by Jack Gantos
Finally, the turkey was cooked, the potatoes were whipped, and the side dishes were in serving bowls. I attached a long extension cord to the electric carving knife, and we were ready. Mom made me change into a nice white shirt and good pants, but I looked silly because the cuffs on the shirt were halfway to my elbows and I couldn’t even button them, and the cuffs on my pants were a couple inches above my ankles. Booth fixed up his big camera on the tripod and set the self-timer, and we all stood to one side of the table and smiled until he made us do it three times in a row and by then we were so hungry we were all chewing on our lips.
We took our places, and even before I could say the blessing, the doorbell rang. I thought it was the Lapps. Mom hopped up. “I wonder what this is?” she said to no one in particular as she strolled over to the door. “Maybe a neighbor needs to borrow some flour.” But when she opened the door she was surprised. Nobody was there. Instead there was a huge basketful of roses. Yellow roses. I knew they were Mom’s favorite, and I looked over at Booth to see if he had a sneaky look on his face as if he had sent them.
But he looked puzzled, and I turned back to look at Mom. Her face tightened, and she stepped around the roses and onto the porch. She looked up the street, then down the street. She stood with her head cocked to one side like a dog listening for something.
Then she shrugged, turned, and picked up the basket by its braided handle. A little card fell out of the roses. Before she stepped back into the house, she picked it up and flicked it open with her nail. Her face hardened, and she slipped it into her shirt pocket.
“Look at these wonderful flowers,” she said pleasantly. She set them down next to the table.
“Who sent them?” Booth asked.
“The girls at work,” she said.
Grandma kicked me under the table, and I knew what she knew: girls didn’t say hello with roses.
“Very thoughtful,” Booth remarked, standing up. He reached forward and leaned over the table so he could pour Cold Duck in everyone’s glass except for mine. I had chocolate milk. When he sat down, he raised his glass and said, “I’d like to make a toast.”
But before he could get all his words out, the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it!” Mom said, and she dashed over to the door and pulled it open.
From where I was sitting, I could see there were three pie boxes stacked up on the porch. She stepped over them and clomped down the stairs in her high heels. She looked up the street and down. Then she turned, climbed the stairs, picked up the pies, and brought them inside.
“Well,” she said cheerfully, “seems like we have another gift from the girls.” She took them to the kitchen, then returned to her seat.
“A toast,” Booth began again, “to family and friends,” he said quickly. “You can’t choose your family, but you sure can choose your friends, and I can’t think of a better place for me to be today than among you all.”
Just then the doorbell rang again and Mom was up and out of her seat like a spooked cat. She whipped open the door. There was a six-pack of canned beer. She picked it up and heaved it off the porch. It hit the sidewalk and skidded into the road. Then she stepped back inside and turned the dead bolt on the door.
“What was that?” Booth asked.
“Nothing,” Mom said decisively, as if that word were a dead bolt to the truth. “Let’s eat.” She handed me the electric carving knife and a serving fork, and I could see her hands shaking a bit. “Joey, you carve the turkey,” she said.
I had always wanted to carve a turkey. I thought I’d carve it up like one of those silly grinning monkey coconut sculptures people brought back from vacationing in Florida. I clicked the switch on just as the doorbell rang.
Mom was out of her seat in a flash.
“Here we go,” Grandma said just when Mom unlocked the door and yanked it open. “She’s sinkin’ to his level again.”
Nobody was there. On the threshold was a little box like the kind you get at the jewelry store when you buy a ring. Mom stepped over it and stood on the porch with her hands on her hips. She looked as sturdy as a lighthouse with her eyes searching back and forth. Then she must have got an idea. She ran back inside, grabbed the electric knife out of my hand, and returned to the porch with the extension cord slithering behind her.
“See this!” Mom said. Without opening the little box, she began to saw it in half. It took her a minute to cut through, and once she did, she set down the knife and flipped open one of the lids. Half a ring fell out and bounced on the porch. Mom picked it up and examined it, then raised it above her head. “Cheap creep!” she hollered to no one we could see. “It’s plastic!”
