JIMMY
I FIGURE YOU GET ABOUT THREE DAYS IN YOUR WHOLE STUPID LIFE when you feel so good nothing can touch you. Or more like three minutes. Anyway, there I was sitting on a rock at the edge of the woods in the freezing cold, wearing a jacket with a broke zipper, and yup—smack in the middle of one of my three. The reason? Debbie D’Olympio had just asked me a question that made me believe in those miracles Nonna was always going on about.
Debbie and I had been meeting at the Grainer School playground every Wednesday, three sharp, for almost six months—practically an eighth-grade record. At first, we sat on the swings like kids, teasing each other about dumb stuff, writing in the dirt with our feet. Then, a couple of months ago, we moved to the rock. It’s not a place where I could kiss her or anything, especially since the little kids get out of school around the same time, but sometimes we horsed around like I do with my little brother and sister. Only different. Okay, way different.
On the way to the playground, I always stopped by Bruce Savery’s house to ditch the hat Ma makes me wear and remind my buddies who I was going to meet. That day Brucie and Kev came up from the basement where they’d been playing darts to watch me Brylcreem my hair like it was some kinda spectacle.
Kevin stood behind me in the bathroom mirror, asking if I’d frenched her yet. As if he knew the first thing about kissing a girl, never mind frenching.
“I woulda had her at the Sugar Shack by now,” Brucie bragged. He claimed to have gotten Janice Meachem to second base back in the fall when the high school kids first renamed an old cabin in the woods for that song on the radio.
I stuck Brucie’s dad’s Brylcreem back in the medicine chest and slammed the door a little too hard, hoping they didn’t notice. I wasn’t about to tell them I already had brought Debbie out to that dumb shack. Or how the old bum who used to live there ruined everything.
It all started in the summer when I was helping my dad out at the garage like I do every Thursday. I had just finished stacking oil cans into a neat triangle and I thought I’d sneak off for a soda when I spotted the bum, putting air in the tires of his bike. It was summer, hot as hell, but he was dressed in heavy clothes. And the smell? Whoa. I didn’t want to make him feel bad, though, so insteada looking for a place to puke, I held out my pack of Camels.
“I’ll spot you back someday,” he said, hands shaking like old Mrs. Ryan’s do since she got the dropsy.
“Thanks,” I told the guy—as if he was the one who gave me something, right? Anyway, when I said it, I made the mistake of looking straight into his eyes. Maybe just for a minute I thought it might have been my old man or something. Hard to explain what happened next, but it was like his whole life was in those eyes. And now it was in mine.
Everyone in town musta seen that bum riding around on his crappy bike, but nobody knew who he was till they found his body in the woods around Thanksgiving. By then, Richard J. Cartier had been dead for a couple months.
“Awful fancy-sounding name for a hobo.” Ma shook her head when she read it in the Gazette. “Imagine.” But I could tell she felt sad, too.
So anyways, there I am at the Sugar Shack with Debbie D’Olympio and what am I looking at? A cup of coffee Richard J. Cartier left on his dang table. And I’m thinking how that day at the gas station when he passed his life into my eyes, he only had about a month left. Kinda made me shudder.
Oh, I snapped out of it fast enough, but by then, Debbie was spooked, too—which is how stuff like that works.
“Maybe we should go?” she said, chewing her Teaberry gum double time and staring at that coffee cup, almost like she could see it, too. “My mom’s probably worried about me.”
At that point, someone else woulda pushed her a little, gotten something to tell the boys about. But once you let yourself feel sorry for one person, next thing you know you’re feeling sorry for the whole dang world. On the way out, I grabbed the bum’s moldy cup a coffee and threw it hard as I could into the woods. It shattered on a rock.
Nope. I sure wasn’t about to tell Brucie and Kev none of that. Instead, I said, “Oh, don’t worry. Debbie’ll be getting a good look at the inside of the Shack soon enough.”
THOSE WERE GOOD times—Brucie and Kev watching the way I combed my hair with two fingers like there was magic in it. Walking down the street, pretending I was wearing a leather jacket and a white T-shirt that showed off my muscles like the guys in the movies did. I played it so good that other people saw the way I felt inside instead of the gawky kid in a jacket with a broke zipper and a striped jersey like my kid brother might wear.
