Lunch-Box Dream (5 page)

The boys are two good boys.

They have whatever they want, they have not been ever without anything, and their grandfather they didn't know well enough, but they are two good boys. Their father? Nuh.

The older boy has eye problems, but so have we all eye problems, except my Bobchicka, my Bobby.

Puppa had spectacles. They are on his face right now in heaven. I put them on him before they took him away.

I hope he will not go blind, my Richie. I hope none of us will go blind. We have to eat well.

Their grandfather wore spectacles, but he was sixty-six only. It was because he was an engineer, always drawing, always bending close over paper.

August was a civil engineer and he designed bridges, first in Hungary, then in Youngstown. He liked to visit new bridges and causeways and there were new ones built every few years over the water near Tampa and Clearwater.

I made chocolate chip cookies that day. I pulled them from the oven and slid the pan onto a cooling rack on the counter. I lifted one to look underneath, they were fine. I saw the clock, rinsed the warm chocolate from my hands.

August was as a young man a baker, with floury white hands the first time I saw him, but he loved my cookies.

The doorbell rang, and I knew it was Puppa. I answered the door, wiping my hands on my apron. “I've made your favorite—”

It was not him. A colored man stood on the doorstep. I locked the screen. There was a truck sitting at the end of the driveway. He wore big overalls. His face was still. He was colored and wore blue overalls and a cap that he took off and held in his large black hands.

“Mrs. Banyon…”

“Banyar,” I told him. “What do you want?”

His lips moved. Sounds came from them. I cannot remember what he said but a few words.

“…bridge…sand…hospital…tried calling…passed.”

I threw the cookies away.

It was Puppa's house, too. He bought it for us. Like that, he was gone and never came home. It is empty now and will be also when I am there.

Wednesday, June 17

The third day they crossed into Tennessee. It was happening so slowly. Bobby felt his stomach roll with every mile the car rolled. This many hours of driving was too many, and there were more than these to come—how many more, he didn't know—but the airplane ride stood fixed at the end of it like a beacon, scouring clean the time before it, so he said nothing. Maybe it was normal after so many hours of driving to feel sick from your stomach to your head, from just below your stomach to the hairs on the top of your head. He looked over. Ricky was staring out the window again.

Sometime late the night before, Bobby woke in the motel room to the sound of his mother talking softly on the phone. It was a quiet call, her voice no more than a murmur, but continuous, as if she were reading aloud. He almost didn't know when it ended because he hadn't heard her say any of the usual words, like “Good night” or “I'll talk to you tomorrow” or “I love you,” just the gentle click of the receiver in the cradle. He cracked one eye open and saw her rise from the desk where the phone was, enter the bathroom, and close the door to brush her teeth. What had they spoken about? He heard the sound of the faucet and the swooshing of the brush soon after she closed the door behind her, which he took as a good sign. She was doing something regular right away after the call. Maybe it was an okay telephone call. Because wouldn't she be slow to brush her teeth if the phone call had upset her? She would linger, wouldn't she? She would look in the mirror at herself. Or just stand there. Or worse, she would cry. But not this time. His mother went right to brushing her teeth.

But the next day he doubted how sure he was that the phone call had ended all right. Not long after a short stop for snacks at noon his mother slammed her palms on the horn over and over, veered off the road, and skidded to a stop in the dusty shoulder.

“Marion!”

“Damn it, that's it!” she said.

The boys looked at each other as she turned off the engine with an angry flick of her wrist and stormed out of her seat, leaving the door open. She crossed in front of the car, stopped at the guardrail, and stared trembling into the trees. A truck roared by, then cars, one after another, then a space of no cars, then a long grinding ribbon of coming and passing and going.

“Holy cow,” Bobby finally breathed.

“Marion,” their grandmother called from her seat, and then said something in Hungarian. whatever it was, she said it twice.

Their mother swung her head around. “So what?” she snapped, her whole body shaking. “I don't even care. He's mad. He's always mad. It wouldn't work, anyway, so what's the point?”

“But, Mar—”

“No!”

Bobby watched his mother step over the guardrail and off the side of the road, stumble a few steps, then collapse to her knees in the grass, and put her hands to her face and cry into them.

“What the heck happened?” asked Bobby softly.

“Dad, what else?” said Ricky. “On the phone last night.”

“You heard that?”

“Vhat?” said Grandma.

