C, My Name Is Cal

by Norma Fox Mazer

  “Oh, now everybody’s doing it,” Leslie said.

  “Goodness, Leslie, my apologies!” Fern said. “I didn’t realize it was an original patented idea.”

  Everyone was doing it. The guys were kneeling down. The girls were climbing on their shoulders. Someone marked out a course and someone else got Mr. Herrick to drop the flag (a T-shirt on a stick) for the start.

  “And they’re off!” Mr. Herrick yelled, like an announcer at the horse races.

  Leslie beat her hands on my shoulders in a frenzy, as if I really were a horse. “Go, Cal, go! Go, go, go!”

  I ran all out. I got caught up in it. I wanted to win, and what flashed through my mind was this: I’ll tell my father. As if winning a dumb race like this meant something.

  We did it. We won. We came in first. Leslie bent over me, her arms draped around my neck. “Fantastic! You were wonderful,” she said. And right there, in front of everyone, she kissed me.

  Chapter 19

  “Do you think I should go see my father?” I asked Mom.

  “Maybe. Do you think it would be any good?”

  “I don’t know. Every time he calls, we don’t have anything to say to each other.”

  “Well, that should answer your question. You’ll go all the way up there, spend all that money, and the two of you won’t say three words to each other.”

  I don’t know why, but I kept thinking about visiting him. One weekend when Alan was home, I talked to him about it. I don’t know why I did that, either. I’d never talked to Alan about anything before. “So what do you think?” I said, already feeling I was wasting his time, and boring him, besides.

  He steepled his fingers and did his Alan rumble. “What do I think? I think, Calvin …” He looked out the window. “I think, Calvin, you probably should go to see him.”

  “Why?” My head always got hot when I talked about my father, and I got that chewing gum lump in my stomach.

  “Why? Why? He’s your father. That’s why.”

  “Is that a good enough reason?”

  What did it even mean that he was my father? He could have been someone off the street for all I knew about him.

  “Alan, you’re more my father than he is,” I said.

  “Well, thank you for that.” Alan rubbed my back. ’I’m fond of you, too, Cal.” He hugged me, got me in a bear embrace. I thought he might kiss me, but he didn’t.

  He wiped his eyes. “Calvin, I don’t know if reason has too much to do with this kind of thing. For better or worse, the man is your father. See what I mean?”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “No, that’s it,” he said. “That’s the bottom line.”

  My father called again. Another awkward phone call. They didn’t seem to get any better.

  I tried to write to him. But I didn’t know what to say. Even if I sent him a letter, he wouldn’t answer me. Maybe in three years he’d send me a postcard.

  Sometimes I forgot all about my father.

  Sometimes I thought about him more than ever.

  Sometimes I wished he had never come to see me and that I could just clear my mind of him and never think about him again.

  “Hey, watch those kidneys!” I said. I had a neck hold on Garo, and he was rabbit-punching me. We wrestled across the room and banged into the desk.

  “Garo! Cal! What are you two boys doing?” Mom called. “The ceiling is going to fall!”

  We paused. We were both panting. “Are we doing anything, Garo?”

  “No, Cal, we’re not doing anything. You want another kidney punch?”

  “No, Garo. Nice of you to offer.” I jerked his head a little bit, then let him go.

  “I’ve got a new joke,” he said, getting out his notebook. “There was this man who had a dog who liked to play checkers. They go into a bar one day—”

  “Do you think I should visit my father?”

  “Don’t you want to hear the rest of my dog joke?”

  “Not now.” I jumped up restlessly.

  “Why don’t you just start out with a phone call to your father?” Garo asked. “I mean, you call him for a change.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s always calling you. But if you want to go visit him, you should do it. You’ve been agonizing over it long enough. I’ll go with you,” he added.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know that,” he said. “But you might want company on a trip like that. You know …”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Garo, you’re a good friend. You’re probably the greatest friend.”

  He shrugged. “I know that, too.… Anyway, so are you.”

  “You’re sure I should do this?” I asked Garo.

