100 Days and 99 Nights (7 page)
Mom says when I saw Sylvester in the toy store window it was love at first sight. I bought my squirrel with my very own money. I saved my allowance and when I reached $10.99, which is as close to eleven dollars as you can come before it actually becomes eleven dollars, I opened my little safe (the combination is a secret), took the money to the toy store, and bought Sylvester my squirrel. At the last minute, Mom had to chip in seventy-nine more cents because they charged me something called tax, which I did not think was very fair. Still, I was very proud of myself.
S
ilent as fish, we traveled the hall upstream into the rush of students heading home. Still silent, we passed the playground where the day’s trouble had begun. Children raced around the swings, monkey bars, and seesaw. There was no trace of the afternoon’s fight. We walked all the way to the mailbox on the corner of Normandy Avenue before Ike begged, “Esme . . . say something.”
I considered what Mom would say in this sort of situation but then just said what I had to say.
“Dad’s rules are all we have until he comes back. You absolutely broke his playground rules.”
“I know it . . . I just wasn’t thinking. . . .”
“That’s Ike Sense, all right — just not thinking.”
I shouldn’t have said that, but I did. His shoulders folded down low as if I had just punched his stomach. I felt pretty bad. I had been a fustilug, but he had broken at least one, if not more, of the playground rules that Dad had drilled into us.
1.
Wait your turn.
2.
Don’t talk to adult strangers.
3.
Don’t throw sand.
4.
Don’t leave the playground without telling an adult.
5.
The first person who hits is always wrong.
“Number five,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Five,” agreed Ike as he fought hard to hold back tears.
“Sticks and stones . . .”
“I know . . . I know . . . ,” moaned Ike. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names . . .”
“. . . and dopey threats will never harm me,” I finished.
Sticks and stones was a no-brainer. Thoughtless fustilugs would talk and say hurtful things, but that was never a reason to hit.
According to Dad, “The first person who hits is the first person to run out of good ideas, and a McCarther never runs out of good ideas.” Dad was big on rules. Rules were important. After all, in the army you had more rules “than you could shake a stick at.”
My father, Sergeant August Aloysius McCarther the Third, has made it super clear that you don’t want to go and break his rules.
“I didn’t want to break his rules.”
“I know you didn’t, Ike.”
“It’s my duty not to . . . ,” Ike muttered sadly and proudly at the same exact time.
I chewed that over, then nodded in agreement. While Dad was away it was our duty to follow his rules.
“I broke my duty. . . .”
The image of Ike breaking his “doodee” almost made me break out laughing, but the sad trickle of tears that slid down into his furred brown coat collar stopped me.
We turned onto our street. The dogwood trees, with yellow ribbons tied to their trunks in hopes of our soldiers’ safe return, stood at attention as we passed. Our house squatted on the far corner. The white paint had started to potato-peel off parts of the walls. Dad would fix that when he got back. He’d take us to the hardware store to buy paint and turpentine.
Turpentine! Dad thought turpentine was a funnier word than yogurt, llama, or even spatula.
“You going to tell Mom?”
“Turpentine.”
I didn’t mean to say that; the silly word just slipped from my lips. Ike looked up at me, scrunched his damp face in confusion, and then for the first time since I saw him sitting on that bench in the office, smiled. Somehow, at that moment, “turpentine” was the very best thing to say. Funny, how you can get lucky that way. Then Ike’s smile just as quickly disappeared.
“What about Daddy?”
What about Daddy? I repeated inside my head. For the first time since my father had left for war, I was angry with him. How could I possibly be angry with him when he wasn’t even here? The house needed painting, Ike got into a fight, Mom needed help, and we hadn’t had a good pancake in weeks. He had other duties — duties here with us. Which came first, the sergeant or the daddy? My lips went straight and my teeth gritted hard together at this dangerous thought. I knew deep inside that even thinking this I had somehow broken an important rule. I sucked in a deep breath of cool air through my nose and looked down at Ike, who waited, expectant eyes, chin raised, for my answer to “What about Daddy?” Think, Esme, think what to say. Be owl wise. But at that moment I was so mad-sad about so many things that I had gone blank inside my head and couldn’t put any words in any correct order.
