by Peter Orner
That emptied house, his furious hysterical loneliness, his nose against the pane, fogging it up. Only our disgraces are permanent? Once—only once, and he’ll never forget it as long as he lives—Daphne grabbed her ankle and raised her leg so that her foot was directly above her head, and he was so stunned he stopped breathing. That tweed dress collapsed over her face like a parachute.
April 30, 1945
I imagine everyone must be happy now—But as Truman said—It should be a solemn celebration—because there’s still a tough, fanatical, and desperate enemy out here—I tell you this to give you a little ammunition to take care of some of the loose talk I know is probably spouting from a lot of our friends—Speaking of, did you see the March 5th issue of Time magazine where some spies were implicated? One of them was a Phillip Jaffe from Chicago in the greeting card business—Isn’t that Irma B.’s brother? It seems they are all Communist sympathizers—Do you remember that parlor-pink harangue Irma gave us a few years ago when she was at our house—I’d like to kick her teeth in—
THE ROBBERY
He comes home from school and the front door of the apartment is slightly ajar. Nobody home. Miriam at work. Leo rarely home these days. Hello, Popper says, Louise? Not a sound. No sign of that cat. Popper creeps in slow, Columbos around a little, peeps around corners, opens closed closet doors. Skulks backward into a bar stool and knocks it over, and leaps, screams, hides behind the couch. Breathes, waits, crawls on knees and elbows into the kitchen. Ah ha. The refrigerator is open. Wide open. Quite interesting. Make a note of this. Said thief may have been out of margarine. Continue the investigation. His room all amiss, therefore nothing amiss. Leo’s room perfect order, therefore nothing amiss. His mother’s—holy fucking shit—the tackle box Miriam uses to store her jewelry is open on the bed, and rings, earrings, bracelets, lockets are strewn around—strewn!
“Good afternoon, Koenig and Stray. May I—”
“Mom?”
That year she was working part-time for a realtor.
“Yes, honey.”
“Somebody broke into the apartment and stole your jewelry.”
“What?”
“And the refrigerator’s open.”
“The refrigerator? Why don’t you go over to Manny’s? I’ll be home after six.”
When Miriam came home, he was waiting for her under the bed. The cakes of dust, the lint, the missing slipper, a shoebox of old letters, cat hair. She came into her room and sat down on the bed. The bottom of the mattress pressed closer to his face. It took her awhile. She must have been examining each piece before dropping it back into the tackle box. Under the bed, Popper, holding his breath, listened to each sad plink. At one point, she began laughing. Why didn’t you just ask me? She was silent for a long time after. When he finally sneezed, Miriam didn’t say anything, didn’t move, didn’t seem to even hear him.
RAVINIA
Jackson Browne played Ravinia Park, even the cops were stoned out of their gourds. After the concert, a friend of Leo’s, Samantha Levinson, lay down on the Chicago and Northwestern tracks and waited for the southbound train, its light already visible in the short distance.
Earlier, Samantha had wandered away from the group and disappeared into the trees on the edge of the park. Samantha wandered away as Samantha often wandered away.
“Where’s Sam?” somebody said.
He was always listening for him then. Leo never much acknowledged that he existed anymore. Sometimes he introduced Popper to his cavalry of friends as a distant cousin visiting from Muncie. After three, he heard the apartment door open. He got out of bed and spied down the hall. The light was on, and Leo was standing and gazing at a bowl of pears on the kitchen table. He took one and had a bite of it, looked at it, had another bite. Leaving the light on, he walked down the hall toward the dark bedrooms. There was mud on his shoes and his feet left tracks. Leo stopped at Miriam’s door.
“Mom?”
Miriam, like Leo, the lightest of sleepers. She got up almost immediately and opened her door wider. His mother, nightdress, bare feet. Popper watched them in the box of light breathing down the hall from the kitchen. Leo leaned toward her as if he meant to whisper, but he didn’t whisper.
“Mom!”
Miriam looked down the hall at the muddy footprints. There’s no crisis unless there’s blood flowing and even then no reason to get excited. (Popper remembers being about four or so and squatting under the glass table on the patio of the house on Riparian. He was looking up at his mother. She was writing in her address book. At one point she looked down at him, and he stood up so fast to go to her his head cracked the glass. As he wailed, she kept saying, “Look, Alex, just a little bit of blood, not even a thimbleful.”)
