“If we get stuck out on the water, I’m gonna frickin’ kill you. I’m gonna wrap that string around your frickin’ Adam’s apple.”
“Try it and I’ll wrap my meat hooks around your throat.”
“The only thing those meat hooks know how to hold is a greasy kielbasa.”
“Christ, I oughta have my head examined for doing business with a greaseball.”
“You oughta have your kookoo coconut examined anyway, you crazy Polack.”
They went on and on like that. If you didn’t know better, you’d think they hated each other’s guts. But apparently they didn’t. In fact, Jimmy said he was closer to Hank than to his own brothers, one of whom was a wimp music teacher who didn’t know a rifle from a baton and the other who had moved out to KooKooLand and was black as a nigger from baking in the sun.
Susan came out of the store. She walked right up to me.
I held my breath. I stood up straighter.
“Well, hello again,” she said.
She was wearing a funny little smile.
“Your father’s a real shipping magnate now.”
I thought it must be a figure of speech. I thought she must mean he was drawn to the sea like a magnet.
“Yes,” I agreed. “He loves the sea.”
Susan motioned to Jimmy and Hank.
“They’re a real pair,” she said. Then she added, “You hang in there. Don’t let them drive you too nuts out there on the water, OK?”
It was then I realized that Hank was coming with us. A millionaire was coming fishing with us in our crappy little boat, the Aristotle Onassis.
“Are you coming too?” I asked. My voice sounded all high-pitched and squeaky like somebody was strangling my Adam’s apple with his meat hooks.
“Being trapped at sea with the two of them might drive me nuts,” she whispered to me, laughing.
Jimmy finished tying the boat on the roof and Hank dropped the Johnson outboard motor into the trunk.
Jimmy took the pancakes out of his tackle box and slipped them to Hank.
“Maybe these’ll put a smile on your sad-sack kisser,” he said.
Hank snatched the pancakes and shoved them in his pocket.
“Announce it to the whole goddamn world, why don’t you,” he hissed.
“Relax,” crooned Jimmy. “What’re you, a yellowbelly? Afraid the fuzz are gonna come get you?”
Susan looked upset when she saw the pancakes. She turned and started to go back inside. Hank grabbed her arm and said some things. Susan got all frozen-looking. I heard him say something that began with “And tell your goddamn mother . . .”
Whatever it was he wanted her to say, Susan didn’t want to do it, I could see that.
I strained to hear more.
Jimmy told me to get my damn keister in the car.
I climbed in the back next to Virginia, who had her hand under the seat and was petting Sylvester.
“What kind of nosy little buttinsky are you?” Jimmy snarled at me. “You don’t stand there listening to people’s family business.”
I looked down, feeling my face get all hot.
I was a nosy little buttinsky and now Susan probably hated my guts.
Hank got into the front seat.
I glanced out the window, hoping to wave good-bye to Susan, but she had already gone inside.
“She’s stubborn, just like her goddamn mother,” Hank said to Jimmy. “Doris screwed her up, that’s for sure.”
Jimmy just said, “Screw Doris. We’re going fishing.”
He gunned the engine and headed for the coast.
We got there in record time.
“Forty minutes and change,” said Jimmy, checking his phony Bulova as we pulled into a patch of mud near the bait shack.
Sylvester had been quiet the whole way, but sensing he was about to head out to sea, he began to meow.
Hank nearly choked on his beer.
“Is there a goddamn cat in here?”
“Yeah, that’s Sylvester,” Jimmy said. “I’ve taken him out in the canoe before. He loves it.”
“Maybe you can take a cat in a canoe,” Hank shot back, “but you can’t take him in a motorboat. The sound of the motor’s gonna spook him. He could jump ship.”
“So? He knows how to swim,” Jimmy said proudly. “I taught him when he was a kitten.”
“You taught the cat to swim?”
“Yeah, I threw him in the kids’ wading pool. Sink or swim. They learn real fast.”
Hank drained his beer and tossed the bottle on the floor. It rolled under the seat toward Sylvester and he meowed louder.
