The Absolute Value of Mike (11 page)

Mild grunt.

“Yeah, well, that's not helping make any money to bring Misha here. Guess you don't care about that. It's more fun to watch a dead TV, huh?” I looked at the blank screen. “Is this your favorite show?” I cupped my hand to my ear. “What's that? Oh, it's a movie. My mistake. James Bond?”

Moo appeared in front of me. “What are you doing, dear?”

“Watching TV.”

She walked over to the set and pressed a button, and a truck ad shouted at us. “It works much better if you turn it on.”

Poppy let out a snort.

“But I thought—”

“It's all right.” Moo patted my hand. “Sometimes I forget to turn it on, too.”

“I didn't forget! I thought since Poppy was watching . . . never mind.” Why would I think that Poppy would want to watch TV “live” when he could watch it dead?

Moo beckoned me into the kitchen and I followed. “I'm not sure Poppy is the best role model for you,” she said softly.

Poppy made a low growling sound.

I sneered through the pass-through at him. No kidding. He was ruining my life, at least for the short term, but more importantly, he was risking Misha's entire life.

“Now, that Past,” she said, drying her hands on a towel, “he's an excellent role model.”

“A homeless guy?” I liked Past a lot, but it seemed weird to call him a role model.

“Oh, he's not homeless, dear.”

“Uh, yeah, I think he is.”

“Why do you say that?”

“For starters, his office is a park bench. And he sleeps there, too.”

“Oh, that.” She stirred a pot on the stove. “It's summer. He likes sleeping out in the open air. He used to go camping a lot, you know.”

“He eats at the soup kitchen.”

“No, he's just there a lot because he likes to volunteer his time.”

“Moo. He pushes a grocery cart around town. Doesn't any of this sound strange to you?”

“We all need a place to put our things. I put everything in Junior. He has a lot of important things in that cart. Mike, could you hand me the parsley flakes right above you?”

I looked through the cabinet among the cans of cat food—for Felix? “Do you guys have . . . a cat?”

“No, just Felix.”

I stared at Moo. Someone had to tell her. “Moo, Felix is a clock.”

“Oh, not
that
Felix. The stray cat who comes by sometimes. I call him Felix.” She patted my hand and whispered, “Don't worry, I'm not as bad off as Poppy.”

That's when I remembered the Saint John's Wort. It was worth a shot. Maybe it'd take the rust out of the artesian screw.

“Hey, Moo? About Poppy. Have you tried Saint John's Wort?”

Moo stopped stirring the whitish, glue-ish stuff in the pan on the stove. “We're not Catholic, dear.”

What? “You don't have to be Catholic.”

She went back to stirring. “Well, it's usually Catholics who pray to the saints . . . and sometimes the saint's warts, too, apparently, although that does seem a little strange.”

“No, it's not—it's just—”

“But Mike, if you think it'll work, you just tell me how.”

“This stuff is an herb that helps with your depression.”

“I'm not depressed, dear.”

“No, I mean”—I lowered my voice—“you give it to Poppy.”

“Oh! I see.” She banged the spoon on the side of the pot until the lumps fell off of it. “Okay, where's Junior? We're off to get some warts.”

“Past already gave me some. I just wasn't sure if you'd want it.” She seemed kind of sensitive about other things, like failing eyesight and being tired or old.

“Well, of course I do! Poppy needs something. It's not normal to sit in a chair all day like a zombie, Mike.”

Poppy made a strangled zombie noise from the other room.

I made Moo call the doctor, like Past said, and she gave Moo the okay. Moo served Poppy his “special recipe” scrapple on a tray in the living room. Then she made us sit down to eat in the kitchen, but fortunately not scrapple.

“Well, I gave it a whirl. Do you think it'll work?” she whispered.

I shook my head. “I hope so. We need it for Misha.” It hadn't done anything for Dad as far as I could tell, and I didn't see how a drop or two of some herb could turn a giant vegetable back into a human being. It would take a heck of a lot more than Saint John's Wort. It would take a miracle.

