Tales From My Closet (24 page)

“She doesn’t hate you,” Robin said. Then, very slowly, she said: “No one does.”

My eyes were misting up so much that when, finally, I opened the box, I wasn’t even sure that I saw what I saw. Because inside it wasn’t a stink bomb or a dead cockroach or a bunch of old chewed-up chewing gum hardened into a twisted rictus, but rather, a silk scarf, gray with blue and green butterflies flying on it. The note read: “I hope you like this scarf.”

“It’s a scarf,” I said.

“Is it pretty?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

A
re you sure
you’ll be okay here by yourself?” Mommy said, standing over me wearing a new, light-blue dress and the string of pearls that her own mother had given her for her twenty-first birthday. I’d never seen her look so pretty. Her nails were polished and her dark hair shone. I was halfway through a history paper that was due the next day, and it was just about killing me.

“I’m almost sixteen. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“I just don’t want you to be lonely.”

“I know, Mommers. And guess what? I’m fine. I have to write this stupid paper. It’s ruining my life.”

“But you sure you’ll be okay? If there’s any problem, you’ll call me on my cell phone, right?”

“Right.”

“You have Alfred’s cell number, too, right?”

“Yes, Mommy.”

“And you’re sure you’re all right?”

“Happy birthday,” I said. “And please go away now.”

“But it’s not my birthday.”

“Whatever. Have fun with Weirdo Man.”

Finally, she kissed me and left.

It
was
hard to believe, but shortly after Poppy’s funeral, she’d started going out with Alfred for real. First there was that coffee, and then they had lunch, but by week number three it was dinner, from which she’d come back flushed and laughing. “You’re kidding,” I said when she’d told me how much fun she’d had. “
Alfred?
”

“You know what?” she said. “He’s a very nice man.”

“But, Mommy . . .
Alfred
?”

“But what, Polly? Who do you want me to date, your swimming coach?”

I guess I must have blanched, or blushed, or otherwise turned color, because as soon as she’d said it, she slapped her palm over her mouth, and said: “Oh, honey! I’m sorry! That was insensitive of me.”

I’d never told Mommy about Coach Fruit — other than about what a great coach he was, I mean. But she did know that he’d given me his jacket. And she also knew that, after the first time I’d worn it, I’d stuck it in the back of my closet and never worn it again.

“I just don’t see why you have to date such a loser,” I finally said.

Now, through the open window, I could hear the two of them laughing and talking as Mommy followed Alfred to his waiting car. I got up and looked out. He was handing her a bouquet of flowers as he held the door open for her, and she was gazing up at him, her face like a petal in the moonlight.

At least the season was over, and I didn’t have to see Coach Fruit again until swimming started up in the summer. But without swimming, I was bored and antsy. I missed the team. But mainly, I just felt incredibly stupid. Stupid and humiliated and dumb. But it turned out that when school started up after vacation, nobody remembered my crush on Coach Fruit, or my jacket, or even how poorly I’d done at State — not after that blog had hit and everyone became so distracted over the ensuing drama that even Weird John forgot to torment me. Even so, with Poppy dead, and my dream of getting a swimming scholarship gone, I felt like my world was falling apart.

But my world didn’t fall apart. It just got boring. Boring and cold and dark. Both Justine and Ann were punished for, like, forever, so I didn’t even have anyone to hang out with, not really, and with Robin going through her own mess at home, she wasn’t all that available, either. The only person I knew who didn’t seem to have the winter yucks was my mother, who went around the house singing. And just when I didn’t think things could get any drearier, Burton called. This is what he said: “I need to talk to you, Polly.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I mean in person,” he said. “When can I come out to see you?”

“I thought you lived in Los Angeles.”

“I’m in New York,” he said. “Clearing up a few things from Poppy’s estate. And I need to see you. It’s important.”

“Let me ask Mommy,” I said, looking out the window as the snow swirled blindly through the dark night. In the next room, she was playing a Beethoven sonata, I forget which one. In the kitchen, where I was working, Hank was asleep in the corner, dreaming about chasing cats, his paws trotting against the air.

“I’ve already talked to her,” he said. “She’s cool about it. I mean, I know I haven’t been much of a father to you . . .”

“You can say that again.”

“And you have no reason to feel anything for me, but . . .”

“I guess so.”

“But this is important. Please?”

He took the train to West Falls the next day, meeting me at the Daily Brew because Mommy said that it would be more comfortable for both of us to be in a neutral, public spot. Also, she had students and didn’t want any big scene while she was teaching. He looked even worse than he had at Poppy’s funeral, his face a gray green, and his skin greasy, as if it was covered with a light sweat. His clothes were too big on him, too, his pants flopping a little around his ankles and his jacket drooping over his shoulders. To add to the homelessness effect, he carried a beat-up shopping bag. Truthfully, the only reason I’d agreed to meet him at all was because Mommy had looked so sad, and when she told me that it was important for me to go and talk to him, her voice had begun to quiver, like she was about to cry. Finally I’d said: “Fine!” and, Mommylike-to-the-max, she’d thrown her arms around me.

