Strays

by Ron Koertge

  Basically he’s just a guy who lives in a nice house. He’s got an okay car and a girlfriend who doesn’t want to go all the way. His parents love each other and take turns cooking dinner.

  That’s it. When the essay for English is done or I’ve solved all the algebra problems for Monday, I hang the jacket back up. Then I’m just Ted O’Connor again, who’s got an appointment with his social worker.

  At twenty after ten, Ms. Ervin shows up in her rattletrap van. I meet her at the door and we shake hands.

  “Do you mind if we talk on the porch, Teddy? It’s not cold out and I have to keep an eye on these boys.”

  I can see both of them with the hoods of their sweatshirts up. They might be monks on their way to a retreat. But they’re not; they’re kids that nobody wants.

  She sits down in one of the phony Adirondack chairs. Her watery eyes flick from the papers in her lap to the van and back again.

  “How are you getting along, Ted?”

  “Pretty well, I guess.”

  “Any problems?”

  I feel like she’s in my room, going through my things. I just need to get through this and she’ll leave me alone. I lean toward her. “I like that blouse. Those are mother-of-pearl buttons.”

  She asks, “How in the world do you know something like that?”

  Her smile is so big and real that I’m kind of sorry I can’t do what she wants and start crying big-time. But that would mean I’d have to remember everything all at once.

  “Dad hated paying babysitters, so Mom dragged me to thrift stores and yard sales when I was little. My job was checking buttons.”

  All of a sudden she stands up and shouts, “LeBraun! What do you think you’re doing? Take Winston and get back in the van!”

  LeBraun says, “We was just gonna play some catch.”

  “Well, not in the street,” Ms. Ervin says. “By the side of the van, where I can see you.” Then she returns to me. “I’m sorry, Ted. Where were we?”

  “We were talking about my mother.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Do you miss her?” She tries to act casual, but we’re in Freudland now. On our left is Sigmund Village, and on our right the Oedipus Complex.

  I say, “She drove me crazy sometimes. You know what good clothes are?” I ask.

  She nods, glances at the orphans, then back at me. “Sure. Things to wear to dinner out or church. Anything that isn’t everyday.”

  “Right. Well, I had clothes that were supposedly so good I couldn’t wear them.”

  “Never?”

  I nod.

  “And how did you feel about that?”

  Oh, man. Right out of chapter 1: Dealing with the Troubled Child.

  “They were used, Ms. Ervin. Somebody else wore them. Why couldn’t I?”

  “And that made you angry.”

  “How do you know how I felt about anything?”

  “Good, Teddy. Let those emotions boil up. So you had intense, painful feelings. You had them then and you have them now. How do you handle them? Do you cry, do you throw things, do you sleep twelve hours in a row?”

  I’ve got to start some serious lying.

  I swallow hard and whisper, “I cry at school sometimes.”

  That makes her sit up. “Really?”

  “Only in Dr. Skinner’s office. Not, you know, where people can see me. Just where it’s safe.”

  “And this Dr. Skinner is —?”

  “My counselor. He’s real accessible, and he likes me a lot.”

  “So there’s someone you can open up to.”

  I nod. “And Astin, sometimes. And C.W. They’re good guys.”

  “Not the Rafters?”

  “Gee, I couldn’t cry in front of Mr. Rafter. He’d tell me to drop and give him twenty.”

  She leans back and laughs. It was the “Gee” that did it. She closes her folder and gets to her feet. “Well, I think we made some real progress here.”

  Which is exactly what I want her to think. But all the lying just wore me out. What’s the point of telling anybody how you really feel, anyway? How many times did I stop the vice principal and tell him somebody was picking on me? How many times did I go to my mother and have to get in line behind a Dalmatian with worms? And as far as my dad goes — forget it. All he wanted to hear was the sound of the cash register.

  “Remember, Teddy. People experience grief and loss in different ways. There’s no right or wrong way.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She wants to hug me, but I’m out of my chair and at the screen door. “Do you want to say hi to Mrs. Rafter? I’ll keep an eye on the kids.”

