Loser (3 page)

In the summer between first and second grades Zinkoff acquires two new friends. One is a baby sister, the other is a neighbor. The baby sister is Polly. The neighbor is Andrew.

When Zinkoff first meets the baby, his mother says, “Look,” and pulls down the blanket. Zinkoff's eyes boggle. There are two silver stars on the baby's diaper. This baby is less than one day old. What can she have done already to deserve two stars? He's never been awarded more than one at a time. “Mom,” he says, “
two
stars? What did she
do
?”

“She did the best thing of all,” says his mother, pulling up the blanket. “She was born.”

Has Zinkoff been misinformed? “I was born too, wasn't I?”

She pats his hand. “Absolutely. You were every bit as born as Polly was.”

“So,” he says, “how come I didn't get two stars?”

“Who says you didn't?”

He brightens. “I did?”

She shakes her head. “Sorry. I was kidding you. That was before I started giving out stars.” Now she needs to pick him up again. “Tell you what—how would you like your being-born stars now? Better late than never.”

He brightens again. “Yeah!”

But she's not finished thinking. “Or how about this? We could make a deal. We could wait until you're having a really bad day, some day when you could really, really use two stars to pick you up. That's when you get them.”

He thinks it over. He hates to wait, but he loves to make deals. “Okay,” he says and shakes his mother's hand. Then he reaches into the blanket and shakes the baby's foot.

 

A month later the new neighbors move in next door. That same day Mrs. Zinkoff bakes a strawberry angel food cake and carries it out the front
door. Her firstborn tags along. “This is how we say welcome,” she says.

He stands at his mother's side as she rings the doorbell and says, “Welcome to the neighborhood” and hands the cake to the new lady neighbor, whose proper name is Mrs. Orwell, but whose first name is better: Cherise. Then he is introduced. “This is my son, Donald.”

Cherise smiles down at him and shakes his hand and says, “Hello, Donald. I have a son too. His name is Andrew. How old are you?”

“Six,” he replies.

“So is Andrew.”

Zinkoff stares at the two ladies in wonder. “Wow! Same as me!” He looks past Cherise. “Is he in there?”

“He is,” says Cherise, “but he's hiding. He says he's never coming out. He's mad because we moved away from our other house.”

Zinkoff thinks about this for a moment. He lifts a finger to Cherise. “I have an idea. Tell Andrew my father is a mailman. That will make him come out.” In Zinkoff's view, carrying the mail is the most interesting job there is.

Cherise nods solemnly. “I'll give it a try.”

Before Zinkoff and his mother get back to their own house, he has another idea. “I'm going to make a special welcome just for Andrew.”

“Good for you,” says his mother. “A cake?”

“No, a cookie.”

His mother does not say no. His parents try not to say no to him unless it's really necessary. So when he announces that he intends to bake a cookie, his mother simply says, “What kind?”

He doesn't hesitate. “A snickerdoodle!” The snickerdoodle is his favorite cookie. Every cookie tastes good to him, but snickerdoodles taste twice as good because of their name. Sometimes his dad says “snookerdiddle” and makes him laugh for an hour.

Zinkoff's idea is to bake a snickerdoodle so big that Andrew the new neighbor will
have
to come out and see it.

Since he is working on the kitchen table, it seems to him that the largest cookie he can make would be one as large as the table itself. But his mother points out that a cookie that big could
not fit in the oven. So he settles for a rectangular cookie that covers the entire cookie pan.

Every time his mother tries to help, the young chef snaps at her, “I can do that.” So his mother simply gives directions and says “Heaven help me” a lot while her intrepid son makes a mess of the kitchen. Flour and eggs fly everywhere. For weeks to come the family will feel the crunch of sugar grains underfoot.

Finally, miraculously, the cookie gets baked. He snatches the quilted mitten and potholder from his mother—“I can
do
it
myself
”—pulls the hot pan from the oven and sets it on the kitchen table. Impatient as always, he cannot wait for it to cool. He blows over the steaming cookie until he's out of breath. He flaps his hands over it. At last the pan is cool enough to touch without the mitten.

He runs next door with it. He rings the bell. Cherise opens the door.

“Hi, Donald.”

“Hi, Cherise. I made a welcome cookie for Andrew. It's a snickerdoodle. I think if you put it on the floor and wait a little while, he'll smell it and come out.”

Zinkoff is utterly serious, but for some reason Cherise laughs. “Come on in,” she says. “Wait here.”

Cherise leaves him standing in the living room. He hears whispery voices upstairs. Once he hears a sharp “No!” Then there are footsteps on the stairs, and here at last is Andrew Orwell walking toward him in his grumpy face and pajamas in the middle of the day.

