Now he was gazing out from the cable car, smiling in a friendly way. I had to admit, it was nice of him to ask me if I was having a good time. Suddenly he seemed less intimidating.
Maybe he wasn’t technically related, but at least he cared.
And if he cared, he’d listen.
“Actually, Mr. Schafer, you’re right,” I said.
“Right?”
“About the picture. I thought you were making fun of me.”
Mr. Schafer nodded. “I figured something was wrong. I’m awfully sorry, Mary Anne. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“Can I ask you a question, Mr. Schafer?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I’ve really enjoyed the trip and all …”
Mr. Schafer grinned. “That’s not a question.”
“I know! I mean, I was about to?—”
“Gotcha,” Mr. Schafer said with a laugh.
A joke. He was turning my feelings into a joke again.
“Maybe it’s me, Mr. Schafer,” I said. “Maybe I’m too sensitive. But sometimes your humor makes me feel … I don’t know, awkward. Like that joke you just made. And the jokes about my dad and my family, too. I know you mean well, and I’m not saying you’re a bad person. I just …”
What was I saying? Mr. Schafer was looking at me as if I were speaking Ancient Greek.
I absolutely hate confrontations. I felt tears welling up.
“I’m just … blabbering,” I murmured. “I’m tired, I guess.”
“No, you’re right, Mary Anne,” Mr. Schafer said softly. “I do have a big mouth. Always have. I’ve lost a friend or two because of it. You must have felt pretty awful there in the RV. I just wish you’d told me sooner.”
“With everyone around?” I asked.
“Good point.” He puffed out his cheek and exhaled. “Sorry, Mary Anne. I’ll think before I open my big mouth. Hey, even grown-ups aren’t perfect.”
“I know.”
“Close. Very close. But not perfect.”
He grinned.
This time, I grinned back.
* * *
Boy, what a difference.
I have never felt so good sitting in a pro baseball stadium. Mr. Schafer had been especially nice to me all the way to Candlestick Park.
Not only that, but the San Francisco Giants were winning — and I was actually enjoying the game!
I cheered for a home run. I jumped up to do three waves with the crowd. I even enjoyed a watery hot dog and half-melted ice-cream bar.
By the middle of the seventh inning, the San Francisco Giants were ahead, 9–3.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, it’s seventh inning stretch time!” the announcer blared.
We all stood up. Mr. Schafer and Jeff took orders and scurried off to the concession stand.
The stadium organist started playing the “Mexican Hat Dance,” and we clapped along. Then Kristy and I turned to each other and clapped hands with each other.
The video screen on the scoreboard showed live views of the audience. A dad bouncing his baby to the music. A barbershop quartet, complete with striped suits and straw hats, singing away. An old couple, dancing. Someone in a big chicken costume.
I laughed out loud at that one.
Then the image changed again, and I stopped laughing.
I stopped breathing for a moment, too.
A smiling, handsome man was waving to the camera. He was wearing a bright red shirt. Beside him was a smiling, pretty woman. She was totally unfamiliar.
But he wasn’t.
I knew his face. I had seen it every day when I was growing up. It was a little older and grayer. And a touch thinner.
But even now, even with those changes, I could not mistake him.
The image changed, and I turned to Kristy.
Her hands were frozen in midclap. Her face was chalk white.
“Kristy,” I said, “was that — ”
Kristy didn’t say another word. She didn’t need to.
I knew from her expression that I’d been right.
I did know the face.
It was her dad’s.
“Jessica. Right?”
I was about to finish my journal entry. The words I was going to write were a baby panda.
But I didn’t get to finish. The sound of Liz Hoyer’s voice made me nearly drop my pencil.
I turned and smiled. Liz was bouncing toward me, clutching an armful of brochures. Her grandparents were right behind her, waving.
Yes, Liz Hoyer. Did I ever think I’d see her again? Not in a million years. Definitely not at the San Diego Zoo.
Honestly, I was convinced she must have been following us.
“Hi,” I called out.
