Me, Dead Dad, and Alcatraz

by Chris Lynch

  “Ouch,” I said. I was speaking to the food and the story together.

  “Want to try mine?” he said.

  “Have you tried yours?” I said because I knew he hadn’t.

  “I’m getting to it,” he said. “You want a taste?”

  “You have any diseases I might actually catch?”

  “Don’t think so,” he said, and extended a spoonful of his white, chunky soup.

  I took it.

  “Nothing contagious since the prison doc killed off the last of the syphilis and the leprosy.”

  You know that thing, where you already have something in your mouth, then you get grossed out before you can manage to swallow?

  I held the soup in my mouth, struggling, thinking what to do.

  Till the soup decided for me.

  “Yeow,” I said, after I had involuntarily swallowed the flaming ball of liquid.

  “I know,” he said, “it is fantastic stuff.” Then he took a big sip of the beer. Oh no, he took a complete, draining slug of the beer. “I usually don’t eat anyplace else.”

  “Or here, either,” I said.

  “Aw, I’m just not starving right now, that’s all.”

  “Starving is actually what you do look like,” I said. “Eat your food.”

  “That’s nice,” Alex said. “That is so nice, you worrying about me. Thank you.”

  “I’m not worrying,” I said, picking up my fork in order to change the subject. Then with two more quick, spicy bites, I had finished my whole meal without his taking any of his.

  “You really should pace yourself more, Elvin,” he said. “You know, I look at you and frankly, I gotta say you are the perfect recipe for a Dead Bishop.”

  “You wanting a Dead Bishop, Mr. Bishop?” Jerry was back, and speaking from underneath a big frown.

  “No, Jerry, sorry, I was just talking about something else.”

  “What’s he talking about?” I asked. “Is that something you can order here? A Dead Bishop?”

  Alex got a kind of whimsical, faraway look on his face. “You know, Jerry, now that you mention it...”

  “No,” Jerry said. “And I didn’t mention it, you did.”

  “Aw, go on, make me a Dead Bishop.”

  “What’s a Dead Bishop?” I asked nervously.

  “This is,” Jerry said, pointing with both hands at my uncle, “if he doesn’t behave himself.”

  “It’s a drink, Elvin,” Alex said in a soft, calm, serene, creepy voice. “It’s a lovely, lovely drink. I invented it. It has green tea in it.”

  “It has everything in it,” Jerry insisted.

  “Ya, ya,” Alex said warmly, as if this were a good thing.

  He didn’t finish his soup. I finished his soup. He finished two Dead Bishops instead. I had coconut ice cream for desert. It was about the creamiest ice cream I ever ate, and just what my tongue needed. Alex had a bite. He started looking very tired before the check came. Then he pulled out his gold credit card and paid.

  “What are you doing, Alex?” I said.

  “Call me Dad, wouldja?”

  “No, I wouldjn’t,” I said.

  “Oh. Then call me Uncle Alex, at least. Could you do that for me?”

  “I could, yes. What are you doing, Uncle Alex?”

  “Ah that’s nice. Could you say it again?”

  “What are you doing, Uncle Alex?” I snapped.

  “Paying the bill.”

  “No. I mean, I thought you didn’t drink anymore?”

  “No, but I don’t drink any less, either.” He could barely get the words out before busting up with big, fat guffaws of laughter. “I love when I get to say that,” he said.

  And he guffawed a little more. Then he laughed. Then chuckled, grunted, then stopped. Next I knew, his head dipped, his chin hit his chest, and he went into mumbling, slurring, spluttering weak, unintelligible sounds to himself.

  “Alex?” I said. Then I reached across to shake him. “Alex?”

  He didn’t respond. Even the noises stopped as he went limp in my hand. Then when I sat back, he sat forward, flopping onto the table.

  I looked around, stupid and helpless. “Jerry,” I called, like I was calling my own mother rather than a Thai waiter I had met less than an hour ago.

  But he was there. On the scene, on the case, and prepared.

