Roll with the Punches (12 page)

I said, "We're not interested in buying anything right now."

"Good, I'm not selling anything." Deep voice.

Like an elementary school principal, the guy stood tall and looked down his nose at me. But it wasn't just any nose. This one was big enough to hang wash on, to hack wood with, to slice right through crapola to get to the truth. Well, I'd been raised among big schnozzes. My dad and brothers had coffee pot spouts—real honkers. What was joke fodder for some fools lent power and strength to our family members. It was our measure of male beauty. Jimmy Durante, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Karl Malden were our heroes. But the nose in front of me put them all to shame.

"Look," I said, irritated. "I'm really busy, trying to get Dad to the doctor, and I can't deal with anything else now."

"I'm going back inside." Dad said, turning around.

"No you're not." I took his elbow and used his own momentum to spin him back toward the car. He wobbled on his axis and grabbed my arm.

"We need to do this, Dad. It's important." To the new guy, I said, "Look, unless you're from Publishers Clearing House, could you come back later?"

The guy folded his arms. Steel blue eyes narrowed at Dad and me. Was he judging us? In our own front yard?

Then Music Man squinted. "You look familiar, boy. Do I know you?"

I started to say no, but the guy nodded and held out a hand to Music Man, who shook it. "Dal Baker, Mr. Hamilton. Remember me? I'm—uh, here for Bing. Came last week and saw your wife. Got some stuff to drop off.”

Doll
Baker? That's how he said it. But he wasn't doll-like or cuddly at all. Or did
Doll
have some other, more personal meaning? The jeans looked old and ripped, not at all like some woman who used odd nicknames had dressed him. I used my super power to read his desires and saw only pillows, or maybe dog beds. Then light dawned. Of course. He must be a dog breeder.

I said, "Is Mom still having Bing do stud service? I thought after his hip surgery, he couldn't quite manage—uh—physically, I mean to assume the position, you know."

A clueless look came down the nose.

I mimed dogs humping with two hands. "I'm sorry. My mother can't be serious. Bing's almost twelve years old. Didn't she tell you?"

Silence.

Red crept up my cheeks.

"Let’s go in, Rhonda." Music Man started back toward the house, but I caught his arm.

"No way, Dad. Um, Mr. Baker, if you put that stuff inside the gate for now, maybe you could help me get my dad into the car. We're late for a doctor appointment." I got in back of Music Man. "Maybe if I push and you pull …" I shoved Dad's low back.

"Leave me alone, Rhonda!" my father said. "I'm not a bag of potatoes." He swatted at me.

"Come on, Dad." I shoved harder, with my whole body, determined to see Dr. Viejo today. Suddenly Music Man fell over into the azalea bushes lining the walkway. Caught off balance, I toppled right down next to him with a
thwump
.

"Rhonda!" Dad thundered.

From a tangle of legs and azalea twigs, I looked up at some cold, steely eyes and a shaking head. But the guy pulled me up easily, considering I was no Tinkerbelle. Then I looked down at the old geezer who'd fed me and housed me and passed his sense of humor, such as it was, to me. Splayed in the flower bed by my own hands.

Oh, crap.

Dal Baker sat by my father on the front porch glider while I went inside to clean Music Man's glasses.

From the kitchen, I heard the new guy turn loquacious. "How are you, today, Mr. Hamilton? Nice day, huh? Have a good breakfast?"

Music Man only grunted at these overtures, yelling, "It'd be a nice day if my daughter would go home and leave me alone. I can drive myself to see Ethel in the hospital. I don't need Rhonda.”

"Your wife's in the hospital?" Dal sounded genuinely concerned. "What happened?"

I came outside and handed Dad the glasses.

"Damn broken ankle and surgery. She's having surgery today, and I need to go see her before she goes in." Dad was tearing up, rubbing his knee, making me look like an ogre.

"I'm free right now. Want to go in my car?" Dal asked, patting Music Man's hand.

I said, "He's got it wrong. She's already had the sur—"

"Come on, I'll take you, Mr. Hamilton." Dal firmly cut me off. "There's a little donut shop not far from here. We'll stop there first."

Music Man lit up and was halfway across the lawn before I could start objecting. Dal ambled behind him with long strides.

I caught up and hissed, "We're late to the doctor. Mom had surgery yesterday. And donuts? How do you know he’s not diabetic?"

