Lenny sits up in the tree, watching with disbelief and fascination as his father walks across the front lawn with an ax in his hands. He’s wearing khaki shorts, sandals, and an old tan Polo shirt with stains on the chest, and staggers drunkenly, almost tripping over his own feet. He yells at Lenny to come down, because he’s going to chop down the tree. Lenny’s mother jumps out of the front doorway, screaming at him to stay away from Lenny, and when he turns toward her, swaying, Lenny sees his chance, and scrambles down the tree, leaping to the ground and running.
His father tells her to shut up. He says, “No one respects me. No one! I work hard all d-day and no one gives me a chance! Not even my family! My own family!”
He picks up the ax and swings it back, but loses his grip. The ax slips out and spirals to the ground, sliding across the grass and leaving a pale green trail. He stumbles forward, reaching for it, and when he picks it up, Lenny has moved to the front door, where his mother pushes him inside. She says, “Go to your room.”
But he hurries to the front window and sees his father gripping the ax with both hands, winding back, and then swinging with all his strength. The ax slices deeply into the trunk of the maple tree, and Lenny lets out a small cry. His father twists and pulls the handle, loosening the blade. Lenny says to his mother, “He’s going to kill the tree!”
His father swings again, and the loud chop reverberates through the front yard and into the house. Although Lenny watches, he can’t bear to see the tree hurt like that. He turns away, and hears another chop. He remembers how he had tried to hammer a piece of wood up in the branches as a back rest, but when he saw that the nail had made the tree bleed, he pulled it out and patched it with rubber cement. He imagined the tree could feel this, and didn’t want to hurt it.
Now, after his father’s fourth and fifth chop, he knows the tree will die.
He sits on the sofa, staring at the large stereo with the wood paneling. His mother closes the front screen door and tells him to wash up for dinner. The chops outside continue, though the pace is slowing. After a few minutes Lenny peers out the window and sees his father resting, and there are deep gouges in the tree trunk, the dark bark chipped away and the white fleshy core exposed. Large sweat stains cover his father’s back. The streetlamp flickers on, sending a yellow glow over the lawn. For a moment it’s eerily quiet. A car drives by, slows down, but when Lenny’s father glares at it, the car speeds up.
His father wipes his forehead with his arm, and then continues chopping the tree.
The slow, erratic chops—a physical, visceral sound that vibrates through the yard—imprint themselves in Lenny’s memory, and will be one of the last demonstrations of his father’s strength and animosity. At one point his father takes off his shirt, and in the darkness his thick, sweating body glistens yellow under the streetlamp. His mother pushes him away from the window and leads him to the kitchen, where she sets dinner in front of him. He eats alone in the breakfast nook, listening to the thunks that reverberate through the house.
The rhythm slows, the chops become quieter, and then, after a long pause, he hears a tremendous cracking and a heavy, resounding thud that shakes the house. Lenny and his mother run to the living room, and a blur of maple leaves and branches press up against the front window, blocking out the yellow streetlight. When his mother opens the front door a branch pops into the house, and there’s a thick tangle of leaves blocking her. The bizarre image of a branch sticking through the door and into the living room almost makes Lenny laugh, but his mother angrily shoves aside the branch and pushes her way out the door, yelling at his father in Korean.
Lenny follows her through the branches and threads his way out onto the yard where the tree lies on its side. There are deep trenches in the lawn. The broken stump has white shards sticking out, with strips of twisted and tortured bark still attached to the fallen trunk. His mother says to his father something in Korean about the mess he’s made, and he replies in a tired voice. He moves toward the branches jutting against the house, and chops those. He sees Lenny watching and says, “Go to bed.”
“You killed my tree.”
“Your tree? Your tree? This is my house, my yard. Go to b-bed now.”
Lenny walks through the branches and back into the house. He hears his father chopping some of the smaller branches, the cracks higher in tone. As he gets ready for bed and settles into his room, listening to the rustling and snapping of branches, he falls asleep and dreams of spiraling helicopter maple seeds falling around him.
When Lenny wakes up the house is quiet and still, and he walks into the living room, which is unusually bright. He looks out of the window and sees many of the large branches cut and piled in the corner of the yard. The huge trunk still lies there in the center of the lawn, with long gashes in the grass and large, leafy branches sticking up into the air, but all the branches that were jutting against the house have been pruned back. Wide, green maple leaves are scattered everywhere. The yard seems brighter, airier.
Lenny walks out onto the lawn, his bare feet swishing through the dew-covered grass. He sees the white wood chips sprinkled across the yard and picks one up. He likes the compactness of it, and when he realizes that this chip was once part of his favorite tree, he puts it in his pajama pocket. He finds a larger one and keeps it as well. He begins collecting as many wood chips as he can, stuffing them in his pocket, and when his pockets are full, using his pajama top as a net.
His mother opens the front door and asks him what he’s doing.
“I want to save some of these.”
She said his pajama bottoms are getting wet.
“I don’t care.”
She disappears for a moment, and then comes outside with a plastic bag, and begins helping him collect the wood chips. After she fills the bag she hands it to him, and tells him to go inside and get ready for school. He brings the bag into his room, sorts and dumps them into an empty shoebox. The chips will travel with Lenny for years, handfuls getting lost or misplaced with each move, but one day, in his late twenties, he will pull out the bag, choose an unblemished chip and begin whittling a pendant, which he still wears today.
Over the next few days his father and brother chop the tree into piles of firewood, and one of their neighbors with a gas-powered chain saw comes over to cut the stump and the few larger pieces of the tree trunk. The front yard seems empty. There used to be a birch tree in the other corner, but his father chopped that down when it began to die. Except for what’s provided by a tall oak that borders the next-door neighbor’s yard, they don’t have any tree cover.
Lenny has to repair the gouges in the lawn, but his father seems too tired to keep hounding him about the yard work. His father is still in the midst of a job search, and although his mother hasn’t revealed all the details yet, she is about to initiate divorce proceedings. Both of them are out often. Mira spends more time with friends and Lenny has the house to himself.
The mail-order pamphlets arrive during one of these solo afternoons, and he’s disappointed that they’re simply a bunch of mimeographed copies stapled together in a crude hand-made book. Even the staples are cheap and bent, misaligned in the spine. The copies are printed in the same purple ink of school ditto handouts.
However, once he reads the pamphlets more closely he sees that they are step-by-step directions for all phases of planting, growing, harvesting and drying marijuana, with line drawings. The detailed explanations are listed in simple, clear language. On the back of them is the name of the organization, a cooperative in Berkeley, California. Because Sal had paid for these, they are his, but Lenny brings them to the Merrick Library and photocopies a set for himself.
