How to Read an Unwritten Language (9 page)

“Stop,”
it said, “you haven't paid for me.”

I think we all felt a thrill of surprise at the sound of a girl's voice, muffled and yet booming out of that doll's face. Some of the smaller children in the front rows cried out.

“But I am a poor girl, and you are so beautiful,” Laurie said, unfazed by this suddenly animated doll, its arms and legs now waving.

“No excuse!” it shouted.

The dramatic shock was over. The doll started yammering about the importance of honesty, sharing, even politeness, and once again we were all crazy with boredom in our seats. The figures on the stage seemed disconnected from the scripted lecture, and I noticed that Laurie must have been given her part for technical reasons: she was tall for her age, and whoever played the doll must have been the shortest.

The doll finally wound up its long speech with the solemn question, “Now do you see how wrong you were?”

As Laurie nodded in agreement with the doll's virtuous logic, the stage light dimmed for her dramatic moment. A spotlight found her face, creating stark shadows that turned her many years older. So when she replied, her voice dark with regret, “Yes, now I see what a terrible mistake I made,” Mother's voice, her long gone voice, rose out of those words.

Still holding on to the doll's gloved hand, again Laurie said,
“Now
I see what a terrible mistake I made,” and this repetition could not have been called for in the script, because she cut into the returning shopkeeper's entrance line—“Well, that wasn't heavy at all!”

Her tears weren't scripted either, and she looked so defeated it caused the shopkeeper to feebly improvise, “Why, little girl, you're not supposed to be crying.”

She wasn't a little girl: she was Mother, asking forgiveness. I gladly gave it to her, I almost called out, but the curtain closed and cut the scene short. A miscue of any sort was welcome at these dreadful affairs, and already the audience whooped with delight. I, however, let tears flow in exquisite relief until the boy beside me started up with the dreaded “W
ussy.”

I smacked his head to the back of his seat.

Ordered to the bench outside the principal's office, I fairly sauntered down the halls, unconcerned and still basking in that strange moment Laurie had given me.

Dan was already there, warming his usual corner. He grinned at my unexpected presence.

“So,” I said, affecting an older brother knowingness, “you got kicked out of the auditorium too?”

“Huh,” he grunted, “I punched Tommy Walters so I wouldn't have to go.”

He'd missed Laurie's skit. Feeling a wave of sympathy for Dan, I gazed at his little tough guy face until he asked, “So, what did
you
do?”

“Knocked John Caligliano's head against his chair.”

“How come?”

I hesitated, unable to find the words I needed to describe Laurie's brief reincarnation of Mother and that opportunity for forgiveness.

“Well,” Dan muttered, “it doesn't matter if you had a good reason or not, Dad'll still get on you.”

He was right. Father's usual silence would be tinged with disappointment—I had seen Dan suffer under it so often, forcing him to range about the neighborhood away from its bitter presence. Now I would feel it too. I'd lose my name for a day. I would be “son,” spoken as if that word couldn't be too short. Settling into the hard wood of the bench, I promised myself I would never allow this to happen again, for how could I draw close to my father if he held me off with his disapproval?

Father lit another cigarette, exhaled, and lavender-gray smoke curled in the air. I'd taken to doing my homework across from my father in the living room, keeping watch for any break in his aloof front. I'd come to imagine that those twisting tendrils were billowing hieroglyphics, eloquent signals of all he hadn't said in the three years since Mother's death.

Yet the cigarette accomplished its steady immolation before any message could be translated, and after one last puff Father sighed and snuffed out the smoldering stub. Again I had failed to decipher that elusive language. Though perhaps those signals were meant to disappear.

Father reached for another cigarette, paused, and asked, “Summer vacation starts in about a week, doesn't it?”

“I can't wait,” I said, closing my textbook.

“Well, you're fourteen now, old enough to learn about the value of a dollar. I think it's time you did a spot of work at the nursery.”

