The people behind me were screaming for another stupid horse—“Go Nutmeg Gal!”—and Virginia and I tried to drown out their stupid voices.
“Go Victory Bound! Go Victory Bound! Go Victory Bound!”
We couldn’t stop yelling it.
The horses came unbunched and I finally caught a glimpse of the black and gold in the backstretch. He was in the back of the pack.
My body went limp. Tears flooded my eyes. And I couldn’t help it.
I blinked.
And then I knew for sure it was over.
I closed my eyes, ’cause it didn’t matter anymore. I felt more tears and tried to squish my eyelids against my eyeballs to make them stop, but it didn’t help.
I hated the people in the row behind me who were screaming louder and louder, urging their horse on when I had just gone mute.
We lost, and it’s all my fault, I thought.
I wanted to take a swan dive off of the grandstand. I wanted to kill those goddamn people behind me.
And suddenly Virginia was grabbing my arm and pulling so hard I nearly fell off the bench.
I opened my eyes and the black and gold was miles in front—miles and miles—coming down the home stretch and Jimmy and Shirley were screaming and Hank and the other Shirley were screaming and all our friends were screaming and I was screaming—govictoryboundgovictoryboundgovictorybound—and the people behind me had gone mute.
He went over the finish line all by himself and I finally heard the announcer’s voice, and even he sounded excited.
“And it’s Victory Bound by six furlongs! Victory Bound is the winner!”
Everybody was jumping around and Shirley grabbed my hand and Virginia’s hand and she looked so stunned, like she couldn’t believe it, none of us could, and we were racing toward the winner’s circle after Jimmy, all of us: Hank and the other Shirley and Uncle Bobby and Aunt Hazel and Uncle Barney and gas-station Charlie and hopped-up Bruce and the guys from the bookie joint and the Greeks from the coffeehouse and the alkies from the beer joint.
Victory Bound came prancing up to the winner’s circle and Jimmy wanted everybody in the picture, but the guy said there were too many of us and Jimmy started to argue with him, but Hank told him to just get in the goddamn winner’s circle with his family.
So it was just us, the Norris family—minus Sylvester and Squirmy—and the ringer who was pretending to be the trainer.
“Ain’t this the life?” Jimmy cried out.
Yes, we all agreed. This was the life.
And then the flash went off.
And we were all blinded for a few moments.
Good Luck, Bad Luck
“My lucky number is six now,” I announced to Virginia in the car on the way back to Old Orchard Beach that night. “Because Victory Bound’s number was six and he won by six furlongs and today is August sixth.”
“Six-six-six is the mark of the devil,” intoned Virginia. She had just read a book about witchcraft and was convinced she had been burned at the stake in a previous life.
“Don’t jinx my lucky number, Satan-lover,” I snapped at her.
In the front seat, Jimmy and Shirley were having a few highballs to celebrate Victory Bound’s winning.
“Poor Shirley,” I heard Shirley say. “She’s really got it bad for Hank.”
“She’s a numbskull,” spat Jimmy. “I never shoulda introduced her to him in the first place.”
He was PO’d ’cause he’d asked Hank to stay over and go fishing with him the next day. But right after the race Hank told him the other Shirley was smothering him to death and they left. The other Shirley smiled and waved toodle-oo like she didn’t know Hank was about to give her the heave-ho and she was gonna be Miserable Shirley again.
“If she’d just been smart enough to back off, she woulda been on goddamn easy street eating bonbons,” continued Jimmy. “A guy like Hank, you can’t crowd him. He’s like a boxer—you corner him, he’s gonna come out fighting.”
“Maybe I should tell her that.”
“Keep your snout out,” said Jimmy. “Hank don’t need another woman nosing around in his business. Besides, it wouldn’t do any good. The real problem is he’s still carrying a torch for that goddamn Doris.”
“I never thought Doris would go through with the divorce,” sighed Shirley. “Her being Catholic and all. People back in Canada said you make your bed, you lie in it.”
