What Would Joey Do?

by Jack Gantos

  That’s when the door opened and Mom marched in and said she had done something she regretted, and I was just staring at her like Grandma’s little zombie.

  “Well, aren’t you going to ask what I’m going to regret?” Mom asked.

  “Sorry,” I replied. “My mind drifted.”

  “I just bailed your father out of jail,” she said, shaking her head as if she was surprised by her own words. “The reason he isn’t here is he was on his way and stopped in at the discount grocery store and was arrested there for shoplifting some doughnuts.”

  “Doughnuts?” I said a little too loudly. I was more confused about what he stole than about the thought that he would steal.

  “Yeah, doughnuts,” she repeated. “He was stealing snacks for the little reception we’re having after your grandmother’s service.”

  “Well, thanks for bailing him out,” I said.

  “Booth thought I was nuts,” she said. “And I can’t disagree with him. This whole deal today would go a lot smoother if Carter stayed behind bars.”

  “Then why’d you do it?” I asked.

  “I guess I felt I owed him one after I tried to throw that knife right between his eyes. I mean, that’s not exactly a good thing to do. What do you think?”

  I wanted to ask her what she thought of my new outfit, but at that moment Dad entered the room running as if he was trying to break an Olympic record. He passed us, dodged the coffin in the middle of the room, and finally slowed down when he hit the far wall with his outstretched hands. “What a morning!” he shouted when he turned around.

  “What a moron!” Mom said, mimicking him. “I can’t believe you stole some doughnuts. How low can you get?”

  I knew they were going to argue. I was ready for that. I just didn’t know what they were going to argue about because they always went over and over the old subjects about who was mean to who first, and who was irresponsible, and who was a no-good drunk, and who was a loser, and who was a crummy parent, and who took better or worse care of me or whatever. I mean, I was ready for some sort of blowout because by now I had figured the funeral was where the seventh bad thing would happen. Still, I was not ready for what happened next. The only person who was ready was Grandma, and that was because she was already dead.

  From across the room they began to stare at each other like contenders in a heavyweight prizefight. Dad was in one corner of the room jerking his head back and forth and cracking his knuckles like he was getting psyched up to kill someone. Mom was in the other corner just glowering at him with her X-ray look of death. I was stuck like the referee in the middle. But it was an odd fight because the only prize was Grandma, and she was already down for the count—decked out in an open wooden coffin on a small table.

  The fight began when Mom said these words: “This coffin is a disgrace. You have insulted your mother’s memory.”

  “There’s not a thing wrong with this coffin,” Dad said. “A lot of people are buried in a plain wooden box.”

  “Yeah,” she shot back. “I can think of a few—dogs, cats, birds, hamsters—pets! You are burying your mother as if she were a pet. Why don’t you just bury her in the backyard?”

  “Actually,” he said, “I am. She’ll go into St. Mary’s Cemetery, and you can see her from the house.”

  “You know that’s not what I meant,” she said. “I meant that you should bury her with some dignity.”

  “I think she looks fine,” Dad said. “In fact, I think she looks more dignified in death than in life.”

  “You cheap creep. You could have bought her a good coffin,” Mom snarled. “And a new dress. And had her properly laid out.”

  I wanted to tell Mom that Grandma had picked out the dress from her chest of old dresses and that the funeral people had cleaned it and ironed it and I had done the makeup and hair. But I didn’t want to get more in the middle than I already was.

  “You haven’t given a cent toward it,” he said. “I’ll have to sell my motorcycle to pay for the plot.”

  “Well, if you had a life, you would have been able to pay for something decent.”

  “Stop it,” Dad said. “Just back off.”

  “No,” Mom said, stepping toward him.

  “If you don’t like it, you can leave,” Dad said.

  “I’m not leaving without her,” Mom replied. “I’ll give her a proper burial and not put her in the ground in some overgrown cigar box.” She reached in and ran her arms under Grandma and began to lift her out like a fireman hoisting someone over their shoulder.

  “She’s fine,” Dad said. “Just fine. It doesn’t matter if it’s a wooden box or solid gold. We all go to the same place.” He reached over Mom’s shoulders and pushed Grandma back into the coffin.

  “Well, she’s not going to show up at the pearly gates looking like she just checked out of the poorhouse.” Mom grabbed Grandma by the shoulders and lifted.

  Dad pushed her back into the coffin again. “Stop it,” he said.

  Mom ran to the head of the coffin and got a grip on Grandma’s shoulders and began to pull her out. Dad grabbed Grandma by the ankles and they were yanking on her and I just stood there with my mouth hanging open watching Grandma being pulled back and forth like a piece of Turkish taffy. The next thing I knew Grandma’s shoes came off in Dad’s hands and he tumbled backward and Mom stumbled back into a chair and the coffin slid off the table and hit the floor and Granny flopped out onto the carpet. I screamed.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” Dad hollered.

  “This is all your fault,” Mom spit back. “If you had treated your own mother decently, then we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “Stop it!” I yelled.

