The Absolute Value of Mike (3 page)

—lines that do not intersect but are not parallel and exist only in three dimensions

 

 

A
car? Tyrone is a car?”

“Yes, he's a Ford Tor—, Tar—”

“Taurus.”

“See? Who can remember a silly name like that? I like Tyrone much better. It's a lovely name, don't you think?”

I decided to play along and opened the door of the backseat. “I'll just put my bags in Tyrone's back pocket—” I stopped when I saw what was inside. The backseat was covered in red velvet, including the armrest. There were movie posters on the backs of the front seats, the door panels, and the roof of the car.
Gone with the Wind. The Sound of Music. The Wizard of Oz.
Even
Under Siege, Die Hard,
and
The Terminator.

I stared. And sniffed. “It smells like popcorn.”

“It must be left over from Sunday's matinee.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sunday afternoons I come in here and watch movies.”

“How?”

“Oh, my dear, I know those old movies so well, I just look at the poster and it all comes back to me. It's much cheaper than going out to a regular theater.”

I threw my bags in the “theater” and sat next to Moo.

She dropped her huge purse in my lap. The thing must've weighed fifteen pounds. “You take care of Junior.”

“Junior?”

“Yes, I've downsized drastically.” She put both hands on top of the steering wheel, which was covered with bright orange fuzzy fabric.

“What was it before? A U-Haul?”

But I didn't hear her answer because Tyrone shot out of the parking space faster than the Emperor of Doom's trebuchet could fling a cannonball.

“Whoa!” I grabbed on to the dashboard.

“Tyrone has a mind of his own, dear, but he's an excellent driver.”

The way she put her hands up on the wheel made it look like she was trying to climb a ladder so she could see what was over the top . . . of the dashboard. I wasn't old enough to drive, but it seemed to me you should be looking above the steering wheel, not through it.

“Moo? Can you see okay?”

“Of course I can!” she snapped. “There's nothing wrong with my eyes. Now, help me read the signs.”

Talk about the blind leading the blind. We circled the parking garage three times before I persuaded her to take the ramp with the Exit sign above it. She thought the sign said Erie and asked, “We don't want to go all the way up there, do we?”

I wasn't sure we'd even get all the way to her house, what with the gurgling, knocking noises coming out of Tyrone. After several minutes Moo started coughing along with him.

“What's that noise?”

Moo sniffed. “Allergies.”

“No, I meant Tyrone.”

“So did I. They're seasonal, though. He does much better in the fall.”

Tyrone's allergies didn't seem to slow him down at all. I kept my eyes peeled in case Moo couldn't see something that I could. Like other cars. And the road. I wouldn't say I was an extra set of eyes exactly. More like the only set of eyes.

Moo kept looking over at me and smiling. I thought if I stared out the windshield she might follow my example. It didn't work. Instead, she stared at me and said, “We're all lost, aren't we, dear?”

“I—I don't think so. We're headed for your house, right?”

“I mean your shirt.”

I looked down. It was my Doves T-shirt, from their
Lost Souls
album.

“Don't worry. I'm a collector of lost souls.” I didn't have a chance to wonder what she meant. Before I knew it, Moo was veering off onto the grassy median. I lurched in my seat and grabbed the wheel, jerking Tyrone back onto the highway.

Moo pointed to the road ahead. “That's our town!”

I looked at the sign as we exited. “
Do Over
? That's the name of your town?”

“It's Donover, but the
n
went missing a long time ago.”

“Why doesn't someone fix it?”

“Oh, I don't know. I rather like ‘Do Over,' don't you?”

“It sounds like something was wrong the first time.”

“Well, maybe there was. Do Over is a second chance. Sometimes we need a second chance.”

Moo nodded at an abandoned Exxon station. “That's where the flea market is on Thursdays and Saturdays. And that's where . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked to her left at Big Dawg's Tattoo and Bar. “You don't need to know about that place.”

I saw an orange warning sign for road construction. “Slow down!”

