by Chris Rush
Stupid monkeys, who went in for dinner.
* * *
MEALTIMES, everyone was on edge. Dad, smash-o, not saying a single word. Disdainful, he’d stare off into space, chewing in slow motion. Mother often tried to start fake conversations with me or my brothers.
“Boys, tell me about your new teachers.”
I was wary, but my younger brothers always took the bait. One night Steven, in the middle of some dumb story about math class, knocked over his glass. Milk inundated corn and casserole, poured off the table. It was an epic mess.
“Not again!” Mother said. She stood and got a roll of paper towels, which she unfurled across the carpet—her flag of surrender. As she sopped up the milk under the table, she began to weep, howling like some dying creature. None of us dared move.
Then Dad flicked his silver lighter—the signal that he’d had enough. Lighting a Winston, he puffed, as if bored by Mom’s performance. In a trail of smoke, like the Devil, he went off to his den.
My brothers, too, ran to various hiding places in the house.
I stayed on, worried about my mother’s mental health. Climbing back into her chair, abandoned paper towels on the floor, she looked deranged. There were drops of milk in her hair and mascara running down her cheeks. Her strange smile terrified me, her hands fluttering in the air, dismissing the drama.
She put three biscuits on her plate and reached for the gravy.
“Honey,” she said. “Tell me some good news. I could use some good news for a change.” She stared at me, grinning, but I had nothing to offer.
* * *
AT RIVERWOOD PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL, I was one of the tallest students, but I spent most days shrinking, looking down, trying to ignore the jibes about my face and girly hair. Under the influence of art supplies, I remained in a trance.
One rainy afternoon, on the bus home, the kids started to chant.
Go Red! Go Red!—and then Ci-ba! Ci-ba! Ci-ba!
Blazingly insecure, I tried to figure out what those words had to do with me, but when I put my head up, everyone was watching the river as we drove by. The water was bloodred. It was terrifying. The girl beside me explained.
“Oh, that’s just Ciba-Geigy—the chemical plant—dumping in the river again.” She yanked a wad of gum from her mouth and stuck it under her seat. “I don’t know, I think it’s kind of pretty—don’t you? And red is our school color!”
* * *
AROUND THIS TIME, my sister sent me a mysterious cookbook called The Ten Talents. In addition to recipes, there were photographs of women in braids stirring nutritious goo with large wooden spatulas. The book’s authors argued for “the Bible Diet,” claiming that cashew milk could revive our godless world. Pulverized nutmeat energized and congealed all the dishes in the miraculous cookbook, from ice cream to casseroles.
Donna wrote that the recipes were very evolved.
I wanted to be evolved. After baking a surprisingly delicious cashew-pumpkin pie, it was clear to me that the Bible was right about snacks. With enough cashews, I, too, could grow strong and spiritual. Soon I was baking bread and fermenting my own yogurt, which Mom said smelled like dirty laundry.
* * *
“ANOTHER PACKAGE for you from Donna,” my mother said when I got home from school. Every month or so, my sister and Vinnie sent me religious items—a votive candle or a small statue of Jesus.
“Isn’t that charming?” Mother would say. “I didn’t realize how devoted they were.”
What Mom didn’t know was that in the gift box, under a false bottom, there’d always be a bag of product—a couple of hundred hits of acid, a slab of hash.
On the phone, Sis said: “Just some stuff we had lying around. It would be great if you could sell it and mail us the cash.”
Luckily, I’d found a few people to sell to at public school, including my old buddy Sean Carney. Sean had been my best friend in fourth grade. Back then, we were inseparable, two boys with our arms around each other, yapping on the playground of St. Ignatius. Sean had a big bristly head of black hair, blue eyes, and the truest smile. I love you, we’d say to each other unabashedly. Then, one day he was gone—transferred to public school.
