The Rich Part of Life

by Jim Kokoris

  “I don’t know,” I said. I wanted to put the pie down; I was tired of holding it.

  “I don’t want to eat that pie. Your uncle, does he know about this pie?”

  “He went out.”

  “Where’s your brother?”

  “He went upstairs.” Then I said, “He doesn’t know about the pie either.”

  Aunt Bess looked hard at the pie again. I knew it was an insult to her. She prided herself on her baking and resented anyone else’s efforts in this area, particularly Mrs. Wilcott’s. She would shake her head and mumble in Greek whenever she watched Access Wilton, criticizing and correcting Mrs. Wilcott’s every move behind the stove.

  “Put it over there,” Aunt Bess finally said, “on the counter.” Then she slowly shook her head and went back to reading Luxury Living!

  Since Mrs. Wilcott refused to leave, I went up to my bedroom. I wanted to be alone. I felt both jumpy and tired, and knew that drawing would make me feel better.

  I stopped dead in my doorway, though, as I entered my room. There, standing by the window, was Tommy wearing a pair of my mother’s old high heels. He also had breasts. Very large breasts.

  “Tommy? What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” he said. Then he thrust his chest out, fluttered his eyelids, and said in a falsetto voice, “I’m Mrs. Wilcott. I got big tits.”

  “Take those off,” I said. I walked toward him and pulled up his shirt to reveal two rolls of toilet paper.

  “Don’t touch my tits!” he yelled and pulled his shirt back down.

  I quickly shut the door. “Give me the toilet paper now,” I said firmly.

  “No way, Jose.” He shook his body and closed his eyes. “I like my tits.”

  I sat on the floor and watched him parade back and forth in the high heels, his ankles twisting and turning with every step. The jumpy feeling had left me and all I felt now was tired, emptied out. I wanted to go to bed and drift and dream of our ranch in Montana, our shiny new Jeep and our personal French chef, a recent addition to my List of Things. Then I heard Mrs. Wilcott laugh—a loud, high giggle that felt like hot electricity. I sat there and listened to her, the woman who wanted to make me play sports, the woman who was probably having sex with my father, the woman my mother did not like. I opened my eyes and stood up.

  “Tommy,” I said. “Come here a second. Follow me.”

  WHEN I RETURNED to the living room a few minutes later, Mrs. Wilcott was sitting very close to my father, her spotless white running shoes touching his worn black wing tips. When I walked past them, my father inched away from her and cleared his throat.

  I started putting away the Stratego game, which was spread out on the low coffee table. I did this loudly to draw attention to the fact that the game was officially being abandoned. Neither my father nor Mrs. Wilcott seemed to notice my surrender, however. They continued to talk about a play Mrs. Wilcott had just seen.

  “I cried, Theo, I cried,” she said.

  “My,” my father said. “It sounds quite, well, sad.”

  “But it was beautiful too. The way they sang.”

  “Ah,” my father said. “Yes.”

  “We will have to go then,” Mrs. Wilcott said, briefly touching my father’s knee. I looked up just in time to see his bald spot glow like Mars.

  “Yes,” he said. “That will have to be arranged. I think so.” My father looked over at me and smiled.

  “I’m thinking about playing the score at the country club Gala in November. I think it would be perfect during dinner. You’ll have to come.”

  My father nodded his still glowing head.

  Mrs. Wilcott sat up straight and smoothed the pant legs of her pink running suit. “I saw the article in that magazine,” she said in a serious, hushed voice.

  “Oh, that, yes.” My father’s face changed. He looked perturbed. “Yes. That article was, um, intrusive. I don’t know why our lives would be of interest to anyone,” he said.

  “It is a horrible magazine. I never read it. But since I am a working journalist, I feel I must at least browse it.”

  My father looked at Mrs. Wilcott, confused. “Journalist?”

  “My column, Theo. ‘Wilton Whispers.’ ”

  “Yes! Of course,” my father said quickly. He actually snapped his fingers. “I read it whenever I have the opportunity. It is always entertaining and informative.” He said this loudly and urgently, as if he had just remembered something he was supposed to have memorized.