What had his parents said, after all? Bobby tried to remember a word, any word, but couldn't, when Ricky opened his door and got out, passed behind the car, hopped over the rail, and went to his mother, standing next to her for a long time without saying anything. There was a tissue in his hand.

What had his mother asked, and what had his father answered? What “wouldn't work, anyway”? That word “work” sounded so ominous. What could it mean for something to not “work” between adults?

His mind flashed backward to the previous Christmas when his father hit him for making noise.

“You want to fight each other?” his father had said to the boys when their mother was working at her job downtown. They had been going at it with the fencing set Bobby had gotten for Christmas. The tree stood unlit in the front of the room, near the picture window. The fencing set's sword blades were plastic and rubber-tipped. Bobby had asked for them, but you can't fence alone, so Ricky had taken an épée and a plastic mask as “his own.” Dancing in front of the tree, Ricky had struck Bobby's blade down, then lunged forward, snapping his own blade in half. Suddenly angry, Bobby punched Ricky in the shoulder and yelled, “That's mine, you stupid jerk!”

“Don't hit me, you jerk—”

His father came right out of the den, where he'd been working.

“You want to fight?” he said, his face red. “Yeah? You want to fight? I'm working in there. I have two weeks. You want to fight? Okay, fight. But I'm going to take care of the first one who cries. So go on. Go on!”

Take care of the first one who cries. That was an odd thing to say, Bobby thought. But he and Ricky watched their father turn and leave and, seeing his broken sword on the floor, Bobby punched his brother again, and soon they were tussling, until Ricky kneed him under the ribs, Bobby sucked in a sudden breath, and exhaled with a cry. Ricky's eyes widened behind his glasses as he moved away.

Quick footsteps from their father's room.

Still on the floor, Bobby pretended his side hurt more than it did, holding his hand on it and wincing, but also setting his face firm and trying to look man enough to shrug it off.

It didn't help.

Through his grimace, he saw his father coming at him. (“Oh, crying, are you? Crying? Crying!”) Bobby barely had time to scramble to his feet before his cheek was cupped in his father's left hand and his father came down fast with his right. The smack was loud and sudden, and he fell again. His cheek felt raw and red and shocked. Ricky watched from the couch as their father strode back into the den and slammed the door shut, opened it, and slammed it louder. Pulling himself to his feet, Bobby ran to his room and cried for an hour, muffled, into his pillow. When he heard his mother open the front door, returning to start dinner, he stopped. Telling her would only make his father madder than before. By that time Ricky was outside. Bobby joined him in throwing snowballs against the trunk of the oak tree until supper was ready.

“Stupid jerk,” Bobby said.

Ricky shrugged. “Yeah, sorry.”

“Yeah, sorry. I hate you—”

“Me?” Ricky said. “You hate
me
?”

This came back to Bobby in the minutes his brother stood by the guardrail, both of his hands empty now.

“We'll get to Chattanooga tomorrow,” his mother said finally, rising and wiping her face with the tissue. Without her glasses, the brown circles under her eyes were nearly black. She spoke to no one in particular, didn't look at Ricky, raised her head as if trying to sniff away the last five minutes. “We'll find the battleground. I don't want to go now. I know it's close, but I'm tired. I don't feel good. I don't.”

“Marion,” their grandmother said.

“Shhhut…” his mother started, then her head suddenly flew around to his brother. “Ricky!”

“Yeah, Mom?” he said, startled by the sharpness of it.

“We'll spend most of the day at the battlefield, okay? I promise. At Lookout Mountain. Will that be enough for you?” She said this with a cold, crying look. “I said will that be enough for you?”

“Sure, yes,” Ricky said, working his glasses back up his nose. “That's fine. Thanks, Mom. I'm sorry.”

She waved Ricky back to the car and after a few minutes of breathing to calm herself got behind the wheel, saying nothing, and drove to the first motel with a vacancy sign and walked quickly into the office, leaving them in their seats.

I know Weeza loves me. And Aunt Ruth and Uncle Ellis. And Poppa. And Olivia. Well, I'm lovable. I know lots of other things, too. I know I am a good speller in school. I know a girl in my classroom likes me, maybe two girls do. And probably Cora likes me, too. I know when Mrs. brings her car around to pick up Aunt Ruth—I am talking of Atlanta where I live, and Mrs. is the white lady Aunt Ruth cleans house for—I watch from the front window as she pulls the car up the street right to our house. It's brand-new and long, with fins the color of butter. Mrs. has to know I want to sit in it. She saw me staring at it from the window. Once I even came down the steps like she was driving up for me. I wonder if she would ever let me sit on those white seats.

