“Is Elise opening presents with us tomorrow?”
“Yes, she’s coming over with Nana tomorrow, and we’re all having breakfast together and opening presents.”
‘Nana’ was what Davey and Brian called Elise’s mother, Ruth Ann.
“Nana’s wrinkly.”
“Yes, well, Granny Jobson’s wrinkly, too. I’ll be wrinkly, soon. You’ll be wrinkly, we’ll all be wrinkly.”
“Yeah, but she acts weird.”
Jeff hadn’t ever tried to explain Nana’s beginning stages of Alzheimers to Davey. He wasn’t even sure he should. As far as he knew, Elise had told him in confidence. When she wanted the boys to know, she would tell them, he reasoned.
So instead, Jeff just deflected the question. “Yeah, well, Granny Jobson acts weird. She dances with invisible people all the time.”
“She says she dances with Granpa.”
Jeff looked at Davey in the rearview mirror. This was the first he’d heard of Granny’s choice of dance partners. “She told you that?”
“Yeah.”
Huh…Granpa Jobson had passed away six years ago.
“Yeah, well…you act weird, too.”
Davey looked shocked. “Me?!”
“You talk to invisible birds, and some kid with your face is messing with the toilet paper.”
“But that’s real!”
“Yeah, well, it’s still weird.”
“Is not.” Davey put his face behind the headrest, and pouted. But only for a second, and then he followed up with the sucker punch.
“When’re you gonna kiss Elise?”
“WHAT?”
Jeff nearly slammed on the brakes. It was more of a hard tap, but it caused several car honks and some screeching of tires.
It also caused a great deal of motion in the car. Brian was restrained by his seatbelt, but Davey’s face got mashed against the headrest, and then he collapsed back into his seat.
“Jeez, Dad!” Davey complained, rubbing his nose.
“I am NOT going to kiss Elise! And put on your seatbelt!”
“You always look like you wanna.”
“WHAT? I do NOT!”
“Well, you always look stoopid around her, like Casey Smith does when she’s chasing boys.”
Casey Smith was a girl in Davey’s kindergarten class, who had already discovered boys at an extremely young age – or had just found an inspired way to torture them.
Davey screwed up his face like he had just been asked to eat a particularly disgusting piece of food. Which for Davey would be something like asparagus or spinach, since dog food was fair game. “She always looks stoopid like that when she tries to kiss me or Jack or Benny.”
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Copyright © 2008 Darren Pillsbury. All rights reserved.
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