The Rich Part of Life

by Jim Kokoris

“Is Bobby Lee going to take me away and make me live with him?” I asked.

  He shuddered and his head shook as if something small but solid had just struck and momentarily stunned him.

  “No,” he said, but suddenly I didn’t believe him.

  DURING DINNER, Tommy the Soccer Star kept talking about the four goals he scored in practice. I knew that the mere fact that he was talking, that words were actually coming out of his mouth rather than high-pitched barks, pleased my father more than the goals. It was the most he had talked since the accident. My father kept nodding his head as words poured out of Tommy in breathless rushes.

  “Mr. Peterson said that I was probably the best player on the team, even though I’m only six and a half years old,” Tommy said.

  My father took a bite of his cheeseburger. “You’re only five, Tommy,” he said.

  “No, I’m not, I’m six and a half now.”

  My father stopped eating. “No, I’m almost certain you’re five. I mean, I am certain you’re five. Quite certain.”

  “No, I’m not. Maurice made me six and a half.”

  My father looked over at me for help but I just poured more ketchup on my plate for the french fries.

  “Well,” my father said. “Anyway,” he smiled. “I’m glad you’re enjoying the soccer experience, Tommy.” He carefully took a sip of his coffee, placing it back down on the table with both hands. “As are you, Teddy, of course.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m sure you will score some points too. Once you play in an actual contest.”

  “You score goals in soccer, not points,” Uncle Frank said. He had been mostly silent during dinner and wasn’t eating much. Sylvanius had been in the basement since breakfast and I wondered if this was bothering my uncle in some way. Sylvanius’s every action seemed to have an irritating effect on Uncle Frank.

  “Well, I have some news,” my father said, giving his throat a good double clearing. “We are all taking a vacation.”

  “What?” Uncle Frank said. “What do you mean, vacation?”

  “A trip, yes. Teddy has expressed a desire to witness the reenactment of the Battle of Bull Run. The first battle. There were two, of course.”

  Uncle Frank looked over at me and said, “You did?”

  I nodded my head.

  “We are?” Aunt Bess said.

  My father picked up a french fry, then put it back on his plate. “Yes.” He coughed. “Yes, indeed. This weekend.”

  Aunt Bess recoiled at this news, her eyes wide and frantic. “What do you mean this weekend? You mean, this weekend?”

  “Yes. It’s Columbus Day. The boys don’t have school on Monday so there shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Where is this Bull’s place?”

  “It is in Virginia.”

  “Virginia,” Aunt Bess said. She looked disappointed. “Virginia.” She chewed on the word like a piece of gum. “Where is Virginia again? It’s out east, but what’s it near?”

  “West Virginia,” Uncle Frank said.

  “I have made arrangements for all of us to fly to Washington on Saturday morning. We will fly together. We will stay in a very nice hotel and then go witness the Battle on Sunday.” He looked up from his plate and for the first time in my life I thought he looked almost proud. “I made all of the arrangements, just this afternoon. It only took a few phone calls.”

  Uncle Frank picked up his glass of water. “Bull Run. I got to hand it to you, Theo. You know how to live.”

  My father ignored Uncle Frank, looking instead over at me. “It will be very educational,” he said. “And it was Teddy’s idea.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was.”

  That night, while I was doing my homework that Johnny Cezzaro had dropped off, my father returned to my room and once again sat down on the edge of my bed. His visits, once special occasions, now put me on guard. I knew they were related to Bobby Lee.

  “And how are you this evening, Teddy?”

  I didn’t look at him. I was doing multiplication tables, something I didn’t particularly enjoy doing even though I had been awarded the St. Pius Mathemagician trophy the year before because the contest had been held on the day Charlie Governs slipped on the ice and suffered a concussion. “Fm okay,” I said.

  He nodded his head. “Teddy, do you have any questions you would like to ask me?”

  “What’s twelve times fourteen?”

  “What? Oh. Let’s see. Let’s see.” He was quiet for a moment. “I think I might need a piece of paper and a pencil to . . .”

