Mick and michelle, p.9
Mick & Michelle, page 9
“He wanted to be a trumpet man, but he was better with strings,” Grandpa says, eyes alert now. He pushes himself up a bit, and I’m happy to see his eagerness, despite the effort it takes him to sit up a few inches straighter. Maybe he’ll be strong enough to sit up by himself and use a wheelchair soon. In the fall, I could pop by after school and wheel him around the neighborhood.
“In Gran’s albums, there are a couple of pictures of him with a trumpet,” Gabriel says.
“He pawned it. Had a needy girl.”
Gabriel laughs. “She’s not said much, but she did mention he was popular among the women.”
“Never one for settling down.” Grandpa smiles, shakes his head. “Not at all the marrying kind.”
“No one knows where he went. He just vanished. Do you know what happened?”
Grandpa shakes his head again. “I left that scene before he did. He always had something going on.”
“Gran says he and my grandfather fell out.”
“They fell out with many people. The O’Neill temper.”
“So you knew my grandfather too?”
“Only by reputation. They were different, you know, looking like that.” Grandpa shifts in his bed, restless. Uncomfortable, I think. “Being… mixed in a pale Irish neighborhood, I mean. Different times back then, even with all the changes happening.” Right. That kind of uncomfortable. His generation is weird on background. Not exactly racist, but they’re good at avoiding complications.
“He had that temper,” Gabriel offers. “He used to yell a lot. Tommy says he was too fond of whiskey. Gran just drinks instead of talking about him. I’m not sure if it’s because she misses him.”
Why does he give up so much information on his family? I don’t know what to say when straight talkers like that unleash their woes. Except Gabriel doesn’t treat it like something shameful or anything. These are facts and nothing but. Unsentimental and direct, he destroys the secrets. If I could do the same, would life move along much easier?
“Many of us were on the bottle. Some of us stopped in time. He never did. Not Alfred either.” Grandpa coughs a little, a slight wheeze catching in his breath.
“Very O’Neill, that drinking,” Gabriel says, handing out facts like candy again.
“Shush. Don’t speak ill of the dead and gone. And Alfred, he sure could play that banjo,” Grandpa says, stern now, but a smile lurking anyway. Maybe he needs more varied company. More challenges to perk him up. Not so much on my visits, though.
“We’ve ripped out the last of the carpets on the stairs,” I say. “We have two of the bedrooms left, though. Seanin says he’s borrowing some machine to sand the glue off the boards. The floor will shine like it’s real expensive when we’re done.”
“Good. How are the neighbors?”
“Curious. The lawyer next door has hinted he wants to buy to merge his with yours.”
“Fleece him if he tries. His clients are rotten to the core.”
“Even the bad ones need fair trials, Grandpa.”
“Bad men doing despicable things to children? I don’t think so.”
“We still need justice. Someone’s gotta do the job,” I say. He grunts, not convinced society is better off with decent treatment of vile offenders. He no doubt remembers the man who lured little girls into cars to do nasty things with them when Dad was little. Grandpa and other fathers in the street organized a local gang of watchmen. The police caught the perpetrator before they did, which is just as well, according to Dad. “Where do you think Seanin got his skills with a bat from?” he told Ma once. Picturing Grandpa with a murderous look of street justice on his face seems impossible when I look at him now.
“You sure you want to be the one arresting them bastards?” he says and grunts some more as he stretches for the thermos of coffee. They never have enough coffee around for him. Until recently, they wouldn’t let him drink it alone either because his grip was weak and shaky, but also for fear of him scalding himself and suing them.
Gabriel fills a cup for him.
“Yeah. I want to catch the bastards,” I say. I aim to be good, and fair, and not hold any prejudice.
“Okay. You have a goal. That’s good. But another cop in the family?”
“I’m not changing my mind.”
“Your mother’s genes, no doubt.” He smiles between sips of coffee.
