2 - Have A Nice Day

*****
After my discussion with Madame Barbosa school is out for the day. I
grab my jacket from my locker and walk over to Hobby Horse Preschool to
pick up Annie, where I find her playing duck-duck- goose with four
other kids.


Before we can leave, Annie's teacher Miss Nelson stops me. It
seems like all preschool teachers are single. You'd think older women
who have already raised children would be more qualified for the job,
but maybe they're all busy teaching kindergarden or babysitting their
children's kids.



"Are you Jamie's father?" Miss Nelson asks me.



"No," I say. Do I look thirty?



"Brother?"



"Yeah."



She hands me a note. It's in a white envelope with Mr./Mrs./Ms. Parker
written across it in black pen.



"This is for your mother or father."



"What is it?"



"Annie got into a little trouble today," Miss Nelson says, in that
annoying way that elementary school teachers have. They treat everybody
like they're five. She's wearing a blue corduroy jumper too, and she
must be in her late twenties. But at least she's not wearing one of
those Thanksgiving sweater-vest things. She's looking down at Annie,
who's standing next to me. Annie looks back for a few minutes then
decides to play with some blocks on the other side of the room.



"What did she do?" I ask.



"I was talking about Jesus with the children this morning, what with
the Holidays coming up and this being a Christian school. We're
associated with the Methodist Church, you know. I was telling the
children the story about Jesus rising from the dead when Annie
interrupted and announced that Jesus hadn't died, he'd just run away,
and that it was Mary who had died. I assume she meant the Virgin Mary.
Young children are very impressionable. The entire group may now have
the wrong idea about Christianity. Thinking Jesus has left them and
doesn't care could be very detrimental to their mental
health.



I smile.


"This is not funny young man."


It's always nice when someone mistakes your age for one much
younger. Once you hit thirty, you start to think you're old, but then
some nice preschool teacher takes you for a young man and you just feel
so good all day.


"This is very serious," Miss Nelson continues. "Annie needs
religious instruction. Unfortunately, since I'm not particularly well
versed in scripture, I can't help her. Your mother may want to take her
to a priest or a minister."



"I don't think that's really necessary. Mary and Jesus were our
cats."



"Excuse me?"



"My mother named our cats Jesus, Mary, and Joseph - you know, to make
us good Christians - and Mary died yesterday so we buried her in the
backyard. Jesus ran away a couple of years ago. Annie was probably just
talking about that."



"Well, I still think Annie needs some help. I've asked your mother for
a conference. Please make sure she gets that note."



"Thank you for taking an interest, but it's not really necessary. I'll
give the letter to my mother, but she's really very busy so I don't
think she'll be able to have a conference with you."



"Young man, this doesn't involve you. Just please make sure you give
that note to your mother."



Miss Nelson turns and leaves. I call Annie over and we walk to the bus
station to catch the next bus home since we've missed the one we
usually take. The one bus in the city makes a tour of the country twice
everyday. Once at three, and the other at three-thirty so the kids who
stay after school have a way to get home. With all the stops, it takes
almost an hour to reach our house.



When Annie and I get home I make her a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich, fill her Donald Duck cup with milk, and send her into the
living room to watch cartoons. She can spend hours just sitting in
front of the tv. I should probably read her a book or something but I
have other things to do.



I go outside into the backyard and sit on the old tire swing that's
been hanging from the old oak tree by our back porch for as long as I
can remember and look at the five acres that my family owns. My parents
bought the house and land when my mother was three months pregnant with
me. My grandfather, who was very rich, loaned them the money to buy it.
He died two years ago and left all his money to my aunt, who uses it to
travel. We get a postcard from her every now and then.
*****


When my parents bought the property my mother, sister, and I
live on now, my mother was twenty-four, still in law school, and my
father was an illustrator for children's books. My grandfather was
paying my mother's tuition as well as the mortgage, so their financial
problems were nonexistent. A few months after they moved my mother had
me. My grandmother came to stay with us after I was born - for what was
supposed to be a few months but turned into four years - to look after
me, because my parents were too busy to take care of me. After she
left, I was on my own. Our neighbors didn't have any children (and even
if they had had our houses were too far apart for me to play with
them), my mother was in school (and later working), and my father
stayed in his office all day - where I wasn't allowed -drawing. I was
left to my own devices and, except for the time when I tried to make
cookies and almost set the kitchen on fire, I got along fairly
well.



