How to Grow an Addict

by J. A. Wright

  So I decided to try it, and once I did she responded by offering to help me with all kinds of stuff. She taught me how to use hairpins to keep my bangs back, how to wear a bathing cap so it didn’t pinch my ears, and how to pluck out the little brown hairs from what she called my “middlebrow.” She even started taking me to the beauty place she went to every week. I liked how they steamed my face and massaged in different creams. And they always sent me home with face cleansers and lotions that I was supposed to use every morning and night.

  My new skin ritual added a few minutes to my morning routine, but it didn’t eat up enough time to make me feel better about waiting so long for Aunt Flo. Most mornings it took her almost an hour to get ready, and by the time she appeared in the dining room I was so hungry it was almost unbearable.

  When she was dressed and ready for the day, she’d make an announcement from the bedroom, and Uncle Hank would take his seat in the living room on his favorite chair, which had a good view of the hallway, and yell out something corny like, “Come to Papa,” or “Here, kitty kitty.” Only then would Aunt Flo begin her stroll down the hallway, pretending she was a model in a fashion show. She never broke a smile or stepped out of character until the finish, when she’d land on Uncle Hank’s lap. They’d get all romantic before they’d join me at the dining table for breakfast.

  I didn’t like to watch Aunt Flo’s walk as much as I liked to watch the cats run down the hall with her. It didn’t matter where they were or what they were doing, when they heard Uncle Hank call out to Aunt Flo they’d run right to him and most of them would arrive on his lap before Aunt Flo did. Then he’d do his best to get them off because Aunt Flo wouldn’t sit down if the cats were on him. I don’t know what was funnier, the cats jumping on Uncle Hank’s lap or his shooing them away.

  Aunt Flo would get so mad at the cats that she’d threaten to buy a dog just to get back at them. But we all knew that would never happen, and we also knew the cats were really Uncle Hank’s. Aunt Flo was more of a small dog person but was too allergic to have one in the house.

  “Cats are my favorite animals,” Uncle Hank told me on our drive to the Grand Canyon after I saw a few deer on the side of the road and told him how much I liked them. “I suppose I like cats because my mother had three and I grew up in a small village where everyone had animals and homes so close together you could have a conversation with the neighbors without leaving the house,” he said.

  Uncle Hank’s hometown was near the sea in Lithuania. He lived there until he was thirteen, and by then he’d learned to swim so well his parents thought he’d become a national champion.

  “World War II changed everything. My parents made me and my little sister Liora leave the country with some people they knew. I was barely thirteen and my sister was ten. It was a dark time,” Uncle Hank said. They ended up in Brooklyn and lived there until Liora got married and moved to California.

  Uncle Hank moved to Los Angeles in 1951, when he was twenty-four, and met Aunt Flo at a housewarming party he attended with Liora and her husband. “Your Aunt Flo was there with a friend, so I only had a few minutes with her, but they were the best moments of my year,” he said.

  He was interested in Aunt Flo, but he also had dreams of being in the movies. He trained to be a Hollywood stuntman and got lucky from the start because he could ride a horse well and knew a few tricks. He said he worked pretty steady for years and got lots of jobs because of his abilities and flexibility; Aunt Flo said it was also because of his good looks.

  After four years of working hard and getting tired of being alone, Uncle Hank mustered the courage to call Aunt Flo and ask her out on a date. He said he knew she was available because Liora was friendly with Aunt Flo’s sister Violet. He also said he knew he’d marry her one day but needed to know he could make enough money to keep her happy. They started dating a few weeks after he finished working on a big horror movie, and got married the summer of 1956.

  Night Scream was his first “big” movie, and I got to watch it, but only once, because it took a long time to set up the projector and film reels, and Aunt Flo said it was too much work just to watch Uncle Hank fall out of a tree and land on top of a crazed bimbo zombie. Uncle Hank said she didn’t like the movie because he’d dated the actress who played the bimbo zombie before her.

