Abel nodded.
“You haven’t changed your mind about switching her to my class, have you?” she asked him.
“No,” said Abel. He was calling from a pay phone at a gas station. Gus had parked the truck across the street and told him he wouldn’t move until Abel called up Mr. Bone. “So, you got home all right last night?” Abel asked. He was sweating.
“Yes. Why? Is it a dangerous trip?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Abel. “You never know.”
“I had no problems,” she assured him.
“Well, I just thought I’d call and make sure,” he said.
“Thank you, Abel. That is very sweet.”
“Okay, fine,” he said, thinking that he could now say good-bye to her and then tell Gus that she didn’t want to go out with him because of the psychological problems it would cause for Angeline.
“Is that all?” Melissa asked him.
He paused. “Yes. No.” He took a breath. “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“Yes. See, I wanted to go out with you before Angeline switched to your class. I hear it might be against the law to have dinner with your kid’s teacher.”
Melissa laughed. “I’d love to have dinner with you tonight,” she said. “We’ll have to keep our eyes out for the cops, just the same,” she added, playing along with his joke.
Since she knew the way to his apartment, she said that she’d drive. “It’s too hard to give directions to my condominium.”
Abel walked back to the truck.
“Well?” Gus asked eagerly.
“What?” Abel asked innocently.
“C’mon,” Gus demanded. “Wha’d she say?”
“Who?” asked Abel.
“Just tell me what happened and stop being so funny!”
“I’m not being funny,” said Abel.
“I know,” said Gus. “You’re not the least bit funny. So will you tell me what she said?”
Abel shrugged. “We’re going out tonight,” he said very casually.
The bell rang, signifying that lunch was over. Miss Turbone looked around the vice-principal’s office. “I hope it’s not against the law,” she said aloud, then quickly walked back to class.
Out on a sidewalk a mailman turned and watched a garbage truck drive down the street and he wondered why it kept on honking its horn.
Mrs. Hardlick told her class that she had some bad news. “I just found out,” she said, “that Angeline will soon be leaving us.”
“Ohhh,” said the class, as if they were truly sorry to see her go.
“Is she moving?” someone asked.
“Where are you going, Angeline?” asked Judy Martin.
“She’ll still be at school,” said Mrs. Hardlick. “She’s going into Miss Turbone’s fifth-grade class.”
“That’s not fair,” said Philip Korbin. “She’s smart enough to be in the sixth grade, easily.”
“She sure is,” said Nelson Ford.
“I know,” said Mrs. Hardlick, “and just when she was beginning to show some real progress. Isn’t that always the way? What’s the matter, don’t you like it here, Angeline?”
Angeline stared at her, wide-eyed.
“Do you think the fifth grade is better than the sixth grade?” Mrs. Hardlick asked. “Well, it’s not. The sixth grade is best. The second grade is better than the first grade. And the third grade is better than the second grade. And the fourth grade is better than the third grade. And the fifth grade is better than the fourth grade. And the sixth grade is best!”
Angeline was dumbfounded. What was this nonsense?
“You’re too smart for the fifth grade,” said Mrs. Hardlick. “You belong here with me.”
Angeline stared at her in disbelief. She felt as if the walls were closing in on her.
“If you want,” said Mrs. Hardlick, “I’ll talk to the principal about it. I’ll ask him to let you stay here.”
“No,” Angeline whispered.
“Pardon?”
“No!” she shouted. She didn’t mean to shout so loud. She started to cry. “Excuse me,” she said. She stood up. “Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me.” She ran out of the room.
She ran across the school yard to the bus stop. Her heart was thumping and she was breathing very fast. Her head spun. She paced quickly in front of the bus stop. Fortunately she didn’t have to wait long.
She got on a bus, walked to the back, then walked back to the front and sat down somewhere near the middle. She never pulled the cord. She rode the bus all the way, as far as it went, past the high school, past the shopping mall, past the train station, past the tire store, past the hospital, all the way to the ocean.
Eighteen
Where’s Cool Breezer?
