Regular Guy (5 page)

“I
t's nuts over there, Guy, positively nuts!”

“What's happening?” I asked as I pulled the phone around the corner and into the hall closet so that Mr. and Mrs. Smith couldn't overhear the conversation.

“Well, for starters, your mother's reinventing Bob-o.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She's giving him a makeover. He looks completely different. His hair is all slicked back just like your dad's, she's dressed him up in a bunch of
your
clothes, and while I was watching she was working on hypnotizing him with a tape recorder and a soup spoon,” Buzz said.

“Get out!”

“Get in!” he shouted. “Pretty weird, huh?”

“My mother doesn't know how to hypnotize anybody,” I said.

“Tell
her
that.”

“What about my dad, what was he doing?”

“Well, I couldn't really tell because I was spying on them through the window and the stupid curtains kept blowing in my face, but I think he was in charge of the new hairdo.”

“Was Bob-o really wearing my clothes?” I asked.

“Yep. You know, when his pants are long enough to cover his socks he looks a lot more normal,” Buzz said.

A terrible thought suddenly occurred to me. “Was he putting anything in his pockets?” I asked. “Oh, man, if he puts tuna fish balls in my pockets I'm gonna kill him.”

“Huh?” said Buzz. “He wasn't eating any tuna fish when I was there, just lying on the couch watching your mom wave the soup
spoon back and forth in front of his face. But your mom did say something about a cake in the oven and some little celebration she's planning.”

“She's probably going to immortalize her new son in frosting,” I said.

“Well, just be glad she's not doing it to you. I think your days on top of the cake are numbered, judging by what I saw tonight,” said Buzz.

“What do you mean?”

“They looked like one big happy family to me. A matched set. Bob-o all slicked back like a Wuckums-clone and your mom all excited about being reunited with her long-lost little geeky boy.”

“Do you really think they know the truth?” I asked.

“Well, if they don't already, it's only a matter of time until they do. Boy, this is going just the way you wanted it to, isn't it?” Buzz said excitedly. “Bob-o's fitting right in at the loony bin, and you're the newest
number-one-son over there on normal street, right?”

“Right,” I said, but deep inside me something was beginning to feel terribly wrong.

S
aturday was one of the longest days of my life. The Smiths' house was as quiet as a tomb all morning. Mr. and Mrs. Smith sat on the couch next to each other reading magazines for hours. Mrs. Smith licked her fingertip each time before she turned the page, and Mr. Smith cleared his throat about a million times. I had begun to think that they weren't really all that normal. As far as I'm concerned normal people talk to each other, laugh once in a while, and do stuff other than read and sit around clearing their throats.

After breakfast I dragged the volcano out of the basement, took it out in the backyard, and followed the directions for how to erupt
it. What you do is pour baking soda, vinegar, and a little red food coloring down the tube in the middle of the mountain, and it bubbles out of the hole and down the sides. I did it a few times, but it wasn't all that exciting and the smell gave me a splitting headache, so I knocked it off and sat on the steps watching ants. I kept wishing Buzz would call and fill me in on what was happening at my house.

Finally, while we were eating lunch, Buzz called and told me to see if I could borrow Bob-o's bike and meet him over at my house. He said it was urgent. I wolfed down the rest of my sandwich and asked if it was okay to go for a ride on Bob-o's bike. Neither one of them seemed to care, so I went out to the garage, pulled Bob-o's bike out from behind the lawnmower, and rode as fast as I could toward home.

Buzz was waiting for me on my corner. He looked very serious.

“We'd better leave our bikes here and go
the rest of the way on foot,” he said.

“What's the matter?” I asked.

“Well, I was over at your house earlier today and I saw something I think you better see.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Follow me,” Buzz said, and his tone of voice made me nervous.

We hid our bikes behind some shrubs and walked through a couple of the neighbors' backyards to get to mine. Then we snuck around the side of the house so we could peek in the living-room window. The lilac bush in front of the window was thick and loaded with big purple flowers. We pushed our way into it, hoping no one would hear the racket as the branches thwapped against the side of the house.

Bob-o was lying on his back on the couch. His face was completely green, his hands were tied in plastic bags, and he wasn't moving.

“He looks dead,” I said.

“No kidding,” whispered Buzz. “He hasn't
moved since the last time I was here, and that was
hours
ago.”

Just then my parents walked into the room. My mother bent over Bob-o and sniffled.

“Poor baby,” she said softly.

“Dead to the world,” my father said as he put his arm around my mother's shoulders.

“I had to do it,” she said. “It wasn't easy, but it had to be done.”

