by Packer, Vin
“He hates his knife collection,” said Evelyn Berrey, pushing the radio’s “off” button as they drove out of the tunnel. “There’s one thing you can’t do, Howard—you can’t make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse!”
“Very witty, aren’t you, Evelyn? Very witty! I’m surprised Life didn’t interview you.”
“I hope Paul Carter gives you a bonus for that free plug Chuckles gave Sterling.”
“What have you got against Mr. Carter, Evelyn?”
“It would take all night.”
“I respect Paul Carter.”
“Oh, don’t I know it!”
“He was very impressed with Chuck.”
“You should have made Chuckles tell him he flunked English! Maybe he’d have been all the more impressed!”
“You should have had all girls, Evelyn. You never understood Howie, and you don’t understand Chuck.”
“I don’t understand Howie?”
“You told me yourself—you just couldn’t figure out why Howie married that Italian.”
“I suppose you understand it, though.”
“You bet I do!”
“Would I be prying if I asked exactly why?”
“Because they’re good in bed, that’s why.”
“You don’t care what you say in front of your son, do you?”
“He’s asleep, Evelyn. Even geniuses need sleep.”
• • •
Charles Berrey sat curled up in the corner of the back seat with his eyes shut. He wondered how his father knew that Howie’s wife was good in bed. At the same time, he was amazed to know that girls were bad in bed too. He had never thought of that before, and it posed an interesting problem. If girls did it too, how did they do it? Girls didn’t have anything to do it with, did they? Charles was sure of that. Maybe Italian girls did. Yet his father said that Italian girls were good in bed. Maybe all girls but Italian girls were made differently. None of it was logical…. Charles Berrey was bad in bed sometimes too … Often. In fact, if his father ever found out about him, it would be a catastrophe. He decided then and there never to do it again. There would have to be an oath on it, to make it real.
Charles Berrey often took oaths. Yesterday he had taken an oath on his mother’s eyesight that he would not set fire again to the grass around the trash can in the backyard. One of his weekly duties was to carry the trash out and burn it. Charles liked that duty. Fire was magic. Charles had read many myths about the origin of fire. His favorite was a Polynesian myth. There was a boy named Maui, whose grandmother was the goddess of fire. Maui asked her to make some fire, and when she did, she made so much that it came out of her fingers and her toes, and everything around her began to burn. The rain came finally and put the fire out, but there was still some left in the trees. According to the Polynesian myth, the fire left in the trees was the source for all of mankind.
When Charles burned the trash out behind his house, he liked to pretend about this myth. He took his squirt-gun with him, and after he set fire to the trash can, he touched a match to the grass around it. After the grass had burned a little while, he squirted water at it and put the fire out, but in the trash can, fire still raged. It was a game with him, but his mother said a grass fire could get out of control, and if he didn’t stop the game, she would never allow him to touch matches again. He knew the only way to make himself stop was to take an oath, which he had—yesterday afternoon. Now he would never do it again, or his mother would go blind.
Charles decided his new oath—the one about not being bad in bed anymore—would be an oath on his father’s life. He wished there were some way to tell his father his decision, to let his father know how much he wanted to please him, but there wasn’t any way to do it.
Charles Berrey wished too that his mother and father would stop quarreling. The trouble was, they were both right. His mother was right about Charles not liking his knife collection and not wanting to be a baseball player when he grew up. At the same time, his father was right about having had his picture in the newspapers when he was in college, and about Mr. Carter. Charles had liked Mr. Carter very much. And Mr. Carter had paid for everyone’s dinner in the restaurant.
When Mr. Carter said, “I just wish I could get my boy’s nose in a book!” Charles had beamed and looked at his father’s face to see his expression. It had surprised him that his father was not smiling, but frowning instead.
His father said: “Don’t get the wrong idea. Chuck’s not all books, you know!”
That was when Charles and his father spoofed Mr. Carter—told him about the “B” in English.
