I looked at him, not quite sure I heard him right. “Illness?”
“Yes. Pulmonary Monoxic Systemia.” And then he says, “I only have six months to live.”
2 Heaven, Hockey, and the Ice Water of Despair
The idea of dying never appealed to me much. Even when I was a kid, watching the Adventures of Roadkyll Raccoon and Darren Headlightz, I always found it suspicious the way Roadkyll got flattened at the end of each cartoon and yet was back for more in the next episode. It didn’t mesh with any reality I knew. According to the way I was raised, there are really just a few possibilities of what happens to you in the hereafter.
Option one: It turns out you’re less of a miserable person than you thought you were, and you go to heaven.
Option two: You’re not quite the wonderful person you thought you were, and you go to the other place that people these days spell with double hockey sticks, which, by the way, doesn’t make much sense, because that’s the only sport they can’t play down there unless they’re skating on boiling water instead of ice, but it ain’t gonna happen, because all the walk-on-water types’ll be up in heaven.
I did a report on heaven for Sunday school once, so I know all about it. In heaven, you’re with your dead relatives, it’s always sunny, and everyone’s got nice views—no one’s looking at a disgusting landfill or anything. I gotta tell you, though, if I gotta spend eternity with all my relatives, everybody hugging and walking with God and stuff, I’ll go crazy. It sounds like my cousin Gina’s wedding before people got drunk. I hope God don’t mind me saying so, but it all sounds very hockey-stickish to me.
As for the place down under, the girl who did her report on it got all her information from horror movies, so, aside from really good special effects, her version is highly suspect. Supposedly there are like nine levels, and each one is worse than the last. Imagine a barbecue where you’re sizzling on the grill—but it’s not accidental like my dad last summer. And the thing about it is, you cook like one of them Costco roasts that’s somehow thicker than an entire cow, so no matter how long you sit there, you’re still rare in the middle for all eternity.
My mother, who I’m sure gives advice to God since she gives it to everyone else, says the fire talk is just to scare people. In reality, it’s cold and lonely. Eternal boredom—which sounds right, because that’s worse than the roasting version. At least when you’re burning, you’ve got something to occupy your mind.
There is a third option, called Purgatory, which is a kinder, gentler version of the place down under. Purgatory is God’s version of a time-out—temporary flames of woe. I find this idea most appealing, although to be honest, it all bugs me a little. I mean, God loves us and is supposed to be the perfect parent, right? So what if a parent came up to their kid and said, “I love you, but I’m going to have to punish you by roasting you over flames of woe, and it’s really going to hurt.” Social Services would not look kindly upon this, and we could all end up in foster care.
I figure Hell and Purgatory are like those parental threats—you know, like, “Tease your sister one more time, and I swear I’ll kill you,” or “Commit one more mortal sin, and so help me, I will roast you over eternal flames, young man.”
Call me weird, but I find that comforting. It means that God really does love us, He’s just ticked off.
Still, none of that was comforting when it came to Gunnar Ümlaut. The thought of someone I know dying, who wasn’t old and dying already, really bothered me. It made me wish I knew Gunnar better, but then if I did, I’d be really sad now, so why would I want that, and should I feel guilty for not wanting it? The whole thing reeked of me having to feel guilty for something, and I hate that feeling.
Nobody talked much on the return trip from the Roadkyll Raccoon incident. Between what we witnessed and what Gunnar had told me, there just wasn’t much anyone wanted to say. We talked about the football games we were missing, and school stuff, but mostly we looked at subway advertisements and out the windows so we wouldn’t have to look at one another. I wondered if Howie and Ira had heard what Gunnar had told me, but didn’t want to ask.
“See ya,” was all anyone said when we got off the train. Howie, Ira, and Gunnar all went off to their Thanksgiving meals, and I went home to find a note from my parents, with exclamation points and underlines, telling me to be at the restaurant ON TIME!!!