  “Come on, Mr. Bishop,” Jerry said, picking my uncle right up off the table roughly. He kept talking to him and jostling him about as he stuffed chocolate-covered cookies into his mouth. “Come on, Mr. Bishop,” Jerry said, louder and more motherly. “Chew now. Chew for me. How many of my customers actually make me do the chewing for them now? You are a very lazy customer, Mr. Bishop. Come on now....”

  He was great. Jerry was great. I had never seen a waiter act like this before. I could not have imagined anybody acting like this before. Taking care of a man, like he was a helpless baby. Like he was his own helpless baby. I would have figured somebody acting like my uncle was acting would get thrown out of a restaurant, rather than cared for, and I was thoroughly embarrassed by it all, to be honest.

  “Sorry,” I said as Jerry simmered down a little and Alex simmered up.

  “Sorry for what?” Jerry asked. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. Sorry... for all this.”

  “Oh well, it happens. You should have made him eat, though. He must eat. The blood sugar gets too low... happens just like that.”

  “It’s happened before?”

  “Oh yes. Fortunately, he was not my first diabetic. We have quite a few regulars. Guess we got some kind of reputation. Come here for the service. I think he does this on purpose, though, to get the free cookies.”

  “I do not,” Alex said sternly. He was wide awake now, and slumped sideways in Jerry’s grip. Like a fighter who’d just been counted out and was being treated by his cornerman. “I can pay for my own cookies. They weren’t even that good.” He straightened up, a little wobbly, but a new man compared to a few minutes earlier.

  “What do you think”—Jerry laughed—“I break out the fresh cookies for the seizures?” He gave Alex a friendly pat on the shoulder before walking away. “And no more Dead Bishops,” he said.

  “No,” Alex said sheepishly, staring across at me with a bit of a blush rising in his cheeks.

  “I thought you said you didn’t have the diabetes anymore?” I felt like I could be bossy and angry and parental now, so I went with it.

  “I don’t, but I don’t have it any less,” he said with a smaller laugh. “It came back, I guess. Won’t happen again.”

  I felt my brows knitting together. Felt like a lot of work. I couldn’t understand why parental types were so fond of it. “About what percent of the time would you say you tell the truth, Alex?”

  “Would I say? I would say one hundred percent. That’s what I would say.”

  I did ask.

  “That was scary, Alex,” I said.

  “Uncle Alex.”

  “No.” I was still feeling too parental. I’d say the cycle was complete now.

  He must have noticed, because he got all juvenile. His head sunk to his chin again, but I could tell by the almost lifelike way he held his body that it wasn’t a seizure this time.

  “Hey,” I snapped.

  He looked up. And caught me five hundred miles off my guard.

  His eyes were loose in their sockets, like they were some tiny child’s eyes shoved into his full-grown head. And they were swimming, floating in all that space, in all that red space.

  I didn’t want to see this. Nobody wants to see this. You don’t want to see babies or girls or crybabies cry, people who are supposed to cry, never mind adult jailbird people who are not supposed to. Not if you have a heart, you don’t want to see that, and even if he is not full-on crying you don’t want to see it, don’t want to see crying or anything related to crying, which this was.

  And you don’t ever want to see yourself crying or anything like crying, which is exactl
y what is likely to happen if you have anything like a heart and you are exposed to anything like the wrong people crying.

  “Uncle, okay? Uncle. There, uncle. Uncle Alex. I don’t see why you have to be reminded, anyway. That’s what you are. It’s not as if I can fire you or demote you or rip some stripes off your arm now, is it? You went away for a million years, lied and stole and hid and God knows what else, and then came back and poof there you were, all uncle on me anyway. So you don’t really need to be that insecure, do you? The job is yours. You are my uncle, okay? It’s a job for life, like a judge or Tom Jones or something, so relax. You are my uncle.”

  Through it all I kept looking down and away and back at Uncle Alex’s liquid eyes to check for signs of progress or complete screwing up. I found—of course, because life is so hysterically funny and unfair and inconclusive—signs of both. A weak smile was making its way like a lost wagon train across his lower face, while the waterworks only increased up there at the top.

  “Will you go someplace with me?”

