The Mighty Miss Malone (32 page)

And, just like Mother said, we
know
Roscoe Malone.

It seems like if you had nearly a year to concentrate on something and wonder about it and dream and worry about it day and night, that with all that time you’d be able to get at least part of it right if it ever came true. But not one thing I’d imagined happened.

I didn’t rush to Father and hug him and scold him and cry on his chest.

I didn’t tell him how much I’d missed him.

I didn’t gut-punch him for being gone.

I didn’t talk or even move.

Mother knelt and put her left hand out. “Roscoe? Sweetheart?”

The man brought his hands down and a skinny arm came
from under the sheet and trembled as it reached toward Mother’s hand. Father said, “Peg?”

Their shaking fingers joined together like something Mrs. Henderson had knitted. They stared at each other before Father turned Mother’s hand to look at her fingers. “Peg? Your ring?”

Mother wiped her eyes and pulled the string from around her neck.

“Here, Roscoe, it’s right here. And I could ask you the same thing.”

Father’s claw of a hand went to his neck. He pulled out a tired string that had his wedding band on it.

“I knew you’d never give up on me, Peg.”

“Never, Roscoe Malone, never.” She patted his beard. “How could I give up on you? How could I give up on my whole life?”

Father said, “You found me. How? I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Sweetheart”—Mother held her face against Father’s—“do you know I’ve spent the last year writing to every police station and hospital, every boardinghouse and funeral home, and even every morgue between Gary and Flint? I know you, Roscoe. I knew if you were alive and all right there was no way you’d not write. I knew something had gone horribly wrong. Why didn’t you write, dear? Why didn’t you let us know you were here?”

“Peg, Peg, Peg. I never even made it to Flint, I woke up in the hospital again. It was too much. I thought I was dying. I couldn’t figure out who I was for the longest time. Once things started clearing up I
did
write. The letters all came back.”

He put his hands back over his face. “I’m so sorry. When I couldn’t get in touch with you, when I thought I’d lost you and the kids, I just didn’t care anymore. I’m afraid I gave up, Peg.”

Mother sighed. “Sweetheart, you’re coming home. We have a lot to talk about, Mr. Malone.”

“Yes, we do. How’re the babies?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

He shifted in the chair to look at me.

His hair was long and dirty and snarled, he had a twisted beard that had bits of food in it, and his eyes burned at me. He sobbed and smiled his jack-o’-lantern smile.

And he was still the handsomest man I’d ever seen.

I rushed to hug him and could feel his shoulder blades poking from beneath the sheet. I fell into his open arms.

“The Mighty Miss Malone.”

I could hear how hard his heart hit against his ribs.

There was so much I wanted to say. But everything I’d rehearsed for this moment was forgotten. The only thing I could think of, the thing I wanted to tell him most of all, was “Look, Father, Jimmie got my teeth fixed.” I wanted him to know he didn’t have to breathe out of his mouth when he was near me.

He choked and covered his mouth with his hand.

“Oh, sweetheart. My Darling Daughter Deza. I’m so happy. It’s so good to see you.”

Father twisted to look at the house. “Where’s Jimmie?”

“He’s doing real good, Father, he’s all grown up now, you’re not going to believe—”

Mother snapped at Mr. Jackson, “How dare you? How dare
you treat any human being like this? Do you know who this man is?”

“Mrs. Blackbeard, look, I—”

“Don’t be ridiculous, my name is Mrs.
Malone
, and this is Roscoe Malone. My husband! Her father! How can you allow someone to wallow in their own filth like this? Get me some soap, a washcloth, a towel, some scissors, a razor, a toothbrush, baking soda and Vaseline.”

“Ma’am, we do the best we can on what we have, there’s barely money to feed the men.”

Mother calmed down. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jackson. Is there a pharmacy around here? Deza, write this list down.”

Mr. Jackson said, “Hold on, Mrs. Malone, I’ve got some of my own things you can use to clean him up.”

Mother said, “Thank you very much. Could you help me get him to a bathroom?”

I started to help Father up and the sheet fell away from his legs. They were nothing but bones covered in tight, ashy-brown skin.

Mother covered him and said, “Deza, take a dollar from my purse and tell the cabdriver he needs to wait another hour before we go back. Then go wait in the cab to make sure he doesn’t leave.”

“But, Mother, I want to—”

“
Deza
!”

I sat in the taxicab. I was happy Mother had shooed me off, it would’ve been really hard to watch Father being led around
like a baby. Plus sitting like this gave me time to figure some things out.

Like the letters.

Mother was right, I think I
did
know they couldn’t have been from Father, but they were real and they were there and it was like Mother says, “Any port in a storm.”

Father never would’ve forgotten to put Jimmie’s name on the letters, that should’ve been my first clue.

But who would send the Malones that much money every two weeks, who was that kind? And that rich?

Mrs. Needham? She has a wonderful heart and a good character. But she’s a teacher, and teachers are poor as church mice.

My heart skipped a beat. Dr. Bracy made a whole lot more sense!

