by Rich Cohen
At the end of the summer, Santiago and I stripped and waxed the floors of the Hubbard Woods school. I crossed the room with the mop, spreading solvent. Santiago hummed by with the stripper. When I told him I wanted to run the stripper, he said, “You will lose control, smash up the room, and burn a hole in your foot, and your rich parents will sue poor Santiago.”
After much hectoring, Santiago let me run the stripper. Before he had even turned his back, I lost control. The stripper buzzed across the room, knocking everything to pieces. It was headed for my foot when the engine died. Sliding through the solvent, Santiago had yanked out the plug. He said, “You see! I told you. Now you must produce in the old way—with the mop.”
Most of the time, I was in the basement with a half dozen janitors who had worked at the school for years, arriving each day, summer or winter, before dawn. One of these men was born in Romania and had fled through the mountains when the Communists came to power. When we screwed around, he said, in a heavy accent, “You dammed kids think you got the world by the ass!” His beloved son, who was my age and worked at the school, was always running off with the truck to get stoned on the beach. The rest of the janitors were just working-class guys. There was a father-son team. The father was in his nineties, waiflike and frail but still smoking a half pack of Marlboros before breakfast. He would sit there grumbling in his ribbed T-shirt, a butt dangling from his thin lips. Too old for anything else, his job had narrowed to just one task: he painted doors. Not walls, not fences, not trim, just doors. There was a tennis day camp behind the school and one of the counselors was a beautiful girl who wore short little skirts and was always flipping her hair. I thought of asking her for a date but chickened out, fearing the social divide (janitor, teacher) was simply too great. One day, this girl went into the ladies’ room in the school to change her shirt, and it just so happened the old janitor was in there painting a door. He came back to the basement, saying, “I seen it all, every bit of it, her little boobies too.”
By the end of each day, I was as worn out as any other working man in America. Sometimes I would stop at a lonely spot along the shore, cut down the bluffs, strip off my clothes, and jump into the lake. I would then drive to Sloppy Ed’s. It was a sad time at the hamburger stand. A few months before, in a divorce settlement, Ed had lost control of the business. His wife, Rachel Carter, had taken over—a slight strung-out woman, in over her head but making a go of it. Ed, who by court order was not allowed inside the stand, stood on the sidewalk, shouting, “You can serve hamburgers! You can put on the mustard and the pickle and even the secret sauce. But you will never be Sloppy Ed.”
Ed became a biblical figure in our town, singing out his sorrow. At night, he holed up in a road motel, his hair wild, his cheeks as red as ground beef. I asked if he wanted me to stop going to the stand. He said, “No, I want all the worshipers in the temple. That way, when the false priest is driven from the altar, the services can resume without delay.”
Most of the time, Rachel Carter just ignored Sloppy Ed. Now and then, however, she wiped her hands on her apron, stepped into the street, and said, “Why, tell me, why would I want to be Sloppy Ed? I divorced Sloppy Ed!”
This would humble the old man. He would start pacing. “OK, fine, you don’t want to be me!” he would shout. “You don’t love me! OK. You want to divorce me. Fine! But why steal my birthright?”
Of course, this is just the sort of scandal Jamie and I would have spent hours discussing. “It’s a split in the very center of town,” Jamie might say. “It is a call to choose up sides, progress or tradition, legal documents or human soul, boys or girls, shirts or skins.”
But Jamie was not around. He painted houses from early morning into the sundown. And even when he was around, I did not have time for him. By then, I was giving every moment—that is, every moment not concerned with stripping and waxing floors—to a girl who had climbed quickly through the ranks from stranger to crush to girlfriend. Jamie let it be known that he did not approve of this new girlfriend and that in losing myself to her I was in some way violating his teachings.
I met Sandy at a party in Winnetka, introduced by Haley Seewall, who said, “This is the prettiest girl in Lake Forest.” If Haley had not said that, who knows what would have happened? I have always been highly suggestible. In the future, whenever I looked at Sandy, I heard Haley saying, “This is the prettiest girl in Lake Forest.” She had long blond hair thrown to one side, and her eyes were big and brown and she was wearing a blue shirt. She always wore blue. Maybe blue was her favorite color, or maybe she just knew she looked good in it. She said, “I am so drunk I am spinning.”
