Nothing Special

by Geoff Herbach

  Then he tried to light up a cigarette! On the bus! But the bus driver, who was obviously staring at him in this mirror because the dude was so weird and scary, shouted, “No smoking in here, son.” And the mullet guy shouted the f-bomb back at the driver and then, as we pulled into Tampa, a couple of cop cars started driving next to us, which made the mullet dude just freaky.

  “They following us, man? You see them cars?”

  “Don’t know,” the lady next to him said.

  “Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,” mullet man said. “Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.” He said it like twenty-five times.

  When we pulled into the station, the dude jumped into the aisle (said, “Excuse me,” to people he bumped) and went barreling to the door and out, and then two cops tackled him on the sidewalk!

  The woman in front of me said, “Thank God.”

  By the time I got out there to go into the station to use the bathroom, the dude was in handcuffs and he was crying. I mean totally sobbing. And there was a German shepherd dog sticking its nose in his bag and barking.

  He was trafficking meth! I heard one of the cops say that! What the hell?

  Now I can’t stop hearing his sobbing, Aleah. It was terrible. It was like Jerri in her bedroom last summer, when she was totally out of control.

  COPS isn’t that funny.

  Is the whole wide world filled with all this craziness and broken crap and crying?

  Yikes. Jesus.

  That guy was way worse off than Renee.

  I’m going to swim in the gulf when I get there, even though there are stingrays and other terrifying fish in the water. I like the water. It’s cleaner there than out here.

  Beach.

  Okay, okay, okay…

  Everything is weird, Aleah.

  August 17th, 10:12 a.m.

  Tampa Bus Station, Part II

  Bus station.

  Smells like a manure spreader. Cow crap. Weird. At least there’s a place to plug in my computer.

  • • •

  Speaking of weird. You know who else is weird?

  After Andrew told me that I’m a giant pecker, Tovi took me out to the beach.

  We left the White Shells from the back door and walked out onto a patio, then past an unstaffed tiki bar and a pool area (with pool) where a couple of grandpa-aged old people were floating (swimming).

  Tovi walked fast (faster than me!).

  From the White Shells we took a boardwalk path between dunes and then, there it was, the ocean. (Okay, okay, the Gulf of Mexico, but dudes like me can’t make too fine a distinction or else we might have to say we’ve never seen anything at all.)

  “There it is,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” Tovi said.

  The sand was really white and soft, and the water was really, really blue because the air was still and there weren’t really waves, and the morning sky was totally blue, no clouds anywhere. Little birds ran on the sand. Pelicans dove into the water. Really cool.

  Both Tovi and I sat down and pulled off our shoes, and we paused for a moment and stared at our feet. They looked like the same feet except hers are a little smaller and she has no hair (but long toes like me).

  “Pretty weird,” Tovi said.

  Then I said, “Will you please tell me exactly what’s going on with Andrew?”

  She stood up, so I stood too. “Let’s walk. I can’t sit still.” (Sound familiar?)

  As soon as we were walking, she started to spill, speed talking.

  “Okay. So here’s the deal, okay? Andrew’s here because I asked him to come down. But Papa has no idea Andrew is his grandson. I’ve been bringing Andrew over there every couple of days or so…”

  “Over where?” I asked.

  “Fiddlesticks. It’s the golf community where Papa lives.”

  “Oh yeah. That was a clue. That was in a Randy Stone email. Fiddlesticks.”

  “Screw Randy Stone. Andrew’s a freak. Anyway, Papa always asks questions of Andrew, like, ‘Where you from again?’ ‘How do you know Tovi?’ ‘You like Bach, huh?’ but just sort of looks through him for the most part. Papa’s not doing so great. Gram (Grandma Rose) was pretty much his whole life after he retired, and he’s always been a sad guy, anyway. So he’s not behaving that weird.”

  “He’s sad, huh?” I asked.

  “As long as I can remember, anyway. Since…” Tovi paused and looked at me.