When I was seven, my father started to leave the house every day for a
few hours at a time. He told me he needed to go for walks to clear his
head. He never let me go with him, explaining that he walked too far
and I would get tired. I was supposed to stay near the house and keep
out of trouble until he got back. A few months after this started my
parents started to get into arguments. They always sent me outside when
they argued, so I never heard much, but after every argument my father
would stop taking his walks for about a month. They always started
again though. Annie was a result of one of the post-blow-up calm
periods.



I know now that my father was having an affair. Many affairs. As of
now, I'm aware of four different women, but there could be more,
probably are. My father's in Florida now with woman #4, a
thirty-five-year-old investment banker named Patricia. I've never met
her, but my father says they're going to get married as soon as my
mother agrees to give him a divorce. But my mother won't sign the
papers. I can't figure out why. She can't want to stay married to him,
especially now that Mr. Rainwater has shown an interest in her. My
father says she's doing it to piss him off. I wouldn't blame her if she
was. My father is a real son-of-a-bitch.
*****


I sit at the kitchen table and do my French homework, eating
a sandwich and trying to concentrate. I can hear the tv from where I
am. Annie's laughing at a cartoon. It's storming outside. Every so
often I hear thunder. I look down at my assignment: Write twenty
sentences about a bad day you've had. I flip through my book, looking
for ideas. After twenty pages, I just turn the pages, not really
looking anymore.


There's no reason to do this. One assignment won't make much
difference to my grade, and it wouldn't matter if I got a D anyway. As
long as I pass it'll be all right. I sit at the table, letting my
thoughts wander. The rain looks like it's letting up. My mother should
be home by eight. I need to start the hamburgers for her. I'm getting a
D in French, but I'm failing Biology. My teacher likes to give pop
quizzes. I know I won't get into college. I'll probably end up working
at K-Mart or a drugstore or something. My father's probably sitting on
a beach in Florida with a beer and Patricia while I'm stuck playing
mother to my little sister. My friends are going to the movies today
without me. Bullshit, bullshit.


The phone rings. It's my mother


"Jamie honey?" she says. She's sounding very friendly, not
pissed off like she usually does when she calls from work.



"Yeah?"


"I'm going to be a little late tonight."



"I thought you only had one case to work on."



"Yes, but Charles, Mr. Rainwater - you remember him, don't you? - Well,
he offered to take me out for a nice dinner, and it's been so long
since I took a night off for myself."



"You took the night off last week. Remember? You went into the city
with Mrs. Johnson? Saw a play or something? I had to watch cartoons
with Annie all night?"



Silence.



"Mom?"


"Jamie, I work everyday.
Ten-hours-a-day-seven-days-a-week-to-support-you. I need time to
myself. Can you understand that?"



"Sure. Alone time, yeah. I can understand why you want that. I have to
watch Annie every-"



"She watches cartoons all day. It's not difficult,
Jamie."



"I'm not her mother. I'm sick of babysitting her all the
time."



"I don't have time for this right now. Make dinner, ok? Hamburgers. You
can make macaroni and cheese too if you want, all right? I have to get
back to work. Bye honey, I'll see you later."



******
The next morning is Saturday. I wake up at eleven and walk into the
kitchen to make myself breakfast - rice krispies and orange juice - but
my mother is already there. She's making pancakes instead of
researching a case.



"Morning honey," she says. She's very cheerful this morning.




"Morning," I mumble, sitting down.



"Well, I had a wonderful time last night," she says, putting a pancake
and a glass of juice in front of me. "Mr. Rainwater and I went to that
nice new French restaurant near the high school. The food was
delicious. We should go there some weekend, you and Annie and I,
wouldn't that be nice?"