Only later did I learn the entire story of that night. Sandy and I spoke over the keg; Sandy went outside and kissed some other guy; Sandy came back inside and talked to me some more; Sandy went back outside and threw up in the bushes; Sandy went to the bathroom and swallowed mouthwash; Sandy went home with me. The night ended with me following a confusing traffic of mumbled signals: Go, Stop, Yes, No, Yes, Stop, Crossing, Yield, No, Yes, Go.
Sandy soon made her first daytime visit to my house. Stepping into the kitchen, she said, “I almost ran over your yard man.” A few minutes later, my father, covered in peat moss and fertilizer, came in the back door and said, “I was almost run over by a girl in a fancy car.” Of course, Sandy did not know that my father was a fanatical gardener; that he worked in the yard for days at a time; that he was often seen by the neighbors gardening at night; that he had been forbidden, by my mother, from gardening for more than three hours at a stretch; that, so he could evade this edict, he purchased several sets of identical clothing; that when my mother left for the grocery store or the pharmacy, he would race out for a few stolen moments in the garden; that, on my mother’s return, he would quickly race into the house and change from a dirty striped shirt and muddy khaki pants into a clean striped shirt and clean khaki pants; that, on one such occasion, he was given away only by his white shoes, which had turned black. Needless to say, my father took an instant dislike to Sandy. He said, “Just being around a girl like that, you sustain a loss in brain tissue.”
On weekend mornings, Sandy would drive to my house, sneak past my parents, and climb into my bed. She was a former Miss Teen Great Lakes. No kidding. There was a full-length picture of her in the window of the Glencoe Photo Shop. In it, she was smiling with her hands on her hips, her teeth glossy, and her hair all brushed down one side of her head. It was a kind of symbol in our town, that photo, in that it seemed to stand for something else, though I could never figure out exactly what. It was very uncool, that’s for sure; still, in those weeks, I found myself carrying a copy of it around in my wallet.
This was no ordinary girl. Her mother had divorced and remarried, and her stepfather was a practically illiterate multimillionaire, jug-eared and sour and constantly complaining, throwing money at his stepdaughters— three girls standing before him, shouting, “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” And him: “Take it! Take it! Take it!” Sandy said she hated him. At fifteen she had run away, stuffing some cosmetics into a bag and calling for a limousine. She charged the getaway car to her stepfather’s account, which made it easy for him to track her down; she was at a friend’s house in Kenilworth, watching cartoons and getting high. She spent two nights in a guest bedroom and then went home, again by limo.
We were together every night, eating picnic dinners and drinking warm beer. I will never forget how she looked coming out of the lake. Even the silly times leave distinct memories. At that age you are essentially longing in the shape of a body. One afternoon, I borrowed the park district truck for a made-up errand and drove to Lake Forest. It was raining. The streets unwound before me, swinging into focus: the trees, the houses, the glistening yards. When I turned onto the main street, there was Sandy in a yellow slicker, hair stuck down to her face. We went to my house; the yellow slicker was tossed into a corner. Each day, she gave me a gift—hair gel, money clip, cologne—until, piece by piece, she had turne
d me into a different person. At night, we went to Ravinia, a bandshell in Highland Park, to see the Chicago symphony or modern dance. Or else to a high-falutin’ suburban restaurant where they treat you like a sophisticate. Her father said, “If you go to Froggies at your age, what can you possibly look forward to later in life?” But Sandy had it all figured out. We would be married after I graduated from college, and a few years later she would be pregnant, and then we would have three kids and I would be riding to and from the city on the commuter train. One night, as we came out of the Village Smithy, the swankiest restaurant in Glencoe, we stumbled into Jamie. He was walking home from work. He gave me a look that said, You poor bastard.
When my parents were out of town, Sandy lived in my bedroom. We dragged the television upstairs, so we could have sex and still watch David Letterman. What I remember best is not the way her body felt—this I remember not at all—but the way her body made my body feel. One night, I drifted off and awoke many hours later, with the TV showing an ape running full tilt up a rocky slope. When the ape cleared a ridge into a valley, where hundreds of apes, each wearing a leather leisure suit, were gathered, he raised a hairy fist and shouted, “Brothers, the humans are attacking! One ape is injured and another is dead!”
