35
“Is Andy going to be my father?” Tony is leaning into the doorway of my bedroom. He’s ten years old but has the world-weary look of a thirty-year-old whose plans haven’t panned out. Andy has left, dragging himself out of bed to get to work on time. He’s a framer, and his day on the job starts early. We’ve been together for a few months, maybe half a year, and Tony likes him. He likes it when Andy pays attention to him. Maybe because Andy is still a boy himself. He’s younger than I am, by a couple of years, and his sense of play hasn’t been squashed entirely. Andy hooked up a PlayStation to my TV and he and Tony play for at least an hour every time Andy comes, which is getting to be more and more often. The sleeping-over part has commenced and the next step will be to move some of his stuff into my house.
I don’t know how to answer Tony. This isn’t the first time that he’s asked that question. He asked it about Mark, and about Teddy, two guys I dated fairly seriously when Tony was much younger. Since then, he hasn’t paid much attention to my boyfriends, so asking about Andy is a big deal to me. I like Andy and have a good feeling about this one. Still, Andy hasn’t been making any sounds of commitment.
“I don’t know, honey.”
You are never truly separate from an ex; despite distance and years, you are still connected if you have a child. Even though Anthony willingly let us go, over the past few years he’s taken to calling us and adding more money to the child support, even though I’ve never asked. He’s even visited Tony twice, taking him out to dinner and letting him pick out some desirable new toy. I’m ambivalent about this contact; he’s not exactly a presence in the boy’s life, just an interruption. Tony doesn’t call him “Dad.” He doesn’t call Anthony anything anymore. Long ago, he stopped asking when Daddy was going to come. Now he takes Anthony’s phone calls and mumbles replies. I can’t tell if there’s some resentment Tony has toward his father, which would be understandable, or if it’s simply that the man is more of a stranger to him than, say, Andy is at the moment. Which makes me smile. “Would you like him to be?”
Tony pushes himself away from the door frame. “No. I’m just wondering when he’s going to leave.”
“Why would you wonder that?”
“Because they all do.”
* * *
I get a call from the school. Tony has been in a fight. I leave work to get my bruised son, mother bear furious at the other kid.
“Ms. Meade, Tony admits to starting it.” The teacher, Miss Fletcher, folds her arms across her chest and turns a teacherly scowl at me and my son. “Tony can be very provoking. It’s not the first time he’s done this.”
“Is this true?” I squat to face Tony. “That you started the fight?”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
“Dunno.”
He is awfully young to be so sullen. “Tony, why did you fight with him?”
“’Cause I didn’t like the way he looked at me.”
The big-haired Dallas debutante teacher pipes in, as if she knows my son better than I do. “That’s not a reason, and you know that, young man. Actions have consequences.”
“I’ll handle my own son, if you don’t mind. I’m sure there was a reason he got mad. People get mad.”
“People get angry, but even a child knows better than to throw punches. We use our words. We discuss our issues.”
I take Tony by the hand and walk out of that classroom and out of that school.
* * *
We left Dallas and headed for Los Angeles. I had a friend we could stay with till I found a new job. Tony would start at a new school and get a fresh start, make some new friends, have another chance. Andy was gone anyway, the romance evaporating in direct contrast to my desire to move on to the next phase of the relationship. Apparently, Andy got cold feet at the thought of living with me and a ten-year-old.
* * *
I shoot up Route 24. After a clot of traffic breaks up around the Silver City Galleria, it’s clear sailing to the 495 West exit. Four ninety-five opens like a smooth pathway for me; even the inevitable road construction doesn’t slow me down appreciably. I feel like I’m flying. A look at the speedometer and I realize that, actually, I am. I slow it down from eighty to a more reasonable seventy-five and hope that no cop in the area will believe that a dull brown Chevy is doing ten over the speed limit. I am prepared to cry if stopped. I’m prepared to convince any trooper who might stop me that he should give me an escort all the way to Worcester—sirens blaring and lights flashing, letting everyone know they need to make way for an outraged woman.
I fluctuate between believing that Artie has kept Mack with him all this time and dread that he has no idea where the dog might be.
In what feels like a lifetime, I haven’t allowed myself to think about not recovering Mack. I won’t think about life without him. I will go to the ends of the earth to find him. Too many others in my life have chosen to live without me; I will not choose to live without Mack. Not when there’s the slightest hope.
* * *
Mack and I are performing during the lull before best in show is judged at a benched show in Portland, Oregon. It is by far the biggest event we’ve been to. Saundra and some of the other members of our freestyle club are here and have already performed. Mack and I are going to premier our newest dance, choreographed to the Beatles’ “Help.” It is a change from “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and has lots of new moves.
