HEMINGWAY’S MAFIA
I WAKE UP with the same huge lump on the back of my head and I’m still dizzy.
Jack has disappeared. I knew there was no way he would stay and take care of us.
Normally I go to Stillton Elementary, which is a short walk up the road. David takes a bus to Withensea Middle School, and Moses spends the mornings playing, while Wendy sleeps in, until the bus for his afternoon kindergarten session comes. But if David and I go to school, nobody will be there to babysit Moses. We decide we can all skip school.
This is the first time any of us have ever played hooky. It’s warm outside, but we don’t want anyone to find out we skipped. We stayed inside all day. First we play Life until we feel hungry. My brothers eat Wheaties, but I like Raisin Bran and we’re out. I eat croutons from an old box in the cupboard while we all watch TV.
We’re jumping on the sofa when the mailman comes. We scream and hide. That’s fun. We play Hide and Seek ‘for reals’ inside our house, which we haven’t done for ages. We play and laugh hard until Moses gets stuck trying to go down the hamper shoot. This is really funny until we have to pull him down by his legs to unstick him and he lands with a crash, tipping over the hamper. He’s crying hard and there’s a huge bump on his forehead. Now we both have bumps on our heads. Other than that, we’re having one of the best days we’ve had in a long time.
Later that day we get a surprise. The wooden woman has ignored my prayers. My father shows up. He doesn’t just show up. He brings our new stepmother, Paulina. Until today, we’d no idea he’d remarried.
All my fairy tale ideas about ugly stepmothers shatter. Paulina is breathtakingly beautiful. She’s tall, about six feet tall, with bangs and long, coppery-brown hair flipped up at the ends in big curls. Her lashes are unbelievably long, and she has big see-through blue eyes she’s heaped loads of makeup on. She has a curvy body with long, long legs and big breasts. Her lips are outlined with a dark ruby-red pencil and painted in with a bright fuchsia-pink lipstick, and when she flashes her wide, white-toothed smile, she dazzles.
I’ve seen the Playboy magazines my father stashed under the bed when he lived with us, and Paulina looks like the women in those magazines, but with clothes on. Her perfume smells like lemon peels and nutmeg.
“Hello, you must be Julianne. Your father has told me so many nice things about you.”
I wonder what nice things he might have said. We’ve rarely heard from him since his move to Florida, and he hasn’t remembered to send birthday or Christmas cards for any of us for about two years, since the divorce. He puts his arm around Paulina proudly.
“I’d like you to meet my new wife, Paulina. We would have invited you to the wedding, but we decided quickly and had no time to bring you guys down to Florida.”
His excuse doesn’t fool me. It’s clear we aren’t part of his new life. I wonder if Paulina’s figured out what a lousy father he is or if he’s lied to her about how he treats us.
This is the part where we meet my father’s second wife and we all play house.
The first thing he does is put us to work cleaning. Probably a good idea. Everything looks like a cyclone hit it and someone had a party with the debris. I don’t think Wendy has dusted or cleaned anything thoroughly in the two years since he’s been gone.
My brothers are told to clean their rooms. Since mine is already tidy, I’m on dusting duty. I am given a rag and a rusty can of Pledge and put to work in Wendy’s room, where he and Paulina are, apparently, going to sleep.
My father was a neat freak when he lived with us. Many fights with Wendy were about her low standard of cleanliness. So I’m not surprised we’re cleaning again. Still, I resent having to make things clean for him. Paulina pitches in and cleans up the kitchen while he makes several phone calls.
“Oh my,” she keeps exclaiming from the kitchen. I’m not sure if she’s reacting to Wendy’s kitchen décor, the kitchen’s state of disorder, or both.
My father makes a few crass comments about Wendy’s credit card redecorating spree, but otherwise he seems happy. It seems like he’s enjoying being back. After a while, when she sees we have nothing in the refrigerator, Paulina leaves for the store to grocery shop.
Wendy calls.
There are several phones spread around each floor of the house. My brothers and I each take our own extensions to talk to her. We all say hello. David is on the phone in the den and Moses is upstairs in Wendy’s bedroom. I sit on the piano bench in the living room, where my father listens to my end of the conversation.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
“How long are you going to have to stay in the hospital?” David asks.
