The Big Shuffle (6 page)

I open the front door and there's the bulky but familiar Officer Rich standing with hat in one hand and heavy-duty flashlight that doubles as a nightstick in the other. Officer Rich has always been my safety net in times of trouble, and even though there's nothing he can pull out of his law enforcement bag of tricks to right this particular wrong, it's still a huge relief to see him standing there.

After pushing the door open the rest of the way to accommodate his hefty frame, Officer Rich steps inside and we stand in the dark front hall staring at each other for a moment. Though he's known to be a warm and affectionate family man, Officer Rich doesn't exactly go around hugging people. Finally he puts his big arm around my shoulders and I switch on the overhead light.

“I was testifying at a case in Cleveland for two days,” he says. “Jeanette called and told me what happened and I came as soon as I could.”

“Thanks,” I say.

“How you holding up, kiddo?” he asks.

If another person called me “kiddo” I'd definitely be annoyed, but Officer Rich has never treated me like a child. If anything, it's always been just the opposite—he lets me in on stuff that a lot of grown-ups don't even know about. At the end of the
day it's obvious that he really cares about the town, and after being the main patrolman here for thirty years, Officer Rich views us all as his personal charges, wanting us to be not only safe but happy.

“There's just so much to do that I haven't really stopped to think about it,” I say. “I mean, I don't want to stop and think about it because I'm afraid I won't be able to get going again.”

He nods with understanding and doesn't say anything, like when people are describing a crime and you don't want to cut them off before they've had a chance to rummage through their memory for all the details.

“Mom is taking it especially hard. They put her in … Dale-wood.” Only it's clear from the way I say the name that he's aware of what I'm really thinking.

“It's just until she's rested,” he says in that deep, reassuring voice. “I know you kids always joke about Dalewood being the loony bin, but it's really a good place.”

We sit down on the couch and Officer Rich continues, “Far be it from me to name names, but I could give you a list of people in this town who have spent time at Dalewood for everything from eating and sleeping disorders to drug and alcohol rehab to personality disorders and even bad cases of postpartum depression, and you'd be
very
surprised indeed. Not everyone who claims to be on vacation in this town is in the Bahamas.” He italicizes the word
vacation.

“I suppose,” I say.

“You've watched too many movies about people being locked up in dark cells and pulling their hair out.”

He's certainly right about that. And it dawns on me that he probably knows a lot about something else, too. Officer Rich often deals with records for the town clerk, especially with regard to deaths. “I always thought my parents were the same
age—Dad's birthday is in April and Mom's is two weeks later in May of the same year. Dad used to joke about it—saying that April showers bring May flowers.”

The normally perceptive Officer Rich looks at me as if he's totally flummoxed.

“But when I was sorting through the papers to find our insurance policies, I found their birth certificates and Mom's says she was born two years later than Dad!”

“Look.” I hand the papers to Officer Rich and turn on the nearby lamp.

He takes out his reading glasses and examines the two documents.

“Do you think Mom changed it for some reason?” I ask.

“Changed her age or the certificate?” asks Officer Rich.

“The certificate—you know, like teenagers change their ID so they can get into bars.” I suddenly realize that this probably isn't the kind of thing one should be mentioning to the local constabulary, especially considering that at eighteen and a half I'm firmly among the population of underaged. “I mean, that's what I've heard.”

Officer Rich gives me a crooked smile to suggest that indeed he did not spring up with the flowers after yesterday's rain.

Holding the document up to the light, he squints at it. “No, this here is the real McCoy.”

“Then why—”

“Maybe your parents were too young to marry without parental permission and so they pushed his age up a little higher to avoid having to wait.” Officer Rich takes another look at my dad's birth certificate to see if the year has been altered.

“Are you kidding—my mother was the daughter his parents never had. In fact, I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that they gave the money for the down payment on our house!”

He starts to chuckle while handing me back the certificates.

“What's so funny?” I ask.