  “It’s a hundred and sixty-eight,” I said. I wrote down the answer and waited for him to talk about Bobby Lee.

  “Well, I suppose it is,” he said, standing up. “Are you looking forward to our trip?”

  “Are you done with your work?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes, I’m done with the conferences. I have no pressing assignments at the moment.”

  I started on a new page of multiplication tables. On top of my workbook page, Johnny Cezzaro had written, “You owe me and Big Tony $15,000!” I made my way through one column of problems and tried to start on the next but felt my father’s eyes on me. I put my pencil down.

  “I think that Bull Run will be fun.”

  “Manassas? Yes. I think it will be educational. Though we could still go somewhere else if you would like.”

  “No, I want to go there.” During dinner, I had thought my decision through again, and was convinced that it was the right one. Manassas would almost certainly make my father happy and less likely to send me off to live in the hills. I also had decided to learn as much as possible about the Civil War, thus making me indispensable in my father’s eyes.

  “How come it’s called Bull Run and Manassas?” I asked.

  He was relieved at my question, his face relaxing. “Manassas. Yes. In the Civil War, the same battle frequently had two names. The South would have a name for it, and the North would have a different name for it. The Union or the North called the battle the Battle of Bull Run after a nearby creek. The Confederates called it Manassas after a nearby railroad junction. I always thought that difference a microcosm of the war. The two regions couldn’t even agree on how to name their battlefields.” He let out a deep breath and looked pleased.

  “Oh,” I said. I sat back in my chair, my eyes, I hoped, bright and eager for the discussion on battlefield conditions and ammunition supplies to begin. Then I heard the doorbell ring and a few seconds later, Aunt Bess rushed in and whispered, “Theo!” She looked scared and that’s when I knew Bobby Lee was back again.

  “I THINK SHE WAS some type of dancer,” Aunt Bess said.

  She was sitting on my bed, trying to explain how my father and mother met, an event that seemed to be shrouded in some mystery. Across the room, I could see Tommy’s leg sticking out from under his bed as he ate a piece of the German chocolate cake Aunt Bess had made for dessert. Downstairs, I was sure my father, Uncle Frank, and Bobby Lee were talking, but I couldn’t hear a word. Aunt Bess had closed and locked our bedroom door when she came up.

  “Where did she dance?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure, honey. In Tennessee. Or wherever she was from again. I’m not sure, honey.”

  “Was my mother a ballerina?” I asked. I imagined my mother in pink tights, dancing and turning lightly onstage, her arms arched over her head, a holy and unapproachable look on her face.

  “I don’t think she was a ballerina, honey. I think she was a different type of dancer. You should ask your father. When you’re older. When you’re eighteen or twenty-one. He’ll tell you then.”

  “Where were they when they met?” I sat at my desk and picked at a piece of chocolate cake with my fingers. Eating in our room was something Aunt Bess normally didn’t allow. But I sensed that the rules were changing in our house, the old order vanishing, and I carefully licked a finger.

  “I don’t know, I’m not sure. He saw her dancing and they met. Your father was at a conferenc
e. That’s how they met.”

  I looked at the chocolate cake again, turning the plate slowly around in circles on my desk. Bobby Lee’s presence downstairs gave me a doctors-waiting-room feeling, a heaviness that made my stomach clench. I stopped turning my plate and pushed it away.

  I could tell that Aunt Bess was nervous too. She kept getting up off the bed and checking the lock on the door. Then she would walk over to the window and check to see if it was locked as well, in the event that Bobby Lee tried to scale the outside wall.

  “I wish we had a phone in this room,” she said. “I wish that black man, your guard, was around.”

  “Maurice!” Tommy yelled.

  “Yes, him,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “He’s large. Eat your cake.”

  I pulled the plate back toward me, but made no effort to eat.

  “Tommy, are you all right down there? Tommy?” She got down on her hands and knees, looked under the bed, then slowly stood up, shaking her head.

  “Are you coming with us to Manassas?” I asked.

