by Jack Gantos
8
THE GIFT
I didn’t know what time it was when Dad woke me up. It was dark out and everything seemed quiet, like it was the middle of the night.
“Did you brush your teeth before bed?” he asked, and I could smell the beer on his breath.
“No,” I said.
“Well, get up and come to the bathroom. Your mom would kill me if I didn’t make you brush your teeth,” he said.
I washed my face and the moment I stuck the toothbrush in my mouth he started talking. “I been thinkin’,” he said.
Even though I was sleepy I knew his thinkin’ was somehow going to be worse for me than for him.
“I know I wasn’t there for you for your whole life,” he started. “And I been struggling with how to make it up to you. Like what would be the greatest gift I could give you? And then just now, bingo! I was on the front porch and it came to me. I’ve been thinkin’ about these patches,” he said, holding the box of them in his hand. “I bet if you didn’t wear them you’d never know the difference.”
I spit into the sink. “You’d know the difference,” I said. “And so would I.”
“I’ve always found,” he said, sitting down on the lowered toilet seat, “that if I need to lick a problem I just tackle it cold turkey. Take my alcohol problem, for example—the last time I was arrested for DWI the judge threw me in jail and there was no booze there. None. Believe me, they didn’t give me a little old alcohol patch. Nope. It was just me and the walls and, buddy, they sent me to a work farm and in the beginning I thought I’d go bonkers. But day by day I got better. I worked like a demon under the sun in those fields, and the old poison just sweat out of me until I got a grip on myself and beat it. It was force of will!” He gave out a low whistle and made a muscle, then slapped it with his hand. “The mind is a muscle,” he said as he pointed to his head, “and determination is the exercise that keeps it tough!”
“But that was alcohol,” I said. “Mine is real medicine. A doctor gave it to me.”
“Same difference,” he said, and smirked. “A bartender gave me mine.”
“Well, what about your nicotine patch?” I shot back, and pointed to his shoulder with the yellow-eyed skull tattoo.
“You got me there,” he said, and for a moment I thought all his big ideas would pass and he’d agree with me and go to bed.
But then he said, “Look at me. I’m a hypocrite. ‘Do as I say, don’t do as I do.’ No kid would listen to a dad who is that way. I’m telling you to suck it up while I use this crutch. Well, no more.” He reached across his body and peeled the flesh-colored patch off his shoulder. “No more drugs,” he growled. He balled it up in his hands and tossed it into the toilet.
“My patch is not a drug,” I pleaded. “It’s medicine.”
“It’s a drug,” Dad insisted, and reached for me. “It’s a crutch.”
I stepped away. “It’s a help,” I replied. “I have to wear it. You don’t know what happens to me when I don’t have it.”
“What could happen to you? You’d find out that you are okay. Is that it? You’d find out that you aren’t some drug-dependent guinea pig for doctors? Joey, son,” he said, “the greatest thing I could do for you is to show you that you are a normal kid and don’t need this stuff.”
“I’m already a normal kid,” I said.
“Not with that patch on,” he said, reaching toward me again. “Normal kids don’t need medicine every day.”
I just stood there with my back to the wall and lowered my head because I knew what was coming and there was nothing I could do about it.
“I watched you pitch out there today and I don’t think there is a thing wrong with you. Nothing. I don’t think you need that medicine. Heck, giving you medicine is like giving a fish more water.”
I wanted him to stop telling me who I was when I knew better. He wanted me to be something I wasn’t, and I wanted him to be something he wasn’t. We were so far apart. And yet, even though I knew he was wrong, he was my dad, and I wanted him to be right. More than anything, I wanted him to have all the answers.
Then he reached under my shirt quick as a cat and ripped off my patch. “You are liberated,” he announced seriously. “You are your own man, in control of your own life—and free as a bird.” He held the patch between his fingers like it was a crusty scab and dropped it in the toilet. “No more patches,” he said. “You don’t need them. You’re going to be a winner without them.”
“I don’t think so,” I whispered.
“There’s no going back now,” he said. “We don’t need this stuff. Real men can tough it out. Be determined. Don’t you tell your mom,” he said. “She’ll be upset with me. But once you show her you don’t need this stuff, she’ll really respect what I’m doing here.”
