11
DEPENDENT EVENT
—an event whose outcome is affected by the outcome of previous events
Guido told Moo how I was going to “Internet the porch pals,” adding, “I tell you what, I was beginning to lose hope. I mean, forty thousand dollars in three weeks seemed like a hopeless cause, but now that Me-Mike is here, I think we might actually save this kid.”
“Heaven knows Karen deserves a child. Anyone who’s been through the horror of three miscarriages and a dead husband like she has . . .” Moo shook her head and sighed. “Karen is always there for us, and now it’s our turn to be there for her.” Moo’s owl eyes fixed on me. “I know you can do it, Mike.”
I stared at Moo and the three stooges, nodding in the background.
I heard a quiet whistle from Past. “No pressure, though.”
“Oh, of course not,” Moo said. “We’re all helping. It’s not completely up to you.”
“Uh, thanks,” I managed, my throat dry. I quickly told Past my YouTube idea. “I need some decent video equipment. Fast. Do you know how I could get that?”
Past thought for a moment. “Moo,” he called, “is it okay if I take Mike over to Dr. P?”
Moo looked at us, fingering her glasses. “Are you having eye trouble, Mike?”
Past shook his head. “We need to borrow his camera equipment. Mike’s going to make some videos and put them on the Internet to make money for Misha.”
Moo’s owl glasses looked at me. “You know how to do that?”
“Sure.”
Her eyes moved to Past. “See? There’s another sign for you.”
Past sighed, muttering, “If they were both named Igor, that would be a sign.”
“Would you boys like a ride?” Moo asked. “I could drop you off on the way to my other errands.”
“No, no, that’s okay,” Past said quickly. “I—I need to bring my cart.” He looked at me. “Come on, Igor, let’s go.”
I followed Past and his shopping cart over crumbling sidewalks in front of derelict buildings. He slowed down in front of one store, Natalie’s Natural Products, where there was a picture of Misha. His eyes were burning into my brain. I heard Past take a ragged breath and I tore my eyes away from Misha.
Past was blinking at the window. It was just the kind of store he’d like, being a health nut, but it was closed. In fact, when I looked closer, I saw it was out of business. I was about to point that out to him when I noticed how pale his face was. When he saw me looking at him, he shook himself, cleared his throat, and walked on.
Except for the park, and the occasional poster of Misha staring at us, it was a depressing town. And poor. No wonder they’d only raised a couple of thousand dollars. We had to reach a wider audience.
I looked at my feet to avoid the urban blight, and that’s when I noticed Past’s shoes for the first time. Brown leather Clarks. Like mine. How could a homeless guy afford Clarks? Maybe he just lucked out. Somebody bought the wrong size? Or outgrew them fast?
The last time Sasha asked me why I kept buying Clarks, I almost told him. But just as I was about to spill my guts, Julia Albasio giggled up to him and he was in girl heaven. The truth probably would’ve sounded stupid, anyway.
I’d gotten dragged shoe shopping with Dad when I was nine, and old Mr. Friedman at the shoe store said he remembered that my mom used to bring me in there. Suddenly it didn’t seem so bad to be in Friedman’s Shoes with my dad wondering out loud why on earth Rockport would’ve changed the style of the perfectly good shoes he’d bought four years ago. I sat on every one of the yellow plastic chairs because I thought, just maybe, my mom might have sat in one. I asked Mr. Friedman what kind of shoes my mom bought me. “Clarks,” he’d said. “She was a smart lady, your mother.” I’d followed him to the register like a stray dog looking for scraps. I knew so little about my mom. Dad never talked about her, so I was desperate to learn anything I could. “She came in one day when you were maybe two years old,” Mr. Friedman told me, “and she says, ‘I’ve done the research, and from now on, I don’t want my son wearing any shoe but Clarks.’” I asked what color Clarks she bought me. “Sable,” he said. “It’s just brown, but they say sable, so they charge twenty dollars more.” I didn’t leave the store that day until Dad bought me a pair of brown lace-up Clarks. I hadn’t worn anything but Clarks brown lace-ups since. Except for sports and PE. I mean, I’m not a total geek.
Past pushed his cart into a crosswalk and pointed down the street. “That’s where we’re headed. Eye Associates of Pennsylvania.”
As we got closer, I confirmed what my eyes had first read:
“It doesn’t say ‘Eye Associates.’ It says—”
“I know. Talk to ye doctor about it.”
I looked at the poster of Misha in the window as we walked inside. A stout bald man in a white lab coat rushed toward us from the back of the store. His glasses were so shiny, they reflected the front windows and the fluorescent lights in the ceiling. “Hello, Past! What a pleasure! And who’s your young friend?”
