See You at Harry's Page 2

  “Hey, little man,” Ran says. They do their special handshake, which involves rubbing palms together. I don’t think Ran knows or else cares how risky it is to touch Charlie’s hands. No one knows where they’ve been — but most likely in some pretty disgusting places.

  “Wanna sundae?” Charlie asks.

  “Yeah!” Ran follows Charlie to the ice-cream counter, and they disappear behind it. A few minutes later, they return with a huge banana-split bowl filled with every topping we sell. They each have a spoon but share the bowl.

  “That’s disgusting,” Sara says.

  Charlie and Ran ignore her and go to town. Miraculously, they eat the whole thing. When they finish, Charlie’s mouth has an almost-perfect chocolate circle around it that slowly drips down his chin. He looks just like the dinosaur on his T-shirt.

  Ran carefully wipes his mouth with a napkin from the dispenser on the table. Then, instead of getting a new one, he just folds it over and wipes Charlie’s mouth for him. Charlie beams.

  In the distance, my dad tries to get the line cooks behind the counter to say, “See you at Harry’s,” but they look kind of confused. Instead, Charlie yells it from our table.

  I hide my face in my hands.

  “What’s wrong?” Ran asks with his familiar bewildered look.

  “Can’t you tell how lame this commercial is going to be?” I ask him.

  “Well, yes,” he says slowly. “But that’s not your fault.”

  “Since when does it matter if an embarrassing moment is your fault or not?” I ask him. “Do you not remember the elf cards? It took months for me to live that down.”

  “Only because you let it bother you,” he says calmly.

  “Whatever,” I say, staring at the orange letters on his T-shirt. GLOW. Yeah. Why is it so easy for Ran to just glow, when I’m the one wearing the neon T-shirt?

  “LET’S GET OUT OF HERE,” Sara says when we finally can’t listen to my dad anymore. “Ran? You need a ride home?”

  “I have my bike,” he says. “Thanks for the ice cream, little man.” He does his handshake with Charlie again. This time their hands sort of stick, and Ran has to wipe his on his jeans.

  “See you later, Fern.” He gives me an odd salute before he turns to leave.

  In the car, Holden turns around from the front seat and grins at me. “So, Fern. What’s with Random, huh?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ran? He’s looking pretty cute these days.”

  Sara eyes me in the rearview mirror. “Yeah, Fern. What’s up with that?”

  “Um, I don’t control people’s metamorphoses.”

  Charlie makes Doll look at me with her unchanging surprised expression.

  “Where’d you learn that word?” Holden asks.

  I shrug.

  “So, anyway, are you two going to be more than just friends? I could see him looking at you in that special way.” Holden raises his eyebrows.

  “Random and Ferny sitting in a tree . . .” Sara sings.

  Charlie makes Doll dance.

  “I think it’s time for all of you to shut up now,” I say.

  “Bad word!” Charlie says, hitting me with Doll’s head.

  “Ow! Knock it off.” I push Doll away and look out the window.

  The truth is, I don’t really know how I feel about Ran. When he smiles at me as if I am more than his childhood best friend, sometimes it makes me happy. Sometimes it makes me scared.

  “If you don’t snatch him up, someone else will,” Holden says.

  “Like you, Mr. Faggypants?” Sara reaches over to pinch Holden’s cheek. “Better watch out, Fern.”

  Holden hits Sara’s hand away. But she just laughs. “Chill out — I’m only joking.”

  “I can’t believe you,” he says, turning away from her to glare out the window.

  “You people need to lighten up,” Sara says.

  At the stop sign just before the turn to our house, Holden jumps out of the car, slams the door, and starts walking.

  “Oh, please,” Sara says. “No one can take a joke.”

  “Your jokes aren’t funny,” I say. “You hurt his feelings.”

  “Well, he better grow a thicker skin soon if he’s going to survive high school.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he wears who he is on his impeccably ironed J.Crew sleeve — that’s why. I mean, he’s like the quintessential fag.”

  “What’s a fag?” Charlie asks.