But that didn’t mean that I wanted to be there. All I could think about was what a jerk he’d been to me and Mommy at Poppy’s funeral. All I could think of was how much I — well, I hated him, is the truth. He sat down across from me, anyway, and calmly ordered a cappuccino for himself and, even though I’d said I didn’t want anything, a hot chocolate for me. When our drinks came, he took a sip, looked into his coffee cup, and said, “Aren’t you going to have your cocoa?”

“No.”

He hung his head. Then he said: “I’m dying.”

Just like that.

“What?”

“Your mother already knows,” he said. “But she agreed to let me tell you myself.”

“I don’t understand. Do you have cancer?”

“Kind of. It’s complicated, what I have.”

I felt like a nonperson. Like a rock. Like a stick. Like I was suspended in midanimation: a drawing of a person, instead of an actual one.

“And believe it or not, you — you and your mother — are going to come into a little money.”

“But I thought you were broke,” I blurted out when, with a thud, my heart began to beat again. “You never even buy me birthday presents.”

I was so confused that I could barely understand what he was telling me — he was dying? He was going to give me money? What was he doing here, with his gray face and floppy clothes? What was
wrong
with him? Why was he just sitting there, drinking cappuccino? Why had he ordered me a cup of hot chocolate even when I’d told him that I didn’t want it?

“The money belonged to your grandfather,” he said. “My father had more than he let on, and he left it all to me. Even the house in Queens. He’d been renting it out for years, and now it’s worth something.”

“I’m going to inherit his house in Queens? Mommy and I are going to have to move to
Queens
?”

For the first time ever, I saw Burton laugh — or rather, chuckle. A little semichuckle, that is, like a cross between a laugh and a cough. “I sold it already,” he said. “And the money will be yours after I’m dead.”

Finally it dawned on me: He was serious.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Meaning?”

“Are you really dying?” I could barely whisper the words out.

“I’m afraid so.”

“What do you have?”

“Pretty much everything,” he said.

Suddenly I was furious. So furious that I wanted to throw my hot chocolate right in his face. How dare he just show up out of the blue like this, just sit there, all calm and weird and greasy looking, and tell me that he was dying? What did I care? What did it have to do with me? I got up to leave.

But just as I was pushing myself away from the booth, he caught me by the wrist and, gripping hard, said, “Polly. Please. Sit.”

But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Instead, I just stood there, frozen with rage. Then he took a deep breath and said: “I have AIDS.”

“You’re gay,” I said.

But he wasn’t. He was an addict. Or that’s what he said: He said that he’d been hooked on heroin since before I was born and had gotten AIDS from a needle. He said that that’s the reason my mother had kicked him out — because he was using. Ever since, he said, he’d spent most of his money on doctors and medicines. He’d never wanted to tell his father, though: He said that he’d been Poppy’s pride and joy and just couldn’t bear to let him know what he really was.

“Mommy kicked
you
out?” I said. “But I thought — I thought . . .”

“Never mind,” he said. “None of it matters anymore.”

I was still standing, frozen to the spot, when he reached down for his battered and creased shopping bag, and handed it to me. “For you,” he said. “It was mine in high school. For basketball. I know it’s hard to believe, but once upon a time, I was a great athlete. At least that was one thing I could give you — speed and strength. Oh well.”

Inside was a varsity jacket with the letters MHS on it. It was maroon and ivory, a perfect vintage example of the type. “Thank you,” I said.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I screamed at my mother the minute I got home. “All these years — and I thought Burton was merely a jerk. And, okay, maybe he is a jerk. He acts like a jerk. But, Mommy! He has AIDS. He’s going to be dead soon.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s why I told him it was okay to tell you.”

“But
you
never told me, did you? You never mentioned the fact that he was a drug addict! Or that he was sick! Or
anything
!”

“I thought it would be worse for you that way,” she said. “If anyone knew. If your friends knew — if the parents of my students knew. I needed to make a living, Polly! I needed to do what was best for you!”

“And so you lied about Burton?”

“I didn’t lie.”

“You didn’t tell the truth, either.”

She hung her head. “I did the best I could, honey. Please believe that. And after a while — it was just easier to let it go. He was out of our lives anyway. What good would it have done you to know who your father really was? To know who your
mother
really was?”

“But, Mommy! You didn’t know he had AIDS. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But I knew he used drugs, honey. I knew it when I met him. And I knew it when I married him. And I married him anyway.”

“Why?”

“I know you can’t understand it, honey,” she said, “but I was in love. He was older than I was, and handsome, and my own father was so cold, so distant — and your father believed in me. He believed in my talent as a musician. And he himself was wonderful. He could sit down at the piano and play so beautifully that you could have sworn there were angels singing.” There were tears in her eyes, and she looked about twenty years younger than she’d looked before. “He was everything to me,” she said. “He was magic.”

“God,” I said, feeling even more uncomfortable than I had been with Burton. Mommy — young and in love? I just couldn’t picture it. I wanted to puke my brains out!