He sits with me a while and we build Lego stuff while Tony asks him about baseball. “I’m more of a Pete Rose man. If Reggie Jackson’s so great, why’s he always striking out?”
“But he hits a lot of home runs too.”
“Yeah, true, true. You seem to know a lot about baseball. I’ll bet you’re pretty good.”
Tony blushes. “I’m okay. I want to be a pitcher.”
“That’s the best position there is! That or shortstop, as long as you’re not stuck in right field.”
Paul is the exact opposite of Reggie Jackson, short and balding, hairy, messy. But he doesn’t seem to care what we think of him which is good because most adults try to get us to think they’re smarter than us.
After we pack the van, we pile into the Vega and follow it through the rain down D Street to our new house. It’s still raining as we get out of the car. The air smells of damp plants, wet gravel and chimney smoke. My feet are cold because of the crappy heater in the Vega. None of it feels real, the green house that stands like a giant A. There are two yellow-brown trees on either side of a gravel walk that leads to six stairs and a porch and a house, a real house, with a redbrick chimney on the side. The odd hairy man carries boxes inside to the big living room with its painted-over fireplace, the kitchen with room for a table, the stairs that lead down to a basement underground where Tony and I get our own room. I can’t believe we get a whole building to ourselves.
There is a room at the end of the hallway downstairs that feels like a cave where a mother wolf would go to raise her pups. It’s dry, and warmer than the other rooms. Mom calls it a den which is exactly what wolves call it. In the corner of the den there is a black wood-burning stove next to a stack of wood and newspapers.
Paul opens the hatch at the front of the iron stove and builds a fire with some wood he brought.
I’m surprised by how good he is with the wood and the matches, how he’s fearless of splinters or brick dust on his jeans as he kneels on the ground. It’s strange how this short oddball of a man knows his way around the objects of the real world.
Paul disappears with the U-Haul once we unload all the boxes and returns in a black Chevy mini-truck with a camper shell and an orange stripe down the side. He walks around and opens the rear gate and out jumps a brown-and-white dog with floppy ears and a tiny nub of a tail the size of a fist. “This is Pepper,” he says. Pepper’s tail jerks back and forth as she licks our hands and runs around the yard to pee.
We go to A&W, where Mom lets me order a whole hamburger for myself and a root beer float the size of my head.
She tells us there’s a Little League nearby at a place called Parrish Field and a school down the street called Englewood Elementary. It has a great big field in front and a park behind it right in the middle of a little forest. She says that’s where we’ll go to school. Plus there’s a bunch of kids on the street for us to play with.
“Doesn’t sound too bad,” Paul says, dipping his fries five at a time into a lake of ketchup on his plate.
“Do you play baseball?” Tony asks.
“A little. But I’m more into fishing and hiking and camping and stuff.”
“Paul’s a woodsman,” Mom says in her dreamy way.
“What in the hell is that?”
Paul crooks his head toward Tony. “Don’t know, really. I guess it means I like trees.”
“Trees are boring.”
“That’s what I like about them.” Paul speaks quietly, a little smile around his lips like he knows the punch line to a joke but he’s not telling. I like him. I can tell Tony does too.
After dinner we drive back to the house and unpack the boxes of dishes and towels and clothes. Soon Paul says he has to go home and he gathers Pepper with a leash and grabs Mom by the waist and kisses her, right there in the living room in front of us. He stops at the door and gives us a weird little wave and walks out.
There is a silence in the house after he leaves, an emptiness that echoes off the furniture and boxes without Pepper running from person to person, without Paul’s big turtle childlike movements. I want him to come back, to maybe just lean in the doorway while I fall asleep on the floor.
* * *
WE PLAY THREE Flies Up in the street after school with the other kids from the block. We play Smear the Queer in the field in front of Englewood Elementary School. We play Butts Up with a tennis ball inside the covered basketball court next to the baseball diamond. We play street football, dodgeball, kickball, baseball, freeze tag and guns. We race our bikes down the hill to see who is faster, who is stronger, who is tougher, who has the balls to climb the fence and get on the roof of the school, who races their bike against the cars and who waits at the corner for the cars to drive by. There are never any girls and there aren’t any men.
