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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
October 10, 2005
Published as Fiction
in a WIP dated May 15, 2001.
© 2001 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Brother & Sister on Lawn, 1992
© 1992 by Bud Grossmann
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PRECIOUS CARGO
For breakfast this morning, Monday, February 14, 1994, Martin Miller served little heart-shaped pancakes. He poured the batter into forms fashioned from strips tin-snipped from a well-washed expired California license plate. “How do you know there’s no lead in that paint?” asked Miller’s wife, Noreen, when she glanced at the griddle as she packed lunch for twelve-year-old Matthew, and Lena, age six. Nearly a quarter century’s worth of conversation with Noreen has convinced Marty that silence is often the best policy, and so he did not reply, but, the truth is, he hardly heard her question because his mind was on their bank account.
Marty, a framing carpenter, has not had a steady job since October. This morning he was thinking about the home mortgage payment for February. He hasn’t yet paid it and hasn’t told Noreen. If Marty doesn’t carry a check in to the bank by tomorrow, there’ll be a late fee of about sixty bucks. Damn. He hates to do it, but he might have to take another cash advance against their VISA card.
Four months ago, Marty used up his sick leave for a hernia repair—probably not a job-related injury. He figures he popped his gut during months of hoisting Matthew to his feet each time he fell to the floor. The boy has muscular dystrophy. He weighs ninety-four pounds now, same as a sack of Portland Cement. Matt has a wheelchair, but his parents and doctors encourage him to walk as much as he is able. Since the hernia surgery, Marty has let his son struggle to rise on his own after he goes down in a heap.
Just when Marty was ready to go back to work, his company folded. No one on the crews had seen it coming, though of course the owners must have known. Marty and Noreen got the word the day before Thanksgiving. The unemployment checks aren’t much. Marty’s had some handyman jobs but no offers of steady work. He is not a union man.
When Marty makes pancakes, he uses a mix. It’s as good as his recipe from scratch—and cheaper. Out of “pride of authorship,” though, Marty embellishes the batter with walnuts or bananas or orange juice. This morning he used Budweiser beer, the last can in the fridge, left over from a holiday potluck.
“Mmmm! These are great, Dad!” Matthew said. But Lena, adventurous in all respects except eating, took one bite and switched to a cup of frozen fruit-and-yogurt that her mother makes in quantity.
Noreen, who teaches English at a high school twenty miles away, leaves the house before Marty and the kids. When Marty set the table this morning, he put a card (with his handwritten endearments) and a small box of chocolates by Noreen’s plate. She thanked him but didn’t kiss him as she went out the door.
Monday is the one day each week when Marty stands a good chance of getting a hearty hug from Lena when he drops her off at kindergarten. Lena loves her teachers and classmates, and so she usually hits the schoolyard running. But, after a weekend away, she sometimes shows apprehension about returning. She invites her father to stay a few extra minutes on the playground: “Dad, come! Watch me cross the bars!”
This morning Lena gleefully swung from rung to rung on the climbing set, the sun rimming her swaying brown hair with gold. Beyond the playground, the dawn’s reddish rays roughened the surface of rounded rock formations, as big as tractor trailers set on end. They seemed ready, at any moment, to topple and tumble down the brushy, ragged slope above the school.
Marty winced when one of Lena’s callused little hands slipped from a rung. She giggled merrily, held tight with the other hand, and swung mightily like a monkey, but she couldn’t quite regain her grip. She dropped to the ground and struck hard on hands and knees. Up she bounced and held out one hand like a traffic cop and demanded, “Wait, Dad! Watch me just only one more time!” Gray grit speckled the girl’s pale palm. Shouldering a classmate aside, Lena, with another giggle, scrambled back up the welded tubing.
In the rare heavy rains of this region, rocks the size of watermelons wash loose from the hillside. A few have collected against the outside of the chainlink fence on the east boundary of the schoolyard. Marty leans against this fence and glances at his watch, although he is in no hurry to go anywhere. Eight thirty-one is the time. Precisely four weeks and four hours ago, Marty realizes, an earthquake reduced buildings and roads to rubble in Los Angeles, a hundred miles northwest. The quake was strong enough to wake folks this far away, but it did not budge the massive mineral towers jutting skyward beside the school. Those, Marty supposes, have been hanging tight since antiquity. Like my marriage, thinks Marty dryly.
“Dad, I did it!” shouts Lena.
