The Rich Part of Life

by Jim Kokoris

  After she was finally finished, she pulled me aside and took my hand. “I’m praying for you,” she said, her eyes wide and earnest, “So is Benjamin. Fie prays every night. And I know he’s praying for you.”

  I nodded my head. I didn’t believe this. I couldn’t imagine Benjamin praying for anything other than the Cezzaro brothers getting hit by a truck.

  As we were about to leave, Mrs. Wilcott asked Sylvanius if he could reenact his favorite scene from Dark Towers. She wanted to videotape it and show it on the noncooking part of Access Wilton.

  “I couldn’t possibly,” Sylvanius said. “It’s been so many years.”

  “Let’s go!” Tommy yelled. Fie pulled on Sylvanius’s rape.

  “Oh, Mr. Sylvanius, please,” Mrs. Wilcott urged, her blue eyes expanding, swallowing us whole. She walked over to the dining room and returned with a small video camera which she held carefully with two hands. “I would just love to have something on tape. I know you have quite a few fans living in Wilton. It would be such an honor.”

  With that, Sylvanius bowed his head. “Since you put it so graciously.” He put his hand over his face and mumbled, “Yes, yes.” Suddenly and with great flair, he threw his cape over his shoulder. “I am a shadow,” he said softly, his voice building. “I am the nightmare you are afraid to remember. The black bird outside your window watching. ‘The stray dog in the woods waiting. The darkness in the night. Come dance with, me in my death.” Then he did something I wasn’t expecting, he pushed past us and jumped onto the first step of the hallway stairs. “Fools!” he cried. “I can never be defeated. Not by you. Not by your God! Not by your weapons. And not by your love!” He cast a dark look down at us, his eyes blazing. I was amazed at his quick transformation, as well as with what he was saying. This didn’t seem like part of his soliloquy. “You may think you have defeated me, but it is an illusion,” he continued, his voice sweet, rich chocolate. “I have allowed you to win. Now, as the sun burns, I will sleep. But I shall return and welcome you to your eternity.” With this, he turned and ran up the stairs, his thick, wet hair jiggling madly like a tower of Jell-O. When he reached the top, he clutched his chest and fell backward, rolling down fast and hard.

  Mrs. Wilcott screamed. “Oh my God!”

  “Wow!” Tommy yelled.

  “Help me,” Sylvanius said weakly as he lay on the bottom of the stairs. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

  AFTER THE AMBULANCE drove away, my father shut the front door, then locked it.

  “Well,” he said, as we walked back upstairs. “That was unfortunate.”

  “Unfortunate for us,” Uncle Frank said. “He was leaving in a few days. Now, Christ.” Then he said, “It’s those goddamn shoes he wears.”

  Instead of having a heart attack, Sylvanius had broken his foot and was resting in my father’s bed. When we walked into the room, Aunt Bess was in the process of bathing his forehead with a cool cloth and administering generous doses of foot-healing 7-Up, straight from a can into Sylvanius’s outstretched glass. The paramedics had wanted to take him to the hospital for X rays, but Sylvanius had refused, saying that he was tired and would go the next day.

  “Jesus Christ,” Uncle Frank said when he saw Sylvanius’s feet. “Those are the ugliest feet I have ever seen. Ever.” He left quickly with his head bowed and his hand over his mouth.

  Sylvanius did have ugly feet. They were long, bony and bunioned. Their ghastly appearance was punctuated by yellowish-orange toe nails that were horribly chipped, as if something wild had gnawed on them. The foot that was broken was lying-in-state, propped up on the mountain of pillows Aunt Bess had arranged on the bed. Every so often, Aunt Bess would gently soothe it with another wet cloth.

  Sylvanius sighed, then sipped 7-Up from a straw. He was a sad serpent now, his thick hair a jumbled mess, his red vampire lips a washed-out mortal pink. “I’m afraid Frank’s right. I have spent my life neglecting, no, punishing my feet, I’m afraid,” he said.

  “Everyone takes their feet for granted,” Aunt Bess said as she filled his glass with more 7-Up. “I never think of mine. I have so many other things to think of.”

