“Now, that sounds exciting,” I say, as though she’s just told me we’re flying on a rocket ship to the moon.
“Yeah.” Mom waves her straw. “I know. A thrill a minute. But it’s got to get done.”
Our waitress comes over with our hoagies and puts the slice of pie in the center of the table. “Can I get you two anything else?”
My dad.
And a Sunday that won’t be a big pile of boring.
“No, we’re fine,” Mom says.
And her words hang in the air like a lie-filled rain cloud.
Sunday, it turns out, is not a big pile of boring.
Mom and I are at the table. She’s studying for the CPA exam, and I’m filling out contest entries, imagining someone coming to our door to deliver a huge grand prize. I’m also working on my Royal-T slogan but can’t come up with anything great.
“What do you want for dinner?” Mom asks.
I know there’s nothing much in the house, so I say, “Whatever.”
“How about—”
There’s a knock at the door.
Mom tenses.
I feel like telling Mom to relax. It’s probably someone delivering a contest win to Shelley B. Epstein. In fact, I’m feeling so positive that I go to the door and fling it open.
“Ben, you need to ask who—”
“Zeyde?” I’m staring at my slightly disheveled grandfather, who’s holding a suitcase in one hand and a pizza box in the other.
“Boychik!” Zeyde shouts.
“Dad?” Mom rushes over and grabs the suitcase from Zeyde’s hand.
I take the pizza box and push my contest stuff out of the way so I can put it on the table.
“What … why …?” Mom leads Zeyde to the couch. “Where’s Abby? Why are you here? I thought …” She turns to me. “Go get your zeyde a glass of water.”
I run into the kitchen, fill up a glass and run back. I don’t want to miss anything.
Zeyde downs the water in a few gulps, hands me the glass and opens his arms. “How are my two favorite Philadelphians?”
I put the glass in the sink, then sit in Dad’s recliner, cross my legs and lean forward.
“How did you get here? Why …?” Mom takes one of Zeyde’s veiny hands. “You’re supposed to be in Florida, Dad. With Abby.”
“Did you walk back here?” I ask.
Mom shoots me a look that tells me my question was both idiotic and annoying.
Zeyde reaches over and pats my knee. “Benjamin, your zeyde is in pretty amazing shape for an old geezer, but not amazing enough to walk twelve hundred miles. With a suitcase. I took a cab. The bill’s four thousand dollars. The guy’s waiting outside to get paid.”
Mom’s mouth opens, but no sound comes out.
“I’m joking, Shelley!”
She forgets to laugh.
“I took a cab to the airport in West Palm Beach and got a good seat on the plane,” Zeyde says, “After landing in Philly, I hailed a cab and made the driver stop at Kirk’s Pizza.” He winks at me. “Ben’s favorite.”
I smell the delicious pizza sitting on the table, and my mouth waters.
“But why?” Mom asks.
Zeyde pulls his hand from Mom’s grip and rubs it over his bald head. “Did you know your sister has fourteen cats, Shelley? Fourteen meshugge cats!”
I didn’t know that. When we visited her a while ago, she had only four: Kiwi, Avocado, Jasmine and Fred. Fred was the smallest and the bossiest.
“Do you know how a tiny two-bedroom condo smells with fourteen cats in it?”
I think Zeyde’s asking a rhetorical question and doesn’t expect us to answer. In this case, “rhetorical” probably means super-sized stink-o-rama! Sometimes Toothpick’s cat, Psycho, smells up the whole house when she poops. I can’t imagine that odor times fourteen!
“Your sister’s turned into a crazy cat lady, Shelley!”
Mom bursts out laughing, then covers her mouth. “This is not good,” she says. “Does Abby even know you left?”
“Of course.” Zeyde looks at his shoes. “Well …”
“Dad?” Mom gives Zeyde the look that’s like truth serum pouring out of her eyeballs. You can’t tell a lie when Mom gives you that look.
“Abby may not be entirely aware that I left today. But she knew I was going to leave soon. We talked about it a few days ago. I told her I was going to come and stay with you guys for a while. At least, I think it was a few days ago.”
“And?” Mom asks.
“And,” Zeyde continues, “when I woke this morning, there was a cat on my head.” He pats his bald head. “On. My. Head!”
