Tom Hanks - Uncommon Type - Some Stories

“Um.” Kenny had to think of something to say. He was looking at Mr. Garcia’s head of thick, jet-black hair, held stiffly in place and so shiny. That was when he remembered seeing Mr. Garcia before, when he was little, when he was playing in the hotel with his brother and sister. He remembered that Mr. Garcia did not work in the kitchen with his dad, but would come in from the lobby wearing a suit. “You work here, too, like my mom, don’t you?”

Mr. Garcia and his mom shared a glance and a smile. “I used to, Kenny, but not anymore. Now I’m at the Senator.”

“You’re a senator?” Kenny knew what a senator was from the news on Channel 12.

“Mr. Garcia works at the Senator Hotel, Kenny,” his mother said. “And he has a big surprise for you.”

“You haven’t told him?” Mr. Garcia asked.

“I thought it should be your treat,” she said.

“Okay.” Mr. Garcia looked at Kenny. “I hear you have a birthday coming up, is that right?”

Kenny nodded. “I’m going to be ten.”

“Have you ever flown?”

“You mean, in an airplane?”

“Have you?”

Kenny looked at his mother. Maybe, when he was a baby, she had taken him on an airliner but he had been too little to remember. “Have I, Mom?”

“Jose is a pilot. He has a plane and wants to take you up for a ride. Won’t that be fun?”

Kenny had never met a pilot before who owned his own airplane. Where was Mr. Garcia’s uniform? Was he in the Air Force?

“What are you doing tomorrow?” Mr. Garcia asked. “Want to go up?”

Kenny looked at his mother. “Can I, Mom?”

“Yep,” she said. “I’m flexible.”

Kenny and his mother had their dinner at a restaurant called the Rosemount. She knew everybody who worked there. The waiter took away two place settings because his mom said that she was on “a special date with this young man,” meaning Kenny. The menus were as big as newspapers. He had spaghetti and, for dessert, the waiter brought him a piece of chocolate cake as big as his shoe. He couldn’t finish it all. His mother smoked her long cigarettes and drank an after-dinner coffee. One of the cooks came out, a fellow Kenny remembered from his days at the Leamington. The cook’s name was Bruce. He sat at the table with the two of them and talked with his mom for a while, mostly laughing.

“Good God, Kenny,” Bruce said to him. “You are growing up as fast as alfalfa.” Bruce could do an amazing trick—he could throw a drinking straw into a raw potato and make it stick like an arrow. On the way out through the kitchen—Mom had parked the Fiat in the back—Bruce did the trick for Kenny. Whap! And the straw almost went all the way through the potato. It was amazing!

His mom lived in a two-story building with a stairway in the middle that separated the two apartments on each floor. The living room of her place had something called a Murphy bed that folded up and disappeared into the wall. When his mom pulled the bed down, it was already made. She had a small color TV on a rolling stand that she turned to face the bed, but before he could watch it she made Kenny take a bath.

The bathroom was small and the tub was tiny, so it quickly filled up with water. On one shelf there were bath soaps and other girlie things, all in colorful bottles and tubes with flowers on the labels. On another shelf was a can of Gillette shaving cream and a man’s razor made by Wilkinson Sword. Kenny played in the tub until his fingers wrinkled and the water got cold. Pajamas had been packed in the pink suitcase from home, and, as he put them on, he smelled popcorn. His mom had made some, shaking it to life in a pot on her little kitchen stove.

“Find something to watch on TV, honey,” she called out as she melted butter in a saucepan to pour over the popcorn.

Kenny turned on the TV and it came to life immediately, without having to warm up like the one at home. He was delighted to see all the old channels, the ones he had watched before his mom moved out of the house and his dad got married again. There were shows on Channels 3, 6, 10, and 13. And, on the other channel knob, the one that turned rather than clicked, there was a Channel 40. Every channel was in color, too, except the old movie on Channel 40. He settled on a show called The Name of the Game, which was fine with his mom.

They lay on the Murphy bed together, eating popcorn. His mom kicked off her shoes and put her arm around her son’s shoulders, her fingers playing in his hair. At one point she sat up and said, “Rub Momma’s neck some.” Kenny rose onto his knees and tried to give her neck a massage, moving her hair out of the way and avoiding the little chain around her neck. After a few minutes she thanked him and said that she loved her little Kenny. They both lay back down. The next TV show came on— Bracken’s World , in which grown-ups went on and on about things Kenny could not understand. He was asleep before the first commercial.

Music was playing on a radio when Kenny woke up in the morning. His mother was in the kitchen, having already made coffee in a glass percolator on the stove. Kenny had to hop down from the Murphy bed because it was a bit high.

“Well, hello, sleepy-bear.” His mother kissed his head. “We have a big problem.”

“What?” Kenny rubbed his eyes as he sat at the two-seat kitchen table.

“I didn’t get milk yesterday.” She did have a can of something called Evaporated Milk—there was a cartoon cow on the label—that she was using for her morning coffee. “Can you go around to Louie’s Market and get a half gallon of milk? You’ll need some for your cereal.”

“I can.”

Kenny had no idea where Louie’s Market was. His mom explained that it was out the front door, one right turn, then one left turn. A three-minute walk. There were some dollar bills on her dresser in the bedroom, he could take two and buy himself a treat for later.

Kenny dressed in the same clothes he wore the day before and went into his mom’s tiny bedroom. There was money on her dresser, so he took two one-dollar bills. Her closet door was open with the light on inside; Kenny could see all her shoes on the floor and her dresses and skirts on hangers. There was also a man’s suit jacket and pants hanging in the closet and some ties on little hooks. A pair of man’s shoes were in there with her high heels.

The streets around the apartment were lined with big trees, but not the blue gums of Webster Road. These trees had wide green leaves and branches that were thick and high. The roots of the tall, old trees had grown so large they buckled the sidewalks and made them uneven. Kenny carried the two one-dollar bills in his hand as he turned right, then left, finding Louie’s Market in less than three minutes.

A Japanese man was behind the cash register, surrounded by candies and sweets on display. Kenny found the dairy case and carried a half gallon of milk over to pay for it. As the Japanese man rang up the sale he asked, “Who are you? I’ve never seen you before.”

Kenny told him his mother lived nearby and had forgotten to buy milk.

“Who is your mother?” the man asked. When Kenny told him, he said “Oh! Your mother is a nice lady. A very pretty lady. And you are her boy? How old are you?”

“In nine days ten,” Kenny said.

“I have a girl just like you,” the grocer said.

For the treat he would have later, Kenny picked out a twin pack of Hostess CupCakes, chocolate with the swirl of white icing down the middle. They cost twenty-five cents, which Kenny hoped was not too much. His mother said nothing when he got back with the milk. She made him toast to eat along with his bowl of Rice Krispies and cut up sections of a seedless orange.