Until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that anybody from school might come by and see me handing out candy, dressed up as Elvis. I mean, who would expect a couple of Charles W. Lister seventh graders to be wandering around with the five-year-old fairy princesses and midget devils?
Feeling my face beginning to get warm, I tried to downplay the whole costume. “I’m just handing out candy to the little kids. For my dad,” I added stupidly.
“Where is he?” Ivory asked, with a tone that suggested she hadn’t forgotten our park conversation.
“He’s got a gig.”
Ivory gave me a closer look. “He didn’t need his costume?”
Note to Ivory: What are you? The FBI cheerleader?
“It’s an extra one,” I said.
Slowly, Ivory’s face broke into a smile. “Well, you look kind of deranged as Elvis. Deranged, but good. Right, Digger?”
Behind her, Cowboy Digger nodded. I shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, wondering how much longer they’d stick around on my dad’s porch, talking to me through the screen door. “We aren’t really trick-or-treating for candy this year,” Ivory began explaining. “We’re going around the neighborhood collecting money for Greenpeace. We stopped by because we thought maybe your dad might want to donate something.”
“But hey, if you want to give us some candy bars instead, that’s okay, too,” Digger joked, gesturing at the almost empty Snickers bag I was still holding. “We’re not that picky.”
Somehow, I ended up sitting on my dad’s porch with the two of them as they finished off the last of my candy bars. The rain was coming down harder and they decided they’d wait a few minutes to see if it let up. “We’ll just hang out here, if that’s all right,” Ivory said, taking a seat on one of the dry patches of concrete and motioning for the cowboy to follow.
“Digger lives two streets away from yours, and we just thought we’d go through his neighborhood this year,” Ivory explained as she carefully unwrapped a chocolate bar and stuffed the wrapper into one of the green knitted gloves she’d been wearing. “Last year, we collected donations for Save the Children in my neighborhood. But Digger’s a big environmentalist, so this year it was Greenpeace.”
“Tree hugger.” Digger grinned through a mouthful of chocolate and caramel. “That’s me.”
While the rain drummed down on the metal roof over our heads, Ivory started going into a long explanation of the different causes Greenpeace helped: whales, rain forests, global warming. I brought up the topic of Digger’s dog collar in the middle of global warming. It was the only thing I could think of to change the subject. Like “dog collar” was written in big letters across my brain or something. “So what’s up with that collar you wear around at school?” I said, reaching for the Snickers bag.
Digger shrugged. “It’s different. Nobody else has one, right?”
Note to Digger: Maybe there’s a good reason for that.
“Artistic expression,” Ivory added. “He’s an artist.”
“You aren’t wearing one tonight,” I pointed out, and Ivory explained she and Digger had decided to be opposites of themselves for Halloween. “This year, we wanted to be something we would never, in a million years, be in real life—so we picked a cheerleader and a cowboy.”
“Yeah, can you see me sitting on a horse?” Digger said, grinning. “If I got up on one, in ten minutes it would be totally flat.” He made a sound like air going out of a balloon (or somebody farting). “There goes Digger on his flat horse.” Which made us almost fall off the porch laughing. Really.
“You’re not that fat,” I heard myself say when the laughter had died down a little.
Note to self: Are you blind? Why do you keep saying such dumb things?
“Right.” Digger snorted as he crumpled up his candy wrappers and stuffed them into his jeans pocket. “I’m the poster child for fat.”
After that, there was an uncomfortable silence when nobody said anything. The rain on the porch roof suddenly seemed extra loud. Anybody passing by on the street must have done a double take at the three of us scrunched together, knee to knee, on the small square of dry land in the middle of the concrete. Now playing on Jerry Denny’s porch: Elvis, the Cheerleader, and the Cowboy.
“Anybody seen any good movies lately?” Digger finally blurted out, which made everybody relax again.
