The Absolute Value of Mike (13 page)

Past stared at me, and then I realized,
How could I be so stupid that I'd ask a homeless guy a question like that?

I swallowed hard. “I'll IM Dad when we get back to your office.” And I did. Creatively.

I typed fast, before he thought of any more questions.

I started typing but stopped. He wouldn't get it. Making YouTube videos to help adopt an orphan? I could say I was working with a teacher because Karen really was a teacher, but then he'd want to know what exactly I was working on. And he wouldn't be impressed if I said I was working with a minister, either, whatever denomination Karen was. Unless . . .

That sounded impressive!

Whoa! I was pretty good at this!

Yeah. Because why would we want to learn about anything
social
? That had to do with people. And life. It's so much better to stick with numbers.

Dad just didn't get it. Had he always been like this? I thought of the Saint John's Wort on our kitchen counter. Did he act this way because he was depressed? And he used to be normal? Or was he always this way and that's what was making him depressed?

I gritted my teeth and snapped Past's laptop shut.

Past jerked up from rummaging in his shopping cart. “So? What did he say?”

I looked at him, the guy who'd ended up on the street, and shook my head. “Absolutely nothing of value.”

—how much one number differs from another

 

 

S
omehow I made it back to Moo's. I was so mad at Dad that I'm not even sure how I got there. I mean, he hadn't seen me in a week and he never even checked to see if I'd gotten here—it was only because I IM'ed him that he knew. And I told him how badly we needed money, and he forgot! Like I was worthless. Then when I sent him a message telling him what I was doing, making it sound even better than it was, he still blew me off. It still wasn't good enough. All he cared about was Poppy's engineering project that didn't even exist! And Poppy wouldn't work on the real project, making boxes, even though he knew how critical his role was in getting Misha adopted. He just sat there like a lump!

When I swung the front door open, Moo was struggling toward me with a huge garbage bag almost as big as she was.

“Moo! What are you doing?”

She put it down, panting, her face red. “It's Thursday.”

“What?”

“Trash day tomorrow.”

I looked at Poppy, who had the yellow yardstick across his lap. “Moo, you shouldn't be the one doing this.” I was seething, my voice loud so it could penetrate Poppy's stupor.

He didn't even flinch. It was as easy to get through to Poppy as it was to Dad.

I gritted my teeth. “I'll handle it.”

“Thank you so much, Mike. I need to finish some paperwork.” She told me where the trash can was and headed to the kitchen.

I glared at Poppy and hissed, “You should be doing this and you know it!”

When I joined Moo in the kitchen—after I'd taken care of the trash and given Poppy another dirty look about it—she was squinting at some forms on the table, her nose about two inches from the paper.

“What are you reading?”

“I made a bargain with Gladys. I told her I'd fill out these direct deposit forms for our Social Security checks if she'd sing for you on YouTube.”

I sat down heavily. “Direct deposit is a good idea, Moo. You'll be happy you did it.”

She looked up at me ruefully. “All I said was I'd fill them out. I never said I'd hand them in.”

“Moo!”

“Oh, all right, I suppose it's safe. But”—she tapped her pen on the form several times—“who can even read these words? They've made them so tiny.”

“Here,” I said, gently pulling the pen out of her hand and pulling the forms toward me. “I'll do it.”

“I've started you off with my name and Poppy's,” she said proudly.

First, I noticed how shaky and oversized her handwriting was. Second, I saw their real names. Beulah Wealthea O'Brien and Heinrich Gunther O'Brien. Whoa, no wonder they went with Moo and Poppy. Third, I realized that Moo had written her name on the line for “Name of Financial Institution” and Poppy's on the “Account Number” line. I asked her for her checkbook to get her account number and went to work.

“All you'll need to do is sign the form when I'm done. And get”—I jerked my thumb toward the living room—“to sign it, and you'll be all set.”

“Thank you, dear!”

I barely got started filling in the blanks when the tapping started. I ignored it at first, but it got louder. I looked at Moo, cooking scrapple at the stove, but realized the noise was coming from behind me. And it was getting more irritating every second. “What
is
that?”

“What, dear?”

“That tapping sound!”

Her shoulders drooped. “I'm late with supper. I think Poppy's getting impatient.”

I felt my grip tighten on the pen and the words on the form grow hazy as my eyes narrowed. The tapping continued.

“Oh! I need to grab a couple of tomatoes from the garden. Past says they have lycopene and would be good for Poppy, so I'm going to try mixing them in with his scrapple.”

As soon as she went out the back door, I stood up to yell at Poppy through the pass-through. I was just in time to see him push the hands of the Felix clock with the yardstick. The clock now read nine fifteen. So that's how the clock kept changing! Poppy started tapping on Felix, loudly, demanding his dinner. All I could think was,
How dare he?

That's when I lost it.

I marched into the living room, grabbed the yardstick out of Poppy's hand, and broke it in two. His eyes grew wide and they locked on mine for a moment before his lips stuck out in a defiant pout and he stared back at Felix. I looked at the two pieces of yardstick, surprised I'd even done that, and dropped them. When I looked at Poppy, I saw that his face was red and his nostrils were flared, but one of his hair horns had flopped over. He was still staring up at the Felix clock.

