Heaven Is Paved with Oreos (14 page)

“I've been thinking,” D.J. said, almost as soon as she started driving, “and I think you need to talk to your dad.”

I sat there feeling fireflies hatching inside my cranium.
What do I say? Why did he let me go? Why hasn't he asked me about it? What does Mom know? What if she doesn't? What if he doesn't? What if I tell him and he flips? What if I tell him and he tells Mom and she flips? Maybe they think it's no big deal to meet your mysterious unknown grandfather. Maybe they think it isn't a big deal when your grandfather doesn't show up . 
.
 . But then why haven't they talked to me?

D.J. looked over at me. “You okay?”

“Yeah—no. You're right—I think you're right—what do I say to him?” I may have wailed this last part.

“The truth. That's easiest.” She laughed a little. “At least it is sometimes. But you can't keep this inside you. It's not right.”

We sat there for a bit, lost in our own thoughts. Did I even know what the truth was enough to say it out loud? I was certain that I did not.

“And another thing, Sarah . . .” D.J. took her own deep breath. “What's going on with you and Curtis?”

I slid down in the seat. Now I felt twice as firefly-y as before. Firefly-y and heart-beating-ish. “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing is going on with us. Not anymore.” I gulped. “He has Emily.”

“Emily?” D.J. frowned to herself. “Wait . . . is that the girl who always makes those posters?”

I nodded a sad little nod.

D.J. snorted. “Oh, please. You have nothing to worry about.”

I stayed hunched over in my seat. My cranium was still full of fireflies . . . But, I will admit, some of the fireflies now had smiling faces.

“Sarah, you need to talk to him. He's not going to talk to you, you know. He's too much of a Schwenk. And a boy. And Curtis.”

“I don't know what to say.”

“I already told you.”

“Oh. The truth?”

“Yeah. That one. It's not that difficult. He likes you. You like him. You don't have to win a science fair to know that.”

“We came in third.”

She grinned. “Same difference.”

“You don't know what really happened.” And she didn't. D.J. knows my grandmother is crazy and terrible at boys . . . but she doesn't know just how crazy and terrible I am too. Us Zorn women and our epic romantic failures. Perhaps it's a genetic flaw, like color blindness. I wonder if someone could map the DNA of boy-liking-blindness. But D.J. deserved to know. After all the talking D.J. and I have done and that extremely nice thing she said about Emily, D.J. deserved to know more than anyone.

So I bit the bullet and told D.J. Schwenk all about the Brilliant Outflanking Strategy and how massively unbrilliant it turned out to be.

D.J. thought for a long while after I'd finished. Then she laughed. “You're amazing. When Brian and I first started going out, we did everything to hide it. We would have died if anyone found out. But you two—you intercepted that pass before it was even thrown. Wow.”

“Great,” I said. I did not sound enthusiastic.

She looked at me—looked at me while she was driving. It was safe, but weird. “You have a lot to figure out.”

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

“Talk to them. Talk to both of them. It's hard, but it's worth it. Trust me.”

This is why I am sitting in my bedroom with my firefly head. I have to talk to my dad and I do not know what to say, and I have to fix things with Curtis and I do not know what to do. The only thing I know is that D.J. Schwenk believes in me. And that counts for something. Right?

 

 

Last night I asked Dad if the two of us could go out for ice cream sometime. He was sitting on the sofa holding two beers to his temples, which is what he does during corn season. He doesn't drink them, he just holds them to his temples until they get warm, and then he puts them back in the fridge. It can't be pop, either: it has to be beer.

Dad looked surprised. Mom was in the kitchen, and she did that thing where she keeps doing what she's doing but her ears grow large.

“That'd be great, sprout,” he said finally. “I'm kind of beat now, though . . .”

“That's okay.” I was happy to put it off. Now at least I could tell D.J. that I'd tried.

Tonight, though, Dad came home early. I don't know if it was because of me or the corn or what. I hope it was the corn's fault. As we were finishing supper, he asked if I was in the mood for ice cream, and at the same time Mom asked Paul to load the dishwasher. Paul these days is so lost on Planet Paul that he didn't even mind; he just started sticking plates in and humming. Sometimes I'm not sure Paul realizes the rest of us are still on Planet Earth.

