Death by Toilet Paper

by Donna Gephart

  I came to Toothpick’s house to get away from everything, but “everything,” it seems, followed me here. “I’ve got to go,” I tell Toothpick. “I need to get home.”

  Toothpick reels back like I hit him. “But you just got here. I have a bunch of cool stuff I want to show you.”

  I take a deep whiff of the rich smells of stew and biscuits. “I know,” I say, wishing I’d never come over in the first place. “But I forgot something important I have to do at home.” That’s almost true.

  “Can’t you do it later?” Pick holds up the scar wax. “Let me give you at least one cool scar.”

  “Sorry, Pick. Next time.”

  I pet Psycho behind the ears and leave without saying good-bye to Mr. Taylor.

  The whole walk home through the annoying crunching leaves and chilly air, I think that I don’t need Toothpick to give me a scar on the outside.

  I’ve got a really big one on the inside that apparently no one but me knows is there.

  * * *

  * A fine example of my Sultan of Sarcasm skills (and nice alliteration, too).

  When I walk into the foyer, I touch Dad’s name on our mailbox out of habit. I avert my eyes from the notice as I put my key in the lock of our apartment door, but it’s hard, because the notice is so bright.

  Sounds come from inside the apartment that I’m sure are crying.

  Terrific!

  I consider whirling around and going back to Toothpick’s house. I could tell him I finished what I needed to; then I’d enjoy a meal of stew and biscuits, get a fake scar on my neck and have a cat rub against my ankles … or I could go inside and deal with Mom crying her eyeballs out.

  I open our apartment door.

  Mom, Zeyde and Mrs. Schneckle are near the table—laughing. I step closer and smell sweet cinnamon. A rectangular pan of peach kugel is on the table. Score!

  “Boychik!” Zeyde says, pulling me into a playful head-lock. “Look at this bounty from the lovely and talented Celia Schneckle.”

  Celia?

  Mrs. Schneckle waves away Zeyde’s compliment.

  “Hi, sweetie,” Mom says, kissing the top of my head. “Mrs. Schneckle brought over dinner. Wasn’t that nice?”

  No one has mentioned the eviction notice plastered on our door.

  “I’m tired of eating by myself,” Mrs. Schneckle says. “Since Marvin died, dinnertime is the worst.”

  My stomach twists. I didn’t know Mrs. Schneckle even had a husband. He must have died a long time ago, because I don’t remember him at all.

  Mom puts an arm around Mrs. Schneckle’s shoulders. “You can join us anytime. Next time I’ll cook.”

  “That would be lovely,” Mrs. Schneckle says, leaning her head toward Mom’s.

  I can’t imagine what Mom would make for dinner. I don’t think Mrs. Schneckle would like pancakes, plain oatmeal or cheese and crackers.

  “Come on,” Zeyde says, pushing me into a chair and handing me an empty plate. “Serve yourself that good kugel before it gets cold.” Zeyde takes another plate. “Or before I eat it all.”

  Mom’s sitting in her seat, eyes closed, inhaling the scent of warm, sweet kugel.

  “Thanks,” I say to Mrs. Schneckle, and mean it. And not only for the food. I’m pretty sure Mrs. Schneckle is the reason Mom looks so happy, despite the eviction notice on our door.

  Zeyde pulls out a chair for Mrs. Schneckle. Dad’s chair—the one Zeyde’s been sitting in. “For you, Celia.”

  “Oh, I’m going back to my apartment,” Mrs. Schneckle says, her cheeks reddening.

  I realize there are four of us and only three chairs. I grab my plate and stand. “Sit here, Mrs. Schneckle. I like to stand while I eat.” That sounded dumb. Who likes to stand while they eat?

  “Oh, no,” she says. “I’ve got to get back.”

  Zeyde hands Mrs. Schneckle a plate piled with kugel and salad. Then he takes his own loaded plate, loops his arm around her elbow and says, “May I?”

  Zeyde’s such a dork.

  Mrs. Schneckle’s cheeks redden again. “Why, I’d love your company, Jake.”

  Jake?

  His bald head seems pinker than usual.