“Yeah,” I said. “It's time, all right. It's time for you to move your butt!”

He was breathing heavily, but other than his chest rising and falling, he didn't budge. He wouldn't even look at me.

“And you know what else?” I added. “I'm going out to the workshop.
Your
workshop. And I'm going to use
your
tools to make all those boxes that
you're
supposed to be out there making!”

His grunt came out sounding more like a yelp, but that didn't stop me. I grabbed the key from the row of hooks by the door and stormed out to the workshop.

—rearrange the formation of a group of numbers

 

 

I
t's not a good idea to go into a workshop when you're angry, especially when you're not all that good at woodworking. I couldn't even cut one straight piece, never mind six pieces that could actually be made into a box. Nothing fit together no matter how many times I ran it through another pass on the radial arm saw. And forget cutting angles to get pieces to wedge together. You need math to do woodworking, so that's why I'm not too good at it. In the end, I was left with about a million assorted sizes of excellent quality toothpicks.

I looked up at the sheet of white lined notebook paper taped above the door. It was Moo's shaky writing but big enough to read easily.
What would Oprah say?
I wasn't sure what words Oprah would use to describe my mess, but I let out a whole slew of words until the door opened and Moo walked in.

She saw the splinters of wood all over the floor and table saw and almost dropped the plate of cookies she was holding. She kept looking behind her at the door like she was worried Poppy might come in and see what I'd done. As if.

“Oh, dear,” she said, her knuckles growing white as she gripped the plate.

“Yeah. I messed up. Big-time.”

“You just need more experience.” She sighed. “I wish Poppy would teach you. He's very good at woodworking, you know.”

Something inside me snapped. Again. Like the yardstick. “No, I don't know,” I yelled, “because he won't get his butt out of that stupid chair!”

She took a step back and put the plate on top of the scraps of wood covering the workbench. “It's frustrating, isn't it? But we all handle things differently.” She bent down and picked up a couple of nails under the workbench that I guess I'd missed when I cleaned up the shop. She walked over to the table saw, dropped them in the cardboard box labeled OLD NAILS, and smiled. “Some of us are more extreme cases than others.”

I wiped the sweat from my upper lip and nodded. Yeah, and why did they all have to end up in my life? I stared at her for a moment, with her hand on the box of nails, still smiling. I had to ask her. “How did you handle my dad? I mean, what was he like as a kid?”

“Let's go inside and I'll tell you a little about him.”

I grabbed the cookies from the workbench and followed her to the kitchen. I remembered her last cookie disaster, but this time the kitchen had a warm chocolate smell that tempted me, and I dug in. “Whoa, these are delicious.”

“I've just finished the chocolate chip and I'm moving on to snickerdoodles. They're doing a fund-raiser a few towns away for Misha's adoption. Isn't that nice?”

I nodded, my mouth full of cookies.

Moo cracked an egg into a bowl on the counter. “Mike, I must say, your dad was a child who was away with the fairies if there ever was one.”

“Spacey, right?”

“He was positively in orbit, dear.”

“He's a genius.” I didn't say it with affection.

She pressed her lips together and looked at me, then eyed the doorway between the kitchen and living room.

“What?” I asked.

“He clipped his shoulder on that door frame every time he walked through it.”

I shrugged. “He never looks where he's going.”

“Sometimes he would wear two different shoes.”

“I know.”

“He never played with the other children even though there were a lot in the neighborhood back then.”

So, he'd always been different. It must be part of being a genius.

Moo whisked the contents of the bowl. “And the fire department had to come twice.”

“What?”

“THE FIRE DEPARTMENT HAD TO—” “Yes, but why? He started two fires?”

“No, just one. The other time he was on the roof and couldn't get down.”

“What happened?”

“Let's see. He was on the roof because he was measuring angles or something . . . I'm not even sure, but he panicked once he looked down, and neither Poppy nor I could get him to budge.”

“And the fire?”

She reached for the glass canister of flour on the counter and pulled it forward, revealing a black patch on the pink countertop. “Your dad said it was a science experiment.”

I stared at the cracked, bubbly blackness against the pink swirls of countertop. “Weren't you mad at him?”

“Well . . .” She took my hand and pulled me over to the kitchen table, where we both sat down. “He obviously has some problems, dear.”

“Problems? He's a genius.”

“I know, dear,” she said sadly, as if it were some terrible disease.

“Moo . . . he's lucky.”

She squinted at me for a moment, then smiled and patted my hand. “Yes, dear, because he has you.” She looked through the pass-through at Poppy.

Suddenly, a woman's voice sang loudly from somewhere in the kitchen.

Moo jumped. “That's my song!” Her yellow sneakers ran over to Junior at the edge of the counter and she dug around inside while the song continued.

Moo flipped the phone open, peering sideways at it as she held it away from her head. “Yes?” she said loudly. “Oh, hello, Karen! I'm making the cookies right now. I finished the chocolate chip and—” She paused, her brow furrowing. “Slow down, dear. Take a deep breath.” Moo nodded, chewing on her lips. “Oh, I'm so sorry. Yes, of course, dear, you need to go. . . . Who? Gladys? Oh, dear.” Moo's eyes darted to the kitchen window and she peered out back into the darkness. “Uh-huh, and you talked with Past?”