“BOO!”
Dixie jumped a foot in the air and clutched her chest, startled.
“Gotcha!” Henry shouted, and then released an oafish laugh.
Dixie bent over feeding her head with more blood. “Gotcha? What are you, nuts?” she shouted along with a stream of curses.
“Hey … watch your mouth there, young lady.”
Dixie threw her fist against his arm. “I’ll watch my mouth, you creep. You’re lucky I didn’t die right here and now.” Dixie was still clutching her chest. “What … what are you looking at?”
“I’m surprised that a lady like you curses that way.”
“They’re not curses. They’re just vulgar words.”
“Hmmm. Come on in,” he finally said as he opened the door. He walked in and waved Dixie inside. “Come. I’ll make some hot chocolate.”
Dixie hesitated, feeling a little strange. Her new friend’s bizarre behavior had her wondering what kind of nut case he really was. After all, what kind of person was a fifty-something-year-old man who swung from trees and wore a jogging suit to his wife’s viewing and acted happy and carefree on the day of his wife’s funeral? There were rumors about Henry she had never paid attention to up until now, rumors that had her wondering if she should trust him alone in a house.
“Don’t you have your wife’s funeral to go to?” she asked as he stood in the doorway.
“I think we have time for a cup of hot chocolate.”
The darkness in the doorway prevented Dixie from seeing any details inside. “You first,” she said, still mistrusting. Hesitant. It wasn’t like they were down by the bridge or in town on her turf where she felt safer, more in control.
He stepped into the house and she followed him. Once in the foyer, she relaxed a bit, her suspicion replaced with a feeling of curiosity of what a house on the north side of Main Street looked like. She was in the Wolff house once before, but that was many, many years ago. She’s forgotten what it looks like inside. As her eyes adjusted to the difference in lighting, the darkness gave way to the sun’s soft luminance shining through the living room window. She was surprised at the simplicity of its decor. Not what she remembered. The only other rich house she had ever been in was the White House when her grammar school class went on a Washington, D. C. trip two decades ago - her only contact with tasteful furnishings more expensive than those found at Unclaimed Freight. The lack of antique furniture and lavish moldings had Dixie thinking that maybe Henry wasn’t rich after all.
As Henry walked her through the living room, she noticed the coin collection on the coffee table, and the couch, which had large, puffy cushions.
“That’s a big couch. Looks comfortable,” Dixie commented.
“It is. Sit in it, if you want.”
Hootie zoomed by her. “Oh, you have a cat.”
“Hootie. He’s a space cadet. Not a cat.”
While they walked past the dining room and into the entrance of the kitchen, Dixie was all eyes inspecting the pictures on the wall and the knick-knacks on the shelves. She ran her hand over the mahogany dining room table, which, she surmised, was possibly the richest piece of furniture in the whole house.
“My humble abode,” Henry said.
“Nice. I like it. It’s homey.”
“Take a seat while I make you some hot chocolate. From the cupboard.”
Henry went into the kitchen while Dixie returned to the living room to plop herself down on the couch. She slumped into the soft, puffy cushions, staking out her territory.
“You know, there’s rumors about you,” Dixie said.
“Yeah, like what?” Henry asked from the kitchen.
“I don’t know. Like you’re not you’re not firing on all cylinders.” Dixie made a face. She shouldn’t’ve said that. She eyed the coin collection, picked it up and noticed the barren slot marked ‘1913.’
“What happened to your coin collection?” Dixie yelled trying to mask her faux pas. “You’re missing one.”
“I’ve been missing that one for ages,” he roared back from the kitchen.
“What do you mean? You lost the quarter or something?”
Henry poked his head out of the kitchen. “Now that’s a sore subject. Mary was ticked at me for years.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Let’s just say the ice cream man has it. Mary was shopping, or something, and I didn’t have enough money in my pocket, just a couple of dollars in loose change, you know. Kids wanted ice cream and I just had to have an ice cream sandwich. I needed twenty more cents.”