  “True, this is true,” Sylvanius said. “I pledge though that this abuse will stop. I pledge that from this day on, I will treat my feet with renewed respect and admiration. They have been dependable appendages and are worthy of my attention. At the very least, I plan on cutting my toe nails more often.”

  “I can do that for you,” Aunt Bess said.

  “You are a saint,” Sylvanius said. Fie took another sip of his drink.

  “The problem might be those shoes,” Aunt Bess said after she had wiped his chin.

  “Ah, yes,” Sylvanius said. “They are very awkward.”

  “Are they special shoes? Orthopedic shoes?”

  “No, they’re very large though and I find them comfortable. I have very long feet.” Sylvanius said, sipping again on his straw. “They’re props, actually. From a movie I was in.”

  This interested me. “What movie?” I asked.

  “I believe it was Dance of Blood, Blood Dance, something along those lines,” he said. “I stomp some people to death and . . .” he stopped here and caught his breath.

  “What’s wrong?” Aunt Bess cried, reaching for him. “Fell me!”

  Sylvanius smiled weakly and patted the tops of her hands. “Nothing, Bess. Just a wave of pain washing over me.” Then he sank back farther into the other tower of pillows Aunt Bess had constructed at his head. “Oh, for something sweet. It would be comforting.”

  “I have a cherry pie cooling downstairs.”

  “Cherry?” Sylvanius asked sadly.

  “I have some butterscotch cookies too, the ones you like.”

  “You are too kind, Bess.” He patted her hand again, then whispered. “Too kind.”

  When Aunt Bess left, Sylvanius looked over at us. “As are you, Theodore. I feel just terrible, commandeering your bedroom like this. And all these pillows. I feel like a sultan.”

  My father cleared his throat. He had been silent the whole time, in shock I thought at the condition of Sylvanius’s feet, as well as with the prospect of sleeping down in the basement with Uncle Frank, whose snores shook the house. “Yes, well, it can’t be helped,” he said.

  “Well, I’m sure I’ll be up and about in no time.”

  My father nodded. “Well, thank you for taking the boys trick or-treating. Tommy and Teddy said they enjoyed themselves. Until the accident, of course.”

  Sylvanius suddenly reached out and took my father’s hand. “You have a fine family,” he said. “Good sons. You’ve done a fine job raising them.” He closed his eyes and whispered, “You’re a good father, Theo, a good father.”

  I looked up at my father, bracing for the symphony of embarrassed throat-clearing that would normally follow such a personal comment. He was silent though and when I looked over at him, I noticed a faint smile at the corners of his mouth and an unfamiliar look in his eye. He slowly withdrew his hand from Sylvanius’s.

  “Well,” he whispered to me. “You should go to sleep now, Teddy. And don’t forget to brush your teeth after all that candy.” Then he smiled at me and patted me on the head and walked out.

  I was stunned. My father had never told me to brush my teeth before, much less patted me on the head. I walked dazed into the bathroom where I spent several minutes brushing hard for my father.

  After I finished and was getting in bed, Tommy asked me if I was still his brother. He was sitting on the floor, sucking his thumb and hugging his candy bag with his free arm, like a life preserver.

  “Jerry Ryan says you’re just a half-brother.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. Tommy’s question made my heart drop. “I guess I’m your half-brother.”

  Tommy continued to suck his thumb, a sure sign that he was deep in thought.

  “What half of you is my brother?” he asked.

  “What? I don’t know. It doesn’t work that way.”<
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  “I think this half here is my brother,” he said, putting his hand on his waist and moving it up, toward his head. “This half here.”

  “You boys should be sleeping.” It was my father. He was standing in our doorway, holding an old green sleeping bag I remembered my mother buying at Wilton’s Garage Sale A Go-Go, an annual fundraiser that featured rock music and old furniture. At first I thought he was just passing by, on his way to his study to read more documents. I had heard the fax machine running earlier that evening and I was sure there was a small stack of papers waiting for him to review. Instead though, he walked over to my desk and turned off the small lamp. Then he cleared his throat.

  “Boys,” he said. “I have something I must ask you.”

  My throat went dry. I assumed it had something to do with Bobby Lee. The day before, I had overheard Uncle Frank tell Aunt Bess that a judge was reviewing the case and might make some type of decision soon because of all the publicity.

