* * *
In this, our second GRAND OPENING lunchtime extravaganza bonanza fund-raiser, I feel like a wanderer, a nomad, going table to table with a message and a murmur: “Yo, I got that Reese’s” … “I got that Heath Bar” … “Y’all better believe I got that Butterfinger.” And then, slowly but surely, like the Girl Scouts dreamed it up when they invested in uniforms, our lunchtime customers come to me, keeper of the candy flock, local shepherd and conqueror of Level 1: Hungry People. Never, in all my almost thirteen years of existence, have I been so wildly popular, in demand and on demand. DONUTS ON DEMAND. You can have me whenever you want me, as long as your favorite snack is still on the shelf. The shelf being my book bag. And halfway through the day, the shelves are empty. I’ve completely sold out. In a good way.
Day Two profits: $126 from me, $112 from Manny.
* * *
Dear February: In case you didn’t receive the memo, you have been asked to leave. Instead, you have brought rain and darkness by the time I approach our front door when I come home from school. My dad, as usual, is at the kitchen table. “No more,” he says, biting his lip, and I know what’s coming: Cut the act, you junky food dealer. No more candy conquering.
Someone must have called home again. Mrs. Q again, Mr. Softee—
“I came home today and I could have sworn there was more chicken”—his hands are shaking now—“but there wasn’t. There wasn’t any left.”
On the tiled kitchen floor, I let my backpack drop, which doesn’t take a whole lot of effort. Eighty-three pounds at the start of the day, now down to five. Thankfully, none of my English papers spill out this time, which makes life good bearable for the moment. “Dad, it’s fine,” I tell him.
“It’s not fine. I wanted a relaxing night after a long day and…”
He bobs his head up and down like a chicken. He must really miss his chicken.
“How about Chinese?” he asks.
* * *
We squeeze into his old green Buick—well, he squeezes, I just sit—and as soon as he turns the key, National Public Radio is already cued as loud as it can go, which isn’t that loud because the hosts sound like they’re reading the newspaper on a snowy Sunday morning with a mug of hot apple cider by their side, but it’s still loud enough that my dad doesn’t have to talk to me and I can look out my window without him getting angry, or lonely, or impatient.
The car smells like last week’s lunch gone sour. I’d look around for a lunch box, a paper bag, moldy Tupperware, but he never packs a lunch. “Tomorrow,” he always says, “I’ll pack it tomorrow.” On the backseat, a mess of take-out menus, tissue balls, tissue boxes, bent folders, two umbrellas, and a black dress shirt crumpled into a ball.
On the radio, a soothing voice, so soothing it sounds like a whisper—I’m Kai Ryssdal, and this is Marketplace—then a choir of flutes. I bet that Kai Ryssdal has a swell life. I bet he wakes up every morning with his pillows nice and fluffy. I check to see if my dad is still awake, not that he has a history of passing out behind the wheel, but I’d understand if he did now. Those flutes and Kai Ryssdal’s melodious voice make me want to close my eyes and look around for a few sheep. So I do.
There are thousands and thousands of sheep. In the meadow, on the farm, grazing through high grass, munching on hay. There are too many sheep and not enough space. They pile in tightly, squeezing up next to one another. The sheep get mad, really mad. Baaaaaa, they cry. There are newspapers on the ground. The sheep look down and read the headline. It’s bad news, really bad news. A new shipment of sheep is on its way. The sheep don’t like this news. Baaaaaa, they cry, and stomp their hooves in protest. The other sheep join in. Newspapers are dirtied, shredded, destroyed. But the shipment arrives on schedule. A thousand more sheep. They fight over space, but it’s no use. Baaaaaa, they cry. There’s no more room on the ground; stacking is the only option. The sheep stand on top of each other. There are piles and piles of sheep to count, all over the green meadow. Hundreds of sheep piles. Another shipment of sheep comes in. The piles get bigger. They approach the sky. Baaaaaa, the sheep cry. There are hundreds and thousands of sheep, and no sign anywhere of sleep, which isn’t a bad thing because the restaurant’s only five minutes away from our house and we’re already here.
