Man of the Year

by Lou Cove

“Second year college dropout.”

  “You dropped out of school twice?”

  “Well, one was a voluntary leave of absence. It’s a blur. But I was working in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and my college roommate called. He’d been canoeing the Miami river and met a guy who asked him to crew a forty-nine-foot yacht for a retired Russian millionaire going from Nassau to the Galapagos Islands. My roommate was from Utah and knew bupkes about sailing. But we both knew Adventures in Paradise. You know that TV show?”

  I shake my head, trying to stay aboard his train of thought.

  “Adam Troy, handsome, dumb, on a schooner with seven gorgeous women sailing the South Pacific searching for adventure. So I said ‘Let’s go!’ And I’m on the plane heading down to meet them, reading about jib, stern, all that sailing stuff. I grew up in Pittsburgh, for Christ’s sake. Near the Monongahela River. It was a fire hazard that your parents told you to stay the hell away from. That was as close as I got to sailing. It was NOT Mahblehead. Believe me. But then I’m there and it’s Adventures in Paradise. We dove in the harbor the minute we got there and everyone on the dock was laughing at us because that was where the ships dumped their bilges. But we were just happy. Until…” He shakes his head and swallows like he’d rather spit. “On the seventh day we hit the open sea for the first time. No more harbor to harbor. And there’s nowhere to drop anchor, so it’s just like a roller coaster. UPHILL. DOWNHILL.” Howie leans back, eyes popping, then lurches forward toward the street below. “That’s when I start puking.”

  “Oh no,” I laugh, trying to imagine it. The ocean has never been anything but an inviting playground for me. Preston Beach, down the road from Grandma Wini’s house with its soft waves and rich tidal pools of anemone and starfish. The endless sandy stretches of Plum Island and the warm rivulets that last until the sea returns to wash them away.

  “You don’t know puking until you’ve done it for two days straight. You don’t care if you live or die. And then, on the third day, a storm kicked up in the middle of the night. No sky, just clouds and darkness, and the wind’s blowing and it’s three in morning. I’m at the wheel and the old Russian comes up screaming, ‘Why didn’t you call me? Climb the mast! Fix the sails!’”

  Howie’s hand shoots skyward, as if the mast is right before us and he looks to the top and shakes his head, no. “The Russian’s getting panicky, which was a clue to me and my roommate that the shit was hitting the fan. He starts wailing at us, ‘We’re going to hit the reef! We’re going to hit the reef!’ I look and I realize he’s right. We ARE going hit the fucking reef and miss the channel.” Howie stands and staggers, feigning a loss of balance but the act of doing it, so high up here, brings the terror and the risk of his story to life for me.

  And then, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes, he extends his left arm forward, draws the right back and strikes a perfect, balanced pose on the copper ridge of the roof. The wind lifts his hair gently and his nostrils flare as he inhales deeply, a beautiful California surfer catching the 31 Chestnut swell.

  “There was this accident of life,” he whispers. “We caught a wave and surfed over the reef and landed in the harbor, completely safe.”

  “That’s. So. Pissah.”

  “That’s one word for it,” Howie shrugs, sitting back next to me and putting a hand on my shoulder. “I was so terrified of the idea that I could have fallen off that boat and fallen off the face of life and no one would know what happened to me. Me. Class president!”

  “You were class president?” I ask, but he stares silently out to sea, adorned in clothes only a man of great confidence could wear, meditating on thoughts only a man of expansive mind (with mind-expanding accessories) could imagine. Whatever he sees out there, it is big. I haven’t yet found a friend in this city, but I have found my hero, flying high over the streets of Salem not with a cape, but with an amazing pair of silk pants.

  “I never felt so weak. But when forces so much greater than you step in—Mother Nature, Father Time, Brother Death in his black hood—you can’t blame yourself for being scared. But I did. I did,” he confesses. “It took me a long time to be able to tell this story, hombre.”

  Howie spits in the palm of his hand, extinguishes the joint with a faint sizzle, and returns what was left of it to the Sucrets tin. He looks back at the ocean, raises his arms over his head, and shouts at the top of his lungs: “NICE WORK, YAHWEH! KEEP IT UP!” Then he turns back to me: “Let’s go see your mamacita.” He throws his legs out in front of him, inches his butt forward, and slips down the warm slate shingle slide, taking the ride I’ve only dreamed of and disappearing over the edge. A moment later I hear a gravelly thud on the flat roof below. “All good!” he calls. “Hit it. I’ll catch you.”

