Regular Guy (3 page)

M
y parents were in the front yard. Dad was standing on a crate posing in his bathing suit. He had on black socks and his brown loafers. Mom, wearing a black garbage bag with holes cut out for her head and arms, was chipping at a huge block of ice with a hammer and chisel. The grass around the ice block was soggy, so she wore a pair of rubber flippers; and to protect her eyes from the flying ice chips, swim goggles.

My father's face lit up when he saw me.

“Hey, Guy! Look, your mother's immortalizing me in ice,” he called.

“Uh huh,” I said as I wheeled my bike into the garage and leaned it against the back
wall. I let myself in the side door so that I didn't have to see the spectacle known as my family out there on display for all the world to see. I wasn't sure how much more humiliation I could stand.

I seriously considered going upstairs and climbing into my bed with my clothes on, pulling the covers over my head, and staying there until I turned eighteen and could legally move out. I also thought about dialing Bob-o's number and begging Mrs. Smith—“Mom”—to come and straighten out this horrible mix-up. Instead, I poured myself a bowl of granola, pulled the family photo album off the shelf, and went out into the backyard to swing in the hammock and study photographs from the early days, hoping they might shed some light on the situation.

I could hear my mother chipping away at the ice and the murmur of my parents' voices drifting through the air as I opened the album. The first few pages were full of
sepia-colored photos of ancient relatives in top hats and long white dresses. I recognized my grandparents, smiling stiffly on their wedding day. It was hard to believe that Grandpa Strang had ever actually had hair. Then there was my mother graduating from high school, looking almost normal in her cap and gown until you noticed she had painted her feet to look as if she was wearing shoes even though she was actually barefoot. There was Dad in a scout uniform standing proudly next to a tepee he'd obviously made out of newspapers and a bunch of coat hangers. He looked almost exactly the same because he was wearing nerdy black-framed glasses identical to the ones he still wears, and his pants, as usual, were about three inches too short. I hurried through my parents' wedding photos because seeing them looking all moony-eyed at each other—my father for some reason wearing a ridiculous gold turban and my mother a wreath of real grapes on her
head—made my stomach ache.

There were a couple of pictures of my mother pregnant and then, all of a sudden, there I was. Pink and bald and bawling. There were many pictures of my mother holding me, walking me, bathing me, burping me. It appeared that I was usually either asleep or crying in the first few months of my life. As I got a little older, except for the way they combed my hair into a kind of Dairy Queen curlicue on top of my head, I looked like a pretty regular baby. But once I was up and on my feet the pictures began to tell a different story.

First of all, there were the Halloween costumes—homemade, of course. One photograph showed me covered, head to toe, with gray fuzz. The caption read
GUY, AGE 4. “LINT
.” They had actually dressed me up as a lint ball and sent me out trick-or-treating. There were also many shots of birthday celebrations, at which my father performed magic tricks (including the infamous “snort the oyster”)
and my mother immortalized me on the top of one birthday cake after another. On one particularly embarrassing occasion, my eighth birthday, she had used tan frosting to create a naked birthday boy complete with a pink gumdrop to represent my “outie” belly-button. Was nothing sacred?

As I gazed at the rock-solid proof of my insane upbringing I heard the flip-flopping of my mother approaching in her swim fins.

“Guy, sweetie,” she said, “come see the ice sculpture. It's a trip.”

“Not a trip I'm interested in taking,” I said without looking up.

My mother pulled the goggles up onto her forehead and looked at me. “Something the matter?”

“Look at yourself, Lorraine,” I answered. “You look like something from
Sea Hunt
.”

“Oh, I
loved Sea Hunt
.” She shooed a horsefly away with one of her fins. “Hey, how do you know about that show, and why are
you calling me ‘Lorraine' all of a sudden?”

“They show
Sea Hunt
all the time on the oldies rerun channel, and in case you've forgotten, your name is Lorraine.”

“Oh, I thought I was ‘Mom,'” she said.

“So did I,” I said quietly.

“Listen, Guy, your dad and I had a great idea. We thought it might be fun to have a party tonight, you know, invite a few people over for a barbecue? And here's the kicker. We're going to fill the wading pool with lemonade and float your father in it. What do you think?”

“Dad's going to float in the pool?”

