Roll with the Punches

by Gettinger, Amy

  As we all tripped over each other and fell into the gold curtain to accommodate Arlene and Dad, I felt like Harpo Marx in that overflowing stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera.

  "I got her, Ethel. I got her on the phone. Arlene had to call Monica for the number, but I got Rhonda." Dad's brown eyes found me under craggy brows. "Oh, there she is. Your face is all red, Rhonda. You sick? Well, you're in the right place for that, right, Ethel?"

  "She’s fine. Sandwich anyone?" Vanna Mom held out the tray of pinwheels.

  Dad popped three in his mouth like candy.

  I turned to roll my eyes at James, who'd ended up plastered against the back wall.

  Dad was now wolfing down Mom's leftover dinner pudding. "Hospital food's better these days. Should be, for all we're paying these quacks to fix your mother." Dad wasn't Christian Scientist. He had just grown up with rural doctors who didn't know much.

  "Better bring your foghorn if you want any attention here. I don't think those buzzers work at all." He pushed Mom's call button. Then his eye lit on Yvette. "Or get this nurse here to check you out." His huge hand swallowed up Yvette's arm.

  Yvette's eyes bulged like a bug's. Again.

  Mom said, "Harold, that's—"

  Dad boomed, "Hey, Nurse Nellie! You already took my wife's temperature once today, and the barometer said she was very dry. So can I take her home now?"

  "—not a nurse! She's a friend of Rhonda's!" Mom yelled. "Let her go!"

  James hissed at me, "Gotta go. My beeper," just as Mom said, "Rhonda, where's James?"

  Dad now zeroed in on James, catching him by the shoulder and pumping his hand like an old friend. "Hey, I know you. Didn't you date my daughter?"

  "No!" I yelled, way too loudly. Man, after all my care keeping James away from my parents' house and my mother's scheming ways, here he was, an awkward deer in Dad's headlights. "I mean, not yet."

  Dad frowned. "Yeah. Didn’t you come over to fix Rhonda's—"

  I said, "No, Dad. You've never met him. Really. Sorry, James. He had so many students over forty-two years of teaching that everyone looks familiar to him.”

  "But I met him." Dad looked confused. "I know."

  "Somebody's forgotten," Mom sang.

  "Not me," I sang back, smiling at James, who looked frayed around the edges. He had been through the ringer this evening, saving me and all.

  Mom chimed in, "Be fair, Rhonda. Remember all those dates you brought home, back in the stone ages.”

  God, give me patience. I said, "Dad. You really worried me tonight. Why didn't you answer the phone when I called back?"

  "Oh, I was too busy packing to go to the place." He looked defeated. "Ethel insisted.”

  Arlene said, "He wouldn't let me help him at all.”

  "Ethel, couldn't I just stay with you?" Dad's wild brows couldn't hide his worry.

  Mom crossed her arms in a gesture I knew well. "Harold. We've been over this. Those lounge chairs they bring in here don't work for you. Remember the time you broke one after Monica had Davey?"

  A tiny sound escaped Yvette, who was shrinking in the corner like a cockroach.

  "What place?" I asked.

  Mom said, "Well, I won’t be home for a few days. We didn't want to bother you, Rhonda, with your job and all. It's just, you know what a terrible cook your father is. And lately he's started falling a lot, and of course he takes his medicine throughout the day."

  "Ethel, couldn't he stay home?" Arlene said. "I could set out his lunch and his noon pills before I go to my volunteer job.”

  "Thanks, Arlene, but …" Mom said, "It's just a few days before our trip, and we've been visiting these places anyway. Mansfield Mansion, Buckingham Battlements, Champagne Chateau. Well, Ralston House has room for Harold this week. Don't you see? It's a perfect time for him to preview the place to help us decide if we want to live there." She nodded at dubious Dad. "They'll provide all his meals and help him with his medicines, and their van can even bring him here to visit me. Then we won't be a drag on Rhonda."

  I frowned at my mother's perfect efficiency, even now an exact match for my father's discomfort. With Monica's added help, nothing had ever been left for me to do, even at holiday dinners. Except chauffeuring loquacious Great Aunt Maddie from the airport. But when had the folks gotten old enough to need Ralston House?

