“Mia.” Homer’s brain and heart were both reeling, but for once the right words came to him. “I think that’s what most parents—the good ones—all want: to give their kids the best life possible.”
“Yeah.” Mia sniffed as she rubbed at her eyes with a fist.
“Yeah,” Homer said, pulling a handful of tissues from the box on the desk. He sat on the side of the bed near the window and held them out.
“Thank you.” Mia grabbed a tissue and wiped it across her face. “I’m a mess. Ugh, this is super, super embarrassing.”
“Nah. I’m actually surprised you haven’t cried more.” Homer shifted so he was facing Mia. “When Christian’s friend Lisa was pregnant, she cried all the time. I used to keep travel packs of tissues in my pockets whenever she visited.” He looked down at his hands, pressing his right thumb on top of his left, then switching. One way. Then the other. Repeat until calm. “The fact that you’re worried about being a good mom is its own proof that you’ll be great.”
Mia grabbed another tissue and began pulling its layers apart. “Why are you so nice to me, Homer?” The tissue fragments drifted like white flower petals onto the floor beside the bed.
“Because you deserve to have people be nice to you.” Homer responded without thinking—like the answer had been formed months ago and waiting to be used ever since.
Mia sniffed. “You deserve good things, too.” She picked up another tissue and tore it into smaller and smaller pieces. Once she had a pile, she gathered the tissue petals in her left hand and let them trickle between her fingers across the carpet. “Homer, will you stay? Just until I fall asleep. Tadpole kicks . . . and sometimes it’s hard to sleep.”
Homer was afraid the trembling in his chest would rattle his words. All he dared to say was “Okay.”
“Okay.” Mia swept the last of the tissues off the comforter and slid under it.
Homer placed his sneakers side by side underneath the desk. He slid his phone out of his pocket and sent a quick series of texts to Einstein:
Don’t worry.
With Mia.
She was upset.
Don’t stay up too late.
Everything’s fine.
He got only one reply:
Okay! But I’m taking your bed. ;)
Homer turned his phone to silent, then shut the lamps off one by one. He had to grab the bedspread twice before his fingers remembered how to work. Still in his jeans and T-shirt, he slid under the comforter as quietly as he could. “Night, Mia.”
“Sweet dreams, Homer,” Mia whispered into her pillow.
Homer stared at the digital clock on the nightstand, wishing he could make the numbers stop changing, until Mia’s breath slowed into a gentle rise and fall.
He was willing himself to slide out of the bed, put on his shoes, and make his way back down the carpeted hallway when Mia sat up. She wiggled her sweatshirt over her head, tossed it on the floor, and then shifted under the covers until her back touched Homer’s chest. Without saying a thing, she reached for his hands and wrapped his arms around her, and without saying a thing in return, Homer pulled her close enough to feel her hair drift across his face. Her shoulder blades pressed against his rib cage from the outside. His wildly happy heart pressed from within.
Not long after, they both fell asleep.
In the morning, everything was different.
LOOKING FOR HOPE ON THE HUDSON
“WE’RE DEFINITELY GOING THE RIGHT way. I recognize this part. My parents always stopped here when we used to visit. There’s the sign for the boring art gallery my mom loved. There’s the church my dad made us tour.” Sid had managed to wedge his face between Homer’s headrest and the driver’s-side window, which meant he’d been shouting directions in Homer’s left ear for most of the morning.
Homer didn’t care. He was only half listening to Sid anyway. Mia seemed similarly distracted. In the Time in a Bottle Inn parking lot that morning, she’d been the first one to say yes when Sid suggested they drive through New York State and stay with his mother’s cousin for a night. When Einstein pointed out how far out of the way they’d be going, Mia said she didn’t care. She wasn’t in a rush. Then her eyes met Homer’s. She had smiled. And he had smiled back.
“Homer? Come in, Homer.” A plastic dinosaur hit the dashboard, then bounced into Homer’s lap. “Are you asleep?”
“No,” Homer said, picking up the miniature T. rex and tossing it back at Einstein. “Where did that come from?”
