Mrs. Wilson, who was not usually nice, suddenly said, “Come with us, Sidney.”
“Well, I don’t have any of the stuff ready,” I was thinking of the check necessary to pay the fee, “and I haven’t practiced since the driver’s ed class. And I got a D.”
Jenny was nice and laughed good-naturedly. “No girls ever get good grades from that guy. I got a C minus. Just come with us. My mom knows who the easy testers are.”
Mrs. Wilson was nodding, “You can drive on the way over so you can see how our car works. Do you have the certification from the class? You need that, and your student ID.”
I couldn’t believe they were being so nice to me.
“Yeah, I have them. Okay, can you wait a minute and I’ll bring Brandy in and get my stuff?”
“Sure Sidney, no rush. I can pay your fee and you can pay me back whenever.”
I got my license that day. The Wilson family had given me a crucial gift. I knocked on my dad’s door the next Saturday morning when he was sleeping in. He was blurry-eyed in my parents’ big bed, the sheets all rumpled, the room disheveled, so unlike the way it was when my mother was there. My heart ached for the return of that order and beauty. Everything was dusty now. Everything was out of place.
“Dad, sorry. I wanted to tell you, I got my driver’s license. Look, here it is.”
“How did you do that?”
He sounded incredulous and I detected a note of surprise that I could be so resourceful.
“The Wilsons brought me.”
I knew he hated the Wilsons, and this would make him hate them more than ever.
“Huh. You would go to them. Make your parents look bad. You are unbelievable.”
“No Dad, Jenny was outside and Mrs. Wilson just invited me. It was totally spur-of-the-moment. I didn’t plan it or anything.”
“Who paid for it?”
Mrs. Wilson had paid for my license but I thought Dad would get mad so I lied, “I saved the money you and Mom gave me for my birthday and I had just enough.”
“Huh.”
I needed to get to the next part fast before this blew up, “Dad, I can get a job at the ice cream parlor where Sophie works. They said they’d hire me right away but I need a car to go there. They said I can work every day after school and all day in the summer too.”
“You want me to supply you with a car now? Are you kidding me?”
“Dad, please. I can’t do anything without a car.”
“Why haven’t you left yet? Aren’t you going to run off and join your mother? Aren’t you just waiting for an escape? Why would I do anything for you now?”
“No Dad, I want to stay here. I want to get a job and help out. Isn’t Preston coming home soon? He and I could share the car. Maybe he could get his license this summer too.”
I don’t remember how it arrived, but soon after, a car showed up in the garage and there were keys on the kitchen table where once the infamous “papers” had lain. The car was a Volare, which was not cool by anyone’s standards, but I was thrilled. I think I remember throwing my arms around my dad’s neck and kissing him on the cheek and thanking him with genuine gratitude. I am not sure if that moment ever happened. Maybe I didn’t thank him at all. I hope I didn’t complain about what a stupid car he got me.
With the car, the world opened up and I felt better about life. The ice cream parlor became my source of food and income. The manager was sleazy and kind of mean but I didn’t care. He could make some of the girls cry if they made mistakes with the cash register or ate too much free food, but he was a pussycat in my eyes compared to what I had dealt with so far in my life, so he and I got along fine. I ate a lot of ice cream but I wasn’t getting fat so I didn’t care. I was so used to my mother telling me not to eat just about anything I wanted to, “Do you really think a brownie’s a good idea, Sidney?” or “Doughnuts are poison” or “French-fried potatoes are just about the worst thing you can put into your body,” that I was enjoying the freedom to eat a burger and fries and a strawberry shake all in one sitting for the first time in my life. There were a few girls from my school besides Sophie who worked at the ice cream parlor and it was fun to sit with them before and after work and order root beers at the counter. And then I got a paycheck on top of it! I worked as many hours as the manager would give me. The other girls were in more activities and had family obligations. I had nothing ever on my calendar and no boyfriend either, so I worked many hours and my paychecks were the envy of the other girls. Sophie helped me open my first bank account so I could cash my checks and I started transferring a portion of each check into savings. On top of this money, one weekend, some of us were hired to do the inventory at a warehouse that somebody’s dad owned. Sophie did this with me. We counted boxes of screws and nuts and bolts all day and into the night for two days and we each got paid handsomely for our efforts. I deposited that check in its entirety so I definitely had some money. A car and an income made all the difference, for now anyway.