“So you used this quarter to buy an ice cream sandwich?”
“Yup. I did.”
“Man. If I were your wife, I’d cut your nuts off.”
Henry ducked back into the kitchen briefly. He returned to the living room with a cup of hot chocolate and placed it on a coaster on the coffee table. “That’s not a lady-like thing to say,” he said.
“Sorry,” Dixie said, not quite sure why she should be sorry. “Is the coin rare?”
“Not really. I probably could find it pretty easy in New York City. Pretty cheap, I bet.”
“How much?”
“Probably for the price of a cheap dinner.”
Dixie began drinking the hot chocolate in tiny sips. “I used to collect stamps when I was a kid,” she said in between the sips. “I stopped.”
“Why?”
“Cost too much and I lost interest, I guess. How much do you think the whole collection is worth?”
“I don’t know. A thousand, maybe ...”
“Yeah, right. If my stamp collection was worth a thousand, I wouldn’t be selling it for ice cream.” She took another sip.
“Okay. Well, maybe a hundred, then.”
Dixie noticed three pairs of booties on one of the shelves. She stared at them, and then pointed. “Those are cute.”
Henry walked over to the shelves and picked the first pair up. “These are Robin’s. She’s the oldest, but she had the smallest feet.”
He picked up the second pair, inspected them and held them out to Dixie. “Sharon’s. She’s my youngest daughter. Had the biggest feet.”
And the biggest mouth, Dixie thought to herself, remembering her relationship with Sharon in school, which wasn’t much of a relationship at all. There was little communication between Dixie and the Wolff sisters, but when there was, it was usually less than congenial.
Dixie remembered prom night when Sharon asked Dixie where she got her dress. It wasn’t the words that were so biting as much as how she said it.
“Where did you get your dress?” Sharon said, and then snickered and raised her eyebrows to her friends. There was no forgetting the look on her face - that crooked smile. There was no mistaking her intent either. The remark was meant to hurt, as if she were suggesting that Dixie bought her dress at the Goodwill Store on the south side of Main Street; as if she had more right to be at the prom than Dixie did.
Thinking back on it now, that was the only thing Dixie remembered Sharon saying to her the entire senior year. She was sure there was more communication, but the prom comment was the only thing she remembered at the moment. Presently, Dixie couldn’t help but wonder why Sharon was such a mean bitch when Henry seemed so docile. Henry was a little crazy, perhaps, but he had a nice temperament that obviously never rubbed off on the youngest Wolff daughter.
“Who does the third pair belong to?” Dixie asked.
Henry picked up the third pair of booties and quite unexpectedly became uncommunicative. He stood there in front of the mantel piece, frozen. Silent.
Dixie remembered the rumors about Henry’s son who died in his crib unexpectedly and felt awkward for bringing up the subject. Suddenly, Dixie was distracted when she looked out the window and saw a car pulling up in the front.
“I think your daughter’s here,” Dixie said.
Henry looked out the window and saw Robin pull up to the curb. “You better hurry up and finish,” he said with an unexpecte
d change in demeanor - as if he were afraid of something.
“Why?” Dixie asked.
“I gotta go to the funeral. Come on. Drink up.”
Dixie noticed a strange twist to Henry’s behavior – not calm anymore - like he suddenly didn’t want her in his house. She felt awkward again. She took a sip, too hot for a gulp.
* * *
ROBIN STEPPED out of her car wearing a black winter coat over a black dress. A sudden breeze of melancholy swept through her soul as she looked around the neighborhood and recalled the people who had come and gone over the years, the different faces, some of whom were friends, some only acquaintances. She glanced next door. She remembered the Rathgabers, who had lived there before the Petzingers. The memory evoked a little guilt in Robin because she felt remiss for not notifying them about Mom’s death. Ruth Rathgaber was a social worker by occupation, and a good friend of Mom’s. Ruth was the only person who knew what had happened to Dad - outside the immediate family, that is. Mom could talk to Ruth, and for a while she provided Mom with solace and healing during those weeks and months right after Dad came back from the war.