I agreed, even to his condition that I put half my salary into a savings account. Though Father didn't raise the subject of my new job again, in the following days I plotted all the ways I would impress him with my industry: saving more than half my paycheck; refusing pay raises; working long hours of overtime or, better yet, working so late that I'd be the one to close up.

On the drive to work that first morning Father barely acknowledged me, though I sat beside him on the front seat. I almost believed he'd forgotten me until, his eyes glancing in the side mirror at a passing car, he finally spoke. “Remember, no special privileges.”

“Privileges?” I asked, insulted he thought I might expect any.

He cleared his throat, flipped a turn signal. “Once I park this car, you're not my son, you're my employee.”

“Yes sir,” I replied, curious what that difference might be.

When Father parked the car he turned to me and launched our new relationship with a cool gaze: his skeptical appraisal of a new employee.

Gerald's Garden Services was a long, one-story building with two attached greenhouses fronting acres of ordered trees and shrubs and potted flowers. Acknowledging the occasional wave of a worker with a flick of his hand, Father led me to the nearest greenhouse. Inside, we walked through the thick humid air, past drooping, broad-leafed plants to a skinny, sandy-haired man crouched over stacks of empty flower pots. He sprang up at the sight of us, as if somehow embarrassed. A coil of unruly hair dangling over his forehead as father introduced us.

“Bob, give Michael here some work that'll keep him busy, and make sure he stays that way.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Kirby, no problem at all,” Bob replied, gulping and nodding, an odd patch of stubble on his left cheek.

“Michael,” Father said, “if you want to learn, you have to ask a lot of questions, and Bob's the one to answer them.”

Now it was my turn to nod.

“Well, I'll come by later today to see how you're doing.” The epitome of a man in charge, Father turned and walked off, his steps crisp against the slate tiles.

With a raspy whistle, Bob motioned me through the door to the grounds. “You're a lucky boy to be working with your dad,” he said with a wink, my presence at the nursery and his authority over me apparently amusing. “That man has more to teach than most people can learn. All he has to do is look at a tree's shadow and he can tell you what kind of tree it is. In any season. With or without leaves.”

He offered a conspirator's smile and I understood that this praise was meant to make its way to Father. If I did my job as go-between, he and I would get along just fine. I returned Bob's smile and discounted his hyperbole. Still, the possibility that Father possessed a secret ability intrigued me.

Fitted with gloves and gardening tools—my usual weekend yard-boy gear—I weeded along the borders of ornamental flower beds, then watered long rows of seedlings. Far from Father's critical eye, I worked well with only my own standards to follow. Bob occasionally skulked along a nearby gravel path, though never near enough to see if the boss's son actually worked. Resenting his assumption that I might be there to waste time and collect an easy paycheck, I bent down among the rows of flowers with even greater determination and searched out the slightest hint of any alien green shoot.

The hours passed, and the sun cast lengthening, multi-petaled shadows along the paths. Yet however I stared at them, they resembled nothing more than dark swaying shapes. Could Father really read such indecipherable patches? I had to know. During my afternoon break I snuck off to the plot of trees with a clipper and furtively snipped branch after branch.

*

While Laurie and Dan helped clear the dinner table, I slipped away and pushed the living room chairs into a semicircle, with Father's upholstered recliner in the middle. Then, with a great show of secrecy, I cajoled my family into their arranged seats. Refusing to answer any questions, I turned off the lamps, stood behind my audience and shone a bright circle on the wall with a flashlight.

“Shadow puppets?” Laurie asked.

“Not exactly,” I said, my arm rustling around in a grocery bag. I teased out a leafy branch and held it before the light. Its shadow spread across the wall.

“Aaand now,” I drawled with a ringmaster's aplomb, “the A-maazing … Dad!”

“Michael,” Father said, “just what are you up to?”

Ignoring his question, I began my barker's patter: “The Amaaazing Dad has never seen this branch before, but he will now tell us, simply by looking at its shadow, exactly what sort of tree it came from.”

Father laughed uncomfortably, and Laurie said, “Can you really, Dad?”

“I'll bet he can't,” Dan said.