  “Quiet, Joey,” Dad snapped.

  “Joey go outside,” Mom ordered. “I need to speak to your father alone.”

  “No,” I said defiantly. I knelt down and put my face on Grandma’s chest. I thought maybe her heart would start beating again and she’d come back to life like in The Return of the Mummy and pop up and knock some sense into both my parents. She had knocked plenty of sense into me. And even though I pressed and pressed my face against her and begged her to come back and be with me, she didn’t. She was just as cold and wrinkled as if she had been carved out of an old log. And the next thing I knew Mom had pulled me off of Grandma and was pressing me against her belly with one hand while reaching over my head with her other to try and slap Dad, who had his arms up in front of his face, and he was doing a jig and hollering, “Don’t get me started! Don’t you get me worked up, or you’ll be in the coffin with her!”

  I broke away from Mom and bolted toward the door, but before running off I just shouted about as loud as I possibly could, “What’s the matter with you? Are you as hopeless as Grandma said? Don’t you know she is going to be cremated and that they always use a wooden coffin for that? And everything has already been paid for anyway! She used her own money.”

  Then I ran out the door.

  “I’ll speak to you later, young man!” Mom shouted. But she didn’t come after me because she had already turned toward Dad and they continued to blame each other for everything bad that had ever happened between them. With the window open in the funeral parlor, I could hear them as I passed by. I wanted to stop and stick my head in the window and yell “Grow up!” and make them sit quietly in chairs facing opposite corners until they could control themselves. But I knew they wouldn’t listen to me. They didn’t want my help. They always did just what they wanted to do, and when things turned out badly, they made up excuses to try and wiggle out of the mess they’d made for everyone around them—which means mostly me. I expect my dad to behave badly, but when Mom is bad too, it really upsets me because I count on her. I keep trying to make some sense out of what they do, but they’ve got me all mixed up, and I can’t figure them out to save my life. So I’m pretty sure I should forget about them and just think about what I should do. Even though, as I ran away, I really wanted to turn around and try to f
ix things up just one more time.

  When I arrived at the Lapps’, I decided that when Mrs. Lapp had said she secretly needed my help, it really meant that I had to secretly help her understand Olivia. I’m sure she didn’t think of it that way. I figured I had to make her see what Olivia saw inside herself. That was the only way they were going to see eye to eye. If I had tried to sneak Olivia out of the house and we were caught by her mother, I would only look like one more crazy Pigza and make things worse between them. So I got my courage up, straightened the noose around my neck, and rang the front doorbell.

  When Mrs. Lapp opened the door, I was standing there holding a single rose I had picked out from a bucket of them at the Mini Mart. I had sniffed them all and made sure this one smelled the strongest. It didn’t look so good, but Olivia was blind so how it looked didn’t matter.

  “Hello, Mrs. Lapp,” I said.

  “Hello, Joey,” she replied. “You look very handsomely dressed this afternoon. What is the special occasion?”

  “I just came from my grandmother’s funeral. And now I’m here to ask permission to take Olivia to see Godspell,” I said directly.

  She stood there for a moment, weighing something in her mind, then said, “That’s very thoughtful of you, Joey. But you know how I feel about religion used as entertainment. Especially Godspell. I saw the poster downtown, and Jesus was wearing a Superman costume and a clown nose. Joey, that is not my idea of religious respect.”

  “I know how you feel about Godspell,” I said, sounding as respectful as I could. “But do you know how Olivia feels about it?”

  She turned to look at Olivia, who was standing behind her. “Olivia feels the same way I do,” she assured me. “Right, Olivia?”

  “Not really,” Olivia said. “I love Godspell. I have the tape. The kids in church were listening to it, and they made me a copy.”

  I removed the tickets from inside my jacket. “Please let her come with me,” I said as nicely as I could. “I don’t think I’ll see much of her in the future, and this would be kind of a goodbye present.”

  “Please, Mom?” Olivia asked. “I just love the music. I didn’t even know Jesus was wearing a clown nose and Superman costume until you just said it. Please?”

  Mrs. Lapp looked at Olivia, then she looked at me.

  “W.W.J.D.?” I shouted when I caught her eye.

  She looked up at the blue belly of the sky, then down at me. “He’d let Joey take Olivia,” she said.

  Olivia squealed. I wanted to tell Mrs. Lapp that I had helped her see the light, but didn’t. I pressed my lips together tighter than ever because if I opened my mouth, I might mess things up by saying too much. So I just said to myself, Thanks for the advice, Grandma.

  “I need to get ready,” Olivia said. Mrs. Lapp followed her into her bedroom.

  I waited in the living room for a while, sniffing the rose and staring at the big clock that called out the time every five minutes. Then Mrs. Lapp and Olivia returned. Olivia was all dressed up like a bridesmaid in a long, shiny green gown with a very large white bow on her back. She had a beautiful jade cross around her neck, and her hair was pulled back into a bun.