When the bus reached the ocean, Angeline was the only passenger left. It stopped across the street from Mitchell Beach, in front of a liquor store.
She hopped off the bus and gazed across the street. She still couldn’t see the ocean but she could see the sand. And she could smell the ocean. Its smell surrounded her. It was just as she had remembered.
She stepped blindly into the street. A car slammed on its horn, screeched, and swerved around her. She was lucky she wasn’t run over.
She ran across the street and to the top of a sand dune at the entrance to Mitchell Beach. From there, at last, she saw it, green and blue and brown, rolling and crashing against the shore. The water stretched out for as far as she could see, until it met the sky. She felt the ocean breeze blow through her hair. She smiled.
Despite the Indian summer weather, the beach was empty except for a lone fisherman who was fishing off Mitchell Pier. She wondered who Mitchell was, that he had a beach and a pier named after him. She wondered if that’s who the fisherman was.
She yelled as loud as she could and ran full speed down the face of the sand dune, then continued out across the sand until she fell over. She laughed as she sat up, spitting sand out of her mouth. She took off her shoes and socks and left them there at the place where she had fallen.
She walked very slowly to the ocean. She walked slowly, not because she was afraid, but just the opposite: she wanted to savor each step. She stopped just outside the reach of the white water and rolled her pant legs up to her knees. Her skin tingled.
A wave broke toward her and she quickly backed away from it. She returned as the water receded and stepped in up to her ankles. “Yikes!” she exclaimed as she jumped out of the water. Then she walked back in. It didn’t feel as cold the second time.
She continued in up to her knees, just below her rolled-up pants. She bent over and stuck her arms in too. Then she splashed her face with the salt water. As she did that her pant legs unrolled into the water. She laughed and leaned farther over so her hair could get wet, too.
A wave came crashing toward her. She ran away from it as best she could. She escaped the worst, but she got splashed by the white water. She laughed. She jumped down on the sand, rolled over, and sat up facing the ocean. Her clothes were all wet and salty and sandy. Wherever she looked, the ocean went on and on and on and on forever. She wondered where she had left her shoes and socks.
She got up and walked down the beach toward the pier. Her pants felt coarse as they rubbed against her legs. She could taste the ocean water in her mouth.
She had to crawl up a steep sand dune and step over some rocks in order to get onto the pier. She could have gotten to it more easily from the street, but she didn’t want to leave the beach. She had finally found a place where she felt she belonged, and she didn’t want to leave it.
She climbed up onto the pier, slipped under the wood railing, and walked out toward the end. She took a deep breath of ocean air. She wished she hadn’t lost her sneakers. She had to walk carefully on the pier. She didn’t want to get a splinter in her foot. She also had to beware of the rotting remains of dead fish. She didn’t want to step on a fish head, barefoot.
She
watched the fisherman as he tried to reel in a fish. She thought it must have been a big one, the way his line was all bent over. She stood right next to him to get a better view.
He glanced quickly at her. “Howdy,” he said. His voice was high and raspy. A line of sweat dripped down his dirty forehead, under a soggy wool cap. He smelled like stale alcohol. There was half a bottle of whiskey and lots of beer cans, some full, some empty, lying next to him. She thought he was probably drunk.
The fisherman struggled with the rod, using both hands. His muscles bulged. But then suddenly the line reeled in very easily, as if the fish just gave up.
“You caught a boot!” exclaimed Angeline. A boot covered with seaweed hung at the end of his line.
The fisherman laughed. His laugh was high and raspy, too. He pulled in the boot and set it next to his foot. “Looks like my size,” he said. He took a drink from the whiskey bottle. “Maybe I can catch the other one. Do you have a sock I can use for bait?”
“I lost my socks,” said Angeline, even though she knew he was joking. “And my sneakers too. Maybe you can catch those.” She laughed.
The fisherman looked at Angeline’s bare feet. “Too small,” he said. “I would have to throw them back.” He took a long drink of beer and burped.
“What’s your name?” Angeline asked him.
