As I walked toward the steps, my pocket continued to buzz. The honkies—or whatever they should be called—continued the text barrage. I was only vaguely aware of my buzzing pocket. Grandma Berba had gotten Aleah’s address from me the afternoon before. I knew she was in the house. I paused outside the door and looked at Aleah.
“Do you mind going in first?” I asked.
“Will that help you?” Aleah said.
“I don’t know,” I told her.
Aleah opened the screen door and walked in. As she did, I peered around her and saw a woman who didn’t look like a grandma hugging Andrew on the couch. She wasn’t wearing old lady pants. She was wearing a business suit, and her hair was brown like Jerri’s, and she was pretty, like Jerri would be if Jerri hadn’t gone crazy. The woman let go of Andrew when Aleah was fully in. She stood up. She was ready for me. I pushed on the screen door and took a step in. Grandma Berba took a step toward me, opening her arms to hug me and then she stopped in her tracks. She stared at my face. She shook her head and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’ve got to be…” She slapped herself on the forehead. She backed up a step and fell back on the couch and cupped her head, laughing. Andrew stared at her through his big nerd glasses—his mouth open. Then he looked at me, eyes wide behind his lenses.
“No,” Grandma Berba looked up. “Really. You have got to be joking. No wonder. No wonder,” she cupped her face with her hands and laughed.
“Wow,” Aleah looked at me. “You’re having a bad day.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I said.
“Come here, Felton,” Grandma Berba said. “Good lord, good lord. Really.” She stood. I walked to her. She reached up and hugged me and laughed and sort of cried at the same time. She wiped her nose on my chest.
“I mean, no wonder,” she said. “You’re the spitting image.”
Even if you’ve been awake all night long (6 a.m.), you have to stay awake for this (if you haven’t sort of figured it out already).
Grandma had a lot to get off her chest right away, which she’s apologized for later because maybe there was a better way to do this, a better time. While my cell buzzed in my pocket, I heard:
Steven W. Reinstein, who’s my dead dad, was an All-American, one-time national champion tennis player at Northwestern University. He played some pro tennis. He nearly qualified for major tournaments. He was six foot three inches tall. I, Felton Reinstein, have stretched and grown in such a fashion that I’m now an exact replica of Steven W. Reinstein. That’s why Grandma Berba freaked when she saw me. (Andrew figured right.) Steven W. Reinstein got his student, Jerri, pregnant during her freshman year of college. Steven W. Reinstein married Jerri because Jerri pressured him. Grandma Berba told Jerri she should not—absolutely not—marry that man.
“He was just a brutal man,” Grandma Berba said. Steven W. Reinstein’s rich parents treated Jerri like dirt. Steven W. Reinstein didn’t want to be married and continued to have girlfriends. Jerri tried to make a home. She bought our house with Steven W. Reinstein’s money. Steven W. Reinstein would scream that Jerri trapped him. Jerri had Andrew to try to stabilize the situation (stupid, said Grandma). Steven W. Reinstein told Jerri flat out that he didn’t have enough love, that he couldn’t love. Steven W. Reinstein got another student pregnant. He got fired. Jerri hated him.
She hated him. She hated him. She hated him.
Jerri served him divorce papers when Andrew was three. He killed himself in our garage.
I only knew the last part—that he killed himself and where. I was fucking there to see it. I thought he was a small, kind Jewish fellow who only loved poetry. Jerri not only hid the truth, Jerri lied.
Andrew was right. Andrew was right. Andrew was right.
My head spun.
As Grandma Berba spilled it all, inappropriately, right there in front of everybody, everybody in the room opened their mouth wider and wider. I was the only one who didn’t. Instead, I stared at my long arms, clenched and unclenched my fists, pictured a tennis racquet in those hands. Of course. I sat tall and got red in the face and thought how I’d like to take a goddamn tennis racket and beat my stupid dad’s face in (he apparently had the same idea). I also thought this: Jerri’s a criminal. She’s a terrible, despicable person. And then instead of listening any longer to Grandma Berba talk about Jerri’s “unhealthy” reaction to these events—how Jerri decided to erase Steven W. Reinstein from her life by burning his stuff and by making up a story about who he was so Andrew and me would think we had a loving father—and listening to her talk about Jerri’s silence in the face of Grandma Berba’s repeated attempts to get her help; her repeated attempts to move us to Arizona; her repeated attempts to get more support money from the Reinstein grandparents; her repeated attempts to get Jerri to get ahold of her fucking life, I exploded out of my chair and out of that house.
