Breakfast with Neruda (8 page)

She laughs and I try them on again. “The mirrored ones.”

She stashes the black pair back in the glove compartment and I start the car. As I back down the driveway, I notice the tank is full.

“You're lucky my parents like you,” she says. “Dad only lets Josh drive this car.”

“He doesn't know we took it the other day?”

“No,” she says. “And he never will.”

It's a little intimidating driving such a tiny car on the freeway, like being a tiny person in a land of giants, but I quickly find my pace and feel comfortable. I glance over and notice Shelly has donned a pink-and-green scarf over her hair. “Very retro chic,” I say.

“And practical.”

We don't talk much on the way to Columbus. The wind and the traffic make it too loud to do anything but shout, but I enjoy the feel of the car, and the adventure of heading into an unknown. I've driven to Columbus many times, but never in a sports car with a girl.

As we approach the outskirts of Columbus, I shout, “Where are we going?”

“Since it's your birthday I'll let you choose,” she says. “If you like Italian, we could go to Buca di Beppo. That's in Worthington. Good food, but no patio.”

“And my other choice?”

“Lindey's in German Village. We can eat outside there.”

“Lindey's,” I say.

I head straight into the city on I-70, get off at Fourth Street, and follow the signs toward German Village, just south of downtown. We drive around to find a parking spot a couple blocks up.

“Should we put the top up and lock it?” I ask.

“There's nothing in it but a pair of sunglasses,” she says. She stashes the scarf in her purse and checks her look in the rearview mirror. I go around and hold the door for her. “Look at you being the gentleman.”

“Given it's my birthday, I'm demonstrating my increased maturity.” As we walk, I say, “So what made you want to see me today?”

She shrugs. “I had nothing better to do.”

“Gee, thanks, I think.”

We stand at the entrance of the restaurant and Shelly points to a sign that reads Free Valet Parking.

“That's okay,” I say. “The walk felt nice.”

There are still a couple tables available outdoors. We settle into our seats and a waiter brings us water glasses and a basket of bread. I order iced tea and Shelly orders a glass of white wine with some Italian-sounding name.

I open my menu and see an array of food I'd never be able to afford. Some of the terms I recognize from French class.

“I could order a burger,” I say, “but I don't want to be
gauche
.”

“Order something unique, something you have never eaten before. You eat burgers all the time.”

“What do you recommend?”

“I'm getting quiche,” she says. The waiter sets down our beverages. “It's your birthday. Live it up. Get something decadent.”

I order the quiche as well.

“Sorry,” I say, after the waiter walks away. “I'm not very imaginative when it comes to food. I was raised on canned pork and beans and corn dogs. The most exotic thing I've ever eaten is Gouda cheese in French class.”

“I keep forgetting you're a homeless hick.”

My face reddens. I take a gulp of tea.

“I meant that as a compliment,” she says. “You don't seem like an ignoramus like so many of the guys at school. You have untapped potential.”

“If this were a story,” I say, “I'm not sure if you'd be the hero or the villain.”

“That's what I mean,” she says. “Your sentences are grammatically correct. Most of those guys at school say crap like, ‘where you at?' and ‘I seen that.' You actually use verbs correctly.”

“I have went there,” I say. “And I seen it.”

She covers her ears in mock horror. “Stop! You're murdering me.”

I laugh. “Maybe I'm just naturally brilliant.”

“No, that's not it.”

“You're just full of the compliments today. Is that any way to treat the birthday boy?”

She grins. “I guess not.”

I rip into a piece of bread from the basket. “One of my mom's husbands was a literature teacher. Annie's dad. He read to us all the time, so I grew up reading and listening to stories.”

“What happened to him?”

“Annie's dad?” I take a long breath. This is one of the stories I don't want to tell. It kind of serves as the beginning of our troubles. “I didn't always live in Rooster either,” I say. “Before that, we lived here in Columbus, where Annie's dad was teaching at Ohio State.”

“He was a professor?”

