Finding the Worm (6 page)

It’s Christmas Eve, but it’s hard to
get in the mood because of what’s going on with Quentin. Christmas is a big deal on Thirty-Fourth Avenue, even if it drives Rabbi Salzberg crazy. He says you’re either cream or milk … you can’t be half-and-half.

What he means is you’re either Jewish or you’re not Jewish, and if you’re Jewish, you’re supposed to celebrate Hanukkah, not Christmas. Like that’s ever going to happen.
Yes, Rabbi, I’d much rather get eight crappy little presents, like dreidels and shoehorns and handkerchiefs, than one really good present, like a slot car race track
. (Which was what I got for Christmas last year.) But here’s the thing: we get Christmas presents, but we also get the dreidels and shoehorns and
handkerchiefs for Hanukkah. Plus, we light the candles, so it’s never a Hanukkah versus Christmas thing. It’s both.

Quentin’s family is the same way. So is Eric the Red’s and Howie Wartnose’s—Howie’s parents go the whole nine yards and put up a real tree! If you look in their window at the Hampshire House, you’ll see a lit-up menorah sitting on the windowsill, with a lit-up Christmas tree standing right behind it. Mike the Bike, who’s a Catholic, saw that a couple of years ago and called Howie a dirty Jew—except it sounded more like “doity chew,” because that’s how Mike talks—and then rode off real fast before Howie could get hold of him. But it was a stupid thing to say, because the next week, when school started up again, Howie jumped him during recess. Then, at the end of the day, he jumped him again and broke the kickstand off his bicycle.

The only Hanukkah-but-not-Christmas guys on Thirty-Fourth Avenue are Shlomo and Lonnie, which makes sense, because Shlomo’s dad is by-the-book strict and Lonnie’s mom was in the concentration camp. The Jewish stuff is a major thing for them. I mean, it’s a
thing
for all of us. It’s not like any of us are worming our way out of Hebrew school. But it’s not a
major
thing.

The funniest thing that ever happened on Christmas happened just last year. It didn’t happen on Christmas exactly, but it happened
because of
Christmas. It was a week later, so it was right after we egged Danley Dimmel. (Which
wasn’t funny at all.) But what happened with Quentin’s Christmas present—that was the funny thing.

Quentin got twenty bucks for Christmas last year. His dad woke him up on Christmas morning and slipped him a twenty-dollar bill. Just like that! None of us had ever had a twenty-dollar bill before. Not even Lonnie, who would sometimes wave around a ten-dollar bill he got for working in his father’s candy store. But a
twenty
—that was just unreal!

I can’t tell you how many arguments we had over what Quentin should do with his money. Shlomo kept saying he should buy a set of walkie-talkies, but Howie kept saying he should buy a Saturn V model rocket kit. The only thing we ruled out was Eric’s idea. He wanted Quentin to get a year’s subscription to
Mad Magazine
, which Quentin would never read, since he didn’t like to read, but Eric would read over and over, because he loved
Mad Magazine
.

It was the Thursday after New Year’s, late in the afternoon, and the five of us—Quentin, Howie, Eric, Shlomo, and me—were walking up Parsons Boulevard to Hebrew school. Lonnie wasn’t with us, because he’d gotten bar mitzvahed a couple of months before, so he didn’t have to go anymore. (It always feels weird when Lonnie’s not there. He’s kind of the glue that holds the gang together.)

We were halfway to Gates of Prayer, just crossing Northern Boulevard, when Eric asked us if we’d remembered
to get tzedakah dollars from our moms. Tzedakah, in case you don’t know, is charity money the rabbis collect for poor people. Except in Hebrew school it’s not a choice. You
have
to cough up that dollar every week, and then you have to walk up to the front of the classroom, with the rest of the kids watching, and you have to fold the dollar in half and slide it into the tzedakah box—or else you get a note home to your parents.

So Eric asked us if we’d remembered, and Quentin got this nervous look on his face, and right off we knew he’d forgotten his tzedakah dollar. None of us had an extra one, so it looked like Quentin was going to get that note home. Except then he pulled out the twenty-dollar bill.

“What good is that?” Shlomo said. “You think the rabbi’s going to make change?”

“Then I’ll just put in the whole thing,” Quentin said.

I’m not sure who said what, because the sentences got jumbled together, but Howie and Shlomo and Eric shouted over one another, “You’re out of your mind!” and “You’ve got to be kidding!” and “Over my dead body!”

Quentin laughed, but it was a panicky laugh.

“Look,” I said, “why don’t we just go into the deli and get change for the twenty?”

That’s what we did. I took Quentin’s twenty, and the five of us walked into the Parsons Deli and up to the counter. I did the talking, and the old guy behind the cash
register was shaking his head before I even was done asking the question. “No change without a purchase,” he said.

“C’mon!” Howie cried. “What’s the big deal?”

“Either buy something, or get out of my store.”

So I glanced around and saw a box of Bazooka bubble gum. One piece for one penny. I grabbed one piece and gave the guy the twenty-dollar bill.

“You got to buy something else,” he said.

I looked up at him and said in a soft voice, “I think that’s against the law.”

Which I was pretty sure was true.

He stared me down. I looked him in the eyes, but I tried to do it in a hopeful way, not an angry way.

“Give me the damn twenty,” he said.

He took the bill, opened the cash register, and handed me back a ten-dollar bill, a five-dollar bill, and five ones.

“Don’t we owe you a penny for the bubble gum?”

“It’s on the house,” he said. “Now get out of here.”

Problem solved, right?

