Dad woke me up this morning just after sunrise. He does that every year on my birthday. He sat down hard on the side of my bed, which bounced me about a foot off the mattress, and I went from fast asleep to wide awake in that second I was in the air.
The first thing I saw, after my eyes focused, was him grinning down at me. Then he said, “I tell you, Jules, you don’t look a day over twelve!”
That’s his routine, every birthday, as far back as I can remember. That same dumb joke, year after year, except the number keeps getting bigger. I don’t mind, to be honest. It’s the only day he does it, and it seems to mean a lot to him.
I yawned and said, “What did I get?”
“You’re thirteen, and you’re still expecting a present?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, kid, I’ll bring you home a pack of Camels.”
“Good enough,” I said.
He snatched the pillow out from under my head, which sent me rolling over. Then he clobbered me across the shoulders and back with it, just kidding around. After that, he got up and left for work.
Now here’s what you need to know about my dad: he’s maybe the most regular guy on the planet. Nothing ever changes with him. It’s not a bad thing, but it also makes him real predictable. Like, for example, he always buys presents for me and Amelia about a week before our actual birthdays and always hides them in the same place … on the floor in the back of the closet in his and my mom’s bedroom. He stashes them underneath a pile of dress shirts he doesn’t wear anymore because he sweated through the collars. So every year, a few days before my birthday, I sneak into the closet and check underneath the pile of shirts to find out what he got me.
What he got me this year is a Bobby Murcer–autograph baseball glove.
I’ll act real surprised when he hands it across the table tonight after dinner. That’s part of the routine too. Plus, it is a great present. He knows how bad I need a new glove, and he knows Bobby Murcer is my guy. I’ve followed him since he was a rookie in 1965. Even after he got drafted into the army, I waited two years until he got out, and then I followed him again. I even kept a scrapbook the first couple of years—I pasted in the newspaper box score of every game he hit a home run. So, yeah, my dad couldn’t have done much better with his present. And any other year, getting a Bobby Murcer baseball glove would have been the highlight of my day.
But Quentin totally stole my dad’s thunder.
It was around three-thirty when the telephone rang. Amelia raced into the kitchen to answer it, which is what she does whenever the phone rings, and then she let out a shriek, but a second later I heard her apologizing in a soft voice. That got my curiosity up. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, though, so after a minute, I forgot about it. The next thing I knew, she was standing outside the door to my room, which is as far as the phone cord stretches, smiling ear to ear, telling me I had a call.
“Who is it?” I said.
She handed the phone to me and stepped back to watch my reaction.
I stared at it for a second, then brought it to my ear and said, “Hello?”
Then came a whispery voice I didn’t even recognize. “Jules?”
“It’s Quentin.”
It was one of those times when your brain short-circuits, when you want to say ten things at once, but nothing comes out of your mouth. I couldn’t spit out a single word. I might as well have put the phone to my armpit and made farting noises—that’s how shocked I was. I mean, the last time I saw the guy, he had that tube-thing in his mouth.
After about ten seconds of gagging and sputtering, I came up with “How do you feel?”
“Not too bad.”
“So … er … is the food okay?”
Amelia slugged me in the chest when I said that. Not hard—she wasn’t mad. But she was staring at me with a real frustrated look, as if to say, That’s it? That’s the best you’ve got? That’s all you have to say to the guy? It wasn’t all I had to say. That’s for sure. But I wasn’t going to get gushy over the phone, which I knew was what she wanted. That’s something girls never seem to figure out, not even if they’re seniors in high school, like Amelia. Guys don’t get gushy with one another. That’s how it works. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, but that’s just how it is. If I got gushy, I would’ve felt wrong afterward. Not only that: Quentin would have felt wrong afterward. He would’ve felt like I was getting gushy because he was sick, which would have reminded him of how sick he was. Why would I do that to him just to make Amelia happy?
“It’s pretty good,” he whispered. “I got orange Jell-O.”
“I got a Bobby Murcer baseball glove. I mean, I didn’t get it yet. But my dad’s going to give it to me tonight. He hid it in the back of the closet, but I found it. Today’s my birthday.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said.
“Oh, yeah, I guess that’s why you called.”
He gave a whispery laugh that almost made me bawl. “Dope!”
“We pushed back my bar mitzvah.…”
“Why?”
“Because of you. Because you’re sick.”
Amelia slugged me again, but I just ignored her.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he said.
“No, I wanted to. We all wanted to, even Amelia. It was like a family decision.”
There was a long pause. “How’d your dad get Bobby Murcer to sign the glove?”
“Murcer didn’t sign it himself,” I said. “It’s just a glove that’s got his name on it.”
“Oh.”
“Dope!”
That made Quentin laugh again, even softer than before, and then he coughed.
“If Murcer had actually signed it,” I said, “I’d never be able to use it, because I wouldn’t want to mess it up. I mean, I’d keep it around the house. But then I’d still need a glove I could play with.”
“That makes sense.…”
Quentin’s mom got on the phone at that point and said the conversation was tiring him out, so he had to rest. I told her I understood—which I did—and said goodbye, and I heard her tell him goodbye for me, and the next thing I heard was the click and buzz of her hanging up.
Amelia took the phone from my hand, because I was still kind of in shock, and she said, “That’s a pretty superb birthday present, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“You really love that kid, don’t you?”
“C’mon, Amelia!”
“I’m just teasing you, Jules. You don’t have to say it to me.”
“I’m not going to say it to you.”
“But at least say it to yourself,” she said.
“What’s the point of saying it to myself?”
“Because if you can say it to yourself, you can say it to Quentin.”
“You just want to hear me say it.”
“He’s real sick, Julian—”
“He’s getting better! You just spoke to him yourself!”
“Don’t take that chance,” she said. “Say what needs to be said.”
“This is stupid.…”
“If you don’t, and something happens, you’ll regret it the rest of your life. Trust me on this one.”
By then, I’d heard enough. I stepped back into my room, snatched my coat from the hook on the wall, and headed outside to find Lonnie. I wanted to tell him I’d talked to Quentin while the thing was still fresh in my mind.