My dad runs a French/Italian fusion restaurant called Paris, Capisce? He didn’t always do this. He used to have an office job with a plastics company, but he lost it because of me. That’s okay, though, because he got the restaurant because of me as well. It’s a long story from the weird world of Old Man Crawley. If you’ve heard of him, and who hasn’t, you’ll know it’s a story best kept at ten-foot-pole distance. Anyway, it all worked out in the end, because running a restaurant is what my dad always dreamed of doing.
We all quickly found out, however, that when you have a restaurant, you don’t run it, it runs you. We all got sucked in. Mom fills in when there aren’t enough waitresses, I’m constantly on call to bus tables, and my little sister Christina folds napkins into animal shapes. Only my older brother Frankie gets out of it, on account of he’s in college, and when he’s home, he thinks he’s too good to work in a restaurant.
My particular skill is the pouring of water.
Don’t laugh—it’s a real skill. I can pour from any height and never miss the glass. People applaud.
Thanksgiving, we all knew, was going to be the big test. Not just of the restaurant, but of our family. See, Thanksgiving has always been big with us, on account of we got this massive extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, and people I barely know who have various body parts resembling mine. That’s what family is. But these days more and more people eat out on Thanksgiving, so Dad decided to offer a special Thanksgiving meal at Paris, Capisce? instead of the usual big family meal at our house. That got the relatives all bent out of shape. We told them we’re doing Thanksgiving at home one day late, but they flatly refused to postpone the holiday. Now we’re family outcasts, at least until Christmas, when everyone will, in theory, kiss and make up. Dad knows better than to keep the restaurant open on Christmas, because Mom told him if he does, he’d better set up a cot in the back room, because that’s where he’ll be sleeping for a while. Mom says things like this very directly, because my father is not good with subtle hints.
As for Thanksgiving, Mom was very direct with the rest of us as well. “None of youse are allowed to eat any turkey this Thursday, got it? As far as you’re concerned, Thanksgiving is on Friday.”
“Do turkey hot dogs count?” I asked, because no direct order from my mother was complete unless I found a way around it. Not that I had plans to eat turkey hot dogs, but it’s the principle of the thing. Mom’s response was a look that probably wilted the lettuce in the refrigerator.
Part of her laying down of the law was that we weren’t allowed to have a turkeyless Thanksgiving at friends’ houses either—because if we did, our own family Thanksgiving would feel like an afterthought. I didn’t think I’d really mind, but right now I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts. I was still feeling funny about the dead raccoon wrangler, and Gunnar’s terminal confession, but it was still a while until Mom and Dad wanted me at the restaurant.
I tried to watch some football, and took to petting Ichabod, our cat, who was ninety-one in dog years, although I don’t know what that means to a cat. But even Ichabod knew I was distracted, so he went off to watch Christina’s hamsters run endlessly on their wheel. I suppose that’s the feline equivalent of going to the market and watching the rotisserie chicken, which is how my mom entertained me at the market when I was little.
In the end, I left early, and took a long, wandering path to the restaurant. As I passed our local skate park, I saw one lonely soul sitting outside by the padlocked gate. I knew the kid, but not his name—only his nickname. He used to wear a shirt that said SKATERDUDE, but the E peeled off, and from that moment
on he was eternally “Skaterdud.” Like my nickname, he had grown into it, and everyone agreed it suited him to a tee. He was lanky with massively matted red hair, pink spots all over his joints from old peeled scabs, and eyes that you’d swear were looking into alternate dimensions, not all of them sane. God help the poor parents who see Skaterdud waiting at the door for their daughter on prom night.
“Hey, Dud,” I said as I approached.
“Hey.” He gave me his special eight-part handshake, and wouldn’t continue the conversation until I got it right.
“So, no turkey?” I asked.
He smirked. “I ain’t gonna miss not eatin’ no dead bird, am I?”
Skaterdud had his own language all full of double, triple, and sometimes quadruple negatives, so you never really knew if he meant what he said, or the opposite.
“So . . . you’re a vegan?” I asked.
“Naah.” He patted his stomach. “Ate the dead bird early. What about you?”
I shrugged, not wanting to get into it. “This year we’re celebrating Chinese Thanksgiving.”