“Absolutely,” said my father as he led her out of the room.

“What the heck is going on in there?” I asked Buzz.

“Looks to me like they couldn't handle the news, went crazy, and offed their only true son. Looks like you got out of there just in the nick of time, Guy,” Buzz said, letting go of the big branch he'd been holding back in order to see in the window. It knocked against the side of the house, letting loose a shower of purple flower petals.

“You're nuts,” I said.

“Well, how do you explain it?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I said, and I noticed that the feeling I'd had before about things going wrong had shot up a notch in my stomach.

As we crouched by the window looking in at poor Bob-o, I tried to make sense of what was happening to my life. The week before, I had felt completely miserable because I was trapped in the middle of my crazy family. Now I was feeling completely miserable because I felt like an outsider looking in at them. It didn't help at all that in the short time I'd been away they appeared to have committed a murder, which meant that they were probably going to be carted off to prison and I would be left to live out the rest of my days with the boring old Smiths.

“This can't be happening,” I said as I felt my throat closing up and tears beginning to sting my eyes.

Buzz looked at me and shook his head.

I turned away from the window and was just about to wipe my eyes on my sleeve
when I got the shock of my life. Standing right behind us was my mother. She was holding a huge knife, and she didn't look happy at all.

Buzz turned away from the window, and when he got a load of my mom with that knife pointed at me, he went wild. First of all, he started screaming this really high-pitched scream that didn't even sound human, and then he threw himself on my mother and knocked her to the ground. The knife went flying out of her hand, skittered between my legs, and disappeared under the bushes.

“Run, Buzz!” I yelled. Buzz and I took off, running like a couple of maniacs down the street to where we had stashed our bikes. We jumped on and rode for our lives without looking back.

“D
id you see the size of that knife?” Buzz yelled from behind me. “She's gone psycho!”

We were quite a ways from my house before we finally slowed down. Buzz rode up alongside me so we could talk. He was white as a ghost.

“Do you think we ought to call the police?” Buzz asked.

I tried to answer him, but I was too choked up. I started to bawl.

“What am I gonna do?” I wailed. “What am I going to do?”

“Don't worry, Guy,” Buzz said, trying to comfort me. “We'll tell somebody and they'll
go over there and take care of it. We can call the police from somebody's house or maybe we should go back to Bob-o's house so his folks can help us. Come on.” Buzz turned his bike around and headed off toward North Maple Street.

“I wish I'd never figured this thing out,” I said as I rode along behind Buzz. “Everything could have just stayed the same. Why did I have to be such an idiot and go messing up the family? So what if they were weird? So what if they snorted oysters and decorated lamp shades? We were a family, weren't we? A perfectly good family, and now everything, everything is ruined.”

I cried so hard that by the time we reached Bob-o's house, the whole front of my T-shirt was wet, and a big string of snot was hanging from my nose. Buzz leaned his bike against the garage door and wiped my nose with his shirttail. He was a good friend. Together we walked up the front steps and into the Smiths' quiet little house.

“So where are they?” Buzz asked.

“They're probably reading magazines somewhere,” I said.

“Well, they're gonna have plenty of time to read about this in tomorrow's headlines, so we better find them now and get this thing taken care of.”

“Mrs. Smith!” I called.

“Call louder,” said Buzz.

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith!” I called a little louder this time.

“Lemme do it. HEY, SMITHS!” Buzz shouted at the top of his lungs.

“What in the world is all the racket about?” Mrs. Smith looked all bent out of shape as she came down the stairs with a gardening magazine in her hand. Mr. Smith came in from the living room with his finger stuck in a copy of
Reader's Digest
. They both looked at us like we were crazy.

“Listen,” said Buzz. “I don't know where to start, but I think we better call the police because—”

The phone rang and Mr. Smith went to answer it.

“Hello?…Yes, yes they're both here…. Uh huh…yes I will…they'll be here…all right, William, we'll be waiting.”

“William? Was that my dad?” I asked nervously.

“Yes, it was and he did not sound happy at all. He and your mother are coming over here right now—”

“You can't let them do that!” cried Buzz. “She's got a knife!”

“What are you talking about?” said Mrs. Smith. “
Who
has a knife?”

“My mother has a big knife,” I said. “Or anyway, she
had
a big knife until Buzz knocked it out of her hands and saved my life, but Bob-o, well, Bob-o wasn't so lucky, he, he—” I started to bawl again.

“I don't know what is going on here, and I'm not sure I want to, so I'm going back in the living room to read in peace until the Strangs arrive. In the meantime, I would very
much appreciate it if you two boys would go outside and occupy yourselves with something
quiet
. I, for one, am not in the mood for drama.”

