“So why’d you leave?”
“Well, after so long, Chuck started to buy his own bullshit. Waddya gonna do?” He puts his hands out, raising his shoulders.
“Did you really carry a gun, Dad? Before Synanon? Like a real shotgun?” Tony has told me these stories, about the drugs and the fights and the crime and Chino state prison. He collects them. We both do. And we know this is a rare moment, alone with Dad with our pop and bellies full of pizza.
“Oh, sure. I had to.”
“But couldn’t people see it?”
“No, I used to wear a long brown trench coat to hide it. I didn’t really use it but you never know. Having a gun pointed at your head is a lousy way to spend a Saturday night.”
“What did you do? Did you rob houses or steal cars? Was it like organized crime?”
“More like dis-organized crime. We wrote bad checks and stole credit card numbers. We ran some drugs. We were too high to be very organized about it.” He lets out a cackle and looks me in the eye, a joke we share, just us guys.
“Weren’t you scared in prison?”
“Not really. It wasn’t so bad. The trick is to make everyone think you’re crazy. That way they leave you alone. If someone walked up to me trying to give me a ration of shit, I would just start screaming at the top of my lungs. After a while, people got the point, you know?”
He tells us this like it’s information we might find useful someday.
“And never take no shit from the guards. ’Cause they’ll try to make you feel like you’re nothing. You can’t let anybody treat you that way. Especially those sonsabitches.
“I had a number. They give everyone a number. Mine was A-73581. When they lined you up, they would call you by your number instead of your name. And I would say, ‘Fuck you, I have a name, asshole. Call me by my name.’ I got to be such a pain in the ass they didn’t want to deal with me because it made them look bad if they didn’t react. So they’d say, ‘I’m gonna lock you in solitary.’ I’d say, ‘Big deal. I’m locked up. Right? How many times you gonna lock me up?’”
There’s a rhythm to the stories, a pace, like he’s told them a thousand times. He’s not embarrassed or ashamed. It’s more like this is what he knows and he’s not going to pretend to know other things. He knows about prison and he knows about cars. He knows about drugs and he knows about Dope Fiends. He knows about baseball, horse racing and those fuckin’ carburetors.
He stays for dinner that night and he’s gone by the time I wake up the next morning. I carry the day with me in the back of my head, repeating the things he said over and over again. I focus on what he looked like, the way he smelled, whispering, That fuckin’ carburetor. How many times you gonna lock me up? The way his blue jeans fell over the top of his boots, the small green dot of tattoo on the middle knuckle of his left hand. How he said, “We’ll go to the beach and I’ll teach you to bodysurf. It’s easy,” when he came to my room before bed that night. He slipped a twenty-dollar bill into my hand with a smile. “Here. It’s good to have a little cash in your pocket.” Then he gave me a kiss on the cheek and I felt the roughness of his thick mustache on the corner of my mouth. He walked out and I felt a pull on my chest as he went, like something stretching to its limit. He paused at the doorway maybe because he felt it too. This stretching. This thing like we’re supposed to stick together.
“I’m gonna take you to Hollywood Park when you come to L.A. You can bet the ponies with me. There’s nothing like a day at the races. You’ll see.”
CHAPTER 8
FATHER FIGURES
Paul is at the house all the time. He comes on Friday night for dinner and he’s still there when we wake up on Saturday morning. He eats cereal in his underwear and watches cartoons with us. We get three channels, 2, 4 and 8. Every Saturday morning we switch between Looney Tunes, Super Friends and Fat Albert. Paul sits right down on the floor with us in his torn underwear. We both like him because he doesn’t suddenly change the channel or start talking about Reagan.
Mom stays in bed on Saturday mornings reading books. She’s got hundreds of them, stacked on a shelf against the wall. She’s always saying, “TV will rot your brain.” She gives us books about animals and books about trees and books about people who live in the ice and snow. Sometimes I read the books and sometimes I just pretend to. Tony doesn’t even bother pretending. “What I need is an aluminum bat,” he says, when she gives him a book about baseball. Every now and then she shouts, “Paul!” and he disappears into the bedroom.
After a while Paul stops going home. He brings more and more stuff over to the house, his camping gear, his fishing poles, his clothes.
One night Mom says we’re having a Big Talk which we know is a big deal because the only other time we’ve ever had one was when Tony and I started a fire in the woodstove when no one else was home. We were spanked. Bare ass, with paddles. Which was something she always said she was against and it hurt her more than it hurt us.
She says Paul is going to be living with us from now on and how do we feel about that? Tony says he doesn’t care and that Mom should do whatever she wants. It’s not like it matters to her what he thinks anyway. She says that’s not true and that she cares a lot about what he thinks. So he says he thinks it’s cold here and it rains all the time so why can’t we live back in California where it was sunny and everyone didn’t think we were weird? Mom says there’s nothing she can do about that, we can’t afford to live in California plus she has her job at the state mental hospital and doesn’t Tony like his Little League team? Tony says it’s okay but he needs cleats. Everyone else on the team has baseball cleats and he has to play in his bubble gum shoes with no tread from Goodwill. Also, why does he have to share a room with his shithead little brother who’s always saying little shithead things?
