Loser (9 page)

It takes her a long time to climb from the top step into the living room. “You can get the door,” she says. He closes the door.

It is dark inside. Not as dark as his cellar, but dark for a house. No lights are on. “So…” she says. He waits for the rest, but that's all there is: “So…” She repeats it quite a few times as she makes her way across the living room. She sets the four legs of the walker out ahead of her, then catches up with her own two feet. Six legs she has. It's the world's slowest gallop. And then she heads into the dining room. “So…” It takes her as long to cross the living and dining rooms as it takes him to walk to school.

“So…what would you like?”

What would he like? Not much, really. Take away today and his life has been pretty good.
Then it hits him, they're in the kitchen—she's talking about food.

“Snickerdoodle?” he says. It's the first thing that comes to mind.

She stops. He stops behind her. She cocks her head to one side. “Snickerdoodle? I haven't heard that word in ages. My
mother
used to make snickerdoodles.”

He tries to picture the old lady with a mother. He can't. “
My
mother makes snickerdoodles,” he tells her.

“No, she doesn't,” she says. “They don't make them anymore.”

“Well, she
does
,” he says.

“No,” she says firmly.

“Yes,” he says, equally firmly. He's feeling a little annoyed.

She seems to be staring at a leg of the kitchen table. She shakes her head but says nothing. She turns forward in the walker. “Well,” she says, “I don't have snickerdoodles.” She continues on across the kitchen. “You'll have to ask for something else.”

Something else. He can think of many things he would like to eat, but he tries to remember he's not in a restaurant and he's not at home. “A sandwich?” he offers.

“A sandwich.” She repeats his words so carefully he wonders if she knows what a sandwich is. He has never been this close to a very, very old person before. He wonders how much there is that such a person does not know. “A sandwich…a sandwich…” she repeats as she continues her frozen gallop across the kitchen. The back legs of the walker land first with a rubbery thud, then the front legs, then the catch-up shushing of her own slippers on the linoleum.
Thud thud shush shush.
“A sandwich…”

He plops into a chair. He is almost woozy from slowness.

She stops at a metal cabinet. “How about peanut butter and jelly?” she says. “Do children still like peanut butter and jelly?”

He has long since outgrown peanut butter and jelly. What he really wants is a pepper and egg sandwich, like his mother makes, with spicy
brown mustard. But he guesses this is out of the question. “Sure,” he says.

She fusses in the cabinet, fusses in the refrigerator. She finds the peanut butter. “Can't find the jelly,” she says. “Today we'll have pretend jelly. How would you like that?”

He's ready to agree to anything. “Okay,” he says.

She is so slow, so deliberate in every movement that he sees things he has never seen before. He had not known there were so many steps to the spreading of peanut butter on a slice of bread. Is this how things appear to the Waiting Man, a world in slow motion?

After what seems like hours she heads for the table, pushing the walker with one hand, holding a plated sandwich in the other. When she lays the plate on the table and heads back for the second sandwich, he jumps up. “I'll get it!”

She transfers herself from the walker to a chair, and at long last they set to eating.

“I'm pretending my jelly is gooseberry,” she says. She is the color of white mice: pink scalp showing through white hair, pink eyelids. Her eyes
are watery, but she is not crying. “We used to have gooseberries on our farm. What's yours?”

“Grape,” he says.

“Jelly or jam?” she says.

He is stumped. “Jelly, I guess.”

“Jam is easier to spread.”

“Okay, jam.”

“Are you sure? I always thought jelly had more taste.”

“Jelly.”

Not that it makes any difference. He really does try to pretend, but all he tastes is peanut butter and bread.

He's glad they're in the kitchen. It's not as dark as the rest of the house. The sandwich halves are in the shape of triangles. He likes it that way. It seems special. Before he knows it his sandwich is gone. The old lady has barely begun. She eats as slowly as she walks.

She looks at him. She puts down her sandwich and with a grimace reaches for the walker. “I'll make you another.”

“No,” he says. He puts his hand on her wrist.
Her skin feels like newspaper. “I'll do it.”

He gets up and makes himself another. “Don't forget the jelly,” she calls over her shoulder. He spreads pretend jelly. He slices the sandwich catty-corner, into triangles.

He tries to eat this one more slowly. They do not speak. He wonders about something to drink, but he's afraid to ask.

“Do you know the Waiting Man?” he says.

She tilts her head and sniffs, as if trying to catch the full scent of the question. “Waiting Man?”

“The man at the window, down the street? Nine twenty-four Willow.”

She puts down her sandwich, the better to think. She shakes her head. “I don't know any waiting man.”

“He's been waiting for a long time,” he says. “A
long
time.”

He hopes she asks him how long.

She looks at him. Her eyes are gleaming, but he is sure she is not crying. “How long?”