But there was always that one minute before I turned the corner of the school when I remembered who I was. Sixty seconds when I was so sure Debbie wouldn’t be there the breath froze up inside me.
That was when I remembered Dad. He wasn’t one for talking much, but those Thursdays in the garage, I watched how he handled cars with tricky problems no one else could fix. Sometimes he’d stop and I’d see that same doubt pass over him. Then he’d let out a few swear words, set his face a certain way, and go back in. That was how he became the best mechanic in the whole world. Or at least in Claxton.
So I did the same. And there she was sitting on that rock in her pink parka like one a those mirages you read about. Every single time. Shoot. Soon as I saw her I was the guy in the leather jacket again. If someone was calling my name, man, I didn’t even hear it. I lit up a Camel and passed it to Debbie even before I said hi—cool as heck.
Sounds dumb, but the biggest thrill of my life was watching her stick that cigarette between her lips and pretend to draw. Brucie and Kev woulda said it was a waste of a good smoke, but when she passed it back and I tasted her Teaberry gum? Man.
That day, she was acting funny, though. “It’s awfully cold out; don’t you think, Jimmy?” she said, doing this cute little shiver. “Maybe we should, um, go somewhere.”
At first, I didn’t get it. Was she asking me to go to her house and meet her mom? I came to my senses real quick, though. There was no way Debbie’d bring a kid like me over to that fancy split-level where she lived. I can hear it now: Mom, this is my, um, friend, Jimmy Kovacs.
Now it woulda been a fine enough name if the guy I was named after wasn’t always landing himself in the court report. Ma hid the Gazette every time James Kovacs Sr. messed up, but someone—usually good ole Brucie—made sure to bring it to school and read it out loud in the cafeteria.
If only the guy coulda done a respectable crime every now and then, it mighta made kids think twice about crossing me. But not James Kovacs Sr. No, he went for weaselly crap like “Shoplifting,” “Drunk and disorderly,” and “Domestic disturbance”—whatever the heck that means.
“So?” I always said, cool as I could be in a situation like that. “Guy ain’t no one to me.” I didn’t even look up from my lunch tray. But after the bell rang, I went straight to the bathroom and puked.
“Do you think the little stove in that place you took me before works?” Debbie asked, interrupting my dumb thoughts. She peeled off one of her fur gloves and stuck her hand in the pocket of my jacket with mine.
“Don’t worry; I’ll get that old thing fired up, all right,” I said, like I knew what she was talking about all along.
I had stomped out my cigarette, and we were halfway across the playground when I heard my name again. Next thing I knew Agnes was barreling toward me. “Jim-meee!”
My first instinct was to keep going and pretend I didn’t know the kid. After all, she wasn’t nothing to me. Just another one a Ma’s Emergencies. I woulda got away, too—if only Debbie hadn’t stopped to look back.
“Is that girl calling you?”
So okay, I didn’t much like the way she said you—like she was seeing me different all of a sudden—but at that point, I coulda let it go.
“Never seen her before in my life,” I said, squeezing Debbie’s hand. I picked up the pace.
I woulda kept going straight for the shack and second base—if it wasn’t for that creaky sound that came out of the kid’s chest when she got too excited or tried to run to Tucker’s store. Once when she caught a cold, it got so bad, I could practically hear it leaking through the walls of Zaidie’s room.
So right after claiming I’d never laid eyes on her before, I spun around and made a liar outta myself. “What the heck, Agnes? You know you’re not supposed to run.”
Kid was so happy to see me she just stood there, wheezing and smiling, smiling and wheezing like some kind a fool.
“Didn’t uhhh you uhhh hear uhhhh me, Jimmy? I was uhhh calling uhhhh you.”
“And you’re not supposed to talk, neither. Jeez, kid. You want to end up in a oxygen tent again?”
But when the kid had something to say, nothing stopped her. So I told Debbie to give me a minute. Then I led Agnes back to the rock that was supposed to be our special place.
“Shush now. Quiet,” I said, patting her hand like I was Ma or something. “You gotta rest before this turns into one a your full-blowed attacks. Where’s your teacher, anyways? Your new mom? And I thought you had a sister or somethin’.”
