Recovering Dad

by Libby Sternberg

  But then, just as we’re surrounded by a swarm of vehicles, the van appears unexpectedly from behind. Connie mutters a curse as it passes on the far left, slowing down to match our pace before burning rubber and moving beyond the herd.

  Connie doesn’t say anything for a second or two, but at a stoplight, she pulls out her cell.

  “You want to go home?” she asks me.

  “I’m not sleepy.”

  She punches in Kurt’s number and we arrange to meet him at a nearby all-night diner.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “THEY’RE TROUBLE, CON. Stay away from them.” Kurt wraps his big hands around a thick mug of coffee. He’s got a five o’clock shadow stubbling up his face, and the creases around his brown eyes wrinkle with worry. Kurt’s such a hunk! Why doesn’t Connie just make a grab for the guy?

  Connie’s finished detailing our evening and her theories, all of which revolve around Paluchek. She hardly says a word about Winslow.

  “Did you find out about that key yet?” she asks Kurt.

  I’d forgotten about the key — the one we’d found in Paluchek’s bedroom.

  “I’m still working on it,” he says. “Hope to have something in a day or two.” He sips some coffee. “Give me the plates on that van.”

  Before Connie has a chance to speak, I rattle off the license number. They both stare at me as if I announced my intentions to run for president.

  “Hey, I’m not stupid,” I say. I notice Kurt doesn’t write the number down. He just nods. He’s probably already seared it into his memory.

  While I have Kurt’s attention, I ask him a question of my own. “What do you know about a place called Bromowich’s?”

  When Connie shoots up her eyebrows, I turn to her and say, “It was the boarded-up store across from the Post Office.”

  Kurt nods. “Used to be an all-night joint.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “One of old man Bromowich’s employees was robbing him blind. When he found out, he shut it down.”

  “Was the guy prosecuted?” I persist.

  “Who the heck cares?” Connie interjects.

  Kurt ignores her and shakes his head. “Nope. Just cut his losses and left town.”

  It’s now close to two in the morning, and I start to get that little itch you get when you think someone you love might be worried about you. If Mom gets up in the middle of the night and discovers we’re not there, she’ll go bonkers.

  “We should get back,” I say to Connie.

  “Yeah. You’ve got school in a few hours.”

  Thanks for reminding hunky Kurt I’m a high school dork.

  Hunky Kurt throws a ten on the table and stands. He gives Connie an affectionate chuck under the chin. “You take care of yourself,” he says, and then, looking at me, adds, “and that sister of yours.”

  The ride is pretty quiet until we’re almost home.

  “You’re gonna be zonked today,” Connie says, pulling up.

  “Like it’ll make a difference.”

  “No more midnight excursions. You’ve got too much riding on this year.” She slips the car into park and turns off the engine. We’re back on familiar territory, with her, the older sibling, again looking out for me.

  “I already took the SATs.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve got your grades to keep up.”

  “Like that will matter.”

  “Look, I know you’re worried about your SATs sucking …” she begins, and because of the late hour and the intimacy it seems to ignite, I imagine she’s going to give me some really encouraging pep talk about how I shouldn’t put myself down and how she knows I’ll do just fine and how I’m a really, really, really bright girl with a promising future in some fulfilling yet lucrative career. “… but you can always take them over,” she says. “Just stop driving yourself crazy.”

  Translation: Your SAT scores will stink, we all know it, so prepare for the worst. Thanks, Con.

  We creep back into the house and into bed, but I’m pumped full of adrenalin and caffeine so I probably get a total of twenty seconds sleep. Well, it’s more like three hours, but I feel like a zombie when I wake up — which is to say, I feel normal.

  I yawn my way through English. I yawn my way through History. I even yawn my way through Creative Writing. Brenda passes me a note saying she’s out of Officer Depp stories for the moment because her “inspiration” (a.k.a., her mom) was at an all-day workshop the day before. She reminds me of the visit to Hopkins I promised to make with her. It’s tomorrow. I’d completely forgotten, so I’m glad she’s giving me the nudge. I write her a note back giving her what I know about the Bromowich store, asking if her mom can find out anything about it.

