Twice a Child Page 5

  Tina’s really concentrating on the road. It’s nothing but cars, cars, cars, and they all seem to be going a hundred miles an hour. And everything’s so yellow—pale yellow fields, like the state’s got gold dust sprinkled everywhere. Never saw anything like it.

  Poor kid, what did I get her into? Maybe it’ll all work out: we get to California, we find Eddie, he sees how much he’s missing—how much he’s missed. Tina was just a little thing when he took off. I don’t how anybody can do that, up and leave their family.

  People today don’t know about hardship. The Depression, now that was a hardship. We’d wrestle each other for street corners just so we could sell five cents worth of newspapers and bring home a couple apples.

  So Eddie couldn’t find the kind of work he wanted in Lebanon, so what?

  “You make fried potatoes.”

  “Are you hungry, Grandpa?”

  Boy, am I. And all Mom’s got going is that damn pasta fazul. If I have to eat one more spoonful of pasta fazul, I’ll throw up. But I don’t have to because Pop’s cutting up two potatoes, frying them in oil. Just for me.

  “Come here, Franco, I make-a you something special.”

  The oil pops and crackles around the potato sticks, each one cut precisely so they fit like matchsticks shoved into that huge cast iron pan. Mom makes everything in that pan, even pizza. But today, it’s fried potatoes, oil, and salt. Just for me.

  “Patate, fritte bambino. Mangiare!”

  “Just let me get through the traffic here, Grandpa, and we’ll find a place to eat. I’m kind of surprised you’re hungry already—”

  My lips drip with oil and salt, the potatoes crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. Pop’s smiling at me watching me lick my lips. A leaf of tobacco is wedged between his yellowed front teeth. He launches into that raspy cough of his, nearly doubles over from it, and I keep eating the mound of potatoes from the chipped plate, savoring every bite. I know it could be days before I get anything like this, so I want to make it last.

  “Grandpa . . . are you eating something?”

  The fried potatoes are nearly gone. Maybe I should have shared them with my sister, who keeps looking at me and drooling, but she’s got a job to do; she’s got to drive and it takes two hands to eat fried potatoes. Besides, Pop made them just for me.

  “Grandpa?”

  Why is she calling me Grandpa? And these cars, how did they get into the kitchen?

  The fried potatoes are slipping off my plate, I have to hold it steady, I have to keep it level—

  This vessel I’m in just got sandwiched between two trucks. We’re moving again, toward an exit.

  “Finito di mangiare, bambino?”

  I laugh at Pop’s suggestion. He probably wants a few, and who am I to deny him that? He’s rarely hungry anymore, I never see him eat anything. He just pushes plates toward me and my sister, maybe takes a noodle, a bean. But these potatoes, Mom must have been saving them for something and now he went and fried them up for me. Of course he can have the rest.

  “What are you handing me, Grandpa?”

  I reach into the glove box and find a ratty napkin, start to wipe my mouth. All that oil. Ah, so good.

  Oh, we stopped. Good, now I can wash my face better, get that grease off. I can’t figure out what’s so interesting about me. She keeps staring at me. Hasn’t my sister ever seen someone satisfied with their meal?

  “Grandpa, tell me your name.”

  “Frank Lillo.”

  “When were you born?”

  “February third.”

  “What year?”

  “Nineteen twenty-eight.”

  “What year is it now?”

  “Nineteen—” If Pop is making me fried potatoes, it must be nineteen—thirty five? “Thirty five.”

  A tear streams down her cheek. My sister, always the crybaby.

  “Grandpa, do you remember what happened back at the diner?”

  Fried potatoes, I smelled them coming from the kitchen. I’d recognize that scent anywhere, my Pop made the best—

  I rub the baby’s head; he seems to be just fine. Tina’s here, too.

  “Someone was frying potatoes,” I answer.

  She hoists the baby to her breast. He gives out a little whimper of protest until he finds food. “It was a diner and it was breakfast, so yeah, I’m sure someone was frying potatoes. Do you know what happened?’

