Walking Backward (8 page)
He said he hopes the team welcomes Sammy. I don’t think there’ll be a problem. I’ve seen five-year-olds play soccer. Half of them look for worms in the dirt and the other half do handstands. They won’t even notice Sammy joining the team. They’ll probably think he played all season.
The coach said they play Tuesday evenings— which is tomorrow—but there are no more uniforms. Sammy was way disappointed at that, like it didn’t count if he didn’t have a uniform. So the coach said he’d find Sam a shirt with a number on it. Chloe said, “You better not give him my shirt.” Her dad gave her a mean look and said, “It’s the coach’s decision.” She said, “Then I won’t have a shirt!” He said, “You have a mother.” And that was the end of that conversation.
Sammy thought that was fair, that he should get the shirt since Chloe gets to have her mother. He was so happy he jumped up and down and hugged the coach, whose name is Carl Simpson, and who is not the sort of person you jump up and hug. I told him my best friend’s first name was Simpson. He smiled politely and said, “Simpson is my
last
name.” Like I might not know the difference between first names and last names because I’m mentally retarded. I just said “thanks” and left.
Sammy hugged Chloe good-bye, but then he practically had to break her fingers to get his Power Ranger back. After that, they waved and smiled like they just loved each other. Little kids are so weird.
After that, we interviewed the neighbors about Mom. When I told Karen’s mom we were making a scrapbook, she went into her house and brought out a box full of colored paper and stencils. Some of the papers are plain, but most have stripes or flowers or patterns on them. Karen’s mom said we could use them for our scrapbook. She said she took classes on scrapbooking—it’s an actual class you can take—and if we cut borders and titles out of different colored paper, our book would look more exciting.
I told her I never took classes in scrapbooking, but I took classes in computer programming. She said maybe she’ll try that next time. Then she laughed like the idea was just ridiculous.
You’d think only kindergarteners would need a class in scrapbooking. But it was nice of her to give us the stuff. She said it was two hundred dollars’ worth of paper. I find that hard to believe.
She didn’t have many stories about Mom. She said Mom was pretty, and she made a face when she said it, like being pretty was just ridiculous. She only had two stories. Once, when I was in grade one, someone’s mother was in an accident, so some of the other moms brought over food for the family. Karen’s mom said my mom baked a couple of lasagnas. I don’t remember Mom ever baking lasagna in her life, so I said maybe she just bought them. Karen’s mom said no, they were homemade. Whatever. I doubt it.
Her other story was about watching Mom do laps at the pool. She said she couldn’t believe Mom was such a good swimmer. Mom looked like an Olympian, cutting through the water. Karen’s mom stood by the wall for five minutes, just staring, because it was so beautiful to watch someone swim so well. I thought that was a way better story than the lasagna story. I’m going to include it in the scrapbook.
Mom used to swim all the way across the lake when we went camping. She’d move across the water with long slow strokes, like there was absolutely no chance she’d get tired or frightened in the middle of the lake with nothing to hold onto. She’d be in the sunshine on the very top of the water, getting smaller as she swam farther away, and I’d imagine the hundred feet of darkness underneath her, and all the creatures swimming in the dark. Mom would flip onto her back and wave at me from the middle of the lake. She knew I was a bit afraid of water.
But I never had a phobia. Our neighbor Mr. Smitts said he has a heights phobia so he knows what it’s like to be too afraid to think straight. He said he wasn’t afraid of heights until thirty years ago, when he took his daughter on a tiny Ferris wheel and freaked out. He’d been up the CN tower before, and in airplanes and on big Ferris wheels, and he’d always liked it. But suddenly that day on the kiddie Ferris wheel, he was overwhelmed with fear. He screamed to get off. The guy running the machine thought it was funny, so he stopped them at the very top. Mr. Smitts tried to climb out of his seat until the guy brought them down again.
I said, “If you were afraid of heights, how could you be brave enough to climb down?” Mr. Smitts said, “I wasn’t going to climb down. I was going to jump off. Just to get it over with.” If he’d jumped, he’d have won a Darwin Award for sure, because how stupid is that? Mr. Smitts said no one can understand what a phobia is like until they feel it. He said you’re not responsible when you’re in that state of mind.