PRESTON
My brother Preston went through an intense football obsession from grade school through the fall of his junior year of high school. My dad had been a college football player and he pushed Preston really hard. Dad sent Preston to a special camp in Texas one summer where the kids train for real with the Dallas Cowboys. My dad knew a guy who played for the Cowboys who got Preston in. I met that guy a couple of times. He was gigantic, and he wore an immense fur coat because he thought Chicago was very cold, and I suppose because he wanted to look cool, which he did. He also wore a massive gold ring that he got for playing in the Super Bowl, which he let me look at up close. He seemed like a gladiator to me.
Preston was not a big guy at all. He was only five foot ten and fine-boned like our mother. Our dad was six foot one, big and scary, and had huge shoulders. Dad wanted Preston to be the quarterback of our high-school football team, which was known for being great. Preston wanted that too, and he did it.
There was a big game that changed everything forever. Our school was playing their biggest rival. Preston was the starting quarterback for the game. He was just beginning his junior year and was first-string quarterback. My mother had been saying that the coach was putting Preston under too much pressure. My dad said he could handle it. For the homecoming game, my parents got all dressed up in stylish sweaters and nice denim jeans and my mom wore her glamorous long shearling coat and high-heel boots. I wore my nice wool coat with fake shearling trim and a big cozy hood lined with the same fur. The coat came down to my calves just like my mom’s did, and I wore my new brown Frye boots that came up almost to my knees. All that day our parents were talking about what they were going to wear and it felt like we were making a big public appearance. I knew that Preston was very worried and excited about this game and it seemed like an important occasion for all of us.
Preston headed over much earlier and I waited around while my parents got ready. I stood in the front hall all bundled up in my coat, ready to go, so I wouldn’t get in trouble for slowing them down once they were ready to leave. We drove over in the four-door Jaguar, even though we could have just walked, but my mom was wearing high heels and my dad probably wanted people to see his car. The three of us looked pretty good I thought, as we entered the high-school outdoor stadium and climbed the stairs to get good seats up in the stands. Mom and Dad didn’t know any of the other parents, and I was too young to know many of the kids who were there. My dad set a wool stadium blanket down over the bleacher bench and my mom sat down with him. I squished in next to her in the crowded stands. My mother watched with interest as they crowned the new homecoming king and queen. The queen from the previous year was there and she seemed grown up and was very beautiful, wearing high boots and a big fur coat. The marching band played, which always interested me because I was studying the flute. Then the game started and I just sat watching people mostly.
Near the end of the second quarter, things were not going well for our home team. It seemed to me that my parents we
re concerned with Preston’s performance. My mother was worried and my father looked angry. Suddenly, everyone on our side started booing and shouting. I couldn’t tell what had gone wrong. I was trying to ask my dad but the crowd around us was so loud I couldn’t talk to him. Then in the next play something bad happened again and our side started shouting to have Preston replaced. All around us in the stands people were angrily shouting to have my brother taken out of the game. My face burned red. I tried to see my brother’s face on the field but I couldn’t get a glimpse of him in the jumble of players in the middle of the field.
After that, all I remember is Preston being called off just before a new play was to start, and people clapping as he jogged slowly toward the benches with his head down. Those minutes of watching Preston with his shoulders slumped over and his head down, with my mother’s overly dramatic laments in my ear and me worrying what my dad was going to do to Preston for this, were excruciating for me. I watched in aching terrible pain for my brother. I watched as a friend of Preston’s who was older and bigger was sent out to replace him and people around us cheered and called out that boy’s name. My heart ached for my brother. I thought about how he lay in bed in the middle of the night and would shout out the plays in his sleep. I used to tease him about it in the morning. “And Duncan is going out for the long pass … no … he’s running! He’s running for the touchdown!”