  “He made them just for me, you know. I couldn’t take another night of pasta and beans—”

  I think I’m making her angry. She’s got that little flare in her eyes, just like Mamie gets when I don’t answer her right away. Thing is, she’s always asking me something, that woman doesn’t know the meaning of silence.

  “Grandpa? How much money was in your wallet?”

  “Around a couple grand, maybe three.”

  “Cash? No traveler’s checks?”

  “No.”

  “Have you counted it since you took it out of your pocket back in Springfield?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, why don’t you do that?”

  “I can’t.”

  She’s looking at me funny.

  “Can’t?”

  “I—uh, I dropped it in the toilet on the last stop.”

  “WHAT?”

  “I was going to count it there, in the stall where no one could see me, and I got the shakes, you know what I mean, and it fell. It fell into the toilet.”

  Well, I might as well as tell her everything.

  “I flushed it then.”

  “You flushed it.”

  “It brought enough trouble. I figured it was best to get rid of it.”

  After a little while, she was talking to me again.

  “Grandpa, did you put any more money somewhere else? Do you have any more with you?”

  “Suitcase, I think. I put some of it in my suitcase.”

  “Okay, that’s good, at least it wasn’t all of it. We need to find a bank, Grandpa.” She pats my arm. “Are you sure you want to keep going?”

  I’ve done something terribly wrong, I know that. I should have let her have a taste of the potatoes, shouldn’t have hogged them all for myself. But I was so hungry.

  “I’m sorry.” This time, I say it with as strong a voice I can muster.

  She’s telling me it’s okay. We’ll go to the nearest bank and get traveler’s checks with the rest of the money and keep going.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” And the next thing I know I’m crying, and my nose is dripping. I look around, families slamming car doors, running inside this building, coming out with big cups and bags of food. I’m a long way from my blue recliner where Mamie sits beside me every night and watches the nightly news with Brian Williams and makes sure I take my pills on time. It was so nice to see Pop. “Tina? When we get to Eddie’s, things will be better. He’s a big deal. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Well, if you ask me, he hasn’t known what to do his whole life, Grandpa.” She’s looking at Joshua, sleeping in her arms. “Still, I get it. If he were my son, I’d want to see him, too. I just wouldn’t have let him get so far away.”

  There’s only one thing I can think of to say. “I’m sorry.”

  I let Tina take care of the transaction, just like I let Eddie when we were a team. He was better at the money, see. The guys in the shop, they didn’t listen to him. Seems they’d drag their feet when he’d bring them an order. One day my foreman, Harry, took me aside and told me the guys took a vote and decided they didn’t want Eddie bossing them around no more. Said he didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground and acted like he was better than them.

  “He stays out of our way,” Harry said. His breath stank of fried onions and cigarettes. “Or we walk.”

  Sometimes that happens when an owner brings in his own blood. The guys figure it’s all handed to him, and no one handed shit to them. So I let him take care of depositing the checks when there were any. I don’t know what he did the rest of the time,
but we sure had a lot of computers no one knew how to use.

  “Inventory control,” was what Eddie called it. And the next thing I know there’s a new guy in the office who looked like a boy with his tee shirt and jeans and sneakers.

  “Pop, he’s a whiz at computers,” Eddie told me when I made a comment about the way the guy dressed. This is an office, I said. We’re professionals.

  But Eddie kept feeding this guy files and he’d tap away, never taking his thick glasses off the screen. For all I know, he could have been watching the TV, but I let Eddie handle it. Said we were making plenty of money to hire him, besides, we got to get with the times.

  “Okay, do it your way,” I said.

  “Would you like hundreds or smaller bills, Grandpa?” The baby was hitched to Tina’s hip, looking at me. This didn’t look like my bank. Too bright. And who was this woman taking my money?

  “Let’s go.” I want to get out of here; it was a mistake to let her talk me into this. I don’t care for how that woman’s looking at me, like I got my coat buttoned crooked.

  “We need to convert the cash to traveler’s checks, Grandpa. It’s safer.”

