“That’s okay, Zeyde, it’s—”
“Pshaw!” he says, sitting taller. “I’m going to wear that wedding dress.” He points at the half-finished dress hanging on Dad’s punching dummy. “And I’ll let that guy over there put all the crazy makeup on me. Then …” Zeyde stands and tugs on his collar. “Then it will be funny.”
“That would be funny,” Toothpick says. “It would be flippin’ hilarious. Oh my gosh, I could paint a brain on your bald head.”
I ignore Toothpick, even though that’s a really good idea. “Zeyde? You’d do that for the contest? For us? It’s all the way downtown, near the Franklin Institute. We’ll have to take a bus and the El to get there.”
“For you, boychik,” Zeyde says, his eyes getting moist, “it’s the least I can do after killing your fish.”
Toothpick turns so he’s facing the empty tank on my desk. His eyebrows arch in a silent question, but I don’t say anything except “Thanks, Zeyde. That would be really funny.”
And I give Zeyde Jake the biggest, tightest hug, trying to hang on to all the good parts of him … before they slip away.
On Monday, school stinks. (Worse than usual.)
But one really excellent thing happens, too.
Before first period is over, I get called to the counselor’s office, and she asks me why I ran off Friday. I tell her I felt sick and thought I was going to vomit, which has a tiny bit of truth to it. She tells me I should have asked to go to the nurse if I felt sick. Then she lectures me for fifteen minutes, explaining how it’s a safety issue if a student leaves campus and how worried they were about me.
Yeah, right. If they were worried about my safety, they should have stopped Angus from stealing my money and slamming my head into a lock on Friday. They should have expelled him a long time ago and sent him to a galaxy far, far away, where there were no known life-forms. He’d have fit right in.
Of course I don’t say anything. I just nod a lot and wait to hear what my punishment will be.
I’m shocked when there isn’t one, just a warning never to do anything like that again.
In the locker room, I’m sweating, even though it’s not at all warm. I try not to look at Angus while I’m dressing, but he slams his locker door, and I automatically look over.
He flashes a creepy smile and waggles a fancy phone before tossing it into his locker, turning the dial on his lock and walking away.
My gut turns to slithering snakes, because I know Angus was showing me the little toy our money bought for him. That moron wasted our rent money on a stupid phone.
At least he didn’t hurt me again. Physically, anyway. He’s probably glad I didn’t tell on him. And his way of thanking me was to not smash my head into a lock again. Mighty nice of you, moron! Besides, I couldn’t tell on Angus even if I wanted to, because I wasn’t supposed to be selling candy bars in the first place.
In gym, Coach pulls me aside and reams me out in front of the entire class because I walked out Friday. He doesn’t let me off with a warning. He makes me run humiliation laps around the gym—around the kids who are now staring at me—for the entire period.
Terrific.
By the eleventh lap, the muscles in my legs are on fire, but I keep going by thinking about one thing: the ten thousand dollars I must have won from the Royal-T sweepstakes. I hope it’s there when I get home, but I realize they’ll need to receive the affidavit Mom signed before they send out my prize.
But maybe they’ll make a mistake and send it anyway. Maybe it will be there when I get home. Maybe—
The bell rings, signaling the end of gym and the end of my ultra-humiliation laps. My legs and lungs hurt worse than the day I went all the way to the cemetery.
Coach smirks at me as I leave the gym.
Terrific!
“Sorry I didn’t run with you during your humiliation laps,” Toothpick says as we change. “I didn’t want Coach to—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Toothpick shrugs and goes to his locker.
I wasn’t trying to be mean, but it really doesn’t matter. It was just something I had to get through. By myself. What does matter is the prize I won from Royal-T, what it is and if it will arrive before Mom goes to court November 2.
When the final bell rings, I’m out of school like a rocket-propelled missile, heading straight for home and, I hope, my big win from Royal-T. But something outside the school’s entrance makes me stop dead.
A kid is being escorted to a waiting police car by an officer. Mr. Sheffield is there, too.
I join a group of kids gathering near the car so I can see better.