“Oh my.” Mom slaps a hand over her mouth.
“That’s when I decided to fly here.” Zeyde looks around. “You don’t have any cats here, do you?”
“Nope,” I answer. “Just Barkley.”
Zeyde tilts his head. “Who?”
I know he’s joking, because every time Zeyde visits, he always goes into my room to say hello to Barkley. And last Chanukah, he bought Barkley a castle to go inside his tank. Dad died shortly before Chanukah. I remember feeling miserable that Dad didn’t get to see Barkley’s new castle. Or light the candles with us. Or eat latkes with applesauce—his favorite dish.
“Barkley,” I say. “You know. My betta fish.”
Zeyde looks confused, but then shakes his head and keeps talking. “I half think Abby got all those cats just so I wouldn’t want to live there.”
“I’m sure she didn’t, Dad. I hadn’t realized she had that many, though.”
I’m a little freaked out that Zeyde doesn’t know who Barkley is. He wasn’t in Florida that long!
“We’d better call Abby and let her know you’re all right.”
“After we eat.” Zeyde pats my knee. “Pizza’s getting cold, and I’m hungry.”
“Let’s call first,” Mom says. “I don’t want Abby to worry.”
“I missed you, Shelley. And Ben, too. How’s an old geezer like me supposed to go so long without seeing my favorite Philadelphians?”
“We missed you, too, Dad, but you were there only three weeks. You were supposed to stay the whole winter, then come back here in the summer for a vacation. You agreed to this. Remember?”
Zeyde lets out a big breath. “Did I mention the cats? Fourteen of them. No normal person has fourteen cats, Shelley. She had only six last time I was there. Only. Listen to me. I’m becoming meshugge like your sister!”
“Oh, Dad.” Mom gives Zeyde a hug, then pulls back. “Give me your cell. I’m going to call Abby to let her know what’s going on.”
“She knows,” he says. “I told you. Bring over my suitcase, Ben.”
I grab it. “It’s heavy.”
“I know. Your old zeyde has too much stuff.” He opens the suitcase and pulls out a box. “Abby gave me this for you, Shelley. She said it’s all taken care of and you’d need one if you had me. Whatever that means.”
“A cell phone,” I say and pump my fist in the air. Finally. A phone. It’s been three long months since we couldn’t afford to pay the phone bill. Mom uses Mrs. Schneckle’s phone if she needs to make a call, and I use it if I need to call Toothpick. Embarrassing.
Mom examines the new phone, then dials. “Abby?”
Zeyde leans back on the couch, closing his eyelids.
“Yes, he’s here,” Mom says. “He’s fine.”
There’s a pause.
“Of course, but—”
Another pause.
“I know, but—”
Then Mom whispers, “He’s been taking his memory medicine, right?”
“Yes, he has,” Zeyde says, his eyelids still closed. “And he’s not deaf.”
I chuckle.
Mom covers the phone and says, “Benjamin, take your zeyde’s suitcase to your room.”
I stop chuckling. “My room?” I whisper. “Zeyde’s staying with me?” I know it makes sense because I have the extra bed in there, and I love him and all, but I�
��m not sure I’m ready for a roommate who has wrinkles the size of the Grand Canyon on his forehead and one really annoying thing that I discovered when I slept over Zeyde’s a while ago, something that kept me from sleeping!
“Now,” Mom says, clearly irritated.
I haul Zeyde’s suitcase into my room and heave it onto the daybed, then look up at the stars and comets, as though the universe will somehow give me an answer.
It doesn’t.
Barkley is nonplussed by the whole thing, swimming in and out of his castle as though nothing has just changed. “You’re getting a new roommate,” I tell him. “And he snores!”
Barkley doesn’t seem distressed by the news.
When I return to the living room/dining room/kitchen, I hear Mom say, “I’ll call you later. Thanks for the phone, Abs.” Mom looks at me. “We really appreciate it.” Mom pushes a button and sighs. “Well, anyone besides me hungry?”
I eat four slices of pizza, and on each of them I sprinkle red pepper flakes from a basket of spices I won from the Spice It Up with Spandex Sweepstakes.
“If it’s too much, Shelley, I can stay at a motel or something,” Zeyde says, wiping sauce from his chin.