“Drama?” said Buzz incredulously as Mr. Smith retreated to the living room. “Try murder.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” said Mrs. Smith. “I'm going to make coffee.”

Buzz just stood there with his eyes bugging out.

“I told you they were strange,” I said.

“That's putting it mildly. Her wacko so-called son has just been murdered, and she's making coffee,” said Buzz.

I heard tires screech as a car rounded the corner at high speed. I knew it was them—and I was right.

My mother came rushing in the front door without even knocking. Her hair was positively wild, and she had dirt all over her face from having been knocked on the ground by Buzz. My dad was right behind her
looking more serious than I'd ever seen him look before.

“I am beside myself,” said my mother. “Absolutely beside myself. What on
earth
is going on with you, Guy? Some Humanities project this has turned out to be. You're acting like a lunatic, and you”—she pointed a finger at Buzz. “Boy, do you have some explaining to do, mister.”

“Me? What about
you
? I saw what you did to Bob-o. I saw it with my own eyes and so did Guy. You offed your long-lost geeky little weirdo son because you couldn't stand the shock, but you're not going to get away with it, Mrs. Strang. Not by a long shot!”

Buzz was riled. My parents just stood there with their mouths hanging open. Mr. and Mrs. Smith, holding their respective magazines, were standing side by side watching the show. Just when I thought it couldn't get any more bizarre, who should walk in but…Bob-o. Alive and kicking. Well, to be more accurate,
picking
. There he stood in the door
way with his finger up his nose and a bored look on his face that said “Yeah, yeah this is just like any other day at the Smiths' house.”

“Bob-o!” I shouted. “You're alive!”

Bob-o quickly pulled his finger out of his nose and smiled at me. I was so relieved to see him on his feet that I ran over and hugged him in spite of where his finger had been.

“Look at that, Wuckums,” my mother said, pointing at Bob-o. “It didn't work.”

Buzz, who'd been completely silent since Bob-o had appeared, did something I thought only damsels in distress in fairy tales did. His eyelids fluttered for a second; then his eyes rolled up into his head…and he fainted.

M
y dad and Mr. Smith carried Buzz over to the couch, and we put a cold washcloth on his forehead. He wasn't out for very long, but it was still scary seeing my best friend all limp like that. Mrs. Smith brought out the coffee and a plate of crackers, and we all sat down to sort out the truth about what had been going on.

“There was no Humanities project, was there, Guy?” my father said.

I shook my head.

“I don't know where to start,” I began, but before too long I'd managed to tell the whole story about how I'd figured out about Bob-o and me being switched at birth. Buzz
sat up long enough to put in his two cents about the fact that babies all look alike when they're first born. My mother listened very carefully, and for once she didn't even interrupt, which was pretty surprising. Mr. and Mrs. Smith just sat there having not much of a reaction, which was not very surprising at all. At one point I saw Mr. Smith crack open his magazine and try to read a little when he thought nobody was looking. Bob-o sat on the arm of the couch near Buzz's feet combing his hair with his fingers until whatever semblance of a hairdo my father had created for him was a thing of the past.

When I was all through telling my story my mother looked at me with this really weird crooked smile on her face and said, “Do you honestly think that I'm not your mother, Guy?”

“Well, yeah, I guess I think it's possible,” I said. “I mean these things do happen sometimes.”

“Marie,” my mother said, turning to Mrs.
Smith, who was busying herself putting coasters under everyone's coffee cups and arranging more crackers in a pinwheel on the plate even though no one had eaten any of the ones she'd put out there to begin with. “Do you have a family photo album?”

“Mmm hmm,” she said, and moved to the bookcase, where she pulled a large leather-bound photo album from the shelf.

“I'd like to show Guy a picture of Bobby when he was a baby,” my mother said quietly.

Mrs. Smith leafed through the book until she found what she was looking for. She handed the book to my mother.

“Come with me, Guy.” My mother took the book and carried it out onto the front porch.

At first I hesitated. After all, the woman had been pointing a knife at me only an hour before. Then I figured it was probably safe to follow her, since she obviously hadn't killed Bob-o and she didn't have the knife anymore. I went out onto the porch and sat down
beside her on the top step.

“Before I show you this picture, there's something I need to say to you, Guy,” she said.

Oh, God
, I thought.
Here it comes. She's gonna tell me she's known all along that I'm not really her son
. I felt like I was going to throw up.

“I'm really sorry about the baseball cards.”

“Huh?” I said.

