Racetrack Blues

"What is it?" Georgie asked as she sidled up behind me. "Pretty!"

"It's dittany, Georgie," I said. "Dittany of Crete. It's what Mom was looking for yesterday at that oil store where the woman made fun of her. I mean, she made fun of the word. Dittany."

"Oh, wow, what are the chances?"

"Right?" I reached out and did it; I snapped one of those beautiful stems right off, brought the flowers up to my nose for a sniff. It smelled of summertime and something cooking. I carefully tucked it into my coat pocket. I looked up at Georgie. "Don't tell."

"You're stealing, Maddie."

"Don't tell. They'll never miss it. Look how many she still has!"

"She?" Georgie looked around. "Who's 'she'?"

I jerked my chin to the plant. "Her."

"Oh, man, you are such a weirdo." Georgie turned on her heel like she was on a mission.

"I mean it, Georgie, don't tell."

"Or what?"

I thought a minute. I was so bad at this, this constant on-your-toes-ready-for- a-fight kind of thing that came so naturally to her.

"Or I'll tell Ruthie Levinson that you have a massive crush on Thomas. And she'll tell her sister."

The Levinson sisters lived in a neighborhood near us and were exactly our ages. Ruthie was my age, and her sister Sarah was Georgie's age. Sarah Levinson had an especially big mouth. Some people called her TeleLevinson, because when you told her something, you might as well have just gotten on the telephone and announced it to the local news station.

Magically, it worked. Georgie seemed stunned that I would even think of starting a gossip chain.

"So how are you planning on explaining this little branch of dit-nee, you Cretan?"

Clever, I thought. It was like she walked around with a storehouse of mean words and witty phrases resting on her tongue, ready to shoot them out at a second's notice.

"It's dit-tan-y. And I don't know. I guess I didn't think about what I'd tell her. Maybe that I found it lying on the ground next to the plant? Yeah, that works. These people probably sweep up lots of dead branches all the time."

"What's it used for again?" Georgie said as we started walking back toward the gothic archways.

"Hmm. Some people use it in tea. For stomach aches and stuff, I think. But the other day, Mom told that mean lady that Origanum dictamnus was used way back, like before the Middle Ages, for open wounds. And in ancient times, one goddess, Athena? Hypocrite? Venus the Milo? I forget. No! I remember now. It was Aphro...Aphrodisiac! Anyway, she rubbed it into her son's skin after he got pierced with a sword. Or a spear. And he healed, like right away."

Our father came up to us as I was so professionally delivering my lesson on dittany, but his face didn't look impressed; instead, he stopped in his tracks like the neighbor cat who sees the birds taking a bath in our backyard.

"What did you just say about an aphrodisiac?" he said.

"That's the name of the goddess who rubbed Origanum dictamnus into the big bloody hole in her kid's back when he got stabbed in the war. I think. At least it was one of the names Mom and that lady at the store were throwing around. Aphrodisiac. Yeah. Anyway, whatever her name was, dittany works! For open wounds! And Mom has a paper cut."

"Hmm." He still clutched his phone, and his eyes weren't so much looking at me, but kind of through me, like you had to do with those Magic Eye books that were all the rage back then. You had to squint and cross your eyes a little, pretend that the pictures in front of you were windows, and as you stared with your crossed eyes, suddenly boom! You'd see that there were fish swimming behind other fish, or the flat old design you were staring at would morph into this crazy 3-D design. I spent way too much time in my room with my Magic Eye books.

Now Dad looked at his watch. "Time to go, girls."

"Wait," I said, "What about your meeting? Weren't you supposed to meet somebody here?"

"Yeah, well, it fell through, Love. I guess this storm is here to stay and some people are Nervous Nellies about it. The friend who was supposed to meet me here says he's going to find us at the track." He looked down as he tucked the car phone into its special leather bag. "So, let's be off like rockets, sprockets! Let's go see some horses."

His smile was kind of weird, like a jack-o'-lantern's. His teeth smiled but his eyes stayed the same.

"Wait," said Georgie. "I thought you were already supposed to meet somebody at the track."

"Indeed," Dad said, his hand resting on her shoulder. "And now there are two men to meet. It's okay, it'll all work out, really."

He sounded like he was talking more to himself, though, than to us.

Whatever, I thought. I was busy figuring out my front seat position. I'd had it coming here to the Cloisters, so I'd have the back seat on the way to the track, then Booyah and Abracadabra! The front would be mine all the way home from Yonkers.

On the way to the racetrack, Dad was quiet, but since Georgie and I were on friendly terms again, we played the Alphabet Game where you shout out the letters from signs you're passing. It's the easiest game in the world when you're going across the island of Manhattan, let me tell you. The signs are just about fighting each other for your attention.