I told him about the university student who bounced out the window. He laughed and said that was a good way to die. I also told him about a guy who swallowed a fish on a dare and choked to death. Mr. Smitts said he almost chokes at every meal. I told him to have that checked out by a doctor, because that’s just not normal.
Mr. Smitts had a lot of stories about Mom. He had so many stories, I think he’s a stalker. He talked all day long about my mother. And all his stories were totally boring. He said when we first moved in, our dog would bark and make me cry. I told him the dog died before I was born, but he said no. Mom used to walk me and the dog at the same time, and I’d fall asleep in my stroller but the dog would bark and make me cry. That was one of his more exciting stories. He had other stories about Mom cleaning the windows. How dull is that?
He did have one really good story. Once, when I was little, Mom took me to Irene’s Ice Cream shop along the bike path. There were three boys on bikes in the lineup in front of us who bought Freezies for fifty cents. Mr. Smitts said they’d spent the whole time in line talking about ice cream and drooling over all the flavors, so when they just bought little Freezies everyone felt sorry for them. They sat at a table outside and ate their Freezies, but they were still talking about the ice-cream flavors other people were buying. So Mom bought them all double-scoop cones, in chocolate and cotton-candy flavors. She asked the girl behind the counter to tell the boys they won them for being the hundredth customers that day. Those kids never even knew that it was my mom who bought them ice cream.
That story definitely belongs in the scrapbook. Nothing like that has ever happened to me. The other day Sammy and I were in the mall and I was drooling over the bikes, but nobody came up and said, “Here, Josh, this bike’s for you.” I know ice cream is cheaper than bicycles but still, it was a very nice thing to do.
Interviewing Mr. Smitts took up most of Saturday and Sunday, and I’m not joking. This morning, Sammy and I took the bus to Mom’s office, which is now the crying guy’s office. He didn’t cry this time, or even look like he might cry, so I should stop calling him that. He said I should call him Mitchell. I told him about our scrapbook, and how important it is because Sammy won’t remember Mom when he’s older. Mitchell said he would gather stories from the professors and students who knew Mom. He gave Sammy some highlighters for no good reason. Sam played with them while we were visiting, and Mitchell said he could take them home. Then he looked around and added a pen you can click to change the color of ink from black to red. I thought the pen was pretty cool, and maybe he should have given it to me, since Sammy only knows how to write one letter. But you can’t compete with a four-year-old. I learned that a long time ago.
I might have been a little ticked off about the pen, because I blurted out the question, “Were you having an affair with our mom?” Mitchell looked surprised. I asked, “Did you put the snake in her car?” He looked even more surprised. He said, “No.”
Then he said he loved my mom, and he would have asked her to marry him if she wasn’t already married. I told him I didn’t need to hear that. He said my mom loved my dad. I told him they did a lot of dancing in the kitchen. Then I asked, “So who put the snake in her car?” He grimaced like he was having stomach cramps, and he said we may never know.
Right about then, Sammy started talking to Mom through the Power Ranger, and I said we had to go see our psychiatrist. Mitchell asked, “Can I give you a lift?” I told him we were meeting Dad at his office two blocks away. Mitchell said, “Oh, that’s right.” Like he already knew where Dad worked, which is suspicious.
I talked to Dr. Tierney about how I’m tired of messing up the laundry—I now have ten socks that don’t match, and my undershirts are pink. I talked about Sammy and how he can’t be weird when school starts or his whole life will be ruined. Dr. Tierney said we shouldn’t be parenting ourselves. I told him it’ll be easier to find another mother than to get Dad to parent us properly. I don’t want another mother, but Sam could use one.
Last night I found Dad in the basement watching home movies and crying. I didn’t know we had any home movies, so I stayed and watched a few. There were some from before I was born and when I was a baby, and when Sammy was born, and every year of our lives. They didn’t make me cry at all. They made me really happy. We all looked happy in them. Not just one time, but over and over through all the years, we looked happy together. And that’s a really good thing, even if one of us is dead now.