Moo scraped a mouthful of food onto her fork, then put the fork down and looked at her plate. “I know you think it's shellfish, Mike.”

I looked down at the lumpy gray-white pile on my plate, too. “Actually, I thought it was tuna.” Then I remembered all those cans of cat food in her cabinet and my stomach howled. “It is tuna, isn't it?”

“What? Oh, the casserole? Yes.” Moo scraped the tuna blobs around her plate and sighed. “I know you think Poppy is being shellfish.”

“
Selfish.
Yeah, I do.”

“But he's really not shellfish.”

True. I'd put him in the vegetable category, not seafood.

“You haven't warmed to Poppy, have you?”

Warmed? To iceberg lettuce? I shook my head.

Moo sighed. “He's doing the best he can.”

“Moo, no offense, but if he were doing his best, he'd be out in the workshop. Don't you think his best is a little lame?”

She patted my hand. “It's hard for you to understand, dear, I know.”

Oh, I understood all right. He let everyone else take care of things, handle all the problems, while he just sat there, “away with the fairies.” Like Dad. I understood all about that. I was getting so ticked off that I even started wondering about Karen. I mean, everyone was trying to raise money for her, but what was she doing? So I asked Moo.

“Oh, my dear, Karen is zipping all over the countryside on that scooter, getting her adoption papers signed, sealed, and delivered. Goodness, it's a full-time job adopting a child! Well, she may as well get used to it, because that's what having children is all about. Of course, this is rushed because of the adoption deadline. Only four months to get a child, not as leisurely as the other way.”

I said, “What other way?” before I realized she was talking about pregnancy.

“Oh, Mike!” Moo's eyes were wide. “Hasn't your father talked to you about sex? Because if not, I can tell you all—”

“No, no—I mean, yes, yes, he has! I know all about that . . . stuff.” Dad hadn't told me a thing, but I knew it all from health class, books, and Sasha. And even if I were clueless, I couldn't imagine getting the sex lecture from Moo. My face was hot and felt red just from the mention of it.

I quickly changed the subject to our visit with Dr. P. I asked Moo what he'd meant about Gladys and her family.

“Poor Gladys got a bum rap,” Moo said. “Her mother was awful. Taking up with a new man every week. That's no home for a child. And who knows where her father went?” Moo sighed. “So, Gladys keeps everyone at a distance. That's what all those piercings are about. They're her armor. If she rejects everyone first, then no one has a chance to reject her.”

“That's dumb. Who would reject her?”

“Well, her father, for one.”

I flinched.

“And her mother ignored her, which is as good as rejecting her.”

I swallowed hard.

“You know, Mike, being abandoned by your parents can make you feel quite bad about yourself, even though it's not your fault at all.”

I shrank in my chair.

“I think the reason she hangs out with Numnut is just to sing in his band.”

“He has a band?” Then I remembered the amps, drums, and mikes in his pickup.

“Yes. It's truly awful. But Gladys's father was a singer in some band when he ran off, and that's why I think she likes going to Big Dawg's, so she can play in the band with Numnut.”

My toes were wiggling and my brain was firing. “Do you think you could get her to sing on camera? She could do kind of a commercial to raise money for Misha.” I could picture the video already: it would begin and end with the bling-framed photo of Misha that sat on Gladys's desk. And a donation request.

“I suppose I could ask her. She might do it for me.” Moo stood up and took our dishes to the sink. “Now that you mention it, giving her a way to showcase her singing that doesn't involve Numnut is an excellent idea.”

She grinned at me and I gave her a thumbs-up.

Moo went out to the living room to get Poppy's plate. She returned at a trot. “Look! He cleaned his plate!” She pointed at the Saint John's Wort on the counter. “Warts and all!”

I heard a grunt from Poppy's chair that almost sounded like “Hey.” A real word.

Moo grinned. “I think it's working already!”