She looked at Leo as if she already knew without needing to be told any facts. A dead girl, Leo? You poor kid, the world is full to the hilt with dead girls.
“You’re still high, honey,” Miriam said. “Go to sleep, we’ll talk in the morning.”
She never minded mud on any carpet, either. Leo was still holding the bitten pear. Later, days later, he told them what he’d seen by the light of the cop’s flashlights. That Samantha was just torn-up clothes, no body. That night Leo went to sleep right where he was. He slumped and dropped to the carpet. At noon the next day, he was still there in the hall in front of their mother’s door, crumpled, snoring.
DR. RALPH
I tell you the one about the female urologist? Terminal case of penis envy.
His mother’s new boyfriend, the urologist Ralph Fishman. Six feet tall, enormous hands, tells jokes. Poppers don’t tell jokes. Poppers tell themselves that Poppers tell stories. Jokes are beneath us.
Come on, Alexander, live a little! That’s humor, that’s comedy. Not everything’s got to be a drama. Miriam, what the hell’s wrong with this kid?
She comes and sits on his bed, rubs his head. “And now, honey, don’t be scandalized if Ralph stays over one or two nights a week. What you need to understand is that Ralph absolutely understands what you’re going through. Plus, he really likes you, not only because you’re my son, but also he likes you as a person. He has kids himself, you know, and we all acknowledge that this is a challenging situation. In the long run, this is good for me, good for you, good for your brother, even good for your father. Because it might force him to move on, to get over his bitterness—”
“Who said anything about him?”
“Won’t you try, sometimes, darling, for me, to not be so sullen all the time?”
MR. VICE PRESIDENT
It is by politics that the work of redemption must be wrought.
—William Stead, If Christ Came to Chicago!
Miriam hosted a coffee for Walter Mondale in ’84. He stood in their living room, in front of the fake fireplace. Like the candidate, the plastic logs lit up but gave off no heat. Mondale, mournful and apologetic, smiled wanly as Leo said, Nice to meet you, Mr. Vice President, Nice to meet you, Mr. Vice President, Nice to meet you, Mr. Vice, as if a record had skipped in his head. Mondale nodded at him as if to say, It is me, my son, but if you truly knew me, you would not be so impressed. Popper wants it all to mean more now. Still, it was the former VP in the flesh. And his mother could not have been prouder or more radiant in her optimism about a future led by this man who would beat Reagan. Walter Mondale as past life. The three of them, Miriam, Leo, and Alexander, were a part of, let’s say, the 35 percent (maybe 38 percent on a good day), of the country who believed in Walter Mondale—not only as a man but as an idea of human decency.
Miriam, serving platter after platter of mini-pizzas, exclaimed to her new, unawestruck neighbors from the apartment complex, a few retirees, a smattering of teachers: “Isn’t he sensational? Isn’t he?”
Who needs Gary Hart? His ruggedness, his good hair?
No, plod we must.
Miriam’s mother (on a visit from Fall River) just beamed and beamed—Look at my Miriam now. Look at her now. The leader of the free world is st
anding in her living room.
Ralph Fishman sidled up to Mondale and said, I got one in your sweet spot, Fritz: Jimmy Carter, the Shah, and the Ayatollah walk into the Kasbah, and the Shah says to the Ayatollah, Let me at least buy you a drink, and Carter says, I thought A-rabs didn’t drink, and the Ayatollah says, who you calling an A-rab, and the Shah says, Khomeini, what if I bought you the whole Kasbah? And Khomeini says, Off with your head, and Carter says, Why don’t we all have milk? and the Shah says, How about a couple of royal palaces? No? An oil well? An oil field?
Miriam shooed him back into the kitchen. “Ralph! Check the oven for the rest of the mini-pizzas!”
“Alex,” Leo said.
“He looks about the same as he does on television,” someone whispered. “A little smaller maybe.”
“Alex—”
“Yeah?”
“Outside. The honking—”
“Shit. Wednesday. You think he’ll come inside?”
“No. He’ll just honk. Maybe the Secret Service guys will go out there and shut him up.”