"If he was, you'd have just told me," he said, adjusting the front seat all the way back. Music Man eased in and immediately hung his blue handicapped card on the mirror. Dal got in the driver's seat.

I couldn't send Music Man off with a strange dog breeder. Weren't they always in the newspapers for clipping the ears and tails of poor defenseless animals? Crating animals too long? Supplying puppy mills?

"This trip better be for more than sugar." I shoved boxes over in the back seat to squeeze in.

We took off. Feeling crated myself, and a little leery, I realized I'd left my cell phone in my car, so if this guy got any weird ideas, I couldn't even call for help.

But our worst danger was the sugar/fat combo at Yo Donuts. At the counter, Dad ordered a full dozen glazed and we sat down inside. Dad inhaled the donuts and was starting his third when Dal said, "I need something from my car, Mr. Hamilton. Be right back. Rhonda?" He crooked a finger at me like he was my master and I would obey.

When I made no move to follow, he stood at the door of the shop, arms crossed, staring at me down the imperious nose. People entering the shop all looked from him to me with great curiosity. He tapped his foot and smiled.

Seething, I followed him to the parking lot. Once outside, I burst out, "What now? Do I roll over for a treat? I barely know you, you've hijacked us, we're nowhere near the doctor, we're more than late, and I don't even have my cell phone to cancel the appointment. We'll never get another appointment this week, and he really needs to go!"

I was so close on his heels that when we reached his car and he turned, I tripped on his foot and fell past him against the side of the car. When I turned around, my back to the car, he was right in my face.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to trip you.” He didn’t look too sorry.

I sputtered, "Who are you, and why—"

He put a hand on the car on either side of me and swooped in and kissed me briefly, then stepped back.

I blinked a second. "What the—?" Then I swung at him.

He blocked me deftly with an arm and took a step back.

"What the—? Are you crazy? Is this T-shirt so alluring?"

"Not exactly. Look. I just needed your attention quick to get the doctor's address. Your dad's full of sugar now, so I predict he'll go to the appointment without much trouble, but the sugar high wears off fast."

Stunned, I handed the address over.

"Cool. So do we let him eat the whole dozen or go save him from a colon upset?" He turned back to the shop.

"What's wrong with my T-shirt?" I ran to catch up. "And you don't know my father. He’s not that predictable." Well, yes, he was.

He said, "Yes, I do. He was my high school Algebra 2 teacher. I had math anxiety for years because of him. But his weak spot was sugar. I remember we brought him donuts every Friday because it was test day. Brought our grades up a whole point.”

"No way." I poked his shoulder. "(A) He would never give grades for food. And (B) a whole point from what to what? And (C) aren't you a dog breeder?"

His fingers went up one at a time. "(A) He sure did, and (B) now I think about it from a C- to a C+. I guess not a whole point. And (C) I don't have a clue about dog breeding. I don't even like to think about it, really." Grinning, he opened the shop door, and waved me through.

"You're mocking me." I started, but now we'd reached Music Man, who was holding forth to a small audience of sugarholics clutching greasy bags and cheap coffee.

"Hey' you'll like this one." Dad took a bite. "You know what the Apache said when the sheriff asked if he could read and write?"

Fried sugar and bad jokes created an anti-Starbucks atmosphere. People grinned.

Dad chuckled. "The Indian says, 'Can write, not read.' So the sheriff tells him to write his name, and the Indian writes it in big, old scribbly letters across the page. And the sheriff says, he says, heh, heh, 'What's that you wrote? I can't read it.'"

"Dad!" I said, helping him up. "Enough!" I snatched the pink donut box and took off for the car.

Hoping for the punch line, grizzled guys with fat donut cheeks followed Dad's slow progress toward the door like lookie loos at a house fire.

At the door, Music Man stopped and turned toward his audience. "And the Apache says, 'I already told you I can't read. You mean you're a sheriff and you can't read either?'" And guffaws floated out of the donut shop like blurts and blats from a teenage trumpet practice.

In the car, to my further mortification, the sugar key opened the floodgates to Dad's tasteless cesspool of lame, politically incorrect humor, which spewed forth for miles. The stiffness of Dal's broad shoulders spoke volumes, and I didn't blame him.

I sank down and blamed the greasy food and bad punch lines for my shaky stomach. There couldn't be any other reason, certainly not a little lip touch from a strange guy whose stony features I could only imagine from the backseat. So I was surprised when Dal looked back at me once, after another appalling joke, a smile on his lips.