Now, years later, we met again in detention. I’d been busted for skipping gym, and Sean had committed multiple dress-code violations. That day, he had on maroon harem pants, bracelets, and a fez. Though Sean was now a broad-shouldered fellow with long hair and sideburns, I recognized him immediately. We couldn’t stop talking. When he said “You heard about the UFOs, right?” I didn’t hesitate. I repeated what Lu’s wife, Jingle, had told me the summer before. “They’re kind of like angels, from Mars and Venus, here to help us through the current crisis.”
“Oh my God,” Sean screeched. “That’s exactly what I heard!”
Sean was enthusiastic about drugs, too. He bought some of my pot, as well as twenty hits of acid.
But I still had a lot of product to unload. I decided to call Star Farms.
* * *
THE PAY PHONE rang and rang—far away, a bell in outer space.
When someone finally picked up, it was Betsy Chang, a junior. I’d always liked her. “Hi!” she said. “Who’s this?”
“Betsy, it’s Chris Rush. I used to go there. Remember, we used to get high in the tree house?”
“Oh, yeah. The gay kid, right?”
My heart sank. Is that all that anyone remembered?
She asked why I wasn’t there anymore.
“Oh,” I said. “My mom’s sick. I need to help her.”
Betsy, always competitive, said, “My mom’s dead.”
I asked if Kurt Vogel was still around.
“Yeah, but he’s in class. He told everyone you ran away from him this summer. Plus, worse shit.”
“Well, I have some stuff he might be very interested in. Tell him I’m taking a train to the Farm this weekend. I’ll call him when I have my schedule.”
On Saturday morning, before my mom got up, I snuck off with a suitcase full of pot. I caught a bus to New York City, then a train north. Five hours later, I sat outside a tiny depot waiting for Kurt to show up.
An hour late, the familiar white van materialized. Kurt and I barely spoke. He was only interested in the weed. Returning to my old school felt very weird. I smiled and waved at a few people as I walked across campus to Kurt’s room. Nicky Bloom dropped by to snoop. “So you’re back?”
“No, man, just delivering product from Tucson.”
“Oh—how working-class.”
“Nicky, not now,” Kurt said. “I have business to do.”
When we were alone, I took the kilo bricks out of their paper wrappers and checked the weight on a scale Kurt had stolen from the science lab. My thirty-two pounds of Mexican Gold had already dwindled to twenty-nine.
Kurt and I sampled a very nice joint, but he refused to smile.
“Obviously, excellent pot,” I said. It was hard to look at Kurt’s stupid face; I still hated him. “I think two-fifty a pound is a fair price.” This was nearly ten times more than the price I’d paid.
“Fuck two-fifty,” he growled. “Two hundred—or keep it.”
I frowned, pretended it was a terrible dilemma. After a long pause, I said, “Okay, man, I guess it’s a deal. You can have the suitcase, too.”
Kurt got the money from a padlocked closet and put the suitcase away. Then, like it was nothing, he said, “Oh, did I tell you Roy OD’d? Remember—those guys we picked up?”
“I know who Roy is.” I thought of his wife, Cheryl, and their little kid. “I have to go,” I said suddenly.
Outside, I saw Zelda, the art teacher, and hid behind a tree.
When the coast was clear, I ran—three miles to the train station.
* * *
AS A CONSOLATION PRIZE for all the nastiness at home, Mom offered to take my brothers and me to New York City one Saturday. I was the only one who wanted to go.
There’s a photo of the two of us from that day, taken
on a ship in New York Harbor. We’re waving from the rails. Mom looks terrific, her hair in a wild flip, plastic wraparound coat with fake fur cuffs and a rope belt. Her white knee-length go-go boots are just hilarious. She’s trying to be young and hip—grinning like a teenybopper on a big date. I’m in blue jeans and a denim jacket, my hair tangled in the wind. Next to Mom, I’m just a goofy blur.
After the ship, we hit the galleries. I recall abstract paintings—lots of blue and yellow stripes. On the street I saw a man in a mink coat walking a cat.
Late in the afternoon, we wandered over to Mom’s favorite Italian place in the Village. She had a few daiquiris—but the good cheer was fading fast. I drank my Coke, trying to explain how hard it was to make new friends at school. “I have to start all over again.”
