When Life Gives You O.J. (16 page)

“What in the world?”

“Augh!!!” The sound of my dad’s voice startled me and made me jump. My grip on the trash can loosened and it began to fall, at which point my dad lurched forward to try to steady it—

And I ended up dumping out the rest of the garbage. All over my dad’s feet. And my own.

Lucky for him, he was wearing slippers. The cold, slimy mess squished between my bare toes.

“Zelly, what in God’s name are you doing?!” yelled my dad. So much for the Zen master.

“It’s all my fault!” I confessed, the truth bursting out of me like soda when you shake it up. “I got mad at Grandpa and quit O.J. and threw him out and it’s all my fault!” And then I just started crying. “I’m sorry,” I managed to choke out between sobs.

My dad leaned down, right there in the garbage with me, and put his arms around me.

“It’s going to be okay,” he told me.

I started to talk, to protest, but he shushed me, very softly, again and again, like I remember him doing when I was really little and I fell down and hurt myself.

“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay,” he said again.

And I cried some more and hugged him back.

Because I really, really wanted to believe him.

The next morning, my dad made breakfast for the two of us. He made some extra toast and wrapped it in foil and packed a thermos of coffee to bring to my mom, who had spent the night at the hospital.

We ate together, not talking. I was grateful that he didn’t mention the mess with O.J. and the garbage. I was grateful to my dad for a lot of things. The night before, after I had
stopped crying, he had run me a bath. Then, later on, as I was drifting off to sleep, he had come into my room and kissed me and petted my hair. After breakfast, when we went out to get in the car to drive to the hospital, I noticed that he had also cleaned up all the garbage.

Unfortunately, there was still no sign of O.J.

When we got to the hospital, the way it smelled made me feel like throwing up. It reminded me of the times we visited Bubbles there before she died.

Please don’t let him die
, I thought to myself as we went up in the elevator. I guess it was like praying, although I don’t usually do that so I didn’t think anyone would actually be listening. If that’s how it works, that you have to have a relationship with God in order to ask for stuff. Although, now that I thought about it, it seemed like maybe God wouldn’t be that way. Maybe God would be nice enough to listen to anyone in need, not just people who had done everything you’re supposed to do, like joining a temple and saying real prayers and all that.

Okay, God
, I tried again,
if you’re out there, please don’t let Ace die. I’ll do whatever you want, okay? I’ll walk O.J. until I’m a hundred and three if I have to
.

Except O.J. is gone, I suddenly remembered. Well, maybe I could make a new O.J. out of another old orange juice jug. In kindergarten, my class had a pet hamster named Timmy, and it wasn’t until Sam started kindergarten in the same classroom that I realized that it had to be, like, Timmy the Seventeenth by then.
Even if I have to make a new O.J. to do
it, I will
, I promised God.
Just let Ace be okay. Ace is my grandpa
, I added, just in case God needed some sort of explanation of who I was talking about. Which he probably didn’t, since he’s God, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.

When the elevator doors opened, we stepped out into a hallway. “Here we are,” said my dad, in this phony happy voice I remembered him using when we had visited Bubbles there. To the right, there was some sort of lounge area, with light green walls and peachy pink couches.

I followed my dad down the hall to a tall desk, where a bunch of people in hospital clothes were standing around. My dad told the lady behind the desk Ace’s name, and the lady told him to wait. She left the desk and went down the hall and came back with my mom.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said, and I hugged her. “Grandpa’s resting now.”

“Can I see him?”

“Let’s let him get some rest. He had a rough night.”

“Is he going to be okay?” I asked.

My mom took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Well, if anyone can get through something like this, he can. As Ace will be the first to tell you, he’s a tough old bird.”

“Why don’t you go to the family waiting area,” suggested the lady who had been behind the desk. She looked eager to get us out of the hallway.

“Okay,” said my mom, and the three of us walked over to where the pink couches were.

“Did you get any sleep?” my dad asked her.

My mom shook her head. “The monitors went off a bunch of times during the night. And one time, the nurses didn’t come in, so I had to run out and get them. After that, I couldn’t even doze off.”

“What happened?” I asked.