“Should I go out there?”
“No, make him wait. This is Mom’s time. Leave him be.”
And Walter Mondale, hapless before the fireplace, the little red lights flickering under the false logs. He spoke about the importance of a living wage, as the neighbors, politely, trickled out the door. As background music, Philip honking his horn. The Secret Service didn’t seem to notice.
Yes to job training. Yes to education. Yes to a nuclear arms freeze. A resounding and unequivocal NO to the MX missile! And a big Yes to Geraldine Ferraro!
Time for him to go. Mondale took a sip of coffee. He thanked Miriam not once but four times. Go forth from our humble home, sir, and lose—it’s all right, lose. We no longer aspire to anything so crass as actually winning. We cashed that dream in ages ago. Our peace-loving friend of labor and the workingman. Our soldier of the Old Guard liberalism. Our warrior of nonconfrontation. You were an era that was over before you even started. But this doesn’t mean you didn’t have integrity by the Minnesotaful. You were a man who would have absolutely raised our taxes, but is this so terrible if for the common good?
So long, Mr. Vice President. You were once us. He blew Miriam a last ineffectual kiss, spittle flying, and was gone.
Walter
Mondale
was
gone.
10
SOPHOMORE
The sin of impurity may not be cured in a day, a year, or perhaps in generations.
—The Vice Commission of Chicago, 1911
May 3, 1945
This Johnston I told you about, in the engine room, remember, the one who writes poetry? Well, for a guy who only went through high school and has practically no education, he does remarkably well—He is quite a toughy and loves his engines better than books or things like that—He was ashamed to admit it to me, but since I found out, I keep encouraging him—He has a peculiar talent—He cannot write a lucid letter to save his life, but he can sit down and write something like this—
No Performance Today
A guy woke up one morning feeling rough and ready and reached over for his wife. She was already up and in the kitchen fixing breakfast. He didn’t want to get up for fear of spoiling everything, so he wrote a note and sent it to her by his small son. He said,
The tent pole is up
The Canvas is spread
To hell with breakfast
Come back to bed.
She in return sent her answer by the boy, saying
Take down the tent pole
Tear up the canvas without delay
The monkey has a hemorrhage
There’ll be no performance today.
TIME PRESENT
Winter: no beginning, no end. And so. And so. April, and still there will be no gym outside. They descend again to the gloom of the indoor track, where they will run walk run walk, loop after loop, like trapped hamsters. Popper, Mooch, Manny, Pampkin, and Sal Marcello. They’re an arbitrary grouping known as a “fitness squad.” Round and round and round, they walk together. The only respite is the occasional glimpse of the pom-pom squad—Julia Horowitz and friends—practicing their yowls and splay-legged leaps on the handball court. Few things make Popper sweatier than jumping girls in sweatpants, but even this, thirty times round, is enough already.
Now, mercifully, the fitness squad is getting dressed again. They’ve taken their showers, fast cold showers, in the shouting bedlam of white tile and fungus, and now they’re shivering, trying to unlock their lockers. Popper can’t remember his combination—again. What the fuck is my combination? And Sal Marcello, standing on the bench above him, drops his towel and shouts, “Hey, Popper, I got a boner!” And Popper looks. An announcement like that? Didn’t Mooch, Manny, and Pampkin look? And then Marcello, he was a strong little fat-thighed guy with an incredibly squeaky voice, shrieks: “Hey, Popper! Whatayoulookingat?”
T. S. Eliot. Snob, casual anti-Semite, etc. Born in the Midwest, St. Louis, though he got to be so British he acted as if he never heard of Missouri from the Canterbury Cathedral. Wife went crazy, probably from having to live with him. Anyway, famous poet, he wrote:
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
What might have been: What if I was looking at your little dick, you gym class fascist?
What was: “I was looking at the fucking clock, Sal.”
Sal: “Mooch, was Popper looking or was he not looking?”
“Pretty much,” Mooch says. Mooch, freckled and kind; he can’t tell a lie, but he won’t rub it in, either. “Pretty much looking.”
“Laveneaux?”
“Well, look at this way. The clock is right above your head, Sal. Popper likes to be on time to English. It’s the only class he’s ever on time for. I’m going to throw my support behind his denial.”