  She looked so great, I thought she might call me a chump.

  “For you,” I said, and pressed the rose into her hand.

  She sniffed it. “A black rose,” she said. “My favorite.”

  Even though I had accidentally pricked her finger with one of the rose thorns and a little drop of blood slid into her palm, she didn’t say anything mean.

  “You two better get going,” said Mrs. Lapp. Olivia started for her room to get her cane and pads.

  “Don’t,” I called out to her. “You can hang on to my arm.”

  “Are you sure about this?” Mrs. Lapp asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. “I’ll only cross at the corner, and then I’ll look both ways first.”

  “Well, okay,” she said.

  Once Olivia and I began to stroll down the sidewalk, I looked over at her and whispered, “Don’t you think this is better than sneaking out?”

  “It is,” she replied. “But it would be cool too if I had to climb out my window.”

  “Yeah, but it wouldn’t be cool if we were caught,” I said.

  And I think we would have been caught. Because when I stopped at the corner and looked both ways, I saw Mrs. Lapp’s car sneaking up the road behind us.

  When we arrived at the theater, I held the door open for her and gave the usher our tickets. He led us upstairs and down a hall past a row of narrow doors. Then he stopped in front of one. He checked the door and the number on our ticket and directed us inside.

  “You have to describe everything to me,” she said. “Where are we sitting?”

  “In our own private little balcony,” I replied, looking around with my mouth open. “It’s very nice. I feel like we are inside a red-velvet-and-gold jewelry box.”

  I put her hands on the brass railing and lined the chair up behind her. “Now, turn your head a bit to your left and down, and you’ll be facing right at the center of the stage.”

  The orchestra began to warm up, and all the different instruments sounded like crazy musical traffic, and then suddenly the lights dimmed and the curtain opened and a line of singers came out dressed like Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy and a bunch of beat-up Goodwill dolls. And as they began to sing, Olivia sang along with them. She couldn’t see a thing but she knew all the words. I could see, and watched for a moment as the players chased each other back and forth. But I wasn’t singing. Instead, the only words I remembered were from Grandma and they didn’t sound like music. But they were loud. She had said that from behind her curtain the whole bunch of us Pigzas were like our own play coming and going and making a mess out of everything. Now things were just getting worse. Grandma was dead. Dad was taking off. And Mom was mad. Her last words were, “I’ll speak to you later.” So while everyone in the opera house was thinking about John the Baptist and Jesus and good people and bad people and heaven and hell, I was thinking about Mom in my own house, with me.

  At intermission I needed to move around just to get away from myself. “I’ll be right back,” I said to Olivia. I stood up and went out our own door and down the hall, then down a set of steps to the men’s room. When I came out, I wanted to see where we were sitting from the floor, so I walked down the center aisle. I looked up and saw the side of Olivia’s face. Then when I turned around, my eyes nearly bugged out. There was Mrs. Lapp sitting in the middle of a row. I got as close to her as I could and waved until she saw me. I pointed up to Olivia, and she smiled. Then she held one finger up over her lips. I nodded. I wouldn’t tell, not because I thought Mrs. Lapp wanted to keep it a secret that she came but because she wanted to be the first one to share that secret with Olivia.

  After the show it was still light outside, and Olivia and I walked home. She was so happy and it made me feel good, because watching someone else be happy was so much better than thinking about how unhappy Mom was with me.

  “I probably won’t see you for a while,” I said when we arrived at her house. “How will I write you?”

  “There is a braille typewriter at the public library,” she said. “Just ask for it. Or better yet, write. But use lots of swear words so when the church ladies read it to me, they’ll get flustered.”

  I smiled. “I’ll miss you,” I said.

  I was going to open the door, but she stood in the way and stuck her arms straight out and leaned her face and lips forward. I wasn’t sure what to do because I never kissed a girl before other than my mom and grandma.

  “Hurry and kiss me,” she whispered. “If my mom catches us, she’ll send me to a convent.”

  I stuck my arms straight out and stuck my lips way out and closed my eyes and figured we were lined up properly. I inched forward, and she did too. My forehead hit her chin, and then I stood up on my tiptoes, and she bent her knees, and we kissed for about as long as it takes to blink. And by the time Mrs. Lapp
opened the front door and winked at me, Olivia and I were just standing side by side holding hands and smiling. And Mrs. Lapp was smiling too. Something was making her eyes shine.

  “Joey,” she said, “even though we’ve decided that Olivia is going away, you can still come by and ring my doorbell, okay?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I love to ring doorbells.”

  Then she bent down and whispered in my ear, “You can always be my secret helper.”

  Then I just bit my lip and waved a tiny wave like a sad fish waving goodbye and drifted slowly all the way home.

  I could tell Mom had been on the warpath. She had already ripped down Grandma’s shower curtain and piled up all of Grandma’s clothes and bathroom things into grocery bags for Goodwill. She had stacked all the couch cushions on the front porch and had dragged the couch out to the front door but hadn’t gotten it through just yet.