Don't Make Me Smile

by Barbara Park

  “Good. Fine. I’ll never wink again,” she said.

  She left the room in a huff. I never realized that winking meant so much to her.

  After that, the day passed pretty slowly. Time always passes slowly when you’re waiting for a surprise.

  By about two o’clock, I started to wonder if maybe my mother had called off the surprise completely. Maybe she was even madder about the winking than I had thought.

  That’s when I heard the doorbell.

  “Yes! This must be it!” I said right out loud.

  I ran to the front door and pulled it open.

  There stood Hank.

  Hank is one of my mother’s cousins. She has three of them. Two of them are really cool. The other one is Hank.

  We don’t see Hank very often. He lives about a hundred miles away. It’s what I like best about him.

  Hank is a total cornball. You can tell he doesn’t have any kids of his own. He’s always saying the kind of stuff kids hate. You know, like calling you “little man” and junk like that.

  When I saw him standing there, I was stunned for a second. I just stared.

  Hank pushed his way into the house. “Hiya there, Chas!” he said loudly.

  As soon as he was inside, he picked me up and swung me around.

  I hate being swung around. I hate it almost as much as I hate being called Chas.

  After he put me down, Hank stuck out his hand for me to shake. “Put ’er there, big guy,” he said.

  I shook it.

  “Oooeee!” he hollered. “That’s really some grip you’ve got there, tiger!”

  “I’ll go get Mom,” I said. Then I turned and ran full speed ahead to my mother’s room. I hoped she wouldn’t be upset. She usually doesn’t like it when company drops by unexpectedly.

  When I ran in, she had just finished fixing her hair.

  “Mom, you’re not going to believe this, but your crazy cousin Hank just showed up at our front door!” I said. “He’s out there in the hall waiting for you!”

  My mother smiled. “I know, Charlie,” she said. “It’s perfectly okay.”

  “Whew,” I said. “That’s a relief. I thought maybe he had just dropped by or something.”

  “No. I knew he was coming,” she said.

  “Well, you better get out there and say hello,” I told her. “I’m going to be in my room for a while. Call me when the surprise gets here, okay?”

  Mom’s face went funny. “What did you say?” she asked.

  “I said, ‘Call me when the surprise gets here.’ ”

  Mom frowned. “Charlie,” she said. “My cousin Hank is the surprise. He drove down to spend Easter with us.”

  I was hoping I hadn’t heard her right.

  “Hank?” I asked. “Hank is the big surprise?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I called him to spend the holiday here.”

  “But … but why?”

  “Because I thought it would be nice if we had someone over here to share our Easter dinner with,” she said.

  “But why?” I asked again.

  “Because I didn’t want you to feel lonely,” she said. “I thought we should have family around us.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  I guess I should have tried to act happier, but oh and why seemed to be all I could come up with.

  Mother put her arm on my shoulder and we walked back to the hall. Hank was still there. He picked Mom up and swung her around. Then the three of us went into the living room and sat down.

  “Did you get the eggs ready?” Hank asked my mother.

  “Sure did,” she said. “Charlie dyed them all himself.”

  She turned to me. “Hank had a great idea, Charles. We’re going to send you on an Easter-egg hunt. That’s what all the eggs were for.”

  “Oh,” I said again.

  “You’re going to love this, big guy,” said Hank.

  “When I was a boy, my parents always hid eggs in the backyard. Then my brother and I would go out and try to find them. The best thing about it was that my dad gave us money for every egg we found.”

  “Oh,” I said, for the third time.

  “Doesn’t that sound like fun?” asked Mom.

  Dumb. It sounded dumb. But I didn’t want to hurt my mother’s feelings.

  “Fun,” I said. “Fun.”

  Hank stood up and headed for the backyard. “You’ll only have five minutes to find them,” he said. “And here’s the best part. I’m going to give you a dime for every one you find.”

  Whoopee, I thought.

