Stranger in Dadland (4 page)

I knew it was stupid and criminal and whatnot for me to snoop around like that. I didn’t even know exactly what I was looking for. Clues to the Phantom Father’s real identity? Or maybe his diary full of pages and pages about how he
missed his kids, especially me, and how he cursed the day he ever left us.

When my uncle Don found out he was dying, he wrote letters and made videos for his son, Davy, to read and watch one day when he grew up. I was definitely
not
jealous of my little cousin for having a dead father, but the letters would be okay, I thought.

I went into Dad’s room. Closet first. Clothes, shoes. A box! I pulled it out and opened it. It was full of secret documents!

No, wait, they were electric bills, rent receipts, car payment stubs. Wow, that Porsche Boxster was
expensive!
And he was paying a fortune for this apartment too.

Beeeezzzz.
An alarm! I shoved the box back into the closet.
Beeeezzzz.
I ran out of Dad’s room, heart pounding, caught! Then I realized it was the door buzzer.

I could hear Mom’s voice in my head, saying not to open the door to strangers. I looked through the fish-eye peephole and there was Beau, picking his nose.

By the time I got the door opened, both his hands were jammed into his pockets and he was smiling his goofy smile.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said, stepping aside to let him in.

“Dad gone?”

“If you mean
my
dad,” I said, “yes, he is.” Then I felt bad for sounding like such a twit. “Gone till about four,” I added.

“So you wanna do something?”

I shrugged. “Like what?”

Beau shrugged back. “I dunno.”

“Well, I don’t know where I am,” I said. “I mean like the neighborhood or what’s around here.”

“There’s nothin’,” Beau said.

“Oh.”

“But I can give you the tour,” he offered.

I shoved some money in my pocket, grabbed the key, the piece of paper with the outside door combination, and my inhaler, and said, “Let’s go.”

As we went down the stairs, I could hear someone running up from below. We turned the corner and there, coming at us, was Beau’s brother Eric. He didn’t say anything; he just smacked Beau on the side of his head as he passed. The sound of that smack echoed through the stairwell.

Beau made an
umph
sound and reeled for a second, then shook himself like a dog and continued down the stairs without comment.

When we got outside, he said, “The nothing on your left is the nonmarket. They don’t sell anything. And over there is the nothing-repair where they don’t fix stuff.”

“I don’t suppose they have gas at that gas station,” I said, pointing.

“Nope,” Beau said.

We passed a nail place, and Beau said that was where the local witches got their talons sharpened. Then he pretended to faint from the smell of incense that billowed out the door of a weird bookstore. His ear was still red from his brother’s smack.

When we passed a dog-grooming place, I thought of Ditz. “My dog weighs sixty-five pounds,” I said. “But when we
take her to the groomer, she crinches down, making herself as small as she can, hoping they won’t notice her.”

Beau laughed. “I’ve never had a dog,” he said. “Just brothers.” Then he pointed across the street, saying, “Hey, if you’re not hungry, we can go to the anti-diner, where they don’t have anything to eat. Want to?”

“Nah,” I said. “I’m starved.”

Beau grinned and punched my arm. A little too hard, but still.

The diner was one of those red-and-white places that have old Coke ads all over the walls for decoration. There’s one in the mall near my house.

Beau ordered eggs over easy, and I wondered if
he
was the one my dad confused me with instead of Liz. Did Dad make eggs for Beau?

Sitting still like that, indoors, I suddenly realized I stank. Phew! All that spilled cologne had formed a cloud around me. I smelled like Ultra-Mega-Dad. My father times ten.

Beau didn’t say anything or fan the air or faint, but I bet he noticed. How could he
not?
I almost told him about my cologne-spilling event, but then he’d know that I’d been snooping in Dad’s bathroom—and that would sound so lame and pathetic.

I ordered a tuna melt and Beau said, “You like those too? Just like your old man!”

“My dad likes tuna melts?” I asked. Another thing Beau knew that I didn’t.

“Now,
my
dad, on the other hand,” Beau said, sprinkling
salt on the tabletop, “is a tofu dude. He won’t even come in here ’cause he’s afraid the preservatives and toxic animal fats will get him.” Beau grabbed his own neck and wrestled with himself.