He grinned, looking very glad that she’d asked him that. “Oh, I got a good name,” he said proudly. He said it like his name was the best thing he had, maybe the only good thing. “Cool Breezer,” he told her.
“Cool Breezer,” Angeline repeated. “That is a good name.”
He told her how he got it. When he was in high school, he owned a car that had no back to it. There was no rear window, no backseat, not even a trunk. “A lot of cool breezes used to blow through that car,” he said. Both he and his car were each called “Cool Breezer.” If someone said “Where’s Cool Breezer?” you didn’t know if they were talking about him or his car. Sometimes even he’d say it himself—“Where’s Cool Breezer?”—and you still didn’t know if he was talking about his car or himself.
He tilted his head back and poured the rest of a beer can down his throat, and also some down his shirt. He burped again. “What’s your name?” he asked.
Angeline looked down at her bare feet. “Cool Feet!” she announced.
Cool Breezer laughed. He tipped his dirty wool cap very gentlemanly-like and said, “Miss Feet.” He thought she had the prettiest feet he’d ever seen.
Angeline pretended to tip her imaginary cap, too, and said, “Mr. Breezer.” They both laughed. “My father drives a garbage truck,” she added.
“No kiddin’,” laughed Cool Breezer. However, suddenly he felt very sad and empty inside. He felt envious of Mr. Feet, Cool Feet’s father, who drove a garbage truck. She had spoken of him like he was a hero. He suddenly wished he had a daughter, too, like her, with pretty feet, who would be just as proud of him. All his life, he had wanted to be a hero. “What happened?” he wondered. “Where’s Cool Breezer?”
“Why do you fish off the side of the pier?” Angeline asked him. “Why don’t you fish off the end?”
“Well,” he said, glad that she asked him a question that he could answer, “if I fished off the end of the pier, the current would take the line under the pier. That’s bad. Here at the side of the pier, the current takes the line away from the pier.”
“Oh,” said Angeline. “Well, I’m going down to the end of the pier.” She took a couple of steps, turned, and said, “So long, Cool Breezer.”
Cool Breezer tipped his cap. “Cool Feet.”
She walked to the end of the pier, careful not to step on any fish heads or hooks, and she tried not to get any splinters in her feet.
She sat down at the end of the pier and dangled her legs over the edge. It was about a fifteen- or twenty-foot drop to the ocean. And everywhere she looked, it went on forever.
There were millions of different kinds of fish, thousands of which nobody had even heard of. There were “Gardens of Eels” that covered acres of the ocean floor. There were caves and mountains and valleys, most of which were still a secret.
It was a great, unexplored mystery. Octopuses, sharks, bat rays, sea horses, bumphead hogfish, long-snouted hawkfish, fat innkeepers—the ocean covered more than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface. Great pods of whales could swim around unnoticed, dolphins, angelfish, rainbow fish, clown fish, boots and sneakers.
Her hands gripped the pier as she ducked her head under the wooden railing. Moonfish, goose-fish, flashlight fish, barracudas, she took several long deep breaths. Stonefish, lobsters, paddlefish, glass catfish, her muscles tightened. Tigerfish, scissors-tail fish, the water rocked beneath her.
She held her breath and pushed herself off the pier. She fell through the air and splashed into the salt water.
After she hit the water, she continued to fall, somersaulting as she went down. It felt like the different parts of her body were doing somersaults separately, her head, her feet, her wrists, as she kept sinking.
She had no idea how deep she’d fallen, but she was out of breath and had to hurry back to the surface to get some air. She felt a terrible pain all over from having hit the water so hard. She struggled wildly to get her head up. The water swirled all around her, splashing off the beams of the pier. She flailed her arms and legs as she tried to stay up just long enough to catch her breath, but she felt herself being pulled down again.
Her eyes burned, and her nose and throat. Surprisingly, she didn’t feel cold except for her ears. Her ears were freezing. They were so cold they felt like they were going to break off.
