Breakfast with Neruda Read online

  We sit inside Wendy’s and bask in its full-fledged air conditioning. “Do you think Earl and Hess would notice if we don’t go back?” she says.

  “Yeah. They’d probably call the cops.”

  “The jails have AC, don’t they?”

  I smirk, and stuff a bite of my double cheeseburger in my mouth. I glance at the wall-mounted TV and read the news banner. “AEP says some power may not come on for another week.”

  “Bummer,” she says. “The generator helps, though. I can run a fan on my face all night. And our food is cold, so I guess we’re sort of lucky.”

  “I haven’t noticed any difference,” I say.

  She laughs. “You’re probably the one guy in this town who could survive this apocalypse.” She steals one of my French fries.

  After we get in the car, she asks, “So how come you, Jeff, and Annie all have different last names?”

  “My siblings and I have different fathers.”

  “Hmm. I see that a lot around here,” she says.

  We pull out onto Rocket Road and head back toward school. “Okay, this has been bugging me since we moved here,” she says.

  “What’s that?”

  “How come it’s called Rocket Road? We’re nowhere near NASA."

  “I thought everyone knew about the story.”

  “My family has only lived here like three years,” she says.

  “It used to be called Second Avenue, but got changed to Rocket Road when astronaut Jed Rogers died.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “He didn’t do anything spectacular like walk on the moon,” I say, “but the town felt slighted when John Glenn had a highway and high school named after him. So we renamed Second Avenue in Rogers’s honor after he died.”

  She considers this a moment. “Why is it most people get recognition only after they’re dead?” she says. “I want my glory when I can still hear the shouts and taunts.”

  “What do you want to be remembered for?” I ask.

  “I don't know. But I want it to be spectacular.”

  Some of the traffic lights don’t work and traffic is slow. “We’re going to be late,” I say.

  “Earl might skin us alive,” she says.

  I chuckle. “So where did you live before moving here?”

  “Where do you think I’m from?"

  “Possibly another planet,” I say. “But I sense you lived in a city.”

  “Why?” she asks.

  “You don’t seem to be afraid of anything.”

  “What’s there to be scared of here? It’s a cow town.”

  “Cows can be scary if they chase you.”

  “Ha ha,” she says.

  “Besides, we have meth labs and devil worshippers all over, so there’s plenty to be scared of here.”

  “Hmm,” she says. She lights a cigarette. Normally I hate when people smoke in my car, but she opens her window to let out the fumes. “So explain about the different fathers.”

  I nod, take a gulp of pop, and rest it between my legs. “If you look in the dictionary under ‘white trash’ there’s a picture of my family.”

  “So why do you live in your car?”

  “I told you; my mom tossed me out.”

  She nods. “Does Jeff live in his car too?”

  “No. He lives with his dad. Which is why Jeff is almost normal.”

  “What about your sister?”

  “Annie still lives with our mom.”

  “Does she see her dad?”

  “No,” I say. “He died.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Yeah, Bob was kind of cool,” I say. I steer the conversation away from me. “Hey, you never said where you used to live.”

  “Cleveland.”

  “Why’d you move here?”

  “Dad made chief partner at the Columbus office of his firm.”

  “Do you miss Cleveland?”

  “Sometimes,” she says. “I miss living near the lake and having access to a bookstore.”

  “Yeah, we haven’t had one here for five years now,” I say. “But why Rooster? Why not Columbus?”

  “My parents wanted to live in a suburb rather than the city.”

  “Rooster’s more than a suburb,” I say. “It’s the boondocks.”

  I pull into the school lot five minutes late. “Shit will hit the fan,” I say.

  Earl surprises us by not seeming to notice our tardiness. An hour later he sends us home.

  It’s like walking through bathwater outside, and even hotter in my car. I spread a bed sheet over the vinyl seats, but the sheet keeps slipping. Maybe I could duct-tape it down.

  On my way to work I stop at Walgreens to get some duct tape and end up buying the best thing ever invented: a battery-operated fan with a mister. I buy a ten-pack of AA batteries too since they’re on sale.

