My Great-grandfather Turns 12 Today (20 page)

What he meant was “It’s your night to do the dishes. You go.”

Why not? I had to go shopping. I had to wrap the sweater. I had to help make dinner. I had to unwrap the sweater. I had to stand there while an old man told me he didn’t want it.

Why wouldn’t it be my night to clear the table, wash the dishes, dry them, and put them away?

Of course, it would be.

I have Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

Pat has Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Mom has Sunday.

Dad has zip.

I guess it’s his responsibility to tell the rest of us when it’s our turn. Mom says he works hard all day at the office. I say I work hard all day in the seventh grade. Well, I don’t really say that. But I think it.

Besides, I’d like to say sometimes, since Dad got his new job, he must be working less because he’s making less money. He could wash one night a week, don’t you think? Like Thursday, maybe?

I’m not supposed to know he’s making less money. Mom and Dad say they won’t talk about money when we’re around because we don’t have to worry about that.

So they go into the kitchen and Dad says, “I’M SURE NOT MAKING AS MUCH MONEY AS I USED TO. I DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’RE GOING TO DO.” And Mom says, “YEAH, I DON’T SEE HOW WE’RE GOING TO MAKE ENDS MEET UNLESS I START WORKING FULL TIME.”

I don’t want to eavesdrop, so I turn up the TV and don’t hear any more until one of them yells, “TURN DOWN THAT TV OUT THERE!”

And when I ask for some little something, like a hairbrush or a poster or a ten-speed bike, Mom or Dad says, “We can’t afford that!”

But I’m not supposed to worry about money.

But—another but—there seems to be enough to buy some old man a fifty-dollar sweater that he wants to give away.

And it’s Thursday. I have to do all the work. Mom says Pat and I can’t do it together because every time we try it that way we start to fight.

I don’t.

He does.

Last night we had waffles and eggs. He had the plates and one frying pan. He just had to wipe off the waffle iron, and I’ll bet he didn’t even do that. I’ll bet he just stuck it back in the cupboard.

Tonight there’s the glass dish the chicken was cooked in—in the oven, which really makes the grease hard to scrub off. A pot for mashed potatoes. A pot for green beans. Salad plates. Dinner plates. Dessert plates.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t call that fair.

* * *

I didn’t even know I had an Uncle Jackie until Mom picked me up after school that spring day in 1990 and said we had to go shopping. She said she’s talked about him before, but I just wasn’t paying attention.

I don’t think so.

He’s her mother’s brother. My Grandma McCarthy died when I was just a kid, so I never met her. While we were looking at sweaters, Mom said Jackie was her mother’s favorite brother.

I don’t have a favorite brother.

Mom said her Uncle Jackie’s name isn’t McCarthy. It’s Duffy. Jackie Duffy. Her mother was Margaret Duffy until she married Peter McCarthy.

“Uh-huh,” I answered.

Like I cared.

I thought all Mom’s relatives were dead. All her old ones, anyway. Pat and I are still doing okay. Although Pat is kind of brain dead.

Uncle Jackie is a great guy, Mom told me, and he’s been living in another city for about a million years. And his coming to our house is a VERY BIG DEAL.

Yeah, Mom, it sure has been fun. Now I’ll do all these dishes by myself while all of you laugh and have a good time out in the living room, and then we’ll wave good-bye to Uncle Jackie.

It’s been a great visit, all right.

I know I’ll remember it for a long, long time.

Don’t forget your new sweater.

* * *

I
was scouring the corners of the chicken dish with a nylon scrubber and some Comet when I happened to glance out the window over the sink. Some guy with a big old Freddy Krueger hat pulled way down over his face said, “Hi, Jeannette!”

I jumped back and dropped the dish in the sink. And before I could scream, Regina started to laugh.

Regina is my best friend and next-door neighbor. We’ve gone to school together since we were in kindergarten.

“Nightmare on 29th Avenue Northeast,” she said in a spooky voice. That’s the street we both live on.

“You jerk,” I said.

The dish had broken. It had taken me ten minutes to get it clean, and now it was broken.

“I found this stuff on your front porch,” Regina said, pointing at the hat and an old-man suit coat.

“You broke my mom’s baking dish,” I said.

“You having Freddy over for dinner or what?”

“You jerk.”

“Gonna let Freddy carve the roast? Swoosh! Swoosh!” She pretended her fingers had sharp blades on the ends of them. “Whadaya like, rare, medium, or well done?”

“Shut up.”

Neither of us had ever seen any of the
Elm Street
movies. Our parents wouldn’t let us. But we saw some of the commercials on television, and some of the kids at school had seen the
Elm Street
videos their older brothers or sisters rented.

“You like my hat?” Regina asked.

“You’re going to have to buy a new dish.”

“What?” she asked, as if suddenly she couldn’t hear me through the window.

“You heard me.”

“You’re Hermie?”