He likes Ma. His skepticism toward women in the police force or the armed forces or other so-called masculine areas of work got severely challenged when she entered the family. She holds no prisoners on stuff she’s enthusiastic about, and the story of how she beat Dad on all the endurance tests at the academy is legendary. They enrolled the same year, after Dad challenged her to join him. This was after she divorced Tommy and probably found herself a bit ostracized by the local morale police, aka all the mothers of good Catholic sons. Fathers too, perhaps. “I joined to prove Old Mullins I was worthy of his precious son,” she sometimes jokes.
I wonder what I’ll have to prove when my time comes.
Will I be a girl with the strength of a guy? That sounds cool, kind of. Except I’m not strong enough at present. I should work out more. I run a lot, and I do some core exercises, sometimes push-ups or pull-ups. Ma prefers to run and then work out at the precinct, Dad prefers to move as little as possible, and Ash refuses to do anything that might give her a toned body. Soft and curvy, she’s gorgeous. I’m too bony with sharp angles to ever look like her, I know, but a girl can dream.
Girl. Me. When I don’t even know how I’d look in a skirt. Never dared try in case I look ridiculous. Something like that.
Gabriel prefers curves to sticks. That much I know from sweating in his presence.
“Hey, snap out of it!” Gabriel swats his hands in front of my face. “I have to go.”
“Oh, okay. See you tomorrow?”
“Nine sharp, Officer Mullins,” he says and mock salutes me. I can’t help but smile and feel a bit flustered. “Nice to meet you, Grandpa Mullins,” he adds.
“Do come back” is the reply. “Too many old folks surrounding me here.”
“Comes with the territory, I guess. You’re the ringleader, right?”
“You got that right. Get going now. Go help your gran,” Grandpa replies, almost as quick with his tongue as in the old days. Gabriel laughs and waves, then shuts the door gently as he exits.
“I didn’t bring the guitar today,” I say. “We came straight from the house. Should I read the paper? The freak heat wave is top news.” The room is steaming hot, and I turn up the fan. I get a glass of water, and peering out the window, I glimpse looming rainclouds. I want to run in the rain later, maybe on my way home. I have the right shoes for the hard tarmac.
“Are you gay?”
I’m glad I emptied my glass of water, because I choke on the remaining drops when his words echo through the room. Grandpa looks stern and holy, but his voice is calm and strangely feeble compared to minutes ago. No joke lurks in his words.
“I’m not gay.” Which is the truth. If I was gay, I wouldn’t deny it. I don’t think so. Nausea rumbles in my stomach. I’m already denying who I am. A gay me doesn’t mean a braver me. But cowardice, that’s not it either. Grandpa keeps staring at me.
“I’m not gay,” I repeat, pretty steadily.
“You look at him like you are.”
“We just get along. He’s cool.”
“He’s not into boys,” Grandpa persists.
Since when have I ever lied to him? If he asks the right questions, everything would be revealed.
“I know. We look at girls all day long from your house. Now I know why you liked to sit on the front porch so much.” I smile, deflecting the tough stuff. He quirks his mouth in a smile too. So busted. “Shall I read now?”
He refuses to let me deflect and locks his eyes with mine. “Seems a bit unnatural, with all those boys holding hands on TV, half-naked too. You young people get affected so easily.” He rubs his chin, pinches the part that is still paralyzed. “But I don’t understand lots of things, so maybe God has a plan with all his mysteries.”
“You got it wrong,” I insist. “We’re friends. Friendships are different these days, Grandpa. Boys hug each other now, instead of just punching each other to express their feelings. Really.”
“So I see. Very strange and modern. Hug another man? Walk up to Henry Kennedy and hug him instead of shaking his hand? No, I suppose I’m getting old and set in my ways.”
I’m not a man, though. Not by far. But he’s right. I do look at Gabriel that way, and if Grandpa sees it, then others will see it. Maybe Gabriel will end up realizing my huge, blooming, impossibly intense crush too. There, I’ve acknowledged it in a fat bundle of craving words inside my mind. They hack their way out into the open, brain cell by brain cell, and my skull isn’t thick enough to contain them much longer.
“You’re maybe a bit old-fashioned,” I say, nodding and trying to stay cheery.
“If you say so,” Grandpa says. “Now read. Not the weather. Give me the gossip and more coffee.”