  I leave work around one in the morning. It’s still muggy out, but now that I have my new fan, I am able to sort of sleep.

  • • •

  Shelly wakes me up by tickling my feet. “Hey, the power came on at our house.”

  I snap my feet away and pull off my damp T-shirt. “Bully for you.”

  “Well good morning to you too, Mr. Cranky Pants.” She picks up my fan, whose battery died some time ago. “What is this?”

  “The best thing ever invented,” I say. “Whoever came up with this deserves a Nobel Prize.”

  “Is it a fan?”

  “It’s a mister and a fan. I can spritz myself with water, then aim the fan at my head. It lets me sleep for about four hours before the batteries run out.”

  “Cool.”

  As we drive in search of breakfast I notice something missing. “What, no cigarette this morning?”

  “I’m trying to quit. My court-ordered therapist kind of recommended it.”

  “So you see a therapist. Is it because you’re crazy?”

  “Yeah, something like that,” she says.

  “You’re a story with a chunk of pages missing,” I say. “I mean, you wear this hard shell on the outside, but the Shelly I know is generous and sort of nice.”

  She punches me. Kind of hard too. “If you ever call me nice again I’ll kill you.”

  I rub my shoulder. “Sorry, bitch.”

  She grins. “That’s better.” She looks at her empty cigarette case and sighs. “Some of your pages have been ripped out too.”

  “It’s because my pages are printed on cheap paper.”

  She laughs. “You’re lacking entire chapters.”

  “Yeah. And the rest of the pages are stuck together with generic pancake syrup.”

  “Ooh, now I’m in the mood for pancakes,” she says. “Let’s go to Eat’n Park. Get the breakfast bar.”

  “I guess that confirms you’re not bulimic,” I say.

  “No way. I like food too much. That whole vomiting thing.” She sticks a finger in her mouth to fake vomiting. “Ugh. I hate hurling,” she sighs. “I just hope I don’t get fat by giving up cigarettes.”

  We have to get our pancakes to go since Eat’n Park is almost ten miles from the school. Shelly dips them in syrup and feeds them to me in small bites as I drive.

  Today we clean one of the art rooms. Before I got booted out, art had been one of my favorite classes. While we were sculpting busts out of clay, Miss Frame, the art teacher, said, “Remember to leave room for the brain.”

  I wish I had taken her advice before I accidentally tried to blow up the school.

  Chapter Four

  Sometimes when I am totally broke I drive around and dumpster dive at restaurants and grocery stores. I find entire loaves of bread still in their wrappers and unopened bags of one-day expired carrots and fruits.

  It’s almost as if the managers of Dan’s Donuts expect people to pick through their trash, because their donuts are thrown away inside boxes, not just tossed in the dumpster behind the building. I buy donuts there when I do have money, just to say thank you for feeding hungry
vagrants like me.

  I often find decent meals inside restaurant dumpsters too. Last night I drove by Olive Garden after work and watched as a guy tossed out a large aluminum pan. It was covered, and when I lifted the lid, the gates of heaven opened up. Lasagna! I also found a bag of salad. It was warm, soaked in dressing, but still edible.

  Shelly notices the empty pan when she stands by my car this morning. “So what was in this?”

  “Lasagna,” I say. “I went dumpster diving last night at Olive Garden.” I collect the food containers and wrap them in a Kroger bag to toss out.

  “I know a little something about that,” she says.

  I give her a quizzical look. “Why does a rich girl like you need to crawl through dumpsters?”

  “I was sort of on my own for a while.”

  “And you’ll tell me about it when we have that long conversation someday,” I say.

  She crosses her arms and leans against the rear fender. “Something like that.”

  “You know, the longer you don’t tell me, the wilder my imagination gets about your story.”

  She laughs. “I hope it’s an amazing adventure.”

  “Oh it is.” I walk over to the dumpster behind the building and toss the Olive Garden remains inside. It suddenly occurs to me it’s Saturday, and we don’t have to clean the school today. “You do know it’s Saturday.”