I shrug. My mother walks back to the stove, flips her pancake onto a
plate, and sits down across from me.



"Charles has tickets to a Knicks game next week. He asked me to invite
you. It might be nice if you two get to know each other."




"No."



"But honey, I thought you loved basketball."



"You're married."



"That has nothing to do with this. We've talked about-"


"Why don't you get a divorce?"



"Because I don't want a divorce. Your father doesn't either. We're
just-"



"Yeah he does," I interrupt. "He wants a divorce. He wants to marry
that other woman. Patricia, or whatever the hell her name
is."


"Don't swear, Jamie. How many times do I have to tell you?"



I ignore her.


"He told you," I say. "He said he told you. You won't give
him a divorce, that's why you're still married. Why are you dating
somebody if you want dad to come back?"



She bites her lip. I can tell she's nervous. She'll change the subject
now.



"I've been thinking," she says. "Maybe it is unfair for you to have to
babysit everyday."



I look up.



"I've called Mrs. Dorian and she said that her daughter Ashley would be
happy to come over three afternoons a week - Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday - so you can have a break. How does that sound?"



I shrug. My mother gets frustrated.



"That's it? I let you get out of your responsibilities and that's all I
get? I took the day off so you could go do something and I get a
shrug?"



"Thank you."



She gets up and throws her plate into the sink.



"Annie and I are going to Kathleen Harris' house so she can play with
one of her school friends. There's thirty dollars on the coffee table
to do whatever you want with."



She leaves the room. About fifteen minutes later, I hear the door slam.
The car starts and pulls out of the gravel driveway. The house is very
quiet. I finish my pancake, rinse off the plate, fork, and knife, do
the same for my mother's things in the sink, and put them in the
dishwasher. I listen to the silence a little longer, then grab the
thirty dollars from the table in the living room, get dressed, and get
my bike out of the garage.



*****


It's five miles of shitty roads to the nearest town of any
size. With my bike it takes me forty-five minutes to get to Steve's
house. He lives in a big white house that had to have cost at least a
quarter of a million dollars. His family's rich because his father
invented some new kind of plastic or something. He works in the
research and development department of the big plastics company in
town. Steve has his own car, the lucky bastard.



Steve's mother opens the door when I ring the bell.



"Well, hello Jamie," she says, smiling. "We didn't expect you today.
Steve and Robert are in the den playing video games."



"Thanks," I say, walking into the house. I have to walk through five
rooms to get to the den. Large houses make me feel sick, especially
when they're mostly empty. Steve's house has a lot of space but almost
no furniture. His parents must have spent all their money on the house.
Maybe they thought, since the property was so expensive, that they got
the furniture free. Or maybe they thought it was one of those half-off
things. Buy one and get the second for half-price. Buy the house and
get half of your furniture free.



"Hey," I say, walking into the den. Steve pauses the game and looks
around at me.



"Thought you were babysitting."



"My mother took the day off."



"Guilt can do great things," says Robert, grabbing a handful of potato
chips from a bowl on the coffee table. Robert is sort of a jackass. He
once got one of my girlfriends to break up with me and go out with him
instead. But I never really liked her much anyway. She was cute but
very Catholic. She thought sex before marriage was a sin and,
apparently, anything much beyond handholding is sex.


"She got a babysitter," I say, sitting down on the couch.
"For Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays."



"Finally," says Steve. "What the hell was she waiting
for?"



I shrug.



"How about driving into New York to celebrate?" I ask.



"Can't. My sister came home from college this weekend. I have to stay
home while she's visiting all her old friends because I don't see her
very often anymore." He looks pissed.



"How about you?" I ask Robert.



"I have to be home by 2, it's my dad's birthday."



"Why don't you hang around here?" Steve asks.



"No, my mother gave me some money this morning. I want to spend it
before she decides she needs it for groceries or
something."



Steve and Robert laugh.



"Can I borrow your car?" I ask.



