Once school is out, I’m close to a ten because I’m at the garage and Grandpa says I’m on my own with the 2012 Dodge Grand Caravan that’s driving in right now. He’s never let me talk to the customers on my own before. That’s always been him or Harold, but Harold’s at the hospital because the baby he’s adopting is due this week and he’s going with the birth mother to her doctor’s appointment.
Grandpa’s already busy working on a Subaru, so he points to the Dodge Grand Caravan and says, “All yours,” and I think he might be giving me a test to see how I do.
“Hear carefully,” Grandpa says, and I know he means listen carefully, but sometimes he changes his words around so they sound wrong, and I wonder if that’s why he’s letting me talk to the customers now instead of him. Because I can keep my words straight. And before I know it, I’m not a ten anymore because I’m thinking of him getting all mixed up and turned around and how it’s probably my fault that I’m making his memory more tired.
I pull on my work gloves. “I got it, Grandpa,” I call over my shoulder because I’m already walking out to the parking lot to greet the customer. That’s what Harold would do. He says the customer is always right, even when they’re not, and you have to be nice and put your best foot forward.
As soon as the van parks, the back door slides open and three little kids tumble out and rush past me. They’re all bright, feathery blond and having an imaginary sword fight, dodging between the parked cars in the lot. Their jackets are unzipped and falling off their shoulders, but they don’t even seem to notice.
“Get over here!” their mom screams, and slams her door. First I see her leather high-heeled boots making pockmarks in the old melting snow like a freshly aerated outfield, and before I look up and see her flowy blond hair I know it’s Alex’s mom. She adjusts her scarf, sees me, and says, “Oh Jesus. You’ve got to be kidding.”
That’s exactly what I’m thinking.
Of course the first time Grandpa lets me talk to the customer it has to be her. And I’m not sure I have a good foot to put forward here, but I can’t run in and get Grandpa because then he won’t let me help him fix the car, or worse, he won’t remember Alex’s mom, and he’ll get embarrassed and let his words wander off, so I just have to try.
“Hi, Mrs. Carter,” I say. “What seems to be the problem with your car?”
“You can’t work here,” she huffs. “Aren’t you ten?”
“Eleven.” But what I want to say is what the crap does it matter how old I am if you can’t fix your car and I can? “I’ve been fixing cars since I was six.”
Now her kids are jumping up on the bumper of the van and launching themselves as far as they can into the parking lot’s melting slush. She tells them to stop, but they don’t listen. Guess no kid in that family knows how to listen. And I’m wondering where Alex is and why he isn’t with them, not that I’m complaining. He probably went home to ice his busted nose.
“The last time I brought my car here I worked with a nice man named Harold.”
“He’s not here today. But I am, and I’d like to get started diagnosing the problem with your car, if that’s all right with you.” I put my fists on my hips and start counting to ten so that only nice things come out of my mouth.
She crosses her arms, huffs again, and juts her chin toward the Caravan. “The check engine light is on.”
I think about what Harold would say next. “I’d be happy to take a look at that for you. Do you mind moving it into the garage so I can begin working?” Even though I know how to drive all kinds of cars, even standard shift, no eleven-year-old has a license, so I can’t let Mrs. Carter know that Grandpa sometimes lets me. Then she’ll think he’s even more unfit to raise me, which is bull because I’m a better driver than half the adults on the road.
She sighs and mumbles, “You’ve got to be kidding me,” again, then shoves her kids back in through the sliding door of the van and backs out of the parking space. I push the automatic door opener, and she drives in through the big garage doors to the first bay, where I have everything I need to figure out what’s wrong with her car.
The kids tumble back out and I tell Mrs. Carter she can wait inside in our lounge. “It should only take a minute.”
“I want someone else to check your work,” Mrs. Carter tells me. “I’m not relying on some eleven-year-old.” I clamp down hard on my back teeth as she pushes her monster children through the doors to the lounge inside, where I know they will bounce off the couches. Two of the kids are identical twins. The third one is smaller. All boys. All blond and flowy and not listening.