Ivory asked me how my grandma was doing, if she was getting better. I told them how she was out of the hospital but in a physical therapy center. My mom had just sent me the new address, adding in capital letters how much my grandma would LOVE to hear from me. But my mom had no idea how crazy my life had been in Chicago. What would I write about? The Aloha jumpsuit? Viv? My dad storming out of the house that night?
Surprisingly, Ivory didn’t ask anything about my dad until she and Digger were about to leave—which was unusual, considering what Ivory was normally like. We were standing around at the bottom of the porch steps. It had stopped raining briefly, and Ivory wanted to get back to Digger’s house before it started to pour again, so his mom could drive her home.
“Did you say anything to your dad?” she asked in a low voice after Digger had moved a step or two away to call his mom on his cell phone. I appreciated the fact that Ivory wasn’t spilling my whole life story in front of Digger, but it was still embarrassing.
I told her I’d talked to my dad that night.
“How’d he react?” she asked.
“Not great,” I mumbled.
“Really?”
“Kind of,” I said, not wanting to go through all the details of what had gone wrong. I could tell Ivory was already putting two and two together herself anyway.
“I’ll try and figure out what you can do next.” Ivory reached down to pick up her silver-and-green pom-poms from the steps. “But this is a good start, Josh.” She shook one of her pom-poms in my direction.
“What’s a good start?”
“Talking to him. And wearing his Elvis costume for Halloween, too.”
Note to Ivory: The costume wasn’t exactly my dad’s idea.
“You look crazy but cool.” She laughed. “I never thought you’d wear anything Elvis.” Turning toward Digger, she added loudly, “Don’t you agree?”
“Sure, right.” Digger shoved his phone in his pocket and tried to act as if he hadn’t been listening to our conversation the whole time.
“There’s hope for you yet, Josh. That’s what your horoscope said this week. Peace,” Ivory finished.
She and Digger flashed me a peace sign and then the two of them went running—okay, with Digger, maybe “lumbering” is a better word—into the darkness. I could hear them chasing each other and laughing halfway down the street.
29. Hurt
Ivory may have believed there was hope for me. But my dad didn’t. That was pretty clear. We didn’t talk to each other again until supper the next night. After about fifteen minutes filled with nothing but the sound of our silverware clattering on our plates and the clock on the stove ticking, my dad finally cleared his throat and said, “Could you explain a few things to me, Josh?”
No, I couldn’t.
But my dad continued without waiting for my answer. “This letter you sent”—he pushed the letter across the table toward me—“everything in it was made up?” He ran his finger along the words at the top. “There’s no Chicago Elvis competition in the Grand Ballroom—or anywhere else?”
“No, not really—”
“Not really?”
“No, there isn’t.” The words stumbled stupidly out of my mouth.
“And the Las Vegas part was made up, too? There’s no trip to Las Vegas for Elvis impersonators? There’s no five-thousand-dollar prize? Anywhere?” Just by the tone of my dad’s voice, I could tell he desperately wanted something, anything, to be true about my letter. Only there wasn’t. Not one speck of truth. That’s what made it worse.
I tried telling him I’d repay him for what he’d spent on the Aloha costum
e, even though I had no idea how I would actually do that. Mow lawns until I was eighty? I also said if he wanted to go ahead and perform at my school, I would understand. “I’ll just deal with it,” I told him. “You can call the music guy back if you want to.”
My dad sighed loudly and pushed his chair away from the table. “It’s not about the daggone costume or the daggone show, Josh.” His silverware and dishes banged together loudly as he dumped them into the sink. “For cripes sake, I can get rid of the costume if I want to.” My dad’s voice rose. “I can sell it in the classifieds. Or put it in Viv’s store. It’s not about the costume or the letter or any of that other stuff, Josh. That’s what you’re not seeing. What really bothers me, what really hurt me about what happened yesterday, is what it shows about you and me,” he said angrily, and stalked out of the room.
