Anna walked in his room and jumped on his bed. In the six months they’d been dating, Anna hadn’t said ten words to me. She was the sort of person who was only nice to you if you could help her in some way. It was pretty clear that I had nothing to offer a girl like her.
At his bedroom door, Dennis squeezed my shoulder and said, “I’ve got to take care of some business.” He winked at me as he shut the door. I heard Anna giggle and the quick squeak of bed springs.
When I turned back down the hall, that Hailey girl had disappeared behind the bathroom door. I shook my head, got out of there, and headed home.
22
As usual, we went grocery shopping on Saturday morning and Dad pushed the cart to Tia’s register. I wasn’t sure if he did this on purpose because he’d seen me talk to her or if it was coincidence that her register was empty every time we were ready to check out. That, I knew, would be a pretty big coincidence.
My father had never asked me about girls. Mom did though. She used to torture me with questions, introduce me to strange girls we’d pass on the street. She would have had a field day with Tia.
Tia smiled. “There they are. The heroes.”
My father didn’t say anything but lowered his head into the latest issue of People. I couldn’t figure out why he found that magazine so interesting. He didn’t watch much TV, see many movies, or listen to any current music, so I wasn’t sure if he even knew any of the people featured in the articles.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Good. You?”
She smiled again. The girl was full of smiles today. “Just fine. That man you saved, Mr. Casey, was in the store earlier today, shopping with his wife.”
“Was he okay?” I asked, turning back to my father. He didn’t look up or act like he’d heard.
“He looked great. They said he spent three days in the hospital. So have you done any good cooking this week?”
“I made lemon, herb-crusted chicken for the first time.”
She nodded, as if impressed, as she continued to run our groceries across the scanner and conveyor belt. The man who bagged them didn’t look much younger than Old Lady Peters. “How did it turn out?”
I shrugged. “Seemed okay, but I think I overcooked the chicken a little.”
She looked past me at my father. “Mr. Hale. How was it?” She knew his name because the store had those discount cards and each time they scanned it your name appeared on the receipt.
My father didn’t look up. “Everything he cooks is amazing. It’s like living with my own personal gourmet chef.”
While I appreciated the compliment, what struck me was how he hadn’t looked up, which told me he’d been listening the whole time.
She raised her eyebrows a little. The eyebrows were a little wild. The right one had three or four hairs that stood up like antennae. She had little blue stars for earrings and a mole beside her right eye.
“Me and a couple friends have a little cooking group. Nothing too fancy. We just get together and cook, try new stuff, teach each other techniques. We’ve never had a boy in the group but if you’d like to come over and check it out we’d be glad to have you.”
“Maybe,” I said.
She wrote her phone number on the bottom of the receipt. “See you soon,” she said.
“Bye,” I said.
Out in the parking lot, my father tore off the bottom inch of the receipt and handed it to me. I expected him to say something else, to prod me about her, but all he said was,
“She seems nice.”
“Did you hear her say that man, the old man from last weekend, was okay?”
He nodded. That was all.
Later, that night, after I spoke to my mother and my father had gone to sleep, I pulled Pottery for Beginners from my backpack. I’d checked the book out from the school library. It didn’t look like a new book and I didn’t think my father was a beginner, but I figured it might help me understand a little of what it takes to make pottery. If I was going to try and push him in that direction then I needed to at least know what I was talking about. And I hadn’t shown him the book because I wanted it to be a surprise.
The book described the step-by-step process of making pottery. It went into the different types of clay craftsmen have used over the years and the various kinds of pottery wheels and what a kiln was.
I knew we could get the wheel and clay in the shed but I wasn’t sure what we do about a kiln. I couldn’t see us building one in our backyard. Maybe there were places that had community ones people could use for a fee.
I closed the book when I heard an owl hooting in the night. I stepped out onto the back porch and wondered how close the bird might be, and I thought about Tia and her cooking club. Maybe it would be fun to hang out with a couple kids my own age who liked to cook and learn from them. When I was alone in my own kitchen that was one thing, and I felt comfortable there, but to be around a bunch of people, especially girls, was another.
23
As my father slept in on Sunday morning, I went next door to check on the sparrows. Old Lady Peters wasn’t outside, so I assumed Simon had probably already come and picked her up.
I carried the five-gallon bucket over to the birdhouse and climbed up. The four babies were starting to get even more feathers and their face and eyes looked almost like the sparrows I’d seen flying around.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?”
I froze. When she started laughing, I turned around. Mrs. Peters was walking toward me, wearing a grey dress. “How they looking?”
“Good.”
She nodded and walked over to the bucket. I helped her up, holding onto her arm, at the elbow.
As she peered into the birdhouse, I heard her son’s voice. “Mom, you out here?”
She turned to me and winked, “Let’s hide.”
I didn’t know if she was serious or not. She climbed down and we walked over to the shed, hid against the back wall. She lifted her finger to her lips.
“Mom,” he called again, then the screen door slammed shut.
She laughed. “I better go before he has a coronary. Have a good day, Julian.”