I come out by myself, pretending to be a lonely woman. Once the lyrics reach the words “but now I’m not so self-assured,” Mack comes dashing out of the wings, prancing around me, pulling playfully at my pant legs, and leaping into the air to bounce over my bent back, portraying someone trying to cheer a friend out of a funk. It is a showy piece, featuring his high-jumping abilities and comedic skill.
The crowd loves it. Suddenly, Mack comes down a little hard on one leap. For one brief, horrible moment, I think he’s injured. But within a second, Mack shakes off the pain and is watching my every signal. For first time, I wonder how long we’ll be able to continue these performances. There will come a day when he’ll be too old to do it. We’ll have to retire. At my subtle command, my dog—my partner—rises on his hind legs and pirouettes around me in perfect clockwise rotation, a little furry ballerina. I relax. It will be a long time before we stop dancing, and only when Mack tells me he wants to.
* * *
I touch my mouth with the memory of Mack’s happy jumps. I miss him so much. In my life, he is the only one who hasn’t let me down.
* * *
Los Angeles was pretty good for a while. I had a nice job at a health-care center, where I did patient intake. I liked it, a first for me. Tony entered junior high there. He seemed to like school, had a few friends he hung around with, boys from around the neighborhood where I had found us a small place to rent, a neighborhood that edged up close to South L.A.
* * *
“Mrs. Meade, we found your son with three other boys and a bottle of vodka.” The principal is a burly guy, Hispanic, and fighting hard to keep an unruly school population in check. He uses the words “zero tolerance” like a cudgel. My pubescent boy is being suspended.
“It’s Ms., not Mrs. What am I supposed to do?”
“He’ll have to keep up with his schoolwork. His teachers will give you what you need.”
“I mean, what do I do to prevent this from happening again?”
Mr. Chavez just looks at me, a flicker of something that might be sympathy in his eyes. “Keep him away from those boys, first. Second, keep him busy. Third, you might want to see about counseling. I wish I could say that this is a boyish experiment, but there have been other incidents, as you know.”
I do know. The fights, the inappropriate language, getting caught smoking in the boys’ lav; the bad grades, which weren’t a result of not understanding the material, but of failing to do the homework. It’s overwhelming. I have to work; I can’t be on him every second. Besides, that never worked for me, so why would it work for Tony? He’s my baby, my only family, and lately he’s become a stranger to me. Secretive, rude. I feel the tears working their way into my eyes, but I won’t let them come. “I’ll take care of it.”
* * *
I’ve reached the MassPike and I am impatient as the tollbooth attendant languidly passes out tickets to the five cars ahead of me. I wish that the car had a FastLane transponder so that I wouldn’t have to stop again, just glide through the exit at Worcester and catch up to Artie. Immediately after getting on the Pike, I pull off at the Westboro service center to pee and to call the truck-repair place. I’ll ask them to keep Artie there. Bladder empty, phone in hand, I am ready to confront Artie Schmidt.
As soon as I punch in the telephone number that Troy has given me, I suddenly wonder if this is a good idea. I’d like to know if Artie’s still there, but what if they tip him off that I’m coming and he bolts? In the end, I snap my phone shut. A quick study of the napkin with the scrawled directions and I’m fairly confident that I can find A-1 Truck Service. It’s just off Exit 11. Bang a right, a left, and then take the next right. It’s bound to be easy, so that all these big rigs can locate it without any trouble; there’s probably one of those huge signs visible from the highway. On the road, I dig out the money needed for the toll and drive with it gripped in one hand. I can’t waste any more time.
* * *
We left California when Tony was thirteen, ending up in Kanab, Utah, on the promise of a hotel manager’s job in what turned out to be a seedy, run-down motel on the main drag. The first thing I did was to move us out of the manager’s pitiful accommodations and into an apartment. In all our moving around, this was by far the nicest place we’d ever lived. Instead of renting a furnished place, I found an empty two-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a Victorian house complete with gingerbread and a circular turret. The bulge of that turret was our living room and we looked out toward the mountains that rose like protection around us. I slowly filled the place with secondhand but decent furniture, some of it donated by our landlords.
Marta and Henry Sanchez were the grandparents Tony had never had. He spent more time in their kitchen than in ours, sampling Marta’s cooking—tamales, chimichangas, homemade red and green sauces. We spent Thanksgiving with them, and popped in for Christmas Eve eggnog. Henry taught Tony how to drive a nail and change the oil in a car. Marta simply loved him.
It wasn’t the job of my dreams, but moving to Kanab put the brakes on Tony’s bad behavior. Maybe time would have done that, but Kanab and the Sanchez couple were good for him.
Things went much better in Kanab, until I had an offer I couldn’t turn down.