“Toy vending machine,” Einstein replied. “Homes, I know it’s foggy out, but I think you can drive faster than this. You’ve managed to create traffic on a two-lane road and pretty soon folks are going to start honking.”
“I have?” Homer glanced in his rearview mirror. The line of cars behind him stretched so far back that the fog made it impossible to see the end. “Wow.” He shook his head. “Sorry, guys. I’m going to pull over and let these people pass.” Homer steered the Banana off to the side, and before he could put it in park, cars were zipping by and quickly disappearing around the next bend.
“Homes, you okay?” Sid asked as he flopped back into his seat. “You seem out of it, and I should warn you that my mom’s cousin is a naturopath, and if you so much as sneeze in her presence, she’ll make you drink some kind of nasty medicine.”
“Good to know, but I’m fine. Just tired.” When Homer glanced in the rearview mirror, he caught Einstein smirking. “Steiner, what’s so—”
“Look!” Mia interrupted. “It’s beautiful.”
“What? What?” Sid’s bouncing caused the Banana’s leather seats to protest. “That wasn’t a fart. I swear.”
“An angel,” Mia said as she leaned over Homer. Her face was so close to his that he could feel the warmth radiating off her cheek. “A statue. Stone, I think.”
Homer tried to shift without Mia’s noticing. Her right elbow was digging into the soft spot above his knee, but he didn’t want her to think she had to move. “I don’t see it.”
“There.” Mia jabbed her finger against Homer’s window.
He followed her pointer finger and waited for a break between the clouds of fog. When one came, he saw the stone cross with a winged figure on top nested in the trunk of a solitary tree. It was surrounded by a half circle of stuffed animals, flowers in various stages of decay, and envelopes and other pieces of paper.
“It’s like the tree is swallowing the statue.” With his sleeve, Homer wiped the circle his breath made on the window. “The angel’s wings are already part of the trunk and roots have curled up around the base, but the stuff on the ground, some of it anyway, is brand-new.”
“It’s been here long enough for the tree to grow around the stone, but not so long that people have forgotten about the person it’s for. They remember, and they’re still sad enough to visit,” Einstein whispered, his breath also making little fog circles on his window. “‘Fly free, our sweet angel,’” Einstein said. “Whew. That’s heavy.”
The backseat squeaked and Einstein mumbled something incomprehensible.
“That’s what it says on the cross?” Sid asked. “Does that mean there was an accident here?”
“My oldest brother, foster brother, Jacob, crashed a car once,” Mia whispered, zigzagging her finger across Homer’s window. “His friends put something up on the side of the road, but it wasn’t this nice. I think they tried to plant a tree, but it died. No one took care of it enough.”
Mia shoved herself off Homer’s lap. “I’m going to go take a picture.” She grabbed one of the disposable cameras from the passenger-side floor, shoved her door open, and then nudged it shut with her hip. She tore the plastic wrapper off the unopened camera as she marched in front of the car and across the road toward the angel in a tree, but when she stopped a foot or so from the collection of gifts and weathered letters, Mia didn’t take any pictures. Instead she slid the camera into her coat pocket, stood still, and looked. When the fog and drizzle turned to rain, she mov
ed the stuffed animals, envelopes, and paper scraps closer to the angel and the trunk of the tree. Even after that, Mia stayed a few minutes longer, watching to make sure the gifts were protected and that she had done everything she could.
Sid was the first one to speak once the lights of Hopeville-on-the-Hudson became visible halfway across the River’s End Bridge. “This part I don’t remember. It looks so fragile, like the whole city is one sneeze away from falling in the river. Plus, I swear there was a diner right after the bridge.”
“All those lights. Like a tree, a giant Christmas tree,” said Mia as she craned her neck and pressed her face against her window to see as much of the city perched on the side of the riverbank as she could. “It’s so pretty. Be even prettier if I had a milkshake right now. I’m so, so hungry.”
The only thing Homer could think to add was that Hopeville-on-the-Hudson was the strangest place he’d ever seen. But that observation seemed bland after Sid’s and Mia’s, so Homer said, “Yeah,” and kept his thought to himself.