Derek is the bucktoothed boy who lives at the top of the street. When he falls off his bike and skins his knee, he screams all the way home. A large woman in a white T-shirt and shorts comes out onto the porch and kneels down. He jumps into her arms. She says, “Are you okay, my little man? Show Mommy where the boo-boo is. Can you do that?” He nods his head, his eyes full of tears. She kisses the skin above the wound and says to wait while she gets a Band-Aid.
Derek sits quietly sniffling while Tony and I watch, in awe.
Why is she talking to him like he’s a baby? Why is he crying like one? It’s strange, like a dog howling at a siren, something that happens without thinking. The child cries. The mother comforts him. It doesn’t make any sense.
The woman we call Mom taught us to cook hot dogs and eggs on the electric stove so if we get hungry we can feed ourselves because the most important thing for a kid to learn is independence. She tells us she saved us from Synanon and that she had kids because she was lonely and that a boy’s job is to take care of his mother. If we skin our knees, we know how to clean the wound, how to put hydrogen peroxide on it to make sure it doesn’t get infected.
Derek’s mom returns with a chocolate cookie. She hands him the cookie and places a Band-Aid tenderly over the raw skin. “There. Like new.” She hugs him close and he leans his head against her cheek. I don’t understand any of it.
The woman we call Mom cries some nights and I lean against her and I say, “It’s okay, Mom. One day at a time.”
And she says, “How do you talk like that when you are just a kid?” But all I do is repeat the words written in wooden letters on the wall in the kitchen. It seems to make her happy to think of me this way, like I am older or wiser or bigger than her.
Those nights I just go blank, like I could tie every bad thing inside me to a balloon and let it float up into the sky, disappearing beyond the clouds. And I think nothing can ever get to me because my secret is I’m different and nothing bad will ever happen to me. I can fly if I really want to and we don’t need the things other kids need because we’re special. We were alone in the School like an orphanage and we know how to take care of ourselves even if it means taking care of Mom too.
Derek’s mom says we’re like wild dogs running through the street.
We don’t know if that’s true because we don’t know if anything is true like space travel or Martians or the tooth fairy or Reaganomics. It’s all part of some big dusty book that we’re too young to read. The rules are so different in the World Outside Synanon. The answers come in pieces, bit by bit as we explore the neighborhood around the house on Breys Avenue: bullets explode if you hit them with a hammer, there is no Santa Claus, do not cry in front of other boys, cats land on their feet no matter how close to the ground they are when you drop them, dog food tastes bad, don’t say what you’re thinking, kids can buy cigarettes from vending machines, gasoline will burn on water, candy bars can be stolen, Mom has read over a thousand books, a Labrador can beat a German shepherd in a fight, parents are supposed to protect you, bullies are mean, we’re bad at baseball, we’re good at reading, we’re latchkey kids, we’re poor, we’re special, we’re smart, we’re different, we’re al
one.
* * *
WHEN I’M IN the tub, I let the warm water fill up all the way to the top edge and fall under, holding my breath and listening to my heartbeat. When I come up for air, Mom is sitting there, her hips pressed against the white plastic of the bathtub in her blue jeans, her now long hair falling past her shoulders, her hand extended for me to hold.
I feel a crowding, like my body is not my own. I want to tell her to leave but I don’t have the words, the words can barely form in my mind, like the connection between my brain and the place where words are made runs through her.
The woman I’m told to call Mom is saying something but I let the water cover my ears to drown the words. Her hand closes around mine and all that’s left is a blankness, as white as the walls of the tub. I know she thinks this is a close moment. “Hey, I’m your mom. Don’t I have the right to sit here with my son?” she says. And I know it’s my job. Let’s hold hands and chat, honey. There’s nothing I can say to her. It feels like I have been taken from somewhere warm to somewhere cold and this new place has a new bargain like we are bad if we don’t act how she imagines little boys are supposed to act.