30. Why Tell Elvis Everything?
A few days later, I found a message from Ivory stuck to my locker. When I first saw the note as I came out of math class and glanced down the hall, my heart started hammering nervously. Who had left it there? What had they written? Of course, once I got closer, I could see the familiar scrawling letters in orange marker and the smiley face, which could only have come from—who else?
I tugged the note off the locker and read it:
I have an idea about your dad. Stop by my locker at the end of school.
Ivory was the only person who’d been able to tell me anything about my dad. For the most part, Dad and I had still been avoiding each other. We went out of our way not to end up watching TV together in the living room or eating dinner at the same time. I made excuses about being too busy with homework or not being hungry at dinnertime. My dad stayed in his bedroom with the door closed, practicing and watching tapes of his shows.
But Ivory knew a lot more of the details because of her mom. It was like being in a giant game of Telephone, where the message is passed from one person to the next. My dad poured out his feelings to Viv, who told some things to Ivory, who passed them along to me.
Note to Dad: Do you know Viv is not very good at keeping secrets?
The day before, Ivory had told me my dad was trying to decide if he should quit being Elvis. “He had a long talk with my mom last night about looking for a new job,” she said before classes started. “They made a lot of lists together.”
“Lists?”
“Pros and cons. Being Elvis versus not being Elvis,” Ivory continued. Then she dropped the bombshell that my dad was considering calling a therapist.
“What?” I said, loud enough for two kids in the hall to glance over at us.
“He told my mom he wants to work on improving your relationship with each other. He feels like he’s been a bad father to you over the years, living so far away and everything.”
I told Ivory the last thing I wanted to do was sit around in some therapist’s office talking about my innermost feelings with my dad. “Can’t you do something?”
Ivory said she’d try to get the message across to her mom. And if the Telephone game was working right, hopefully her mom would pass the word along to my dad, who would drop the whole idea.
“But we still need to come up with a way to get both of you to talk to each other at least. I mean, he’s your dad, right? You can’t keep being here…and there.” She spread her arms out as if to demonstrate how far apart we were. I didn’t bother to tell Ivory that we had always been that far apart. With about four states between us. I was used to it.
After getting Ivory’s note about my dad, I waited for her at the end of the day. Just in case any of the vending machine guys happened to pass by, I stayed across the hall and pretended to be studying a row of old photographs showing Lister sports players from the 1950s (who all seemed to bear a vague resemblance to Elvis).
“Hey.” Ivory bumped my back with her armful of books. Her hair was in two long braids and she was wearing a blouse that looked like it had come from an old Brady Bunch episode. Pink, white, and brown zigzag stripes. Like spumoni with a headache. “Why are you standing over here?”
“I’m trying to find a picture of someone I know.”
Ivory rolled her eyes. “Right.” She nodded toward her locker. “So come over here while I unload my stuff and I’ll tell you my great idea.” Keeping an eye on the hallway, I waited while Ivory put her books away. Other girls had mirrors and message boards and pictures in their lockers. Ivory had an embarrassing collection of stick-on stars and glow-in-the-dark planets.
“Okay,” she said, tugging a large jeans purse over her shoulder and slamming the door shut on her mini universe. “Before I tell you my idea, you have to promise you’ll do something to help me.”
With Ivory, this could be a very dangerous promise to make, but I was getting desperate. I needed somebody (besides a therapist…jeesh) to give me some good advice for dealing with my dad. Or at least a plan for getting out of the mess I was in.
“Okay,” I told Ivory cautiously. “What is it?”
“I want you to help Digger win in gym class.”
“Win?”
“Hit a home run, or catch a ball.” Ivory gestured at the air. “Something like that.”
“We’re playing volleyball. It doesn’t have home runs.”
Ivory glared at me. “You can think of something to let him win.”
“I’m serious. He’s really hopeless in gym.”
“Do you want my help with your dad or not?”
I told Ivory I couldn’t make any promises. “I’ll try,” I said.