  He quit working as a stuntman when he was forty, after “some asshole” screwed up and gave a signal to a driver to turn right instead of left. He hurt his back real bad and it took him years to be able to move the way he used to. Dad said he made more money from the insurance payout after the accident than he’d made in his entire career as a stuntman. He thought the settlement was in the six figures. At least, that’s what I heard him tell his mechanic.

  After he gave up the movie business, Uncle Hank took up writing jingles for radio advertisements and copy for greeting cards. According to Aunt Flo, Uncle Hank was pretty good with words and she often helped him because she had great advice to give. “It ain’t doing anyone any good just sitting in my head,” she said.

  The Pretty Good Card Company bought most things Uncle Hank sent them, and I thought writing must pay pretty well because he and Aunt Flo never seemed to worry about money. But I found out the real story the summer I stayed with Aunt Flo and Uncle Hank. Just after their Fourth of July barbecue (which my parents weren’t invited to), Dad called their house and I answered the phone. My stomach got all twisted up when I heard him say, “Put Hank on the phone will ya?” because I had been hoping I wouldn’t see or hear from Dad that summer.

  A few days later, he showed up in his blue convertible T-bird because he was selling it to Uncle Hank. “He needs money for Robbie’s tuition,” I’d heard Uncle Hank tell Aunt Flo earlier in the day. I went out to the driveway with Uncle Hank when Dad arrived and said hello but Dad didn’t say anything back. After a bit of discussion, Uncle Hank handed Dad a big envelope and I stood next to the fence petting one of the cats and watching Uncle Hank slowly walk around the car, looking at the tires and fenders and even the mirrors.

  Dad stood on the driver’s side counting the money out on the hood of the car. “You must make some big bucks from selling those secrets of yours to the commies, huh Hank?” Dad laughed.

  Uncle Hank’s eyes went wide for a second and he took a big step toward my dad and stuck his hand out. Dad stopped counting and reached out to take Uncle Hank’s hand and I could tell from the way my dad’s face crinkled up when Uncle Hank grabbed his hand that it hurt. The handshake went on for a long time before Uncle Hank said, “I have no secrets and I’m not a communist.”

  Dad pulled his hand away and stepped back. “Well, if you ask me, only a spy or my mother would have that much money stashed away,” he said.

  “But no one asked you,” Uncle Hank said in a calm and matter-of-fact way as he reached over and took the Thunderbird’s car keys off the hood of the car.

  I could feel myself starting to laugh a little so I turned and walked toward the house so my dad couldn’t see me. For as long as I could remember, Dad had been telling my mom and his buddies at the car club that Uncle Hank was a communist spy, and now Uncle Hank had let him know he was wrong in a way I’d never heard before and it was kind of funny—but I had a feeling Dad didn’t think so.

  I’d never seen Uncle Hank behave like that before, and I’d never seen that much money, either. If I hadn’t gone with Uncle Hank to his garden shed earlier that day, I might have sided with Dad. But Uncle Hank had been telling me for a few days about a special surprise he had in store for Aunt Flo and how he wanted my thoughts on it, and I was curious about the surprise, so when he waved me out of the pool to go to his shed that morning, I didn’t hesitate.

  The shed was next to the garage, not too far from the pool. It was full of Uncle Hank’s stuff. I often helped him with the rock polisher he kept in one corner of the shed, below the shelves of wine bottles that he labeled himself and stored by year. I watched him push an old steamer trunk from its place near the b
ack wall, opposite the rock polisher. He pointed to several floorboards and asked me to lift them up. They were loose, so it wasn’t hard at all. Once they were up, I saw a large red metal toolbox sitting on top of a big wooden chopping block, similar to the one Uncle Hank made for their kitchen. I let out a sigh of excitement and Uncle Hank laughed.

  He lifted the box and set it down on one of the several tables that lined the back wall. The box had a small combination lock on it, and he told me the code was the same as their street address: 22123. Uncle Hank’s red box was filled to the top with colored paper money he called pounds, and other bills he said were francs. Underneath the foreign money there were piles of US hundred-dollar bills stacked on top of shiny gold, rectangular bars.