It was too late. Mom had gone off; she couldn’t listen. All she wanted to talk about now was the bastard. “You should know what’s going on, darling. It’s not just the drinking or the money problems. Last week, your father said he was going to a meeting. But he put on too much cologne. I followed him. He went to the Cedarwood. I waited outside a bit and then went in. The bartender says, ‘Oh no, we haven’t seen him, Mrs. Rush.’ Then, there he is, strolling from the back with Rita Rooney, telling me, ‘Norma, they have a drywall problem in the basement.’ Do you understand what I’m saying, Chris? Your father in the basement with a waitress!”
She stared at me, waiting. What did she want me to do? I had no idea how to console her, how to be supportive and loyal. These were not qualities that had been instilled in me.
As her teardrops fell, all I could say was, “Please don’t.”
* * *
AT HOME, Mom began to ambush me. She wanted to talk about her childhood, go through the old photo albums. I’d never heard any of it before. It sounded like a fantasy: pony rides and lemonade, dance parties and sing-alongs. She spoke of her doting grandmother Teresa, elocutionist and photographer. Teresa entertained Mom after school, performing fairy tales for her delight.
She rarely mentioned her father—bootlegger, bandleader, wife beater—a man who ran a side business as a traffic judge. Only years later would I hear the whole story. How the cops on Route 9 would nab motorists on their way to Atlantic City and drag them over to Farrow’s Bait and Tackle, where my grandfather had turned one of his storage areas into a faux courtroom. If the “speeder” couldn’t pay the fine, Granddad and the cops would confiscate whatever they could find in the car.
I also learned, much later, how he would beat my grandmother Loey. And how my mom would hide her head under a pillow so she couldn’t hear the screams. When finally, after years of brutality, Loey divorced Bill, my mother was forced to testify against her father in court. She was sixteen.
Now, at forty-six, my unhappy mother tried to explain how wonderful her childhood had been.
14.
Five Gunshots, Maybe Six
MOM AT BREAKFAST—NO MAKEUP, scribble hair, bathrobe.
“Look at this paper. This is terrible. Now everyone knows our business!”
Next to her coffee was a copy of the Daily News, the largest-circulation paper in the tristate area. Mom snapped it open to page two.
There it was: NJ BUILDER BUSTED IN BRIBERY STING.
Reading over my mother’s shoulder, I discovered that a “Charles Rush” had been pulled over in Atlantic City for drunken driving only a few months earlier. The officer had invited the builder to pay a thousand-dollar bribe or spend the night in jail. Mr. Rush cordially agreed to come back the next day with cash. As it turned out, that particular officer was under surveillance for mob activities and Mr. Rush was filmed handing off an envelope. The article stated that New Jersey prosecutors were now forcing this Mr. Rush to testify.
Half a million copies of the story had been distributed. Mom was freaking.
When Dad came home early that day, it was not for his usual alcoholic nap. Instead he had a serious heart-to-heart with Mom. As the two of them whispered in the living room, I eavesdropped from the hall.
“If I don’t testify, I go to prison. But I got a call from Richie. He says if I testify—I’m a dead man. Maybe I better leave town for a while.”
“What does Richie know?” my mother snapped. “His restaurant is awful.”
My father said Richie was in the mob. “Norma, this is serious!”
Mom started to cry—it was more like howling. Still, she managed to make demands. “Why do you always have to drag us backward? Charlie, I cannot live with any more shame. You had better clean this up!”
I went to the basement and lit a joint. I zoned a bit, wondered what would happen next. Then five gunshots rang out, maybe six.
Oh my God, Dad’s been shot! Then I thought, That was quick!
I hid under the bed. Then I heard a door slam and my father’s voice in the kitchen.
When I crept upstairs, he was sitting in a chair with a revolver.
“What happened?”
“Target practice,” he slurred. “Gotta protect myself.”
And then he said, “Tree,” and pointed the pistol at my head.
* * *
A FEW NIGHTS later, during dinner, a truck went by with several violent backfires. In an instant, Dad was under the table. I looked at him there, tiny and sad, cowering beneath the tablecloth. When he got up and lit a cigarette, his hands were trembling; his face was white.
