Record Breaker

by Robin Stevenson

  It was even kind of exciting. Sometimes Dad let me help him, explaining his sketches to me and letting me add columns of figures, because, as he said, I had a good brain for arithmetic. We’d gone out in the backyard one evening and I’d held the tape measure for him while he paced out exactly where the bomb shelter could go. It had been raining lightly, and he was in a good mood, laughing and ruffling my damp hair. That night, with music playing softly and Mom resting on the couch with three-week-old Annie sleeping in her arms, it had been hard to feel worried about anything. We could have been planning a backyard fort, a clubhouse for me and my friends to play in.

  And then the Russians put nuclear missiles in Cuba, and it stopped being a game. See? Dad had said. You see? They’re going to do it. The crazy bastards are going to do it. But don’t worry. We’ll be ready.

  Within a few days there was a crew of workers in our backyard. By Christmas, Annie was almost four months old and the shelter was finished. Then, in January, Annie died and my mother sort of fell apart, and my aunt Jane came all the way from England to look after her for a few weeks. Mom cried all the time, which was awful, but after Jane left, it was even worse. Half the time, Mom wouldn’t even get out of bed. I started having nightmares again, and sometimes Annie would be in my dreams too, crying and sick from radiation poisoning, or dead and buried in the giant hole behind our house.

  After Annie died, Dad lost interest in the shelter. I guess he’d been mostly concerned about protecting Annie, but as it turned out, he couldn’t do that anyway. So the shelter was basically finished, but there was nothing in it at all—no food or water or iodine tablets or whatever else it was supposed to have. If there was a war, we’d starve to death. I wondered, if we all died, whether I’d see Annie and whether my mom would be happy again. Though if the whole planet was wiped out, maybe heaven and hell would be gone too. Could heaven and hell go on existing if there were no people anymore? I wasn’t sure how that would work. It wasn’t the sort of question you could ask anyone.

  Three

  Our school is called Memorial, and it’s on Wilson Street, the main road through town. It’s not far from my house, not even a ten-minute walk. Ancaster is a pretty small town. Not even a town, really. More of a village. There’s the one main street and on it there’s our school, the new post office, Thompson’s Grocery Store, Township Hall, the bank, a couple of churches, the fish-and-chips shop and Tony’s Variety. And that’s about it. If you head west, you’re in farmers’ fields, and if you head east, you’re going toward Hamilton.

  By the time Allan and I got to school, we were both soaked. Miss Thomas was standing at the front of the class, and she nodded and smiled at Allan and me. She was the nicest—and prettiest—teacher in the school. She wore pointy-toed shoes with high heels, and purple eye shadow. It was her first year teaching and she got all flustered sometimes, but hardly anyone took advantage like they would have with some other teachers.

  As I made my way between the rows of desks to my seat near the front of the classroom, I felt something hit me in the back of the head. I pretended not to notice. I sat down, took my books out of my bag and placed them neatly on my desk. And then—ever so casually, like I was just smoothing down my hair—I reached back and felt the wet, gummy spitball stuck there. I flicked it to the floor and, without looking around, opened a book and tried to act as if nothing had happened.

  My ears were on fire though. Probably everyone sitting behind me could see them glowing, sticking out on either side of my head like two red beacons.

  Richard Cole, from whose mouth I was sure the spitball had come, sat three rows back and one row over. I could feel his eyes on me and picture his satisfied grin. Richard was tall—the tallest kid in our class—and fair-haired, with a thin freckled face. We’d been friends back when we were little kids. He lived on my street, so we’d ridden our bikes together and played at each other’s houses. We’d drifted apart a few years ago, but it had all been friendly enough until fifth grade. For some reason, Richard had turned into a real jerk. It hadn’t been so bad when I’d had David on my side, but this year I was on my own. Grade seven, and still Richard wasn’t showing any signs of growing up.

  Mom had wanted to talk to my teacher about it, but Dad wouldn’t let her. He said I had to fight my own battles. He was right: if the teachers got involved, it’d only make things worse. Mom had no idea about how things worked at school.