He raised his eyebrows knowingly. “Year of the Goat. Gotta love it.”
“So,” I asked, “isn’t the skate park closed for the winter? What, are you gonna sit here and wait till it reopens in the spring?”
He shook his head. “Unibrow said he’d come down and open it for me today. But I don’t see no Unibrow, do you?”
I sat down and leaned against the fence, figuring that chatting with Skaterdud was as good a mental distraction as any. Kind of like playing Minesweeper with a human being. We talked about school, and I was amazed at how the Dud knew more details about his teachers’ personal lives than he did about any given subject. We talked about his lipring, and how he got it to stop him from biting his nails. I nodded like I understood how the two things were related. And then we talked about Gunnar. I told him about Gunnar’s imminent death, and he looked down, picking at a peeling skull sticker on his helmet.
“That chews the churro, man,” said Skaterdud. “But ya can’t do nothin’ about no bad freakin’ luck, right? Everybody’s got a song on the fat lady’s list.” Then he thought for a second. “Of course I ain’t got no worries, ’cause I know exactly when I’m doing the dirt dance.”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“Oh, yeah,” said the Dud. “I know exactly when I’m croaking. A fortune-teller told me. She said I’m dying when I’m forty-nine by falling off the deck of an aircraft carrier.”
“No way!”
“Yeah. That’s how come I’m joining the navy. Because how screwed would it be to fall off an aircraft carrier when you’re not even supposed to be there?”
Then he stood up and hurled his skateboard over the fence. “Enough of this noise.” He climbed the fence with the skill of a gecko, then looked back to me from the other side. “You wanna come over? I’ll teach you stuff the other kids gotta break bones to learn.”
“Maybe another time. Nice talkin’.”
“Yeah,” he says, and heads off. In a moment he disappears over the concrete lip, and I can hear him zipping in and out of concrete ramps that were slick with patches of ice, not caring how dangerous it might be, because he’s so sure he’s safe for another thirty-four years.
I got to the restaurant on time, but I felt like I was late because everything was in full swing. Since most of our Thanksgiving reservations were for later in the afternoon, my dad didn’t expect it to get crowded until around two, and he didn’t want me hanging around with nothing to do, since that was “a recipe for disaster.” But they hadn’t counted on all the holiday walk-ins. There weren’t enough walk-ins to fill the restaurant, but it sure was enough to make my father run around like a maniac, which made my mother do the same. Only my sister Christina was calm as she folded napkins into swans and unicorns, and placed them at each table. Dad had given most of his staff Thanksgiving off, since he’s such a pushover, so that meant more work for the family.
Just watching my dad work is enough to exhaust you. He’s like the plate spinner at the circus—he’s got to keep everything going, see everything at once. Maybe it’s because he’s overcompensating. He doesn’t have any formal training in running a restaurant, just a head full of great recipes, and a rich, cranky old business partner willing to give him a chance.
“Old Man Crawley is a very hard man to please,” my dad had told me. Having worked for Crawley myself last year—as the walker of his many dogs, among other things—I knew more than anyone how hard he was to please. Used to be my dad worked long hours in a job that he hated. Now he works longer hours in a job that he loves, but he seems just as brain-dead at the end of the day.
Anyway, when Dad saw me come in, he took a moment out of the mania to give me a hug, and a mini neck massage.
“Water-pouring muscles all ready?” he asked. It was a bit of an inside joke, on account of my shoulder muscles used to lock into a shrug after my first few days as a busboy. Who knew pouring water could be so strenuous.
“Yeah,” I told him.
“Good,” he said. “’Cause one of these days they’re gonna make ‘The Water Pour’ an Olympic event, and I expect to see nothing but gold.” He handed me an apron, slapped me on the back, then went back to work. I really like being around my dad early in the day, before the stress turns him into what we in our family like to call “Darth Menu.”
Pretty soon my mind was occupied pouring water and taking away dirty plates, but thoughts of the doomed raccoon guy and Gunnar never entirely faded into the background.
