Jailbird Kid Read online

  One year she framed Dad’s police mug shot and gave it to Grandma for Christmas. Grandma didn’t like it, though. She put a horse picture in the frame instead.

  When we lived in our old town, we spent a lot of time with Grandma and her husband, Hank, especially after Mom’s parents moved down to California. I called him Grandpa Hank, and he was nice. They got married the year before I was born. I never knew Grandpa Wroboski. “Hank’s a good man,” Grandma always said. “Unlike some people I could name.”

  I knew who she was referring to. Grandma despised Uncle Al, who was Grandpa Wroboski’s brother. “That man never did anyone a speck of good,” Grandma would say, when Uncle Al’s name was mentioned. “He gets everyone into trouble except himself. Poor Nicky would never have gone to jail, not even once, if it wasn’t for Al interfering in his life.”

  Mom came back into the kitchen, fresh from her shower and dressed in a T-shirt and shorts. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She was really pretty and only thirty-one years old.

  “You look nice,” Grandma said. “Nicky’s sure gonna be happy to see you and Angela. It’s good for both of you that he’s coming home. Angela’s getting to an age when she wants her daddy.”

  “What are you cooking?” Mom asked, snapping the tab off a can of Coke. She threw some ice cubes into two glasses and poured a drink for each of us. Grandma already had her favourite, cherry cream soda, and Gemma opened a beer.

  “We brought some chickens and we’ve got the makings for potato salad,” Gemma said. “Thought we could have a party for Nick.”

  Mom said nothing, but her lips compressed into a tight line. I knew she didn’t want a party for Dad. She didn’t want his homecoming to be advertised.

  “Mix up that stuff for the salads, Gemma,” Grandma ordered, then eased back into her chair.

  I got up to help.

  “We’ll get this show on the road and then I’ll give you the present I brought you,” Gemma said to me with a secret smile.

  I wondered what it would be. Probably something Mom wouldn’t like. Mom said that Gemma was “eighteen going on twenty-five.” She wore too much makeup, and her blond hair had a kind of purplish neon glow from so many perms and colour experiments. I liked her, though. She might have looked kind of tough, but she was always nice to me and fun to have around. You never knew what was going to happen with Gemma. She’d finished grade twelve and started working immediately in a big department store downtown. Gemma was hoping to become the cosmetics and beauty department manager someday.

  “That Nicky! I’ll never forget when he was a kid.” Grandma’s face had lost its redness, and she sat back, relaxed. “The other kids would be out playing road hockey, and Nicky, he’d be inside. ‘Anything I can do for you, Mamma?’ he’d say. ‘Shovel snow? Split wood? Anything?’ He did not want to go outside and play hockey. Nicky hated getting knocked around. He was always delicate.”

  It was hard to think of my dad as being delicate. I pictured him strong and good-looking, with long dark brown hair and hazel eyes, smooth skin, and nice white teeth. He wasn’t very tall, about five feet nine inches, but he said in his letters that he’d been working out with weights and was in good shape. He always spoke softly, and he really listened to people when they told him something, even me, even when I was a little kid.

  “Nicky wasn’t a mamma’s boy, but he was always thoughtful,” Grandma continued. “Same as Hank. He’s considerate. I gotta make his lunch when I get home. He’s on the midnight shift at the plant.”

  Grandpa Hank worked at the meat-packing plant on the eastern edge of the city. He commuted twenty miles each way, but he said he liked the trips in and out of town; it gave him time to think and look around. Grandpa Hank was the only man in our family with a job. Grandma and Hank had a little house on a big lot in our old town where they raised and sold chickens and garden stuff.

  “Grandma,” I asked, “why did Dad get into so much trouble?”

  Silence. If it wasn’t my birthday and Dad’s homecoming, I wouldn’t have dared bring up the subject. Grandma always got a hurt look when anyone talked about “Nicky’s troubles.” Gemma and Mom didn’t talk much about it, either, especially to each other.

  “Well, Angel, it started when he was your age, actually about eleven or twelve,” Grandma said slowly. “I remember that summer like it was yesterday. Your Uncle Al came to stay with us when his momma got so sick. That Al! I do a favour for someone and lose my son over it.”