  Mom and I watch Mrs. Schneckle and Zeyde leave, and I’m struck by how much Mrs. Schneckle reminds me of Bubbe Mary. Not how she looked but how she acted. They walk right past the bright orange eviction notice on the door.

  Mom shakes her head. “Your zeyde’s really something.” Then she pulls out an envelope. “It’s here,” she says. “It came today.”

  Still not talking about the eviction notice on the door.

  “I know,” I say, shoveling forkfuls of sweet, warm peach kugel into my mouth. Mrs. Schneckle put raisins in this time. I love raisins. “I brought it in from the mailbox.”

  “Of course,” Mom says.

  With Zeyde over at Mrs. Schneckle’s apartment, Dad’s kitchen chair is empty again, and I can’t help but think how much he’d enjoy eating the kugel, how much we’d enjoy having him here again. Just the three of us.

  “I’m doing it,” Mom says, waving the envelope. “It’s the invitation to register for the fourth and final test.” Mom puts her hand on mine and squeezes. “I’m going to register at the library tomorrow and put the money in the mail. I can’t believe they make you pay a registration fee of ninety-five dollars plus an examination fee of one ninety thirty-five. But what can you do?”

  I want to ask Mom if she saw the notice outside our door, because it’s weird she hasn’t said anything. I want to ask how she’s comfortable with spending $190.35 to register for the test when we can’t pay the rent.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen, Benjamin,” Mom says. “But I’ve got to do this one thing. Your dad worked that extra shift at the Inquirer so I could finish my courses. And he earned extra money painting houses instead of canvases, like he’d wanted to, so I could take the other three tests. When he got sick, I had only the last of the four tests to take before I could get my license. He so wanted this for us, Ben. It’s taken me a while to get back on my feet and start studying again, but I’ve got to take and pass that last test. For him.” Mom squeezes my wrist. “For us.”

  Thank you, Dad.

  “Despite that awful notice plastered on our door for everyone to see!”

  She saw it.

  Mom’s cheeks get pink.

  “But how are we—”

  “I don’t want to think about it right now,” Mom says. “I just want to enjoy this delicious dinner from Mrs. Schneckle. All right?”

  “Sure.”

  Mom slips a forkful of kugel into her mouth and closes her eyelids.

  The look on her face—pure bliss—makes everything feel okay, even though Dad’s chair is still empty and the eviction notice is still plastered to our door.

  Later, I’m working on my Royal-T slogan at the table and Mom’s studying her accounting textbook when Zeyde returns.

  “That Celia is a class act,” he says. “You should see the toilet paper she has over there. I used it to blow my shnoz.” Zeyde kisses his fingertips and releases them skyward. “Good stuff! Just like the stuff you gave me the other day, Ben.”

  Dork-o-rama!

  “Did you have a nice time?” Mom asks, looking up from her book.

  Zeyde rubs his belly. “Delicious!”

  Mom smiles.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Zeyde says, “I need to retire to the throne for a few minutes.”

  Zeyde heads down the hallway, and I look at Mom.

  She leans close and whispers, “ ‘Throne’ is a fancy word for ‘toilet.’ ”

  “Really?” Tiny fireworks explode in my brain, and I tap my paper with the pencil. “People really say ‘throne’ instead of ‘toilet’? You’re serious?”

  “Of course I’m serious.”

  “YES!”

  Mom looks at me like I’m crazy, but I don’t care, because now—NOW!—I have that certain something that will make my slogan the one that w
ins the ten thousand dollars. Thank you, Zeyde!

  I neatly print my new and improved slogan. Then I put it in an envelope and kiss it for good luck, like I do every time I send off an important sweepstakes entry.

  “Yes!” I say again, leaning back, feeling like a weight’s been lifted off me.

  “Good luck,” Mom says. “I hope you win the big one this time.”

  “Me too,” I say. I just hope the prize money comes in time.

  Zeyde’s in the bathroom again later when I climb into bed. He’s probably putting his teeth in a glass on the sink. At least, I hope so!

  I figure if I can fall asleep before Zeyde starts snoring, I have a chance of sleeping through it. But if he snores first, it’ll be impossible to fall asleep.

