He grinned, his teeth big as a horse’s. “Maybe you can do me a favor sometime.”
“A little quid pro quo, huh?” I’d just learned the phrase a week ago and was thrilled with a chance to use it.
By the time Clark took me back to the Y, I figured it was kind of a sign that I’d met somebody so debonair—an artist, a member of the avant garde. It was a sign I did the right thing, moving to Philadelphia.
The next night Clark took me to a party in an apartment with dim lights and the sweet aroma of incense. I recognized the scent from the Magic Midway where the snake charmer had burned it in her trailer. I brightened, thinking I knew more about the world than I realized.
He introduced me to a group where a guy named Jeffrey was babbling, “So my favorite scene is where he’s watching ‘La Traviata.’ They’re singing the Drinking Song and he’s in the audience on the verge of tremors.”
“Yeah, yeah,” a fat girl with eye makeup butted in. “The camera shifts back and forth from the guys guzzling onstage to him practically collapsing from wanting a drink.”
“Brilliant movie-making,” Jeffrey said. “Brilliant.” He turned to me. “So, we’re talking about The Lost Weekend. What did you think of it?”
“I … uh … well, I thought it was brilliant movie-making, too,” I stammered. “I was telling my stepfather just the other day I thought it was brilliant. Plus I always like Ray Milland.” That wasn’t true. Ray Milland wasn’t enough of a dreamboat for me, too much chin and forehead, but it seemed like the thing to say.
I’d never been around such brainy people. They talked about writers I’d never heard of. Bertrand Russell. Phillip Wylie. John Hersey. They knew about classical music and jazz and laughed at everything.
I was careful to listen more than I talked but a couple of times I dropped a quote. “A rose is a rose is a rose, huh?” or “The truth shall make you free, right?” Once when something really flew over my head, I gushed, “My stepfather, he’s real smart, he feels the same way.” I felt sneaky bragging about Earl but I liked being able to say I had a stepfather. Stepfather. Even the word seemed to make me more important.
Later Clark and I sat on a sofa watching some of the others dance, Clark’s hand resting on the cushion between us.
“Boy, your friends are sure deep thinkers, aren’t they? They’re real debonair.”
He gave me a smile. “I suppose so. I like them fresh from upstate P.A. myself.” He patted my hand and I thought to myself, Clark was just the kind of guy who could take my mind off Bobby.
The next week without any trouble at all, I found a typing job at an ad agency and I thought, hey, this is just a beginning. Maybe I’ll turn out to know just where I’m going in life after all. Clark took me to his apartment for a drink to celebrate. There was big room in front with pictures from magazines plastered all over the walls showing advertisements he had illustrated. Ekco Pressure Cookers. Cuticura for Baby Chafing. Ajax Hard Rubber Combs.
He mixed me a rum and Coke and told me he and his friends were bohemians and atheists. He said the trouble with most people, they didn’t think things through or appreciate culture. Most people were philistines. That confused me because I thought philistines were a tribe in the Bible, but I kept my mouth shut.
Clark told me he saw a head shrinker once a week. “I’m extremely neurotic. Most of my friends are, too.” The reason he was so neurotic, he explained, was that his father had committed suicide. “That’s not the kind of trauma you get over, you know. It’s not the kind of kick in the gut you can forgive.”
“Oh, I understand,” I said.
“I thought you would, smart girl like you.” He poured another drink and told me that his father had never felt he was successful enough in life, and Clark blamed his mother for pressuring his dad too much. He said it was criminal the way people ruined one another’s lives.
“Oh, I think so, too.” I lit a Pall Mall, waited a couple of seconds, then asked, “Do you think I’m extremely neurotic?” I hoped he’d say yes.
Clark squinted. “Mmmm. I’d say you have more of an inferiority complex.” I felt disappointed.
He saw my face and grabbed my hand. “But we’ll work on changing that,” he whispered, leaning forward kissing me on the mouth. It was different than with Bobby. With Bobby, a kiss was like a flood of sunlight, but with Clark it was more crackly, like heat lightning.