  Still, it was all very well for Dad to tell me to fight my own battles. He’s over six feet tall and big in every way: strong and square-jawed and broad-shouldered. Even his hands are huge. He used to play baseball, and even though he’s thirty-five, he looks like a movie star. My parents used to say I’d be like him when I got older, but they stopped saying that a while back. It’s pretty obvious that I don’t take after my dad. I bet he never got hit with spitballs when he was a kid.

  Miss Thomas told us to work on our math problems, and I gratefully lost myself in fractions and ratios. Time passed way too quickly though, and soon enough we were all changing into gym clothes. We trooped down the stairs, single file, and across the field. I saw the bases set up and my heart sank. Baseball.

  Mr. Barnes, our phys ed teacher, was standing by home base. He didn’t look like any kind of athlete. He was a small balding man with a high-pitched nasal voice, and he always wore the same brown pants and beige shirt.

  “Come on, hurry up,” he called out.

  I looked at Allan and made a face. We both knew what was coming.

  “Team A, Richard. Team B, ahh…Cathy. Let’s get going.” Mr. Barnes adjusted his heavy-framed glasses on his nose and hiked his pants up higher. “No dillydallying! Let’s play ball!”

  Richard and Cathy took a few steps forward, separating themselves from the group before turning to survey us. I shuffled my feet, digging the toe of one runner into the soft damp grass. I hated it when we all had to stand in a line. Over the summer, it seemed like other kids had all gotten taller and I hadn’t. I was really short. Not short enough to be useful—the record for shortness was held by a dwarf called Georges Buffon, who was only sixteen inches tall. I wasn’t in that league. I was fifty-two inches: short enough to get teased about it but not short enough to be famous.

  “Thomas,” Richard said.

  Thomas Atkins, a tall, heavy boy who could hit a ball halfway to the moon, stepped forward.

  Cathy tucked her curls behind her ears and chewed on her bottom lip for a few seconds. “Pete,” she said.

  Pete Schultz grinned and winked at Cathy, and a few of the girls giggled.

  “Mark.” Richard beckoned to a wiry kid. I knew Mark was a fast runner because he’d chased me more than once, to steal my hat or knock my books out of my hand or carry out some other prank.

  And on it went, punctuated by occasional groans and stifled giggles, until I was the last one standing there. As usual.

  Richard didn’t even try to hide his disgust. He actually groaned out loud, then jerked his thumb toward me, scowling. As we walked away to take our positions—he put me in deep outfield, which was fine by me as I wouldn’t know where to throw the ball if by some miracle I caught it—I glared at him.

  “You’re such a jerk,” I said.

  “You’re such a jerk,” he repeated mockingly, his voice a high falsetto. “Boohoo. Jack called me a jerk. I’m going to cry.”

  I turned away, furious, wishing I had the courage to punch him. Sometimes I imagined doing it—imagined the feel of my knuckles smashing into his face—but I knew I wouldn’t ever do it. If it came to a fight, Richard would pound me into the ground. Besides, fighting was stupid.

  Standing in the outfield, keeping an anxious eye on the ball, I let myself imagine how shocked Richard would be if I broke a record. Maybe someone from the newspaper would come to the school to interview me. I’d be on the front page: Jack Laker, Record Breaker! That would show Richa
rd.

  Dad would be pretty shocked too. It bothered him that I didn’t like sports. I knew this because I’d heard him tell my mother, more than once. He’d coached the boys’ baseball team down by Spring Valley arena when I was younger. I’d played for three whole seasons before he finally gave up in disgust and let me quit. It wasn’t like I hadn’t tried. I knew how much it mattered to him. I knew how disappointed he’d been in me.

  Even though he’d stopped pushing me to play baseball, I felt like I had let him down. Sports were important to him. Even grumpy old Mr. Gilmore next door got Dad’s approval, just because he’d been a marathon runner a hundred years ago.