So a couple of hours later, we’re sitting in Rabbi Salzberg’s classroom, and we’re getting near the end of class, and he pulls out the tzedakah box from the bottom drawer of his desk and sets it down on top of the desk. As soon as he does that, we all reach for our dollars, and that starts the parade up to the front of the room, one by one, in alphabetical order.

When Quentin’s turn comes up, he’s got this big smile on his face, and I’m feeling pretty good about that smile, because it was my idea to get change at the deli … except then, as he passes by my desk, I notice he’s got the ten-dollar bill in his hand instead of a one. I reach out to grab him, but it’s too late. He’s out of reach. I call his name under my breath, but he can’t hear me. Quentin is still smiling as he folds the ten-dollar bill in half and slides it into the tzedakah box.

I thought Howie was going to strangle him on the walk home from Gates of Prayer. Eric and Shlomo were yelling at Quentin and cracking up at the same time. You should have seen Lonnie’s reaction when we told him what had happened. He was rolling on the floor, gasping for breath. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him crack up so hard. I mean, we razzed Quentin for months afterward. None of it bothered him. The guy is just good-natured.

He kept saying how he still had ten dollars, and that was more money than he’d ever had before. You know, to this day, I have no idea what he did with that ten dollars.

Except here’s the thing: the more I think about it, the more I think Quentin did it on purpose. It’s nothing I can say for sure. But he always got this look on his face when we were arguing over what to do with his twenty-dollar bill. It was like the entire thing made him feel weird. I think maybe he meant to get rid of all the arguing in the tzedakah box.

Here’s the second essay on good
citizenship I wrote for Principal Salvatore:

I slid the paper under the door of Principal Salvatore’s office as soon as I got to school, and Miss Medina handed it back to me an hour later. Principal Salvatore had written on the back:

Dad woke me up this morning just after
sunrise. He does that every year on my birthday. He sat down hard on the side of my bed, which bounced me about a foot off the mattress, and I went from fast asleep to wide awake in that second I was in the air.

The first thing I saw, after my eyes focused, was him grinning down at me. Then he said, “I tell you, Jules, you don’t look a day over twelve!”

That’s his routine, every birthday, as far back as I can remember. That same dumb joke, year after year, except the number keeps getting bigger. I don’t mind, to be honest. It’s the only day he does it, and it seems to mean a lot to him.

I yawned and said, “What did I get?”

“You’re thirteen, and you’re still expecting a present?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, kid, I’ll bring you home a pack of Camels.”

“Good enough,” I said.

He snatched the pillow out from under my head, which sent me rolling over. Then he clobbered me across the shoulders and back with it, just kidding around. After that, he got up and left for work.

Now here’s what you need to know about my dad: he’s maybe the most regular guy on the planet. Nothing ever changes with him. It’s not a bad thing, but it also makes him real predictable. Like, for example, he always buys presents for me and Amelia about a week before our actual birthdays and always hides them in the same place … on the floor in the back of the closet in his and my mom’s bedroom. He stashes them underneath a pile of dress shirts he doesn’t wear anymore because he sweated through the collars. So every year, a few days before my birthday, I sneak into the closet and check underneath the pile of shirts to find out what he got me.

What he got me this year is a Bobby Murcer–autograph baseball glove.

I’ll act real surprised when he hands it across the table tonight after dinner. That’s part of the routine too. Plus, it
is
a great present. He knows how bad I need a new
glove, and he knows Bobby Murcer is
my guy
. I’ve followed him since he was a rookie in 1965. Even after he got drafted into the army, I waited two years until he got out, and then I followed him again. I even kept a scrapbook the first couple of years—I pasted in the newspaper box score of every game he hit a home run. So, yeah, my dad couldn’t have done much better with his present. And any other year, getting a Bobby Murcer baseball glove would have been the highlight of my day.

But Quentin totally stole my dad’s thunder.

It was around three-thirty when the telephone rang. Amelia raced into the kitchen to answer it, which is what she does whenever the phone rings, and then she let out a shriek, but a second later I heard her apologizing in a soft voice. That got my curiosity up. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, though, so after a minute, I forgot about it. The next thing I knew, she was standing outside the door to my room, which is as far as the phone cord stretches, smiling ear to ear, telling me I had a call.

“Who is it?” I said.

She handed the phone to me and stepped back to watch my reaction.

I stared at it for a second, then brought it to my ear and said, “Hello?”

Then came a whispery voice I didn’t even recognize. “Jules?”

“Yeah …”

“It’s Quentin.”

It was one of those times when your brain short-circuits, when you want to say ten things at once, but nothing comes out of your mouth. I couldn’t spit out a single word. I might as well have put the phone to my armpit and made farting noises—that’s how shocked I was. I mean, the last time I saw the guy, he had that tube-thing in his mouth.

After about ten seconds of gagging and sputtering, I came up with “How do you feel?”

“Not too bad.”

“So … er … is the food okay?”

Amelia slugged me in the chest when I said that. Not hard—she wasn’t mad. But she was staring at me with a real frustrated look, as if to say,
That’s it? That’s the best you’ve got? That’s all you have to say to the guy?
It
wasn’t
all I had to say. That’s for sure. But I wasn’t going to get gushy over the phone, which I knew was what she wanted. That’s something girls never seem to figure out, not even if they’re seniors in high school, like Amelia. Guys don’t get gushy with one another. That’s how it works. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, but that’s just how it is. If I got gushy, I would’ve felt wrong afterward. Not only that:
Quentin
would have felt wrong afterward. He would’ve felt like I was getting gushy because he was sick, which would have
reminded him of how sick he was. Why would I do that to him just to make Amelia happy?