Chapter Eleven
Ten days crunch out quickly. I guess they always do. Last day of Greek, and Puck and I join in. Rain had come in the night, a drumming around ten o’clock. It was still present in the cords of gray stone on the side of the road, little green hills, early gold sun, a punctured blanket of gray cloud, brushed out at the edges, stretching over the whole valley and the river. If flipped vertical in space – a curtain between one world and the next. The Bear switched on his iPhone in the sunrise, a Spotify selection of bagpipes, “Waking Ned Divine”. A little more elegant and gritty than Puck’s earlier diagnosis of his morning situation…
“I had to make an achoo and a burp at the same time, Mom.”
He had still been in his room tugging on the dinosaur chasing a land rover shirt still somehow stained with a little red sauce…
“Mom! I heard a wheel go past my room!”
“That was a goose, Puck.”
And maybe more real than my dreams. Australian-African tribes, desolate places of dried grass and red brick public schools in the bright afternoon, drowned thoroughbred rescued from sun-patched river. And always that same feeling…
“Are you looking forward to going back to work this week?” I ask The Bear.
He nods, “I love everything I do.”
An answer that always surprises me, but never surprises me. The same man who composes this form of poetry…
Roses are red,
Bacon is red,
Poems are hard,
Bacon.
The student center is half dark. Only a few lights in the kitchen where the sentinel of vending machines waits for customers. A visiting pastor – I think – is the only other guest, at a table with orange juice, a laptop, and a morning round of phone calls back home, seven hours away…
“So tonight’s the big night? Are you gettin’ your hair done? You got two dozen roses? Let me talk to your brothers… You bein’ the man of the house while I’m away? You keepin’ the goblins out? Takin’ care of your sisters?… Are you helpin’ your mom, make sure she doesn’t get too stressed out?”
Diagnosis: pastor with wife, five kids, home schooled, Kentucky… Puck is already hunting out cupcakes. I let him have one; I know I shouldn’t. He packs in the chocolate, thick white cream filling, and lace of white stringing the smoothed fudge top, throws away the wrapper…
“I’m still hungry, Mom. You can’t imagine how hungry I am.”
The pastor in the plaid shirt calls his mom. Mentions blood clots. Puck rakes through reading, math, and writing. I pull the string-wrapped Bose from his backpack and switch on another “Little House on the Prairie” after he’s played “spook” to himself in the dark half of the student center and snagged an empty paper cup from the tea and coffee counter before I can stop him. Two of the guys from The Bear’s class loudly begin a round of ping-pong, talking even louder…
“Yeah, I have some savings… [whack] But I’m saving them for things like… [whack]… if I get in a car accident… [whack]… or health problems… [whack] or if I get married… [whack].”
“Yeah, man. Getting married will take all your savings.”
“Just buy a ninety-dollar ring,” I want to tell them. “Worked great for me.”
When The Bear walks in twenty minutes later, he urges once more to visit Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in Des Peres. I’ll admit, there’s nothing quite like their five-dollar every-Friday gyro. So once more, we drive the highway journey and fill the trays to go.
“Here, sweetie, have a cracker,” the lady with heavy Greek accent hands the small crunchy packet to Puck.
He grins. Everyone is eager to help, and most were probably at least born in Greece. The lady behind the cash register at the end of the long line of fish, pork, hot wrapped goodies, and heavy pastries bursting with honey – heavy jewelry, make-up, might have walked right out of “My Big, Fat Greek Wedding”. I love that stuff. We have more than a few pairs of helping hands to box the plates into styrofoam, cracking with the weight of stuffed gyros and baklava.
Queeny Park isn’t fair down the road, past the mosque bearing copper crescents on its pinnacles. We sit in the cool sunshine together, onions and tomatoes dripping in tzatziki sauce fall through the metal table onto rust-stained pavement. Yes, the one time I eat onions on purpose. But Puck is too excited to finish. He has an appointment with stone-faced tiers of tunnels and slides, and runs past three school kids photographing each other running front flips off the middle terrace. They’re polite. I can hear Puck’s voice as clear as a bell from across the park. Now I understand why those ancient amphitheaters worked so well. All they needed was a Puck. He digs out a tiny patch of bright green star moss and hands it to me. A little world in my palm. He knows what I like. He also swings down the fire pole for the first time.
The police station is the last stop on our list, the station where no one is ever there and the glass lobby sprouts a double-gumball machine of expired candy. It doesn’t prevent Puck from cajoling a quarter with dancing eyes and then offering me a bright red chewy Spree.
Puck clunks out of his room during Quiet Hour, still in his yellow boots, claiming – after I instructed him to finish his water bottle from the Greek lunch – to not really need “French water”. He also has claw-cuts across his face, red streaks from an angry cat. Sometimes even Crackers can’t take the affection of a roof-shattering volume young man. I apply arnica. He swaggers out from his room a few minutes later, both cheeks plastered with grape purple marker…
“I disguised the marks,” he informs me.
Two minutes more and he’s uprooted the metal floor bar between the bathroom linoleum and the wood floor of the hallway. If there’s anything he hasn’t tried to help by dissecting… Good thing The Bear suggests we take him to the park to practice his golf swing with the putter Mr. Knotts modified for him. We stay longer than I thought, into the sunset, open blue skies and dark clouds on the ridge. We finish off the evening with more spaghetti and meatballs, and a beat-up library copy of “The Emperor’s New Groove”.