“Not the real Dad, the ice sculpture Dad. It'll give me a chance to show it off.”

“Well, count me out,” I said as I swung my legs over the edge of the hammock and hopped out.

My mother put her hands on her hips. “Are you still mad about the lamp shade?” she asked. “Is that what this is all about?”

“That's only part of it, just the tip of the iceberg,” I said. “Do you have any idea what it feels like to be dressed up as a lint ball and sent out in public? Or what it's like to see yourself naked on top of a cake being served to your entire second-grade class? No one eats raw hot dogs for lunch, do you realize that?” My mother didn't say anything. “I like peanut butter and jelly, and white underwear. I like Superman, not Lee Trevino. I like blue and white, not purple and orange, and I don't like my prized possessions glued to household appliances.”

“But white underwear is so
boring
, honey.”

“Then I guess I'm boring,” I said. “And you know what? If you want someone more exotic than me for a son, maybe you should have been more careful about which little bundle of joy you brought home from the hospital that hot July afternoon. Did you ever think about that,
Lorraine
?”

“What in the world are you talking…”

But I was already halfway across the yard, propelled by my anger and the need to straighten out this ridiculous sham of a life I was leading.

I
stayed up in my room for the rest of the afternoon. I heard my parents dragging the wading pool off the rafters in the garage and across the backyard to the patio. I listened as they made preparations for their little “shindig,” as my mother kept calling it.

“How many gallons of lemonade do you think it'll take to fill it up, Wuckums?” my mother called to my father. His name is William, but he'd had trouble pronouncing it as a child and had inadvertently nicknamed himself “Wuckums” for life.

“Just dump in all of the containers and fill it with the hose,” he called back. “If it's too weak I'll run down to the store and get more.”

My father got the grill going, and soon the odor of barbecued chicken wafted up into my room. I put the pillow over my head and ignored my rumbling stomach. I was not going to this party no matter what. Even with my head covered I could hear my mother squealing as she and my father carried the ice sculpture from the front yard to the back.

“Oooh, you're giving me goose bumps, Wuckums!” she cried.

Then I heard a loud splash as they tossed my mother's work of art into the pool.

“You know, dear, it really does look like me. Especially around the ears,” my father boomed cheerfully.

Pretty soon I heard people arriving. I recognized the voices. Leo and Emma Biedermeyer, the two wackos who owned the art-supply shop in town. Petra Vidnowich, an accomplished classical pianist who taught all the kids in the neighborhood even though she hated children. Sammy and Val, our next-door neighbors, who liked my parents
because they didn't complain when their cat used my old sandbox for a toilet. And then I heard a voice I knew I recognized, but I couldn't quite place.

“Long time no see, William. Long time no see.”

“Call me Wuckums, John. Everybody else does.”

“Really? Okay…Wuckums,” said the man tentatively.

John. Who was John? I racked my brain but came up empty.

“Yoo-hoo, Marie, come and take a look at my latest work of art. And while you're at it, how about a glass of lemonade?” called my mother.

Marie? John and Marie? Wait. It couldn't be. I jumped off the bed and raced over to the window just in time to see Bob-o's mother accepting a glass of lemonade from my mother. Or was it the other way around? Good grief, my real mother and my supposed mother, face-to-face in my own backyard.

“I suddenly remembered that incredible barbecue sauce you made years ago and I thought, ‘You know, Lorraine, you should just call up that Marie Smith and ask her for the recipe. So what if you haven't talked to her in umpteen years, we had
babies
together for gosh sake, she'll give you the recipe.' And I figured if I was serving your sauce, the least we could do was invite you and John over to sample it.”

I couldn't believe my ears.

“Lovely of you, Lorraine,” said Mrs. Smith, laughing nervously. “I'm just surprised you remembered the sauce—why it must have been almost twelve years ago that we all got together for that picnic.”

“Right after the boys were born,” said my mother.

“Time flies,” said Mrs. Smith.

Personally, at that particular moment I felt as if time was standing still. They actually
knew
each other and they knew they'd both had boys at the same time. We'd all gone on
a picnic together! It was shocking. Just then I heard a noise behind me and I spun around to find Bob-o Smith standing in my doorway with his finger up his nose.

“T
his is a no-picking zone, Bob-o,” I said.

“Huh?” he said, still digging around in his nose.