By 6 P.M., we were already into our second seating, and I was a bit grumpy, because I kept taking away all these plates of food, but I couldn’t eat any of it myself. Both Mom and Dad had come up with great Thanksgiving recipes that fit the French/Italian theme of the restaurant. Pumpkin Parmesan Quiche, and Turkey Rollatini au Vin—stuff like that. I got so hungry I would pick at some of the leftovers I took away from the tables, and that got me a whack on the head from Mom. While the skeleton crew of regular staff had breaks every few hours, family members were slaves today, and I resented it.
So I’m moving plates and pouring water, and I can’t help thinking that here are all these people stuffing their fat faces, while some poor slob died simply because he got stuck holding on to a balloon—and then there was Gunnar. How could these people eat when he was suffering from pulmowhachamacallit?
That’s when it happened. The glass of ice water I was pouring overflowed. The moment I realized it, I jerked the pitcher back, but that only succeeded in sloshing ice cubes onto the woman’s dinner plate.
“Oops!” Then I reached onto her plate like an idiot and started plucking ice cubes out of her Garlique Yam Puree with my bare fingers.
“ANTSY!”
Like I said, my dad saw everything all at once in the restaurant, and I had been caught red-handed—or orange-handed, as it were.
“What do you think you’re doing?!”
“I . . . I spilled. I was just—”
“It’s all right,” said the woman. “No harm done.”
But she was wrong about that. “We’ll get you a new plate right away,” my father said. “I’m sorry for the trouble. Your meal is on the house.”
By now my mom and the other waitress had come over to help clean up the spill. Dad handed me the plate of food and pointed to the kitchen. “Take this away and wait for me.”
He apologized to the woman again, and maybe even a third time. I don’t know because I was already in the kitchen, cleaning off the plate and awaiting judgment. It wasn’t long in coming. In just a few seconds, he was there, all fire and brimstone. I could tell the day had already burned him out, and he had gone over to the Dark Side.
“I can’t believe what you did in there! Where is your head?”
“Dad, it was just a spill! I said I was sorry!”
“Just a spill? Your fingers were in her food! Do you have any idea how many health codes you broke?”
I’ll admit that
I deserved to be reprimanded, but he was out of control.
That’s when Mom poked her head in, and said in a whisper that was louder than most people scream, “Will you keep it down? The whole restaurant can hear you!”
But Dad was a runaway train. “How could you be so irresponsible?”
“Well, maybe I have something else on my mind!”
“No! When you’re here, you can’t have anything else on your mind!”
“Why don’t you just fire me?” I snapped. “Oh, that’s right, you can’t fire me—because I don’t actually work here, do I?”
“You know what, Antsy? Just go home.”
“Fine, I will!” And for my parting shot, I dipped my finger in the big pot of Garlique Yam Puree, and licked it off.
It was long after dark now, and the walk home was freezing. I thought my brother Frankie might be at home to keep me company, since he was back from Binghamton for the weekend, but he was off with friends, so I had nothing to do but hang out and stew.
The phone rang at about eight-thirty. On the other end was Old Man Crawley, who owned more of my father’s restaurant than my father did. Getting a call from Crawley was worse than getting chewed out by my dad.
“I understand service was sloppy tonight,” Crawley said.
“Did my father tell you that?”
“I haven’t spoken with your father. I sent an observer to eat at the restaurant.”
“You sent a spy to your own restaurant?”
“Espionage is a common business practice.”
“Against yourself?”
“Apparently it was warranted.”
I sighed. Old Man Crawley had more eyes in more places than anyone I knew. I wouldn’t be surprised if right now he told me to stop picking my nose.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, I oughta tell you a little bit about Old Man Crawley, or “Creepy Crawley,” as all the little kids call him. The guy’s a legend in Brooklyn—the kind you really don’t believe until you actually meet him, but by then it’s too late to run. He’s very rich, very selfish, and generally mean. He’s the kind of guy who’d hand out vomit-inducing candy on Halloween, and then sell Pepto-Bismol across the street at jacked-up prices.
Antsy Does Time Page 2