The minute she saw me standing out there, Aunt Ruth growled and shooed me back in the house to help Weeza wash up the breakfast plates. I ran!

But I didn't stop looking.

That car must ride pretty nice. I know I would drive it right out of here.
Kansas City here I come!

Cora laughs behind her hand when I say funny things. She hides her teeth when she laughs. She says funny things, too, and almost made my nose explode in church with what she told me.

I get an idea sometimes. You know what I mean. I've lived in Atlanta my whole life, and that's a big city not a little town. I'm practically ten, or will be in a few months. And I'm tall for my age. Sometimes I think a thing and I'll say it. I've always been that way. I remember something about Poppa and my old momma. One day, he comes in and I say, “Poppa, why did Old Momma leave me here with Weeza and you and never come back?” And he blinks his eyes at me and says, “Never mind about that. You're with people who love you now.”

Now.

He said “now.” Like Momma didn't love me. Well, lots of people love me now.

Sure I know Poppa is not really my poppa. Once when I was supposed to be sleeping I saw him cry. Some white people did something to him. I've never cried but maybe once.

Being nearly ten I have seen a few things. I have friends down in Atlanta and they've seen things, too.

At three o'clock I'll go into town to an office in a store. Cora will walk down the sidewalk with me, but I know what to do. I just go left and left and right and left and into the store. Then I walk between the racks of clothes to the office behind the wall in the back and sit on the chair next to the desk. I know the number by heart, and I dial the telephone myself. There's a man there who's white. He probably has a car like Mrs. They all do.

They stopped at a place called the Cumberland Motor Inn in a city called Wartburg. Funny name, he thought. Wartburg. Only it wasn't a city, but a small town that lay just off the highway in a valley surrounded by overlapping hills. The hills were covered with brown trees, but looked more like giant mounds of mud that rain had washed into peaks and creases that dried dusty brown.

The man at the front desk called a name and whistled sharply as his mother came out of the office, and a Negro girl with towels in her arms ran from somewhere to what Bobby suspected was going to be their room, but it wouldn't be ready for an hour, his mother said, so they ate lunch.

The cheery waitress at the restaurant up the street from the motel hovered over the table, first with water, then with her order pad, then with sodas, then with food, then just to see how things were going. They weren't going well. Bobby wasn't at all hungry, but his mother told him to eat, so he ordered the Sputnik Special from the children's menu. “Yes, little sir,” the waitress said, which annoyed him. The Special was described as a “a meal to send any kid into orbit!” but was only a grilled cheese and coleslaw. Ricky ordered a sandwich and potato salad said to be “just like Mama used to make before television.”

“Yes, sir!” said the waitress, smiling as she wrote on her pad, then leaving the table. Ricky chuckled. “They probably don't even
have
television in these mountains—”

“It doesn't matter,” his mother said, sounding as if she was talking to herself. A blanket of quiet settled over them then, as if they were all too tired to speak. After the waitress slid the plates on the table and left once more, no one breathed a word. People at the other tables glanced at them when their own conversations faded. Bobby did not meet their eyes, but leaned over his plate.

In the motel room, his mother slept. So did he. The grilled cheese settled in his stomach like lead, and he felt it would sooner send him into the bathroom than into orbit. Gazing around before he set his head down, he realized he hated the room. It was too much like their room the night before in which he woke to hear his mother whispering on the phone. The cot's soft mattress smelled dully of someone else, a man, he thought, who smoked; but why would a grown man sleep on a cot? But this was the South. So who knew?

Finally, the room's heat fell over him, and he closed his eyes, trying to imagine the coming airplane ride but not getting far because he didn't know at all what it would be like.

When he woke, hours had passed, and he found he had a headache and no dreams to remember. His grandmother was sitting up in bed, praying with her eyes closed, while Ricky studied a large book of photographs by a crack of window light. Bobby looked out at the pool beyond. There were one or two people, a girl, a family, maybe, moving in the sunshine. It was afternoon and hotter than before. He turned over, rested his head on the mattress, breathed in shallowly, and slept again.

Later, he stepped out onto the little sidewalk between the room and the parking lot. It was nearly nine o'clock. The nighttime air was warm and scented with flowers and chlorine. His mother was still sleeping like she had the day she learned Grandpa had died. After the strange afternoon everything had slowed to a near stop, gone quiet, almost to sleep itself. They were far enough off the highway so that the air was hushed. Bobby felt that no one would ever find them there, if anyone was even looking for them. The mud hills twinkled with house lights far above the roof of the motel office.