“A graduate student, working on his doctorate, and he taught classes there. That's how my mom met him. When Jeff and I were small, I guess she wanted to better herself, and since we were poor, she got to take classes for free.”

I rip another hunk of bread from the basket. “We lived in this one-bedroom apartment. I was three and Jeff was two. We all slept on a mattress on the floor. My mother had wanted to be something more than a breakfast waitress in a Tee Jaye's. Plus she sometimes worked nights at 7-Eleven.”

“So who took care of you when your mother worked?”

“I don't remember a lot of the details about when I was a kid. My earliest memories are of being woken in the middle of the night and shifted from one location to another. Sometimes Jeff and I slept in the back of the car while she worked. In fact, I think we lived in Mom's car for a while, so I guess my lifestyle is not new to me. It's just not my first choice of addresses.”

“How did your mom have time to take a class?”

“I don't know, but she took this class taught by a cute, young guy named Bob, and back then, my mom was still hot, even though she'd had two babies.”

“So they started dating?”

I nodded. “I remember the first time we went to his house for dinner. He was funny and nice. It was winter, and it snowed, so we spent the night at his house. He had a place near campus. I don't think he owned it. Rented it maybe. We moved in with him shortly after that. It was on California Street. I remember that because I loved that we lived on California Street. I thought that made us closer to Hollywood. Bob used to say, ‘If we can't live in California, we can live on California.' There were a lot of students who lived in the area in big, old two-story houses with lots of room. Our house had three bedrooms, so Jeff and I each had our own room until Annie came along.”

“So living with him was an improvement.”

“Big time,” I say. “And Mom must be as fertile as a rainforest because she immediately got pregnant with Annie, so she and Bob got married.” I drink some tea. “My mom quit working once Annie was born, and for a while she was a housewife. Bob didn't make a lot, but enough to rent a house, and Jeff's dad sent support checks, so we didn't starve.”

“How old were you when he died?”

“Six or seven, I think. Annie was like three.”

“Did you like him?”

“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Bob was a great guy.” Bob and Paul were both good stepdads. My mom may be nuts, but she chooses her men well. Most of them anyway, so I think my own father might be an okay guy. “Bob was smart, and we had books all over the place. We lived like a Norman Rockwell painting. Mom was home, the house was clean, and she cooked for us. Bob helped us with homework and we read stories. I even wrote a few.”

“Do you still have them?”

I chew on another hunk of bread. “I don't have anything from that time.”

“Because you live in your car?”

I look down at the table. “No, because of what happened to Bob.”

The waiter brings our lunches. A big pie-shaped yellow slab of eggs inside a crust with some fruit on the side. He refills my iced tea and Shelly's water glass. We bite into our meals. I don't know what to expect. The thing on my plate looks weird, but when I take a bite, my taste buds go into overdrive.

“Wow, this is really good,” I say.

“Told ya.” Shelly takes a sip of her wine.

I want to devour it all at once, yet also take my time savoring the eggs and cheese and whatever else is in this quiche thing.

“So what happened to Bob?” Shelly asks.

I take a big bite and swallow. “He and my mom were saving to buy a house, so Bob started working a second job a couple nights a week. He tended bar at a place downtown.” I take a drink from my water, not wanting to tell this story. “Bob didn't go in until nine or so, so he always read us stories before bed. Back then I went to bed around seven-thirty. He often read us tales from
The Arabian Nights
. He said those had been his favorite when he was a kid.”

I chug some tea and wipe my mouth. “Anyway, one night he didn't come home. When I got up the next morning my mom was in the kitchen sobbing her eyes out. Bob had been shot in a drive-by after work while walking to his car.”

“Oh that's terrible.”

“Yeah. He got caught in the crossfire between gangs,” I say. “Things kind of headed downhill fast after that. Bob had only taught part-time, and didn't have life insurance. We had to move out of the house since we couldn't afford rent. Mom sold what she could and we ended up back in Rooster, where Mom came from. We lived with her mom for a while. But her mother threw us out.”

