by Harry Mazer
‘Where’s your brother?’
‘Sleeping.’
‘Still sleeping?’ He went inside. The house was stuffy and dark. From somewhere deep inside he heard a baby cry.
‘Jeff, guess this riddle. Why did the robber take a bath?’
‘So he could come clean.’
‘Wrong. The robber took a bath so he could make a clean getaway.’
‘I like my version better.’ Jeff went up the carpeted stairs, past Danny’s room, then up another flight of stairs to the attic where Vet, another of Mrs. Belco’s boarders, also lived. He was just going to see if she was up there.
It was dark, and all the doors were shut. There was a smell of ammonia and after-shave lotion. The baby cried. It stopped him. He didn’t belong here. He backed towards the stairs as a door opened.
‘What are you doing up here?’ Vet was barelegged, wearing a short red bathrobe, like a boxer, and rubber clogs.
‘I heard –’ There was an obstruction in Jeff’s throat. He was caught where he didn’t belong, and he started making excuses. ‘I was looking for Danny. I heard a noise … I thought Danny –’
‘Jeff,’ Danny called from below.
Jeff ducked downstairs, sure that Vet had seen right through him.
Danny was tucking in his pants. ‘You ready? Where were you? My uncle’s out there. Let’s go.’
In the truck, Jeff sat by the window, looking out, not saying much. At the first pickup, he and Danny hopped out. Danny worked the back while Jeff heaved the garbage cans up to him. He was glad for the hard work. After a while it got him over the bad feelings.
They took turns, one of them on the ground and the other in the truck, challenging each other to see who could work harder. It was fun for a while, hefting the cans to their shoulders, then tossing them over the rim.
Danny’s uncle Val never moved from the driver’s seat. ‘I used to do the whole job myself,’ he told them, looking out, ‘until I gave myself a double hernia.’ He was a pig farmer over by the Fair Grounds, and he did garbage pickups for markets and restaurants and then fed the garbage to his pigs. ‘These pigs eat better than I do.’ Jeff had seen them, pink, ugly brutes, up to their bellies in muck.
It was a hot, sweaty job. As the morning went on, the cans got heavier and Jeff’s body ran with sweat. He and Danny kept changing places, but towards the end it was just hard work.
The last stop was a fish restaurant on the North Side. Val went inside to get some fresh walleyes. Danny tossed the last can off the truck, then climbed up in back with some pieces of cardboard for them to stretch out on.
The sun baked Jeff, and the smells around him rose like fumes from a rich, overripe vegetable soup. Sweet, pungent, rotten smells. He smelled fish in one nostril, and rotten fruit flowed through the other. The morning … the memory of the coolness of the predawn air was like a dream.
Danny said he was going out to the wreckers later to find a door for a VW he was working on. ‘Can’t see Tracy tonight, she’s working late at the market.’
‘You going to pick her up?’
‘Can’t, I’ve got to do some reading for my class. Bet Mr. Farah’s going to flunk me again.’
Jeff stared up at the blue sky, and then he slept.
A banging on the side of the truck woke him. He opened his eyes and looked up into the trees. He saw the peaked roof of the Belco house elbowed into the blue sky and Mary’s attic window, open now like a crooked eye. And then he saw her, looking out, the princess in the tower looking down at the prince disguised as a garbage collector.
6
Jeff had worked out the moment when he’d finally meet Mary – the Big Scene – ten different ways. He might be alone or it might happen with supporting actors. With Danny or Mrs. Belco or Danny’s little brother, Robert. Even Muffin, one of the Belco cats, worked itself into his scenario.
JEFF: Hello.
MARY: Hello. And who is this?
JEFF: Jeff Orloff. And who is this? Little Mary Silver? And what has Little Mary Silver been up to?
Cut! Why the sarcasm? What was he afraid of? Another take.
JEFF (sincere): I’ve heard so much about you.
Cut! That was subject to misinterpretation, too. Once more.
JEFF (surprised): You here? I didn’t even know you knew the Belcos.
Cut! That suggested he knew more about Mary than he cared to admit. Again.