In a minute I could hear Dad’s motorcycle. Even with the engine idling, it still sounded like something angry spitting fire. Mom came back inside and got the basket of roses. By then Dad had pulled up in front of the house and turned off the engine.
“Hi, Fran,” he said, and removed his bug-eyed sunglasses.
“See these,” she snarled, pointing to the flowers. “This is what I would like to do to you.” Then she began to cut all the blossoms off the roses.
“Fran,” Booth said as he got up and walked toward the door. “I know you’re upset, but maybe it’s time for us to settle down and be thankful for what we have and just let him go on his way.”
She turned off the knife and stepped back inside. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m not going to let that creep ruin our dinner.”
She returned to her place at the table and took a deep breath and shivered wildly as if she were Houdini trying to escape from inside her own skin.
Then we could hear him walk up the steps.
“I’ll call the cops,” Booth said evenly. He headed for the phone.
Grandma lit a cigarette and exhaled. She had a smile on her face like a satisfied snake. She must have seen this coming.
There was a knock at the door. “Fran,” Dad said, “I’m trying to be nice. Don’t you remember how nice I used to be to you?”
From her chair Mom threw the salt shaker and hit the glass pane on the door. It shattered and in an instant revealed Dad on the other side. He had his hands over his face to shield his eyes, and he stepped back and began to pluck at his black leather clothes to shake the shards of glass off.
“Good Lord, Fran,” he said. “Is that any way to greet a family member on Thanksgiving?”
“You don’t deserve a family!” she yelled. “Now get out of here and stop ruining this one.”
“Let me talk to Joey,” he said.
“No!” she hollered from her chair.
“I want to see my mom,” he said. “Wish her a happy Thanksgiving.”
“I have a restraining order out against you,” she said fiercely. “You have to stay a hundred yards away.”
Dad shrugged. “Restraining orders are for criminals,” he said. “I’m a lover!” He puckered his lips way out. “Kiss me,” he said. “Your kiss will fix me up and patch us back together. I know I’ve been a clown, but now I’m ready to be a good husband. Kiss me.”
“I’ll give you one in the kisser,” Mom said.
“Fran,” Booth called out from the kitchen, “just stay put. The police are on their way.”
Mom was out of her seat before he finished his sentence. She rushed to the door with a long knife in her hand, and Dad backed up.
Booth ran into the living room and snatched his video camera out of the case. He raised it to his eye and began filming as he slowly moved toward the door.
Mom chased Dad off the porch, and he scrambled down the stairs. He stood there in front of the house calling for me. “Joey. Son,” he pleaded as if trying to coax a cat out of a tree. “Come and say Happy Thanksgiving to me.”
I wanted to. I was his son, and there was something powerful in me that wanted to help him. I was pushing my chair back from the table when Grandma grabbed my wrist.
“Don’t you dare,” she growled like a watchdog. “It’s bad enough to witness
this mess, but don’t get caught up in it. I told you, they’re nuts. Just look at me. I’m worn out from living like this.”
Just then Mom hollered, “I told you the next time you come around here, I was going to throw a knife right between your eyes.” And she reared back and let it fly.
It would have hit the man in the moon between the eyes before it hit Dad. The knife spun end over end and clattered onto the sidewalk across the street.
“Missed me, missed me, now you have to kiss me,” Dad sang.
Mom stormed back into the house. She grabbed the pies from their boxes and returned to the porch and threw them at him one at a time. The strange thing is he never moved, and she never hit him. He never ducked out of the way. He just stood there with his face leaning way forward, daring her, when the first pie hit the sidewalk and skidded into the gutter. Then the next pie hit the yard with a thump. The third pie slipped out of Mom’s hand, caught the upper edge of the porch ceiling, and fell straight down and burst open, splattering her shoes with pumpkin mush. She grabbed the flower basket by the handle and flung it at him. It missed, and the glass vase inside pitched forward and broke against the concrete. She marched back inside and scanned the counter, searching for the other knives. But by then Booth had put down his camera and tossed them out the back door. It was a good thing because Mom looked ready to run down the steps and stab him. Instead, she grabbed the bottle of Cold Duck by the neck, marched outside, and flung it with all her might. It wobbled through the air and exploded against the fender of a parked car, like when a bottle is smashed on the side of a newly launched ship.
