The Absolute Value of Mike (7 page)

“Yeah, I have. But . . . what's the artisan's crew?”

She patted my shoulder. “You know what an artisan is, right? It's someone who makes beautiful things with their hands.” She looked at me expectantly.

I nodded slowly.

“Well, Poppy does fine woodworking and is supposed to be leading a whole crew of people in making wooden boxes for—”

“Wait. What? Boxes?” I said. “Boxes?”

She nodded.

Dad's artesian screw plan was rapidly unscrewing. “You mean it's not some kind of engineering project?”

Karen laughed. “Not even close!”

“But—I thought Poppy was an engineer. Like my dad.”

She laughed again. “He drove a dairy delivery truck for sixty years.”

I let out a long, slow breath. I couldn't believe it. That was it, then. There was no artesian screw. No engineering project. No escape from Newton High. I looked at the orange and red swirls, felt queasy, and slumped against the door until the vacuum banged into it.

I moved away and Moo pushed the vacuum onto the porch. She was still sniffling. Karen pulled me inside and shut the storm door as far as it could go with the vacuum cord underneath it. The noise muted slightly.

“Let me explain,” Karen said. “The whole town is helping me in my adoption effort. Have you seen the signs, ‘Build a Family, Adopt a Child'?”

I tried to nod but I was still too stunned.

“We have to work fast because the adoption laws in Romania are changing and—”

“Romania? Is this the kid on Past's cart?”

Her smile drew up her cheeks and accentuated her heart-shaped face. “Isn't he adorable? His eyes are so piercing.” She clenched her hands together under her chin, almost like she was praying. “We need everyone's help. Whatever you can do to get Poppy moving would be wonderful. He was going to get two hundred dollars for each box, but now I don't know how we'll make up that money.”

I wondered how good I could get at making boxes. “How many boxes do you need?”

“Well, Poppy and his crew were going to make dozens.”

Dozens times two hundred dollars would be . . . “How much money?”

“For the whole adoption? Well, if you include airline tickets, staying in the country during the adoption process—about forty thousand.”

I nearly choked. “Forty thousand dollars?” “By July fifteenth.”

“What! It's June twenty-second! That's only . . .”

“Three weeks and two days.”

“Why so fast?”

“Romania is about to close down international adoptions.”

“What do you mean, ‘close down'?”

“They're changing the regulations, so they're putting all international adoptions on hold for—well, we don't know how long.”

“So someone else could adopt him?”

“Possibly, but adoption isn't very popular in Romania. It's more likely that he'll just sit there for months—or years—until they open up to international adoptions again.”

Karen went on to talk about her “baby,” and the toys she'd sent him, and the room she'd gotten ready for him, while I stood there trying to get my brain to work. The kid could be stuck in an orphanage for . . . forever. With no family. Alone.

“Oh!” said Karen. “Here's the picture of him I got this morning.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small photo.

“Look!” She put the photo in my hand.

I peered at it and gasped.

“I know,” said Karen. “Isn't he sweet? He's playing with the LEGOs I sent him. See what he's making? It's a house, or maybe it's a garage? For his little cars there.”

I shook my head slowly. It was like I was looking at myself. It wasn't a house. It wasn't a garage.

“What is it? What do you think he's building?”

“It's a bridge,” I said quietly, not taking my eyes off the photo. A bridge. Like the bridge I'd made out of LEGOs for Dad. The one that made Mom call me a great engineer.

“Oh,” she cooed, “he's building a bridge from there to here. He wants to come. Do you know”—her voice cracked and her eyes watered—“they showed him a picture of me and he said”—her voice cracked again—“he said . . . Mama!”

The vacuum buzzed in my ears while I stared at the kid and Karen broke down.

“I want him home,” she cried. “I have to raise the money. We need to get Poppy moving. Somehow!”

I shoved my hand into the pocket with my LEGO brick and stared at the photo. “Don't worry,” I said. “This kid is definitely coming home.”

—to determine the worth of; to appraise

 

 

M
IKE!” a voice screamed in my ear. “Are you feeling all right, dear?”