  “You stay here now, Charlie,” said my mother. “Hank and I will go hide the eggs. And remember … no peeking.”

  The two of them hurried outside. I waited alone in the living room.

  After a few minutes had passed, Hank called me from the back door. “OKAY, CHAS!” he shouted. “YOU CAN COME NOW! WE’RE READY!”

  Slowly, I got up and walked outside. Believe me, I was in no hurry. This was one of the dumbest things I’d ever had to do in my life.

  When I got outside, my mother and Hank were standing there grinning. It was obvious that they were having a lot better time than I was.

  “Okay, Chas,” said Hank, “you’ve got five minutes.”

  My mother shoved an empty basket in my hand. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. GO!” she shouted.

  I couldn’t stand how stupid she was acting.

  “God, Mother,” I said. “This isn’t a space launch.”

  My mother hates it when I say God. I almost always get a lecture if she hears me say it. But saying God is as close as I can come to really swearing without serious punishment, so sometimes I say it, anyway.

  This time, she ignored it.

  “Just go!” she yelled. “You’re wasting time! Start looking!”

  Hank looked at his watch. “Hurry up, Chas,” he said, “you’ve already wasted forty seconds.”

  I walked out into the middle of the yard and looked around. I spotted three eggs in the bushes. They were lying out in plain sight. Hank must have thought I needed glasses or something.

  I picked them up and put them in my basket. I looked around and saw a couple more around the tree. I walked over and picked them up. Two more were balanced in the branches. I grabbed them, too.

  So far I had collected seven eggs. There were twenty-nine more to go. I made my way around the yard, picking up the eggs as I walked along. Not one of them was hard to find.

  Finally, Hank shouted for me to stop. “TIME’S UP!” he called. “BRING YOUR BASKET IN!”

  I wished he hadn’t shouted so loud. If any of my friends knew that I was hunting for eggs, I would have died. Slowly, I carried the basket over to the patio.

  Mom counted them. “Thirty-six!” she said. “You got all thirty-six, Charlie! That’s great!”

  “Shh. Not so loud,” I said.

  Hank laughed. “Don’t be so modest, Chas! You should be proud of yourself!” he said. “When my brother and I used to do this, we never found all of them.”

  “Maybe your parents didn’t put them out in plain sight,” I said. “I tripped over at least ten of them.”

  Hank laughed again and reached into his pocket. “Let’s see now. How much does old cousin Hank owe you?”

  “Three-sixty,” I said. I probably shouldn’t have made him pay. But if you’re going to make a fool out of yourself, you ought to get a little something for your effort, I think.

  Hank handed me the money.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I turned to my mother. “Is this the end of the ‘fun’?” I said. “Would it be all right if I go watch TV?”

  “Sure, go ahead,” she said. “Dinner will be ready in a few minutes.”

  I went inside and turned on the TV. Naturally, nothing good was on. No sports, no cartoons, no nothing. Television stations save their worst shows for Sunday afternoon. They probably figure that on Sunday afternoon people are so bored they’ll watch anything.

/>   They’re right, too. I ended up watching this do-it-yourself show about how to repair water rings on your tabletops.

  My mother and Hank stayed outside and talked for a few minutes. When Mom came in to fix dinner, Hank flopped down beside me on the couch.

  “What’cha watchin’, big guy?” he asked.

  I can’t decide which I hate worse, Chas or big guy.

  “Nothing much,” I answered. “Just some dumb show.”

  “You mind if old Cousin Hank watches it with you?” he asked again.

  I said no. But it wasn’t easy. I minded a lot. The guy was seriously getting on my nerves. I thought if he called me Chas one more time, I would blow up.

  “What’s this show about, Chas?” he asked then.

  Quickly, I sprung up from the couch. “Could you please stop calling me Chas?” I said. “I hate that name. How would you like me to call you Hanky? Huh? Would you like that, Cousin Hanky?”

  Hank’s face looked confused at first. Then just plain hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

  Right away, I felt terrible inside. I never should have shouted at him like that. Not ever.

