Father's Day (11 page)

Once he sat in the garage and told himself that after completing the motorcycle, he would ride out into the night with only the clothes on his back.

It was when little problems mounted up that Jason felt the worst. The toilet isn't flushing. The AC is broken. Harvey won't stop coughing. No more diapers.

But in the end Jason realized that it was also the little things, like pizza night, playing drums, and watching cartoons, that made life worth living.

As he sat there, weighing out the moments of their first summer together, his eyes settled on the neighbors' mailbox, mottled where he'd struck it with an empty beer bottle several years ago. Someone had pushed out the dent with a hammer, but you could still see the damage.

The husband worked on a construction site and came home with dust on his pants. The mother cleaned houses.
Jason knew because she had a sticker on the side of her minivan.

             
HEAVENLY SHINE CLEANING SERVICES

             
(516) XXX-XXXX

             
24/7

               
SE HABLA ESPAÑOL

On her days off, the woman snipped things in the garden wearing her husband's old coat. Sometimes she sat on the front porch in bare feet and talked on the phone in Spanish.

They had two children who, on warm days, ran around the garden in pajamas, jumping over a plastic house that was too small for them.

Sometimes the son waited on the porch for his father to pull up, then carried his hard hat or put it on himself.

The neighbors had flowers lining the driveway and rosebushes at the side where the sun fell heaviest. There were hanging baskets too, which Jason had seen getting watered by the children on footstools with glass jars.

Twice a year, a blue or pink balloon was tied to the ruined mailbox. Minivans with chrome wheels pulled up one by one. Soon the backyard was full of people. Salsa music. A piñata. A spread of things to eat. Children running with their shoes off. Older girls in bright dresses standing with their mothers. Men in shorts and sandals, holding bottles of beer, laughing occasionally about work, and moving their feet to the music.

Sometimes the parties went on until dark. Then the music was turned off. Voices filled the driveway as sleeping children were buckled into seats.

Jason used to watch from the spare room. Used to sit there watching until everyone disappeared and there was only darkness.

H
E FINISHED DRYING
the car with old T-shirts, then dragged the hose over the dead yellow grass of his yard. When he got inside, Harvey had all her Polly Pocket dolls on the floor. The dolls were at school, Harvey said. It was their first day, and they were eating raisins in the cafeteria and braiding each other's hair. Harvey asked Jason if he could braid hair—asked if he knew about the rabbits jumping.

“Want to get McDonald's for dinner?” he said.

Harvey was trying to force a rubber shoe on a doll foot. “What about ribs and barbecue pizza?”

“Washing the car wiped me out. How about Taco Bell? You're half Spanish, after all.”

Jason washed his hands and looked at the ribs defrosting in the sink. Then he sat in front of the TV and noticed all the oil on his pants.

“Holy Christ!” he cried.

Harvey looked up from her dolls.

“There's shit on my pants!”

“It's on your face too,” Harvey said. “But I was afraid to tell you.”

After a long shower, Jason sat on the bed drying his hair with a towel, listening to Harvey play with the dolls in the living room. She was talking to them and they were talking
to each other. He wondered if she knew it was all pretend, or if part of her believed what she was making up.

Tomorrow would be her first day of school. She had picked out what she was going to wear three weeks ago. Her T-shirt still had the tag on. Jason wondered if she'd outgrown it already.

After loading his soiled pants and shirt into the washer, Jason opened the refrigerator and stood there looking in. Harvey put her dolls down. “Thought you were too tired to cook?”

“I am,” he said, spooning macaroni and cheese from a plastic container.

Harvey got to her feet. “We're having leftovers for our celebration dinner?”

“We'll celebrate tomorrow,” he said. “Ribs take a while to bake, anyway.”

Harvey stood watching him sprinkle ground beef on the macaroni. Then he cut a jalapeño pepper for himself. “Find something good on TV while I heat this up,” he said.

“I thought we were getting McDonald's or Taco Bell because I'm half Spanish?”

Jason stopped what he was doing and looked at the plates. “Well, I've made this now. Just go put the TV on. We'll get McDonald's later this week.”

He poured Harvey a glass of milk and opened a can of Mountain Dew for himself. When they were sitting, Harvey scarfed her food down and asked if there was any more.

Jason looked at her. “Thought you weren't hungry?” he said, then scraped the rest of his food onto her plate.