Hopeville-on-the-Hudson wasn’t a tall city of skyscrapers, asphalt, and glitz like the one they’d driven by that afternoon. Rather, it was a place of stunted shoulder-to-shoulder structures, brick, and hazy streetlights that were far too weak to offend the dusk. Hopeville stretched up and away from the Hudson River’s bank as if the buildings had all grown from a handful of tossed seeds: tightly packed near the water’s edge and spreading farther and farther apart as the land sloped upward. Maybe once upon a time it had been a shiny, hopeful city, but that night, with the river as black as oil and the row of warehouses with windows that stared over the water like sleepy eyes, Hopeville looked more like a haunted place than anything else.
Homer took the first exit at the end of the bridge and then his first left, trying to find a place to park while Sid got oriented. If there was any order to the narrow streets, the four of them couldn’t figure it out. The streets made curved lines instead of straight, ended abruptly, and went from two-way to one-way without any warning. No matter which direction Homer turned, they kept going downhill toward the water. The Banana had made it all the way to the row of warehouses with the spooky window eyes when the sound coming from the engine went from the occasional thump to a drum solo.
“What is—” Before Mia could finish her question, the engine released one more thunderous boom and stopped just before a burp of black smoke erupted from under the hood.
“Uh, Sid,” Homer said, staring at the tendrils of smoke as they blended into the darkening sky. “Do you have any idea what just happened?”
“Without looking under the hood, my best guess is firecrackers in the engine.”
“Ha,” Einstein snorted. “That would be insane.”
“Right?” Sid replied. “Or just skip the firecrackers and get your hands on some pure magnesium—”
“No way, you’d want sulfur and potassium nitrate for the rotten eggs smell.”
“Guys.” Mia turned as much as her seat belt and stomach would let her. “I love fireworks, but I am five minutes away from cranky-pantsville if I don’t get something to eat soon, so if we could focus on the problem at hand, that would be super.”
“Wow.” Einstein unclicked his seat belt and scooted toward the center of the backseat. “That was the most serious I’ve ever seen you.”
“It was scary,” Sid added.
“Sorry, Sid.” Mia patted her stomach. “It’s just when I get hungry, I turn into an— Holy Jesus!” Mia jumped so far back from her window that her left elbow knocked an hours-old lidless Slurpee cup out of the cup holder and into Homer’s lap.
Homer didn’t know whether to react to the sticky electric-green puddle he was sitting in or to the face with sunglasses that had just appeared outside Mia’s open window.
“Nah, but I’ve been mistaken for him a time or two. It’s the sandals.” The wiry guy in sunglasses flung one of his feet high enough to be even with the side mirror. “And the hair.” He set his foot back on the ground and peered in the window. He had a long nose, and his shoulder-length hair was somewhere between yellow and orange. “Looks like you all are in a pickle.” His voice sounded worn, like his words bumped and bruised one another as they traveled from his brain to his mouth.
“Sorry,” Mia gasped. “You surprised me.” She looked over her shoulder at Homer. “Oh no. Did I do that?” She pointed at the wet circle spreading across Homer’s pants.
The Jesus Guy spoke before Homer could. “I should be the one apologizing, Little Mama.” He stood up and made a gesture like he was tipping a hat. “Shouldn’t have snuck up on you like that.” He braced his hands against his knees so his face was once again in the center of Mia’s window. “You kids visiting?”
“Where? Here?” Einstein’s head appeared between the front seats.
“Guess that answers my question.” The Jesus Guy pushed himself to standing. Despite the cold, he was dressed in cargo shorts and a brightly striped poncho. “I just assumed you were heading to Renata’s. That’s where most folks are going when they get down here. You should stop in. Queen Bee likes a full house.”
Homer shifted his way forward to the edge of his seat. The Slurpee had soaked almost completely into his pants, and each movement he made sounded like a boot lifting out of mud. “That’s really nice of you, but we’re expected somewhere. If you could give us directions, though, we’d appreciate it.”
“Uh, Homer?” Sid interrupted.
“Yeah?”
“I think I mixed things up.”
