by Jack Gantos
Mom stopped and waved, then opened her door. I got out as Grandma and Dad scrambled down the steps. Before he said anything to me he tried to kiss Mom but she yanked her head back as if Dad’s lips were electrified. Then she gave him a frozen look and said to me, “Joey, go get the luggage out of the trunk.”
I got the keys out of the ignition and went around to the back of the car with my head spinning so fast I couldn’t pluck one thought out of the blur of them. The two of them being weird together was making me think if I locked myself in the trunk they might forget about being mad at each other and focus on me.
But I canceled that thought. And by the time I came back dragging my army duffel bag no one was talking but they were staring so hard at each other, with their mouths slowly opening and closing like big goldfish, I figured I had gone deaf from bad nerves and started twisting my fingers into my ears like when they needed cleaning.
“Don’t worry,” Dad finally said. “I’ll take good care of him.” I heard that loud and clear and by then he was holding the box of patches. “I’ll change it every day like I do my nicotine patch, or every other day depending—”
Mom cut him off. “Just follow the prescription,” she said sharply. “Joey will tell you.”
“Don’t worry,” he said.
“But I do,” Mom replied. “You might mess with my head. But if you mess with this kid …” She didn’t finish her thought out loud because she had finished it in her mind so many times, and it was making her so huffy she was about to lose it. So it was my turn again to help her out.
I reached for her hand and when she glanced over at me I winked our giant eye-squishing secret wink, which was a reminder to chill out. She smiled and instead of going off the deep end, she stooped down by my side, fixed the hair back over my getting-better bald spot, then gave me a hug. “Call me,” she whispered in my ear. “Call often so I can say I love you.” Then she turned, stiffly marched like a windup toy soldier toward the car, got in, and drove off.
3
STORYBOOK LAND
Mom was disappearing down the road and Dad was shifting around in front of me with his arms and legs crossing back and forth like he was sharpening knives. He was wired. No doubt about it. When I looked in a mirror I could see it in my eyes, and now I could see it in his. Even with my medicine working real good, I felt nervous inside he was so hyper. Now I knew what Mom meant when she said he was like me, only bigger. He was taller than me too. He had long arms and pointy elbows and a humming sound came out of his body as if he was run by an electric motor. I took a deep breath and even though my insides were churning I was determined to stand there and be as stiff as the rusted-up Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.
“Well, Joey,” Dad said with a grin rocking back and forth on his face like a canoe on high seas, “you can call me Carter.” And he stuck out his hand to shake.
I knew I’d never call him that. But before I could call him the one important word I had waited so long to use, Grandma stepped forward.
“Truce,” she barked, and stuck out her wrinkled old hand which looked like a dried fish. “Since you’re gonna be here for a while we might as well get along.”
She had her hair cut short and slicked all the way forward with something so shiny I thought it was covered with Christmas tree tinsel.
“Come on,” Grandma persisted, and poked her hand forward again. “Don’t make me think you aren’t happy to see me.”
I squinted back at her because the sun reflected off her hair and directly into my eyes.
“No,” I said, and began to say that I was happy to see her, because the last time I saw her she had been walking off down the street and I figured she was washed down the sewer drain where I found her shoe and nothing else, but she jerked her head back before I could say so.
“No!” she squawked like a parrot. “Did you say ‘no’? Well, I can see already that you have stopped using the good manners I taught you when you lived with me.”
“I have manners,” I said, with my voice sounding tight. “Mom makes me use manners. Have I done anything wrong yet? No. Have I said anything mean? No. I’m polite.”
I still hadn’t moved an inch except for my mouth, which was now all oiled up from defending myself.
Grandma clamped her lips together and turned away to glare over at Carter. “I told you how that person lets him run the show,” she complained, and gasped for breath. “The cart leadin’ the horse!”
