C, My Name Is Cal

by Norma Fox Mazer

  “Okay, fine with me,” I said. “Let’s forget it.”

  But as if I’d protested, she went right on. “Well, what was I supposed to do? Give him tea and crumpets? Pat him on the back for being Father of the Year? Tell him he’s a great guy for finally wanting to see his own son? Or did he want that? Now that’s a question, isn’t it, Cal? How much did he want to see you, how much did he want to get forty bucks from me?”

  My face flashed hot. “Let it go,” I said. “Just let it go!”

  We got in the car. Mom put the key in the ignition. “Okay, I’ll let it go. But I want to say one more thing. You know what I want to say, Cal? The hell with that man; he’s never done a thing for either of us.” She jammed her foot down on the gas, then looked across at me. “The hell with him, Cal,” she said. “You deserve something a whole lot better.”

  Chapter 14

  “Calvin.” Fern passed me in the hall and put something into my hand. It was an envelope with my name on the outside. CALVIN MILLER. I opened it and took out a sheet of paper. PLEASE COME TO MY BIRTHDAY PARTY APRIL 15TH. LOTS OF GOOD FOOD. DANCING. GAMES. NO PRESENTS, PLEASE. JUST YOU. FERN LIGHT.

  Why was she inviting me? It was a mistake. I went after her down the hall, but she turned into the math lab, and the bell rang. I ran for my next class. Anyway, I’d see her in Mr. Aketa’s room.

  “You meant this invitation for Garo, didn’t you?” I said later. “I’ll give it to him when I get home.”

  “Garo? Why would you think that? I gave it to you, didn’t I?” Her eyebrows thickened. “So, are you coming?”

  “Uhh …” I didn’t know what to say. Me, go to her party, and not Garo? What sense did that make? “What about Garo?” I asked.

  “What about him?”

  “Uh, I thought the invitation—”

  “I know, I know. You thought it was for him. Are you having a major political crisis over this?”

  “You don’t want him at your party?” I blurted.

  “Did I say that? What are you, his nursemaid?”

  “You’re a rough girl,” I said.

  “I try.”

  As it turned out, Fern had given Garo an invitation, too, but she wasn’t a normal person who would just tell me that. She had to put me on the spot. Are you coming or aren’t you? Give me an answer in ten seconds or less! Probably hoping I’d make a fool of myself, so she could produce another one of her brilliant sarcastic remarks.

  Saturday night, Garo spent at least two hours getting ready for Fern’s party. First he laid everything out, from matching shorts and socks to jacket and vest. Then he showered and brushed his teeth and combed his hair and sprayed himself with everything available. He changed his tie at least five times, and then at the last minute decided to change his socks and underwear so they’d all match.

  “You plan to take your pants down during the party?” I asked.

  “Red socks,” he said. “Where are my red socks?” He finally borrowed a pair from me.

  Maybe Mom had thrown his away. Garo didn’t like getting rid of his clothes, and Mom was always trying to weed out his old, wornout stuff. Like she’d weeded out my father? I thought of his blue jacket. How limp it had looked. Even from across the street, even from the other end of the mall, I’d seen that. Maybe he really needed that forty bucks. Maybe he spent all the money he had on coming here. To see me. Maybe he really did come here to see me.

  All these things started bouncing around in my brain. And I did something I hadn’t done in years, I took Opha Kangaroo off the closet shelf and held her. It was strange. A wave of something like dizziness or sleepiness came over me. I wanted to shut my eyes. I could have dozed off, standing right there.

  “What’re you doing?” Garo said, tucking in his shirt.

  “Nothing.” I shoved Opha K. back in the closet.

  “You’re not even dressed yet, Cal.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t go.”

  “Shut up and put on a clean shirt. Change your jeans, Cal, they look ready to walk away by themselves.”

  I looked down. My jeans were a little grungy.

  Garo went into the closet. “Here, put these on. And then go shave.”

  I zipped up the jeans. “I don’t have to shave tonight. I shaved on Wednesday.”