  “Since my dad killed himself in my garage,” I said.

  “Yeah, man,” Tovi nodded.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “I know,” Tovi said.

  “So, you asked Andrew to come down?”

  “Well…he wasn’t my first choice, Felton. I didn’t really know about him. I knew about you. And I remembered you.”

  “We met?”

  “Here. Right here, man. When we were like four.”

  “I sort of remember.” I nodded. I did remember too, Aleah. I could picture a little curly-head girl and this beach. Hazy. But there in my head. “Why did you ask Andrew, then?”

  “He emailed me like a day after Gram died. Out of no place. I was supposed to contact you…I mean that’s what Gram wanted. But then, Andrew’s all…you don’t want Felton around this.”

  “I think the day he found out about Grandma Rose, I told him he should stop worrying about crap and should just shake it off.”

  “Oh.” Tovi nodded. “Okay.”

  “I have to apologize to him. Seriously apologize.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be so easy, man. Andrew’s pretty much straight-up anti-Felton Reinstein right now.”

  “Jesus. I don’t know why he’s so mad.”

  Tovi shrugged. Then she said, “You’re pretty fast, right? You want to race to that umbrella?” Tovi pointed down the beach about sixty yards to where an old lady in a black bathing suit had just jammed her umbrella in the ground.

  “You want to race me?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Your hamstring healed?”

  “How do you know about…”

  “I read the Internet, man. ‘Reinstein Runs over Cuba City!’” she shouted (a headline from last fall’s football season). She took a couple of fast steps down the beach. “Andrew isn’t the only detective in the family. Go!” Then she was off. Fast. Very fast. Very fluid like a gazelle, even though we were in sand. I actually had to turn it up to catch her.

  I passed her about fifteen yards from the umbrella and the black swimsuit, biscuit-butt lady and then Tovi did something so weird, Aleah. She totally dove into my legs and sent me twisting through the air onto the back of my head, about five yards from the poor old lady who screamed (“Ahh!”) when we both hit the ground rolling.

  “Ow. Shit!” Tovi shouted. She grabbed the back of her head. “Damn! Why would anyone play football?”

  “Helmets,” I said.

  “Damn!” she shouted, squeezing her eyes shut.

  My mouth had sand in it. My face and hair were covered in white sand. I chewed and spit. Then I looked over at Tovi and said, “Who are you?”

  Tovi rolled onto all fours and spit sand, then swallowed and spit again, then said, “You think you’re the only jock in the family?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Oh.”

  “You have to be careful with your hamstrings. That’s genetic.”

  “You have a lot of sand in your hair,” I said.

  “That’s genetic too. Your ’fro is totally crusted, dude.”

  “You look like an old lady,” I said.

  Then the old lady yelled at us. We picked up our shoes and walked again.

  “Actually, Andrew’s more of a Reinstein than we are,” Tovi said. “We’re more like Gram, Rothe
nbergs. The fighting Rothenbergs of Prague! Andrew’s all Papa Stanley. You’ll see,” Tovi said. “Except Papa has some curly hair, not totally straight like Andrew’s.”

  “Rothenberg.”

  “Yeah. That’s her maiden name. Gram was the real athlete. Papa just whacks tennis balls around and shouts at people for not playing as well as he’d like to, even though he can’t.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “He’s teaching Andrew to play tennis.”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah. He’s teaching him to play like John McEnroe. I’m a tennis player, you know? I won’t let Papa tell me anything because he’d drive me crazy like he drove your dad crazy.”

  I stopped. “What do you mean he drove Dad crazy?”

  “I guess Papa just rode Steve hard all the time, just took all the fun out of the game for him.”

  I stared at her for a second. “Is that why Dad killed himself?”

  “Jesus. I don’t think so. No. There had to be a hell of a lot more to it than that.”