“Hank oughta thank his lucky stars she finally went through with it, ’cause he never woulda pulled the trigger. He’s a loyal SOB. And she woulda just kept blubberin’ to the cops every time they had a little spat.”
“At least she waited until Susan and Terry were out of high school. At least those kids didn’t have to grow up in a broken home.”
“Give her a prize for that,” said Jimmy. “Give her the goddamn Cracker Jack prize.”
Hearing about Susan and her broken home made me more determined than ever to buy her a nice present. Not some piece of crap like a lobster key chain. Something special she could take back to college that would remind her I was her best friend in the whole goddamn world.
I slipped a finger into my sneaker to make sure my winnings were still safe in there. I could feel them—four simoleons. Jimmy had kept the two he had staked me for the ticket, ’cause he said that was like a loan. Then he took a cut of the winnings, ’cause that was like interest on the loan. If he were a loan shark that’s how it would work, is how he explained it.
I felt like telling him he was an Indian giver, but I didn’t want to hear about what an ungrateful little weasel I was. It was true I wouldn’t have had any dough at all without him, so maybe he had a point. Maybe he deserved a cut. Maybe I was an ungrateful little weasel. Nobody had given Jimmy diddly-squat when he was my age. He had worked in Yanco’s butcher shop every day after school and all day Saturday, and Papou always took his cut. So maybe all fathers took a cut. Maybe that’s just how things worked.
That night when we got home, we all hid our money. Shirley’s went into her underwear drawer and Jimmy’s went under the mattress and mine went into the Good & Plenty box. Virginia didn't have any to hide ’cause she'd blown all of hers on cancer sticks and Pepsi. Jimmy had gotten everybody started on hiding their money. He didn’t think money belonged in a goddamn bank. He didn’t want some busybody banker knowing when he was making a killing and squealing to Uncle Sam. He didn’t want his money all locked up after three in the afternoon when he might need to lay down a big bet or buy some hot merchandise or hightail it up to Canada if the fuzz came looking for him. Just to be safe, he made Shirley stay a Canadian citizen so we could get across the border easy—bingo bango.
I could imagine other situations in which we might need to use Jimmy’s escape plan—an alien invasion, for instance. Or an A-bomb attack by Communists.
Awful things happened. They happened all the time. They happened out of the blue.
It didn’t matter who you were. Or even if you were a big shot. Anybody could get sucker punched.
The day after Victory Bound won, I was lying on the beach, still basking in the glow of victory, when I heard two women sobbing. They were saying that Jackie Kennedy’s baby had been born too soon and was probably gonna die.
It’s a son, too, one of the women blurted out, which seemed to make it worse.
People all over New England are praying, the other woman said.
The pope’s praying too, said the first woman. All good Catholics are.
I joined in. I closed my eyes and prayed with the pope and all the good Catholics of New England.
I prayed with Susan ’cause I knew, wherever she was, she was praying too.
But two days later, the Kennedy baby died anyway. Maybe somebody, one person, hadn’t prayed hard enough. Maybe it was me.
But I knew what Tina would say. What Susan would say. God wanted that little baby. God had a scheme and it wasn’t our business to know God’s family business. We just had to pray now for the Kennedys no
t to suffer too much, even though the prayers we’d prayed before hadn’t worked. Every time you prayed and your prayers didn’t come true, you just had to keep on praying. Tina said that’s what you did if you were a good Catholic.
So I lay down on the beach again and closed my eyes and prayed for the Kennedys to be less miserable.
But I couldn’t concentrate. Jimmy’s voice kept butting into my prayers.
He was going on and on to Shirley about Papou and YaYa. He had called to tell them about Victory Bound’s victory and all YaYa had wanted to know was when we were coming back ’cause she was sick and tired of having a filthy rodent in her basement. Then, when Jimmy asked Papou if he wanted a photo of us in the winner’s circle to put up in the beer joint next to the picture of the Great Jack Dempsey, Papou had told him not to waste his goddamn money.