“Hi,” Zinkoff says. “My name is Donald Zinkoff. I'm your neighbor. I made you a welcome cookie. It's a snickerdoodle.”

Andrew's face perks up. He leans in to smell the cookie. He is hooked.

Zinkoff reaches for the spatula his mother told him to bring along. A cookie is not really a cookie until it's out of the pan and into the hand. He lays the pan on the floor. He pries the giant snickerdoodle from the sides and bottom of the pan. He lifts out the warm, soft, heavenly smelling welcome. He lifts it with both hands and holds it out to Andrew. As Andrew reaches for it, the panless, unsupported cookie collapses of its own weight and falls to the floor. Zinkoff is
left with a bite-size scrap in each hand.

Andrew Orwell stares in horror at the floor. He screams, “My cookie!” He screams at Zinkoff. “You dropped it!” He runs screaming up the stairs. “I hate this place!”

Zinkoff stuffs one scrap into his mouth, then the other. He gathers up the collapsed pieces from the floor and carries them home in the pan. He sits on the front step. Everybody who passes by that afternoon is offered a piece of cookie. In between, Zinkoff helps himself.

By the time Clunker Four rattles up to the curb, the cookie is gone. As his father gets out of the car, Zinkoff runs to him, plunges his head into his father's mailbag and throws up.

Zinkoff was born with an upside-down valve in his stomach. This causes him to throw up several times a week. To Zinkoff, throwing up is almost as normal as breathing.

But not to his father, who has brought his mailbag home with him in order to repair the strap. When Donald was an infant, Mr. Zinkoff was very good about changing diapers, but he has no stomach for vomit. He turns away, holds out
the bag and growls, “Take it to your mother.”

Early on, Zinkoff's mother impressed upon her son the etiquette of throwing up: That is, do not throw up at random, but throw up
into
something, preferably a toilet or bucket. Since toilets or buckets are not always handy, Zinkoff has learned to reach for the nearest container. Thus, at one time or other he has thrown up into soup bowls, flowerpots, wastebaskets, trash bins, shopping bags, winter boots, kitchen sinks and, once, a clown's hat. But never his father's mailbag.

He thinks his mother will say “Heaven help me” but she does not. She's cool. She puts down baby Polly and unloads the bag into the toilet. She scours it with a stiff bristle brush and hand soap. She rubs it with Marley's Leather Cream. She sweetens it with a splash of Mennen's aftershave and sets it into the playpen for baby Polly to crawl into.

Hungry again, Zinkoff eats a full dinner that night. And throws up into one of his socks.

“Heaven help me.”

Soccer is Zinkoff's kind of game.

Baseball has too much waiting and too many straight lines. Shooting a basketball demands precision. Football is fun only for the ball carrier.

But soccer is free-for-all, as haphazard and slapdash as Zinkoff himself. He plays in the Peewee League in the autumn of his seventh year. His team is the Titans. Every Saturday morning he's the first one there, kicking pinecones around the field until the coaches show up.

Once the game begins, Zinkoff never stops running. He zigs and zags after the checkered ball like a fox after a field mouse—except he hardly ever catches up to it. Someone else always seems to reach it first. Zinkoff is forever swinging his foot at the ball a half second after it goes
past him. He winds up kicking the shins, ankles and rear ends of the other players. Twice he's kicked the referee. Once, somehow, he kicked himself. His teammates rub their bruises and call him “Wild Foot.”

To Zinkoff a net is a net. He doesn't much care which team the net belongs to. Several times during the season he kicks the ball at the wrong goal. Fortunately, he always misses.

The first game is against the Ramblers. When it's over, Zinkoff jumps up and down and pumps his fists as he has seen athletes do and yells “Yahoo!” He does not notice that he is the only Titan cheering. “What are you so happy for?” says Robert, one of his teammates. “We lost.”

This is news to Zinkoff. Throughout the game, and even at the end, he has not thought about the score. Apparently, losing has made Robert very unhappy. It shows on his face. It shows in the way he's kicking at the turf. Zinkoff looks around. Other Titans are kicking turf or stomping their feet or pounding their thighs with their fists. Every Titan wears a sour puss.

And then the coach calls the Titans into a huddle and says, “Okay, on three, yea Ramblers. One, two, three—” Zinkoff bellows, “Yea Ramblers!” And adds, “You da man!”

“Yea Ramblers” barely crawls from the lips of the other Titans.

And then the coach is lining them up, and the Ramblers are in a line too, and the Titans and Ramblers are patting hands down the line like dominos, pat pat pat pat, no sour pusses on the Ramblers, who keep saying “Good game, good game, good game…” and Zinkoff is the only Titan saying “Good game” back.