It’s only later, when I run through the pounding rain and am completely soaked to the skin, with the wet pants chafing my thighs and the rain unwilling to cool me down, that I realize Grandpa didn’t condemn any gays to eternal damnation. He’s less about the sins these days. There wasn’t shock in his voice when he prodded me about Gabriel either. More curiosity, perhaps. He said he didn’t understand lots of things.
Maybe Michelle wouldn’t give him another stroke after all.
Chapter 14
I SPENT most of Saturday helping the Mullins clan sort through what to keep and not in their childhood home. This activity was, for the most part, spectacularly boring.
Aunt Maura joined us online from San Francisco, but she only wanted a couple of the pictures and called dibs on the large chest of drawers in Grandpa’s bedroom, the one still filled with his clothes and all of Granny’s lace tablecloths and curtains.
“How on earth will you get this monstrosity to the west coast? Do you know how much it weighs?” Dad asked, pounding his fist into said solid wood and wincing.
“I slept in the bottom drawer, Gerry. I need it. One of Jack’s colleagues has a son moving back west this fall. I already talked him into letting me have a spot in the moving van. Should leave right about the time I come back for the sale. See? I’m planning ahead.”
“Same old, same old,” Dad said, rolling his eyes in a way I hope doesn’t resemble the way I do it.
“Mick, you make sure it stays in the house, okay?” Maura said. “Don’t take out anything.”
“Some of Grandpa’s clothes are inside,” I said.
“If you feel like it, you can go through them and chuck anything that’s old and worn. Seriously, the man never throws away a sock unless it’s been mended ten times over.”
“Not sure I want to dig into that unchartered deep,” I said, and Maura laughed like mad.
“I’m looking forward to seeing you again later this summer, Mick. How’s that friend of yours who made those lovely flower hair bands for the girls a couple of years back?”
“Diana’s on holiday. Might not be back yet when you’re here.”
“Shame. Never had a babysitter who could silence and enrapture my two crazies like she did. I’d pay her well to repeat the service.”
“If she’s here, I’ll tell her, okay?”
“You do that, Micky. Good man.” Yep, her good man Micky wouldn’t want to babysit, would he? Except that’s not true. Michelle certainly would. I would. I can even make flower bands that look nice.
As if on cue after Maura bringing her up, I finally hear from Di late in the evening, after Seanin’s family have been over for dinner and overcrowded our house. When Di pops up in my feed after two weeks of being offline, she sends me loads of pictures of herself with a paintbrush, and in one of them, I spot Diego lounging on a rooftop, shirtless and very relaxed. That’s Diego in a nutshell.
Me: Yeah, I get it. You’re bored witless. How many buckets of paint have you used so far?
Diana: Can’t wait to get hold of a spray can again.
Me: Clever, you.
Diana: Yeah, kinda kidding. This is still torture….
Me: Nothing good to report?
Diana: Only my abuela’s cook’s cooking. I won’t be able to run from the cops when I come back.
Me: You didn’t before either.
Diana: That was your ma. No one outruns her.
Me: Dad outran you too, and he’s got a pouch in the works.
Diana: Yeeeah, whatever. Your ma tricked me into running his way.
Me: Just your lucky day.
Diana: Not aiming to get caught again, tho.
Me: Why the silencio?
Diana: I have to prostitute myself to get access to the internet around here. Seriously.
Me: ???
Diana: My abuela runs a prison. Lockdown is at 10:00 p.m. every night. Rise and shine at 5:00 a.m. I had to bribe my cousin into getting access to this computer. He’s ten years old and scary pro at haggling.
Me: No phones?
Diana: I must beg to even touch it. Diego had unbreakable orders to monitor my phone, but he told abuela to lock it up in her safe because no way would he resist my begging. Such a snitch.
Me: Bet your mama is happy about that.
Diana: Mama phones the landline every other night to give me the hard talk over and over. Papa keeps it short and grunts a kind of hello in the background. I bet he secretly thinks she went overboard.
Me: Nice.
Diana: Yup. Anyway, sorry x 1000 for the nonresponse. When I finally got hold of my phone, Diego had used up all my minutes texting someone. Deleted the evidence, that sucker.