  “I was wondering if I might sleep in here tonight. Your uncle is snoring very loudly. Would that be all right with you? The couch in the living room is too small and I don’t really want to sleep in the kitchen.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. I tried to keep the excitement and disbelief out of my voice. I couldn’t imagine my father sleeping with us, much less on the floor.

  “All right then,” my father said as he spread the sleeping bag out carefully in the middle of the floor, between Tommy and me.

  “Teddy, Daddy is going to sleep with us,” Tommy whispered loudly as he got into bed.

  “Well, just for this one night. I imagine I’ll end up in the basement soon enough,” my father said as he slowly got into the sleeping bag. Once he was settled he said, “It’s very late. Close to midnight. We should try to get some sleep now.”

  We were quiet for a moment and I feared my father would immediately fall asleep. I couldn’t let this moment pass in silence, however.

  “Is the floor hard?” I asked. I had trouble making him out, my eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness and when I looked in his direction, all I could see was a dark, round shape.

  “Well,” I heard him say, “I’ll get used to it. I used to sleep on the floor quite often in college. My roommate, Mr. Quinn actually, our lawyer, was quite a snorer too. So I used to sleep in another classmate’s room, down the hall.”

  “At Harvard?”

  “Yes. There.” I heard him moving in the sleeping bag.

  “Did you go trick-or-treating when you were little?” Tommy asked. His voice was soft and tiny and I knew that he was already falling asleep.

  My father cleared his throat. “Yes, I did. With your uncle. We would go up and down the neighborhood together. I remember doing that, yes.”

  The image of my father trick-or-treating, of being young and having fun, fascinated me.

  “What did you go as?” I asked. “What costume did you wear?”

  “Oh, well, I don’t really remember,” he said quietly. I thought he would fall silent, but then he said. “Once I went as a gangster. Gangsters were very popular back then. I wore my father’s hat, I remember that, an old felt hat. We both had toy machine guns. Black machine guns. They were very realistic.” He spoke tentatively, like someone making his way through a dark, cluttered room. “Mrs. Frosso, an elderly woman, a neighbor, she called the police when she saw us coming down the street to her flat. When we got to her door, the police were already waiting for us so we started running away.”

  “Why did you run?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. I guess we were scared. You didn’t see the police in our neighborhood very often, and they, the police, started chasing us.” My father then laughed, a dry, rusted sound, totally unfamiliar and totally wonderful. “Yes,” he said. He was speaking faster now, his words coming out in bunches. “They chased us for blocks, through alleys, through the park. The only reason they were chasing us was because we were running. I remember, we finally hid in a garage, inside of a car. That was where they found us.”

  “What happened then?”

  “We were taken down to the station house and our parents were called. It turns out that the police were looking for two young toughs who had been vandalizing the neighborhood. It was all a misunderstanding, but very exciting. We were terrified. At least I was. Frank didn’t seem very fazed by it, as I recall. It was the talk of the neighborhood for some time, though.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Oh, about ten or twelve. Your age. Frank was seven or eight.”

  “Where did you live then? You didn’t live in Wilton, did you?”

  My father chuckled, another new and odd sound. “No, no. At that time, we lived on the north side of Chicago, in the city, by Lawrence Avenue. It was a Greek community. Everyone was Greek.”

  “Can we go there some time?” I asked.

  There was a pause. “Why, of course,” my father finally said. “We could go down there. That might be enjoyable. I haven’t been back in thirty years.”

  The room fell quiet. I was thrilled with my father’s story and the way he had told it. I planned to ask him more questions about his life, to talk all night, but it was late and I was beyond tired. Lying in my bed with my father so close, I felt safe in a way I hadn’t felt since my mother died. I closed my eyes for what I thought would be just a moment.

  “Well, then,” I heard my father say. “I suppose that’s enough talking for tonight. We should get some sleep now. Good night, boys.”

  Tommy was silent. But I managed to whisper, “Good night, Dad,” before slipping away.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I CAN’T HELP IT, I love cheeseburgers, any kind, any way,” Bobby Lee said as he poured a pool of ketchup onto his plate that spread like an oil slick. “I know they ain’t the best thing for me, but I can’t help it. Everyone’s got a vice I suppose. What’s yours?” he asked as he took a bite of the burger. “Fast little girls?”

