by Jack Gantos
“I’ve been thinking about the silver lining to your accident,” she said. “I think there’s a gift in it somewhere.”
Before I could ask about what the gift might be Dad shuffled through the door singing, “I’m a happy dreamer, I believe love can change the world.” I stared at him as though a ghost had returned because I really did think he had run off, but here he was dancing back into my life as a happy dreamer, which seemed more like a scary nightmare.
He smiled at me with that goofy wide grin of his. “I picked you a bouquet of joy,” he sang in his cheerful voice, and like a magician he pulled a bunch of faded yellow mums from around his back. “The nurse put them in a paper cup for me.” He set the flowers down on my bedside table. I took a sniff and pulled my nose back.
“Did you pick these in the smoking section outside the front door?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, I did,” he admitted proudly. “They have a little garden out there and I didn’t want them to go to waste now that the weather is turning.”
I thought the smoky blossoms might start coughing and wilt like my grandmother, who turned the color of beef jerky as she smoked herself to death.
“Feeling better?” he asked, and nicked me on the chin with a fake punch.
I jerked my head back. “Different,” I replied.
“Well, that’s the first step toward positive change,” he said with enthusiasm. “Yes, sir,” he said firmly, “there is nothing like feeling different from yourself to know you are on the mend.” Then he turned to Mom. “By the way, the nurse said visiting hours are about over. They are going to wheel Freddy to radiology and then they need to keep him overnight for observation. Why don’t we let him get some rest and I’ll take you out for a special dinner.”
“Okay with you, wild thing?” Mom asked me.
I nodded okay back because if I had said yes I wouldn’t have meant it.
She bent down to kiss me and then buzzed my ear with her lips. “I’ll give you a second chance on that bet,” she whispered, “if you give him a second chance.”
She pulled away so she could look me in the eyes.
I had never had a hundred dollars before and hated to lose it so quickly. “Okay,” I said reluctantly I figured it didn’t cost anything to give him a second chance because he was sure to blow it.
After Dad left to get his car, the doctor came in and talked Mom and me through what was going to happen that night, and then Mom gathered her things and got ready to go. I was actually glad to be spending the night away from her because she was acting so nutty.
She gave me another kiss, then walked quickly toward the door. “See you in the morning, chico,” she said before slipping out of sight.
“Hey, what’s my silver-lining gift?” I called behind her before she was out of earshot.
A moment later she stuck her head back in. “Forgiving him is going to be the greatest gift you ever gave yourself,” she said, then quickly ducked out.
It wasn’t until after she’d been gone for a few minutes I realized I’d been laughing as if what she said was the funniest joke ever, but it wasn’t funny. Still, her punch line kept me laughing while my hands covered up my big bandaged head until finally I just couldn’t laugh any longer and I dropped back onto the pillow like a knocked-out boxer. “Forgive him?” I moaned. “How?”
I couldn’t answer because my head began to throb and my brain swelled up like a sponge full of tears.
3
HANDCUFFED HEARTS
Over the next few weeks there were a string of surprises that went off one by one like a pack of firecrackers. The first bang let loose the next day when I got home from the hospital. My head felt woozy and my legs were shaking as I walked up the front porch steps and into the living room while trying not to step on the dogs, who were chewing on my hospital booties that I wanted to keep as souvenirs. I plopped onto the couch and that’s when Mom stooped down and looked at me from about six inches away from my face. Then she moved closer and closer until our noses touched and I felt like a cross-eyed frog.
“What?” I asked, pulling back and looking from her to my dad. “What’s going on? Why are you being so loco?”
Suddenly she shrieked, “Last night your father asked me to remarry him!”
The force of her scream blew me back against the couch cushion.
She jumped up and down and did a little happy hamster dance, which made my head throb even more. I was stunned. Remarry? She might just as well have told me Charles was actually an alien that inhabited Carter’s body.
“I thought you already were married,” I said, and breathed deeply to keep myself calm.
“We’re having a renewal-of-vows ceremony,” Mom answered. She looked at Dad and smiled sweetly.
