Father's Day

by Simon Van Booy

  “I’m your neighbor,” Jason said, pointing in the direction of his house.

  “Sí, sí. You have a little girl living with you?”

  “Well, she’s real sick.”

  “Oh no, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “She’s burning up.”

  “Did you take her temperature?”

  “It’s a hundred and five point something.”

  “That’s very high. What you have given her?”

  “Nothing. She won’t eat or drink.”

  The woman nodded and looked down at her bare feet, but Jason could tell she was thinking.

  “Go home,” she told him. “I’ll get some medicine and be right over.”

  HARVEY WAS IN the bathroom when Jason got back. The door was open, and Jason saw her feet dangling a few inches off the floor.

  “You pooping?” he called out. Harvey leaned forward but was too weak to answer.

  Jason lifted her off the seat and looked into the bowl.“That’s diarrhea,” he said. “You’ve got diarrhea.”

  “I can’t wipe,” she mumbled. “Get it off, Dad.”

  The smell clung to the air, and there were traces of it on her fingers from where she’d tried to clean herself.

  Jason spooled off several squares of toilet paper, which he held under warm running water. The diarrhea had dripped down her legs and into the seat of her pajamas.

  “You’re gonna have to step out of your pj’s,” Jason said, turning the shower on. “I’m gonna run a little warm water on your legs so you don’t itch, okay?” Then he lifted her into the shower. Her legs were shaking with cold.

  When Harvey was clean and back in bed, someone knocked on the front door.

  “Is that doctors?” Harvey said.

  “No it’s the people from next door.”

  “The ones I’m not allowed to wave at?”

  “Yeah, them,” Jason said.

  Mrs. Gonzales had brought little bottles in a white plastic bag, along with a small container of Gatorade. “Is it okay if my son sits out here and watches TV?” she said. “He’s off school today.”

  Harvey had pulled the sheets up to her neck when Mrs. Gonzales entered her room. “It’s okay, sweetie,” Mrs. Gonzales said, putting the bag of bottles on the dresser. “You’ll feel better soon.”

  “It’s my birthday,” Harvey said. “I got sick on my birthday.”

  “Oh, you poor thing. You so brave.” Mrs. Gonzales put the back of her palm on Harvey’s forehead and made a sad face. “You’re burning up, baby girl.”

  Harvey held up her bear. “Look what my dad got me.”

  “Your own little friend. That’s so nice of Daddy.” Mrs. Gonzales took one of the bottles from the white bag and measured some purple liquid into a plastic shot glass. “I’m going to give her this,” she said. “It’s what I give my own kids. She allergic to any medicines?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “You’d know by now if she was, but I brought some Benadryl just in case.”

  After Harvey had swallowed the medicine and was getting comfortable, Mrs. Gonzales’s son, Hector, appeared in the doorway and said he needed the restroom.

  Jason pointed. “Second door on the right.”

  “I’m going to sit with Harvey awhile, if you don’t mind,” Mrs. Gonzales said. “Make sure she keeps the medicine down.”

  “What can I do?” Jason said.

  “Maybe make sure Hector is okay?”

  Hector had finished in the bathroom and was just standing around. The television was on and there were Spanish voices, but he wasn’t interested. Jason handed him a glass of root beer, then asked if he liked motorcycles.

  “Yeah, sure,” Hector said. “They’re pretty cool.”

  “Want to see one getting built?”

  TAPED UP ON the brick walls of the garage were posters of panheads, choppers, bobbers, and Fat Boys. Women in bikinis and platform heels leaned over immaculate, gleaming machines.

  Jason asked Hector to point out his favorite bike. The boy pointed to a photo of a blond woman bending over the front forks of a custom Harley chopper in a bra and thong panties made from beads and brown suede, Native American–style.

  “That bike’s a killer,” Jason said. “No rear suspension, no front brake.”

  “I think it’s cool,” Hector said.

  Jason took the poster down and rolled it up. “Here,” he said, handing it to Hector. “Something to dream about.”