Before long, Music Man was following the big pink box I carried right into Dr. Viejo's tastefully decorated office, just as Dal had predicted. I checked him in. However, before I could sit down, my father grabbed my hand for a Muzak-inspired dance in the waiting room. He made up for his lack of agility by turning me twenty or thirty times under his arm. Then he suddenly let go.

Dizzy and reeling, I tottered and landed right in Dal's lap. My head bumped his nose. I immediately bolted up, brushing my seat as if I'd landed in a fire ring at the beach. Which looked really bad, like I thought he was dirty. And he was far from it. He was actually quite neatly dressed and, if you took away the scowl, maybe even good-looking, in an elemental sort of way. And, I had to admit, he was helpful.

I forced a smile, but Dal seemed impervious to my bodily assault. He turned to Dad. "Hey, Mr. Hamilton. Who do you think is gonna win the World Series?"

*
      
*
      
*

Dr. Viejo was short and rotund, and about the same age as my father with thinning white hair on top. Music Man took one look at the white lab coat and started complaining about his knees, chronic sources of pain.

He rubbed one. "Well, this one got twisted when we were dancing in the waiting room, and this one hurts like hell since she tackled me this morning and knocked me down." He pointed at me and looked used. "Happened last week, too. Twice."

The doctor cocked an eyebrow at me, just like my tenth grade chemistry teacher after I'd dropped my second mercury thermometer in one class period.

I rushed to explain. "I was just trying to get him into the car. I wasn’t even there last week. He's been dizzy, I guess, and … well, I wanted to see if he's depressed or maybe has a drug interaction going on, or a vitamin deficiency or something." I handed him a list of Music Man's prescriptions.

He looked at Dad's knee. "Are you dizzy right now, Mr. Hamilton?"

Dad shook his head.

"Feeling depressed?"

Dad set his jaw. "Nah. Depression is for wimps, I always say."

"Me, too," Dr. Viejo agreed, and said to me, "My depressed patients don't generally dance in the waiting room.”

I said sotto voce to the doctor, "Okay. He also just—" I was suddenly at a loss for words. "Seems a little off." Lame. Without Mom around, I suddenly realized it was Dad and me against the world. How could I tell this guy about dad’s craziness?

The doctor looked up from listening to Dad's chest. "How 'off'?"

Applesauce! Grabbing nurses! Grabbing the steering wheel! Tools in the linen closet!

This was a new feeling, being responsible for Dad. Somehow, telling on Dad to this stranger who had zero sense of humor suddenly seemed really traitorous. He didn’t know Dad and his jokey character. If I told him all the strange things my father had done in the last few days, would he lock Dad in a loony bin? I was suddenly torn.

"Just … off," I said, and fought for something else to say past Dad's scowl. "Like he's bugging me every few minutes to take him to the hospital, and …"

"The hospital?" Dr. Viejo asked, all alertness. "What's wrong, Mr. Hamilton? Chest pain?"

Music Man and I both said, "No."

"Is this girl hurting you?"

Oh, God. I rushed on. "No! We take good care of him. I mean I rarely even see him. Mom told me about his falls, but I …" Okay, start over. Breathe. "Actually, Mom just had surgery on a broken ankle yesterday. Dad tried a senior living place for a night since I live down in Rancho Santa Margarita, and he packed an awful lot of food in his suitcases, but no—"

Dad piped up. "Do you have any idea how tiny the portions are in those places, doctor? No bigger than a dachshund's tit." He formed a tiny
O
with his fingers. "You could starve."

"Dad, you didn't even eat there."

The doctor turned on me. "Miss Hamilton, your dad has had a lot of stress this week. His wife's injury and surgery, her hospitalization, several falls, topped off by being uprooted from home. However well-meaning it was on your part, changing his home environment could easily have caused him to be a little 'off' as you say. Even dizzy.”

So it was all my fault?

He continued, condescendingly, "It takes longer for older people to acclimate to new circumstances, and adding the new living situation surely would make a person feel and act a little differently. You should give him time to adjust rather than immediately seeking a medical solution to everything." He shook his head. "People in your generation are so quick to take drugs for the least thing these days, from a hangnail to thin lips. It's only been two days, right? His medications aren't the type to interact, and as long as he's eating well, I see no need to worry about a vitamin deficiency. Do you eat well, Mr. Hamilton?"