The Second Chance of Benjamin Waterfalls, page 5
There are dozens of figurines on every shelf, every counter. Not the cheap kind you see at gas stations and gift shops near the register, but very detailed sculpture-like animals made from clay and painted to a flawless accuracy that almost makes me think the animal posed for hours for whoever was making it. There are caribou, deer, wolves, loons, eagles, turtles, and even a moose … And that’s just the shelf I can see. There are two or three shelves behind it, all filled with more animals. This room is a freaking zoo.
And at the large oak desk in the corner is my dad. Painting the eye of a ceramic squirrel. Did my dad make all of these? Is he an artist now? What the hell? Why didn’t he make animals when I knew him? His interests back then were whiskey and crying at all hours of the night. My stomach growls, reminding me why I’m in here.
“You really like animals, don’t you?” I say, and his hand stops.
He swivels around in his chair to face me. He’s wearing silly glasses that make his eyes five times larger. He takes them off and folds them, placing them on the desk.
“This is an ajidamoo. A squirrel. And these are my Awesiinh,” he says, and points to his collection.
“Awesiinh? What’s that mean?” I ask.
“That’s the name of the collection. It means ‘wild animal,’” he says.
“You still speak Ojibwe, huh? I quit after you left” I say, having forgotten nearly everything he taught me when I was younger, and only hearing it nowadays under my mom’s breath when she’s angry. She begged me to keep studying it, saying how important it is to know our mother tongue, but I found better ways to steal my time: by stealing. Plus, Ojibwe always reminded me of him, and all I wanted to do was forget him, so I forgot Ojibwe as much as I could.
“Many things about me have changed, but not everything,” he says.
“Well, you still did what you did,” I say. “You can pretend all you want to be a ‘changed man,’ but I know who you are.”
“I can’t change the past, but it doesn’t have to be my future,” he says. “Or our present.”
“Whatever. You sound like a bumper sticker.”
He laughs, and from my stomach, a growl shakes my ribs so loudly that my dad shoots his eyes to my belly.
“You’re that bakade?” he asks.
“If that means hungry, yeah, I’m starving.”
“Me too. Why don’t you make us some lunch,” he says.
“I’m not much of a cook,” I say.
“That was the old Benny. Maybe the new Benny would like to give it a shot. After all, we are in Cook County.”
“Fine. I’ll ‘give it a shot,’ but I can’t promise what I make will be edible.”
He smiles, gets up, and walks out of the room. I look at the one-eyed squirrel, and for a split second, I think about knocking it off his desk, just to watch it shatter—the way he shattered our family and now has the nerve to be an artist. While my mom is barely making rent, he’s over here in his big farmhouse painting little animals, making dream catchers and building weird travel spots in his living room. And now he wants me to cook him food. No way!
Before I leave the room, I notice that I am already at his desk with the squirrel in my hand. All I have to do now is drop it. All I have to do is release my grip, and this squirrel dies.
“I know you want to, but it won’t make you feel better. I’ve been where you are now. And I dropped it,” my dad says from behind me.
“Was I the squirrel you dropped?” I ask.
“No. I was the squirrel I dropped. Don’t make the same mistake I did. You’ll feel worse. Trust me.”
“That’s the thing…” I look him straight in the eye and drop the squirrel. “I don’t trust you.”
There’s no blood or guts or squirrel screams. Just ceramic chunks scattered at my feet.
I walk past him and out of the room. His eyes are filled with a look I have seen in my mother many times: disappointment. I don’t care. He’s disappointed me my whole life.
But by the time I am halfway through the hall, I realize he is right. I don’t feel better. In fact, I feel worse because that squirrel had nothing to do with my dad leaving us. It should have been him who I held up and dropped. He should be in chunks on the floor. He should be in pain, not me. And definitely not the squirrel.
I enter the kitchen and try to act like nothing happened. I don’t want to feel bad for killing a ceramic squirrel, and I don’t want to get a lecture on how I made the wrong decision by Mr. Wrong Decision himself. I just want something to eat.
He follows me a few seconds later. We must be more alike than I thought, because he too is acting like the squirrel murder never happened. He is smiling again.