  Yeah, well I listened to Eddie telling me everything’s going to be easier to track once we get it on the computer and then he takes off and the guy in jeans shows up every day, looking at me to tell him what to do. So I kept feeding him more files and by the time he was through all the files what else was he supposed to do? I let him go. Never did learn how to work those computers. They sat there, five of them at five different desks, the way Eddie set them up. No people to run them.

  “C’mon, let’s go.”

  “Grandpa, hundreds or smaller bills?”

  I’m giving the woman behind the counter my most charming smile as I whisper to Tina, “We don’t know these people.”

  “We’ll take smaller bills,” she tells the lady.

  “Now don’t spend it all in one place, darlin’,” the lady says. Her hair’s all teased up in a beehive and her teeth are yellow. That smile’s so fake.

  I don’t need this coat, I realize as we get back outside. The sun’s beating down on my head and people are getting out of their cars wearing short sleeves.

  “Where are we?”

  “Edge of Oklahoma,” Tina says. “Should be hitting Texas by nightfall.”

  “You’re not pulling a fast one on me, are you girlie?” The anger’s boiling up, it does that when I’m feeling hoodwinked. “We’re going to California, not Texas.”

  She put the car into gear, checked for clearance, but the look on her face tells me she’s not liking the question. “Texas, then New Mexico, then Arizona, the state before we get to California, Grandpa. It would be good to stop and rest for the night. We still have a ways to go.”

  “Yeah, that’s what they all say.”

  My bed’s lumpy. Mamie sure as hell didn’t pick it out. She knows I like a firm mattress. I’m staring at the ceiling listening to Tina snore. The room smells like baby poo— that sweet, acrid odor that gets into your nostrils and stays there. Once in awhile a woman moans in the room next door. I’m glad Tina’s asleep. She shouldn’t be hearing such things.

  I can’t sleep. Besides, I want to go home now. I don’t like it here. I don’t know anyone, and I’m tired of looking at fields and fields of yellow. Everything’s so damn flat. I thought California’s supposed to be beautiful. Palm trees, movie stars. The ocean. Not this shit.

  It’s cold, too. I should have grabbed my jacket to go outside because that breeze is nippy. Must be coming off the ground, my legs are getting downright cold.

  Oh, hey, someone lost some money—there’s a twenty laying there right on the ground. I look around, make sure a car isn’t pulling away, I’d give it back.

  What the hell? The damn gravel’s biting into my knees. Feels like I touched a live wire. Shit. No wonder I’m cold. I’m not wearing pants. And it’s dark out. Except for that sign: M O E L.

  “Tina?” I’ll have to walk back over there, where the sign is. How did I get so far away from it, all the way across the street? The wind’s picking up now. Now I see it, that damn twenty tumbling away from me. A twenty ain’t worth it, I decide.

  My knees just popped. Well, at least I got up. I pat myself down—tee shirt and underwear, for chrissake. Nothing’s coming, it’s pitch black out here. I fix my eyes on the sign—M O E L, it’s getting closer. All I want to do is grab hold of it, so I keep my arms out like I’m reaching for a post to steady myself, but I keep missing it.

  Shit. I just stepped on something. Something crunchy.

  I don’t know what it is, feels big, almost as big as my foot. The sign’s getting closer. I’m under it, that red makes my skin glow. Imagine that. I made it through Three Mile Island, but not a trip to see my son. It’s all these damn pills I’m taking, that’s what it is. Tina keeps shoveling them into me, just like Mamie, and now my legs are glowing.

  I’m not going anywhere, best to stay put. I’ll just keep holding onto this post here. Besides, all the rooms look alike.

  “He was hanging on here when I came to open the office. Good thing he got it before it got him.”

  Tina’s looking at me like she’s never seen me before. She keeps trying to pry my arms away from the post, but I need it. I don’t want this wind to take me with it. Bad enough my legs are so damn cold.

  She’s crying.

  “Okay, okay. Just tell me what room we’re in and I’ll let go,” I say.