He grinned like a carved pumpkin, and a warm light glowed from his eyes and mouth. “I love her,” he crooned. “She’s my dream angel from heaven and I can’t do without her.”
“We’ll be a whole family again,” Mom continued. “¡Una familia perfecta!”
“And a church blessing will mean we aren’t just living together in sin,” Dad explained, as he rested his arm around Mom’s waist.
He said sin like it was something he had always avoided.
Mom’s face got all soft as she tilted her cheek onto his shoulder. “A dream angel is a delicate creature that can only survive in heaven on earth,” she purred.
I thought the only way to survive this surprise was to give up my meds and just go crazy on my own before they dragged me into their insane world.
But I guess even the sane get used to living with the insane, which kind of turned my world upside down. I stayed home instead of going to school, and passed out candy on Halloween instead of going trick-or-treating, and instead of being Mom’s “big man of the house” I went back to being her “little man,” which was like getting kicked all the way back into second place, which around here is like last place, which is where I spent most of my life, and so I didn’t like it at all, especially since I had worked so hard to be my own man in the first place. In no time at all my world was replaced by their new made-up world of heavenly love and before long I found myself at the church on the day of what they called the rewedding.
They insisted I be the ring bearer, which made me nervous, and to make matters worse my mind was a bit drifty since I wasn’t allowed to take my meds because of my headaches. I warned them about this but they didn’t listen. So on the big day I slowly walked up the church aisle while some guy with a karaoke machine at the back of the room sang, “My love must be a kind of blind love,” and even though I thought love must definitely be blind because Mom was acting like a different person and Dad was using a fake name, I kept focusing down on the little heart-shaped pillow and the two gold rings which were my responsibility to deliver to the front of the church. My arms were shaking and the little rings, side by side, looked like a tiny pair of vibrating handcuffs. I didn’t dare look away much from the rings for fear of dropping them.
To my left were a dozen of Mom’s lady friends from the hair salon who all had their hair done up like fancy pastries and elaborate birdcages. To the right my dad’s friends from who-knows-where kept looking at their watches and shifting anxiously in their seats. I was in a silky white rented tuxedo over a white shirt that had fluffy ruffles from my belly button up to my chin. It looked like someone had sprayed my chest with canned whipped cream and topped it all off with a giant pink satin butterfly bow tie. For safety reasons Mom and Dad said I had to wear an adult-size bicycle helmet over the bandage around my hurt head. Dad had sprayed the helmet white to match my outfit and Mom had put little heart stickers and cupids around the edge. But the thought of that helmet hurt worse than the blow I took to my head.
I was too old for this job. I told them so, but Mom insisted that it was the perfect activity for her “little angel.” If anything I wanted to be the best man, but my dad had one of his buddies stand by his side. He had met a lot of really nice but tro
ubled people at Alcoholics Anonymous, and this guy, Dick, who was built like a bloated bowling pin covered with see-through hair that stood out the same as on a plastic bottle brush, was now his new best friend. They had worked together as roofers in Pittsburgh before moving their business back to Lancaster. I don’t know how Dick got on a roof, because he looked so big in the belly he couldn’t tie his own shoes and only wore bedroom slippers. They called themselves DEATH-WISH ROOFERS, Dad told me, because they would climb up onto any roof no matter how tall or steeply pitched. I guess their “death wish” created a bond between them, which means you could call Mom and Dad getting remarried a sequel to the “Until death do you part” wish. Dad said to me that he and I already had a bond so there was no need to build one, but our bond was still just on my “wish list” and not yet on my “wishes fulfilled” list. I knew forgiveness would definitely be good for him, but maybe because I had been in the hospital with a busted head I just wasn’t strong enough yet to forgive him.
Before the rewedding had started, Dad and I were down in the church basement getting dressed. There was a life-size Christmas manger scene stored there with the three kings and Mary and Joseph, and Dad had his foot propped up on the cradle next to baby Jesus’ head and was tying his big shoe.