  Hardness came into Grandma’s usually soft voice. I glanced over at Mom, but she was running her finger around the edge of her glass, as if that was her main focus. Gemma looked pouty. She thought Al and Dad were great, which they were ... sometimes.

  “Al was sixteen that summer — and wild. Good-looking and charming! First thing I know, Nick’s got money. He’s buying candy, chips, and pop for his friends, paying his own way to the movies, buying piles of comic books. Never needed to ask me or Hank for money.”

  Grandma fanned her face, which had again flamed red from the heat. “I ask where he’s getting this money. He says Al and him found work mowing lawns. ‘Yeah?’ I say. ‘For who?’ I know everyone in town, but he gives me names I’ve never heard of. Nicky, he never could lie very good.”

  “That’s why he got into so much trouble and Al didn’t,” Gemma said.

  “That’s not why at all!” Grandma snapped. “He wouldn’t have had to lie if it wasn’t for that bad Al putting him up to no good!”

  “So where did he get the money?” I asked.

  “Stealing,” Mom said. “He stole anything that wasn’t nailed down. Like people’s tools or lawn mowers.”

  “I hope Nick’s bus isn’t late,” Gemma interjected.

  “Lawn mowers!” I repeated.

  “Yeah, he began his big B and E — breaking and entering — career by breaking into garden sheds,” Gemma said. “He worked his way up from there to houses, liquor stores —”

  “We don’t need to go through all this again,” Grandma said, her good mood gone. “It gives me heartburn remembering those bad days.”

  “He said he’d be on the 7:15 bus,” Gemma cut in. “He phoned yesterday from the joint. I said I’d meet him.”

  “He just hero-worshipped that Al,” Mom said. “Al was a real bad influence.”

  “Well, you go ahead and meet him at the bus,” Grandma said. “I’ll wait here. Someone’s got to watch that deep-fat fryer.”

  “I’ll stay with you,” Mom volunteered.

  I didn’t say anything. Mom never went to visit Dad during the whole two years of his incarceration. Only Gemma made regular visits every month.

  Grandma sipped on her pink pop. “All his life, Nicky’s had bad luck. He thought he was getting somewhere when Al took him into his business, but he was blinded by that bad man. Nicky’s not bad. He’s just unlucky.”

  “Jerry sees different reasons for Nick’s bad luck,” Gemma said. “She says the Weasel got slow, and you don’t get slow when you’re doing a B and E.”

  “Shh!” Grandma hissed. “Don’t call him that name! Don’t let Angela hear such talk. It’s not nice.”

  “Well, Jerry and I have been seeing each other and he’s really a nice guy. So there. Now I’m going to meet my brother at the bus depot! Someone’s got to show him we care that he’s coming home.”

  “Nicky will be different when he comes out this time,” Grandma said. “He’s had lots of time to think in there. And he’s got you and Angela to look after. He knows that.”

  “I’m going to give it everything I’ve got,” Mom said. Her voice sounded so ultra-serious that we all stared at her. “But if any of his ex-con friends start coming around — including Mike and Jerry, I don’t care what you say, Gemma — or Uncle Al shows his face, that’s it! I don’t want Angela to know these people. I don�
��t want her to think what they do is cool. If they come, we’re gone.”

  “Well, isn’t that just great!” Gemma’s voice slapped across the room. “So Nick’s on probation even at home!”

  Silence settled, heavier than the heat. I could hardly breathe. It was my fifteenth birthday, and I felt like a hundred and fifteen.

  Grandma hoisted herself out of her chair, came around the table, and wrapped her arms around Mom’s shoulders. Mom’s arms curved partway around Grandma’s wide middle, and she rested her head against the pink-flowered dress.

  “Oh, Mamma,” Mom sighed. “I’m so sorry it’s turned out like this. I thought I could help him. I thought he’d straighten up.”

  “Connie, honey, you’re such a good wife for Nicky.” Grandma’s tone was smooth. “I knew you were special from the minute I met you when you and your folks moved into the big house behind us there. Come on, baby, we’ll all help. Me, Hank, Gemma, Angela, all of us. You’ll see. Nicky left here a boy. He’ll walk in that door a man.” Her voice dropped soft and low like a lullaby. “It’ll be okay, Connie, honey. It’ll be good this time. We’ll be a real family again.”