—angles that share a common vertex and edge but do not share any interior points

 

 

T
he next morning at Past's office, we got to work. Past had gotten the laptop as well as the parts I needed for my Pringles Wi-Fi antenna. I put the antenna together in less than an hour and attached it to the back of his bench. I fired up the laptop and . . . it worked! The signal was great!

“You're brilliant, Mike!” Past said, slapping me on the back.

I guess it wasn't hard to impress a homeless guy.

I have to say, though, that I designed a pretty sweeeeet website. I mean, how could you not love a page that opened with Misha's earnest eyes staring at you? Karen e-mailed me Misha's photos—the one in my Buzz Lightyear shirt and the LEGO one—so I posted them on the Bring Misha Home! website as well as every social networking site I knew, telling the world how they could help bring Misha home. Karen had told me that at first the adoption agency didn't want Misha's photo posted online—something about distant relatives coming forward and claiming him—but she said her faith led her to trust that Misha would end up where he was supposed to, and if by some chance a relative came forward and actually wanted him, maybe that was for the best. I didn't believe her for a minute, but I did believe the next thing she told me: that it rarely, if ever, happens. To be on the safe side, I wasn't giving a last name. Heck, I didn't even know his last name. To us, he was just Misha. Karen's Misha.

“It's looking good,” Past said. “How about a tally of the money we're raising?”

“Oh, yeah.” Figures I'd forget the part that had to do with numbers. I put counters showing the days left to adopt Misha before the government shut the door—21—and the money Karen still needed—$37,914.62.

I also posted a world map, with Romania on the right side of the screen and Pennsylvania on the left, with all those countries and that huge ocean in between. I started building a LEGO bridge from Romania to Pennsylvania, each block representing $1,000. We had just over two of the forty LEGO bricks that we needed. We were only as far as Croatia. We had a lot of building still to do. But I was determined to complete that bridge.

“I like the LEGO idea, Mike,” Past said, “but are you sure blue is a good color? We're about to hit the Adriatic Sea, and there'll be a lot of blue Atlantic Ocean to cover, too.”

I looked closely. “The oceans are more turquoise. Blue LEGOs are fine.”

Past shrugged. “Okay, I just thought—”

Just then, Karen buzzed up to our bench on her moped, waving a DVD. “It's a video of Misha!”

“Great!” I said. “Can I put it on the Internet?”

Karen beamed. “Of course! But I want to watch it again right now, okay?”

I popped the DVD into the laptop and scooted over next to Past. Karen sat on the other side of me as we watched the screen, waiting.

The image began with a burst of color from bright walls and big windows, and noisy chatter, mostly from women who were bustling around a large room. There were lots of tiny tables with four kids each, sitting quietly.

I adjusted the laptop screen to shield it from the sun and scanned the tables that were in the camera's view, but I couldn't find Misha. “Where is he?”

“Behind that orphanage worker with the white uniform,” Karen said.

“All of the women have white uniforms,” Past observed as we squinted at the screen.

“The large woman. There.” Karen pointed to the left side of the screen.

I craned my head around as if I could peek behind her. “Why doesn't she move?”

“She does,” Karen assured me. “Just wait a minute . . . there he is!”

Misha wore a blue plaid flannel shirt and sat at a little table next to two girls, with a bigger boy across from him. They all looked expectantly at the noisy, chattering women who served plates of steaming food, pasta of some sort.

“They're so quiet,” Past said. “The children, I mean.”

“And polite,” said Karen. “They don't touch their food until everyone is served and they say grace.”

The women were babbling away and, of course, I had no idea what they were saying since they spoke Romanian, I assumed. After everyone was served, one of the women picked up a pitcher of milk from a sideboard near Misha and went table by table, filling each kid's plastic cup. A crash off camera stopped her just before she got to Misha's table and she scurried away, stage right.

“Hey, you forgot Misha!” I said.

It was as if he'd heard me! He looked straight at the camera! Pleadingly. Just like in the posters. It was eerie.