  “Is this yours? Where did you get it?” I asked with excitement.

  He chuckled and told me it was all his, and then he picked up a gold bar and handed it to me. “I bought eight of these in 1970 when gold was cheap. They weigh ten ounces and they cost me three hundred and fifty dollars back then. They’re worth more than two thousand dollars now. It was a good investment,” he said.

  The gold bar was cold, hard, and smooth, and it felt good in my hand. I held on to it while Uncle Hank sorted through his things and pulled out a small black box. He smiled when he put it up to my face and opened it really slow. I heard myself gasp when I saw what was inside: a large, beautiful green stone, and two round diamonds almost as big as the green one. They were sitting close together, as if they were attached.

  The gems and the foreign money had once belonged to his mother and father, he said, and he’d been saving hundreddollar bills for years. “Make sure you save a little something from every paycheck. That’s how people get rich.”

  I nodded in agreement and then sat down on a wood stool Uncle Hank pulled out from under the table for me. I somehow knew I needed to slow down and pay attention, but I was so excited I kept wiggling around and almost dropped the gold bar. Uncle Hank took it from me, smiled, and said, “You don’t need to be nervous. These are my treasures, and I want you to know about them.”

  He placed the gems in the center of my left palm and I immediately put my right hand underneath to support it. Then he opened a small piece of paper and put it down on the table in front of me, “This is the ring I’m having made for Flo. What do you think?” he asked.

  The drawing wasn’t in color, so I just guessed that the green emerald would be in the middle and the diamonds on each side. Under the drawing of the ring were the words, Hank always loves Flo. I felt myself blush when he noticed I’d read it.

  “Oh, she’ll love it, Uncle Hank, that’s for sure. It’s almost as big as her wedding ring,” I said.

  “Not quite. Flo’s wedding ring has a very big rose cut diamond in the center. I wore it and a few other gems in a small hidden pocket my mother stitched into my coat before I left Lithuania. Liora had gems sewn into the hem of her dress, but we had to sell most of those in New York so she could afford to move to California. When she passed away last year her husband sent me one of the diamonds I’m using for Flo’s new ring,” he said.

  “I’m sorry about your sister,” I said.

  “Me too,” he replied.

  Uncle Hank spent the next few minutes organizing the gold bars and money before he spoke again. “My jeweler friend from the community center is going to make Flo’s new ring, and he promises it will be ready by August 15—our thirtieth wedding anniversary.”

  After he put the gems back in the black box, he took a picture frame out of a purple velvet pouch that he’d pulled from underneath the stacks of American money. He introduced me to his mother, father, two older brothers and two sisters, all standing close together in front of a fireplace and looking very serious. Uncle Hank was about six or seven in the photo, and Liora was standing next to him holding his hand. When I asked him where his family was now he shrugged his shoulders, looked down at the floor, and said, “Gone, all gone, all of them.”

  I sat quietly and watched him kiss the photo before he put it back into the velvet pouch and laid it gently on top of a gold bar. He picked up a few stacks of US hundred-dollar bills and put them in his shirt pocket before he put his treasures back in the red box and the box back under the floorboards and pushed the steamer trunk back where it belonged. When we were walking back to the house, I asked him why he didn’t keep the money in the bank, and he told me he didn’t trust banks or bankers or anyone else with his things. “You shouldn’t trust others with the things that are most important to you, okay?”

  I nodded yes before I told him I wanted to go for a swim. He patted my head and said, “Go for your swim, but promise me you’ll keep the box our secret. Don’t breathe a word about it to anyone, especially your brother, and don’t say anything to Flo because I’m planning to surprise her with it one day; I just haven’t decided when.”

  “Not a word, Uncle Hank, I promise.”

  He reached over and wrapped his arm around me. “You’re the most important person in my world—next to Flo, of course—and I sure hope when we’re gone you can raise your family here.”

  No one had ever told me I was important. I felt so good about it that I didn’t care about Dad not talking to me that afternoon.