My mom and dad were upset. They spoke to each other in complete shock and as if this was a very shameful thing that was happening, as if these people were against our family, as if it was a rejection of our family by the entire community. That’s the way my parents acted and that’s the way it felt to me. My parents stood and gathered our wool blankets from the bleachers and said, “Come on Sidney, we’re leaving.”
I followed them, but it seemed wrong to walk down the bleachers right then, before the game was finished, just after their son had been called off to the bench. I saw people’s heads turn and I thought they were looking at my parents. I followed slowly behind thinking that this felt worse than if we had stayed. We stood huddled together at the base of the bleachers as the game roared on around us, my mother talking to my father, saying it wasn’t right what the coach had done by putting Preston in so soon, blaming my dad for getting Preston’s expectations so high about football in the first place. We walked to my dad’s car in the big brightly lit parking lot with the roar of the game behind us and Preston somewhere down in the bowels of the high school football machine. I was worrying about him. How would he leave? How would he get home? This was a big celebration night and kids would be going out in groups after the game. But what would Preston do?
My parents and I drove the few short blocks back to our house and I ran up to my room and locked the door. I heard my parents arguing about my brother and football and the coach and the people at the game.
A while later I heard Preston come in the house. I don’t know whether he walked home or if someone gave him a ride. He went in his room and locked his door. I listened, holding my breath for a very long time. There was only silence in the house. I went to bed with a heavy heart.
After that game, Preston quit football. My dad was mad. There were many fights, my father yelling, Preston earnestly defending himself, our stupid mother, crying helplessly. I heard Preston say that the coach and some other boys he knew from football passed him in the hallway and the coach called out, “There goes the quitter.”
One night when the football season was still going, soon after Preston had quit, Seymour Hoffman and his wife invited my parents over for dinner in their screened-in porch. It was nice because they kept a fire going in the big brick fireplace, making the porch very cozy in the late autumn. The Hoffmans lived in our neighborhood even before my parents bought a house. Our old third-floor walk-up apartment was across the alley behind their house. They had a son who was Preston’s age whom we had known since my brother and I were little kids. My parents wanted Preston to come along because their son would be there too. I knew I had to go, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to do anything else. Preston was in his room refusing to come out and when he did, he looked disheveled and miserable and my dad yelled at him to spruce up and “get a decent shirt on.” We drove over together with my brother slumped in the back seat next to me like a beaten dog. My heart broke to look at him.
We arrived there and everything was just as it used to be when we were younger. Seymour and his wife were glad to see us. Their son came down from his room and he and Preston exchanged awkward but friendly greetings. The screened-in porch was at the back of the property attached to an old stone garage so we carried the salad and the dishes out through their nicely tended garden to the porch. The porch had a stone wall at the back and a built-in fireplace. The fire was going and there was a grate with cooking barbecued chicken and baked potatoes. I was excited that we’d be having a nice dinner. My mom looked beautiful in a cream cable-knit sweater and slim jeans with lace-up boots. She was wearing her heavy gold hoop earrings, her gold bangle bracelet, and her wide gold band wedding ring that had one very large rectangular diamond. She had an ability to look very regal in her casual attire, which I admired and loved. I think Manhattans were made for the adults. My mother said she’d sip that one drink the whole night and still never finish it. Seymour’s wife, Mrs. Hoffman, said she’d be ready for another pretty quickly so Seymour should keep ‘em coming.