  As I lie there watching Barkley dart through his castle, I’m glad Mom’s moving forward with the Grand Plan by registering for the test tomorrow, despite everything that’s going on. And I’m so happy Zeyde gave me the word that provided my entry with that certain zing that might make it stand out from the rest.

  In the cafeteria at our lunch table, Toothpick munches on a chocolate-covered biscotti and passes me one. When I take it, I notice a small pencil plunged into the back of his hand.

  “Oh my …!” Who did that? Angus Andrews?

  A smile spreads across Toothpick’s face.

  I’m sure his grin is caused by the raging infection from his hand that must have spread to his brain. “Seriously, Pick!”

  Toothpick cracks up, and I can see chewed-up biscotti on his tongue. “Great, right? I totally got you.”

  I look closely at the bluish-red swelling around the pencil, which is clearly jammed into the back of his hand. “That’s not a pencil?”

  “No, it’s a pencil. Moron.”

  A guy at the far end of our table looks over at us like we’re weird.

  Toothpick makes a face at him, then leans in toward me. “Scar wax.”

  “It looks real,” I say. “It looks … infected, dude.”

  The guy at the end of our table looks at us like we’re making him sick.

  Toothpick glares, then opens his mouth with the chewed-up biscotti.

  “Ew,” I say, but at least it makes the guy turn away from us.

  Toothpick shows me a magazine with a picture of a hand that looks just like his. “Besides the scar wax, it’s a little fake blood and reddish-brown powder and—”

  Toothpick gets as excited about movie makeup artistry as I get about sweepstakes and contests. I wonder if Pick kisses his hand when he makes a particularly wicked-looking wound, like I kiss my sweepstakes envelopes for good luck before I send them off. Maybe we are weird.

  “Hi, losers,” Delaney says as she walks by our table with her box of lousy Golly Pops.

  “I can’t stand that girl,” I say, crunching into my biscotti.

  “But she’s totally cute,” Toothpick says.

  “Totally,” I admit.

  Toothpick gives me a fist bump with his “wounded” hand. “Hey, want to come over after school?”

  I think of returning home to the bright orange eviction notice on our door. I think of Mom sometimes accidentally wearing her paper piggy hat when she comes home from work and studying, and I think of Zeyde being with it sometimes and so confused other times.

  “Definitely,” I say.

  At Toothpick’s, it’s just Psycho and us, because his dad’s at work. Toothpick’s mom moved out a long time ago.

  She used to bake delicious cakes and cookies for us and once helped us build a fort from blankets and sheets in their living room. When we were done, the three of us hung out in the fort, eating warm slices of banana bread while his mom held a flashlight and read to us from Charlotte’s Web. She read to us like that every day for two weeks. At the end of Charlotte’s Web, when the sad thing happened, Toothpick and I both cried.

  We were little then.

  Toothpick visits his mom for a week in the summer and over winter break. He doesn’t talk about her much, other than to say she doesn’t let him watch horror movies when he’s there, which is kind of stupid because Pick is horror movies. He says she doesn’t realize he’s not a little kid anymore, which is kind of dumb because Pick is as tall as a grown man, even though he’s only in seventh grade. Mrs. Taylor’s tall, too. Really tall. Pick told me she played basketball on her high school team.

  In his room, Toothpick changes into shorts and creates a wound on his knee with a nail stuck in it. It’s pretty cool how he spreads the scar wax, makes an indentation and fills it with fake blood, then spreads powder around the edges to make it look gross and infected.

  But after Toothpick creates his third wound, I get bored and look around the Internet on his computer. I find a few new mail-in sweepstakes and write down the information so I can enter them later at home. One of the sweepstakes is giving away a video camera, which I would totally give to Toothpick, if he didn’t already have a really nice one his dad gave him a couple years ago for his birthday. If I won, I’d probably sell the camera and give the money to Mom.

  I also check out Toothpick’s YouTube channel. He’s got his three short horror films posted there. He told me he hopes a producer stumbles across it and asks him to make a movie in Hollywood.

  “Hey,” I say. “You got a new comment on The Terror Train.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “Heart it! Please make more movies!”

