What Would Joey Do?

by Jack Gantos

  On the monitor I watched her moving to the condiment section, and I took off running for her. As soon as I got close enough, I said, “I saw you singing on the TV they use for shoplifters. You were smiling too. What’s making you so happy?”

  She turned toward me and in a real smarmy voice said, “I’m smiling and singing a happy song because I’m thinking that I’m really screwing up your job and you are probably going to get fired and that would make me the happiest blind girl in the world.”

  I was just about to scream, I’ve had it with you!, when Mrs. Lapp appeared and said, “Oh, there you two are. Was Olivia a big help to you, Joey?”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Huh is an ugly sound,” she said. “Now, what have you been doing all this time?”

  Before I could make up an excuse, Olivia cut in. “He’s been totally hyper, and all he did was run around the store and mix up all the groceries and get into trouble with the manager.”

  “That’s not true!” I hollered. “You’ll see.” And I marched to the manager’s office because I wanted him to tell Mrs. Lapp that I wasn’t a pain but he wasn’t in his office and I looked up at one of the TVs and there I was standing by his door, hopping from foot to foot while wringing my hands with my eyes all bugged out and I did look totally hyper and all I could think of was this girl was driving me around the bend just as much as my grandma had and my mom and my dad and I had no patience for waiting any longer because it was time to get Pablo and give him a big hug and have him lick my face all over with his stinky rotten melon breath while I settled down. He was the best friend in the world and even if he were blind and deaf and had three legs and no teeth and a bent tail he would still love me more than anyone on this planet. And I took off like a rocket out the front door and around back and I was yelling out Pablo’s name even before I reached the corner. And then when I turned the corner I was really yelling his name because he was nowhere in sight. “Pablo!” I hollered with my hands cupped around my mouth. “Pablo!”

  He was gone. I mean he wasn’t anywhere. And believe me, I looked in the bushes, in all the Dumpsters, in the parking lot. Out in the road. Everywhere. And I couldn’t find him, and I knew deep down inside he needed my help and I didn’t know what to do, and I was scared because I thought this was definitely disaster number three.

  But then I knew exactly what to do, and I went running toward the Beauty and the Beast hair salon because that’s where Mom was, and it was her job in life to help me when I couldn’t help myself.

  “Pablo!” I shouted. “Pablo!” I ran down the middle of the street shouting his name until some kid jumped out onto his porch and shouted back, “I’m Pablo. What do you want?”

  “Sorry,” I yelled without slowing down. “Sorry. I’m calling my dog.” And I was sorry. Sorry all over. Soooooo sorry.

  “Pablo! Hang on. I’m coming as fast as I can.”

  5

  LOST DOG

  Mom was slumped down with her eyes closed in a special seat with one of those aluminum dome hairdryers covering the top of her head.

  “Mom!” I shouted above the humming. But I knew from playing with the machines that she couldn’t hear me.

  I picked up a hairbrush and banged on the side of it. “Mom!” I shouted again. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  She lifted the dome and I almost cracked her on the ear. “What?” she asked, and snatched the brush away. “What are you doing here?”

  “Pablo’s been stolen!” I said and tugged on her smock, which was smeared with different colors of smelly hair dye.

  “Joey, nobody would steal that dog.”

  “But, Mom—”

  “Joey, don’t start with the dramatics. I’ve had a bad enough day. You know what happened?”

  “I don’t want to know,” I said. “Not now. Pablo is missing, and the longer he is gone, the harder it will be to find him. Come on.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to sit here and fry my brain under this dome until my headache goes away. You know what your dad did today?”

  “I don’t have time,” I said. “Pablo’s been stolen. Or he’s way lost. We have to act fast.”

  “Your dad dressed up in women’s clothes and marched in here with his hips swinging back and forth like a tart, and he was wearing some god-awful frilly lavender wig—”

  “Stop,” I said. “Listen to me!”

