KooKooLand

by Gloria Norris

  And, anyway, I had my own life to worry about. I was determined to get good grades at Central and prove to Jimmy I was no dummkopf. I studied hard and didn’t get too friendly with anyone. I didn’t join any clubs or put myself in situations where kids or teachers would start nosing around my life. I didn’t want to have to come up with excuses why I couldn’t invite anyone over to my place. If anyone asked what my father did I said he was a doctor. It didn’t seem like that much of a stretch.

  Meanwhile, Jimmy and Hank found other clubs besides the Greek’s joint to hang out at, places where the women weren’t so picky and didn’t mind a quickie with a guy who had ventilated his ex-wife. Hank played the field. He didn’t want another ball and chain.

  Hank had more free time now ’cause he wasn’t running his own business. The state wanted to put an on-ramp to the highway smack in the middle of where his store was and made him shut the place down. Jimmy said he oughta fight the goddamn pencil pushers, but Hank insisted he didn’t want the goddamn responsibility anymore.

  Hank couldn’t just live the life of Riley, though. He’d blown a lot of dough on the shyster. Not to mention his goddamn kids. So he took a job in another guy’s boat shop. But that didn’t mean he was gonna toe the line. If a customer rubbed him the wrong way, he’d still blow cigar smoke right in the numbskull’s kisser. Sometimes, when his boss was out, he’d even have S-E-X right on the guy’s desk.

  At least that’s what he told Jimmy and what Jimmy told me.

  Virginia was having a lot of S-E-X of her own. But hers was married S-E-X, which she didn’t think was as F-U-N.

  By then, Virginia was living with Wayne in military housing in North Carolina. She called home whenever Shirley sent her a few extra bucks. If we were lucky, she called when Jimmy was gone.

  “Wayne wants a bunch of brats,” she groaned to me over the phone.

  “It’s ’cause he’s Catholic,” I said, being an expert on that subject.

  “I keep tellin’ him we oughta live a little first. I’ve never even seen the Stones, for cripes’ sake.”

  “Wayne hates the Stones. He’s never gonna take you to see ’em.”

  “I could go by myself.”

  “Fat chance.”

  “Well, I’m not havin’ a kid. I’m just not.”

  She lowered her voice, even though Wayne wasn’t there. He was off training to kill some gooks, or so he said.

  “I’m on the pill. He doesn’t know. Keep it on a stone wall. Don’t tell Mom and Dad.”

  “I don’t tell them anything, dummkopf.”

  But by the next phone call, a few months later, Virginia had totally changed her tune. She’d gone off the pill, and was learning to cook and was trying to be a better wife. If Wayne went to Vietnam and got killed, she said, she’d never forgive herself for not trying harder to make him happy.

  “I owe him a kid. And, anyway, what else have I got to do?”

  “You could do a lot of things.”

  “Like what. Waitressing? Whoopee-do.”

  “You could become a stewardess. That way, you could fly back here all the time.”

  “I’m too short. And my nose is too big.”

  “Your nose isn’t big. Daddy’s is.”

  “I got his stupid nose. You didn’t. Thank your lucky stars.”

  I didn’t know what to say about that, so I changed the subject.

  “So what did you make Wayne for breakfast this morning?” I asked her.

  Wayne ate like a horse and Virginia was always entertaining me with stories of his food consumption.

  “A dozen eggs, a pound of bacon, and half a loaf of toast.”

  “You married Godzilla!” I squealed.

  “No, I married a marine,” she replied.

  A short while later, in the summer of 1969, Virginia came to Old Orchard Beach to see the family. Wayne was still training to go to Vietnam and couldn’t come with her. We were up in Maine for Shirley’s two-week vacation from the sunglass factory and were staying in the same apartment where I’d had my first taste of lobster. Jimmy’s declaration of love for the place was still written above the door, though by now it was pretty faded.

  I was trying to talk Virginia into going back on the pill.

  “A kid’s a ball and chain,” I said. “Like in that Janis Joplin song.”

  “I hate Janis Joplin,” Virginia scowled. “She sounds like a hyena.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. We had always loved the same music.

  “Wayne’s brainwashing you!” I shouted. “Next thing I know you’re gonna be bad-mouthing hippies.”

  “Well, somebody’s gotta go fight for our freedoms and it sure ain’t gonna be the hippies.”

  “I suppose you don’t believe in smoking pot anymore either.”

  Her face lit up. “You got pot?”

  Oh yeah, I had pot. Bruce, the lobster poacher who had put together our bunk beds while zonked out on glue had moved up in the world and was now a pot dealer. He had shown up a few days before with a stack of dough and a mountain of grass, both of which he had laid out on our kitchen table. He was trying to entice Jimmy into going into the pot business with him.