After all, she did us a favor and it is now our job to repay her. We are close and “close” means whatever she needs it to mean, whatever she thinks it means, even the days she lies in bed for hours with the deep-russian, even on the days she’s crying in a heap on the floor, she knows what’s real and I don’t because even then she tells me, “You’re going to grow up and do something great, something that will change the world.” So it feels like a ladder I must climb up into the clouds to get away from this emptiness, to be somewhere warm. Except every time I climb it, when I get to the top, there’s nothing there but quiet and cold and another ladder to climb.
Another night she calls me into the bedroom and she is lying facedown on the bed with her pants pulled down to the top of her behind. Next to her is a small jar that smells like peppermint and a slim white plastic object the shape of a rocket. “My back hurts, sweetie. Take some of that ointment and put it on my back.” I grab the jar because I know it is my job to do whatever she asks because she is the reason I was born and so I rub the sticky ointment on her back. She grabs the little white plastic rocket and twists the bottom and it starts to make a buzzing sound. She hands it to me, “Now hold this on the skin.” It shakes in my hand, making my fingers go numb as I place it on her back. I don’t know why her back hurts or why this helps. And I don’t know why I feel like I want to jump out of my head, like I am not a person at all but a ghost or a tool like a fork or the pliers Paul leaves under the sink. I am two inches tall of empty invisible nothing.
Whenever she asks me to do things like this, I don’t know how to tell her I don’t want to because it’s like the idea doesn’t exist in her mind. I’ll say, “Do I have to?” Then she gets mad or worse, she turns in on herself with her mouth all scrunched up like she’s about to cry and I know I’m being an Ungrateful Son.
When I tell Tony about it, he says the white thing is called a vibrator and I’m too young to know what it’s for. “It’s for her back,” I say. He gives me the look he gives me to tell me I’m a dumb little kid and the next time Mom asks me to hold it on her back I tell her I don’t want to. She tells me to stop being such an Ungrateful Son so I hold the tiny rocket on her back and feel myself slip through the ceiling to a space behind a wall fifty feet thick. From this place I can decide to be whatever I need to be for the world. I can be the Good Son who will act precisely as I am expected to act. I can disappear.
I’m just too small next to this mountain of reasons.
Because the reasons are endless and I know every one by heart: that we are a close “family” now that we left Synanon together and I am her special smart boy who will take care of her and make sure she’s not lonely and it’s my job to grow up to be special enough to explain to the world all the sacrifices she made for me, to dance with the quiet ones whether I want to or not, to be the cowboy who never leaves, to be her revenge on the cowboys who did.
CHAPTER 7
WALKING THROUGH YANKEE STADIUM WITH BABE RUTH
And then on the morning of my sixth birthday, just days after Mount St. Helens erupted, spewing fire, mud and ash over the entire Pacific Northwest, ash that traveled through the air and landed in the gutters in front of our house on Breys Avenue, ash that we collected solemnly in small jars and placed in secret spots for safekeeping, there is Dad, sitting quietly on the edge of my bed with his hands in his lap. I rub my eyes to get a good look. That curly black hair, that thick gold necklace, the faded jeans, the brown café leather jacket, the cowboy boots, the deep laugh lines around his hazel-green eyes as he smiles with that tan, weathered face that looks like it’s been dragged behind a truck for a thousand miles.
“Hey, dude. Happy birthday.” I jump up and throw my arms around his neck. He smells like Old Spice and skin lotion. Dad. Da. Pop. Poppy. I don’t understand. How does a blur come to life? How did he find us here in our hiding spot on the other side of the mountains? Did he ride his motorcycle? It’s too fantastic to imagine.
Tony wakes up in the bed across from mine. “Dad!” He jumps up and throws his arms around him, burying his face in his shoulder.
I can hear Tony cry and I don’t know why but I start to cry too and then the three of us just sit there, two blond heads buried into the broad shoulders of our dark Italian father. A blur come to life in jeans on my bed.
He says, “I missed you guys.”
“How did you get here?”
“I flew on a plane.”
“Why?”
“I came for Mick’s birthday.”
“Just for the day?”
“Yep.”
“But isn’t that really far?”
“Not so far.”
“When are you leaving?”
“Later tonight, but your mom and I talked. You guys are going to come stay with me next summer in Los Angeles.”