“Not sure. They dunno how long it’ll take for my neck to heal. It’s broken in two places,” Wendy says. She sounds funny, like she’s talking with her mouth full of food.
“But can’t you come back home while it gets better?” Moses asks.
“No, the doctors wammetuh stay in the hospital case my breathing becomes worse. I dunno know how longI’llbeere”
Wendy begins to cry as we all listen on our various phones. No one knows what to say to her. Moses tries. “It’s all right, Mummy. Dad’s here and he brought his new wife, Paulina. They’ll take care of us and you’ll be better soon and come home.”
We can hear her make a terrible gasping noise. “He brought thadwhore?”
Moses made a big mistake.
“Puddyafatha on the phone,” Wendy says. I shakily hand the phone to him.
“She wants to talk to you.”
I can hear Wendy’s scream through the receiver even when I cross the living room.
“You asshole! You bring that whore inside my house? Getherouttathere!”
At first he talks quietly back to her even though he says nasty things. “You’re lucky your neck is already broken. If you think you can tell me what do, you’re a crazy bitch! She’s my wife, and she goes where I go.”
“Get your ass out!” Wendy screams, completely clearly.
Now he loses it. “I gave you this house. Don’t you talk to me that way! You better shut your fucking mouth or …”
“Don’t you dare threaten me or I’ll mess you up so bad you won’t know your ass from your elbow!”
“You can’t do shit from a hospital bed. You’re going to have to shut up and let me take care of my kids. Do you understand? This wouldn’t have happened if you stayed home where you belong instead of riding around like a teenage imbecile on a motorcycle!”
He hands me back the phone. “Say good-bye to your mother.” I accept the phone from him, still shaking. “Goo-good-bye, Mom,” I say quietly. “W … w …w … will you call us tomorrow?”
“I will,” she says.
My brothers say good-bye and we all hang up our respective phones.
I worry about what will happen. Wendy and my father are at it again, and it seems clear neither one is going to back down.
I’m not happy about having him here again. He’s been here barely a few hours and he’s created a war zone. Paulina seems decent, though, and it’s good to have a semblance of parental intervention again. We’ve gone two years without any and managed to remain safe, but I know it might become a dangerous situation for my brothers and me. I’m afraid Wendy will make him go away again, as much as I’m afraid of his terrifying temper, living here with us.
When Paulina gets back, my father helps her unload tons of bags from the grocery store and she starts making us dinner. This is a treat. We are told dinner will be at six thirty sharp and to wash our hands, change our clothes, and brush our hair, which no one has told us to do for years.
At six thirty we all sit at the dinner table, wide-eyed with gratefulness, and wait for the signal from my father to begin. After he lifts his fork we’re allowed to do the same, and not a moment sooner.
Dinners with my father were usually tense. His idea of parental responsibility included a strict manner code for meal etiquette. We had been trained to eat as t
hough we were attending a banquet held by Emily Post.
After the age of five, any etiquette infraction got “corrected” by the swift poke of a fork tine, which, I’m certain, is definitely not Emily Post behavior.
I have tiny fork tine scars on my upper arms. Apparently, I’m a slow learner.
We eat silently, remembering the “children should be seen but never heard unless addressed” dinner rule from earlier days.
Paulina has prepared baked chicken with a can of mushroom soup, green beans, and homemade macaroni and cheese. A feast. It’s been a long time since we’ve eaten a dinner of something other than frozen or fast food. Or our staple, cereal.
“She’s broken bones in her neck? Won’t she need a surgery?” Paulina asks.
“She didn’t say.” He meets her eyes and motions toward us before he continues. “We won’t know much more for a few days. In the meantime, let’s do the best we can to put this place back in shape and take care of you kids.”
My brothers and I glance at each other with faces reflecting a vocabulary of emotions. I know they are as confused about all of this as I am.
David asks, “If Mom isn’t better soon, will you be living here for a while?”
“Would you like that?”
