I Got a D in Salami #2

by Winkler, Henry

  “Here, Cheerio!” I said. “A treat!”

  I thought if I got his attention, he’d stop spinning for a minute and then I could grab him. Instead, I got Nina’s attention, which was not my plan.

  Nina jumped up to get the salami, and as she came down, her giant tail swept across the table, knocking all the platters into the air. There were trays of lunch meat sailing around like Frisbees. Slices of soy salami flew everywhere, scattering like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Nina was grabbing them out of the air. She got them before they even hit the ground, ate some of them, and gave a few to Cheerio, since jumping isn’t exactly his strong suit.

  I looked at some of the salami that landed on the rug. I think I saw the word sloppy in one and the word fail in another. I know I saw Ms. Adolf in another one—the words, not actually her.

  Cheerio must have gotten one with a big chunk of something in it, because he was having a tough time chewing up his slice. I looked down at him. He held the salami between his front paws, trying like crazy to gnaw through a chunk of manila folder that was wadded up in it. He was so busy concentrating that he was standing still for the first time since he crashed the party.

  “Let’s get him,” I said to the others.

  Frankie, Ashley, Robert, and I joined hands and made a tight circle. We crept up on him, and before he could say “arf,” we had him surrounded. I scooped him up and held him tight in my arms.

  Poor Cheerio. Love was hard on him. He was exhausted. His little heart was racing, and he was panting. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth, and it still had a piece of soy salami clinging to it. I lifted the salami out of his mouth so he wouldn’t choke on it. When I looked at it, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There, lying in the salami for all to see, was my D in spelling.

  That rotten grade was going to follow me wherever I went.

  CHAPTER 19

  WE’RE FRIENDS, RIGHT? So you know me by now—at least a little bit. So you’ve probably figured out that when bad things happen to me, I make lists in my head.

  That’s exactly what I did as I looked around the mess that used to Mr. Gristediano’s beautiful apartment.

  THE NEXT SIX THINGS I PREDICT

  WILL HAPPEN TO ME

  BY HANK ZIPZER

  (ALSO KNOWN AS “CAPTAIN

  DESTRUCTO”)

  1. Mr. Gristediano, who is really a genie in disguise, will grant me three wishes. For my first wish, I will wish that none of this ever happened, and it won’t have.

  2. For my second wish, I will wish for front-row season tickets to the Met’s games. I will get them.

  3. While sitting in my box at the Mets game, I will catch more foul balls than any fan ever did.

  4. They will offer me a position on the Mets as center fielder. I will accept the position and become the youngest baseball player in America.

  5. For my third wish, I will wish for world peace, because that’s what Papa Pete always wishes for when he blows out his birthday candles.

  6. I will become world famous as a peace-loving baseball star.

  CHAPTER 20

  YOU MUST HAVE guessed by now that Numbers 1 through 6 didn’t come true.

  Instead, what happened was that Mr. Gristediano called my parents and said that he had to see them right away about a very serious matter.

  So much for my predictions. I guess I don’t have much future in the crystal ball business.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE HARDEST THING in the world is waiting, especially when you’re waiting for bad news. It only took twenty minutes for my parents to get to Mr. Gristediano’s, but it seemed like twenty years.

  I asked Papa Pete if he would take Ashley, Frankie, and Robert home. They got into this mess to help me out. I didn’t see any reason for them to have to be there to take the blame. Papa Pete told me he was proud of that decision, because I was taking responsibility for my own actions. Before he left, he took my face in his hands and whispered, “Remember, Hankie: truth. That’s the magic word.”

  Papa Pete took Cheerio home, too. Poor Cheerio. After Mr. Gristediano’s store managers left, Cheerio flopped down next to the fireplace and started to lick the bricks as though they were doggie candy. Don’t ask me why. You just can’t explain a lot of what Cheerio does. Nina wanted to play with him, but Cheerio had lost all interest in her. That’s him. In love one minute, licking bricks the next.

  When we were alone, I offered to help Mr. Gristediano clean up the mess in his apartment.

  “I think you’ve done enough damage already,” he said. He was holding the pieces of one of the china ducks that had broken in half.

  “I bought these ducks in Italy,” he said. “I paid a pretty penny for them, as I recall.”

  “I’m really sorry, Mr. Gristediano,” I said. “I didn’t mean to break anything.”

  He didn’t answer. I couldn’t blame him. I’d be angry at me, too, if I were him.

  I bent down and started to pick up the chess pieces that were scattered all across the floor. I had to do something to help. Very carefully, I put them back on the board the way they were supposed to go.

  “I see you play chess,” Mr. Gristediano said.

  “My grandpa taught me.”

  He began to sweep up the pieces of the blue-flowered vase. It was quiet.

  “Do you play chess?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “My father taught me. He played a lot of chess.”

  “My dad does crossword puzzles,” I said.

  “Do you do them, too?”

  “No way. I’m a terrible speller.”

  “Me too,” he said. “I was a teenager before I could spell my name correctly.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Of course, it’s not that easy when your name is Vincenzo Giovanni Giuseppe Gristediano. My brother got off easy. His name is Mike.”