Excited by the arrival, Sal asks Lenny to water the crops while he stays at home to study these. After an initial glimpse, he hands Lenny more cash and says, “Find other catalogs and books. Stuff like this is great.”
Lenny counts out fifty dollars. “About growing?”
“Anything. And keep the change again.”
They’re sitting in his crawlspace, and he pulls a small lamp closer to him. Lenny asks about the trip lines, even though they haven’t seen any more evidence of trespassers.
“Keep them up. Maybe that one time was just some guy wandering around. I’m guessing it was night when he showed up, so maybe he didn’t even notice the plants. But check everything carefully just in case.”
“Come back here?”
He says, “I might be upstairs. You know what? Here’s an extra key for the lock here. You can hang out here if you want. If you ever need to crash here, go ahead. Just make sure I’m not here, sleeping. I’m usually not, but just in case.” He hands over a key to the padlock.
“Thanks.”
“No big deal.”
“Things okay at home?”
Lenny shrugs his shoulders.
Sal finally says, “Okay. Let me go through these. Thanks.” He settles into a cushion, hunching over, and studies the pamphlets.
Lenny finds Ed that afternoon packing most of his belongings into the storage room, preparing for his summer off. Ed asks how school is, and Lenny tells him about the stupid test he hadn’t understood.
Ed tilts his head. “I hope you did well.”
“Why?”
“Those are placement tests for junior high school. You’re going to be tracked based on those tests.”
“Tracked.”
“You know: Gifted, Advanced, Regular, Dumbshit.”
“What?” Lenny says, alarmed.
“Yeah, and you can’t get off it. It tracks you into high school, and your GPA gets added points if you’re in the higher tracks so the higher tracks get into better colleges. I got fucked. So, I hope you did well.”
Lenny says that he rushed through it quickly to get to recess.
Ed raises an eyebrow. “Why did you do that?”
“I didn’t know it was important!”
“Oh, man. You’re going to be a dumbshit.” He laughs. “Just because you wanted to go play kickball!”
Lenny feels queasy.
His brother’s goodbye is brief and uneventful. Mira and Lenny hadn’t gone to his graduation, and no one had gone to Lenny’s, including Lenny himself. He never gave his parents the invitation, and he just didn’t care. All these events make the end of the school year feel anti-climactic. When Ed leaves the house he hoists a heavy backpack over his shoulder, punches Lenny in the arm and says, “Catch you later.” Their mother kisses him. Their father shakes his hand, and Ed ruffles Mira’s hair.
Then he walks out of the house and jumps into his friend’s Mustang. They screech off, and that’s more or less the last Lenny sees of Ed for years. The strange thing is that there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference in the house. He was there so rarely anyway, that for Lenny the biggest change is his new bedroom in the basement, where it’s cold and damp, but completely private.
The back door leads directly to the basement stairwell, so Lenny often leaves and enters the house without seeing anyone. Lately, though, his mother has taken over the kitchen table in the breakfast nook for her work and studying, so sometimes Lenny finds her late at night preparing for her realtor exam.
One night he comes upstairs and finds her studying, charts and graphs of home prices in front of her, and she brightens when Lenny appears. She asks him to join her. She shows him her test preparation books, and tells him she likes this because it involves so many different areas, like math, reading, and even art and architecture. The test is in a couple of weeks, and she feels ready. She says, “I never thought I would become a real estate broker.”
“You wanted to be a painter, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Maybe I will go back to it eventually. What do you like to do?”
He thinks about the books, pamphlets and magazines, and says, “I like to read.”
“Maybe you can be a professor.”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t give you a lot of advice, but I will say one thing. Find what you love and do it well and keep doing it, and the money will follow. If I had followed that advice maybe I would be a famous painter by now.”
She touches his cheek. “I know you will do well. I can see it.”
“How?”
“Because you never give up.”
She kisses his forehead and tells him to go back to bed.
Sal has to go to summer school, but because Lenny has his days free, he cares for the crops, and he watches the plants grow taller and bushier, those with the premature flowers tagged as male—the tiny stalks and symmetrical knobs indicating their sex—appearing even larger and thicker. Sal wants to wait until the pre-flowering stage when the females begin clustering their new leaves, fully revealing their sexes, and then they’ll decide what to do with the males.
Lenny studies the copies of the pamphlets as closely as Sal, and they debate the idea of fertilizing the females with male pollen to produce seeds for the next crop. Sal isn’t sure if there will be another crop, and he still has plenty of seeds stored in his crawlspace. Although Lenny understands that female plants that don’t make seeds are more potent, he keeps thinking about the future. Sal repeats a few times that growing in the woods is too hard. Lenny wonders about his attic and the backyard. Even though he doesn’t know yet how complicated harvesting and drying is, and he has no idea about selling, it’s the notion that he, a kid, could grow something illegal, coveted and profitable that appeals to him.
A couple of the catalogs advertise seeds for sale, though he isn’t sure how legal this is and worries about his parents getting in trouble. He considers using another address, maybe his elderly neighbor’s, making sure he intercepts her mail.
Lost in thought as he returns home, he’s startled to find a strange Korean man sitting on the front steps, smoking a cigarette. He stands up when he sees Lenny, ducking his head shyly, and asks in broken and barely understandable English something about whose house this is.
He has large bags under his sad eyes, and his teeth are crooked and tobacco-stained. A belt holds up oversized jeans. Lenny asks him whom he’s looking for, and the man says “Yul.” Then he asks, “Are you Won Chul?”
That’s Lenny’s Korean name. He nods his head.
“I am Gil. Your…” He pauses, thinking of the word. “… uncle? I see you when you…” He lowers his hand to his thigh.
“You’re my father’s brother?” Lenny asks, not recognizing him.
He smiles and said he is.
He doesn’t look like Yul, and because his parents had never mentioned a visit, Lenny is suspicious. He asks Gil to wait here while he calls his mother. Gil sits back down, and lights another cigarette.
Umee hadn’t known Gil was coming, and tells Lenny she will call him back. After a few minutes his father calls, and asks to speak with Gil. Lenny hurries to the front door and opens it, motioning him in and leading him to the kitchen phone.
He speaks to Yul in Korean, and Lenny hears his father’s voice asking curt questions. Uncle Gil replies in a soft, apologetic tone, and after a few minutes, he hands Lenny the phone.