  A grin spreads across Toothpick’s face. “I should come up with my next one soon.”

  “Definitely. Your fans are waiting.”

  Toothpick laughs. “You mean my fan is waiting.”

  “Ha. You’ve got like forty comments on each of your movies. You’re practically famous, dude.”

  “Practically.”

  I look around online for more contests and discover that Charmin and Cheap Chic—whatever they are—run a contest for the best wedding dress made entirely from toilet paper, glue, tape, needle and thread. “I could do that,” I mumble.

  “Hmm?” Toothpick says.

  I show Toothpick the winning toilet paper wedding dress from last year, being modeled by the person who created it. “How cool is that?”

  “A toilet paper dress? Weird,” Toothpick says as he slathers a fake wound with fake blood.

  “Yeah, like that’s not weird,” I say, pointing to the fake wounds all over his body.

  Toothpick shrugs.

  “The person who makes the best dress gets over two thousand bucks.”

  “Now, that’s cool,” Toothpick says, breaking a pencil near the eraser so he can create another fake pencil puncture wound, this time on top of his foot.

  There’s a video online that shows how to make a rose with a stem out of two squares of toilet paper.

  I grab a long length of toilet paper from the hall bathroom and work on making roses. They’re easy to do—just a few folds. When I’m finished, I have six droopy toilet paper roses.

  There are sites that teach all kinds of toilet paper origami. I could make a toilet paper swan, boat or butterfly, but those things look complicated, so I don’t bother.

  If I could somehow make an entire wedding dress from toilet paper, I could compete to win two thousand bucks this summer, when they have the contest. I just wish summer wasn’t so far away. I could use that money right now. It would be almost enough to pay our back rent and the upcoming month’s rent, too. If I do enter the contest, I’ll have to borrow Pick’s camera and find someone willing to model my toilet paper dress for the video submission.

  Toothpick’s tall. It would be hilarious if he modeled the toilet paper wedding dress for the video. Humor and creativity count for a lot in these contests.

  I look over at Pick. He’s covered with fake wounds. I wonder what it would take to get him to agree to model a toilet paper wedding dress.

  “What?” Toothpick asks, looking up at me.

  I push my glasses up on my nose. “Nothing.”

  “Then quit staring at me. You�
�re freaking me out.”

  “You’re covered with fake pencil and nail wounds, and I’m freaking you out?”

  “Yeah.”

  My stomach rumbles. “I’m starving.”

  “Me too. Let’s go downstairs and see what my dad left for us.”

  In the kitchen, with Psycho crunching bits from her food bowl, Toothpick and I devour a couple slabs of cold broccoli-cheese casserole and a quart of Rita’s mango ice for dessert.

  It’s dark when I finally head home.

  The cold air feels great. I take deep breaths and wish my dad could feel this crisp air. He loved fall. Colorful leaves to crunch through. On Halloween, he wore crazy costumes to freak out the little kids in our neighborhood. And this was the season he had the Eagles on TV to scream at.

  Too bad our cable got turned off when Mom couldn’t pay the bill. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care about the Eagles anymore without Dad here.

  I open the door to our apartment building and touch Dad’s nameplate—TODD EPSTEIN—for luck, then check our mailbox. My shoulders slump when I find it empty. No contest wins or free toilet paper coupons today. Not even a lousy bill.

  At our apartment door, I pull out the six paper roses from my backpack to give to Mom. Fishing for my key—in front of the eviction notice—I hear Mom screaming.

  I jam my key in the lock, turn the knob and shove the door open.

  Mom’s at the kitchen sink, holding up a sopping roll of gray toilet paper.

  Zeyde’s standing near the sink, running a hand over his bald head again and again, like he’s pushing back hair that isn’t there.

  “Dad!” Mom yells, shaking the soaking roll over the sink. “I’m going to ask you again. What were you thinking?”

  “It was so rough, Shelley,” Zeyde says. “I wanted to make it softer.” Zeyde bites his bottom lip, and I know where Mom gets that habit from. “I really don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry, Shell. Please don’t be mad, sweetheart. You and Ben are my favorite Philadelphians. Remember?”