  “That’s very nice of you, Ted. I will say hello.”

  When she’s inside, I head for the van, where the two boys are playing catch.

  LeBraun tosses the ball to me, and it bounces off my chest.

  “You get the iron glove award, man.”

  It’s a relief to get away from Ms. Ervin. I feel like she’s been poking me with a stick. I tell LeBraun, “I guess I’m not Cool Papa Bell.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Black baseball player when there was so much segregation that there had to be a Negro League.”

  “He have good hands?”

  “Uh-huh. And he was so fast he could hit the light switch then jump in bed before the room got dark.”

  LeBraun looks suspicious. “How you know about him?”

  “My father told me.”

  At the magic word — father — the other boy starts to cry. LeBraun just sneers. “Here come the fuckin’ waterworks again.”

  “What’s his story?” I ask.

  “He adopted by white folks, then they up and die and the relatives are all, ‘I don’t even like chop suey.’ So the next thing you know he in the system. Somebody take him, though. For good I mean. He all clean and exotic. They’s ten thousand little knuckleheads like me. I be lucky somebody don’t beat my ass to death and toss me on the side of the road.”

  “Let’s go, boys.” I watch Ms. Ervin herd them like ducks. They scramble into the van. She slides the heavy door shut. “You call me, all right, Ted? Any little thing, you call me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She walks back to me. “How’s C.W. doing? We had an appointment and he didn’t show up. I don’t have time for that.”

  “He’s the most popular kid at school.”

  She snorts, but wants to believe it.

  I open the door for her, then wait until she pulls away. I’m still thinking about Cool Papa Bell. He really was an amazing athlete. Dad told me all about him while we drove to minor league ballparks. He made sure we got there after the seventh-inning stretch because then admission was free.

  That late in the game, we could almost always sneak into the boxes behind the dugout. He’d pick up a program somebody had thrown away so he could harass the players by name (“Don’t just stand there, Sanchez. Get around on it!”). Then he’d rag on the umpire while I sank lower and lower in the seat we hadn’t paid for.

  That was his idea of a father-son night out.

  I have another bad night. I toss and turn. The lions make a circle around my bed and growl at something out there in the dark. In a dream, my parents crawl out of their graves. Finally I hear Astin get up, and then a little later the sound of his motorcycle. I guess I go back to sleep, but it’s nine or so before I stagger downstairs.

  Mrs. Rafter is still in the kitchen, wearing crinkly-looking gold pants and a gold zippered top. She looks like a big souvenir from Fort Knox.

  There’s syrup and butter on the table, a big blue bowl beside the stove.

  “Where is everybody?” I ask.

  “Bob’s at church, Astin’s riding with some friends, and C.W.’s playing basketball. So I’m making waffles. It’ll be our secret.”

  “I’m not all that hungry.”

  She turns around, holding the spatula like a wand. “You’ve never had waffles like these, Teddy. You fold the egg whites in separately. I’ll bet
your mother never did that.”

  I pull out a chair. “My mother fed everybody out of the same box. Me, the animals, Dad, everybody.”

  “Probably she was busy.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Do you want coffee, honey?”

  “Sure.”

  “And some milk. For your bones.”

  I start to get up.

  “No, no,” she says. “I’ll get it.”

  She gives me a heavy mug and a tall plastic glass with oranges on it. Then she pours batter and closes the lid of a very old-looking waffle iron.

  “Don’t let me eat any more,” she says. “I’m going to Curves at eleven.”

  “Okay.”

  “Did your mom belong to a gym or anything?”

  I shake my head. “She didn’t go out much.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do without Curves,” Mrs. Rafter says. “There are four or five gals I see there all the time that I just really like. We don’t call each other on the phone and I’m not sure I know their last names, but we’ve all got time on our hands and a person can only watch so much Oprah. . . .” She lets the sentence drift away and gets busy coaxing a perfect waffle off the griddle.

  And it actually is just about perfect. I tell her, “This is really good.”