But I was thrilled that he liked me enough to say we’d work on changing things. That was just what I wanted: to change things. Sometimes at night in my room at the Y, I’d curl up in bed and watch the neon sign flash outside. I’d feel as though I was deep down alone, and Clark was a bright ray of light I needed to help me find a place for myself in the world.
I asked for another rum and Coke and tried to think of a way to impress him. I downed the drink, took a deep breath and said, “I don’t have a father either, you know.”
“Really?” He looked at me, interested.
I lowered my eyes. “It was terrible. He went hunting in the woods with friends, and he decided to go in deeper—my father was always the most adventurous—and nobody ever saw him again. The police combed the woods for weeks but never found him. They figured he must have got lost and starved and animals ate him.”
“Ugh. How grisly.” Clark’s eyes widened. I could tell he was impressed.
“My mother got hysterical and after that she was never the same again.” I looked up, trying to make my eyes teary, trying to give a small, sad smile, but I felt a raw ache in my throat. I was furious with myself. Why couldn’t I just tell the truth? What would be so horrible if for once in my life I just told the truth?
28
NANCY, 1946
Randolph Street in North Philadelphia was lined with narrow rundown brown stone apartments. Number 127 smelled like pot roast. As I stood staring at the peeling paint on the door, I wondered if Yvonne was somewhere inside cooking up dinner. I ran my finger over the list of names scribbled on dingy cards tucked into a tarnished metal plaque alongside the door, but there was no Gus Montana.
I felt half glad and half disappointed. I worried whether Clark was really going to be that ray of light for me. When I was with him I’d think yes, but later in my room at the Y, I’d wonder. He could be sweet as you please and then suddenly he’d turn and ridicule you. I’d decided if I found Yvonne, that would mean I should ask to stay with her and go back to the carny, and if I didn’t, it would mean I was supposed to stick with Clark and become a part of the avant garde. All I knew for sure was I wasn’t wise enough to decide on my own.
“Who ya want, dearie?” a gravelly voice called from upstairs.
I lifted my head and saw a woman in curlers leaning out a second story window, one plump red hand dangling alongside a geranium plant that was all stems.
“I’m looking for Yvonne and Gus Montana,” I replied.
The woman chewed on the inside of her cheek for a minute. “Ah, the carnies. Yvonne and Gus. They moved away, dearie. Pret near a year ago now, I’d say. Hard to remember, they was gone so much.”
“Do you know where they moved to?”
“Nah. Prolly somewhere here in North Philly.” She waved her pudgy hand.
“Well, thank you.” I felt small and lost.
I turned and walked down Randolph Street. A radio was playing “Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer” from one of the houses. I felt strange, like the atoms, neurons, and other things that hold a person’s body together were pulling loose inside me.
Clark and I were at his apartment drinking rum and Cokes. We’d just got back from a party at an old guy’s house who wore a black beret and was married to a six-foot redhead who’d been a WAC and played the guitar while she sang “The Rising of the Moon.”
I sat on the edge of the studio couch. “Uh, do you remember a couple of weeks ago when I told you about my father?” My voice came out in a quick burst, like I was winded. “That he was lost in the woods?”
“Do I remember?” Clark
laughed.
I felt myself redden. “I … uh … made up the story.”
“Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?” he teased. I should have been irritated, but I was too anxious to get the truth out, and there was nobody else I could tell who wouldn’t look down their nose at me.
I took another swig of rum. “The truth is I have no idea who my father is at all.”
“Really?” Clark’s voice rose.
“Yeah, really.” I felt old and weary. Running my fingers along the Japanesey patterns on the couch cover, I blurted out practically my whole life story. I told him how the kids used to tease, “Hey, it’s Harry, Dick, and Tom, havin’ fun with Nancy’s mom.” I told him about Eddie, Mr. Encarnacion and the Magic Midway, Yvonne, Earl. Everything except Bobby. Bobby was too important.
When I finished, Clark gave a soft whistle. “Well, that explains a lot including why you’d…” He looked toward the shuttered window for a second … “uh, well, among other things, why you’d live at a dump like the Y.”
He put an arm over my shoulders. “Jesus, Nance, that’s tough. I knew a guy in college who was a bastard. It really ate at him, not knowing who his father was. He turned out to be an alcoholic.”