Carter kept whipping around and finally an uneven sound came out of his mouth like a car engine that wouldn’t start. Then he waved his hand in front of his face as if it were a magic wand and suddenly he went from a stutter to full-speed-ahead talking. “That’s all in the past!” he shouted, and pulled Grandma behind him a little too hard. “I’ve been thinking about what we should do today, and I have the perfect idea.” Instantly he was full of energy and happiness, and he smiled real big and announced we were going to Storybook Land Fun Park. “You have to see this place,” he said. “It’s where my whole life turned around.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. If his life turned around when he was a kid that would mean it got worse. But if he turned it around as an adult, that would mean he got better.
“Hey, this thing is heavy!” he shouted, lifting my duffel bag. “Whatcha got in here?”
“Clothes, shoes, books, my trumpet,” I said, trying to picture it all like it was on the list Mom made for me.
“Did you bring a baseball glove?” he asked as I followed him up to the porch. “’Cause I’m coaching a team and I could use a ringer like you.”
“No,” I replied. “I don’t have one.”
“Don’t sweat it,” he said, plopping my duffel bag down inside the front door. “I’ll pick one up this week. Now let me see the size of your hand.” I held mine up with my fingers spread wide open and he did too. When our hands pressed together I felt a jolt as if he had a joy buzzer in his.
We piled into his big old car and all the way to Storybook Land I imagined playing baseball. I was pretty good at throwing rocks, so I figured I’d be pretty good at pitching. I wanted to tell Dad that I would love to play on his team but I couldn’t get a word in.
He just kept talking and talking his nonstop sunny talk about what a great summer we were going to have and that he had tons of plans and that we would get caught up as father and son and soon all our rough past would be behind us and we would have nothing but smooth sailing for our future. And he especially kept talking about Storybook Land. “You gotta, gotta, gotta see this place. Gotta!”
Grandma sat next to him with gray clouds of cigarette smoke over her head as if her grumpy mood had set her hair on fire. Finally, after Dad said “You gotta see it” for the hundredth time, she yelled at him. “Okay, Carter! We’re on our way there for god’s sake. Give that motormouth of yours a rest!” She was going to say more but she got choked off by a coughing fit.
Dad continued talking his fast talk and when he took a breath I tried to tell him about wanting to play ball on his team, but he cut me off like a clueless driver and kept going so I just listened, which was okay with me because it made him happy. I figured I’d tell him when I had a chance. For now, it was enough that we were together even if he was taking me to a place which was way too young for my age. He was trying to get to know me, so it was fine. We had to start somewhere, and maybe in his mind I was still a baby.
After we got out of the car Grandma announced she would allow Dad and me some time alone to get caught up while she played miniature golf. “Gonna work on my short game,” she wheezed, then bent over hacking with her hands on her knees. When she finally pulled herself together and stood up she said, “Should have brought my oxygen tank today. It’s smoggy.”
“See you later,” I said as nicely as I could because she was a handful when she got mad. Dad and I headed down a little stone path lined with flowers and a short white picket fence that wasn’t tall enough to keep out the golden squirrels. As we strolled, te
enagers passed by dressed up as storybook characters. They waved at us and when they smiled their painted faces wrinkled up into strange masks. We waved back. The wolf from Little Red Riding-Hood howled at some cowering kid who screamed and clutched his mother’s pants. Dad nudged me with his elbow and said, “Your granny would eat that old wolf alive!”
“I think so,” I said, then added, “but why does she need oxygen?”
“Emphysema,” he said. “From smoking. She can’t get a whole breath and now needs to carry around one of those little oxygen tanks, but some days she’s too embarrassed to do it. I just hope she can get through the golf okay.”
“Me too,” I said, imagining Granny slumped over the miniature windmill, or halfway down the little wishing well. It wasn’t funny.
The first exhibit we came to was the sad-eyed Humpty Dumpty. From Dad’s buildup I was expecting something very fancy, but there was only a painted half-cracked concrete egg leaning against a cinderblock wall. All the king’s horses and men were made of carved wood and staked into the ground. They were tilted one way or another and splattered with mud.
