Stand Tall (9 page)

He walked slowly up to Sophie, who was studying the floor.

Cleared his throat.

Waited.

She looked up. “
Well?
”

“I’m here,” Tree said.

“
And?
”

“I was going to ask you to, you know . . .” He looked around. “Dance.”

“You need to say the words. Would you like to dance?”

“I would,” Tree said.

“
No
—you ask
me.
”

“Right. Would you . . . like to dance?”

She took his hand, smiled bright. “I’d be delighted—and I’m not just saying that.”

They walked onto the middle of the floor. Tree was absolutely the tallest person in the room. Lazar and Coach Glummer’s cousin Sheila locked into position, which seemed easier for shorter people.

“Good posture,” shouted Sheila. “If you get lost, just watch me and Lazar.”

Tree bent down to reach Sophie’s waist. Her head came up to his chest. He took her hand gently; didn’t want to squish it. He wasn’t sure his left foot could detach at this angle.

He could either dance or have good posture—not both.

Sophie laughed. She had a good laugh. Solid, not tinkling. “You look like you’re at a funeral.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Aunt Peach dragged me here by my nose hairs, but it’s not as bad as I thought.”

Tree nodded.

Dumb music started playing.

Tree took the deepest breath of his life and forgot everything he’d been practicing for the last ninety minutes. Sophie was right there with him, messing up.

Tree had no idea how this would help him in basketball or in years to come. But it sure was nice to be so close to Sophie.

“It’s weird here now, huh?”

Tree took his tie off and said it to Curtis, who was lying on the couch at Dad’s with an empty pizza carton over his face.

“I mean, with Mom and Dad and everything. . . .”

“It’s weird,” Curtis agreed, not moving the carton.

Tree flopped into the chair.

“I’m here
all
the time.” Tree wanted to make this point. He felt like a soldier that had been fighting a battle on his own, just waiting for fresh troops to come in and give him a hand. “Sometimes I’m not sure what to think.”

“I’m not, either.” Curtis took the carton off his face, looked inside, ate the last bit of cheese. “We went to Mom’s house tonight. Me and Larry. Larry called it Munchkinland.”

Tree nodded.

“We helped her trim the tree.” Curtis sighed. “She told the ornament stories. This one we got on that Christmas farm in Iowa. This one we got in Bermuda.”

He didn’t mention it was like being at a funeral, remembering the dead.

Didn’t tell Tree the next part, either.

How Mom kept asking them, “
Are you all right?
”

What do you say?

“No,” Curtis had said finally. “I’m not. I’ll be all right. But this is hard, Mom.”

“Why did you buy this house?” Larry asked her.

“It was the only one I could afford!”

“
Why did you get this dog?
” Larry wouldn’t let up.

“Because I wanted company! You’re blaming me for this divorce, and that’s not fair!”

Tree took his shoes off, studied his big toe sticking out of his sock. Looked at Curtis. “Why do you think they got divorced?”

Curtis crushed the pizza carton. He wanted to get back to school, where things seemed normal. Tree looked kind of pitiful to him. As the oldest, he’d seen and heard more of the fights. The ones about his father’s job were always loud.

“
Why
,” Mom would shout at Dad, “are you content just running a sporting goods store? You have so many gifts that you’ve never developed.”

“I
like
sports.”

“That’s not an explanation.”

“Not everything in life has to have an explanation!”

And she would storm off saying that
she
wasn’t going to just settle for whatever came.
She
was going to improve herself.

“Go for it,” Dad would yell.

The next morning, they would be in the kitchen with faces like cement.

Curtis sighed. “I don’t know how it happened. They just changed. They stopped doing things together that they used to do. They stopped laughing. They began to have really different lives. Dad worked mostly; Mom worked, went to school, and rearranged the furniture.”

Tree half laughed. “Remember that time Dad came home
and sat where his brown chair had always been, and fell down and started shouting?”

“I thought he was going to punch a hole in the wall.”

“And then I’d meet him at the door when he came home and tell him if Mom had changed stuff around while he was gone.”

Curtis nodded. “You were always good at things like that.”

They looked at the scrunched-up pizza box.

“Do you think,” Tree asked, “they’ll change their minds? I mean, if Dad learned to understand her more, they could get back together maybe. It’s not like they hate each other.”

“I don’t know, Tree Man. I don’t think so.”

“I wish they’d waited till I was in college.”

Curtis smiled. “They might have killed each other by then.”

“Do you know the secret to fighting a war?”

Grandpa asked Tree the question as they were folding the laundry. Grandpa always dove deep doing laundry.

Tree didn’t know.

“You’ve got to hold on to the things you know to be true, set your mind to a higher place, and fight like a dog to keep it there. War can be so fierce, you can forget the good. Forget what you’re about in this world, what’s really important. There’s always going to be somebody who wants to try to make you forget it. Don’t let them.”

Tree wasn’t sure how you do that in seventh grade.

He folded a towel and remembered the day his mom moved out.