His father says, “Keep an eye on him until I come home.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just don’t let him touch anything.”
“How can I do that?”
“Just do it,” his father says. “I will be home early.” He hangs up.
Lenny turns to his uncle, and they stand there awkwardly for a minute. Lenny offers him a drink, which he doesn’t understand, so Lenny motions drinking with his hand and Gil grins. “Yes, yes. Thank you.”
Uncle Gil originally came to the U.S. on a tourist visa, which had expired years ago, and he’s here illegally. He’s in town now to ask his brother for a job.
Lenny doesn’t understand much of what’s going on, because unlike the conversations his parents have, which are often sprinkled with English, Gil and Yul speak quickly and without the same inflections. When Lenny asks his mother she tells him that his father is angry at this surprise visit and burden. “Your father always had to take care of Gil when they were younger, and he didn’t like it.”
“What can Gil do, if he’s here illegally?”
“Many Korean storeowners can hire him off the books.”
“How long will he stay with us?”
“Not long,” she says. “Your father won’t let him.”
Gil smokes a lot, and Lenny often finds him sitting on the back steps, mashing out a cigarette in an old ceramic pot that quickly fills up with butts and matches. His English is limited to a few words, but they manage to communicate through gestures.
One afternoon Lenny asks him about his father, trying to find out what he was like as a kid. It takes a while, but Lenny finally conveys his question, and Gil sits and thinks about this while blowing smoke rings. He finally points to the house and makes a fist. “Abogee, daddy, uh…” He tries to think of a word, but shakes his head. Then Lenny gets an idea. He finds a Korean-English dictionary on his mother’s bookshelf and hands it to Gil, who smiles. He flips through it and says, “Your daddy… tough.”
Later, Lenny’s mother explains more. She and Gil have talked, and she learns that Yul used to punish Gil by making him lift a wheelbarrow and carry it across the yard. If Gil dropped it he wouldn’t be allowed to sleep in the house.
“Where was their father? Their mother?”
“Your grandfather was never home. He was a smuggler.”
Lenny had forgotten about that, the stories of his grandfather smuggling opium into Korea. “And their mother?”
“I don’t know. They don’t talk about her very much. I think she was also hard on them. They were a hard family. You have to remember that about your father, how he is. It’s all he knows.”
Lenny can’t imagine his father as a kid, but he can see Gil as a child, because of the tentative and awkward way he seems to deal with everyone, including Lenny. Gil has trouble looking people in the eye. He talks to peoples’ feet, mumbling in a low voice. But his timidity annoys Yul, who barks at him, and Gil straightens his posture. Yul’s tone is tinged with disgust whenever Lenny overhears him talking about his brother, and Lenny begins to feel sorry for Gil.
Handy with tools, Gil helps with a few household repairs, including fixing the garage door, which often sticks, and cleaning out the gutters. Yul inspects these the same way he inspects Lenny’s yard work—Lenny notices a similar glimmer of hostility in Gil’s eyes.
One afternoon Lenny hears them arguing in the garage. Gil’s voice is characteristically quiet and subdued, but there’s an edge to it, an insistence that angers his father, who speaks in clipped tones. Lenny doesn’t know what they’re saying, but Gil loses his temper, raising his voice.
Yul replies, and Lenny hears the garage door opening. His father storms back to the house, gathers Gil’s bag and clothes, and throws them out the front door. His father then sits in the living room and turns on the stereo. Lenny goes outside through the garage and sees Gil picking up his clothes and packing them angrily in the small duffel bag. His face is flushed. When he sees Lenny he takes a deep breath, and lights up a cigarette. He asks, “Taxi? Bus? Where?”
“You can get one at the train station,” Lenny says, pointing beyond the church. “Train.”
Gil nods his head, understanding. He hesitates. He sticks out his hand to shake. “Goodbye,” he says.
“Goodbye.” Lenny shakes his hand, which is covered in rough calluses.
Gil inhales the cigarette, turns and walks down the street. Lenny never sees him again.
Umee passes the real estate broker exam, but continues to work as a receptionist and secretary while she trains with her boss. Yul, pleased for her, celebrates with a bottle of wine with dinner, imagining aloud that she will tap into the Korean market and then set up her own firm in New York, where rich Koreans will use her services to buy investment property.
But Umee quickly dismisses this, saying that all she wants is a good, steady job.
“No vision, no d-dreams,” Yul says scornfully.
“Like a candy store in the middle of nowhere?”
They are eating at the kitchen table, and the small radio on the shelf plays the local classical station. Everyone falls quiet as Yul considers this retort. The announcer on the station comes on in his soothing, deep voice, and Mira and Lenny exchange glances. They know they will be leaving the table any minute.
Yul says, “It would’ve worked if the economy was b-better and you did a b-better job.”
Umee then does something uncharacteristic. Lenny expects her to spit something back, or to shut down, but instead she puts her glass of wine carefully on the table and looks coolly at Yul. She says, “Blame me all you want. Everyone knows the truth.” She motions her head toward the kids, which surprises Lenny.
Yul reverts to Korean, his voice threatening. But Umee isn’t fazed. She shrugs a shoulder and replies. Her reaction also seems to confuse Yul, and when Mira and Lenny ask to be excused he waves them away. Yul and Umee begin to talk quietly in Korean, and the strength with which Umee handles her husband is so interesting to Lenny that he sits on the steps to the basement, the door closed, so he can eavesdrop. He doesn’t know precisely what they’re saying, but his mother seems to be laying out an argument slowly and carefully, bullet points for his father to consider. His father listens for a while and then replies in a tired voice. Lenny hears his father’s chair scraping the floor as he leaves the table. He walks to the bedroom and closes the door.
Lenny emerges from the basement stairwell as his mother clears the table. He asks her what happened. She blinks rapidly, her expression disbelieving. She says, “I told him I hired a divorce lawyer. I want him to move out soon.”
Based on the advice in the pamphlets, Sal and Lenny harvest some leaves and growing shoots. Although the main goal is the final harvest, especially the buds, which is approaching more quickly that Sal had thought—the ideal weather, the swampy soil, and the strain of cannabis all contribute to this—Sal needs to sample some of the new growths for the potency. He dries the leaves in his oven when his parents aren’t home, and rolls a joint. Because he’s worried about the smell, he smokes it in the woods. He says, “I’d offer you some, but I think you’re too young.”
“I think I should try a little.”
He hands Lenny the joint, who never smoked anything before, and because of his soft palate problems he has trouble inhaling without leaking air in through his nose. Sal laughs at his difficulty, and finally Lenny holds his nose to suck in the smoke. It burns his throat, and he has a coughing fit.