  As we walked on, Tovi told me that she’d become aware of me again during track season last year, when out of no place I was running some of the fastest times among sophomores in the country. (She had a Google Alert, like Andrew). She showed her mom the articles, and her mom was like, “Oh my God. That’s Steve’s Felton,” and her mom totally broke down and cried. They decided they’d print articles and bring them to Grandma Rose when they visited her during the summer. But then Grandma Rose got the cancer diagnosis and Papa Stan fell into a worse mood than ever, so they didn’t do it.

  Apparently Grandma Rose had been saying for several years that it was time for Stan to get over my dad’s death and reconnect with us boys. Grandma was waiting for him to feel better, but he never did.

  “Papa sort of hates your dad, I think,” Tovi said.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “I don’t know. I think Papa’s really just heartbroken, but it comes out as anger,” Tovi said.

  In the fall of last year, while I was getting more and more sort of famous from football, Grandma Rose’s health went downhill fast. Tovi decided Rose should know about me, no matter what. Her mom, Evith, wasn’t so sure. She thought it might be too late.

  “Gram was having all kinds of chemo and she lost all her weight and she was so weak she could barely get up from her lawn chair…but I brought it up to her anyway.”

  “You mean, you brought me up to her?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I printed out a bunch of articles for her, and it was all kind of sweet and great to start out with. Gram was lying down on the couch in the living room, then Mom told her that I had something to show her and Gram stared at the articles and read them really close and smiled and got teary-eyed and said, ‘He’s an athlete! He’s my boy!’

  Then her hands started shaking and then she started coughing and sobbing really hard, and then she went completely crazy screaming at Papa, who was in the other room listening to classical music like he does all the time, that she was going to die without her grandkids ever knowing she loved them and it was all his fault for not forgiving…it was bad, Felton. We had to call the ambulance because she couldn’t breathe or sit up or swallow. Oh man. It was scary. And Mom was super pissed at me for coming up with this lame-brained plan.”

  “Oh God. Oh shit. I killed my grandma.”

  “No, she didn’t die then. But I decided to forget about it. Papa told me if I ever brought you up again, he’d disown me too.”

  I felt so weak. “Why did Andrew come here?” I asked.

  “Because,” Tovi said. “Gram wanted him to come.”

  In March, about three weeks before Grandma Rose died, Tovi got a card in the mail. Inside there was a check for ten thousand dollars (yes, $10,000). Grandma Rose wrote about how it was so terrible and heartbreaking for her because it was too late. She couldn’t ever fix the family. She always thought she had time and that she’d let Stan heal, but then this? It’s not too late for your grandfather, Tovi. You can make this happen for him and for me. He needs to make amends with his grandsons.

  “She asked me to bring you guys down. She told me to use the money. I would’ve made a plan, man. I would’ve contacted you. But Andrew beat me to the planning stage. He knew right when Gram died. He told me you were a jerk and weren’t interested in us, Felton. Then me and Andrew spent a couple of months planning out how we’d slowly introduce him to Papa. We’re using tennis and classical music. That’s why he’s here.”

  “That little asshole,” I said. “He tried to cut me out of the family.” I could feel the heat rising in my face.

  “Don’t be too hard on him, man. He’s had a rough run, you know?”

  “No.”

  “Being your younger brother.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I don’t know,” Tovi said. “He is a little nuts.”

  “Well, I’m here,” I said.

  “I’m glad,” Tovi said. “But now I don’t know what to do about our plan. Papa is going to know you’re Steve’s kid, man. He’s going to recognize you right away. There’s not going to be any more easing in.”

  Well…

  • • •

  We tried, Aleah. We tried to ease in. I wore a costume.

  I shit you not.

  I’m like a freaking Scooby-Doo cartoon.

  August 17th, 10:49 a.m.

  South of Tampa

  Here’s a question: is it weird to like your cousin too much? I don’t mean in a gross way, but I mean, I really, really like Tovi. Is it weird?

