Hanging on to Max

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Chapter One

The total silence woke me up. I opened my eyes, slowly, and there they all were, watching me. Ms. Garcia, with her sad little worn-out smile. The rest of the class, grinning like monkeys. The room was almost dark, except for the light from the slide projector.

"Nice nap, Sam?" Ms. Garcia asked. Everyone burst out laughing. Ooh. Good one, Ms. Garcia. Except what teacher in her right mind would turn out the lights and show slides at 1:30 in the afternoon?

I shrugged upright in my desk. "Sorry." I shook my head, trying to clear it out.

"Do you know what this slide is, Sam?"

I squinted at the screen. "Jupiter?"

People applauded. Someone in the back whistled. I rubbed my eyes. When I'd fallen asleep, there'd been a slide of a woman making cookies. Ms. Garcia's "Why We Should Study Math" inspirational slide show.

"Okay," Ms. Garcia said, "in 1995 NASA sent a probe from the Galileo spacecraft down through the atmosphere of Jupiter." The slide projector clunked to a picture of the probe.

"It looks like a giant tit," some guy said.

Ms. Garcia sighed. "Okay. Well. The probe sent back a stream of data for 57.6 minutes, until the incredible pressure of the Jovian atmosphere crushed it."

"Poor little probe," the girl next to me said.

"Bor-ing," somebody in back said.

I imagined the probe, analyzing, computing, while the weight of Jupiter pressed in heavier and heavier.

"So," Ms. Garcia said, "do you think the scientists at NASA had to use math to design this probe? And to communicate with it?"

"I'd rather design a giant tit," the guy in back said.

Ms. Garcia sighed. The next slide was a Volvo. "Now back on Earth the safety engineers..."

I put my head back down on the desk and closed my eyes.

The bell woke me up. Kids were grabbing books and papers, cramming them into backpacks. Everybody talking at once. At the front of the room, Ms. Garcia was saying something about turning in the test papers from the beginning of class and something that was due next Wednesday. But nobody was listening. People were jamming up in the doorway, pushing to get out. "Test papers," Ms. Garcia said again.

The guy who sat behind me, who always smelled faintly of sweat and cigarette smoke, slapped my back. "Hey, dude. At least you weren't drooling."

"Right," I said. "Thanks." I stared down at my test. I'd finished it in the first ten minutes. And that had included checking my answers three times. I stood up slowly and shrugged into my backpack.

As I dropped the paper on her desk, Ms. Garcia's hand snaked out and grabbed my wrist. "Give me a couple of minutes, please, Sam?"

I glanced at the clock. "It's 2:30."

"They'll wait for you."

I sighed and moved out of the flow of kids. Good job, Sam. Two weeks into September and already you've ticked her off. Already you're blowing this. A kid stopped to explain why he'd done only the first three problems on the test. And then Marcella went into a long thing about how she was going to Mexico for two weeks and needed to know what she'd miss. I shuffled around a little, banged my foot against the garbage can, just to let them know I was still standing there, but nobody paid any attention.

Finally the last kid left. Ms. Garcia ran her fingers through her hair. Her face was tense, like maybe she had a bad headache.

"I've really gotta go, Ms. Garcia." I pointed to the clock. "And I'm sorry about falling asleep. It's just...we had a bad night last night. I didn't..."

She waved her hand. "I know. I know. Everybody had a bad night last night." She leaned toward me. "The real problem here, Sam, is you don't belong in this class."

I took a breath. "But this is the only math class that fits in my schedule. We went through this whole thing, Mrs. Harriman and me." Besides, I liked this class. I needed an easy class. I took another breath, deeper, slower. Don't panic here, Sam. Get a grip. "I need the credit. I have to graduate this year."

Ms. Garcia tilted her head to one side and looked up at me. "I talked to Mr. Wright, Sam, yesterday. Your math teacher at Willamette View?"

I nodded. Mr. Wright. He'd been okay. Andy had called him "Mr. Wrong," which was pretty dumb, but I'd always laughed, because it was Andy.

"Mr. Wright loaned me a different text. It comes with a computer program. It'll let you work at your own speed."

I laughed. My own speed? My own speed was like a dead stop. "You know, Ms. Garcia, I sort of dropped out of Mr. Wright's class."

"But he says you had a good grasp of all the concepts. A very good grasp, he told me." She pointed to the iMac in the corner. "We can set you up over there. You can work on the computer in class and take the textbook home with you." She held it up, barely. It looked like it weighed about 500 pounds. "It actually gets into precalculus."

I could tell she wanted me to be impressed, excited. "But..." I started.

