How I nicky Flynn fINAllY Get A liFe ANd A dog a little background inFo like I said my mom lies Which is why I decided to start this mental log of when and where and how That’s what Dr Ice my secret favorite cartoon crime-fighter does whenever he’s keeping tabs on his archenemies the Heat Technically speaking I’m a little old for Dr Ice But I’m sick and tired of Mom getting off scot-free with everything she says Here’s a list of a whole bunch of stuff she told me this past summer that just isn’t true She said for instance that we’d be much better off living here in Boston than out in the suburbs I can already tell you after just three weeks here We’re not First of all Charlestown isn’t Boston You can sort of see Boston from Charlestown if you squint through a bunch of highway overpasses and bridges But Charlestown itself is pretty much exactly what it says a town named Charles not much bigger than Littleton where I’m from About the only difference is that Charlestown’s a lot more run-down and dirty Plus the buildings are all squished together in rows which they call town houses even though the houses where I’m from in a real town have big front and back lawns with lots of trees We now live in a one-bedroom apartment on the parlor level which is the first-and-a-half floor of one of these so-called town houses on Eden Street Eden is supposedly the beautiful garden where Adam and Eve lived 4
You CAN’t teACH AN old doG New trICks when they named all the animals About all they could name here in Charlestown are alley cats and squirrels And Adam would have to sleep in the middle of the living room just like me Back in Littleton we used to own a real house on King Street a big white one with green shutters I had my own room with a door that locked Plus I went to fifth grade at this really great elementary school in Littleton Common that had a campus with a swimming pool an auditorium and a computer lab In fact I was just about to ask my best friend Marky if he wanted to try out for junior high soccer when ZAP Mom tells me out of the blue in mid-August that she’s put the house on the market and rented an apartment in the city I had the worst Labor Day weekend ever While Marky was barbecuing hot dogs and hamburgers in his backyard I was actually you know laboring I can’t tell you how many boxes of old clothes and toys I schlepped out of my room into the car and over to Goodwill The very next Tuesday I found myself walking through the doors of this totally sketchy middle school in Charlestown you’d swear was a maximum-security prison if you didn’t read the sign Forget about sixth-grade soccer My new school doesn’t even have grass It only took about a week for everybody in class to realize I’m like a half a grade ahead when it comes to math and reading Me So now everybody thinks I’m some kind of book freak and nobody will talk to me 5
How I nicky Flynn fINAllY Get A liFe ANd A dog But that’s not what this log is about It’s about Mom’s In Littleton I was just a normal kid who had tons of friends Well maybe not tons But lots lying Here’s another example Mom swears this new apart ment is a lot less work than that big old house Oh yeah So how come there’s always dishes in the sink and dust kitties under the table Big fat one She loved our old house Plus she had this gigantic flower garden she was really proud of She spent half the day out there digging and humming and pruning her roses She doesn’t ever hum here in the city and the one potted plant she brought with her the philodendron philodendron from our front hallway isn’t looking so hot Example number three Mom likes her new job She’s always telling her old friends back home how much she loves standing on her own two feet As if She just sits at a desk all day answering the phone for these two lawyers downtown that father-and-son team you constantly see on TV shouting at you to give their 800 number a call if you’ve been hurt on the job or involved in a bad car accident Mom calls them the Ambulance Chasers behind their backs She’s told all her Littleton friends she likes hearing other people’s hard-luck stories for a change Whenever they call to see how she’s doing she tells them all about the mailman who slipped on an icy sidewalk the old lady who got run over at a crosswalk or some hospital patient who had the wrong parts taken out Mom’s favorite stories seem to be about 6
You CAN’t teACH AN old doG New trICks wives who take their husbands to the cleaners for cheating on them Back in my old neighborhood whenever anyone cheated at kickball we just stopped playing with them Anyway if work is such a barrel of laughs all day long why is Mom so tired when she gets home All she ever wants to do is flop in front of the TV in the living room with a glass of white wine and watch nature shows until I finally wake her up so I can go to bed She used to do stuff all the time with her old friends work out at the gym play tennis go to gallery openings and parties and stuff Now she only ever talks with them on the phone and that’s just once in a while Which leads me to number four and the biggest whopper of all Talking to a shrink will help us adjust to our new life Don’t look at me seeing Dr Holkke once a week wasn’t my idea My opinion If Dr Holkke really wanted to help out he’d lend us the money for a new set of front tires Instead he’s constantly asking me all these How are you feeling and What’s on your mind today questions stuff he couldn’t care less about What he’s really trying to get me to talk about is my dad which is frankly a none of his beeswax and b kind of a sore subject with me at the moment My parents split up a couple of months ago just before the Fourth of July To Dr Holkke though I just say stuff like not bad or not much and sit there for half an hour until it’s time to switch places with Mom out in the waiting room Which isn’t much better by the way because Dr Holkke doesn’t have 7