  I look down the long, gray stretch of roof, waiting. “I can’t see you,” I call.

  “If I back up, I won’t be able to catch you, now will I?”

  I shiver pleasantly at the prospect of sliding full speed, but the idea of missing him altogether is unnerving. Usually, I shimmy carefully on my butt, hang off the edge, and drop to the flat roof. But I’ve always wanted to let go and ride that wicked slope. If I do it right I’ll land feetfirst on the newly minted makeout zone outside my bedroom window, like Howie just did. But if I misjudge or slip too far to the left I’ll miss the flat roof altogether and it’s Ding dong! Road pizza delivery for Frank!

  “Can you see my hands?” Howie yells. He jumps and I see his fingertips appear briefly at the end of the roof then disappear as he lands back on the gravel below, out of sight.

  “Yes!”

  “Aim for them. Come on! I gotta pee.”

  “OK,” I answer, letting myself slide slowly forward, the rubber of my heels dragging at the slate but doing little to slow me once I really start moving. I lift my feet and abandon my fear as the speed fills my chest with a warm rush that makes me feel I can fly. I shout the first word that comes to mind, the curious word Howie had uttered at the top of our little world just a minute before: “YAHWEH!” as the soles of my Pumas plow into his face. My palms break part of my fall, ripping open in a half dozen spots as the pebbles dig into the skin.

  “You mutherfuckinglittlecocksuckingfuckeryoufuck! FUCK YOU!”

  *

  Dinner that night is beef bourguignon, zucchini potato pancakes, and Brussels sprouts. I hate Brussels sprouts. Papa calls to let us know he’s still at the office. Mama shrugs and starts to serve.

  Frank joins us, a jolly replacement for Papa with his rounder frame and shorter moustache. He takes my father’s place at the head of the table and offers a word of thanks for the meal, and for his landlord family.

  Howie, face swollen and woozy, makes fun of me for not eating the sprouts, taking some from my plate and filling his cheeks with them.

  “Baby, you are the most handsome chipmunk I have ever seen,” Carly says, scratching under his chin as he rolls his eyes in satisfaction.

  “Looks more like W. C. Fields with that shnoz,” Mama giggles.

  There it is again. I know my mother as serious, attentive, self-sufficient, and super smart. But silly is a new one.

  “Oy! These zucchini pancaketh!” Howie says, his mouth full of them. “You are a miracle worker. You are!” he yells. Mama shakes her head and blushes. “You are a miracle worker and I am Helen Keller. You’re Anne Bancroft and I’m Patty Duke.”

  “Howie, you’re ridiculous,” Mama says. “It’s zucchini pancakes.”

  Howie looks thoughtfully at her. “Maybe you’re Anne Bancroft and I’m Dustin Hoffman.”

  Carly smacks him. I am lost. Again.

  As dinner concludes, I roll a greasy sprout off my plate and let it drop into my lap, then flick the big spongy marble under the table to a panting Atjeh. It lands with a faint thump and is followed by the gobble of the wolf dog.

  “Did you just waste a Brussels sprout?” Howie asks.

  “No,” I say, shooting him a don’t snitch on me look that he should understand.
/>
  “A beautiful Brussels sprout made by the Hunan Princess?”

  “No,” I repeat hotly.

  “Eat it,” Howie points at my plate. “You haven’t had any. You must try, niño.”

  “I’m eating,” I object angrily.

  “Man can’t live on beef bourguignon alone. Try this,” says Howie holding the green sprout in front of my face and shaking it. I want to barf. “This is good. This is good for you. Try it.”

  “Howie,” Frank says softly, recognizing my discomfort. “Let the boy be fickle. It’s better than being bitter. He looks up to you.”

  Carly smiles at this and rubs Howie’s back.

  “Whoa,” Howie says, visibly blanching. “Did I just pull a big brother?”

  “You kinda did, lover,” Carly says with a firm tenderness.