“All right, here’s my idea for your dad.” Ivory dug around in her large purse. She pulled out a skinny blue ticket and held it toward me. In black type were these words: Jerry Denny as the King. Friday, November 12, at 8 p.m. Sponsored by the Winona Lions Club. Tickets: $15 at the door. $10 in advance.
I had to read it twice to realize that the ticket was referring to my dad. Jerry Denny. As the King.
“We’re going to see one of his shows next week,” Ivory said proudly, pushing the ticket into my hand. “Isn’t that a brilliant idea?”
No, I wanted to say, it isn’t. Because I didn’t see how going to one of my dad’s shows would change anything, other than making him really angry with me for showing up and upsetting him in front of a live audience. “How’s this going to help?” I said, shoving the ticket into my back pocket.
Ivory didn’t answer. She just kept babbling on about the show. “The tickets are already paid for and not returnable. My mom got them for us, so we can all go and see him. And besides, it’s for a good cause. To raise money to help kids in hospitals. My mom will pick you up.”
“Does my dad know anything about this?”
Ivory squinted at me as if I was the world’s biggest moron. “Of course not, that’s part of the surprise. He won’t know we’re there until he sees us in the audience.”
“And what are we supposed to do then?”
“I don’t know.” Ivory’s voice rose impatiently as she began to head down the hallway without waiting for me. “What do you usually do at concerts? Clap. Tell him it was great. Whatever you want to do.”
“What if it’s terrible?”
Spumoni Shirt didn’t even turn to answer that question.
31. Hit or Miss
As it turned out, I wasn’t the only person who got tickets from Ivory and her mom.
“I’m going to see Elvis,” Gladys chirped the minute I stepped into her house.
I had stopped by to visit her on my way home from school on Friday. It had been a day or two since we had checked on her, so I thought I’d see how she was doing and say hello. When she told me she was going to see Elvis, I figured maybe she was a little mixed up about my dad or confused about something else. She often seemed to be lost in the past these days. But her eyes were bright and she did a shuffling dance in her pink rose slippers after she told me the news.
“Elvis?” I repeated.
Gladys reached for an envelope sitting on the doily-covered table by her f
ront door and pulled out the same type of blue ticket Ivory had given me. I know I must have looked completely shocked. Like mouth-open, eyes-bugged-out shocked.
“You probably don’t know the Mahoneys,” Gladys began slowly, “but Vivian runs a little clothing store in town. Years ago, right after my husband died, I used to help out in her store on the weekends and do little sewing projects and clothing alterations for them. Just for my milk and bread money.” Gladys gave a small laugh. “I can’t do that kind of thing anymore, of course, but Vivian and her daughter still come by every once in a while to check up on me because I’m so”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“old. When they came by to visit yesterday, they brought me this ticket to see Elvis. Imagine that!” She waved the ticket in the air again.
In the game of Solitaire, this would have been the moment when a column of cards suddenly fit together, from the king at the top to the lowest card at the bottom. As Gladys talked, I remembered Ivory’s story about the retired lady who’d helped out in their store. The one who had played “Chopsticks” on the piano when they had no customers. The one who had suggested the name Ivory.
That lady must have been Gladys.
And so Viv was the person who had introduced Gladys to my dad when he was looking for someone to sew his Elvis scarves. The whole time, of course, I had been under the impression that Gladys was just a lonely old lady living all by herself, but now it seemed Ivory and Viv (and probably half of Chicago) had been keeping her company, too.
“The two of them were nice enough to give me this for free.” Gladys held the ticket toward me. “Look at that. It cost ten dollars—my stars, can you believe it? Why, when I saw Elvis at the Chicago Amphitheater in 1957, it was only a dollar or two.”
“You saw the real Elvis?” This was getting more and more bizarre.
Gladys nodded. “He was gold—all gold. I’ll never forget it. He looked like”—she closed her eyes as if she was trying to picture the scene again—“a king, or a movie star…or somebody like that.”
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