  “A boy who likes boys instead of girls,” Sara says.

  “And it has nothing to do with how someone dresses!” I yell.

  “Except in Holden’s case,” Sara says calmly.

  “I know you think you’re funny, but you’re not. And stop saying that word!”

  “Just telling it like it is, Ferny.”

  I wish Sara could be more like the Sara she was named after from A Little Princess. That Sara is nice to everyone. Even the mice in the attic. This Sara seems to find it necessary to look for everyone’s weak spot. And then stomp on it.

  When we get home, Charlie runs around the yard with Doll, throwing her in the air, then catching her and kissing her.

  An hour or so later, my dad drops my mom off. He’s all excited about taking the delivery truck someplace for another surprise. My mom gives me and Sara a look that tells us to zip it, but even she seems pretty wary.

  “Holden ran away!” Charlie says as my dad pulls back out of the driveway.

  “What?” my mom asks, dropping a bag of groceries. “Where did he go?”

  “Faggypants, faggypants,” Charlie sings, walking around my mom in a circle as he traces his finger across her legs.

  “Stop it, Charlie. That’s not nice.” She looks at me and Sara accusingly. “And who taught him that lovely word?”

  I can’t believe she has to ask.

  “I was only joking around,” Sara says.

  “Which way did he go?”

  “He got out at the stop sign on the corner,” I say.

  “Sara, take Charlie inside and give him a snack. Fern, go find your brother, would you, hon? You’re the only one who seems to be able to bring him back.”

  Holden is always running off in a huff, and I am always the one searching for him and bringing him home. Holden’s named after the main character in The Catcher in the Rye. I wasn’t supposed to read it until I’m older, but I snuck my mom’s paperback copy out of her room last year. The pages were all soft from her reading it so many times. The book is about this boy who’s depressed because he thinks everyone he knows is a phony, so he runs away. I understand why my mom likes the book and all, but I personally think it was a big mistake to name your kid after a boy who tries to kill himself, even if he is thoughtful and brilliant. My favorite parts in the book are when the main character talks about his little sister, Phoebe. Sometimes I think I’m a little like Phoebe to our Holden. Because in the book she’s the one he goes back for. And that’s sort of like me. Only I have to go looking for him first.

  I find Holden sitting under the huge pine tree in our next-door neighbor’s yard. They’re never home, so it’s a good hideout. He showed it to me when Charlie was born and I used to get upset and jealous. I felt like I went from being a shadow to being completely invisible. Holden told me the tree cave would always be our special place that no one else in our family would know about.

  “Knock, knock,” I say, standing just outside.

  “Who’s there?” Holden asks.

  “Boo.”

  “Boo who?”

  “Don’t cry.” I bend low under the bottom boughs and crawl under. It’s cool and smells like Christmas.

  “I don’t know why you bother coming after me,” he says, picking at the rubber on the sole of his sneakers the way he always does.

  “I’m your sister. That’s my job.”

  “And Mom sent you.”

  “I would’ve come anyway.”

  He buries a piece of shoe rubber under some brown dried-
up needles.

  “So, you coming home soon?” I ask.

  “I dunno. I kind of like it under here. It needs some decorating, but . . .”

  “Holden? Is it true, what Sara said?”

  “That I’m too sensitive? No.”

  I nudge him. “Come on, you know what I’m talking about.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  I wait for him to really answer, but he doesn’t. He just sits there with his arms crossed over his knees. If it’s true, I wonder what that must be like. To know you’re different. To know some people are going to hate you because of it.

  We’re quiet under the pine, smelling Christmas in summer and listening to the traffic on our street pick up as people start getting home from work. It’s my favorite thing about Holden, being able to sit quietly together and not talk. Just think together and not have to say a single word. But today, for the first time, I feel something floating between us, a question I’m sure I know the answer to. I feel the weight of the answer separating us for some reason I don’t understand. If it doesn’t matter to me, why should it matter to him?

  “I don’t care if what Sara said is true,” I tell him quietly, hoping my words will make the floating thing go away.