I opened the window a couple of inches. “You heard me.”

“What a grouch,” Regina said. “You want to hear something mysterious?”

“Yeah,” I said. “How did you get so tall?”

“I’m just floating here. Like an angel.”

“Like a hot-air balloon.”

You have to come up about a dozen steps to get from our front yard to the first floor of our house. The kitchen window is at least ten feet off the ground.

“I borrowed a ladder from Mr. Hanson,” Regina said.

“You stole Mr. Hanson’s ladder!” He lived two houses up on the other side of Regina’s house. He was a real crab.

“How did you know I’d be at the sink?”

She looked at me like I was really stupid. “It’s Thursday,” she said.

“YOU ABOUT DONE OUT THERE?” Dad hollered from the living room.

I turned toward the kitchen door. “ALMOST!”

When I looked back at the window, Regina was gone. She’s going to pay for that dish, I thought.

“Don’t tell anyone,” a voice said, and I jumped again.

Regina’s head popped back up. She had only been crouching on the ladder.

“Don’t tell anyone what? That you stole the ladder?”

“That you broke the dish.”

“Yeah. Right. And the next time Mom goes to bake something then . . . .”

“By then you can have a new one in the cupboard.”

“You think?”

“Why not? Why make your mom worry about something like that? After all, it was your fault.”

“No way. It was yours. And that’s a stupid hat.”

“It was on your porch.”

“And you make a crummy Freddy Krueger.”

“Scared you.”

“You’re too ugly to be Freddy.”

I was just kidding. But her face kind of crumpled, and she scurried down the ladder. I put my mouth right up next to the window. “I WAS KIDDING!” I yelled, but Regina didn’t answer.

It’s her fault, I thought. Can’t take a little joke. She started it. She knows I didn’t mean it. She’s pretty sensitive about her looks.

Regina is kind of small. Except for her ears, which she used to try to hide in her straight black hair. But now she has her hair cut short, and her ears always pop out like they can’t breathe in there or something.

She’s had to put up with a lot of “Dumbo” jokes. Not from me. I think she’s really cute. Kind of like an elf or a pixie or maybe a leprechaun.

She’s short too. More than a foot shorter than I am. I’m five-foot- eight with curly hair that used to be more blond than it is now. I’m really skinny — still “little girl” skinny, if you know what I mean.

I’ve had to put up with a lot of “beanpole” jokes. Mostly from boys.

Short boys.

So I wasn’t talking about Regina’s ears when I said she was ugly. I meant her face. It was just a joke. I’d make it up to her, I thought, as I started to dry the dishes and put them away.

I decided that tonight I’d signal her and say I’m sorry. Our bedroom windows face each other. They’re both on the first floor. Everybody else in our families has rooms on the second floor. I can shine a flashlight from my room right into hers. I figured I’d do it after she turned off her lights, and then I’d put up a big note that said “SORRY.” We each keep binoculars by our windows for reading notes. When we were littler, we tried to learn Morse code.

Bad idea.

It took forever and the messages always got screwed up. Like “I am frounded. I was gighting with Pat.” Instead of “I am grounded. I was fighting with Pat.” Or “I hate yobs. All yobs are stupid.” Instead of “I hate boys. All boys are stupid.”

That was a few years ago. Now Regina and I both kind of like certain yobs. We still call them that once in a while. Like our own little code word.

“YOU DONE?” Dad yelled.

“I JUST HAVE TO TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE!” I answered, putting the broken dish in the sack.

“GOOD GIRL!”

Oh, yeah. A smart one, anyway.

While I was outside dumping the trash in the can, I looked around the back of the house on the kitchen-window side. The ladder was gone. At least Regina wasn’t so mad she left that here.

“Let’s go! Hey!” Dad said from the back door. The “back” door and porch are really on the side of the house. The south side. “You out there, Jeannette?”

“Yeah.” I came back around the corner of the house.

“Come on. There’s work to do.”

Work to do? I just did my work.

I scampered up the back steps, and Dad held the door open for me.

“Move your things up to the spare bedroom,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Not everything. Just what you need for tonight and tomorrow morning.”

“Huh?”

I followed him back into the living room. “Uncle Jackie is going to use the downstairs bedroom,” Dad said.

My bedroom.

“You’re going to bunk in the spare bedroom upstairs.”

The storeroom.

My little brother, Pat, was holding open the front screen door for Uncle Jackie, who was walking in, not out. The old man said, “I don’t want you to think I figure I’m at some hotel here. I can still manage. After those front steps I just needed to set this stuff down and get my strength back up. Now just point the way.”

“I’ll show you!” Pat said, running toward my bedroom.

Uncle Jackie was carrying one really beat-up suitcase. The old coat Regina had been wearing was draped over his left arm. The Freddy Krueger hat was planted firmly on his head.

Regina was right.

“Nightmare on 29th Avenue Northeast” was just beginning.

The Hidden Fortune