I want to yell after her and say that her car is in good hands, even if they are eleven-year-old hands, that my hands can fix anything, including her stupid son’s stupid attitude, and if she wants me to readjust another one of her kids to just send him on out. Instead I take a deep breath and turn toward the van.
Grandpa’s installing new windshield wipers on the Subaru Outback across the garage, and he walks over when Mrs. Carter takes her kids inside. “Good job, Robbie,” he says. “What’d she say was the program?”
I know he means problem, not program. Since he wandered off into the sugar maples, his memory’s been more tired than usual, even during the day, and I wish he would just rest so everything could come back to him.
“Check engine light is on.”
“Know what to do?” he asks.
“I got it, Grandpa.”
The scan tool is black and yellow and looks like a big cell phone with a long wire attached. When I plug it into Mrs. Carter’s van, it will give me a code and tell me exactly what’s wrong.
I open the driver’s door of the van and slide into Mrs. Carter’s seat. It feels weird to be in Alex Carter’s car. It’s sort of like when I see Ms. Meg or Mr. Danny or Ms. Gloria at Dean and Walt’s country store and it feels all wrong, like I’m peeping in on a part of their life that I’m not supposed to see.
White towels line the backseat, and they’re covered with muddy paw prints and black hair, and that makes me hate Alex Carter even more because he has a dog and I’ve always wanted one, but Grandpa says no, he doesn’t need one more thing to take care of. Alex will probably put his dog on his family tree.
When I turn back around to plug in the scan tool, I knock a plastic bag from the console and it spills all over the passenger floor, and I’m thinking this is exactly when Mrs. Carter is going to come out and check to see how the eleven-year-old is doing with her car, so I shove everything back in the bag fast. A huge pack of M&Ms, some kind of makeup with a big black brush, and lots of bottles of pills that rattle when I pick them up and look like the kind of bottle I got when I had strep throat. I want to look closer and figure out what’s in the bottles and why there are so many but I know I’ll get caught peeping where I don’t belong, so I put the bag back on the front seat and try to forget about it.
I keep my eye on Grandpa in the next bay while I plug in the scan tool and wait for its code. The new windshield wipers are on the Subaru, and now Grandpa’s head is under the hood. I know I shouldn’t be worried because his brain is hardwired for cars. Just like mine. But I keep thinking that he might just drift off again.
The tool beeps and I read the code. It’s something with her gas cap, which is the best-case scenario and should be an easy fix. I pull the lever down by my feet and the gas tank door pops open. I’m sliding out of the driver’s seat to go check out the tank when I hear Harold’s voice.
“What’re you working on, Robbie?” He’s got on regular clothes, not his navy blue jumpsuit with Harold stitched over his heart.
“What are you wearing?”
He hits the brim of my hat, laughs, and tells me he didn’t want to dress like a schlub when he was going to see his baby’s birth mom in the hospital. “I don’t want her to think her baby’s going to some greaseball.”
“But you are a greaseball,” I kid him.
He looks at me like I have a point and says, “She doesn’t have to know that.” Then we laugh together.
“When is the baby coming?”
“Any day!” He beams, and he’s crossing his fingers.
“Cool,” I say, but I’m already sick of talking about baby stuff. “I have to check out this gas tank.”
Grandpa makes his way over and shakes Harold’s hand as I open the gas tank door.
“Easy!” I shout because I love when I’ve solved the problem, when I figure out what’s wrong and how to fix it. It’s that snap-into-place feeling. “The gas cap is missing.”
Harold gives me a fist bump and Grandpa nods his head. “A-plus, Robbie.”
Harold comes with me when I go inside, where Mrs. Carter is waiting with her kids, but he lets me tell her what I found out about her van. The twins are doing a cartwheel contest across the lounge, and the littlest one is wrapped around Mrs. Carter’s ankle and crying.