Hunan Palace. Against a black misty sky, a pink sign buzzes with missing letters. Or maybe they meant to advertise as Hunan Pal. Friendlier that way, more chummy: You got a pal at Hunan Pal.
I hope not. I really hope there are no pals here. You see, I’ve never been part of the United States Secret Service, but going out to dinner with the Natural Schmoozer can’t be much different. Climbing out of the car in the wet cold, it swallows me: the paranoia, the fear that someone at my school is lurking, watching, waiting, dining with their friends and family, strolling through the parking lot, swapping tongues in a parked car. The exhaustive searches, scanning the premises—someone will be here already, will suddenly appear, a drive-by, a drive-through, a driver with a big mouth, a sniper with a smartphone, a classmate with a computer, a familiar face from Facebook. I need a suit and sunglasses, Secret Service–style, a baseball hat, makeup, a fake mustache, a fake dad, a motorcycle for a quick getaway. I look left, I look right, I look down, I look up and say a prayer that the coast is clear, that there is no threat—yes, I am a scared member of the Secret Service, but my dad is too big, too unpredictable. If he loses his cool, the gig’s up. All those carefully timed jokes, pranks, and performances. My public persona, so carefully chipped and carved and crafted, will crumble into pebbles, and all I’ll have left is just Denny Murphy, an eternal life of loserdom, and my dad. I must be vigilant, be vigilant, c’mon, be vigilant. I peek through the restaurant’s frosty windows, past a bubbling tank of pink and yellow fish. As a Secret Service agent, I fight an urge to protect the fish. Would I take a bullet for them? Silly question. Small fish don’t get shot. Would I take a net for a fish? As long as it got me out of having to dine with the Natural Schmoozer.
I continue scanning. A man in a blue shirt and yellow tie at a corner booth, eating with his wife and two young sons. One looks eight, the other six. They’re strangers. Green light, they’re safe. A family of eight at the middle table. A grandmother in a flowery blouse, her husband in a black button-down shirt. Green light. Their kids all over forty. Green light. Three grandchildren still too young for Blueberry Hills. Green light. One grandchild is a teenager. Hooped earrings. Stranger. Green light. A young couple in the back, slurping hot and sour soup; the girl is a green light, the guy’s a yellow light. His back is turned. His hair is gelled to the side like no one I’ve ever seen, but Secret Service agents can never be too sure. There, now he turns around for the waiter. Green light. An older man walks back from the bathroom to his family. He doesn’t teach at my school. Green light. His daughter has long, flowing blond hair and that’s all I can see. Yellow light. I bend down to tie my shoes, my head tilted to the side for a better view.
“Denny, what are you doing?” my dad grunts.
I see her profile. Green light.
“Nothing, Dad, good to go.” It’s safe to enter, so I do. A string of bells on the door signals our entrance. The restaurant smells of fish and soy sauce.
The manager, a thin man with a thin black mustache and thinning black hair, is smiling behind the counter. Then he sees my dad enter.
He is no longer smiling. His face drops—sagging cheeks, heavy eyes, like Mrs. Q sensing impending doom upon my arrival, or Sabrina walking into an unwanted group partnership.
We have a history here. My dad does. It’s not a good one. But a customer is a customer. “Welcome,” the manager says. Such a pal. Everyone is a pal at the Hunan Pal.
The host guides us to an empty booth. Cue the stares, the double takes, the whispers about my dad’s weight. At the middle table a grandson in a blue turtleneck doesn’t whisper: “WHOA, LOOK AT HOW FAT HE IS, MOMMY!”
His brother elbows him. “Shhh, don’t say that so loud. But that guy
sure is fat.”
They both laugh.
The girl with the long flowing hair turns her head. “Yikes,” she says.
From the back of the restaurant, the guy with gelled hair turns around and fights a smile. He doesn’t fight hard enough. Soon, WE’LL have to fight, I want to shout, but I don’t want to draw any more attention than we already have and I don’t want to fight him unless I really have to because he’d probably definitely beat me up.
