Stand Tall

by Joan Bauer

  The Pit Bulls were particularly bad at sliding.

  The evening went downhill. Sully and Eli were sticking their fingers down their throats, pretending to vomit.

  “We’re going to put some of these steps together.”

  Partner time. The popular boys raced for Amber and her friends.

  Sully said he was sick.

  Eli said he had to get a bucket for Sully.

  Tree hoped that dancing with someone would be better than dancing alone.

  He walked slowly up to Sophie, who was studying the floor.

  Cleared his throat.

  Waited.

  She looked up. “Well?”

  “I’m here,” Tree said.

  “And?”

  “I was going to ask you to, you know . . .” He looked around. “Dance.”

  “You need to say the words. Would you like to dance?”

  “I would,” Tree said.

  “No—you ask me.”

  “Right. Would you . . . like to dance?”

  She took his hand, smiled bright. “I’d be delighted—and I’m not just saying that.”

  They walked onto the middle of the floor. Tree was absolutely the tallest person in the room. Lazar and Coach Glummer’s cousin Sheila locked into position, which seemed easier for shorter people.

  “Good posture,” shouted Sheila. “If you get lost, just watch me and Lazar.”

  Tree bent down to reach Sophie’s waist. Her head came up to his chest. He took her hand gently; didn’t want to squish it. He wasn’t sure his left foot could detach at this angle.

  He could either dance or have good posture—not both.

  Sophie laughed. She had a good laugh. Solid, not tinkling. “You look like you’re at a funeral.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Aunt Peach dragged me here by my nose hairs, but it’s not as bad as I thought.”

  Tree nodded.

  Dumb music started playing.

  Tree took the deepest breath of his life and forgot everything he’d been practicing for the last ninety minutes. Sophie was right there with him, messing up.

  Tree had no idea how this would help him in basketball or in years to come. But it sure was nice to be so close to Sophie.

  “It’s weird here now, huh?”

  Tree took his tie off and said it to Curtis, who was lying on the couch at Dad’s with an empty pizza carton over his face.

  “I mean, with Mom and Dad and everything. . . .”

  “It’s weird,” Curtis agreed, not moving the carton.

  Tree flopped into the chair.

  “I’m here all the time.” Tree wanted to make this point. He felt like a soldier that had been fighting a battle on his own, just waiting for fresh troops to come in and give him a hand. “Sometimes I’m not sure what to think.”

  “I’m not, either.” Curtis took the carton off his face, looked inside, ate the last bit of cheese. “We went to Mom’s house tonight. Me and Larry. Larry called it Munchkinland.”

  Tree nodded.

  “We helped her trim the tree.” Curtis sighed. “She told the ornament stories. This one we got on that Christmas farm in Iowa. This one we got in Bermuda.”

  He didn’t mention it was like being at a funeral, remembering the dead.

  Didn’t tell Tree the next part, either.

  How Mom kept asking them, “Are you all right?”

  What do you say?

  “No,” Curtis had said finally. “I’m not. I’ll be all right. But this is hard, Mom.”

  “Why did you buy this house?” Larry asked her.

  “It was the only one I could afford!”

  “Why did you get this dog?” Larry wouldn’t let up.

  “Because I wanted company! You’re blaming me for this divorce, and that’s not fair!”

  Tree took his shoes off, studied his big toe sticking out of his sock. Looked at Curtis. “Why do you think they got divorced?”

  Curtis crushed the pizza carton. He wanted to get back to school, where things seemed normal. Tree looked kind of pitiful to him. As the oldest, he’d seen and heard more of the fights. The ones about his father’s job were always loud.

  “Why,” Mom would shout at Dad, “are you content just running a sporting goods store? You have so many gifts that you’ve never developed.”

  “I like sports.”

  “That’s not an explanation.”

  “Not everything in life has to have an explanation!”

  And she would storm off saying that she wasn’t going to just settle for whatever came. She was going to improve herself.

  “Go for it,” Dad would yell.