Before I saw the movies, I thought maybe we weren’t happy together. Or at least maybe Mom wasn’t happy, because she went and died. I thought someone as happy as she was in those movies wouldn’t ram their car into a tree, even if they had a snake phobia. But now I think she just accidentally hit the tree. She didn’t really want to leave us.
After the movies were over, I made fun of Dad’s time machine, but he said, “I can do it, Josh.” He was absolutely sure he could go back in time and change our whole lives. I left him there and came upstairs.
I looked around at our messy house. The recycling is overflowing. The garden is full of bugs, and the lawn is two feet tall—which Mr. Smitts mentioned, but not in a mean way. I opened some mail, and the bills haven’t been paid, even though Dad still works. I know that for sure, because I’d thought maybe he was leaving the house every morning to hang out at the cemetery—which wouldn’t have been a big surprise—so when we met him at work this morning, I asked the lady in the next office if Dad really worked every day. She said, “Yes, of course.” So he should be able to pay the bills.
Dr. Tierney wouldn’t talk to me about Dad, only about how I feel about Dad. I told him Dad’s not as good as Mom, but he’s better than nothing. I wish he’d just give up on his time machine. Last night when he was talking about it, I almost believed him for a second. I thought,
Maybe he’ll do it! He’ll go back and change things so Mom doesn’t die!
But that’s ridiculous.
But maybe it’s not totally ridiculous. I don’t know anything about time travel. I saw a funny movie where medieval knights come to modern America. I watched it with Mom a few years ago, and she loved it. It cracked us up. I should rent that movie again. I could use a good laugh.
It was nice having someone in the family who thought about me when I wasn’t around. The day we watched that movie, I came home from Simpson’s house and Mom said, “Hey, Josh, I rented a knight movie for us.” She’d been thinking about me and doing something nice for me when I wasn’t even there. That never happens anymore. Not that I go to Simpson’s house anymore. He has two houses, and I don’t go to either of them.
Simpson’s mom drove us to soccer this weekend. Her ear was wrapped in a bandage. When I asked her about it, she gave Simpson a funny smile. She must have let him practice his piercing skills on her. I can’t see Mom ever letting me do that, no matter how much she loved me. Simpson’s mom is too nice for her own good. She would probably adopt us if I asked. But since she’s already sad over Simpson’s dad leaving, she doesn’t need Sammy’s insanity making her sadder. She cried when Simpson told her about Sam talking to Mom in the Power Ranger’s girly voice.
I called Aunt Laura and asked her to visit again, because life is too hard without a mom around.
In most Native American tribes, families mourn for a whole year after a person dies. Aunts probably come around and help out a bit. The men in some tribes cut their hair as a sign of grief. I think that’s a good practice. Sammy and I need haircuts before school starts.
Sammy has his first soccer game tomorrow at six o’clock. The coach dropped off his shirt tonight. It’s number ten. Sammy wanted to sleep in it, but I said no. He’s sitting up in bed right now, staring at it. He’s so excited he probably won’t sleep tonight. He’ll probably bounce out the window, he’s so excited. He’ll probably choke to death.
The decisions that turn out to be important in your life aren’t always about important things. “Do I go skydiving?” is something you’d take your time deciding. But other decisions seem too small to matter. Like, “Should I have a look under the driver’s seat to make sure there’s no snakes in the car that’ll scare me stupid when I’m on the highway going a hundred kilometers an hour between a concrete barrier and a hardwood forest?” Who would ponder that?
There’s no word yet on whether Mom will get a Darwin Award. I didn’t put a proper subject on my e-mail. I chose the “Miscellaneous” category. I asked if someone would qualify if they died because of a phobia. I gave Mom’s example, and I provided a list of smart things she did, like writing two books on medieval plays that stupid people never even heard of.
Mitchell came by our house on Wednesday night with a file box full of stories about Mom from the people she worked with—students and professors and secretaries and even the cleaners, who said Mom was friendly and kept her office neat. One story was totally weird. It was about a student named Ben who had a crush on Mom. He sent her flowers and presents every day. He dropped by her office and hung around outside her classes and creeped people out. Mom wasn’t even nice to him—she took out a restraining order and acted like he was invisible. I thought he must be the one who put the snake in her car. But Mitchell told me Ben was in jail at the time for attacking another student. That says a lot.