Seated, my dad and I gaze at the pandas on the walls, avoiding each other until a waiter balancing a tray full of water glasses hands us two menus. He must be new here.
“No, no, no,” my dad growls, “I want the Chinese menu.”
“Sir?” Eyebrows raised. “I’m sorry?”
“I want authentic Chinese food, what real Chinese people eat.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” he says, “I don’t understand.”
(I don’t understand either, though we’ve been through this before.)
“Just bring me the Chinese menu!”
The whole room is closing in and I am trapped. I feel like a mouse locked in a cage. Of Chinese food. The waiter blinks. Water glasses rattle on his tray. He throws me a desperate glance, but I can’t help him. I am a mouse.
The Natural Schmoozer smooths out his napkins, mumbling to himself. All I catch are the words “ridiculous,” “damn,” “quit,” “broccoli,” “service,” and “can’t.”
In the kitchen someone’s blasting a fast-paced Katy Perry song, and it’s hard to tell which one it is because they’re all exactly the same and I want to shut it off, shut it off, shut it off, stop, stop thinking about it, but it’s better than looking at my dad, and way better than listening to National Public Radio, especially that Kai Ryssdal.
The waiter returns with two red menus with Chinese writing, even “Hunan Palace” is in Chinese. He tentatively places them on our table.
“Do I look like I speak Chinese?” my dad huffs.
“But, sir—”
“I need you to translate.”
“But, sir, I don’t speak Chinese.”
“Just bring us what Chinese people eat!”
The waiter’s face turns powder white. I watch him turn around and power walk to the manager at the front of the restaurant, and that’s when I notice I’ve failed as a member of the Secret Service.
A girl walks in with her parents.
She’s wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and her hair is parted over her right eye. She has a stud on her nose and a Batman bracelet on her left wrist.
Red light.
Sabrina can’t see me like this. Can’t see my dad like this.
I toss my napkin on the table. “Dad, we need to go.”
He’s breathing harder. “As a paying customer, I demand—Denny—I’ve gotten it here before and—they need to—it’s not fair and I know—you know—I—”
“Dad, it’s okay. Here, take a sip of water.”
The manager smiles at Sabrina and her parents. They smile back. Her dad removes his black coat and helps his wife out of her beige one. He hangs them up on the rack. “Right this way,” says the host.
I look away.
“Dad, I’m going to the bathroom.”
Before Sabrina can see me or my dad can tell me to sit back down, I hustle to the bathroom and lock the door. I wish this were a movie and I wish I were a trained member of the Secret Service, but I’m not. I try to make out an exit strategy through the bathroom, but there is no air-conditioning vent to pop out. No escape behind the paper towel rack, or behind the cracked toilet and out through the pipes.
Crumpled paper towels on the floor with footprints. Water on the sink. A flickering light. I feel dirty and then dirtier, because above the sink I see the blue sign, EMPLOYEES MUST WASH THEIR HANDS, which is obviously an admission that employees don’t wash their hands—or at least had a history of not washing them.
How comforting to know the employees at Hunan Pal need a reminder to wash their hands after doing their business. The restaurant should just come out and say it: “Our employees don’t always wash their hands. We wish they did, but they don’t. Sometimes, after they wipe, they get distracted. They think about the day’s errands, relationships gone sour, the score of the game, a new ingredient to add to your chow mein. Hey, they’re only human. We’d fire our employees for poor hygiene, but we’re all pals here at the Hunan Pal and like to keep it light. Enjoy your meal.”
I need to get out of here and I don’t just mean the bathroom. I walk with my head down the whole way back to our table. I must look like a pouty kid after a tantrum, but I can’t make eye contact. I count seven stains on the green carpet before I plop into my seat. When I look up, the manager is headed our way. A smile is plastered to his face. “Ah, Mr. Murphy, good evening, sir. The Chinese menu again?”
My dad nods.
“Not a problem, sir. How are you this evening?”
Another nod.
“We’re good!” I tell him, loud enough for Sabrina to hear. “We’re really good. Swell, even. So swell we’re swollen. We’re swelling swellness. Oozing it, actually. Thank you for asking.”
