he got there, giant, puffy clouds were moving in, most of them white and harmless, but a few threatened the blue sky with their gloomy grey complexion. He took a seat on one of the benches near the center of the park, in front of the populated field. Baloo sighed, stretching out in a patch of sun at Ian’s feet. Ian looked up, praying that the white clouds might push the gray ones away so the warm sunny day could stay.

  “Can I pet your dog?” a boy’s voice asked, catching Ian’s attention.

  A short, clean, blonde boy was standing in front of him with hands clasped in front of him and feet—shoddily covered in (Ian would hardly call them) shoes—touching each other.

  “You’re the kid I saw earlier. You gave that homeless boy a new jacket.” Ian looked down at the boy’s feet, then back up to his pleasant, round face, “And your shoes.”

  He nodded, “I did. I noticed you watching me too.”

  Ian felt a little bashful for that and cleared his throat, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare. I’ve never seen someone act that way towards—” Ian didn’t want to say it.

  “Towards someone who didn’t have anything to give me in return? Most people haven’t. As I’m sure you heard, most people don’t even stop to look, but you did. So, you’re ahead of the curve.”

  Ian blew out a sigh, shifting his weight on the bench, “I didn’t used to be like that. I used to breeze right past people, my head down, just trying to get from point A to point B, without getting bothered.”

  “What happened?”

  Ian smiled at the boy’s curiosity, “Then I looked up for a second, just for a second, and I saw someone who told me to seize the day.”

  “Ah, carpe diem.”

  Ian raised his eyebrows, impressed with the boy’s advanced intellect, “That’s right.”

  He smiled, “Looks like that one second had quite an impact on you.”

  Ian nodded, remembering the boy’s first question, “I’m sorry, you asked to pet my dog. You can go ahead, he doesn’t bite.” He scooted back on the bench, moving his feet under him so the boy could get closer to Baloo.

  He took a seat on the ground, let Baloo sniff his hand, then started petting his head. Baloo’s eyes closed instantaneously; even Ian felt mesmerized just by watching the soothing motion of the boy’s pale hand stroking the dog’s head.

  “It’s a beautiful day, don’t you think? It’s quite lucky. The first day I get to come back to my favorite park, I’m rewarded with a sunny day. I used to come here every day, but I’ve recently been moving around a lot, traveling, site-seeing mostly, visiting some friends, some family too. My mom’s from this area though, so we like to make it back here every so often. What brings you to the park today?”

  The boy seemed harmless. There was no reason, that Ian could identify, for him to lie to the boy about his personal matters. If Ian had maintained any trait from the person he used to be, it was his innate honesty.

  “Truthfully? I’m avoiding doing something else.”

  The boy stared up at Ian, clearly waiting for him to go on.

  “See, it’s my father’s birthday today. I know I’m supposed to call him, I know it’s the right thing to do. I just really don’t want to. You know? I always try to look on the positive, ever since that second I looked up for the first time, and my father…he’s not very positive.”

  “Do you usually call him on his birthday? Or is this a habit of yours, coming to the park instead of picking up the phone?”

 
Ian felt his chest tighten, expelling a bitter laugh. He thought he was abrupt; this kid was something else entirely. “Well, up until a few years back, my sister was the one that made sure I called him. She would remind me a hundred times, wouldn’t let me off the hook until I finally caved and gave him a call. But she’s been gone for a while, now and I haven’t talked to him since.” He leaned back against the bench, coming to the startling realization that it had been ten years since he had talked to his father. Well, closer to nine, really, but that number didn’t make him feel much better. He remembered their last conversation with crystal-clear bitter memories. It had been at Jackie’s funeral.

  She was the only good thing left of this family and now she’s gone too.

  That’s what Ian’s father had said, dry-eyed, without consideration for how his words would affect Ian. It shouldn’t have come as a shock to Ian: his father’s utter disregard for Ian as a son, or a person, for that matter. But it did. It sliced the string that had spanned between Ian and his father, growing thinner and finer as the years went by: stretching to accommodate the distance that grew between the two men. But that day, the thread’s well-being didn’t matter. Because, in his father’s eyes, Ian was apparently not only detached from ‘this family’ but he wasn’t ‘good’ either.

  “I’m sorry, you didn’t ask for—” Ian started to say, ready to stand up and leave before someone called the cops on him for mentally scarring this little kid.

  But the blonde boy went on, unfazed by Ian’s words, “I always wished for a sibling, maybe a sister would be nice. But it’s just me and my mom and as you can see, I’m short one contributor to my family, so I’ve come to terms with being an only child.” His hand paused on Baloo’s head; the dog flicked his ear once, then sat up, his massage having been interrupted. “I never met my dad. He died before I was born, actually a few minutes after, if we’re being specific.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Ian didn’t ask about the ‘minutes after’ comment; that would certainly send the boy running, and though he normally had terrible luck communicating with children, Ian was enjoying the boy’s mature company.