Dad just stood there as if he could catch bullets in his teeth. “Joey,” he called out, “you said all I had to do is be nice to her and she’d be nice back. What gives?”
“Did you tell him to do this?” Mom yelled at me from the doorway with such fury that I froze. “Did you tell him to try and win me back? After all I’ve done for you, I can’t believe you’d turn on me and team up with him. That is a stab in the back!”
“Don’t blame the boy,” Dad said.
“You shut up!” Mom shouted. “I want to hear what Joey has to say for himself.”
She put her hands on her hips and gritted her teeth as she stared over at me. “Well?” she asked. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I had said something like that to him when I went to find the Chihuahuas. But I was only trying to help. I wanted him to be a good dad. But now I just wanted him to go away.
I lowered my head and shrugged.
“How could you?” Mom snapped at me. “What are you two up to?” Her head whipped back and forth between me and Dad. But neither of us had an answer.
And then I saw Mrs. Lapp and Olivia standing on the sidewalk by the edge of our front yard. I didn’t know how long they had been standing there, but even if it was just a little bit, it was still too much. I hadn’t seen them coming because I was watching Mom and Dad so intently. Mrs. Lapp looked absolutely pale with fear, and the bright green Key lime pie she was carrying in her white-gloved hands was shaking like a bowl of terrified Jell-O. Olivia’s face was turned up toward her, and I could read her lips saying, “What? What’s going on?” She tried to step forward, but her mom turned her around, and they marched down the sidewalk back toward their home.
“Olivia!” I shouted. “Come back!” Just when I made a friend, my family put on a freak show and scared my friend away. The only thing I could think to myself was, What would Joey do? I bolted out of my chair before Grandma could grab me, and I took off running out the back door, past the knives, across the yard, and into the cemetery and around, and I got to the Lapps’ house first and was standing in front of the door when Mrs. Lapp and Olivia arrived.
“Please move out of the way,” Mrs. Lapp said.
“I have something to say,” I replied, a little out of breath.
“No, I have something to say,” she said sternly. “I don’t think you should come back here anymore. I’ve been thinking a lot about you just now. I asked, What would Jesus do? And he told me, Keep Joey away from your daughter. So please don’t come back anymore. We try very hard to provide a good loving home for Olivia, and I know she has some issues we need to work on. I’m not blind. But what I saw at your house was just too much. You and your family have a lot of problems that we just don’t want to share. I’m sorry,” she said, “but I have to draw the line somewhere when it comes to protecting Olivia.”
“But what happened?” Olivia asked, still holding her pie as if she were about to set it on a shelf. “Someone please tell me.”
I looked at Mrs. Lapp. She shook her head back and forth, and I knew not to say anything to Olivia so I did as she asked and stepped away from the door.
“Joey, it’s just time to admit that we’d all be better off going our own separate ways. You either have God in your daily life or you have chaos,” she said. “I made my choice a long time ago, and I’m sticking with it.”
“I’m just trying to help everyone be better,” I explained.
“That’s God’s job,” she said.
“Can’t I help too? My grandma said God helps those who help themselves.”
“Mom!” Olivia shouted. “What is going on!”
“’Bye, Joey,” Mrs. Lapp said. And just like that she shifted her pie to one hand, opened the door with her other, and directed Olivia across the threshold. Then she followed and closed the door. Even still I could hear Olivia shouting, “What happened? What bad thing happened? Don’t treat me like a baby. Tell me, or I’ll throw this pie!”