“Everything you need is in here. Hurry up, I’m as hungry as a hippo,” he says, and walks out of the kitchen.
Hungry as a hippo. I wonder if his words were intentional. We used to play that game when I was little. Hungry Hungry Hippos. It was our thing. We played it before dinner to work up our appetites, and when my mom would bring in our meals, we’d both pretend to be hippos and scarf down the food as quickly as possible. My mom would watch in horror as we both made a mess and filled our faces with food. Does he play that game with George now?
Little does he know, the only thing I can make that’s half decent is a grilled cheese sandwich. So that’s exactly what’s on the menu for lunch. I know I said I wouldn’t cook for him, but I’m way too tired and way too hungry to fight. I’ll just make the freaking sandwiches and argue with him when my belly’s full. I guess I’m going to smell like cheese again.
Seven minutes later, I carry our plates out of the kitchen. The thought of melted cheese quickens my pace. The sooner I give him his, the sooner I can eat mine.
He’s sitting in a beach chair in the Hawaiian section of the living room. He’s removed his shirt and is leaning back as if he is sunbathing. He’s even drinking a pop through a straw and wearing sunglasses. On the ceiling is a large yellow sun made of construction paper.
“Pull up a chair, it’s nice out,” he says, and points to a folded beach chair.
I walk up to him and hand him his plate. There’s a slight itch inside of me that wants to indulge in this little Hawaiian fantasy. A fake sun is still a sun, right? But I don’t. We are not friends. It will be better for everyone if he gets that through his thick head.
“They’re a little burnt,” I say.
“That’s okay. I have sunscreen,” he says, and pulls out an invisible sunblock tube and squeezes it onto his hands. He mushes his hands together and smears the invisible sunblock onto his grilled cheese sandwich.
“Really?” I ask.
“Either sit and eat or find a flight off the island,” he says.
“What?”
“You’re blocking my sun, son,” he says, and brushes his hand into the air, signaling that my shadow is interfering with his imaginary sun rays.
I don’t want him calling me son. Not ever again. But I don’t tell him this because my mouth is full of grilled cheese. I’ll tell him later.
I step aside, and he smiles. “After we eat, I was thinking we can visit Manido Gizhigans,” he says.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
He laughs. “Little Spirit Cedar Tree. A four-hundred-year-old cedar growing from the rocks. Tourists aren’t allowed to go up to it, but us Ojibwe are. I was thinking we can leave some asemaa under the tree together.”
“Is that what people do around here? Go see old trees? There are millions of trees around us, and you want to go see another one? That’s fun to you? This isn’t Grand Portage. This is Bland Boretage.”
“Fine. Maybe another time. When you’re ready. I guess you’ll just get straight to work, then,” he says as he bites into the cheesy sandwich.
“Work? What work?” I ask with my mouth full.
“You didn’t think this was a vacation, did you? Boot camp is what I think your mom called it,” he says.
Before I can respond, I hear the front door unlock and the shuffling of giant dogs (maybe large rats, maybe wolves) right outside the house. My dad leaps up from his beach chair. His eyes light up with a happiness I haven’t seen since I was six. He looks like a little boy on Christmas Eve that just caught a glimpse of Santa.
“Did you make Windy Wendy a grilled cheese?” he whispers to me.
“Uh, no. Obviously.”
“But she’s always hungry,” he says.
“Not my problem,” I say.
“Oh, but it is. There’s nothing scarier than a hungry Wendy. We must always make one for Wendy. Here, you give me this piece, and I’ll give her one of mine,” he says as he snatches half of my grilled cheese and puts it on his plate, having it appear that there is now a whole grilled cheese sandwich waiting for her to gobble up.
The door opens. My dad throws on his shirt and takes a few steps, leaving Hawaii.
Rolex, Casio, and Apple (the white dog) rush past me and dart straight for the kitchen, leaving us humans alone in the living room. Wendy enters, wearing a blue jogger’s tracksuit. She is pale white and has long red hair. I immediately think of the American flag. Red, white, and blue. There are even fifty stars too, but they’re not coming from her; they are in my dad’s eyes when he looks at her. He’s so giddy. It makes me want to vomit.
