To my complete surprise, he said, “You're absolutely right, Mabel. It is today. Which is why I'm here.” He held up the grocery sack and whispered, “I've brought him a little gift.”
“Gwa-aaal,” she said. “How'd you know?”
She gurgled at him until he patted her hand and said, “I'm much too predictable, I'm afraid. But he enjoys them, and…” He noticed her gaze shift in my direction.
“Hoo haa,” she said.
“This is my daughter, Julianna. Julianna, I'd like you to meet the extraordinary Miss Mabel. She can remember
everyone's birthday, and she has a real passion for strawberry milkshakes.”
I managed a smile and whispered, “Nice to meet you,” but all I got in return was a suspicious scowl.
“Well, we're off to David's,” my father said, then shook the bag. “Don't spill the beans if he happens by.”
I followed him to a bedroom doorway, where he stopped and called, “David? David, it's Robert.”
A man appeared at the door. A man I would never have picked out as my father's brother. He was stocky, with thick brown glasses, and his face looked puffy and pale. But he threw his arms around my father's chest and cried, “Wobbad! Yaw heew!”
“Yes, I am, little brother.”
I followed them into the room and saw that the walls were covered in a collage of puzzles. They'd been glued directly to the walls and even up on the ceiling! It was cozy and comfortable, and interesting. I felt as though I'd entered a quilted cave.
My father held his brother at arm's length and said, “And look who I've brought along!”
For a split second David looked almost frightened, but then my father said, “It's my daughter, Julianna.”
David's face broke into a smile. “Ju-weee-an-na!” he cried, then practically tackled me with a hug.
I thought I was going to suffocate. My face was buried as he squeezed the air out of me and rocked from side to side. Then with a giggle he let go and flopped into a chair. “Is mooy bwuf-day!”
“I know, Uncle David. Happy birthday!”
He giggled again. “Fwank eoow!”
“We brought you a present,” my dad said as he opened the paper sack.
Before he had it out, before I saw the actual size, I remembered the sound it had made when I'd shaken it in the truck. Of course! I thought. A puzzle.
Uncle David guessed it, too. “A puwwwle?”
“Not just a puzzle,” my dad said as he pulled it out of the sack. “A puzzle and a pinwheel.”
Dad had wrapped the puzzle box up in pretty blue paper and had taped the red-and-yellow pinwheel on as a bow. Uncle David snatched the pinwheel right off and blew. First gently, then fiercely, in great spitty bursts. “Ownge!” he cried between blows. “Ownge!”
Very gently Dad took it from him and smiled. “Red and yellow do make orange, don't they?” David tried to grab it back, but my father said, “We'll take it outside later. The wind will blow it for you,” and pressed the puzzle back in his hands.
As the wrapping paper fell in shreds on the floor, I leaned in to see what sort of puzzle my father had bought him and gasped. Three thousand pieces! And the image was simply white clouds and blue sky. No shading, no trees—nothing but the clouds and the sky.
My father pointed to a spot in the center of the ceiling. “I thought it would fit just right over there.”
Uncle David looked up and nodded, then lunged for his pinwheel and said, “Owsiiide?”
“Sure. Let's go out for a walk. Feel like going down to McElliot's for a birthday ice cream?”
Uncle David's head bobbed up and down. “Yaaah!”
We checked out through Josie, then headed down the
street. David can't walk very fast because his body seems to want to move inward instead of forward. His feet pigeon-toe and his shoulders hunch in, and he seemed to lean on my father pretty heavily as we moved along.
But he kept that pinwheel in front of him, watching it spin, crying every now and then, “Owwwange, owwwange!”
McElliot's turned out to be a drugstore with an ice cream parlor inside. There was a red-and-white-striped awning over the ice cream counter, and there were little white tables and chairs set in an area with red-and-white-striped wallpaper. It was very festive-looking, especially for being inside a drugstore.
Dad got us all cones, and once we were sitting down, Dad and David did talk to each other some, but mostly David wanted to eat his chocolate fudge swirl. My father smiled at me from time to time, and I smiled back, but I felt disconnected. How many times had the two of them come here for ice cream? How many birthdays had my father celebrated with his brother like this? How long had he known Mabel and Josie and the rest of the people at Greenhaven? How could it be that in all these years, I'd never spent any time with my uncle? It was like my father had a secret life away from me. A complete
family
away from me.