“How come you get soda?” she said.

“Because I don't like milk.”

Harvey looked at her glass. “Me neither.”

Then they didn't talk because there was a show about how camels survive in the desert.

“That's like our yard,” Harvey said, pointing to the endless yellow plain on the screen. “Can we get a camel?”

When they had finished eating, Jason went out for a cigarette, then came back in and told Harvey to get her shoes from the cupboard.

“Where are we going?”

“Out.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost five.”

“But I have school tomorrow. It's my first day.”

“Then hurry up.”

When they were in the car, Jason turned around to make sure she was buckled. They drove down Hands Creek Boulevard. It was warm, and they passed a few people on motorcycles.

“That'll be you someday,” Harvey said. “After your bike is builded.”

When they pulled into a strip mall, Harvey recognized where they were. “Why are we going to Home Depot? Did you get the job?”

“No, I did not.”

“Then why are we here?”

After passing through the automatic doors, Jason took Harvey's hand and they followed signs to the garden center.

“What are we doing here?”

“Getting stuff we need,” Jason said. “You'll see.”

The garden department extended into an area with a clear plastic roof. There were flocks of small trees, bags of mulch, water fountains on pallets, and trays of flowers on trolleys.

Jason stopped a man in an orange apron and asked which flowers were the best for a new garden. His name, Bernie, was written in Magic Marker on his apron.

Bernie led them to a trolley of plants he said were a mix of perennials and annuals. The man explained that perennials would come back to life every year, while the bloom of an annual lasted only the summer, as the plant itself would not survive the first frost.

Harvey thought perennials sounded better.

“If they die before the end of summer,” Bernie said, “just bring them back.”

They were also going to need topsoil and a bag of mulch, which Bernie said was essential for protecting new plants.

When they got home, Jason and Harvey walked around the house to find the sunniest spot. They decided the best place was right in front.

“And if we put them here,” Harvey said, “anyone who comes to visit will say, ‘Oh, look, what pretty flowers.'”

Once they had marked the spot for each plant with handfuls of yellow grass, Harvey asked how they were going to dig, because the earth was hard and dry.

Jason had a look in the garage, but most of his tools were useless as gardening implements. In the end, he took a carving knife from the kitchen drawer and found that repeated striking was quite effective. As he was chopping up the ground, the neighbors went past in their minivan. Harvey waved.

Jason looked up from his stabbing. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Just waving.”

“Well, quit it. We don't talk to them.”

Once the ground was churned up, Harvey said they should add water to make it soft. Jason filled a bucket, then lit a cigarette and watched Harvey pour.

When the earth was grainy and they could move their hands around in it, Harvey squeezed the soil between her fingers. “I used to work in the garden with my mom,” she said. “In winter we made piles of leaves and I jumped in them.”

“That's nice.”

“Can I do that with you?”

They dug holes for the flowers with dessert spoons, then laid each plant in the ground root-first. Once everything was done and the mulch was spread, they sat on the front step.

Jason said it didn't look much different. That they should have gotten more flowers.

“I think they're cute,” Harvey said. “I like them.”

After putting her pajamas on, Harvey opened the front door to say good night to the flowers. Then, in bed, she imagined them growing into bright trees with branches she could pull herself into and swing from. Jason could watch and tell her what a good climber she was.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Jason got up early to make French toast as a surprise for Harvey's first day. As he was splitting the frozen segments with a knife, he heard a loud bang. Harvey had fallen off the bed and cut her lip on the side of an open drawer.

He couldn't remember where Wanda had put the first-aid kit, so he went back to the kitchen and grabbed a frozen piece of French toast which he told Harvey to press on the swollen part. Then he rummaged around in the garage and found a Band-Aid, but the sticky part was old, so he used small patches of duct tape to hold it on.

Her lip was soon very swollen. When Harvey saw herself in the mirror, she cried and said she couldn't go to school because everyone would make fun of her.

“I told you not to jump on the bed, Harvey!” Jason shouted. “I told you a hundred times not to do that.”

Her face darkened over the half-cooked French toast on her plate.

“Eat,” Jason commanded. “Or I'm really gonna lose it.”

“I can't,” she sobbed, touching the fat part of her lip. “I'm not hungry.”

Jason stood there and made her eat half a piece before she could leave the table and go cry in her room.

S
CHOOL WAS TEN
minutes away.