“Is that right!” said Mr. Carter.
“Yes, sir,” said Charles. He giggled, and then he noticed that his father smiled at last. Charles felt proud to be collaborating with him.
His mother said nothing, but her eyes were cold and angry.
“Well, now, nobody’s perfect,” said Mr. Carter, “A boy that got perfect grades and knew the answers to everything just wouldn’t be normal.”
“Last week,” Charles said, “When I had to name all the kings of Israel and Judah, I barely remembered Uzziah.”
That was an untruth. Charles Berrey would never forget Uzziah’s name. Uzziah had come down with leprosy for burning incense in the temple. Would Charles ever forget the picture in his mind of Uzziah standing with the burning taper, while the leprosy popped out on his forehead? What was it Charles’ mother always said? Play with fire and you get burned, one way or the other.
“I didn’t know you almost forgot Uzziah, Chuck!” said his father, grinning down happily at him.
“What do you think I am, a brain or something?” Charles answered.
Everyone had a good laugh over that, everyone but Charles Berrey’s mother.
In June, when he took his tests, Charles decided, he would purposely answer some of the questions wrong. He sat in the booth of the restaurant poking at his ice cream with his spoon, no longer interested in dessert, thinking only that in June he would spoof them all! For some reason, his decision made him feel tired and no longer glad. He sighed and sat there, watching the chocolate melt on the spoon and dribble down into the dish. An infinitesimal part of Charles Berrey was protesting the way a dog who had been spanked for another dog’s mischef might protest, by cowering there in the corner, uncertain and sad, with something akin to anger stiffled deep inside of him—so deep that it would probably never be born at all.
Evelyn and Howard Berrey argued all the way from the Holland Tunnel to Reddton. Charles feigned sleep so well that when they reached the bungalow on Almanac Drive, his foot was actually asleep from staying in one position so long. He shook it and squeezed his toes inside his shoes, and when he got out of the back seat, he stumbled into his father.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.
“Just say you’re sorry, Chuck!” his father snapped.
“Yes, sir.”
“Leave him alone, Howard! You make me sick!” said his mother, slamming the car door.
“Oh, shut your yap, Evelyn!”
“I’ll shut mine when you shut yours!”
“You’re asking for it, Evelyn! You’ve been asking for it all night!”
“You make me sick! Come on, Chuckles,” said his mother, putting her arm around the boy’s shoulder.
“That’s right, come to mommy, Chuckles,” said Howard Berrey in an angry, mock falsetto.
Charles tried to laugh at the way his father imitated his mother, but he was a little afraid now. He had only seen his father strike her once, but he knew that it had happened other times too. Sometimes during the night he woke up and heard his mother crying: “Don’t hit me, Howard!” and invariably after she said that, there would be a crash, and Charles’ room would seem to vibrate with the noise of it.
The one time he had actually seen it happen, he had never forgotten. They had all gone on a picnic near Palisades. Charles was coming back from a walk by himself, with a butterfly caught in his hand. It was a zebra swal
lowtail, the kind with the largest tail of any native species. He was sure it was a zebra, even though he knew they were more common to the Southeast. He was running to show them, the excitement mounting as he drew near the spot in the woods where they were preparing lunch. Just as he came to a point where he had a glimpse of them, standing there in the clearing, he opened his mouth to shout: “Look what I found!” but he never got the words out. His father had reached out and hit his mother across the face with the palm of his hand. The blow had sent her sprawling to the ground. Charles stood dead still, staring. The first thing he saw was his mother’s face—the expression there. It was peculiar, all squeezed up. He had never seen her cry before, and it took him a moment to realize that was what she was doing—crying. When he looked down at the rest of her, he saw her skirt up above her knees, saw the flaccid white flesh of her thigh, and there against the white, a trickle of red blood, and her gartar holding her stocking. He turned and darted back behind the tree where they couldn’t see him, and he stood there for a moment with his heart pounding wildly under his sweater. After some slow seconds, he realized that the inevitable had happened. He had wet his pants. He stood there with his fists clenched, hating himself, afraid of what his father would do to him when he found out, and a few slow seconds later, when he looked down at his hand, he saw that he had killed the zebra swallowtail.