Dad and I walked over to Jorgensens'. The sun was low in the sky, although not like a Roman sunset. I thought about mentioning this, but I do not have the type of vocabulary that can describe sunsets, and also I did not want to talk about Rome. I mean, I did want to talk about Rome, but that did not seem to be the most effective way to bring it up.

I got vanilla. Dad got fudge ripple.

“So how you doing, sprout?” he asked. Dad eats his ice cream uncommonly slowly. He says he does it because it used to drive Uncle Tommy crazy. It still does: I have observed with my own eyes Uncle Tommy shouting at Dad to eat faster while Dad laughs.

I stared at my vanilla. I have thought for several days about how to say this, and I know many ways to say it that would be bad:
Why didn't you . 
.
 . ?
or
How come you never . 
.
 . ?
But I did not know a way to start this conversation that was good.
Tell the truth,
D.J. had said. I took a deep breath. “I wish you had told me about Paolo.”

There. It wasn't easy, but it was the truth.

Here is one enormous difference between my mother and my father: when Mom doesn't speak, it is because she is waiting for an answer. But when Dad doesn't speak, it is because he is letting the quiet tell its own story.

Dad lowered his ice cream cone and cocked his head like he was paying extremely close attention even though he wasn't looking at me. He didn't say anything.

I didn't say anything either, partially because I did not know what else I could say and partially because I had started to cry. Which was embarrassing because we were sitting on a picnic table in Red Bend Park and because I had ice cream, which is difficult to eat while crying.

“Oh, sprout . . .” Dad patted my leg. “What happened?”

“Z took us to Rome to meet Paolo because they made that promise forty-six years ago, and so we sat there for hours even though the Spanish Steps were really hot, but he didn't come and Z said she hadn't expected him to but she obviously had, and now I am exceedingly confused because I want to know my Italian family and why didn't you ever tell me?”

Dad sat there for a long time. Fudge ripple dripped down his fingers, but I do not think he noticed. “That's why she went to Rome? Not because of the churches and that Hesselgram pilgrim writer?”

I nodded. “Yes. No. Hesselgrave.”

“Paolo . . . Jeepers.”

“Paolo means ‘Paul.'” I did not need to say this, but I did anyway. Possibly there is more Mom in me than I would like to admit.

“She was serious . . .” Dad was talking more to himself than to me.

Who was serious? Z? What was she serious about?
  . . . I did not say anything, though. I was trying to let the quiet tell its own story.

Eventually he shook his head like he was waking up. “Jeepers . . . Sprout, I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry. I didn't know that's what she was doing . . .”

“It's okay. I learned a lot, you know. I am not just saying that either.”

Dad studied the fudge ripple dripping over his hand. He looked bothered, but not about the ice cream. “I believe you.”

“Dad? . . . Who's Paolo?”

“I don't know. Z only mentioned him to me once. She was staying with us after Paul was born, helping—well, she wasn't much help. She was awfully discombobulated. I think the baby was really hard for her. Brought back a lot of memories.” He started cleaning ice cream off his fingers. I gave him my napkin. “Z and I were sitting at the kitchen table late one night, and she told me about an Italian man who played the guitar like Paul McCartney. That his name was Paolo. That he was my father.”

“And that's why you named Paul Paul,” I whispered, finishing the story.

“What? Oh, no. That's the wacky part. We'd already named him.”

I stared at Dad.

“Maybe that's why Z was so discombobulated . . . I never thought of that.”

“So you named your son after your father without even realizing it?” My mouth hung open so much that I could have eaten an ice cream cone sideways.

“Yup. Universe works in mysterious ways, doesn't it?”

“Wow . . .” I exhaled. I sounded like D.J.

“You know, I didn't even know this fellow was from Rome—I always thought they met in New York. If they met at all. ‘Paolo'—it's almost too much, you know? And you know, I'm not sure Z even remembers telling me. She has a way of forgetting stuff she doesn't want to know. Or at least forgetting for a long time.”

