When Life Gives You O.J. (17 page)

She knocked the pile of cards against the table and began to slide them back into the box before continuing. “But you
know something, Zelly? They also called him ‘Judge Ace’ for another reason. And that was because, without fail, Grandpa always came through for people. That’s just how he was—the best card in the deck.”

“Is,”
I corrected her, handing her the ace.

My mom looked up, startled.

“You’re right,” she said, forcing a smile and sliding the ace back into the box. “Is.”

I wasn’t allowed to see Ace at all that day. My mom asked if I wanted her to call Allie’s mom or maybe Jeremy’s mom to come get me, but I said no. I just wanted to stay at the hospital. She looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t.

My mom spent the day going back and forth between Ace’s room and the waiting room. My dad and I spent the day on the pink couches, flipping through old magazines and watching hours of television. I got to eat all kinds of things out of the vending machine: a silver bag of tiny potato chip sticks, a 3 Musketeers bar, a box of Cracker Jack, and some gummy snacks made with ten percent real fruit juice. My dad had a lot of loose change, and my mom wasn’t there much to say no.

The next day was mostly the same, except Sam came to the hospital with us. In the middle of the afternoon, Ace’s doctor told my mom he was stable enough for visitors. But only one visitor at a time. My mom apparently didn’t count, which was good because I didn’t like the idea of being alone in a hospital room with Ace. What if all of a sudden a machine went off or he stopped breathing or something?

My dad said I could go first. My mom took me down the long hall, past the desk with the lady behind it, to Ace’s room. We entered the room and found Ace propped up in a hospital bed. He had a skinny rubber tube taped under his nose and more tubes taped to his arms and his chest.

His caterpillar eyebrows twitched when he saw me.

“Hiya, kid,” he said. Only not in his usual booming Ace voice. More of a harsh, gravelly whisper.

“Hi, Grandpa,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I should get too close, but I saw his brown-spotted hand beckoning to me, so I shuffled forward. My mom pulled a chair over for me, and I sat down next to him. For the first time ever, Ace took my hand. Bubbles always did that with me in the hospital. “
Shayna velt
, your hands are so cold!” she would say. Always worrying about me, though she was the one who was so sick she didn’t even have hair anymore.

Without meaning to, I started to cry.

“Sha, sha,” said Ace, squeezing my hand. I wiped the tears away with my free hand. “It’s gonna be all right.
Zorg zikh nisht
. I’m a tough old bird.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

Ace smiled, even though it looked like it hurt to do so. “In all my years on the bench,” he said, “if I had a nickel for every time I got yelled at …” He whistled the tune of “If I Were a Rich Man” from
Fiddler on the Roof
.

“I’m still sorry,” I said.

“You feel guilty?” he said. “Good! As your grandmother would say, my work is done.”

“Bubbles?” I asked, confused. “But she never made me feel guilty.”

“Not you, kiddo. She used to say that to me.”

“You?” I remembered how my mom had said that Bubbles was the boss. But I didn’t know that Bubbles. The Bubbles I knew was part fairy, my magic grandma with the sun in her hair and the pocketful of treasures.

“Sure,” he said. “A grouchy bear like me, kvetching from morning till night? Ranting to anyone who’ll listen? Who wouldn’t lose her temper?”

A lone tear darted down Ace’s cheek. It happened so fast I almost missed it. Ace swatted it away like a fly.

“I miss her,” I told him.

“Of course you do,” he said matter-of-factly. “You miss her, I miss her. The world misses her.”

I nodded. It was exactly like that. He didn’t say it like “You and everybody else.” He said it like “The world is a sadder place without her in it.”

“Ace—?” I began again.

“And another thing,” he cut me off. “I’ve been thinking maybe it’s time for ‘Ace’ to be retired.”

“But aren’t you already retired?”

“I’m retired from the bench, yes,” said Ace. “So I’m thinking maybe it’s enough with the ‘Ace’ business, already. Maybe I could try being plain old ‘Grandpa.’ ”

“I don’t want a plain old grandpa,” I told him.

“Or I could try a new nickname,” he said. “I’m thinking maybe ‘Ambassador.’ ”

I smiled at his joke, but I knew I still had to say what I was going to say. “I’m also sorry I let you down.” Before he could say anything, I continued, talking fast to get it over with. “I threw O.J. out. But I wish I didn’t, and not just because you got sick. I should’ve kept my promise, and I wish I could go back and start all over again. So, you don’t need to change. It’s me who should have done things different.”

Ace looked unimpressed. He waved one hand while still gripping mine tightly with his other hand.

“Tell it to him.”

“To him?”

“Yup.”

“To … God?” I whispered.

Ace chuckled softly, which looked like maybe it hurt. Then he began coughing and had a tough time stopping. I looked over at my mom, who was perched on the edge of her chair, ready to run out and grab a nurse if necessary. Ace coughed one more time, then waved his hand at her to show her he was okay.

“No, Zeldaleh. Tell it to O.J.”

I was surprised to hear him call me something other than
“kid.” I was also surprised that he hadn’t heard what I said about O.J. Maybe his hearing aid wasn’t in.