Then he stood up and lifted the lid of the toilet. And one by one he took my patches out of the box and balled them up in his fist and dropped them into the bowl. I tried to reach for them but he held me back with one hand.
“You’re in my house now, buddy. You may not know it yet but the greatest gift I can give you is to take something away from you. Funny, isn’t it?”
It wasn’t funny to me. Especially when he flushed the tank and kept flushing it over and over as he dropped the patches into the swirling water, and as they spun around in that funnel I felt it was me who was spinning around and around and being flushed down a hole. I just started to cry. I didn’t jump around and bang my head on things or bounce off the walls or pitch a fit in any way. I just stood still and quietly cried. And I was thinking to myself, The next time you cry you won’t be standing still. You’ll be dancing a little crazy jig like a person being stung by a million bees. I remembered how that felt.
I looked at myself in the mirror and I still had toothpaste in my mouth and around my lips and already I looked like a mad dog.
“Now be a good boy and finish brushing,” Dad said once the last patch had disappeared. “Your mom will kill me if you get a cavity while I’m looking out for you.”
I brushed a little more, then said good night and trudged back to my bedroom. I crawled into bed and pulled Pablo up and tucked him between my shoulder and chin. I kissed him on the head and felt his whiskers tickle my lips. I kept thinking that there must be some way for me to talk Dad into changing his mind. Even though I knew the patches were down the drain, maybe we could get new ones. Maybe he could tell Mom he lost them. She’d be mad but she’d get more for me.
I wanted to get up and call her. But I could hear him crossing the living room. The refrigerator door opened and bottles rattled and clinked. A bottle hissed as its cap was twisted off, and Dad plopped back down on the sofa to watch TV.
“You shouldn’t be drinking,” I heard Grandma say. “Go to bed.”
“It’s just beer,” he replied. “If you don’t like it, you can pack your oxygen tank and hit the road.”
She didn’t say anything more and I lay in bed and all I could imagine was the worst part of me getting on a train a long ways off. That old Joey was coming to get me and I couldn’t do anything about it. Day by day he would get closer. Even if I got up and started running away, he would catch me. There was nothing to do but wait, and worry. And worry wouldn’t protect me, so I closed my eyes and told myself to sleep while I could.
9
DOWNTOWN
I opened one eye like it was a periscope going up and scanning the room for safety. I looked left, then right. I didn’t see Dad, and Pablo was up and gone. Grandma must have opened the bedroom door and let him out. I slid out of bed and tiptoed over to my dresser. I checked the ashtray for a patch. It was empty. I put my hand in anyway and ran my finger around the inside like I was trying to get the last drop out of a bowl of soup.
“Okay,” I whispered to myself. “Take a deep breath, and like Mom told you, if you want to make good choices, think one thought at a time.”
First thought: I figured I could call Mom and tell her right away to come get
me, and then I could listen to her tell me “I told you he was no good” all the way home and I’d never have another chance with Dad again.
Second thought: I could stick with Dad and find out that I was normal without the medicine. I wanted to believe what he said. I wanted to believe that I was like any other kid.
Third thought: I remembered how I had been without my good meds in the past.
Fourth thought: I wanted to give myself another chance.
I peeked my head around the edge of the doorjamb and saw Grandma leaning against the kitchen counter with the oxygen tank between her ankles. She was knitting something like a scarf for a giraffe. “I didn’t sleep too well,” she said to Dad, who was staring into the refrigerator. “I been up all night with the nervous worries. Your drinkin’ again’s not right.”
“Well, I slept like a baby,” he said, and stretched his arms like a cat. “If you didn’t worry so much you would too.” He was showered and shaved and from across the room I could smell his cinnamon chewing gum. “Hey, buddy,” he said, spotting me when he turned around. “I’ve been waiting for you. Hurry up. There’s nothing in the fridge. We’ll eat breakfast downtown and you can see the sights while I punch the clock.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’d like that.”