At the time, our housekeeper, Dolmi, a middle-aged woman from Ecuador whom my mother considered a member of the family, was bothered by what was going on between me and Sandy and yet could see no way to stop it. So at last she took a pack of condoms from my room and placed them in my parents’ night table. When my mom found the condoms, she was far too embarrassed to say anything to me directly. Instead, she called my sister and engaged in one of those endless late-night conversations that have had such a nefarious effect on my life, leading to big-sisterly talks on drunk driving, bounced checks, and AIDS.
On those nights when my friends came around, looking for a party, Sandy and I would shut off the lights and pretend no one was home. Once I watched Jamie drive up, park his car, and ring the doorbell. After a while, he stepped into the driveway and looked up at the attic window. I moved back, trying to fade into the darkness, like the tiger in the old print. But I know he saw me; it registered on his face. He shook his head, got in his car, and drove away.
Tom Pistone invited Sandy and me over for a party. He lived in a creaky house by the train tracks, a garage in back and a weedy yard. We were met at the door by Tom’s father, who, for a father, was so young and so handsome that I always felt he was playing a trick on me. He was wearing a white T-shirt, his body just a cord of muscle. He said, “Get in here, boy! Come to see Tommy? Well, all right. Let’s get a look at the girl. She ain’t too bad!” As he said this, he walked around Sandy, saying, “No, sir, ain’t too bad at all.”
Tom was drinking a beer on the back porch, staring at the houses across the alley. At dusk, the lights in those houses came on, one after another, like the break of a wave. Then it was night. Jamie walked in from the yard in faded jeans. He asked if I wanted a drink. He went to the kitchen and came back with something that tasted like a hangover. Tom talked to Sandy. Jamie took my arm and said, “I need to talk to you alone.”
“Not now,” I said.
I did not want to be alone with Jamie or listen to the lecture I knew was coming. That night, I avoided rooms where he could back me into a corner. After dinner, I went into the garage, where Tom had stashed some beer. As I opened the fridge, light spilled across the concrete floor and I spotted Tom’s father in one of the cars. It scared me to death. He rolled down the window and smoke billowed out. He handed me a joint and I took a drag. It was skunk weed picked on the far shores of Lake Michigan. “The hippies used to grow it,” he told me. “It’s the only true thing they left behind.” He coughed a little, then said, “Nice girl you got there.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pistone.”
“I noticed her the moment you came in,” he said. “She has nice hair and a good ass, and good tits too.”
I told him I had to get back to the house.
“Now you’re thinking smart,” he said. “You don’t want to leave a girl like that alone. Not for a minute.”
I grabbed the beer and headed toward the house, glad to get out of there. I had always figured that, as you got older, you grew out of your boyhood weirdness. To me, Mr. Pistone was a warning that youthful creepiness can just as easily dig in and become your personality. From the porch, I could see the kitchen through the window. Light gleamed off the stoves and countertops. Sandy stood before an open cabinet, reaching for a glass. The shelf was high and she was on her toes. Her skirt rode up, showing her legs. Coming up from behind, Jamie put his hand on her back and reached for the glass. As he did this, he said a few words in her ear, and she turned and smiled. I did not think Jamie would sleep with Sandy. That would have been too simple for him, too simple and too drastic. After all, it was not Sandy he was concerned with, it was me: my friendship, my gaze. No. He was just showing me that for him having Sandy would be no more than a good night’s work. After all, he had been with dozens of girls like Sandy, or so he let me believe. So no matter where I turned up, Jamie had been there first, been and gone. It was this aura of mastery, of keekness, that, among other things, had attracted me to him in the first place. It was the light he was giving off. But that summer it began to irritate me. It was an example I could not live up to. As long as Jamie was in my life, nothing I had would be truly my own.