“This is where it happened,” Dad whispered as he squatted down and wiped the figures clean with his handkerchief. “Right at this spot.” He drew an X on the ground with his finger. “This is where my whole life turned around. I had wandered in here one night after having a few too many drinks, and I passed out and the next thing I knew it was morning and a girl dressed as Little Miss Muffet was waking me up with her shoe and telling me to move on or else she’d call the cops. I stood up and stared over at old Humpty and I thought, I’m as bad as he is. I’m nothing more than a teary-eyed busted-up egg. And as I left the park I thought, Man, I can learn a lesson from that Humpty Dumpty dude. So the next day I came back and just stared at him and the more I stared the less I liked myself. I didn’t want to be a pathetic broken egg with everyone trying and failing to put me back together again. I decided on the spot that Humpty was never going to get better. He didn’t have the willpower to stop whining and get off his can and pull his own self together and move on. Right after that I went to a clinic and dried out, and whenever I get a chance I come to pat and polish old Humpty’s head. Believe me, I’ve been in every clinic in Pittsburgh, but not one of them taught me a lesson more valuable than what I’ve learned in Storybook Land. You know what I mean?” he said. He turned toward me, and waited for me to say something.
“I think I know what you mean,” I said, but I wasn’t quite sure if when last year I was sent down to the special-ed school I had become a Humpty Dumpty who had to glue himself back together again. Because I didn’t do it myself. I had a lot of good people to help me.
“You know,” Dad started up again, flapping his arms around as we strolled along the path past the Three Little Pigs, “this isn’t a kiddie park after all. I mean, everything I see here really gets me to thinking.”
“Dad, can I talk for a while?” I asked.
“Nobody’s stopping you,” he said. “Two people can talk at once. It’s like watching TV and talking. No big deal.”
“Yeah, but it’s hard for me to do that. I want to listen to you, then I want you to listen to me, and go back and forth like people who want to know about each other.”
“Sure, we can do that,” he said. “Now, keep talking and we’ll go down to Jack and the Beanstalk. Man, that is one place where I really did some deep thinking about you.”
The beanstalk was a telephone pole painted green with wide metal leaves running up both sides. “Check this out,” Dad said, and scampered up the pole as if he had done it a hundred times already. At the top was the giant’s balcony. Dad stood on it, shaded his eyes with his hands, and shouted, “Fe! Fi! Fo! Fum! I smell the blood of a little one.”
I laughed up at him and shaded my eyes too. “Fe! Fit Fo! Fum!” I boomed. “I smell the blood of a great big bum!”
“Joey,” he said, making a sad Humpty face, “there’s not a man alive who wouldn’t feel some guilt for abandoning his kid. But I’ll make it up. I’ll think of some way to pay you back for all I’ve done wrong to you. We were apart for a long time, but from now on, I swear, I’ll stick with you. And if you disappear again I’ll sniff you out like the giant and track you down.”
I stared up at him and he looked huge, as if he could see around the entire world and sniff me out no matter where I was. Half of me loved it because he was saying we would never be lost from each other again. The other half was a little scared because if I wanted to get away from him it meant I couldn’t—couldn’t run or hide or disappear without him finding me.
“Joey, do you get what I’m saying to you, son? This place made me think.” He squinted and thumped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Think like never before.”
“Dad?” I asked, looking up at him as I stumbled forward. “Can we do something a little more fun now?”
“Yeah, we can take a break from all this thinking,” he said. He climbed down the beanstalk and swung me around and nearly snapped my neck. “Sure. Let’s go get our pictures taken so we can always remember this day. And then we can go on the bumper cars in the park.”
We walked down the path and he continued talking nonstop.
“Now look over there,” he said, and pointed at Goldilocks and the Three Bears in their little house. “We can learn so much about each other here. How hot do you like your porridge?”
“What’s porridge?” I asked. “I never ate any.”
