Page 79 of Off the Mark
Eddie huffed out a laugh and my grandmother patted my knee softly. “You look very handsome in a suit.” She squinted, tilted my face side-to-side. “And tired. You’re working too much. Or worrying too much. That must be the reason why you’ve been avoiding me.”
“I saw you less than thirty-six hours ago,” I said with a grin.
“Complete and total abandonment.” She sighed. “I always knew it would come to this.”
“Did you ever think these guilt trips are the reason I’m tossing and turning all night?”
“I should hope so. I know how you tomcat around.”
I twisted in my seat. “Yo, Dean. Are you hearin’ this?”
Tabitha was mid-laughter, filling a basket with tomatoes while Dean was shaking his head with a small smile.
“You do have tomcat ways,” Tabitha called over. “I say own it.”
“Alice speaks the truth,” Dean said. “I’ll get you some cat ears for Halloween.”
In my lap, the kitten yawned, and I scratched the top of her head with the tip of my finger. “It’s one thing to besmirch my good name when I’m alone. But around Tiffany? That’s low, man.”
Eddie bent to scoop up the kitten. “She’s not so innocent, this one. She watches the soaps with me and Pam every afternoon. I think she knows how the world works.”
Then he turned on his heel and waved goodbye from over his shoulder. “Thanks for the cannoli, Rowan. I’ll see youse later.”
“I’ll see you at the center though, right?” I called. “For your job that I pay you to do?”
He grumbled something I didn’t catch before disappearing around Tabitha’s aunt’s house. Dean and I exchanged another amused look. Eddie enjoyed being vulnerable about as much as I used to enjoy plunging my shoulder into ice baths at the end of practice. The man was the definition ofhe’s grumpy because he cares.
He did care, pulling hours at the center past what we paid him and always doing his best to get food where it was needed.
Letting Eddie go wasn’t an option.
I switched seats, moving to sit next to my grandmother so I could tip my head back, close my eyes for a second. Her fingers tapped gently on my arm, and the neighborhood surrounded me—the baseball stats on the radio, the 47 bus stopping to let off passengers at the corner across the way. Behind us, two neighbors were having a friendly-seeming argument while a Spanish-language pop song slipped out from the tiny market on the corner.
This block had saved me and my grandmother during our darkest moments—not only the summer that my parents died but the years after. Over the course of one night, Alice became a grieving mother and my sudden guardian. And I became an orphan, on a new street, in a new house, being raised by a grandmother I’d always liked but hardly knew at all.
It’s not a time I remember super well, for all sorts of reasons, but I do recall that meeting Dean made a lot of things better for me.
Knew that Midge and Maria fed us more nights than not, stayed late to do the dishes, and kept the house full of people when we needed a distraction.
And I knew that Eddie—for all his gruff grumbling—took me shopping for clothes and toys and a brand-new bike when my grandmother couldn’t get out of bed.
For years, a host of South Philly folks were constantly around—sometimes obvious. Sometimes not, like the times Eddie would fix a leaky patch in our roof without saying a word. Or how Annie—the woman whose house used to be on this abandoned lot—would walk me and Dean to school. Or take Alice to church.
Before Elaine was my boss at the rec center, she was leaving a box of food on our stoop for Christmas.
I opened my eyes and pressed the palm of my hand over the spot in my chest that ached now. For my parents. For this neighborhood. For the senior food program that Dean and I had been so proud of.
I owed everything to this place.Whether they hired me as the ED or not, Ineededto figure out a way to fix things at the rec center before it was too late. There was only one event with Charlie between now and the ultimatum I’d been given—the championship gala dinner. I needed to bring my A game to that dinner, and in the meantime, keep shaking the pockets of every donor we had.
The surprise $10,000 from Steve was a great start, and helpful, but I needed to secure a lot more to save the day, and Charlie’s list of names would help me do it.
As long as she was still speaking to me.
“Tabitha? Dean? Come over here for a second,” my grandmother said. “I’ve got a bone to pick with all three of you.”
My eyebrows shot up. “All three of us?”
“Yeah, what did I do?” Tabitha exclaimed.