  “—so he goes up to Tiffany and says, ‘I’m lookin’ to make an appointment with Fran to do something with this mop on my head.’ So Tiffany comes and gets me and says a clown is here who needs some big-time help, so I think, well, maybe the circus is in town, but when I go out there and take a good look, I could see right away it was your father dressed like a beat-up Barbie.”

  “Mom, I don’t want to hear this,” I said.

  “Well, who else can I tell this stuff to? He’s your father. You should know what kind of nut he is.”

  “I already know,” I said. “He’s a nut. He’ll always be a nut.”

  “Well, he’s driving me nuts too.”

  “Mom,” I begged, tugging on her apron, “this isn’t about you goin’ nuts. This is about me goin’ nuts because Pablo is missing.”

  “And then your dad rips off his weirdo wig and drops down on one knee and takes out some see-through plastic shoe that he must have bought in a costume shop and grabs my foot. He scared me half to death. Then he yanks my shoe off and jams the plastic shoe on me and says, ‘You are my Cinderella. Come with me to my castle where we’ll live happily ever after’—or some such nonsense. I thought I’d never breathe again, I was so stunned. So he bends down to kiss my foot, and I just kicked him as hard as I could, and he grabs his chin and yells out that I’ve hurt him again and that—get this—I’m the evil one! I thought I’d take my scissors and cut his heart out and feed it to the danged rats.”

  “M-a-a-a!” I moaned, and poked myself in the chest. “Listen to me. Me! Me! Me! Pablo has been stolen. We have to call the police and start finding him right away.”

  “Oh, I’m sure Pablo’ll come back,” she said, and snapped her fingers. “He’ll get hungry and come home. Just set out some food for him. There’s no reason to get overexcited.”

  She looked away for a moment, and her eyes were as empty as Olivia’s. Then she stooped down, and I caught her glancing at her watch before she began to speak. “I’m so glad you came in today. I was going to go looking for you, because I have something important to tell you. After your dad’s little stunt, I’ve decided I should stay at Booth’s place for a short while,” she said. “I need to chill, and anyway Booth and I need some time to figure out what we’re doing with each other, and all the commotion that’s going on around the house is too much for us right now.”

  “Wait a minute. What about me?” I asked. “You know, me. You love me more than him. Think of me. I already lost Pablo and now I’m losing you.”

  “You aren’t losing me, honey. I’m still here. But I’m trying to move on with my life too. Can’t you understand that?”

  “No, I can’t,” I said. “Why do you have to move on without me?”

  She paused, and then she said something that was like magic words sprinkled over my head.

  “Help me,” she said. “I need you to help me by being strong for yourself right now. I need you to buck up and do all the right things.”

  “But I need you,” I said. “I’m just a boy.”

  “You are my big boy,” she said, “so you shouldn’t sound like such a baby. Grandma is here now. You and she get along great. In fact, you said yourself that you two think alike. So you’ll be fine. I already told her this morning, and she said she looks forward to being with you. It’ll be like old times, she said.”

  Which old times, I thought. The ones where Grandma made me behave like a dog and do doggy tricks? Or the ones where I was her baby and she protected me from Mom and Dad as they jumped in and out of our lives like escaped mental patients?

  “And
what about Dad?” I blurted out. “He’s zipping around all over the place.”

  “That’s another thing I wanted to tell you. I called the cops and Booth is going to take me down to the station so I can get a restraining order against him. Honey, he’s after me. Not you. So don’t worry. Once I’m out of the house, he’ll go away too.”

  I just stood there feeling like a big exclamation mark swelling up and up and up and was about to burst until I shouted, “I can’t believe you really think leaving me behind is a good idea!”

  “It’s just for a little while,” she said. “Once I figure out what I want, we’ll all be better off. Someday you’ll understand that.”

  “I understand that now!” I shouted. “That’s easy to understand. What I don’t understand is why you are more interested in Booth than you are in me because I can help you more than he ever can. I’d help you do anything.”

  Her eyes broke away from mine, and she looked over my head.

  “Hi, Fran,” Booth said, “Heck of a day, isn’t it? Hi, Joey.”

  I turned and frowned at him. “Go away,” I said. “Leave us alone.”