“I don’t believe this,” Abby murmured.
“What is she doing here?” Karen asked.
“We-e-ell,” Watson said, “Mr. and Mrs. Hoyer! Felicitas! How wonderful to see you! Won’t you join us?”
Gulp. Join us?
“No!” Andrew blurted out.
“Do we have to?” David Michael whined.
“Shhh,” Mrs. Brewer said.
The Hoyers didn’t seem to have heard the rude remarks. Liz was whispering something to her grandfather as he approached.
“We’d love to!” Mr. Hoyer replied.
I wanted to slink away.
But I smiled. I was going to be a good sport. It was a beautiful day, and nothing was going to spoil my trip to the zoo.
Liz looked grumpy.
“We’re going to see the mommy panda have a baby,” Andrew informed her.
Liz rolled her eyes. “She is not going to deliver her cub in captivity. The zoo officials returned the pandas to their native habitat.”
“What’s a havitack?” Andrew asked Mrs. Brewer.
Mrs. Brewer knelt beside him and began translating Liz’s remarks.
David Michael looked warily at Liz. “How do you know they sent the pandas back?”
“I can read,” Liz declared.
“So can I,” David Michael replied.
“So can I,” added Andrew (which is true).
Liz handed the boys a brochure. “Here, then.”
“Well! Lovely day, isn’t it?” Mr. Hoyer said.
“Super,” Watson replied.
“THEY TOOK THEM TO CHINA?” Andrew screamed.
“They had to,” Liz said. “It is too risky to attempt a panda birth outside of?—”
“I DON’T CARE! IT’S NOT FAIR!”
Mrs. Brewer was buying our tickets now. As we walked through the entrance, Watson scooped up Andrew, who was sobbing.
Abby was giving Liz a fierce Look.
I don’t think Liz noticed. She was whispering to her grandparents again, and they were both frowning at her.
“Be nice,” I heard Mrs. Hoyer say.
Right. That was sort of like asking an egg to grow hair.
We headed for a loading area marked Kangaroo Bus Tours. Liz walked along with us.
“Did you know that the San Diego Zoo has four thousand animals?” she asked.
“I read that,” David Michael replied.
“Eight hundred species, too,” Liz continued. “And three point three million visitors come each year. Did you know that?”
David Michael had taken the brochure from Andrew and was quickly leafing through it. “Uh …”
“After this,” Liz rambled on, “my grandparents are taking me to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, which is thirty miles north of here.”
“Great,” I said.
“It’s twenty-two times bigger than this zoo.”
“Uh-huh,” said Mallory.
We boarded the bus. Liz kept talking.
Our tour guide started narrating. So did Liz.
Mr. Hoyer seemed to find this amusing. Mrs. Hoyer gently tapped Liz on the wrist and said, “So bright for her age.”
We were dying.
We stepped off the bus at the Children’s Zo
o. Andrew wriggled out of Watson’s arms to pet a potbellied pig. We watched some zoo attendants feeding baby animals who had been rejected by their mothers.
“Weird,” Liz remarked. “Why would parents do such a thing?”
When she was out of earshot, Abby whispered, “Maybe the same reason her parents left her with her grandparents.”
That was mean. But I laughed.
The bus took us to the pygmy chimp exhibit, where these weird little monkeys chased after each other at super speed. We watched them somersault, bop each other over the head, and clap their hands and feet.
One of them ran right up to us and made the silliest, scowling face.
“It’s Kristy!” Andrew squealed.
Abby, Mallory, Karen, David Michael, and I cracked up. It did look a little like Kristy in one of her bad moods.
“Kristy?” Liz was paging through her guidebook. “Where did you find that? This book gives some of the animal names, but I don’t see that one.”
We ignored her.
Andrew was jumping up and down, imitating the monkeys. It was a relief to see him happy again. No more clinging to Watson, no more complaining about the panda.
He sure had enough to see. At the Tiger River exhibit, we spotted a tiger with milky white skin and a “fishing cat,” which has webbed feet and dives for its dinner.