  “I shaved,” he said.

  “You? You did not.”

  “Sure I did. It’s a neat thing to do before a party.”

  I sniffed him. Sure enough. After-shave lotion. “What did you even have to shave?” I patted his face. “That baby skin?”

  I’m not going to relate the whole party. I’m just going to tell the three main things that struck me. The first was the girls making a major fuss over Garo. Every girl there was dressed to kill—heels, makeup, jewelry, hair, clothes. And from the moment we walked into Fern’s house, all of them swarmed around Garo.

  “He’s so so cute,” I heard Ami Pelter say. And Margie Clearmount—“He’s a little teddy bear. Don’t you just want to hug him?”

  There were fifteen girls and six boys at the party. The boys were mostly dressed up, too. I was about the only one who looked like nothing special. It didn’t bother me until I saw the black girl who had been with Angel and Fern the day they looked in the window of Hair Today. Her name was Iris.

  She seemed different from everyone else—I don’t mean because she was black. That’s too obvious. It was something else about her, maybe the way she carried herself. She had a long neck, and she kind of sailed regally when she walked. She was wearing a short black skirt, some kind of tucked or pleated blouse, silver earrings as big as plates, and black and white zebra stockings.

  I couldn’t stop looking at her, but I didn’t have the nerve to speak to her. I sort of wandered around the outskirts of wherever she was, watching her.

  The third main thing about that party was playing Sardines. I never thought I’d hear myself say playing a game like that was memorable. “Since it’s my birthday,” Fern said, “I get to choose the hider.” She looked around the room. “I choose … Calvin.”

  Everyone looked at me. I saw Iris looking at me.

  “Get going, Calvin,” Fern said. “We’ll wait five minutes while you find your hidey hole. Try not to make it too obvious and easy.” She shut the lights.

  I walked quickly through the dining room and into the front hall. I ran up the stairs. A long dim hall. I opened a door and looked into a bedroom. It might have been her parents’. I backed out and opened another door. Bedroom again. Maybe I could hide in a closet. But that was so obvious. The next door I opened led to the bathroom. I started to back out of there, too, then I heard Fern shouting, “One more minute!” I dashed into the shower stall and pulled the curtain. It was either brilliant or stupid. Either so obvious they’d find me immediately or so obvious it wasn’t obvious at all.

  I heard footsteps and voices.

  “Nobody in here.… Maybe he’s under the bed.… Try the closet.… Are your parents going to kill us?”

  Someone opened the bathroom door, then closed it. I leaned against the tiles. The door opened again, and a moment later the curtain was pulled back. Hands touched me. “Aha!” someone whispered. Whoever it was got in next to me. “Good place.” It was Fern. “But not good enough. I knew you’d do something like this.”

  How could she know that when I didn’t know it myself?

  “Because you think you’re clever,” she whispered, as if I’d asked the question. She was so close I could smell her hair, a lemony scent. “Not talking? Okay. I just wonder, are you shy or just stuck-up?”

  What was I supposed to say to that?

  “Leslie says you’re shy.”

  What else had Leslie said?

  “And that you don’t know how to kiss.”

  My mouth fell open.

  “Don’t you have anything at all to say?” she whispered.

  I thought of something to say! Or do. We were alone for another minute, or maybe two minutes. Not more.

  Then
Candy Perkins found us and climbed in. A moment later, Carl Vazerik was there, and Leslie Branch came right after him. “Oooh, oooh, ooh,” Leslie crooned. “What fun. Whose hand is this?” Someone else got in. It started to get crowded and hot. That was the point of the game. Sardines.

  Later, at home, Garo and I talked about the party. He couldn’t stop saying what a great time he had, and how pretty Fern looked, and how nice she was to him, and how when he found my hiding place she’d been the one who reached out and hauled him into the shower stall. “I’m just in love with her,” he said. He did five pushups and collapsed on the floor and lay there, smiling.