“You too, Mrs. Peters.”
She squeezed my hand twice and walked inside.
After she went in, I filled the feeders and changed the bath water. I heard the door open again. I’d assumed they had gone, but it was Simon. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m changing the birdfeeders.”
“You don’t need to come over here anymore.”
“It’s not up to you,” I said.
“It’s not up to you either,” he said, taking a couple steps toward me. I got the impression from his stance that if I was his kid he’d have slapped me.
He looked down at his watch, cussed, and walked away. “You better leave now.”
I did what he said, sure that he’d be having another talk with my father.
It was a nice day, good weather for running, but it was a Sunday, Dad’s day of rest from training. We decided to mow the yard. He went around with the weedwhacker while I did the actual mowing.
Our yard wasn’t particularly big, so we were able to finish in about forty-five minutes. I considered mowing her small front yard but didn’t want to make Simon any madder. I’d spent most of the time, while I mowed our yard, thinking about what I was going to tell Dad about Mrs. Peters and what happened with her son.
After we’d put everything away, Dad and I sat out on the front porch, each drinking a bottle of water. “Dad, I’ve got to tell you something.” I hated to do it but knew it would be better coming from me.
“Let me guess, you’re going on a date with that cashier.”
I shook my head. “The lady next door, Mrs. Peters. For the last couple weeks, I’ve been helping her in her yard.” When he didn’t say anything, I told him the whole story, how she’d called me over the fence that day, about the early morning walks and the baby birds, about her feeding birds by hand, and about the conversati
on I’d had earlier with Simon.
He sipped his water and uncrossed his legs, taking his time and choosing his words.
“I know you told me not to go over there, but she needed my help that first day and I discovered that I like hanging out with her. She’s nice and knows all kinds of stuff. She’s taught me a lot about birds.”
Dad spat a thin stream of water between his legs. “Let’s say I tell you again not to go over there, would you?”
“If you told me today, now, not to, then no I wouldn’t.”
He nodded, patted my knee. “I’m okay with you helping her, but don’t be a smart ass to her son.”
“I won’t,” I said, thinking damn, that was easy.
He winked at me, and I went inside to start making dinner. I’d decided I’d make Shepherd’s Pie today—meat and mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables.
An hour later, the doorbell rang. It was Simon. I didn’t answer but went around back and told my father who it was. He walked down the steps and headed toward the front of the house. I watched the two of them talk for a few minutes even though I couldn’t hear a word they were saying.
As we ate, my father told me that Simon had asked him to keep me away from her and Dad had said no. This pissed Simon off. “Just try to avoid him,” Dad said. “And let me know if he says anything else to you.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
24
“Did you hear that?”
Mrs. Peters and I were sitting at the table, having our usual breakfast, when she suddenly sat up.
“I think it’s a hummingbird.”
All I could hear was the usual chorus of birdsong all around us.
“Watch over there,” she said. She was staring over at the butterfly bushes. I looked past the still flowerless bushes at the red-based feeder.
When I turned to Mrs. Peters, she looked anxious, her lips pursed as if she were a contestant waiting to see if she’d won some contest. An odd excitement came off of her, and this made my heart beat fast and hard. For a moment, I didn’t hear a single bird in the garden. They were everywhere, in the trees and bushes, but I could hear nothing.
Then there was a thick buzzing, humming sound and before she said it I knew it had to be a hummingbird. She clapped her hands together. “A female ruby-throated,” she said.
I looked to where she was staring, over at the feeder. The hummingbird buzzed this way and that, taking sips out of one of the feeder’s holes before moving on to the next. The bird wasn’t quite as small as I’d expected. I was expecting something about the size of a bumble bee. To me the cool thing was how it hovered with ease, bobbing back and forth, more like a bee, than a bird. After a couple minutes, it lifted up and flew away, out over the shrubs.
“How do you know that was the female?”
“The male has an actual ruby red throat. The female doesn’t have that red throat area.”
We sat there for a few minutes. Both of us hoping that the tiny bird would come back. Finally, I said, “Do you want to go see the baby sparrows?”
She shook her head. “I think this old lady has seen about all she needs to for one day.”
She was right. Compared to the arrival of the hummingbirds anything else would be anti-climactic.
That night, after our run, Dad told me about one of his patients, a man who’d had a stroke but also needed open heart surgery. He said the man’s name was Walter Black. Dad said you could tell the man had money by the way his family dressed.
“This afternoon I walk in there to change some meds and his wife was holding his hands and singing some old song. She wasn’t a particularly good singer but it was sweet.”
I wasn’t sure what it meant and why he was telling me the story.
Did it have to do with Mom? I didn’t think so. During the last week, as we continued to train, he’d started hanging out a little more after dinner, helping me clean up before heading to his room. We weren’t exactly shooting the breeze for hours every night, but we’d been talking more than we ever had before Mom left. It felt to me like he was trying to let me into his life.
“Is he going to be alright?”
