by Avi
“If you fake a smile, your eyes don’t crinkle. Her eyes crinkled.”
“How come you know so much?”
She squiggled up her glasses. “I’m tall.”
“Monday,” I said. “Same time. Same station. I’ll tell you what my grandmother says.”
“Catch you later, traitor,” said Kat, and she ran off.
That afternoon I listened to the Giants and Dodgers game. The Giants lost. Again. It was bad enough that the Giants were losing so often. Listening to the game, I had to admit their announcer, Russ Hodges, wasn’t as good as the Dodgers’ announcer, Red Barber. They say you win some, lose some. I just wanted to win once. So I put all my thoughts to talking to Grandma Sally tomorrow, knowing she’d be able to tell me Dad’s secret.
I couldn’t wait.
20
Ma’s family lived in Indiana. I rarely saw them, though she called her mother every Saturday, when long-distance rates were low.
Dad’s family lived in New York City, where he grew up. We would get together two, three times a year. I wasn’t sure why it wasn’t more. I knew my aunts saw each other often. Sister stuff, I guessed.
When we went, Ma and my aunts stayed mostly in the kitchen, cooking and talking about kids. The men sat around in big chairs, like a movie that didn’t move, just talked. My cousins and I, from two years old up to fourteen, did what we wanted: played kick the can, stickball, talked baseball, played board games. That part was okay.
This Sunday’s get-together was a birthday party for Aunt Louise. It was at Aunt Betty’s apartment on Eastern Parkway, out in Brooklyn. By the time we arrived, everybody else was already there. Sometimes I thought my folks got to these gatherings late on purpose to shorten the visit. I hadn’t thought much about it before, but now I wondered why.
Aunt Betty’s apartment was a musty, cluttered place, like a museum exhibit that never changed. Heavy armchairs covered with yellowish doilies and fringed cloths stood around like stuffed animals. On every table were vases with cloth flowers. Mirrors and faded pictures were on the wall. On the floor were small oval rugs that looked like old scabs. No books. Just magazines and a cabinet radio that was never open.
I only knew a few things about my relatives. I knew Dad’s sister, Aunt Betty, made great lasagna. Her husband, Uncle Harry, worked in a hardware store. Dad’s other sister, Aunt Louise, did something about real estate. Her husband, Uncle Mort, smoked a pipe and had an insurance business. Uncle Chris—Grandma Sally’s brother-in-law—was a plumber. And Dad had just told me that Grandma Sally, his mom, used to be a waitress. That was as much as I knew.
Okay. Dad taught us history, but not much about his family history. How come? That was the first question.
When we got there, Dad and Ma went to Grandma and talked to her, but not for long. They never did. Second question: Why not?
Then Ma went into the kitchen with the chocolate pudding pie she’d made, and Dad went and sat with the men. Same time, Bobby went over to Uncle Chris. I guess they had become friends.
Third question: When did they become friends and why?
I joined the men, who were talking business and politics. Uncle Mort was a Democrat. Uncle Harry was a Republican. When they argued politics, they flung wads of words at each other like a kids’ food fight. Names like Truman, Eisenhower, McCarthy, and Roosevelt were tossed around like bread balls.
Mostly, Dad kept his mouth shut. Now and again, the men would ask him something about history. He’d offer facts, which didn’t seem to matter to them. Uncle Chris was mostly quiet, too. He just sat there, frowning and looking cross. Every once in a while, he’d make some sarcastic, angry remark.
Fourth question: Why was Uncle Chris so angry?
Score: Questions 4. Answers 0.
There was a family rule that every kid was supposed to say hello to Grandma. Wanting to talk to her alone, I held back and studied her.
Pete’s Grandma Sally was a small, wiry woman with curly, snow-white hair and fierce, iron-gray eyes below black eyebrows. Her face was almost chalk white, with netlike wrinkle lines and a mouth as tight as a vise.