I stepped over the curb onto the faded stone walk that led to the house. From behind the front door you could barely hear Napoleon’s muffled welcoming barks.
“I miss Dad,” I soft-said. It wasn’t something I had ever said since he had left. But now, having said it, I felt like I had broken another big rule.
“Me too.”
Ike slipped his hand into mine and squeezed. We continued up the path toward home.
This is my third time through the T’s. I started with Tina my tiger, which I got from Mommy’s little brother, Tom, when he visited us in Germany two years ago. He took us on an amazing boat trip down the blue Danube, a river in Germany whose banks are dotted with ancient castles that Tom told us are ruled by ferocious trolls. (Tom likes telling stories so I am not sure how true that part is.)
My turtle’s name is Tililah, which Ike insists is no name at all. This is another case of Ike Sense. Since my turtle is named Tililah, it is most definitely a name. When we first arrived in Alexandria, Delilah, a corporal lady in my dad’s division, gave me Tililah. She explained that this turtle would always remind me that “slow and steady wins the race.” Even though I like Delilah and Tililah very much, I don’t believe that one bit because anytime we race in gym I have noticed that the fastest one wins and the slowest, steady one does not. Sometimes grown-ups don’t know very much about kids.
I
bounced on my bed, examining my crossed-off calendar. It looked like I was X in a very long tic-tac-toe game that I should have won at least ten days ago. To try and make the game a tie, I decided to circle the rest of the days Dad was gone. With my thick black marker I circled day seventy-two, a sunny Sunday. At least I had Grandpa McCarther’s visit to look forward to.
Napoleon’s happy howls from the living room announced Grandpa’s arrival. I tucked Tililah back into my bedzoo between Sylvester my squirrel and Tina my tiger, jumped off the bed, and raced out of my room, almost knocking Ike down the stairs.
When Grandpa saw us he gave us a big double hug. His eyes were not quite as bright sky blue, his hair more grayed than light brown, his face more gentle, but Grandpa McCarther looked a lot like Daddy, which, when you think about it, is really no great surprise. Crossing the crumbly skin on his arm were the rusty remains of his robin redbreast tattoo, now a faded red-and-black blur.
I looked down at my slender splinter of an arm and knew for certain that that picture could never fit. When I looked back up, Grandpa was smiling at me in that way grandparents do when they know exactly what you were just thinking. He winked at me to signal that we had just shared the same thought.
“Did you bring me a present, Grandpa?” Ike asked rudely. Grandpa always did bring us something, but it was best left as a surprise and not something expected.
“Isaac!” warned Mom.
“I most certainly did.”
He reached behind the couch and slid a wrapped box to Ike, who ripped it open to reveal a hulking yellow dump truck.
“Wow! Thanks, Grandpa.”
Ike sped to the basement to test it out with the rest of his collection.
“Esme, I think I have solved quite a prickly problem you have been having.” An oddly shaped, awkwardly wrapped package appeared in front of me. Grandpa McCarther was a great solver of prickly problems.
I carefully picked at the taped paper corners and slid the contents out, revealing a big-beaked stuffed bird.
“Esme, dear, finally this is it. This is the X for your bedzoo.”
I still had no X. Everyone knows there are very few words that start with that terribly troublesome letter, and absolutely no animals.
“It is a bird, Grandpa, and bird starts with a B, like bandicoot or beetle.”
“It is not just any bird, Esme . . . it is a dodo bird.”
I was silent while my brain raced through the alphabet once, then twice. Both times dodo started with D. But Grandpa was very smart and he would never mistake the D in dodo for the ever-troublesome X, so I checked a third time, because as Dad always said, “three strikes and you are out.”
“D — dodo definitely begins with D, not X,” I gently reminded him, and then thought, Grandpa, yer out!
“Ahhh.”
That big open-mouth sound meant Grandpa McCarther had somehow tricked me.
“Dodos are X-tinct, and X-tinct begins with X!”
