Pop

  Then another thought occurred to him. An awful thought.

  Marcus found Chelsea at her locker before school the next day.

  She was now the friendlier of the Popovich children, which was to say that she no longer reacted like a pit viper every time she saw him. Still, she was wary as he approached, greeting him with a quiet “Hey.”

  “Hi, Chelsea. Listen, I have a question for you, but you’ve got to promise not to bite my head off.”

  She regarded him dubiously. “Okay.”

  He took a deep breath. “Does your dad read his own mail?”

  She bristled. “You know, Troy says you have an unnatural obsession with our family, and maybe he’s not wrong.”

  Marcus stood his ground. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

  “He passed second grade a long time ago. Yes, he knows how to read. If you have a point, please make it, because you’re starting to get on my nerves.”

  “Charlie is being inducted into East Bonaventure’s sports hall of fame in two weeks.”

  She was impatient. “No, he isn’t! Don’t you think his own family would know if—” She stopped short when the significance of his original question dawned on her. Was it possible that Charlie had received the letter and forgotten about it? Or hadn’t understood it in the first place?

  Her face seemed to crumple, and he spoke up quickly. “Hey, this is good news! You should be happy your dad’s getting the recognition he deserves.”

  It did nothing to reassure her. Marcus could read the fear in her eyes. These days the family’s central preoccupation was keeping on top of Charlie’s unpredictable behavior. Just when they thought they were in control, here was something important that they had no idea about. It had to be pretty scary.

  Aloud, she said, “How come we’re always learning about Dad from you?”

  Marcus shrugged evasively. “I heard it from another EBU alum. This guy’s all excited to see your dad get honored.” He could almost taste her mistrust. “I promise I’m not stalking you guys. I just wanted to make sure you knew about it. It’s a great thing for Charlie.”

  Elizabeth Popovich sat at the computer, her son and daughter peering over her shoulders at the East Bonaventure University website.

  “It’s true! They’re inducting your father and the Rogers sisters into the hall of fame!”

  Troy scowled. “Who are the Rogers sisters?”

  “A synchronized swim team,” Chelsea supplied. “It says they won the Olympic silver medal back in ’eighty-eight.”

  “Dad’s in real good company,” her brother sneered.

  “Never mind that!” Mrs. Popovich snapped. “How could we not know about this?”

  Chelsea couldn’t restrain herself. “I hope you’re kidding, Mom! I can’t believe that after all we’ve been through with Daddy, you don’t know the answer to that question!”

  “I’ve been to all the doctors’ appointments!” her mother exclaimed. “I’ve read enough about Alzheimer’s disease to earn a PhD. But my husband of more than twenty years would not forget something like this.”

  “He didn’t forget,” Troy said bitterly. “To forget something, first you have to have a clue about it.”

  Chelsea looked daggers at her brother. “This is our father you’re talking about.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he muttered. “It hasn’t been him for a long time.”

  “Could it be the school’s fault?” Mrs. Popovich mused. “They could have misplaced the letter. Or the post office…”

  “Dream on, Mom,” said Troy. “Who knows what he’s doing with his mail. Probably eating it.”

  “He reads!” Mrs. Popovich shot back hotly.

  Chelsea shook her head. “He does things out of habit. Maybe he’s just looking at pages.”

  Her mother stood up. “We need to find that letter. Where does Dad keep his mail?”

  The five-bedroom house had a spare room that Charlie used as a study. There were a desk, a leather chair, and bookshelves, all in pristine condition.

  “See?” Mrs. Popovich’s enthusiasm was forced. “Look how tidy he is. Is this the office of a person with a disorganized mind?”

  Chelsea patted the chair cushion, and a small puff of dust rose. “No, it’s the office of someone who doesn’t come anywhere near his office.”

  There was no mail of any kind on the desktop. A search of the drawer revealed eight broken pencils and a desiccated sandwich with a slice of what had been turkey covered in greenish fuzz.