“But, Ace,” I said louder, “I just told you …”

Ace smiled, that same satisfied smile from the herring-on-the-wall joke. He crooked one finger to get me to lean in. “You know what your problem is? You think too much.” For the first time, he didn’t say it accusingly. Instead, it sounded like he was confiding in me. “I know we can pull this off,” he hissed urgently. “So all that matters”—he tapped my forehead and looked me straight in the eye—“is right in here. And,” he added, poking me just below my collarbone, “a little in here.”

“Okay …,” I said uncertainly, because I wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about.
My head and my heart?
I looked at the clear fluid in a bag hanging from a pole next to Ace’s bed. Every few seconds, it would drip into the tube connected to his arm. I wondered if the medicine in it was making him loopy. Loopier than usual, that is.

Then he leaned his neck a little farther forward and crooked his finger again. I leaned in, so close I felt his hot breath on my ear.

“Look inside—” he whispered, but then he started coughing again, right in my ear. I pulled away, and he coughed some more, louder this time.

Just then, one of the machines started beeping and a nurse came running in. She sort of pushed me aside, and my mom came over and put her hands on my shoulders. The nurse punched some buttons on the machine and got it to stop beeping, which was a big relief. Ace was still coughing,
though, and trying to catch his breath. The nurse kind of nodded at my mom, who swung me out into the hall. In a few minutes, the nurse came out and told my mom that it would be good for Ace to get some more rest. Then she went back in, and we went down the hall to the waiting area.

My dad and Sam were sitting there, watching a game show. When Sam saw us, he jumped up. As usual, Sam was wearing his Jedi knight bathrobe. Tucked into the belt was a long plastic tube. It had tinfoil attached to one end, presumably to give his lightsaber a handle. Costume or no costume, Sam looked nothing like Luke Skywalker. He looked like a tired, frizzy-haired little kid wearing his bathrobe in the daytime. To top it off, he had a whole bunch of rubber bands on both wrists like bracelets. He had put them on “for luck” when my dad told him about Ace’s heart attack, and now he refused to take them off.

“My turn!” said Sam. My mom squatted down next to him and gave him a hug.

“Next time, champ, okay? Ace needs some rest.”

Sam stomped his foot on the ground hard. He crossed his arms emphatically, and his lightsaber slipped from his bathrobe and clattered to the floor, jarring the tinfoil handle loose.

“No fair!” he yelled.

“Sorry, kiddo. Doctor’s orders,” said my mom.

“Why does she get to go see him and I don’t? She’s the one who made his heart get attacked in the first place!”

“Sammy, we talked about that,” my dad reminded him.
“Remember, it doesn’t work that way. No one made Ace get sick.”

“Yeah, but—” Sam started to say, but my dad scooped him up, just like he used to do when Sam was really little. My mom picked up the plastic tube and the tinfoil.

“It’s been a long day,” said my dad quietly. “How’s about we go get dinner at Sally’s?”

At the sound of the word
Sally’s
, Sam hesitated. I could tell he really wanted to make a big, noisy scene so he could get his way and visit Ace. But Sam loved Sally’s Pizza, with its free soda refills and bowling-pin-shaped balloons with cardboard feet. Sam nodded slowly, defeated. He put his head down on my dad’s shoulder as we left the building.

In the backseat of the car coming home from Sally’s, I could see that Sam was almost falling asleep.

“Sam?” I whispered.

“Hmmm?”

“I’m sorry I said that stuff about how telling would make Ace sick. Okay?”

“Uh-huh,” he said.

He was quiet for another moment. Then he said, “My lightsaber broke.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You want me to fix it for you?”

“No,” he said sadly. “It’ll never be the same.”

“I could try,” I suggested.

Sam didn’t say anything. I guess he must have fallen asleep. But when he sort of toppled over sideways so he was leaning on me, I didn’t push him off.

That night, when we got home from the hospital, I went up to my room and thought about what Ace had said.

What did he mean, “Look inside”? Did he mean it like some sort of spiritual thing, like “Look in your heart”? That didn’t sound like the Ace I knew. Although he had gone to temple the day of his heart attack. But then why would he have said he wasn’t talking about God when he said, “Tell it to him”?

Maybe Jeremy would know. I decided to go talk to him in the morning. I owed him an apology anyway, and maybe he’d help me sort out some of Ace’s cryptic comments. He was smart that way. And a good listener. Plus, with going to Hebrew school and everything, it seemed like Jeremy might have a direct line to God. I imagined Jeremy flipping open a special talk-to-God device, sort of like the communicators they use on
Star Trek
.

Just then, I heard the doorbell ring. It was almost like Jeremy had read my mind. My dad called, “Zelly!”

I ran downstairs. But instead of Jeremy, Allie was standing there.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I replied coolly, trying not to let her know that I was happy to see her.

“I called you like a million times, but there was no answer, so my mom said I could come by and leave you a note. She told me about your grandpa. I’m really sorry.”

Allie handed me a piece of paper. It was folded up and had the words
To Zelly
and
Top Secret
written on the outside. I unfolded it and read:

“I’ll ask my mom,” I told her cautiously. I didn’t want to tell her that I didn’t want to sleep over with Jenny and Megan anytime soon.

“Just you and me, okay?” said Allie.

“Okay,” I said.