by Jim Kokoris
“Hey there, boy,” he said. “I gotta talk to you.” Then he smiled at me, a wide smile I can still see to this day. I looked away and started walking faster.
“Hey, I can give you a lift,” he said, “Get in. Might rain.”
“No thanks,” I said.
“Your momma taught you not to talk to strangers, that’s good. But I ain’t no stranger.”
“Who are you?”
“You don’t recognize me? Come on,” he said, leaning over to open the door. “Get in now.”
“I have to go home,” I said. And then I turned and walked away fast.
THE NEXT EVENING was dinner at the Wilcotts. My father wore a pained expression on his face as he attempted to flatten his fluffy cotton-candy hair in the hallway mirror with a comb I had won at the St. Pius Summer Festival by lowering a magnet into a fish bowl full of cheap prizes. Several times, he pushed the hair down on the sides of his head only to watch it slowly rise again like Jiffy Pop popcorn heating on the stove. I knew he didn’t want to go to the Wilcotts and had overheard him discussing the possibility of canceling with Aunt Bess. Social activities frightened him. He obviously was not comfortable with conversation and was known to disappear into bathrooms at parties, sometimes for hours. In the end however, he decided going would be easier than calling Mrs. Wilcott and canceling.
“I want you to keep a keen eye on your brother,” he said as he once again tried to flatten his hair. “I think it might be best to keep all forks and knives out of his immediate reach.”
“What about spoons?” I asked.
“Spoons are fine,” he said, though he paused before answering.
Uncle Frank walked into the hall, holding a glass of wine. “What time is dinner?” When he saw my father, he took a step back and said, “Whoa. What the hell do you have on?”
My father stopped combing his hair and looked down at his clothes. He was wearing white pants, a white, short-sleeve shirt, and white socks. The entire ensemble was offset by the thick, black shoes he always wore and that reminded me of sturdy rubber life rafts.
“You look like a milk man, for chrissakes,” Uncle Frank said. “Don’t you have any other clothes? Something with some pigment?”
“Well,” my father said, clearing his throat. “I was thinking of wearing a sports coat as well.”
“What color?” Uncle Frank asked. Then he said, “Not white, I hope.”
“Well, actually,” my father said, his voice trailing off.
“Don’t you have a blue one?”
“Yes,” I said. “The one mom gave you last year. For the faculty dinner.”
“Oh, yes,” my father said. “That’s right.”
“Well, that’ll help,” Uncle Frank said.
While my father was upstairs, Uncle Frank took me by the arm and pulled me into the kitchen and whispered, “Let’s keep an eye on this Wilcott woman tonight. Find out what her story is, what angle she’s playing.”
I nodded my head. I enjoyed being brought into Uncle Frank’s confidence and despite the fact that I didn’t really have any idea of what he was talking about, I was determined to help him in any way I could.
“We have to figure out what to do about her. We have to decide whether we let this thing play itself out or”—he paused here, his face grave—“or take matters into our own hands.”
I nodded grimly. “Okay,” I said.
When my father came back downstairs, Uncle Frank said, “That’s better. A little. Anyway, are you bringing this woman anything. Some wine? A pie? A melon? Something?”
“I hadn’t really thought of that,” my father said. “That would be the proper thing to do, I suppose. Aunt Bess usually does the shopping. I wonder if she thought to pick up something appropriate.”
“Well, you’re a little late for that,” Uncle Frank said. Aunt Bess had returned for a few days to her home in Milwaukee to pick up some more clothes and check on Baber, Aliki, and Asa, her three cats who were staying at a friend’s.
“What the hell, I’ll run to the store and pick up something,” Uncle Frank said.
We were waiting for him on the front porch when he returned with three bottles of wine. Tommy the Dog was running in small circles on the lawn, chasing fireflies that no one else saw. My father, looking stiff in his blue jacket, was watching him intently, squinting his eyes in the fading light. When Uncle Frank arrived, my father took the bottles and thanked him.
“Let’s go,” Uncle Frank said.