I jerked and for a minute I pictured myself sprawled out in a gutter with stringy hair, a bottle in one grimy hand.
“So all those years what did you say if somebody asked about your dad?” Clark took his glasses off, breathed on them, and wiped them on his shirttail. He looked odd without his glasses, like his face wasn’t finished.
“I made up lies, like the one about him getting eaten in the woods.” This was the first time I’d ever admitted to all the lies. It felt good. The rum had helped. “I made up lies and then went to bed and cried about it.”
“Oooh, boy. Nancy, Nancy. The trouble with you is you’re too damn repressed.”
“You mean depressed,” I said, confused.
“No, not depressed. Everyone is depressed. Repressed. And you should tell your mother to fuck off.”
I gasped, not from the word, Clark used it all the time, but from what he was saying.
“Oh, Clark … don’t…” I couldn’t finish. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to say. My chin started to wobble.
“Okay, okay, sorry.” Clark took my hand. “I sometimes forget you’re not battle-hardened yet.” He ran his finger over my trembling knuckles. “So tell me more.”
“Well sometimes if a kid asked me about my dad and I didn’t care about the kid I’d say can you keep a secret and the kid would say sure and I’d say, so can I.” Clark howled and hugged me.
“I still say you need to tell your mother to fuck the fuck off. Tell her from now on you can just fuck your life up yourself.” We both roared.
“Frankly, my dear, that might not even be enough. From what I can see, you’re a real hardship case in the repression department,” he said seriously. “Telling good ol’ mom off might be just the start. I bet a head shrinker would tell you to look for good ol’ dad. If I were you that’s what I’d want to do. Meet good ole’ dad.”
I sputtered, “My father?”
“Oui. Si. Fa-ther. As in what I lack myself.”
I thought about the men I used to look at in Marysville and wonder about and gag over. I remembered for awhile I’d thought it might be Reverend Mackey. On Sundays I’d sit in church and stare at him through the sea of ladies’ hats, all silk tulips and colored cherries, watching him wave his arms around like he was about to take off. He’d warn that the Devil was loose from the bowels of the earth, and it was up to us to drive him away or burn in hell. Then, when he’d look around, to be sure everyone was good and scared, I’d want to yell, “Are you my dad, Reverend Mackey? Are you the one?”
Now looking at Clark, my heart started pounding so hard I felt it in my ears. “What would I say? What would I do?” I picked a round glass paperweight off the floor and clutched it in my hands. It felt heavy as the world.
“I don’t know. ‘Long time, no see,’ maybe.”
“Clark, it’s not funny.”
“I know it isn’t.” His eyes became serious again. “So what’s with all the can-you-keep-a-secret jokes?”
I felt like a photograph that’s out of focus. “I don’t know,” I whispered.
29
NANCY, 1946
It was October first but there was an Indian summer. Walking to work, I eyed men rushing this way and that with suit jackets flipped over their shoulders, hooked to their thumbs. I looked for someone with almond-brown eyes and feathery eyebrows, someone with an egg-shaped face whose shoulders jutted forward like mine, as though he was in more of a hurry than the others to get someplace.
I had a new aim in life: looking for my dad. He could be any one of them, I figured. Any one of them could have lived in Marysville once. Or gone to the Pocono Mountains for a vacation, stopped to see the slate quarries, and wandered into town. It was as though Clark had unleashed a longing that had always been inside me. All I’d needed was for him to say: let it out.
At the office, Marilyn, the red-haired receptionist, said, “There’s a special meeting in the conference room right away.”
I stopped cold. “Me too?” Most of the bigwigs at the agency never even looked at me.
“Yep, everybody,” Marilyn said, tossing her head.
“Wow.” Self-conscious, I followed the carpeted hall to the conference room. Everyone was there, from Jo-Jo, the crippled mail boy, to Mr. Feygelman, the agency president.
I couldn’t stop thinking about my dad as I stared at Mr. Feygelman’s gray hair and wondered if it was ever brown. I peeked at Mr. Madison. Mr. Madison was a dreamboat. Light-skinned with freckles, he reminded me of Van Johnson. I studied my arms for freckles, and I found a couple of little caramel colored ones. I wondered if Aunt Cora would tell me anything. Maybe if I went home for a weekend I could just casually ask, “Incidentally, do you remember anything about my dad? I was just wondering.”
