Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking (3 page)

“Haven’t talked to her yet. You on another hunt?” Ollie was big into geocaching—or “urban treasure hunting,” as he called it. He tracked down treasure boxes in random places around town using a handheld GPS and a list of coordinates off the web. There wasn’t actual treasure in the boxes—just pins and weird bottle caps and whatever—but every time Ollie logged another cache it was like he’d discovered a chest of gold. It made him happy, which was awesome, but didn’t do much for me. Figuring out where the stuff was seemed more exciting, and if you already had the coordinates, well…what’s the fun in that?

But Ollie told me that it’s all about what you
see
, and how you look for things. “It’s a lot harder to see what’s really around you than you might think,” he told me once. I’m not sure I got it.

“How’d you know?” he said. “This one should be tough. The guy who hid it, GI Goh, has done some of the best caches I’ve found…” He went on, talking about boxes disguised as rocks and one in the Public Garden, but all I heard were the Sully Cupcakes details rattling around in my head. Ollie didn’t know about Grumps’s less-than-honest past—another sacred family rule was to keep family business to ourselves—and I didn’t want him asking questions I couldn’t answer.

“If my mom lets me, I’ll go,” I told him, which was basically what I’d texted him when I got home. I’d rather hang with Ollie than Putrid Richard anytime.

“Something bugging you, Mox?” he said.

“Why?” My heart picked up speed. Since he was usually buried in his GPS or attached to a video game controller, Ollie wasn’t the best at reading people, but when he latched on to something…

“Number one,” he said, and I could imagine him pushing up his glasses, then ticking the reasons off on his fingers. “You haven’t made a crack about the geocache, and number two, you never listen to ‘Seasons of Wither’ after the snow melts, regardless of whether or not it comes up in a playlist.”

Ollie knows me better than anyone.

“Disco,” I answered.

“Wha…?” he said. “Oh. Is this Moxie-lingo?”

I laughed. “Disco!” I repeated. “Sounds good as a response to anything, doesn’t it?”

“The word sounds way better than the music ever did,” Ollie muttered.

The call-waiting on my phone clicked. My mom. Bell saving was
not
happening for me. I was supposed to call her when I got home but was, uh, distracted. “My mom’s beeping in. I’ll text you when I know what’s going on.”

“Disco,” said Ollie. I grinned and switched over to Mom’s call.

“My battery ran out,” I said, anticipating her lecture, “and I already made plans with Ollie.”

“Well, Richard and I want to have dinner with you tonight,” she said. “There are a few things that we need to discuss.” I covered the mouthpiece on the phone and groaned. Mom had her “I won’t take no for an answer” voice on. I’d like to see
her
in a room with Sully Cupcakes. She could totally take him.

“Oh-kay,” I groaned, stretching the word out. “What time and where?”

She gave me the details—we’d be going to one of my favorite restaurants—and as she spoke, something occurred to me.

“Can you pick me up at Alton Rivers?” I asked her.

“I guess,” she said. “But isn’t it late for you to be heading over there?”

I glanced at the clock. “If I hop on my bike, I can be there before they have dinner,” I said. “I missed my regular visit because of end-of-the-year stuff.”

She warned me that Grumps might not be in a good
place—Nini would have been in this morning, and visitors take a lot out of him—but said sure, I could go.

I clicked off with Mom, then texted Ollie that I’d have to bail on the Arboretum. I tossed a hoodie, my wallet, keys, and cell phone into my backpack, killed Aerosmith, and headed downstairs to say bye to Nini.

More data, here I come.

The colorful shopping area of Jamaica Plain, the Boston neighborhood where my family lives, blurred by as I dodged clueless pedestrians and distracted drivers on the way to Alton Rivers.

A few minutes later, I clicked my bike to the rack outside the facility. I’m not sure why they had a bike rack out there—mine was the only one I ever saw on it—but I appreciated it. It’d totally suck to come outside from visiting a relative in a nursing home and find that someone jacked your ride.

Inside, Iris, the elderly desk monitor who likes big jewelry and buckets of flowery perfume, quizzed me about summer vacation and the “big move to high school” while I signed in, my eyes watering from her olfactory assault. I tried to be polite—summer in the city and Boston Classics High next year…yes it’d be exciting to attend such a prestigious school, no I didn’t mind the uniform (which was a total lie—around the house I referred to the plaid jumper as the Uniform of Horror) blah blah blah…But my brain buzzed with questions for Grumps.

“It’s been great talking with you, Iris,” I told her, “but I’ve
gotta find Grumps before dinner. Do you know where he is?”

“Try his room, love,” she said. She blew me a kiss and I headed down the main hall, relieved to breathe fresh air.

Alton Rivers is nice for a nursing home, I guess—not that I’m an expert or anything. There are big windows that overlook a backyard garden, the walls are painted a light yellow, and it smells like lemons, not old people.

I checked Grumps’s room, but he wasn’t there. I dropped off my backpack and helmet and headed to the back porch—his second-favorite spot to hang out in the afternoons. I saw him before he saw me.

He was parked in his wheelchair in the sun, back to me, his dandelion fluff of white hair waving in the light breeze, and my heart broke a little, just like it did every time I arrived. I walked around to the front of the chair and squatted down, holding my breath. The first minute was the worst—you never knew what you were going to get. All of the Sully Cupcakes questions were replaced with the same ones I think every time I visit: Will he recognize me today? Is it a good memory day?

“Hey, Grumps!” I said, giving him a big smile.

His bright blue eyes lit up under his bushy eyebrows.