Suddenly he realizes the number is not handy. His father had originally said “thirty-two years.”
That was in second grade, he's in fifth now. Three years. Thirty-two plus three…

He stares at her. Like stones, he drops each sound into those uncrying eyes.
“Thirty. Five. Years.”

She does not seem impressed. She picks up her sandwich and takes a bite and chews for a long time. Her eyes drift away, toward the living room, the Beyond. “What is he waiting for?” she says.

“His brother.”

“Oh.” She says this matter-of-factly, nodding, as if that explains everything.

There's a clatter at the front of the house. He realizes it is the mail slot opening, letters being pushed through. His father is delivering. She doesn't seem to hear it.

“What's his name?” she says.

“Who?”

“The brother.”

The question surprises him. He has never wondered about the brother's name, or the Waiting Man's for that matter. “I don't know,” he says.

She starts in on the second half of her sandwich—he has long since finished his. He feels her staring at him as she chews. He is uneasy. When he looks at her for more than a second at a time, he discovers her skin is almost transparent, like thin ice over a December puddle. He feels he is looking
into
her. A thought pops into his head: The moment she stops chewing she is going to ask him his name.

He does not want her to ask. He does not want her to call out “Oh, Donald!” or “Oh, Zinkoff!” He wants to be “Oh, mailman!”

He must say something, quickly, create a diverting action.

“I can spell tintinnabulation,” he blurts. And he spells it for her. He has been waiting for years at school for someone to ask him. “T-I-N-T-I-N-N-A-B-U-L-A-T-I-O-N.”

Her mouth drops open, her eyes bulge. She is astonished. She is amazed.

“And I got an A once. In Geography. It was the only A in the whole class.”

This time she seems not so much amazed as
pleased. She nods and smiles. She is not surprised. She knew he could do it. “Congratulations,” she says.

The echo comes in his parents' words:
One thousand congratulations to you!
And suddenly he remembers the day in the hospital when Polly was born, making a deal with his mother for two stars whenever he really needed them. Could he ever need them more than today?

“Do you have stars?” he says.

She looks at him funny. “Stars?”

“Those little paper stars? Silver? That you stick on—” he is about to say “your shirt”—“paper and stuff?”

She nods. She gets up and goes to a drawer in the cupboard. “Stars…stars…” she mutters as she roots through the drawer.

She hauls the walker off to the dining room. He regrets he asked.

“Stars…stars…”

She returns beaming. She's holding up something, but it's not a star. It's a turkey sticker, the size of a postage stamp, the kind Miss Meeks put
on a paper of his once or twice. She hands it to him. “How about a turkey?”

A turkey is perfect. He sticks it on his shirt. He can't tell her how happy that turkey makes him feel, so happy now his eyes are watery too, and his breath flutters in his chest and something hard and thorny goes out of him and he tells her everything. He tells her about Field Day and why he isn't at school. He tells her about his two favorite teachers of all time, Miss Meeks and the Learning Train and Mr. Yalowitz who said, “And the Z shall be first!” He tells her about his giraffe hat and Jabip and Jaboop (she laughs out loud at that) and the giant cookie for Andrew Orwell and Hector Binns and his earwax candle. He tells her about Field Day again and what the clocks said and what Gary Hobin said and he tells her about the goal he scored for the Titans and what happened when he closed the door behind him in the cellar with the Furnace Monster which, heaven help him, he still half believes in.

On and on he talks, scooping the fruit out of his life and dropping it into her lap. He gives her
his lucky pink bubblegum stone. She rubs it against her dress and gives it back. Through his tears she is blurry, ghostlike. Her white hair sits upon her head like a puff of cotton.

The kid he has always known himself to be seems to be napping nearby. When he wakes up he is on the sidewalk. The lady is calling “Bye, mailman!” from the step and the sun is bright beyond the rowhouse roofs. School is over: Knapsacked kids are racing home. The air feels cool and new, the air feels good upon his face.

The Yellows won big.

Zinkoff finds this out the moment he arrives at school next day. All the Yellows are wearing gold medals around their necks. The medals are really made of plastic, but they look exactly like Olympic gold medals and they hang from their necks on red, white and blue ribbons.

Gary Hobin did great things at Field Day, and for the remaining days of the year he is King of the School. Some days he laughs a lot and is friendly to people whose names he doesn't know. He is never the first one to speak. He has learned that if he holds his tongue, someone will congratulate him. In fact, so many congratulate him that he finds himself surprised when someone does not.

On other days he is serious and is seen stretching and touching his toes during recess and dur
ing slow times in class. On these days he does not seem to notice other people. His eyes are focused on the Beyond—certainly not the Beyonds of Binns or the Oh Mailman Lady—most likely the Golden Beyond of Olympic Glory. After a day or two the other Yellows stop wearing their medals to school, but Hobin wears his every day, right up to and including Graduation.

 

Zinkoff sits with the orchestra during Graduation. The orchestra has two numbers to play, plus “Pomp and Circumstance” as the graduates march in. From his perch on the stage, Zinkoff can see everything, but he cannot locate his parents and sister in the crowd.