“What’s so funny?” he hissed.
But none of us were laughing.
Later, I heard mumbling and peeked into his room. I saw him on his knees, praying to the crucifix, tears in his eyes.
* * *
MY MOTHER’S ABSURD PLAN: Dad should get out of town for a while—and take his boys hunting! She said something to my father about lying low, and something about the bond between fathers and sons. Maybe she wanted to keep my father away from Rita Rooney. Or maybe she just wanted to be alone.
It worked, I guess—the hunting trip was on.
My brothers Michael and Steven got a little overexcited, preparing for the expedition. My mother was manic, too. She went on a cleaning jag. I heard her shouting from down the hall. “Moths! We have moths!”
Dad said, “What’s going on?”
“Look at this.” Mom was pulling clothes out of Michael’s closet. There were little holes everywhere. “Charlie, call the exterminator.” She handed my father a tattered sweater.
“This is shot,” he said.
“That’s what I just said,” my mother hissed.
“No, Norma. It’s not moths. It’s buckshot.”
It turned out that in the commotion my brother had accidentally fired a shotgun into his bedroom closet.
My mother started screaming, “I want you animals out of this house!”
Everyone, except five-year-old Danny, was expelled.
* * *
DAD’S HUNTING LODGE was on the Chesapeake. There he hunted geese. Deer he usually killed up north.
My brothers already owned various guns and knives. While they packed up their weapons, I made it clear to everyone: I am a vegetarian and will not touch entrails of any kind.
The ride down was endless. Dad, obviously drunk, sulked and swerved, chain-smoking until Steven got carsick. When Dad refused to pull over, Steven barfed in his gym bag, which Dad then chucked out the window.
I assumed Maryland would be ugly in November, so I was shocked as we approached the lodge. The land was soft and lovely, the Chesapeake blue and brooding.
That Dad had something beautiful he did not share with his family almost made me like him. Somehow his secret made him seem more human, more like a child. The lodge was an old barn that he’d remodeled into a warm and comfortable lair.
I brought a bag of dope with me, and after dinner snuck out for a smoke. I walked down to the bay, the smell of the water clean and bracing. The stars were very close, shuddering as the frost fell.
Not required to kill at dawn, I slept in, ate breakfast alone. In the late morning, I put on a
jacket and headed out. Dad said everyone had to wear an orange hat, and I tried to do so with mannish style—though with long yellow hair, I looked, no doubt, like a confused scarecrow.
As I wandered, the day grew warm. I settled in the shade of a hedgerow and fell asleep.
Ka-boom! The first burst of buckshot missed me by only a few inches.
A second round scattered in the hedge—my tangerine hat took a direct hit.
I screamed. Screamed again. My brother Michael said, “Wha…?”
“Stop shooting! I’m right here!”
“Oh.”
I found him on the other side of the hedge, in boots and burly-wear, sporting the same useless hat I had on myself. Behind his thick and filthy glasses, my brother’s blue eyes were wild. A shotgun protruded from his waist. He tried to blame me.
“Why were you lying on the ground? Were you touching your penis again?”
“No, asshole, I was asleep. And what the fuck are you doing, shooting into the bushes?”
* * *
BACK AT THE BARN, my father had started drinking but was not yet mean. I watched him gut the geese he’d killed that morning. He meticulously cut livers from the iridescent goo, carefully placing each one in a plastic container.
He told me, “The livers are for your mother.”
Maybe he still loves her, I thought. Why else would you give your wife livers?
My brothers drifted in and Dad made them pork roll sandwiches; for me, a grilled cheese on rye.
He seemed all right, in the kitchen of his secret lodge. I relaxed a little and showed him my tattered hat, mentioning the mishap with Michael’s gun. Dad did not chastise my brother but rather scolded me. “It’s time you learned to shoot.”
After lunch, he took me outside. He nailed a dead duck to a piece of plywood, its head hung low. Leaning the crucifixion against a tree, he handed me his shotgun.