He heard the sound of a faraway train whistle.

It came to him then what his mother had told him, that when there was a change of trains in Washington, Grandma had asked her to find out if Grandpa's coffin was being moved to the right train to continue its journey to Ohio. Had his father been there, too? It was Washington, where he was studying. But he wasn't part of this story, so perhaps not. His mother told Bobby she had been nervous, afraid, and dizzy. But after several wrong ones, she found the right counter and, clutching the stamped yellow tickets, asked a man at a window.

Bobby imagined a ruffle of papers behind the window, and a slow nodding: “Yes, ma'am. Your father's been transferred to track seven, leaving for Youngstown in twenty-eight minutes. I just made the call. He's safe.”

Those strange words. “He's safe.”

And his mother wobbling back to where Grandma stood alone in the waiting room, no more now than a stick of herself.

“He's safe,” she repeated.

And Grandma's face, worn down to nothing. “Good.”

He thought of uniformed men rolling the casket down the platform. Maybe they laughed. Certainly there was no way to disguise what they were doing among the holiday travelers. Was there a holiday? Maybe not. In any case, what they were pushing down the platform was undoubtedly a casket and it  was going on a train and everyone saw it. Did Grandpa need a ticket like seat passengers? Maybe they didn't call it that, but it was still a ticket. He needed to reserve a place on the train. No. Two trains.

Across the parking lot, the chrome frames of vending machines sparkled under the bulb in the ceiling of the walkway. One was a bright red and white box the size of a refrigerator. There was movement at that machine. The girl he had seen earlier by the pool was bending over at the machine. Then she was up and turning around and facing him, holding something in her hand.

Candy? A soda?

Her hair hung to her shoulders. It was light brown.

“Huh…”

Bobby turned. Ricky had said that. He was standing on the sidewalk just behind him, the room door closed. How did he get there so quietly? He notched his glasses up his nose as he looked past Bobby at the girl, his brow crinkling to make him look older. His sudden appearance reminded Bobby of the time he had spotted a quarter frozen in the sidewalk on his way home from school. He had exclaimed at it, then was amazed when an older boy pushed him out of the way, kicked the quarter free of the ice with the heel of his boot, and went off with it. He remembered how he told Ricky, who said he deserved to lose the quarter because he had said anything about it in the first place. Or maybe he only imagined Ricky would say that, but he had never actually mentioned the quarter to him.

“I remember her from the restaurant.”

“The pool,” Bobby said.

Ricky hooked one thumb in his pants pocket and shifted his feet.

Could a year make such a difference? What was Ricky thinking about the girl? Bobby thought about the girl. Of course he did. He had thought about her from the moment he had seen her at the pool, only he didn't know her hair was that long because she had worn a bathing cap to match her suit. Still, Ricky was taller, a year older, knew things about girls, and his thoughts were different and meant more.

“Let's get some ice,” Ricky said, stepping in front of him.

“What for?”

“To get some ice.”

They walked across the parking lot to the machines. The girl stayed there, holding a soda bottle in one hand while unwrapping a candy bar with her teeth. She took a bite, looking at Ricky.

“My parents drove me here because we're going to a horse farm to buy me a horse,” she said, chewing.

“That must be fun,” Ricky said. “What kind of horse?”

“Doesn't matter. I have two horses already,” she said. “But one's getting old. I ride all the time.”

“I've ridden a few times,” said Ricky.

“You have not!” Bobby said.

“Shut up,” said Ricky. “We're here to see the battlefields.”

“You talk funny,” the girl said. “You from up north?”

“Ohio,” said Ricky.

“That's far away from here,” she said. “I'm from Atlanta. My daddy works for Coca-Cola.” She tapped one of the vending machines and laughed.

“What?” said Ricky.

“Coke bottles,” she said. “You know. Glasses?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “I always drink from the bottle.”

“We'll see Chattanooga,” said Bobby. “Lookout Mountain. That's where we're going tomorrow morning. Lots of guys died up there. Union and Confederate. Both sides.”

“Oh,” she said, tearing a strip of wrapper idly from her candy bar. She didn't say any more, except another “Oh.” Then she walked back along the sidewalk to her room, trailing the scent of chocolate behind her.