“You know, Freddy,” he said to me, “one day when I was up on some roof sweatin’ and cursin’ myself for being such a loser, it just came to me out of nowhere— like a voice from a low-flying plane—that I should go buy a lottery ticket and then wait for my life to transform into something better. So I did what my thoughts told me to do. I tied my end of the safety rope around a chimney so Dick wouldn’t fall off the roof and I hustled down to the street and walked over to a convenience store. Right up front was a huge display of ketchup and it just popped into my head that I was Mister Charles Heinz, and then I swaggered up to the counter where the nice man from India asked, ‘What can I do for you?’ and I replied, ‘I want a lottery ticket.’ The dates for your birthday and your mother’s birthday just popped into my head, and I gave the man those numbers and one other number and he gave me the lottery ticket. Soon as I touched it I knew it was a winner. I went home and took a shower ‘cause I figured the newspaper would want to take a picture of me. I started right then and there to pack my belongings. Anything that said Carter Pigza on it I threw away. When Dick came home after yelling down to the street and begging people to haul him up the rope I told him about what happened and he laughed at me, which was okay ’cause he probably should have been mad with the way I left him hanging. Then we watched the lottery after dinner and the lady called out the numbers and right away it was your birthday and year, then your mom’s, and then there was that one more number I picked. I had used Carter’s lucky number and that was the one number I missed. I should have used Charles’s lucky number, but I didn’t think of it. Dang! As a result I didn’t win the ten-million-dollar mega jackpot, but I did win a nice chunk of change. I guess fate thought if I won the big one I’d go just hog wild like a hot air balloon with a hole in it until I crashed and burned.”
He rubbed his chin and nodded reflectively. He began to tie his other shoe before starting up again.
“No, fate was smart. Gave me just enough cash to force me to make sensible decisions. And here I am now,” he said matter-of-factly. “The complete package. Man. Dad. Happy dreamer and soon to be a re-husband all over again.”
“Do you really think you heard a voice from a low-flying plane?” I asked him. I couldn’t get over that.
He didn’t answer, because just then his foot slipped off the cradle and he fell forward with a holler, ripped open the back seam of his tuxedo, and knocked over the three kings. Two of them had gold crowns on and when the statues hit the floor the crowns rolled away.
That should have been an omen to me about the rings I was now carrying as I took baby steps up the aisle while holding the pillow in both hands. I had to concentrate and make sure I kept the pillow balanced just right. When I got closer I glanced up and could see that Mom had given herself a tight-curled perm and a spaghetti-sauce-red dye job. It wasn’t what I expected when she said she was planning a new hairdo to wipe the slate clean and have a fresh start with “Charles.” Really, when she said that I thought the hair dye and dryer heat over the years had softened her brain because it was like asking for a fresh start with someone who was rotten to the core.
“He’s nuts!” I had said to Mom after she told me about the renewal ceremony. “His name is Carter. Remember!”
“Well, I think we should respect his wishes to be called Charles,” she said firmly.
“That’s insane,” I pleaded. “It is not like calling someone Bob when their name is Robert, or Matt when it’s Matthew. He has totally flipped out and is calling himself some other name because he thinks he has become someone else. It’s like Pablo thinking he is a Great Dane.”
“Well, you know,” she said thoughtfully, “that identity change has done him the world of good, and it would be good for us, too. Just think, overnight you can become a whole new person and toss into the trash can all the junk from your past. And becoming Maria has already done me some good, too. Every time I remember something stupid I did as Fran, I just give my head a shake and say, ‘That’s not me anymore.’ And the memory vanishes like magic, like pouring bleach on a stain.”
“Please don’t do this,” I begged. I wanted to beat my head against the wall but at the time I didn’t have my helmet on.
Mom ignored me. “Adults behave in ways kids can’t yet understand. When you grow up and have a kid you’ll see what I mean. You’ll understand then that your father and I share a bond between us that can never be broken. We messed up a few times but now we have a chance to pull ourselves together, and as adults you don’t get a second chance very often. Can you understand that?”