She pointed down the street. “Kathy uhhh leaved.”
Somehow in the middle of all the gasping and wheezing, she managed to explain how she snuck out of the dismissal line before anyone noticed.
So what could I do? I sat with the kid on the rock, holding her hand and shushing her every time she tried to tell me something—which was about every two minutes—until the wheezing slowed down. And the whole time the stupid kid was smiling at me like I was Wyatt Earp and the Easter Bunny all rolled into one. Jeez.
I musta been pretty worried cause I forgot all about Debbie. I didn’t even hear her coming up behind us.
“What’s wrong with her?” she asked, looking at the kid the way people did when they caught Richard J. Cartier going through the trash cans.
I mean, did she have to say the word wrong like that—as if it was the biggest word in the sentence? Or maybe in the whole stupid sky? Reminded me of Bruce Savery reading the Court Report at school. Wrong. Almost made me want to go out and commit a dang domestic disturbance.
“Didn’t you ever see anyone with asthma before?” I blurted out before I could stop myself. “Maybe you’re the one got something wrong with you.”
Well, that was it. See, I’m pretty sure no one in her whole life said anything like that to Debbie D’Olympio. Least of all the likes of James Kovacs Jr.
I stared at the cute mouth where she’d held my Camel a few minutes earlier and wondered how I could take it back. I tried to chuckle like I was just kidding or something.
“Debbie, you know I didn’t mean—”
But before I could get it out, I heard the rasp of the kid’s breath, and it was just like that day in the dang shack. Instead of thinking about Debbie like I shoulda been, my mind went back to the days when the kid first came, and how she had stood in the picture window for hours, waiting for some guy in a yellow station wagon to come and beat the crap outta her for nothing. All while Debbie sat in that nice split-level house. And you know what? I wasn’t sorry. Nah, I wasn’t a bit sorry.
Not that it woulda mattered. Debbie D’Olympio didn’t even say goodbye. She just walked away, picking up speed as she hit the pavement like she was running from a burning house. And heck, maybe she was.
Any kid in his right mind woulda told the wheezing Indian to scram and run after her. But me? I just sat there on that rock and let Debbie go. After a while, a shudder took hold a me as the cold came through my cheap jacket. I fired up another smoke, making sure not to breathe on the kid.
By then, my lungs were kinda burning, and every time I exhaled, the angry plume got bigger. “I hope you’re happy. You just ruined the best day of my life.”
“I made prettiest girl in the whole damn city go away,” she said, nodding.
“Jeez, you don’t have to smile about it. And Ma would wash your mouth out with soap she heard you curse like that.”
“Ma,” she repeated. As if the word tasted sweet in her mouth.
“Hah. You musta forgot what she’s like—because she’d be giving you a whoopin’ right about now.” I reached in my pocket and gave her the Sky Bar I’d brought for Debbie. Not that she deserved it, but I didn’t need no reminders. That’s when I noticed the shiny red ribbons tied to the end of Agnes’s pigtails, her fancy wool coat. She even had fur mittens like Debbie’s.
“Looks like them Dohertys are treating you pretty good, huh?”
She bit into the caramel square first just like she always did. “Mommy takes us swimming on Tuesday. Even in the winter. And I have my own bathing suit. A green one.” She scowled as she moved on to the fudge square. “Only she’s not really my mommy.”
“Yeah, well, real or not, she’s probably going ape by now. From what Ma says, this cold air ain’t good for the asthma, neither. You know the way home?”
She pointed toward Grainer Street. “That way. Mommy’s house is on the corner. A white one with green windows.”
“You mean shutters?”
“Shutters.” She touched her chest like she did when Zaidie taught her something, like she was taking the word inside herself. “See?”
It was just an ordinary word, but when she said it, I could tell what she was thinking about. Or who.
“You still miss her, huh?”
“My sister,” she whispered.
If Ma’s name was sweet to her, Zaidie was like one a Nonna’s holy saints. She couldn’t even bring herself to say it out loud. I was sorry I brung it up. Or that I’d ever played that silly “See?” game with her.
So there I was feeling sorry for ninety-nine things that weren’t my damn fault when outta the blue, the kid says, “Mommy was here looking for me.”