“I should never have taken them out of your album without asking you. I'm sorry. Sometimes I just get carried away. Your dad is looking into finding replacements for the ones that are already glued down. The Reggie Johnson—”

“Jackson,” I said.

“The Reggie
Jackson
is fine, and I put him back in the album. Can you forgive me?”

“They're just some stupid baseball cards, Mom.”

My mother's eyes got all shiny. She put
her arm around my shoulder and pulled me in tight next to her. Then she pointed to a photograph in the book that lay open on her lap. “This is Bobby Smith right after he was born,” she said quietly.

“Man, what a weird-looking baby. Why's he all blotchy like that?” I asked.

“Allergies. The poor little thing was splotchy and red from the minute he drew his first breath,” my mother said.

“What's with the hair?” I asked.

“Some babies are born with a full head of dark hair like that—usually it falls out later.”

“Did I have hair like that?” I asked.

“You were bald as a cue ball. You've seen pictures of yourself, Guy,” she said gently.

“Oh, yeah,” I said.

“You were sweet and round and pink and bald and the most beautiful baby I'd ever laid eyes on,” my mother said, and she had a tiny little catch in her voice like maybe she was going to cry.

“Did you see me right away? Because
maybe Bob-o and I got mixed up when they took us away to clean us up or something,” I said.

“I held you in my arms and your dad cut the cord, Guy.”

“Gross,” I said.

“I nursed you for the first time right there on the delivery table—”

“Yech, Mom, too much information,” I protested.

“Guy, I didn't let you out of my sight the entire time I was in the hospital. Poor little Bobby Smith was coming and going all the time for treatments and ointments and what not, while you just lay in my arms staring up at me like a little angel. I felt sorry for Marie. I still do.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Guy, Bobby is, well, let's just say he hasn't had an easy time of it. He's always been kind of an odd duck. Marie and John are perfectly nice people, but they don't have a clue when it comes to helping that boy.”

“What do you think they should be doing?”

“Paying attention to him. Listening to him. Right from the get-go they refused to really look at him. Now their kid is walking around talking to himself and stuffing his pockets full of rolled-up tuna fish, and they're sitting around with their noses stuck in—”

“—magazines.” I finished the sentence for her. “Why does he have tuna fish in his pockets, anyway?” I asked.

“I asked him that. He told me he hates tuna fish, but every day his mother packs him a tuna fish sandwich for lunch. He wads up the tuna and eats the bread.”

“Why doesn't he just throw it out?” I asked. “That's what I do with the raw hot dogs.”

“You do? Why didn't you tell me not to pack them?”

“I did,” I said quietly.

We sat for a minute on the step not saying anything. Finally I got up the nerve to ask,
“How come you said ‘it didn't work' when Bob-o walked in, before?”

“He was picking his nose,” she said.

“So?” I said.

“I tried to hypnotize him out of that habit,” my mother said. “But it didn't work.”

“Oh,
that's
what you meant?”

“Uh huh. What did you think I meant?”

“I thought you had tried to kill him, Mom.”

“What?!”

“He was green, and Dad said he was dead to the world. I heard him.”

“That's just an expression. I tried to hypnotize him to stop him from picking his nose, Guy. Obviously I haven't mastered the technique yet, but I'm starting to get the hang of it. I'll show you when we get home.”

Home
. I let the word wash over me like a warm wave, but only for a minute. I still had more questions.

“Why did you put Bob-o's hands in plastic bags?” I asked.

“I put an herbal salve on his hands to help
break the picking cycle, and the bags were supposed to keep it from getting all over everything. He fell asleep on the couch and the bags broke open. I was in the kitchen frosting a cake, and by the time I checked on him he'd somehow managed to get himself covered pretty much head to toe with the stuff. My couch will never be the same.”

“What were you doing with that knife, Mom?”

“I was cutting the cake when I heard something outside the window. I thought it might be Sammy and Val's cat making a mess in the bushes. Apparently it's tired of your old sandbox and has taken a shine to my lilac bushes, the little poot.”

“Were you going to stab it?”

“Of course not. I forgot I even had the knife in my hand. I just ran outside when I heard the commotion in the bushes.”

“I thought you were going to kill me,” I said, and I was surprised by the flood of emotion I felt as I said it.

My mother put the book down next to her and put her arms around me.

“Apparently a vivid imagination is one of the many genetic traits you failed to notice you had inherited from your parents, you nut,” she said.

“Oh, yeah? Name another.”

“Ever noticed your father's earlobes?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, come take a look. They're notched, and so are yours.”

I held the screen door open for my mom, and we went inside to examine those wonderful lobes.