  My mother had heard me yell. She came in and grabbed me by the arm.

  “Could you please excuse us for a minute, Hank?” she asked. Then she quickly pulled me down the hall to my room.

  She slammed the door. “How could you, Charles?” she said. “How could you have said something so hateful?”

  I didn’t know myself, so I couldn’t answer.

  “What kind of kid are you, anyway?” she asked. “My cousin drove over a hundred miles to brighten up your Easter, and you stand there and scream at him like that? How could you?”

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t know how I could, Mother,” I said. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I didn’t really expect that Hank would be the big surprise today. I thought it would be something better.”

  “Oh, well, that’s just wonderful,” said Mom. “Now what am I supposed to do? Tell him he wasn’t a good enough surprise and send him home? Or first, maybe you’d like to yell at him some more.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  She opened my door and pointed. “Well, don’t tell me. I’m not the one who drove one hundred miles to spend Easter with you. If you’re really sorry, you go tell Hank. You fix this, Charlie. I mean it.”

  My mother is very big on having me apologize to people. But this time, I knew she was right.

  I walked back into the living room. Hank was sitting there pretending to watch the furniture show.

  “Hank, I’m sorry, okay?” I said. “I’m really, really sorry for yelling at you like that. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. Honest. It’s just that I’ve been having some personal problems lately. And I’m not really acting that good.”

  Hank smiled. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “We all have to blow off steam once in a while. Everybody says things they don’t mean.”

  I tried to smile back. “It’s okay to call me Chas if you want,” I said.

  Hank reached over and ruffled my hair. “That’s okay, big guy,” he said.

  A couple of minutes later, my mother called us to dinner. While we were eating, no one said very much. I forced myself to smile more than usual. So did my mother and Hank. It takes a while for people to start acting normal after there’s been a big argument like that.

  After dinner, Hank stuck around for a couple of hours. He still acted corny, but for some reason I didn’t mind it as much. I guess just because someone is a big cornball, it’s no reason not to like him.

  I just hope that my mother doesn’t think she needs to call Hank every time there’s a holiday, though. If I thought his Easter-egg hunt was dumb, I’d hate to see what Hank would come up with for Halloween.

  Thinking about this worried me a little. I wanted to mention it to my mother, but I didn’t want her to get mad at me all over again.

  Suddenly, I thought about Dr. Girard. I wondered what he might tell me to do?

  There was only one way to find out.

  I went to the phone and dialed his number.

  The voice on the other end was a recording. It said: “Dr. Girard is not in the office right now. At the sound of the tone, please leave your name and telephone number, and Dr. Girard will return your call … beep!”

  “This is Charles Hickle, Dr. Girard,” I said nervously. “My number is 555–6788. Please call me back. Thanks.”

  After I hung up, I already felt better. Just the idea that there was someone I could talk to helped me more than I thought.

  (eleven)

  SO FAR, I’ve talked to Dr. Girard four times. Each time he’s made me feel a little bit better about things.

  Don’t get me wrong, though. I still don’t think I’m ever going to totally get over this. And I still think divorce is a rotten thing for parents to do.

  It’s really hard for me to get used to living just with my mother. It must be weird for her, too. Almost every night, when she sets the table, she accidentally puts out three plates.

  Once in a while, Mom calls me “the man of the house.” I don’t know if she’s trying to make me feel grown-up or what. But I don’t really like it. Just because they decided to get divorced doesn’t suddenly turn me into a man. I don’t even shave yet. The next thing you know, she’ll expect me to go to work or something.

  Of course, maybe going to work wouldn’t be so bad. It’s got to be better than school. Because to tell you the truth, school hasn’t been going that well for me lately. I used to be pretty good in school, but ever since the divorce, I’ve had a hard time keeping my mind on stuff. Somehow, learning how brine shrimp lay eggs just doesn’t seem important anymore.