“This is Mike, otherwise known as Igor”—I glared at him—“Moo’s grandnephew.”
He extended a hand to me. “I’m Dr. Perrello, two r’s, two l’s.”
I shook his hand. “Mike Frost. Hi.”
He smiled and began polishing the lenses of the sample frames on the rack along the wall beside us, without taking his glasses off of me. “Mike. Maybe I can enlist your help in getting Moo to come for a visit. She hasn’t set foot in here for three years.” The polishing cloth stopped for a moment and he lost his smile. “I’m a little worried about her.” The cloth started again. “How is your eyesight? No problems as you’re growing? That can happen in adolescence.”
“No, I can see perfectly fine. In fact, I was looking at your sign and it says—”
He chuckled. “I know. To tell you the truth, I get a lot more business now than I did when it was correct.”
“Business? People just walk in and decide they need glasses?”
“Not my business. My wife’s. She sells fruit spreads and cakes. After the sign got . . . rearranged, she changed her label to ‘Ye Ass Homemade Goods,’ and business really picked up.
He pointed to the counter beside the cash register with a huge basket full of plastic-wrapped packages next to a pyramid of jam jars.
Past was over at the counter faster than a speeding shopping cart. “Lydia’s fruit spreads are great!”
“Yup,” Dr. Perrello said proudly, “all fruit, no sugar.”
Past whistled, staring at a label. “Blueberry, huh?” He whipped his head around to face the eye doctor. “Fresh or frozen?”
“Fresh, of course.” The doctor glared at Past over his glasses.
“Lots of antioxidants in blueberries.” Past rubbed his chin. I started tapping my foot impatiently. “How much are they?” he asked.
“Four dollars.”
Past dropped his head like a brick had hit it.
“Aw, go ahead and take one,” said Dr. P. “Lydia would want you to have it. And take a couple of her fruit squares while you’re at it.”
“Hey,” I said, seeing an opportunity, “would your wife like to sell some of those for Misha, the kid Karen’s adopting?”
His eyes brightened through his shiny glasses. “She already is! She’s made a modest amount at the flea market. The thing is, lots of people around here make their own jam, so there’s not a huge demand.”
“No problem. We can put them on the Web—eBay and anywhere else I can think of, like YouTube.” I asked if we could borrow his video equipment and explained it all to him. How I was going to record videos of porch pals, vinegar, whatever we could, and appeal for buyers or even donations. The videos would be short so people would actually watch them, sort of like public service announcements. Only more desperate.
“You know who should go on the Web?” said Dr. P. “Gladys.”
“Gladys from the bank?”
“She used to do solos in church when she was a tiny little thing. What a beautiful voice. I was always sorry she didn’t keep it up. But her mother—I guess it was really her father’s fault—well, anyway . . . maybe you could ask her, since it’s for a good cause.” His eyes landed on Past’s cart. “Let me go get the equipment and load up the cart.”
I walked over to Past, who was scrutinizing the ingredients list on a fruit square. “What’s the story with Gladys?”
He didn’t take his eyes off of the label. “Sugar—but she doesn’t say what kind. Well, at least it’s not high fructose corn syrup. That stuff means instant diabetes.”
“Past. What were her parents like?”
“Stay away from that high fructose corn—”
“Hello! Could you answer the question?”
He looked up from the fruit square. “I don’t know Gladys’s story because I’ve only lived here a couple of years. I know she plays guitar and sings, that she has poor taste in men, and that Moo has tried to take her under her wing because Moo is this town’s savior of lost souls, but I don’t know Gladys’s past, okay, Igor?”
Past finished rearranging the pyramid of fruit jars, now that he’d removed one, as Dr. P came out with an armload—camera, tripod, mikes, cables. “Happy filming!”
Past opened the blueberry jar before we were even out of the store. I stared at him as he slurped the spread right out of the jar and purple juice dribbled down his chin.
“Jeez, you attack it like my dad attacks a Snickers—like it’s going to run away if you don’t grab it.”
Past eyed me from around the jar and slowly took it away from his lips. “Snickers have hydrogenated fat. He shouldn’t be eating those.”
“There’s a lot he shouldn’t be eating.”
“Is he overweight?”
“Big-time.”
“You’ve got to get him to go on a diet!”
“Oh, right, like he’ll listen to me.”
“You’re his son. You care about him. Of course he’ll listen to you.”
I shook my head and continued pushing his cart.
“You have to try. Promise me?”
“Okay, fine, I promise. So, now that we’ve got the camera equipment, we need to find a laptop and somewhere that has a high-speed connection to upload the files.”