“Really?! The whole summer?!”
I stare at his face trying to memorize it, to give sharp outlines to the blur in my head. Eyes, brownish green. Hair, black, curly. Mustache, thick and bushy, covering all the space between his mouth and his nose. Crow’s-feet. Lines on his forehead. It seems the sun is shining on him, even in the dark room in the basement.
We have breakfast with Mom then he takes us to the field in front of the school to play baseball. He has us stand in the outfield with our gloves as he hits balls to us to practice fielding. He tells us to crouch, to keep our knees bent and our bodies low with our gloves centered between our legs. We chase down grounders and line drives. We kneel afterward at home plate and he says we’re going to get pizza for lunch. We walk the two blocks back to the house on Breys Avenue.
Some of the other kids are tossing a football in the street as we walk up with our dad. He’s tall, in his orange-brown cowboy boots with the big heels, hairy with olive skin so different from my white hairless arms, my overbite which makes my mouth stick out in a funny way like the apes in Planet of the Apes. It feels like walking with a trophy, with a tank, like walking through Yankee Stadium with Babe Ruth. I want to scream, “Hey everyone, this is my dad you little shits! He’s only here for the day. He flew from Los Angeles where he lives, though he could’ve ridden his motorcycle over the mountains if he wanted to.”
The boys are silent as we walk by. That’s the power of a dad, I think. Your own private pit bull, your own private genie, your own private Zeus.
He takes us to Shakey’s where he lets us order two bottomless Cokes and an extra-large pepperoni pizza. I can’t help but stare at him as we walk to the booth to sit down, to take note of the dip of his walk which has the slightest rhythm to it, almost like a dance, his hand swinging just a little lower than it needs to, the smallest bounce between strides. He comes up behind me at the table, puts his hand on my shoulder and pats me on the chest. There’s a closeness to it. I think, I am a son. I have a father.
I
memorize the walk, trying to get the rhythm down. It doesn’t quite work without the boots. His speech has a music to it. “Let’s get you boys some pizza. If I don’t eat soon, we’re gonna have ourselves a fuckin’ problem.” He’s not afraid to swear in front of us, like we’re in on something, just us boys. And he swears so poetically, so effortlessly. “Those goddamn Padres suck shit this year. They only got like two bats on the whole damn team.” “That shitbird Reagan couldn’t find his ass with his own hands.” “It’s a good truck but the fuckin’ carburetor is busted again.”
The fuckin’ carburetor. I repeat the words under my breath, practicing for emphasis. The trick is to roll the word “fuckin’” out like it’s nothing, like you don’t even care about it, like it’s just a short detour on the way to the word “carburetor.” Oh, did I say “fuck”? I didn’t even realize. I don’t even know what a carburetor is but when Dad says that word between bites of pepperoni pizza, when he shakes his head, I shake mine too as if to say, “Yeah Dad, no fuckin’ shit. It must be the fuckin’ carburetor. That’s your problem right there.”
I repeat the phrase in my head, trying to imagine ways I can work it into my daily speech. “Well, Derek, see the problem with your bike is the fuckin’ carburetor.” And “Ah well, Mom, I hate to say it but the reason the oven won’t turn on is the fuckin’ carburetor.”
“And don’t even get me started on Thatasshole Reagan,” he says, pulling a stringy piece of pizza from his mouth. “I tell you what, if your mom loses her job, it’ll be because of Thatasshole Reagan. Thatasshole will say anything to get elected.” He’s been called Thatasshole so many times by so many people I don’t even know his first name. When I heard the name “Ronald” Reagan on TV, I figured Thatasshole must have a brother who’s running for president.
When we get to talking, Dad says that Synanon wasn’t so bad. Tony and I are on our third glass of sugary-sweet soda. I’ve mixed Mountain Dew, Sprite and Orange Crush with it to make what we call a Suicide. I don’t want to go anywhere. I wonder if we could live right here in this red booth next to the big window at the Shakey’s on Market Street drinking pop and listening to Dad talk. “Synanon was a great place, before it went bad. We used to say we were in the people business. We did one thing: we took people who had problems and we turned them around so they were a better person.”
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