I had heard enough. On the way home from the Lapps’ house, I mostly looked down at my feet. When I passed the yard where my gnome friends lived, I looked over to see if they had made it through the holiday. Someone had knocked them over and left them facedown in the dirt as if they had given them the boot and banished them from under the bushes. Then I looked up. There was a cop car stopped in front of my house. I could hear the radio squawking, “Carter Pigza! Carter Pigza! Suspect last seen on Plum Street heading north.”
I lowered my head and ran for the house. As I climbed the steps, I saw the cranberry sauce and sauerkraut and creamed corn and bowls and serving spoons on the sidewalk. The turkey was on the porch looking as if it had come to life and had tried to make a break for it. I kicked it out of the way.
“Where’s Mom?” I shouted when I passed through the door. There was still the glass and food mess and chopped-up flowers, and Grandma sitting at the table smoking another cigarette with her eyes closed. Her elbow was in the center of her empty dinner plate with her chin tucked into her fist. When she lifted her eyelids, her eyes peeked out like a crocodile’s. She raised her chin and slowly opened her hand one finger at a time. I read her mind. This was bad thing number five. “Where’s Mom?” I asked again. She flicked her ashes toward the bathroom.
I knocked on the door. “Mom?”
“Come in,” she said.
I did. She had just stepped out of the shower. Her hair was wet and sticking to her neck, and she had a bath towel wrapped around her middle. The light was off.
“What else happened?” I asked. “I heard the police.”
“Nothing,” she said.
I knew she was not telling me the truth. I asked her again what had happened because I don’t like it when she keeps something from me. She’s not allowed. Because when she lies, something inside me changes, and it’s like the whole world is one way and I’m the other. Like I can’t trust a thing, as if the whole world knows a secret I don’t and I’m running around from person to person asking them to tell me but they won’t and the more I don’t know what is going on the more scared I become and I feel myself drifting farther and farther away from everyone.
“So where are you and Booth staying?” I asked.
“Around,” she said, brushing out her hair.
“Where around?” I asked.
“Just around,” she said, treating me as if I wer
e Dad’s little spy. “Your grandma knows.”
And I was so upset when she said that, I just squeezed my eyes tightly until I could see stars, as if Booth were setting off his flash again.
“Where’s Booth?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“Well, what are we going to do?”
“About what?” she asked.
“About everything,” I said, nearly melting down to nothing. “Our house, Dad, us—you know, what just happened. How do we fix all this?”
“This is my problem, not yours, so don’t worry about it,” she said as if she was so tired she didn’t care one way or another. “Now, can I have a little privacy?”
I stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door behind me. I could hear her lock it. I felt so full of sadness on a day when I was supposed to feel so full of thanks. It was as if all the stuffing had been knocked out of me. Then I had one more ugly feeling, a feeling I didn’t understand—a feeling that didn’t come with a label attached to it. It was such an awful feeling it made me hate myself, even though I knew I should hate her. But since I couldn’t hate her, I lowered my head and walked away.
11
SMITHEREENS
In the morning, I looked in my mirror and ripped the WHAT, ME WORRY? label off my forehead because I was worried. I was getting ready to go to Olivia’s, and even though Mrs. Lapp had expelled me from her house as if she were the principal of a two-kid school, I wanted to get back to her on something. I wanted to ring her doorbell as if it were a fire alarm and ask, What happens when your secret helper needs help? Because I needed some. And even though I was changing my patches every day, and taking deep breaths, watching my p’s and q’s, walking a tight line, following the rules, and helping out, I was beginning to feel very springy inside. I was beginning to believe that all my help was worth nothing, and that made me feel like nothing too. A big zero. That’s what I woke up with inside my chest. A big, quivering, nervous zero, and it was making me very uncomfortable because that zero was getting bigger and bigger and it was filling up my insides like an inner tube so that I felt like if that zero got any bigger it would blow me to smithereens, just like our family was blown to smithereens and our house was blown to smithereens and my hope to help everyone was being blown to smithereens.