  The next morning, they would be in the kitchen with faces like cement.

  Curtis sighed. “I don’t know how it happened. They just changed. They stopped doing things together that they used to do. They stopped laughing. They began to have really different lives. Dad worked mostly; Mom worked, went to school, and rearranged the furniture.”

  Tree half laughed. “Remember that time Dad came home and sat where his brown chair had always been, and fell down and started shouting?”

  “I thought he was going to punch a hole in the wall.”

  “And then I’d meet him at the door when he came home and tell him if Mom had changed stuff around while he was gone.”

  Curtis nodded. “You were always good at things like that.”

  They looked at the scrunched-up pizza box.

  “Do you think,” Tree asked, “they’ll change their minds? I mean, if Dad learned to understand her more, they could get back together maybe. It’s not like they hate each other.”

  “I don’t know, Tree Man. I don’t think so.”

  “I wish they’d waited till I was in college.”

  Curtis smiled. “They might have killed each other by then.”

  “Do you know the secret to fighting a war?”

  Grandpa asked Tree the question as they were folding the laundry. Grandpa always dove deep doing laundry.

  Tree didn’t know.

  “You’ve got to hold on to the things you know to be true, set your mind to a higher place, and fight like a dog to keep it there. War can be so fierce, you can forget the good. Forget what you’re about in this world, what’s really important. There’s always going to be somebody who wants to try to make you forget it. Don’t let them.”

  Tree wasn’t sure how you do that in seventh grade.

  He folded a towel and remembered the day his mom moved out.

  August twelfth, a bright, sunny day. A day where you wouldn’t think anything bad could happen. He’d just come back from helping her move. There in the dryer was a full load of her clothes she’d forgotten to take. He gathered the clothes in his arms, started up the basement steps, couldn’t handle it. He dropped the pile and ran into his bedroom, crying.

  A knock on Tree’s bedroom door.

  He was madly drying his face with his sleeve. Grandpa came in.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Convince me.”

  Tree told him about the clothes.

  “I would have cried, too, if I’d seen that.” He limped over—his leg was so bad—sat on the bed. “It’s the things we don’t expect that just rip the scab off.”

  “She was supposed to pack everything.”

  “She meant to. It’s been a hard day. People do all kinds of things they wouldn’t normally do when they’re fighting each other. I’ll help you fold that laundry, then you call her, let her know it’s here.”

  Tree walked to the basement steps, gathered up the clothes.

  His mother had used fabric softener. Her yellow robe was soft and smelled nice. He half buried his nose in it like Bradley snuggled his old towel.

  He lugged the laundry to his room. He and Grandpa folded each piece like it had cost a fortune. Tree called Mom at her new house, and she started crying. She’d come over and get it, she said. She hadn’t meant to leave it.

  Tree hoped
he wouldn’t think about this every time he did the laundry.

  “It’s tough around here now, I know.” Grandpa held up five unmatched socks, looked in the hamper for the others. “We’ve all lost a piece of ourselves. War does that—it blows things up and leaves an empty place where something important used to be.”

  “Is that how you feel about your leg, Grandpa?”

  “Yep. Is that how you feel about your mom and dad?”

  Tree looked down. “Kind of.”

  “I’ll tell you something about empty places. They don’t get filled in right away. You’ve got to look at them straight on, see what’s still standing. Concentrate on what you’ve got as much as you can.”

  Grandpa dug around the hamper, couldn’t find the missing socks. He started laughing. “I don’t need a pair of socks. I just need one. Doing the laundry gets easier when you’re not so particular.”

  Tree laughed, too.

  You’ve got to love a man who can teach you to laugh at war.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Okay, Aunt Peach, so this is my friend Tree.”

  Tree was standing in the hallway of Sophie’s apartment. It was cramped and dark.

  Piles of laundry all around.

  Lassie, the iguana, in a cage on the dining room table.

  Cats on the couch; cats in the hall.