I got on my dad’s Schwinn Varsity and pumped it as hard as I could. I exploded around corners and up hills until I got to the main road that leads to my house, the house Jerri bought with Steven W. Reinstein’s money. I exploded down the road past the golf course, flying by signs and light posts and cars and the blurry tall grass that grew in the ditch. I flew over the hill, pumping, and down toward our drive, boiling over and completely exploding. At the bottom of the hill, I turned the bike too hard and slid out trying to make the turn to my house. I fell and slid on my side on gravel, tearing up the skin on my legs and ass. I slid for probably thirty feet, but I didn’t cry out. I picked up the bike, got back on, and exploded up the hill toward the house. In front of the garage, I got off my bike. I held it steady. Tilted it to the side. Stared at its blue paint and scratched up logo.
Schwinn Varsity. Schwinn Varsity. Schwinn Varsity.
Then I grabbed the bike with both hands, lifted it over my head, and threw it into the ground as hard as I could. The bike bounced up from its tires and hit me in the chest, hurting.
“Fuck you,” I cried. I grabbed it again, and this time, I flung it—spinning out into the yard.
“Felton,” Jerri yelled from the window.
“Don’t ever talk to me, Jerri,” I shouted.
I went into the garage and pulled out a shovel.
“Felton, stop,” Jerri shouted.
Then I went nuts on it, on my Schwinn Varsity. I jumped up and down, bending its frame. I beat the mirror to pieces with the shovel. I stabbed the shovel’s pointy end down on the spokes with all my might, breaking them. I hammered off the back gear shifter and bent the front. I stomped on the chain wheel. I stomped on the front fork until it bent and then broke. I was tearing off the brake levers, crying like crazy, when Jerri grabbed me.
“Felton, stop!”
“No,” I said. “No, Jerri,” I cried.
She pulled the bike’s handlebars out of my hands and let what was left of it drop on the ground. Then she pulled me by the wrist to her and then she hugged me saying, “This isn’t yours. You were right. You were right,” and she sobbed. I cried, “I’m so mad at you. I’m so mad at you.” And then we sort of fell over.
I guess we more crumpled over. We crumpled, and I bled all over from cuts on my hands and the scrape on my side, and I cried.
“He wasn’t…” I said. “He wasn’t kind.”
“This isn’t yours. It isn’t,” she cried. “I shouldn’t have lied.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“I should have told you who…”
“I won’t, Jerri,” I said.
“This is mine.”
“I won’t ever play asshole tennis, Jerri,” I cried.
“It’s my fault,” Jerri told me, her hands on my face, totally sobbing.
Then we laid in the yard crying, the broken pieces of my Schwinn Varsity littering the ground around us.
Jerri and I were in the kitchen. With a hot washcloth, Jerri cleaned the gravel out of the skin on my leg and ass. I winced, trying not to cry out. Jerri was doing a mom thing, but she didn’t seem like a mom. She was sort of jittery, and she was trying really hard, but I could see she was seeing ghosts or whatever.
“I told Grandma Berba to tell you everything,” Jerri nodded too hard.
“Umm, mission accomplished,” I said.
“I’m surprised she told you at the Jenningses’.”
“Well, you wouldn’t…”
“I couldn’t do it, Felton. I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t deal with it.”
“Jerri, listen, I’ve decided not to be mad at you.”
“Oh, thank you. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t think that’s something you can decide. But thank you.” She kept nodding.
I didn’t know if I should say it, but it was on my mind.
Dad had girlfriends.
I said it.
“I think one of Dad’s girlfriends lives at the nursing home.”
“Oh. Uh huh. Kelly Mayer,” Jerri nodded. “She’s been there for a long time.”
“She recognizes me. She thinks I’m Dad’s ghost.”
“Oh God, oh God, oh God. I’m so sorry, Felton.”
“She’s completely nuts.”
“Uh huh. Yeah. I’ll say. Steve knew how to pick ’em. Kelly was already schizoid twelve years ago when your dad was…She’d call here all hours of the night. I wasn’t much better. Steve went for the weak ones.”
“You weren’t weak, Jerri. You were smart.”