JEFF (simply): Hi, nice to meet you. Are you here long? Visiting your family? Friends? Good, good. Nice time of the year to be up north. Get away from that southern heat. Yes, it gets hot here, but it isn’t the same kind of heat …
When he first saw her, it was as if someone had grabbed him by the throat. She was sitting in the Belco kitchen on the couch, holding a doll. It was Mary, a Mary he didn’t know, with bare legs and white ankle socks and this doll in her lap.
He reacted defensively. Struck a pose, hand on the wall. Steadying himself. Director Orloff’s commanding presence escaped him. He froze, forgot his lines, forgot how to move, forgot where to stand. She looked at him without recognition. This was unbelievable. She used to smile at him. Had he changed that much? He was shaving every day now.
She looked old, but young. Young and old both. Ordinary and undistinguished. Two eyes, a bit of a nose, a line for a mouth. A cartoonist might have drawn it. A plain, ordinary face. Who’d stuck that baby in her lap?
The baby looked at him, too, round eyed and openly.
Mary? Baby? Who was she? What was he doing here? Where did he fit in? He didn’t. He’d come over to see what she was like. Simple curiosity. Mary Silver was no friend of his. Just a girl he’d known in high school, a girl who could act, someone he’d admired from afar. Well, he’d seen her.
Leave, he told himself. And he would have left, but she was looking at him. Looking at him with those eyes, those large, extraordinary eyes, her expression apprehensive and worried.
She looked at him once, and then again, and he seemed to see her for the first time. See that plain face.
‘Introduce yourself, Jeff.’ Mrs. Belco was heating the baby’s bottle. ‘Where’s your friend Daniel? I sent him to the store for a bag of potatoes an hour ago.’ She tried a drop on her wrist, then handed it to Mary. ‘Perfect. Jeff is a friend of Danny’s.’
‘Jeff Orloff,’ he said, clicking his heels together, a moronic gesture. ‘Orloff, like oarlock, one l, two fs.’ Clever. He waited for the light of recognition, the mouth rounded, the eyes open wide. Jeff Orloff. Not the Jeff Orloff!
‘Didn’t you go to North?’ she said.
He reached down to stroke Muffin. Didn’t you go to North? Great powers of observation, Ms. Silver. Go to the head of the class. Did you go there, too? I never saw you, either.
‘It was such a big school,’ she said. Was she apologizing? ‘I don’t remember a lot of people.’
He rubbed Muffin’s ears.
She glanced at him, then looked away, giving the same large-eyed attention to the refrigerator, the sink, the counters. He flung himself at the refrigerator, one arm over the top. Buddies. Good old refrigerator, and there were his pals, the toaster, the blender, and the popcorn machine. Our Gang.
His foot jiggled. He stepped on it. Then his finger started tapping. She was looking around. Was the Belco kitchen good enough for someone like Mary Silver? He hadn’t missed the gold around her neck and the expensive-looking watch with the broad gold strap. She didn’t fool him with this not knowing a lot of people in school bit. She knew the ones who counted, and he wasn’t one of them.
He decided he didn’t like her, not at all. Now that he saw her up close and they were talking – after a fashion – he wondered why he had ever been interested. Adolescent delusions. She wasn’t pretty, not the way Tracy was. She didn’t try to make herself attractive, either. Her hair was coarse and thick and she wore it like a mop, tied back loosely. Her eyes were her one good feature. Cool, beautiful eyes. She looked so bored with everything, glancing out the window, then
picking a bit of lint off the baby.
His foot was hopping again. His feet wanted to go. Why didn’t he follow? Why stand here, clinging to the refrigerator like a shipwrecked sailor? Leave. But he couldn’t, just as he couldn’t look at her and couldn’t not look at her.
He slapped the side of the refrigerator with hearty familiarity. ‘Mrs. B! What’s there to eat around here?’ He wasn’t hungry.
‘You know where the food is, Jeff. You’re leaning on it.’
Mary glanced at Jeff. Was she remembering him from the Drama Club now? Was she sorry he was there? Was this baby something she didn’t want anyone to know about? Well, she’d sure come to the wrong place.
Just then Danny walked in. ‘Where are my potatoes?’ his mother said.
‘What potatoes?’