Unlike her daughters, she never wore shirtwaists or high heels, but preferred a formless dress. Today’s was pale blue. On her feet were shaggy pink slippers. She took those slippers in a wrinkled paper bag everywhere she went. It looked like the same bag, save that it had a few more wrinkles every time Pete saw it.
At family gatherings, Grandma Sally went straight for a corner chair, where she sat knitting the scratchy sweaters for her grandchildren that were sure to show up at the next family gathering. Her small, bony fingers never stopped working those needles. But even as she knitted, her gaze darted about over members of the family, like the gaze of an old, skinny white cat, choosing where to pounce.
I sat down next to her. “Hi, Grandma.”
“Hello, Pete,” she said, her needles not stopping. She leaned over slightly so I could poke a kiss on her dry, wrinkled cheek. It was like kissing tissue paper.
“How’s school?” she said in her clipped voice.
“Okay.”
“You getting good grades?”
“Yes.”
“I made your favorite cookies. Cinnamon.”
“Thanks.”
I’d done my duty and was free to walk away. But this was my chance, and I took it. “Grandma, can I ask you something?”
Needles still clicking, she said, “Depends what it is.”
I said, “What was my father like as a teenager?”
The needles halted. She turned toward me. “Which part of your father’s life would you like to know about? When he was your age?”
Fighting my discomfort, I said, “No, older. When his—when your husband died.”
Her cheeks went white on white. Her jaw clenched. “Why are you asking?”
“Just . . . the other day, Dad was telling me about him.”
“What did he say?”
“How . . . how he died.”
“He didn’t die,” she said. “He vanished.”
“What do you mean, vanished?”
She sat still for a moment then pointed down. “You ever wonder why I wear slippers?”
“Not really.”
“The old days, what they called the Great Depression, were bad times. I was a waitress. On my feet all day and night. Just thinking about it, my feet get sore. These slippers make them feel good. They tell me that those days are gone.”
I didn’t understand why she was telling me that.
“I worked,” she continued, her voice as raspy as an old saw, “so I could keep the family together. Because Tom, my husband, couldn’t find work. Too proud to take anything except machine work.
“Then one day, he was gone. I never heard from him again. Not one word. After seven years I had to go to court to get a divorce.”
“You have any idea where he went?”
All she said was, “The children were very angry. They told friends their father died. Kids want fathers to be there. He wasn’t. I was.”
That idea I had before, that my grandfather might still be alive, popped back into my head.
Grandma picked up her needles.
I said, “Did my father . . . do anything when your husband went away?”
The knitting stopped again. She took her time before saying, “After Tom left, your father . . . ran away from home.”
“Ran away?” I cried. “For how long?”
“Six years. Left when he was eighteen. I didn’t see him again till he was twenty-four.”
“But . . . where’d he go?”
“He never told me. He didn’t come back until just before going overseas with the army.” Her thin lips quivered. “By then, he’d married your mother. Had you kids. Can you imagine? I don’t see him for six years and then it’s, ‘Hello. Here’s my wife and kids. Good-bye. I’m off, maybe to be killed.’ ”
She turned so that she was looking right at Dad. Glaring, really. Next moment she turned livid e
yes on me. “Do you know what memories are?” she said. “Dead-end streets. You can’t go anywhere with them even if you want to. Not worth trying.”
She snatched up her knitting, and the needles began clicking faster than ever. “Go find some of my cookies,” she said.
I walked away asking myself why, if my grandfather didn’t die, Dad would say he did. And where’d Dad go? Did he really run away from home? To do what? Were those the things the FBI wanted to know, too?
Questions 9. Answers 0.
My cousin Ralph grabbed my arm. “We’re going out to play stickball. Come on.”
“Later,” I said.
I wandered around Aunt Betty’s apartment. On her lace-covered bedroom dresser, I noticed a bunch of small photographs, mostly of her kids and husband. One was a picture of Grandma when she was younger. She was standing next to a man, the same man in that picture I found in my dad’s desk. He had to be my grandfather, Tom Collison.