My mom sighed and began talking like I was a little kid asking why the sky was blue or something. “Oh, there are just these medical machines that the doctors use to monitor Ace’s vital signs—”

“No, Mom,” I interrupted her. “What happened to him? What made him end up here in the first place?”

“Oh,” said my mom. “Didn’t Daddy tell you? Ace had a heart attack.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “I mean, what made him have a heart attack?” Ace always said that my dad’s jogging was going to give him a heart attack. But Ace didn’t jog. He didn’t even play golf anymore.

“It doesn’t work that way, sweetie,” said my dad. “I mean, yes, something can trigger a heart attack, or it can just happen out of a clear blue sky.”

“For someone Ace’s age, that is,” added my mom quickly. “You don’t have to worry that it is going to happen to you.”

“I know,” I told her. “I’m not six, remember?”
So stop talking to me like you do to Sam
, I added in my head.

“Hey, do we need to go get Sam?” My mom turned to my dad like she had read my mind.

“No, Frank Harwood said they’d keep him through dinner.”

My mom looked relieved.

“Are you hungry?” she asked me. I shrugged. If it got me out of sitting in the lounge with the pink couches, I was. “Why don’t we go take a walk to the cafeteria?” she asked. “Nate, can you stay with Ace?”

“Sure,” said my dad, picking up a magazine and walking back toward the lady and her desk.

At the hospital cafeteria, I picked out a donut and a carton of chocolate milk, and my mom didn’t even frown. That’s how unlike herself she was. We sat and she had coffee and I ate, and neither of us said anything until I was practically done.

Finally, almost as if she was talking to another mom or something, my mom said, “I hate hospitals.”

“Me too,” I told her.

“I always did, even before my mo—I mean, when Grandma got sick, that really did it for me.”

“Is Ace going to be okay?” I asked again.

My mom was quiet for a second. Then she said, “I hope so.”

“I don’t want him to die,” I admitted.

“Of course not, sweetie,” she said. “No one does.”

“Yeah, but”—this was the hard part—“promise you won’t be mad?” She nodded, so I told her, “I kind of wished for it. I didn’t mean it,” I added quickly. “I just got so mad at him. I also yelled at him. A lot.” My eyes welled up with tears again.

“Zelly, sweetie, listen to me,” my mom said, holding both of my hands firmly. “You did not cause this. You can’t make someone have a heart attack.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You can’t,” she repeated. “I told Sam that and I’ll tell you.”

“Sam? What did Sam say?”

“Oh, Sam thought Grandpa had a heart attack because you told Jeremy about O.J. Any idea where he got that idea?” She raised one eyebrow.

I looked down at my tray. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“I know you are,” she said.

“But Daddy said if Grandpa’s blood pressure gets raised, like by arguing, it can make him sick.”

“What Daddy probably meant is that sometimes people have heart attacks because something put too much strain on their hearts, like stress or smoking.” She looked irritated. I wasn’t sure if it was at me or at him. “But sometimes,” she continued, “people, especially older people like Grandpa, just have heart attacks for no reason.”

“Okay,” I said doubtfully.

“Zelly, it’s true.” She locked eyes with me. “You didn’t cause this. All right?”

“All right,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not. I had a feeling that the only person who might tell it to me straight would be Ace. Say what you will about Ace, he’s not known for pulling his punches to make people feel better.

“Hey, how was Allie’s slumber party?” my mom asked suddenly, like she had forgotten.

“It was okay,” I said.

“Just okay?”

“Well, I didn’t actually end up sleeping over.”

“I know. Daddy told me. What happened?”

“Well, when he called to tell me about Grandpa, I just wanted to come home.”

“Okay.”

“But … the thing is, it wasn’t so great even before that,” I admitted.

“Oh no?”

And so I told her about Allie and Jenny and Megan and the way they were acting about Jeremy.

“And they kept calling her
Allison
.” I rolled my eyes. “And they wouldn’t stop teasing me about Jeremy.”

My mom looked amused. “Really?” she asked.

“Yes,” I told her. “They kept acting like Jeremy and I are going to have to get married because we supposedly look like each other and we both have glasses. And we’re both Jewish.”

“Oh, right,” said my mom, nodding. “Because all Jewish people are required to marry other Jewish people.”

“No, they’re not,” I said. “Wasn’t one of Daddy’s parents not Jewish?”