An officer puts his hand on top of the kid’s head and puts him into the backseat of the car and slams the door. That’s when I get a good look at who it is, when I see the kid’s scared face through the car window before he turns away.
“What happened?” I ask.
The girl next to me shakes her head. “I heard he got caught with a bunch of stolen stuff in his locker. Even had some kid’s wallet in there.”
The police car drives off, and Mr. Sheffield turns to us and says, “Show’s over, everyone. Go home.”
I run all the way home. And I’m absolutely ecstatic, because the person sitting in the backseat of the police car was Angus Andrews.
I yank open the door to our apartment building, step inside and stop moving. Stop breathing.
Mr. Katz stands in front of the mailboxes, talking to Mom.
“I’m really sorry, Shelley,” Mr. Katz says. “I tried to talk to my partner on your behalf, but … my hands are tied.”
Mom bites her bottom lip and nods.
Even though Mr. Katz’s voice is kind, I want to sock him like I did Dad’s punching dummy. It’s only five hundred stupid dollars. Mom will have that much and more as soon as she passes the test and starts working at Mr. Daniels’s firm. And Zeyde says he’ll give us more as soon as he gets his next monthly check. Why can’t Mr. Katz’s partner wait a little longer? We’re almost there.
When Mr. Katz is gone, Mom leans back against the mailboxes and exhales. “The court date is in fourteen days, Benjamin. Mr. Katz stopped by to give us one last chance to pay.” Mom opens her hands. “But we just don’t have it right now.”
“Maybe we’ll have the money by then,” I say, hoping the ten grand has arrived from Royal-T already.
Mom laughs, but not a happy laugh. “I doubt it. By the time the court date rolls around, we’ll owe November’s rent, too—twelve hundred more. But I love that you’re an optimist like your dad.”
I touch Dad’s nameplate on the mailboxes. “Remember the Royal-T contest?” I ask. “We definitely won something big.” I reach into my pocket for the mail key and squeeze behind her. “A check might be in the mailbox right now.”
I yank the little metal door open.
The mailbox is empty.
Disappointment shows on Mom’s face. She trudges up the steps like each leg weighs a ton. “At least we still have two weeks left in the apartment,” Mom says. “That’s something.”
I follow her inside. “Actually, even if things don’t go well in court, we’ll have at least twenty-one days after the court date before they could get the police to kick us out. I read that at the library. That’s kind of good, right?”
She turns. “Yes, that’s good to know, although I hope it doesn’t come to that.” She looks up, then at me. “By the way, I stopped by Mr. Daniels’s office to make sure his offer still stood about the job.”
“What did he say?”
Mom smiles. “He said as soon as I pass the test, there’s a spot for me, and he can’t wait for me to start.”
I plop onto my chair at the table. “Looks like we’re both waiting for some pretty important mail to be delivered.”
“Looks like,” Mom says.
For some reason, we both look at Dad’s empty chair, as though it will provide some magic glimpse into the future, offer some definitive answer.
It do
esn’t.
Chairs are like that.
Tuesday after school I stop by Toothpick’s to go over some ideas for our zombie-bride costume that Zeyde will be wearing. While I’m there, I check out more videos of people making dresses out of toilet paper so I can figure out how to make the top part of the stupid dress.
The best-looking dress is one made by a bunch of art students, but they took three months to create it.
I don’t have three months.
The contest is next Saturday—in only eleven days.
I tell Pick I’d better go home and work on the dress.
He’s busy making his kneecap look like an exposed brain anyway, so he barely nods when I leave.
At home, even though I touch Dad’s nameplate three times for luck, there’s only junk in our mailbox.
Inside the apartment, I drop my backpack on the couch, toss the mail on the table and find a note from Mom: “Ben, went to the ACME. Be home real soon. XOXO Mom.”
I leave the note on the table and hurry into my room. I have a wedding dress to figure out.
Zeyde’s in there, pacing in the tiny space between our beds. He taps his forehead, like he’s trying to remember something.
“Zeyde?”
He gasps. “You’d better hurry.”
“What?” My heart races. “Hurry to what?” I wonder if something happened to Mom.