“I know. It could be smoother.”
“People do this for fun?” Lenny gags.
“A bong would cool off the smoke, but the leaves are harsh. I’m going to experiment with curing, because that’s supposed to help. Slow drying too.”
Lenny’s eyes water, and he hands the joint back to him. “I don’t feel anything.”
“You probably won’t, not the first few times. I’m feeling it.”
Lenny studies him. He seems no different than usual. It occurs to him that maybe Sal is often stoned. They sit on the edge of the concrete run-off, a small stream of water splashing into the creek, brown and yolk-colored foam congealing near their feet. The sweetness of the marijuana covers up the rot smell of the swamp.
He tells Lenny he’s found the model of motorcycle he wants, and will probably buy it used, once he sells the bulk of the crop. He says, “I already have buyers for most of it. Not guaranteed or anything, but I know a bunch of dealers who can handle a quarter or half pound.”
They haven’t talked about Lenny’s payment since he first started working with Sal. Lenny says, “I’ve done a lot so far.”
Sal smiles and nods his head. “Your base payment is still three hundred dollars, but there’s going to be a bonus, no doubt. It all depends on how much usable weed we harvest and how much I can get for it. I promise you that I won’t screw you over. Just with the mail order stuff you’ve probably helped me make better weed.”
“Okay.”
“You’re going to have a lot of cash for a kid. What are you going to do with it?”
“Save it. Most of it.”
“Good. You should open a bank account. Do you have one?”
“My father opened one for me. There’s only twenty dollars in it.”
“Watch out for that. My friend had a joint account with his dad, and his dad emptied it out.”
Lenny didn’t think of that.
Sal says, “I also want a small boat. I’m thinking about taking a boat license course. You want to take one with me?”
“Maybe.”
“It’s to certify us to pilot a boat without adults. They’re giving the course at the Freeport Recreation center. Think about it.”
They sit quietly while Sal continues smoking his joint.
Lenny tells him that his parents are getting a divorce.
“Oh, man. You going to move or what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Here. Try another hit.” He hands Lenny the joint. This time Lenny sucks the smoke into his mouth, and then inhales that with air, and it goes down more smoothly. He still coughs, but not as badly.
Lenny passes the joint back. They hear the cars on Sunrise Highway above them, the babbling water below, and as he takes a deep hit, the ember sizzling, Lenny hears a train approaching. He finds a sense of calm settling through him.
Lenny sighs contentedly.
Lenny still does the yard work at the house to pay for the dent repair, but after well over a month of this he suspects his father is taking advantage of him. His father wakes Lenny up in the morning with a list of tasks, including mowing the lawn, trimming the hedges, and weeding the grassy area along the sidewalk. Lenny tells him he mowed last week, and his father says, “The lawn grows. Time to mow it again.”
“I think I’ve paid for the dent by now.”
“I don’t think so.”
“How much did it cost?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
“I’ve mowed and trimmed and weeded and raked twice a week for a month and a half, even more. I think I’ve paid for it.”
“Now that Ed is gone, you are responsible for the yard.”
“Why don’t you do it?”
He says, “You stupid little b-boy. You will do what I say.”
Lenny sits on his bed. His father put his hands on his hips, waiting for a response. Lenny wonders what his life will be like when his parents split up. He says, “I am going to call up landscaping businesses to find out how much they charge. If it looks like I’ve done more than $200 of work, then I am going to start charging you.”
His father is about to reply, but stops. He smiles. “You are getting smarter. That’s good b-business sense. Starting next week if you take care of all the yard work I will p-pay you an allowance.”
“How much?”
“Three dollars a week.”
“If you p-pass inspection and I don’t have to remind you every time, then four dollars a week.”
“How about five?”
“Don’t get greedy.”
His sister tells him of a garage sale nearby, so they go together that afternoon, and while she searches for a new record player Lenny examines one of two TV’s for sale—an old black and white, and a small color TV. Neither is right for his room, but while browsing the books he finds a bin full of Radio Electronics and Popular Science magazines. In one issue of Radio Electronics are plans, including a parts list and detailed instructions, for how to build a telephone eavesdropping device. His heart starts beating quickly. The older woman tending the sale wears a flowing glittery wrap and scarf, her hair beaded. She lookes surprised that Lenny wants to buy a box of magazines, and accepts his offer for two dollars. She says, “You Orientals like engineering, I guess.”
This startles him. He doesn’t know how to reply to that, and just hands her the two dollars. Mira is disappointed that there’s nothing for her to buy.
But when they return home she surprises him with a gift. It’s a small smooth rock that has been painted yellow, with a face of a bear on the front. “What is it?” he asks.
“Pet rock.”
“You paid for this?”
“A dollar.”
“You paid a dollar for a rock? Are you joking?”
She blinks, her expression hurt. “It’s a present.”
“How could you waste money like that?” He’s about to throw the rock out the window, but stops. Mira looks like she’s about to cry. He realizes how mean he’s being and quickly says, “You know what? It’s cool. I like it. Thanks.”
“I got it for you.”
“I know. It’s great. I’m sorry. I like it a lot. Really I do.”
She turns away without speaking and walks to her room.
Lenny holds the rock in his hand, cursing himself for not being more thoughtful. He vows to keep this rock forever and make sure he’s careful about other peoples’ feelings. He looks at the bear and says, “You will keep me from being mean.”
Harvest time for the marijuana coincides with Lenny’s father’s fading from their lives. Sal has already taken the males, cutting them down before their flowers open, but now the females are in full bloom; according to the pamphlets the buds are their most potent as the flowering slows, so it’s time. Sal dries the males in the crawlspace, but he worries he doesn’t have enough room for the more important females. The males hang upside down on string, a small fan blowing air around them to prevent molding.
They work at night, because they have to carry three heavy burlap bags, large and suspicious looking. Sal has a make-shift trailer—just a large piece of plywood with baby-stroller wheels attached—that he hooks onto the back of his minibike, and they tie down the bags with bungie cords.
It’s three in the morning, and both of them are exhausted from cutting and carrying the plants through the woods, worrying about cops. He starts up the engine, and they cringe at the noise. He says, “Hurry up. Get on.”
Lenny climbs onto the back, and Sal pulls forward, glancing over his shoulder at the trailer. It shudders and clatters behind them, but seems secure. Sal tells Lenny to keep a sharp lookout, but the streets are empty. He speeds back to his house, killing the engine before he reaches the driveway, and they coast into his back yard. Moving quickly, they bring the three huge burlap bags into this crawlspace, though there really isn’t any room. The drying males crisscross the low ceiling, and the smell makes Lenny’s eyes water.
