For Whom the Minivan Rolls (9 page)

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said in a dreamy voice.
“It’s my number, all right.”

“And I’ll bet you didn’t call me that night,” I
offered as he stashed the card in the box and set the box back
carefully in exactly the same place.

“Mr. Tucker, before your unannounced arrival here
tonight, I had never heard of you, and no offense, my life didn’t
seem all that much emptier.”

“No offense taken,” I said. I was starting to like
this guy.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you gentlemen,” he said,
“but I’m sure, Mr. Tucker, I’ve never called you and threatened
some woman I’ve never met.”

“Are you sure nobody else could have used your
phone, Mr. MacKenzie?” Okay, so I was grasping at straws, but I’d
driven all that way, and was looking at another two-hour trip down
the musical memory lane of my youth on the way back. I had to come
home with
something.

MacKenzie shook his head. “No, nobody ever comes in
here except me and occasionally one of my daughters. Besides, I’d
never leave someone alone in here. I’m very protective of my
plants.”

“Maybe somebody picked up the phone without your
hearing. . .”

“I know my hearing isn’t what it used to be, Mr.
Tucker, but I like to think I would have noticed someone using my
phone while I was in the room. And as I said, only my daughters
come here to visit me. You did say the caller was male, didn’t
you?”

I forced a smile and shook MacKenzie’s hand. “Yes, I
did. And I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time, Mr.
MacKenzie.”

“Not at all. And put that phone down, Mr.
Mahoney.”

Mahoney looked sheepish and replaced the phone in
the drawer. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. You needed to try. But you see, I did
notice. I hope you didn’t call out of the area. They charge you for
that, you know—at least on my plan.”

“I didn’t get to call anybody, Mr. MacKenzie. You
were too quick for me.”

MacKenzie laughed until he started to cough. “That
is the first time anybody’s said that to me since Jimmy Carter was
in office,” he said.

Mahoney pointed at one of the flowers MacKenzie had
ready to plant. His brow wrinkled, which usually means he’s about
to say something you wouldn’t expect from a rent-a-car
mechanic.

“I’ve never seen roses like these before, Mr.
MacKenzie. The pink petals with the blue specks in a diamond shape
like that.” See what I mean?

“Yes,” MacKenzie beamed. “I’m real proud of those.
They’re a hybrid I developed myself.”

“But can’t these roses be planted outside at this
time of year?” Mahoney asked. “I’d think they’d be able to
withstand even one of the colder nights this late in the
season.”

“You have a keen eye,” MacKenzie nodded. “I actually
could plant them outdoors now, but the fact is, my knees are shot.
I can’t bend and plant things in the ground the way I used to. It’s
one of the reasons I took my retirement savings and built this
greenhouse six years ago.”

“It’s an impressive set-up,” Mahoney said. He took a
few steps around, nodding. If he were wearing a tuxedo, I’d have
sworn the next words from MacKenzie’s lips would have been, “so,
Mr. Bond. . .”

Instead, Mahoney said, “I don’t suppose you’d sell
me some of these hybrids? I could use them in a flower bed in front
of my house.”

MacKenzie smiled. “I do sell some on occasion, Mr.
Mahoney. But since I couldn’t help you gentlemen with information
tonight, and seeing how you drove all this way, you can have the
rose bush for nothing.”

He walked us to the front door, and as the white
gravel crunched under our feet, we waved at MacKenzie like we would
to a favorite old uncle. I slumped into the passenger seat of “The
Trouble-Mobile” and consciously didn’t put on my seat belt.
Mahoney, using some coarse twine, bound together the skinny rose
bush and its enormous thorns, placed them in the back of the van,
and secured them between a couple of 10-gallon drums of oil.

“What’s your problem?” Mahoney asked as he barely
coaxed the van into ignition. I hoped the company’s rental cars ran
better than this vehicle, but then again, if they did, the company
might not need a chief troubleshooter.

“What do
you
think is my problem? The only
halfway decent lead I had turns out to be another dead end.” If
you’re going to whine like a high schooler, it’s best to do it in
the company of someone who knew you when it was age-appropriate for
you to do so. Mahoney grinned.