  Aunt Peach was chasing one of the cats that had just clawed the drapes.

  She stopped, gazed up at Tree, way up. “You’re a big one.”

  Tree slouched a little.

  Aunt Peach ran off. “Dimples, I’m going to break your furry neck!”

  Tree and Sophie were going to take the bus to the Midas Muffler shop in Baltimore where her dad worked. She was going to give him her Christmas present.

  She knew he wouldn’t have anything for her.

  “He’s not so good at presents,” Sophie said.

  “He’s not so good at life,” her mother added from behind the bathroom door. “Don’t expect much, Sophia.”

  Sophie put on her coat, tucked a little wrapped present in her backpack. “I expect the bus’ll get us there, Ma. I expect it’ll be cold outside. That’s it.”

  A flush. “Don’t take the wrong bus.”

  “I’ve done this before.”

  Running water. “Don’t stay long.”

  “He gets a fifteen-minute break.”

  Bathroom door opened. Sophie’s mother stared up at Tree. She looked just like Sophie except for being older and rounder. “If he asks about me, tell him I’m dating three movie stars.”

  Sophie laughed.

  “You deserve a better father.”

  “But he’s the one I got.” Sophie pushed Tree out the door.

  The Midas Muffler shop was packed with people drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups and checking their watches. Sophie pointed to a big man with his head inside a car engine.

  “That’s him. The big guy. You’ve got something in common already.”

  Sophie’s father seemed satisfied with what he’d done; he motioned for another man, who got in the car and drove it out. He walked toward the glass door—didn’t smile, didn’t frown—pushed it open.

  Sophie got nervous, her hands went in every direction. “Okay, Dad, so this is my friend Tree.”

  Sophie’s father looked at Tree. “How old are you?”

  “Twelve.”

  A snort. “You think I’m stupid?”

  “No, sir. I’m really tall for my age.”

  “You’re tall for my age.” He stepped closer. “You know how old she is?”

  “Dad—”

  “No, really.” Tree grabbed his wallet, got his seventh-grade ID. He had a copy of his birth certificate, too. His mother made him carry it.

  Sophie stepped in. “Okay, so we know you’re busy, Dad, and we don’t want to mess up your schedule here.”

  Sophie’s father studied the ID, handed it back.

  “I brought you a present, Dad, on account of it’s Christmas soon.” She handed it to him.

  “I left yours at home.” He always said that. He lit a cigarette, blew smoke rings out slow.

  “I recorded some Christmas music for you on my flute. I got your favorites. ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen’ and ‘Jingle Bells.’” She’s talking faster, too fast. “I call it Sophie’s Greatest Christmas Hits. The last half of ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ got cut off ’Cause my cheeks were getting exhausted from all the blowing.”

  “I’ll play it in the car.”

  “I hope you like it.”

  “You still got that flute, huh?”

  “Yeah. I practice a lot.”

  He put the cigarette in his mouth, gave her a good pat on the shoulder.

  “Vinnie!” Another man shouted it. “You on vacation or what?”

  He looked at Sophie, softer this time. “I gotta go.”

  “Sure,” she said quietly.

  “Hey, Soph, we’ll get together.”

  “Anytime, Dad.”

  He patted her shoulder again. Shook Tree’s hand. He had a killer handshake.

  “Size matters, kid. Wear it proud.” He pushed through the glass door.

  Tree stood straight.

  Sophie’s mother was right.

  She deserved a better father.

  “He can take a muffler out faster than any man alive,” Sophie said. “They had a contest here last year and he won by three whole minutes.”

  “It was nice, what you gave him.” Tree didn’t know what else to say. He couldn’t imagine having a father like that.

  “I’m glad you think so, because it’s the exact same thing you’re getting for Christmas.”

  “My dad doesn’t know how to love people,” Sophie explained.

  “He drove my mother crazy.”

  The bus was late. They stood there shivering.

  Tree clapped his hands together to stay warm. “I guess my parents drove each other crazy, too.”