Then I saw, in the back row of photos, a small, framed picture of a boy. It was a faded arcade picture, the kind you get when you sit in a booth, drop a dime in a slot, there’s a flash, and out pops your picture. I picked it up and saw it was of one of those boys in the photos Dad had.
Why was his picture on my aunt’s bureau? Was he Frank, Blaine, or Nelson Kasper?
I put the photo back, went into the kitchen. Aunt Betty was there alone, taking her lasagna out of her oven.
“Aunt Betty, can I ask . . .”
“Later, Pete . . . the birthday dinner is ready.”
Dinner meant adults at one table, kids at another. No crossing over. Kids’ talk was mostly baseball, a subject I usually loved, but tonight I hardly listened. I kept sneaking peeks at Dad, wondering who he was and what he had done.
Eventually the men started arguing politics. Dad sat there, saying little. He talked plenty of politics at home. Why didn’t he talk here?
All of a sudden, Uncle Chris stood up and shouted, “You know what? You’re all full of malarkey! When are you going to wake up to the truth? You’re doomed. All of you!” He stalked away.
I’d seen him do that before. As usual, everybody just looked at him as if it didn’t matter what he said and then resumed their arguments. I had no idea what Uncle Chris was talking about. He reminded me of Bobby.
The rest of the evening, I kept waiting for a chance to ask Aunt Betty about that picture, but I could never get to her alone. Between her fussing with food, her kids, and the birthday cake for Aunt Louise, she was always with someone or other.
Then, when I saw Uncle Chris sitting off alone, reading a newspaper, I decided to see if I could get him to tell me some family history. He and Bobby had become friends. Maybe he’d be friends with me, too. Besides, he had been yelling about the truth. I could use a bit of that.
21
Uncle Chris peeked at me from behind his paper, something called The Daily Worker.
“Hey, Pete,” he called, “how you doing?”
“Okay.”
“I heard you got suspended from school for fighting.”
“Who told you?”
“Your brother. Glad you’re a fighter like me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Fighting—struggle—it’s what the working class is all about.” He held out his hands. He was older than Grandma, and his hands were big and solid, with thick fingers. “I work with my hands,” he said. “Dirty hands. Not like your dad, one of those wishy-washy socialists.”
He said “socialists” as if it was some girly thing. Not sure how to react, I just stood there.
He grinned, stood, rolled up his paper, and bopped my head. He towered over me. “Just kidding,” he said. “Hey, like cars?”
“Sort of.”
“I got a new one. Want to see it? Come on. I’m tired of my relatives. The car’s parked right around the corner.”
When we got down to the street, I said, “Can I ask you something about our family?” It was growing dark, and streetlights were already on.
“Ha! You’ve come to the right place. I know where the bodies are buried.” He grinned. “Digging up dirt. It’s what plumbers do.”
I said, “What happened to my grandfather?”
He wheeled around. “Is that why you got me out here?” he demanded. “To ask me that?”
“You said you wanted—”
“How come you’re asking?”
The best I could come up with was, “Grandma told me my grandpa vanished. Dad said he died.”
Uncle Chris glared at me. “My brother disappeared.”
“Where did he go?”
Chris stood there, breathing heavily, his big hands in fists. In the gloom, he looked enormous, a little scary. “Let me tell you something, Pete. Back in them days, there was the worldwide collapse of capitalism. Wasn’t easy for your grandma to feed the kids when your grandfather, my brother, ran off. My nieces had to drop out of school, find what work they could. Everybody was just scrambling to keep alive. Eventually, I had to step in. It was me who kept the family together.”
That was what Grandma said she had done. She hadn’t mentioned Chris at all.
He kept going. “Did your dad help? No siree bob. Denny-boy stayed in school. Kept his nose in a book.”
That time he said book as if it was a dirty word.
“After your grandfather went off, I was a second father to your dad. Tried to give him advice. Did he listen? No. After all I done for him, he announces he’s going to take care of himself. Then he abandons his mother.
