The Absolute Value of Mike (18 page)

I remembered Moo saying that, but then . . . “Okay,” I said slowly, “so if you're not homeless, then why—”

“I just don't want to go home.” He said it so softly, I could barely hear him.

What did that mean? He sounded like a kid who'd run away from home. “Why not?”

He took another deep breath and let it out slowly. His eyes were blinking so rapidly, he finally closed them altogether. “Because she's not there.”

She? Who was she? His wife? His wife left him? What, he was divorced and couldn't handle it? People got divorced all the time. And handled it. They just divided up their stuff and dealt with it. “So, you're saying you have a house?”

He nodded, his eyes still closed.

Wait. I knew what happened if you didn't make your monthly mortgage payments on your house. The bank would take it back. And if he hadn't been working . . . “Are you losing your house because you haven't been paying the mortgage?”

He winced and shook his head slowly. Finally, he spoke. “Others have been making the payments for me.”

“Others? Who others?” Who pays for somebody else's house? When he doesn't even live in it?

“Poppy and Moo, for one. Karen. The guys you call the three stooges. And—”

“Whoa, whoa! Back up a minute. Moo? Moo is paying your mortgage?”

He nodded.

“Moo, who's busting her butt and can barely scrape enough money together to feed herself—you're letting her pay your mortgage? And Karen? Who's trying to make money to adopt Misha? She's paying your mortgage while you're—you're out on the street . . . finding yourself or something? Dude! Are you out of your mind?”

He scraped the sidewalk with his Clarks and I wanted to stomp on them. “Believe me,” Past said, his voice a hoarse whisper, “I feel terrible about it. I just couldn't handle things. I even had to send Joey away—”

“Joey?”

“He was the only family I had left, but—”

“I don't believe this! You left him? What a hypocrite!”

His eyes flashed at me. Hurt. Bewildered. Guilty.

“That's not building a family! First you're ruining Karen's chances of building a family, and then you walk out on your own family?”

“Joey's being well cared for.”

“You didn't want to keep him yourself?”

“Of course I did! I do! I just—the street is no place for—”

“Then you shouldn't be on the street! Especially when you have your own home! Jeez!”

“Look, I can understand why you'd be upset.”

“You understand nothing! You're making poor people pay for your house while you hang around supposedly working on building a family when you left your own! You don't get it at all!”

“Mike—”

“And telling Whitney some story about finding a job? That was all crap!
You're
all crap!”

“But—”

“I don't even want to talk to you. Leave me alone!”

He tried to touch my shoulder. “Mike—”

“Just—forget it!”

I took off, my Clarks feeling like clumsy lead weights and my LEGO brick chafing my thigh.

—a special relationship between values

 

 

I
spent a long time walking and I didn't even know where I went or how I got home again. All I knew was that it had to be late because it was almost dark. When I went inside, there were no lights on. I jumped back when I saw the shadowy figure, a miniature version of Poppy, sitting on the couch. After I found the light switch and flicked it on, I saw who it was. Moo.

“Moo, what are you doing? It's pitch dark in here.”

“It doesn't matter.” Her voice was dead flat. “I'm blind, anyway.”

“What?”

“Mac-you-lar jee-jen . . . jee-den—”

“Macular degeneration?” That was bad. Sasha's grandmother had that and wasn't allowed to drive.

Moo's voice was shaky. “That's it. I can't see. I can't drive anymore. I can't do anything.” She sniffled. “I couldn't even drive Tyrone home. He was so upset.”

“Tyrone?”

“No. Dr. Perr—Perr—Perrello. Two
r
's. Two
l
's.” Her voice was squeaking steadily upward. “No
i
's!” She covered her eyes and burst into tears.

Oh, jeez. I sat down on the couch and put my arm around her HOLY COMFORTER hoodie. She felt so frail as she shook with sobs. Moo without Tyrone? He was like a friend, especially since Poppy wasn't.

I felt like crap. Maybe if I'd just left things alone, she'd still have Tyrone, still have her life. She looked suddenly so old to me. Like a skinny elderly lady in an assisted-living place.

She gulp-cried and shakily put Tyrone's keys down on the coffee table.

“Where's Tyrone now?” I asked her, then immediately wanted to kick myself for asking. “At YE—Dr. P's, right?”

She nodded, crying so much she couldn't speak for a moment, and I sat there feeling my throat swelling.

“I don't know how to bring him home!” she wailed.

“Don't worry, Moo, we'll get Tyrone.” Somehow. “Why don't you”—I ran to the closet and pulled out the Hoover—“vacuum.”

She nodded, hobbled over to it, and dragged it into the kitchen.

I heard a choking sound from Poppy before the whir and dust balls of the vacuum started.

“What are you going to do about it?” I asked him, my eyes narrowed. “You could drive, you know, if you just got your butt out of the chair!” I grabbed the keys from the coffee table and stomped over to him, jangling them in his face.

He jerked and took a deep breath. For a moment, I thought it was working. He actually raised his right arm but then let it drop on the armrest again and sank even lower into his recliner.

“Come on! Go get Tyrone! Moo can't! It's one thing you could actually do for her!”

I felt my breathing, heavy and fast. I heard the keys jangle in my hand because I was shaking so much. I smelled his scrapple and sweat.

He scratched his head and turned away. “No,” he grunted.

He finally spoke and that was all he could say?
No
?

I yelled the first thing that came into my head. “Why don't you go jump in a lake!”

I slammed the door after me, took the porch steps in one leap, and headed for Tyrone.

 

I pulled Misha's photo out of my pocket and put it on Tyrone's dash for good luck. With a deep breath, I put the keys in the ignition and turned on the engine. I'd warmed up our car for Dad before. How much harder could it be, really, to drive? Besides, it was dark and no one would see me. Who would even know?