“Folks can be peculiar about their age. There was a time not too long ago when a woman didn't want to be older than her husband. And then last week I had a lady down at the hospital insisting she was fifty-nine. She didn't have insurance, so they called her son to ask who was paying for the operation. He said,
‘Insurance?
She's seventy-two years old and completely covered by Medicare!’ ”

“But Mom is claiming to be two years
older
than she actually is, not younger.”

“Then probably she was the one who couldn't get permission from her parents,” he suggests. “So they told a white lie.”

“I suppose that's what happened.” It would explain Aunt Lala's reaction. Though my mother isn't in favor of any kind of lying, no matter what the color.

“It's late,” says Officer Rich as he rises. “And I've got to stop by the station to see the reports made while I was away and get a list of any lunatics who may be loose in our area.”

This is meant to be a joke because rarely anything criminal ever happens around here, but I can tell Officer Rich is sorry he used the word
lunatics
under the circumstances.

We walk to the front door and he says, “I'll come by to check on things. The synagogue is just up the street.” To anyone who doesn't live in town this might sound like an odd statement since Officer Rich, who is African American and has a St. Christopher statue on his dashboard, is the last person you would guess to be Jewish. And he isn't. There aren't more than a dozen Jewish families in town, and that's the problem. At least ten are required in order to hold daily prayers, and so he swings by the synagogue right before lunch every day and often makes up the tenth.

Fortunately he doesn't say “Call if you need anything,” because I don't know what to say to that one anymore. Basically what I
need
is: Dad alive, Mom home, a lot of money, and, failing all of that, someone who wants to change diapers and feed and bathe twins all day long. Oh yeah, and someone to keep Aunt Lala from burning the house to the ground by putting bottles in a pot of water on the stove, turning the burner on high, and then taking the twins downstairs to the playroom and forgetting all about the bottles.

It's impossible to sleep. And I can't exactly call Bernard at one o'clock in the morning. Craig! He'd left several messages during the day, but it had been difficult to talk with all of the commotion around here. I curl up on the couch and dial his dorm room at the University of Minnesota. He sounds relieved to hear from me and still completely flabbergasted by what's happened. I tell him that the funeral is on Thursday afternoon.

“Then I'll fly home on Thursday morning,” he announces.

It's a sweet offer, but I tell him no because he can't afford to miss all those science labs and lacrosse practices.

“I already told my professors that I have to go home for a few days,” Craig insists.

Of course I'm secretly thrilled. It will be so nice to have a shoulder to cry on and a hand to hold. Eric and Louise are as gobsmacked as I am right now and it's useless for us to complain to one another. If anything, we're trying
not to
express our worst fears—the main one being that Mom doesn't ever come home.

“And I quit lacrosse,” Craig adds in a nonchalant voice.

“Why?”
I ask. “Did you get hurt?” It would be just like Craig to be sitting there with his leg in a cast and not say anything.

“No, nothing like that,” he says. “It just took up too much time.”

Still, I find this odd. Craig has always been a good student and never had to work all that hard to get A's and B's. But I'm too preoccupied with my own family tragedy to pursue the matter. It's just so good to hear the sound of his comforting and familiar voice. We talk for a long time—Craig recounts how he and another guy got lost in the woods while collecting mold samples for botany and had to be rescued by a platoon of ROTC students who made it into a reconnaissance exercise.

Then I tell him about Mom being transferred to Dalewood and how Aunt Lala made sticky buns with Francie to cheer her up, but forgot to add the yeast and so they never rose any higher than the pan. And the way the church ladies force the kids to play Bible Scattergories for hours on end. They're quite the linguists, too, never seeming to tire of pointing out how the words SILENT and LISTEN contain the exact same letters and that DANGER is ANGER with a D.

A
SNOWPLOW ROARS DOWN THE STREET AT FIVE IN THE MORNING
and I wake up still trapped inside the same horrible after-school special that doesn't seem to want to end. In fact, it gets worse when I hear the heavy metal blade scrape up against my front porch. Obviously the driver has passed out at the wheel and lost complete control of his vehicle.