Harvey looked out the window as they passed all the places that were now familiar.

Jason stared at her in his rearview mirror. The old Band-Aid was leaking blood and Harvey was licking it.

When they were a block or so from school, Harvey threw up. Jason stopped the car and turned to see her panting as though out of breath. Her arms and legs were covered.

“Shit shit shit!” he screamed. When he punched the steering wheel, Harvey threw up again. It was now on the back of his seat and pooling on the floor.

Someone behind in an SUV laid on the horn. Jason jumped out of the car with his fists raised. “Why don't you go fuck yourself!” Spittle sprayed out with the words. He expected it to be some meathead with blow-up muscles and a crew cut, ready to jump out and fight with him—but it was a small, shocked woman with children in the backseat.

Jason got back in the car and pulled away, turning onto the first side road he could find. Then he got out again and stood in the empty street. His hands were shaking and he needed a cigarette. He swung open the back door and undid Harvey's seat belt, which was coated with pale yellow chunks. The seat, her clothes, and her shoes were covered with sick, and the acrid smell filled his nose and mouth.

Harvey's face was red and her lip was still bleeding. “I don't want to go to school!” she screamed, throwing her arms around as if trying to hit something. Sick flew everywhere.

Jason shut the door and leaned against it. He could hear Harvey inside, but the sound was muted, as though she were underwater, or far away, or in a dream.

Then he clenched his hand into a fist and drove it into his palm as hard as he could several times.

Most of the houses on either side of them were redbrick with white garage doors. A dog barked, then a back door slammed, and the street was silent again. The ground was damp from a night of rain.

The longer he just stood there, not doing anything, the less he felt rage pushing him to act. Then something from long ago came back to him. Sneaking away from school to fix a sandwich for his brother, with things he could steal from a nearby supermarket. An older boy had taken Steve's lunch,
and Jason had found him sitting alone at recess, licking salt packets he'd picked up off the cafeteria floor.

After watching his brother eat the sandwich, and cleaning the blade of the flick-knife he'd used to cut the bread into pieces, Jason said he was going to find the boy responsible, then pummel him until he threw up the stolen food. But Steve didn't want him to go and put a hand on his big brother's shoulder, asking that he stay for the final minutes of recess.

Most nights Jason kept himself awake until their father was in from the Lucky Clover and passed out on the couch or in his bed.

He felt that he was awake again now. But instead of his brother slumbering in the bed next to him, it was a girl screaming in the backseat of a car, with sick on her clothes.

She didn't care what Jason had done—the way he punched the steering wheel and screamed at that woman in the SUV—or even that he had been a thief and spent time in prison after blinding someone in a fight.

Of all those things, Jason felt suddenly that he had been forgiven, that Steve had forgiven him and was there now, in the trees or in the sky, watching, somewhere close, somewhere without a name.

W
HEN
J
ASON THREW
open the back door, Harvey stopped crying.

“Look at us, Harvey,” he said, trying to smile. “We're like clowns!”

He released her from the seat and helped get her clothes off. At first she was embarrassed, but Jason said it was the only way, and draped his motorcycle jacket over her before cleaning up the backseat. Harvey watched him load the sick-heavy clothes and the car seat into a black trash bag he found in the trunk. The bag was already heavy because it contained bits of plastic and metal that Jason had picked up when he drove out to the Northern Parkway to see the place where his brother had died.

He wiped down the vinyl seat using water from a gallon jug, then picked soft bits out of the carpet with his hands. When it was done, Jason carried the trash bag over to a Dumpster sitting in the driveway of a house under construction. With a few swings, he managed to get the bag in. Then he noticed construction workers sitting in a truck eating breakfast. They must have seen everything. Jason took a few steps toward the vehicle and put his thumbs in the air. The driver wound down his window and said it was okay.

As Jason was walking away, one of the men in the back of the truck leaned forward. “I think that's my friend's neighbor,” he said. “Really crazy guy.”

T
HE CAR WAS
very hot by the time Jason got back in, and there was little relief from the smell.

“Does this mean I can sit in the front from now on?” Harvey said.

“No,” Jason said, adjusting the seat belt on her shoulder. “This is just for today. And if you see a police car, get down.”

Old Navy hadn't opened yet, so they sat in the car with the AC running.

“Did you ever throw up in a car before, Jason?” Harvey wanted to know.

