All Shook Up
Contents
2. Sideburns and Orange Parrots
3. A Big Hunk of Love for Chicago
14. Peace, Love, and Vegetarian Spaghetti
20. Watch Out for an Unexpected Surprise
26. Elvis Has Left the Building
For my dad,
an original Elvis fan
1. Welcome to My World
Looking back, I would say everything in my life changed the summer I turned thirteen and my dad turned into Elvis.
I’d heard people say thirteen was an unlucky number, and from the very beginning, that seemed to be true. I’d been thirteen for less than twenty-four hours when the phone call came from Florida about my grandma taking a fall on the steps of the Shadyside Episcopal Church and breaking her hip. That same day, somebody swiped my bike from the rack at the city pool because—yes—I’d stupidly left it unlocked. And then my mom decided to ship me off to Chicago for four months so she could rush to Florida to take care of my grandma.
Before arriving in Illinois in August, I didn’t know anything about my dad being Elvis. Well, that’s not quite true. I knew there were people who pretended to be Elvis. You know—sideburns, sunglasses, twisting hips, jiggly legs, and all. But I never thought my own dad would become one of them.
Neither did my mother, or she probably wouldn’t have put me on that plane. I’d have gone to Shadyside Villas instead, where I could have stayed with her and a lot of nice old people while we waited for Grandma’s hip to recover.
But my dad, in his usual style, didn’t mention a word about Elvis when my mom called him. “Great. No problem. Sure. Josh can stay with me,” he must have told her on the phone—while I stood on the other side of the kitchen doorway crossing my fingers behind my back, whispering, “No, say no” under my breath. As they were talking, I could hear my mom clattering a spoon around and around a mixing bowl, loudly making something for dinner. She never spoke to my father without sounding extremely busy.
“So you don’t mind keeping Josh?” I heard her say. “Until Shirley’s better? The doctors told me it could be a few months. He’ll have to be enrolled in school. Are you sure this isn’t going to be a problem?”
Keep Josh.
That phrase again. Like I was somebody’s pet guinea pig or prize Chihuahua getting passed back and forth. Keep Josh. Take Josh. Pick up Josh.
Note to my parents: Why not ask Josh what he would like to do?
But after eight years of being shipped between two houses almost a thousand miles apart, I knew it was pretty much useless to say anything. I was the SHARED KID and both of my parents liked me better if I seemed okay with their arrangement. So that’s why I ended up telling my mom I was fine with living in Chicago for a while and staying with my dad and even going to a different school. Although I wasn’t really fine with any of those things. Especially not the new school.
2. Sideburns and Orange Parrots
My dad said he would meet me near the Arrivals gate at the airport. The plane got there on time. I got there on time.
My dad didn’t.
This wasn’t any big surprise. Every year, I flew from Boston to Chicago to visit my father, usually during Christmas vacation and the last few weeks of August, and my dad had never once been in the right place at the right time. When I was younger, one of the flight attendants would bring me to Airport Security if my dad wasn’t anywhere in sight when we landed. I was one of those crackling announcements you always hear over the airport loudspeakers. “Mr. Denny, please meet your party at Airport Security,
crackle, crackle,
Mr. Denny, please meet your…” That party was me.
Back then, sitting around the security office wasn’t so bad because they usually gave out free cookies and juice boxes to keep abandoned kids quiet and unpanicked. But I was thirteen now, and I wasn’t about to be treated like a lost kid in desperate need of a tropical fruit punch.
So I didn’t hang around by the gate. That was the trick, I had decided. Since I didn’t need an airline babysitter anymore, I just tugged my carry-on bag over my shoulder and headed quickly for the baggage claims area, trying to look like I was somebody who traveled a lot and knew what he was doing.
This time, Dad spotted me first. I was waiting for my suitcases to come around the baggage carousel when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed this guy with strange black hair wildly waving his arms as he hurried toward me.
Note: The last time I saw my dad’s hair, it was brown. Light brown. And thinning a little on the top.
“Josh! Josh!”
Before I could say a word, I was wrapped up in one of Dad’s garlic-and-cigarette-smoke hugs. My dad works with smokers and he eats out a lot, which you can tell just by getting close to him. He is also into big, manly hugs. This is the exact opposite of my mom and her family, who pat your back lightly or shake your hand when they meet you.
Note to Dad: I prefer the way my mom acts.
When my father finally stepped back and I got another look at him, I couldn’t even think of what to say that would be polite. Or wouldn’t hurt his feelings. He was wearing a blue Hawaiian shirt with orange parrots (parrots!) all over it, and jeans that were too tight for an adult, in my opinion, and scuffed, grass-stained white sneakers without socks. But it was his hair that I couldn’t believe when I saw it close up. (Remember, I didn’t know anything about him being Elvis at this point.)