  She comes all the way around the table and tries to play with my hair, then retreats back to the counter, where she worries little bits of dried batter off the waffle iron. “If I took you to get a haircut, would you like that? I’m thinking of a different kind,” she says. “Something spunkier. Bob won’t like it. Anything longer than a buzz cut is just another sign of the end times. But what does he know? He’s about as sensitive as a two-by-four. If he ever had a feeling, he’d probably hit it with a hammer. Has he got my name on his big fat arm? No, he’s got Semper Fi. And just try talking to him about anything.”

  Mrs. Rafter sighs and moves her coffee cup around. “Ms. Ervin says that you’re starting to talk about what happened to your parents.” She drips a little syrup onto a broken piece of waffle and pops it in her mouth. “It’ll get easier, Teddy. It’s not like you forget, but you just don’t remember all the time. I don’t remember all the time.”

  “Remember what?”

  “I lost my baby. My Toby. Bob wasn’t what you’d call supportive, but I wanted what I wanted. Everything seemed fine right up to the day I went in the hospital, and then it was one complication after another. Oh, Teddy, sometimes I’m so empty inside.”

  I push my chair back. Fast.

  Mrs. Rafter asks, “Are you finished, honey?”

  “Yes, ma’am. And now I’ve got —”

  “Come with me, Teddy. There’s something I want to show you.”

  “Mrs. Rafter —”

  “Barbara.”

  “Barbara, breakfast was great. Really. But —”

  “This will just take a minute. I wouldn’t want to have to tell Ms. Ervin you were being difficult.”

  “Honest, I’m sorry about your baby and all, but —”

  “Don’t disappoint me, Teddy. Don’t make me call somebody. There are foster children in this town who are sleeping in basements with rats.”

  I don’t want to, but I follow her down the hall past all those pictures of Mr. Rafter in uniform. I stop and look at the one where he’s standing by a Jeep. What if I just made a run for it?

  “Teddy!”

  When I get to the bedroom, she’s already in a rocker. It’s about ten o’clock. The shades are down, and there’s a fat candle burning.

  She says, “Ms. Ervin likes you, Teddy.”

  “Barbara . . .” My voice kind of breaks, and I can’t finish.

  Up comes the index finger. “Shh. She thinks you’re unusually sensitive. I think you’re sensitive, too, Teddy. I think you’d understand things other boys might not. C.W.’s not somebody to confide in, and Astin’s just a big noisy boy in tight pants.”

  My eyes adjust to the gloom. A door leads to their bathroom, where I can see a damp towel hanging on a hook. There’s a big bed that’s not even made. And there’s a cradle, the old-fashioned kind with the curved rockers.

  Mrs. Rafter holds out her arms. “Would you bring her to me, Ted.”

  “Who?” I sound like Woodsy the Owl. “Bring who?”

  “Little Noodle.” She nods toward the cradle. “She’s had her nap.”

  “Mrs. Rafter, I don’t think —”

  “Please. Don’t make me get up.”

  So I cross the swamp-colored carpet. Finally I look down and see her. Or it.

  “Isn’t she beautiful, Ted?”

  I think its name is Nora Newborn. I think I’ve seen it in a Toys R Us ad on television. It’s diapered, it’s slightly wrinkled. It’s supposed to be lifelike, but if you ask me it’s corpselike. I pick it up by a foot.

  “Careful.” Mrs. Rafter frowns. “Hold her in your arms. Support her little head. Now let me have her.”

  I can’t wait to be rid of it. The skin is cool and doughy, like zombies’ feet. I hand her over and step back. As far back as I can.

  She says, “Bob thinks I’m stupid and that I’m living in a dream world.” She unzips her gold top and there’s her bra. It’s huge and all crisscrossed with straps, guy wires, and rigging.

  There’s even a trapdoor, and when she undoes that, a big nipple pops out like an accusing finger. Then she presses Noodle’s plastic head to her chest.

  “But who,” she asks, “does it hurt?”

  I don’t know what to do. Much less what to say. The front door opens, then closes with a bang.

  “It’s . . . somebody,” I hear myself say. “I should go.”

  She just plants a kiss on Noodle’s made-in-Taiwan forehead.