“We’ll leave this here and deal with it tomorrow,” Sal says, opening the burlap bags to air the plants out.
“How will you dry all this?”
“Do you think we can use your attic?”
Lenny hesitates. “I don’t know.”
“You said no one goes up there.”
“But getting it there will be hard. My mom stays up late in the kitchen, and my sister is around a lot.”
“You can do it a little at a time. It’s going to take a couple weeks to dry all this out anyway. Every day just bring a few plants, string them up to dry. Make sure there’s ventilation.”
“There is. It still gets hot up there, though.”
“Start tonight. Be really careful with these. The oils on here have all the THC. If they get rubbed off, we lose it.” He carefully wraps three plants in cheesecloth, and hand them to Lenny, who is too tired to argue. He cradles them in his arms, and walks home.
The moon shines brightly down as he presses his nose close to the plants and inhales them. The sweet smell has become familiar and comforting to him. Although he has smoked some more since that first time, he doesn’t particularly like it, especially since it seems to aggravate his allergies, and inhaling is difficult with his nasal problems. It also does something strange to the back of his eyeballs, making them feel as if they’re bulging. But he likes the idea that he can grow something natural and sell it for money.
Instead of bringing the plants into the attic in the middle of the night, which he knows will make noise throughout the house, he strings them up in his closet, throwing his coats and shirts onto the floor. Tomorrow he’ll figure out how to use the attic once everyone goes to work. Maybe he’ll send his sister on an errand to keep her out of the house.
Lenny looks at the clock: it’s almost four a.m. He’s so tired he collapses on his bed in his clothes, the smell of marijuana on his fingertips, and falls asleep.
Lenny’s mother gives him updates about the impending divorce—Yul hired a lawyer, and they’re negotiating the terms, including the division of property, assets and the house. Umee just wants out of the marriage, so she surrenders more than she should have. She’s close to selling her first house as a newly minted Real Estate Broker, and is confident that she can support her children without their father. But she worries about their college fund. “I will fight for that,” she tells Lenny.
But his father still lives at home, and the strange détente that exists between them gives the house a muted, awkward feel. Lenny’s mother spends most of her time at the kitchen table, while his father stays out of the house, sometimes for a couple of days at a time. When he returns, he drinks in the living room and then slumps off to bed. Lenny’s mother sleeps on the sofa.
Yul becomes morose and withdrawn, but it’s the knowledge of his departure that emboldens Lenny. He no longer maintains the yard, and when his father tells Lenny that he isn’t going to pay the agreed allowance, Lenny shrugs it off. When his father asks Lenny to shine his shoes, Lenny refuses. His father looks as if he’s about to yell, but after a moment stops himself. He turns away without saying anything.
He leaves boxes of files and computer books stacked in the basement office as he slowly packs his belongings. Lenny snoops through the paperwork and amidst the bills and delinquent notices, he finds a file of receipts, including one from an auto body shop for a dent repair, dated shortly after Lenny dinged the car with the ladder. The total cost for the repair was sixty-five dollars. Lenny studies this, angry that his father had lied about the cost of the repair and made Lenny work more than he should have. Lenny wants to confront his father with it, but knows he’s drunk right now.
Lenny walks up into the kitchen, stewing at the fact that he’d been cheated by his own father, when he calls out to Lenny, telling him to bring some ice. Lenny ignores him. He calls Lenny again, and Lenny says, “Get it yourself.”
Lenny hears him move off the couch and walk toward the kitchen. Lenny slips out through the garage, and hurries along the side of the house, hearing him call out again.
He appears in the front doorway as Lenny crosses the street. He yells to come back.
“No,” Lenny says. “I know you lied to me about the dent. It didn’t cost two hundred dollars. It was only sixty-five dollars. You made me work more than I had to.”
His father thinks about this, swaying. He says, “How did you know that?”
“I saw the receipt.”
“You should not be going into my files!”
“You shouldn’t be lying to me and cheating me. You owe me money.”
“How dare you talk to me like that!” He lets out a string of Korean curses. “You come back right now!”
Lenny stares at his father, whose face is sweaty and red.
He has to hold onto the doorframe for support. Lenny is completely disgusted.
“Then you stay out! You don’t come back here.”
“Fine,” Lenny says, walking away.
“Don’t come back!”
“I won’t!”
Lenny moves down the street, heading toward the library. He considers staying out as long as he can, sleeping in Sal’s crawlspace. He regrets not telling his father how he really feels, how glad he is about the divorce.
He then hears someone call his name. He turns around. It’s Mira on her small bicycle, streamers flowing from her handlebars and a wicker basket in front with a sunflower design. She calls out to him again and tells him to wait up. He stops, puzzled.
She rides up to him, her feet pedaling quickly. She’s out of breath.
“What do you want?”
“Where are you going?”
“Away.”
Her eyes widen. “You’re leaving?”
“He kicked me out.”
She looks down, and finally says, “I want to go with you.”
Lenny, taken aback, says,” I’m not really leaving. I’ll be back. Go home.” He starts to walk away, and she follows him. He turns to her. “What are you doing?”
“I want to go with you.”
“I’m just going to the library.”
“I want to go too.”
He sighs. “All right. Come on.”
She rides next to him, her wheels squeaking.
The next afternoon Lenny receives a letter in the mail from Merrick Avenue Junior High School, telling him that he placed in the regular classes, and the schedules will be sent to him in a month. He completely forgot about this, about taking that test, and now he wonders if he should tell his mother.
He calls her at work, and she answers the phone in her secretary’s voice. When he explains what happened with the test and the results of that, she practically yells into the phone, “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“I forgot.”
“You forgot that you ruined your academic career?”
“I didn’t ruin—”
“Give me the phone number on the letter.”
“Mom, it’s no big deal—”
“Give me the number.”
Sheepishly, he does. She hangs up without saying anything else. A few minutes later she calls back and says, “I’m picking you up in twenty minutes. We’re meeting the vice principal.”
“Now?”
“Twenty minutes.” She hangs up.
Twenty minutes later his mother picks him up, telling him that she had to take off from work, and this is something he should’ve told her about as soon as it happened. She says, “You understand what this means, don’t you?”
“The tracking? Ed told me.”
“You told Ed, but you didn’t tell me?”
She shakes her head angrily. “This is not a joke. This is your future.”