“Your dad had a friend. What was his name? Alberto Depaco. Dumb Al. From the old neighborhood. They went to the same high school and they ups and took off together. I tried to find Dennis for his mother’s sake. If I had gotten to him, I would have belted him for a home run. I tried to find Tom, too.”
He went on, angrier every moment. “Wasn’t till after Pearl Harbor your father comes back. He’s in the army. Married. With kids. Home for a couple of days, then off to the war. Near the end, he’s wounded and suddenly Dennis is a different guy. Willing to be part of the family. Oh, sure.
“I’m a nice guy, so I offers to take him into my business. Be like my son. He tells me he wants to do something better. Ha! Better than me. Becomes a college professor. So here he is. A stuffed shirt. Thinks he’s smarter than us all.”
Chris was describing someone I didn’t know. Dad wasn’t like that.
“You want facts?” he went on. “Your old man thinks he’s better than the rest of us. Professor I-do-what-I-want-the-heck-with-the-family. Some professor. Your father can’t handle the truth. Can you?” He grabbed my arm, yanked me toward him, put his hot face and breath up close.
“I . . . I think so,” I said, scared.
“Let me tell you something about myself, Pete. I’m a Communist. A real one. Proud of it.”
I couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“Because I know what’s the truth. The future. I don’t give up. Not like your father.” He snorted. “Take it from me, Dennis is a turncoat.”
He shoved me away. “Now go back to your aunt’s and tell your old man to stuff it. I’m going to unclog a toilet. Clean work.” With that, he turned and marched off.
Shaken, I watched him storm away, unable to make sense of what he said. The future. Hadn’t Bobby complained that he was the only one in the family who cared about that? As I hurried back to my aunt’s apartment, I realized I never saw Chris’s new car. And he hadn’t told me what had happened to my grandfather, either.
I felt like I was looking through a kaleidoscope. Every turn I made, things changed: shape, color, and the connections between them. It’s a strange world when you can’t put names to the colors you’re seeing.
22
For the rest of the evening I avoided the adults and stayed with my cousins, playing Monopoly. Between turns, I tried to make sense of what I’d heard. I couldn’t.
Going home on the subway, Bobby gave me an elbow. “Dodgers beat the Gia
nts again. Giants lost their last three to the Dodgers. That’s eight losses straight. Eight. Still a Giants fan?”
“Yeah,” I muttered.
“Loser.”
Soon as we got home, Dad went into his office and started grading student papers.
I followed him. “Dad, can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” he said, without stopping his work.
“Uncle Chris told me he’s a Communist.”
Dad swiveled around and looked at me. I tried to read his face but couldn’t tell what was there: disgust or uneasiness. He took a deep breath, smoothed out his mustache with his thumb, and said, “If he wants to say that, he’s a bigger fool than I thought. What made him tell you?”
“Just talking,” I said, not wanting to tell Dad I was trying to find out about him. “He was reading a newspaper called The Daily Worker. What’s that?”
“The Communist Party newspaper.”
“Oh. Why is Uncle Chris so angry?”
“He’s always angry. And a couple of years ago he got into serious trouble over taxes. Didn’t pay or something.”
“What happened to him?”
“I’m not sure. In that situation . . . if it’s truly bad, people can go to jail. But most often, they make a deal with the government. You know, slowly pay back the money along with fines they owe. Chris didn’t go to jail, so he must have worked something out. But he just got angrier.”
I stood there. “Dad?”
“What?” He was exhausted.
“Grandma said when you were a kid you ran away from home. That true?”
I had taken him by surprise. He sat there for a few moments, then said, “What made her tell you that?”
I gave a shrug. “I asked her.”
Dad sat there, as if he weren’t sure how to respond. He flexed his bad arm. “You know what, Pal, I think I’ve told you enough about that time. Nothing but unhappy memories.”
I was not going to be pushed off. “Grandma said memories are dead-end streets.”
His eyes softened. “She may be right.”
“Dad, you said you’d always tell me the truth.”
“Pal, sometimes the truth is too complicated. Now, I have papers to grade.” He turned back to his work.