David stares at his plate before he answers. “Well, I want my mom to get better.”
Paulina speaks. “Of course you do. This is a hard time. We’ll all do the best we can. Did you know I have two children? I have a boy and a girl. They live with their father now, but soon they’re going to come and live with your father and me.”
This sounds unusual to me. I wonder why she doesn’t have her kids with her. Isn’t that how it usually goes with a divorce? The kids live with the mother.
Paulina smiles at me. I ask, “Why don’t they live with you now?”
Paulina starts to answer, but my father interrupts, “Ix-nay on the explanation-ay.” Sometimes he speaks in Pig Latin, like we can’t understand what he’s saying. “Not your business,” he says to us.
We spend the rest of dinner in silence.
After dinner, Paulina asks me to help her with the dishes. I know we’ll have the kitchen to ourselves, and I’m curious to spend time alone with her. While we wash and dry, she tells me about her kids in Scituate and her life with my father in Florida. They live in a town called Destin.
“Where is Destin? I’ve never heard of it.” I’ve never done dishes like this, with someone else. I’m careful when I lift the warm, slippery dishes from her fingers. I dry them with the new pink dish towel she bought at the store and stack them in the new dish rack.
“It’s south of Niceville,” she says.
“Niceville?” I ask. “What part of the state is it in?” My nose is itchy. I can’t tell if it’s her “lemony scented rubbing alcohol perfume” or the dish soap. Wendy never buys this soap. I put the dishes into the automatic dishwasher with the Cascade.
“South. It’s in the southern part by the Gulf of Mexico. I’m not sure how I ended up down there. I grew up in Maine, but I love it down there. Florida’s kinda pretty.”
“I know,” I tell her. “My mother brought us to Key West this year for spring vacation.”
“Oh, I love Key West.”
“Yeah, I liked it too. My favorite is Ernest Hemingway’s house. I love that he left his money to his cats,” I say.
I think Paulina might have been to Hemingway’s.
“Ernest who?” Paulina asks me.
“Hemingway. The writer?”
She seems confused. I continue: “For Whom the Bell Tolls?”
Her eyes get bigger and rounder.
What I didn’t understand at eight is that most people don’t enjoy reading as much as I do.
Wendy is an avid reader with a wide variety of interests. She’s had lots of time during these long New England winters to do nothing but party and read. She has also, as long as I can remember, taken sporadic college classes, mostly related to psychology. So the shelves are stacked two and three deep with everything from Chaucer and Freud to Erica Jong. I took full advantage of the books. Books are my antidepressants.
By the age of eight, I’d consumed a literary buffet including an assortment of Steinbeck, Thomas, Carroll, and several books of poetry. Ever since Key West, Hemingway has been my favorite.
“I’ve never heard of that book. I’m not much of a reader. I like movies though. Do you like to go to the movies?”
Ahhhh, movie friend. I love going to the movies. “Yes. Did you see Dr. Zhivago? It’s one of my favorite movies,” I say.
“Ummm,” Paulina looks confused again, “no, I didn’t. I loved Airplane. Did you see Airplane?”
“No. What’s it about?” I ask.
“Ummm, well, you’ve got to see it. It’s so funny. It makes fun of other movies. It’s so funny.”
I’m beginning to wonder about our being movie buddies.
She asks, “Do you like to go bowling? I noticed there’s a bowling alley here in Withensea.”
I nod. “Yeah, I like to go bowling.”
The bowling alley, Withensea Shore Lanes, is one of the only year-round businesses where kids are allowed to hang out. Saturdays, after the leagues finish, anyone can play. Besides the bowling there are candy and pop machines—items that are not allowed in our diets. We use the money we get from our grandfather for treats like these.
“It’s ‘candlepin’ bowling. I read recently that candlepin bowling was invented in Massachusetts. Are you familiar with candlepin?”
Paulina shakes her head no.
“It’s similar to ten-pin bowling, but each player uses three balls per frame, the balls are much smaller and don’t have holes, the downed pins aren’t cleared away between balls during a player’s turn, and the pins are thinner and harder to knock down. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. I’ve never played ten-pin. Maybe we could go bowling this weekend?” I ask.