“He yowls ’cause he’s not cut like a sissy cat,” explained Jimmy.
“For Chrissake, why can’t you get yourself a goddamn dog like every other guy?” demanded Hank. “A cat’s no good for hunting. It can’t pick up a scent or retrieve a duck.”
“I don’t need Lassie to help me find a goddamn duck when it drops. I can find it myself unlike the ding-dong judges and crooked cops hanging around your joint who call themselves hunters but can’t find their own ding-dong to take a piss.”
Hank split a gut.
“Anyway,” Jimmy added, “cats are smarter than dogs. Dogs would wag their asses and follow you into the devil’s rumpus room. Cats are sharp enough to be suspicious of people.”
Cats were also easier to hide, since the projects didn’t allow pets. But Jimmy didn’t say that. He just asked Hank a simple question.
“C’mon, if it came down to it, who would you rather be? Top Cat, who’s a wheeler-dealer, or goddamn Huckleberry Hound, who goes around sniffing petunias?”
“I don’t wanna be either one,” snapped Hank. “They’re goddamn cartoon characters.”
“Cats have spunk. Dogs are droolers. That’s all I’m saying.”
Hank was fed up. His bulbous nose was becoming all pink and veiny.
“I’m not going in any goddamn boat with a yowling tomcat, you crazy greaseball.”
Jimmy suddenly started laughing his head off.
“Cool your keister. I was never really gonna take him. I just wanted to get a rise out of you. I wanted to get that Huckleberry Hounddog look off your kisser.”
Hank’s expression darkened.
“I’m never going hunting or fishing with you again,” he barked.
“You say that every goddamn time,” said Jimmy.
“Well, this time I goddamn mean it.”
“Well, then it’s my goddamn lucky day.”
“Just get the goddamn bait.”
And that’s how it went. We finally got the goddamn boat in the goddamn water and Hank showed Jimmy how to pull the goddamn string so as not to flood the goddamn motor and we went out for some goddamn mackerel.
Sylvester watched us shove off. Virginia had made him a bed out of Jimmy’s smelly old shirt.
“Poor Sylvester,” she whispered to me.
I thought it was his goddamn lucky day. This was one time I would’ve rather parked my keister in the car. I didn’t want to be trapped in that floating rust bucket with a goddamn greaseball and a goddamn Polack and no place to pee.
But all that changed once we got out onto the open sea. The cool salt air smacked me in the kisser and it felt good. The brine shot up my nose and into my brain and flushed out all the worried thoughts that were stuck in there like crusty boogers. Blue was all around me and I felt happy. Dolphins jumped out of the water to greet us. I saw bobbing seagulls, and laughed when Hank shouted in my ear that they were Polish eagles. Jimmy said they were dumb and dirty like Polacks and tried to run them over. He was going too fast, but I didn’t care ’cause there were no poky old ladies or pissed-off truckies to crash into.
Virginia grabbed my elbow if I leaned out too far and tried not to get her Keds soaked from the water sloshing around in the bottom of the boat.
Jimmy dropped anchor in just the right spot in that whole big ocean. We caught fish after fish—except Virginia, who never wanted to kill a fly a
nd said she’d rather watch. I forgot they were mackerel, and just had so much goddamn fun. I reeled them in as fast as Jimmy and Hank could bait my hook. Heard them flopping around in the wet burlap bag at my feet and pulled up another one.
I didn’t even mind when Jimmy and Hank cracked open the whiskey and warm beer and started telling their old stories about being in the merchant marine. Stories about sailing under the same captain, E. J. Christianson, who was a good skipper and never talked down to his men. I learned about what Jimmy called “the Religion of the Sea,” and pretended that I, too, could one day join the merchant marine, join the brotherhood of men, even though I was just a goddamn girl.
We fished until the burlap bag couldn’t hold any more.
Then we filled the bottom of the boat.
And even Hank didn’t look so sad anymore.
I was sorry when Jimmy pulled anchor and we headed back to shore.
Sylvester was glad to see us. He got a mackerel head for staying in the car all afternoon without spraying.