He hands the plate to Wendy as she approaches us, which causes her to smile. Her teeth are so white, and as she gets closer, I see her face. She’s beautiful and plain at the same time. I want to search her face for things I can hate and mentally make fun of, but the truth is, she is as pretty as those Viking actresses on TV. She looks tough enough to hold her own in a dark alley but still sweet enough to give up a grilled cheese sandwich for. Ugh. I really don’t like her. My mom is way prettier. And probably way smarter too.
Wendy finally looks at me, and her eyes are as blue as the Hawaiian sky painted on the walls behind us. If she stood perfectly still, she’d look like one of the animals my dad makes but hasn’t painted yet. She is porcelain white. Probably the whitest person I have ever seen.
“Her eyes. Don’t stare too long, or you’ll begin to float away,” my dad says.
“What are you talking about?” I say, looking away from Wendy as she bites into her sandwich.
“I call them skeyes. When I first saw her, I floated fifty feet up, they had to toss me a rope to bring me back down,” he says to me.
“That never happened,” Wendy says in between bites. “I’m the proud owner of two boring blues. Hi, I’m Wendy.” She offers me her hand.
I don’t take her hand. I don’t want this Wendy lady to think we’re on good terms. We’re not. She stole my dad. That makes her my enemy. My porcelain-pale, boring-blue-eyed enemy.
My dad notices my snub and tries to calm the seas between us by plopping the last bite of his sandwich onto her plate. “She’ll eat the entire house if you let her,” he says.
Wendy laughs and finally puts her hand back down to her waist. “Thank you for the sandwich,” she says to me, while chewing her final bite. “I know your father didn’t make this. It’s good to see we have another cook in the house. I was getting lonely.”
“Well, this is Cook County,” my dad adds.
“You already used that joke. It wasn’t funny the first time either,” I say.
Wendy laughs. “Well, still, thank you for feeding me,” she says.
“That’s all I can make, really. Grilled cheeses and sometimes scrambled eggs. Half the time they come out wrong.”
“Only half the time? I’ll take those odds any day. Like tomorrow,” she says.
Did she just imply I’m making her breakfast tomorrow morning? My dad is right. She’s always hungry. I mean, who plans out breakfast while finishing lunch? And is this part of boot camp? Was I sent here to make breakfast for the people who ruined my life? How is that going to rehabilitate me?
“We have any chips? Chips are so good with a sandwich,” she says.
My dad takes her plate and and heads into the kitchen. “I’ll check.”
Wendy and I are alone. I stare at her. She stares at me. I will not float away.
“So, Benny … What’s your specialty?” she asks.
“I just told you. All I can make are grilled—”
“No, I mean, your specialty. Is it pickpocketing, shoplifting, grand theft auto, burglary?”
I smile, even though I should probably be insulted. “I guess you can say shoplifting. Although I’m not a bad pickpocket, if I’m being honest.”
“Well, hopefully you’ll discover new skills, ones less damaging to your soul while you’re here. My one rule is you do not steal while you live under this roof,” she says, and places her hands on her hips, the same way in those Western movies when the actor tells everyone that there’s a new sheriff in town.
“Relax, I’m not going to steal from you,” I assure her, which is most likely a lie since I have stolen from my own mom, a few bucks here and there. And that I already regret, but I’d have no issue stealing from my mom’s replacement.
“Whoever you steal from, it always ends with you stealing from me,” she says.
Another bumper sticker speaker. “How is me stealing from someone else also stealing from you?” I ask.
“You steal away trust. And I, for one, hate nothing more than not being able to trust someone. There’re miles and miles of forest out there. It wouldn’t be hard to hide a scrawny body like yours if something of mine goes missing … Don’t screw this up, Benny,” she says as she walks past me, presumably to help my dad hunt down those elusive chips.
Wendy is so strange. One minute she’s super nice, and the next minute she’s threatening to hide my dead body in a forest. I can see why my dad likes her. She’s unpredictable. And unpredictable is never boring. Even if her blue eyes are.
