New Jersey Me

by Ferguson, Rich;

  “Okaaaay…” Jean looked my way, hoping for a more positive response. “How ’bout you?”

  I had no idea. I took a wild guess: “Thirty-six?”

  Jimmy flashed me a look. It wasn’t so much code for dumbass. It was a pretty obvious dumbass. He grumbled: “Twenty-two.”

  Jean beamed. “Howdja know?”

  “He knows a lot of things,” I chimed in. “Ain’t that right, Jimmy?”

  “Whatever,” he muttered. He went back to staring at his shoes.

  Jean shook her head. “You two really are a pair.” She took us up some stairs that led us into Lucy’s head. “Look out her eyes, boys.”

  I manned the right one. Jimmy didn’t bother manning the left. Being a Lucy aficionado, he already knew the only thing he’d see were some lousy old buildings. So he just stood there, arms tight across his chest, telling me to hurry.

  What I saw through Lucy’s right eye was ocean. So endless and so many different shades of blue. That ocean sparkled brighter than Grandmother’s ring. Suddenly, I was filled with a sense of calm I’d never before experienced. It was like my life had started all over again clean. But it hadn’t. Deep inside me, I could still feel Callie, Mom, Grandmother, and all the other ghosts and flesh-and-bone beings that made up my life. And no matter what I did—drive three thousand miles away or take a rocket to the moon—I realized I’d never shake them. Fine. Especially right then. Because instead of dragging me down like they often did, I was happy to have each and every one of them with me. Happy to have them look through the elephant’s eye and witness that ocean—blue ocean, sparkling ocean, an ocean big and wide enough to not only hold all my happiness, but to drown all my bullshit.

  Jimmy shook me from the good and bad of it all. “C’mon already.”

  While Jimmy had seen that ocean view countless times, it seemed to affect him differently that day. Once he’d pressed his right eye against Lucy’s right eye, his grumbling stopped; his tight shoulders eased down away from his ears a bit. “You see?” I said, taking full advantage of his body language. “Lucy’s still great, huh?”

  At first, Jimmy didn’t respond. He just kept staring out at the ocean. Again, I said those words. That’s when his shoulders completely dropped into their relaxed, natural state, and all other signs of tension left him as well. He wiped at his face, nodded.

  Jean even picked up on Jimmy’s change. She gave his back a pat, and said: “I told you the best was yet to come. Let’s get you two up top.”

  She guided us to the open-air riding carriage atop Lucy’s back. For as far as you could see there was ocean, and the cheerful summer cottages, and dilapidated structures dotting the Margate landscape. The ocean breeze whipped all around us. Carried up on its chilly currents were the smells of salt air, cotton candy, and fresh-squeezed lemonade. Those smells always made me feel so electric and alive. Like summer would never end, and everything was possible.

  Jean asked me: “Got any questions?”

  I did. “What do the locals think of Lucy?”

  “Some folks love her,” she said. “But others take her for granted. Even when she was whipped into shape, they still couldn’t care whether or not she was torn down.”

  “Sounds like where I’m from,” I said.

  “Oh yeah? Where’s that?”

  “Blackwater.”

  Jean made an euw face. “Man, I feel for you.”

  “You’re telling me,” I said.

  I approached Jimmy, slung an arm around his shoulder. Whether due to exhaustion or the cold, he was shivering. I drew him closer. “Remember when your dad brought us here? How you wanted to take Lucy home?”

  “Of course,” he uttered.

  “You were right,” I said. “She’s the perfect pet.”

  “The best,” he said. “I love Lucy.” Then, for the first time that day, an inchworm of a grin slinked across his face.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Your dad’ll be okay.”

  He jerked away. “He’s got cancer.”

  “But there’s surgery,” I said. “And chemo. There’re all kinds of things to help.”

  “You don’t know for sure.” With that, he shot down the stairs.

  I bolted after him. We ended up on the beach, sprinting past tourists, scrub pines, palms, and dune grass. Seagulls cawed and circled overhead. An old man combed the sand with a metal detector. Families collected seashells. We kept running.