“Good morning,” Mr. Feygelman said. There were columns of figures on the blackboard and he went into a long-winded speech about economics and competition. The agency had lost a big client, and some of us would have to be let go, right away, that day. There just wasn’t enough work for some of us anymore, including guess who.
Back at my desk, my supervisor, Mr. Constable, said, “I’m sorry, Nancy.” Mr. Constable had huge pores and smelled like tomato juice. “Why don’t you finish up this typing and just leave at lunchtime. We’ll send your last check to you.”
“Oh, sure,” I said with a smile, as though leaving at lunchtime was just another work assignment. My stomach felt like it was full of jumping beans, but I didn’t want to let on, it didn’t seem citified. Mr. Constable looked relieved.
At eleven forty-five I packed my belongings: a half-eaten bag of pretzels, a pair of sunglasses with a bent stem, a Kotex wrapped in toilet paper from the Y.
I walked out with Glenda, another typist who’d been let go. She wasn’t worried, her husband was getting her a better job at the company where he worked anyway. She said she’d already called him to come pick her up and blow some of her last paycheck on lunch.
There was a warm breeze blowing up from the river and cumulus clouds were gathering in the sky. They looked like dumplings plumping up in boiling water, and they reminded me of my grandma cooking Sunday dinner. I got an ache in my throat.
“Good luck, Nancy,” Glenda hollered as she clacked across the street in her high heels.
“You, too,” I yelled, but I didn’t mean it. Glenda had enough good luck. I looked in my wallet. $8.27. I might as well blow some of it on lunch myself. I walked across the street to Lucas’ Pie and Lunch, and ordered a ham and cheese sandwich and a root beer.
The lunch counter was horseshoe-shaped. I liked long counters with mirrors better where you could eye people without staring right at them. I liked to watch elegant-looking people eat, figuring I could learn from them. With the horseshoe-shaped counters, you were stuck
looking at whoever sat across from you. It could be any old slob. I worked hard trying to keep up with Clark and his crowd, read the newspapers at the public library and looked up words in my desk dictionary. It had been a huge thrill to me to have my very own dictionary; suddenly my heart dropped, realizing I wouldn’t have it anymore.
Maybe my getting laid off was a warning from God, I thought. Maybe God was telling me I was getting too big for my britches. Or, as my mom would say, bridges. Maybe God was saying who did I think I was, trying to move to a big-time city like Philly, thinking I could get in with a hotshot like Clark, thinking I could look for my dad and get a look in my eye like Aunt Cora.
The waitress brought my root beer. I looked across the counter and wondered if the woman with her eyebrows plucked and half circles penciled in above them had ever been fired. What about the man with the egg salad on his chin or the woman who was all in green—green crepe dress, green purse, green crocheted beret? Probably not. I’d never known anybody else who was fired. Oh, well, Glenda, but she didn’t count. She had a husband to get her another job.
My sandwich came so I unfolded my napkin and laid it neatly in my lap. I bit into the sandwich, then wiped my greasy fingers on the napkin. The sandwich tasted delicious, the crunchy buttery toast, the thick hot creamy cheese, as though it was a small reward for all my misery. Bite, wipe, bite, wipe. At least there were some things in life you could count on.
Suddenly somebody came in and a gust of wind blew my napkin off my lap onto the counter in front of the lady in green. Nobody else’s napkin blew off, just mine. It sat there with my greasy finger marks on it. It made me so sad I started to cry. I looked in my purse for a hanky but I couldn’t find one, so I took the toilet paper off the Kotex and pretended to blow my nose with it.
Back at the Y, I sat on the bed and pulled out my letters from home. One was from Aunt Cora, written in August. It was on powder blue paper and said, “Hi, kiddo. The big news here is I’m pregnant. Me and a couple of million other war wives. I’m six months along, and all is well. I had to take a leave of absence at work, but I’ll go back. I’m not the type to sit around the house crocheting afghans.
Rhonda the Rubber Woman Page 20