  When I see Kerrie at lunch, she asks if Doug has given me any indication of whether he’s escorting me to the Junior/Senior Ball. I thank her for the knife to my heart.

  Actually, I rehash the contents of his first e-mail on the topic, and his more recent, chipper e-mail, and we spend the entire thirty-seven minutes of lunch interpreting those tea leaves again. But whereas Kerrie was ready to burn the guy at the stake the first time she heard this tale of woe, she’s now reversed position and is in the mood to see his messages through the Pollyanna filter she usually keeps handy. Sometimes I get the impression Kerrie just says what she thinks I want to hear. It’s sweet but irritating.

  “He could be telling you he wants to be here but he’s worried he’ll be distracted,” she says, eating a piece of Belgian chocolate. Kerrie often has special treats in her lunch. She offers me one and I snarf it down. “He isn’t saying he won’t come. And he was probably worried you’d misinterpret his first e-mail so he sent you the second one about visiting campus to make sure you understood.”

  I don’t think a single, straight guy on this planet ever worries about a girl “misinterpreting” something. “He’s saying he has a big exam that Monday and doesn’t know his schedule that weekend,” I argue. I’m too tired for this, and I know I look so hideous right now, no one would want to go with me to any ball — junior, senior, or super-sized. My face is the shade of kindergarten paste, with half-moon rings under my eyes, and my hair is clumping into strings because I decided to forgo a shower this morning.

  “See, there you have it — he doesn’t know his schedule. He’s not saying he can’t be here. He hasn’t said no.”

  I look at Kerrie. She’s all eager and excited. She’s genuinely trying to cheer me up. She wants me to believe Doug will come through.

  “I’m going to check out Hopkins tomorrow with Brenda,” I say to change the topic.

  Her happy smile fades, replaced by creased-brow worry. “Oh.” Then, after a pause, “It’s nice you’re going with her.”

  Translation: Brenda might get in, but you’ll be lucky if they let you visit. As your true friend, I won’t give you false hope.

  How is it that Kerrie can be all confidence-boosting when it comes to Doug and such an ego-deflater when it comes to my scholastic aptitude? Do I have some sign over my head that flashes, “No Future. Must Marry Quickly and Be a Housewife”?

  The bell buzzes and the day goes on. I’m dragging by the end of it, but thinking how nice it’ll feel to fall into bed and take a quick after-school nap. But I see Brian in the hallway after the last bell of the day. He cocks a finger at me and says, “I’ll be right there.” That’s when I remember he’s supposed to tutor me in the library. Ouch.

  I head to the library, open my Physics book, and lay my head on it. Big mistake. Before you can say “Einstein’s Theory of Relativity,” I’m catching some Z’s.

  “Bianca?” Johnny Depp’s voice calls softly across a misty moor. “Bianca, are you all right?” When he lightly touches my cheek, I turn to him, smiling as my velvet hood falls oh so gracefully off heavily coiled tresses dancing about my rosy-cheeked face in the soft damp breeze. Waves crash in the distance. A dove coos overhead. “Yes, darling. I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve been waiting so long …”
<
br />   “I didn’t take that long, did I?” Zzzzzzrrrrrp. Rewind. Not Johnny Depp. Brian. Brian, TutorMan. Brian, standing over me, funny grin on his face. I sit up and feel my face. Great. It’s got a nap-crease on it. Add that to my many charms of the day — pasty skin, dirty hair, creased face. What a catch!

  “Umm … no. All right. Just sleepy. Studied a lot. Last night. Let’s start.”

  Brian turns out to be a whiz. At the end of a half hour, he has me understanding something important that escaped me at the very start of the AP Physics Cycle of Doom. This, in turn, unlocks other mysteries hitherto hidden from my view. And all with me only half-conscious!

  “That’s right,” he says, nodding his head so vigorously I’m afraid his hair will fall out, “you’ve got it now.” He points to a row of complex average acceleration equations I’ve just completed.

  “You mean these are right? As in ‘correct’?”

  “Yup. It’s sometimes a matter of figuring out what the roadblock is. Once it’s unblocked, everything else falls into place.”