Dad shook his head. “Too much damage. He’ll be lucky to ever walk again. If he makes it out of surgery.”
I could tell this took a lot out of him. People dying, their lives changing right in front of him. And he’d done all this because he needed a job, something to support our family.
“I’m going to hit it,” he said, starting to stand up.
“Don’t, not yet.” My voice surprised me, but I didn’t want him to go to bed yet. He was actually talking to me about his life and I didn’t want him to stop.
“Let’s play UNO,” I said. It was a silly old card game I used to play with Mom and Dad years ago. I’d come across the deck of cards earlier while I was looking for a bottle opener. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d played it, couldn’t remember half the rules but didn’t think that mattered.
“You’re on,” he said. “Be right back.” He walked to his room while I dug out the cards from the back of one of the kitchen drawers.
When he came back, he was carrying his Miles Davis CD. He dropped it in the CD player and sat across from me. As he read the rules aloud, from the back of one of the cards, the music started. I’d always thought it was slow and sad music whenever I heard it seeping under the door, but that wasn’t the case. There were moments when Mr. Davis’ trumpet seemed to rise so high it was like beautiful screaming.
“I’m dealing first,” he said.
“Whatever. I’m still going to kick your butt.”
“We’ll see about that.” He winked at me as he tossed me a card.
25
I’d set my alarm on Tuesday morning because I wanted to go for another walk with Mrs. Peters, but as I opened my front door, she was backing her car out of the driveway. I ran up to her driver’s side window and knocked on the glass. She looked at me wide-eyed and lifted her hands in the air. The car coughed and stalled. She shook her head as I ran around to the other side and let myself in.
“Julian, you about scared me half to death.” She wasn’t wearing her overalls and white shirt. She had on her grey dress and her hair was combed back nicely.
“I suppose you want to go for a ride,” she said.
When I nodded, she shook her head and turned the key again and off we went, out of the neighborhood. Mrs. Peters drove with both hands on the wheel. She stared forward with her lips parted slightly. Driving seemed to take all of her concentration. As we headed downtown, I considered asking her where we were going because I only had two hours before I had to leave for school. She turned off the main road, into the entrance of the Green Hill Cemetery.
We passed hundreds of graves, marked by headstones big and small. She pulled the car over to the side of the road, turned it off and climbed out. “I won’t be long,” she said.
While Mrs. Peters hadn’t invited me to walk out into the cemetery with her, she hadn’t told me I couldn’t come either, so I followed her, staying back a little, through the maze of headstones. Twenty yards in, she stopped at a stone and kneeled down.
I read the names engraved on the stone: Roger Peters 1919-1992. Her name Evelyn Peters was below his with the year 1919 and a dash but no end date. I knew people sometimes bought funeral plots in advance so they could be together forever—my grandparents had done it—but still it must be strange to see your name on a headstone in a cemetery.
She talked to her dead husband for a few minutes before running her hand along the top edge of the headstone. I turned away. It was one of those moments, something personal between adults that made me feel uncomfortable, like when I used to see my parents kissing.
When she turned around, she didn’t seem surprised to see me standing there. She held out her arm and I took it as we walked back to the car. I helped her into her seat and walked around to the passenger side and climbed in.
After starting the car, she turned to me and said, “I lik
e to come out here and tell Roger when I see the first hummingbird of the year.”
“Did he like birds as much as you?”
“Not really, but he was always willing to listen.”
As we drove away from the cemetery, I thought of that day she ran over my leg. I remembered her standing over me, looking down as if she didn’t quite understand who or what I was, this boy under her car.
“Do you remember that day you ran over my leg?”
She turned, her hands gripping the steering wheel. “What are you talking about?”
As we looked at each, our faces a couple feet apart, I knew she had no memory of that day. I could see fear in her eyes, something I’d never seen before. “No, Mrs. Peters, I’m just kidding.”
She patted my left knee twice and said, “You are a strange young man.”
When we pulled into her driveway, my father’s truck was gone.
“I didn’t do too bad for an old lady without a license, did I?”
“What do you mean you don’t have a license?”
“Simon took it away from me a couple years ago. And he took all my keys away, or at least he thought he did. I had an extra set.”
I realized then that I hadn’t seen her drive her own car since the day she ran over my leg. Maybe that’s what Simon had promised my father years ago: that he would take her keys away and not let her drive anymore as long as I stayed away from her.
26
The next morning, Mrs. Peters was sitting at the bench between the butterfly bushes. The tea tray was at her feet. As I walked toward her, she said, without looking back, “Morning, young man.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Peters.”
The grass was wet with dew and it was a little cooler than it had been, so much so that I had to wear a jacket.
“I saw them yesterday afternoon. A male and female.”
She didn’t have to tell me she was referring to the hummingbirds.
She sipped her tea while I sipped my milk. I wanted to ask her something about her husband, wanted to know if they ever had problems. Maybe all couples go through some sort of trouble at different times, and this was my parents’ time. “Did you and your husband ever have any problems?”
Heart with Joy Page 7