Donuthead (14 page)

Sarah looked at me closely as if to ask what I was playing at.

I just shrugged my shoulders. Gloria had sent a package to my house and it wasn't for me. This day was not improving.

We went inside and put the package on the kitchen table. It was wrapped in creased brown grocery paper and tied several times with knots.

My mother pulled the utility knife from her pocket and looked at Sarah. “Okay?” she said.

“Whatever.”

My mother cut the twine. Sarah opened the box to reveal another heavy cardboard box. There was a note taped to it. She looked at me.

“Go on,” I said. “You can read it.”

The first part was a poem by Langston Hughes. I'd read it before. It was called “Dreams.” Sarah put her finger under the word and started to sound it out. “Dre-aims,” she said.

“No, this is one of those words where you just hear the first vowel,” I told her. She got it right on the second try.

“Okay,” she said, squinting.

I made a mental note that we should get her eyes checked. Maybe she didn't just do that for effect.

Sarah Kervick started reading. She did pretty well. I was proud of her. That girl is a quick study.

Carefully, Sarah lifted out the box and took off the lid. Lying there, in a bed of tissue, were two gleaming white figure skates. She took out one and cradled it in her arms like a baby. After she traced the curves with her fingers, Sarah Kervick replaced the first skate and did the very same thing to the other one.

She smoothed the tissue down over them and stepped away from the box. There was an unreadable look on her face as Sarah Kervick tried to put her whole fist in her mouth.

When she realized she wasn't alone in the room, Sarah mumbled something about having to use the bathroom. We heard the sound of the door slamming and then the faucet
being turned on full blast. Then she got the shower running and flushed the toilet several times. But even above the sound of all that gushing water, we could still hear Sarah Kervick crying.

After that day, Sarah Kervick was a different girl. It used to be that she only relaxed at isolated moments. Like those ranks of soldiers you see in movies, she was at attention most of the time, just waiting for some general to smack her from behind. Zooming through the infield or looking at those step-by-step pictures of how to twirl on ice were the only times she was at ease.

Now she was relaxed more often. Her hands stopped balling into fists. She smiled and showed her teeth. Three days after Gloria sent her the skates, Sarah's father came to school. He had shaved and put on a clean shirt buttoned all the way up to his chin. Sarah was gone from the class for a long time, and Mr. Putman had a substitute sent in for Ms. Linski.

“I'll be goin' to the resource room now,” she told me and Mrs. Boardman at lunchtime. “And we don't have to get in trouble or say we're sick or nothin' to come here, either.”

She looked me up and down. “You're still gonna help me, right, Franklin?”

I swallowed and nodded yes.

“That's a relief. 'Cause the crap they give me to read is even more boring than the crap you give me.”

“Gee, thanks,” I replied.

But it made me feel a little sick the way she said it, because I knew right then that Sarah Kervick was feeling sorry for me. Pitying me and pounding on me were just about the only two
ways fifth graders interacted with me at Pelican View Elementary. Up until then, Sarah Kervick had been the first person in recorded history to treat Franklin Delano Donuthead like just another kid, like, maybe, even a friend. But at the moment, it seemed she was sliding into the “pity” group.

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After school, instead of pulling out my tape measure, I just sat on the bed staring at the neat row of inches on the tape. Would I do this every day for the rest of my life, I wondered. When I grow up and get a job, will I come home from work to this very same room and pull out this very same tape measure to find out … what? That my arms and legs are two different lengths?

“Say that box was for you,” I said to my mother as we were driving around town a few days later. “What would need to be in it so you would feel as happy as Sarah did when she opened hers?”

“Oh, I don't know. When you get to be my age, you can buy things. Things don't contribute much to my happiness.”

“But I'm not your age,” I said. “And I can't think of anything, either.”

“What about an inch each for your arm and your leg?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“Just think. You'd be regular. You'd be like everybody else.”

“Like everybody else,” I repeated.

And for some reason I thought about Glynnis Powell just then. And how unlike everyone else she was: so crisp and tidy in appearance, her handwriting neat enough to frame. The way
her bangs lined up in an even fringe beneath her kerchief, you just knew she had serious things on her mind.

The other day when I shined my quarters for her, her cheeks tinged pink and she whispered, “Thank you, Franklin, for the 100 percent organic fruit roll,” not directly to me but down at her hands. Her hands with the nails that shone like little slivers of moon.

Being regular just didn't have the same appeal for me once I remembered all that about Glynnis.

There was one more big surprise coming for Sarah Kervick. Two days before the Pelican View Ice and Fitness Center was scheduled to open, my mother made an announcement.

“I know a guy who can sharpen your new skates,” she said. “Better bring 'em with you to practice. And bring a sweater, too. It's like the Penguin House at the zoo in that place.”

“Will we see the ice?” Sarah wanted to know. “Is the rink frozen yet?”

My mother had promised to take us to the first open skate.

“They're working on it,” was all she said.

But when we got there, she took us right into the rink. There it was: a huge field of ice. The surface was smooth and glassy and beautiful.

“Can I touch it?” Sarah asked with awe.

“Well, the thing is …” My mother glanced at Sarah and me, drawing out the moment. She was up to something. Something good, from the way she was smiling.