  He nodded, and I dialed. The phone rang in my father’s apartment. “Hello?” he said.

  “It’s me, uh, Calvin.”

  “Well. Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  There was a silence. What did we have to say to each other? Nothing. What did we have in common? Nothing.

  I cleared my throat. “Just called to say hello.”

  “That’s very nice of you, Calvin.”

  I cleared my throat again. “This is the first time I’ve called you.”

  “That’s right! I knew it was going to be you. I was reading that book you told me about, and the phone rang, and I thought, it’s going to be Calvin.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  We stumbled along for a few minutes about the book he was reading and the movie I’d seen and a TV show we’d both hated.

  “Well … I guess I’ll call you again sometime,” I said.

  “Okay, I hope you do,” he said.

  “If that’s all right with you,” I said.

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “It’s fine with me. Yes. I like it.”

  “So, okay. Good-bye, uh—”

  “Good-bye, son. You take care now.”

  “Okay.”

  “You be good to yourself, son.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “Good. All right, then, I’m going to let you go.”

  “Good-bye,” I said.

  “Good-bye.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You take care, too.”

  “I will.” He seemed to be waiting, waiting for me to say something else.

  I leaned forward. “So I’m going to hang up now.” But I didn’t. Say it, I thought. You can say it. My hands were sweaty. And then I said it. “Good-bye, Dad,” I said, and I put down the phone.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the My Name Is series

  Chapter 1

  When I was born I weighed less than a pound. “Not even as much as a loaf of bread,” my mother always says. When my parents, who are Jody and Daniel Merritt, finally took me home from the hospital, I was four months old, and I still didn’t weigh as much as some babies do at birth.

  “You were smaller than my thumb,” my dad says. “And you’re still a tiny thing.”

  Well, maybe … but now I’m nearly fourteen, and I want my parents to stop fretting about me. I want them to stop hovering over me as if I’m a delicate plant that someone in the big, bad world is going to step on and crush.

  Here’s the way it goes in our house. In the morning, as soon as I enter the kitchen, my mother says, “How did you sleep, Danita?” My father hands me my vitamins and says, “Kiddo, did you brush your teeth good?” And even my little sister gets into the act. “Dani, were you cold last night? Did you have enough blankets?”

  I swallow vitamins and say, “Warm as toast, slept fine, and always brush my teeth.” Which, just then, are showing in what’s meant to pass for a smile. Finally, we move on to other things.

  My father begins reading out loud a letter someone wrote to the newspaper. “‘Dear Editor, we women do not appreciate the hairy apes that are called men today.’”

  “Hairy apes!” Lizbeth shrieks.

  Dad smiles. For years he’s been collecting the dumbest
letters people write to the newspaper. He says someday he’ll make a book of them and call it Stupid Opinions. He’ll print it right at his shop. “‘How can any self-respecting man cover his face with a hairy mess called beard?’” he goes on. “‘Did you ever see one of these ape-men eat?’” He’s laughing too hard to continue. “How do you guys vote on this one?”

  “Definitely a saver, Dad,” I say. Ooops. Why did I say anything? Now he’s got me on his mind again.

  He fixes his eyes on me and says, “That’s not the way you plan to go to school, is it, sweetie?”

  Certainly, it is. I’m wearing sneakers, white ankle socks, mauve pants turned up at the ankles, and a mauve-and-white diagonally striped sweater. Plus, my best silver double hoop earrings. I spent a lot of time last night and again this morning figuring out what I was going to wear.

  “Pretty outfit, Dani, but it’s raining.”

  “Dad,” I plead, “it’s only dripping.” It’s a soft rain, and I look forward to walking in it. I might put on a jacket, but not a raincoat! Not rubbers! Not an umbrella.

  “I don’t want you taking a chance of catching a cold.”

  “Which could turn into flu which could turn into pneumonia which could cause me to die at a young, tender age,” I say.

  “Very funny,” Mom says. “I want to see that raincoat walking out the door this morning, Dani.”