When he was finished, he licked his finger and dipped it into the salt. “Me,” he said, “I’m a whatever-I-can-shove-in-my-mouth kind of guy.” And he licked the salt off his fingers.

I was starting to like Beau. At least, I could see why Dad liked him. I wanted to ask him about
his
dad, and I wanted to ask about
mine
, but instead I said, “Are we near the beach?”

“No. We’re not anywhere near anything. Like I say, we are
nowhere!
”

“But yesterday my dad said…”

“We’d have to take the bus, or hitch a ride or something.”

“Is it far?”

“Everything’s far. But I couldn’t go today anyway. I gotta stick around. Help with the boys.”

I didn’t know what he meant, but our food came. I ate my second meal of the day and it was only nine-thirty.

After we ate, we roamed around. Beau wasn’t kidding: There was nothing there. Just the usual video stores and coffee places. But it was less boring because it was all so Californian—that sunlight that’s a whole different color than back home and those weird plants that make our plants seem blah.

Then Beau suddenly slumped down and nudged me. I followed his eyes, and there on the corner were a bunch of
girls. I straightened up as tall as I could while Beau, who actually
is
tall, made himself shorter.

The girls were ignoring us pretty hard and tossing their hair around. Beau dragged his feet, kicking at nothing. Then he horked up a huge mouthful and spit a perfect gob. He was an even more impressive spitter than my friend Theo, and that was saying something.

One girl shrieked, “Ewwww, gross!” And they all started to giggle like crazy, throwing their hair around even more. Then Beau and I bumped into each other and, like a klutz, I stumbled off the sidewalk. My arm just barely touched a cactus and,
ouch!
, I was cut and bleeding.

“It’ll probably swell up,” Beau said, darting a glance at the girls. “Harsh, angry vegetable. Has some kind of poison.”

“Poison?” I asked, wondering if I was allergic. Great, I thought. Now I’ll break out in hives and start to wheeze right in front of everyone. How manly.

Just then a van pulled up. All the girls piled into it and were whisked away. Beau and I watched them disappear.

Then I looked at the spiky plant that had stabbed me. It had thorns and a giant asparagus-looking thing poking up in the middle.

“It’s an Eric plant,” Beau said. “Just being ugly isn’t enough. Gotta be
mean
too.”

I waited for the swelling to start and my breath to cut off, wondering if I’d have to hightail it to the hospital. But the
cut just acted like any old cut, and my inhaler did not have to leave my pocket.

I pointed at one of those bright pink bushes that climb up walls. “My sister hates these,” I told Beau. “Last summer she told them to shut up and stop screaming at her.”

Beau nodded. “Pushy plant, bougainvillea.”

Liz hated all the California plants last year. She’d said they were all show-offs. I think it was because Dad’s girlfriend Bobbie was sort of a show-off and Liz had lumped her and everything else about California into one heap. It hadn’t been our best visit to Dadland. But then, maybe none of them were.

On our way back Beau slapped himself on the forehead, spun on his heels, and said, “I was supposed to get milk.”

We walked back to a little market we’d passed earlier, and Beau picked out a weird carton. “Soy milk. Untouched by cow,” he said when I asked him what it was.

The clerk, who had a braided beard, knew Beau by name. Beau told him he’d spent all the milk money on breakfast, and the guy told him he could pay next time. I tried to imagine that happening back home. Impossible. I’d been going to the same store for a hundred years and no one there ever recognized me. Maybe I was just more forgettable than Beau.

“His Royal Ugliness used to be a stock boy here,” Beau said as we left. “They fired his pimply butt.”

“Why?” I asked, imagining Eric smacking the customers in the head.

Beau shrugged. “He can’t be bothered with anything but his music, so he hardly ever showed up. Good thing they don’t think all Lubecks are created equal. They say they’re gonna hire me one of these days, for after school and weekends. That’ll sure beat my job this summer.”

“What job?” I asked.

“Baby-sitting,” he said, and for one sickening second I wondered if Beau meant baby-sitting
me!
Could my dad have hired Beau to hang out with me?

But then Beau said, “My ma pays me to help out.”

Baby-sitting
Eric?
I didn’t get the joke and felt dumb. I hate that.