Virginia and I snuck off and peed behind the bait shack, keeping a lookout for one another.
When we came back, Jimmy and Hank were having a contest to see who could gut the most fish fastest. Jimmy won, but Hank said Jimmy cheated ’cause he took the best knife.
On the way home, Hank bought each of us a mug of A&W root beer, even though Jimmy said that Virginia and I could share. Hank told him to quit being a cheap Greek where his kids were concerned and I thought that sounded like good advice. I imagined Hank was my father and Susan was my sister and we never had to share a root beer unless we wanted to, with two straws, for fun.
Finally, we dropped Hank back off at his store. I was hoping to see Susan again and brag about how many fish I caught, but she was long gone.
When we got back to the projects, we went door-to-door passing out the mackerel. All the mothers were tickled pink to get them. They had something besides Rice-A-Roni to put on their tables that night, something to feed their nine or eleven or thirteen kids.
If one of the mothers was the Project Snitch, I thought maybe we had even won her over and she wouldn’t squeal on us anymore.
The Grass Is Not Greener
Hank asked Jimmy to check on his goddamn lawn. The thing was, it wasn’t really his lawn anymore. Doris had gotten the house in the divorce and was planning to sell it and move to KooKooLand. But Hank was still all worked up about that lawn. Jimmy had put it in for him a couple of years before and now Manchester was stuck in the worst drought in fifty years and the lawn had some brown spots. Hank had seen them when he drove by.
“Let the goddamn lawn rot,” Jimmy had told him. “And Doris along with it.”
But Hank wanted the lawn green as a rube so the house would look better and sell for more dough.
“More dough for her to spend at that Jew clip joint Neiman Marcus,” said Jimmy.
Hank told him to quit being a goddamn pain in the ass and go over there and check on those spots.
So that was how, a few days after the fishing expedition, Jimmy and I ended up at Hank’s old house.
Jimmy walked around the lawn throwing down new seed and watering those brown spots with a hose.
I saw Susan watching him through the window. I stuck my head out of the car so she’d see I was there and maybe come on out.
It worked like a charm. She walked right up to the car and asked if I wanted to come in where it was nice and cool.
“You poor kid. What does he do, drag you all over the city?” she asked.
“Just about,” I said. “Everywhere except the bookie joint.”
Susan just shook her head and opened the door for me.
She told Jimmy she was taking me inside and he told me not to break anything or he’d golf me one.
I followed Susan inside, staring up at the back of her head and wishing I was as tall as her.
The house was dark. Most of the shades were down. Susan poured me a glass of Pepsi. The glass was made of real glass, not plastic like our free tumblers. I gripped it tight with both hands so I wouldn’t drop it and break it and get golfed.
My eyes darted around, looking for bullet holes. I’d once heard Jimmy tell Shirley that Hank had shot his gun at Doris in the house. Jimmy insisted Hank had only done it to scare Doris, to get her to straighten up and fly right. He didn’t want her to keep driving her Cadillac out to KooKooLand, spending money at every Jew joint along the way every time they had a little fight. After all, little fights were something husbands and wives had all the time, especially when one thought the other was cheating or when somebody was spending too much dough or when the husband’s hamburger was burnt black as a nigger and not all nice and bloody.
I didn’t see any bullet holes around. I figured maybe they had hung a picture over them or covered them with a fuzzy throw rug.
I took a sip of soda and found myself once again staring at Susan’s gold cross.
“I like your necklace,” I blurted out.
People ate up compliments. I had learned that from Jimmy. When he wanted something from you, you were a beautiful doll or a stand-up guy. I wanted to be Susan’s friend and I was willing to use any means—including Jimmy’s—to achieve my goal.
“Do you go to church?” Susan asked me.
“Oh yes,” I lied.
It wasn’t a total lie. It was a white lie as opposed to a full-out whopper. The truth was when we were in Nova Scotia the previous summer Shirley had dumped me at Sunday school, which was like church only you got to color pictures of the Three Wise Men.
“Then you know Christ died for our sins?” Susan continued.