  I stayed awake much longer than I wanted to thinking about Uncle Hank’s reaction to my Dad accusing him of being a spy. Uncle Hank had been so serious, almost angry, and it scared me a little. I also thought about what Dad always said about Uncle Hank, that he was a spy and a millionaire. I’d overheard him tell his friends at the car club how Uncle Hank’s greeting card racket was a cover for his spying, and how he wrote jingles containing codes and secret messages.

  It did seem to me that Uncle Hank had a lot more money and stuff than my parents had, and I wondered what type of special information Uncle Hank might have that someone would pay a million dollars for. Other than his hidden box and his plan to make a ring for Aunt Flo, he’d never told me anything especially secretive, maybe how to do a good poker face and master the game of cribbage, but I was sure others knew what 15-2, 15-4 meant.

  The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that Dad was wrong about Uncle Hank. Especially after I recalled how much Aunt Flo helped him with his jingles, and how I’d even helped him once with a greeting card message and he’d given me thirty dollars—ten dollars for each word I contributed. He even showed me the card when it was printed up and it didn’t look to me like there was any secret code in it.

  I think my contribution of “you hate peas” really made the card special:

  I can’t wait and you sleep late.

  You like opera and I dig the blues.

  I love cooking and you hate peas.

  I drink coffee and you like tea.

  Though we don’t always agree;

  I know you’re the one for me.

  CHAPTER 8

  Uncle Hank wasn’t just good at writing jingles; he was good at lots of other things too, including cooking. They had a kitchen that reminded me of a restaurant, complete with a big gas stove, a double wall oven, and three stainless steel sinks, one for washing, one for rinsing, and another one for rinsing again. There was a large work counter next to the sinks, and another they used as a breakfast counter. I loved everything about their kitchen, especially the card table–size butcher block in the middle and the rack of copper pots and pans hanging above it. Uncle Hank spent a lot of time in the kitchen cooking and cleaning. He often wore a large white chef’s apron around the house, even when he wasn’t cooking.

  Every cupboard and drawer was full of utensils, and their walk-in pantry was stacked from floor to ceiling with boxes and bags of food. They had a large spice rack on the inside of the pantry door and a bunch of herbs growing in a dirt box on the back porch. And because Uncle Hank loved tomatoes, there were four hanging baskets just outside the back door that provided tomatoes all year round.

  On the few days it rained the summer I stayed with them I awoke to the smell of baking
and knew that Uncle Hank had gotten up extra early and used the sourdough starter he kept in the back of the refrigerator to make a loaf of chewy bread. He told me that he’d given pieces of his gooey sourdough starter to more than forty people since he got it in 1963 from an old lady he used to pick up and take to church. “A few months before Mrs. Kulis passed away she invited me over to see photos of her family, and while I was there she gave me a glass jar with a ball of dough in it. I spent the next couple of hours with her learning to care for it and making the best loaf of rye bread,” Uncle Hank said.

  I loved Uncle Hank’s sourdough toast just about as much as I loved his blackberry jam.

  Besides bread, Uncle Hank also made cheese, yogurt, juice, and wine, and he even had a meat smoker he used to make a special type of ham. But the biggest source of food at their house was the garden. All year round it produced fruits and vegetables. What they didn’t eat, Uncle Hank gave away to neighbors and friends at the community center. The same community center where he took cooking and pottery classes and played bridge on Fridays.

  I felt like Uncle Hank’s food guinea pig. He was always trying to get me to eat something and I often had no idea what it was. I was about five the first time he served me shredded kale, red cabbage, garlic chives, and toasted pecans over baked peaches sprinkled with cumin and cinnamon. I remember sitting at the dining table and crying because I didn’t want to eat it and Uncle Hank pleading with me to try a bite or two. I finally did, but only after he poured some Hershey’s chocolate syrup on the peaches.

  It took time, but I eventually got used to eating his unusual dishes, and sometimes I’d even ask for his mashed honey-glazed carrots, parsnips, and leeks with roasted pumpkin slices and fried shallots. Occasionally Uncle Hank would drizzle dark balsamic on top to give it a little tang.