by Joan Bauer
“Sure.”
He stood up straight, closed his eyes at the effort that took.
“Millstone’s speaking at the Methodist church picnic on Saturday. I need you to help me get there.”
He had to be kidding.
“I just need a ride. I’m not supposed to drive until the bandage comes off my eye. I don’t think my mother will … you know …”
“Braverman, did they give you strong painkillers, or is your brain just naturally impaired?”
He thought about that.
“Both,” he said.
* * *
A rash of teenagers signed up to work on G.T.’s campaign as news of Braverman’s beating hit the streets and Jillian spread the word on-line.
G.T. stood on the steps in front of Town Hall. “I will not allow this evil to prosper! I demand a full investigation by Deputy Babcock to bring those criminals to justice!”
Sheriff Greebs strolled out the front door. “I’ll be handling any investigations around here.”
“I do not believe, Sheriff, that will lead us to the truth.”
“That’s your problem,” snarled Greebs as he walked to his squad car.
On Thursday the Mulhoney Messenger carried this on the front page:
A POLITICAL LESSON
by E. A. Braverman
This week three men dragged me into an alley and beat me up. They took turns holding me down. They took turns hitting me. I didn’t owe them money. I hadn’t done anything to hurt them. They didn’t take my wallet. All they tried to take was my right to support G. T. Stoop’s candidacy. They told me I’d better shut my mouth about politics in this town.
I don’t know their names or where they live, but I would like to say something to all three of them.
It didn’t work.
Oh sure, you broke three of my ribs. I have stitches in my forehead and I won’t be able to work for a while. But you’ve only made me more determined to speak out and find the truth about the corruption that has a hold of this town.
For a few days after the beating, I told myself that if I’d been stronger, I could have pushed you away. The truth is, you are the weak ones. And you’ve made your cause that much weaker by showing how low you would sink to get Eli Millstone reelected.
I hope the sheriff’s office catches you, but even more than that, I hope that people will see the fear that’s really behind your actions. You’re afraid of the truth.
You know what?
You should be.
* * *
Saturday morning. The teenagers of Mulhoney had had enough.
I got Braverman his ride to the Methodist church picnic. Fifty-seven kids decided to join us.
My heart was thumping with anger and deep caring as Braverman dragged his bruised self into the big tent set up on the front lawn and stood smack in front of Eli Millstone, who was droning on about truth, justice, and the American way.
“Mr. Mayor! Could you explain what the sheriff’s department is doing to find the three men who attacked me?”
Millstone was shocked at first, but looked at Braverman with fake compassion. “We’re going to get to the bottom of what happened to you, son. I give you my word.”
“Your word?” Braverman hobbled closer. “Mr. Mayor, your word isn’t worth anything.
Adam raised his fist in the air and started the cheer.
“Tell the truth! Tell the truth!”
We screamed it loud until the tent poles shook.
Until finally Eli Millstone stormed out, fuming.
You think all teenagers care about are musicians and movie stars?
Spend some time in Wisconsin.
We’ll blow your socks off.
* * *
On the mouse front, we had big news. The Mulhoney Messenger carried it on the front page. The paper was down to eight pages now; it used to be twenty, but Cecelia Culpepper vowed to keep publishing it no matter what.
The lab report showed no rodent hairs in the Welcome Stairways kitchen. The mouse had been dead for at least a week. It couldn’t have come from our diner. That sweet couple had been arrested twice for passing bad checks.
“And the corker,” said Deputy Babcock, sipping coffee at the counter, “is that couple said a man in Milwaukee paid them to do their mouse act in the Welcome Stairways.”
“What kind of a person would do that?” Flo asked.
“I don’t know,” Brenda Babcock replied. “But I’m going to find out.”
* * *
Days passed. Hot, muggy ones. Not that I’ve ever expected much else from July.
Braverman was in direct contact with his inner porcupine. He’d become consumed with “getting” Millstone.
Revenge of the Giant Grill Man.
He’d become a symbol of public outrage, walking around town with his bandage over his eye and his black-and-blue face. But, as Sid Vole said, it sure was a good reminder to the voters. “STOOP FOR MAYOR” was showing up on more and more lawns and bumper stickers, but the juggling, joking Braverman was gone. He was serious and fuming, morning till night.
I mentioned it to him gently after a campaign meeting.
“I swear to God,” he vowed. “I’m not going to let Millstone win.”
“I just don’t think you should carry the whole campaign on your shoulders.”
“Just lay off, Hope.”
It really hurt me when he said that.
Braverman’s injury was wreaking havoc in the kitchen. He couldn’t work a whole shift. Addie was pulling killer hours. She tends not to suffer in silence. Once, G.T. rolled up his sleeves to help her, and in twenty minutes of them working side by side my whole future in Wisconsin could have gone up in smoke. Thankfully, G.T. saw it, too. He backed out gracefully and said, “Well, Addie, I sure don’t want to ruffle your feathers any more than I have.”
Addie muttered that if she had any feathers left it was only by the grace of God.
Out at the counter G.T. said to me, “You got any advice on how to get along better with your aunt?”