  I laughed. Mr. Gristediano smiled for the first time since the disaster. I couldn’t believe he could smile after the all the trouble I had caused.

  The doorman downstairs rang the buzzer to say my parents had arrived. I sighed. And there it was—the moment I definitely had not been waiting for.

  When my mom came in and saw the mess, she shot me one of her mom looks. It was the one that says, “I don’t know what you’ve done, but how could you have done it?” You’ve probably gotten that look sometime in your life. My dad had a different look on his face. It was the same one he had the time he went to the dentist for a root canal on his back molar.

  “Let me just say that we are so sorry,” my mom began.

  “Of course, we’ll take care of everything that’s broken,” my dad added.

  Mr. Gristediano offered them a seat on the couch. My dad sat down, then reached under his butt and pulled out a piece of salami that had gotten wedged in between the pillows. When he put the salami into the ashtray on the coffee table, I could see a wad of manila envelope mushed up inside it.

  “Hank, I think you need to tell your parents what happened here today,” Mr. Gristediano said. “I’m sure they would like an explanation, as would I.”

  Listen, I can make up a story at the drop of a hat, right?

  Sitting there on the couch with all of them waiting for me to talk, I was tempted. I could have said that alien worms invaded the salami and planted secret papers in it. I could have said that a superhero named Captain Destructo told me to destroy all lunch meats to save the world from the evils of soy.

  Truth, I heard Papa Pete say in my mind’s ear.

  And so I told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  I started at the very beginning, with the three D’s on my report card. I told them how ashamed I was of those grades. I described everything that happened after that—the meat grinder, the recipe switch, the plan to seize the salami. At the end, I even pointed out the chunk of brown manila folder wadded up in the salami on the coffee table.

  My parents could not believe what they were hearing. Their mouths were hanging open so wide
that you could have planted trees in there.

  There are no words to describe how they reacted. Well, maybe there are. Angry. Embarrassed. Shocked. Disappointed. Hot Under the Collar. (Sorry, that’s three words. Oops, I mean four.) If I knew how to spell infuriated , I’d put that down too.

  I’m out of words now, so let me just say this: Imagine confessing to your mom or dad the worst thing you’ve ever done. Imagine what their faces would look like. Imagine how their voices would sound. Imagine steam coming out of the top of their heads. You get the picture? Good, because that’s just how my parents looked when I finished talking.

  “Hank, how could you?” my mom asked. She turned to Mr. Gristediano. “We don’t know what Hank was thinking.”

  “You better get used to your room,” my dad said to me, “because you’ll be spending all your time there.”

  “I don’t want to butt in to your family business,” Mr. Gristediano said, “but may I make a suggestion?”

  I was sure he was going to suggest that I go to jail and just eat bread and water.

  “This sounds like a situation I had in my own family,” Mr. Gristediano said, “with my middle daughter, Angela.”

  “She ground her report card up into lunch meat, too?” I asked.

  “I’m sure she would have liked to,” Mr. Gristediano said. “Angela was a very bright child who did very poorly in school. We were always so frustrated with her, and even worse, she was always frustrated with herself. She grew to believe she just wasn’t smart.”

  Boy do I know how she felt, I thought.

  “When she got to junior high school, one of Angela’s teachers suggested that we get her tested to see if she had any learning differences. It turned out she did. Angela was smart, don’t get me wrong. She just learned differently than a lot of other kids do. Do you know that one out of every five kids has learning challenges? I’m sure I had them, too, but when I was growing up, no one even knew there was such a thing.”

  Mr. Gristediano had trouble learning? No way. He owned the biggest supermarket chain in all of New York.

  “Where is Angela now?” my mom asked.

  “She’s a senior at Columbia University,” said Mr. Gristediano. “Once we figured out how she learned best, we got her help and her grades improved dramatically. In fact, everything changed for her.”

  “I assume you’re telling us this for a reason,” my dad said.

  “As I listened to Hank just now, he reminded me so much of my Angela, and of myself, too,” Mr. Gristediano said. “His frustration. His shame in failing. It’s all so unnecessary. I’m no expert, but if Hank were my son, I’d see about getting him tested.”

  I looked over at my mom and dad. We all said the same thing at the same time: “Mr. Rock.”

  That’s exactly what Mr. Rock had said after I spent that week in detention with him. He said he thought I should be tested to see if I have learning challenges. He even came over to our house to tell my parents that. He said exactly what Mr. Gristediano just said, but without the Angela part.

  When Mr. Rock suggested it, my mom thought it was a good idea to get me tested, but my dad refused. Instead, he gave me a lecture about his Stanley Zipzer theory of success in school. According to his theory, all you have to do is “put your butt in your chair and study” and you’ll do fine. End of story.

  I’ve never been able to convince my dad that I really do study. I study; I just don’t learn.

  That’s not exactly true. I learn some things. In fact, a lot of things are really easy for me— like memorizing poems or remembering facts from history. My brain just gobbles up that stuff like Hershey’s kisses. But other subjects, like spelling or math or drawing—those are really hard. I feel as though when I try to learn those things, my brain says, “Sorry, I’m closed.”