Me: Secret girlfriend?
Diana: He wishes. That big dipper of his ain’t gonna see any action any time soon.
Me: He around? Or is he still slouching up on the roof?
Diana: Out fishing with my uncle. Some nighttime operation with demanding tourists.
Me: But he hates fish.
Diana: I knooooow. I feel so sooooorry for him.
Me: Tell him I said hi. And to stop sending me pictures of the three girls next door.
Diana: Ha! They’re off limits. Like, strictly. Their papa will castrate him if he makes a move.
Me: He’ll still make a move, don’t you think?
Diana: Sure thing!!! Hey, sorry, gotta go. Don’t know when I’ll be allowed access to the world again.
Me: ’Kay.
Diana: You could call me, you know. On the landline.
Me: I’m pretty much broke until Grandpa’s house is done. Texts only, okay? If you don’t reply, I know why.
Diana: Just know that Diego might answer your texts instead of me.
Me: He already did. I thought we were getting married based on “your” latest reply.
Diana: Ha-ha-ha. My sorry life in a nutshell. See you later. Don’t screw around while I’m gone. Hugs aplenty.
Me: Would I ever.
She’s logged off before I can virtually hug her. She’s the only girl I ever send hugs to. The only person next to Grandpa, period. Mick is not really a frequent hugger. Michelle, on the other hand, is. I have ten thousand hugs, minimum, to spare when the time comes.
Di is my best friend, but she thinks Diego is my bestest friend because she’s convinced boys and girls can’t truly be soul mate buddies without it developing into something more at some awkward and friendship-ruining point. Which she reminds me about all the time to make sure I don’t get any amorous ideas about her.
I think she’ll be the first friend I tell about myself, but then I have to tell Diego too. The two of them have no secrets. Truly. They’re psychic or something, always sensing when something’s up or when something major or minor has happened to the other.
Like, when Diana kissed Kwame Morrison on a dare, Diego had lunch with me and said his lips got all “tingly and shit,” same as when he eats strong chilies. One minute later, Di sent the two of us a text saying that Kwame’s great and promising lips, rumored to give a good time, destroyed her with their crushing power, and that she’d never kiss a smoker again. None of us knew she was kissing this guy. We weren’t invited into Di’s girl alliance at school. She’d have lunch with us a few times every week, sometimes bringing her friends, and we’d make up this gang of friendly people. I wonder if this’ll change next year if I go public. Or whatever. Shoot.
Anyway, Diego got this perplexed look on his face from Di’s text and kept quiet for a few moments—an occurrence so rare I should probably have noted it down for when he becomes famous for something and the media scramble to collect stories from his life. He leaned toward me and whispered, “I hope I don’t fucking feel anything when she goes all the way with some guy one day. That would be torture.” How do you reply to comments like that?
“You’re disgusting,” I said, but I giggled like a stupid tween, and so did Diego. The psychic bond between them is real, though. Spooky real sometimes.
Di’s kissed a couple of other guys since Smokey Lips, and I haven’t heard about Diego’s lips tingling again, but I seriously doubt if Di liked kissing any of those guys at all. She’s been disappointed every time, and she commented a lot on girls the past few months, so I got the feeling she’s trying to tell me something. Maybe she’s not into guys that much, despite admitting to liking that graffiti guy so bad she said she would take her pants off for him if she got a chance. He sure was trouble.
Her recent girl focus, though, makes me nervous about telling her about me. What if it’s not that she tried to find me a girlfriend but that she’s into girls, and what if she decides to kiss me once she hears I’m a girl? Or worse, what if she’s into me as Mick? Jesus. All of this is possibly pretty screwed up.
I don’t want to kiss her. She’s a girl. I’m not into girls, no matter how cool Di is. I don’t want to kiss Diego either. Doesn’t matter that he’s kind of cute. With girls, he’s hopeless. When he found out his nickname among a certain junior it-crowd at school was Diego Desperado, he beamed as if it was lucky time and thought he’d hit it off with some of those “older women, woo-hoo!”
