by Jack Gantos
I was worrying about Olivia. I wasn’t an oracle. A real oracle actually sees into the future and knows all the details—the good and the bad—of what is about to happen. But nobody can really do that. I couldn’t see how her journey would go but hoping for a happy ending is kind of the next best thing to being an oracle. I closed my eyes and hoped that Olivia made it back to school okay. I hoped it so much that I could see her get into a nice car with a good older person who would drive her directly up to the front door of her school and say to her, “Good luck with your anger management,” and she’d reply, “Thank you, kind person, but my boyfriend Joey Pigza helped me get that under control.” Then she would walk into the school and tap her way down a long hallway to her dormitory and crawl into her own bed and the next morning wake up with hope in her heart and a big black outline of Carter Junior in her head where that black box had tortured her for so long.
I could imagine it all with my eyes closed and it made me feel hopeful. And then the moment I opened my eyes it happened.
“Ding-Dog!”
It was Mr. Fong with dinner, I thought, but when I hopped up and opened the door it was not Mr. Fong. It was the other delivery guy, my dad, and he had delivered himself. He was standing with a suitcase in one hand and a bag of take-out food in the other.
“Where is Mr. Fong?” I asked.
“We’ve all eaten enough pizza for a lifetime,” he announced. “From now on it’s Chinese food. It’s your mother’s favorite.”
I reached out and took the food. “Come in,” I said.
“The food might be cold,” he warned. “I’ve been waiting across the street. It took you long enough to say goodbye to your girlfriend.”
He walked into the kitchen and looked around. “It’s so clean,” he said. “Nice.”
“And no more filthy roaches,” I pointed out.
“I hate them too,” he agreed.
“We have something in common,” I said.
“We have your mom in common too,” he added nervously, and pressed his fingers against his face as if a piece of it needed sticking back on. “Is she here?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Carter Junior is asleep and I’m waiting for her.”
He looked up at the ceiling as if he could see Carter Junior in his donut doggy bed. “How do you think your mom will act when she sees me?” he asked.
“Well, when I’m hopeful about it I see her coming into the house and seeing you and not splitting your head open with a meat cleaver, or mine for letting you in, and then she’ll run upstairs and check on the baby and when she sees that he is okay then she’ll take a deep breath and count to ten and then she’ll come downstairs and I’ll kiss her a lot while she kisses me a lot and tells me I did such a good job and was her man of the house and that I was her anchor while she got better and then she’ll spot you hovering in a corner looking pretty pathetic and right at that moment it will be time for me to go to my room, and quite honestly, the rest is up to you two. I’m not an oracle. I’m just a hopeful boy. I can imagine how everything turns out really well, but it will be up to you and Mom to make it happen.”
“That’s kind of what I’m hoping for,” he remarked. “Do you see anything else?”
“Just that I’m wired because you are wired because your mom was wired,” I said. “So it figures that I love Carter Junior because Mom loves Carter Junior and if you love Carter Junior then we’ll all love you too.”
He nodded. “That’s real good,” he said eagerly. “Can I tell her that?”
“No. Or yes. But whatever you tell her it better come from the heart and you better live up to it because even though you are here I’m still the man of the house. You got that?”
“Yes,” he mumbled.
“Now go set the table,” I ordered. “If she comes home it would be a really good start to have dinner like a family.”
While he got the plates and knives and forks and napkins I got the cake out of the refrigerator and onto a platter and set it down right on top of Mom’s plate like she could just drop her face into it and eat the whole thing. I thought all that sugar would put her in the right mood.
Then Dad and I sat down, but we didn’t serve the Chinese food or talk to each other. We were like little plastic family-member statues just staring at the door and waiting for the unknown to happen.
Then I heard it in the distance, tap, tap, tap. It turned the corner and was coming up our street. Then it got closer and louder. And then it was in front of our house. Tap, tap … and then there was a little scream.
It couldn’t have been Olivia returning because she always made everyone else scream. I jumped up and in an instant ran out onto the front porch. The light from the open door shone down the steps. Mom was at the bottom with a shopping bag in one hand and her purse in the other. She was standing unevenly with all her weight on one high heel because the other one had snapped.
“Welcome back to the House-of-Pigza,” I cried out and threw my arms up into the air like I was a human firecracker going off.
“Dang shoe,” she said. “What an entrance!”
She kicked off her other shoe and ran up the stairs and gave me a big hug just as I had imagined it. Then she kissed me all over. Then she said I was her anchor and her man of the house like I knew she would.
And then the other man finally got up some courage and stuck his head around the doorjamb.
“Hi, Fran,” he said, sheepishly. “Welcome home.”
She just stood there shaking her head. “I knew it,” she said dryly. “I could see it clear as day in my mind as I was walking up the street. I said to myself, Fran, be prepared because that crazy, no-good husband is going to be in your house looking for a second chance for the hundredth time.”
Wow! She really was an oracle!
“Well, you always had good vision,” he replied with as much of a smile as he could manage on his messed-up face. “Now come on in,” he said. “Someone baked you a cake.”
The first thing she did was go upstairs and get Carter Junior, and even though he was sleepy she brought him down and I could see where her lipstick was all over his little beaming face.
Then she saw her cake and took a moment to read it, then turned to me with tears in her eyes. I was grinning like a lunatic and hopping up and down along with the dogs. “We’re two of a kind,” she said.
“Double that,” Dad added in, and pointed toward Carter Junior, then poked himself in the chest. “House rules are that four of a kind beats a pair of Pigzas every day of the week.”
Mom looked over at him. I could read her mind. She was going to make some crack about face cards. But then she thought better of it. Instead, she said, “Well, welcome back, stranger. You better be playing with a full deck.”
I stood there watching them and thinking that I should say something about all we had gone through in the past and our great future together, but then there are times when saying nothing is like being the most all-seeing oracle in the world.
“I’m going to my room for a while,” I announced. “It’s been a long week.”
I kissed Mom, then gave Dad a hug and didn’t look back as I closed my bedroom door and kicked off my shoes. Maybe it’s a little bit of a spook house having Mom and Dad back and a big photo of my wired granny smoking a cigarette on the wall over my bed, but it’s my house and they are my dark shadows and bright panes of light and under every roof there is a wacky family and this is mine and I love them. I think I’m finally going to have a good day. So don’t be a stranger. Stop on by. There is always an extra slice waiting for you at the House-of-Pigza.
BY JACK GANTOS
Heads or Tails: Stories from the Sixth Grade
Jack’s New Power: Stories from a Caribbean Year
Desire Lines
Jack’s Black Book
Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key
Jack on the Tracks: Four Seasons of Fifth Grade
Joey Pigza Loses Control
Hole in My Life
What Would Joey Do?
Jack Adrift: Fourth Grade Without a Clue
The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs
I Am Not Joey Pigza
Dead End in Norvelt
From Norvelt to Nowhere
The Key That Swallowed Joey Pigza
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010
Text copyright © 2014 Jack Gantos
All rights reserved
First hardcover edition, 2014
eBook edition, September 2014
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eISBN 9780374301774