He rarely sees her this angry at him, and he sinks down into his seat. When they arrive at the school, which is open for summer school but mostly empty, they walk into the administration offices, where Mr. Jasper, the Vice Principal, is waiting for them.
Mr. Jasper, tall and lanky, has a full beard and mustache, and speaks calmly to Umee about this unnecessary visit, because, as he stated on the phone, there isn’t much he can do.
Lenny’s mother launches into a long explanation of what happened with her son, why his test scores are low, and, based on his grades, why he should be in the gifted program.
“I’m afraid the scores determine—”
“Then he should retake the test.”
“That’s impossible. We don’t make the tests. They’re state-administered, and anyway, if everyone could retake the test it would be—”
“I am not talking about everyone. I am talking about my son.”
“He can start out in regular classes and his teachers can recommend his being bumped up to advanced—”
“But he will already be behind. This can’t be. I will not let this happen. I will take him to private school if I have to. I will contact the newspapers and the ACLU and the Korean Legal Aid to let them know that this tracking is unfair and is a form of discrimination!” Her voice cracks and Lenny sees that her cheeks are red, her hands shaking.
Mr. Jasper says quickly, “That’s not necessary. Your son is obviously a good student. Look, I can arrange to have him in advanced classes, because those aren’t just test-based, but he can’t go into the gifted classes. And if his average falls below ninety at any point we can put him back in regular.”
She considers this, then nods her head. “Fine.”
They leave, and as they walk back to the car, she says, “You better not let me down, Lenny.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
She gives him a hard look.
He says, “Really. I won’t.” For the first time he understands how important she considers his schooling, and he vows that he will never let her down again.
Over the next two weeks Lenny manages to smuggle a half dozen more plants into his attic, hanging them to dry, while Sal prepares the rest. He tells Lenny the males are treated differently, especially the flowers, because they aren’t as potent, and he makes small rolled sticks out of them. The females, especially their buds, once dried, will be the main source of potency.
He says he lined up buyers, using most of his original contacts. He tells Lenny this while pacing back and forth in his backyard, his fingers nervously tapping his leg. “This is stressful, man,” he says. “Some of them want to sample it, but it’s not ready. But they trust me because I’ve dealt with them in the past. But now I’ve got a reputation to keep up, so this has got to be smooth stuff. It’s not like I’m just a middleman. I’m a source.”
“How do you know them?”
“For a while I’d buy a quarter pound, maybe a half pound, and then dime bag it, sell it off and make a good profit. I got to know some dealers.” He sits down, tapping his feet, and then stands up and paces again. “It’s this waiting that’s driving me nuts.”
“You can use the oven again.”
“No, that makes it too harsh. Just another week or so, and it’ll be ready. You’re making sure your attic is ventilated, right? Checking for mold?”
“Every day.”
“Good. Good.” He turns to Lenny. “I don’t think I can do this again. It’s too much. I might just go back to regular dealing.”
“But the money.”
“I’m not a minor anymore. This is serious shit if I get caught.”
Lenny nods. Over the past few weeks he witnessed Sal get more and more nervous, and Sal confessed that he’s having trouble sleeping with the plants drying in his crawlspace. He keeps the door padlocked, and his parents never go down there, but his younger sister is always snooping, and the smell is beginning to rise up into the house. “Maybe it’s my imagination, but I keep smelling it everywhere. My parents aren’t dumb. They’re going to figure it out unless I bag and seal it soon.”
“Just a few more days,” Lenny says.
“Yeah. I know. I know.”
Lenny’s mother tells him they’re going to keep the house, take over the mortgage payments, and she will pay a lump sum of twenty thousand dollars to his father. When Lenny asks where she will get the money, she confides to him that she has been saving money in secret for years, and will also ask her mother and family for a loan. However, when Yul realizes how quickly Umee agrees to these terms, he adds a last-minute stipulation: if and when she sells the house she’ll also pay him another lump sum of ten thousand. Umee just wants out and agrees. Yul will also pay two hundred a month for child support and alimony until Lenny and Mira turn eighteen. The details of the divorce seem straightforward, and are nothing like Lenny imagined. It’s a business deal. He’s not sure why they didn’t negotiate an end to the marriage much earlier.
His mother now works ten to twelve hours a day, not only to pay her family back for their loan, but also to pay the mortgage, now solely her responsibility. She is also taking classes and studying to be an appraiser. She tells Lenny that working as a real estate appraiser, especially for commercial property, means a steady and well-paying job regardless of the economy, unlike selling residential real estate.
One night she comes home, excited, and shows Lenny her first commission check for a house she just sold. The check, for over four thousand dollars, is wrinkled from her constantly pulling it out and reading it. She says, “My boss says he’s never seen anyone take to this like me.”
“Wow,” Lenny says, but he thinks about how much Sal might make from selling his pot. One pound of pot can sell wholesale for over three thousand. If he dime bags it he’ll get over four thousand, and this is just for growing a weed. Then again, Lenny’s mother doesn’t have to worry about getting arrested.
Sal, who grades and sorts the crop into quarter- and half-pound bags, warns Lenny again about telling anyone what’s happening. They’re now moving into the selling phase, and this makes Sal tense. The first of his deals is with his friend Tommy, who’s curious to meet Lenny, the kid assistant who knows how to find information on growing techniques, so Lenny accompanies Sal to Tommy’s house in East Meadow, near Eisenhower Park. They take the bus up Merrick Avenue, and look like any two kids heading to the park, though Sal has a backpack full of marijuana.
Tommy lives in a split-level white house with a lush green lawn. Assorted flower windmills sit in the garden, though none of them spin in the stagnant heat. They walk up to the front door and ring the bell. A woman in her sixties, wearing a tank top, her shoulders freckled and brown, opens the door. Sal greets her, asking if her grandson is in. She calls upstairs to Tommy and lets them walk upstairs.
Tommy opens his bedroom door. It’s a teen’s room, with Pink Floyd, Queen and David Bowie posters covering the walls. Sal asks Tommy why he’s not with his brother.
Tommy smiles. “Got kicked out. Now it’s grandma time.”
He turns up the stereo and locks his door. He looks at Lenny and says, “So this is the kid.”
Sal introduces them.
Tommy studies Lenny and says, “Does he speak English?”
Sal and Lenny glance at each other, and Sal laughs. “Of course he does.”
“Of course I do,” Lenny says.
Tommy has long, messy hair, brown curls falling over his face, and a leather wrist band that slides up his arm when he pushes back his hair. He says, “Sal showed me the books you got. Nice. You getting more?”