  All that rushing through sand felt like we were moving in slow motion while our muscles worked double time. I finally caught up to Jimmy, wheeled him around. “Your dad needs you,” I said out of breath. “And all you did was run off like some chicken shit.”

  Jimmy shoved me.

  I shoved back.

  Next thing we knew we were a sweaty knot of flying fists and curses, the two of us tangling like we were fighting for the same heart. We crashed to the sand. More punches to the gut, head, and ribs.

  At one point, I got him in a headlock. “Give up?”

  “Fuck you,” Jimmy sputtered, through a puffy lip.

  “What about going home?”

  Another “fuck you.”

  I doubled my grip on him. “What about your dad? Or graduation?”

  Jimmy tried saying more, but all that came out were grunts and gasps for air.

  I let him go.

  Struggling to catch his breath, he wiped some blood from his lip, and hissed: “You’re lucky I didn’t Westinghouse you.”

  He was referring to George Westinghouse. Back at the turn of the twentieth century, after securing the patent for AC electricity, he challenged Thomas Edison’s DC system. In retaliation, Edison tried influencing public opinion by displaying the dangers of alternating current electricity. Utilizing AC, he electrocuted animals up at his West Orange lab. His displays of AC’s killing potential did nothing to scare off the public. They did, however, help to create the electric chair, and the frying of Coney Island’s Topsy the Elephant.

  “Yeah right,” I said. “You better watch it or I’ll go Bruce Lee on you again.”

  “Dude,” Jimmy shot back. “You couldn’t go Pee-Wee Herman.”

  After that, we just sat there in the sand, nursing our war wounds, and occasionally joking about our lousy fighting skills.

  Finally, Jimmy said: “If I go home what if my pops dies? He’ll never see me graduate.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “He will. And there’s an added bonus.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’ll be tons of graduation parties with hot girls.”

  “You’re always talking about that,” said Jimmy. “Don’t you ever think about anything besides getting laid?”

  “Yeah. Getting you laid.”

  “Don’t rush me,” he huffed. “I just ain’t found the right girl yet.”

  Perhaps that was true. For years, I’d tried hooking him up with different girls: fellow students, waitresses, even a clerk—a young ringer for Stevie Nicks—I’d encountered at Spencer’s at the Ocean County Mall. But with each and every girl I’d introduced to Jimmy, he’d either said they weren’t cute enough, or didn’t like Tolkien, smoke weed, or share his particular taste in music. Or maybe, like Mom had speculated, he was gay. Being the early days of AIDS, I didn’t fully get all that entailed. It would take me a little while to sift through the tons of fears and few reliable news sources swirling around to better understand how something like Jimmy’s sexuality could seriously affect the safety of his future health and well-being in Blackwater. In that moment, however, I erred to the side of straight. I snatched up a stick, sketched a crude picture of a girl in the sand. “When it comes to the opposite sex,” I said, “the thing you gotta remember is that you can be a lot of things, but the one thing you can’t be is scared.”

  Jimmy swiped the stick, swished it back and forth through the
picture. “I ain’t scared.”

  “I ain’t saying you are,” I said. “I’m just saying sex is a big deal. Like a rite of passage.”

  “How do you mean?” he asked.

  “It’s like once you do it,” I said, “you’re a man. No one can take that from you. It’s better than a DWI. It stays on your record forever.”

  Despite his messed-up lip, that one made Jimmy smile a smile I hadn’t seen in a while. But then that smile vanished. He shook his head. A mess of curls spilled down into his eyes. “Don’t bother with girls,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think I’m that much into them.”

  “Like the girls I choose,” I said, “or no girls at all?”

  Jimmy didn’t say anything. He just kept swishing that stick through my drawing.

  I repeated my question.

  Finally, he mumbled: “No girls at all.”

  “You mean you’re—”

  Jimmy whipped the stick into the wind. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you,” he said. “You hate me now?”

  I flashed on all the times we’d hung out in his basement, wrestling and rolling around on the floor. I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d had a thing for me then, or even now. What if he did? How would that affect our friendship?