  Then Jason pulled the dust cloth off his bike and they stood beside it. Chrome pipes sparkled in the garage light.

  “It’s so awesome,” Hector said. “I can’t believe you built this.”

  “It’s taken almost ten years,” Jason said. “Sit on it, if you want.”

  Hector put his leg over the bike, then moved around in the seat.

  “Hold on to the handlebars, Hector. Get a feel for it.”

  Hector reached over the teardrop gas tank and put his hands around the grips.

  “Looking good, Hector. You were born to ride.”

  A poker-chip key chain dangled below the gas tank, and Hector asked what it was for.

  “It’s attached to the ignition key,” Jason said. “Turn it.”

  Hector cautiously followed the silver chain until his fingers rested on the key. Jason told him to go ahead and turn, but when he did, nothing happened.

  “Still needs a battery and some electrical,” Jason said. “One day soon, though, it’ll be finished.”

  “My dad could help you,” Hector told him. “He’s a really good electrician.”

  Jason pictured the man he’d seen glaring at him from the minivan whenever they passed his house. “I don’t think your dad likes me much.”

  Hector nodded. “It’s because he thinks you broke our mailbox with a beer bottle.”

  Jason bent down and rearranged a few of his tools. “It was nice of your mom to come over and help. I was really freaking out this morning.”

  “Oh, she’s nice to everybody,” Hector exclaimed, still holding the handlebars. “Did you like the flowers we planted when your daughter first came to live with you? There was a bunch left over from the ones at church, and Mom asked if she could have them. She even got my dad to help.”

  XXXVII

  BY THE NEXT morning, the medicine was doing its work, and Harvey’s fever had fallen below a hundred. Mrs. Gonzales had written down a list of danger signs that Jason should watch for, which he taped to the refrigerator door.

  In the late afternoon, after her husband was home, Mrs. Gonzales returned to see how Harvey was feeling, and to stay with her while Jason went to the drugstore for supplies.

  By the weekend, Harvey was picking at fruit cups, fish sticks, and french fries. She spent the daylight hours on the couch in her pajamas, watching TV, and the early evening on her father’s bed, listening to him read the third Harry Potter book.

  Duncan was there too, and had made friends with the bear from Harvey’s breakfast tray.

  The following week she was back in school, and life went on as before, with excursions on Saturday to playgrounds, or the beach, or Marshalls for new shoes or a winter coat. On Sundays, Jason did laundry in the morning while Harvey put her toys away or did homework. In the afternoon, if there was nothing special on TV, she kept Jason company in the garage, glancing up from her dolls now and then at her father on the ground in dirty jeans as he hammered or wrenched something into place.

  One evening when they were on the couch with nothing to do, Jason showed Harvey a video about a disabled man in Florida who’d built a swing arm mechanism into his Kawasaki sport bike.

  “It comes out at red lights,” Jason said as the video played. “See, Harv, look at that—it stops the bike from tipping over.”

  “Are you going to get that, Dad? So you can ride?”

  “I’m going to make one myself,” Jason said. “I just have to figure out how it works, then get the parts.”

  “So you can take me to sch
ool on the back when it’s done?”

  Jason nodded. “Oh, sure.”

  “Wait till you see their faces, Dad!” Harvey said. “When I pull up to school on the back of a motorcycle!”

  Jason explained that most bikers with disabilities ride trikes, but Harvey couldn’t picture such a thing, so Jason went to find a picture in one of his old magazines. When he returned, Harvey was watching a cartoon.

  “Look what I found in the garage, Harvey, it’s one of my old scrapbooks from back in the day.”

  “But I’m watching this show right now . . .”

  “C’mon, Harvey—I gotta show you this.”

  Jason fixed her another glass of juice, then muted the television. “My brother and I used to make these scrapbooks when we were kids. This one even has my mom in it.”

  Jason sat down and peeled open the book. “That’s your grandmother, Harv.”

  The photos were very small, with a child’s handwriting beneath a few of them.

