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“Jeff! Open this!”
My mom is standing in the driveway, waving an envelope at me as I get out of my car after work.
“I can’t stand it,” she says. “I wanted to open it myself.”
I take the envelope from her. Return address: Office of Admissions, Brooker University, Brooker Springs, Texas.
“Open it! Open it!”
I hesitate. What if it doesn’t say what I want it to say? Then I rip open the envelope and yank out the letter.
Dear Mr. Jeffrey Browning: We are pleased to inform you that you are the recipient of . . .
“I got it! I got it!” I drop my gym bag and grab Mom, lifting and twirling her around.
She’s screaming, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”
Stacy comes running across the street.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
I put Mom down and hand Stacy the letter.
“You got a scholarship?”
‘Yes . . . Yes, yes, yes!” I am grinning so hard it hurts.
Mom is laughing and crying all at once. Stacy throws herself at me, nearly knocking me over.
“I’m happy for you, Jeff. But I’ll miss you. Texas is a long way away,” she says, stating the obvious.
“I’ll be home for Christmas,” I start singing, in imitation of Bing Crosby.
“But it won’t be the same as seeing your beastly face on a daily basis.”
Mom takes the letter from Stacy.
“I’m going to call Steve,” she says, running into the house. She’s back outside in a few minutes.
“Steve wants us to meet him at Barb and Edie’s. He says this is an occasion to mark with a garbageburger.
“Great. I’m starving,” I say.
“Me, too,” Stacy says, “or is this only a family affair?
“You’re family, Stacy,” Mom says. “Come with us.”
I run in and wash up, then the three of us climb in my car and we drive down into the industrial area of Fifth Street. Steve is parked out front of Barb and Edie’s, waiting in the car for us. He bear-hugs me when we meet at the door.
“I’m proud of you, Jeff,” he says with a big smile. Then his face darkens with sadness, like it still does now and then. “God, I wish Janie were alive to see this. She thought you were the greatest kid around. Remember?”
“I remember,” I say, thinking of Janie’s quick smile and easy laugh.
We sit down at a round table near the back. Barb and Edie’s is not the kind of place where you have to wait for a maitre d’ to seat you. There are paper placemats on the red formica table, and a mural of Bridal Veil Falls on the side wall.
“What can I get for you?” Edie calls from the counter.
“Garbageburgers all around,” Steve says, “Two orders of onion rings . . . what to drink?” he asks us, then relays the message, “Three Cokes and a Dr. Pepper.”
“Regular or diet?”
“Regular,” Steve says.
I’ve never seen either Edie or her partner, Barb, use an order pad, no matter how many orders they’re taking at once. The other waitresses do, but never the bosses.
Steve reads my letter out loud while we’re waiting for our food, then hands it back to me.
“What a deal!” he says. “Tuition, books, room and board. Boy, this plus the money from Grandma and your mom, should have you sitting pretty. I wonder how you’ll like dorm life?”
We’re talking about how part of the agreement is that I will work on campus fifteen hours a week, when Barb comes out from the back room and walks over to our table. She’s carrying a little kid.
“Hey, Shane!” she calls to the guy who’s busing tables. “Go put the stuff away from the delivery that just came in, would you?”
Shane stops what he’s doing and shuffles toward the back. Barb shakes her head.
“If that guy wasn’t Edie’s nephew, he’d be out of here,” she says, shifting the kid from one side to the other. Stacy tries to hand the kid an onion ring, but she hides her face in Barb’s shoulder.
“I hear you folks are celebrating?” Barb says.
“Jeff’s getting a scholarship to a college in Texas,” my mom says, beaming.
“Hey! The onion rings are on us,” Barb says, laughing her hoarse laugh. “No, that’s great, though!”
Barb reaches over and ruffles my hair. “Got a brain under there, huh?”
“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion,” Stacy says, getting a big laugh from everyone.
I’m feeling great—surrounded by some of my most favorite people, an exciting, paid for, college life ahead of me, eating my favorite food. Rolling in clover, as my grandma would say. Then Barb says to me, “My daughter, Emmy—remember Emmy? She went to Hamilton High.”
I nod my head, even though I only sort of remember Emmy. I think she graduated a couple of years ago.