  Jimmy knew what I was thinking. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not into you. Only guys that like Stevie Nicks.”

  That one made me smile. That one made us both smile.

  “I don’t hate you,” I said. “I’ll never hate you.” I scooped up a handful of sand and let it slowly sift through my fingers. “How long have you known?”

  “A while,” said Jimmy. “That’s one of the reasons I spend so much time in my room.” He let fly a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Some people have problems coming out of the closet. I can’t even come out of the basement.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I thought maybe I’d change.”

  After that, we fell silent. End of The Day Silent. Setting Sun Silent. Had I been in LA right then, I would’ve been watching that sun slowly sink into the Pacific. But since I was still stuck in Jersey, facing the Atlantic, it was setting behind me.

  “What’ll I do now?” Jimmy asked.

  “I dunno. You’re kicking butt in school. I’m proud of you for that.”

  Jimmy beamed. He dabbed some blood from his lip with the collar of his flannel shirt, then sat up a little taller.

  I sat up a little taller, too. That’s when I noticed the pre-dusk sky streaked with shades of blue-gray, orange, and rust red. Distant storm clouds moved in from the east. Vibrant waves crashed in front of us. The cool, crisp salt air whipped around the laughing children running along the beach. At that moment the world seemed such a peaceful, picture-perfect place.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Jimmy said.

  I pulled Callie’s letter from my pocket. I didn’t read Jimmy all the stuff about Callie telling me how much she missed me, and how she hoped we could see each other again some day. Instead, I fast-forwarded to a part toward the end. “Listen to what she says here,” I told Jimmy. “‘All in all, life doesn’t get any easier, it just gets different.’”

  He shrugged. “So?”

  “I mean look at us,” I said. “We’re sitting on the beach. We’ve got Lucy with us. We’re not sick or nothing. No one’s giving us any shit. It’s great, right?”

  “Not really,” said Jimmy.

  “Think about it,” I said. “Right here. Right now. We’re okay. I guess it’s just strange to think this might be one of the best moments of our lives. And after this…who knows.”

  “Exactly,” said Jimmy. “After this I gotta go home and watch my pops die.”

  The sun fell further to the west. That once colorful sky veered toward black. And from the east, storm clouds drew closer. The salt air became laced with the smell of deep dampness and sweet electricity.

  I glanced back toward Lucy. From out of the gathering darkness she loomed high above all else, staring out at the water with sad, knowing eyes.

  As for Jimmy and me, we weren’t secured in one place. If we’d wanted, we could’ve bolted. Forget Blackwater. Forget everyone. We could’ve just hopped in our cars, and headed off in separate directions, never looking back.

  “Hey,” said Jimmy. “You feel that?”

  At first I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I felt a single raindrop land on my arm, then another crash-land on my head. After that, a whole ton of them fell from the sky.

  “Hey,” said Jimmy. “It’s raining.”

  I glanced up. “Yep.”

  “It feels nice,” he said.

  I agreed.

  “Think we should leave?” he asked.

  “Not just yet,” I said.

  Chapter 21

  With diplomas in hand, and high school in our rearview mirrors, Jimmy and I were immediately sucker-punched by the real world. As planned, we gave JC a shot. But after just a couple semesters of mind-numbing classes like Survey of Mathematics and Computer Science, we were spun. Could hardly tell a tombstone from the Rolling Stones. So we dropped out. From there, our options grew bleaker.

  It was either ship out for the military or find work in town. Since we weren’t keen on jarhead buzz cuts or getting shot at, we voted for day jobs. There was the power plant. Next, the Exxon station. Yet, since we figured we’d do more gas huffing than pumping, Jimmy and I vetoed that one, too. Ditto with Bob’s Bait and Tackle, Nora’s Knit Shack, and 7-Eleven. That pretty much left Sole Survivor Shoe Store and the Rainbow Casket Company. Jimmy took the shoe route. I followed the dark Rainbow.

  “It’s about time,” my old man said when I first got the job from his buddy, Mr. Delaney. “It’s taken you eighteen years, but you’re finally serving the public.”