“I’ve got just the thing for you,” he said, and
pulled out an eight-track tape from a box under his seat. He
slammed it home.

Billy Joel. “Turnstiles.”

At midnight, after thirteen choruses of “All You
Want to Do Is Dance,” we arrived back at my house, and a yawning
Mahoney said his quick farewells without getting out of the van. A
couple of middle-aged guys who used to be able to greet the dawn
with bright eyes after a night out and about. It was sad, really. I
dragged my weary ass up the front steps.

The lights were on in the living room, which was
unusual. I’d told Abby I’d be late, and that she shouldn’t wait up.
But even before I had the chance to open my newly installed screen
door, the steel door inside opened, and my wife, in a T-shirt and
sweatpants, stared me in the face, her eyes looking anything but
pleased.

“So? What are we going to do?”

Ah. Clearly, she was speaking in anagrams tonight,
and I’d have to decipher her meaning. I was up to “doot noigg”
(I’ve never been any good at anagrams) when she spoke again,
impatiently:
“Well?”

“Well, what? What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t
see
it?” Abigail walked out
through the screen door and pointed at the sidewalk. My weary eyes
could barely focus.

“See what?”

“Honestly, you must have walked right over it.” She
walked to a spot on the sidewalk and pointed straight down.
Calculating how much the average mental institution cost per month,
I followed her.

Something in very faint orange was scrawled on the
sidewalk. In the dark, with just the porch light on and after
having spent the night not finding anything I was looking for, I
had a hard time working myself into a lather over it. There were
two choices: I could pretend to get all bent out of shape so she’d
have company, or I could be honest and risk my wife’s wrath.

I’m a good husband, but I was tired and
irritated.

“So?”

Abigail’s teeth clamped shut so tightly I was afraid
she’d drive the top ones up into her skull. Somehow, she still
managed to speak.

“Well, if this doesn’t bother
you. . .”

“Honey, I don’t even see what you’re talking
about.”

“Take a better look.” Abby produced a small
flashlight from the back pocket of her sweats and pointed it at the
sidewalk.

The orange blotches became a little clearer as I
knelt to follow her flashlight beam. And then I saw why Abby was so
upset.

There on the sidewalk, in clear (however faded)
block letters were the words “FUCK ETHAN.”

“Oh, shit.” I suppose
you
could have done
better.

“I spent the whole night comforting him and then
washing the sidewalk,” said Abby.

“Any idea who might have done this?”

“You’re the investigative reporter.”

I started to feel like I’d eaten a hand grenade for
dinner. “Oh, not you, too.”

“Hey, you’re the one who’s been off all night
playing detective.”

I stood again, my knees cracking as I did. “Yeah,
and doing a damn lousy job of it, too.” I noticed something lying
next to the garbage cans on the side of the house, and walked over
to it. Bending down again, I found a plastic squeeze bottle.

“Well, our first clue.” I examined it in the light
from the porch, and probably chuckled in spite of myself.

“I don’t see how this is funny,” Abby sniffed.

“Well, you have to see the humor in it. Somebody
just wrote ‘Fuck Ethan’ on our sidewalk with a squeeze bottle of
barbecue sauce.” I held it up to show her.

Sure enough, the bottle, which had clearly been
pilfered from some restaurant counter, bore the label “Big Bob’s
Bar-B-Q Pit”—a picture of a large porcine creature wearing a chef
’s hat and standing next to a log cabin.

Abby burst out laughing, then put her hand over her
mouth, upset with herself for the natural response. I stood up and
took her hand.

“Could be worse,” I said.

“How?”

“Could’ve been ketchup.” We both hate ketchup, and
she involuntarily made a gagging sound.

Abby turned off the flashlight and we started back
up the steps to the house. I put my arm around her shoulder to
prove that I’m really not that bad a guy, and she put her arm, hand
still holding the flashlight, around my waist, to prove that I’m
really not that bad a guy.

“Is he still up?” I asked as we made it back into
the house.

“I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s pretty upset. He
figures it means that absolutely nobody at school likes him and
he’s destined to live his life alone and in misery.”

“It probably really means that someone in his class
just learned the word ‘fuck.’”

She chuckled. “You’re so naive.”

“How do you wash a sidewalk, anyway?”