The principal says things to get the program started. Then the superintendent of schools speaks. Then comes the orchestra's first number, “Palaggio's Waltz.” Twice during the number Zinkoff's flute yips like a pinched sister. The music teacher winces, but Zinkoff never notices.

Then Katie Snelsen receives a book for having the best grades. She stands at the podium
and gives a speech. Everyone smiles and pays attention to her. Only the orchestra can see that she is grinding the toe of one shoe into the stage floor.

Next come the awards and special recognitions. There are winners galore—for the best this, the best that, the most this, the most that, second-best, third-best. There are medals and citations and checks and handshakes and gift certificates and trophies and, for Bruce DiMino (Principal's Award), a glass apple.

It is during the giving of the awards that Zinkoff spots Mr. Yalowitz standing in the back. Mr. Yalowitz does not need to be there. He teaches fourth grade, and what does he care about graduating fifth-graders? But there he is, Zinkoff's favorite teacher of all time (along with Miss Meeks) and his end-of-the-alphabet neighbor. And suddenly it hits Zinkoff: He's graduating! No more grade school. No more walking, being first there in the morning; next year he'll ride the bus to middle school. No more staying in the same cozy classroom all day, all year.

For the second time that spring Zinkoff feels
the tears coming. Graduation isn't even over yet, and already he misses John W. Satterfield Elementary. He even misses the boondocks and Field Day and Mrs. Biswell. He looks around. He loves everything and everybody. He wants to hug the walls. The last award is given, and it's time for the orchestra to play “You'll Never Walk Alone.” It's just about the hardest thing he's ever done: play the flute and cry at the same time. The music teacher, he notices, seems to be crying too.

He wonders how many of the original two thousand one hundred and sixty days are left. He has never forgotten the number.

Now the principal walks slowly to the podium. He thanks the “talented musicians” for the “wonderful music.” He smiles down at the graduates in the front rows. He says, “And now the moment we've all been waiting for.”

The graduates stand and head for the stage as the principal calls out the names. The superintendent of schools hands each graduate a rolled-up piece of paper with a blue ribbon around it. The diploma. Most of the graduates grab for the diploma, but the superintendent
holds it back and makes them shake his hand before forking it over.

The calling of each name triggers a reaction in the audience. People run crouching down the aisles to snap pictures. Family, relatives, friends cheer the graduate. Some cheers are modest: a little handclapping, a “Yea, Sarah!”, a “Go get 'em, Nicky!”

Other families are more boisterous: leaping from their seats, arms waving, two-fingered whistles, moose calls, stomping the floor. It's hard not to make comparisons, hard not to notice who gets the loudest cheer, the longest, the most outrageous, the most camera flashes. It's like a last minute, before-you-get-outta-here, final test.

Zinkoff tries not to look at it that way. He knows that some families are simply not as loud as others and that it doesn't mean they love their graduate any less. So it will be with his own family: His father is not a whistler nor his mother a stomper. Still, he can't help thinking it must be nice to have somebody go bonkers over you. That is, assuming you have somebody there to begin with, which he isn't assuming anymore because he
still
hasn't located his parents out
there—maybe Clunker Seven broke down—and it's getting to the point where he'll be thankful for just a peep.

Because he's thinking these things and searching the field of faces, he fails to hear his own name called:

“And last but not least, Donald Zinkoff.”

The principal waits. The superintendent waits. The principal looks around, as if Zinkoff might be up in the air somewhere. He says it again, this time with a question mark:

“Donald Zinkoff?”

Zinkoff snaps to. He jumps up, lurches for the principal, catches his foot in the chair of the clarinetist beside him and goes sprawling to the floor. The flute goes clattering. The audience explodes with laughter. He doesn't blame them. What a goofus! He joins in the laughter. He scrambles after the flute. He picks himself up, takes a bow and resumes his journey to the principal, only to be reminded that it's the superintendent he needs to see.

By now it is quiet again, and again he is hoping, wondering…

The tabletop that had held the stack of diplomas is bare. The last one is in the superintendent's hand. Boondocks forever.

Zinkoff reaches for it but receives instead the superintendent's huge, warm paw. He shakes it. He stands at attention. He declares, “Zinkoff reporting, sir.” The superintendent gives him a grin, a brief half salute and, at last, the diploma.

In the audience someone shrieks: “Go Donald!” The voice is familiar. He looks. It's Polly. They've been there the whole time, right in the middle. His parents are clapping with their hands above their heads, but Polly's the one. She's sitting on his father's shoulders and she's flailing her arms and pumping her fists and yelling her face off—“Go Donald! Go Donald!”—and she's doing it, she's going absolutely bonkers, she's giving him the wildest cheer of all. And in the very back of the auditorium, standing against the wall, Mr. Yalowitz smiles and sends him two thumbs-up.