  “All this could be yours,” he said, waving his hand over the drugs and dough like he was Monty Hall on Let’s Make a Deal.

  “Forget it,” Jimmy replied. “I don’t want no part of nothing the goddamn hippies do. Besides, I tried that crap before those longhairs were in diapers and it don’t give you a buzz like booze.”

  “Try this stuff,” Bruce insisted. “It’s strong, King Kong strong. They use a special, top-secret-type fertilizer.”

  “Don’t tell me about goddamn fertilizer, OK? I know how to grow a lawn greener than you, greenhorn.”

  “Maybe you’re too scared to get high,” needled Bruce, lighting up a joint. “Maybe you’re an old geezer now like your pal Hank and you’re more chicken than rooster.”

  “I’ll show you who’s chicken. I’ll bust your skull open and eat your Kentucky Fried brain on a spit.”

  “Take it easy, Jimmy,” Bruce laughed. “I don’t want to fight. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

  “OK, lover boy, I’ll show you. Gimme a goddamn puff,” Jimmy barked.

  Bruce passed the joint to Jimmy.

  “Hold it in till your lungs feel like they’re gonna explode,” coached Bruce.

  Jimmy had no trouble doing that since that’s how he puffed cancer sticks, dragging deep, sucking down every wisp of smelly smoke.

  Jimmy passed the joint to Shirley. I could tell she was scared. Scared that she’d do it wrong and scared Jimmy would yell at her for doing it wrong and scared of what it might do to her. She took a drag and had a coughing fit.

  “What a greenhorn,” Jimmy crowed. “Pass it back to Bruce. You’re burning up dough. That wacky tobaccy ain’t cheap.”

  “Can I try it?” I asked, pretending I was a greenhorn too.

  “Are you kidding? You’re still a pip-squeak.”

  “You got me drunk when I was ten.”

  “You got her drunk?” croaked Shirley.

  “I gave her a taste. Is it my fault she can’t hold her liquor? Besides, booze’ll never hurt you. In Greece that’s what they give babies for medicine.”

  “She’s fifteen. Let her have a toke,” said Bruce.

  “Butt out, hophead,” said Jimmy. “Her brain cells are still developing. You’d know that if you read a book once in a while.”

  “I don’t have time to read,” said Bruce, spitting a mouthful of Pepsi on the pot so it would look darker and sell for more dough. “I’m a businessman now. I got a complicated operation to run.”

  “Yeah, you’re such a big shot I oughta give you a big shot in your big fat head,” said Jimmy, getting up to make another highball.

  Bruce winked at me and slipped me a big fat joint.

  I saved it to share with Virginia when she came up.

  Bruce was right. It was strong, King Kong strong.

  Virginia
and I laughed our heads off and got so hungry we could’ve outeaten Wayne. There wasn’t much food in the fridge—no bologna, not even any bread. We made sandwiches using slices of American cheese as bread. We spread mustard on the cheese and used pickles as the filling. They were the best sandwiches we had ever eaten.

  We turned on the TV and watched men walk on the moon and felt like we were flying high right up there with them.

  The next day, Virginia had changed her mind about everything.

  “I’m going back on that pill,” she said. “I don’t give a flying you-know-what what Wayne says.”

  “Thank God,” I said. “I thought I’d lost you to the pod people.”

  “I wish we could go to Woodstock,” she said.

  “Let’s do it. Let’s run away,” I squealed.

  “Sure, dummkopf, we’d get about as far as you and Tina did,” she said.

  Virginia went back to Wayne. She went back on the pill, but not fast enough. She found out she had a bun in the oven right before she found out Wayne had his orders for Vietnam.

  The day she told me, she cried like a baby.

  I wasn’t sure if she was crying because Wayne was going to Vietnam or because she had a bun in the oven. I don’t think she was sure either.

  Sickening

  Virginia moved back to Manchester when Wayne went off to Vietnam. She rented an apartment with money YaYa gave her. The apartment was on the top floor of a dirty-white triple-decker. The floors sloped so bad that if you dropped a jawbreaker it would roll from one side of the room to the other. There was a porch that had been a big selling point before Virginia rented the place, but once she signed on the dotted line the landlord said he wouldn’t use it if he were her and claimed no liability if she used it anyway and it collapsed.