“DON'T PICK YOUR NOSE IN MY ROOM!” I shouted.

Bob-o slowly removed his finger from his nostril, and as I watched in horror, he wiped it on the leg of his jeans.

“Didn't your mother ever teach you how to use a tissue, Bob-o?” I asked.

He just stared at me.

“Look, I don't know what the deal is with you, but you're standing here in my room so I might as well take advantage of that fact and drop my big bomb,” I said.

Bob-o said nothing.

“Okay, there's something you should know, Bob-o. Something very serious and very weird and very, well, hard to believe.”

Bob-o looked at me and started to scratch his nose.

“Put your hands in your pockets!” I barked.

He did.

“Okay, here goes, I'm about to tell you something that is going to change your life forever. Something that you won't believe at first, but I will be able to prove to you.”

Bob-o blinked slowly behind his thick glasses. I took a deep breath.

“We have the same birthday, Bob-o—July fourteenth.”

Bob-o wrinkled his nose but didn't make a move to scratch it.

“And we were born in the same hospital—Saint Matthew's.”

“So?” said Bob-o. “My mother told me that in the car on the way over here. She said
that she and your mom shared the same room at the hospital.”

I don't know which was more amazing—that Bob-o had spoken to me out loud in full sentences or the shocking thing he had just told me.

“You're kidding!” I gasped.

“I thought you said you had proof about something weird.” He turned around and headed for the door.

“Wait. My proof is standing out in the backyard right now. Come over here.” I grabbed the back of Bob-o's shirt and pulled him backward toward my window. I spun him around and pointed to the patio, where my mother and father were getting ready to do the limbo while their guests, including John and Marie Smith, looked on politely. “Look at them,” I ordered.

Bob-o watched silently as my father attempted to slip his bulging belly under the limbo bar (an old bamboo fishing pole held at one end by my mother).

“Suck it in and wiggle your hips, Wuckums!” my mother shrieked. “Come on, hoochy-koochy man, put a little Elvis in your pelvis!”

Bob-o snickered.

“Shh. Keep watching.”

My father managed to go under the bar—mostly because my mother cheated and lifted it higher so his gut could pass under it. Then it was her turn.

“Cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-CHA…” My mother began to sing and dance a demented little number that involved sticking her rear end out and pursing her lips. At one point she bumped into Mr. Smith so hard that she knocked him off balance and his arm went into the lemonade-filled wading pool up to his elbow. Mrs. Smith rushed over with some napkins to help dry him off while my mother, oblivious to her wet guest, continued to dance. Finally she made a big show of bending way over backward and sliding under the fishing pole. As soon as she was
done my father dropped the pole and applauded wildly. Then my mother ran over and hopped on his back so he could run, carrying her piggyback around the backyard for a minute.

“What do you think of them, Bob-o?” I asked. He shrugged. “Do you think they're weird?” He shrugged again. “Embarrassingly freakish?” I asked.

“Not particularly,” he said. “I think they're sort of…cool.”

“Exactly. And there's your proof,” I said as I flopped down on my bed, partly because I'd made my point and partly because Bob-o was smelling fishy and I needed some breathing room.

“Proof of what?” asked Bob-o, coming dangerously within whiffing distance again.

“Proof of the fact that you and I were switched at birth.”

Bob-o started to protest, but I stopped him before the words actually made it out of his mouth.

“Look at yourself and look at my folks. Don't you see the similarity?” I asked. “Sure, there's the bad eyesight, the high-water pants and the red hair, but there's something much bigger than that. You're all kind of, well, forgive me for being blunt, Bob-o, but you're all kind of
different
in the same way. You know?”

“And you think they're really my—” Bob-o said.

I nodded. “And your mom and dad are really my mom and dad too—all the signs point to that.”

“They do?” said Bob-o.

“Sure. There's the straight brown hair and the left-handedness, but that's not the most important thing—your parents are completely normal, Bob-o,” I said. “Normal, predictable, ordinary, regular. Like me, right?”

Bob-o sort of half shrugged, half nodded in response.

“Don't you get it? They shared the same
room
when we were born. Do you have any idea how easy it would be to mix up a
couple of babies if you were taking them to the same room?”