“See!” he declared. “See. Now I know something more about you.”
And before I could ask him how he liked his porridge he said, “Okay. Who is smarter? Hansel or Gretel?”
“Hansel,” I said. “He tricked the witch with the chicken bone. Who do you—”
“Oh, look,” he said. “There’s the Old Lady Who Lives in a Shoe. She had so many accidents she didn’t know what to do. And there goes that kissin’ fool, Georgie Porgie. I know how he feels.”
I knew how Dad felt about everything. But Dad didn’t know how I felt about anything. All the way to the photo booth he kept pointing out storybook characters and he had something important to say about each one, but after a while I stopped listening because he didn’t know if I listened or not.
“There it is,” I said, and pointed at the picture booth. We went over and I sat on the big Mother Goose and Dad put his face into the cutout head of the Jack of Hearts. The photographer took two pictures. One for me, and one for him.
“Better get one for your mom too,” he reasoned. “So she won’t think I got you hanging by your thumbs down in the basement.”
I thought that was a good idea, and when the photographer said “Smile” I thought of Mom and got a big lip-curling grin on my face.
“Okay,” Dad said, slipping the photos into his top pocket, “let’s hurry up ‘cause there are a few more important story spots I need you to see.”
“What about the bumper cars?” I asked.
“In a minute,” he said. “This next thing is important.”
We walked down to the Crooked House and right away Dad bent over to one side and began to play as if he was all crooked. “This is me before,” he said, with a wavering voice. “All crooked.” Then he straightened up like a soldier at attention. “And this is me now. Do you get it? ‘There once was a crooked man, who lived in a crooked house. He had a crooked dog—’”
When he said “dog” the breath went out of me like I had drowned on land.
“Oh my god!” I shouted, then sucked in some air. “I left Pablo in the glove box!”
“Who’s Pablo?” he asked.
“My Chihuahua,” I cried out with my feet hopping up and down. “I have to call Mom. Where’s a phone?” I looked around like there might be a little crooked phone in the crooked man’s house.
“Well, why’s he in the glove box?”
“Because he got carsick on the radio,” I said, and took off running down the path to where I had seen the log-cabin bathrooms and a pay phone
.
By the time Dad caught up to me I had the money envelope out of my pocket and was ripping the tape off the quarters and popping them into the phone slot. I didn’t know how much money it would take so I figured putting it all in was good.
“She probably hasn’t made it back yet,” Dad said as he took the phone from my hand and hung up. All the money came shooting out of the change return and went rolling across the floor.
“I have to go home!” I said as I scrambled for the coins. “What if Pablo is stuck in the glove box when Mom returns the car and Pablo is trapped in there and dies like those kids trapped in car trunks?”
“Joey,” Dad said. “Don’t turn into a Humpty Dumpty on me. You have to tough it out, buddy. Everything is going to be all right. Why, I bet your mom found Pablo after a while and turned around and brought him back. I bet he’s on the front porch right now waiting for you.”
“Let’s go see,” I said nervously. “Let’s go now.”
Dad took my hand and we went running toward the miniature golf course. Grandma was sitting on a small brown-and-white polka-dotted mushroom seat with her golf club across her knees. “I’m just takin’ a breather,” she whispered harshly.
“We have to go home,” Dad said, and reached for her elbow to get her on her feet and going. “Joey lost his Chihuahua.”
“What Chihuahua?” she asked. “Nobody told me a fancy rat dog was part of this deal.”
Dad didn’t say anything. Instead he scooped her up into his arms. I was already heading for the car and I wished I had the keys because I’d start it up and take off looking for Mom and Pablo.
All the way back to the house Granny said mean things about my “fancy Mexican rat dog.”
“He’s half-Chihuahua and half-dachshund,” I said.
“Half-rat, half-wiener, you mean,” she snorted back.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and said, “You be quiet.”
“No. You be quiet,” she shot back.
“No! You be quiet,” I said again.