What Would Joey Do?

by Jack Gantos

  I was just thinking of making an I’M WITH STUPID label and sticking it to my forehead when Mom said sharply, “Joey! Booth asked you a question.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Huh is not a word,” Mom corrected.

  “How’s the homeschooling?” Booth asked, starting at square one again.

  “Fine, I guess,” I said to him.

  “Joey’s so smart,” Mom said, “I’m thinking of starting a college fund for him. I saw an ad in the paper where the hospital is doing a study on active boys, and they’ll pay if all he does is show up and go through a few tests every month. I thought maybe with that money we could start a little college savings account. A few dollars a month, and someday he’ll be making millions and take care of me.”

  Then before I could ask Mom what she meant about a hospital study, her face went all hard and she bolted straight up as if she were possessed by some demon. And in an instant she grabbed her water glass and whipped it as hard as she could across the table, over Booth’s flat head, and through the dining room window, which smashed into a thousand pieces.

  “That son-of-a-gun!” she hollered.

  “What the heck was that?” Grandma squawked. Mom didn’t answer. By then she had jumped up and run to the window and stuck her head through the empty frame, which was edged with glass shards. She looked like a lion tamer with her head in the lion’s mouth. “Carter Pigza!” she yelled. “Next time you peek through a window in this house you better expect a kitchen knife right between your eyes!”

  “How about a kiss?” he hollered back. Then I could hear him belly laughing like a crazy gnome as he ran off, and a few moments later I heard the motorcycle start up, then die out.

  “When I get my hands on you, I’ll squeeze your neck until your head pops. You hear me?” Mom yelled.

  I don’t know if Dad heard her, but I’m sure the entire neighborhood did. Then the motorcycle started again and caught, and he roared down Plum Street.

  “Told you those two are lovebirds,” Grandma said to me.

  Then we both looked over at Booth. His lips were sucked entirely inside his mouth so that it looked like a sock rolled inside out. He sat there as stiff as a stump not knowing what to do. And what could he do? Get up and run for his life? Get up and fix the window? Get up and help Mom catch Dad?

  “Just roll with the punches,” Grandma advised him. “You always have to consider that you’re in the house of Pigza, where anything goes.”

  He put on one of his fake smiles, which seemed to have lost its silver lining, and sat there stunned with his knife and fork quivering in each red fist until Mom came back and plopped down in her chair, and then he calmly asked, “Fran, what was that all about?”

  “He was peeking in the window,” Mom said furiously, pointing toward the smashed glass. “He was spying on us, the little sneak, so I let him have it. I don’t think he’ll ever do that again.”

  “This is just a suggestion,” he said delicately, “but do you think you should call the police and lodge a complaint?”

  “No,” she shot back. “No. I can take care of him on my own.”

  “Okay,” Booth said. “I was just offering a suggestion.” Then he reached across the table and picked up the platter of spaghetti and helped himself. “This is real good,” he said in his upbeat voice. “Probably the best I’ve ever eaten.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Mom said harshly. “It’s just spaghetti. You boil the noodles, and you toss a jar of sauce on it.” Then she stood up and marched down the hall and into her room. I heard a drawer open, then slam, and when she marched back to the table, she had on fresh lipstick and was carrying a handbag. She looked at us. We looked back at her. “I don’t know why,” she said angrily, “but when your dad is around I always seem to sink to his level.”

  She stuck out her elbow as if it were the handle on a teapot. “Come on, Booth,” she said. “Let’s go have a cocktail and forget about this nonsense.”

  “Sure,” he replied. “Anything you say, Fran.” When he stood up, his little camera fell from his lap.

  “Your camera,” I said politely, pointing toward the floor where Pablo was sniffing it.

  “Come on,” Mom said more forcefully. Then, just as he grabbed the camera strap, Mom yanked him by the hand and just about jerked him out of his shoes. He stumbled forward and I don’t think he fully caught his balance until he was out the door and down the steps and standing in the middle of the road saying, “Whoa, boy.” I could see right away why Mom liked him. She was the boss.

  Once their voices faded down the street, I began to clear the table. “Do you think,” I said to Grandma as I stacked the plates, “that I ought to follow them down to Quips and see if Mom is okay?”

  “Joey,” Grandma said, “you need a life. Leave these people alone, and think about yourself.”

  “But it makes me happy when I keep an eye on her.”

  “You know, Joey,” she said, “let me give you some old lady advice. It’s been my observation that those people who try to make everyone really, really happy are really the most miserable people of all.”

  “I’m not miserable,” I said. “I’m really happy. See.” And I ran up to her and smiled right in her face.

  Grandma shoved my face away with her hand and got all huffy. “You’re bugging me,” she said. “Go to bed.” Then she shuffled over to her couch, jerked her curtain closed, and turned on her oxygen tank. I could hear it hissing as she sucked on the tube.

  “I’m just going to do the dishes,” I called in her direction. “It will make Mom happy to come home to a clean kitchen.”

  “Forget the dishes,” Grandma said. “Go have some fun. What do you think she’s doing?”