My personal favorite was Hippo Beach. We slipped behind a Plexiglas barrier to watch hippopotamuses dance in their underwater tank. Yes, dance. That is the only word to describe what they were doing.
“She just did a piqué turn!” I exclaimed.
“A what?” Abby asked.
“And a tour jeté!”
The kids were howling. “We should give them hippo tutus!” Karen said.
“Toe shoes!” David Michael added.
“Hippos do not have toes,” Liz informed him.
We saw sea lions and gorillas and naked mole rats. We were hugged by actors in animal suits. We must have watched the koalas for half an hour.
I think the kids liked the polar bear exhibit the best. We could see them swim, too, like the hippos.
Unlike the hippos, though, they had visitors. On a wooded hill, behind the polar bear pool, stood seven reindeer.
“Rudolph!” screamed Andrew.
“No, they have black noses,” David Michael said. “It’s Dasher and Basher and Comic and Glickson?—”
“Dasher and Dancer and Comet and Blitzen,” Liz corrected him.
“Whatever,” David Michael snapped. “Where’s Santa?”
“I think he is hiding in the polar bear suit,” Karen said.
Liz sighed. “You still believe in?—”
“Ahhhhhh-chooo!” sneezed Abby. “Oops, allergies.”
She gave me a sly smile.
As we headed for the bus, Liz was whispering to her grandfather again. This time I could hear her.
“Liz, they’re very nice children,” he said.
“But I don’t like them!” Liz replied. “They’re boring, and they don’t know anything!”
What?
She had it backward. She was wildly boring. And we didn’t like her! How dare she? I had half a mind to turn around and argue.
“They invited us to tour with them,” Mrs. Hoyer said softly. “We couldn’t say no.”
“If you don’t take me to the Wild Animal Park, I’m going to scream until my face turns blue! Then I will pass out and boy, will you be in trouble.”
The next thing I knew, Mr. Hoyer was jogging to the bus. Watson and Mrs. Brewer were just about to board.
“Pardon me,” Mr. Hoyer said. “My granddaughter is a bit fatigued, and we’re going to walk back to the parking lot. It’s been lovely to travel with you!”
Zoom. They were out of there. Liz didn’t even look back. But just before she turned away, I could see she was smiling.
So were we.
“Oh, darn,” Mallory said with a straight face. “I was going to ask her how many species of plant life there are in the zoo.”
“How many hairs on a polar bear,” I suggested.
“Pimples on a hippo’s belly,” Abby said.
“Next stop, the special panda exhibit!” the tour guide announced.
“But they’re in China!” David Michael blurted out.
“They’re not leaving until the end of the week,” the guide said with a smile. “Passport problems.”
I thought Andrew would burst with joy. He didn’t stop squealing until we arrived at the exhibit.
What were the pandas like? Adorable. They looked as if they were smiling at us as they chewed happily on bamboo sticks. They were messy, too — letting thin bamboo shards fall all over their round white bellies.
Andrew shook his head and sighed. “If they’re going to China,” he said, “someone should teach them not to eat their chopsticks.”
“Are you sure it was him?” Stacey whispered.
“Almost positive,” I replied.
I racked my brain, trying to think of the postmark from Dad’s last letter. “Sausalito!” I said finally. “Is that near here?”
“That’s just over the Golden Gate Bridge,” Dawn said. “Is that where he’s living?”
“I think so.”
“Then this is his home team!” Claudia blurted out.
“Duh,” I said.
“Let’s find him!” Mary Anne exclaimed.
“How?” asked Stacey. “There are fifty billion people here!”
“How many more innings are left?” Claudia asked.
“I think two and a half,” Stacey replied.
“Perfect! They take forever. We have plenty of time.” Claudia sprang out of her seat.
“No!” I said.
“No?” Claudia repeated.
“Why not?” Dawn asked.
I sat back in my seat, looking out over the ocean of people. I was in a daze.
Dad was somewhere in there. We were in the same stadium.