  “He would do it to me,” Amanda says, not looking my way. “He deserves it.”

  “No one deserves it,” Howie declares, standing. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. That may be a part of me, that kind of macho-man, bully bullshit. That’s some old shit. I don’t know why it cropped up but I AM SORRY, niño. Will you accept my apology? It’s true.”

  I look at Frank, who nods, a glow rising under his five o’clock shadow.

  “Sure,” I say, realizing that this is the first time a man has ever apologized to me for anything. The ones I know don’t do it. But Howie just did.

  “Let’s-a play-a some music,” says Frank, adopting a Godfather accent. “The whole-a-family’s together.”

  Carly puts a new album on the record player. She, Amanda, and Mama start swirling around the dining room together, pulling me and Frank in as Cris Williamson and a choir of women’s voices grow stronger and louder.

  Love of my life I am crying,

  I am not dying,

  I am dancing.

  Howie joins and we all whirl through the house, music following us on Papa’s multi-room sound system, voices rising as we master the chorus together. The idea that you could be crying for joy instead of sadness suddenly seems right. It is the first time I have ever danced in this house.

  The song ends with the full-throated choir promising, “And we will sing for a long, long time!”

  Everyone is flushed, a little winded, laughing. I think, Maybe we’ll stay here, like this, together after all.

  *

  The next morning, I wake to the hum of warm and easy voices coming down the hall. It’s an exotic sound for a Tuesday morning on Chestnut Street, usually marked by Mama’s ritual shriek from the first floor to the third, calling for a timely departure for school that never happens.

  I swing off the bunk, pull on a sweatshirt, and wander down to Howie and Carly’s room, only to find everyone gathered in the bathroom. Amanda is perched on the toilet. Mama, Carly, and Howie have squeezed into the tub, each holding a personal pot of paint and a dribbling brush.

  “Where’s Papa?” I ask.

  “Work,” Mama says. “You slept late. Look what Howie did.” She points to a painting just above the edge of the tub. It’s a brownish bird—a cross between a hawk and a robin?—assuming a protective stance on a rock beside the recipe for Mama’s zucchini potato pancakes which Howie has carefully transcribed in black and pink oils. “Yield: Six to Eight Servings.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Howie explains. The gauze is gone and the swelling’s down, but his eyes are black and blue. His S’s have returned.

  “Can he do that?” Amanda asks.

  “I think he just did,” Mama says, smiling. A fait accompli instead of a cause for concern. Instead of a highly organized, paint-by-numbers project there is a spontaneous, splattered, rainbow-infused mural on the wall of our guest bathroom and Mama is laughing, not fretting. She’s kissing Carly on the cheek. Hugging Howie. They’re all hugging. Again. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Mama smiles.

  “So are we,” they say in unison.

  We fill the wall with as many creations as we can before we eat breakfast. Amanda paints a portrait of Bunny Yabba. David draws a stick figure of Mama. I make a vampire flying over the zucchini potato pancake recipe with blood dripping from his fangs and two bats on either side of him. Mama paints a list of her top five mystery novels, then joins forces with Carly to paint a garden of flowers with a fountain at the center. We’re going to be late for school, but I don’t say anything. You don’t bother the Hunan Princess when she’s happy.

  Getting Whacked

  Halloween comes, and with it a most intense observance by the locals. Back in New York we rode our apartment building’s elevator up and down, knocked on a dozen doors, and went home with a little paper sack of candy, our faces damp with the condensation that accumulated on the insides of our sharp plastic masks. But in Salem, city of witches, the number of doors we knock on is endless, and the elaborate handmade or professional-grade costumes worn by children and adults in equal measure are genuinely frightening.

  I lead Amanda on a trek through the neighborhood that does not end until our pillowcases are overflowing and her tears begin to spurt—partly from exhaustion and partly from a kid with a dangly eyeball and an axe in his forehead who jumped out of the bushes on Flint Street and made her pee a little in her Laura Ingalls Wilder pantaloons. I share some sugar loot with Howie and Carly and fall asleep on the edge of their bed as they whisper stories about commune living in Berkeley and the naked beach near Pacifica.