“Until she's sixty-four.”

Dad gasped. “Of course. The Beatles. That's what triggered this.”

I started crying again, just thinking about my next question. “Dad? . . . What was Z like as a mom?”

“She was pretty much like she is now. Not so many wrinkles. She'd show up with presents and big hugs, and then she'd go away again.” He put his arm around me. “Some people—your mom, for instance—they're born to be mothers. And some people are born to be grandmothers. Z was an eighteen-year-old grandma.”

“It wasn't hard for you?” I whispered.

“Sometimes. Being a kid is hard sometimes, even when you're grownup—being someone's child.” He squeezed me. “But sometimes it isn't.”

“I'm sorry.” I'd never thought about it that way before.

“Don't worry about it, sprout. You'll be real good at being a kid. You already are.”

Then the mosquitoes started getting to us and we walked home.

 

 

I am sitting in the park, at a picnic table. There's a softball game going on between a tractor-repair company and the county EMTs. If anyone gets hurt, it will be okay.

Last night Dad said he'd have to tell Mom what he and I talked about and he promised that she wouldn't freak. The two of them were up extremely late—the lights were off in their bedroom, but I could hear them talking, which shows how much I was awake too. I will admit that this morning Mom did not do her what-if-you'd-been-attacked-by-flying-monkeys thing. But she was most definitely on the edge of doing it. Simply lying in bed I could tell she was thinking it. I did not get up for breakfast. I did not see the need.

So now I am in the park because the library is too hot and Red Bend does not have a Harmony Coffee and it is afternoon and so Mom will be back from work and I have no interest in flying monkeys.

I am still thinking an enormous amount about what Dad said yesterday. It is a huge relief that he did not know about Paolo—that Dad did not let me go to Rome to a Spanish Steps possible disaster. It is a huge relief that Dad doesn't think Z was a bad mom. She was no worse at being a mom than she is at being a grandma, and sometimes she is extremely good at that.

I get the sense that Dad is not going to talk much more about Paolo. He's got us and Z and corn. That's all he needs. He's Planet Dad.

I think that D.J. would be pleased. She would be happy that I told the truth and heard the truth—a truth I hadn't even anticipated!—from him.

Then she would say,
And what about Curtis?

Curtis is a different planet entirely.

He comes home Sunday. In three days he will be playing baseball in this exact park where I am sitting now. He has been on his baseball trip longer than I was in Rome. I wonder if he's gone through as much as I have. Is that possible with baseball?

Has he thought about me?

Has he not thought about Emily?

I cannot tell which of those two I want more.

D.J. told me to tell Curtis the truth. But how can I do that when I don't even know what the truth is! When I think about boy-liking, all I feel is confusion. Confusion ≠ truth.

 

 

Something tremendously strange and provoking to my brain just happened.

I was sitting at this precise picnic table thinking about Curtis and Emily and life, feeling 100% confused and horrible, when D.J. Schwenk came over with two other girls and asked if they could sit with me because they had just gotten ice cream (mint chocolate chip; strawberry; something with nuts) and my table was in the shade. These were her two friends who happen to be going out together, which I know because everyone in town knows it, because two girls going out together is an unusual thing to do in Red Bend, Wisconsin.

I said yes, and D.J. introduced Amber and Dale, although I already knew their names, and I pushed my backpack out of the way and
Two Lady Pilgrims in Rome
fell out. I have been carrying Miss Hesselgrave around for so long that I did not even know it was in there.

Dale picked it up and laughed. “Miss Lillian! I love this gal! She was one rocking lesbian.”

If this was a cartoon movie, my jaw would have fallen onto the picnic table with a thunk.

There was a long and immensely awkward silence. “I'm sorry,” Dale said. “I didn't think that word would bother you.”

“Lillian Hesselgrave was gay?” I asked. Then I realized how bad I sounded, so I added, “I mean, gay people are fine,” which made me sound even worse. “Miss Lillian Hesselgrave? She couldn't be!”