  I sipped my Coke ... and waited.

  3

  Birthday

  Gemma and I left the house at seven o’clock to get to the bus depot for Dad’s 7:15 arrival. I could hardly hold back my excitement. I usually encouraged Gemma to talk about Dad, to tell funny things that she and he did when they were little, but tonight Gemma was tense and didn’t feel like talking.

  We sat on a bench outside the bus depot, and Gemma pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Want one?” she asked. I shook my head. She took one out, lit it, using a fancy blue lighter, and shoved the pack inside her purse.

  When the bus pulled in, my heart was pounding like crazy. We got up and walked close to the bus door to watch the people get out.

  Dad wasn’t there.

  “Hey!” Gemma called to the driver. “Was there a guy on, dark hair, good-looking?”

  “Nope,” the driver said.

  “You sure?”

  “Look, lady, you saw who got off. You don’t believe me, go inside and check for yourself.”

  Gemma did. She came back out with tears in her eyes. “He must have missed the bus. Nick doesn’t read clocks too good.”

  “Maybe Uncle Al drove up to get him,” I suggested.

  “Nah.”

  Gemma didn’t have to say anything more. It wasn’t something Uncle Al would do. He didn’t go near jails.

  Gemma’s mascara was smeared from crying by the time we got home. She really loved her brother and was scared something had happened to him. Me, I just had a hollow ache in my stomach, but it was almost always there.

  “He ain’t here,” Gemma announced as we walked through the door.

  Mom and Grandma had the table set, with a bouquet of pink and white peonies in the centre. I could smell their wonderful scent from the doorway, even over the fried chicken.

  Quietly, Mom picked up Dad’s plate, knife, and fork and put them back in the cupboard.

  Grandma, too, was silent — a bad sign.

  “Well, happy birthday, baby,” Mom said, hugging me.

  We celebrated my birthday with fried chicken, potato salad, ice cream, and cake. Grandma gave me money for clothes, and a doll she’d made with a long, fancy skirt. “You gotta put something under her skirt, like a roll of toilet paper, to make her stand up on your dresser,” she explained.

  Gemma gave me a sample kit of makeup: little tubes of lipstick, eye stuff, and a small bottle of perfume. “I’m starting to get real good at selling this stuff,” she said proudly. “I’ll make us all beautiful, like me!”

  We laughed, but I could see Mom wasn’t impressed by Gemma’s gift. She thought Gemma wore too much makeup.

  Mom’s mother and stepfather, Grandma Johnson and her husband Steve, sent me some cool clothes and twenty American dollars. They moved to California to be near my Aunt Jackie after she married a professor who got hired at a university in Santa Barbara. When Mom married Dad, it caused a real split in our family, which was too bad.

  By the time Grandma and Gemma were ready to go home, it was almost dark.

  “Rain’s coming,” Grandma announced. “I can smell it.”

  She was right. An hour later the rain poured down as if it were being dumped from a giant’s pail. Lightning flashed across the black sky followed by the crack of thunder.

  “I wonder if Dad’s out there trying to hitchhike home,” I said to Mom as I got ready for bed.

  “I think he knows enough to get out of the rain. You go to sleep, honey. I’ll wake you if he shows up.”

  I lay in bed, listening to the wind and rain that sometimes pounded on the roof, sometimes tapped lightly. I thought of Dad being released today after being in jail for almost two years. When I asked what he was in for, no one would ever tell me the facts.

  Mom would say, “A bunch of stupid stuff, never mind.”

  Gemma would say, “He was part of a famous gold robbery!”

  Grandma’s response would be: “A bunch of false charges that came from Al’s doings. There, now you know.”

  I still had a lot of questions, the main one being: “Why?”

  I could hear Mom pick up her guitar and strum a few chords. I recognized C, F, and G7. Mom was a good musician, and she was teaching me. She’d once recorded a CD, and it was played over several radio stations. But when Mom was in the band, Uncle Al told Dad he’d better watch out, because Mom was so pretty that guys in the audience would be hitting on her all the time. Dad got scared about that and asked her to quit. I didn’t know why she listened to him. Now she just played for me, and sometimes with friends when they came over.