‘What potatoes! You were gone long enough. Forgot them? After I sent you for them special? Ten pounds of potatoes. I’ll break your neck, Danny.’
Danny reached around behind him and produced the bag. ‘I like to see you steam, Ma. I took Tracy home.’
‘The minute you get near a girl you lose your brains. Sometimes I think you boys have your brains in your pants.’
Jeff glanced at Mary. She was fussing over the baby, smoothing its hair, then pressing her lips to its head.
Fade in: Proud Mary with baby, foul-mouthed mother-in-law and uncomfortable father standing nearby.
Cut! He had put himself into the picture. Was he the father? He could be the father … No, you couldn’t. Yes, I could. If thoughts are father to the deed … If Mary pointed a finger at me and said, You are the one …
Fade in: A courtroom. Puritan Boston. JEFFREY in the witness box. COTTON MATHER is the prosecutor. He wears a dark suit with a wide white collar.
Q: Jeff Orloff, answer yes or no. Do you know the plaintiff?
A: Know, sire?
Q: You deny knowing her?
A: No, sire, but not that way.
Q: What way? You knew her! (The prosecutor hammers the table with his fist.) You knew her.
A: Yes, sire.
Q: You made a portrait of the plaintiff that you stared at hungrily. You had many of these portraits on your wall.
A: Yes, sire.
Q: And when you regarded these portraits you had unlawful, lewd, and lascivious thoughts about the plaintiff?
A: Yes, sire.
Q: On many occasions. How many? Speak up, boy, this is a court of law.
A: Many, sire.
Q: Carnal thoughts of copulation? Sit up, boy, don’t sink under the seat. Show some backbone. Own up to it like a man.
A: Yes, sire.
Q: Carnal thoughts?
A: Yes, sire.
Q: Thoughts of copulation?
A: Yes, sire.
Q: And the innocent babe, did you consider it?
A: No, sire.
Q: It was nothing to you, a doll, something to be tossed aside.
A: Yes, sire.
Q: Guilty on all counts!
DAME BELCO (rises to her feet): Brains in his pants! Brains in his pants!
‘Jeff …’
‘Ahh …’
‘Jeff … Jeff!’
His head came up. ‘Yes, sire!’
Mrs. Belco stood back, looking at him. ‘We love Jeff, he’s so funny sometimes.’
But the way Mary looked at him, if that’s what you could call it, she didn’t think he was that funny. She didn’t think he was funny at all. What had he said or done, but grunt. That’s the way she was looking at him, like someone who grunted a lot.
7
Jeff, barefooted, barechested, and spattered with paint, stood on the ground squinting up at the wall. His hands were sticky, and there was a crick in his shoulder. The fresh paint was dazzling, iridescent, like a falling sheet of white peacock’s feathers. Above him Mary appeared in a pure white gown, shimmering on the wall, out of reach but smiling down at him like the painted Virgin in the Cathedral. He reached his hand out to her. Mary, untouched, filled with perfect knowledge.
Oh, really?
The purity of his dream had been sullied, stained. He stood staring at the wall, his nose jammed against the clapboards. You’re a fool. Paint, fool. And he slapped the paint on in great gobs and then worked like a fury spreading it before it all dripped on the ground.
He was quitting, just coming down the ladder, when Danny appeared, driving his VW van. ‘I need you, Jeff.’ He was wearing his Green Sentry baseball uniform. ‘I’m pitching tonight. We’re playing the top team in the league, McCulloch’s Tavern, and you’re going to cheer our side.’
Jeff hopped off the ladder. ‘Wait till I clean up.’ Ten minutes later, his head wet and wearing a clean shirt, he came running out, packing his camera and some extra film in a shoulder bag. Some important footage was going to be shot tonight. He’d been thinking about doing a baseball film. Something quintessential, that went straight to the heart of the game.
‘We’re picking up Tracy first,’ Danny said.
‘More support.’
‘Right. I thought we’d do something afterward.’
‘I’m invited to that, too?’
‘I just said you were. It’s more fun when there’s a crowd.’
‘I’m a crowd.’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘If you invited Mary Silver, there’d be four of us.’
‘Why her?’
Jeff eyed a row of passing houses through the camera. ‘I don’t know, she might like to do something.’