  Right after my teacher found out that things were bad for me at home, she got real nice. She didn’t make me do any work at all, hardly. But teachers don’t stay patient like that forever. Teachers definitely have a limit on their niceness.

  Last Friday after school, Mrs. Fensel handed me a note to take home to my mother. She told me to be sure that Mom saw it.

  “I’m going to trust you not to read it first, Charles,” she said.

  What a lie. If she really “trusted me not to read it,” why did she have it all sealed up with tape? Does that sound like trust to you?

  Having to take a note home to your mother is one of the worst things a kid ever has to do. It’s like asking a criminal to cut off his own head, sort of. It’s just not fair.

  All the way home I held the note real loosely in my hand. I kept waiting for a big strong gust of wind to come along and blow it away. But as usual, there’s never a good wind when you need one.

  The same thing used to happen when I was a little kid and I wanted to fly my kite. I would spend about an hour untangling my ball of string, and by the time I got it all ready, the wind had totally stopped. Usually, I ended up dragging it up and down the street a couple of times and putting it away.

  The only time it’s ever windy is when you don’t want it to be. Like when you finish swimming, for instance. I don’t know where the wind comes from, but as soon as you get out of the water, a big gust comes and freezes your tail off.

  Anyhow, on the day Mrs. Fensel gave me the note, the wind was nowhere to be found. I tried blowing it away myself by sneezing on it really hard. But that didn’t work, either. I think all the tape was weighing it down.

  When I finally got home, I decided to take the note to my room first before giving it to my mother. I thought that maybe I could hold it up to the light and read a few words. But when I looked through the envelope, all I could see was that the note was folded into a tiny little wad. Good old Mrs. Fensel. She knew every trick in the book.

  The stupid thing was, I really didn’t need to read the note at all. I knew exactly what it was going to say. And trust me, Mom wasn’t going to be too thrilled about it.

  My grades hadn’t been very good lately. In fact, the highest mark I had
gotten that week was a D+ in spelling. I would have gotten a C-, but I forgot to capitalize Russia.

  Personally, I think it’s really stupid to count a word wrong just because you didn’t use a capital. It’s not that you’re using the wrong letter, it’s just that you’ve used it in an alternative size.

  As I stood there with that note, I thought about how much trouble I was going to be in. For the first time in five weeks, I began to think about running away from home again. When it comes to getting good grades, my mother is really tough.

  I knew exactly what she would do. She would read the note and then call me into the living room for a little “talk.” And if there’s one thing that I hate, it’s one of my mother’s little “talks” about schoolwork.

  First, she starts out by telling me how she isn’t going to yell or scold me. Then she yells and scolds me. After that, she starts taking away all of the fun things that I like to do and tries to make it seem like it’s for my “own good.” That way, she doesn’t feel so mean.

  The more I thought about it, the dumber it seemed to actually give Mom the note at all. I mean, if I already knew what she was going to say, what was the point of bothering her with it? Instead, I could give myself my own little “talk” and save her the trouble.

  “Okay,” I said to myself. “I promise that I’ll watch less TV and study harder.”

  There. Now my poor mother wouldn’t have to feel so mean about yelling at me. What a thoughtful son I was to spare her that.

  Besides, Mrs. Fensel hadn’t specifically told me to give my mother the note. All she had said to do was to be sure Mom saw it. So, if my mother saw the envelope, I wouldn’t be doing anything wrong.

  Mom was in the kitchen. I grabbed the note and went in to say hello.

  We talked for a while about the usual stuff. Then finally, I headed for my room again. Right before I left the kitchen, I dropped the note on the floor.

  I picked it right up and kept on going.

  “What was that?” asked my mother.

  “Nothing,” I called from the hall. “It’s just a note that someone wrote at school. No big deal.”

  When I got back to my room, I felt much better. Now I wouldn’t be lying when I told Mrs. Fensel that my mother saw the note. There’s no doubt about it … I am definitely a clever kid.