“Well, let’s see what your father says. On Sunday we’re gonna try to go visit my kids at their dad’s. They live in Scituate. Maybe we could go on Saturday if your father says it’s okay.”
I can tell she’s making a big effort to get me to like her, and I’m not going to stop her. It’s nice to have her falling all over me that way, but I wonder why. Is Wendy going to be in the hospital for a long time? Are we going to be able to stay with her when she gets out? I wonder about the hospital surgery my father doesn’t want us to know about. Everything’s shaky.
A few weeks later, after school, things get even shakier. Outside our house, my father’s car is gone. Inside, Paulina is sitting in a cigarette fog on the piano bench, mascara running down under her eyes. Beside her on the bench sits a pack of Pall Malls and a half bottle of Chivas Regal.
She’s flicking ashes from her cigarette into an ashtray on the piano.
It’s Wendy’s ass ashtray. When you press a plastic button on the side of the tray, which is shaped like a giant butt, it opens and the ashes go inside the ass crack. Paulina hasn’t figured out how to use it because the ashes sit on top of the butt in a huge pile, about to topple over onto the piano.
Her face is all wet with tears, but her eyes are blank like a doll’s.
“Hi Julianne.”
“Hi. What’s wrong?”
“Come over here. I’ve got something to tell you. I’ve got bad news.”
I steel myself and walk over to where she sits, clutching my school book bag against my side. “Where’s my father? What’s wrong?” I ask.
Paulina peers intensely at me, like she’s searching for an answer in my face. “Your father left. He went for a drive.”
I can tell she’s left something out that has nothing to do with what she’s about to tell me. So there are at least two bad things going on.
“It’s your mother,” she begins, but she stops and stares at her lap.
She’s not supposed to be telling me what she’s about to tell me. My heart pounds and I have a hard time finding the breath to speak. Tea
rs start stinging my eyes. I squeeze them shut for a second to keep them from coming out.
“Is she dead?” I ask, staring at her face.
Paulina looks at me with the same blank stare. “No, she’s not dead, but she’s not doing real well. The doctors don’t think she’s going to live. So, she might die.”
My head zings with a million thoughts.
I don’t trust grown-ups to tell me the truth. Has Paulina told me something that’s going to happen soon, has already happened, or might happen sometime in the distant future? Grown-ups aren’t supposed to say scary things to kids, and this sounds scary. Here’s Paulina telling me my mother might die, so it must be true.
I wonder if she wants Wendy to die. Does she want to take care of us? What about her own kids? Is she going to be allowed to have her own kids come live with her if she has to take care of us, or are we going to go live with my grandparents? I still hold out hope that we’ll get to live with my grandparents, although Wendy laughs whenever I suggest it.
Worse, will we be sent to one of the orphanages Wendy threatened us with?
“So what’s going to happen?”
Paulina jumps right in as though she’s been waiting for me to ask. She seems excited, which is weird.
“If she dies, your father and I will stay here with you kids.”
“You won’t want to go back to Florida?”
“Florida? No, we haven’t lived in Florida for the last—” she stops to count on her fingers, “—six months. We’ve been staying at your Aunt Doreen’s.” I’m stunned.
They kept a secret.
My father has been living in the same town as us for six months without bothering to visit? We didn’t see my Aunt Doreen this past summer because supposedly my father was out of town, and we never visit his family without him.
They all knew he lived there and kept it secret.
“H-how come he didn’t come and see us?”
Paulina’s face turns magenta. I can tell she feels caught and doesn’t want to tell me the truth.
“Well, your father didn’t tell you he was here because he was afraid your mother would ask for the child support payments, and he doesn’t have a job yet.” She stops for a second. “There’s no money for that. I’m sorry, honey; I didn’t mean to make you sad. It’s … every spare dime has gone to the lawyer who’s working on bringing my kids back to me. You’re gonna like my kids a lot. My boy, William, is a year older than you and handsome. My girl, Lucy, is Moses’s age. Just think, you’ll have a sister!”
The Belief in Angels Page 8