  “We had a real basic camera,” Jason said. “Jesus, look at that! It’s Steve with the dog we found!”

  “Birdie?”

  “That’s right. We called him Birdie because he was always chasing pigeons.”

  “Is this my dad as a little boy?”

  “That’s him.”

  “He has a nice face.”

  “He was a sweet kid. Saw the best in everybody—even me.”

  Jason turned the page.

  “Look, Harv, here’s me building my first bike in the driveway. It’s so weird to see it after all this time.”

  “You’ve got long hair!”

  “That’s right. I had long hair then. Maybe I’ll grow it out again. It was curly though. Once I dyed it blond, and everyone started calling me Goldilocks, so I dyed it back.”

  “Can I dye my hair?”

  “No. It’ll get screwed up. Now, look at that bike!”

  “Why would I screw it up?”

  “I bought this one as a rolling frame, then built it from the ground up, learning as I went along.”

  Jason’s first machine had been featured in the Readers’ Rides section of Back Street Choppers. It was orange with chrome springs in the front and a small nickel headlamp. Jason had cut the picture from the magazine and pasted it in the scrapbook. “That bike really stood out, with those extended forks.”

  Harvey’s finger pressed down on a chrome pipe. “What does this long thing do?”

  When Jason explained its function, Harvey’s finger slid to another part of the engine.

  “And that’s part of the ignition, Harvey. Some bikes have an electric start,” Jason told her. “Others have to be kicked.”

  Harvey thought that was funny and wanted to know if you could kick it anywhere.

  Jason had bought the frame and wheels for only a few dollars when he was a freshman in high school. There was also a box of parts that came with the sale, but most turned out to be for a different machine. He worked on his bike in the driveway and kept the rain off with a blue cover.

  When his father was dying of cancer, he sometimes went outside and pulled the tarp off. Once Jason caught him out there, leaning on his cane and rolling his eyes over the half-built machine.

  “C’mere, boy,” he said, pointing at something in the engine. “That bit ain’t right. See there . . .”

  Jason listened as his father listed all the things he was doing wrong. The old man’s once giant hands were now small and birdlike. He hadn’t been able to drink for months and was too weak to put up a fight. It was the first time Jason and Steve had seen their father sober for longer than a few hours, and he’d begun telling them things about his life. Made them agree never to join the military, and to listen to their mother—do what she wanted.

  A week later, Jason’s father was out in the driveway again, this time on his knees, doing something with a wrench and cursing when it wouldn’t latch. When Jason got home that night, his mother was loading bedsheets into the washer.

  “Your father said to tell you he fixed your chain,” she said. “And that you did a good job with the gears.”

  Jason just stood there. “He didn’t say that. You’re making it up.”

  A week later, Jason’s father died. The television was on, and his eyes stayed open even after they laid his body down.

  For the next two nights, Jason worked to get his bike running. He had told his mother he wasn’t going to the funeral, but then followed the hearse on his motorcycle and watched from a distance as strangers in military uniforms lowered the casket. When they lifted their rifles to fire, birds flew out of the trees.

  ON ANOTHER PAGE of the scrapbook was a teenage girl on a 1937 Indian Chief.

  “There’s my mom again,” Jason told Harvey. “When she was seventeen.”

  The bike belonged to Jason’s father before the war. His mother was in high school when they met. In the summer they used to pack towels and drive to Long Beach. Sometimes the bike broke down, but someone always stopped to help.

  In another picture, Jason’s mother was standing on a boardwalk in a hula-girl outfit. In the background couples danced. Jason said it was most likely Robert Moses, maybe the Rockaways.

  “I’d wear that,” Harvey said, pointing at the grass skirt and coconut top. “Do you still have it?”

  Jason said it was long gone and that Steve must have rescued the scrapbook before their mother’s house got sold.

  There were two very old photographs loose in the book near the end. Both were dated 1910. Jason didn’t know who the people were, but Harvey said the man in the bow tie could have been Jason’s great-grandfather because he was the only person in the picture not smiling.