Zeyde grabs both of my shoulders. His fingers dig into my skin. “You need to tell Bubbe Mary to make her carrot tsimmes right now.”
“Okay,” I say, but it’s not okay. I can’t believe Zeyde seemed fine yesterday, but today …
“Now,” Zeyde says. “Or it will never be done in time for the holiday dinner.”
I used to love Bubbe Mary’s carrot and raisin tsimmes, but that was a long time ago. I don’t know how to respond to Zeyde’s urgent request. “You want me to—”
“Hurry, Todd,” Zeyde says, spitting on me. “Go tell Mary to make the tsimmes. It’s Ben’s favorite.”
That knocks the wind out of me. He’s calling me by my dad’s name. “I’ll tell her,” I say, the words sticking in my throat. Can’t you see it’s me, Zeyde?
I run out of my room and into the bathroom, lock the door and sit on the toilet seat lid, drawing my knees in tight. It’s okay, I tell myself. It’s okay. Zeyde will go to the memory-care program, and everything will be fine. But I know it won’t be fine, even when he goes to the program. He might be safe and have fun things to do, but it won’t make him better. Mom even told me the medicine he takes only slows his memory loss but won’t make him better.
Even though Zeyde is still here physically, parts of him keep slipping away.
This makes me think of Dad, of how I’m going to lose his galaxy painted on my bedroom ceiling. I think of Toothpick’s mom moving far away and him seeing her only a couple times a year. And Zeyde—who’s completely here one day and living in a mixed-up past the next.
And I realize there’s more than one way to lose someone you love.
I tear off a stretch of lousy toilet paper and wipe my nose.
Someone knocks hard on our apartment door. As I run to answer it, I hope it’s not Mr. Katz. I can’t deal with him right now.
“Mrs. Schneckle,” I say, grateful to see her.
“Hi, bubeleh.” She touches my cheek. “Your mother asked me to check on your zeyde. How’s he doing today?”
Mrs. Schneckle must see the answer in my eyes.
“Where is he?”
I point down the hall, and she marches down there and goes into my room. A few minutes later, Mrs. Schneckle walks out, her arm linked through Zeyde’s, and she’s singing some old song. Zeyde is moving his head side to side as he walks. And he’s smiling.
How did she do that?
I watch them walk, arm in arm, into the living room/dining room/kitchen.
Mrs. Schneckle helps Zeyde onto a seat at the table. “Ben,” she says to me. “Do you have a deck of cards?”
I hand Mrs. Schneckle our deck of War cards, and she starts dealing and singing. Singing and dealing.
Zeyde taps the tune with his fingers on the edge of the table, then picks up his cards. “What are we playing, Celia? Five-card stud or Texas hold ’em?”
I’m stunned. He’s back.
For now.
Mrs. Schneckle looks over at me and winks, so I know she has everything under control. I’m so glad that, as soon as the paperwork Mom filled out gets approved, Zeyde will go to the memory-care program at the center where Mrs. Schneckle volunteers. She’ll take good care of him.
I slip into my room, take a few breaths and get to work on the wedding dress.
While I’m draping toilet paper over the punching dummy’s shoulders, hoping it will fit Zeyde when I’m done, I think, Reason #9,258 we can’t lose this apartment: Mrs. Schneckle is filled with awesome!
Zeyde seems himself on Wednesday, which is great. But the Royal-T prize doesn’t arrive, which is lousy.
It doesn’t come Thursday either.
And Friday is a bust, too.
After the whole next week of worrying about Zeyde, working on the wedding dress and wishing for money to miraculously appear, the Royal-T prize still doesn’t arrive.
I begin to think there’s been a mistake and we won’t receive a prize from them at all.
I consider sending Royal-T a letter to ask about it, but I know it will never arrive in time to pay the rent before Mom has to go to court. In fact, I’ve been too busy lately to send them any letters at all, which means no more coupons for free toilet paper.
It’s Saturday morning, October 31, and we still haven’t gotten the prize from Royal-T. Of course, it’s early.
But if Mom’s going to be able to pay the back rent of five hundred dollars at court on Monday morning, we need that prize delivered today.