I remembered a secret birthday wish I’d made when I turned six: I’d wished that Dad and I would visit all the ballparks together. I’d thought we had plenty of time, a whole lifetime.
We ended up only making it to two: Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium in New York. Since then, we’d been batting zero. Oh for seven years.
I never thought we’d actually add another one to the list. This was some strange way to do it.
“I don’t know if I want to see him,” I murmured.
“He’s your dad!” Dawn insisted.
“Was,” I said. “He left us, Dawn. Worse. He erased us. I mean, I used to write him all the time. I sent him artwork, told him about my ball games, even sent him a tooth I lost. I asked questions, too. Tons of them. Why did you leave, how are doing, did you find a new job, what’s the best way to guard against a sacrifice bunt, blah blah blah. I expected him to answer at least some. What did I get in return? Three postcards. Hi-how-are-you-be-a-good-girl-love-Dad. And that sneak visit of his — I had to lie to everybody and almost lose all my friends because he wanted to stay hidden. Then he just ditched me again! So now what? If I do see him, what am I supposed to say?”
“Kristy,” Mary Anne said, “you have to look for him. You know that. If you don’t do it, you’ll always regret it.”
I felt as if a racketball had leaped up from my stomach and lodged itself in my throat. I knew I was going to cry, and I just hate that.
Leave it to Mary Anne.
She is always right.
I swallowed and stood up. “Okay. Let’s go.”
We barged up the aisle. Mr. Schafer and Jeff were already heading back with cardboard trays full of food.
“No need to go, we have enough for?—” Mr. Schafer began.
“Be right back!” Claudia shouted.
We whizzed into the corridor.
“How are we going to do this?” Mary Anne asked. “He could be anywhere!”
“He likes to sit on the first-base side,” I replied. “You can see the batters better from the
re because most of them are right-handed. Let’s start at the top level and work our way down.”
I sprinted up the ramp. My legs thumped the cement. People lurched out of the way.
Thinner. Dad had looked thinner. And his beard was gone. He’d had one the last time I’d seen him.
Maybe he was sick. Maybe he was on a health food diet. Maybe his girlfriend was a nutritionist.
If that was his girlfriend.
Maybe it was his wife.
My heart was pounding. My throat felt like a woolen sock.
We emerged in the upper deck. The stands were pretty sparse.
“This can’t be it,” I said. “He was in a crowded area.”
At each level, we split up, running down the aisles, scanning the crowd. No luck.
When we reached the box seats, just behind the dugout, a uniformed guard stopped us. “Tickets?”
“We’re sitting someplace else,” I blurted out. “But we have to find my dad!”
“All of you?” he asked.
“You don’t understand!” I said. “We came all the way from Connecticut. And I know he’s here. He was on the scoreboard?—”
“He’s a player?”
“No! He’s divorced! I mean, I haven’t seen him in a long time, and then I saw his face when the cameras panned the audience, and I don’t know exactly where he’s sitting, so even if you let me go down, I don’t even know if we’ll find him, but please please please let us look!”
The man pulled out a cell phone. “I’ll call the press box. They can page him for you.”
That was when I saw the flash of reddish-brown hair. And the little V-shaped grin. And the bright red shirt.
Just above the dugout. Right behind the first-base line.
“DA-A-A-A-A-AD!” I screamed.
He looked up. The V turned into an O.
Then I saw him mouth, “Kristy?”
I bolted past the guard. I nearly fell down the stairs. Dad was edging toward the aisle, stepping over people’s legs.
“Dad, it’s me!”
I stopped. He stopped. We were both in the aisle now. I was standing one step above him.
I didn’t know what to do. Hug him? Scream at him? Jump into his arms? Stomp away? My mind was a tangle.
His eyes were watery.
“Hi, pal,” he said.
At the sound of his voice, I had to catch my breath. I remembered the last time I’d heard that voice in my house, when I was little. I remembered the words it had used. Words that traveled through the walls. Words that made Mom cry and made me pull my pillow around my ears.