  On the final inside page of the scrapbook was a color photograph that had been torn up, then taped back together. It was of a woman on a couch in a basement. She was quite young and had on a white T-shirt and tight blue jeans. She was laughing at whoever was taking the photograph, laughing so hard that her eyes were closed. Her hair was long and straight and very dark.

  Harvey pointed to it. “Who’s that?”

  “No one,” Jason said, closing the book and getting up.

  “She’s pretty,” Harvey said, but Jason was already halfway back to the garage.

  XXXVIII

  JASON MET RITA Vega at an Irish pub in Hicksville.

  She was playing pool with a few girlfriends. When it was time for more drinks, she came to the bar with her money out. The bartender was stacking glasses in the back, so she made small talk with the man at the bar who had a tattoo on his neck. Her hair was long and very dark.

  By the end of the night, she’d written her number for Jason in lipstick on a cocktail napkin.

  They saw each other once the following week, then a few days after that. She learned to ride on the back of Jason’s motorcycle by locking her arms around him and leaning in to curves. Sometimes they went to Jones Beach. Their favorite time was twilight. They took walks on the sand, with Jason stooping to pick up shells because Rita collected them. Once he found a giant clam with so much seaweed it looked like hair.

  “That’s so weird!” Rita said.

  “You think everything’s weird!” Jason said, and tried to chase her with it, but was laughing too hard to run.

  In late summer, they would collect driftwood from the dunes and build a fire. Rita brought things to eat, like hot dogs or meatball sandwiches. When it was dark and they were the only ones left, Jason would spread out a blanket. When they got underneath, Rita let him take her clothes off, then touch her, then slowly get on top.

  All Jason could hear was the sea, then Rita saying his name over and over as though she were calling him, but he was there.

  She had been born in Costa Rica and came to Long Island as a little girl, where she was raised Catholic in a Spanish neighborhood. Jason sometimes heard her praying at night in a low whisper. She had a tattoo on her arm of her grandparents’ names, and often painted her nails black or sometimes dark green.

  Back t
hen Jason was working in a furniture warehouse, packing plywood parts and hardware into cardboard boxes for people to assemble at home. It paid just over minimum wage but included benefits and a product discount. The manager didn’t mind that Jason had been in prison—said he believed in second chances.

  Rita was working as a waitress at an Italian restaurant where the food was served family style. Jason sometimes stopped by the restaurant when Rita was working—ordering appetizers and beer until Rita’s boss said that family style wasn’t designed for one person and Jason could meet her in the parking lot when her shift ended.

  Family, Rita said, was to her the most important thing in the world, so when she found out Jason had a younger brother, she wanted to meet him, get them talking again—but Jason was against it.

  Rita liked scary movies, drive-through restaurants, and free refills. Sometimes they just sat in the car and talked about nothing.

  If anyone hit on Rita in a bar while Jason was in the restroom, he would come out, put his arm around the guy, and say, “How about me instead, baby?” Which made Rita laugh and gave the guy a chance to laugh too.

  Rita didn’t mind that Jason had a criminal record. And when he talked about how things were for him growing up, she held his hand. He had never cried so much in front of anyone. Rita said it meant he was learning to trust.

  She planned to attend community college after she’d saved enough money and her English was better. She wanted Jason to get his high school diploma and open a custom motorcycle shop—said he was wasting his life in a factory job.

  Jason listened to her. Thought about it. Had to admit he’d be happy working with bikes.

  “It’s us now,” she would say, and always went with him to Dairy Barn when they ran out of milk or beer.

  One day Rita said she’d show him Costa Rica. He could meet her grandmother and grandfather. Swim in a turquoise sea. Pick fruit to eat. Take walks along the road in wet weather, because rain makes the jungle sing, she said.

  After six months together, Jason told Rita she should move in with him, because she was always there anyway and her landlord was an asshole.

  Jason wanted to meet her mother and father, but Rita said they were quite religious and didn’t even know about her tattoo, or that she went to bars.