“I told you, dear, Tyrone has a mind of his own.”

I hit the dashboard a couple of times. “Tyrone! Dude! Slow down!”

Moo peered over the steering wheel at the roadwork. “I think the orange team needs to find a better place for their soccer game, don't you, Mike?”

“They're construction workers! They're wearing orange vests so you can
see
them.”

“Oh. Well, goodness, they don't have to dart all over the road like squirrels.” She looked over at me, dragging the wheel to the right, narrowly missing a guy in a yellow hard hat. “It's just not safe.”

Tyrone crunched over several traffic cones before lurching to an almost complete stop and turning without using a signal. Horns blared behind us. Moo explained that Tyrone's “ticky-ticky” wasn't working, by which I figured out she meant the turn signal.

“How does anyone know when you're turning?”

“Well,
I
know when I'm turning, Mike. That's what counts. Goodness, other people are busy with their own lives. They can't worry about where I'm going.”

“Uh, actually, they do, because—” But I stopped as Tyrone made some particularly weird sputtering noises and lurched to a stop in front of a Kmart.

I looked at Moo. “What's wrong? Allergies?”

“I'm afraid Tyrone's out of gas, but we can walk home from here. It's not that far.”

But it was as hot as a furnace. “Can't Poppy pick us up?”

“He's . . . busy.” Moo took the keys out of the ignition and put them in Junior. “Oh, dear, we didn't get to buy scrapple for—”

The blare of an air horn drowned out anything else she was saying and made me jump and reel around to look out of the rear window. An eighteen-wheeler practically sliced off Tyrone's butt, which was kind of stuck out in the lane because of Moo's parking job.

“. . . and we need to be careful of the trucks, dear.”

“No kidding! Get out of the car, fast, before the next one comes!”

She smiled back. “It's rather a nice day for a walk, isn't it, Mike?”

With the semis?

I grabbed my bags out of Tyrone's theater and followed Moo down the rural highway. A semi blasted its horn over and over and I thought it was going to run us down, but Moo was laughing, her fist pumping up and down like she was pulling a chain.

Five more semis went blasting past, Moo pumping her fist at each one. I was panting like a dog from the sun, my bags, and the horns, but I literally jumped when a horn blared right behind us, a whole string of notes that sounded out “Dixie.”

A black Ford F-350 swerved right by us, missing us by inches, and honked again. The driver's long hair was flying wildly around his face, but I could see that he was laughing.

“What the—”

“NUMNUT!” Moo screamed.

“No kidding!” I watched the pickup, loaded with drums and amps bouncing in the back, as it raced away from us.

“Gladys's boyfriend.”

“What?”

“GLADYS,” Moo shouted, “from the bank.”

“He's an idiot!”

“Yes, he is. We're all waiting for Gladys to dump him. Again.”

“She sounds a little clueless.”

“Oh, she's very bright, Mike, super smart. But not when it comes to men, I'm afraid.”

“Obviously.”

I wondered if Gladys was one of Moo's “lost souls.”

A few minutes later, we finally turned off of the main road and passed a couple of houses before Moo walked up a gravel driveway. A white Chevy Suburban with a dented bumper sat at the end of the driveway, in front of an old garage. I followed Moo, walking past their mailbox, which had a Harley-Davidson motorcycle carved on top.

It was an ordinary small white frame house except for the fact that the front porch and steps were carpeted. In an orange and red swirly pattern. Even weirder was the array of colorful plastic buckets and bowls sitting upright in the yard.

“I bet I know exactly what you're thinking,” Moo said from the top step.

I was thinking a lot of things. Like,
What's up with the buckets?
And,
Am I really stuck here for six weeks?
Even,
If this is some bizarre video game, how do I quit?

Moo nodded knowingly. “You're thinking, West Nile virus. But don't you worry, I never let any water sit in those buckets, so no mosquitoes can breed West Nile virus. And I put a little vinegar in each bucket because bugs hate vinegar. As soon as the rain stops, I empty all the tubs into my big covered trash can in the vegetable garden out back to use for watering later. Water isn't cheap, you know.”

