Joshua Mohr - Some Things That Meant the World to Me

Letch got to the school an hour later and met with me and the principal, who filled him in on what I'd done.

"I can't believe this," Letch said to her, shaking his head. "This will not go unpunished. I can promise you that."

The principal asked me to wait in the hallway so she and Letch could chat by themselves, and I left. I sat outside her office. The nurse's was across the hallway, and through the window I saw Sean walking with his mom. He held a bandage to his nose, and his head was tilted back.

I smiled.

Letch and the principal walked out, and he said, "I can't tell you how sorry I am about this. His mother and I will make sure this never happens again."

She nodded approvingly.

As soon as he and I were outside, he said, "Congratulations, little man."

He'd never called me little man before. I liked it.

"How'd you like it if I took you out for a steak?" he asked.

We went to a restaurant. He ordered two beers from the waitress and she giggled, saying, "He don't look twenty-one," and Letch said, "They're both for me, darling. I'm very thirsty," but when she brought the beers and had walked away, he slid a bottle to me, saying, "Here's to you busting noses, Rhonda."

We both drank.

It's hard for me to know how much to tell you about Letch because I don't want you to like him. But the truth is there were a lot of days where he was all right.

We drank our beers and ate steaks and everything was fun.

"Are you going to tell mom?" I said.

"Hell, no. She wouldn't understand."

"Where is she?"

Letch looked at me for a minute without saying anything. Then: "Do you miss your dad?"

"I don't remember him."

"At all?"

"Nothing."

"Jesus."

"Where's my mom always going?"

Letch finished his steak, his beer. "You'll have to ask her that one, Rhonda." He paid the bill, and right when we were leaving, he fuzzed my head and said, "I want you to know I'm real proud of you."

I lied to old lady Rhonda, after I'd gotten home from Vern saying he'd like to break my arm. I lied because how much more was I supposed to take that day? Handa told me about her big boy, Hector, and Vern offered to break my arm, but the worst part wasn't what he'd said, worst part was that it sounded like a good idea to me. I wanted him to break it. Smash the bone into glorious splinters. I wanted him to let me have it, the way Letch used to. So when I got to my apartment, and when old lady Rhonda came downstairs to watch "Wheel of Fortune," the first thing out of my mouth was, "Tomorrow's my birthday," and she said, "Really?" and I hated lying to her, really hated it, but I needed something good to happen, so I said, "Why would I lie?" and she laughed, which made me laugh, which made me feel a little better.

We sat on the burned couch, with our mugs of vodka. Commercials played on the TV. "Wheel of Fortune" would start any minute.

"This is so exciting," she said. "We'll have a little party. I'll bake a birthday cake."

"You don't need to do that. Let's just spend the night hanging out."

"What's on your wish list?"

"Nothing."

"Since you saved my couch and TV, I'll buy you anything you want."

"I don't want anything."

"Don't stomp on an old woman's heart, Crash Man. What would you like for your birthday?"

On the TV, Pat Sajak and Vanna White walked onto the stage. He was squinting and smiling; she was just smiling. The audience clapped.

"Let's play Wheel!" Pat Sajak said.

"I can have anything?" I said to old lady Rhonda.

"Name it."

"I've always wanted a tattoo."

"Do you already know what you'll get?"

"I've known for years."

She rubbed her hands together. She said, "I'll make an appointment. And invite anyone you want to the party I'll bring my husband."

I drank my whole mug of vodka. There wasn't anyone I wanted to invite to the party, and I didn't want her husband there. I only wanted it to be the two of us. "Why would you bring him?"

"The more, the merrier."

"He lit your couch on fire."

"We've been married for thirty years. We have good phases and bad. You met him in a bad one."

"He shouldn't treat you like that."

She hugged me.

We hadn't been paying attention to "Wheel of Fortune" and someone had already solved the first puzzle.

"Don't worry about me," old lady Rhonda said. "I know how to deal with him."

I went into the kitchen and made another vodka rocks. I looked at the man shielding himself from the world with the pizza box on his face. "I don't want him at the party." I came back over and sat next to her.

"He's not so bad," she said and put her head on my shoulder. "Please… please let him come to the party"

How could I say no? The woman was throwing me a birthday party on a day that wasn't my birthday and offered to pay for a tattoo. I couldn't blackball her husband, even if I hated all the things he reminded me of. I needed my own pizza box to block out every niggling memory. "Fine."

"Maybe you'll even like him," she said, sounding like my mom prepping me to meet one of her new boyfriends. She'd introduced me to Letch in a bar, at a Mexican restaurant close to our house. She said, "This is my new friend," and she chewed the ice cubes in her wine spritzer, and he chewed the ice in his Bloody Maria. He nodded his head, slowly, and handed me some quarters. He said, "There's Ms. PacMan by the entrance. Go play a few games on me."

"What do you say?" my mom said to me.

"Thanks."

"This is just the beginning," Letch said, fuzzing my hair.

"Beginning of what?"

"You'll see." He fuzzed my head again, and this time his watchband got snagged in one of my curls. I yelped. He smirked and said, "Sorry about that."

After old lady Rhonda had gone upstairs to cook her husband dinner, I lay in bed with Madeline. She smelled bad: mold in her bag, chunks of green floating on top of the orange liquid, like tiny lily pads.

I rested her on my chest.

I tucked her under my shirt so it looked like I was pregnant and put my hands on her, pretending to feel her kick.

I said, "I won't let anything happen to you."

I said, "You're safe."

I fell asleep like that, with Madeline slipped underneath my shirt.

About four a.m. I woke up from a nightmare. The same one I always had. I'm not ready to tell you about it yet. But I woke up and didn't want to go back to sleep. All I could think about was Vern. Vern cracking the bone in my arm, cracking it miraculously. In my fantasy, Karla was there, standing and watching, apologizing for all the awful things she'd said after I saved her life.

I dozed, in and out, and little-Rhonda said, "You still have that nightmare, huh?"

"A couple times a week."

"Is it still as scary?"

"Gets scarier every time."

He walked over and sat down on my mattress. The light on his helmet was on. He looked at Madeline, still under my shirt. I expected him to say something about her, but he never did. "Do you love the old lady?"

"Yeah."

"Does she love you?"

"I think so."

He turned his light off. "She's not our mom."

"She's better," I said.

When I opened my front door the next morning, old lady Rhonda wore a party hat, one of those cone-shaped jobs with the rubber band tucked under her chin. There were unicorns on it. Her gray hair was pulled back in another ponytail. She had a party favor in her mouth and blew it so it screamed; then she held it like a cigarette, while singing "Happy Birthday."