  “Where? Oh, Virginia,” she said. She walked back to my bed and sat down with a sigh. “Of course I’m coming. I hope the hotel is nice. And I hope we go to some nice restaurants. That’s all I want. A nice restaurant. You know, we haven’t gone out to eat once since we won the money? Not once.” She shook her head. “Are you sure that’s where you want to go?”

  I nodded.

  “You like the Civil War too. You’re just like your father. Theo I mean. Not like your real father.” She looked stricken after she said this and quickly stood up, her arms outstretched. “Oh, honey,” she said. “This must be so confusing.” When she kissed me on the top of my head, I smelled old soft pillows. “I don’t know why they waited so long to tell you. They should have told you sooner.”

  I shrugged and looked down at my desk. I didn’t really care when they had told me that Bobby Lee was my father. I couldn’t really imagine there being a good time to learn this.

  “Have you had any more dreams?” I asked. Aunt Bess sat back down, the bed sagging.

  “Dreams? No,” she said. “I don’t have many dreams anymore. I lost the gift. Every so often I get it back, but I lose it again. No one talks to me anymore, I don’t see or feel things anymore. I’m over the hill.”

  “My mother told me you used to talk to dead people,” I said.

  “Oh, sure. I used to all the time,” she said. She shrugged again, then waved her hand in a way that made me wonder if I was one of the few people who didn’t talk to dead people.

  “Do you think you could talk to my mother?” I asked.

  “No, honey. I said I lost the feeling a few years back. It left me.”

  “Where did it go?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Wherever it goes. It just went.”

  “How did you get it?”

  “I was born with it. Some people are born with moles.”

  “Whom did you used to talk to?” I asked.

  “Everyone. Friends. Friends of friends. Relatives. Famous people sometimes. Near the end though all I could get was my mother. No matter who I tried to contact, I kept getting my mother. And I didn’t want to talk to her when she was alive.” Aunt Bess shook her head. “If I thought I could reach your mother, I would try, I would try. But I know I can’t. Not anymore. I’m old. It’s not my time anymore.”

  I turned my plate around again and looked out the window. It was dark and I could see the street lamp in front of the Yankee Codger’s house burning bright, streaking the night with milky yellow light.

  “Why is Bobby Lee here?” I asked.

  “He just wants to visit. That’s all. That’s all he wants to do. He just wants to visit and see you.”

  “How come I’m not seeing him then?”

  “Because he wants to talk to your father first. Do you want more cake?”

  “No.”

  Tommy crawled out from under the bed and walked into the closet and shut the door. Aunt Bess looked at the closet for awhile, began to say, “Tommy,” but changed her mind. Instead, she just shook her head.

  “I don’t know anymore,” she said.

  “Whatever happened to Baby Girl?” I asked. I knew this was a sensitive subject, one that could provoke tears from Aunt Bess, but I asked anyway. I was still very curious.

  “She’s in a foster home. Your father called and found out. A family in Chicago. A nice family. She’s fine, honey, she’s fine. I knew she would be.”

  Aunt Bess was about to say something else when a commotion broke out downstairs. I heard shouting, first Bobby Lee, then Uncle Frank. A moment later, I heard the front door slam. When I ran over to the window, I saw Bobby Lee get into his truck and drive off. Then Aunt Bess said something in Greek and made the sign of the cross.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MY HEART STARTED pumping like a Mr. Helpner jumping jack when they called our flight number. I had not slept much the night before in anticipation of our trip and even though I was tired, I was glowing, giving off heat as I stood up and held Aunt Bess’s hand. The airport was bright and polished and the terminal hummed with a muffled current of noise and energy as people hurried past on their way to what I assumed were exciting journeys and exotic destinations. We were going to Washington, D.C., to fight in the great Battle of Bull Run, leaving Wilton and Bobby Lee far behind.

  “I thought we were flying first class,” Uncle Frank said as we got in line to board the plane. He was dressed in his usual black clothes and wearing immense dark sunglasses that wrapped around his large head, securing, I hoped, his hair. The night before I had briefly worried how air travel might affect his toupée.