  Sophie marched in place so her feet wouldn’t freeze. “I got sent to a therapist about it. She told me I had hidden anger at my father and it was coming out when I was with other people. I told her no way was there any anger hiding in me. ‘Open your eyes,’ I said. ‘It’s all here on the surface.’ But I figure I’ve got it better than a lot of kids. At least I know where my dad is.”

  Tree had never once thought of that.

  The bus pulled up. She climbed inside.

  “You coming or what?”

  Tree got in the bus, hit his head.

  She laughed. “You need a bus with a sunroof so you can stick your head out.”

  Tree didn’t think that was funny.

  Sophie elbowed him. “You’ve gotta laugh. If you don’t, you’ll cry.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Getting Grandpa in the Santa suit reminded Tree of the time when his mother had bought an outfit for Bradley—a sweater, hat, and booties—and Tree had to put it on him.

  “Standing’s not an ability I’ve got right now!” Grandpa tried to steady himself as Tree tried to pull the big red pants over his legs.

  “It would help,” Tree said, “if you’d stop moving so much.”

  “It would help if I had two working legs.”

  “Let’s go with what we’ve got, Grandpa!”

  Finally the pants were on. Grandpa looked at the floppy pant hanging loose over his half leg.

  The Trash King adjusted his elf cap, cigar in his mouth. “You could say a reindeer chewed it off.” King put on his pointy elf shoes, struck a pose. “Am I hot or what?”

  “Scorching,” said Grandpa. “But lose the cigar.”

  “It’s not lit.”

  “You’ve got to be a role model.”

  King put the cigar in his pocket. “And you’ve got to be careful, Leo. We tell the kids you’ve got to save your strength for Christmas Eve, when an angel’s gonna come down from heaven, touch you with a magic wand, and your leg’s gonna grow back.”

  Grandpa looked in the mirror Tree was
holding up, put rouge on his cheeks, fastened the big white beard. “We’re going to ruin this holiday for hundreds of children.”

  King picked a cigar leaf from his teeth.

  “Ho, ho, ho,” said Tree halfheartedly, folded the wheelchair, and carried it to the truck.

  “The thing about Christmas,” the Trash King said, driving his truck to the children’s hospital, “is how I didn’t understand what it was about until I got to Vietnam. You remember Christmas in Nam, Leo?”

  Grandpa sighed. “I was in the hospital.”

  “That’s right. You didn’t get to see the show.” King turned the corner. “They brought in a big show from the States with singers and dancers. There were hundreds of us out there watching. A couple guys had made a Christmas tree out of bamboo and painted it green. I was feeling sorry for myself because I wasn’t home.

  “And then we started singing. Just singing the songs. ‘Silent Night,’ ‘Jingle Bells,’ ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas,’ ‘Hark, Those Herald Angels Sing.’ And I could have sworn—and a few guys in the Signal Corps would back me up on this—that there was a star in the sky a little brighter over where we were. And I thought, We get these holidays all wrong. We think it’s what we get and how we feel and how warm and cozy we are, but Christmas came to all us slobs that night and most of those guys weren’t expecting it. Some of us hadn’t even washed. Now, I’ll tell you how this helps me in trash. . . .”

  King pulled up to the hospital parking lot. Grandpa groaned. “Save it, King, for the ride home. We’ve got a job to do.”

  Tree got the wheelchair from the back, placed a red throw blanket over it. Carefully eased Grandpa out of the truck and into the chair.

  “Santa has landed,” said King.

  “You bet your boots, Elf Man.”

  Grandpa adjusted his beard, waved them forward like a lieutenant leading a platoon into battle. “Let’s take this hill.”

  He grabbed the chair’s wheels with his strong arms and pushed through the emergency doors that swung open at the miraculous power of Christmas.

  “Ho, ho, ho,” Grandpa bellowed to young and old who looked up excitedly.

  “The Big Guy’s here!” the Trash King shouted. “We’re going to party tonight!”