“I’m trying.”
“Cool.” He turns to Sal. “The samples were good. You got the half?”
Sal reaches into his back pack and pulls out a large football-shaped bag of marijuana, clear plastic tape wrapped tightly around it. He hands it to Tommy.
“Hell, why’d you tape it up so much?”
“I was worried about the smell.”
Tommy weighs the package on a small spring-loaded postal scale on his desk. He nods and pulls out a wad of cash, counting out $900, laying the bills on the desk. Sal takes it, thanks him, and they talk for a while about a guy they know who bought a pound of pot to sell but ended up smoking all of it himself. They laugh. Tommy looks at Lenny and says, “Can you see out of those slanted eyes?”
Lenny, confused, says, “Yes.”
Sal says to Tommy, “Yo.”
Tommy asks Sal, “How do you blindfold a chink?”
“Come on, man,” Sal says.
“With dental floss.”
“Hey, hey,” Sal says. “That’s not cool.”
“He knows I’m just kidding. Right, Bruce Lee?”
Lenny doesn’t want to mess up Sal’s deal, so he doesn’t respond.
“Can you really speak English?” Tommy asks.
“Yes, I can.” Lenny turns to Sal and says, “I’ll wait outside for you.”
As he walks downstairs he hears Sal tell Tommy, “That wasn’t cool, man.”
“What’s the big deal?”
Outside Lenny sits on the front steps and watches one of the neighbors washing his car. When Sal comes out he motions for Lenny to follow him, and they walk back to the bus stop. He says, “He can be kind of an asshole.”
“You only got nine hundred?”
“I cut him a deal because he got the seeds.”
Lenny nods, but doesn’t say much else. His opinion of Sal has fallen because he’s friends with Tommy. While waiting for the bus, Sal counts out $300 and hands it to Lenny. “This is what I promised. There’s another two hundred for you after the next deal.”
“I don’t think I want to go with you.”
“Yeah.”
Lenny pockets the cash, and even though he knows it’s a lot, more than he’s ever had before, he finds this whole process disappointing. He thinks about buying a TV, about saving the money for more books, but all this has been tainted by Tommy’s comments.
Lenny and Sal end up not talking for the rest of the way back to Merrick, and when the bus drops them off at the train station, Sal says he’ll call in a couple days after the next sale, and he’ll have the money.
Lenny thanks him. Sal says the next time they see each other Sal will be on his new motorcycle.
“I’ll give you a ride.”
“Cool,” Lenny says, and walks away.
Over the next few day Lenny begins searching for a good color TV, visiting garage sales and the Sunrise mall. He also buys supplies from Radio Shack—coaxial cable, splitters, wire cutters—and studies the cable TV lines running along the telephone poles. His plan is to steal a tag from another pole and attach it to the illegal line he’ll install to his house. He also mail-ordered the plans and parts for a descrambler, which will allow him to get all the premium pay channels. In order to build this, though, he needs more equipment, like a soldering iron, a volt- and ohmmeter, and various wire crimping tools. He studies the plans and realizes he needs a better understanding of circuit boards, and begins spending hours in the library, teaching himself basic circuitry and soldering.
One afternoon as he walks back from Radio Shack he sees Sal on a large Kawasaki motorcycle speeding down Sunrise Highway. Lenny waves to him, and he pulls over, his hair windblown and tangled. “Check it out,” he says.
“Looks great.”
“Glad I ran into you.” He reaches into his jacket and counts out two hundred dollars. “This is for you. Thanks for everything.”
“You’ve been selling?”
“Almost all of it. I’m saving a half pound, but everything else is going for top dollar. I can finally sleep.” He smiles, his underbite jutting forward.
“Are you going to grow again?”
“I don’t think so, at least not for the next season. I have all those seeds, but I think I can store them for a year. But thanks for your help.”
“Thanks for this.” Lenny holds up the cash.
Sal revs his bike, and says goodbye, speeding off into traffic.
Lenny walks home with the roll of twenties in his pocket, worried to have this and the $260 left in his room. He remembers what Sal said about joint bank accounts, and he doesn’t trust his father to have access to the money, so he considers asking his mother to open an account for him.
When he walks into the house, he sees boxes stacked in the garage, and then hears his father’s drunken voice say, “You ruined my family!”
He stops, turns around, and creeps quietly across the street to the church.
Yul is supposed to be moving out this weekend, and although he begins the process of loading his Cadillac, he starts drinking in the morning and is plastered by the afternoon. Lenny stays away from the house as long as he can, but gets hungry around dinnertime.
The kitchen, in shambles, has dishes, pots and pans strewn across the floor. Mira and his mother have locked themselves in Mira’s room. His father is sprawled on the living room floor, and moans about how everything he worked for is disappearing. Lenny walks quietly to Mira’s room, checking on them, and his mother unlocks the door. “Where were you?” she asks.
“With Sal. Is there dinner?”
His mother listens for a moment, then says she’ll make something. Lenny follows her past the living room, where his father pulls himself up and says something in Korean. His mother ignores him.
In the kitchen, his mother picks up the pots and pans, and he helps her sweep the broken dishes into a dustpan. His father appears in the doorway, and he says, “Your mother is ruining this family!”
His mother says, “You ruined this family many years ago.”
“You can’t take my children away from me!”
Lenny, surprised by this, never thought his father was interested in his children except for doing chores. His father says, “All my life I tried to make a good family. I tried to give you all what I never had, and this is what happens?”
His mother says something sharp in Korean, and his father flinches.
His father replies in a mournful voice, and looks down at his bare feet. Lenny and his mother wait for a moment, but his father doesn’t say anything else. Instead he walks quietly back into the living room and turns on the stereo.
His mother reheats leftovers and sets the kitchen table. Lenny watches her move briskly from the refrigerator to the stove as she stir-fries cold noodles and microwaves a tofu and beef dish. Mira walks into the kitchen and takes a seat next to him. She tells him she still hasn’t found a record player to replace her broken one, and he says he’ll help her look tomorrow, since he has to find a TV.
His father yells something from the living room. Mira glances at Lenny, her gaze uneasy. His mother yells back. There’s a tremendous crash and pop that shakes the walls. His mother runs into the living room, and screams at him. Mira and Lenny walk out and see the huge stereo face down on the carpet, the wires and torn mesh fabric on the back exposed. His father looks down at it blearily. Some of the records have spilled out of a side pocket and fan out of their sleeves. The turntable still spins and clicks, but then stops.