Past used his finger as a spatula to get the rest of the blueberry glop. “I have Wi-Fi.”
I eyed him. “Seriously?”
Past gave an overexaggerated sigh. “Oh, ye of little faith.” Then he gave me a smile. “It’s from the lawyer’s office right by the park. Often people can get a signal, sometimes not.”
I knew how to handle that. “I need a can of Pringles.”
Past frowned. “Fruit would be a better snack.”
“No, it’s for a Wi-Fi antenna to get better reception. Sasha and I built one out of a Pringles can so we could use his neighbor’s Wi-Fi.” I explained how, and Past assured me he’d get all the parts I needed for the antenna if I agreed not to eat the Pringles.
We shook on it. “You are nothing if not resourceful, Mike.”
I shrugged. “I still need a laptop to upload the pictures and videos.”
“I’ll ask if I can use the soup kitchen’s laptop for the uploads.”
“They have a laptop?”
“It’s almost brand-new, just given to them by”—he started blinking rapidly—“someone . . . who wasn’t using it anymore.”
“I can design a website to raise money for Misha by selling Moo’s vinegars, Mrs. P’s fruit spreads, porch pals—”
“Porch pals?” He got that goofy look on his face that porch pals seemed to inspire in him, and nodded.
“Good. Now, I just have to think of a video that’ll get people to buy porch pals.”
“I’m sure you’ll find some sign, Igor.”
“Would you stop calling me that?”
Past sighed. “I guess I’ll have to go back to calling you by that culturally common name of Mike.”
“Look. I know you don’t think it’s a sign that Misha and I have the same name. And you have a point. But it’s not just the name. Or the T-shirt. Or even the LEGOs. It’s the eyes.”
Past stopped the cart and studied me. “Yours are brown. His are blue.” He paused. “They both start with b. Is that the sign?”
I folded my arms. “No. His eyes are . . . I don’t know . . . trying to say something.”
Past raised his eyebrows.
I pushed the toe of my Clarks against a wheel of his cart. “It’s like . . . okay, this is going to sound really weird . . . it’s like he’s trying to tell me something.”
Past’s eyes were wide and his face was frozen.
“Never mind! Forget I said anything!”
“No.” He started blinking again and leaned his forearms on the cart, bending over like I’d knocked the wind out of him. “I believe you, Mike,” Past said quietly. “If you’re feeling something at a gut level, then you know what? You’re right. That’s a sixth sense. Or spirit. Or whatever you want to call it.” He looked up and stared at me with his Bono eyes. “I want that kid adopted, too.” For a long moment, he just kept staring at me. Then he scratched his stubbly chin and a smile started growing until it was a broad grin. I realized that I’d never seen him smile this much, because now that I saw it, I knew for sure that he was a guy the girls would drool over. Jeez, why didn’t I get his face? I mean, if I wasn’t going to get a brain, couldn’t I at least look good? Past even looked great in a frayed green-striped button-down shirt and tweed jacket. Maybe I should wear—
“My shirt!”
“What?” It came out croaky because I couldn’t believe he’d been inside my head.
“My shirt! I can sell my shirt on eBay!”
I felt better realizing that he hadn’t known what I was thinking, but it took me a moment to catch on to what he said. “EBay? A shirt?”
“It’s not just any shirt. It’s a shirt worn by a real street person.”
“Don’t you . . . need it?”
He waved his hand. “Plenty more where this came from. In fact, I’ll put one shirt a week on eBay.”
“Do you have that many shirts?” I asked.
He gave me a funny look. “I believe I can part with that many shirts, yes.” He put the blueberry jar in his cart, whipped off his jacket, and unbuttoned his shirt, taking it off quickly. He handed it to me as he started to put his jacket on over his gray T-shirt with his free arm.
I was doubtful, but I decided to humor him. “Okay,” I said, slowly reaching out for it, trying not to act like I didn’t want to touch it. “Uh . . . I’ll take care of washing it.”
He jerked it back. “What? Are you crazy? And devalue it? This is a shirt worn by a real live homeless guy. This shirt has lived against the man’s skin! This shirt has lived on the street, night and day, for . . .” He froze, went pale, and then slowly a look of resignation came over his face, gentling out the lines in his forehead. His voice came out low and in a monotone. “I’ve been forgetting to count. Wow,” he said quietly. “Anyway, it’s been”—he looked at his watch—“two months, twenty-seven days, six and a half hours.”
“Since what?”
He blinked rapidly, not looking at me and not answering. “I—I have to get to the soup kitchen. In the meantime, I’ll head you in the right direction for home.”