  I don’t even freaking know because I’ve never had a cousin before, Aleah. Jerri was an only child and Dad whacked himself. Where were all my cousins supposed to come from? Cody seriously has like eight hundred and forty-two cousins. If his mom wants to have a barbecue, she puts a post up on the family Facebook, and she can’t blink before they’re all rolling down from the hills in their big-ass pickup trucks bearing bratwurst and potato salad.

  I texted Tovi from the airport in Madison and told her I was bringing her a huge box of cheese and sausage from Wisconsin. (I bought the Hickory Farms at the airport. I needed to give her a gift. She texted back, “You are such a freak, dude.”)

  I know she’s really going to love it, though. (I guess what’s left of it…sort of gross—like a half-chewed stump of sausage.)

  Also, Tovi told me about my hamstring. The little man that blew me up? That’s a tweak. Tovi gets hamstring tweaks and she rests for a week and she’s fine. My dad had tweaks too. Ruined one of his tennis seasons in college. What if I knew that this spring? Took a week off? Victory.

  Right. If Dad hadn’t killed himself and I had Tovi in my life forever, I don’t think I’d have ever felt so out of place on the planet. I might be more like Peyton Manning.

  What if I always had Grandma Rose? She was an accomplished track athlete and tennis player in her youth. Remember that from the obituary?

  If I want to make myself really sad, I think about how I never got to hang out with my Grandma who was like me. Grandma Berba is great, but she doesn’t know a touchdown from a home run from a three-pointer from a…total shuttlecock master spike in badminton. Grandma Rose played sports and watched sports, I guess. Back when she was Rose Rothenberg instead of Reinstein, back when she first got to the U.S. from Eastern Europe, she totally killed everyone in all these New Jersey Jewish sports leagues.

  Who would I be if she had been in my life, Aleah?

  They just called my last bus. Thank God. It’s going to be great to see Tovi (for about an hour before I have to fly back to Wisconsin for the game).

  August 17th, 11:40 a.m.

  Just Left St. Petersburg

  Hey! Believe it or not! It’s hot as shit!

  We pulled off to pick up passengers in St. Pet
ersburg, which is pretty much just another part of Tampa as far as I can tell, and the hot air poured, poured, poured into the bus.

  I need to change my freaking clothes, Aleah.

  I bought a Snickers bar in the bus station. It was so melted I threw it out, but not before chocolate got spread all over my shorts. I look like I pooped the front of myself. Nice, huh?

  Onward. We’re rolling again.

  • • •

  Andrew was not acting like Andrew. When Tovi and I got back from the beach, the Golden Rods were done practicing. We went up to Andrew’s room, but Tovi’s key card didn’t open the door.

  “What the hell?” she said.

  We went down to the lobby, and the front-desk person said, “Mr. Andrew has changed rooms.”

  “Well, Mr. Andrew is an idiot, because I’m paying for the room, so you have to tell me what room he changed to,” Tovi barked.

  “Fair enough,” the front-desk dude said.

  Andrew had moved two rooms down the hall. We went back up the elevator with the new room key in hand.

  “Andrew’s giving me a big headache,” Tovi said.

  When we got up there, Gus was hanging out in the room watching TV and Andrew sat in the corner on the floor reading that same fat Spinoza book he’d had in Bluffton. (Library book! Fines!). He didn’t look up at all.

  Gus lifted his hair wad out of his face, gestured with his eyes at Andrew, and shook his head really fast (I believe saying, Crazy).

  Tovi didn’t care if Andrew was crazy. She started screaming immediately. “You think you can just do whatever you want? You think you’re entitled to just run and hide from me?”

  Andrew looked up. “I’m not running from you.”

  “Did you tell me you were moving?”

  “I knew you’d tell Felton if I did.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?”

  “It was a flawed plan, I admit,” Andrew said. “I need to register with my brother the seriousness of my anger.”

  “So registered,” I said.

  “Don’t talk to me,” Andrew said.