My father looked surprised. “You’re not coming, of course.”
Uncle Frank looked equally surprised. “What do you mean? Of course, I’m coming.”
“But you weren’t invited.”
“What do you mean I wasn’t invited? I need an invitation to have dinner at someone’s house?”
“Well,” my father said, considering the question. “Yes.”
“So she didn’t invite me? She doesn’t even know me. How could she not invite me?”
My father was confused and cleared his throat. Despite his social back-wardness, he held manners and protocol in high regard, a fact I attributed to his admiration of certain Confederate generals like Robert E. Lee, who, according to my father, was a very proper man when he wasn’t defending slavery. “Mrs. Wilcott specifically said, ‘I’d like to have you and your boys over for dinner.’ She didn’t say anything about me bringing, well, a grown man, my brother. It could prove very embarrassing, Frank.”
Uncle Frank processed this information silently. Then he looked over at me so I looked down at my shoes. Aunt Bess had polished them before going to Milwaukee and, despite the growing darkness, I could still see glints of the shine.
“I hope you understand, Frank.”
Uncle Frank remained silent. He was wearing a black shirt, black coat, and black pants. He looked like night and against this darkness, his pale face stood out, deathlike. For a moment, I feared he was a vampire or, at the very least, an apostle of the devil. His eyes narrowed as he aimed his chin directly at us.
“Well,” he finally said. “Well, I see.” Then he reached for one of the bottles of wine. “I’ll just take one of these back then.”
My father hesitated before turning to leave. He looked concerned. “What will you do for dinner?”
Uncle Frank shrugged. “I’m going to eat Stavros,” he said. With that, he turned and walked slowly off.
“Well,” my father said as Uncle Frank disappeared. “I suppose we should go, so we can . . . come back.”
THE WILCOTTS HAD ONE of the largest houses on the block. It backed up to the Wilton Forest Preserve and the tall pine trees that ringed its sides gave it a majestic secluded look that reminded me of a castle. Up close though, the house lost its luster. Its white paint was peeling in small flakes and the red door that looked so impressive from the sidewalk had a large, crooked crack that ran jaggedly from the bottom all the way up to the doorknob. Leaves from the unraked lawn swirled and danced in the wind before settling in small piles.
Mrs. Wilcott was waiting for us in the doorway. “Hello, Theo. Hello, boys,” she said in a high, cheerful voice that sounded like a friendly chipmunk.
She looked very different than I had ever seen her look before. She was wearing a very short dress that was cut low in front to reveal the tops of her breasts. My first thought was that we had come too early and she hadn’t yet finished dressing. My second thought was that she might pitch forward because her breasts were so large. I stared helplessly at them. They were pressed tight together, almost angrily, and the crack that separated them wiggled when she opened the front door to let us in.
My father was startled by her appearance as well. He cleared his throat for such a long time that I feared he was choking. “Gloria,” he finally said stiffly, holding out the bottles of wine. “We brought this for you. For your family, I should say. But not for the children, of course.” He bowed his head deeply as he presented the bottles to her.
“Oh, Theo, you shouldn’t have,” Mr
s. Wilcott said as she took the wine. Then she did something that astounded me: she leaned forward and lightly kissed my father on the cheek.
My father’s reaction equally shocked me. He accepted her kiss as if it was an expected present, then he coughed into his hand and said, “Well, yes, anyway, I hope you enjoy it.”
We followed Mrs. Wilcott through the spacious living room and into the dimly lit dining room, her high heels clicking loudly on the shiny wooden floors. Benjamin, her son, who played on the St. Pius football team and always had some form of dried blood on his arms or knees, was already sitting at the table, holding his head in his hands and staring at his plate. “Can we eat now?” he asked without turning to look at us.
“Benjamin, honey, why don’t you take the boys up to your room and play for a while? Dinner will be ready in a few minutes.”
“What am I going to do with them?” he said, looking at Tommy who was sucking his thumb. “Watch Barney?”