  I follow her to Room 7, and along the way, she points to the ground where a black crab lays, but it’s smashed. That crab’s got one leg curled up over its back.

  I never saw anything like that back home.

  eleven

  Grandma’s death threw him into his befuddled state: that must be it. After all, they did spend sixty years together, a symbiosis Tina once envied when she wanted them to be her parents in the worst way. Now with Grandma’s large presence absent from their lives, and the reality that she could not return Grandpa to his wife’s loving arms, the panic that had set in earlier felt more like terror.

  Something was not quite right. What else would explain his wandering in the middle of the night in a strange place, clothed only in his sneakers and underwear? What could he have been looking for? And yet, he seems to adopt this befuddled way of his only under stress. There’s been enough of it, for sure. When he sees his son . . . Eddie . . . he’ll be his old self again. It really must have thrown him when he didn’t show up for Grandma’s funeral.

  She hurried through her shower, the baby batting at a rattle strung along the handle to his car seat, which occupied nearly all the floor space in the motel’s tiny bathroom. The TV blared out the morning’s news—more Americans killed in Iraq, gas inching up to four dollars a gallon, misery with no end in sight.

  She wrapped a towel around her, flicked the rattle, producing a squeal of delight from Joshua, and opened the bathroom door to check on Grandpa. He was sitting where she had left him at the little round table by the window, sipping coffee from a paper cup. He had dressed after she led him back to the room, and the office manager was kind enough to brew a fresh pot of coffee, inviting her to stop back to the office for a couple cups. Though she longed to crawl under the blanket and steal another hour’s sleep—the sun was just beginning to rise—she knew Grandpa would be awake now, and no amount of promises to stay in the tiny room with her and Joshua would hold up.

  She popped her head out the bathroom door. “I’m soon done in here, Grandpa. You okay?”

  Grandpa blinked as if trying to remove something from his eye. His gaze grew fearful and he shot straight up from the little table, causing it to rock in response to the sudden move. “Are you on fire?” He scanned the room, searching frantically for what, she did not know. “Where’s the extinguisher?” He started toward the bathroom and she was afraid he’d trip over the legs of his chair.

  “It’s steam from the shower, Grandpa. I like hot showers.” She opened the doo
r wider so he could see.

  “That’s one hot shower, girlie,” he said. He sat back down.

  This trip had been a big mistake.

  Tina stopped at a Cracker Barrel for breakfast not wanting to repeat yesterday’s episode when she thought a local diner would be a novelty, like the kinds of places in Tarantino movies—remote, good food, no commercialized versions of breakfast. Now some place known would be best, where thousands of travelers drive in, drive out, seven days a week, the coffee’s hot, and the waitresses are friendly. Even a baby changing station in the bathroom.

  Grandpa stayed in the car. “Just bring me a bun and some coffee.”

  Five patrons left the restaurant, climbed into their cars and drove off to their own destinations before she could convince him to come inside. Once seated, Grandpa plastered himself to the far corner of his booth, hunching his shoulders, craning his neck. He stared beyond her, but when she turned to see, nothing but an empty booth was behind them.

  “Grandpa? When was the last time you saw Eddie?” Maybe shifting the subject would help him relax, forget what happened the last time they had stopped for breakfast.

  His gaze returned, but it was as if he were trying to place her. He looked at Joshua, who banged on his tray, spreading cereal with a determined sweep of his hand.

  “His eyes look funny,” Grandpa said.

  Tina watched Joshua concentrate on picking up a Cheerio with his thumb and forefinger. There was a deep-set look to his eyes, a dark smudge beneath both. He wasn’t smiling. She felt the baby’s forehead.

  “Oh my God, he’s running a fever.” She rummaged through her diaper bag and found the Tylenol. Joshua received the syringe like a baby bird accepting regurgitated worms. “Grandpa, eat up.” She gestured toward his half eaten omelet. “I may have to find a clinic or emergency room. It might be another ear infection. He’s prone to them.”