“But what if your second chance ruins my first chance?” I argued.
“I’m the adult,” she said impatiently. “Ultimately what’s good for me is good for you. Anyway, you should feel lucky that your father and I are getting back together. I’m doing this for you.”
I didn’t feel lucky, really. Besides, I thought if growing up means that you just make the same dumb mistakes over and over, then I don’t want any part of “seeing what she means.” Before I got my meds and some help I used to make the same mistakes over and over and it led to nothing but trouble. My old teacher down at the Special Ed Center, Mr. Special Ed, said that not learning from my mistakes would always lead me to trouble. This was one of his Rules of Life. But maybe Mom’s “second chance” thing was just too much for me to understand.
To keep from flipping out as I walked up the aisle, I tried to think of something good to help me calm down. I lowered my eyes and looked at the two rings and I thought of my two dogs, Pablo and Pablita. Mom said I should rename them to fit our new family, so I began thinking of new Heinz family names for them. I thought about Salt and Pepper, Ketchup and Mustard, Sweet and Sour, Paper and Plastic, Nacho and Cheese, but I didn’t know enough Spanish to know if they would sound good when translated.
Then disaster struck, but it wasn’t all my fault. Mom didn’t take me to rent my tuxedo until the last minute, because she made me stay in bed while my busted head could heal. She stayed in bed a lot, too, with the flu or something, and Dad was out “taking care of business” most days. I had told Mom my head felt fine but I think she was just trying to keep me out of the way while she dreamed up their crazy rewedding ceremony. Anyway, the only pants that fit me in the waist were too long in the legs, so Mom had used a bunch of Scotch tape to hem them on the inside, and I knew that the tape was a weak link, which is why I steadied my hands around that pillow as I shuffled my feet forward. I didn’t want to walk normally, because I was afraid of stepping on a pant leg if the hem came undone.
But as I made it halfway up the aisle I was confronted by a pretty big test. Right across the center of the aisle there was a little pyramid of steps—three up to a little platfo
rm, and three down. Some wedding-planner girlfriend had put this idea together so that Mom and Dad could each climb up the little pyramid and pause at the top to turn and wave to everyone—which they had done, and it was a big hit with the crowd. And now it was my turn to climb up and tilt the pillow forward for everyone to see the rings as I displayed them to my left and then to my right. Then I was supposed to climb down, shuffle up to the altar and be ready to offer them to the reverend when he requested them. No one in the history of wedding planning had ever heard of such a ring-showing-off ceremony, which is why my revamped parents did it. They love to be the first to do anything which I call “weird” and they call “unique.” It was like one of those nutty creative-name ideas Mom came up with once in a while. She suggested I “personalize” my name and change the spelling from Joey to JO-E.
“NO-E!” I said to her. “I like my name spelled how it is.”
“I’ll get you a gold chain with a big JO-E spelled out in diamonds,” she said. “It will look stunning around your neck.”
“Diamonds?” I questioned.
“I mean diamond-like,” she said, waving off my critical look.
“I’m going to stay Joey,” I said. “I don’t want to be Joey-like.”
Later, she tried again with Freddy. “Why don’t you spell it P-h-r-e-d-i,” she suggested. “Give it a distinctive flair.”
“You really don’t want me to go through life like that,” I asked, “do you?”
Mom let it go, but when it came to the rewedding, she was geared up to try everything nobody had dared do before. She had to “personalize” everything. First I was to climb the pyramid and reveal the rings like a waiter showing off a tray of fancy desserts. Then there was going to be the wedding ceremony with vows of undying love they wrote themselves. Then gold and black balloons were going to drop from a net under the ceiling of the rental church—each balloon had QUIPS PUB and GO STEELERS! printed on it because they were donated by the sports bar where the reception was taking place. Then outside were a few cages of pigeons—Charles paid some buddies to catch them with butterfly nets. They would be released as Mom and Dad did some sort of Broadway tango down the church steps toward their rented white Hummer limousine, which was as long and wide as a house trailer.