“Yes, smart. Okay. But I was looking for the escape hatch. Right? Your dad…That’s why hicks like me were so attracted to…He was from a different planet. I was weak.”
“Are you…Are you better now?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” Jerri said, shaking her head. “I need serious help.”
We both giggled, which was weird.
“I’m going to get serious help, Felton,” Jerri said seriously when we got done giggling.
***
Jerri went to get some tweezers from the bathroom. While she was gone, the phone rang. Neither of us made a move to answer.
The machine beeped. Cody’s voice carried through the house.
“Uh. Hey. This is a message for Felton. I think his phone’s off. Felton, don’t worry about…Don’t worry about faker or whatever. Nobody cares. Only the seniors from last year. They’re jerks, you know? They’re making a big deal out of it, but nobody else gives a damn. Call me, okay? You still coming up to the baseball game? You should. Give me a call.”
“Oh my God. Everything,” I said.
“What was that about?” Jerri asked, holding up the tweezers as she re-entered the kitchen.
“Bullshit,” I said. And I meant it. I had no interest. There were serious issues in the world. Faker? What a bunch of crap. Jocks are total idiots, I thought, and they’re assholes. My dad. If I could punch him.
I had turned my phone off. I wouldn’t turn it back on. And I wasn’t going to any game.
You know, later that day, Cody left another message on our home phone:
“Felton. Didn’t see you at the game and your phone’s off, man. Do I need to come over there and shake you out of bed? Give me a call!”
“Is that Cody threatening you?” Jerri mumbled.
“Probably,” I said. I wanted to rip the phone off the wall. I would have if Grandma Berba hadn’t been there in the kitchen cooking spaghetti. Grandma looked at me and smiled.
“Make sure you call him tomorrow so he knows you’re all right,” she said.
Yeah, right. Honky’s out to get me
, is what I thought.
Crazy. Crazy.
Hey, check this out! Imagine some circus music! I have three pairs of clean white socks in my hands, balled up tight by Grandma Berba! I’m juggling them, baby! Three balls! Wooo! 6:12 a.m., and I’m juggling three balls! I can’t juggle four balls. I’m juggling three balls!
Whoops. Shit!
I’m juggling two balls!
Sock balls!
You know, if I think about it, I was really upset. Why is it so hard to know why you’re behaving the way you are when it’s all going down? I don’t know.
The following three days were hazy. Grandma Berba washed my sheets for the first time all summer (every morning because I bled on them), and for like three days, almost all I did was sleep in my clean bed.
I got up to eat (huge doses—there was good food in the house). I got up to hang with Jerri. I did the paper route.
Andrew, Grandma, and I went together. Grandma Berba drove. Andrew and I dropped off papers. (I was slow because on top of a slightly achy back, I had a gravel burn the size of a small child on my leg and ass.) We’d go super early in the morning so nobody could see us. Andrew and Grandma delivered the nursing home so I wouldn’t have to see Dad’s old girlfriend, Kelly Mayer. Everything else was dark on the route. So early.
All the lights were out in every house, including Aleah’s. She changed her practice schedule, not so she could hang out with me but so she could help Andrew with piano. I guess that was nice of her. She biked over to our place each day, and they played and played and played. I didn’t even watch but listened from my clean sheets below. I couldn’t go upstairs.
Because.
I was so embarrassed and mortified. Aleah couldn’t possibly be interested in me. I’d freaked out. I’d told her about squirrel nut. She’d called me a simple boy and an innocent child, and that’s not good. You want a boyfriend who’s simple and innocent? Date a baby? No thanks. My chest hurt.
One time, while I was downstairs listening to them play, I did turn on my phone to see if she’d called or texted, but there was such a blizzard of texts from honkies (I’m sorry, but I have to call them honkies) and voicemails from Cody and Coach Johnson asking me to contact him that I shut the phone back off. I couldn’t deal.
Anyway, she didn’t need to call. I was downstairs. And Aleah knew I was there while she was with Andrew. How could she not? Where would I go? She didn’t ever come down to see me. That’s all the information I needed. Aleah didn’t come see me. And it made my chest so heavy, extremely heavy, because I didn’t mean to have childish thoughts that popped out of my mouth. I couldn’t take them back.
At least I had clean sheets.
***
I also got up to use my computer. I didn’t check email. Google searches. That’s all I did.