“Brush your teeth,” he said, and pointed to the bathroom, which reminded me of the night before. I nodded and went into the little room and closed the door and waited to bounce around the walls like a cricket trapped in a shoe box, but nothing like that happened. I just squeezed a perfect line of paste on my brush and brushed my teeth like any normal kid. I washed my face and combed my hair over to cover my bald spot. When I returned to my room and got dressed the thought of being able to walk around Pittsburgh as a totally normal drug-free kid was pretty exciting. I felt like I was a caged animal being released back into the wild. I put my tape player in my pocket, and my trumpet in my backpack along with the money I pulled out of my pillowcase. I heard Dad start the car and I ran, dodging through the maze of furniture in the living room. “Goodbye,” I yelled to Grandma and to Pablo, who was busy chewing a hole in a couch cushion. Normally I would pull him out and scold him, but I was late so I let it go. He and Grandma can work that one out without me, I thought.
“You want to drive?” Dad asked when I opened the car door. “Practice makes perfect.”
“Not today,” I said, thinking that it might be dangerous. If I lost control of myself downtown who knows how many people would have tire tracks down their backs.
As soon as I slammed my door it was like a starter’s pistol had fired and Dad’s mouth was off and running. “You know, Joey, I woke up thinkin’ about how last night was a turning point in my life. With a couple of flushes of the toilet, I really got a load off my chest. And just like that,” he snapped his fingers, “you and I are even. All that old guilt is gone and I’m ready to move forward. I feel like a new man. How about you?”
I wanted to say that last night was a turning point in my life too, but I wasn’t sure just yet what direction it was going to turn.
“I don’t know if I feel like a new man or my old self,” I said. “I just don’t know, but I’m hoping for the best.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, “by the end of the day you’ll see your dad was right again. You gotta have faith in me, pal.” He stuck out his hand. “Give me five,” he said.
I slapped mine down on his hard enough to leave a blood blister. Then I held mine out. He swung his open hand down and I pulled mine away. He toppled forward and the car swerved to one side.
“Aren’t you ever going to catch on to that?” I asked as I helped him back up.
“I better before it kills me,” he replied, and steered the car back between the lines. Then, once it was clear to me that he was still in a good mood and wouldn’t bite my nose off, I said, “You scared me by drinking last night.”
“That shouldn’t scare you,” Dad replied. “I do my best thinkin’ after a little drinkin’, and look at me today. I’m as good as new. And look at you. No patch, and you’re on top of the world.”
“But I thought you told Mom you quit drinking, because she told me to call her if you drink and now it scares me not to call her.”
“To be totally honest,” Dad said, “your mom would like you to have a dad who didn’t act like a man. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a wonderful woman, but when it comes to men she thinks we should do everything by her girl rules. But we’re men, Joey. We have our own way of doing things, and especially our own way of solving some of life’s bigger problems. Like I said last night, we just pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and move on. We don’t talk about our problems every single hour of every single day. Know what I mean? Plus, your mom would baby you along on medicine for the rest of your life. To me that is not a solution. Now, you can call your mom if you want. But I think you should be a man, and prove to everyone that you don’t have any problems you can’t fix yourself.”
“Is all that true?” I asked.
“Of course it’s true,” he said. “Man to man. You can’t go out into the world for five minutes without a woman telling you what to do. Mark my words.”
When we got to the diner, Dad didn’t even ask me what I wanted. “Two Hungry Man specials,” he called out to the waitress as we took our seats, “with extra sides.” When the food arrived, there was a ton of sausage and bacon and toast with melted butter and silver dollar pancakes and fried eggs and we chowed down and it was a good feeling to be hungry, and a better feeling as my belly got full as a new moon.
“How’re you making out?” he asked, and wiped a folded slice of toast across his slick plate.
“Great. I’m not hyper one bit,” I said, as I peeled back the sticky tops on all the little jelly tubs and started to suck the warm jelly out.
“I mean your arm,” he replied. “I’m tired of talking about problems. That’s women’s talk. Now eat up, you got to build strength for the next game.”
I waved my hand for the waitress. “Excuse me. Could I have some more strawberry jelly, please?”
“Are you sure this much jelly is good for you?” she asked, and pointed her pen at the empty tubs.
I didn’t know what to say, so I smiled real big and she gave me some apple jelly because nobody eats that tasteless stuff. People don’t even take it home with them unless they want to use it for glue.