“Why?”

I grab Shelly's wine and take a big swig. I set the glass back on the table, leaving my fingers around the base. “My mom, she was, well . . . she kind of went through a phase where she had a different guy every night.” I finish Shelly's wine. “It may be how she made her living for a while.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” I can't believe I'm telling her this. I don't think anyone outside the family knows. “She finally found another husband, though. Tomas. We moved in with him in the townhouse where she lives now.”

“So is your stepdad the reason you got tossed out?”

“No. He's been out of the picture for a while. Tomas was the total opposite of Bob. He drank, smoked pot, lived on welfare, and was an all-around asshole.”

“Why did she marry him?”

I shrug. “Who knows? Loneliness? Money? The bad thing is my mom drank with him, and the two of them just sat around the house drunk and stoned, so Jeff's dad took him to live with him.”

“How come he didn't take you and Annie as well?”

“He already had a whole family with his new wife.”

“Oh.”

“But Jeff has had it okay. His life is somewhat normal.”

“So how bad was it for you and Annie?”

“Kind of bad.” I suck down my tea until it's just ice and set the glass down. “Tomas would take off for days, sometimes weeks at a time. Then he'd come back and act like it was normal for a husband to just disappear. If she yelled at him about it, he hit her.”

“Did he ever abuse you or your sister?”

“He came at me a couple of times, but I fought back. Tomas wasn't a big guy, and by then I could almost kick his ass, especially when he was loaded.”

“How long was he in the picture?”

“He moved out at the end of my eighth-grade year.”

It was shortly after that I started noticing the accumulation of things. The house had always been a mess, but things got worse. Piles of crap just grew. There were days my mom didn't leave the house, but I am never telling Shelly this part of my story.

“Eventually Tomas left for good,” I say. “He could be dead for all we know.”

“Wow,” she says.

“Yeah. I've had kind of a shaky history with dads, none of whom was my own.”

The waiter fills my tea and sets a chocolate cupcake in front of me with a candle in it. “A pretty little bird told me it was your birthday,” he says.

After lunch, Shelly suggests we walk over to The Book Loft. “I can get you a birthday present.”

“I thought lunch was my present.”

“The Book Loft is also part of your gift.”

“Is it a bookstore?”

“Yeah, and it has thirty-two rooms.”

“That sounds cool. Let's go.”

We walk about three blocks. It's a nice walk through an old neighborhood where the streets are made of cobblestone. “It's a lot different here than Rooster,” I say.

I spot a strip of shops in an old brick storefront. I notice a Cup O Joe coffee shop. Next to it is a neon sign and a giant red banner identifying The Book Loft. We stop at the entrance, which has a couple benches and planters. “It looks like someone's house,” I say. We walk further in and there are several tables loaded with books. “This is awesome.”

“This is just the beginning,” Shelly says. “Don't forget the thirty-two rooms inside.”

Outside the store entrance Shelly glances at the announcements of authors who will be coming for book signings.

“Ugh,” she says. “Pelee Peugeot.”

“Never heard of her.”

“She's this pretentious, ghastly, self-absorbed bitch who writes chick lit,” Shelly says. “My mom loves her stuff.”

“How do you know she's ghastly?”

“And self-absorbed and pretentious,” she says. “She came to Columbus around Christmastime a couple years ago and did a reading at the Barnes & Noble at Easton. Josh and I drove up to get Mom an autographed copy of her latest bestseller. We got there kind of late because Josh has no concept of time. So we had to park clear over by Macy's and hike to the store in a mini-blizzard. Anyway, we get there an hour before the store is closing. Pelee Peugeot is still there sitting next to a stack of hardback books of all her titles. The line is kind of long, so I stand in line to wait while Josh hurriedly buys her latest book.”

Shelly picks up a copy of Vonnegut's
Slaughterhouse-Five
. “Five ninety-nine,” she says. “Not bad.” She picks up a copy to buy and wanders away from me.

“So what happens next?” I ask.