I looked at his determined face; felt he could take it. “G.T., truth is costly. You’ve got to give her full reign in the kitchen. There’s no other way.”
“Hands off, huh?”
“Completely.”
G.T. looked at his hands and put them in his pockets.
* * *
G.T.’s energy was up and down. His fever had risen slightly, and his doctor said he had to avoid most people until his white blood count went higher. That scared all of us. G.T. said this would be part of his life for a while, but he was like a caged bull waiting to get free.
I was standing in his apartment, which was across the hall from ours. I’d brought up some of Addie’s disease-fighting chicken soup with egg noodles. I’d triple-washed my hands with antibacterial soap and sprayed Lysol disinfectant on my sneakers.
I could tell he was hurting.
“How’s Braverman?” he asked.
I kept it light. “He’s healing. He’s working things out.”
A huge sigh. “How’s it going downstairs?”
“Good. We’re staying busy.”
He slapped the table, stared at the oil painting on the wall of a little sailboat riding the waves of a choppy ocean, its sail puffed full with the wind.
“That’s where I want to be,” he said with irritation.
“You’re a sailor?”
“Not much of one. I want to be out in the thick of it, Hope, not stuck in here like some patient.”
I looked at the painting. “I feel like that boat sometimes.”
“How so?”
“Well, sometimes I feel pretty small and the waves around me are big, but I still have this feeling that I’m going to make it to shore.”
Harrison would have loved that.
G.T. smiled. “My mother painted it.”
“She’s good.”
“She said it was how she saw troubles. A good sailor knows how to steer into the wind, to use the power t
o his advantage. You don’t become a real sailor until you sail in a storm. Then you test what you know, you see what you and the boat and the wind are made of.”
I looked at that painting for the longest time.
Thought of the high waves of my mom leaving me.
The big winds of Gleason Beal that almost capsized me.
“I wish there was another way to learn, G.T.”
He flopped on the couch. “I don’t like the process either.” He picked up a beautiful piece of dark wood that was sitting on the coffee table; held it out to me. “Feel that.”
It was smooth like glass.
“That piece of mahogany came from a ship that sailed the seas over a hundred years ago. See how deep the color is? It didn’t start out that way. It was the pounding of the waves and the stretching of that vessel by the sea over the years that helped make this wood so beautiful.”
I held the wood. Didn’t want to put it down.
“I know how hard it is sometimes to be strong, G.T.”
He looked at me with such kindness. “I know you do.”
I covered the soup to keep it warm and hoped with all my heart that he’d get well.
Losing G.T. seemed like the worst thing that could ever happen.
* * *
We lost Sid Vole instead.
He’d been called to Virginia to provide mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the campaign of a congressman who had visited a school and announced that Abraham Lincoln was the thirteenth president of the United States instead of the sixteenth. A little kid had corrected him and then the whole class started laughing. A TV camera had been there to capture the drama. The press was crucifying that man.
It was, Adam said, the ultimate test of the ultimate spin doctor.
But it meant we were down a consultant in G.T.’s campaign.
Not to mention an adult.
I was trying to write this all in a letter to Harrison and Miriam. Trying to explain my life up here with G.T.’s campaign and how important it was. Trying to explain why Braverman got beat up and the depth of our non-relationship.
There’s this guy that I told you about before—I’m kind of interested in him, except we work together and we’re really just friends. Sometimes I think he likes me and other times I don’t think he does and I’m finding the whole thing really irritating.
Miffed in Mulhoney.
I walked over to my Replogle globe, which was sitting on my dresser. I gave it a slow spin, stopped it at Wisconsin.
Put my finger on Milwaukee. Moved it slightly to the left.
Mulhoney, of course, was not on the globe.
Such a small, hidden place in the world.
“I’m here, Dad.” I said it louder than I’d expected.
I waited, listening.
Life has too many unsolved mysteries.
14
Some things become a mission, and Mr. Woldenburg became that for me. Every Friday he’d plunk down at the counter and order the same thing—grilled American cheese on white. I tried not to shudder.
Tried to introduce him to new food experiences, like grilled Swiss on seven-grain bread with sliced tomatoes.
“Had a grilled American on white every Friday for as long as I can remember.” Hands on hips. Mr. Impatience.
I tried to get him to talk about anything.
He grunted instead.
I always tried to put in a few good words for G.T.’s candidacy, but he never responded. Once when people at the counter were talking about the election he announced, “I don’t vote. Never have.”
Never?
“I don’t vote, the wife don’t vote either. All politicians do is mess up the world.”
Adam was sliding in for the kill, holding a Students for Stoop newsletter, smiling like the Cheshire Cat. But Mr. Woldenburg waved him off. “Not going to read any propaganda.”
He ate his sandwich and left a fifteen percent tip (fifty-seven cents).
You should vote, Mr. Woldenburg.
It might expand your world.
* * *
G.T.’s fever was down, but boy, was he dragging.
A few reporters got wind of G.T.’s campaign and came to town to interview him. A human interest story, they called it. Sid Vole had called a few newspaper editors that he knew. It was his parting gift to G.T.’s campaign—more publicity.