  As I fell asleep, I thought about Dad. Maybe he was wandering along the side of the highway in the pelting rain and wind and lightning, trying to find his way home. Mom and I could write a sad song about that.

  4

  Cat

  On Monday I walked home from school, wondering what I’d find when I got there. I was waiting for two things: Dad, and my birthday present from Mom. Both were late.

  Before I could put my key into the lock the door sprung open. A man stood facing me. I jumped and dropped my keys.

  “Oh, Angel, I’m sorry!”

  The man scooped up my keys and looked at me. He had short dark brown hair in a buzz cut, hazel eyes, and a moustache. Since he was bare-chested, I could see that his shoulders and chest were muscular. Both of his arms were covered with tattoos. My breathing almost stopped.

  “Dad?” I said in a squeaky voice as I put down my backpack.

  He held out his arms. I moved ahead stiffly and let him hug me, though it felt weird.

  “The door was locked. How’d you get in?”

  He grinned. “Wasn’t hard.” He flipped a small metal object in his hand, shoved it back into the pocket of his jeans, and grinned shyly. “Hey, you’re a young lady now. So tall! Beautiful!”

  “I’m fifteen.”

  “Yeah, I know! And I’ve brought you a present.” He searched through a pile of his stuff scattered on the couch and extracted a newspaper-wrapped parcel. “Here!”

  I pulled back the paper, and a strange thing peered up at me. It was black with a white face, big staring eyes, and a long black tail. In its belly was a clock.

  “Here, I’ll show you how it goes.” He shoved a battery into the back. The thing began to whir, and the eyeballs flicked back and forth: left, right, left, right, to Dad, to me, to Dad, to me. Its tail was a pendulum switching out the seconds.

  “Thought you’d like it,” Dad said. “It’s Felix the Cat from the cartoons.”

  “What cartoons?”

  “You know — Felix!”

  “No.�
��

  “Like Garfield, only black. Neat, eh?”

  “Yeah, it’s cool. Thanks.” I held the thing away from me, letting its tail swish, and wondered where I could hang it. Not in my bedroom — too creepy and tacky. “I thought you didn’t like clocks.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Mom.”

  “Oh.” He flashed a smile. “Well, not in jail. You don’t think of days or hours in there. You just do your time and get it over with. Now I’m home, so clocks are okay.”

  After we found a picture nail, hammered it into the living-room wall, and hung Felix, we became shy with each other again. I stared at the jumble of stuff falling out of his duffle bag and wondered what it contained. Old-fashioned clothes that he wore more than two years ago when he was incarcerated? Letters and pictures from me and Gemma? We were the only ones in the family who wrote to him. Did he keep a journal? Did he take courses, or learn to do something that might get him a job when he got out?

  “You doing okay in school?” he asked, then looked serious. “Anyone hassling you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Nobody’d better give you stress. I’ll send a posse after ’em.”

  “Yeah, whatever. You been okay?”

  “Me? Oh, yeah. No complaints.”

  “Anyone hassle you? Give you stress?”

  He laughed. “Nope.”

  “Have you drawn any more pictures?”

  He leaped to grab a cardboard-enclosed package. “Here! I brought some home for you.”

  Out spilled his pictures. The first was done in brown and yellow pastels, a sunset silhouetting a barren tree in the foreground. Nice — until I noted a hangman’s noose suspended from one of the dead branches. The second featured black-and-white pastels and had an old Cadillac car with the gangster Al Capone standing in front of it. I knew his face from the million pictures Gemma had collected for Dad and Uncle Al.

  “Here’s one I did for Valentine’s Day,” Dad said, “but I didn’t know who to send it to.”

  Dad had used bright poster paints for this one. A man with his fedora hat pulled low over his eyes, cigar held between thumb and forefinger, had a big Valentine heart shaded in behind him. In a “balloon” formed from the cloud of cigar smoke above the man’s head, I read: “Just a little Valentine message from Scarface.” A gun pointing at the viewer shot a streak of fire.