"And if you get stuck, I can help you out. I was a math major, you know." She smiled at me, her eyes big behind her wire-framed glasses. "I'm not saying it won't be hard work, Sam. But don't just say no. At least think about it." And her smile widened, a little desperate looking. Ms. Garcia, the math major, teaching bonehead math in an alternative high school. "I don't want to lose you, Sam. I think, if you were challenged more, you might sleep a little less."

And who needed sleep? I took another breath. If it would make her happy, if I could stay in her class, if I could graduate like I was supposed to, what was one more thing? "Sure," I said. "Sure. I can give it a try." I took the book. It did weigh 500 pounds.

She nodded, once. "Good. I'm glad, Sam. I don't think you'll regret this."

It took me five minutes to get to my locker. The halls were packed with kids, goofing around, laughing, yelling. Typical end-of-the-day high.

I jerked my locker open. It smelled funny. Gym socks? Rotting sandwich? I didn't have time to figure it out. I grabbed my English book and the stack of government worksheets. I stuffed them all into my backpack and slammed my locker shut.

The secretary looked up from her monitor as I burst through the day care doors. "We'd about given up on you," she said, but she was smiling. They all smiled at me, all the time.

"I had to talk to Ms. Garcia," I said. I shouldered through the door into the crawlers room.

"Here he is!" Mrs. McPherson, the teacher, said. "Here's Daddy."

Max leaned out of her arms toward me, his hands stretched out, his face red and swollen with crying.

I took him. "Hey, buddy. It's okay." He wrapped his arms around my neck, taking a big hiccuppy breath, twining his fingers into the long hairs at the back of my neck. I patted him gently. "Let's go home."

Copyright © 2002 by Margaret Bechard

Chapter Two

I was almost all the way home when I remembered we were out of diapers. So I had to double back all the way to the Safeway up on Barbur. Max had fallen asleep in his car seat, and it would have been a whole lot easier to just leave him, but I knew I couldn't do that.

He woke up as soon as I lifted him out. I held my breath, thinking maybe he was going to start screaming again. You never knew. But he just grinned up at me, and when I put him in the seat of the shopping cart, he made this goofy little squealy noise. Max got off on grocery stores.

I hated grocery stores. I hated the way people stared at us.

I went straight to the baby aisle and grabbed a giant pack of diapers. And some of the wipey things. We were probably out of those, too. I should have made a list. Dumb, Sam. I threw in a can of formula, just in case. I was keeping a running tally in my head. The Datsun needed gas, and I only had like twenty-five bucks left from the money Dad had given me on Sunday.

I headed out of the aisle and saw Martha Bennett's mother coming out of the produce section. I couldn't believe it. I'd picked this store because it was so far from home. I skidded the cart to a stop. Martha and I had played on the same indoor soccer team all through elementary school. I did not want to talk to her mother. I knew the look she'd give me. I knew just how she'd say, "Oh, Sam. How are you, Sam?"

I whipped into the next aisle, Max grabbing the bar in front of him and laughing. "Shh," I hissed. "Shh." We were in snack food. I grabbed a bag of Cheez Puffs and pretended to be reading the back, just in case she came down this aisle.

Cheez Puffs. I turned the bag over in my hands. Andy and I had lived on these things, weekends at his house. I used to spend just about every Friday night at Andy's, back in elementary and middle school.

Max leaned out of the cart, snagged a cardboard display of dip and nearly dragged it over.

I grabbed it just before all the little cans hit the floor. "Max!"

"Woo-woo!" he said. He grinned at me. I tossed the Cheez Puffs back on the shelf.

I peered around the end of the aisle. Mrs. Bennett was nowhere in sight, so I made a dash for the express line.

The checker smiled at Max. "Aren't you a sweetheart?" she said.

Max leaned over and blew a big spit bubble at her.

"Isn't he precious?" She reached over and tweaked Max's cheek. Then she looked up at me. "Is this your little brother?"

I nodded.

"And you're helping your mom out?"

I nodded again.

"Well." She gave Max another tweak, and he squealed. "Your mother must be very proud of both of you."

When we got home, I thought about sticking Max in his high chair, with a bottle and some crackers. Or maybe even sticking him in his crib. Just while I tried to get something done. I had about a million things to do. But playing with Max was one of the things I was supposed to do. It was on the list on the wall in my bedroom.

I took him into the living room and put him on the floor. I put Metallica on the CD player. A classic. The parenting book said music was good for a baby's mental development.

We played chase the baby around the living room, both of us crawling, Max shrieking and laughing. It was cool, to make him so crazy happy. We sat for a minute, beside the couch, both of us panting and grinning. "Ready to go again, buddy?" I asked.

He blinked at me, and he gave me a look, a look he had sometimes. Like he knew something I didn't know. And then, all of a sudden, he crawled under the coffee table, stretched out flat, and, in about ten seconds, fell fast asleep.