  “I didn’t know your brother and you are planning on going into television.”

  “We are?” my father asked. “The article said this? I never read it, never finished it, I mean.”

  “The article said you were going to produce a talk show. Your brother was going to be the host.”

  My father nodded his head and said nothing, though I noticed the muscles on his jaw grow tight.

  A few moments later Mrs. Wilcott stood up to leave. “I have to pick Benjamin up from karate class,” she said. “Teddy, I hear you might be playing soccer this fall.”

  I pretended I didn’t hear her. I fiddled with a Stratego piece.

  “Well, he’s considering it,” my father said, chuckling nervously. “Aren’t you, Teddy?”

  “What?” I asked, looking up.

  Mrs. Wilcott smiled knowingly at my father and walked to the door. Just then Tommy walked into the room. He was wearing, the high heels and the lipstick I had carefully applied to his mouth. He was also wearing, on the outside of his sweatshirt, one of Aunt Bess’s bras, which was stuffed with several pairs of my father’s boxer shorts. “Hello, Theoooo,” he said in his high voice. He shook his breasts a little and fluttered his eyelids. “Let’s eat some pie! They make my tits grow bigger.”

  My father’s reaction was initially delayed. At first, he just looked at Tommy with a smile on his face, the same smile he had when he was looking at Mrs. Wilcott. Then the smile vanished and he fell slightly backward against the wall, his face disbelieving. I thought he might slide down the wall to the floor when Mrs. Wilcott grabbed his arm and did something that, at that point in time, ranked as one of my life’s biggest disappointments. She laughed.

  “Oh, Theo,” she said. “Stand up now. Stand up, that’s it.”

  Tommy kicked off the high heels and ran upstairs.

  “Are you all right?” Mrs. Wilcott asked my father. She had taken his hand and was holding it.

  “Yes, of course, yes. That just startled me. I’m so sorry. That was rude of Tommy. Very, very rude. I apologize, I don’t. . .”

  Mrs. Wilcott stood close to my father and patted his hair down, pressing it softly against the sides of his head.

  “Oh, Theo, really. I raised three children,” she said. “I would expect that from a five-year-old.” Then, turning to face me, she said, “Now I know Teddy wouldn’t do something like that, not at your age, would you, sweetheart?” She smiled at me, but her smile looked different than it usually did. I felt my face flush.

  “Well, anyway, I am sorry,” my father said. “I’m going to make it a point to have a discussion with Tommy about this.” He walked Mrs. Wilcott to the front hallway. When he opened the door, I heard a car engine start up and through the living room window, I saw the red pickup truck drive off.

  “I wonder if Mrs. Rhodebush is having some work done in her garden,” Mrs. Wilcott said as she and my father walked out onto the front porch. “That old truck has been parked in front of her house off and on, all week.”

  I walked out onto the porch where they were standing.

  “I think she is,” my father said absentmindedly. He was staring at Mrs. Wilcott, a trace of a smile on his face. I was furious. I couldn’t understand how he could have recovered so quickly. Normally, such an experience would have thrown him into a throat-clearing fit that would have lasted for hours, if not days.

  “No, she’s not,” I said, eager to break my father’s trance. “That truck’s been following me.”

  “What?�
�� my father said.

  “That truck has been following me home from school.”

  “What do you mean?” my father asked. “Following you?”

  “I see it all the time.” I enjoyed seeing the look of concern on his face.

  “Are you sure?” Mrs. Wilcott asked.

  “Yes. Charlie has seen it too. So has Johnny Cezzaro.”

  “How many times have you seen it?” my father asked.

  “A few times. It has Tennessee license plates.”

  “Tennessee,” my father said. His shoulders stiffened a bit when I told him this. “Do you know who it is? Is it someone’s father or brother? Someone from school?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, Theo, it’s probably just another reporter,” Mrs. Wilcott said.

  “I thought it was but I don’t think he is now. They don’t drive trucks,” I said. “He waved at me and tried to talk to me.”.

  “Who did?” my father asked.

