Red Cheek Days

“Look at those red cheeks! He’s gonna cry!”

“Don’t push him, Eric, he will cry and you’ll get detention!” said Mike, who really had once earned a detention for making Jonathan cry in English class.

Jonathan was thoroughly used to the abuse Eric and Mike had been dishing out throughout the lunch period. He had, he thought, been doing pretty well at not being in any danger of crying this time. But the mention of “red cheeks” was a game changer. All at once he was transported half a lifetime ago - not so long at age thirteen, even he had to admit - to the before times.

Before his parents had moved to their dead-end town. Before Dad got promoted but didn’t get a big enough pay raise to move again, and was up and gone before Jonathan got up in the morning. Before Mom was the constant ball of rage she always seemed to be these days. Before Jonathan himself had stopped giving a damn about school and started getting C’s where he could get A’s with just a little more effort.

Back when his favorite drink was apple juice, and his mother’s preferred brand was Red Cheek.

He knew now the good old days weren’t so good. Mom and Dad had been even more financially strapped then than they were now. Their old hometown had been even more dead-end than this one, beyond the boundaries of their beautiful little apartment complex anyway. But Jonathan’s world back then had been a happy one, no matter how small that world was. Riding his first bike all over the paths between the apartment buildings with his two best buddies, Andy and Josh (with whom he had exchanged one letter each after the move), imagining they were pilots flying all over the world…the sheer terror of the woods behind the complex and the incomparable thrill on the day they had finally gone in and found nothing but dead leaves…the first time he’d read a Dr. Seuss book on his own, except for the nonsense words…sledding on the dike in winter, tumbling down it head over heels in summer…

What happened?

Now, home safe from school with dry eyes, Jonathan looked at his baby book, which he had purloined from the attic with Mom none the wiser down in the kitchen. He ought to be doing his homework if he wanted things to improve at all, he knew that. But at least he had done some of it for a change before sneaking off upstairs. Besides, thoughts of Red Cheek apple juice had been dancing in his memory all afternoon. There were no photos of it in the baby book, of course; but that didn’t matter. What it did contain was a precious taste of a joy he could scarcely remember.

He had felt a spark of joy on the way back from lunch, when he crossed paths with Penny Grayling, whom he had danced with once at the last after-school dance, and had asked if he could join her friends for lunch tomorrow. “Course you can, Jonathan!” she’d said with a smile not unlike the one when he’d asked her to dance, only this time without any stern warning about what would happen if he gave her a run in her nylons. “Why do you want to bother with Mike and them anyway?”

Because Mike had been a pretty good friend of his back in fourth grade, that was why. Jonathan knew just what had changed: Mike had gone on to be one of the cool kids, and he had become the opposite. But that seemed well worth it if he got to sit with the girls for a change.

Jonathan opened the book. His cheeks were probably red in that very first photo from the day he was born, although he couldn’t tell for sure because it was in black and white. Dozens of pictures followed with Dad in his Army uniform and Mom in her wonderfully dated colorful clothes - the ones he sometimes still imagined her wearing on that wonderful day when he would rescue her and Dad. The real Mom and Dad, that was - the happy ones he remembered from way back when. Some time between then and now, Jonathan was sure, they’d been captured and thrown in jail and replaced with the perpetually angry substitutes he now had to live with. He couldn’t help laughing at the image of himself arriving at some faraway jail cell and unlocking the cell to find his parents, dressed in clothes he could barely remember and Mom’s hair so much longer, and all of them living happily ever after.

Jonathan was too old for happily ever after, of course, and he doubted if he’d ever really believed in his jailbreak fantasy. But wasn’t it nice to think that day might one day arrive?

They would be a lot less angry if he finished his homework, at least for tonight. And so he would, Jonathan promised, but he just had to visit some more of the good old days.

Christmas, age three…there he was on Santa Claus’ lap, and Mom’s note read, “bravery for Santa!” He couldn’t quite remember that, but he imagined it felt a lot like the bravery for Penny he’d worked up a few hours before. For the first time all day, he smiled.

There was a lock of his hair from age four or so, where Mom had written, “So blond!” It still was blond, but less so now. The opposite page had a list of milestones, showing his age when he’d started dressing himself, putting his toys away, reading, putting his clothes away…the last was blank, which made him laugh. Fair point, Mom, he thought.

First day of kindergarten. He wasn’t quite smiling in the picture, but at least he wasn’t crying. He recalled crying for the first three days at least. Mom said it was every day until Christmas. Well, who wanted to spend three hours a day listening to poems about how he was made out of snakes and snails and puppy dogs’ tails anyway? But he did remember being the first in class to know the alphabet.

First day of first grade. “Graduation from babyhood,” it said, and there he was at his desk with his hand raised. He actually had liked that school…all two months he’d spent there before the big move. The next Christmas photo was from their apartment before they’d found the house. Age six and three quarters, and the book ended at seven. Already something gone, he could see in that photo of him with his hand deep in the red and green stocking, though he couldn’t have said what.

Jonathan knew what the last page said, about his seventh birthday. He didn’t want to read it, but he forced himself to turn the page. “Seven years old! Jonathan is blond and beautiful, and happy as a seven-year-old should be.” Wrong, he knew now. He’d known it even then, how he’d been prone to putting himself down, he hadn’t liked his new school (and to be fair, Mom and Dad hadn’t liked it either - they’d hated his teacher, he recalled quite well), and he’d never again made friends like Andy and Josh.

Happy as a seven-year-old should be…did Mom write that because she wished it were true? It seemed all too likely. Just like the way she called him an honors student these days when he never made the honor roll because of all the homework he missed. But he had gotten a pretty good start on it this afternoon, and he had been brave enough to ask Penny to join her friends for lunch. Making better grades wouldn’t stop Eric and Mike from calling him a crybaby, and it wouldn’t stop Mom from being angry about her lot in life…but at least she wouldn’t be angry at him, right?

Wrong. Of course she would be, he knew that. But at least he would know he was doing a better job. Penny, too, and right now that was irresistible. Who cared what the boys thought then!

The sound of Dad’s car barreling up the driveway wafted up through the open window. Jonathan took a long last look at his favorite picture of himself with Andy and Josh, and closed the book and shoved it under his bed. He could put it back in the attic next time he was home alone. By the time he heard Dad shuffling up the stairs, he was seated at his desk with a list of which classes he had homework in; he was just crossing out English and French, which he’d already completed before his trip down memory lane, when the door opened.

“Hi, Jonathan. How’s the homework?”

“I hate algebra. But the rest is fine.”

“Good for you. We’ll work on algebra after dinner. I heard you did a great job on your last French test?”

“Got a ninety-six.” He could even hear his younger self remarking on how lousy that was. Not now.