I think of the Bates Motel from that scary movie Toothpick showed me once. “You shouldn’t stay at a motel. It’s not a good idea.”
“No, not a good idea,” Mom says, smiling at me. “Besides, motels cost money, and last time I checked, you’re not Donald Trump.”
“Of course I’m not Donald Trump,” Zeyde says. “He has hair.”
“And money,” Mom points out.
Zeyde looks at his lap. “I just don’t want to be in the way, Shelley.”
“You’re not in the way,” I tell him, even though my room will be really crowded with another person. “We can play cards, and when I’m at school, Barkley will keep you company.”
“Who?” Zeyde says again.
Mom gets that worry wrinkle between her eyebrows. “You sure you’re taking your medicine, Dad?”
“Every day,” Zeyde says, tapping his head. “Working better than ever.”
“If you say so,” Mom says, but I can tell she’s not convinced.
After dinner, Mom pulls out her book to study for the CPA exam, but I can tell she’s not really studying, because she’s staring off into the distance. I do my homework but stop to think about Zeyde moving in here, sharing my room and being confused about Barkley. Did he really not know who he was? Or was he joking around?
Zeyde’s in the bathroom when Mom asks, “Benjamin, are you okay with Zeyde moving in here for a while? I know things were easier when he had his own apartment, but Aunt Abby and I were afraid to have him living alone. You know, with his memory problems.”
“It’ll be fine,” I say. “We can do, you know, guy stuff.”
“Yeah.” Mom bites her bottom lip. “I hope it works out. See, Aunt Abby was supposed to—”
The bathroom door clicks opens, and Mom stops talking.
Zeyde strides into the living room/dining room/kitchen and slams a roll of gray, scratchy toilet paper onto the table. “Shelley, please,” Zeyde pleads. “Have a little sympathy for an old man’s tuchis.” Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a ten-dollar bill and slaps it onto the table next to the toilet paper. “I’m begging you. Buy some decent toilet paper.”
I run to my closet and return with a fluffy roll of Royal-T—from the free four-pack Mom picked up at the ACME. I’m saving the rest of the rolls for an emergency. I can almost hear Toothpick mocking me, saying A toilet paper emergency? and punching me in the arm for being a total moron.
Zeyde rubs the Royal-T toilet paper against his cheek. “Ah,” he says. “That’s better. No splinters in this stuff.”
Mom’s shoulders bob, and I think she’s crying because she feels bad that we can afford only lousy toilet paper, but then she bursts out laughing.
I laugh, too.
Zeyde laughs hard, then stops suddenly. He pushes his false teeth back in. “Oh my,” he says, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes. “Almost lost my teeth on that one.”
This makes Mom hysterical.
And Zeyde keeps chuckling, but softly. I can tell he’s afraid he’s going to lose his teeth again, because he’s got his hand over his mouth.
I’m bent over from laughing so hard, and my stomach hurts in a good way. I can’t wait to tell Toothpick about Zeyde’s teeth flying out.
Laughter sounds great in our apartment. Much better than Mr. Katz’s awful word: “eviction.” It reminds me of how our apartment sounded when Dad was still here, before he got sick and everything.
I’m definitely going to enjoy having Zeyde here.
Before bed, I use Mom’s new cell phone to call Toothpick.
“You got a phone?” Pick asks.
“Yeah. It’s from my aunt Abby.”
“Dude, that’s awesome!”
I don’t tell Pick the phone is actually Mom’s and I’m only borrowing it.
“Guess who showed up at our door tonight, carrying a pizza?”
“No idea.”
“My zeyde.”
“Zeyde Jake’s there? I thought he moved to Florida or something a few weeks ago.”
“He did, but now he’s here. He brought pizza from Kirk’s and a suitcase.”
“Is he going to live with you guys?”
“I guess. For a while.”
“Cool. Maybe we can put him in our next horror film.”
I think of the tufts of hair growing from Zeyde’s ears. “He’d be perfect. You should have seen what happened tonight. He can pop his teeth out of his mouth and—” I hear someone walking down the hall toward my bedroom. “Gotta go.”
My bedroom door opens. “Hi, Mom.”
Her hand is out, as though she’s waiting for me to put something in it.