  I’d end up working at Rainbow for two years. Didn’t think I’d last that long, but I did. I never got wasted at work. Never left early. Was always on time. Had my morning routine wired.

  To be at work by ten, I’d wake at eight. Didn’t perform my two-Bruce ritual anymore, not since twelfth grade. But I’d give the posters a well-deserved nod, then get down to my own version of kicking ass. Since my old man would already be at work, I’d haul the Kenwood speakers from my bedroom, into the hallway. One morning I might crank Springsteen’s Nebraska. The next day: Pixies’ Surfer Rosa. It all depended upon my mood. Then I’d shower, brush my teeth, drag a comb through my hair. Slap on slacks and a fresh white button-up, which would be sweated out well before the end of the day. Then a tie, black jacket, and black Florsheims: clothes my old man bought me when I first got the job. Next, I’d chow down on coffee, cereal, an English muffin, or whatever edible leftover was available. Just before I’d head off in my Vega—which I’d topped off with oil the night before—I’d down some Listerine. Not only did it make for better customer relations, but that mediciney shot would also recall the vodka I’d snuck from Mom’s Bloody Mary back when I was six.

  As for the Rainbow Casket Company and its neighboring businesses, they had their own memorable qualities.

  Located in a strip mall in the center of town, Rainbow was flanked by Dandy Dry Cleaners on one side, Three Brothers Pizzeria on the other. That walk through the parking lot, I’d be marauded by all kinds of smells: pepperoni, sausage, ground beef. The nasty cherry on top was a kerosene stench. And the sounds: customers bitching about the rising prices of dry cleaning and how their clothes smelled all chemically. High-school dropouts and burnouts—guys not that much unlike Jimmy and me—hanging in front of the pizzeria, bumming smokes and spare change.

  Once through the door of Rainbow, it was a whole other world. Sobs, carefully measured words, and Muzak. Scented candles, Softique Kleenex, and Stargazer lilies. Holden Caulfield once said: “Who want
s flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.” Apparently, my boss, Mr. Delaney, never read Catcher in the Rye. Those Stargazers were everywhere. Stuffed into vases on the counter. On various shelves, stuck in between urns, Hummel figurines, and crosses. That densely sweet smell was what Mom used to say that’s what she’d imagine Heaven to smell like. As a child, I believed her. Only a day into working at Rainbow, I thought she was full of shit.

  Stargazers and Muzak aside, Mr. Delaney wasn’t bad. Was in his late fifties. Tall, thin-lipped, lean-faced. Bowl-cut gray hair, gravelly voice, raised left eyebrow when making a point. Think Lurch from The Addams Family repackaged: less severe, no eyeshadow, far better vocabulary.

  That first morning when I walked through Rainbow’s front door—which sounded an electronic ding when opened—Mr. Delaney was waiting for me in the showroom, right between two of Rainbow’s best-selling caskets—the Legacy and the Starlight Slumber, the coffin in which my grandmother had been buried. In his own crisp white shirt, black suit, and shoes, Mr. Delaney stood tall, stern, his hands gathered behind his back. He seemed ready to quiz me on death-related matters—perhaps the grieving process, or why it was better to say casket instead of coffin. Instead, in that rough voice of his, he asked: “What’s a shark’s favorite illegal substance?”

  I knew the answer, but didn’t respond. I just let his question hang heavy in the air like the stench of Stargazers.

  Mr. Delaney repeated it with a bit more gravel and gravity.

  What the hell, I thought. It was a decent enough joke. “I dunno. What is a shark’s favorite illegal substance?”

  Left eyebrow raised, Mr. Delaney said: “Reefer.”

  I let fly a sly grin. “Not bad, sir.”

  That’s the way it was with my boss. As severe as he could appear at times, he said if you didn’t start the morning with a joke, selling caskets could wear you down, fast. Then he’d throw in a bit of trivia. Like how with all the steel caskets buried in the US each year, we could use that metal to build a new Golden Gate Bridge. Or how the Bo people of Southern China don’t bury their caskets. Instead, they hang them vertically off the side of cliffs.