“Well, Emmy was going away to college, too. But then this little gal changed things. Didn’t you, Rosie?”
The little girl looks at Barb, smiles, and shakes her head.
“Yep. Emmy had plans to be the big college girl up north, away from home, living in a dormitory,” Barb says, laughing that hoarse laugh again. “Now Rosie’s her roommate and Emmy’s taking classes at that glorified high school called Hamilton Heights City College,” she says, then walks back to the counter, still carrying the little girl.
The mood at our table is not so light now. I hardly ever talk about Christy’s pregnancy to anyone. I guess I try to forget about it. There’s nothing I can do. But always, somewhere under the surface of things, I’m aware that she’s carrying a baby that’s a part of me. And everyone at the table is aware of that, too, even if we don’t talk about it. Well, I can’t help it if she’s going to have my baby. It’s not my fault, and it’s not going to ruin my life.
“Hey, Sis, you’ve got something to celebrate, too. Right?” Steve says, turning the attention away from me to Mom.
She smiles. “Yep. Karen Browning, girl nurse. Can you believe it, after all these years of trying to balance night school and work, and training sessions at the hospital?”
“Not to mention raising this hunk,” Stacy says.
“When’s graduation?” Steve asks.
“May 29th. You’d better all be saving that date for me.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Steve says.
“Me, either, Mommy K,” Stacy says.
“We’ll party hearty,” I say.
Mom gives me a look, the kind that used to scare me when I was little. Ever since she had to come get me at the ranger station she acts like maybe I’m getting a big drinking problem. When I try to tell her I almost never have more than one beer, usually not even that, she gets this look on her face, like maybe so, maybe not. Between Christy being pregnant and me getting busted in the mountains, things aren’t quite as easy between me and my mom as they were before. It’s not like she’s mad—just kind of edgy, like she could get mad any minute. I think it’s a good thing I’ll be going away to school in September.
“How about you, Stacy?” Steve asks. “What will you be doing after high school?”
“I don’t know. I still want to be a vet, but I’m afraid it’s too hard.”
“Maybe you should try nursing,” my mom says. “It’s a shorter course, and there’s always one or two patients in a ward who act like animals.”
That gets us all playing the what should Stacy be when she grows up game—stuff with animals that doesn’t require too much school. Work for the Humane Society, or at a zoo, or at the race track, or open her own pet-sitting business, or grooming shop.
“Okay, okay,” Stacy says. “I get the picture. You want me to have a life—a plan. I’ll give it some serious thought,” she says, striking the classic “Thinker” pose.
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After dinner Stacy and I sit on the curb in front of my house and talk for a long time.
“Everything will be different next year,” she says.
“It’s different every year,” I tell her.
She knuckle-punches me on the arm before I have time to flex.
“I’m serious,” she says. “All of our friends will be going all different directions. You’re going to be in Texas. Who’s going to insult me when you’re gone?”
“Someone will turn up.”
“I’m scared,” she says.
“Of what?”
“I don’t know. Growing up, I guess. My mom’s already telling me if I don’t go to school next year I’ve got to get a full-time job, and pay room and board. Can you believe it?”
“Sounds fair to me,” I say.
“Oh, yeah, easy for you to say, big scholarship dude. You’re not paying room and board anywhere!”
She punches me again. I punch her back. Not mean or anything, just enough to let her know she can’t walk all over me. We argue some more, then she asks, “What about God?”
“What about God?” I repeat.
“You know, is there or isn’t there?”
That’s how our conversations go—from one extreme to the other. I don’t know about God and neither does Stacy, but it’s been a favorite subject with us for a long time.
“How could God kill Janie with breast cancer?” I ask my standard question. When Janie died, first I was mad at God, and then I thought maybe there was no such thing.
“Maybe He wanted her in heaven,” Stacy says.
“But why punish Uncle Steve?”
“Maybe he did something really bad that we don’t know about.”
“That’s bullshit,” I say. “I think if there is a god, he just got us all started and forgot about us.”
Then I see this bright shining shooting star that streaks across the whole sky.
“Wow!” Stacy says. “Did you see that?” She laughs. “I think God was telling us something.”
“Coincidence,” I say. But it’s kind of weird. Like maybe it was a special sign or something. It was the brightest shooting star I’ve ever seen.