She was a doctor, had a telephone right in her house and baked pies all of the time, she must be very, very rich. And she had been very kind!

But that didn’t make sense either, how would she know to send letters to us at general delivery in Flint?

I was stumped.

Then a epiphany hit me in the head as hard as Dolly Peaches had!

It was Jimmie! No one else could have known where to write us, no one else would have cared enough to do it, no one else was making that much money. And most of all, no one else would have forgotten to put their own name on the letters!

That was why he didn’t get excited when I told him Father was OK.

I cried so hard the cabdriver said, “I told you I’d wait, miss, don’t cry.”

I said, “I’m not crying for that, I’m crying because I have the best brother in the world and I am so proud of him that I could bust.”

The door of the horrible-smelling house came open and Mother and Mr. Jackson slowly walked Father to the taxicab. I opened the back door for them.

I thought he looked skinny before, but now, with his hair cut short and his beard shaved off and his hideous sheet traded for a white set of clothes like Mr. Jackson’s, it looked like they’d cut thirty more pounds off of him.

Mr. Jackson said, “Hold on, Mrs. Malone, there’s something of his in the office.”

Me and Mother helped Father into the seat between us. He smiled, then shut his eyes and leaned his head on Mother’s shoulder.

Mr. Jackson came back holding a shoe box.

He said, “These are the letters he sent. After the first five or so came back marked ‘Return to Sender’ we stopped mailing them for him. We didn’t tell him, but there just wasn’t money for stamps. I apologize, Mrs. Malone. When you wrote me, your name should’ve rung a bell, but it didn’t. There are so many people in and out of here that I just didn’t put two and two together. When these letters started coming back, I do remember asking him who the Malones were, and he’d never answer.”

“Thank you.” Mother handed me the box.

Mr. Jackson said, “I’m so glad something good finally happened to one of the men, Mrs. Malone. This place is the end of the road for so many dreams.”

He tapped the top of the cab. “Drive safe.”

We began the ride back to Gary. Father fell right to sleep.

It was so hard to look at him. He seemed so tiny.

I pulled the lid off of the shoe box. It was filled with envelopes. The first one I pulled out was addressed:

Mrs. Margaret Malone, Master James Malone and Miss Deza Malone

Someone had stamped on the envelope in big blue letters:

RETURN TO SENDER. ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN
.

The next five envelopes were marked the same way. Every envelope afterward just had Father’s handwriting, no big blue stamp and no postage stamps.

I saw why none of the letters had gotten through. Father had put the wrong address on them. They all were sent to 4309 North Street, Flint, Michigan.

“Mother, Father sent them all to the wrong place.”

I showed her one of the envelopes.

“He was confused, Deza. This is our old apartment in Flint, where we lived when we were first married.”

I put the lid back on the box. I would never read these letters. Never. They would be filled with nothing but pain.

Mother laid her arm on Father’s chest and cuddled him to her. He looked terrible, like all the strength and happiness had been drained out of him.

“Mother? Is he going to be all right?”

“Deza, we don’t know how this is going to turn out. You
have to be prepared. You have to look at this clearly. We’ve got him back and no one can care for him like we will. But this will be hard. He might be very different.”

“He’s coming home, I don’t care.”

She squeezed my cheek. “I don’t care either, dear.”

As we drove, Father would wake up every once in a while, see me or Mother and smile, then go back to sleep.

We were a hour past Lansing and Father had been awake for a while when I said, “Look, Mother, Burma-Shave signs! Have you ever seen these, Father?”

I read to her and Father,

Me, the taxicab driver, and Mother yelled out the last sign, “
Burma-Shave
!”

There were two more sets of signs and they got a smile out of Father.

He fell back asleep until about twenty miles outside of Gary.

His eyes came open and he pointed his bony finger out the window and said, “Look, more signs!”

We were passing a field. There were no signs, only a fence and fat white-and-black cows.

Mother pulled his hand down and said, “Why don’t you try to sleep, dear?”

Father pointed again. “No, don’t you see them? Deza, how ’bout you?”

My heart sank. I lied, “Yes, Father, I see them.”

His eyes sparkled when he said, “Great! Read them with me.”

I looked at Mother. Her 1-1-1 lines were back. She gave me a sad smile.

Before I could say anything, Father cleared his throat and started reading the signs only he could see:

Father pulled his bony hand down and grabbed mine and Mother’s in both of his and finished,

The car was silent as me and Mother stared at the sly smile on Father’s face.

He weakly waved his arms and half-shouted,
“Burma-Shave!”

For the first time in a million years Mother, Father and me exploded in laughter. Together.

But Father didn’t get everything right. That last invisible sign really read, “
Next stop … back on the road to Wonderful
!”

Today it is hard for us to imagine the importance of the Joe Louis–Max Schmeling fights of 1936 and 1938; there is nothing comparable. We could take the excitement over the World Cup; the Super Bowl; the World Series; and the NBA, WNBA, NASCAR and NHL championships and put them together, and they would not reach the level of excitement that these two fights generated.