“Moxie-girl!” he said. All the air whooshed out of me as I gave him a hug.

A confused expression flitted over his face, and he frowned.

“I don’t have any pudding,” he said.

On Wednesdays, when I usually visit, the cafeteria at Alton Rivers serves butterscotch pudding for dessert after
lunch, and if Grumps is having a good memory day, he saves his for me. Butterscotch is my favorite. Evidently, today was an off-the-charts great memory day.

“Surprise! It’s Thursday,” I said, and grinned. I dragged a deck chair over and plopped into it. “But my schedule has been crazy with the last day of school tomorrow, and I wanted to make sure I saw you this week.” And see if I could get information about this mysterious redhead who showed up at our house today.

Grumps smiled. “Checkers?”

We always do the same thing when I visit: Hang out on the big sunny porch and play checkers. Grumps never played checkers before his diagnosis, but the docs say it’s a good activity for his brain and he seems to like it. Sometimes I have to remind him if his pieces are black or red, but other than that he does pretty well. He beats me most of the time, but that’s good. If I start winning too many games, I’ll start to worry about him more than I already do.

I checked the clock over the door. Plenty of time for a game before dinner.

“I’ll get the board.” I went inside and grabbed a checkers set off the rack in the rec room, then set up the pieces.

I spent a few minutes enjoying the game, trying not to think about The Redhead and Sully Cupcakes, or who Grumps used to be before Alzheimer’s and after his criminal past.

When our game was almost finished, Grumps paused to watch this red bird do its bird thing in the feeder that hangs
from the tree just outside the back door. I watched Grumps watch the bird, and it was time to ask.

“Grumps…” I trailed off. He turned to me, as alert as I’d seen him in weeks. My insides squeezed. Asking him about the past was risky. He could drift.

But I had to know. I swallowed hard.

“Grumps, do you remember anyone named Sully?”

A shadow flitted across his eyes. His hands—he has these huge hands—shook. Just a little. Not slosh-coffee-down-your-pants shaking, but more like ripples-across-the-top-of-the-cup shaking. They’d never done that before.

“I know a lot of Sullys,” he answered.

That was probably true. Sully is a nickname for Sullivan, and, if you live in Boston like we do, Sullivans are as common as Dunkin’ Donuts coffee shops.

Honesty, right?

“Sully Cupcakes?”

His eyes narrowed to slits just like the way my mom’s do when she’s angry over something I said about Putrid Richard.

“Where’d you hear that name?” A vein popped out on his forehead, which is probably a very bad sign when you’re eighty-three and have Alzheimer’s.

I swallowed again. “I saw it online,” I said, losing my nerve and lying—for…what? The third time this afternoon?

“Well, forget it,” he said. “Bad news, that one.”

Obviously.

“Did you ever work with him?”

This time, Grumps didn’t answer, just pressed his lips
together and stared out across the garden. I didn’t want to believe it, but the quick stab to my heart told me
yes.
Grumps didn’t lie to me. I wished I could blame this on his disease, but deep down, I knew: Grumps was avoiding the truth. On purpose. And he was aware that he was doing it.

Before I could ask another question, the back door opened and Angel, his aide, came out to the porch.

“Moxie!” he cried. “What a surprise!”

Angel is young—once he told me that he works at ARC to help pay for nursing school—and has these amazing dark brown eyes and a dimple in his left cheek. And really big biceps, from lifting people in and out of wheelchairs so much, I guess. I try to remember that he’s a medical professional, but his hotness can be distracting.

Angel retrieved a blanket from the pocket on the back of Grumps’s wheelchair and spread it over his legs. I turned away, struggling with what this latest change—Grumps avoiding me—meant. Over the past two years, I’d watched a lot of things around Grumps change: what he could do for himself, what we could do together, and—maybe the saddest change—what we could do for him. But even though all those other parts of life around Grumps had changed, our relationship had stayed steady. Or I thought it had.

Now? I had no idea what was the truth and what was a lie.

“Time for dinner, Mr. Burke,” he said. Grumps grunted.

Angel released the brake on Grumps’s chair and I got up to hold the door for them. Grumps cruised by me, not meeting my gaze.

Still stinging from Grumps’s omission, I said bye to Iris and found Mom’s tiny hatchback parked outside of Alton Rivers, engine idling. I pushed away a flare of annoyance that she hadn’t come in and said hello. Instead, I snuck up to the passenger-side door and peeked through the window at her: head bent over her notebook, scribbling away. Mom makes lists like other people breathe—all the time. She has this square chubby notebook with about five hundred pages in it, and that’s where she keeps everything she has to do, I have to do, things she might want to do, or what I should be doing in my free time. I tapped on the glass and she jumped. She leaned over and unlocked the door, then popped the back. I wrestled my bike in, struggling with the handlebars, then slid into the front seat.

“Hey, honey.” She pecked me on the cheek. “How was he?” she asked, eyes on the floor.

I shrugged, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of a full report. She hadn’t been to visit in at least two weeks. Of the three of us, Mom visits Grumps the least. She says it’s really hard to watch him slipping away and she “just can’t do it.” But—
hello!
—it’s
hard for me and Nini too, and we go. I pointed out that if she saw him more often, the changes would feel more gradual. She didn’t like hearing that. Basically, she likes to move forward, and Alzheimer’s doesn’t allow that—at least, that’s what Angel’s told me. He’s talked to her about it a few times.

Her lips tightened into a thin line and she put the car in gear, then pulled into traffic.