  Dad was going to get a real surprise when I broke a record. Sometimes I closed my eyes and pictured his face when I told him: wide-eyed shock, mouth dropping open, then that movie-star smile slowly widening as he realized it was true. I didn’t think you had it in you, he’d say, shaking his head. Looks like I was wrong, son.

  I could hardly wait.

  Four

  After school, Mrs. Miller picked us up in her blue-and-white Ford. “Jack, you’re coming home with us. Hop in, boys,” she said. Her nails were painted red and her blond hair curled up at the bottom, like Jackie Kennedy’s, only a little longer. It looked like little waves breaking just above her shoulders. She was wearing a pearl necklace too. Mrs. Miller was very glamorous for a mother.

  “Did you talk to my dad?” I climbed into the backseat.

  “Yes,” she said. “He has to work late and your mom’s had a hard day, so you’re staying with us tonight.”

  “Okay,” I said. It wasn’t the first time.

  When we got back to the Millers’ house, I went to the bathroom and stayed there for a long time, looking at National Geographic magazines. I wanted to be alone, but it’s hard when you’re a guest. I could hear Allan and his mom whispering to each other, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I was pretty sure they were talking about my family though.

  Everything seemed so wrong lately, and it seemed to me that the wrongness must show. When I looked in the mirror above the sink, I was almost surprised to see my own familiar face: brown eyes, little-kid snub nose, front teeth too big for my mouth. Same face I had a year ago, before everything got messed up. I wrinkled my nose at my reflection and wished I had broader shoulders. I pushed my sleeves up and flexed my muscles. Scrawny was the only word for me. I tried a few different angles but didn’t find any that made me look less pathetic.

  Finally I had to leave the bathroom, because I didn’t want Mrs. Miller to come knocking on the door and asking me if I was all right. Allan and I went up to his room and worked on his model airplane for a while, and I told him about my rocking-chair record attempt.

  “Doesn’t sound too hard,” he said.

  “I could have done it,” I told him.

  Allan squinted at me from behind his thick glasses. His lenses were blurry with smudged fingerprints and spattered with white flecks. Toothpaste, maybe, or spit. Something gross. “I was thinking maybe your family is cursed.”

  “That’s a stupid thing to say. The stupidest thing I ever heard.” But his words were bouncing around in my skull. Cursed. Cursed. Your family is cursed.

  He shrugged. “Seems like a lot of bad luck for one family to have.”

  “Not that much.” My heart started thumping like crazy.

  “That baby that died, and now your mom being sick, I mean.”

  “That baby was called Annie. And my mom’s not really sick. She’s just sad about Annie. So it’s really all the same thing, isn’t it?”

  Allan looked at me, his carrot-orange hair sticking straight up, his cheeks pink under all the freckles. “You found her, didn’t you? The baby? In her crib?”

  My mouth opened but nothing came out.

  “My mom told me,” Allan said.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” In my mind, a door slammed closed, with my memories of Annie locked securely on the other side. “Anyway, my mom will be fine.”

  “My mom said it’ll be a miracle if she ever gets over that baby dying.” Allan picked up a toothpick and spread a thin line of glue on the F-16’s wing. “She said it’s a terrible thing for a child to die before its mother.”

  I felt like hitting him. “We’re not cursed,” I said. “You shouldn’t say stuff like that.” But what if he was right?

  “People who lose a child, they’re never the same again. That’s what my mom says,” Allan said comfortably.

  I hated the way he always had to tell me what his mother said, but even more than that, I hated feeling like he might know more than I did about what was going on. “Did she say…did your mom tell you what’s wrong? I mean, with my mother?”

  Allan looked away, his cheeks flushing red behind all the freckles. “Not really,” he said.

  I didn’t believe him. According to our parents, Allan and I were best friends, but we weren’t really. I didn’t like him all that much. Whenever he thought he knew something I didn’t, he would get a smug grin on his face that annoyed the heck out of me. Other than our dads being cousins, the only thing we had in common was that we were both lousy baseball players. It wasn’t much to build a friendship on.