"Sure. Keys are hanging by the door. Just keep it tonight, you can
drive it back tomorrow."



"Thanks."



I say goodbye to Steve's mom, grab the keys to the new black
convertible in the driveway, and pull out.



New York is only about forty miles away. Driving at 75 mph, it doesn't
take me very long to get close to Manhattan, but the traffic slows me
down when I get within five miles of the city. I sit in traffic,
listening to the radio and reading the license plates of the cars
around me.
*****


It's amazing how many out-of-state people you see on the
highway near Manhattan. Moving through traffic on the way to the bridge
I see people from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Ohio, and, of
course, New York. There are a lot of minivans, families on vacation
probably. It's around Thanksgiving, a popular time for tourists. People
always like to travel around holidays.



My mother has just started letting me go into New York alone. Actually,
I'm supposed to have a friend with me at all times, I'm just allowed to
go without an adult. This is my first time alone. I usually drive up
with Steve and Robert. We go to one of the rundown bars in a bad area,
the kind that looks like it's about to fall apart and its so dark you
can hardly see the person across from you. Maybe they're trying to save
money on electricity, I don't know. We can usually get them to sell us
alcohol in those places. One of us doesn't drink though, because we
always drive back in the dark. There's no use risking an accident.



A guy in our school and his girlfriend died in a car accident
last year. They hadn't been drinking, but the guy in the car that hit
them had been. He was in his forties. Maybe they should target those
'Don't Drink and Drive' campaigns toward adults too. Drop some cars
outside companies like K-Mart and Wal-Mart like I've heard they do
sometimes at schools to demonstrate what getting in an accident can do
to a car.



My mother was still up when I got home from New York one time. She knew
I'd been drinking and gave me a lecture. All the men on her side of her
family were alcoholics. Her father, brothers, male cousins, and some
female cousins as well. I say they were alcoholics because most of them
are dead now. Two of my mother's cousins are still alive, but the rest
are dead. There are very few living males on my mother's side. One of
her brothers died in the Gulf War, the other of a drug overdose. Three
cousins died at once in a car accident. They hadn't been drinking.
Their car was hit by one whose driver had fallen asleep at the wheel.
He was on some sort of medication.



My mother's terrified that I'll become an alcoholic. I've only been
really drunk once though. I threw up all night. I drink responsibly
now.



I'm on the bridge now. I wonder, if I turn the wheel to the side and
hit the gas, if I'll drive through the side of the bridge. I've never
heard of that happening before. I wouldn't be able to go fast enough in
all this traffic anyway. I'd probably just wreck the front of the
car.



Traffic is at a standstill. I'm in the far left lane. Kids fill the
backseat of the minivan next to me. There are four of them. They all
look under the age of ten and there's a man and a woman in the front
seat. The man is driving. Men always seem to drive on long trips. If
there's a man and a woman in a car, the man will probably be the one
driving. That's how it always used to be with my
parents.



The kids are bouncing around even though they have their seatbelts on.
One of them is drinking a juice box. I used to drink those when I was
younger. I liked apple. Annie drinks them now. She hates apple. She
only drinks grape. An indication that she'll like wine, maybe? Another
alcoholic in the family?



I wonder where the people in the minivan are from. Probably Ohio. They
look like Ohioans.



My father was born in Ohio, in a small city south of Cleveland. His
father was a bank manager. I've always thought it was strange that you
rarely see a male teller working at a bank. They're usually women. It
doesn't seem like a particularly feminine job, not like being a nanny
or something. Men usually seem to be bank managers though, or in a
higher position then a teller. How do they work their way up? Maybe
they just start in higher positions; they can skip being tellers. Most
bank managers seem to be men, but a male teller? When hell freezes over
maybe. Or when I get into college.