  I really wasn’t sure what Mom was doing. But whatever it was, I wanted her to be happy. After I finished the dishes and put the food away I swept up the glass spikes that had fallen inside the house, then went out back and took the plastic tablecloth off the picnic table. I wiped the dirt away with a wet sponge, got some thumbtacks, and pinned it up over the hole in the window.

  After I brushed my teeth and washed up, I noticed Grandma’s lamp was still on. I could see her shadow against the shower curtain. She was lying down with her head thrown back on the arm of the couch. The cigarette in her mouth looked like the last smoking tree after a forest fire.

  “Go to sleep,” I said, “before all your envelopes catch on fire and you burn the house down.”

  “If I go to sleep, I might never wake up,” she replied. “And I can’t die, or everything around here will go to hell before I’m cold and in the grave.”

  “Don’t talk that way,” I said.

  “You know why I’m still alive?” she said to me, exhaling like a punctured tire.

  “’Cause you don’t want to die?” I guessed.

  She slowly pulled aside the curtain so that just her old turtle head stuck out. “No. I do want to die. I’m begging to be put out of my misery. I just want to make sure you’re in good shape before I check out. I took care of you in the beginning when you were a handful, but now that you’ve pulled yourself together …” She coughed, then took another drag. “You got to get away from these people. You can’t depend on people who can’t run their own lives to tell you what to do. You got to make your own life. Once I see to it that you are headed in the right direction, then my job’ll be done, and I can smoke cigars, drink hard liquor, and dance with the devil in style.”

  “Grandma,” I said quietly, “please don’t talk that way. You scare me.”

  “And here’s another thing,” she continued. “I’ve got a little letter-stuffing money set aside, as I’ve been saving for a lung replacement I’ll never get. When I’m gone, you get to it first, you hear? Don’t you go becoming no experiment at a hospital.”

  “I hear you,” I said, even though I didn’t want to.

  She pointed her cigarette at the cigar box on the couch. “There’s an envelope in there. You take the money and spend
it on yourself. Don’t give a nickel to them. Because even after I’m dead, they’ll be fussin’ and fightin’ over what’s left of me.”

  “You’re not going to die,” I said. “Stop it.”

  “Yes, I am,” she replied. “And soon too, so get used to the idea. And if you want me to die happy, you’d better stop trying to help your parents and join the real world, which is on the outside of this house.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know.”

  “And you have to make a friend.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. But I don’t want to kill you if I ever do make one.”

  “Joey you’re killing yourself if you don’t make friends. You got to move on. I do too. As for the nuts, they’ll do what they please.”

  “Oh, stop talking that way,” I said. “You’re too old to talk that way.”

  “I’m old enough to have seen everything there is to see around here twice over, and I don’t like what I see coming the third time around.”

  “What do you see?” I asked. “Tell me.”

  “I’m not telling,” she said. “But stick around, and you’ll find out soon enough. Goodnight.” And she pulled the curtain back in place.

  3

  BRAT GIRL

  When Mom came home that night, she slipped into my room and kissed me. I was asleep, but I knew she had done it because the next day there was a red kiss print stamped on my forehead. I saw it in the mirror when I went into the bathroom to change my patch, and it made me smile really big because I looked like a love letter about to be sent. Then I ran into Mom’s room and she was still sleeping but I kissed her anyway and she half woke up and hugged me and pulled on my big ears and yanked my nose and kissed me some more. I love that feeling when my mom loves only me, me, me! But then, as I left her room, my smile twisted up like a rusty old nail when I remembered what I had to do next.

  After I fixed Grandma and myself some breakfast, checked her oxygen tank level, fed Pablo, watered the plants, took out the trash, picked the stuck roaches out of the Roach Motels, and dialed the Dial-a-Joke number and got my one free laugh, I did what I didn’t want to do every weekday morning. I stuffed Pablo into the top of my giant backpack and trudged over to Olivia Lapp’s house to get my daily dose of abuse. My mother knew her mother, and one day they got to talking. That’s how all this homeschooling business started. Mom was doing Mrs. Lapp’s hair one afternoon and they started comparing notes about their kids and about how best to raise them and before I knew it Mom came rushing home and said she had something “life changing” to tell me.

  “What?” I asked, thinking right away that it must be a big treat if it was going to change my life. I closed my eyes and spread my arms out as wide as I could so that even if she was giving me a giant experimental Chihuahua—like a Chihuahua the size of a Great Dane—I could hold it in my arms.

  “I’m putting you into a homeschooling situation,” she said.

  I opened my eyes and my arms slapped down against my sides like a bird who has given up and would just rather fall to earth than fly.

  She was nodding so furiously I knew I couldn’t disagree without her having a meltdown. She continued, “I had the greatest conversation with an old school chum.” And then she went on and on about how good homeschooling was going to be for me.

  “But I’m already in school,” I said. “I already have a teacher and a desk and books. I already have homework.”

  “Not after tomorrow,” she said. “Homeschooling is so much better. Plus, you won’t have any kids to tease you.”