As soon as the waitress turned away Dad leaned toward me. “See what I mean about women always butting in?” he said. “What should she care if you eat a bathtub full of jelly? Okay, while we’re talking about men stuff, I put together a big new guy plan for us. Now that I got you off the drugs, you might decide you’re better off living with me. We’ll keep doing the Police Athletic League circuit until you go to high school. By then you’ll be a prospect and colleges will recruit you. Then you can go to Pitt here in town and pitch for the Panthers. I’ll become your agent and get you drafted into the minor leagues, where you’ll only spend a short while until a big league team calls you up. Then bingo—you’ll be an awesome force. What do you think?”
“What will Mom think?” I asked.
“I’ll handle that part,” he said, waving his fork across his face. “What do you think?”
“You know I can’t help you get back together with Mom if you drink,” I said.
“I have news for you, Joey. I don’t want to get back together with your mom. That’s over with. She’s not the right woman for me anyway,” he replied.
“Does that mean Leezy is the right woman because she lets you drink?”
“There’s more to it than that,” he said. “But she and I talked about getting a place together. And I’m sure she’d like it if you were there. Hey, already she likes you better than me. Really, she can’t stop talking about you. So what do you think?”
I didn’t know what more to think, so I just blurted out what I say when I don’t have an answer. “Can I get back to you on that?” I said. “It’s a big step.”
>
“Speaking of steps,” he declared, suddenly looking at his watch. “Let’s beat feet. People on the bottom of the food chain can’t be late.” He threw some money on the counter, stuffed a five-dollar bill in my shirt pocket, and hopped up. I followed him out the door.
“See that building over there?” He pointed toward something that looked like a Greek temple. “That’s the War Memorial. I’ll meet you there at four. If you need me earlier I’ll be upstairs setting up chairs in the conference room.” Then he started walking quickly in that direction.
“Thanks for breakfast!” I yelled, and stuck out my belly and jiggled it like I was a sumo wrestler.
He whipped around and pointed into the air. “Hey, don’t be a Chicken Little today. The sky isn’t falling. Have fun.” Then he turned and walked off.
I looked up into the air. The sky was solid blue. Not a crack in sight. “You better stay put,” I whispered. “I’m taking a big chance on me and I need this to work.”
When I realized I was speaking to the sky I closed my mouth and looked around. A woman waiting for a bus was staring at me. “I’m not taking drugs anymore,” I said. She smiled, and turned away.
I wasn’t sure what to visit first, so I decided to play a game that was always good for getting things started. I stood in place by the bus stop and spun around in circles, faster and faster, with my finger pointing straight out like I was the spinner on a game board of downtown Pittsburgh. When I screeched to a stop I opened my eyes and followed my finger down the road.
I hadn’t gone all that far when I saw a video game arcade. Okay, Joey Pigza, I said to myself, if you are going to lose it, this is the place that will send you around the bend. I went inside and changed half of the five dollars Dad gave me into tokens and took a seat in the race car booth. I thought I would practice my high-speed driving before Dad put me behind the wheel again. I slipped the money in, gripped the wheel, and pressed on the gas. My car peeled out and instantly I started whizzing around a track with a dozen other Indy cars. We smashed into each other. I spun out and hit a wall. I ran off the road into the bales of hay. I scattered the mechanics as I roared through my pit. Finally, I ran out of time and my car slowed down. YOU ARE OUT OF FUEL read the screen. I put more money in and pressed the gas. I didn’t care if I won the race or not. It was fun just to swerve like a maniac all over the track and have the other drivers shake their fists at me as I sideswiped them. After I forced one car into the stands, it burst into a ball of flame and sent the fans screaming for the exit. For a moment I wondered if I was the one who was out of control. “Relax, it’s just a game,” I said to myself. By then I was out of tokens, so I hopped up and walked outside. I must be doing okay, I thought. Usually when I’m in an arcade I’m running from machine to machine and playing everything until I’m totally broke and then I look all over the floor for dropped money, and check the coin returns, and tip machines forward to look under them, and pester the arcade attendant for free tokens until he flips me a few and when I ask for a few more he boots me out because it is obvious that I’m an out-of-control pest.