The Slurpee’s sweet smell and the rubber stench of smoke suddenly seemed overwhelming. For a second Homer thought he was going to throw up. “Okay?”
“I just got a text from my grandmother,” Sid said, his voice tentative, uneven. “I guess my mom’s cousin’s in Hudsonville-on-the-Hudson, not Hopeville, which is definitely a way better name.”
Homer rested his head on the steering wheel. He put his sticky hands together, then thought better about placing them any closer to his face. When he spoke, the words rattled. “So you’re telling me the engine just blew, it’s nighttime, and we’re in the completely wrong place?”
“Not completely wrong. We’re on the correct side of the river. Look.”
In his peripheral vision, Homer saw Sid’s outstretched arm jiggling a phone. He sat up and let his head drop so he was looking at the car ceiling. “Sir, is there any chance there’s a service station nearby?”
“Ha, you’re funny, big guy.” The Jesus Guy raised his arms straight out from his sides and tilted his head back as if he was addressing the sky. “Welcome to the river’s edge, where things get bent but seldom straightened and crime is its own currency.” As if to punctuate his sentence, a crack, followed by the sound of breaking glass and slamming metal, cut through the night. The Jesus Guy dropped his arms, swiped his sunglasses off, and leaned in Mia’s window.
“Look, if you all don’t mind pushing for a bit, Martha used to be a mechanic, and she’s always at Renata’s on . . . what day is it?” He pulled a phone out of one of his many pockets. The light from the screen gave his face a blue tint and made his nose seem even longer. “Wednesday. In fact, I’m already late in picking her up.” He slid the phone back into his pocket. “Martha’ll be too tuned up to do anything tonight, but she can take a look under the hood first thing in the morning. She’s guaranteed to be hungover, but phew”—he whistled—“even at her worst, Martha’s just that good.”
Mia stuck her hand out the window. “I’m Mia.”
“Pleased to meet ya, Mia. They call me Poncho.” He shook Mia’s hand and then stood up. “You don’t have to wait at Queen Bee’s, but you definitely want to get your car off the street.” Poncho patted the Banana’s roof. “Can’t see anyone wanting this beauty whole, but even a crappy chop shop could do something with the parts. How about you put her in neutral and then we’ll push her a couple of blocks?”
“All righty.” Mia scooted out of the car before Homer had even undone his
seat belt.
Unsticking himself from the front seat was disgusting and messy, but once Homer stood up, he wished he were still sitting behind the wheel in a pool of Slurpee.
“Wow,” said Sid, bouncing out of the backseat. “It looks like you electric-green peed your pants.”
“Thanks,” Homer replied, trying to wipe some of the stickiness off his hands and onto his T-shirt.
“Your pee can be green?” The orange glow from the streetlight Mia was standing under made her eyes seem exceptionally large.
Homer was grateful that Poncho chose that moment to start giving orders.
“Hey, Little Dude.”
Einstein opened the left back door and leaned out. “Uh-huh.”
“Today you get your driver’s license. You’re gonna steer while we push.”
If Einstein hesitated, it was only for a moment. “Okay.” He rooted around on the floor of the backseat until he found a large sweatshirt and some magazines. He threw them over the driver’s seat on top of the spilled Slurpee and then slid over the center console, landing in a tangle behind the steering wheel.
“Okay, put it in neutral and let’s go.” Poncho gestured for Homer and Sid to line up next to him behind the Banana.
“I feel pretty useless right now. I can at least steer,” Mia said as she crossed her arms and kicked at the ground, sending pebbles skittering over the uneven sidewalk.
“Don’t worry about it. Between Bean Pole, Big Dude, and me, we got this.” Poncho braced his hands against the back bumper, waiting for Homer and Sid to do the same on either side of him. “On my count we’re gonna push this thing like it insulted our mamas. Okay?”
“Okay.” Homer adjusted his feet. “My name’s Homer, by the way. That’s Sid.” Homer gestured with his chin.
“Howdy.” Sid gave a little wave, then went back to his pushing stance.
Be Good Be Real Be Crazy Page 10