Charles never told them about the zebra, nor about what he had seen. He sneaked away from there and scampered down the rocks to the water, and then he sat in the water. Later, he told his mother he had slipped and fell into it, and that was why he was all wet. When his mother began to scold him for it, his father said: “Let the boy alone. All boys do that!”
• • •
Inside the house, that night at the end of May, Charles and his mother had milk and cookies in the kitchen, while his father put the car in the garage.
“You’re sleepy, aren’t you, Chuckles?” said Mrs. Berrey.
“Please don’t call me Chuckles.”
“I’ve always called you Chuckles, darling. Don’t you like me to have a special name for my big boy?”
“It’s a preposterous name.”
“Oh, it is, is it?” his mother laughed. “Do you want to ‘iterate that?”
“Reiterate,” said Charles Berrey giggling.
“Maybe I’ll call you Mr. Iterate instead.”
Charles laughed so hard he almost choked on his milk.
“That’s what I’ll call you, Mr. Iterate.”
“I’ll call you Mrs. Amphigoric then!”
“Mrs. what?”
“That means meaningless.”
“Figorick! Where do you pick up those words, hmmm?” She pinched his cheek. “Did you swallow the dictionary?”
“I masticated it,” said Charles.
Mrs. Berrey’s smile faded. “What did you say?” she said.
“I masticated it.”
“All right, that’s enough play for tonight,” his mother said somewhat coolly. “That’s enough for tonight.”
“What’s the matter?” he said.
“Go to bed, Chuckles. Hurry now!”
“I will,” he said, finishing his milk, puzzled at her sudden change of mood.
Instead of hugging him hard, the way she usually did when they said goodnight, she simply bent and kissed his forehead.
“Go right to sleep, Chuckles,” she told him.
For awhile, after he was undressed and in his pajamas, Charles Berrey thumbed through Ironside’s British Painting Since 1939, but he was not as fascinated with it now as he had been late that afternoon. He kept trying to figure out why his mother had acted as though she were angry with him when they were in the kitchen, toward the end. He would never have dared to show off his vocabulary around his father, but his mother usually enjoyed it. Maybe he had gone too far when he had called her Mrs. Amphigoric. Tomorrow he would remember to explain to her that the word amphigoric came from the word amphigory, and all amphigory meant was a nonsense verse. He shouldn’t have told her it meant meaningless. He had probably hurt her feelings.
When he put out the light above his bed, he lay in the dark thinking about what his father had said earlier. He was glad he had made up his mind to be good in bed, like Howie’s wife, but it still confused him. Why were only Italian women good in bed? It might have something to do with the fact that they were all Catholics, and Catholics were extremely religious. Religious people would not be bad in bed. Maybe what his father had meant to say, was that Catholic women were always good in bed. He was pondering over this when the argument started in the living room. This one was even worse than the one on the trip home. In the car, Charles had not worried as much, because his father could not very well become violent in traffic, but now there was nothing to stop him.
Charles crawled out of bed and listened at the door. He did not have to open the door to hear what they were saying because the bungalow walls were paper-thin, and both of them were yelling.
“… never teach him any respect!” his mother was screeching, “No wonder he’s mixed up!”
“He’s not mixed up, you’re mixed up! Your brains are scrambled, Evelyn, scrambled and fried!”
“If he’s going to lie to Life magazine, who’s he going to lie to next?”
“What the hell do I care about Life magazine!” said his father, “I don’t even read Life magazine!”
“You mean you don’t even read!”
“Shut your yap!”
“He never said anything like that before tonight. That’s all I know. Not before tonight, he didn’t. You’re the one that put it into his head to be a smart aleck.”