Bob-o sat down on the foot of my bed and started to scratch his nose. I gave him a sharp look, and he put his hands back in his pockets. He smelled terrible. I had to finish up this discussion soon or I was going to pass out.

“Do you believe me now?” I asked. Bob-o did his half shrug, half nod again. Just then I heard a loud belch. Buzz stood in the doorway with his hands on his hips and an annoyed look on his face.

“Excuuuuse me,” he said, “but since when do you have parties and not invite me?”

“This is no party, Buzzard. This is life and death.”

“Oh,” said Buzz as he came over and sat on the edge of the bed, “in that case I'm no longer offended, just curious. Sheesh, it smells like Sea World on a hot day in here.”

“I just clued Bob-o in about the baby mix-up and I'm glad you're here, because we
could use a little expert advice.”

“That's my specialty,” said Buzz as he snatched up a magazine and started fanning fresh air in through the open window.

“We need to figure out a way to tell our parents,” I said.

Buzz put down the magazine and pulled a yo-yo out of his pocket. He fiddled with the string, trying to fit his finger through the loop.

“Okay,” he said. “The main thing you have to remember about parents is that they're not happy unless they think they're in the driver's seat, and you can't tell them anything because they think they know everything already.” He finally got his finger through the loop and executed a couple of wobbly tosses of the yo-yo. “So, if you go down there right now and say ‘Look, there's been this terrible mix-up and you've been raising the wrong kids,' they're just going to laugh and ignore you.”

“So, what do you suggest?” I asked.

Buzz tried to rock the cradle, but he
screwed up and the yo-yo got tangled.

“Obviously, what you're going to have to do is trick them into figuring this thing out for themselves,” he said as he tried in vain to untangle the string.

Bob-o was sitting on my bed fidgeting and muttering to himself.

“What are you muttering about? If you have something to say about all of this, why don't you say it out loud,” Buzz said.

“Why would anyone in their right mind want to be me?” Bob-o asked so loud and clear that both Buzz and I jumped.

Buzz snorted. “He doesn't want to be
you
, Bob-o, he wants to be himself. He just wants to be that self in the right home.”

“Your home looks okay to me,” said Bob-o, looking around. “Why don't you pick somebody more exciting to be, like a movie star with a swimming pool or one of those big wrestling guys-with all the muscles?” He pulled his neck down into his shoulders, grimaced, and went into a classic muscleman
pose that looked so ridiculous I had to laugh.

“I'm glad you two are hitting it off so well all of a sudden, but could we get back to the matter at hand, please?” said Buzz, giving me a look. “Your parents have spent years trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, right, Guy? And Bob-o's parents have been dealing with a round peg and a square hole.”

I nodded.

“What you need to do is bring the square peg to the square hole and the round peg to the round hole, so they can see what it feels like to be dealing with the right pegs and the right holes.”

“How do we do that?” I asked.

“You switch places,” said Buzz simply.

“Like I said,” said Bob-o. “Wouldn't you rather be—” and he went into his muscleman pose again, baring his teeth and twisting his wrists to make his puny little biceps jump up and down. It really was funny. I would have laughed, but Buzz looked annoyed, so instead I said, “You're nuts. We don't exactly
look alike, you know. Don't you think they'd notice?”

“What do you take me for, Guy, an idiot? Tell them it's a homework assignment for Humanities—you're trying to prove whether it's true what they say about how you have to walk a mile in another man's shoes to really know how he feels. Then, you move into each other's houses, cozy up to your real folks, drop a few hints, and before you know it they put two and two together and—
ta-da!
You guys end up living happily ever after in your rightful homes.”

“You know, Buzzy, for an idiot you're pretty brilliant,” I said.

“Why, that tongue of yours could charm the skin right off a rattlesnake, do you know that, sonny?” Buzz said, putting on his accent just like he'd done for Mrs. Dipnower.

Bob-o giggled.

“Come on, let's get out of here and get some fresh air,” I said.

“Yeah, let's go to the fort,” said Buzz.

“Cool!” said Bob-o, jumping to his feet.

Buzz and I exchanged a look. We'd never allowed anyone else in the fort, and Bob-o certainly wasn't high on our list of people we might be interested in bending the rules for. But he seemed so excited that neither of us had the heart to disappoint him, so the three of us headed off, stopping briefly in the backyard to grab a couple of chicken legs and some lemonade.