I drop the phone into her palm. “I just called Toothpick.”
“That’s fine. You can use the phone anytime you want. That was really nice of Aunt Abby, wasn’t it?”
“Really nice,” I say.
“I miss her.”
“Me too,” I say. “I wish we could visit her again.” But then I feel bad, because Mom probably wishes that, too, but we don’t even have enough money to pay our stupid rent, much less to fly to Florida for a vacation.
Mom sits on the edge of my bed and lets out a big breath. “Well, that was a surprise.”
For a second, I wonder what she’s talking about, but then I see Zeyde’s suitcase and know she’s talking about him showing up at our door.
“Big surprise,” I say. “But I’m glad it was Zeyde at the door and not Mr. Katz.”
This makes Mom smile. “You sure you’re okay bunking with Zeyde?”
“Totally. It’ll be awesome.”
“You’re the best, Benjamin.” Mom kisses my forehead. “G’night, sweetheart.”
“Night, Mom.”
She taps on the tank. “G’night to you, too, Barkley. You’re sure lucky to have Ben looking after you.”
I want to tell Mom it’s not good to tap on the glass, but she’s been so stressed that I don’t say anything. Maybe I’ll put a little sign up on Barkley’s tank about not tapping on the glass, like they do in pet stores.
After Mom leaves, I try to read my history textbook, but I’m zonked, so I switch off the desk lamp, roll toward the wall and close my eyelids.
Zeyde wakes me when he comes into the bedroom and says, “Good toilet paper, Benjamin.”
Even though it’s a weird thing for someone to say, it makes me smile.
I hear Zeyde put something on the desk between our beds, but I’m too tired to roll over to see what it is.
The daybed squeaks, and Zeyde lets out a little groan.
“Good night,” I say quietly.
“Good night, Mary.”
My heart races. I want to rocket up and tell Mom what Zeyde just said, because Mary is the name of my bubbe—Zeyde’s wife.
And she died thr
ee years ago.
“I’m not Mary,” I whisper. “I’m Ben.” When I don’t hear anything, I add, “Your grandson.”
Zeyde doesn’t say a word, and for a second I panic that he’s dead, but then I hear loud breathing.
First, Zeyde doesn’t remember Barkley; then he forgets who I am. What’s going on?
“Zeyde?” I whisper.
A soft grunt.
“Please be okay.”
I roll over toward him and blink to help my eyes adjust in the darkness. But without my glasses, all I see is a long lump under the covers in the daybed. The lump rumbles every few seconds.
Then the lump’s rumbles intensify.
Soon Zeyde sounds like the trash truck that groans and grumbles down the driveway behind our apartment building.
“Zeyde,” I whisper fiercely, my throat dry as sand because I’m so thirsty from Kirk’s Pizza and those Spice It Up with Spandex red pepper flakes. “You’re snoring!”
He doesn’t hear me over the sound of his snoring.
Next thing I know, Zeyde’s snores escalate to lawn-mower proportions.
“Seriously?” I flip onto my back. How am I supposed to sleep with a lawn mower in the next bed?
I wouldn’t have believed it was possible, but Zeyde Jake’s snores get even louder. Now he sounds like a jackhammer—um, Jakehammer—breaking through cement. I expect Mom to burst in, telling Zeyde she needs her sleep for work.
But she doesn’t.
She’s probably sleeping blissfully through the noise in the next room.
Once, when we visited Aunt Abby during a category 1 hurricane, Mom was the only one who slept through it. Aunt Abby, Dad, me and even the cats were awake, watching through the sliding glass door as palm trees dipped and swayed through wild sheets of rain.
Just when I think Zeyde’s snores can’t possibly get louder, they ramp up to earthquake level. It feels like my bed is actually shaking. I’m pretty sure if Zeyde’s snores were an earthquake, they’d register at least 6.5 on the Richter scale and be felt throughout Philadelphia and maybe the rest of Pennsylvania, too.
I consider stuffing Royal-T into my ears to block the Zeyde-quake, but I don’t want to waste it. Maybe Zeyde staying in my room isn’t the best idea. Maybe I can sleep at Toothpick’s while he’s here. Maybe I need Mom to buy me industrial-strength earplugs or something.
Death by Toilet Paper Page 5