  “Lizbeth—” I begin. I don’t even know what I’m going to say about Lizbeth. Just something about them never bugging her. But Mom reads me on that, too.

  “Sweetie, you’ve had every little horrible virus and nasty bug in the world. Lizbeth has never been ill a day in her life. She’s healthy as a horse.”

  The perfect thing to say about my sister! She’s a horse fanatic. She sleeps, eats, talks, thinks, and even wears horses. This morning she’s got a wooden horse on a chain around her neck, a T-shirt with an embroidered red horse on the pocket, and a belt around her jeans with a brass horse-head buckle. I think her secret desire is to be a horse.

  I gulp milk, grab a piece of toast. “‘To Arnold with whom I used to pick raspberries when we were children thirty-five years ago,’” I whisper under my breath, trying to ignore my family. That’s the title and also the beginning line of the poem I’m going to recite for Greasepaint tryouts. It’s a very sad poem, about someone who killed himself a long time ago. Every time I recite it all the way through, I cry.

  “See you guys,” I say, putting down the glass.

  “Hold it.” Dad takes my arm. “In case you haven’t noticed, sweetie, breakfast is on the table.”

  “Dad, I have to get to school early.”

  There’s less than a week until tryouts. I’m definitely not an actress; just the opposite, in fact! But somehow I’ve got it into my head that this year I have to be in drama society. Which means I need every bit of practice I can get before tryouts. And not in my bedroom, where I feel safe, but on the spot (so to speak), on the stage, in the auditorium, facing those rows and rows of seats, where I feel … I won’t lie to you … terrified.

  Mom slides a plate of loose, whitish scrambled eggs in front of me. Dad muscles me (gently, I admit, but still muscles me) into a chair. “Get any skinnier and you’ll blow away in the first stiff wind.”

  I choke back a yell of outrage. If I blow my cork, they’ll say I’m not acting like myself and conclude I’m getting sick and may not even let me go to school. According to my parents, I’m “myself” when I’m happy, calm, and cheerful. But then who am I when I’m feeling ugly, irritable, and disagreeable? I swallow a forkful of slimy egg, trying not to see it or taste it.

  By the time I get to school, it’s much too late to go to the auditorium to practice. “Disaster day,” I mutter between my teeth and slam my locker door a few times. Fortunately, I finally notice the note on the floor that Laredo slipped into the locker.

  DANI, LUNCH MUNCHIES TOGETHER PER UZUAL?? GUESS WHAT! I SAW YOU KNOW WHO ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL. LOVE YA. W.W.

  W.W. stands for Wild Woman. You know who is Jon Haberle, a senior-high boy I have a crush on.

  Chapter 2

  Laredo and her mom live on the east side of the city on Park Street in an apartment, which happens to be in the same building and above a place called the People’s Beer Hall. The first time Laredo invited me for a sleepover, Mom and Dad drove me there together. They parked the car, got out, looked up and down the street like a pair of housing inspectors, and advanced with murmurs and frowns on the People’s Beer Hall.

  “Your friend lives here?”

  “Not in there, Mom and Dad. Upstairs!”

  Laredo’s door is next to the bar, but completely separate. You go up a long, narrow flight of stairs. The apartment is at the top. Up we went, a parent in front of me, a parent in back of me.

  “You could get a buzz on from just breathing the smell off these walls,” Dad said.

  I prayed he wouldn’t say anything like that in front of Laredo’s mom. She was already going to be late for work, just so she could be interviewed by my parents. I should have prayed harder! Dad asked a million questions.

  “What time will you be home from work, Mrs. Gerardi? What are Laredo’s rules for being alone? Will you be calling the girls from work to check that they’re okay?”

  Finally he and Mom ran out of questions and agreed with Mrs. Gerardi that Laredo and I were responsible people and could take care of ourselves for a few hours.

  “Well, that wasn’t so bad,” Laredo said, after they all left. She locked the door.

  “Oh, no? Did you happen to notice that my father thinks I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time?”