I open the front door to find Al Santora lurching up the driveway in a big town plow and clearing the two feet of snow in minutes. He waves his hat from the cab, and I pull on a pair of Mom's boots that are by the door.

A pale winter sun is rising in the distance and the trees had taken on a thick coating of ice during the night. The rooftops are blanketed with fluffy layers of snow that make the houses appear as if they belong in a gingerbread village. The entire neighborhood has a gauzy, dreamlike quality.

Al shifts the rumbling machine down to idle, leans out the window, and shouts over the still-growling engine. “It's terrible about your dad. I'm really sorry.”

“Yeah, it's a nightmare.” Thick flakes of snow stick to my eyelashes and dissolve on my lips as we talk. “Mom is at Dalewood.”

Al nods as if he's heard all the details.

“Nice set of wheels.” I nod at the orange plow with the gold Cosgrove County seal painted on the side. Last I'd heard, Al had been laid off from the water authority and was collecting unemployment.

“It's my new job until April.” He gives me a half smile that I take to mean,
When you have a stay-at-home wife and four kids, you take what you can get.
“One of the guys is out on disability and this way I keep up my benefits.”

Al had a nice gig before—he wore a suit and scheduled inspections. Now I see there are bags under his eyes and his lips are chapped and cracked from the cold.

“We had six more inches since midnight.” Al points to the section of the road where he's plowed.

When I look down the block, it's impossible to tell where the street ends and the sky begins.

“A big storm is coming in from Erie,” he warns. “I've got to keep moving.” He cranks the engine back up and throws his plow into reverse. “Turn on the radio,” he shouts over the noise of gears crunching. “The superintendent just called my boss and they might close the schools.”

What Al doesn't say is that he shouldn't be seen plowing individual driveways with taxpayer dollars or, worse, make someone think that he's earning a little extra on the side. But it's a huge relief for me right now. Teddy can clear up the front walk easily enough after breakfast, though Dad always liked to say that the hardest math problem ever invented was how to get five feet of boy to shovel one foot of snow.

While mouthing “thanks” I wave at Al and then dash back into the house.

The twins are still sleeping soundly and so I head toward the kitchen to make some coffee and switch on the radio. Though it
doesn't really matter if school is closed because our gang wasn't going anyway. Today Eric and I somehow have to break the news.

When I open the fridge, I notice that the churchwomen have reorganized the whole interior and left two dozen sandwiches, complete with labels describing the contents, date made, and expiration. What's not there is the milk, and I know we had a full gallon. When things are missing in the kitchen, all roads lead to Aunt Lala.

Gently knocking on Mom's door, I say, “Aunt Lala—have you seen the gallon of milk that was in the fridge last night?”

“Oh dear,” comes the frazzled voice from inside the bedroom. The door opens to reveal Aunt Lala in her nightgown with a complicated set of hair rollers dangling in front of her face and a large circle of pale green cream surrounding each eye.

“Did you check the freezer?” she asks.

“First thing,” I say.

“What could have happened to it?” she asks. “I wasn't able to sleep and went down for some tea in the middle of the night. Do you think I may have put it back in the cupboard with the cookies?”

“I think you could have,” I say with fake cheerfulness. Aunt Lala always feels terrible about making so many mistakes. We hate for her to feel bad and so hide her oversights whenever possible. A knightly quest if there ever was one.

Sure enough, the milk is in the cabinet above the sink, next to the cookies. I sniff it to determine whether it's spoiled. Smells okay to me. Just to be sure, I'll use the first child to arrive for breakfast as a taste tester and if that one vomits or collapses I'll mix up a batch of powdered milk for the rest.

The radio announcer reads a list of local closings in alphabetical order—a 4H club meeting, most of the area private schools, some church activities, and a Hebrew school class. It's a
local joke that the world would have to be ending for our public school system to close. Most of the administrators were once public school students around here, so I often think they want to make sure that today's kids suffer as much as they did before the invention of fleece jackets and waterproof boots.