Shirley said she was sure Papou was happy about the horse winning, that he just had a funny way of showing it. It was the Greek way, which was not to show happiness at all, ’cause then the evil eye would come looking for you and misery would rain down on you. Shirley had first learned about the evil eye when YaYa spit on me after I was born so I wouldn’t die.
Since the Kennedys weren’t Greek I figured nobody had spit on their baby. Maybe if some Greek had done that, everything would be different. Maybe that was why I had lived and Jimmy had lived, even though, according to YaYa, we had both been born too soon and both been sickly, just like the Kennedy baby.
“Who wants a nice cold root beer?” Shirley sang out.
I figured I could do more praying later and opened my eyes.
Virginia was walking up to the blanket carrying my sand bucket. Jimmy had sent her to the Normandie Inn to steal some ice from their cooler. Virginia handed the bucket of ice to Shirley, and Shirley plopped ice cubes into highballs for her and Jimmy and into root beers for Virginia and me.
“What have you been doing, dum-dum?” Jimmy asked me, gnawing on a hunk of ice.
I tensed up. I knew Jimmy wouldn’t be keen on the idea of me praying. He might turn it into a joke. Or he might start talking about all the starving babies in the world and ask why I wasn’t praying for them, too. He might make me defend what was so special about the Kennedy baby in relation to those other babies and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it to his satisfaction.
“Nothing,” I said. “I haven’t been doing anything.”
“In other words, you’re wasting your vacation. The vacation your mother and I worked so hard to take you on.”
“No,” I said. I didn’t see how that followed. “I’m having fun. I’m getting a nice tan. See.” I held out my browning arm as evidence.
“Tanning is for idiots,” he said. “KooKooLand idiots. The time you waste lying there like a corpse you could be reading a book or the newspaper to make yourself less of a dum-dum.”
I obediently reached for the newspaper. A picture of President Kennedy looking sad was on the front page.
“They’re making a federal case outta one dead kid,” Jimmy complained. “Kids die every day. It’s a big, bad world.”
I nodded like I agreed with him.
“C’mon,” he said suddenly. “Let’s go for a dip.”
I thought he must be joking.
There was a freak invasion of jellyfish going on at the moment and everybody was staying out of the water. Some of the jellyfish were pink and some were white and one kind was harmless and the other stung you and I couldn’t remember which was which.
Jimmy insisted all the jellyfish were harmless. He said he knew all about jellyfish from being a merchant mariner and a fisherman and from swimming amongst jellyfish lots of times. Even if one kind did sting a little, it wasn’t poisonous and you would barely feel the sting.
“What are you, a chicken?” asked Jimmy. “A little baby chicken?” He started to make his clucking sounds.
Pluck pluck pluck.
“I don’t think she should go in the water,” Shirley piped up.
“Oh, look, it’s the mother hen trying to protect her baby chick,” said Jimmy.
“I don’t want her to get stung. Even if it’s not poisonous.”
“What about me?” asked Jimmy, draining his highball. “You don’t care if I get stung? You only care about her? You don’t care what happens to me?”
“No, of course not. Of course I care about you.” I could see Shirley was trying not to get boxed into a corner. “You said the stinging wouldn’t bother you. But you’re a big, strong man and she’s a little girl. Besides, nobody else is in the water.”
“These goofball tourists are all chickens.”
“Jimmy . . . please. I don’t want her to go.”
“Why do you have to take up for her all the time? Ever since she’s been born you’ve been doing that and I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit. You’re always taking her side.”
“I’m not taking anyone’s side,” said Shirley. “I just—”
“I don’t see you taking my side. I don’t see you ever taking my side. And you should be taking my side. You should be taking my side all the time. I’m your husband. I’m the head of this family and you treat me like I’m Joe Palooka.”
I knew he was going down a road that wouldn’t end until Shirley cried and he told her they had been having a great time and she had messed it all up.
Unless I saved the day.
“I want to go in the water with Daddy,” I blurted out. “I’m not afraid of those stupid jellyfish.”