We climbed the stairs of our building and Beau went into apartment 212 to change into his swim trunks. Now I knew where he lived. I wondered if he shared a room with Eric. If Beau’s apartment was like my dad’s, it had only two bedrooms.

Uh-oh, I must’ve forgotten to close Dad’s apartment door. It was wide open! Mom was always ragging on me for stuff like that. But when I walked in, there was my dad on the phone.

He saw me and hung up fast. “Where were you?” he demanded, shaking a finger at me. “You didn’t even leave a blasted note! I almost called the police!”

“But I thought…I thought you said…,” I stammered.

“And why didn’t you tell me Chris called? That was an important—a
very
important message!”

“Well, I, I’m sorry, I just…”

“Listen, mister,” Dad said, “if this visit is going to work out, you’re going to have to be
a lot
more responsible and considerate.”

“I will. I just thought…”

“How do you think it sounded when your mother called and I had to say I had no idea where you were? What did that make
me
look like? Huh?”

“Mom called?” I asked, shocked. Mom
never
called here, ever! She’d made me promise about ninety times that
I’d call
her every day.

Dad’s mouth clamped shut. He stopped shaking his finger at me and straightened up.

“Mom called
here?
” I asked again.

“Yeah, well,” Dad said, suddenly quiet.

“Why?” I asked.

“Well, she…” Dad’s eyes darted around. “I’ve got to get to my meeting. You leave a note if you’re going out, okay, Big Guy?” He mussed my hair on his way out the door, then he turned and said, “Give your mother a call. I’ll be back around six. We’ll get some dinner.”

Six? What happened to fourish? I wondered.

Beau appeared in the doorway, looking embarrassed. “Should I pretend I didn’t hear all that?” he asked.

I shrugged like it was no biggie. “I gotta make a call.”

“John?” Mom said in a very strange voice. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Johnny, honey…” There was a long pause. “Liz doesn’t think I should tell you until you get home, but I don’t think that’s right.”

“Tell me what?”

“We have bad news, son. Oh, Johnny, it’s so sad. Will you be all right? Is your father there with you?”

“What is it?” I nearly yelled.

“He has a right to know,” Mom said, and I figured she was talking to Liz. I heard my mom sob.

Then there was a scuffle sound. My sister’s voice came on the phone. “She went after a car. You know how she does—just out of nowhere…Oh, John, Ditz is dead.”

That wasn’t true. That couldn’t be true.

“She just shot out the door and there was no time to…” Liz was crying now. “It was so fast!”

Ditz wasn’t dead. Why was Liz saying that? I don’t know what else we said before hanging up.

I stood looking at the phone, but it seemed unreal—like a painting of a phone. And I felt far away from those voices who’d been crying. Light-years from what they’d said about Ditz. I don’t know how long I stood there.

I finally left the kitchen. Beau was channel surfing.
He
– didn’t look particularly real either. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said, and walked past him to the guest room. I got my trunks out of the drawer. I felt like I was moving in slow motion, as if the air in the room had turned thick and I had to push through it.

I changed. Put my clothes on the chair. Got a towel. Went
step by step out the door and down the stairs. Nothing looked right. The sun was too bright. The water in the pool was too blue. I looked back. Beau was bounding after me like a dog. Like Ditz. Leggy and eager and dumb.

I dove in. Sank to the bottom.

It’s all my fault, I thought. Ditz didn’t understand about vacations. She didn’t know I was coming back; she only knew I was gone. Maybe she’d run out to go look for me! Maybe she’d thought I was in the car she’d chased.

I shouldn’t have left her. And I should have trained her. The vet
told
me to work with her. He said if I just practiced a few minutes a day, she’d learn not to bolt out the door or run in the street or chase cars. Why didn’t I?

I wasn’t crying. Was it even possible to cry underwater? Then I realized my lungs were about to burst and I swam to the surface.

The chlorine in the pool probably made my eyes just as red as crying would. It would make a good camouflage, I thought. But there were no tears coming anyway. I swam lap after lap, waiting for the sense of Ditz to reach me, but it was as if her death were scrambled and my guts couldn’t decode it.

That’s good, I thought. I don’t want to be a street weeper like Mom—willing to worry and cry anywhere, anytime. But I also didn’t want to be taken by surprise later in front of anyone. Better to get it over with now.