Chapter Nineteen
I forget to ask questions sometimes. Like why The Bear needed to be at the Spanish house music school in Faust Park at 8:30 this morning. Puck and I weren’t about to be left behind, though. Puck packs down two eggs and two scones, resurrecting the pop-gun once again into the winds of a quiet Saturday morning. Our dirt-salt-dirty car loops back through the woods past the private Spanish house on the left, the white German house-barn, and the fogged glass of the greenhouse on the right, up the short hill to the school. I still forget to ask what he is doing there exactly. All I know is – music, recording, people from church. But Puck and I have our own plans.
His gift card still lingers for Target. He walks beside me, binoculars hanging around his neck. He asks for the rows of shiny plastic toy cars, shelves spilling over in flashy greens, reds, blues… but I know better.
“Think about it for awhile,” I tell him.
We walk around. I think about the $7.48 pair of dusty-blueberry looking corduroys for Puck. But they’re a size too large or too small, and he’ll be too big for both by next winter. I hope… So I find a pair of charcoal yoga pants for myself. Puck still wants toys though. And then I think of it…
“I know what you really want, buddy. Follow me.”
We backtrack in the quiet aisles and hard scuffed paths to the art department. No one else is standing there making decisions over stacks of patterned paper and glitter foam squares, colored pencils and crayons shaped like jewels the size of your fist. It doesn’t take two minutes. Puck marches to the register: box of ten paint brushes in various sizes and ten packs of washable paint. Just forty-eight cents over budget. But it’s only been an hour. We have a lot of time to kill. If we have to be shopping on a Saturday morning, we’re stopping by World Market. It’s still pretty quiet, fortunately. We smell a few of the fancy soaps wrapped in paper the color of sunsets or salmon, printed with Eiffel towers and pagodas. But Puck would rather see the pantry in the back. He sees the tin of mints shaped like a mustache, just like the one Linnea has. I add two boxes of Pocky sticks, one in chocolate, one in strawberry, and a package of striped licorice blocks in bright colors. We walk past a display of tables suitable for Vikings.
It’s warm enough for the park. So many children, but not enough to be uncomfortable. I read of Ann Voskamp in France, on a cold blue bench, while Puck makes friends. Two boys in shorts with their dad, one man in the epidemic of almost-military hair cuts and Oakleys wandering the metal jungle. He could be Hispanic, a twinge of southern accent. I’m guessing he dressed the boys. They play “ship”, with crocodiles, frozen seas, and pirates…
“I melted the ice!” Puck roars up to them, just having soared down the slide. “You’re safe!”
Geese spear blue skies, floating slowly under hot white sun in January.
“Mom!” Puck announces, running up to me. “I hear a man speaking another language!”
This excites him. I listen for it. Spanish. A few words I catch, he drills them out so quickly…
“…es frio…” he laughs.
There’s one thing I understand. The Bear is done half an hour late, but we don’t mind. Puck asks to roll down the windows in the car on the small lot, sorting his art materials, listening to more Odyssey, but asking for “Uncle Red Strike’s music” the most. The Bear slips his violin back into the trunk at eleven-thirty. I wave the shiny metallic package of New Zealand licorice in his face; his eyes grow wide. Always looking for a good new licorice. He has been recording a CD for 3 and 4 year-olds, he says. I promised Puck a ride on the carousel. The man operating it today is probably our age. A big guy, longer hair, beard, shorts, canvas-looking suit coat, and those shoes with toes that I really can’t stand or understand. But somehow it completes his picture.
“How are you all today?” he asks, grinning.
He seems to have a perpetual grin. Puck chooses a brown horse and holds the gold bar, proudly spinning under folds of billowing green and yellow cloth, music, and white lights.
“Let’s have lunch,” says The Bear, roping Puck back up onto his shoulders. “What do you want?”
We like our vacations bite-sized. The man with light brown skin, green eyes, and mascara takes our orders of burgers and grilled cheese at Steak ‘n Shake. Puck wears the paper hat, isn’t sure he wants the mandarin oranges after all. The man at the grill is Hispanic. Maybe ten years older than me. He is methodical, quick, he doesn’t talk, he doesn’t smile. Flip, smash, look up to the screen, flip, smash, look up to the screen… how many hours does he do this a day? How many days a week?
We skipped a Saturday. Puck is happy to see his nana and papa again. Gloria piles pasta, meat, sauce, cheese, and pepperoni into three glass casseroles on the counter. The doors and windows are open to wind as I push Puck on the swing, ask him to watch clouds with me, even if they’re mostly wisps.
“I can’t, Mom!” he shouts back to me from his soaring. “My eyes are allergic to watching the sky!”
Gloria researches organic olive oil before leaving to pick up her ring at the jeweler’s. She pours me a mug of hot peach tea. The radio drones on about stuff, something about a cheese monger, but she switches it off as she leaves. Wind, rustling dry oaks, steaming pot on the stove, snoring dog, tapping keys… Gloria comes back to fix dinner. Puck breaks for a juice, more swinging; Theodore pushes him under the big oak for awhile, flying high. Gloria makes garlic bread, too, crunchy butter tops. The pizza casserole is as good as before, even if she and Theodore can’t have it. They eat salads of thick vegetables topped with green mossy-algae dressing. Curly calls in at Gloria’s request to talk about more wedding plans for May.
Puck is being good today, I think to myself.
At 7:33 I hear the news – Stan Musial passed away at his home in Ladue that evening, all of 92 years old.