  My dad always said Allan was spoiled rotten, and if you asked me, he was right. The biggest problem in Allan’s life was that he had to practice the piano for twenty minutes a day. I looked around his room: paint-by-number pictures proudly displayed on the wall, model planes hanging from the ceiling on thin strands of fishing wire, stacks of comic books, the smell of glue, the blow-up mattress on the floor where I was supposed to sleep, the plate of Oreos his mother had brought up for us. A special treat on a hard day, she had said. Like cookies would help.

  I took the airplane from his hand and tossed it, not as gently as I should, onto his desk.

  “Hey! Careful. The glue’s not dry.”

  “Let’s go outside,” I said.

  Allan examined the plane carefully, inspecting it for signs of damage. “Okay,” he said finally. Standing on tiptoe, he set the plane down on the top shelf of his bookcase—out of my reach—and turned to me. “I’m making allowances because of what you’re going through,” he told me.

  I didn’t say anything, but I gave him a look that anyone with half a brain would know meant shut up.

  Allan shrugged and looked out the window. “Um, you want to go to Tony’s?” he offered. “We could buy some candy.”

  “Okay.” I followed him downstairs and stood by the front door while he went into the kitchen to ask his mother’s permission. Across the living room, a brand-new television sat on a low table. It was the biggest one I’d ever seen, even bigger than the one at our school, and it was color. I’d never seen color television before. Mrs. Miller had promised we could watch it after dinner. Like the Oreos, this was supposed to cheer me up, but it didn’t. Mrs. Miller thought my mother would never be okay again. I knew that was why she was trying so hard, so all her smiles and cookies and niceness only made me feel worse than ever.

  Mrs. Miller walked out of the kitchen with Allan at her side. “Jack. How are you doing?”

  “Fine, thank you, Mrs. Miller.” I made myself look her right in the eyes so she would believe me and stop asking.

  “Well, you boys have fun. I’ve given Allan a nickel for each of you. Don’t eat too much though, because I’m making chicken potpie. And be home for dinner at five.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Miller. Thank you. We will.” I forced myself to smile at her. She had fresh red lipstick on, and gold earrings. Allan’s mother always looked sort of shiny, I thought, like she’d been polished.

  I couldn’t remember the last time my mother had worn lipstick or jewelry. She hadn’t even worn the necklace I’d given her for her birthday, and that was more than three weeks ago. Since Annie died, my mother had to be rem
inded just to take a shower.

  Five

  “Hey, boys,” Tony said as we stepped inside his store. Tony had an Italian accent and a big round belly that looked as hard as a bowling ball. He was always listening to the radio while he worked. He turned it down when grown-up customers came in, but he didn’t bother when kids did. I’d learned lots of things from Tony’s radio—things my parents talked about in quiet voices after they thought I was asleep. Last year, when Dad was working on the fallout shelter, the people on the radio were always talking about what was going on with the Cubans and the Russians.

  “Hi, Tony,” we said in unison.

  “What’s it going to be then?”

  We pooled our nickels and picked out a bunch of candy—Hot Tamales, which I didn’t like but Allan did, plus Atomic Fireballs, candy cigarettes, marshmallow cones and Tootsie Rolls.

  “Your mom like that necklace you bought her?” Tony asked.

  I looked down at the candy shelves. “Yes, she did, thank you.” It had been pretty—gold, with a heart-shaped pendant and a clear blue stone set in it—and Tony had let me have it for half the regular price.

  “Bet it looks real nice on her,” Tony said. “Haven’t seen her in here for a while.”

  “She’s been busy,” I said.

  “Well, you give her my best.” Tony waved goodbye to us as we left, watching to make sure we closed the door tight behind us.

  “I heard Tony has cancer,” Allan whispered as we walked away.

  The air outside was cold and damp, and I shivered. “You did? From who?”

  He ignored my question. “That’s why his stomach is so huge. There’s a growth in it. A giant tumor.”

  “He’s always looked like that.” I felt uneasy, thinking about my mom. What if she had cancer? She didn’t seem sick like that, but then Tony didn’t look sick either.