Sticks (5 page)

“No, Ruthie, really, I’d love to help.”

“It’s not a good idea.” Mom storms into the kitchen and throws a pan in the sink.

“But Mom!”

“No!”

I feel like I just got thrown in jail.

Joseph Alvarez is looking down.

Camille is playing with her silver earring.

Poppy nudges me, nudges me again.

“Ouch!”

She points toward the pan of brownies on the server by the window like dessert is going to solve the problem. I bring them to the table and start cutting them in huge squares as this heavy feeling fills the room.

“I have never,” Joseph Alvarez says quiet, “seen a brownie that big.”

I hand him one. “It’s the biggest brownie in America.”

I clear some plates from the table and bring them in to Mom. She’s fuming around the sink, shoving the little yellow rug in place to cover the cracked floor tiles. I can hear Poppy telling Joseph Alvarez how good it is to see him again and how they’d all wondered if he’d fallen off the end of the earth.

“I guess Alaska’s pretty close to the end,” he says loud, looking in at Mom.

“I guess it is,” Mom says under her breath, and starts scrubbing a pan hard with Brillo even though it doesn’t seem to need it. Her lower lip starts going,
she looks hard at the yellow-and-white-striped wallpaper that she and Camille put up last summer, then runs out of the kitchen, saying she isn’t feeling well, and takes that wet Brillo pad right with her.

I come back into the dining room.

“What was that about?” Camille whispers to Poppy.

“
Pundonor
,” Joseph Alvarez says sadly, getting up slowly to bring his plate to the kitchen.

“Pundo-what?” I ask.

“
Pundonor
,” he says. “It’s a Spanish word. It means something you’ve got to do—a point of honor.”

*   *   *

I can hear the Peterbilt roaring away down Flax Street. Mom never did come back out.

“Honor,” I say to Poppy. “That means doing the right thing, doesn’t it?”

“That’s what it means.”

“Did Joseph Alvarez do something wrong?”

Poppy rubs her fingers to get the blood circulating. It helps the arthritis in her hands. “Just because somebody’s an adult doesn’t mean they always know what to do.”

“I know that.”

“Your mother never cared much for Joseph’s ways, and it’s up to her to decide what’s best for you.”

“What didn’t she like about him?”

Poppy thinks about that. “What bothered Ruth most, I think, was how Joseph just needed his space.
He’d go off for days, weeks, to kind of recharge, not tell anybody, and then he’d come on back to visit.”

“Where’d he go?”

“I never asked him. I just respected his right to do it.”

“He always came back?”

“He did. We used to kid him about where he’d go, and he’d laugh and say nothing. Your dad always called him Cowboy because he had that kind of spirit to him. He and Charlie were always working on cars, doing something automotive. Makes sense he’s driving a truck, starting his business, wearing that hat. On the road’s a good place for Joseph.”

“What did he mean about honor?”

Poppy runs her hand through her short gray hair. “I’m not getting in this fight, young man. There’s too many shadows. You just believe your mom is going to do the best thing for you she knows how to do.”

“What if she doesn’t do the best thing?”

“You’ll live, regardless.”

“If Dad was here, he’d be teaching me.”

“That’s right,” Poppy snaps. “But you just remember, whatever happens, that down deep inside you there’s a whale of a champion, just like your father.”

Mom stands at the counter in the kitchen finishing her oatmeal. Camille’s already left for school. Poppy’s taking her morning energy walk. Mom’s talking fast about how Larry Troller called this morning to tell her that last night the citizens’ patrol got some drug pusher arrested who’d been using the abandoned Chrysler dealership on Krenshaw Street as his warehouse.

I’m glad about the pusher. Petie Pencastle’s brother started taking drugs last year and had to go to a special hospital to not want them anymore. I made a poster in school for Health Week with a skull and crossbones on it that said
BAD DRUGS ARE BAD NEWS
. Mrs. Riggles hung it in the best place in the hall, right next to the water fountain.