  Howie and Carly’s stay goes from one week to two, then to three, and still shows no signs of abating. They are the unexpected jackpot in the Salem lottery. In a town where you expect the locals to stone you to death when you pick the wrong slip, I’ve found a true prize: honest, loving adults who renounce social divisions, bring everyone to the table, and then dump everything on it. The more time I spend fluttering around the edges of their blissful life the more I want to lose myself in its sensuous anarchy. It was clear when the light hit the sheet that first evening: innuendo is over. Everything is explicit.

  So, perhaps this is the place I will grow up, after all.

  In contrast to the magical mystery tour under way at home, my school, Oliver, is just holding me back. Assignments aren’t hard for me, but paying attention is. They don’t reward smarts at Oliver. They reward compliance. But the real reward, I am learning, is in breaking the rules. One day, I absentmindedly tear the erasers off Mrs. Biegelbock’s pencils while waiting at her desk to turn in a paper. She yells at me in front of the class, and that’s it. But a few days later when I crush her empty Styrofoam coffee cup in a similar manner, she has the principal call my mother. And that is the last straw.

  *

  When Howie comes down the next morning, I am sorting candy. Mama is sorting her tools—a sledgehammer, gloves, a shovel—in preparation for demolishing a wall in the basement.

  “I can’t believe how much you take on, Princess. All work, never a complaint, just sleeves up, head down. And Lou, what? No school?” I nod as he pats my head lightly on his way to the kitchen and a fresh pot of coffee. I like what he said about Mama. I like how much he likes her. And I can see how, in her own quiet way, she enjoys being liked.

  Still, the work ethic Howie appreciates in my mother is the same drive to do that keeps her from me. There’s a joy and spark to her now that wasn’t there before. At least not in New York. But it shines brightest for our guests, not for me.

  “I’m pulling him from Oliver and sending him to another school,” Mama says, wiping her brow and smiling at Howie. “They gave him a D on a spelling test even though he got every word right. In New York, he was top of the class. Without trying, I might add,” she says, directing this last bit at me.

  “I didn’t set up the margins the right way, and my lines came out crooked,” I grouse.

  “But it’s a spelling test,” he reappears with a mug and a banana.

  “And then he destroyed a Styrofoam cup. Oy! What a delinquent,” she says in her most sarcastic Jewish-mother voice. “That’s why he’s going to the Alternative School,” Mam
a concludes. I beam, proudly.

  “Alternative School,” Howie repeats as Mama lifts the sledgehammer to her shoulder. “I like the sound of that. And look at you, Hunan Princess. Who got in your way today?”

  “Little renovation downstairs. Carving out space for a framing studio. It’s an old hobby, and maybe even a way to make a little extra money around here, since I can’t go back to work right now.”

  “Well ain’t that just like the daughter of a Kosher butcher? Grab a tool and carve. I love it. So let me help,” Howie offers. “I want to get dirty with you.”

  “I would love to,” she laughs, “but I actually have to run some errands first, and what would really help me is if you could spend some time with Lou. I don’t want him sitting around eating candy all day.”

  An alternative to candy never sounded so good.

  “OK, but don’t use that sledgehammer without me. I’m starting to get soft with all this easy living around here.” And then, to me: “So, hombre, how ’bout we go visit your dad in the city today? Let’s see how El Jefe spends his days.”

  *

  “Why aren’t we driving?” I ask, as we pass the blue and white minibus, beckoning like a yellow submarine.

  “Well, I’m high, for starters.”

  The train to Boston is nothing like the subways in New York, where there are too many people too close together and the doors shut too suddenly. Once Mama pushed Amanda and me off a subway car ahead of her, then started to follow just as the doors began to close on her huge pregnant stomach. She screamed and I thought the baby would explode out onto the platform. David didn’t appear for another few weeks, but I never forgot the terror in my mother’s voice, rising above the cries of the few passengers who pleaded angrily with the conductor to “Open the fucking doors!”

  The memories of New York have already started to blur. But the ugly ones stay sharp: brighter stars in a receding constellation. Why not the good ones? Why not the best?

  Thirty-three minutes later, on soft seats in a half-full compartment, we roll into North Station.

  “Naht station next. Naht station,” the conductor calls out as he pulls ticket stubs from the seat backs. Howie doesn’t move.