  “The man driving the truck. He had long blond hair,” I said.

  My father repeated this, then stared over my head into the street. He was very quiet. We all just stood there.

  “Theo,” Mrs. Wilcott said. “Is everything all right?”

  My father continued to stare, his eyes looking at something that was approaching at a great distance, something that only he could see.

  “Yes, yes, everything is fine,” he said, his voice a whisper. “Good night now.”

  When we got back into the house, my father told me to go up to my room. Then I heard him lock the door.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MAURICE JACKSON HAD seriously considered becoming a Muslim but had ultimately decided against it. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but he told my father it took him years to realize that he wasn’t devout or disciplined enough to follow such a demanding religion.

  “I’m not strong enough to follow the faith,” I heard him say. “I know my own limitations.”

  “Yes, well,” my father said.

  I was sitting on my perch on the hallway stairs listening to Maurice, my father, and Uncle Frank talk about Maurice coming to work for us. His job, according to Aunt Bess, was to keep Tommy and me from being kidnapped, then buried alive in a pine box in a forest preserve while the ransom was being collected.

  “It happens, honey,” Aunt Bess whispered as she sat next to me on the stairs. “It happens.”

  Maurice was being hired partly because of the red truck and partly because of Edwina Hart, the orange-haired old lady who had handcuffed herself to our front door the day before, demanding that my father give all his money to keep the polar cap from melting any further. She stayed on the front porch most of the morning, yelling “Save the cap!” As soon as Aunt Bess saw her, she called the police.

  “Some nut is on our porch,” she said when she called. I was surprised how calm Aunt Bess was about the whole affair, considering that neither my father nor uncle were home to protect us and Edwina, with her shocking hair and gas mask, struck a very disturbing pose.

  “Everyone’s nuts,” Aunt Bess said as she watched Edwina from the window. “Everyone’s crazy.”

  The police had taken a long time in responding, so Aunt Bess finally offered Edwina some coffee, which she gratefully accepted.

  “The others were supposed to come, but I think they’re lost,” she said. She lightly blew on the surface of the coffee. “Great coffee. Decaf, dear?”

  “That’s all we drink,” Aunt Bess said.

  After a while Edwina stopped yelling “Save the cap,” and instead sat on the front steps and waited for the police to come and cut off her handcuffs. She claimed to have swallowed her key.

  “My God, I’m surprised you didn’t choke,” Aunt Bess said to her. “How big was it?”

  “The key? Not very,” Edwina said. “I’ve swallowed a lot bigger things. Here,” she said. She dug into a brown duffel bag and pulled out a large “Save the Cap” T-shirt and handed it to Aunt Bess. Aunt Bess held it up against her chest. Under the words was a picture of what looked to be an ice cube melting.

  “Do you have anything larger?” Aunt Bess asked.

  When the police finally arrived, Edwina went willingly. She was disappointed that no television stations had shown up to cover her arrest and was eager to get back home and resume her crusade.

  “This whole thing was poorly planned,” she said to Aunt Bess as she was led away. “I think I gave the group the wrong address. They may come by later.”

  “I’ll keep the coffee on,” Aunt Bess said.

  Upon learning about the incident, my father decided to hire Maurice.

  “What happened with the protester, the woman yesterday, are you experienced in dealing with such situations?” my father now asked.

  “Yes,” Maurice said. “I’ve dealt with a lot of different situations. I can handle most anything.”

  Maurice was about ten years younger than my father and had played in the National Football League back when, according to Uncle Frank, it was a “sport, not a business.” He played for the Chicago Bears. “I was an offensive lineman, that’s why you probably never heard of me,” he told my father. “I was much heavier back then.” He had a low, quiet voice that seemed at first to hover close to the ground before lifting gently into the air. I liked the way it sounded and because of that, I thought I might like Maurice too.

  After he left, Aunt Bess and I walked down into the dining room where my father sat at the table, quietly reading some papers Maurice had given him.

  “He’s good,” Uncle Frank said eagerly. “He’s got the right pedigree. He’s worked for a lot of VIPs, a lot of celebs, when they come to Chicago.”