The manager bows and points to the Chinese menu in front of my dad. “Having difficulty deciding what to order?”
I touch his arm. “Hunan chicken is good, Dad. It’s spicy and crunchy and delicious. We should get that.”
He takes another sip of water.
The manager takes out a pen and pad, his first mistake.
“Something good,” my dad grunts. “Give me what the Chinese eat.”
“Give me what the Chinese eat isn’t technically an order,” the manager points out, which makes my dad raise his voice and other parents gawk and their kids once again whisper, “Look at how fat he is, Mommy.”
“JUST BRING ME WHAT I WANT!” my dad thunders.
I don’t want to, but I steal a peek at Sabrina. She’s looking at us. Everyone is looking at us. Especially the young grandson with the blue turtleneck. He’s having a good ol’ time. And I can no longer look up. The napkins on the table are red and the silverware is shiny. I turn them over in my hand.
Ten years pass. We are graying and aging at the speed of light.
When the food arrives, my dad sends it back, telling the waiter, loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear, that the food is too hot or too cold or too burnt or simply not good. I don’t know exactly what he says because I’ve been trying to plan an exit route to minimize humiliation, but I haven’t yet come up with any ideas.
“Dad, it’s fine,” I beg, my eyes fixed on the tablecloth.
“Are you paying? Because if you’re paying, I’m content to eat what’s in front of me, but if I’m paying, my food should be the way I want it, understand?”
My dad stands up. Dad, NO! WAIT! The words grab at my tongue, but it’s too late. My dad stands up. And so does the table.
Glasses tip over, fall over, spill, crash, break. The Chinese menus slide down the table into small puddles of water on the floor. The manager grabs hold of the back of his head. I think he rips some hair out, but I don’t want to look—at him, at his hair, the laughing children, Sabrina, or my dad, now storming out the door to a chorus of bells. But as I’ve said, it’s hard not to look when you’ve told yourself not to, and though my face is flushed and I wish myself a sudden painless death, I could use a bit of assurance that Sabrina won’t gab about the night’s incidents to anyone.
I steal a glance. She doesn’t look angry or judgmental or annoyed. Just, well, sad. Don’t tell anyone, I say with my eyes, but I’m not sure she understands.
February never got my memo, so why should she?
* * *
Outside the restaurant, my dad walks aimlessly across the parking lot. Beads of rain stick to the ends of his wispy hair, like someone sprayed the water out of a bottle.
I jog up to him and put my arm around his wide shoulders. His clothes smell. “Don’t worry about it,” I say. “The employees don’t even was
h their hands here.”
He doesn’t answer.
“Seriously, Dad. They don’t wash their hands here. They admitted it in the bathroom. You should’ve seen the sign. It’s a low-down dirty establishment any way you slice it. We’re better off without them. Hey, you in the mood for fried chicken?”
He leans over with his arms against his legs, as if he’s out of breath. “You okay, Dad? Seriously, you okay? I’m not mad. Are you okay? C’mon, stand up straight.”
On his way up, he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and says, so softly I barely hear it, “I miss her.”
Then he looks away from me, across the parking lot. All I can see are one sideburn and the side of his eye, wet and distant. “I—I miss her,” he says.
I do, too.
So I tell him: “I do, too.”
THE WAY IT WAS
It’s spring. Not just any spring day, though. My tenth birthday. Spring Training has ended and the season has started and the Phillies have a home game with over 40,000 screaming fans and I am one of them. It’s my first game, so the grass is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Greener than the greenest green. Greener than a neon highlighter named “The Greenest Green Ever Invented.” The chalk lines are as straight as rulers, the dirt looks clean, and I can’t wait to tell everyone about this incredible thing called “the wave,” and then spread it to my fourth grade class, and then to other grades, and then to the world. It’s that cool.
From the second level, the players look bright and important, and their arms have muscles in places I’ve never seen muscles in before. I’m wearing a red Phillies shirt and a Phillies hat. In my hands, another Phillies hat, this one miniature-size and filled with vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup. “Nothing better than a sundae on a Sunday,” my dad says, diving in for a spoonful.
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