  "My Christian Scientist wife." Dad grinned around the room. "She's going to get better because she believes she will. So I figure the doctor should just believe he'll get paid, right?"

  James pointed at his watch and scooted out of the room. Yvette scurried right after him.

  "Mom, surely Ralston House needs more notice than this," I said, watching them go.

  "Oh, no. It's their respite program, you know. Like a hotel." Vanna Mom yelled towards Dad's good ear, "They have a bridge group, Harold.”

  Dad looked worried. "Well, I sure hope they feed me enough. The portions they give those old people in those places aren't enough to fill my right nostril, much less my big ole stomach. You know how old people find their meals in the boarding house, Yvonne?" Patting the wide body part, which exuded a bouncy personality of its own in his XXXL plaid shirt, he looked around for Yvette. "With a magnifying glass," he said, deflated at not finding her.

  Mom said, "Rhonda could you get my hand cream? The lavender one." A pastel assortment of creams and lotions already sat on the shelf by the window, arranged by shade in little plastic bins, with a stack of order forms nearby. Mom, the opportunistic entrepreneur.

  I stood up to reach it and my heel caught on something sticking out from under my chair. Yvette's little pink purse.

  Mom pointed at it. "And tell your dad about that party trick you girls did earlier with that little purse. He'll scream."

  Dad looked affronted. "Ethel, I do not scream."

  I grabbed the bag and ran out into the hall just as the elevator doors closed over a pink sweater at the other end. I started down the hall, but stopped short. What was I doing? Let the little weevil worry a little. Do her good.

  CHAPTER 5

  "Hey, did you hear the one about the farm boy and the city girl?" Dad said.

  It was an hour later, and Dad was signing his name on the admission form at the desk of Ralston House and grinning at two giggling young female staff members who held his bags.

  He answered himself. "They passed a cow nuzzling a calf in a field, and he said he'd like to do the same thing.”

  Arlene and I rolled our eyes at Julie Bauer, the cheerful admissions director in the equally cheerful foyer full of silk claw-foot sofas, knick-knack cabinets and paisley carpet.

  "She said, 'Go ahead. It's your cow,'" Harold chortled. It had to be his wild eyebrows and crazy samurai look that made the girls laugh. He'd been quite a comedian with all the girls, starting way back in his Valley Oak High School volleyball coaching days.

  "Thanks for taking Dad so last minute," I said to Julie.

  Julie said, "I know your mother wanted Harold to stay in our main building, but unfortunately, our other facility had a flood today, so we're full inside."

  "Oh. Should I take Music Man home?" My shoulder bunched up in a knot.

  "Music Man?"

  I explained. "I only call him 'Dad' to his face. He taught high school for years and played Harold Hill in a school production of the Music Man. Imagine him dancing and singing in his warbly baritone about trouble in River City. And he always claimed that the main function of his job, keeping kids busy until their hormones calmed down, could just as easily have been accomplished in a pool hall.”

  Julie's smile dimmed a fraction. "Well, I'm sure the Music Man will get along fine in one of the apartments outside. We'll send someone out with his medicines three times a day. Don't you worry. He seems like a big, cuddly teddy bear."

  Teddy bear? Sure. One that could make a kid jump a foot with a single roar. I still had a dent in my head from hitting the underside of our big kitchen table
when Dad had exploded at Hank for "borrowing" forty dollars from Dad's wallet in 1977. I turned to go.

  "Rhonda," Dad stopped at the hall door, a girl on either side of him, a little pang in his voice. "You coming to eat breakfast with me?"

  "Sorry, Dad. Gotta work."

  "But where's the cafeteria? I need a big breakfast, you know. Ever since my farm days."

  "Don't worry, Dad. I'll tell them to kill a pig for you.”

  * * *

  Headed towards home and bed, I passed by a Roams and Rambles Bookstore and made a U-turn. It galled me to think of spending money on the evil Reynard Jackson book, but I had to see the damage for myself. I reached the door at 11:02, just as an iPod-zoned-out clerk turned the sign to CLOSED. I banged on the glass, to no avail.

  At home in my tiny condo, I checked Amazon online and found the depressing truth that Memory Wars really had an identical synopsis, plotline, and first page as my book. Except for the character names. And they were temporarily sold out of copies, as were my other go-to book sellers.