And then the Titans are heading for their parents on the sidelines, and in order to show their parents what serious soccer players they are, they kick the turf some more and tear off their knee pads and shirts and throw them to the ground and stomp on them. One Titan even falls to his knees and bawls while pounding his head into the grass.

Zinkoff wants to be a good Titan. He kicks at some turf too. His mother and father look on with mouths agape as he tears off his shirt and shoes and finally his socks and stomps them all
into the ground. He gets down on his knees and rips up grass and flings it into the air. He snatches the pacifier from baby Polly's mouth and hurls it onto the field. He pounds his fists into the ground and cries out, “No! No! No!”

By now other parents and players are watching.

Zinkoff's mother says, “Just what do you think you're doing?”

Zinkoff looks up from his knees. “I'm being mad because we lost.”

Baby Polly is bawling.

“Well, you can start being madder, because this little demonstration will cost you your allowance for a week. And you have five seconds to bring that pacifier back.”

 

Zinkoff is determined to become a better loser. In the following weeks he practices his losing in the backyard. But he never again gets a chance to show his stuff on Saturday, for the Titans win all the rest of their games.

No great thanks to Wild Foot.

One time, amazingly, he finds himself alone with the ball and a clear field ahead of him.
Propelled by an excitement of whistles and screams behind him, Wild Foot boots the ball on and on, never realizing he has long since gone out of bounds. He crosses two other soccer fields and is finally stopped in the parking lot.

On another occasion he throws up on the ball, which in turn causes two other players to throw up.

It is after this incident that several Titans ask the coach if Zinkoff can be traded to another team. They are soon glad it didn't happen.

The last game of the season comes down to a play-off between the Titans and the Hornets. The Hornets also have lost only one game. The winner will be champion.

The game goes as usual for Wild Foot. He runs around a lot. He swings his foot a lot but seldom connects with the ball. Sometimes he makes himself dizzy running in circles as he tries to keep up with the action swirling around him.

Late in the second half the score is still 0–0. Zinkoff is standing in front of the Hornets' net, wondering where the ball is, when suddenly it hits him in the head. It bounces into the net for
a goal, and Zinkoff is instantly mobbed by cheering teammates. The final score is Titans 1, Hornets 0.

The Titans are Peewee champions!

The Titans go wild. They jump like kangaroos. They fall onto their backs and churn their legs in the air. They ride their parents' shoulders and thrust up their fingers and crow, “We're number one!”

Zinkoff goes wild too. He tries to stand on his head. He shouts into baby Polly's face “We're number one!” and makes her blink. He climbs onto his father's shoulders and proclaims to all the wide world: “We're number one!”

And then he looks down and sees the face of Andrew Orwell, his neighbor. Andrew is a Hornet. Zinkoff has never seen a sadder face in his life. It reminds him of a monkey's face. He begins to notice the other Hornets, in their black-and-yellow shirts. They are slumped on the grass. They are slumped over their parents' knees. Not one of them rides a shoulder. Every one is monkey-faced and crying and slumpy.

Then they give out the trophies. Every Titan
gets one. Zinkoff has never won a trophy before. It's a golden soccer player on a black pedestal with a golden soccer ball at his foot. It glows as if it has been painted in sunlight. It is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

Zinkoff sees the other Titans kissing their trophies, so he kisses his too. As he does so, he sees the Hornets slumping away to the parking lot.

And suddenly he's running, he's yelling, “Andrew! Andrew!” Cherise and Andrew turn in the parking lot. Zinkoff runs huffing up to them. “Andrew, here.” He holds out the trophy. The look in Andrew's eyes tells him he has done the right thing. “You take it.”

Andrew reaches for it, but his mother catches his wrist. “Donald, that is really nice of you, but you're the one who won it. Andrew will win a trophy of his own someday.”

Andrew's fingers are curled like claws. They can feel the golden trophy inches away. As his mother leads him off to the car, he cries out, “I
want
it!”

That afternoon Zinkoff sits on his back step. The trophy is beside him, brighter than ever.

Zinkoff is playing a game he invented called Bugs on a Stick. In the next backyard Andrew sits cross-legged by a bed of purple pansies. He cradles his chin in his hands. His face is still sad.

Zinkoff calls, “Wanna play my game?”

Andrew shakes his head.

“Wanna go in the alley?”

Andrew shakes his head.

Zinkoff asks Andrew many questions, but all Andrew does is shake his head and look monkey-faced.

After a while Zinkoff gets tired of his game. He looks at Andrew. He can think of nothing else to say. By now Zinkoff is sad too. Not just because Andrew is sad, but for another reason: The soccer season is over. That has been the best part of it. Playing the games. He wishes he could make himself feel less sad.

He picks up his trophy and goes inside. A minute later he opens the back door and places the trophy on the step and goes back in.

When he comes out later that day, the trophy is gone.