I didn't like it. Didn't understand it. And I was getting myself pretty worked up about it when David's cone crushed in his grip, causing his ice cream to flop onto the table.
Before my dad could stop him, David picked up the ice cream and tried to cram it back onto the cone. But the cone was shattered and the ice cream fell over again, only this time it landed on the floor.
My dad said, “Leave it, David. I'll get you a new one,” but David didn't listen. His chair shot back and he dove after it.
“No, David! Let me get you a new one.” My dad pulled him by the arm, but David wouldn't budge. He grabbed the ice cream and crammed it back onto what was left of his cone, and when the bottom part of his cone crumbled completely away, he started screaming.
It was awful. He was like a two-hundred-pound infant, throwing a tantrum on the floor. He was yelling words I couldn't understand, and after a minute of trying to calm him down, my father said, “Julianna, can you get him another cone?”
The man behind the counter scooped as fast as he could, but in that short time David knocked over a table and two chairs with his flailing and managed to smear chocolate everywhere. The checkers and customers at the registers seemed frozen with terror—like David was some sort of monster out to destroy the world.
I gave the new cone to my father, who handed it to David, right there on the floor. And while David sat there eating it, my father and I worked around him, putting everything back in order and wiping up the mess.
On the walk back to Greenhaven, David acted like nothing had happened. He spurted into his pinwheel and cried, “Owwwange!” from time to time, but when my dad held open the front door, I could tell that David was tired.
Down in his room David placed the pinwheel on his bed and picked up the puzzle box. “Why don't you take a rest before you get started on it?” my dad asked.
David shook his head. “Naaow.”
“Okay, then. Let me help you set it up.”
My father pulled a card table from beneath the bed, then swung the legs out and snapped them into place. After he had it shoved up against the wall near the bed, he moved a chair close to it and said, “There you are. All set up.”
David had the box open and was already sifting through the pieces. “Aaaas a gou wwwone, Wobbad.”
“I'm glad you like it. You think you might have it done by Wednesday? I can come back and glue it on the ceiling for you then if you'd like.”
David nodded, but he was already intent on the puzzle, carefully laying pieces on the table. My father put his hand on his shoulder and said, “I'll see you Wednesday then, okay?”
He nodded.
“Will you say good-bye to Julianna?”
“Baaawye,” he said, but he didn't look up from his box of pieces.
“See you later, Uncle David.” I tried to sound cheerful, but I didn't feel that way.
When we got back into the truck, my dad clicked on his seat belt and said, “So.”
I just looked at him and tried to smile.
“Are you as exhausted as I am?” he said.
I nodded. “Everything was fine—except for the ice cream.”
Dad chuckled. “Except for the ice cream.” Then he turned serious. “The trouble is, you never know what ‘the ice cream’ is going to be. Sometimes it's a fly in the room. Sometimes it's the feel of his socks. It's hard to predict everything. Usually getting ice cream is safe.” He shook his head
and closed his eyes, thinking things I couldn't imagine. Finally he turned the ignition and said, “David lived with your mother and me for a while. Before you kids were born. We thought it would be better for him to live with us than to be in a home, but we were wrong.”
“But overall, everything went okay today….”
He ground the gearshift into reverse. “David has many,
many
special needs, both emotional and physical. Your mom and I couldn't handle them all. Fortunately he's happy here. They have programs to teach him how to care for himself— how to dress and bathe and brush his teeth, how to act around others and communicate. They go on outings, and he has a job doing mailings for a doctor's office….”
“He does?”
“He goes there every morning during the week to fold mailings and fill envelopes. Greenhaven's been so good for him. He gets an incredible amount of individualized attention. He has his own room, his own friends, his own life.”
After a minute I said, “But he's part of the family, Dad. And it just doesn't seem right that he's never been over for a visit. Not even on Christmas or Thanksgiving!”
“He doesn't want to, sweetheart. One year your mother and I insisted he spend Thanksgiving with us, and it was the biggest disaster you can imagine. He broke a window out of the car, he was that upset.”