Right away I was getting into deep water. My knowledge of churchy stuff beyond the Three Wise Men visiting baby Jesus and bringing him toys was strictly limited.
But suddenly a word my friend Tina had mentioned floated into my head.
“You mean our venal sins?” I asked, certain this would impress Susan.
She laughed.
“Venial sins,” she corrected me. She spelled it—V-E-N-I-A-L—like it was a spelling bee. “He died for all of our sins, mortal and venial.”
“Yes,” I said, trying to figure out a way to change the subject but not coming up with anything.
“My friend Tina is a Catholic,” I announced. “There are lots of Catholics in the projects.”
Susan’s face got all sad-looking.
“There are a lot of people in need in this world,” she said. “That’s why I want to be a doctor. To help those children.” Then she started talking about other bad things in the world, like people fighting each other with A-bombs and prejudice against black people, which confused me ’cause I thought they were colored.
“Life’s a raw deal, I guess,” I said. “ ’Cause people are starving and we all die—even our parents.”
“Death isn’t a bad thing,” she said. “There’s something better after we die if we don’t sin. There’s heaven.”
Heaven. I pictured it like a planet in another galaxy but without the bloodsucking aliens. I sure hoped it existed, but Jimmy said there were no guarantees. It wasn’t a sure thing like a six-to-five shot.
I heard Jimmy’s voice boom out from the other side of the screen door.
“That goddamn lawn looks like hell,” he said.
It sounded like he wanted to blame somebody but didn’t know who.
“It’s my fault,” offered Susan. “I’ll take better care of it from now on.”
“A lawn’s a living thing,” lectured Jimmy. “If you don’t take care of it, you’re killing a living thing.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” said Susan. After a moment she added, “I remember when you put that lawn in.”
“C’mon, Dracula, let’s go,” he called out. “Hop to it.”
I jumped up. I hopped to it.
I was almost to the door when Doris appeared from a back room.
I stopped in my tracks.
She looked so different.
; Different from the ladies I saw around the projects and different from my teachers and different from my mother even though I once heard Jimmy tell Shirley they looked like sisters when he was trying to butter her up.
Maybe it was because Doris had been hanging out in KooKooLand that she seemed so different. Hank said she looked like a movie star and I had to agree with him. Her shiny dark hair was done up like she’d just come from the beauty parlor and her nails were painted the color of the reddest red in the Crayola 64 box.
I suddenly felt bad for my mother. She had never even been to a beauty parlor. She just gave herself a Toni home permanent every couple of months, and her nails were usually split from doing piecework and dotted with bits of Scotch tape to keep them from splitting even more. Besides, Jimmy wouldn’t let her paint them anyway.
“Hello, Jimmy,” said Doris, blowing the smoke from her cigarette out between her red lips that matched her red nails.
“Yeah, hi,” said Jimmy, barely looking at her. “C’mon, Dracula, get a move on,” he snapped at me again.
I realized I was still holding my Pepsi and gulped down the rest of it because there were starving, Pepsi-less kids in this world and I didn’t want Susan to think I didn’t care about them.
I handed the empty glass to Susan, but she barely noticed.
“You feeling better, Ma?” she asked Doris, a worried look on her face.
“Yeah, sure,” said Doris, not sounding like she meant it.
Doris walked closer to the screen door. “So how’s Shirley?” she asked Jimmy.
“She’s OK,” grunted Jimmy. He was not making the least attempt to shoot the baloney with her.
“You letting her get behind the wheel yet?”
Jimmy didn’t like the question one bit, and Doris looked like she knew he wouldn’t like it.
I hurried over to Jimmy so we could leave before he got all riled up and maybe smacked my best friend’s mother in the kisser.
“I don’t need my wife driving so she can take off on me,” Jimmy snapped. “Take off to KooKooLand.”
“KooKooLand?” Doris laughed. “If you ask me, this whole city is KooKooLand.”
“Good. Then you can just drive your ass right outta here,” he said. “And as for Shirley, she don’t want to drive anyway. She’s a good woman. She knows who’s boss in our family.”
KooKooLand Page 8