Mr. Rathgaber was not as close to the family, primarily because he was wary of Henry’s odd behavior, and he became less tolerant of Dad’s little quirky stunts as they became more and more bizarre. Robin remembered the Christmas before the Rathgabers moved away when Dad placed a nativity scene between their properties. Half of the nativity display was in the Rathgaber’s yard. Dad thought it looked better there, away from the shed and where everyone could see it from the street. Mom demanded he take it down since the Rathgabers were Jewish. Robin remembered how upset Mr. Rathgaber was. He came home that evening with the Rabbi to celebrate Hanukkah, and right after the Rabbi saw the nativity scene sprawled out in yard, Mom received a phone call demanding Henry take it off their property. An argument ensued between Mom and Dad. Dad thought it was an ornament of great design. Mom thought it was inconsiderate to their neighbor. Mr. Rathgaber thought it was an unconscious display of anti-Semitism. And the Rabbi thought the Rathgabers should move to a more accepting neighborhood. Not long afterwards the fence went up, and shortly after that the Rathgabers moved away. Still, Robin felt she should’ve called Ruth and told her of Mary’s passing.
Robin retrieved the mail and shuffled through the envelopes and then inspected the house where she grew up. The shutters needed painting and the gutter on the north side needed reinforcing. Robin mentally made a list of the things that needed fixing. She’d write them down and give Dad some of the chores to keep him busy and contract out the more complicated items.
Robin saw a letter addressed from the court. She had been in contact with Judge Brady, so she knew the letter was notifying Dad about the preliminary hearing. Although Robin had discussed this issue with him already, she still didn’t think he fully understood what was going on. A twinge of resentment towards Sharon filled Robin for not explaining to Dad her intentions. Robin resented being the messenger, when it was clearly Sharon’s responsibility.
How could things have gotten to this point, Robin wondered? Mom died and it was an end to an era, just like that. Poof! But, as she thought about it right then, it wasn’t all that bad growing up with Dad. It wasn’t as challenging as Sharon was trying to make everyone believe. Sure, Dad was a little nutty and Robin had to put up with comments like, ‘what’s the matter with your dad’ when he would climb up the maple tree to get a better view of the sunset and wouldn’t come down until the last bit of light ducked under the horizon. Yeah, it was embarrassing, sometimes, but those were simpler times back then. There were no cares. No serious concerns. There had been little to worry about except for keeping up with the social calendar and who was going with whom to the prom. Life became much more complicated after graduating from high school, and going to college, and passing the bar, and getting a job, and finding the right man, and preparing for the rest of your life ... and so on and so forth.
Robin scouted the neighborhood. How the world had changed since her childhood! So many more responsibilities now. The one constant between then and now, she thought, was Dad. He changed very little. Most of the time he treated the world as a playground. Still did. What’s so bad about that?
And how could Sharon do this to him?
In a seamless motion, Robin walked across the lawn, knocked on the door, opened it and entered the house. “DAD,” Robin yelled as she closed the door behind her.
She walked into the house and into the living room. She noticed through the window someone darting down the driveway. She leaned over the coffee table to look, but the figure was already down the street and it was hard to tell who it was. If she didn’t know any better, it looked like Dixie, or someone with a pair of headphones on who looked like her, or danced like her, at least.
She dismissed the idea and began to search for her father. First, she looked in the dining room, then the living room, then the kitchen. She stood in front of the hall closet, slowly reached for the knob and jerked the door open, as if she were playing a ‘hide ‘n seek’ and expected to find her father waiting and perched for a sudden ‘gotcha’ move.