She raised her head just enough above the surface to get another breath. Her arms and legs began to weaken. She kept swallowing water. She wanted to get air, but before she could breathe some in, she first had to cough the water out of her lungs. And as she coughed she kept taking in more water. She felt like she’d never catch up. She felt that if she could just get her breath once, she’d be all right.
She went down. She fought her way back up, coughed, gasped some air between coughs, and went down again. Her head was spinning. Her nose burned and her ears were frozen. She struggled to just get her mouth above water. She tried to take a breath but her mouth filled with water instead. She spit out as much as she could. Her eyes were on fire. She went under.
Puff-fish, turkey fish, monkeyface blenny…
Nineteen
The Only Way to Find Her Is to Tell Her a Joke
“Don’t hug me until I take a shower,” said Abel as he headed straight for the bathroom. “Angelini,” he added gleefully.
He was eagerly and anxiously looking forward to seeing Mr. Bone. He felt like a teenager about to go out on his first date. He turned on the shower and washed the banana peels out of his hair, feeling so excited that he sang, sort of:
“Oh, I went downtown for to see my gal,
Sing pol-ly wol-ly doo-dle all the day.
We had us a time, and how,
Sing pol-ly wol-ly doo-dle all the day.”
He made up the words as he went along.
“Her name’s Me-lis-sa, but they call her Mis-tah,
Sing pol-ly wol-ly doo-dle all the day.”
He couldn’t stay on tune either.
“Fare thee well,
Fare well,
Fare well to the garbage truck.
Oh I’m off to Lou-si-an-a for to see my Su-sy-a-na,
Singin’ pol-ly wol-ly doo-dle like a duck.”
But he was happy.
He stopped singing as he let the shower spray his face. It had been over five years. Over five years since Nina died, since she drowned at Mitchell Beach. “That’s long enough!” he decided. Now it was time for him to start having some fun. “I should go back to the beach, too,” he thought. “I should take Angeline.”
“Oh I had a dog that said me-ow,
Sing pol-ly wol-ly doo-dle all the day.
So, I got a cat that said bow-w
ow,
Sing pol-ly wol-ly doo-dle all the day.”
He washed his feet and in-between his toes. He washed behind his ears four times. He washed behind his knees. He couldn’t remember the last time he had washed the back of his knees.
“Fare thee well,
Fare well,
Fare well my dar-lin’ tru-u-ue…
Oh I’m off to Lou-si-an-a wid a head full o’ ba-na-nas,
Singin’ pol-ly wol-ly doo-dle doo-dle doo-oo.”
He turned off all the hot water, leaving just the cold. He stayed under it as long as he could, then stepped out of the shower and vigorously dried himself off. “Angelini!” he called. “Guess what? Gus is coming over tonight. He’ll have dinner with you. Just you and Gus, Angelini!
“Do you want to know where I’ll be?” he called. “Angelini? Angelooni?”
He lathered his face with shaving cream. “I’ve got a date!” He waited for her to respond. “I have a date, Angelooni!” He was so excited he cut himself shaving.
He went into his bedroom to get dressed. “Do you want to know with whom?” he called. “You’ll never guess whom I’ll be going out with tonight!” He walked out into the living room. “Do you want to guess?”
She wasn’t in the living room or in the kitchen. “Where are you, Angelooni?” he called. He looked for her in all the usual hiding places, under the bed, in the closet, although he knew, with Angeline, there were no usual hiding places. “I haven’t got time for this!” he called. “I have a date!” He decided to break the news. That would surely get her to reveal herself.
“With Mr. Bone!”
He waited. She still didn’t respond. He knew Angeline was great at playing hide-and-seek. It suddenly occurred to him that it had been a long time since they had played. He wondered why that was. “I’ve got a date with Mr. Bone, Angelooni!”
He looked for her all over the apartment. It was a small apartment but he knew she always found a new place to hide, one that he would never think of. Once, he remembered, she sat on top of the refrigerator, right out in the open, but he was so busy looking behind things and under things that he didn’t see her. If she hadn’t laughed when he looked inside the mustard jar, he never would have found her.