  I couldn’t decide whether to be worried or frustrated. I’d most likely get around to both.

  “I am someplace with you,” I said, pointing at the other tables with place settings and cloth napkins and wineglasses. “And the other day, I was at another someplace with you.” I raised my mighty right arm, rolled up my sleeve, and pointed at my brand-new hulking biceps. It looked okay, as long as you didn’t poke it with a finger.

  “A different someplace,” he said, graciously nodding approval at my muscle. “I want to take you to see somebody.”

  It set off bells. My mother suggested once that she wanted me to see somebody. I knew what that meant.

  “I’m not crazy,” I said. “I’m just big boned.”

  He stared at me in such a bemused way, I thought he was maybe slipping into another seizure.

  “Oh, you are crazy, Elvin,” he said, rising carefully but steadily from his seat, “but we’re not going to see somebody for you, we’re going to see somebody for me. And I need you there.”

  Alex didn’t wait for a response, just headed on out of the restaurant. I followed. Wasn’t like I was going to argue with him, was I? He needed me. He needed something anyway, someone, that was for sure. And for right now I was that something.

  He had succeeded in this much, whether he was trying to or not: he had made me feel pretty important. And that didn’t happen every day.

  “Alex,” I said as I caught up to him out on the street, “are you talking about now? Are we going to meet somebody now?”

  “I’d like to,” he said, and I could hear the old wheezing like when he’d winded himself on the tuba, “but I’m not going to be up to it. Stamina... seems to be becoming... more of a problem.”

  “Sure,” I said, “fine. Whenever.”

  “Whenever is tomorrow. Tomorrow is whenever, Elvin.”

  “Okay,” I said, and walked along right beside him, not touching him, but being handy just in case.

  He seemed steady enough by the time we reached my house. But not so steady I wasn’t nervous. “You want to come in?” I asked.

  He just shook his head.

  “Why not? Come see Ma.”

  He didn’t seem to like that idea at all. He looked embarrassed, looking down, looking away, shuffling his feet. He shook his head more vigorously.

  “That’s just foolish,” I said, and mounted the stairs. “But just wait here so she can say hi.”

  As I was unlocking the door, I looked back over my shoulder and he was already gone.

  9 Whenever

  “SO WHO DO YOU figure he wants you to meet?” Frankie asked over Monday lunch. “Criminals? I bet he wants to introduce you to his underworld syndicate, to break you into the game. That’s what he came back for. That’s been his plan all along, to pass along the family business. This is the coolest thing I ever heard. You are going to be a big muck, Elvin. I mean, the actual crime stuff might not be such a nice thing... but the suits you’re going to wear, and the money, and the power...”

  I just stared, gape mouthed. He was sitting next to me, his face inches from mine, and I just stared. I couldn’t even stare the old stare at the moment, I was so blown away. I couldn’t tell whether I was more stunned by the lunatic outlandishness of Frank’s tale, or the horrifying possibility it might be true.

  As usual, it was down to Mikie to tip the balance. He finished placing the individual black olive slices evenly around the inside of his tuna sandwich, patted the whole wheat top back on, then turned to Frank.

  “I’ll give you a buck if you shut up,” Mike said.

  “Hey, it’s my theory, that’s all.”

  “Didn’t I tell you not to have any more theories? You only wind up hurting yourself when you have a theory. Unless your theory involves hair or hair products, you’re on shaky ground.”

  “I don’t care; I’m sticking by my theory.”

  “I couldn’t even begin to think who he would want me to meet,” I said. “It’s been making me kind of crazy today. At first I was okay, but then I realized anything’s possible here. Alex is a total wild card. Then I started thinking, when I was lying in bed this morning at, like, five, half awake—”

  “Uh-oh,” Mike said, “the spook hours...”

  “The spook hours is right,” I said. “I was lying there, shaking, convinced that today Alex was going to bring me to meet my father. Ya, that it would turn out that he wasn’t dead either, and that was what this was all about and I swear, guys, I don’t know what I’d do. I swear, I’d go mental and a half. I never got back to sleep. And it just kept getting worse and worse.”