  I ignored him and tried to swallow a thick french fry. Bobby Lee’s persistent questions were making it difficult to keep to my strategy of silence. Sooner or later I was going to have to speak.

  “Yeah, well, you are a little young for women,” he said.

  We were sitting in Will’s New Family Restaurant eating an early dinner. Originally, Bobby Lee had wanted to go to McDonald’s but after talking to the lawyers it was decided that we would have more privacy at Will’s. They were right, we were the only people there other than Bobby Lee’s and my father’s lawyer who were at a nearby table drinking coffee. Outside, I could see Maurice, who had dropped me off, sitting and smoking in his car, the window down a crack.

  “Kind of a nice place,” Bobby Lee said, looking around the empty restaurant, his mouth now full of cheeseburger.

  I looked around with him. He was right. Over the past few months, Will’s had undergone a drastic transformation. Its heavy layer of grease and slime had been stripped away to reveal a brighter, cleaner, almost cheerful surface. The old, stained, and ripped booths had vanished, replaced with sleek black lacquer tables, and the slippery floor was now a dazzling checkerboard of black and white. Even the menus were new and colorful, offering selections under impressive headings such as “May We Suggest . . .” and “A Few Wonders from Will’s Grill.” Off in the far corner, some remodeling was evidently in progress; a wall had been knocked down and behind a hanging sheet I caught glimpses of ladders and buckets of paint. A sign on a nearby easel read, PARDON OUR DUST. When Will seated us, he briefly explained that he was building a small banquet room for special occasions such as funerals.

  “So, do you think you’d ever like to come visit me in Tennessee sometime?”

  I shrugged.

  “I think you’d like it,” Bobby Lee said, chewing on a french fry. Then his expression changed and he looked down at his plate. “These fries suck,” he said and waved the waitress over. Despite all the new changes at Will’s, I recognized the waitress as the same one who had waited on Tommy, Uncle Frank
, and me awhile back, the last time we were at Will’s. Her teeth still looked like they needed to be shined.

  “Get me some more of these. I got a bad batch here.”

  The waitress gave Bobby Lee a long look before walking away.

  “You like burgers?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Your mom, she liked hamburgers too. That’s about all we ate down in Memphis. You remember ever eatin’ hamburgers down in Memphis?”

  “No,” I said. I allowed myself to speak. I figured having no recall of my prior life was a point I should communicate.

  “Yeah, well, you were just a babe.” He took a long drink of his Coke, pulling hard on his straw. “So,” he said, swallowing. “What do you want to be when you grow up? A doctor or lawyer or something? I heard you get good grades. I know you like to draw. You want to be some kind of artist?”

  I nodded. Apparently, my silent strategy was having little impact on Bobby Lee. He seemed oblivious of the fact that I wasn’t talking or responding to his questions. I sipped my Coke and wondered if a new strategy, one that focused on short, dull answers, would be more effective.

  “Yeah, well, you’re young. You got plenty of time. You can do what you want to do. Just don’t go join the army. That’s all I can say. I tried it for awhile and I hated it, didn’t like it one bit. My brother Carl joined too. He’s your uncle. He liked it enough. But he’s always been a little off. He and my sister Barbara are different. She’d be your aunt. We called her Barbi growing up. She and Carl were always ganging up on me like they were my parents. She lives in Kentucky, Barbi, in Lexington, I think. Haven’t seen her in awhile.”

  I continued to say nothing. I wanted to tell Bobby Lee that I had no interest in these people, Carl and Barbi, had no interest in who they were and what they did. I knew he was trying to construct bridges to me, connect me to his life, but I just wanted to go home.

  “So, you and Amy used to draw a lot. She liked to draw all right. And dance. Hell, she could dance. Was a shame what happened to her. She wasn’t a very good driver. Drove reckless. I used to tell her to slow down. I don’t think she had very good eyesight either. I remember her telling me that she needed glasses or contact lenses. But she never got them. Vain. Did she ever get them up here?”