Mrs. Wilcott said nothing. She just looked at Benjamin and gave him a big chipmunk smile. Her breasts still looked angry though.
“Let’s go,” he finally said.
On the way upstairs, I noticed several framed pictures of Mrs. Wilcott on the wall. In one, she was standing on a stage, in a long dress, her hands over her mouth in apparent surprise as another woman placed a crown on top of her head. In another, she was playing a white piano in what I recognized as their living room.
“Hurry up,” Benjamin said. He didn’t stop or even slow down as we passed the pictures.
Benjamin’s room reminded me of a gym. It was large with a high ceiling and a bare wooden floor that I imagined was cold in the winter. A small basketball net hung in the corner with several small balls on the floor underneath. Trophies and certificates lined the bookcase and walls.
Benjamin picked up one of the balls, yelled “Pop a shot,” and threw the ball in the basket. Then he jumped on his bed and began reading Sports Illustrated. I watched him read. He was tall and wiry, his body abrupt angles and small muscles. “I want to go to Notre Dame,” he said after a few minutes. “Where do you want to go to college?”
“Harvard,” I said.
“Harvard? Why?”
“My father went to college there.”
Benjamin snorted. “They don’t have any good teams there. What’s he doing?” Benjamin was looking over at Tommy who was lying down on the floor, still sucking his thumb.
“Resting,” I said.
“How old’s he?”
“Three,” I said. Tommy was five.
Benjamin raised his eyebrows a little, then went back to his magazine. I walked slowly around his room. I could quickly tell that Benjamin and I had nothing in common other than the street we lived on. The walls were covered with dozens of photos and posters of various Notre Dame athletes, most of whom looked like older versions of Benjamin. “My mother said she might let me go to a Notre Dame basketball camp if I didn’t embarrass her at dinner,” Benjamin said. “It costs about a thousand dollars. And we’re not rich like you. We don’t have a butler like you.”
“We don’t have a butler.”
“Then who’s that short guy always hanging around your house, driving you everywhere? I just saw him come back from the store with the wine. I can see everything from my window.”
“Oh. Him. He’s our uncle,” I said. “He makes vampire movies. He made Microbes: The Unseen Death. That one wasn’t about vampires though.”
Benjamin was unimpressed with Uncle Frank’s occupation. He continued to leaf through his magazine. “You should have a butler. And a maid. If I was as rich as you, I’d have a maid and I’d screw her every night. That would be part of her job.”
I nodded my head. “Yeah, we were thinking about hiring a maid. But not to screw. Not right away, at least. We’d let her work for a while first.”
Benjamin put down his magazine and looked over at me. “How old are you?”
“Eleven,” I said.
He went back to his magazine. “How come you guys don’t move? You can probably buy a mansion or something. What are you doing in Wilton? I mean, it’s okay, but you’re really rich. You could probably live anywhere.”
I kept walking around the room, looking at the pictures of grimacing, smiling, and ultimately victorious athletes. “We’re probably going to move next year,” I said.
“Where?”
“We’re going to buy a ranch in Montana and raise horses.” I said this very nonchalantly.
“Horses?”
I nodded my head, then put my hands in my back pants pockets like a cowboy. “Horses,” I said.
“You ever ride a horse?” Benjamin asked.
I shrugged. I had once ridden a blind pony at the Wilton Carnival, but I suspected this would carry little weight with Benjamin.
“You don’t seem much like a cowboy,” Benjamin said.
WE ATE IN THE DINING ROOM, surrounded by flowers and flickering candles. The table looked like a page from one of my mother’s old magazines about beautiful houses and diets. The gleaming dishes reflected the light from the crystal chandelier and the thin, tall glasses felt fragile and weightless in my hand. The silverware was much heavier than ours and the napkins were thick and embroidered, like the drapes in our living room. When I laid mine on my lap, I felt a serious responsibility not to drop any food on it.