I threw my arms around his neck to show him how much I loved the gift, then ran upstairs to my bedzoo to name my X-tinct Dodo.
“Hurry back,” Grandpa called. Then ordering and asking at the same time, he added, “What say we give you two tykes a little break from your mom and take a park adventure?”
I didn’t need a break from Mom, but maybe she needed a break from us.
Unicorns are not real live animals. This has been told to me many times. They are made up, like mermaids, dragons, and werewolves. But if, with a wave of a magic wand, there was one animal I could make real, it would be my unicorn, Ulrich. I can close my eyes and imagine his shiny white coat, long twisty horn straight to the sky, silver hooves kicking up dirt, and me on his back riding through the forest.
I
t was a great day with Grandpa. We rode the carousel six times straight — a McCarther family record. I went on the camel, donkey, giraffe, dragon, skipped the elephant because its seat was broken, and finished with two straight rides on the sea horse. We drank dark soda, ate big salt pretzels, three candy bars, a lolly, and a soft vanilla-chocolate-swirled ice-cream cone — having all in the same afternoon was another McCarther family first.
As I held Grandpa’s right hand and Ike his left, we walked through the park answering his questions about how school was and what our favorite subjects were.
“Math. Math is my favorite. I like the way everything comes out exactly right in the end.”
“That was your father’s favorite. . . .”
“Lunch!” spit Ike, blowing rainbow sprinkles off his ice cream. “I like the way everything is always eaten in the end.”
“Hmm. Well, if I remember correctly, that was your father’s favorite also.”
“Grandpa,” I cautioned, “he couldn’t have had two favorites. Which was it? Math or lunch?”
Ike’s face scrunched, preparing to howl in victory. In his mind there was no possible way he could lose this lopsided competition between math and lunch. Tired from watching us on the carousel, Grandpa eased us down onto a wooden slatted bench that overlooked the carved green-and-brown baseball fields where boys and girls batted and caught.
“Why couldn’t he? I have two favorites,” he glanced at each of us.
Partially satisfied with a tie, Ike relaxed his jaw and attacked his now-soupy ice cream. I smiled at Grandpa’s skill at escaping this trap. The smack of a bat hitting a ball and calls of “Out!” and “Safe!” made us look out onto the ball field.
“Grandpa, do all Dads come back from war?”
“No, Ike, they don’t.”
It was late afternoon and the sun was sinking fast, giving long shadows to the arguing players. Looking over the darkening tree branches, I could just about see the distant tip of the Washington Monument poking at the clouds. I had many questions. I knew Ike, and that one answer always led to one more question, so I decided to stay silent and let him do all the hard work.
“You came back.”
“I was plumb lucky.”
Now Grandpa was squinting far into the distance at the barely visible point of the monument too. His answers were so quiet and short, he seemed to have lost all his skill in solving prickly problems. I began to worry. I wanted to tell Grandpa that this was another Ike trap that he had to escape, but my throat began to close up. Now I didn’t want Ike to ask any more questions, none, zero, zip . . . and then I wanted him to ask one more.
“Is Daddy lucky?”
Grandpa’s arms spread and lifted. His exaggerated shadow on the walkway made him look like a huge eagle about to fly away. But instead of leaving us, his arms flapped down onto our shoulders and pulled us in tight to his sides.
Say “yes,” Grandpa. Say “absolutely one hundred percent lucky.”
“Certainly he is, he has you two great kids.”
His body felt warm and reassuring, but his arm on my shoulder didn’t feel like a wing anymore. Instead, it felt like a weight. His coat had hitched up his wrist, exposing the faded smear of red-and-black ink under his skin. I looked up to him in hopes of a smile, a wink, and a squeeze of encouragement, but his jaw was set and his eyes narrowed as if he was getting ready for a fight.
“Come.”
The deep creases in his forehead smoothed and his face slight-softened. His knees cracked as he straightened his legs to stand.
“It’s getting dark. We better get going before your mom starts to worry.”
He eased us off the bench and turned us onto the right path toward home.