  He takes a deep breath that sounds like it hurts. I wait for him to say something, but he just sits there, staring at the pine needles. And it almost feels like the floating thing has swallowed him up, leaving me all alone.

  ABOUT A WEEK LATER, my dad waves a puffy manila envelope at us and calls a mandatory family and staff meeting at the restaurant. He rounds us all up in his office. It’s the hottest day of the summer, I think. August. And the office is packed with our family, the wait staff, the cook, and the line crew. We’re all crammed into the tiny room in the attic among cardboard boxes, paper products, and my mom’s meditation stuff. A dusty old fan buzzes hot air at us from the one window in the room. Instead of cooling anyone off, it just blows the stinky mixture of body odor, kitchen grease, and my dad’s coffee breath. I think I’m going to throw up.

  My dad opens his laptop and holds up a disc that he handles as if it could crack at any moment. “Just arrived today!” he says, smiling like a maniac. “I haven’t even viewed it myself!”

  My mom makes a tiny noise. I think it’s actually a whimper. One of the new cooks is standing on her meditation cushion. She closes her eyes, and I can tell she’s taking a deep breath. I am pretty sure she’s going to have a hard time finding her inner peace any time soon.

  Charlie claps his hands.

  I breathe through my mouth to keep from gagging on the growing smell.

  “Here we go, here we go,” my dad says quietly as he slips the disc into the computer.

  “Go, go, go!” Charlie yells. He hugs my dad’s knee.

  An image of the Harry’s sign on top of the restaurant comes into view, then the camera pans lower to show us all standing there.

  “Woo-hoo!” someone in the back of the room yells.

  Holden moans.

  “Shhh,” my dad says, and the room gets quiet.

  On the screen, my dad is listing all the ice-cream flavors we sell at Harry’s. The camera zooms in on our faces. Charlie is inspecting my dad’s ear as he talks. I see myself cringe in the corner of the screen and feel myself do it again. There are a few shots of inside the restaurant while my dad’s voice-over talks about how great it is to be running a second-generation business and how he’s made every attempt to preserve the authentic feel of the place. I glance over at my mom, who shows no expression at all. Sara told me that when my dad inherited the restaurant, my mom wanted to renovate the place and sell organic vegetarian dishes, but my dad said the business would never survive and that he couldn’t bring himself to destroy his own dad’s dreams of making Harry’s truly famous one day. I guess my mom must have thought that was a noble-enough reason because whenever my dad comes up with these business schemes, my mom is always at his side.

  “There’s Mona! There’s Patrick!” the staff shout as the camera pans to various staff members.

  “Shhh,” Charlie says with his wet finger to his lips.

  I see Ran with Charlie behind the counter, holding up the sundae they made. My stomach flutters when Ran smiles at the camera, and I feel myself blush. I look around, as if anyone could actually tell what just happened. But Holden nudges me and winks, and I realize maybe someone can.

  The scene flicks back to our family standing in front of the sign and my dad mentioning heaven. Then it zooms right into Charlie’s dirty angel face when he says, “See you at Hawee’s!” at the top of his lungs.

  The screen goes black, and then the store hours appear in neon-green text.

  There are cheers, but I barely hear them. I am already imagining how this will play out at school. It is not a good scenario.

  “Well?” my father asks, turning in his swivel chair to face us.

  “Again!” Charlie cheers, pointing to the screen.

  My dad tousles his hair.

  “Born actor!” someone says.

  Holden snorts.

  “Fern, honey, remind me that we have to contact Ran’s parents and get them to sign a release form so he can be in the ad. I’d hate to cut that scene. It’s nice to have some diversity.”

  “Di-what?” Charlie asks.

  I roll my eyes. “It means Dad wants to use Ran because he has darker skin than the rest of us.”

  “Oh, Ferny,” my dad says, tucking in his enormous T-shirt where it keeps coming untucked because it’s too small and only emphasizes how huge his belly has gotten. “I’m not using him. It’s just a nice coincidence. Just like Mona.”