  It was Frank’s turn to stare gape mouthed at me. “Holy smokes,” he said.

  Mike was required to put down his sandwich again, which he does not appreciate once he has begun his methodical deconstruction of his meal. He reached across the table and grabbed both of my forearms tightly.

  “Your dad is dead, El. I promise.”

  “Really?”

  “Ya.”

  “Thanks.”

  My reassurance lasted about four seconds.

  “How do you know for sure?”

  “Easy,” he said. “Your ma. She’d let Alex be pretend dead. But... no way. Not to you. Not her. No way.”

  Because he was Mikie, because he was so supremely reasonable and so magnificently sure of my mother’s fineness, there was only one way to treat this.

  I was calling my mother.

  I pulled my phone out of my bag, in the face of ferocious protests from my two oldest and best friends. Because this was seriously against the rules here. Setting fires was a less punishable offense than a student using a mobile phone between the hours of eight and two. At the stroke of two, the place sounds like a gigantic music box.

  “Ma,” I said as my bodyguards frantically scanned the perimeter for faculty goons.

  “Elvin?” she said. “What a sweet... wait a minute, are you in trouble? It’s only lunchtime and you shouldn’t—”

  “Ma, is Dad dead?”

  She was at her best when she was overly cool.

  “Pardon me?”

  “I’m kind of freaking, Ma. Thinking Alex is going to bring me to meet Dad. I can’t shake it. Is Dad dead?”

  There was too, too long a pause on the other end. Maybe a second and a half.

  “Hold on, hon,” she said, “let me check. Hmm, hmm, yes, I do believe he is deceased.”

  To some people that might have sounded horrible. To me it was the highest art of mothering. If she treated this with anything other than snap, I would have gone into convulsions of anxiety.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Boy, you don’t trust me with anything,” she said. “What did you think, I had misplaced him? Did you think maybe the past decade or so was one spectacular surprise party for you but we were waiting for just that right moment for him to jump out of the closet?”

  I felt like eating my lunch, finally. I also felt like listening to her tin
ny phone voice for a good long time now. “Thanks—” I said but was cut short by the sharp kicking of Mike’s feet under the table and Frank, first elbowing me and then leaning right over on top of me. Then he snatched the phone right off my ear.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey yourself,” barked Mrs. Llewellyn from behind me.

  I looked up to see her glowering, first at me, then Frank. Frank gestured to her with the one-finger, hold-on-a-sec move, which turned her face plum.

  “Okay,” Frank said into the phone. “That’s right. No, don’t worry about it. All set. Sure. Oh, you too. Love ya, baby. ’Bye.”

  I would have paid good money to hear both sides of that conversation.

  “What are you doing?” Mrs. Llewellyn demanded.

  “Sorry, it was an important call. I had to handle a crisis.”

  “I could have sworn I saw Mr. Bishop talking on that phone from across the cafeteria.”

  “No ma’am,” Frank said, going all soft and wasting his considerable charm on her.

  “Oh really?” she said. “Well, that is not even your phone, Francis. Everyone knows your phone is the famous silver-plated phone.”

  Franko looked around a bit before answering and I feared he was lost. I needn’t have feared.

  “Not to brag or anything, Mrs. Llewellyn, but if you’re me you gotta have two of these things, minimum.”

  Not sure what the word was for the shade just past plum, but I certainly now knew what it looked like. She wrote out the little pink slip while growling lowly, then stuck it in Franko’s hand.

  “I’ll see you in detention this afternoon,” she said. Then she grabbed my phone away from him.

  “Wow,” Mike and I both said when it was safe to speak again. I added, “Thanks, Frank. Really. You didn’t need to do that.”

  “Ah,” he said, looking utterly unconcerned, “you have a big date this afternoon.”

  “Well... wait, so do you.”

  “Ya, but for you it’s rare.”

  We may have had the most unfathomable three-way relationship in the vicinity, but at the moment I didn’t mind if we ever figured it out. I sort of hoped we didn’t.

  This time Alex was on the ball. He was at the school gate—safely outside it—when I got there.