  “Is this a bad time?” he asked Mom.

  “It’s always a bad time to steal my mother,” I said. “She’s mine.” I reached out for her, but she reached me first and held my shoulder. In a moment she had steered me into the storeroom at the salon.

  “Joey,” she said with her long nails pressing into my shoulder, “we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You know I love you. Give me a little space to work this out with Booth, and then we’ll all get back on track.”

  “No,” I said loudly. I jerked my shoulder away from her hand because it was my shoulder, just like my heart was mine and I didn’t want it in her hands either. I lowered my head, knowing she was going to do what she wanted no matter what I did. Then I thought of one last thing. “He can come stay with us,” I said in a whisper. “You can work it all out at our house. I’ll be good. I’ll be very, very good. I’ll listen to Booth and do everything he asks. I won’t argue. I won’t do anything weird. I’ll be the perfect helper.”

  “You’re perfect already,” she said, reaching out to touch my face.

  “If I’m so perfect, why are you doing this?”

  Booth opened the door and stuck his head in. “Fran,” he said, “we have to get going. They’re waiting for us at the station.”

  “Okay,” she replied. “We’ll just be a minute more.” She raised one finger in the air.

  I looked at the finger and thought, That’s what I am now—one minute of her time.

  “Booth and I have to get going, hon. We can finish talking about this later.”

  “Later, when?” I asked, and stomped my foot down.

  Booth stuck his head back in. “Joey,” he said in that fake dad’s voice he gets when his patience runs out, “do as your mother tells you to do.”

  At that moment I wanted to slam the door shut across his neck.

  “You are stealing my mother,” I said as under control as I possibly could. “Someone just stole my dog, and now you are stealing my mother. I should call the cops on you.”

  He didn’t even say anything. He reached for my mom’s hand, and she reached for his and stood up.

  “Joey,” she said, “just settle down in here for a minute, and when you’ve calmed down, I want you to go straight home, and I’ll call you tonight.”

  “Can’t I go look for Pablo?” I asked.

  “Go home and put some food out for him,” she suggested. “That will do the trick. Besides, your dad is out there running around like a nut so I’d feel better if you were at home.”

  “Okay,” I said, and lowered my head. “I’ll do what you want even if you like someone else more.”

  “Don’t worry,” she whispered, “I’ll always love you the most.” Then she closed the door. But, when it clicked shut, I felt something in me click shut too. It was my heart, and it was locking her out, and it was locking me in, and that was about the worst feeling I ever had. I sat down on the floor and leaned forward so my knees covered my ears. I didn’t want to hear anything. I held my nose so I couldn’t smell anything. I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see anything. I didn’t want to touch anything or taste anything. I was trying to imagine how to be nothing—not dead, just relieved, like a sharp pain that finally disappeared.

  Then after a minute of being quiet, I whispered to myself, “What would Joey do?”—not the old wired Joey, but the new helpful Joey. The big-boy Joey. The better-than-a-boyfriend Joey.

  “Unlock your heart,” I answered. “She needs you. She said so herself. So don’t flip out. Be strong.”

  And as soon as my heart unlocked and I took a deep breath as if I had been let out of a dungeon, I remembered it was Pablo who needed my help right now. Mom had Booth. Pablo was all alone. “Pablo!” I shouted. “Hang on, I’m coming!” And I hopped up and burst out of the storeroom and ran up the street looking down at the asphalt as I went because the first thing I thought was that he might be roadkill. I ran up and down nearly all of Lancaster before going home, and my heart nearly burst half a dozen times because I thought I found him flattened out, but it was only dead squirrels, which are about the same size.

  When I got home, I ran over to the telephone. I thought I’d call everyone in town and tell them to be on the lookout for Pablo. I flipped the phone book to the yellow pages and started with the AAAA Driving School. When they answered, I told them about Pablo and asked if they wouldn’t mind keeping student drivers off the road until I found him. They hung up on me.