  Mrs. Popovich was horrified. “I think that’s from last Thanksgiving!”

  “That’s from the first Thanksgiving,” Troy amended sourly.

  Chelsea tried to stay focused. “Okay, so he doesn’t come here. Where does he go?”

  “Do I look like his travel agent?” mumbled Troy.

  “You know what I mean. He sits on the porch. He putters around the garage. If we can figure out the place, we can search for the mail.”

  “It has to be the porch,” Mrs. Popovich decided. “I sort through the mail, hand him his, and he goes out front to read it.”

  Troy got a strange look on his face. “The glider track on the porch swing has been sticking since the summer....”

  The three rushed out the door and approached the swing like it was booby-trapped. Chelsea got down on her knees, pressed the seat back, and reached into the housing of the glider track. When she withdrew her hand, she was clutching a fistful of mangled envelopes.

  “It feels like there’s a ton of it back there,” she reported.

  Mrs. Popovich began to sob.

  “Ease up, Mom,” Troy said gruffly. “This is nothing new.”

  “It’s just … so hard … to know for sure when the little slips and forgetful episodes really add up to something more serious.”

  “You know when the doctors tell you,” Chelsea replied gently. “When there are so many slips that they all blend together—”

  “And when your porch swing is full of mail,” Troy added.

  Mrs. Popovich nodded, ashamed. She had once been queen of real estate in this town. Now she needed her son and daughter just to force her to see reality.

  Chelsea was trying to smooth out crumpled dirty papers. “Oh—this one’s from last April,” she groaned. “How are we going to reach the stuff that’s crushed at the bottom?”

  Troy headed for the garage. “I’ll get a tire iron. Maybe we’ll find my letter from Santa in there.”

  Soon they had the glider track pried open. An amazing sight met their eyes. The box was crammed full of mail in various stages of shredding and decomposition. Some pieces were little more than pulp, mashed by the moisture in the air and the to-and-fro of the mechanism.

  They began to sort through the envelopes, working in silence. The image of what had happened was clear to all of them—Charlie opening his mail, skimming the contents, then getting distracted and stuffing the letters under his seat to look at later. But later never came, and instead the mail was ground into the track by the motion of the swing.

  At length, they found the envelope that bore the EBU logo, postmarked June 29.

  Dear Mr. Popovich,

  Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected for induction into East Bonaventure University’s Sports Hall of Fame.

  Your achievements in the National Football League have been an enormous source of pride to everyone in the East Bonaventure community, and we are delighted to bestow upon you this well-deserved honor.

  We hope that you will be able to join us for the ceremony, which will be held homecoming weekend, November 14…

  “He knew about it,” Mrs. Popovich breathed.

  “He knows nothing,” Troy said firmly.

  “But the letter was opened.”

  “Even if he read it twenty times, he knows nothing about it now.”

  “Troy’s right, Mom,” Chelsea agreed in a small voice. “What are we going to do?”

  Troy shrugged. “We’ll
go through all this mail to make sure he didn’t throw out anything else important. We’ll try to fix the swing—” He stopped and stared at his sister. “You mean the ceremony? What good would it do to take him there?”

  “It’s Dad’s honor,” Mrs. Popovich reminded her son. “He’s earned it.”

  Troy was appalled. “You want to honor Dad? Let him keep his dignity instead of parading him in front of all those people so they can see exactly what he’s turned into!”

  Chelsea was angry. “You don’t care about his dignity! You just don’t want him to embarrass the Great Troy Popovich!”

  “If he goes to this thing,” Troy said tersely, “do you honestly think he’ll understand word one of what’s happening to him? Of course not! All we’d be doing is sticking him in a car for two hours, confusing the hell out of him, and sticking him back in the car for the return drive.”

  “Is that what you really think?” Chelsea challenged. “Or is it just because the date clashes with the Poughkeepsie West game?”