  “Dani, don’t complain; it’s adorable the way your father worries over you.” She went into the kitchen and plugged in the popcorn maker. “I decided tonight that he’s Mr. Ideal Dad. He’s a ten, Dani.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Plus, he and your mom are still a big romance item. Another ten!”

  Laredo was impressed that every year my parents celebrated two anniversaries, the day they got married and the day they met.

  “Plus, they’ve been married sixteen years.” She poured in a cup of popcorn. “My parents couldn’t even hold it together for three crummy years. And, your father likes me.”

  “Why should he get credit for that, Laredo?”

  “Let me put it to you this way. Does my father like you?”

  “Laredo, he lives three thousand miles away in Texas. He wouldn’t know me if he fell over me.”

  “My point exactly. Your father is here, on the spot, present and accounted for. And I’ll tell you something else about your father.”

  “I know you will,” I said over the noise of popping corn. “You’re on a roll.”

  “He thinks you are the greatest thing that ever happened to him, Dani. And he tells you so. The last time my father told me anything, I can’t even remember.”

  “I’m sure he loves you,” I said.

  “Yeah, he has a great way of showing it.” She dumped the melted butter into the popcorn and we went into the living room to watch TV.

  Laredo and I met for the first time last year in gym, on the volleyball court. She was new in school. I noticed her right away—tall, lanky, all this hair flying wildly around her head. Very beautiful, and she looked athletic. Ha! She was all thumbs and clumsy feet. She did things like bumping the ball backward instead of over the net, losing us the point. Not once, not twice, but three times!

  “What a spaz that new girl is,” Heidi Gretz said, not even bothering to lower her voice.

  I glanced at Laredo. I thought she’d be crushed. Instead, she was laughing. “Sorry, guys, I’m a total flake on a court. Keep the ball away from me!”

  Later, I asked her to come home with me after school. I liked her—there was something so different about her. One thing was her enthusiasm for everything. “This is great,” she said the moment we walked into my house. “I love this place! Oh, look, a breakfast nook! Your father made
this? I’ve never had a breakfast nook.” She ran from room to room, looking at everything. “A family room! Your dad built that fireplace? I don’t believe it! And you have two bathrooms.”

  Laredo had lived in apartments all her life. “Eight, no, ten apartments, counting the two I don’t remember from when I was a baby.”

  “It must be fun living in different places. I’ve always lived in this same boring house.”

  “Oh, ta! Poor baby!” “Ta!” was Laredo’s expression of sympathy, scorn, warmth, irony, whatever. “Ta!” was for everything, and I picked it up from her. We said “ta” to each other when we met, and “ta” when we parted. It became our special word.

  One day we made ourselves blood sisters. Laredo’s idea, of course. She sterilized a needle over the kitchen stove. I’m sure I turned pale. I closed my eyes and tried to make a joke. “Practicing to be a doctor?” Laredo wanted to go to medical school someday.

  “It’ll be fast,” she said, and a moment later, “Okay, open your peepers.”

  I saw a thin line of red dots. Quickly, she pricked her thumb and put it over mine. Our blood mingled.

  “Ta, Dani,” she said solemnly. “We’re linked forever.”

  Chapter 3

  Laredo gave me an elbow in the ribs and rolled her eyes at a boy walking by us. “Oh, my soul,” she sighed. She craned her neck after him.

  We were sitting on the bench near the fountain in the Springfield Mall after school. We’d come over so Laredo could look at guys and I could look at Jon Haberle. He worked at Ice Dreams, and from where we were sitting I could see him in his little white-walled space. I’d like to say I could see him clearly, but since I’m nearsighted, this wasn’t the case.

  “Don’t you think Jon looks like—” I mentioned a movie star.

  Laredo looked dubious. “Maybe.”

  I drifted off into one of my daydreams about Jon noticing me. It could happen here … or in school.… He’d come up to me, stop, really look at me, and then he’d take my hand, gaze straight into my face and say, Danita, I’ve wanted to talk to you for so long … all I think about is you. “Ohhh,” I sighed.