  “But they don’t bother me now,” I said. “Honest.”

  “Of course they bother you,” she replied, not listening to me one bit. “Believe me, Joey, you can do this homeschool all day and you will learn so much more. And you will be with really good people. Decent people. People who care about the whole Joey. Not just the physical Joey, but the emotional and spiritual Joey.”

  I glanced over to the wall mirror to make certain there were not three of me. There was just one, and he was looking like a skinny, pale, wide-eyed, freaked-out Joey. “Do you want to know what I think?” I asked.

  “You don’t know what to think yet,” she replied. “You have to try it first before you know.”

  “Well,” I said, “I just don’t think it’s a good idea. Like, I can hardly do homework at home. It would be a disaster for me to do schoolwork at home too.”

  “With that attitude, you’ll make sure it doesn’t work,” she said.

  “Well, what if I stay home and Grandma homeschools me?”

  “Your grandma only knows how to stuff envelopes, smoke, curse, and die slowly,” she said.

  “Hey!” Grandma squawked from behind her curtain. “I heard that!”

  “Sorry,” Mom said, and put her hand over her mouth, but her eyes were smiling.

  “That’s okay,” Grandma replied, sounding a little hurt. “I’ll just cheer myself up by smoking another cigarette as I kill myself stuffing these damn envelopes.”

  “See,” Mom whispered, “in one breath she taught you everything she knows.” Then she bent down and gave me a kiss. “Come on, sweetie,” she said with her lips buzzing my ear, and kissed me again. “Just follow my lead on this one. I have a very good feeling I’m right. And if you don’t agree with me, then you can do what you want to do. Okay?” And she kissed me again. “I’m doing this for your own good.”

  “Okay,” I said, slipping out from under her arms. “I’ll give it a try.”

  The next day Mom went with me to school and spoke with the principal and filled out some papers while I inched down to my class and put all my personal stuff in a shopping bag and told my teacher, Mrs. Lucchina, that I was going to be homeschooled.

  She looked worried. “Is your mom going to be your teacher?” she asked.

  “No,” I said sadly, “she already taught me how to wash, cut, dye, and dry hair. We do it to my grandma all the time.”

  Then she pulled herself together and by the time she knelt down she had a you-can-do-it look on her face. “Good luck,” she said, staring directly into my eyes like when the eye doctor shines his light in. “We’ll miss you. But try your best no matter what, and let me know if you need some extra help. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said to her as I looked into her smooth blond hair and saw over her shoulder the whole classroom of kids whose names I had already memorized because I had planned on making each one my friend. “I’ll try.”

  So I was thinking all this half-sad, half-mixed-up stuff and telling myself to keep my chin up as I headed toward Olivia’s house—she’s the homeschool girl I’m paired up with. It didn’t take me long after I started going to her house to realize the only reason Mrs. Lapp had me around was to try and be a good influence on her totally bratty sight-challenged daughter. “She can be a little ornery,” Mrs. Lapp warned me, “but she’s got a pure heart. Your mom said you are a good kid, so you can be my secret helper by showing Olivia how even a kid with a big problem can be nice.”

  I hated being called a “kid with a big problem,” but I did like being called a “secret helper.” It made me feel like a superhero out in the world with a mission to do good things for people. “I’ll try my best,” I said to Mrs. Lapp. “Honest.”

  And I was trying. But being a secret helper superhero wasn’t working too well. Olivia was totally blind and liked to call herself “blind as a brat!” because she couldn’t see to do anything nice. Still, she had twenty-twenty vision for getting me in trouble. The first day there was a nightmare. After Mrs. Lapp introduced us in the kitchen she left the room so we could “get to know one another.” As soon as she was gone Olivia said, “I already know about you being a hyper retard.”

  I didn’t know what to say back, and even if I did I couldn’t because my throat was closed up like when I ran into a clothesline while sneaking through yards at night. I needed a drink. I stood up and got a pitcher of lemonade off the counter, but when I carried it to the table Olivia trippe
d me with her cane. I spilled it all over my special homeschooling citizenship book, and there was nothing I could do but holler for Mrs. Lapp, then tell her it wasn’t my fault, while Olivia’s already dark eyes grew darker and cloudy as if there were a storm brewing inside them.

  “Just do your best,” Mrs. Lapp whispered to me. “Don’t let her get to you.” Then she went out back and hung the soggy book over the fence to dry out.

  That afternoon I was totally distracted by my label gun. I spelled out GENIUS STICK and stuck it on my pencil. I put LEFT on the rubber toe of one sneaker, and RIGHT on the other because sometimes I put them on so fast I got them reversed and walked around like a dork.

  “I love my new Tweety Bird watch,” I said to Olivia while she read a book in braille. Her fingers moved across the page like a tarantula taking a stroll. “Would you like to touch it?” Booth had given it to me. He had found it at a wedding reception, and when he fastened it around my wrist he said the picture of Tweety reminded him of me. I stuck JOEY “TWEETY” PIGZA on the plastic band.