I had Googled “Steven W. Reinstein” before. I remembered the results, which I thought weren’t about my dad. I redid those searches and knew they were about my dad. I saw pictures I’d seen before and archived articles I’d glanced at before. Tennis pictures. Tennis articles.
STEVEN REINSTEIN LEADS NORTHWESTERN PAST PURDUE.
COURT COVERAGE KEY FOR REINSTEIN.
REINSTEIN IS FORCE OF NATURE.
REINSTEIN BRINGS NCAA SINGLES TITLE TO NORTHWESTERN.
All of it was on the Northwestern website (except one small picture and paragraph on the NCAA website). He wasn’t all over the Web or anything. (I suppose he played tennis before there was an Internet.)
I had for several years seen, over and over, a particular picture on the Northwestern website of a big Jew-fro dude in a purple T-shirt explosively hitting a tennis ball, a grimace on his face, sweat shooting up in the air everywhere. A dude who happened to have my dad’s name, who really happened to be my dad.
I stared at that picture. I downloaded it to my computer. I blew it way up. Dad. There. Probably rode to the courts on our dead Schwinn Varsity. Steven W. Reinstein, while he was in college, looked exactly like I would if I were four years older. He was enormous and obviously hugely powerful. He was a force of nature.
It made me miss him, and even though I’d decided not to be mad at poor Jerri, missing Dad made me so mad at her. I had nice feelings about Dad pent up in my muscles because of years of lies (he’s sweet and kind—wrong). But I should never be mad at Jerri. She was his victim, and the notion of me being so low and terrible that I could even fathom being angry at Jerri made me hate
me
and then I thought I better get the hell out of bed and go eat a sandwich, which Grandma Berba would prepare and which would taste much better than Kwik Trip white bread with a hunk of cheese on it. She bought some ham, which was good. Wheat bread.
Even when I ate, I boiled in my guts about everything.
Grandma Berba bought lots of stuff. For example, she bought me new clothes that fit.
“You can’t go back to school in high waters. Here, try these.” She threw me jeans. (I could only hope they fit in a month—they do, by the way.)
She bought Andrew a whole wardrobe full of little polos and blue jeans and tossed out his pirate wear. (“Thanks, Grandma,” he beamed.)
She did lots of other stuff too. She cleaned up and threw out the Schwinn Varsity. She weeded the jungle garden. She mowed the lawn. She washed every corner of the house for hours on end.
“Why is all this junk pulled out of boxes?” she asked.
Andrew shrugged.
On the third day, she drove Jerri to Dubuque, Iowa, to see doctors and therapists.
I didn’t like Jerri going to Dubuque. I didn’t like her not being close by. I had a job. When I wasn’t sleeping those three days or on the computer or delivering papers or eating, I’d be next to Jerri watching TV in her room, laughing too hard, to make everything normal. That’s what I had to do. My job was to make Jerri know I think she’s great and know she can count on me because I’m not like my dead dad, who I missed more and more every hour, which really pissed me off.
Very upset.
Grandma Berba came down to my room before they left for Dubuque, after I asked to go with, then pleaded, but was turned down.
“Felton,” she said. “You can’t fix your mom.”
“I can help.”
“It isn’t your job. You’re the kid, okay?”
“I want to help.”
“Be a kid, Felton.”
“I want to…”
“No. I’m here to take care of you. Your job is to be a kid.”
Oh, man.
It was decided in Dubuque that day that Jerri would leave. She was put on serious medication, which made her sort of dull and retarded but resistant. To get better, to make sure she wouldn’t hurt herself, she’d go away. She’d be checked into some kind of mental health facility in Arizona that Grandma knew about (it looked like a freaking vacation ranch with doctors—I checked it on the Web). Jerri was leaving.
“She can’t leave!” I shouted at Grandma Berba.
“She needs to get better,” Grandma said back.
The voice in my head said:
She’s leaving you.
And so, three days passed. Three days closer to Aleah leaving, which didn’t seem to matter anymore. Three days closer to Gus coming home, giving me an opportunity to officially lose my only friend. Three days closer to school starting, which I didn’t want to think about at all. In four days, Jerri would go, which made me cry. And it was three days closer to my sixteenth birthday, which happened to be in three days.
Who cares about birthdays? I didn’t want to. I probably did care though. I know I did.