  I called A-OK Septic Service. They hung up. I called A-1 Locksmith. Then Angie’s Touch-of-Class Nails and Tanning. Some kid laughed through his nose and hung up. I was calling Arthur’s Beverage Sales when Grandma yanked the phone out of my hand.

  “Enough,” she croaked. “Do yourself a favor and put on a fresh patch. No, make it a double. You’re acting like your old self again. And I don’t like that. But what makes me really mad is that the nuts in this family are bringing out the worst in you again. They should be ashamed, but they’re not because they are too selfish to think of anyone’s needs other than their own.”

  I lowered my head. “Help me, Grandma,” I said. “What should I do?”

  “Go take care of your meds, and then we’ll make some Lost Dog signs and you can tack them up around the neighborhood. That’ll help. And we’ll call the dog pound too.”

  When I returned from my bedroom, Grandma was just hanging up the phone. “I talked to a lady at the pound,” she said. “Three other people are missing Chihuahuas. Now what do you think the odds are for a town this small to suddenly lose four Chihuahuas in one day?”

  “A million to one?” I guessed. “Two million to one? Three million?”

  “Hey, that reminds me,” Grandma said. “Where are my scratch tickets? Maybe I’ll win a million, and we can buy a hundred and one Chihuahuas.”

  “I forgot them,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, run back out there and get ’em,” she said. “It’ll do you good to work off some of that wired energy you got pent up.”

  I shot out of the house. Grandma may have been right about Pablo. He’s only a dog. But not just any dog. He’s a mutt with mostly Chihuahua blood, which meant he’s small enough to be one of my body parts like a heart or liver with little ears and a tail. It’s like he was part of me just like east is connected to west. He doesn’t wake up wanting a new human, and I don’t wake up wanting a new dog. He has been with me ever since I got out of special ed, and he is my lucky charm, and when I rub his belly, good things do happen, and I wished his belly was with me now. And while I stood in line at the grocery store to get the tickets the lady in front of me had a milk carton with a missing kid on it. Everybody cared about a missing kid. But nobody cared if there was one less Chihuahua in the world. No one. And I wondered if Pablo was feeling and thinking the same thing, and that made me even sadder because I know when you feel that no
one cares about you, then before long it is easy to care less and less about yourself until you are a speck without a voice.

  After I got the tickets, I walked out back and checked by the Dumpsters one more time just in case he had gotten lost, or was trapped under a box of toppled garbage, or had eaten too much and had fallen asleep like everyone does after Thanksgiving, or had chased after some big dogs and had returned to the Dumpsters and was waiting patiently to tell me all about it—when I heard Dad’s motorcycle coming. I turned toward him and watched as he sped past the Goodwill bin and across the grocery store parking lot and headed right for me. He had his dark glasses on and looked as blind and mean as Olivia, and I thought he might run me down, but at the last moment he turned away.

  “Dad!” I shouted, and waved my arms as he roared past with his cut-up leathers flapping in the breeze. “Dad, stop! I need your help!” But he went right on by and through the old stockyard gates behind the store and disappeared into the dark maze of pens that Grandma told me had been around from when she was a kid—only then the pens were full of cattle that were shipped in and out on the train.

  On my way home I walked across the broken sidewalks, past all the shifty gnomes, and I was thinking about Pablo and what he would say if he was a human. As a dog he mostly barks at everything. I imagine that if he was a person, he would be a lot like Grandma, always telling people what to do and how to live and where to go, and he would just be yapping off a long list of nonstop opinions about how dogs and people should behave properly and how the world should be run to suit him. And I figured whoever stole him would soon want to get rid of him because it took an especially patient person like me to really put up with an especially difficult dog like Pablo.

  6

  WANTED MAN

  When my eyelids flipped open the next morning, I looked up at the muffler on the wall above my head, and it seemed to me that I put it on the wall because that was exactly how I felt—burned out and flattened and miserable. Maybe that was what it meant. But I didn’t have time to think about it because Pablo was still missing. I crawled under my covers and down to the end of my mattress where he had dug out a little cave for himself, but he wasn’t in it. He was gone.