“But … why haven't we been visiting
him
? I know you have, but the rest of us. Why not?”
“Well, it's draining. Your mother finds it incredibly depressing, and I understand that. We both agreed that it was no place to take small children.” He accelerated onto the
highway, silent behind the wheel. Finally he said, “The years just seem to slip away, Julianna. One day you have a baby in your arms, and the next you realize she's very nearly a woman.” He smiled at me sadly. “I love David, but he is a burden, and I guess I wanted to protect you from that. But I realize now that all of this
has
affected you and the family.”
“But Dad, it's not—”
“Julianna, what I'm trying to tell you is I'm sorry. There was so much I wanted to give you. All of you. I guess I didn't see until recently how little I've actually provided.”
“That's not true!”
“Well, I think you know my heart's been in the right place, but if you line it up objectively, a man like, say, Mr. Loski adds up to a much better husband and father than a man like me does. He's around more, he provides more, and he's probably a lot more fun.”
My dad wasn't one to go fishing for compliments or signs of appreciation, but still, I couldn't quite believe he actually
thought
that. “Dad, I don't care how it looks on paper, I think you're the best dad ever! And when I marry somebody someday, I sure don't want him to be like Mr. Loski! I want him to be like you.”
He looked at me like he couldn't quite believe
his
ears. “Is that so,” he said with a grin. “Well, I'll remind you of that as your someday approaches.”
That turned the rest of the trip around. We laughed and joked and talked about all kinds of things, but as we neared home, there was one thing the conversation kept turning back to.
Pancakes.
My mother, though, had other plans. She'd spent the morning scrubbing floors and nixed the pancakes. “I need something with more staying power. Like grilled ham-and-cheese. With onions,” she said. “Lots of onions!”
“Scrubbing floors?” my dad said. “It's Sunday, Trina. Why were you scrubbing floors?”
“Nervous energy.” She looked at me. “How'd it go?”
“Okay. I'm glad I went.”
She glanced at my dad and then at me. “Well, good,” she sighed, then said, “I also felt like scrubbing because I got a call from Patsy.”
“Loski?” my dad asked. “Is something wrong?”
My mother pushed a few wisps of hair back and said, “No…. She called to invite us over for dinner on Friday.”
We blinked at her a moment; then I asked, “All of us?”
“Yes.”
I could see what my dad was thinking: Why? All these years of living across the street, and we'd never been invited over. Why now?
My mom could see it, too. She sighed and said, “Robert, I don't exactly know why, but she was insistent. She was practically in tears, saying how sorry she was that she'd never invited us before and how she'd really like to get to know us better.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I couldn't very well say no. She was being so nice, and Chet has really done a lot….” She shrugged and said, “I said we'd go. It's set for six o'clock Friday night.”
“Really?” I asked.
She shrugged again. “I think it might be nice. A little strange, but nice.”
“Well, okay then,” my dad said. “I won't schedule any overtime for Friday. What about the boys?”
“There's no gig on the calendar, and they're not scheduled to work, but I haven't talked to them about it yet.”
“Are you sure they want us
all
over there?” my dad asked.
My mom nodded. “She insists.”
I could tell the whole idea of dinner at the Loskis' was making my dad pretty uncomfortable, but we could both see that something about this invitation meant a lot to my mother. “All right then,” he said, and got to work slicing cheese and onions.
For the rest of the afternoon, I sort of lazed around, reading and daydreaming. And at school the next day, I couldn't seem to concentrate. My thoughts kept turning back to David. I wondered what my grandparents had been like, and what they'd gone through, having a son like him.
I daydreamed a lot about the sycamore tree, too, which at first I thought was because I was feeling melancholy. But then I remembered how my mother had called the sycamore a testimony to endurance. It had survived being damaged as a sapling. It had grown. Other people thought it was ugly, but I never had.
Maybe it was all how you looked at it. Maybe there were things I saw as ugly that other people thought were beautiful.
Like Shelly Stalls. A perfect example! To me there was absolutely nothing to recommend her, but the rest of the world seemed to think she was the cat's meow.