‘She doesn’t like to do anything.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I live in the same house with her, don’t I? She doesn’t do anything. Just sits up in her room with her baby and reads.’
Jeff put his feet up on the dashboard.
Danny reached over and knocked his feet down. ‘What are you, still interested in her? If you want my advice –’
‘I don’t.’ He didn’t want to hear a lot of pious drivel about Mary. ‘Belco, why don’t you look where you’re driving?’ And he put his feet back up on the dashboard.
Truman Park was a big scruffy dry field at the edge of South Bay Road. A couple of baseball diamonds, a scattering of cars behind home plate, and people sitting in folding lawn chairs, with their kids running around. Somebody had a stereo set up and going full blast.
Jeff and Tracy sprawled out on the grass by first base. That is, he sprawled while Tracy, in a pair of tight shorts, posed with one leg outstreched, knee raised. As the Green Sentries took the field, she cupped her hands. ‘Go get ’em, Danny!’
Jeff focused the camera and took a shot of her. He couldn’t take his eyes off the inside of her creamy smooth thighs. Tracy prodded him. ‘How about giving Danny a cheer?’
‘Go, Danny!’ He swung the camera and caught Danny on the mound wiping his forehead. The knees were torn out of his green playing pants. He pulled his cap down, squinted at the batter. There was a man on first and no outs. The Green Sentries were already behind 3–0. ‘Keep it low!’ the third baseman yelled.
Flat on his belly, Jeff panned the camera low across the field. There was something about this field, something about people coming together to play and to watch … It was happening everywhere. If he could get up high enough, he’d see people playing baseball all over America in scruffy fields like this one, full of dust and faded grass. In back of high schools and in empty city lots and playgrounds and in the streets. And in Truman Parks and Kennedy Parks and Eisenhower Parks, in towns like Phoenix and Waterville and Central Square.
He swung the camera around on Tracy again. ‘How’d you like to be in a major motion picture?’
‘Little me?’ She sat back and pushed out her chest. Across her yellow T-shirt in black letters it said, HANDS OFF.
‘You’ll be the star. It’s a baseball movie.’
‘Then I want to play centre field.’
‘No, you can’t. You’re going to be the hero’s girlfriend.’
She tossed her chin
up and fluffed her hair. ‘Why can’t I be his girlfriend and play centre field?’
‘Because they don’t make movies that way.’
‘Why not? If I’m the star, I want to be the centre fielder.’
‘The director says no. In this movie you like two guys. The hero and his best friend.’
Tracy dusted off her shirt. ‘That’s interesting. That I like.’
‘I thought you would.’
Tracy studied her legs. ‘What part are you going to take? The best friend or the boyfriend?’
‘Told you, I’m the director.’
‘Too bad. You’d be a cute boyfriend.’
‘So, do we sign a contract? I’d like to get your commitment for this project in writing.’
‘What’s my cut?’
‘Cut! I thought you were doing it for love and friendship.’ He found a stick and scratched a mark in the dust. ‘Sign here,’ he said. ‘I’m flying to the coast tonight. Shooting starts in ten days.’
‘Sorry, but I have a full schedule. I’m working and taking a class.’
‘Oh, Tracy, what did you flunk?’
‘Nothing,’ she said indignantly, and tossed her head. Tracy was an expert on those girl-girl things. ‘I’m taking a modelling seminar this summer, that’s my class.’
‘Really, what are you going to learn?’ He ran a blade of grass over her leg. ‘How to paint your toenails?’
Tracy glanced over as the other team took the field. ‘I’m learning how to stand and walk and how to wear clothes properly.’
‘You still don’t know that?’
She kicked him. ‘Fun-ny. I’m learning how to model so I can enter the county beauty pageant.’
‘You think you’re going to win?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I think you can do anything you want to do.’
‘Do you mean it?’
‘Sure, I mean it. I’d vote for you.’
‘I can never tell if you’re serious or not.’
‘I’m being one hundred percent serious. You could be Miss America if you wanted to enough.’ He sat up. ‘You believe that?’
She pushed him back. ‘I’m not crazy.’
He let himself fall over backward and she sat on him, her knees on his shoulders. Whoom. The blood went crashing through him.