Jimmy looked over at me with his angry face, and for a breathless moment I thought he was going to start in on me.
But he broke into a grin.
“All right then. Now you’re talking. That’s my kid. That’s what I like to hear.”
I jumped up. I prayed to God to protect me from the killer jellyfish. At least if I get stung, I prayed, please don’t let it hurt too much ’cause I’ll have to pretend it’s nothing, really nothing, or she’ll be right and he’ll be wrong and then I’ll get blamed for ruining the whole goddamn day.
“I’ll race you to the shore,” he said.
As I got into my starting position, he turned back to Shirley for one more parting jab.
“Your daughter’s got more goddamn guts than you do.”
Shirley looked at me helplessly. Her eyes said I’m sorry. I put on a big smile so she wouldn’t feel so bad.
I raced him to the shore. Raced him faster than I ever had, dreading the destination.
I’m gonna beat you, you bastard, I thought. I’m gonna beat you if it kills me.
He let me get close. He let me get my hopes up and then he pulled away like Victory Bound.
He charged into the ocean ahead of me, splashing water back into my face.
“You’ll never beat me. You’ll never beat your old man,” he crowed, and dove head first into the water thick with pink and white jellyfish.
I edged into the water, trying to avoid the jellyfish, but it was impossible. They sloshed against me, blobs of pink and white potential pain.
There was nothing left to do except ask God to protect me, even though I knew he was probably busy right now with the Kennedys.
Jimmy waved me out into the deep water and I went toward him, pushing my way through the sea of fear.
I closed my eyes and pretended I had a force field all around me. Like the robot in The Day the Earth Stood Still, nothing could touch me.
I went in over my head and somehow I didn’t get stung.
“See?” Jimmy laughed. “I was right. Remember, your old man is always right.”
“You’re right,” I repeated, and this time it was true.
I lay back and floated in a sea of beautiful jellyfish and never wanted to go back to shore again.
What’s in the Box?
It was our last night at the beach and I had to make up my mind once and for all. I needed to find the perfect present for Susan. I felt like our whole friendship was riding on my decision.
There were several items
in the running. There was a framed Jesus that had OLD ORCHARD BEACH, MAINE stamped across the sea he was walking on. There was a bongo drum, which was what I wanted, but which I thought Susan might like too since she already played the clarinet and might want to learn a new instrument. There was a jewelry box shaped like a pirate’s chest that smelled like cedar when you opened it. I figured Susan could store her gold cross in there. That is, if she ever took the cross off, which was something I didn’t know about one way or the other.
The truth was I was beginning to realize there were lots of things I didn’t know about Susan. Like what her favorite color was and whether she liked chocolate better than vanilla or Top Cat more than Huckleberry Hound. I began to see Susan as a mystery and realized how few clues I had. I felt Nancy Drew wouldn’t be in such a predicament. She’d know what to buy her best friend. She’d have solved that goddamn mystery by now.
To make matters worse, as I dragged myself up and down the main drag, Virginia was breathing down my neck. I’d begged her to come shopping with me, but she was dying to get back to the arcade. She wanted to spend her last night with Tommy. She’d gotten crazier and crazier about him over the two weeks we’d been there. She said he reminded her of James Dean, but all I could see was a freeloader who bummed money from her to buy pizza and then wouldn’t even give her a bite.
As we went from souvenir shop to souvenir shop, Virginia kept pushing me to make up my mind. I hadn’t told her I was buying something for Susan, so she thought I was just dicking around trying to pick out something for myself.
“How about that bongo drum?” she suggested. “You haven’t stopped talking about that since we got here. Or those giant sunglasses? You thought those were a riot when you first saw them.”
“I thought they were cute. I didn’t think they were a riot. I thought the giant pencil was a riot. I thought I could write a whole lotta mystery books with that.”
“So get it then.”
“I really want a lot of things. That doesn’t mean I’m gonna buy ’em.”
“What about candy? You love candy. What about that chocolate lobster?”
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