Root (3 page)

“
There … are … other … places … you
fool,” she said. “You never heard of a mall? Movies?” Her eyes went
wide. “Actually … my sister’s having a sort of a beach party next
weekend. Upperclassmen mostly, but I’m gonna go. Wanna come?” She
glanced towards the hearse. “I mean … if you feel up to
it.”

A quake trembled through me. “Um. S-sure!
Definitely!”

It felt so wrong to feel so good with a
funeral procession ready to roll and my mom blubbering on her
brother’s shoulder, but I think dad would have approved. He worried
about me being such a loner. He would have been proud to see me
hooking up with a girl at his funeral. It was certainly something
he would have bragged about. Who knows, he might have been bragging
about me right then, wherever it was he had gone.

“
Great! I think we’re going Saturday
at nine. My sister’s taking the minivan. You can meet us in front
of the library. I’ll save a spot for you.”

“
Cool.”

She patted my arm. “I’m afraid we can’t go to
the cemetery. Mom’s got a hair appointment. But … so sorry about
your dad. Must be so hard.”

I didn’t know what to say. I just
nodded.

“
Looking forward to Saturday,” she
said.

“
Th-thanks. For inviting
me.”

I watched her walk away, bedazzled by what had
just transpired. I just stood there, letting the last few minutes
resonate through my being. But then I realized I couldn’t call her.
I didn’t have her number. I didn’t even know her last name. But
that was no biggie. I would see her next Saturday at the
beach.

I heard a long whistle. Uncle Ed stood on the
sidewalk, waving for me to come. Cars were lined up, ready to go. I
realized that I was standing alone on the church steps. I stumbled
down to the car in a stupor.

***

Mourning is supposed to progress in a series
of phases, one leading to the other. That’s what the grief
counselor told me, anyhow. Problem was, neither mom nor me could
seem to break out of shock and denial.

Mom was a wreck. She stayed in her pajamas all
day, and lurched around the house like a zombie.

She kept on making breakfast for dad, setting
out a plate of bacon and eggs, dumping it in the trash when it got
cold. I was caught in the same time loop. On Saturdays I washed his
truck like always, still expecting to find a ten dollar bill show
up on my dresser. Nobody dared sit in his chair in the family
room.

The house was just wrong now. Mom tried using
me to compensate for his absence, gossiping to me like some
substitute husband. What did I care what the neighbors were doing
with their septic tank or who was snubbing who?

Thank God, Uncle Ed’s family stayed with us
that first week and relieved some of the pressure. Aunt Helen
became her gossip receptacle and spared me the bother.

Uncle Ed was anxious to get back to his
business in Cleveland, but mom kept breaking down, going all
catatonic, locking herself in the master bedroom. He was reluctant
to leave with her in such a state, so he and the family stayed on
till the weekend. Aunt Helen did her best to keep mom occupied,
taking her shopping, to the movies and for long drives along the
waterfront.

Ed stayed in the house all day, watching
baseball, screaming at the twins and fretting over mom and dad’s
papers. For the owner of a landscaping company, he didn’t take much
interest in our lawn.

One morning, when I was bringing him a cup of
coffee, I found him in dad’s office, muttering to
himself.

“
Something wrong, Uncle
Ed?”

He gave me this sick look and tried to smile.
“Nah. It’s okay. I guess. Let’s just say … your dad wasn’t the best
at staying on top of things. I can’t make head nor tail out of the
mortgage stuff. And I was kind of hoping he’d’ve had some life
insurance.”

“
He was talking about it. I mean,
mom kept nagging him about getting some.”

“
Yeah, well. I guess he never got
off his butt to get it done.” Ed got up from the chair, and brushed
back a dangling lock of hair. His gray-green eyes looked so much
like moms. Yet, little else about him was anything like her. Unlike
her, he had never gone to college. He seemed to have no interest in
the world beyond Cleveland.

“
James? You ever need a job, you can
come up to Ohio and work for me.”

“
You mean it?”

He shrugged. “Why not? If you learned anything
from your mom, I know you can write, work with numbers. I could use
some help in the head office. Especially if you could bone up on
some accounting. Why don’t you see if there’s some night classes at
the community college or something?”

I should have been grateful for the offer, but
a desk job? That had no appeal to me whatsoever. Landscaping to me
meant carving up yards with bulldozers and backhoes; creating hills
and dales, rock gardens and water features; transforming boring
yards into living sculpture.

“
What about working outside? I mean,
if I came to work for you.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t wanna be
doing that.”

“
Why not? I think I’d like it. I
think it’d be cool.”

Uncle Ed sighed. “Trust me. It’s not something
you want to be doing.” He went into the kitchen and got a Bud out
of the fridge. “That’s why God put Dominicans and Guatemalans on
this earth.”

***

I gladly let my twin nine-year-old cousins
sleep in my room. That week, I pretty much stayed up until everyone
else had gone to bed and then crashed on the sofa. I didn’t sleep a
whole lot, between thinking about dad and thinking about that beach
party on Saturday.

Despite the pall that the funeral had spread
over everything, I had the sense that this beach thing was going to
be a momentous and monumental occasion—a crux in the course of my
life. I certainly couldn’t hype it up any bigger in my head. The
way I saw it, Jenny was looking for a way for us to connect, to
create an opportunity that would let our feeble bantering and
dilly-dallying evolve into an actual relationship.

Now Jenny wasn’t the prettiest girl I had ever
met. She had really nice eyes, even without makeup. But her
forehead had an odd pinch to it, and nose was way too small for her
face. She was by no means model material, but I liked the way she
looked—a lot.