After "P", though, there's always that dreaded lull in the game. You're almost always looking for a "Q". I closed my eyes and thought about Zana and how I'd like to understand tarot cards someday, and I think I fell asleep because suddenly we were there, in the parking lot at Yonkers Raceway, where we usually got a ten dollar bill and could bet on any horse we liked, based on things like the horses' names, or the names of the guys who drove the tiny carriages behind the horses. Or in my case, gut feelings.

Thing was, the parking lot was almost empty.

I rubbed my eyes.

"What the heck?" Georgie said. I guess she'd fallen asleep, too.

Dad was tapping the keys of the car phone and didn't answer her.

"Dad?" I said.

"I'll be with you in a minute, girls. Don't get those panties in a twist, now."

It's how they talked back then. He thought he sounded cool. He was trying too hard to make his voice sound okay, normal, and I saw right through it, with my mad Magic Eye skills.

He got out of the car, slammed the door.

"What the heck?" Georgie said again. "I have to pee! And I'm hungry! And I don't think they're even open!" I unfastened my seatbelt and leaned up so I could see her. She was grabbing her crotch, which made me laugh, but that made her even madder.

"Didn't you just pee back at Zana's? Gosh, you pee a lot, Georgie."

"Shut your stupid pie hole."

"Just open the door and pee in front of it, Georgie! Like when we went to the beach that time, and I couldn't hold it 'til we got to the rest stop? I'll stand in front of you." I undid my seatbelt and opened the door. Dad was flapping his arm again, pacing away from the car, and once again yelling into the phone.

"Damn it, Jerry!" he said, but then he turned around and saw me. "Hang on. Madeline. Get. Back. Into the Car. Now." His voice was lower than usual, and his mouth made a perfect upside-down U.

"But Georgie..."

"No buts. Get back in the car!"

We were rarely on this side of Dad's yells, Georgie and me. He yelled at our mother sometimes, but only when she yelled first. And once I heard him yell a swear word when he was trying to put wallpaper up in the bathroom.

I got back in the car.

"Um. Just rock back and forth, maybe," I said. "Sometimes when you rock back and forth, the pee in your stomach sloshes around and it's too busy to get out."

George undid her seatbelt and started rocking back and forth and I decided not to talk anymore so that I could watch Dad and figure out what the heck had made him so mad. And why the heck we were here at the racetrack all alone.

The wind was whipping his hair around, and I sat for a moment, watching new snow fall and thinking about what a handsome man my father was and how someday I wanted to marry someone who was handsome and funny and knew all the words to lots of songs. I still felt stung from him yelling at me, but with his hair over his eyeballs and his face all red from the cold and from being upset, I think I felt sorry for him for the very first time in my life.

When he slammed back into the car, Georgie started in right away. I should have warned her to shut the heck up and that maybe there were worse things going on than having to pee and being hungry.

She grabbed her crotch again and with her other hand reached out to clamp onto his arm.

"Daaaaad," she moaned. "I have to go to the bathroom!"

He cranked his neck and looked all around the parking lot. "What the heck? Didn't you just go back at the psychic place? There's no one here, George. Just get out and pee. No one will see." His voice had softened a little, but he was breathing hard.

"I caaaaan't pee out in the middle of a parking lot!"

"Fine. Buckle up. We'll find a place."

"Wait," I said, but he had already started the engine and we were rolling back onto the highway. It was supposed to be my turn for the front. I got a lightbulb idea, though, of how I could make this work because of Georgie needing to pee. So I stayed away from the front seat subject. "Why was the track closed?"

Georgie made mewling sounds up front and was still rocking wildly.

"Weather. I guess we should have called first to check if they were racing. Dumb of me." Dad threw the car phone down beside him and flipped the fan on to clear the fog from the windshield. "The roads are a mess, apparently. And Central Park Avenue was closed down completely. No way for us to have known unless we'd called ahead. Here we are," he said, and his breathing seemed almost back to normal.

He had magically landed us at the Raceway Diner, which had the best hamburger anywhere, and chocolate shakes. But most important, they had a bathroom, so Georgie was in there like a lightning bolt, out of sight by the time Dad and I got inside the front door and were stomping the snow off our boots.

"Hungry?" he asked, with his hand on top of my head.

"Starving."

"You're not starving. You don't know starving, kiddo." He ruffled my hair, and I looked up, but he wasn't looking at me. His eyes were on the window, far away.

The lady at the podium got us a booth, and I made sure to take my coat off and get comfortable next to Dad so that by the time Georgie came back from the bathroom, that seat couldn't even be an option for her.

And no, I didn't even feel guilty.