And then it was the Fourth of July, which has always been my favorite holiday. In the afternoon, Sandy and I walked into town. There was a warm breeze and a marble sky. The houses looked festive, and the trees were draped in bunting. Some of the stores had set up sidewalk tables. The Korean guy who owned Ray’s Sport Shop was doing a brisk business in whiffle-ball bats. Sloppy Ed was at Harry’s Delicatessen, eating corned beef and saying, “I have lost my last appeal. I am cut adrift, no way home.” The streets were flooded with faces, the faces that make up a small American town: women in sundresses with bronzed legs, men in hats, straw hats and Panama hats, fathers loping toward middle age, mothers cold in judgment, toddlers and kids dressed up for American Legion baseball, old-timers with hard gray eyes. I went into Little Red Hen and ordered the lunch special, a slice of pizza and a Coke for a buck. The pizza was greasy and delicious.
The parade began at the firehouse and stretched through the afternoon strange as a beach dream. There were kids on tricycles, bigger kids on bicycles, the mayor in striped pants riding one of those old-fashioned contraptions with a giant wheel in front and a small wheel in back; there was a high school jazz band and a junior high school marching band, and the kid on the snare drum got a nose bleed; there was every fire truck and police car in town; there were dozens of other vehicles, including the game warden in his panel truck flashing his lights, and a sleek police boat up on a trailer that got the crowd whispering. Chief Tompkins was a keen fisherman, and some wondered why he needed such a fancy rig if not for his own excursions. Bringing up the rear, on a sit-down lawn mower, was Tall Ted Conner, a retarded man in his forties who could be seen in any season racing his visions through the parks of town. Tall Ted weaved down the road, waving and smiling.
As the parade turned off the main drag, it seemed to take the afternoon with it. The crowd headed toward the beach. In less than an hour, everyone had regathered on blankets and lawn chairs on the bluffs above the lake. In Glencoe, it is the same fireworks show every year. The sun goes down; the crowd gets restless; there are shouts of anticipation. Then the first rocket goes up, trailing sparks. For the next twenty minutes or so, due to the small-town budget, rockets scream by in fits and starts, now and then a splash of color setting the town beneath a strange new streamer-filled sky. Otherwise, the night is dead moments, noisemakers, and duds. As a kid, I had watched these sparklers fade, hoping one would burn long enough to set the woods on fire. In the end, there is of course the finale: a run of consecutive blasts, the people ooohing and ahhhing.
Sandy said, “When will it start?”
And then the whole world went up, dozens of rockets sailing into the sky, bursts of light, sharp concussions echoing up and down the lakeshore. Everyone jumped to their feet. This was the best show ever. There were fiery candles and screamers and flashers. After that first flurry, however, the show settled back into its familiar pattern, with each burst separated by stretches of dead air. And then ten, twenty, thirty minutes went by with nothing at all. Not a burst, not a blast. Someone shouted, “What’s going on?” Flashlights, dozens of flashlights, began wandering across the bluffs. Here and there, faces, dumb-struck and angry, were caught in the beams. It was the cops, walking through the blankets and chairs, saying, “All right, everyone, time to go home. Some idiot set off the finale first.”
It was a play without a third act, an orgasm without sex, premature eJakeulation. The crowd turned surly. The sidewalks filled with grumbling celebrants. I ducked onto a side street and lost Sandy; she had been carried away in the crowd. Jamie was waiting on the next corner. In his baggy coat, he looked like one of the old men of town. “I was hoping to find you,” he said.
I said, “Hey! What’s up? What about that finale?”
He did not answer me right away. He paced back and forth, arms folded across his chest. His body language was all about confrontation. He was clearly thinking over what he wanted to tell me. I finally asked him.
“I want you to stop it,” he said.
“Stop what?”
“You know, stop it,” he said. “Stop all of it. Stop wearing cologne.”
“What? What are you talking about? Why?”
“I want you to smell your own stink,” he told me. “I want you to tear the pleats from your pants. I want you to stop playing house. I want you to rejoin the land of the living.”
OK, I thought, so here it is. “You want me to break up with Sandy.”
“Fine. If you want to reduce it to that, fine. I want you to break up with Sandy. Ditch her. Dump her. Get rid of her.”