I tried hard not to look at Mrs. Wilcott’s breasts while we ate, but they had a strong gravitational pull, drawing my eyes in their direction every few seconds. Their immense size concerned me. They appeared caged in by her dress and I feared they could break free from their restraints at any moment. Initially, my father seemed to be afraid of them as well. During the early stages of dinner, he kept his eyes steadfastly on his plate and when he passed things, he did not turn his head more than an inch to either side. He did have several glasses of wine, however, and as the evening progressed, I noticed that he seemed less fearful of Mrs. Wilcott’s breasts and talked more, occasionally glancing at her breasts when he did. Midway through the meal, it was apparent that he had entirely overcome his fear of her breasts and was talking directly and solely to them in a very conversational manner, as if they were old friends.
“This is all quite delicious, Gloria,” he said. “Quite delicious.”
I looked over at Mrs. Wilcott’s left breast to whom my father had directed the compliment, expecting it to answer. Instead Mrs. Wilcott’s mouth did. “Why, thank you, Theo,” she said.
While we ate the strange food Mrs. Wilcott had prepared, chicken with cooked peaches and walnuts, she mentioned that our neighbor, Mr. Tuthill, was selling his house.
“It’s a beautiful house,” she said. “It was in Chicago magazine.”
“Ah,” my father said. The wine seemed to have had an arousing effect on his hair, which now stood out like small wings on the sides of his head.
“It has five bedrooms and a study with a fireplace.”
“A fireplace,” my father said.
“Oh, do you like fireplaces, Theo?”
“Yes,” my father said, swallowing. “They are so, well, so warm.”
“I enjoy a good fire on a winter night,” Mrs. Wilcott said.
“Yes,” my father said. “It would seem that that would be an appropriate time to have one. Winter is so, well, cold.”
“We used to use ours quite often, but now that it’s just me and Benjamin, we don’t find as much occasion. We used to though, before everyone left, the girls left for school.” Mrs. Wilcott stopped here and took a slight sip of her wine, then dabbed at her mouth, her lips pressed together. “Do you have a working fireplace, Theo?”
My father was confused by the question. “A working fireplace?” he repeated. “Yes, I think we do. I don’t remember ever using it though.”
“We used it once,” I said.
My father looked at me, surprised.
“Mom did,” I said, softly. “To smoke out that raccoon. The one that built that nest at the top.”
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“Oh, yes,” my father said. He lowered his head over his plate and cut at a remaining peach. “That was quite an . . . event.”
During dessert, while we ate a cranberry pie that made my lips pucker and sting, Mrs. Wilcott began asking my father questions about the Civil War which he answered at great length. When he finally finished talking, she leaned forward on the table, put her chin in her hands, and said, “It’s all just so fascinating. And tragic too.” Then she suddenly stood up and bounced into the kitchen. She was back within seconds, a copy of my father’s book, A Civil War Companion, in her hands.
“Would you be so kind as to autograph this?” she asked. She handed him the book and a pen. “I just bought it.”
My father accepted both the pen and the book with an uncommonly gracious nod of his head, then stared at her breasts for inspiration.
“Make it out to Benjamin,” she said. “He’s interested in history. Aren’t you, Benji?”
Benjamin made a strange sound, half burp, half cough, then drank some milk.
The mention of Benjamin’s name broke my father’s breast trance and he began to write in the book, his pen moving with precision over the page, his brow furrowed. I imagined this to be how Abraham Lincoln looked when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. “There,” he said, handing the book back to Mrs. Wilcott, who read the inscription. My father watched her face as she read.
She smiled. “I think this book would make a wonderful movie, Theo,” she said. “It’s a fascinating subject we all need to know more about. There’s just not that much information about that particular war available to the public.”
To this, my father, who had once told me that tens of thousands of books had been written about the Civil War, simply said, “Yes.”
“Tell us about your trip to Atlanta, Theo, your conference. What are you speaking on?”
My father swallowed some pie. “Boots,” he said. “Soldiers’ boots. Yes.”
Mrs. Wilcott put her chin back in her hands and said, “Interesting.” Then she said, “Do you mean, what they wore on their feet?”