  I stare at him as if he’s an alien, because I’m so stunned and drowsy I can’t think of anything to say. But he interprets my silence as a lack of self-confidence (when in fact my lack of self-confidence is a whole different animal), so he gives me a pep talk about how bright I am, and how quickly I’m mastering this stuff, and asks me what colleges I’m looking into.

  “I’m taking a look at Hopkins tomorrow,” I say.

  “You are? Hey — so am I. That would be terrific if you went there, too.”

  And he means it. This isn’t pity-induced encouragement, or the kind of phony self-esteem-building teachers do to make you think you can accomplish something without actually working to get it. Kerrie may doubt me, but Brian actually believes I’m capable of getting into Hopkins. His sincerity unleashes my own, so I confide in him my doubts about my SAT scores, and my worries about my college prospects altogether. He asks me some questions about my grades (which are pretty good) and my class rank (which I don’t know), and then talks to me about teacher recommendations and essays.

  “You’re a crackerjack writer. I’ve seen your stuff in the paper. You’ll be fine on the essays. That’s something I struggle with.”

  Yeah, I guess if you use words like “crackerjack,” you, too, might struggle with essays. But I keep this comment to myself because I don’t want to hurt Brian’s feelings. He’s a nice dude. Instead, I offer to return the favor and help him with his essay-writing.

  “Thanks,” he says. “I’ll take you up on it.” He smiles and looks down. Shy alert!

  “I was thinking of asking Sister Olivia for a recommendation,” I say to break the spell of silence. Olivia had me in English last year and loved everything that dripped from my pen.

  “Uh-huh,” Brian says. “She’d be good. Get Sampson to do one, too. He’s a pushover and writes terrific recommendations.”

  “For everybody?”

  He nods. “For everybody. Sooner or later, colleges will catch on that he has no standards. Until then, you might as well cash in. I hear he really goes overboard.”

  I make a mental note of this, wondering how many goo-goo eyes I’ll have to make at Sampson for him to make personal phone calls to college admissions officers on my behalf.

  “See ya tomorrow?” Brian asks. His voice is tentative, as if he’s unsure I’ll say yes.

  “We don’t have a session tomorrow,” I say.

  “No, I meant at the Hopkins thing.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Yeah.” I nod, too. Hopkins is such a distant dream that I’d forgotten about it already. I’m thinking of tomorrow as a field trip, not an aspiration. But Brian clearly sees me as part of the potential-Hopkins-student crowd. Wow!

  I take my after-school nap. When I wake up, I see no notes from Mom about dinner. I check in with Tony, who’s in the middle of his own nap on the living room sofa and greets the disruption with mumbled curses.

  “Where’s Connie?” I ask.

  “Office.” He turns over and goes back to sleep.

  I purposely don’t ask him about dinner. He might know something I’m supposed to do, and as long as he doesn’t tell me, I can plead ignorance and get him into trouble at the same time. A two-for-one deal.

  It’s nice out and I figure a late afternoon walk will get my blood pumping, even to my brain, so I’ll be in shape to chip away at my homework. I head toward Connie’s office, calling out my intentions to Tony when I’m at the door. He affectionately grumbles a fare-thee-well, or something else that sounds not at all like one.

  When I shove open Connie’s door a few minutes later, she’s on the phone.

  “Gwendolyn,” she says, then spells the name for the person on the other end of the line. Her feet are on her desktop and her chair is pushed back. “Gwendolyn Wright. Yeah. Uh-huh.” A pause. “Okay. Thanks anyway.” She hangs up the phone and sits up straight.

  “Who’s Gwendolyn Wright?” I ask.

  She points to a bunch of photos on her desk. “Paluchek’s ex-wife — remember?”

  Ah, yes. I come over to the desk and look at the photos. It’s an array of all the pix I took at Paluchek’s McMansion — the cancelled checks, the ripped shot of Dad, and the other photos. But because they’re pictures of pictures, some are a bit murky. The one that Connie pointed to is a photo of a younger Steve Paluchek in a dark suit, grinning to beat the band, next to a shapely dark-haired beauty dressed in some gauzy long dress, holding a bouquet of flowers. It’s a wedding picture.