August twelfth, a bright, sunny day. A day where you wouldn’t think anything bad could happen. He’d just come back from helping her move. There in the dryer was a full load of her clothes she’d forgotten to take. He gathered the clothes in his arms, started up the basement steps, couldn’t handle it. He dropped the pile and ran into his bedroom, crying.

A knock on Tree’s bedroom door.

He was madly drying his face with his sleeve. Grandpa came in.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Convince me.”

Tree told him about the clothes.

“I would have cried, too, if I’d seen that.” He limped over—his leg was so bad—sat on the bed. “It’s the things we don’t expect that just rip the scab off.”

“She was supposed to pack everything.”

“She meant to. It’s been a hard day. People do all kinds of things they wouldn’t normally do when they’re fighting each other. I’ll help you fold that laundry, then you call her, let her know it’s here.”

Tree walked to the basement steps, gathered up the clothes.

His mother had used fabric softener. Her yellow robe was soft and smelled nice. He half buried his nose in it like Bradley snuggled his old towel.

He lugged the laundry to his room. He and Grandpa folded each piece like it had cost a fortune. Tree called Mom at her new house, and she started crying. She’d come over and get it, she said. She hadn’t meant to leave it.

Tree hoped he wouldn’t think about this every time he did the laundry.

“It’s tough around here now, I know.” Grandpa held up five unmatched socks, looked in the hamper for the others. “We’ve all lost a piece of ourselves. War does that—it blows things up and leaves an empty place where something important used to be.”

“Is that how you feel about your leg, Grandpa?”

“Yep. Is that how you feel about your mom and dad?”

Tree looked down. “Kind of.”

“I’ll tell you something about empty places. They don’t get filled in right away. You’ve got to look at them straight on, see what’s still standing. Concentrate on what you’ve got as much as you can.”

Grandpa dug around the hamper, couldn’t find the missing socks. He started laughing. “I don’t need a pair of socks. I just need one. Doing the laundry gets easier when you’re not so particular.”

Tree laughed, too.

You’ve got to love a man who can teach you to laugh at war.

“Okay, Aunt Peach, so this is my friend Tree.”

Tree was standing in the hallway of Sophie’s apartment. It was cramped and dark.

Piles of laundry all around.

Lassie, the iguana, in a cage on the dining room table.

Cats on the couch; cats in the hall.

Aunt Peach was chasing one of the cats that had just clawed the drapes.

She stopped, gazed up at Tree, way up. “You’re a big one.”

Tree slouched a little.

Aunt Peach ran off. “
Dimples, I’m going to break your furry neck!
”

Tree and Sophie were going to take the bus to the Midas Muffler shop in Baltimore where her dad worked. She was going to give him her Christmas present.

She knew he wouldn’t have anything for her.

“He’s not so good at presents,” Sophie said.

“He’s not so good at life,” her mother added from behind the bathroom door. “Don’t expect much, Sophia.”

Sophie put on her coat, tucked a little wrapped present in her backpack. “I expect the bus’ll get us there, Ma. I expect it’ll be cold outside. That’s it.”

A flush. “Don’t take the wrong bus.”

“I’ve done this before.”

Running water. “Don’t stay long.”

“He gets a fifteen-minute break.”

Bathroom door opened. Sophie’s mother stared up at Tree. She looked just like Sophie except for being older and rounder. “If he asks about me, tell him I’m dating three movie stars.”

Sophie laughed.

“You deserve a better father.”

“But he’s the one I got.” Sophie pushed Tree out the door.

The Midas Muffler shop was packed with people drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups and checking their watches. Sophie pointed to a big man with his head inside a car engine.

“That’s him. The big guy. You’ve got something in common already.”

Sophie’s father seemed satisfied with what he’d done; he motioned for another man, who got in the car and drove it out. He walked toward the glass door—didn’t smile, didn’t frown—pushed it open.

Sophie got nervous, her hands went in every direction. “Okay, Dad, so this is my friend Tree.”

Sophie’s father looked at Tree. “How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

A snort. “You think I’m stupid?”

“No, sir. I’m really tall for my age.”

“You’re tall for
my
age.” He stepped closer. “
You know how old she is?
”

“Dad—”

“No, really.” Tree grabbed his wallet, got his seventh-grade ID. He had a copy of his birth certificate, too. His mother made him carry it.

Sophie stepped in. “Okay, so we know you’re busy, Dad, and we don’t want to mess up your schedule here.”

Sophie’s father studied the ID, handed it back.

“I brought you a present, Dad, on account of it’s Christmas soon.” She handed it to him.

“I left yours at home.” He always said that. He lit a cigarette, blew smoke rings out slow.

“I recorded some Christmas music for you on my flute. I got your favorites. ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen’ and ‘Jingle Bells.’” She’s talking faster, too fast. “I call it
Sophie’s Greatest Christmas Hits.
The last half of ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ got cut off ’Cause my cheeks were getting exhausted from all the blowing.”