It’s kind of hard to talk, or think, because they’re so annoying, but I focus on the deep grooves that run across her forehead, the grooves like Grandpa’s, and I tell her, “It’s an easy fix. Your gas cap is missing.” I’m trying to tell her how important something so small as a gas cap is because it helps maintain pressure within the fuel tank and how she’s probably not getting her best gas mileage because she’s losing fuel through evaporation, but she doesn’t even care. She cuts me off.
“Oh, good God. I bet I left it on top of the car last time I filled up.”
Harold goes to find a replacement cap and says it’s on the house.
“Thank you,” she says to him. “I don’t think I could have handled one more bit of bad news.” And I see those lines on her forehead cut deeper.
Then she walks out, lugging her youngest kid with each right step while the twins run past her and push through the doors to the lot, where Grandpa is parking her car.
We’re watching Mrs. Carter shove her kids in the sliding door and scream at them to buckle up. One of the twins keeps popping out of the door and dancing wild in the parking lot. When she finally gets everyone in and buckled and drives away, I remember the bag of pill bottles rattling across the floor of her car and I wonder again what they’re for.
“You sure you want kids?” I ask Harold.
He puts his arm around me and says, “Yeah. I’m sure.” And if he still wants a baby after seeing those crazy monsters, then he must really want a baby.
We’re looking out the window and watching Grandpa walk back from the parking lot, and I want to tell Harold about how Grandpa wandered away Friday night and almost got lost up in the woods. And how I think Grandpa’s check engine light is on and I don’t know how to figure out what’s wrong. But I hope it’s something as easy as a missing gas cap. And that we can get a new one, on the house, and drive off all fixed.
But I don’t tell Harold because what if it’s something more serious? Not just a missing gas cap, but he’s got too many miles on him, or tough terrain has worn down his struts. So I just stay quiet and let Harold put his arm around me and keep thinking about how Grandpa’s the only branch on my family tree and how we don’t even look like we belong in the same orchard, and how Harold will be getting a kid soon. One he asked for.
Then Harold’s husband, Paul, pulls up in his 1958 green Chevy pickup truck. I call her “She Roll” because the V and T are missing across the back hatch where it says CHEVROLET, so it looks like CHE ROLE. It’s kind of our thing.
“There’s my ride,” Harold says and I walk to the parking lot with him.
Paul hops out of the front seat. “She Roll!” he calls as soon as he sees me.
“How’s she rolling?” I ask, which is my favorite question to ask Paul because his truck is so old you just never know when it’s going to putt-putt-putt and sputter to a stop.
“Still rolling like the queen she is.” He pats She Roll on the hood. Then he gives me a hug before he hugs Harold, and even though I’m not a touching kind of person it feels pretty OK.
Grandpa comes over too, and we wave good-bye as they drive off.
It’s already getting dark and my stomach is growling. I help Grandpa pull down the big garage doors and watch him search for the right key to lock up. He tries two wrong ones before he slides the right one in and we can start walking home.
On the way I tell him all about Alex Carter’s mom and how she doubted me because I’m eleven, and how I’m actually not so bad at talking to the customers, so I could do that again if he wants. I can tell he’s listening because he pats my shoulder, but he’s not saying anything. I sometimes wonder if he’s getting quieter and quieter because he knows he fumbles his words and gets embarrassed and shakes his head, and I hate that. And I’m thinking how if he gets too quiet I’ll never be able to finish my stupid family tree project because I don’t even know what my mom’s name was. And every time I’ve tried to ask, he snaps shut fast.
And just when I think I’m getting the guts to try to ask him about my mom, he pats my shoulder again and says, “You did a glued job, Robbie.”
So I just reach up and touch my baseball glove against his hand and say, “Thanks, Grandpa.”
When we get home Grandpa looks out back toward the sugar maples. “This weekend we’ll boil the sap,” he says. “You can invest your friend.”
And I know he means invite. And I know he means Derek.
“OK, Grandpa.” Then I take the keys from his hand and find the silver one to the front door and let us in.
Inside, he sits down on the bench by our front door and bends over to pull off his boots. I try to help him with his jacket, but he shakes me off.