I tell him to shut up and Mom says don’t call your little brother names and he says why not, he’s a sneaky little son of a bitch and it’s not fair that he has to live with me and that he doesn’t have real baseball cleats. Mom says, go to your room if you’re going to talk like that so Tony gets up and stomps his feet on the floor as he walks through the kitchen and down the stairs to our room where he slams the door.
“He’s such a dick.”
“Don’t talk like that. What do you think about Paul coming to live with us?”
I say I like him, that he’s nice to us and he makes her happy. I say this because I know it’s what I’m supposed to say even though I’d probably say it anyway because Paul slips us candy when Mom isn’t looking and when he’s around I don’t have to hold the white plastic rocket on her back.
Mom says Paul is going to be my father figure now and that all boys need a father figure. I want to tell her I already have a dad and just because he’s in Los Angeles doesn’t mean he’s not my father figure but I know she doesn’t want to hear it. She says I need a role model that I see every day. All the books say so. I’ll understand it someday when I read books like she does. It’s basic Child Psychology.
Sometimes I think Tony is right to be mad. Maybe I should be too but he’s better at it and I don’t know how to disagree with Mom. He does it all the time. Maybe it’s because he was older when he left Synanon so he didn’t really know her until he was almost seven. I had a Bonnie who was like a mom and I don’t think he had anyone because he never says anything good about it. Mom thinks maybe something bad happened to him there. That might be true but I want to tell her being alone is bad enough already. It’s bad enough to wake up with no one to talk to and I don’t know why she always forgets that’s how it was for us.
It’s hard to feel loved when you are alone. Tony was alone for almost seven years.
He’s sadder than I am. I know that. But sometimes he forgets how much he hates me and he’s almost nice. He throws rocks with me in the alley and helps me light my Luke Skywalker action figure on fire with the gasoline from the gas can. He likes that. I love him, mostly because we’re brothers and we look alike and I know we ha
ve to stick together. At least that’s what people say.
Paul never says anything about being a father figure. His face turns red and he goes quiet when Mom says it. He pretends his hunting knife needs sharpening and stands over the sink with the blade and a flat stone. He says, “Don’t force it” or “Let it alone, Gerry.”
She says, “But you’re going to be their role model.” Paul doesn’t seem to be convinced. I think he knows we already have a dad.
Paul sits with us before bed while Mom reads upstairs about Child Psychology. He reads Tony’s comics and listens to Michael Jackson with us on the tape recorder that Dad gave me when he came to visit. He says, “Did you have a good day?” And even if I say Derek and I got in a fight, he won’t cut me off and tell me how I need to be a better person. He listens then says, “Next time you should just tell him he can’t ride your bike without asking” and “He’s your buddy, so you got to try to be nice to him.”
He says now that he’s living here, he wants to be an “open book” and I can ask him any questions I want. So I do.
“Why are you home all the time? Don’t you have a job?”
“I had one. I was training to be an EMT, which is someone who drives around in an ambulance and helps people who are hurt.”
“Are you still an EMT?”
“Well, I lost my job.”
“So how’d you meet our mom?”
“Through the program. She’s in Al-Anon and I’m in AA and we know some of the same people.”
“You’re in AA? Doesn’t that mean you’re an alcoholic?”
“A recovering alcoholic. That’s what we say.”
“When was the last time you drank?”
“Two years ago.”
“What did you drink?”
“Didn’t matter. The point was to get drunk.”
“Why?”
“Because then I could forget about everything.”
“Why’d you want to do that?”
“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t like myself very much.”
“Why not?”
“This just doesn’t end with you, does it, kid?”
“You said I could ask whatever I wanted.”
“Fair enough. At first I didn’t like myself because I wanted to be a doctor but I wasn’t smart enough so I drank to feel better. Then after a while I didn’t like myself because I drank so much. So I drank to forget that too.”
“That doesn’t sound fun.”
“It wasn’t. It’s a disease, you know. Like polio or cancer.”
“Is it contagious?”
“No. But it runs in families.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Not really. But it progresses like a disease does. It gets worse and worse as time goes on. Eventually, it got to the point where I didn’t even go to bars. I’d just get a bottle and go park my truck somewhere in the woods. I’d wake up and wonder where I was. That’s when I knew I had a problem and I went to AA.”
“Do you like AA?”
“It beats drinking alone in the woods.”
“What do you do at AA?”
“We talk about when we drank and how bad it was and we help each other work the twelve steps.”
“What are the twelve steps?”
“They’re a bunch of things that you do that make it so you don’t feel like you need to drink anymore.”
“Did you do all twelve?”
“I did them all in one weekend.”
“Is that fast?”
“Yeah. That’s not really how you’re supposed to do it. So then I went back and did them over six months or so.”
“Did you feel better?”
“I did, actually. I felt lighter. Like I didn’t need to forget so much because I liked myself more. I can’t believe I’m telling all this to a little kid. You sound like you’re thirty, ha-ha!”
“Do you love my mom?”
“Yes I do.”
“Are you going to marry her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can we watch cartoons now?”