I opened my eyes to see Moo's huge glasses in my face. “I—I think so. Why?”

“It's so late. I thought you might be sick.”

I sat up in bed. “What time is it?”

“It's after eight!”

“Eight? Eight in the morning?”

“Yes! Poppy and I have been up for hours.”

“I usually sleep until eleven, at least.”

She laughed. “Oh, Mike! You are so funny!”

I flopped back down in bed and closed my eyes. I'm a very slow riser.

“I'm making brunch for you,” Moo said, her voice fading as she headed downstairs. “Then we'll go to the bank to deposit the checks so we can pay the electric bill . . .”

The electric bill! I opened my eyes and sat up again. For the power tools for the artesian screw! Oh, wait. My head hit the pillow. The project that was—

I sat bolt upright. “Adoption!” I said out loud as I stumbled out of bed.

I tried to think of everything Moo had told me the night before, after Karen had to run to a meeting. How the whole town was involved in fund-raising for Karen's adoption because her husband died and she always did so much for everyone, anyway. How all the churches came together for this cause instead of having separate church bazaars, including the Baha'i and Hmong—or as Moo put it, “the Buy-high Temple and the Mung Dynasty”—oh, and also the Lutherans. How everyone was having bake sales and selling their wares at the Exxon flea market and donating the money to Karen. How after the adoption agency said it was okay to put up a picture of “that enchanting face,” the excitement really started. Still, it was such a small town, and from what I'd seen, it wasn't a rich one. I tried to get contact information from Moo for the artisans, but she was reluctant to tell me because she didn't trust the guys—Jerry, Spud, and Guido—alone in Poppy's workshop. Guido? There was really a Guido? “Yes,” she said. “He's a wonderful artist, but not the kind of artesian who can build things.”

In spite of Poppy being deadwood, so to speak, I hadn't given up on lighting a fire under him. And if I couldn't get him moving, maybe I'd make the boxes myself. If I could get Guido to paint them, people might not notice how badly they were made.

And I had to reach Dad. I had to get money fast to pay Poppy and Moo rent, or pay their bills, or buy the food, or something, because they could barely support themselves, let alone me. Plus, we should donate some money to the artisan's crew and to the adoption costs. Oh . . . that could mean Dad would find out there's no artesian screw. Okay, must choose my words carefully.

I ran to the bathroom and tried to take a shower, but the showerhead was missing. I wondered if that was something else they couldn't afford. I wet my head under the sink faucet, my only chance to keep my hair under some kind of control, and was vaguely aware of an odd smell. It wasn't a bad bathroom smell, just not the kind of odor you normally found in a bathroom. It smelled like . . . salad dressing.

I ran back to my room, Doug's room, and pulled on my usual uniform of band T-shirt—this time the Rolling Stones—and jeans, complete with LEGO in the pocket.

“I'M GOING OUT TO TALK TO MY TOMATOES, MIKE! BRUNCH IS READY WHENEVER YOU ARE.”

I heard the kitchen door slam and sat down on the bed to put my shoes on. Most people shove their feet into their shoes without even untying the laces. Not me. Tying and untying shoes were my daily moments of Zen, the signal to wake up in the morning and wind down at night. Besides, it didn't take any longer than the foot-cramming method because I skipped the time it took to walk around awkwardly trying to shove my heel into the shoe.

It was while I was doing my shoe-Zen thing that it caught my eye. A photo of a kid a little younger than me and a guy who I figured was a thinner, younger, happier Poppy, with no devil hair horns. I picked up the denim frame and peered closer. It was strange seeing someone who looked more alive in an old photo than in real life. What really hit me, though, was that Poppy and Doug were sitting high off the ground in a tree house. A really beautiful, awesome tree house. Given that Poppy was, supposedly, a woodworker, they must have built the tree house together. Sweet.

“I'M BACK, MIKE!”

I almost dropped the photo.

I ran downstairs to find Poppy still sitting in his chair with the yardstick across his lap, like he'd never left. “Good morning!” I said.