“I’m not a hundred years old, you know,” he grumps. And I know he’s not a hundred years old, but when it gets later in the day he always looks older than he did that morning.
He starts toward the kitchen. “Let’s see about some breakfast.”
“Dinner,” I say. “I’ll help, Grandpa.”
He opens the cupboard and takes out a box of mac and cheese. “I’m fine. You must have some schoolwork to do.”
I unzip my book bag and take out a worksheet that Mr. Danny gave us during gym class about heart rate. I have to find my pulse and time it for ten seconds, counting each beat, then multiply by six to figure out my beats per minute. Then I’m supposed to do the same thing after I run in place for a full minute. Then I have to write four sentences about what I notice about my heart and exercise.
I’m sitting at the table, searching for the pulse on my wrist, but really I’m keeping an eye on Grandpa in the kitchen.
He fills the pot with water and turns on the burner.
I find the thump-thump in my wrist, and I’m trying to count but I can’t because I’m watching him hold the box of mac and cheese like he’s not sure what the next step is. He takes a knife from the wooden block on the counter and my heart jumps faster. He starts sawing open the box.
I rush over. “Grandpa, like this.” I carefully take the knife from his hand and show him how to open the cardboard box.
Then he pours the pasta shells in the pot, and even though the water isn’t boiling yet, I don’t say anything. He stirs it with the knife, and I don’t say anything about that either.
After the water gets to boiling I dip in a wooden spoon and try one of the shells. “They’re done,” I say and turn off the burner. The bubbles die in the water and he looks down like he’s lost something in the pot. I keep waiting for him open the cupboard and grab the strainer, but he just keeps staring down in the pot until I can’t watch him look anymore.
I fling open the cupboard and get the strainer myself. “Almost my turn for the cheese squeeze,” I say.
The cheese squeeze was my part for as long as I can remember. Grandpa always let me cut open the top of the silver pouch and squeeze all the orange cheese on the hot shells and mix it up. Then I’d lick the spoon. He would call me for dinner by hollering, “It’s time for the cheese squeeze!” and I would come running. I used to have to stand up on a stool to reach the pot, but I don’t need that anymore.
I do almost all the parts now. Not just the cheese squeeze.
“My part, remember?” I touch Grandpa’s arm, and he moves away from the stove. The pot of mac is heavy and this has never been my part, but I get it over to the sink and pour it perfect into the strainer without even one of the shells missing and falling down the drain.
“You didn’t have to . . .”
“It’s OK. I like cooking, Grandpa.” Which isn’t actually true, but it comes out anyway.
I pour the shells back into the pot, and it feels so good to squeeze all the orange cheese out of the pouch. I slide my fingers down both sides and it comes out smooth and all in one big melty, snakey glop. Then I squeeze the pouch hard in my fist to get all the last bits out. I grit my teeth and crush it and squash it and pretend it’s Alex’s stupid face when he calls me Robin, or when he says, Why don’t you call your mommy? Oh, wait! You don’t even have one! I crush and squeeze and get it all out. Then I stir it all up. But I don’t lick the spoon anymore like I did when I was little.
Later in bed I listen through the wall to Grandpa’s room, and wonder if he’ll open his door in the middle of the night to go find those sugar maples he said he was looking for out back. Or hike up to the Appalachian Trail shelter without me. I listen for the springs in his old bed when he turns over, and I listen for his snores. And I wonder if his memory is going to be rested tomorrow because if he can’t remember that we only tapped the front twenty sugar maples in the backyard, or how to open a cardboard box of mac and cheese, how will he remember to tell me who my mom was and how she died and if I’m like her?
I’m trying to count my heartbeats like Mr. Danny taught us, but my brain keeps wandering and before I know it, I’m trying to think of a haiku for Grandpa. It’s hard to count out all the syllables in my head without a pencil to write it down, but I think I have one.
Grandpa, sorry. Don’t
wander away. Promise I’ll
be just like Jackie.