—
dad knocked on the diner window; I saw him and Frank didn’t. He had my hula hoop tucked under his arm, and when he reached us, he dropped it and picked me up off my seat. He held me tight against his chest and said, “Thank God,” and “You’re grounded forever,” and I heard the hoop rolling around on the tiled floor.
I said: “I don’t get why I’m grounded forever.”
“It’s directly connected to what happens in a father’s heart when he finds a pink hula hoop just lying there in the mud. To find that and have no idea where its owner is—I mean, goddamn it, Bird.”
I thought about it. He was right.
“And then I ask around and nobody remembers having seen her. And then Agnes starts talking about enemies—”
“This is Flax Hill. I couldn’t have gone far.”
“Don’t you see that that’s what made it so scary that no one had seen you? Your mom’s been on the phone to every kid in your class. But then Susie called your grammy. And you’re grounded forever.”
It was funny—I’d kind of expected Frank to be gone when Dad finally put me down, but Frank was still there, dipping his french fries in mayonnaise. He’d probably guessed that Dad wouldn’t hit an old man.
“Arturo Whitman,” Dad said, and held out his hand.
Frank went right on eating. “I know who you are,” he said.
Dad looked at me, looked back at Frank, then suggested that Frank introduce himself. Frank said his name, said it with pride, and Dad grabbed his arm and forced him out of the booth. For a second I thought Frank was going to get beaten around the head with his own walking stick, but Dad pressed it into his hand and told him to get out. “Just go. And if I see you look back at me or my daughter—if you look back at us even once—I’ll kick you right into the middle of next week.”
Frank said: “Why would I want to look back?” And he did as he was told.
—
apparently susie conlin told Dad to come get me because of Frank’s negative energy. She told Dad I was sitting in a booth with an old man who was telling me his life story and stopped talking whenever she walked past. She said I was writing down everything the man said, that I was wincing as I wrote with my bandaged hand, and that I looked really tired. She thought the old man should find somebody else to tell his life story to.
“He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“No.”
“If he did—”
“No. It was the tree that cut me.”
“Show me what you wrote down.”
“He took it with him.”
Mom was sarcastic when we got home. “You and your Nancy Drew act. Thanks for coming home,” she said, interrupting Dad, who was telling her about Frank and how he didn’t think Frank was going to come near us again. She was red-faced and red-eyed. I put her arms around me and held them there until she hugged me.
—
also . . . i found out the worst thing that can happen when you tell someone you love them. I thought that if you love someone and they don’t love you back then they’re nice to you. Or at least, if you end up feeling terrible, the other person didn’t mean for that to happen. But Mom said “I love you” to some man on the phone, a man named Charlie, and he said: “Why?”
I got into the eavesdropping late, but I knew she was the one who’d called him, because the phone hadn’t rung. She was mad at him. She thought he’d told her dad where to find us. “You told that man about me and Bird!” she said. He said he hadn’t spoken to Frank Novak in years, and was Bird a boy or a girl, and Mom said: “She’s my daughter. My little girl.” Then this Charlie person said he had two sons, and a wife. He said he was happy. (I could almost hear Frank Novak saying “The happy ones were safe from her.”) That was when Mom told him she loved him. And he asked why.
Mom said: “Charlie? Charlie?” as if the phone line wasn’t working properly, but the line was clear. He said he had to go and hung up. Then I had to wait for Mom to hang up—obviously I couldn’t hang up before she did. She didn’t put the phone down for at least a minute. I stood there listening to the dial tone and began to wonder if this was a trick and she’d left the receiver off the hook in the parlor so she could appear in the hallway and tell me I’d been busted. Then I thought she might be crying into the phone, but her breathing was regular. After she hung up I dashed across the hallway and into bed with my heart going like gangbusters.
Mom: Charlie . . . I love you.
Charlie: Why?
Mom wore sunshades for the next few days. She wore them indoors and at night, and she smiled when Dad teased her. He thought she was acting that way because Snow was coming home.
Dad: I love you, honey.
Mom: And I love you.
She slept all the way through the weekend. She didn’t even get up to eat.
I tried to tell Aunt Mia that she should maybe come over or take Mom out somewhere. I’d want someone to tell Louis I was feeling down if for some reason I couldn’t tell him myself. But Aunt Mia was avoiding me. When I called her apartment, she said, “Hello?” and then dropped the phone when she heard my voice, and then I had to call back six times before she finally answered. If that isn’t avoiding somebody then I don’t know what is.
“What’s new?” she asked, once she was done denying that she was avoiding me.
“I met my grandfather.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, on Mom’s side.”
“I figured. Well?”
“Well, we sort of hated each other.”
(I’d cried about that. The tears came all of a sudden, when I was jumping rope with Ruth and Paula. Suddenly my feet wouldn’t leave the ground and my face and neck felt raw, as if they’d been scraped with rocks. It was the look he’d given me when he understood that I was his granddaughter. It was like a burn. And now that I was safe from it, the syringe scared me even more.)
“It’s okay, cara. I didn’t get along too well with one of my grandfathers, either.”
“Yeah, but . . . this was . . . anyway, he said something weird.”