  She shrugs. “I thought we could just hang out. You know, cruise around.” She digs into her bag and pulls out a Speedway card. “And I’ll pay for the gas.”

  I chuckle. “I’m starting to feel like your platonic gigolo.”

  “Be sure to put that on your college applications.”

  I scratch through my rumpled hair. “I don’t have to work later today, so, yeah. Let’s go driving. I had to cover so many hours last week that Mitch forced me to take the weekend off so that he didn’t have to pay me overtime.”

  Shelly looks different today, but I can’t figure out why. She’s wearing her usual shorts and T-shirt. Haircut? I don’t know. She looks better than usual.

  I fill up the tank and we get coffee and donuts at Dan’s Donuts after I explain to Shelly how they feed vagabonds like me. Shelly leaves the counter girl a $2 tip. We get back to the car, and Shelly says, “Let’s just drive.”

  It’s a nice day out. Warm, but not the toxic heat of the past week. The humidity is low, and the 4-70 air feels almost cold. We drive around in comfortable silence. I glance at her, and it hits me; she isn’t wearing the raccoon eye makeup. Her eyes look bigger, and bluer. I almost compliment her, but I’m afraid it might piss her off, so we just drive. After about an hour Shelly says she’s hungry for real food.

  Since we are in no hurry, we go to Bob Evans, where I order the Farmer’s Choice Breakfast. It comes with eggs, sausage, home fries, and pancakes. When my mountain of food arrives, Shelly says, “Are you planning on plowing a field today?”

  I grin. “Maybe.” I chomp on some home fries. “Since you don’t drive, how did you get to the school this morning?” I ask.

  “My mom dropped me off,” she says. “I told her I was meeting a friend.”

  “How did you know I’d be there?”

  She shrugs. “You’re always there.”

  “So, we’re friends?”

  “Yeah,” she says. She sips her coffee. “I could do worse.”

  I nod and chew. “What do you want to do all day, friend?”

  She shrugs. “I know we just ate, but maybe we can have a picnic somewhere later since it’s so nice out.”

  It is a spectacular day. I couldn’t have asked for finer weather on a day off.

  We stop by the theater to pick up my check and drive to the bank branch inside Kroger so I can cash it. The lot is nearly full since it’s Saturday morning. “Sorry to have to park so far,” I say.

  “I don’t mind,” she says. “It’s so pretty out, and you need to walk off that giant breakfast.”

  After I get my money, I say, “Hey, since I have cash, the picnic is my treat. Cheaply, though. No caviar and foie gras.”

  She links her arm in mine. “Okay.”

  We browse through the aisles, and I pick out a baguette, some grapes, and a hunk of cheddar cheese.

  “How very French of you,” she says.

  “Oui, oui, mademoiselle.” I had three years of French, but don’t remember a lot of it other than food names. Funny, but our French teacher is named Mr. German, and our Spanish teacher is Mrs. French.

  “Let’s get a bottle of wine too,” she says.

  I chuckle. “Nice try. We’re not old enough.”

  “According to my sources I’m a twenty-two-year-old grad student.” We go to the wine aisle and Shelly browses through the wine bottles.

  “How do you know the difference?” I ask.

  “Some wines are sweet, some are mellow, and some are tart. Do you have any preferences?” she asks.

  I shrug. “The only time I had wine was when my brother and I tried some Mad Dog 20⁄20 one of my mom’s boyfriends left on the kitchen counter. It was like drinking battery acid.”

  She scrunches her face. “Mad Dog is not wine.”

  “You’re the expert. Or as they say en français, tu es un sommelier."

  “Reds are good for picnics because you’re supposed to drink them warm.” She reaches up and pulls down a bottle of Pinot Noir. I notice the price. Twenty-eight bucks. I’d choose the one below it on sale for $5.99.

