Six weeks later on Cedar Drive, two big guys delivered a special hospital bed on a Saturday and set it up in our living room. We moved the flowery couch into the garage to make space. A home health nurse pulled up behind the delivery truck and started up the walk.
“No waterworks,” Grandpa said.
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s just a bed.”
“Did you know the first mattresses were stuffed with pea pods as their filling?”
“Nope, can’t say that I knew that.” What Grandpa had said was that he’d had a good life and he wanted a good death. And that meant being around the people he cared about and not a bunch of nurses and strangers. That was what he said, so we all agreed.
I tried to look at the bed as just a bed. I tried to look at the home health nurse as just a friendly visitor.
But I couldn’t.
I read somewhere that the heart and the brain are only eighteen inches apart inside the body. Well, it was hard for my head to send down the message to my racing heart that the arrival of a bed meant time was running out.
So I called Denny. Mrs. Rosenblatt pulled up to the curb an hour later with Denny and a giant soup pot.
Mrs. Rosenblatt shouted from her car, “For your family! Bubbie’s recipe. Take it inside, Denny.”
Denny shoved the giant soup pot into my hands.
“Bubbie’s recipe? So it probably has a lot of fiber, right?”
“It’ll drop on you like a stomach bomb,” Denny sang.
“Great.”
We got into Mrs. Rosenblatt’s van and headed away from Cedar Drive, where no one had to see a big, comfy hospital bed in the middle of the living room. We were going to hang out at the mall.
Denny whispered to me, “Wayne, did you know that one of the world’s largest matzo balls weighed four hundred and twenty-six pounds, was made with more than seventeen hundred eggs, and was created in 2010 for a Jewish food festival? Although, technically, it was not the world’s largest ball, because it was not recorded by Guinness World Records. Guinness lists the largest matzo ball at only two hundred sixty-seven pounds and made with about a thousand eggs.”
I glared at him.
“W-w-what? You like facts when you’re nervous. So I gave you facts.”
At the mall, we went to Denny’s latest hangout. Lady Foot Locker.
“Does your mother know you’re like this?”
“She thinks I’m an angel.”
I punched him solid, but he just laughed.
We got back to Elegant Engravings, and Mrs. Rosenblatt asked us to “man the store” so that she could go grab a sandwich. I sat down on the floor of the kiosk and opened my laptop. Denny kicked me.
“What?”
And there she was. Monica. The pretty, dark-eyed girl from Denny’s bar mitzvah. I could see her through the glass cases of the kiosk.
Denny looked at me, helpless.
“Hi, Denny,” Monica said. “I really like that song you sang. Are you a Beatles fan?”
Denny looked down at me again. Quickly, I wrote a small note and held it up for him to read.
“Monica, did you know that the first lyrics to the Beatles’ hit song ‘Yesterday’ were ‘Scrambled eggs’?” he sang.
“Really? That’s cool,” Monica said. I gave Denny a thumbs-up.
Mrs. Rosenblatt came back, so we decided to walk around the mall because Denny was so pumped up about Monica.
“She’s really pretty, isn’t she?” Denny asked. “And she likes the Beatles. Perfect.”
That was when I spotted another pretty girl.
Sandy Showalter, leaning against the giant panda in front of Panda Palace. Her long blond hair? Gone. All cut off in some short style. She was surrounded by ordinary girls with ordinary hair. But she was the most beautiful. Still.
“Hola, Señor Kovok.” Sandy ran over.
“Cómo estás?”
“Call me, Wayne? We can hang out.”
Did you know that when you lose your voice and can’t talk, your hearing gets sharper and the way you pay attention to sounds is different? Some words sound harsh and mean. Some, worried and sad. And some just sound so beautiful.
Call me, Wayne? We can hang out.
Those were really beautiful words.
True story.
“Sure. I’ll call you. We’ll hang out.”
Denny and I walked around for a while and ended up in Macy’s, where he went through the cologne gauntlet. Again. But the cologne ladies with their white jackets reminded me of nurses. And nurses reminded me of hospital beds. So much for going to the mall and distracting myself.
I didn’t know I’d gone outside the Macy’s exit doors until the rain hit me in the face like a slap. The rain had come out of nowhere. It wasn’t even in the day’s weather forecast.
Sort of like the way I was feeling. It came out of nowhere, too.
“W-W-Wayne, w-wait up!”
“Did you know that seventy-five percent of your brain is water?” I asked.
“Inside, please,” Denny said.
“Denny, did you know that a sneeze exceeds one hundred miles per hour? It does. A cough clocks in at about sixty miles per hour. How about your nose? Want to know something about your nose? It can remember fifty thousand scents, so you’re filling it up with cologne. Feet? Feet have five hundred thousand sweat glands. Your facial hair grows faster than any other hair on the body, so you’d better invest in a good razor, Denny. Your fingernails? They grow four times faster than toenails. The fastest-growing nail is on the middle finger. And—”
“Wayne!” He had to scream.
“Yeah?”
And he returned to his whisper-voice that kept the stutters away. “What’s wrong, Wayne on a plane?”
“Nothing.”
“So, what? Sandy?”
“No, it’s not Sandy.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t want to look at pretty girls in the mall anymore, okay?” My words came out quick and angry. It showed on Denny’s face. “Look, I don’t want to be mean, but I didn’t like Sandy because she was nice to look at. I liked her because she was Sandy. I liked her because when we did the Alamo project together, she was smart and creative and remembered to put a few girl action figures next to the Alamo. And also, that story I told about the ketchup.”
“Not every girl would rescue a ketchup-faced nerd. I’m a dope.”
“You’re not a dope.”
“Agreed. Something else bothers Wayne on a plane, yes?”
“It’s just…”
“You love him.”
“Shut up.”
I was glad I was out in the rain.
“You. Love. Him!”
“Shut up! Let’s both shut up, all right?”
“Sometimes that’s impossible. For you. The awkward silences are the blanks. Wayne Kovok fills in the blanks of life. Leave no fact unturned, Wayne on a plane!”
“When are you going to stop calling me that?”
“When I stop stuttering.”
Denny Rosenblatt was right more than he was wrong. My discomfort with the blank spaces made me aware of how much I didn’t know. How much I couldn’t control or change. “Okay, the brain,” I said.
“Yeah, the brain?”
“It consumes more oxygen than any other organ in the human body,” I said to him. “Deep breaths keep your brain happy and alert.”
“Keep going.”
“Did you know that Jeopardy! first aired in 1964?
“Did you know that the author of The Wizard of Oz got the name of the magical land in his books by looking at the drawers of a filing cabinet? He scanned A–G, H–N, and then O–Z, and chose it.”
I filled in the blanks until Mrs. Rosenblatt closed up the Elegant Engravings kiosk and splashed up to the curb at the mall and honked.
“Oh, honey, you look hungry to me,” she said. “I will make you a sandwich.”
I finally got to eat one of Mrs. Rosenblatt’s ambitious sandwiches.
And I told her that it banished my craving for Beatty Middle School cafeteria pizza sticks forever. That was the biggest compliment a sandwich ever got.