“They're having a skating party tonight for all the big donors. See how smooth it is? My friend Paul used to operate
the forklift over at Megamart, but now he works here, driving the Zamboni. See, after a lotta people go on the ice, you have to smooth it out. Even after one person goes on the ice, you need to smooth it out some. He's comin' by later this afternoon to smooth it out for the party and all—” She broke off and started to laugh.

“You just don't get it, do you, Sarah? It's your turn now. All by yourself. Paul is one of those wonderful strangers that Gloria was telling you about. He's gonna come in and clean up later, so you can skate on this rink right now all by yourself.”

Sarah threw her arms around my mother. “Didya hear it, Franklin? It's just like a dream. I got the whole place to myself.”

Yes, I'd heard it. But just barely. Mentally, I was adding up the number of times my mother had used the name Paul that day. At breakfast: “Paul's got a miter box. He's gonna help me frame in that alcove by the sink there.” And at the gas station: “Paul thinks I'd get better gas mileage if I fiddled with the tire pressure. Might get me in good with the boss.”

I didn't need a calculator to tell me that you mention some-one's name in direct proportion to the amount of time you spend thinking about him. What I did need was at least seven minutes to process what this meant for our family health profile. But there was too much going on at the moment.

We were about to launch Sarah Kervick onto the ice, and despite the fact that she always got to be the one to have the adventures and that this was beginning to be a sore point with me, I wanted to see it.

I had to pay attention. Gloria would be counting on me to cheer her up with a report of this historic moment.

“How much time we got?” Sarah asked breathlessly. “Don't you wanna do somethin' to my skates?”

“No, honey, that was just a little trick to get you to bring them down here. Gloria took care of all that.” Consulting her watch, my mother said: “Almost two hours.”

Sarah sighed with pleasure. Then she tore open the box and got out her skates. Heads bent together, Sarah and my mother did the laces.

“They should be tight. You don't want them to wobble. But they shouldn't cut off your circulation, either. Here, I'll hold your skate guards.” My mother took the long plastic sheaths and stuffed them into the pocket of her jacket.

Sarah squeezed my arm and I didn't even flinch. I was actually starting to get used to all this touching. “Are you gonna watch me, Franklin?”

“Sure, I'll watch,” I said, wishing I'd brought a video camera. Gloria would be near to ecstatic if I got a video of this.

In just the same way she seemed to do everything, Sarah Kervick didn't hesitate on the edge of this dream moment. She didn't stop and think about what a big deal this was. What she did was walk carefully to the edge of the rink and launch herself onto the ice, her arms flung out wide, like she was expecting some invisible force to catch her if she fell. And she did fall. Over and over.

I guess dreaming doesn't teach you balance.

Once she was on her feet again, she'd take off, digging her toes in the ice and doing this funny tiptoe thing until she lost her balance and fell forward again.

“She's too greedy,” my mother said, watching her. “It's like she's trying to eat the experience rather than just have it.”

She stuck her fingers in her mouth and produced the same shrill whistle that called Sarah in from the outfield. Sarah walked, slipped, and toppled over to the railing at the edge of the rink.

“I don't know much about skating,” my mother said, “but I figure you can't think of it like walking. Slow down, push back and away from the center of your body.”

To demonstrate, my mother moved her feet like she was dancing. “You're in too much of a hurry.”

“Okay,” Sarah said, panting. Her cheeks were flushed, and in the big fluffy sweater that hid her bony arms, she definitely looked regular. I'd even say she looked pretty.

“Franklin, it's so fun!” she called up to me. “It's just how I imagined it.”

And I knew right then, no matter what, that Sarah Kervick was going to be all right. I think I even understood just how it was she kept going. All those days she spent sliding in the dust in front of her trailer, she was seeing this moment. And now, she was seeing the moment when she would glide across the ice like a pro. I admired Sarah for that. She had one good imagination.

“I still have some work to do,” my mother said, pulling out her receipt pad. “Seems they get little wavy lines when they try to watch the Fitness Channel. You know that won't do. I'll be back in a couple minutes.”

Sarah clink, clink, clinked back to the middle of the rink. Holding her arms in front of her as if she were clasping a giant ball, she straightened up and pushed off with one skate. Not bad.

I rubbed my hands together. Even with my long-sleeved underwear and my PrimaLoft jacket, I could not get rid of the chill. Some part of my frozen brain thought of the hot chocolate machine in the lobby. Maybe it wouldn't matter, just this once, if I drank a beverage that was sure to contain hydrogenated vegetable oil. Other kids did it every day, and I didn't see them dropping like flies.

I looked up to see my mother returning with an enormous shopping bag.

“I almost forgot. Sarah's not the only one who gets surprises.” She was smiling. “I'm your mom, Franklin. It would mean a lot to me to find the thing that would make you as happy as those skates made Sarah.”

She began pulling heavy chunks of molded plastic out of the bag.

“I'm not sayin' this is it,” she added, “but if you want to join her …”

It was a goalie's uniform, from the head cage to the enormous padded gloves to the shieldlike shin guards. All piled up, the pieces of the uniform were higher than me as I sat there in the bleachers. From the bottom of the bag, she pulled out a pair of battered brown skates.

“A girl I work with over in Montcalm County has a son in hockey,” she said. “He outgrew all this, so she let us borrow it. Coach did mention a hock—” She broke off and looked at me.