  I could have talked about Iris, how just thinking about her made me feel really peculiar and almost dazed. But I didn’t. And there was something else I could have talked about to Garo that I didn’t. Something else I didn’t want to say. I didn’t want to tell him that Fern and I had been kissing in the shower.

  Chapter 15

  I saw my father again. This time he was standing across the street from the school and I was in the Language Arts lab. My seat is by the window. We were doing journal writing that day. Mr. Pelter reads our journals once a week, so I never put down anything private. I was trying to write something funny about Mom and the slice of French bread. I got up to stretch and look out the window. Or did I know in some way? Did something tell me to look out? Probably not. Probably I’d looked out that same window in that same way a hundred times before—stood up, stretched, looked out, and sat down without having seen anything worth remembering.

  This time, I didn’t sit down. I saw my father out there, leaning against a green car and staring across at the school. He was here for me—this time I knew it! Here to see me. Or just to see the place I went to school. He had his hand above his eyes, as if he were keeping out the glare of the sun. But it was a cloudy, gray day.

  I left. I walked out of the room. I didn’t ask for a pass or anything. I just walked out. I went by Garo’s desk. “Hey,” he said. I went by Mr. Pelter’s desk. “Calvin?” he said.

  I closed the door behind me. I walked down the hall, listening to the click and echo of my boots. I went down the stairs. Not thinking, not asking myself why I was doing this or what I was going to say to him. Just moving, as if I was on the end of a rope and something was pulling me forward.

  Mrs. Jones-Barbarra stopped me as I was going out the front door. Mr. Pelter must have called down to the office. “What’s going on, Calvin?” She took my arm.

  “Nothing. Let go of me, please.”

  “Why did you leave Mr. Pelter’s class?”

  “No reason. Please let go of me.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “No, I just want to go outside for a minute.”

  “Calvin. If something’s wrong, you can tell me.”

  “Nothing’s wrong. Can I go outside for a minute?”

  “This is schooltime, Calvin.”

  “Just for a minute. Please, it won’t be any longer. I’m going to come right back,” I said. I tried to move around her.

  “You can’t get up and walk out of your class, walk out of school on a whim,”

  “It’s not a whim,” I said. I yanked my arm free and pushed open the door. The car was gone. My father was gone. There was no sign of him. The whole street was empty. I might have imagined it, imagined the whole thing. Maybe I had.

  I got handed two weeks’ detention for that, an hour every day after school. And I got lectures, as well, from Mr. Pelter, from Mrs. Jones-Barbarra, from Mom. And from the coach.

  “Calvin, I’ve thought this matter over,” he said. “I’ve given it lots of thought; this is not a hasty decision.” He ran his hand over his hair. “In my view, considering this latest stunt, I don’t think you should be on the basketball team right now.”

  What did walking out of Language Arts have to do with basketball?

  “Any time you get an idea in your head, you act on it. You do what you want to do. The game starts and you’re not there. Now this! It isn’t just my judgment, you know. Your teachers concur.”

  I looked down at my sneakers. My teachers concurred? That really made me feel lousy.

  “Calvin, I’m sorry about this. You’re a nice guy, but you need some discipline. I hope this doesn’t discourage you. You can try out again next term, in the fall.… Do you want to say anything?”

  I shook my head. What was the point? I could have defended myself, but I didn’t want to discuss my father with him or anyone else. That was private.

  I found out where my father was staying by calling all the motels in the area and asking for Cameron Miller. It didn’t even take as long as it took Tom to get one picture of me and Garo right. I tracked down my father that same day and called before I lost my nerve. He was out.

  The next time I called, there was still no answer. I sat down on Alan’s bed. Then Garo came to the door. He and Mom had just come back from the dentist. I motioned Garo in. “I’m calling my father.”

  He sat down next to me. “Good.… How was detention?”

  I shrugged. “You’re supposed to do homework. I read the whole time. Nobody bothers you if they think you’re reading something serious.” I’d picked up a book called Woman Warrior in the library. I thought it was science fiction, but it turned out to be about Chinese people coming to this country, and all the problems they had. It was interesting, because the author made it personal and told a lot of stories about herself and her family.