“We’re going to trumpet this all over town,” Mom says. “
This
will bring volunteers in.” She rinses her bowl in the sink, grabs her tan coat. “Got
to run. You have a good day, honey.” She touches my shoulder and heads out the back door and down the steps like Joseph Alvarez never came to dinner last night.

I shove my oatmeal away.

I can’t believe she did that!

I race into my room, which is right off the kitchen, jump over my blue beanbag chair by my bunk bed, push the clothes aside in my closet, and open the secret door that leads to the roof. My room’s the smallest in the house; I picked it because of the passageway. I head up the dark stairs fast, touching the wall on either side to steady myself, moving toward the strip of light under the roof door. I get to it, push the door open, and step out on the flat, black surface.

I take a big breath and let it out slow. Poppy says that helps with anger. It doesn’t much today. I stare out at the stone bell tower at the Lutheran church, at the cop cars going in and out of the Botts Street police station, at the low-hanging clouds over Zeke’s Towing. When we studied weather in school, Mrs. Riggles gave me an A+ in cloud recognition. The clouds over Zeke’s are cumulonimbus—flat bottoms with flowing, puffy tops, the kind that bring showers.

It’s warmer today. The wind picks up over Mackey’s Auto Supplies and fills my windsock full. I made it with one of Mom’s old nylons—attached the nylon to a wire loop, stuck that with string onto a bamboo stick, and let it fly. A garbage truck blows black smoke in the air on its way to the dump as the bells at Grace Lutheran Church start ringing.

It’s eight o’clock; time to go to school.

I head down the stairs, through my closet, and down the back kitchen steps.

*   *   *

At school I tell Arlen about everything. He says adults need extra time to get reasonable when they’ve acted immature. He points at Mr. Borderbomb, the school principal, who’s walking down the hall fast.

“He’s wearing his mallard duck tie,” Arlen whispers to me. “He’s been mad five out of the last six times he’s worn it.”

Arlen sees patterns in everything.

Mr. Borderbomb stops at the big picture of Grover Cleveland hanging by the lunchroom. Grover Cleveland was born in New Jersey and became the twenty-second and twenty-fourth president of the United States, taking a break in between when he got beaten by Benjamin Harrison. We studied him last fall during Giants of New Jersey Week along with Thomas Edison, the inventor, Vince Lombardi, the football coach, and Joyce Kilmer, the poet. They all have rest stops named after them on the New Jersey Turnpike. Mr. Borderbomb looks like he’s got gas; so does Grover Cleveland. Mr. Borderbomb yells at three kids who are making noise outside the library and tells Mr. LaPont, the janitor, that the boys’ bathroom is a mess
again
.

We hide under the stairwell as he storms by. Arlen can also tell when Coach Crow is going to lose it
—usually it’s right after Petie Pencastle misses his third free throw in basketball. Arlen can’t see patterns in parents yet.

He also can’t see why we have to sing these dumb songs in music appreciation when there are plenty of good songs around like “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Ms. Weisenberg is planning the big spring concert and the fifth grade has to sing a song about the first robin of spring. T. R. Dobbs, who has the best speaking voice, is supposed to shout, “Look, everyone, here comes a robin!” right in the middle of the song. T.R. says he’s going to eat soap and puke the night of the concert so he doesn’t have to do it. Arlen and I are having a slow-walking contest to music appreciation class to postpone the pain.

We get there eventually (I win) and sneak into our seats. Ms. Weisenberg stretches that long neck of hers and yells at the boys to “Sing out!” This always makes the girls laugh, especially Cindy Gunner. Then the boys have to sing our part alone, which is worse than eating creamed spinach, because Ms. Weisenberg’s hands are waving in the air trying to get us to sing “fuller.” We sing a little louder, which is the last thing anyone wants to do with a loser song. By the time the bell rings, the only thing we appreciate about music class is that it’s over.

It’s raining when school gets out. Arlen and I take the school bus home and sing “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” loud with the rest of the fifth-grade boys so the girls know we can do it.
Arlen and I get off at the sixty-eighth bottle right before his carsickness hits and walk the last two blocks down Mariah Boulevard.

