The Magical Stranger by Stephen Rodrick

American flag presented on behalf of a grateful nation. What it all meant I didn’t know.
    T his is what I remember.
    A little boy knows some things. Mom and Dad come from different places. It’s not about class or money; those are things I don’t understand. It’s geography, a word I can’t quite pronounce but whose answers lie in a big blue book kept on a high shelf. He is from the North, she is from the South, and we live in the West.
    I see it best on vacations. Dad is one of six kids, raised in Brockton, Massachusetts, home of somebody named Rocky Marciano. In December 1972, we drive there from somewhere in a storm arriving just in time for the wedding of Dad’s baby sister, Marie. We go straight to the church and I fall asleep in a pew.
    Then we go to his home. We live in a suburban tract home with air-conditioning and two bathrooms. My grandparents’ home is old and smelly. The carpet is faded green, the ceilings are slanted, and an old cat slinks around the place. There is only one shower in the two-story home on Herrod Avenue, so we bathe in shifts that seem to last the whole day long.
    Grandpa Rodrick is just sixty, but he seems to be the oldest man in the world. He just got laid off from his job in shipping at a shoe factory but still slicks his hair back with Brylcreem and eats franks and beans for breakfast every morning. The house has a family room just like ours, but there isn’t much family about it. Right at 7:00 p.m., Grandpa retires to his La-Z-Boy and scowls at the Boston Globe while the Bruins skate around on Channel 38.
    The kids are all adults now, but they still tiptoe around the old man. He tolerates me as long as I stay quiet. I plow through Time magazine’s Year in Review from the 1930s and 1940s stacked on a bookshelf. Every once in a while, I asked a question. Who was Tojo? Where was Ethiopia and why did Italy invade? Sometimes, he answers, sometimes he just mutters.
    â€œJiminy Christmas, you knucklehead. Why do you need to know that?”
    Grandma Rodrick is the exact opposite. On her wrist is a jangle of bracelets holding charms with pictures of her rapidly multiplying grandchildren. She still works for Kelly Girl, a temp agency, filling in at offices three or four days a week. I sit in the backseat with her and Mom on the way home from Mass. She sings “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and nuzzles my face with her whiskery chin, smelling of Avon. Sometimes, she talks about grown-up things when she thinks I’m asleep. I hear about a miscarriage and a day driving around Brockton when she thought of ditching Grandpa.
    Where Dad fits in his family is clear. He is the hero. Dad’s family isn’t exactly poor, but they are far from rich. Their pilot son gives color to their black-and-white world. The neighborhood is equally invested; I run errands with his sister, Lyn, and the grocer and the baker ask after Pete.
    His black Irish features make him seem fierce, but he has a crinkly smile that makes you know he doesn’t think he’s better than you. His brothers and sisters approach him with serious looks and grown-up questions.
    Dad’s just about to turn thirty.
    H is family views Mom just as I do: she is the prettiest creature, with light in her eyes. There’s usually a touch of lipstick on gapped teeth inside a mouth that is always working a piece of Juicy Fruit gum. She’s from Virginia Beach, Virginia, less than 600 miles from Brockton, but she might as well be from Mars.
    Her dad is the cartoon opposite of Dad’s dad. Bill Gentry is a joker; wisecracks slip from his mouth almost as quickly as marriage proposals. He’s on his fourth or fifth rodeo. It is hard to get my parents to cough up details, but I’m smart and nosy and get it from here and there.
    Sometimes, he takes me on his rounds in his sky blue boat of a car plopping me on a stranger’s couch in front of a Leave It to Beaver rerun. A nice lady