  Then I googled Reynard Jackson and found the usual stuff about his books and where to buy them, and a couple of sites run by fans: ReynardtheMysteryFox.com and Everything You Need to Know about Mr. Foxy Jackson.net. Both of them spouted the same paragraph of useless information, in different fonts. Even Wikipedia had the same inane blurb. No one had a picture of the author or contact information.

  There was no further biographic information about him anywhere in cyberspace. And there was no proof of his gender. In fact, other than the press referring to "his" books in book reviews, Reynard could have been a man, a woman or a Labrador retriever. There were, however, millions of speculations on blogs and websites about these very things, as well as his whereabouts, favorite corn chips and sexual orientation. Tabloid articles claimed Reynard sightings galore.

  Then there were the book reviews on Amazon and other bookseller websites. The glowing New York Times book review of his latest book—no, my book attributed to that snake—made my blood boil. But what could I do? Write the publisher? And say what? Pretty please hand back my plot line and characters? Pay me instead of him? Right.

  I checked my email. Two agents and an editor said my practical joke sending them my full MS had cost them precious reading time. One asked if I had a good lawyer. My blog was worse. I'd received fifty comments from regular visitors in response to one nasty post by a particularly mean agent claiming I should be shot for plagiarism. Half supported me, but half went with the agent. Yikes! I composed a quick defensive post and then whaled on my punching bag for fifteen minutes before calling my best friend Harley, well after midnight. She was an accountant and the most logical person I knew.

  "Why you calling so late?" She yawned. "Did your book get picked up?"

  The words felt like a stomach punch. "Ding, dong, the book is dead. Buried. With my life.”

  "Rhonda. We've talked about this. It's a great book. You have to be confident or you'll never succeed in a writing career. You know how brutal publishing is."

  "Brutal? You don't have a copy of Reynard Jackson's latest book, Memory Wars, do you?" I chewed a fingernail.

  "No. You know I only read chick lit. Why?"

  Standing at my lonely kitchen sink, I explained the whole fraught writers’ group scene as I ripped open an emergency package of two-bite brownies.

  "No way."

  "Way." I stuffed two brownies in my mouth. Heaven.

  "Whoa. That blows. With Jamesie Boy sitting there? Ouch."

  "Double ouch. Some evil editor lady, Yvette was there, too. She actually accused me of stealing my own work. From Jackson. By hacking."

  She snorted. "With your sucky computer skills? Right. But that plot was your idea. I watched the whole painful process. What are you eating?"

  "Celery."

  "Like hell."

  I pounded the counter with my fist. "Harley! This screws up my current project, too. How can I sell the sequel to a book someone else published?"

  "Imitation is the sincerest … you're not flattered, are you? What about your agent from the last book?"

  "She's on the bad agent list now. Got caught asking for a reader fee and lost all her clients." I ate another brownie and poured some milk. "And the other agents have all started emailing me death threats for plagiarism."

  Harley groaned. "Agents read Jackson? Who knew? Could your old publisher help you? Your lawyer?"

  "No, that publisher only does kid stuff. And I broke up with my lawyer, remember? I'm sure Jackson's lawyers are much better, anyway. Besides, even if I could prove it's mine, the book's already in print. They can't print a clone. Copyright issues. And if they did, who'd buy mine if they could buy his? He has the name. No, I'm really screwed." I flopped onto my recliner.

  "They could change the author's name on it …"

  "Do you know anything about publishing?" I yelled.

  Silence.

  "Sorry."

  "So who do you think Jackson is?" she grumbled. "One of your online critique partners?"

  "Janelle and Brenda? They only read selected chapters of the book, never the whole thing."

  "Are you sure? Then who? Your writing group? Your mom? Your dad? A neighbor?"

  My stomach dropped. "I don't know! Not many people come over here except—"

  "I know. Just boyfriends, flying through the revolving door of your love life. I hate men." When we were young, Harley had wanted to be a strong woman in the circus. Currently, she just wanted to annihilate the male subspecies. "Well, one of them could have grabbed your backup disk right before that last breakup speech, and hello bestseller.”

  "Not lately. The revolving door's stuck. And forget disks. We use flash drives now. The one with all the drafts on it is somewhere in the house, I'm pretty sure, but—" I scanned my living room skeptically. Oh, boy. What a jungle.