All day long I’ve been thinking how to say it.

Maybe “You don’t like Joseph Alvarez, do you, Mom?”

Or “Mom, is there something about Joseph Alvarez that bothers you?”

Arlen heads off to his cousin Francine’s house, where he stays after school when his parents have to work late.

“Just remember,” he says, “your mother isn’t going to want to talk about it. When my mom hung the beechwood kitchen cabinets too high in the Krebbs’ new addition and had to rip them out and hang them lower, she wouldn’t talk about it for two months.”

*   *   *

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Mom’s face has that hard look it gets when she’s had it; even her freckles look mad. I don’t want to talk about it much either, but . . .

“You don’t like Joseph Alvarez, do you, Mom?”

She stiffens. “Mickey, I’ve had one lousy day. We took nineteen three-year-olds to Toy Town to see how a business is run. Donny Palmer threw up on the bus. Cybil Docks and Jenny Romano had a fight in aisle twelve over the last Baby Oh-So-Sweet doll. Joshua Cohn lost his
shoes
!”

She collapses on the blue corduroy chair in the living room and covers herself with the little plaid blanket. I push the footstool over, put her feet on it.

“You don’t trust him, do you, Mom?”

Her eyes crash shut. “We haven’t seen Joseph for a very long time, Mickey. It bothers me that he thinks he can just stroll in here like—”

“Poppy seems to like him,” I say.

Mom nods. “Poppy always did.”

“Dad liked him?”

“Yes.”

“I kind of like him, Mom.”

Nothing.

“Is it okay if I like him?”

“It’s okay,” she says, rubbing her eyes. But I don’t think she means it. I hear the echo of pool balls clicking up from the hall.

I say the next part fast. “Is it okay if he helps me with my pool game so I can beat Buck into the dirt?”

Mom sighs deep and looks at me. “Mickey, I understand how much you want this.”

“He’s the awesomest player, Mom, because Dad taught him!”

She throws off the blanket. “There are things, honey, that you don’t understand. I need to think about what’s right for you!”

“Winning is right for me!”

“This is not about winning!” Mom bolts up. “
There are things, young man, that you don’t understand
!”

*   *   *

Mom goes to lie down in her bedroom. Since it’s Friday afternoon, she says I can go to Francine’s house as long as I’m home by dinner. Francine’s
house is a good place to go to when there are things you don’t understand. Camille offers to drive me; she’ll do anything to get behind the wheel.

Camille twirls up her long curly hair, sticks it under her floppy black hat, and steers Mom’s old red Chevy down Flax Street. “Ugh. There are parts of this town that are positively decaying. Look at that sign over Cassetti’s Bakery, Mickey. The wood’s so cracked you can hardly read it.”

“Mrs. Cassetti’s helping her granddaughter go to college,” I remind her. “She said signs cost money and everybody already knows where the bakery is.”

“If Poppy just painted Vernon’s purple like I’ve suggested, it could start a major trend.”

“Yeah, nobody’d come in the hall anymore.”

“A
creative
trend, Mickey. We’re too limited here. Boring brick stores, apartments on top.”

“What’s wrong with brick?”

She sighs and turns the corner a little fast. The tires screech.

I hold on to my seat belt. “What about those new stores going up on Botts Street?” I ask her. “What about Pinkerton Park getting all cleaned up?”

“Honestly, I don’t know why Mother stays here.”

I look out the window at Officer Hack, who’s waving from her patrol car as we drive by. I wave back.

“You do too know why.”

Camille bites her lip and holds the steering wheel so tight all the rings on her fingers stand up. Mom loves Cruckston. When Dad died, people poured out to help, even folks she didn’t know. We had to borrow space in people’s freezers to hold all the casseroles neighbors sent. That’s why Mom started
up the citizens’ patrol. She says at the heart of Cruckston is something that won’t die—hope.

I shout to Camille to slow down, the light just turned red. She hits the brakes and almost rams a bus.