His mother yells something, and he replies, “I don’t want it anyway.”
“It is time for you to leave,” she says quietly, in English. “Our agreement is that you leave this house today.”
He nods his head. “I am almost finished.”
“Go.”
His expression tightens and he looks as if he’s going to argue, but Lenny’s mother cuts him off with, “This house belongs to me today. Do you really want me to call the police?”
“You would call the police on me?”
“I should’ve called the police years ago when you started beating me.” His mother has a calm expression. She’s utterly confident and unafraid. Lenny has never seen her like this before.
His father stares at her, then glances at Mira and Lenny. He then mutters something under his breath as he goes to put on his shoes.
Mira and Lenny eat quickly, and leave the house. They want to sneak into the church, but see the front office lit up. They peer over the bushes and spy the pastor on the telephone. He wears a sweater vest, his chubby, pale face bright under the fluorescent lights, and he rubs his forehead while he talks, a red welt forming over his eyes. This is the minister who came here after the former one had an affair with his secretary and divorced his wife. Mira and Lenny have never met this one. They walk to the side of the church, and sit on top of a wooden fence that borders an elderly woman’s house. Her sidewalks are rusty brown from her old sprinkler system.
Mira asks, “Where is he going to live?”
They watch their father load his Cadillac with more boxes. He then lugs a huge suitcase, and throws it into the back seat. Lenny says, “I think he’ll be in Flushing. Mom said he might have a new job at a bank in Queens.”
“Will we see him again?”
“I have no idea.”
As he carries another box, the bottom breaks. Computer paper falls out and tumbles down the driveway, the perforated sheets unfolding. The wind lifts a long section of it, spreading it farther across the sidewalk. Lenny’s father drops the box and kicks the stack of paper, the long sheets extending and fluttering onto the lawn. After a moment he stares at the paper, picks it all up and dumps it into the garbage.
It’s getting darker, and they see the pastor locking up and leaving the office. He walks across the lawn to his house next door. Mira and Lenny hurry to the back entrance and jimmy the door open. They move quickly through the dark, quiet halls and onto the stage of the back room. Lenny remembers the steeple and searches for the entrance up there while Mira stands on the stage and asks him to turn on the spotlights.
“Not yet. Just in case the minister comes back.”
She speaks to her imagined audience, telling them that this next song is dedicated to her fans.
When Lenny climbs down from the back of the stage and into a small stairwell, he sees a narrow built-in ladder that leads up to a panel in the ceiling, very much like his own attic entrance. He can’t find a light switch, so he climbs in the dark, using the smooth walls to guide him. The higher he climbs the warmer it becomes, but when he finds a handle and pushes open the ceiling door, he immediately feels the night breeze blowing around him. He calls down to his sister.
“What is it?” she says.
“I found the tower.”
“I don’t want to go up there. I’m afraid of bats.”
“All right. You stay down there.” He pulls himself up into the tower, and sees the wooden beam crisscrossing above, but there’s no bell—two large bullhorns bolted to the beams connect to a tape deck and amplifier. Lenny moves closer to one of the ledges, the guardrail dusty and dirty. His sister calls to him, asking him what’s up there.
“Not much. But there are no bats. Come up. Be careful.”
She climbs up and clutches one of the large support beams in the center, peering cautiously down onto the street. A strong cold gust blows through here, and she says she’s cold. Then Lenny points to the house, the garage light on and their father still loading his car. They see more lights turning on inside and outside the house. Their father can’t close the trunk lid, so ties it down with string. He then walks out onto the sidewalk, looking around. He calls Lenny and Mira’s name.
Mira says, “Should we answer?”
He shakes his head. Lenny knows his father wants to say goodbye. Their father puts his hands on his hips and calls to them again, shouting toward the church. At one point he looks up, and Lenny pulls back slowly, although he doubts his father can see them.
Lenny asks Mira if she remembers how he wanted them to perform in a talent show at this church. She doesn’t.
For a brief time they all went to this church. When they first moved there the minister, Reverend Ames, and his wife welcomed their family with apple pie and an invitation to attend Sunday service. The Ames’ had four children, the youngest about Ed’s age, and all of them treated Lenny and his sister as cute, huggable babies, which he didn’t mind, coming from the two daughters.
Reverend Ames and his wife were calm, quiet-spoken, and seemed to Lenny possessed of a New England reserve and charm that was foreign to him. He never saw them raise their voices or even give any of their children dirty looks. Everyone seemed unnaturally well-behaved.
This model family undoubtedly served as a nagging comparison to the Changs, and when there was a church talent show and potluck dinner, and some of the families were planning on performing, Lenny heard the envy in his father’s voice as he told them that he wanted the family to do something. None of them had any real demonstrable talent, so his father wanted them to get on stage and sing a song together. He wanted them to sing “Edelweiss,” from The Sound of Music, and, again, Lenny knew that the idyllic image of the Von Trapp family was serving as a template in his imagination, but unfortunately none of them could sing.
Ed flatly refused, and since he hadn’t been going to church anyway, and everyone knew he would just disappear if he was required to be there, their father didn’t press him. But then his mother said she didn’t want to get on stage. None of them knew how to play the guitar, and she’d have to learn the piano accompaniment, which she didn’t have time for. Their father looked at Mira and Lenny, and Lenny said that if Ed and Mom weren’t going on stage, then he wasn’t. They turned to Mira, who had a gleam in her eye, but their father then sighed and said never mind.
None of them went to the talent show, and their father brooded for days. Lenny heard him arguing with his mother in Korean, his frustration at the family directed at her. But even as a kid, Lenny knows that the fault lies not with her, and not even directly with him. This is a family that wants out. His father dreams of the sea. His mother dreams of freedom. Ed already has been making excursions away. It’s only a matter of time before Lenny and Mira begin planning their escapes.
And as Mira and Lenny watch their father call out their names again, his voice hoarse and weaker, Lenny says, “He’s getting ready to leave.”
Mira is quiet. Their father calls out one more time and seems deflated. He drops his arms and walks slowly back to his car. Lenny knows all he has to do is go down there and say goodbye, but there’s a hardness in him that wants to punish his father in any way he can, and that means not saying goodbye.
Mira and Lenny watch him look around for another minute. He then climbs slowly into his car and starts the loud, rumbling engine. Black smoke spews from the tailpipe. He backs down the driveway, the muffler bottoming out because of the weight of the boxes. The brakes squeal. He pulls into the street and, after revving the engine to warm it up, he drives down the street and turns the corner, the rumbling engine echoing and fading away.