“Oh you do, eh?” Father replied, spurred by the challenge. “That's an oak branch. Much too easy, Michael.”

I groped about in the bag again and then aimed the light at a new branch, its leaves curled at the edges like potato chips.

Without hesitation Father announced, “Beech.”

Determined to make the challenge harder, I shook the next branch a little to evoke swaying in the breeze, but he immediately said, “Hickory.” Laurie giggled at this feat, but Dan didn't join in, doggedly unimpressed.

Because I still didn't know much about trees, I couldn't discount the possibility that Father might be faking, so I dangled the first branch in front of the flashlight.

“Oak. What's the matter, run out already?”

“No sir,” I answered, chastened. Then I continued through the rest of my collection and Father easily called out their names—fir, walnut, hemlock, spruce, elm and juniper.

“Is that the best you can do, young man?”

“No, there's more. But first,
“
I said, returning to my ringmaster's patter, “a short refreshment break.” I switched the lamp on, passed around a tray of cookies, and hurried to the bathroom with my grocery bag.

Hunched over the linoleum tiles, I pulled off every leaf or waxy needle from the branches. Now we'd see how good he was.

When I resumed the show Father easily identified each naked, knobby branch, and Dan and Laurie clapped with each new feat. Father was a kind of wizard.

“The Amazing Dad!” I sang out.

He bowed—an unusual, graceful gesture. “Okay, time to clean up, kids.”

I started hauling the chairs back in place. Dan and Laurie scrambled over to the bag of branches and leaves and quizzed each other. “No, that's not elm,” Dan insisted. “Dad,” he asked, leaves cupped in his hands, “what are these?”

Father was already behind his newspaper. He turned down a corner. “That's enough fun and games for tonight, Danny.” The corner turned back up. “Isn't it almost bedtime?”

“No, it's not,” Dan said, crumpling the leaves in his fist. Father said nothing, as if he hadn't heard.

The happy spell was broken. We drifted from the living room, leaving Father in his upholstered corner. I thought of that succession of leafy shadows and wondered how my father could have such eyes and be so blind. I hated to consider it, but perhaps he had no seeing left for us.

*

I'd proven myself such a hard worker that Bob gave me more responsibility, each morning, simply suggesting a list of jobs that would keep me busy. I'd take in his instructions and spend the day killing weeds by covering the soil with long sheets of plastic, hammering copper sheeting around planting beds to keep out slugs and snails, or molding cubes of soil for seedlings.

Overhearing the idle talk of other employees now and then, I learned that Father was considered exacting yet fair, though he didn't seem to inspire much affection in anyone. Once, while on my way to the greenhouse for my morning assignment, I noticed my father in conference with a new cashier, a greasy-haired young woman who kept pinching at her nose. I stopped and listened to Father's firm, patient voice explaining the key code step by step.

He turned to me, one raised eyebrow posing a silent question I understood, and I answered by continuing on to the greenhouse and my work. Yet I couldn't suppress an ache of resentment: he'd never spent as much as a minute with me since I'd started working.

Perhaps it wasn't entirely an accident when I sprayed the wrong bush with the wrong insecticide. Within an hour the leafy clusters were nothing more than dark, dangling burn victims. What would Father say when he discovered this devastated bush? I knelt before it and tried, without success, to construct any excuse that might put me in a sympathetic light.

“Nasty, that's truly nasty,” Bob whispered behind me.

A tremor rippled through me. “Hey, don't creep up on me like—”

“Don't worry.” He grinned. “I won't tell a soul.”

I could only shift my eyes from his face, not at all certain I should feel gratitude.

“Hey,” he said, suddenly glancing at his watch, “it's time for lunch.” He squinted at me, amused. “But I can't really say that you look hungry.”

We settled down in the open shed behind one of the greenhouses. I sat there with a clear view of the long lush rows of ornamental shrubs, sandwich in hand yet unable to eat.

“So what's up for the big weekend?” Bob asked, initiating what would become a ritual teasing about all my supposed girlfriends.

I considered eating my sandwich, anything to avoid responding.