  Before we left, my parents again offered to pay Mr. Gristediano for everything that Cheerio destroyed.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “You can pay me back by looking into the testing.”

  My dad didn’t say anything, but my mom said she would make arrangements right away.

  As we left, I apologized to Mr. Gristediano for causing so much trouble.

  “I hope you learned something from everything that happened today,” he said. “Growing up is tough, Hank. It’s not all smooth sailing.” Boy, was he nice.

  We were pretty quiet the whole walk home. When we got back to our apartment, my mom went right into her bedroom.

  I could hear her dialing the phone.

  CHAPTER 22

  THE TESTING PLACE looked just like an office at school, which isn’t surprising because it was an office at school. The walls were covered with lots of posters that kids had drawn. One showed a colorful butterfly. Another showed a family of puppies in a basket telling whoever was looking at them to read a lot. Those puppies were cute enough to play with.

  The tester was Dr. Lynn Berger. She smiled when she talked and kept telling me to take deep breaths and relax. She must have been hanging out with Frankie.

  We sat at a round table facing each other. Dr. Berger had a little table right next to her with all her equipment on it: blocks, LEGOS, pictures, pencils, and lots of paper. I mean lots of it. Some pages were blank, some had shapes, and some were divided into four squares.

  I was nervous. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because I hate taking tests or maybe because I was worried the tests would tell everyone that I was stupid for real.

  “Well, shall we begin?” Dr. Berger asked.

  “Sure,” I answered, not really meaning it.

  “Okay. First, I’m going to put a piece of paper in front of you and ask you to draw your family—pets and all.”

  “Does neatness count?” I asked.

  “No, Hank. This is not about you being an artist,” Dr. Berger assured me.

  I picked up the pencil and stared at the blank piece of white paper for a while. I didn’t know how to draw people without making them looking like sticks.

  “Can I go get a drink of water?” I asked.

  Dr. Berger went to the corner of the room, where there was a water cooler. She pushed the blue button, and water rushed out into a paper cup. She handed me the cup. I took a small sip. I wasn’t really thirsty; I had just wanted to get out of there.

  “Try to relax, Hank. You’re fine,” she said.

  I drew a little squiggle on the paper. It looked like a hair.

  “Do you understand what I asked for?” Dr. Berger asked. “I want you to draw any kind of picture of your family.”

  “I understand. I’m sorry,” I said. I wasn’t exactly positive why I was apologizing, but it sounded right.

  I started with Stan the crossword-puzzle man. I tried drawing him sitting at the dining room table doing a crossword puzzle. The table got so big that it took up almost the whole page, so I put the rest of the family there, too. Everyone in the family was on one side of the table, facing me. Mom, Dad, and Emily, with Katherine on her shoulder. I even put a little piece of iguana poop on Emily’s sweater. Cheerio was under the table. He came out looking like one of those really long bubbles that I used to blow when I was little.

  “I hope this is right,” I said to Dr. Berger.

  “There are no right or wrong answers on this test,” she said.

  “I wish all my tests were like that,” I said to her.

  Dr. Berger laughed, and I started to relax a little bit.

  I sat back and looked at my picture. I noticed that we all looked exactly alike—even the iguana. Now I started laughing, because it struck me funny that Mom had three twins, and one of them was a green reptile with a mile-long tongue.

  Dr. Berger asked me what was so amusing.

  “It’s just that my sister’s pet iguana looks like her twin,” I said.

  “Do you all have dinner together?”

  “Yes. Every night.”

  “My, such a lovely family you have.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, because you haven’t seen my d
ad in his boxer shorts.”

  Wherever that thought came from, please let it go back there right away!

  Dr. Berger laughed again. What a great audience.

  The next part of the test involved putting a set of odd-shaped blocks into exactly the same pattern as the one drawn on a sheet of paper. Dr. Berger put the blocks in front of me.

  I pushed them around until I lined them up perfectly to look just like the pattern on the test paper.

  “Wow! You accomplished that task in record time!” Dr. Berger said.

  “No kidding. Was I the fastest person ever?”

  “I’m sure you are one of them,” she said.

  That felt good. I began to think that maybe this testing thing was going to work out just fine.

  There was reading and vocabulary and listening to numbers and having to repeat them back. I worked puzzles, looked at splattered paintings, and arranged pictures in order. Some of the activities were fun, which made the time really speed by.

  When we were all done. Dr. Berger walked me out to the hall, where my parents were waiting. She told us she would go over the results and we would hear back in about a week. Hear what? Hear that I had to change schools? Be left behind? That I’m not smart enough to go to school in the first place?

  Boy, seven days can be an awfully long time.

  CHAPTER 23

  WHEN I’M NERVOUS, my body turns into a fountain. If I’m a little bit nervous, my forehead gets damp. If I’m medium nervous, my palms start to sweat. If I’m really nervous, the armpits get involved. And when I’m scared, my back actually sweats. That may be too much information for you, but there it is, I’ve said it.