“Here? You mean today? While you were sitting here with me?” I jumped to my feet.
The kid pointed to the playground, not the least bit flustered. “Over there. Kathy, too. They don’t see us, though.” Then she corrected her grammar, all proud a herself. “Didn’t. Did not see us.”
“What the heck, Agnes? You saw your mommy and you didn’t say anything? How long ago?”
“Right before the prettiest girl leaved.” She popped the marshmallow square into her mouth. “This is the Jimmy piece, on account of it’s the sweetest one.”
“For cryin’ out loud, Agnes. Good old Mommy’s probably home calling the cops right now and you’re sitting here, naming the squares of your Sky Bar. Lady probably thinks you’re kidnapped or something. And when they see me, they’re gonna—”
I started for the street, pulling her by the hand. “Let’s get going. One block down Grainer, you say? Hurry up—but don’t run. No matter what, do not run.” Okay, I wasn’t making a lot of sense, but it had been a pretty messed-up day. And now I had to worry the cops and some crazed Mommy might be looking for us.
As we walked, I couldn’t help noticing that all traces of the asthma attack that wrecked my life were gone. She even had the nerve to smile at me. It woulda been pretty aggravating, but I figured when someone hurts you bad as that Mr. Dean did to her, you go one of two ways. You either walk around scared shitless for the rest of your dang life, or you turn out like Agnes.
Her new home was so close that we could see it from the sidewalk of the school. Four houses down. No streets to cross.
“That the house with the green shutters you were talking about?”
Agnes let go of my hand and nodded. Then she pointed in the opposite direction. “You go that way and I go to the green shutters. Then Mommy won’t call the cops on you.”
“Heck, did you think I was really afraid of that? Let’s go.” I tried to reclaim her hand.
Agnes shook her head and touched the center of her chest the way she did when she learned a new word or had something important to say. “I go by myself, I said.”
Like I told you, when that kid made up her mind, there was no changing it; and since there were no streets for her to cross, I didn’t argue. I looked back a couple of times until she reached the house, though. And every time I did, she spun around and gave me that smile of hers. Almost like she could feel my eyes on her.
On the way home, the whole dumb afternoon tumbled around in my head—the taste of Debbie’s Teaberry gum, the way she tilted her head when she asked me to go to the shack, and that thing that come over me when I walked around the Grainer School and saw her waiting for me in her pink parka. Best feeling I ever had in my life.
I walked a little faster. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe I could still go home and call her. But then the kid’s dang smile came back to me—and the way Debbie looked at her when she said the word wrong. Shoot.
Worst part was I couldn’t even blame Debbie for it. Just like you couldn’t blame people in town for acting the way they did when they caught Richard J. Cartier picking through the trash. None of those people had ever got as close to the bum as I did the day I give him that cigarette. Just like Debbie had never seen the kid standing in the window, watching for the yellow station wagon. Sometimes even in the middle of the dang night. And Debbie hadn’t been there the first time the kid laid down in the snow to make angels, neither. But I had. Suddenly, I was furious at Ma.
“Everything you do, no matter how small, has a consequence,” she liked to say.
One of what we called her personal Ten Commandments.
“And everything you don’t do,” Dad chimed in, looking around the house. “That adds up, too.”
But did either of them ever think of the consequences of bringing all those Emergencies into our house? How every one of them changed us? It made me mad till I remembered that once, someone had stood outside the house at 100 Sanderson holding a sorry-eyed kid name of James Kovacs Jr. And for some reason no one can ever explain, Ma had opened the door.
With my whole life and probably a little of Richard J. Cartier’s rolling around in my head like that, it was no wonder I never noticed the kid was following me. My first hint shoulda been the happy howl Princie let up when she spotted me from the picture window. I mean, the dog’s always glad to see me, but this was different.
Ma came and stood in the door, with Jon behind her. “Why is Princie barking like that?” But by the way his voice rose, you could tell he knew before he finished the sentence.
“Jimmy, what in the world—”
She was saying my name, but Ma’s eyes were on the spot behind me. And when I turned around, there was the kid I thought I left on Grainer Street, smile blazing like a fire that nothing in the world could put out.
“I come home, Ma!” she said, as Princie and Jon pushed through the storm door and leaped on her. “Home!”