Eddie isn't ready

PROFESSOR UNCLE

 

Mama is busy in the kitchen. Company is coming. As always, Mama plans on serving salmon croquettes for lunch. I watch her open three cans of Sockeye red salmon, drop them in her big yellow bowl that she uses when she has the urge, and time, to bake a cake. Four large potatoes are already boiling on the gas range. While they are getting soft, Mama mashes the salmon until all the little bones have been mixed in and the salmon is smooth. A dinner fork lets her know when the potatoes are ready. Her flour sifter is handy so she drains the potatoes, lets them cool a few minutes, mashes them and mashes them into the salmon until the glob looks to me like pinkish paste. Two eggs, salt, pepper, bread crumbs she bought at the A & P, go into the bowl and she is ready to form the croquettes in her hands. Mama won't let me help. What is left is frying them lightly in Crisco and voila, the basis for lunch will be ready when company comes all the way from Philadelphia.

 

We don't have a dining room so I help set the big round table in the kitchen. 'How many plates, Mama?'  'Let's guess three. Our family is five. Eight should be enough. I don't really know, Lottie. We can always add another place if we have to.' 'You sure made a lot of croquettes, Mama.' 'Better too much than not enough, Honey. We can eat what's left tomorrow.'

 

Our door bell rings at 10. I open the door for our company. Two men I never saw before are standing there. One is tall with yellowish skin and an unpressed suit. The other is bald as a billiard ball and has a huge smile on his face. He's Eddie, my mother's uncle. The yellow one is Meyer. Both are my great-uncles. In a clean wrap-around dress Mama invites them in. They have no suitcases but Eddie holds a heavy cloth shopping bag in his left hand. It looks to me like it holds a treasure or some presents.

 

We all go into the living room to wait for Dad who has the afternoon off to meet Mama's family. I am bored listening to stories of when my mother was little, growing up in Philadelphia. Eddie has to go to the toilet and takes his heavy shopping bag with him. 'Eddie, my mother says,' 'leave that here. I'm not going to steal it.' His answer surprises her and me too. 'You would if I let you. You'd be rich and known all over the world.' 'Cut out the nonsense, Uncle Eddie. What have you got in there?' He pretends he doesn't hear her and goes upstairs to the bathroom. Mama starts in on Meyer, 'What's Eddie got in that bag, Uncle Meyer?' He won't say until Eddie gives the okay and that won't be until maybe tonight, after he sees Dr. Mason, head of the Cancer unit at Johns Hopkins. He said we may have to stay overnight. Don't worry about us. We'll go to a rooming house on Broadway, right across the street from the hospital.' Mama tells me to go outside and play. Uncle Eddie may want to speak privately to her. I go.

 

Daddy comes home for lunch and finds me sitting on the front step. 'Are your uncles here?' he asks and I tell him I was chased out so they can talk to Mama. I think Uncle Eddie has cancer and is going to die soon, Daddy.' He takes my hand and says, 'Come on, let's go have lunch.'
The house smells good. The croquettes are warm on the table. Mama has canned peas mixed with corn in a serving bowl, real red sliced tomatoes sitting on crispy lettuce, a basket of saltine crackers and a giant size bottle of Heinz ketchup and a smaller one of mustard waiting for us. Coffee is ready. I get chocolate milk, eat three whole croquettes, save my apple pie for later.

 

When the table is cleared away, Uncle Eddie suggests I go out to be with a friend while he, Meyer and my parents talk. Perfect, I think and skedaddle, come back in thru the cellar and listen in to what Uncle Eddie has to say, find out when he will die.

 

Uncle Eddie has a big jar, a really big jar in his bag. He has invented a sure cure for cancer and wants to get a lot of money for it but first has to give Dr. Mason all the names and figures he has saved for three years of people who had cancer who took his medicine and all are still living. I can tell my parents are excited as they talk real fast. 'What's in it, Eddie? Can we put money into your invention if Dr. Mason says he will give it a try?' 'We'll see, Lou. It won't be overnight. Meyer and I have an appointment with the doctor at three and it is a long street car ride to Hopkins. Doctors are never on time. I'll sit there until the moon turns purple if I have to.' I'll call you after we talk.'

 

'Thanks for the croquette lunch, Mildred. Everything was delicious.' Uncle Eddie almost falls on me when he opens the door. He gives me a quarter, smiles his big smile and tells me not to spend it all in one place. I go to the streetcar line and wait with them, wave goodbye.

 

I am already in my night gown when the phone rings at about eight o'clock. Mama sounds like she is crying. Daddy takes the phone and listens to Uncle Eddie's report of his meeting with Dr. Mason. He repeats it to Mama–and me. Dr. Mason asked him what was in the mixture, what new chemicals he had mixed, who his 'patients were', what proof did he have that they ever had cancer.

 

Dr. Mason opened the big jar of medicine Uncle Eddie brought from Philadelphia, tasted it, laughed wildly and poured Eddie's mess down the laboratory sink and had the guts to tell Eddie to go home and make mud pies.

 

Poor Uncle Eddie has to sleep across the street from Johns Hopkins with my Uncle Meyer and start his experiments again when he returns to Philadelphia.