“Fuck off, Manny. Pampkin?”
Pampkin. Benji Pampkin would turn his mother in to the Gestapo. “Absolutely totally looking.”
Footfalls echo in memory
Down the passage we did not take
I found my thrill on Liberty Mill. Most sophomores lead lives of quiet masturbation.
The uniforms they wore, reversible shirt and shorts. Their names written in permanent ink on the blank white stripe on the left thigh. All their names. All their mothers’ handwriting. Laveneaux, Pampkin, Marcello, Popper, Boobus, Gordon, Deutch, Newton, Moritz, Lund, Mueller, Moncada, Rudman, Cahill, Tiziano, Frankel, Edelstein, Meyers, Palandri, Bortz, Stenzler.
The little man in the cage who threw them towels. His name was Mr. Carl, and he’d throw a kid a towel only if he could prove that he’d at least got his hair wet, and so they would shake their heads at him like Labradors just out of the lake, him saying, Not on me, spazolas, not on me. Mr. Carl lived and probably died in the stench of that locker room. Their shoes, their sweat, the crotch rot of their never-washed shorts. Mr. Carl in his cage with his tiny black-and-white TV, watching General Hospital. Those were the days of the wedding of Luke and Laura, and Mr. Carl would periodically shout updates.
She said no!
She said yes!
She’s fucking his friend!
He knows!
The wedding’s off!
Reconciled! The wedding’s on! Luke and Laura, everybody! Who says there’s no such thing as romance?
So Mr. Carl. So those towels. Washrags, really. So small you couldn’t tie one of them around your waist, and so they’d have to hold it there to make it stay. Again, Sal on the bench.
Hey, I gotta—
Marcello’s dick littler even than his own, but since it’s uncircumcised, it actually looks bigger. This is something Popper wasn’t prepared for. A hooded sausage doomed to lurk for all time as part of his permanent record. Not a day goes by. Who said, you don’t choose what haunts you? He will die not with beautiful conjurations of home, family, a long record of contribution, of achievement, bu
t instead with an image of Sal Marcello’s dick in his head. And yet it seems now, after all these years of re-enduring this moment, that Sal’s poor dick itself, independent of Sal, is now, in Popper’s head, trying to apologize. As if Sal Marcello’s unsheathed shlong is whispering: What choice did I have? You think anybody would willingly choose to be an appendage of Sal Marcello? You can’t choose your family, either.
All is always now.
Fine, fine, but shouldn’t he also be able to hold on to the moment before? Aren’t there synapses in the space/time continuum between when Sal says “Hey, I gotta—” and he, Popper, pops his eyes up to see what once seen he will always see? Shouldn’t there be a way to reverse things and hold the moment before? But he never can slow it down. There’s always this slippage from the boner to the looking.
the bench Sal stood on
beneath his unclipped horny toes
the combinations of dead locks etched
other echoes
shouts, reverberations of
slams
all sound once heard is heard again
here is a place of disaffection
us in the thick brown shit-stained light
hey I gotta
whatayou?
PEEPER
It’s not a question of whether or not you’re guilty.
—Horace
A light in the window upstairs. A hand moves slowly down the pane. So long, sucker. Burton Avenue. Bedroom. Popper’s on the grass, Stan Smiths in hand, socks in his pockets hanging out like little rabbits. The light darks. He slips his shoes on and gets on his bike and begins to drift home no-handed. Takes a right on Roger Williams. Now Roger Williams was also a man. He wanted to be pope of his own religion, so he left Massachusetts and rowed his boat to Rhode Island, where he created his own 5 by 7 kingdom. Why we honor him in Illinois, who the hell knows. Now the great man connects Sheridan Road, named after a boozy Civil War general, to Green Bay Road, named after a football team. Left onto St. Johns. Down the hill and up again. A soft right onto Forest. Two blocks. And here, ladies and gentlemen, behold the mute houses of Highland Park’s notorious white-collar-criminal element. Three homes in a row, three indictments. The Blotners, Missy Blotner’s father (insider trading). The Sterns, Dr. Stern (Medicare fraud, embezzlement). The Gordons, Judge Gordon (bribery, racketeering, witness tampering, extortion, influence peddling, Operation Greylord).