“Wendy,” I say before she reaches Australia.
She turns around and raises her eyebrows. “Where will I be staying?” I ask.
“In the garage, with the watch dogs and all the important stuff. Remember my rule, kid,” she says and points to a door. “Don’t worry. It’s insulated. Technically it’s the largest room in the house, you lucky duck.”
I have to stay in a garage? With three smelly dogs? I open the door and step inside. It’s a large room with an entire back catalogue of animals lining the shelves. This must be dad’s storage. Half of them are not yet painted, and the other half have SOLD stickers stuck to them. I should smash them all and cause real trouble for him, but I’m here to be a better person, right? I owe it to my mom to at least try out this boot camp thing. I wonder when it is going to begin?
Near the window is my bed. A cool-looking mama moose and her two babies are stitched onto the red blanket. The thought of three meese—mooses—moose? sleeping on me every night warms my body. Against another wall are three large dog beds. I hope those giant dogs don’t snore. I sit down on the bed and consider taking a nap, wishing this was all just a bad dream. If I fall asleep in my dream, maybe I’ll wake up in real life … But, ten minutes later, Wendy walks in and tosses me the keys to the Jeep.
“Time for work. You drive,” she says.
“I’m thirteen,” I say. “I can’t drive yet.”
She pauses and stares at the keys in my hand. What is she doing? It looks like she’s having a conversation in her head. Even her lips are slightly moving.
“You okay?” I ask, which snaps her out of it.
“Your dad can drop us off,” she says.
“You don’t know how to drive? But you’re old,” I say.
“I know how to drive. I just don’t,” she says.
“Back in Duluth, that’s just called being lazy,” I say.
Her gaze bites my face, “I am not lazy, kid. I just…”
“What is it, then? Pretty little white lady needs her big Indian man to drive her around, so she doesn’t break a nail?” I ask.
She shows her teeth. “I know what you’re doing. You want to rattle me. You want us to seethe at the sight of one another, but it’s not going to work. I’m not going to dislike you, Benny. Now matter how hard you try,” she says.
“Well, I already don’t like you, and if you’re too scared to drive, that’s fine. I’ll just stay here and take a nap,” I say.
She takes a deep breath. Half anger, half determination. I know I agitate people. I like getting a rise from them and seeing them squirm in frustration. Anyway, I’m not here to make friends. Especially with someone who replaced my mom. Wendy can go kick rocks … But … Why isn’t she leaving?
“Fine. I’ll drive. But you owe me,” she says, and walks out of the garage.
I owe her? What the heck is going on?
I follow her out of the house, and I’m immediately met with the crisp cold air that reminds me that this is no dream. I’m no longer in Duluth. I’m really here. Ugh.
The chill somehow sneaks past my sweatshirt, past my skin, and finds a way to attack my bones. After a few agonizing steps, I give up on walking and run to the Jeep. This time, I avoid the mud puddle and shimmy my body alongside the Jeep to the passenger door. Wendy, however, wears no more than her long-sleeve sweatshirt and sweatpants, and walks like she’s taking a stroll through a butterfly garden in spring. And what is that around her neck? The golden scarf I stole. Did she go through my stuff? What happened to trust? She climbs into the Jeep and slides the key into the ignition. “I can do this,” she says.
“Yeah, obviously,” I say.
“You’re right, obviously. Oh, and thanks for the scarf. That was really sweet of you,” she says as she roars the engine awake from its sleep. “Your father said you got it for me. How did you know I love gold?”
“Look at history. White people love gold. Just remember this sweet gesture before you plan on dragging me through the woods wondering where to bury me,” I say.
She laughs. Yep. And there it is. No wonder my dad leaps to his feet whenever she asks him to do something for her. It’s to keep her happy, and if she’s happy, she’ll be smiling. And to see that smile is worth doing whatever chore there is. I really need to remember that I dislike her. Wendy is bad. Wendy is really pretty, but very bad. She wrecks homes. She steals dads. I mean, I steal things too, but not dads away from moms and sons. She’s a next-level thief.