  Amazingly, we make it through the line with Shelly’s fake ID. We are a few paces out the door when I hear a man and a boy behind me, laughing. I glance back and notice a boy of about six standing inside a grocery cart, the man pushing it. They roar past us. The dad growls like a motor, and the kid screeches in laughter all the way to their minivan. I feel something inside me rip open as I set the groceries in the backseat. I stand up and watch them.

  “What’s the matter?” Shelly asks.

  I shake my head and get in the car.

  She sets her bag on the floor and snaps her seatbelt. “Why were you staring at them?” she asks. “Do you know them?”

  “No.”

  “Then what is it?” she asks.

  I stare out the windshield and watch the van drive out of the parking lot. “I just wonder what it’s like to have a dad.”

  Shelly places a hand on my arm. “You don’t have a dad?”

  “Not my own.” I click my seatbelt. “Jeff’s dad sometimes played with all of us when we were young. A couple of my mom’s boyfriends did too. But none of them was my father.”

  Shelly asks, “So what happened to him?”

  “I don’t know. My mom says he moved away before I was born.”

  “So he doesn’t even know about you?”

  “No, I guess not,” I say. I start the car and back out of the space.

  “Parents lie, you know,” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your dad may be living right here in Rooster, walking around, and you don’t even know it.” Shelly reaches for her cigarette case, remembers it’s empty, and stuffs it back in her bag. She chews on a piece of cinnamon gum. “Have you tried looking for him?” she asks.

  I look for him every day, I think, every time I see a tall, dark-haired guy. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “You have his last name, don’t you?”

  “No. Flynn is my mom’s maiden name.”

  “So how come she didn’t give Jeff and Annie her name?”

  “They know who their dads are. My mom won’t tell me his name.” What I don’t want to say is she may not know his name. When I was small I used to ask at least once a year, and every time I got a different story. Sometimes I was a king’s son who had been left on her doorstep, or she bought me at a flea market. My favorite tale was that I had been born a baby dragon, but somehow morphed into a boy. Eventually, I stopped asking. Any number of men in Rooster or Columbus could be my dad. I look for guys I resemble since I don’t look much like my mothe
r. She has blond hair and brown eyes, like Jeff, and my hair is dark, almost black, and my eyes are green. Jeff looks like her, and Annie resembles her father. Me? I’m a broken pencil in a box of felt-tip markers.

  I don’t tell Shelly any of this, though. I divert the attention back to her. “So in what ways have your parents lied to you?” I ask.

  She holds out empty fingers and pretends to puff on a cigarette. “That’s another long conversation for another day.” She takes an imaginary puff. “Just drive.”

  We head south of town on a two-lane highway, one of those unevenly paved country roads common in this part of Ohio, roads that seem to lead to nowhere, where you can drive for hours and not see a soul, and suddenly you come to an intersection and there’s a four-lane highway zipping with traffic. We come to a fork, where we can choose east or south.

  “Which way?” I ask.

  “South.”

  “Aren’t you afraid we’ll run into a meth lab?”

  She shrugs. “We’ll take our chances.”

  I shake my head. “You know, we have all day. Don’t you want to share some of that long conversation with me?”

  She bites her nail and ignores my question. She reaches into her purse for a stick of gum. “I’ve gone from being a chain smoker to a chain chewer,” she says.

  At one intersection we spot a farmers' market stand. We stop and buy a bag of fresh peaches and a sack of tomatoes. As we drive, she reaches for a tomato and bites into it like she’s eating an apple.

  “I’ve never seen anyone eat a tomato like that,” I say.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I eat tomatoes on salads and stuff, but never, like, you know, just bite into it.”

  She holds the tomato close to my mouth. “Taste it,” she says.

  I do, and its sweet earthiness envelops me. The juice runs down my chin. “That is good,” I say.

  “Have I steered you wrong yet?”

  “Not so far.”

  She slides her flip-flops off and places her feet on the dashboard. The wind whips through our hair. It’s such a great moment; time can stop now and I will die happy.

  We keep driving south and are probably close to forty miles from town when we spot a sign that reads “Hardin–Essex Family Reunion 1 mile.”

  “Wanna crash it?” she asks.