Momly kept the kitchen just like she kept the car. Clean. Germ free. Scrubbed from top to bottom with something sudsy and bright colored, like sun yellow that smelled like rotten lemon, or mutant green that smelled like if every flower in the world sneezed. I pulled up to the table; Maddy was peeling fat off the meat. Cauliflower tonight. White broccoli. But not nearly as white as the spotless dinner plates.
After I told Momly what I had to tell her every night, which was that I was sorry for not finishing my homework in time to help her, she kicked off the dinner small talk with telling us about her favorite patient. See, she got her own business (but it don’t make her boat money) where she takes care of sick people—Emily’s Expert Care, which I think is a terrible name, by the way. Ain’t got no warmth to it. No hug in it. I think it should be called something like, In Emily’s Arms, or Mobile Mom. Something like that. Maddy thinks it should be called Momly to the Rescue, and, well, even though I don’t like that name either, it would at least be a true statement. At least for Ma, because when me and Maddy went to go live with Momly and Uncle Tony, it just made sense for Momly to add Ma to her client list, along with the most-talked-about of them all, Mr. Warren, who Momly calls the sweetest old man alive. But I don’t really know if my mother is the sweetest old lady alive, and Ma wasn’t really happy about none of it at first, just because she don’t really like nobody taking care of her. But at least it’s family and not some stranger, even though she can definitely, uh . . . be a lot to deal with. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe a stranger would’ve been better. I bet during those first few visits, Ma almost drove Momly to Jesus too. Or off a cliff.
“Well, my favorite patient besides your mother,” Momly clarified about Mr. Warren. He was an old man who had Alzheimer’s, which basically just means he can’t really remember too much no more. She said sometimes random stuff popped into his head, but usually he doesn’t know where he is, even though he’s in his own house. So he just stays in the bed now. And Momly goes over there and feeds him, and makes sure he’s all cleaned up while his daughter runs around taking care of errands and stuff. Momly’s been looking out for him for a long time.
“I went to use the bathroom, and when I got back to the room, he was up out of the bed, tearing the room apart looking for something. He was yanking clothes out of the closet, and snatching pictures off the wall. So I asked him what he was looking for and he said, ‘Something to buff the floor with.’?”
“Buff the floor?” Uncle Tony asked. I was just as confused.
“That’s what he said. And when I told him the floor didn’t need buffing, he explained that he had mouths to feed, and who was going to take care of his family?” Momly laid her napkin in her lap, all proper, like she was eating in front of folks she ain’t know. “Eventually I got him to calm down. Got him back in the bed, where he seemed to just melt back into himself. And I put everything back in the closet, and hung the pictures back on the wall.” She shook her head. “Just one of those days. Poor guy.” Momly took a breath, then turned to me. “Speaking of pictures on the wall, Patty, how’s the whole Frida thing going?” Momly now pushed her fork through one of the tiny trees. Tired seemed to sit in her cheeks, make her face look saggy. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she fell asleep right there at the table. “It’s Frida, right?”
I nodded. I’d asked her if she knew anything about Frida when we first got the assignment, but she said she didn’t. She had seen her in pictures, but that was pretty much it.
“It’s goin’ okay,” I told her. “She seemed like a cool lady.”
“But not as cool as you,” Uncle Tony said, wiggling his eyebrows. I wasn’t sure if Momly was done small-talking me about my school project, but if she wasn’t, Uncle Tony definitely ended any chance of it continuing because he awkwardly made a hard left into a totally different conversation. “Um . . . how was practice?”
Frida to track practice? Worst transition of all time. This is why Momly’s the small-talk queen, and Uncle Tony’s the cartoon character.
But I knew Uncle Tony wasn’t trying to be rude, and that his jumpiness was all about my second-place loss at the meet on Saturday, which, by the way, he wasn’t at. Had an emergency at the office. He does something called Information Technology, which is IT for short, or “it” for even shorter (which is what he says), which all just means he works with computers. And apparently sometimes computers have emergencies. Anyway, all this weird dinnertime chat was his way of knocking on the door of my brain, like, Hey, is it okay to come in? And if it wasn’t for practice today, maybe I’d still be mad. I told him and Momly and Maddy about being chosen for the 4x800 relay team, and doing the waltz.
“The waltz? Like . . . the ball-gown, pinky-in-the-air dance?” Pinky-in-the-air was Uncle Tony’s way of saying fancy.
“Yep. It was to teach us something about being in tune with each other. Like knowing each other so well that we don’t even have to think about the handoff.”
“Maddy, sweetheart, eat your cauliflower,” Momly’s exhausted voice slid between me and Uncle Tony’s.
Maddy groaned. “Eat your cauliflower,” I repeated. “It’ll make you strong.” Uncle Tony, following my lead, curled his arms up, making his muscles jump. Maddy smiled.
“Well, if doing the waltz is all it takes, then let me show you how to run even faster,” Uncle Tony said. Then, as soon as he said it he braced himself, thinking I would catch feelings, as if I thought he was saying I don’t run fast enough, and judging by Saturday, I don’t. Not fast enough. But it was cool.
“Uncle Tony, I’m not mad no more,” I told him, getting straight to the point so he could stop acting so weird.
His shoulders dropped, rolled back as if he just unbuttoned the top button on his pants after a big meal. “Oh, thank God,” he exhaled the words, and I smirked, then tapped my fork on Maddy’s plate. She stabbed a piece of cauliflower, lifted it to her mouth. Uncle Tony continued, “So, yeah, if you wanna run faster, try this.”
He scooted out from the table, Momly already frowning at whatever was coming. And then . . . it came. The strangest thing I’ve seen Uncle Tony do, maybe ever. The Running Man. Spastic and offbeat and all over the place.
Maddy busted out laughing, white mush in her mouth, and I was right behind her, my laughter scrubbing away the last 10 percent of sad in me. Uncle Tony lurched forward, pumping his legs, panting, “This . . . is . . . how . . . you . . . do . . . it . . . Patty . . . ,” and I kept snickering. My uncle, a straight-up clown.