******
I've gotten into Manhattan now. Most people hate driving in New York,
but I like the traffic. Car horns beeping, traffic lights on every
corner. Maybe, when I graduate, I'll move here, get a job somewhere.
Maybe in a bank. I hear the benefits are good. I could be a manager in
no time.
******


It's rush hour in New York City. If you want to be anywhere
on time, walking will get you there faster than a car. I'm heading
toward the parking garage where my friends and I always park when we
come to the city. I turn the radio to a station playing classic rock
and sort of sing along, but I'm really not a very good singer. I was
actually kicked out of a choir once when I was eight. It was a church
choir. You didn't have to audition or anything, anybody who wanted to
could join. I really enjoyed it too, sort of, but then my mother got a
call from the choir director saying that the other kids were getting
upset because I couldn't sing the songs right and it would probably be
better if I didn't come to practice anymore. My mother didn't tell me
that then though. She said that she and my father didn't have time to
take me to practice and pick me up and that they were allowing me to
play on a baseball team and that should be enough. She told me the
truth about it last year though. It's funny really. Not many people can
say that they were kicked out of a children's church
choir.



I haven't thought about baseball for a while. I played until I was
twelve, and I was pretty good actually, but I just lost interest. I
don't even like to watch games anymore. I don't know why. I used to
play shortstop, made a lot of double plays. I wasn't too great at
batting though. I hardly ever got a hit.



*****



I've just turned into the parking garage and taken my ticket. I have to
drive up to level five before I find an empty spot. It's right by one
of those big yellow poles and there's a car in the next spot. I try to
pull in slowly but I hit the car anyway. It's a dark green BMW. I stop
and wonder if I should pull back out or just pull all the way in. I
decide in and scrape both cars up some more. I should've gone with
out.



I turn off the ignition and get out of the car to check the damage. The
BMW doesn't look good. I've scraped up almost the entire left side. The
repairs will definitely cost at least a couple hundred dollars. Shit. I
check the license plate: Pennsylvania. The person who owns it is
probably here on vacation or business or something and parked it in the
garage so he could take cabs or the subway while he's here. It could be
days before he comes to get it.



I decide to leave a note. I search Steve's car and find a pen and a
menu for this drive-in place we have in our town. You park and the
waitresses bring the food out to you to eat right there in your car,
like they did in the 50s or 60s or whenever it was. I flip the menu
over and write a note for the owner of the BMW, giving him my name and
phone number. Steve is going to be pissed at me. I've scraped up his
car a little. Not very much though. I don't know how I'm going to pay
for the repairs, or for the damage to the BMW. I'm not an insured
driver on Steve's car; the insurance company isn't going to pay the
bills. Shit. I should've looked for another parking spot. Or at least
gone with out.



I leave the note under the BMW's windshield wipers and walk down to the
first level of the garage and out onto the street. I don't know where
I'm going; I just walk. There's a lot of people on the street, most of
them walking pretty fast. People always seem to walk faster in New
York. Once I just walked for hours, until my date for the day told me
that she was cold and wanted to go home. I don't feel like walking
today though. I decide I'll go see a movie.



*****


It's twenty blocks to the nearest movie theater, but when I
get there I decide not to go in. There's no need to waste eight dollars
for two hours of actors either falling in love, beating the shit out of
each other, or blowing things up.



I look at my watch. It's only three thirty, but I decide to go home
anyway. I'll save the thirty dollars my mother gave me and come back
next weekend with Steve and Robert. New York isn't as great when you're
alone.



As I'm walking back to the parking garage, I see an old man sitting on
the sidewalk. His back is against a luxury high-rise apartment building
and he's wearing old jeans and a plaid shirt that only has a few
buttons and holes in the sleeves. He has to be cold. It can't be more
then thirty degrees and he's not wearing any shoes or socks. There's a
coffee can in front of him, but it's almost empty. There can't be more
than a few dollars in there.



I take the money out of my pocket and drop it into the coffee can. All
of it, the twenty and the ten. After I do it, I sort of want to take it
back but the man says thank you so I just keep walking. I don't usually
do things like that. I'm not a very generous person. I can't even watch
my little sister for my mother. But I'm not feeling too good today. I
think I'm coming down with the flu or something. My head is starting to
hurt already.