I couldn’t tell if he was hoping to look younger, or more in style, or if he went to a discount hair-cutting place or what, but it was completely embarrassing to see what he’d done to himself.
Picture a hairstyle that an outdated country-western singer would wear. It was an extra shiny black color. Think jet-black. Or oil slick black. Or overdid it with Hair Color for Men black. And even worse, he had grown triangle-shaped sideburns down each cheek. They reached almost to the edge of his jaw (I’m being serious). And I swear it looked like maybe there was a little black eyeliner traced under his eyes, and I didn’t even want to think about that.
Jeesh.
“Your hair’s different,” I said uncomfortably, trying to avoid checking out his eyes again.
“Long story,” he answered, draping one arm across my shoulders. “I’ll fill you in on all the details later. Let’s get out of here.” He started heading out of the baggage area. “My car’s in a no-parking zone. Probably covered in tickets by now. I got stuck in a traffic jam on the way here, and then when I got to the airport, I opened up my wallet and realized I didn’t have one single dollar to pay the parking attendant. Not one stinkin’ dollar,” he repeated, giving me one of his goofy grins. “Forgot to go to the bank yesterday, doesn’t it figure?” My dad squeezed my shoulders again. “You’re getting so daggone tall, Joshua Greenwood. Every time I see you, I swear I’m getting shorter.” He says this every time I visit.
If I hadn’t reminded Dad about my luggage, we would have headed to the car without it. My mom is the exact opposite. She would have picked me up on time and had plenty of change for the parking attendant, and she would probably be carrying a Post-it note that said
REMEMBER JOSH’S LUGGAGE
. My mom is the Post-it Note Queen. The dashboard of her car is always lined with little notes in various colors like rows of international flags:
BUY BREAD
&
EGGS
.
CALL DENTIST FOR JOSH
.
PICK UP NEW PRESCRIPTION
.
CANCEL CABLE
.
BRING COOKIES TO BOARD MEETING
.
“Luggage,” I said to my dad, jerking my thumb toward the baggage conveyor.
“Right. That would help, wouldn’t it?” Dad laughed at himself. Because I was staying longer on this visit, I’d brought a lot more than usual. Dad tugged my suitcases off the conveyor belt, one by one, and it took both of us to start pulling them down the corridor. Good movie title:
Josh’s Life in Three Suitcases and One Carry-on Bag.
As we passed people who were hurrying to their flights, I couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that everybody who walked by us was noticing my dad. I caught people checking out the parrots and the sideburns and then pretending to look away before they started cracking up.
And I could tell they were probably glancing back over their shoulders, too, craning their necks like ostriches once we’d gone by, just to get a second glimpse of the weird-looking country-western guy with the fairly normal kid walking next to him.
Why’s that kid with that goofy guy?
That’s what they were probably thinking.
Normally, I’m not the kind of person who spends a lot of time worrying about how I look, because there isn’t a lot to pick on. My hair is nothing special, just short, a little wavy, and light brown—like my dad’s hair before the bad dye job. I don’t have any of the Big Three yet: Zits. Glasses. Braces. My feet are on the large side, but I’m one of those people who likes wearing my jeans long anyway. About an inch dragging on the ground under my heels, getting frayed and worn, is perfect. It’s a habit that drives my mom crazy.
As more gawking people passed us, I could feel my face getting warm. Why had I worn one of my bright orange soccer sweatshirts? Why not dark blue or, better yet, gray? I reached up and flattened the hair across my forehead, hoping to cover up more of my face. I hadn’t gotten a real haircut since the beginning of the summer, so this kind of worked. Keeping my eyes focused on the red and blue diamonds of the airport carpet, I imagined myself blending in, the way lizards blend into trees.
Then it happened.
Two women walked by us, and I was jerked out of red-and-blue-diamond land when I heard one of them say extra loudly to the other, “That guy looks just like Elvis. Look back at the guy in the Hawaiian shirt, Dianne. Hurry before he gets too far ahead. Look.”
But here’s the part I couldn’t believe: My dad turned around, waved at these two strange women, and said in a smooth Southern drawl, “Hey, darlings, you talking to the King?”
The suitcase I was pulling slammed right into the back of my ankles.
Elvis.
3. A Big Hunk of Love for Chicago
Trust me, right at that moment, I didn’t really want an explanation for why my dad was pretending to be Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll. If you have to choose between standing around with somebody who is being a complete
hunk-a hunk-a
burning shame in public or getting as far away from the situation as you can, you take the second option. Always.