Tyrone was parked in a spot where I could pull straight out, so leaving the parking lot was pretty easy. Staying on the road was a lot harder. From behind the steering wheel it looked like Tyrone took up the entire road. And I mean
the entire road.
I don't know why they have that line down the middle because, basically, a car needs both lanes. Every time I tried to keep Tyrone to the right, he'd hit the gravel of the shoulder and lurch left again. And there must've been something wrong with his headlights because they kept moving around the road like he was trying to follow a tennis match in the dark.

Still, I thought I was doing pretty well until I saw the flashing lights and heard the siren. I let fly a string of colorful words.

I ground to a halt on the shoulder and put my window down, cringing as I watched the officer in the side mirror striding up to Tyrone, knowing that “objects in mirror are closer than they appear.”

I smelled the garlic before he opened his mouth. “Evening, Moo—Hey! What the—! Who are you? And where's Moo?” He stuck his whole face in the window—dark, pointed eyebrows and large, sharp nose. And garlic.

“She's okay—she's at home.”

“So you stole her car from under her nose?”

“I'm not stealing it! I'm taking it back to her.”

“Oh, I get it. You're just borrowing it, huh? Well, kid, that's still stealing.”

“No—”

“What's your name?”

“Mike Frost. I'm her—”

“Mike? Jeez. Her grandnephew? And she thought you were some kind of miracle. Who would've thought her little miracle would steal from her?”

“I'm not! She can't drive anymore because the eye doctor said she has macular jee—gen—jee—” I was having as much trouble talking as Moo. “Mac-u-lar de-gener-a-tion.”

“Uh-huh, okay. Did you stop and think to, oh, say, maybe have an adult drive the car?”

I was so mad at his attitude that I wasn't scared anymore and spat out my response. “Oh, sure! Like who? Poppy?”

“Is he still frozen?”

“Think iceberg.”

He shook his head. “Even so, Mike, what made you think you could drive a car? I mean, you don't look old enough to have a license. Am I right?”

My shoulders drooped and I nodded.

He sighed. “Stay here.” He took a step toward his patrol car, then his head was back in Tyrone's window. “On second thought, give me those keys.”

I took them out of the ignition and handed them over. He walked back to his patrol car, muttering, “Maureen will never believe this one. Maybe she's right—I should write a book!”

I heard the radio crackling in the patrol car and sighed, staring at Misha's picture on the dash. What were his eyes telling me? I imagined what he might say. Like maybe I'd completely blown his chances. If I got arrested, who would take care of saving him?

When Tyrone's door opened, I jumped.

“Slide over, Mike.”

“What?”

“You don't mind if I drive, do you?”

I scrambled over to the passenger seat. “Are you arresting me?”

“Why? Do you want to be arrested?”

“No. But—where are we going, then?”

He shook his head, grinning, as he started Tyrone. “Back to Moo's. Where do you think we're going? Disney World?”

I turned and looked out the back window. “What about your patrol car?”

“Well, the only car thief in town is here with me.”

“I'm not a car thief!”

“Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting. You know, Moo has had a rough time lately. She doesn't need more heartache from you.”

“Me?” I snorted. “I'm trying to help her! Which is a whole lot more than Poppy's doing.”

“That's too bad he's not snapping out of it. I'm real sorry about that.”

I looked over at him. He was frowning and shaking his head, so I figured he understood. As a cop, he must've seen all kinds of losers.

“What do you do with people like that?” I asked him.

“Me? I just shoot 'em.”

“What!”

“I'm kidding.”

“Dude, you shouldn't say stuff like that!”

“Uh-huh, and you've never done anything you shouldn't have? Like, oh . . .” He whipped his head to the right to glare at me. “Drive a car?”

I looked away. “What's going to happen to me?” “Nothing. Unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

“Moo decides to press charges.”

I let out my breath. “She won't. I was just wondering . . . what happens when someone drives without a license.”

“Oh, that. Yeah. Thanks for reminding me.”

Why didn't I just shut up?

“Depends. I think in your case we'll assign community service.”

I knew it was a good deal, but I was wondering how I could do anything beyond Do Over Day.

He coughed. “I'm thinking you could work on, you know”—he pointed at Misha's picture on the dash—“getting ready for Do Over Day.”

I felt my whole body sigh with relief.

He turned his head to look at me. “Sound okay?”

I nodded, trying to contain my smile.

We turned into Moo's driveway and I braced myself for the crash into Poppy's Suburban that never came.

“You're a little high-strung, aren't you, Mike?”

A patrol car pulled in right behind us, its siren piercing the night for just a moment, and I jumped.

He grinned. “Don't panic. That's just my ride.” He tossed me the keys. “Inside. Now. No driving. Next time, I'll lock you up.” He held his hand out to shake mine. “I'm Tony, by the way. You can call me Officer Giancola.”

I shook his hand. “Yes, sir, Officer Giancola.”

“And Mike?”

“Yes?”

“Good luck bringing that kid home.”

—characteristics or qualities of an object

 

 

W
hen I got inside, Moo was standing in the kitchen doorway, pulling on her hoodie strings.

“Mike?”

“I'm okay. So is Tyrone.” I hung the keys on the peg near the door.

She nodded but kept yanking the strings. “Where's Poppy?”

“What?” I looked over at his chair. Empty. It was an unusual sight, and creepier than it was with Poppy in it. It even made the hairs on my arm stand on end.

“Mike?” Moo's voice was almost a wail.

“Maybe he's in the bathroom.” Even as I said it, I knew it wasn't true.

Moo made a halfhearted effort to look up the stairs to the bathroom and shook her head. She knew it wasn't true, either.

“Maybe he went to bed early?”