She wasn’t very bright or witty, either. She
never cracked jokes, just snickered at other people’s. And she knew
hardly anything about the world. She thought Obama was a Muslim
socialist and that Afghanistan was a country in Africa. From what
she let me see of her iPod, her taste in music was narrow and
pedestrian—Lady Gaga and Nicki Manaj and not much else in
between.

She had this odd way of dressing—wearing
sweaters and long pants even when it was warm out and all the other
girls had on short shorts. It made me wonder if she were hiding
some scar or deformity. I wondered what she would wear to the
beach. Would I actually get to see her in a bikini?

Two days before the beach date, I couldn’t
stand the waiting anymore. My relatives still swarmed the house and
mom had yet to return to work so there was not a chance of privacy,
especially with my two pestiferous cousins poking their nose into
everything I did.

I needed a fix of Jenny badly. I needed to
hear her voice to make sure that what happened at the funeral was
not a hallucination or a delusion, that the invitation was real. So
I had to figure out a way to call her in private.

But to get her number, I needed to know her
freaking last name. Jenny was the only name she had given me. That
wasn’t going to get me very far.

There was this geeky kid next door who went to
her high school. I barely knew him. He rarely seemed to go outside.
But when I saw him taking out the trash, I ran out to the curb in
my boxers. He threw up his arms defensively when he saw me coming
at him fast, like he thought I was going to beat him up and take
his wallet.

“
Adam, calm down. I’ve just want to
ask you something. You go to Ft. Pierce, right? Do you happen to
know any girls named Jenny?”

He lowered his arms. “Well yeah, only about
twenty. Every other girl’s named Emily or Jennifer or Ashley. I
don’t know what the deal is with these parents. Can’t think of
anything original to name their kids.”

“
Well, this Jenny I’m looking for
has got shortish, dirty blonde hair. Freckles? Never wears
shorts?”

Adam just stared. “Sorry guy. These Jennys and
Jessicas all look alike to me. It like the school got invaded by
clones.” He faked a smile. “I got a high school phone directory, if
you want to borrow it.”

“
Um, sure! Can I?”

I followed him back to his front door and
waited on the stoop until he brought over this photocopied and
stapled listing of students by class.

I started to thumb through it.

“
Oh, just take it,” he said. “I’ve
got others. And it’s not like I use them that much.”

“
Gee, thanks! I’ll bring it back as
soon as I’m done.”

“
No rush.” He headed back into a dim
lair smelling faintly of microwave popcorn.

I took the directory home and locked myself in
the bathroom. Unfortunately, it had no pictures, only names and
addresses. And Adam wasn’t kidding. While there weren’t actually
twenty Jennifers at Ft. Pierce High School, there were at least
twelve. And while I knew she couldn’t be a senior, I had no idea
whether she was a junior, a sophomore or even a precocious or held
back freshman.

I considered calling them all one by
one until I found the right Jenny, but then my finger landed on a
kid named Burke Watkins. I checked the rest of the directory. There
was only one Burke in the entire school. It had to be
the
Burke—Jenny’s friend.
So I called him.

A little girl answered.

“
Hi,” I said. “Is your brother
home?”

“
Which one?”

“
Um … Burke?”

I heard her call. “Burkie!”

There was a clunking, and then:
“Hullo?”

“
Hey, uh … Burke. This is James.
From the park?”

Silence.

“
The home schooler? The mama’s
boy?”

“
Ohhhh, right! Hey James. What’s up?
Hey man, it really sucks about your dad. How are you
doin’?”

“
I’m … getting over it. Hey, listen.
Jenny … she came to the funeral, and I need to call her, but … I
don’t have her number … and I don’t even know her whole name. Would
you—?”

“
Gallagher,” he said.

“
What’s that?”

“
Her last name. It’s
Gallagher.”

“
Oh. Thanks a bunch!”

“
Haven’t seen you at the park
lately. Where’ve you been?”

“
I don’t know. Busy, I
guess.”

“
Hey man, I know we can be kind of …
uh … brutal sometimes. But we’re just screwing around. You realize
that, right?”

“
Yeah, sure. I’ll come by
sometimes.”

I hung up, feeling a bit startled and
flattered by his concern. I could never have guessed they might
feel bad about how they acted around me.

I found Jenny Gallagher listed under the
sophomores in Adam’s directory. From her address, I could tell that
she lived in a trailer park north of town, way too far to walk. She
probably lived in one of those double wide mobile homes that were
so common along the canals near the airport.

There was no way I could call her discretely
from home. Even if I took the wireless into the bathroom, we had
too many extensions and I had too many nosy cousins infesting the
place. So I slipped out the back door and started walking to the
bus station.

I wasn’t even positive they had working pay
phones. If they did, it was probably one of the last places in Ft.
Pierce that did. But I had a pocket full of quarters and they
jingled with every step. As I skipped along, my feet barely touched
the ground.

Close to three miles I walked, right to the
edge of downtown. I reached the Greyhound terminal just after dark.
As I approached, I saw a bank of pay phones around the corner from
the rest rooms. I went inside, my palms tingling.

The first phone I tried was out of order. My
quarters fell into the slot and slid straight through into the coin
return. The receiver smelled like a wino’s dying breath. It
probably hadn’t been disinfected in years. The second phone smelled
no better, but at least it kept my quarters.

My coins conjured a glorious tone and I
punched Jenny’s number. Some older guy answered—Jenny’s dad, I
presumed.

“
Hi, is uh … Jenny home?”

“
Who is this?” He broke into an ugly
fit of coughing, full of phlegm. He had to be a smoker, and maybe a
drinker.

“
Um. I’m James. A
friend.”

“
A friend, huh? Well, Jenny ain’t
here.” He slurred his words. Definitely, a drinker.