“Sure.”
He takes us fishing down on the banks of the Willamette River beneath the West Salem bridge. He has a green tackle box full of lures and we go to a bait shop to buy earthworms and bright pink garlic marshmallows for the rainbow trout. He teaches us how to curl the worm around the hook so it goes through the body in three different places, how to cast the line out and reel it in slowly, careful not to hit anyone standing behind us, how it’s important to release the line at just the right point to get the most distance. Tony catches a trout. We put it on a metal line attached to a rock in the river that goes through the mouth of the fish and back out through the gills. He teaches us to skin it, right there on a flat rock on the shore of the Willamette with a fillet knife that he uses to cut open the belly and take out all the guts. Then he cuts the head off, splitting it into two halves right down the middle. We take it home and Paul fries it up with garlic and butter and salt and we wish we could eat fried fish every night.
When Tony and I start school at Englewood Elementary three blocks away, Paul is there to pack our lunches in the morning and even walks with us to the front gate. I’ve never been to school before so when I see the huge yellow building in front of the baseball diamond, it seems like a spaceship. I think maybe I’m going on a journey somewhere. I know I’m supposed to go inside because that’s where all the other kids are going, into the spaceship to be launched into space.
There are so many kids in my class and they are all different shapes and sizes. Timothy Manning, who seems mean with his dirty face, making fun of everyone from the back row. There’s a girl who wears dirty clothes like Tony and me, but she smells like pee. This is good, I think because even though our clothes have holes in them, at least we don’t smell. There’s a boy with smooth, well-trimmed black hair and tight designer jeans with white stitching that says Jordache across the pocket and a pretty blond girl in a dotted blue dress. She looks like a doll, something I’m not allowed to be near in my dirty pants and stained red ski vest from the Salvation Army.
On the first day the teacher gives everyone number lines that are supposed to teach us how to add. One plus one then three plus two. You take your pencil down the line to mark the answer. But I already know how to add and subtract and multiply and I don’t understand why the other kids can’t do it too. I watch them struggle and wonder what I’m missing. The teacher gives me a workbook for second graders that has pictures of birds inside circles and I have to say how many are in the circle and how many are outside it and how many there are total and again I don’t understand why we would have to write something so silly.
When I give her the workbook back, she reads it and after a little while she tells me we should go visit the third-grade teacher. So we go across the hall to the third-grade class during nap time and the teacher there gives me a workbook. She shows me how I’m supposed to follow directions and put my name in the upper-right-hand corner on each page, so I do. Then she says do I understand and I say yes and they both watch me read the workbook which is all about blocks and numbers and shapes and making change for a dollar.
One day the vice-principal comes into the classroom and talks to my teacher who calls me up to the front of class. We sit down in the corner and he says, “Have you ever been to school before?” And I say no because I don’t think the Synanon School counts since it was like an orphanage and nobody talks about it. So he says, “Do you do schoolwork at home?” I say no because maybe that’s cheating, to talk about all the books Mom gives me. I don’t want to get in trouble and these kids are all bigger than me and they’ve been to school before and my brother is in fourth grade and he’s always putting me in headlocks and breaking my stuff.
The vice-principal says they need to talk to my mom about it but maybe I’d be “more comfortable” in a different class. He says he called her at work but she was busy and I say, “Well yeah, she’s got a lot of prisoners to deal with,
” and he gives me a funny look.
When I tell Mom all about the workbooks and what the vice-principal said, she says she isn’t surprised because all we ever did in Synanon was read and write and I’m the special life that she had to protect and bring into the world so I could change it someday.
She skipped two grades in school when she moved to the United States from Dutch but she hated it because everyone was older than her and no one spoke Dutch and it was hard to have friends.
When the vice-principal takes me out of class, he puts me at a desk in his office and says he wants me to do a test. After the test I get to go outside for recess. All the boys climb on the monkey bars and play tag in the field and I’m thinking about the test and about the story I read about a poor couple who couldn’t buy Christmas gifts for each other so the woman sold her hair to buy a watch chain for her husband. But the husband sold his watch to buy a brush for his wife’s hair so neither of them can really use the gifts that they were given. The gift is a waste. The test asks you to give an example of ironing but I just write down that it’s funny that they tried to help each other by giving away the thing they love the most and at the end they realize they don’t really need possessions anyway as long as they have each other which is what Mom is always telling us when we want her to buy us a new Star Wars action figure.
I’m walking through the field and a big group of kids run by and one of them nearly runs into me so Timothy Manning runs up and says, “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking.”
“You’re in the way, dummy. We’re playing freeze tag.” He’s got straight black hair and he stands over me with his shoulders back and his fists at his side even though he’s skinny and maybe half the size of my brother who I have to fight all the time. There’s no Demonstrator, which is what they called teachers in the Synanon School. When you had a problem with another kid, you were supposed to tell everyone your feelings so that you could learn to be a new kind of person who doesn’t need parents. But that seems like a terrible idea when a boy is standing over you with a bunch of kids with dirty faces and balled-up fists. The bell rings and that means recess is over and we all have to go back inside.
Hollywood Park Page 7