Moo held the front door open for me and I caught a whiff of mothballs. I recognized the smell from our attic, where Dad kept the bags of Mom's clothes. I asked him why he didn't give them to the Namboodris' church to send to orphans and homeless people in eastern Europe. All Dad did was stare into the distance and mumble something about mothballs preserving things.

“Come on in, dear!”

Moo disappeared inside. “Poppy! Mike's here, and do you know what? He got me home from the airport. Isn't that amazing? Mike, come meet Poppy!”

As I tried to adjust my eyes to the darkness, I noticed the walls were covered in portraits. It was a good thing Dad wasn't there. He'd be freaked by this many sets of eyes staring at him. “Who are all these people?”

“They're portraits nobody wanted. I call them ‘instant ancestors.' I'm a regular URL—Unwanteds Rescue League.” She grinned at me. “I take care of all the rejects.”

Rejects? Like me? I wiped the sweat from my upper lip and told myself she was just an old lady, and a pretty wacky one at that. She really wasn't calling me a reject. Not on purpose, anyway. Still, I was getting hotter. And sweaty. And dizzy. Then I realized what was wrong. It was about a hundred degrees in the house. It was amazing the paintings weren't melting.

“Moo?” My voice was dry, cracking, weak. “Where's the thermostat?”

“What, dear?”

I cleared my throat. “We need to turn the AC on.”

“The what?”

“The AC,” I said, louder, remembering her bad ear. “AIR-conditioning.”

“We just have fans, dear.”

“Can we turn them on?”

She chewed her lip. “You must be hot, Mike. Are you feeling all right?”

Me? I looked at her and realized that she was still wearing her HOLY COMFORTER hoodie. “Aren't you hot?”

“Not really, dear.”

“What about . . . Poppy?”

“I don't think he feels the heat.”

Where was Poppy, anyway? Behind the living room was the kitchen. I could tell because of a doorway and a pass-through cut in the wall. Beside the doorway and pass-through was a TV. Opposite the TV, a white couch with an orange afghan sat under the front window. In front of the couch was a coffee table that had a bunch of Oprah magazines with a bright yellow yardstick on top of them. I followed the line of the yardstick, which seemed to point to a huge recliner in the far, dark corner of the room. With a statue sitting in it.

At least, it was frozen like a statue. Its arms were almost as white as its undershirt except for the blue veins running up and down. Above the undershirt, hair peeked out, then a fat neck and stubbly chin. Lips stuck out in a pout. Eyes stared straight ahead. Two tufts of gray hair stuck up like devil horns. The whole statue looked like it hadn't moved in days.

“Say hello to Poppy!” Moo said.

—place value identifies the value of each digit

 

 

P
oppy didn't move. Even when a fly landed on his hand. I was sure he was dead. How long had he been dead? Is that why she had mothballs? Was Moo preserving him?

“He's very quiet,” said Moo.

“Y-Yeah. Real quiet. How—how long has he been this quiet?”

She whispered in my good ear. “Since the death—”

“Oh, jeez!” He was dead!

“I'm sorry, Mike, didn't your dad tell you?” She pulled on her hoodie strings. “Doug died four months ago and Poppy just hasn't been able to deal with it.”

“Oh! You mean your son.”

Moo pulled harder on the strings of her HOLY COMFORTER hoodie. I gently pulled on the back of her hood to give it some slack. Her little fists rose with the strings as I pulled. Eventually she let go and rubbed her arms and shoulders like she was cold.

“Sorry about Doug,” I mumbled. I looked over at the wax figure. “But Poppy's . . . uh . . . still with us?”

She tapped the side of her head with her finger. “He's away with the fairies.”

“Huh?”

“He just sits there and thinks about Doug. He won't do anything else, won't talk to anyone. Not even me. Just looks at the TEE-Vee. And eats scrapple.”