  “Found her yet?”

  She shakes her head. “Been checking death records.”

  My skin grows cold as I remember Kerrie’s description of the Law & Order episode. Before I can ask if Connie’s come across a death notice for Gwendolyn, she ponies up what she knows, which is nothing.

  “No trace,” she sighs.

  She throws a pencil on the desk as if she’s disgusted by all the dead ends. “I even checked with her second husband, who’s doing time for burglary. He thinks she’s still in San Diego.”

  “You actually went to the state pen?”

  “Well, no. I sent Kurt.”

  “Kurt’s the man.”

  Connie stares at the photos as if they’ll form a map revealing Gwendolyn’s whereabouts.

  “She have any other relatives around?” I ask.

  “Father passed away two years ago. Mother should still be alive.”

  “Well, get on the phone!”

  “Tried that. Called the mother’s number — Kurt got it from Mr. Gwendolyn Number Two, a guy named Clay Bingel. But nobody there’s seen her or Gwendolyn Wright.”

  “You sure you dialed the right number?”

  “Yeah, and they said they’ve had it for a year. Got some calls for Mrs. Wright at first but they trailed off.”

  “So it used to be Gwendolyn’s mother’s number.”

  “The phone company doesn’t wait long to reassign numbers.”

  “You think she’s dead too?”

  Connie shakes her head. “Probably would have found her death notice by now.”

  I plop down on the edge of Connie’s desk and tap my finger against my chin. “Gwendolyn’s father dies a couple years ago. At least one year ago, her mother moves and changes phones. How old is she?”

  Connie consults some notes. “In her eighties.”

  “What about nursing homes? You check those?”

  Her eyes widen. “There must be a gajillion of those.”

  “What’s her last known address?”

  “Some small town in Pennsylvania,” Connie says, turning back to her computer and whipping through to yellow page directories. I scoop up the photos and sink into a nearby beanbag chair, flipping through the pix because I have nothing else to do.

  In about a half hour, Connie’s called at least two dozen nursing homes in the Ephrata, Pennsylvania region with no luck finding a Eunice Wright, mother of Gwendolyn. I doze off. I’m right in the middle of a dream where Doug duels Johnny Depp f
or my hand in the dusty sand of a Spanish bullring when a bizarre clicking noise rouses me to the present — right before I could make out which boy wins my hand in marriage.

  It’s not a clicking, I realize — it’s a snapping. Snapping, and an electronic version of the “Toreador Song.” Connie’s snapping her fingers at me, pointing to her cell phone, which is ringing. She’s on her office phone and can’t pick it up. I stumble out of the beanbag chair and grab her cell.

  “Mom! Hi, it’s Bianc.” Mom is wondering where we are. She’s going to order pizza and would like us both home.

  “Sure thing, Mom. Soon as Connie’s finished.”

  Connie, meanwhile, is barking into the receiver, obviously talking to someone whose phone is dialed down to “hard of hearing.”

  “Is this Park View Village? I’m looking for a Eunice Wright …”

  Mom hears this, too. “Bianca, what’s your sister doing?”

  “Uh … some investigating. For a case.”

  Connie hits the jackpot. She grabs a pencil. “I’d like to talk to Eunice, please.”

  “What kind of case?”

  “Uh … older people getting scammed. Getting ripped off.”

  “What do you mean Eunice isn’t available? I’ve got news about an important lottery win.”

  “Ripped off how, Bianca?” Mom’s voice is taut and thin.

  “Uh … I’m not sure exactly. Yeah, I’ll ask her as soon as she’s off the phone.”

  “Millions of dollars are at stake, ma’am. I really need to talk to Eunice.”

  “In fact, I’m getting off the phone right now, Mom. I’ll be right home.” I click-close the cell and place it on the edge of Connie’s desk while raising my eyebrows and widening my eyes. Translation: Why’d you have to use a scam-like intro to try to get to Eunice when I’m telling Mom you’re investigating a scam? Huh, huh, huh?