I started walking again. Fast. Trying to stay a good foot or two ahead of my dad. I didn’t look back, even as he kept talking to me.
“Hey, Speedy Gonzales,” he hollered.
“I’m tired,” I said over my shoulder.
“Well, then slow down a little.”
“I just want to get to the car.”
All the way there, I planned how I was going to tell Dad that, despite what he might think, I was not a dumb little kid anymore and he’d better stop doing things that embarrassed me. I had a long list of examples:
Embarrassing Things My Dad Does
1. Hums loudly in public places.
2. Wears sneakers without socks in the summer (has hairy ankles).
3. Answers the phone too loudly or with some bizarre greeting other than hello, such as “Jerry’s Pizza Shop,” “The Shoeshine Man,” or “93.5 FM, you are on The Jerry Denny Show”—that sort of thing.
4. Puts his arm around my shoulders as if I’m still five.
5. Introduces me to people as “Joshua Aaron Greenwood, my son from Boston,” which always leads to the usual divorce conversations. Why couldn’t he just say, “This is Josh”?
And I would also make sure he got the message that I didn’t like his pretending-to-be-Elvis act. Or whatever he was doing to be funny this time.
When we reached the car, it had a neon orange parking ticket stuck underneath the windshield wiper. Dad whipped the ticket off the windshield. “Dammit, dammit, dammit.”
Note: My dad tries his best not to swear when I’m visiting, but 99.9 percent of the time he forgets. When he forgets, his swearing is one of the things I like about him.
I tried to jam the suitcases into the backseat of his small car, which was already crowded with junk. He’s driven the same dark blue Honda with the cat scratches on the trunk for as far back as I can remember.
“Just wedge your suitcases around whatever’s sitting back there,” my dad hollered. Right. There were two big stereo speakers, wadded-up fast-food wrappers, newspapers, a small lunch cooler, and about a dozen ceramic coffee mugs scattered across the floor of his backseat.
I think you can tell a lot about people from their coffee mugs. For instance, on the floor of Dad’s Honda, there was a gold-edged mug that said
TOP NOVEMBER SALESMAN, MURPHY’S SHOES
. Others showed scenic places my dad had visited over the years, like Niagara Falls, St. Louis, and Myrtle Beach. One mug had the words
HAPPY 40TH BIRTHDAY
and another
COFFEE: GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE
. I shoved that one farther under the backseat junk and climbed into the front.
“All set?” Dad started the car and Elvis’s voice suddenly blasted out of the speakers, almost flattening us and half of O’Hare International Airport.
A-WELL-A, BLESS MY SOUL,
WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?
Letting out a string of swearwords, Dad reached for the knobs, trying to find the volume. The air conditioner roared on instead.
I’M ITCHING LIKE A MAN…
As the song boomed out of the speakers, he tried hitting several controls at once. All the people who were standing on the curb turned to stare at us, mouths open, and a ticket cop started walking slowly toward the car.
I’M IN LOVE—
Oh god.
I slid down farther in my seat.
I’M ALL SHOOK UP—
Right after that, the music cut off. But I swear you could still hear “UP, UP, UP” bouncing through the terminal and ricocheting off the windows. “Sorry about that,” Dad said, glancing nervously at me while the Honda lurched away from the curb, with the entire city of Chicago watching us and shaking their heads.
Freak family.
“Just listening to a few tunes on the way here,” he added, as if that explained everything, as if every dad drove around Chicago with Elvis blasting out of his stereo. “It’s a long drive, you know.”
I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes, giving Dad the big hint that I really didn’t want to be around him right at the moment—and since I couldn’t jump out of a moving vehicle heading onto the freeway at fifty miles per hour, closing my eyes was the best I could do.
I thought about how things would have been completely different if I had gone to Florida with my mom. How, right then, we’d probably be eating at the little seafood place with those Sharks of the World paper place mats I liked to collect when I was younger. How we’d play cards at night on my grandma’s patio with the moths smacking themselves silly against the screens. How there was fresh-squeezed orange juice in the morning.
Note: I know this sounds like a dumb thing to feel nostalgic about, but trust me, orange juice tastes different in Florida.
Next to me, I could hear Dad making all of his nervous sounds, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and fiddling with the air-conditioning. “Josh,” he said after it had been silent for about five seconds. “There’s something important I need to tell you about. Do you want to hear it now or later?”
I clenched my eyes a little tighter, pretending to be tired. “Later.”