  My father continued to study the papers in silence. “I have some reservations,” he said after some time.

  “He’s black,” Aunt Bess said. “He’ll scare the neighbors. Isn’t there a white guard we can hire?”

  Uncle Frank waved his hand and poured coffee into a cup. “I think that’s one of the reasons we should hire him. It will send a message loud and clear to every creep out there. Some white guy isn’t going to scare people away. Besides,” he said, picking up his coffee, “the guy used to play for the Bears.”

  My father put the papers down and cleared his throat. “His discussion of religion. I thought that, well, I thought that a bit odd.”

  Uncle Frank shrugged. “He’s a very serious guy. What’s the word? Introspective.”

  “But he used to play football,” my father said.

  Uncle Frank quickly put down his cup. “Hey, now that’s a stereotype,” he said. “There’s a lot of introspective athletes out there, Theo. Don’t be so biased, just because he didn’t go to Harvard, doesn’t mean he can’t be introspective. I’m introspective. I’m introspective as hell. And I didn’t go to goddamn Harvard.”

  My father sat back in his chair and took a deep breath. Then, looking over at me, he said, “Teddy, we are hiring this man to make sure that no one interferes with you and Tommy. We don’t want anyone bothering you.”

  I immediately thought of Benjamin. Suddenly I liked the idea of Maurice immensely.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Well, we will try this for a month or so,” my father said. “If the situation proves uncomfortable, I’ll just rearrange my work schedule and take them back and forth to school myself.”

  “Theo, you’re almost sixty years old and you have a bad heart,” Uncle Frank said. “What are you going to do if something happens, someone tries something? What, go into cardiac arrest on top of him?”

  “We shouldn’t hire him,” Aunt Bess said, picking up the coffee pot and walking back into the kitchen. “Emily Rhodebush and the Yankee aren’t going to like having him around the neighborhood.”

  My father took another deep breath and looked out the window. “Well, it does seems a bit extreme to hire someone to stand guard over your children.”

  “Well, I think it’s a good idea. A damn good idea,” Uncle Frank said, but my father s
aid nothing.

  THE NEXT DAY Maurice walked us to school. “Walking is good exercise,” he explained. “And it will give me the opportunity to get to know the neighborhood.” As we walked, I surveyed Wilton with a new, critical eye. Familiar houses and streets were now suspect. I looked hard for lurking dangers, the red pickup truck or Edwina Hart, but didn’t see a trace.

  Maurice was tall and thin, with short cropped hair that was sprinkled with gray He walked with an easy, smooth grace that I found hard to keep up with. Tommy walked a few feet in front of us, his eyes glued on the sidewalk. He was attempting to step on every crack he could because Jeremy Bodens said it would break Miss McHugh’s, his kindergarten teacher’s, back.

  “Am I going too fast for you?” Maurice asked.

  “No. I’m okay.”

  “Well, you let me know now. I don’t want to tire you out before you get to school.”

  A few blocks from St. Pius, a Wilton police car drove slowly by and stopped. The officer, a short fat man with pale skin and thick shoes, got out of the car and asked Maurice if he was our bodyguard.

  “Yes,” Maurice said as we kept walking. “I am.”

  “Just double-checking,” the policeman said. “We were notified that you were starting today. We’re there if you need us,” he said. He got back into the car and drove off.

  Maurice just nodded and took Tommy’s hand as we crossed the street.

  When we got to St. Pius, all the children on the playground stopped what they were doing for a moment and looked at us. Mostly, they looked at Maurice.

  He didn’t seem to mind or notice though. He walked slowly over to the fence, pulled out a large brown pipe from his coat pocket, and began inspecting it, rolling it around in his large hands before carefully lighting it. Tommy ran off to the swings.

  I just stood where Maurice left me. Since I had never been guarded before, I wasn’t clear on exact procedures. I had a vague idea that I was in some type of protective radius and didn’t want to anger Maurice by leaving it.

  “Go on and play,” he yelled and waved his hand. “Pretend I’m not here. You’re okay.”