  “If you don’t trust what I think, why don’t you ask your boyfriend?” Troy challenged. “Since he knows Dad so much better than any of us do!”

  “Well, Marcus thinks he should go. So maybe he does know Daddy better.”

  Mrs. Popovich seemed torn. “I look in his eyes and I still see the man I married. Maybe I just want it too much…”

  Troy put an arm around his mother’s shoulders. “You think I wouldn’t give anything to have the old Dad back?”

  “They’ll send a plaque, right?” she mused sadly. “He’ll like that. That’ll be a pretty big honor.”

  Chelsea nodded, eyes moist. “Yeah.”

  There were footsteps on the front walk, and Charlie leaped athletically onto the porch. “Hi, guys. Hey—who broke the whatchamacallit?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  East Bonaventure University is pleased to welcome synchronized swimmers Stephanie and Elise Rogers back to their alma mater for this year’s induction ceremony....

  Marcus stared at the words on the EBU website. Stephanie and Elise Rogers? What about Charlie? Surely the King of Pop rated at least equal billing with a couple of nose-plug jockeys from 1988.

  Of course, Charlie’s response would have gone in late—good thing Marcus had gone to see Mac in Coltrane or the Popovich family never would have found out about the ceremony in the first place. The next time EBU updated its website, surely they’d be welcoming Charlie, too.

  He sat back in the hard wooden library chair and peered through the window at the passing parade in the school hall. Quite a few eyes turned toward him, and there were plenty of smiles and waves. There was no question that he’d made an impact as a football player, even on the you-can’t-improve-perfection Raiders. It still bugged him that he would never get a chance at quarterback when he was the best choice for the job. But there was plenty to be proud of besides throwing touchdown passes.

  I love the pop!

  He spied Alyssa among those who waved, but in her case, the gesture was accompanied by a lot of body English. If it was possible to hit on someone in half a second from the other side of reinforced safety glass, she aced it. A moment later, Chelsea entered his field of vision, in the company of a few sophomore girls. He tapped on the window to get her attention. She looked toward the source of the sound, nodded a very cursory greeting, and turned away quickly. He tapped again. This time she picked up her pace and hurried past.

  Okay, he wasn’t exactly at the top of the Popovich family Christmas card list. But there was something more. As he slid his chair back along the carpet, the web page headline swept into view … and he just knew.

  Charlie’s omission from the homecoming roster had nothing to do with a late acceptance. He hadn’t been mentioned because he wasn’t going.

  Marcus raced out of the library just in time to see Chelsea disappear into the cafeteria.

  He caught up with her in the food line and wasted no words. “You’re not taking him.”

  “Not here,” she mumbled under her breath.

  “I can’t think of a better place,” Marcus returned quietly but firmly. “Somewhere too public for the lecture about how this is none of my business.”

  “It is none of your business,” she hissed.

  Maybe, but he wasn’t about to let it go—not with something this important on the line. “Explain it to me anyway.”

  She abandoned her tray at the taco bar and headed to a deserted table.

  Here it comes, he thought. She’s really going to let me have it.

  Instead, she just said, “I’m sorry, Marcus.”

  “I’m not the one you have to apologize to,” he told her. “That would be your dad.”

  She reddened. “If we take him there, he won’t understand. It’ll just get him mixed up to the point where he could freak out in front of everybody.”

  “You don’t read minds,” Marcus argued. “No one can be one hundred percent certain what’s going on in Charlie’s head.”

  “It’s not up to me,” she said defensively. “It’s up to my mom.”

  “Are you sure it isn’t up to Troy?”

  “That’s out of line!” she snapped. “I know you have a problem with my brother. I have a problem with him, too. But we’re my dad’s family, and you’re not. A couple of months ago, you’d never even met Charlie Popovich. How dare you act like you know one fiftieth of what it’s like to watch your father turn into a lost, helpless stranger?”

  Marcus had no reply. She was one hundred percent right.