  She snorted. "How do you know with that giant mess?"

  "I love my piles. They're stratigraphic. I can find anything I want at a moment's notice." I started kicking at dusty, ragged piles of books and paper that covered the floor.

  "Except your tiny flash drive on its little lanyard. Which Sam the Salami or Peter the Poop probably wore home.”

  "Hey, get off my case about the boyfriends. That was eight years ago and I said I was sorry.”

  She snorted. "Six years, four months, and two days. So who else saw the book?"

  "Just the folks in its early stages, and then lately, just the group—and you. Are you Reynard Jackson? Do you have my flash drive?"

  "No, but I'll send over some archeologists to help you excavate."

  * * *

  Chirp. Chirp, chirp. I covered my head with the pillow. Who let those noisy birds in my room? And why were they chirping in the dark?

  Julie Bauer's voice blared out into the kitchen and down the hall, "Rhonda? Rhonda? Are you there? Please pick up the phone. We have a situation here."

  3:35 a.m. "Hello?" I said.

  "Uh, Rhonda?" It sounded like she was in a noisy bar. "We need you to come and pick your father up right now."

  Uh-oh. "Is he sick? Did he fall? What happened?"

  Music Man grabbed the phone and said tremulously, "Ethel? Is that you, Ethel? I'm sorry, Ethel.”

  * * *

  Nineteen minutes later, after blasting through all the toll booths between Rancho Santa Margarita and Anaheim, I pushed open the big glass doors to the Ralston House lobby. Empty. I tiptoed past the desk in my fluffy slippers. A light shone out of an office down the hall on the left. I went to the door and peeked in.

  There was Dad, the big, bad kid in the principal's office, snoozing in a chair, suitcases at his feet. His head was bent forward, his glasses falling off his nose.

  I started toward him.

  "Hey, dude, you come for Harold? You his daughter?" I jumped and saw a stocky guy in scrubs and a crew cut, blocking the doorway like a fire plug.

  I cringed and nodde
d. "Do you know what this is about?"

  "Dude, it was awesome," Fire Plug Guy grinned and rubbed a blocky hand across his fleshy lower lip. "Harold, er—Mr. Hamilton, there, he had us super busy tonight."

  Julie Bauer blazed in and said in a sharp whisper, "Ms. Hamilton, we really aren't equipped to deal with patients with dementia here. Surely you read that in our brochure. You'll have to find somewhere else to place your father. What happened tonight was just too disruptive to our community.”

  My eyes bugged out. "Dementia? He's not demented. He's seventy-nine years old, but as far as I know, he's very mentally acute."

  A windy snore escaped Dad.

  "Surely you've noticed a few changes in your father? In the past few months maybe?"

  "Uh. I haven't—" been home lately. "Oh, did he get too loud? He's always been loud. His hearing's not good, so he kinda yells. You're not kicking him out for that, are you? Doesn't a person have a constitutional right to be loud in the United States?" Panic bloomed in my chest. If this place threw him out for something so small, would any other place take him?

  "Wait." Julie hunted in her desk.

  Fire Plug Guy crossed anchor-tattooed arms. "Hey, dude. You got any little kids at home?"

  I shook my head no.

  "Chuf, man." He grinned. "He thinks you do. He knocked on everybody's doors, yellin' at the top of his lungs for somebody to give him a ride home 'cause a bunch of kids and dogs were home alone. Young kids, like four or five years old. Dude. You got a sister named Nancy?"

  I frowned, "No. He did. Why didn't you tell me this when you called? Are you sure he wasn't sleepwalking?" I approached the elephant in the room. "Dad?"

  Julie handed me a pamphlet as Dad stirred, bleary-eyed and heaved himself up, picking up his trusty carryall, a small navy blue cloth bag holding Kleenex, sunglasses, glasses-cleaning kit, a crossword book, and contraband snacks. His beige pants clung wetly to his legs. A whiff of something rank reached my nose.

  "Come on, Rhonda. Let's go," Dad said. "These people can go to hell for all I care. They wouldn't even let me come and check on you and Monica and Hanky and Jerry." He and I exchanged a puzzled look. "I mean Davey and Susie, of course. Monica's kids," he corrected himself.