The food was good and the grownups were in high spirits as we ate. The boys were allowed to drink beer. I got the feeling that the boys were drinking beer faster than the parents were aware, but I don’t think anyone cared. I was just watching the fire and enjoying the cozy porch. The boys were gone for a while, I thought they were inside watching television. The parents were drinking some more. My mother was starting to get agitated. Her voice was wary as she started saying, “Oh honey, do you really need another one?” with each of my dad’s drinks or freshly opened cans of beer.
I knew it was getting late. The colder night air was starting to win out over the warmth of the fire and I was wishing I had a warmer coat. I put my hood up on my pale blue windbreaker jacket and tied the strings tight. I got out of my little metal folding lawn chair and crossed to the back corner away from the screen door and sat down on the stone edge of the fireplace. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and leaned back as close as I dared to the fire.
I was getting very sleepy and no one was talking to me so I wasn’t really paying attention until I saw that the boys had returned to the porch for more beer. They were looking kind of wobbly and my dad picked up on that and started accusing my brother of stealing extra beers. Seymour’s son Sam tried to defend Preston. “I offered him the beers, Mr. Duncan, it’s my fault.”
My dad got madder. “Shut up, Sam. This is between me and my son. Preston, do you think you’re an adult? Do you want to drink like a man?”
“No Dad, I’m sorry Dad.”
“No Dad? No what? You think you aren’t a grown man? But you want to sneak beer like a little coward, and drink it anyway?”
“No Dad, I’m really sorry Dad.”
I was worried that Preston couldn’t take this right now. This was too much for him. I knew it. Our dad should shut up and leave him alone. Mom started in with, “What? Have the boys been drinking all this time? Oh my god … we need to go home … our family needs to go home. This isn’t right. How did this happen?”
My mom stood up and started cleaning up dishes and glasses. She was talking to Mrs. Hoffman who seemed pretty out of it, encouraging her to start bringing things back to the house. “Let’s get the dishes going. I don’t want to leave you with a mess.” Mrs. Hoffman was mumbling, passing a careless hand over the direction of the wooden table covered with serving platters and plates and glasses, beer cans, liquor bottles. “We can clean it up in the morning, this is nothing.”
But my mother was insisting, gathering more plates in her arms and beseeching Mrs. Hoffman to join her. Eventually the two women left the porch w
ith their arms full and Mrs. Hoffman stumbled along behind my mother up the path to the kitchen door. They disappeared inside. I thought I’d get up and clear dishes and go in too, hoping it would be warmer in the house. But that’s when Dad and Preston started up again, worse than before, and there was no way I would be able to squeeze past them to get out the porch door. I sat on my perch by the fire and hoped things wouldn’t get bad. But Dad was livid and he lurched toward Preston.
“God damn it Seymour, my son needs disciplining. He is spineless. He’s a sneak and a coward. Do you know what he did Seymour? Do you know the shame he’s brought on us?”
Mr. Hoffman said, “Hey, come on Don, calm down, there’s no reason to get into this.”
“Get into this? It needs to be talked about. Am I supposed to pretend it didn’t happen? Walk on eggshells around my own son?”
“Dad, stop it. Everybody knows what happened.”
“Oh are you talking now? Preston Duncan, the family coward? The quitter? The sniveling little cripple who couldn’t take the pressure. You couldn’t handle it could you? You choked!”
“Jesus, Don! Take it easy. It’s over. Come on.”
But my dad couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, “Is this how I brought you up? What, do you take after your fearful whimpering mother is that who you are? You fucking little pathetic worm! Come here. I’ll teach you not to steal beer from your father’s friends. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
He lurched, he grabbed, my brother let out a yelp. In one fell swoop my brother was on the stone floor of the porch, my father was shouting, “You aren’t my son! You’re a fucking worthless piece of shit on the fucking ground! Look at you! You’re an emotional cripple, you’re weak, you are weak and sickening!”
My dad started to kick my brother’s crumpled form, my brother winced as my dad kicked him in the stomach. I wanted to stop him but I was afraid to, he was so out of control. I was trying to get Mr. Hoffman to do something.
A Girl Called Sidney Page 4