I sat there, watching him, making sure this was for real, making sure he wasn't just going to pop back up again. But he was out cold. "Yes!" I whispered. I clicked off the CD, lay down on the rug beside him, and I fell asleep, too.

Dad coming into the kitchen at 5:30 woke me up. My first thought was, Oh hell, where's Max? Nobody had ever specifically said it, but falling asleep like that was probably bad, too. Only he was still conked under the table.

Dad came into the doorway and looked at us.

"Hey," I said, quietly.

"I brought home Chinese food. Let's eat quick before he wakes up."

I scrambled to my feet. "Sounds great." And it did. It sounded wonderful. I hadn't had anything to eat since the gluey cafeteria macaroni at 11:30.

I filled my plate with lo mein and fried shrimp and kung pao chicken. Dad ate the way he always does — one thing at a time. First the shrimp. Then the chicken. He even ate his rice separately, at the very end. When he was done, he set his fork down on his empty plate. "Has your Aunt Jean called?"

I was digging for the last of the noodles. "Not yet."

When it had seemed like maybe they wouldn't give me custody, because Mom was dead, and it was just Dad and me, Aunt Jean had stepped up. Had said she'd be here. And she had been. She'd moved in with us in December, and then stayed through January and February and March. It had been great. Max was so tiny, just a worm baby. I was totally clueless. Aunt Jean had known everything. How to change diapers, mix formula, get him to sleep. It had been kind of a shock when she'd said she thought I had the hang of it, and it was time for her to go back and look after Uncle Ted. A shock for both Dad and me.

"She'll call tonight," I said. "She always calls on Wednesdays." I dumped the leftover rice into the leftover kung pao and mixed it around in the box.

Dad nodded. He waited until I'd eaten the last grain of rice, then took the empty box from me. I slumped back in my chair. I knew I should get Max up. He'd never sleep tonight if he napped like this now. But I couldn't move.

Dad tossed all the boxes in the garbage. Then he filled a glass with water and drank it, standing by the sink.

"So," I said. "How was work?"

He put the glass down. "Okay."

I nodded. "Still wiring that building in Tualatin?"

"That's right. School okay?"

"Fine."

He nodded. He pointed with his chin toward the living room. "He's okay?"

"He's great."

Dad nodded again. Then he glanced up at the clock on the microwave. "I want to catch SportsCenter." He looked back at me. "Is there anything..." He looked around the kitchen, like there was something he might find. "Is there anything you need?"

I frowned. For a second, all I could think of were things I needed. But I gave him a big smile. "Nope," I said. "I've got it all under control."

He nodded. "Good then." And he went out of the kitchen. A few seconds later, I heard the TV in his bedroom click on.

I sat there, staring at the plates, shiny with grease and soy sauce. Something to add to the list: Never, ever make Max feel like he's disappointed you in some big unfixable forever way. And then, just a flash, I tried to imagine Max in seventeen years. Me and Max. I shook my head. I couldn't even imagine Max in seventeen minutes.

I hauled myself up out of the chair. I had to clean Max's bottles, get them ready for tomorrow. And wash the plates and forks Dad and I had just used. Do some laundry. Max was out of clean clothes again.

Homework. A ton and a half of homework.

I was rinsing the last bottle when the phone rang. "Hello?"

"Hey, Sam." There was silence, then, "It's me. Andy. Andy Pederson," he added.

"Andy? Andy! I...hey, man." I nearly said, I was just thinking about you today. I nearly told him about the Cheez Puffs. But that would sound stupid. "How's it going?"

"It's going...it's good, dude. Listen. I just wanted..." He paused, and I could picture him, sitting there, his feet jigging up and down. Andy was a high-energy kind of guy. "Listen. I made varsity, you know."

I didn't know. "No kidding! Way to go!"

"Yeah. Finally, huh? My senior year. Perfect timing."

We were both quiet. And I knew he was remembering all the times we'd talked about being seniors. Back when we were little pitiful freshmen. How great it would be to be seniors together. How maybe we'd even go to the same college. I could feel the memories, clogging the phone lines.

And suddenly I realized that, actually, I was a little ticked. Andy hadn't called me in like six months. He'd come over once, which had been sort of a disaster. Max had been sick. But he called me now, to tell me his great news. "Varsity," I said.

"The thing is, we're playing a home game? This Friday? And I thought you might...well...it should be a good game. And, I mean, you know, you can bring the baby."

In the living room, Max grunted. He was awake. Awake and filling his pants. "Hey, Andy. Dude. I'm glad you called."

"Do you think you can make it? To the game?"

"I'll think about it. This Friday." Max had stopped grunting and was starting to whimper.

"But, listen. Sam..."

I hung up before he could finish.

Copyright © 2002 by Margaret Bechard