“You sure did, sweetie! Let’s zip that jacket.” Over her frilly, flowered dress, Lena is wearing a black windbreaker, a hand-me-down from her brother. She does not protest when Marty drops to one knee and helps her start the zipper. Lena pulls it up halfway. Marty spreads his arms, and his daughter gives him a huge hug and a quick kiss on the mouth.
“Goodbye, Daddy. You don’t have to pick me up, you know. I’m going home with Carol May.”
“Oh, that’s right, honey. Ballet today. Matt and I’ll see you at Carol May’s house after your dancing.”
Marty does have to pick up Matthew after school today. They drive to the home of Mrs. Sanchez, Matt’s math tutor. While student and teacher are unraveling the mysteries of long division, Marty sits in his Dodge Caravan, parked on the street, and reads a library book, the almost-most-recent Updike novel. Noreen and Marty bought this van new when Lena was a baby. The original metallic blue paint is nearly flawless. Engine runs great. Marty suspects a CV joint is going bad, but he hasn’t priced the work.
The van’s sliding door is open; the middle seat is out. Marty is sitting on the floor, with his back supported by the front edge of the rearmost seat. His book rests on his thighs. Marty removed the van seat last Wednesday—by himself, though he shouldn’t have. His mother-in-law (a twice-widowed woman who lives in the town where Noreen teaches) had bought a boxed, unassembled dining set—table and chairs—at Sears in Escondido, and Marty wanted to save her the delivery charge. The Sears guys helped load the furniture.
This morning’s chill gave way to a cloudless, breezeless brightness. Now, in late afternoon, the Caravan is warm; but Marty, in T-shirt and jeans, is comfortable enough.
Pausing in mid-paragraph in the Updike novel, Marty suddenly notices he is sitting in the midst of clutter. Amazing! He had cleaned the van, inside and out, before he went to Sears. Marty looks about and sees a rolled blue vinyl tarp, Matthew’s scuffed white Reebok Pump shoes and one white sock, a rust-orange beach towel, a wadded black leotard of Lena’s, Matthew’s ukulele, a sweat-stained pigskin work glove, a white tubular plastic clothes hanger, Matthew’s red book bag and his jacket (black and zippered, with epaulets—a larger version of the one his sister wore this morning), a length of three-quarter-inch galvanized pipe that Marty keeps within easy reach behind the driver’s seat in case he ever needs an instrument of negotiation in a traffic dispute, a folded pink umbrella, a battered box of Kleenex and several crumpled tissues, and Matthew’s leg braces—seldom worn because they bruise the boy’s calves.
That’s not all. There’s a sixth-grade literature book, the current issue of Boy’s Life, a stalk of bougainvillea with one papery magenta blossom, Jurassic Park (paperback, much creased and tattered), two yellow foam collars for soda cans, three Ziploc bags containing Schlage deadbolt parts, a pair of blue shoes—pumps—scuffed and flattened and technically too large for Lena but wonderful for her to clop-clop-clop in, a whisk broom, a foam jack-o-lantern the size of a small apple, a many-colored rubber snake, and an unopened box of caramel-pecan Girl Scout Cookies.
These are the items plainly visible to Marty from where he sits, with his finger holding his place on the page of his book. He looks overhead and notices something more: a dozen scattered pale-green, brown-tipped Christmas tree needles clinging to the felt surface of the van’s headliner.
Actually, Marty likes a clean car. Last week when he was hauling Grandma’s dining set, both kids sat up front, Lena on Matthew’s lap, with the seat belt over the two of them. The kids were being silly. Lena ignored her father’s repeated commands to “knock it off” and continued bouncing and singing and sputtering a spray of spittle onto Marty’s freshly-Windexed right window. His eyes on the highway, Marty swung out with the back of his right hand and smacked his daughter harder than he intended, on her slender left arm. The man was immediately filled with remorse—what the hell’s a dirty window, anyway?
Marty does like a clean car, yes. But most times, the dirt and clutter bother him not much at all. He has come to recognize them as evidence of his great wealth as the father of young children, and evidence, too, of his vast daily freedom while he is out of work.
When the car is freshly tidied, and its exterior brightly bathed, Martin Miller sometimes allows a thought to cross his mind: If I were single and childless.... But when, a day or two later, his own junk and his kids’ possessions miraculously spring forth from the fertile carpeting of the Caravan, Marty’s heart makes room for the more usual and enduring realization: I am a father. I am a rich man! ♦
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