  “I only made accommodations for coach,” my father said. He fumbled for our tickets in his front shirt pocket and squinted at them.

  “I always fly first class,” Uncle Frank said. “You can’t sit back there. Those seats are for dwarves.”

  “Frank, you’re not very tall,” Aunt Bess said.

  “I’m not a dwarf, for chrissakes,” he said. “I’m five ten.”

  Aunt Bess and my father both looked at him.

  “Five eight,” Uncle Frank said. He grabbed his ticket from my father and walked away.

  In line in front of us, a large overweight man in a bright orange sweatshirt and a baseball cap struggled with his luggage, finally dropping his bags and a book in a sloppy heap on the ground.

  “Going to break my back,” he said to my father, who quickly looked back down at our tickets. The man bent over and picked his bags up again, kicking the book ahead of him as he walked. Behind us, a tall, dignified man in a blue suit and red tie cradled a small phone against his neck while jotting casually into a thick book that was overflowing with notes and papers. He looked important, statesmanlike, and I immediately assumed he was a U.S. senator. Aunt Bess had said we probably would run into a few politicians on the plane, considering our destination.

  “I’ll call you when I get on the plane,” I heard the U.S. senator say. “I’m about to board. Tell him to fax everything to my hotel. The whole thing.”

  The flight attendant at the door smiled in a bored, mechanical way and looked past us as she tore our tickets in two. My father briefly studied the stubs she returned him before picking up his briefcase and entering the jetway.

  I sat in the window seat, next to my father while Tommy and Aunt Bess sat in front of us. Uncle Frank and Maurice sat across the aisle, behind the U.S. senator. I was initially disappointed in the plane. I had imagined it to be more spacious and expected the flight attendants to be glamorous, if not movie stars. Instead, the inside was gray and narrow and the flight attendants old and washed-out looking. I liked the small tables that flipped down from the seat in front of me though. I opened and closed mine several times while my father struggled with our luggage in the overhead bin.

  “I hope Sylvanius remembers to water the plants,” Aunt Bess said, peering over the back of her seat at us with one dark eye. “A
nd to feed Stavros.”

  “I’m sure he will,” my father said, sitting down. His face was flushed from his efforts with our suitcases.

  “Well, he’s going to miss some wonderful meals at restaurants,” she said.

  “Who? Stavros?” Uncle Frank asked.

  “No. Sylvanius,” Aunt Bess said.

  Aunt Bess had wanted Sylvanius to come with us, but Sylvanius had refused, saying he wanted to use the solitude to reflect. Uncle Frank said he wasn’t intelligent enough to reflect on anything other than his next free meal and the real reason he didn’t come was because he was scared of flying, something Sylvanius didn’t deny.

  “I don’t know why you let him stay in the house,” Uncle Frank said to my father from across the aisle.

  “Well,” my father said. “He asked me. And he really has no place else to go. Besides, he will keep an eye on things.”

  Uncle Frank shook his head as a man holding what looked to be a guitar case walked between them. Uncle Frank leaned forward and peered around the man. “I think you’re pretty trusting, Theo. Pretty damn trusting,” he said. “I would have chained him to a tree in the yard until we got back.”

  “I’m sure everything will be fine,” my father said. Then he began to read the safety manual while a flight attendant with blond hair and bright red lipstick began talking about oxygen masks, emergency exits, and ocean landings.

  When we took off, Tommy raised his arms up over his head as if he were riding a roller coaster. He also screamed. I gripped my seat handles tight and leaned forward, into the rush ot noise and energy. As we climbed into the sky, I felt breathless for a moment, my stomach light and fluttering. The very notion that we were leaving the earth and entering the air thrilled me. I looked over at my father and was disappointed to see that he was calmly leafing through a magazine, our take-off just another opportunity for him to read.

  After the plane leveled off, I looked out the window and watched the houses and cars shrink, then disappear altogether under sheets of clouds. I had the urge to draw, but my sketch pad was packed away, so all I could do was watch the clouds drift close and finally surround us.