“DAA-AAD,” she yelled again – two distinct syllables, letting her father know she was not in the mood. “This is not funny. We haven’t got time for this ... this …” She left the sentence open because she wanted to yell out a vulgar word or two or three, but changed her mind. “I have to talk to you before we go. We haven’t got time for this.”
She walked straight to the stairs and looked up. “If you’re upstairs, will you please come down? I need to talk to you.”
Robin walked back to the kitchen, grabbed the wicker basket underneath the calendar and rested it on the kitchen table. She sat down and retrieved seven envelopes from her pocketbook that were marked with the days of the week, then yanked seven twenty-dollar bills from her wallet and slapped them on the table. There was a noise from behind and she quickly turned around. No one was there.
“Dad. If that’s you, I’m going to be really angry. No games, please.”
Then, in moment of surreal frenzy, this huge blur jumped in front of her and a loud “BOOOO” resonated throughout the kitchen.
Robin almost fell off the chair. “STOP IT,” she yelled at the top of her lungs.
If there ever was a time Robin wanted to curse her father out in an unrestrained string of expletives, it was during these moments when the occasion called for him to be … normal.
He sat down, slapped the tabletop with his hands, and chuckled. “Gotcha,” Henry said.
“That … was … NOT … funny,” she said.
“Yes, it was,” he fired right back. And then with an East Indian accent he said, “I scared bricks of cement out of you.”
Robin settled down and stared at her father trying to find the right words. “Please don’t talk like that. It makes you sound …” She hesitated.
“Stupid?”
“No. I didn’t say that.”
“But that’s what you meant.”
“No. That’s not what I meant.”
Robin measured her thoughts. She had been at these crossroads a hundred times before and knew the word ‘stupid’ was a trigger, which could very well cause Henry to retreat into silence - a silence that used to last for days when she was a kid; like the time when she was twelve and was window-shopping with some friends in front of the GAP. Robin saw Dad sitting on a bench at the bus stop. He didn’t see her across the street. She turned quickly into the window to avoid him, but one of her new friends who didn’t know that Henry was Robin’s father, said, “There’s that retard across the street.”
“Shhh,” another friend whispered. “That’s Robin’s father.”
She went home humiliated and that very night she called her father “stupid”. Robin remembered the result of her angry tirade that night. Dad didn’t talk to anyone for a week and retreated emotionally to a place where no one else could go, not even Mary who usually was able to coax him back to reali
ty. That was the last time she ever called her father “stupid”.
“No, Dad,” she said. “I’m not calling you stupid. It’s your behavior. I think you’re behaving childishly.”
Robin said the word ‘childishly’ with her brows fully extended, and her eyes piercing into her father’s, like a headmaster does when scolding a third grade student in a detention room.
“You’re not fun anymore,” Henry said, faking a hurt look.
“Dad, think about what’s going on here. Under the circumstances, don’t you think maybe you should be more somber?” Robin looked at her watch.
No response from Dad.
“You should start getting ready pretty soon, Dad.”
Still, no response.
“Mom’s funeral? Remember?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Henry finally said. “There’s a time and place for everything. That’s what I always taught you kids, you know.”
“Yes, Dad. That’s what you always taught us.” As Henry started to get up from his seat, “Wait a minute. We still have a little time. We need to talk first.” Robin patted Henry’s hand and waited a couple of seconds. This was going to be hard.
“I love you, Dad.”
“Manure sandwich.”
“What?”
“You’re gonna give me a manure sandwich. I can tell. You’re gonna tell me some good stuff and stick something bad in the middle. Like ‘I love you, Dad. You’re stupid. You look very handsome today’. Manure sandwich.”
“Dad, stop. I need you to focus.”
Henry sat back, stretched, and looked up at the ceiling. “Okay. I’m focused.”
Robin talked as she placed the twenty-dollar bills into the envelopes. “I have something uncomfortable to talk about.” Robin waved a twenty-dollar bill before putting it into ‘Friday’s’ envelope. “Your money has been frozen by the courts. Remember?”
South of Main Street Page 9