  Oh, my God. I can’t believe he just said that. Mona, who is Chinese American, is a waitress who has worked at the restaurant for a million years and used to babysit us all the time, too. She just shrugs. Everyone always just shrugs when my dad says something stupid. He means well, my mom always says. Whatever.

  “So,” he says to everyone else, “the first ad will air at the end of the month! Just in time for the fall tourists. Just you wait. Just you wait! They’ll be flowing through the doors.”

  A quiet, sarcastic great sweeps through the stifling room. My dad seems to be the only one interested in increasing business at Harry’s. I think everyone else just sees a busier restaurant as more work. Most of the people who work here are what my mom calls strays. People who are down on their luck. People she thinks she can help save. I think it’s the only part about owning the restaurant that she really likes — being able to help give people jobs, even though waiting and bussing tables is hardly a good time.

  “Well, back to work, work, work!” my dad says cheerfully.

  A few people roll their eyes behind his back. I see my mom notice and cringe. My poor dad. The thing is he really does mean well. He’s just . . . a little intense. Sometimes I look at the old photo albums my mom keeps to see that he wasn’t always like he is now, so obsessed with the business and making it busier. My sister loves to tell the story of how before they had us kids, my parents followed the Grateful Dead on tour and camped out in people’s fields and stuff. But then my grandparents died, and my dad inherited the business. And soon after that, my mom got pregnant. I think Sara is secretly devastated that Jerry Garcia, the lead singer, died, because she is obsessed with their music, and I’m sure she would love to camp out in strangers’ fields, too. But I just like hearing the stories and looking at the pictures because my parents look so happy and relaxed in them. And it makes me think that if they could be that way once, maybe someday they will be again.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, we’re in the kitchen helping my mom with dinner when the phone rings. When my mom hangs up, she tells us that we have to go out to the driveway for some sort of surprise from my dad.

  “What now?” Holden asks.

  “I’m sure it’s not that bad,” my mom says.

  Sara and I sigh at the same time.

  “Why do you guys always have to assume the worst?” my mom a
sks.

  “Do you really have to ask?”

  “Oh, Fern, don’t be so negative.”

  “Should we all put our T-shirts on in case the camera crew is coming to the house?” Sara asks.

  Charlie, who is already wearing his, pats the dinosaur on his tummy.

  “Let’s just get outside,” my mom says.

  We all follow her out to the driveway. Charlie takes my hand and swings it back and forth. Even though his hand is sticky, it feels kind of nice that he picked my hand to take instead of my mom’s or Sara’s. He looks up at me and smiles. “I like supwises.”

  “Not this kind,” Holden mumbles.

  Charlie frowns. I squeeze his hand to reassure him, even though I have to agree with Holden.

  In the distance, we hear the familiar roar of the ice-cream truck.

  “Daddy!” Charlie yells. He lets go of my hand and starts to run down the driveway.

  “Charlie, get back here!” My mom runs after him and pulls him onto the grass.

  My dad honks the horn and swings the truck into the driveway.

  “Oh. My. God,” Sara says.

  I stare at the side of the truck with my mouth open. My mom drags Charlie back up the driveway but stops halfway and turns when she sees the looks on our faces. Charlie wriggles out of her grip and runs back to me as my dad comes around to us from the other side of the truck, beaming.

  We all stand beside the truck and stare. Even Charlie is speechless.

  “Well?” my dad finally asks. He’s smiling bigger than I think I’ve ever seen. “Whaddaya think?”

  The ice-cream truck used to say Harry’s Homemade Ice Cream and Family Restaurant on it in fancy scrolled letters. Now the words are gone, and instead there is a giant photo of Charlie’s face. He’s licking an ice-cream cone in his dinosaur T-shirt. The front of it is covered with blue ice-cream drips and so is his chin. His long curls hang in his face so he looks like a girl. To the right of his face, there’s a giant cartoon speech bubble that says in enormous letters SEE YOU AT HAWEE’S! Yes, it’s spelled that way.

  No one says a word.

  My dad steps over to the truck and pats Charlie’s enormous face. “Well, gang? Pretty great, huh?”