  “How was Dr. Fried?” I dialed the motel again.

  “I got three new jokes from him.” Garo slapped his face. “I’m still numb on this side.”

  The phone rang. “Hold on, please,” a woman said. Then a moment later, “Red Line Budget Motel.”

  “Mr. Miller in Room 105.”

  “One moment, please.”

  Two more short buzzes. “Hello.”

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hello? Somebody there?”

  “Is this—” I started coughing. My throat was dry. “This is Calvin Miller,” I said. “Is this Cameron Miller?”

  “Calvin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m home.”

  “I’d like to see you. This is Calvin, my son, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I want to see you. Only I don’t think your mother is too happy about the idea.”

  “You can see me,” I said. And I had this mental flash, like a weird vision, of me up on a movie screen, a huge blue-jeaned and booted Calvin, hands on hips like some old fifties cowboy, looming over a tiny dark room where my father sat slumped back, gazing up at the screen.

  “Do you want to meet someplace?” he said.

  “Where?” I said.

  “Wherever you want. Choose a place.”

  I thought of Le Bread and Buttery. No. The mall. No. “I could come to the motel,” I said.

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “I’ll find it.”

  After I got out of detention the next day, Garo and I caught a bus and went downtown. The motel was on the edge of the downtown area, on East Henry Street. Just a block further south, there were a lot of boarded-up stores and empty warehouses. The motel was a yellow building with a big signboard in front. WELCOME MARY AND MARK ON YOUR TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY.

  We walked into a small lobby, with a few chairs scattered around, and on a table in a corner a glass coffeepot and a stack of Styrofoam cups. The woman at the registration desk looked up, then went back to reading a newspaper.

  “This way,” Garo said, pointing to a corridor.

  “How do you know?” I felt a little sick. I’d eaten pizza for lunch, which ordinarily I didn’t eat, especially at school. I hoped I wouldn’t do anything stupid like throw up.

  “105 is the first floor.” Garo tugged at my sleeve. “Come on. It says so, right there.” On the wall an arrow pointed to the numbers 100–120.

  “I can’t.” I was starting to shake inside. I
n the back of my mind, I’d had this idea that I would stride into my father’s room, shake his hand, and say, “Hello, Cameron!” in a forthright, forceful way.

  How’re you doing, Cameron? Where have you been? How come you never came here before? What brought you here now?

  I’d ask all these questions that had been on my mind, but at the same time act as if I didn’t really care about the answers. I just wanted him to account for himself. Just a point of information.

  “Wait,” I said. “Wait.” I was shaking.

  “Want me to do it? I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  “He doesn’t know you.”

  “I’ll introduce myself.” Garo was completely calm. He walked toward the room, then came back and patted my arm. “Sit down, Cal, take a load off. I’ll be right back.”

  I leaned against the wall and watched Garo walk down the corridor. He stopped in front of a door and knocked. The door opened. I couldn’t believe how fast it happened. Time seemed to have gone crazy. Garo was turning, looking at me, raising his hand. He called me. “Cal. Come on.”

  At that moment, I could have walked out. I thought of it. I didn’t have to stay there. I didn’t have to see my father. I didn’t have to do anything. But I went forward. I walked toward Garo in the corridor and my father hidden in the room.

  Chapter 16

  My father was standing in the doorway, and he looked so small to me. He was wearing an Elvis T-shirt and tan pants and shoes with no socks on. He looked like he had almost no shoulders at all. “Come on in,” he said.

  “Hello,” I said. It was all backwards, and that was the way I felt—backwards, nervous, confused, nauseous. A light in the room behind him glared into my eyes.

  Garo gave me a little shove, and I stumbled into the room. I saw my father’s blue jacket hanging over the back of the chair. Big padded shoulders.

  We didn’t shake hands. We didn’t touch. We didn’t do anything. Just looked at each other. “Sit down,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything. He looked unhappy, that’s all I could think. He had an unhappy face. He wasn’t smiling to see me.