“Yup,” said my mom. “Grandpa Bill.”

“Right! So, why did those guys have to say all that stuff?”

“Zelly,” my mom said lightly, “it sounds like your friends were just teasing. Or, at worst, being a little ignorant.”

“It’s not just that, though.” I sighed. “I feel like I could live here forever, but I’d never really fit in. Nobody else looks like me here. Nobody else’s brother dressed up like Batman
on the Fourth of July. And nobody else ever unwrapped her lunch and found a sandwich made out of a
cow’s tongue.
”

My mom smiled sadly at the memory. “I stopped letting Ace pack your lunch after that.”

“You’re sure he’s going to be okay, right?” I asked suddenly. All this talk about me and my problems made me forget for a minute the reason we were here. I felt a pang of guilt for complaining about being teased while Ace was upstairs fighting for his life. I might not even get the chance to see him again. Or to tell him how sorry I was.

“I hope so, sweetie,” said my mom.

“Me too,” I said. And meant it.

My mom took a sip of her coffee, then said, “Ace really does mean well. Did I ever tell you about the time my mom was having a problem with this neighbor of ours?”

It took a second for me to realize she was talking about Bubbles. Usually, she called them Bubbles and Ace, or “your grandma and grandpa,” not “my mom and dad.”

“No,” I said. “What was the problem?”

“He was just a really unpleasant person, from what I recall. He was a big joker, and he always had something kind of nasty to say at someone else’s expense. Anyhow, one day he said something that upset my mom more than usual. Probably some sort of insensitive joke or prejudiced remark. And let me tell you, my mom was hopping mad.”

“Wow,” I said. It was impossible to picture Bubbles, with her broad smile and paint-spattered sneakers, getting mad at anyone.

“When my mom told Ace what the neighbor had said,” continued my mom, “I expected him to march next door to give him a lecture. You know how Ace can be.”

I nodded. Did I ever.

“And you know what he did?”

I shook my head.

“He said, ‘INVITE HIM TO DINNER.’ ” My mom imitated Ace’s booming voice. “ 
‘To dinner?’
asked my mom. ‘TO SHABBES DINNER,’ said my dad.
‘Abraham, have you lost your mind?’
asked my mom.
‘Why would we invite that shmendrick into our home?’
And Ace said, ‘YOU GOTTA START SOMEWHERE.’ ”

“Ace said that?” I asked.

My mom nodded proudly. “Do you know why he’s called Ace?” she asked.

“Because his last name is Diamond, right?” I said. “They used to call him ‘Judge Ace’ or ‘the Ace of Diamonds’ or something?”

My mom put her purse on the table and started digging through it. Eventually, she pulled out a worn-looking box of playing cards with an old-fashioned design and the word
Bicycle
in red at the top.

“One of the nurses gave me these to help pass the time,” she explained. She shrugged. “Solitaire, I guess she was thinking.”

She opened the box at one end and spread all the cards out on the table. She pushed them around until she found the card she was looking for. It had a big red diamond shape in
the center, with two letter
A
’s and small diamond shapes in two of the corners.

“Here it is. The ace of diamonds,” she said, holding it up.

“Right,” I said.

“You know that in cards, an ace is worth one point, right?” she said.

I nodded. I suddenly remembered Ace playing Go Fish with me when I was little. And Crazy Eights and some game he called Rummy. I used to love to watch him shuffle,
whirrrrr
, like a machine. When I tried to do it myself, the cards would go flying everywhere.

“But here’s the thing,” she added. “An ace can also be worth eleven points, which is more than any other card, even a king or queen. So an ace is called a ‘wild’ card, which makes it the best card in the deck.”

My mom handed the ace of diamonds to me, then gathered up the rest of the cards while she talked. “When Grandpa was a judge,” she continued, “the lawyers in his courtroom called him ‘the Ace of Diamonds.’ You’re right that the ‘diamond’ part was because of his last name. The ‘ace’ part was because he was a little ‘wild,’ a little unpredictable. Always full of surprises, your grandpa.”

“I’ll say,” I said, studying the playing card and thinking about the day O.J. first appeared on my bedside table. I remembered Ace’s mysterious note strapped in place with one of his beloved rubber bands.