“With Mr. Clean and a brush.”

“Aha, two-timing me with this Clean guy, huh?”

I trudged up the stairs to talk to my son.

Ethan was lying in bed, his overhead light dimmed to
just slightly not-off. He’s working on his fear of the dark.
Pokémon posters decorated the walls, and used socks decorated the
floor. He’d been crying.

“Hey, Pal.”

He didn’t move. “Hi, Dad,” came a voice from
somewhere near his pillow. Two artists from Webster’s came in and
began sketching a picture of Ethan to put next to their definition
of “dejected.”

“How you doing?”

“Bad.”

Uh-oh. I sat down beside him. He hadn’t left me much
room on the twin bed, and I had to fight to keep from falling onto
the floor.

“I heard about what happened tonight,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“You have any idea who might’ve done it?”

He rolled over, so as not to be facing me. “No. It
could have been anybody. Nobody likes me.”

“
I
like you.”

“I mean nobody young.” Webster’s artists now had a
choice: they could take Ethan’s face or mine.

“Well, let’s think about it,” I said, remembering a
technique Ethan’s therapist had offered. “How many people like
you?” He didn’t move.

“Let’s see,” I continued. “There’s me, and Mom, and
Leah.
She’s
young.”

“She’s
too
young,” he countered.

“Okay. How about your friend Matthew? And Andrew
from camp? And Thomas from the baseball team?”

It took a long time, but he rolled back to look at
me. “I guess,” he said.

“And Emma from school. . .”

“Emma doesn’t like me. She calls me names all the
time.”

“You have a lot to learn about girls, my
friend.”

“Girls don’t count, anyway,” he went on, ignoring
what I’d said.

“So. We’ve established that a pretty decent number
of people, some of whom are not even related, like you. Now. Who
doesn’t like you enough to write that on our sidewalk?”

His face clouded over again. He didn’t turn away,
but he didn’t look at me, either. Ethan’s dark eyes stared at the
outdated posters on his wall, pictures of characters any other
11-year-old would have thrown away months, if not years, ago. But
for a kid whose intellect is eleven and whose emotions are eight,
there is great comfort in things that aren’t quite as mature as he
is.

“I dunno.”

I didn’t want to push it. Maybe tomorrow he’d
remember a name. Or think of someone he’d especially pissed off
today. Maybe by the time we woke up tomorrow, rain would have
washed away the rest of the barbecue sauce that had formed the
objectionable phrase. Maybe tomorrow I’d find the little bastard
who wrote it and throttle him until his clavicle fell out—whatever
a clavicle might be. I hadn’t gotten all the way through biology
class, either.

“Well, get some sleep, okay, Pal? Remember, all
sorts of people with really good taste like you.”

I started to stand, but Ethan, uncharacteristically,
reached up suddenly and grabbed me in a tight hug. I held my son
close, kissed him on the head, and felt my shirt get just a little
damp where his eyes were pressed against it.

“It’s okay, Ethan. It’s going to be okay. It’s okay.
I promise.” I stroked his cheek and repeated myself for a long,
long time.

The next morning, the sun was shining brightly and
the stain on our sidewalk was plainly visible. Figured. When you
want
bad weather, you can never get it.

Ethan was the last one down the stairs that morning,
which is not unusual, but he was ten minutes later than on an
average morning, and his expression was dour in a way that only an
11-year-old boy’s can be. Not only was he sad, but everyone within
a fifteen-mile radius of him should also be sad, and never be happy
again for the rest of their lives.

Leah, of course, compensated by being so cheerful
Walt Disney would have gone into insulin shock in her presence.
That just served to blacken Ethan’s mood another degree or two. He
clomped into the kitchen, wearing the same
Star Wars
T-shirt
he’d slept in, a pair of shorts that had last been washed before
Keith Richards took up smoking, and a pair of white athletic socks
that I felt it best not to actually look directly at.

“Good morning, Pal.”

He glowered at me and sat at the kitchen table.

“What would you like for breakfast today?”

“I’m NOT HUNGRY!” he said, flashing me a look that
defied me to make something of it. Clearly, it was my fault someone
had written an epithet on the sidewalk in front of our house with
his name on it.