  “It’s a family decision,” Chelsea went on. “Mom thinks Daddy would just get upset. And you know what? I agree with her. Why drag him across the state for nothing?”

  “Sorry to bug you,” Marcus mumbled stiffly. He left her to return to the taco bar and exited the cafeteria.

  Okay, so Marcus had no business meddling in their family’s crisis. And yet—

  He knew Charlie in a way that neither his wife nor his children did. As Mac, he’d seen Charlie from a friend’s perspective. Sure, the relationship was based on a fundamental misunderstanding. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t real. Too real—Marcus was facing criminal charges because he didn’t want to rat Charlie out.

  Over the past month, a lot of Charlie-and-Mac had seeped into Charlie-and-Marcus. Charlie and Mac had been kids together, football buddies, hell-raisers, closer than brothers. Now Charlie was about to miss out on the biggest honor of his life.

  What would Mac do?

  Chelsea said Charlie wouldn’t understand the hall of fame induction. Maybe, maybe not. Marcus could sit in the cafeteria all day and debate the issue with her.

  Or he could confront the one person who could provide the answer for real.

  It felt strange to be in Three Alarm Park in the middle of the school day. Not that he had a huge guilt complex about ditching class. But he couldn’t get past the thought that if Officer Deluca found him here now, he’d be arrested for truancy instead of the usual vandalism and harassment. That would certainly pad his bad-boy legend at school.

  The park wasn’t as empty as it had been during the summer. There were a few young mothers pushing babies in strollers, and an elderly couple chatting on a bench in the shadow of the Paper Airplane. Remembrance—what a name for the sculpture that marked his first meeting with a guy who couldn’t remember at all.

  No, that wasn’t quite right. Charlie did remember. He remembered what still made the most sense to him—being young and wild and invincible, taking on the world with his best friend. Those memories were so pure and vivid that he believed he was still living them in the here and now.

  Marcus had already made a few circuits on the Vespa, but there was no sign of his onetime football pal. Of course, it was a long shot to expect to find someone by running into him on the street. Still, he knew that Charlie, in his confusion, often spent his days prowling this area in search of something familiar.

  Come on, Charlie, where are you?

  Eventually,
he knew, he’d have to go back to school. But before that, he decided to make one final run along Poplar Street toward Seneca Hill, where Charlie lived.

  He hadn’t left the park far behind when a commotion reached his ears. Angry voices filled the air around a bus parked at the curb on the corner. A small lineup of passengers shuffled impatiently as the driver ordered a tall, belligerent man off the bus.

  A familiar voice announced, “I paid my quarter, and I’m entitled to my ride!”

  “That’s not a quarter, it’s a walnut! And the fare’s two bucks, mister!”

  “Two bucks? What is this, a bus or a stretch limo?”

  “It’s neither!” roared the driver. “It’s the shuttle to the outlet mall.”

  Marcus leaned the Vespa against the fence and ran up. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  Charlie regarded him in irritation. “Back of the line, pal!”

  The driver shot Marcus a desperate look. “You know this guy, kid? Is he your dad or something?”

  “Or something,” Marcus acknowledged non-committally.

  “You’ve got to get him some help,” the driver pleaded. “This isn’t the first time he’s done this. At least I’m used to him. If it happens on my day off, he could wind up at the outlet mall with no idea how to get home again.”

  “Come on, Charlie,” Marcus said gently. “Let’s go.”

  “You don’t tell me what to do!” Charlie protested. “I don’t even know you!”

  “Sure you do—I’m Mac.”

  “Mac?” He looked a little less angry, a little less sure of himself.

  Marcus reached further into his storehouse of topics that might trigger recognition. “Just be careful. Old Man Dingley’s on the warpath.” He took a chance and grasped Charlie’s arm.

  Charlie allowed himself to be led down off the bus and along the sidewalk toward Three Alarm Park. As the scenery grew more familiar, he became animated.