I look at the galaxy on my ceiling, missing all but the one plastic star I didn’t pry off. “I’m going to need some help here,” I say to the nearly starless galaxy. “Whatever you can manage would be great, Dad.”
Toothpick arrives with his toolbox movie makeup kit. And I make a couple adjustments on the dress.
“It better be a heck of a good zombie, Pick. We need to win that prize money. Today.” I don’t tell him why, but I’m sure he can figure it out, since he saw the eviction notice on our door, which I’m sure he told his dad about. Embarrassing!
“Oh, we’ll win.” Toothpick looks right at me. “Wait till you see what I’ve been working on.”
“Sounds great. And we’ll split whatever we win, right?”
“Right,” Toothpick says, snapping open the lid to his toolbox. “Half each. There’s a summer film school I’m dying to go to, but it’s really expensive. Dad said if we win that money, we’ll be able to afford it.”
“Awesome. Let’s get to work.”
I carefully remove the dress from Dad’s punching dummy. By some miracle, the tape, glue and thread hold, and it doesn’t fall apart instantly in my hands. I look up at the galaxy and offer Dad a silent thank you.
Zeyde’s a real champ about me putting the dress on him. His hairy arms and legs look hilarious with the white dress.
It’s just a pain when he has to pee and we have to take everything off and then put it back on.
When the dress is just right, Toothpick pulls over his toolbox and says flatly, “Leave.”
“Huh?”
“Get out,” he tells me. “Wait in the kitchen or something. I’ll tell you when we’re done. I want it to be a surprise.”
Zeyde nods, letting me know he’s fine with this, so I leave and go to the living room/dining room/kitchen.
Mom’s there, tapping a fingernail against the table.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m restless. Let’s do something.”
“Sure. What?”
Mom pulls out the deck of cards, and we play about a million rounds of War until Toothpick finally calls us.
Toothpick skids into the living
room/dining room/kitchen. He makes Mom and me stand. “Lady and, ahem, gentleman, are you prepared to feast your eyes on the toilet paper zombie bride?”
Mom smiles.
“About time,” I say. “You took forever.”
“All right, then,” Toothpick says, ignoring my comment. He takes a deep breath and yells, “Come out, Zeyde Jake.”
When Zeyde shuffles out, not only wearing the toilet paper dress but looking like he has an exposed jaw and brain, Mom screams and covers her mouth. She approaches Zeyde and examines him up close. “Unbelievable.”
“Pick, it’s amazing!” I punch him hard on the arm.
He rubs his arm where I punched him. “I know. Right?”
“And this dress,” Mom says, touching my toilet paper creation. “It’s astounding, Ben. You two are so talented.”
Mom gives me a hug and kiss. And she hugs Toothpick and gives him a peck on the cheek, too.
Pick looks down, but I can tell he likes it. It’s the same as how it makes me feel good when Mr. Taylor puts his hand on my shoulder, gives me a hug or tells me I did a good job at something.
“Wait a minute!” Mom darts down the hall and returns with Dad’s bowling shoes. “The perfect footwear for a toilet paper wedding dress.”
Mom’s right. Those shoes will ramp up the funny factor.
“Ugly bowling shoes,” Pick says. “Perfect, Mrs. E.”
We help Zeyde put them on over his short black socks. And they fit!
Mom stands back with her hands on her hips. “Oh, très chic, Dad. I have to take a picture to send Abby. She’ll love it!”
Zeyde strikes a pose. “Aren’t I fantastic?” Then he touches the toilet paper dress, kisses his fingertips and says, “It’s made from the good stuff!”
Mom gives him a kiss on the side of his face without the exposed jaw and snaps a photo with the phone Aunt Abby gave her. “You’re the best!”
“I certainly am,” Zeyde says. “Now, somebody help me with this thing. I need to pee again.”
And we all crack up.
On our way out of the apartment building, we see a colorful cardboard scarecrow someone taped to the door. It makes me sad that it’s Halloween and Dad’s not here. He loved Halloween—dressing up in crazy costumes, like the clown with the purple wig and giant sunglasses, and making a big fuss over the costumes the little neighborhood kids wore, even when they weren’t that good.
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