Jason nodded. “Yeah, a lot—even once while I was driving.”

“Did it go on the windshield?”

“No, it mostly went on the steering wheel.”

“I think you would crash if you threw up when you were driving,” Harvey said. “Do you think my mom and dad threw up when they were going to die?”

“I don't think anyone really believes they're going to die,” Jason said. “Until it's in your face, you know?”

Harvey tried to imagine death in her face. Felt its breath upon her. More heat than fear.

When Jason noticed someone inside Old Navy unlocking the doors, he went around to Harvey's side and gathered her up in his jacket. “What's this?” she said, pointing to a dark stain on the arm where the leather was pockmarked.

“That,” Jason said, trying to think of something, “is probably oil.”

“Oil!” Harvey screamed. “You said oil was poisoning!”

“That's olive oil, Harvey, not engine oil.”

“Why do you have olive—”

“Let's just go in, can we?”

As he lifted her out, Harvey was worried that people might see she was naked under the jacket.

“Just think about your dream outfit,” Jason told her. “Because today's the day.”

He carried her across the parking lot, then straight through the shop, where hundreds of pairs of blue and pink jeans were suspended on wires.

A teenage worker came over and introduced himself as Tyrone. Jason told him that Harvey's clothes had gotten ruined and it was the first day of school.

“That's too bad,” Tyrone said. He asked Harvey what school, but she didn't know.

After they picked out new T-shirts, pants, leggings, and socks with colored dots on them, Tyrone unlocked a fitting room. “Just holler if you need something.”

Most everything fit, but Harvey was disappointed that she hadn't found anything with a dog on it.

“I don't know about dogs,” Tyrone said when they asked him. “But we got pandas . . .”

When the fitting room door opened, Harvey stepped out in blue sparkly trousers and a shirt with cartwheeling pandas that said
PANDA
MONIUM
.
Jason told Tyrone that Harvey was going to wear everything right away, and asked if he could rip off the labels and scan them. Tyrone looked at Harvey in her new clothes. “You Daddy's girl now, right?”

A
T
M
C
D
ONALD
'
S,
J
ASON
asked the woman if they had any fresh Band-Aids for his little girl, and she went to find
a manager. After cleaning up Harvey's lip in the restroom, Jason ordered two milkshakes, and carried them to the edge of an empty play area.

“Wish I didn't have to go to school,” Harvey said. “Wish I could just stay with you.”

“After all this?” Jason said. “If you don't go today, Harvey, you'll never go.”

When they finally got to school, Jason wanted to carry Harvey in through the main doors on his shoulders, but she was too embarrassed.

As it turned out, the first day of school was just a morning of orientation for the second-graders, with only an hour left to go.

A gang of parents had gathered in the lobby to wait. They watched Jason sign in. The receptionist explained where the second-grade classroom was. Jason wanted to tell the woman why they were late, but Harvey's face begged him not to say anything.

When they passed the other parents on their way to the classroom, Jason looked straight ahead. The school was in an affluent neighborhood outside Jason's official district, but Wanda's husband was a superintendent and had pulled some strings
.

The classroom assistant said she'd been expecting them and helped Harvey get settled in a chair.

Jason watched through a small window in the door. Then he returned to the car and smoked three cigarettes, one after the other.

A few minutes before noon, Jason went back inside the school and stood near the classroom door, but at a distance from the other mothers and fathers. When Harvey appeared,
there was blue paint on her hands and on her new panda shirt.

Some of the other children didn't want to leave, so the parents talked about going to Friendly's for lunch. Harvey asked if they could go too.

When they got home, at least a hundred more flowers had been planted in the front yard. Harvey got out of the car and ran to look at them. She thought Jason had done it while she was in class. But Jason said he'd just been waiting outside.

“Maybe fairies? Or angels?” Harvey said.

“Or Wanda.”

“But it could be angels, right?”

After making peanut butter sandwiches, they sat on the front step near the flowers. Jason opened a soda to share, but Harvey said she wanted milk, so he had to go back inside.

“Looks like a real garden now,” Harvey said when Jason returned. Then she took the glass but it slipped out of her hand. The bottom step turned white. Jason got up and went into the house. Harvey stood holding her sandwich but not eating.

“Are you mad?” she said when he appeared with a roll of paper towels.

“Yeah,” Jason said, looking at her. “But I'm tired of it, Harvey. I'm tired of being mad.”