Nothing.

I decided I wasn't taking nothing for an answer. The man had to snap out of it. And fast. “GOOD MORNING, POPPY!”

At least I made him flinch, even though he only gave a mild grunt in response.

I grunted back and went into the kitchen.

Moo pointed to a plate on the table. “There's your scrapple, dear.”

Beyond the greasy sausage smell was that salad-dressing smell, even stronger than in the bathroom. It made more sense in a kitchen, though. I lifted the lid off a boiling pot on the stove and found the showerhead. I stared at it for a moment, not sure what to think.

“I'm cleaning it. Vinegar works wonders on lime deposits.”

“Vinegar? It smells like salad dressing.”

“I put herbs from my garden in it. Marjoram for the bathroom and oregano for the kitchen. Felix doesn't like scented vinegar, so I just put a drop of the plain stuff in his water. Did you know it kills fleas?”

I turned to stare through the pass-through at the cat clock. “No, I didn't.”

“Vinegar has so many uses. I use it in my laundry. Soon your clothes will smell of vinegar.”

I looked down at my Rolling Stones “Start Me Up” T-shirt and tried not to grimace.

“In fact, I'm going out to clean Tyrone's dash while you eat.” She gave me a knowing smile. “Vinegar keeps plastic from getting dusty. It's great for so many things.”

“Gee, Moo, you sound like an infomercial.”

She laughed and headed for the front door, stopping to turn to me. “Oh, and if you get stung by a bee, you know the solution for that, right?”

“Vinegar?”

“That's it!” She walked out the door.

“Hey, Moo! You could sell vinegar to make adoption money!”

She popped her head back in. “Do you really think so? Well . . . I sell my tomatoes at the Exxon flea market. I suppose I could sell my vinegars there, don't you think?”

“Absolutely!”

“You're brilliant, kiddo!” Moo winked before disappearing with her vinegar.

Brilliant? Moo didn't know me very well. I sighed and took a bite of scrapple. And discovered that it's not half bad. It's all bad. “Hey, Poppy,” I yelled, “how can you stand this stuff?”

He ignored me, of course.

“Do you want mine?”

No answer.

“Okay, I'm going to dump it in the trash.”

His grunt was clearly audible.

“Fine, do you want to come in here and get it?”

No movement.

“Okay, this time I'll bring it to you, but next time you can get it yourself.” I marched into the living room, grabbed the yardstick out of his hand—making him flinch again—and deposited the plate of scrapple on his lap. “Enjoy!”

I scrounged in the kitchen and found some generic Cheerios, which were okay, even with powdered milk. I was putting my cereal bowl in the sink and staring out the kitchen window at Moo's tomatoes, trying to calculate how much you could charge for each one, when she came back in.

“Isn't the lake beautiful?” she asked.

“What lake?”

“Lake Revival! Oh, you can't see it through all the trees at this time of year. It's where early settlers did their baptisms.” She scrunched her shoulders up to her ears and grinned. “And it's where Poppy and I used to go skinny-dipping.”

That was more than I needed to know. I shook my head to get rid of the image.

“Have some iced coffee.” She handed me a glass full of ice cubes and an opaque beige liquid. “Chug it, and we'll hit the road.”

I don't even drink coffee, but it was like drinking java ice cream, and I downed it all without stopping. Then I shivered because of the taste or the iciness, I don't know which.

Moo grinned. “Double caffeine, extra sugar. How do you think I stay so young?”

She headed out the door before me, so I was able to say a special good-bye to Poppy. “If you don't do anything in your workshop”—I took the workshop key off the rack by the door and paused for dramatic effect—“
I
will.”

The loudest grunt I'd heard so far.

—numbers that have both a whole number and a fractional part

 

 

T
yrone parked in front of the bank, a little brick building that looked like a cottage. There were even window boxes out front with plastic flowers in them. And a sign on the door that said, Build a Family, Adopt a Child. With a poster of the kid's face. And those haunting eyes. It looked like he was trying to say something, but I didn't know what.