Charles Berrey stood anxiously by his door, wondering if he shouldn’t go in there and tell her what amphigoric meant right now, instead of waiting until tomorrow. She had taken it all wrong.
“You’re the one that told him to lie about his grades,” said his mother. “Now he’s going to be a smart aleck.”
“What’s wrong with that? I’d rather have him be a smart aleck than a goddam book-sissy!”
“You’d rather have him stand right there in that kitchen and tell his own mother he masturbated the dictionary?”
“He was making a joke!”
“A smutty, smark-aleck, wise-guy joke! In front of his own mother, in that kitchen, right here tonight!”
“I’m glad he knows the word. I was beginning to wonder if there was something wrong with him, reading in the goddam library all day and night!”
“What kind of a father are you? You want your own son to masturbate!”
“What’s he supposed to do?” said his father, “go out and screw eight-year-olds in the recess yard? Berrey men always grow up fast!”
• • •
Charles Berrey sank onto the edge of his bed. His face was red-hot with shame. He bit on his knuckles and jiggled his knees. That wasn’t what he had said at all; he had never said that word! Not even to himself! Everything was crazy suddenly. There was his father in there saying he didn’t care if he was bad in bed, and only tonight he said Howie had married Jean because she was good. His mother had mixed everything up, and his father didn’t even know it, and Charles didn’t know anymore who was right and who was wrong. The shouting was growing louder and louder now, and Charles was frightened and sick of listening. He didn’t know why he got up and went across to his closet in the dark, nor why he reached for his wool jacket on the hook behind the door.
“Shut your yap!” he heard his father say, “or I’ll give it to you good, Evelyn!”
“Go ahead and hit me!” his mother shouted back. “Just you go ahead and hit me!”
When he heard the crash, he ran to the window.
The night was cool and not too dark because of the moon. It hadn’t been much of a drop to the ground. The only hard part was getting the screen unhooked without anyone hearing the noise when it fell off onto the sidewalk below. But even that was easy, because the Berrey bungalow was wild with the sounds of his mot
her and father screaming and throwing things. Were they just throwing things, or had his father hit her? Charles Berrey read the newspapers every single day, and they were full of stories about men murdering their wives, and women murdering their husbands. Sometimes even children murdered their mothers and fathers. If he could stop them some way, or make someone stop them. If he could find a policeman, or do something.
For awhile he simply stood out behind the garage by the trash can. There were matches in his coat pocket left over from burning the trash yesterday, and he thought of the dry grass, half-burnt already, and of the oath he had taken on his mother’s eyesight not to set fire to it anymore. He thought of Uzziah coming down with leprosy in the temple while he was burning the incense; and he thought of the rain pouring down in the Polynesian myth, and Maui’s grandmother with fire coming out of her fingers and toes.
From inside the house, he heard another crash, and now he began to run, back through the fields behind his house, running and crying and wetting his pajama pants. His bedslippers were thin-soled and he could feel every bump and stone, but he ran as fast as he could, without knowing where he was going or how he was going to get help. When his feet hit pavement, he realized he was on Rider Avenue, and when he stopped, breathless and wet and desperate, he saw the red firebox on the corner. He didn’t even bother to use the little iron mallet to break the glass, but with his whole strength, punched it with his fist until it smashed. Then, with his other hand, he pulled down the handle.
It would only be a matter of minutes now. Charles Berrey knew that. Soon the fire engines would roar and clang, and lights would go on in all the dark houses, and people in robes would lean out of their windows, and everyone would wonder where the fire was.
It was near midnight. In Sykes, New York, a boy named Brock Brown was secretly retrieving seventy-two cents he had left on a neighbor’s screen porch; and in Auburn, Vermont, Reginald Whittier was asking Laura Lee to elope with him. Charles Berrey climbed back in the window of the bungalow and waited.
PART THREE