  I run all the way to the Gold Line station. There’s only one place I want to be right now.

  On the ride south, I’m kind of sick at my stomach. My mouth tastes like old pennies. My mother was odd, but she wasn’t psycho. If she’d had something called Little Noodle, it would’ve been a dachshund.

  People doze or talk on their phones. Somebody with an old school boom box gets on, turns it way down, and leans his ear against it. At the Arroyo station, a man watches the woman he’s been talking to walk south carrying plastic bags in each hand; then he holds up a little portable radio and I can hear Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers.

  I let myself think about my parents.

  My dad was a baseball fanatic. He always had a game on the radio. His bedtime stories were all about mistakes: Enos Slaughter scores from first, beating Johnny Pesky’s lousy relay throw (Game 7, ’46). Bill Buckner lets Mookie Wilson’s dribbler get by him, and the winning run scores (Game 6, ’86).

  My mother’s stories were about animals — how giraffes in captivity lick the fence when they’re upset, why hurt animals in the wild don’t whine and carry on because it’d attract predators, how birds that migrate have to learn and then remember the route because it isn’t hardwired into their brains.

  Every now and then I’d hear about the day she was walking home from the store with some groceries and my dad pulled up on a little Yamaha. She said how long his legs were and he said how cute she was.

  I have to sit back and take a couple of deep breaths.

  A family of four gets on. The father stares out the window; the daughter opens a book, then fumbles with her glasses; her little brother crawls into his mother’s lap. He settles in with both arms around her neck, but as he dives deeper into sleep, his arms slip loose and hang over the back of the seat, limp as vines.

  That about does me in. I’ve got that photograph in my wallet. But I don’t take it out. It’ll just make things worse.

  The Gold Line ends downtown. It’s only a few hundred yards from that platform to the bus stop in front of Union Station. Then twenty minutes on the DASH bus.

  I’m first off that, first in line to get the student discount, first to push through the turnstile. The zoo is big and green. It reminds me of Africa. At
least all the bamboo does. Not the corny asphalt trails or the caterpillar-like trams with the loudspeakers.

  I still feel more at home. I like the heavy air — biting and sour. Most people hold their noses, but it tells me things: I live here. This is my territory. Don’t come any closer.

  I stand outside the new enclosure for sea lions. Huge windows give everybody an underwater view, and up a dozen stairs there’s plenty of room for the pups to lie in the sun.

  I say hello to them, but they’re too busy diving and having fun to reply. My dad didn’t like the sea lions or the seals. He said they loved their jailers too much. He wouldn’t watch them bark and clap their flippers and roll over for fish at the two o’clock public feeding. He told me that the reason I didn’t have any brothers and sisters was that he couldn’t breed in captivity.

  A hundred yards away, the flamingos squawk and bend their long necks to hunt under one wing for something that’s aggravating them. One of them spots me and walks toward the iron railing.

  “Your pants are awful,” he says.

  “They’re Ralph Lauren.”

  “They’re brown. You should wear brighter colors.”

  “Are you guys okay?”

  He shrugs. “I miss flying. How are you?”

  “I’m having a little trouble. I kind of miss my folks.”

  “Really? My mom’s in Florida, I think. Eggs are definitely the way to go.”

  A little girl standing just behind me says, “Daddy, why’s that boy laughing?”

  Her father isn’t quite sure what to do. He likes having the tall colorful bird right up close, but he’s not so sure about me.

  So I move on. I don’t go by the chimps, because they all jabber at once. My mother told me a story once about chimp wars. A couple of troops of males would meet on neutral turf and throw it down. That’s how researchers finally figured out the weird female-to-male ratio they ran into every now and then; a lot of the males had been killed. Mom said Jane Goodall hated to think her beloved chimps could do something like that. But they could and did.

  Giraffes don’t make war. I like seeing a real giraffe instead of the one in the backyard. I stand by their big enclosure, and the dominant female strolls my way.

  “Teddy. How nice of you to drop by.”

  Giraffes are always polite and kind of upper-class.