Braverman watched and listened like a sponge.
“What has the cancer taught you?” a reporter asked G.T.
“It’s never too late to do the right thing,” G.T. answered.
“Great,” Braverman said, and wrote down the exchange on his pad.
There were MOS interviews (man on the street).
TOS interviews (teen on the street).
Some people, like Addie, refused interviews. I never did. I had a secret hope down deep that with all this media exposure, my father would somehow recognize my face, my name, something; jump into his Jaguar sedan and drive fast, but not recklessly, through the night to find me.
* * *
I was in the back office taking my break and feeding Anastasia. She’d been here for over a month and not much had changed. Her little mouth would start sucking, then she’d let the bottle drop. I’d put it back in her mouth; she’d try again. She sure was small and skinny.
“Okay,” I told her, “you’re real lucky I’m here because I had the same problem eating as you did when I was a baby. Sucking for food isn’t a concept every baby gets right off and you’ve got to just deal with the stress because people are going to put their stopwatches to you and expect you to be doing things you’re not ready for.” I put the bottle near her mouth. She took a few more sucks, and couldn’t hold on.
“Now the best thing you’ve got going for you is that your mother really cares about you. I know this is true because she’s making the rest of us half nuts with all her worrying. My mother couldn’t have cared less, and I bet that affected my eating in the beginning, so you’re way ahead of the game in that department, Anastasia. I think you should feel pretty good about that.”
I rubbed the bottle’s nipple over her lower lip. I’d seen a veterinarian do that once at Miriam Lahey’s house to get her dog to eat. Anastasia opened her mouth a bit.
“Suck,” I said.
She did a little. “Not bad. I’m telling you, you get this eating stuff down, lots of things are going to fall into place. At some point, you might want to talk to your mom about your name because Anastasia is almost as big a challenge as the first one I got slapped with. But first things first. Eat, baby. You need the energy. Come on.”
The bottle slipped out again.
I put my finger in her mouth to see what would happen. She grabbed on, started sucking.
“That’s the stuff. I’m going to make the transfer now.”
I moved my finger out of her mouth, brought the bottle in. Not much better.
“It’s okay. We’re just going to practice it. Do you know your mother loves you so much she lugged a collapsible crib to the diner so you could be here while she worked?” Anastasia was watching me now, smiling a little. “Another thing about your mom—do you know she can carry four captain’s platters on her arm and not drop an orange slice? You’ve got an excellent person fighting for you. That’s about the best thing a kid can have in life—somebody out there fighting for them. Try this bottle again.” She didn’t hesitate this time, took the bottle, drank longer than I’ve ever seen her.
She kept drinking, looking at me. I took a chance, put her little hands around the bottle, pressed them firm so she’d get the idea.
“Come on, Anastasia. Hold on.” All of a sudden there was nothing more important to me than this baby holding this bottle herself.
There was a sniff behind me. I looked up to see Lou Ellen standing in the door, tears streaming down her face.
I wasn’t sure what to say.
“You’re a good mother, Lou Ellen.”
She shook her head.
“You are. Believe me, I
know the difference.”
I took my hand off the bottle and for a few magic seconds Anastasia was feeding herself. Lou Ellen was standing there by the door grinning through tears.
I was smiling at Anastasia and trying not to cry myself.
The thought kept hitting me over and over.
I wonder if my mother ever cried for me.
* * *
I walked slowly up the back stairs and crashed in the apartment, exhausted from everything. I never take naps, but I was going to take one today. I headed for my room; my soft, clean bed. I kicked off my shoes, getting ready for the experience.
“Brace yourself,” Addie said to me from our kitchen.
“What?”
She appeared in the hall, stone-faced. Bad sign.
“No way to tell you except straight-out, Hope. Your mother’s coming to visit.”
“What?”
“She read about what’s happening in town and she’s coming up from St. Louis.”
I felt this heavy cloud fall in the room.
Could see Deena filing her nails, telling me she loved me.
“I don’t really want to see her now, Addie.”
“She doesn’t tend to ask permission. You know that.”
“You know how weird those visits are.”
“She’s driving up, honey. She’ll be here in a few days.”
I flopped down in despair, chilled to the bone in the middle of summer.
It was my father who was supposed to be coming, not her.
* * *
I slammed plates the next day at the diner. Braverman was back at work. It was good to see him until he called me “Sunshine,” and then I told him to back off.
I’m doing all I can to avoid stress. Ask Flo to take the six-top of truckers telling dumb-blonde jokes.
Tell Lou Ellen I’ll pay her to wait on the young mother at table ten with the five children all under the age of seven.
I’ve got one hour to go on my shift and I have not committed murder in any form. I’m squeezing my hands and releasing them to get rid of the tension. I want the gloves on bad. I really want to hit the big bag.
That’s when this hotshot reporter swings into the diner like he’s God’s gift to journalism. Adam Pulver is covered in STOOP buttons on his way out the door. The guy stops Adam and tells him he wants to talk to “some average Americans working on this campaign.” Adam points to me and says, “Hope is average.”