  But Virginia loved the place. It was the first time she’d ever lived on her own. She scrubbed every inch of the apartment and decorated it with stuff she found at a North End thrift shop. She made curtains out of somebody’s old tablecloth, and tablecloths out of old curtains, and everything looked cool, like in a magazine. Once in a while, when she was puking her guts out, she remembered that a kid was growing inside her and that her private paradise wouldn’t be private very long. But usually she just tried to forget about that part.

  She got a black cat from an animal shelter even though black cats were supposed to be bad luck. She told Jimmy the people at the shelter had screwed up and said the cat was a boy when it was really a girl. She told Jimmy the cat’s name was Cyn, short for Cynthia, but it was really Sin.

  Jimmy hated Sin and Sin hated him.

  Several times a week Jimmy would stop by the crooked apartment to check on Virginia and make sure she was dressing like a Greek crone, not like a hippie or a whore. Sin would hiss at him and Jimmy threatened to shoot her right between the eyes. Virginia said the cat was a sweetheart with everyone else, so it must be something about him. She said maybe he reminded Sin of someone who had once tortured her.

  But it turned out Sin was temperamental because she was in the family way just like Virginia. She soon gave birth to a whole litter of little black girl kittens. Jimmy vowed to drown them all in the Merrimack River, but I didn’t think he was serious. After all, he was crazy about cats. On the other hand, he was just plain crazy, so who could say? Fortunately, Virginia found homes for all the girl kittens so we never had to find out if Jimmy meant business.

  Around this time, Susan also got herself a cat. She named him Hank ’cause he was a little wild and a little crazy. She returned to medical school with the cat, determined to become a doctor once and for all. But she still felt lousy and the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

  Finally, Susan figured it out herself.

  “She’s only half a doctor, but she knows more than those half-wits,” Jimmy told me. He said Susan had something called lupus. I asked what it was and he said it was a disease where the body went berserk and attacked itself like in a horror movie.

  “So, she’s dying?” I blurted out, miserable.

  “Nah, she’s not kicking the bucket. They got stuff they can give her. But there ain’t no cure.”

  “Could I catch it? Like if she hugs me?” I asked, feeling my chest constricting.

  “Don’t be a numbskull. It’s not a goddamn virus. You get it or you don’t and they don’t know why. It’s the luck of the draw.”

  Susan had gotten Norris Luck. Maybe she had caught it from me?

  After that, she had to leave medical school again. She returned to New Hampshire to try to get better. I didn’t see how being around mean ole Hank could make anybody feel better, but I knew better than to say that.

  Jimmy started to think he was sick again, too. He got the Yankee doctor to check him out for lupus. Then, MS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and his old standby, the Big C.

  Jimmy’s headshrinker kept insisting Jimmy’s aches and pains were all in his head, so Jimmy finally said “frick you” and quit seeing her. On the drive back home after his last visit, he was elated. He said the headshrinker was probably a dyke anyway, since she wasn’t married, and a dyke couldn’t tell him anything about being a man. He told me I could be his headshrinker from then on ’cause the only thing headshrinkers did was listen and nod while they were picking your goddamn pocket and I could do the listening and nodding just fine and save him some dough in the process.

  “Hell, you know me a helluva lot better than that goddamn dyke. And you’re a whole lot sharper too. I been wasting my time with that numbskull. So, whaddaya say, Doc?”

  He laughed and threw his arm around me.

  I can do it, I suddenly thought. I can make him better. I’m the only one who can. It’s all up to me.

  For the next few weeks, Jimmy acted like I was his best buddy. He told me his troubles, which I mostly knew already—everyone was out to get him and life sucked—and I told him he was smarter than Einstein, tougher than Dempsey, and the best duck hunter on the planet. I said he could even be a great trumpet player if he picked it up again.

  I buttered him up like a piece of burnt toast.

  “You’re the best goddamn medicine,” he said. “Better than goddamn Librium.”

  He said he only needed someone like me to believe in him to be the man he always wanted to be.

  And I believed him.

  Until the man he really was showed up again.

  We were at the movies. It was a picture Jimmy had been dying to see, called Take the Money and Run. Jimmy had been crazy about Woody Allen for years. He was always corralling me to watch Woody do his comedy act on every talk show he was on.

  “Pay attention,” he said, half-joking, as the lights went down. “You might learn somethin’.”

  The movie grabbed me right away. Woody played a guy who wanted to be a musician but stank at it and became a petty criminal instead. Jimmy and I both cracked up through the whole thing.

  After it was over, I felt giddy. I threw my arms around Jimmy. It felt great that I had a father who took me to such a cool movie.

  In the lobby, Jimmy puffed on a cancer stick and checked out the movie’s poster.

  “He’s a goddamn genius, like Chaplin,” he said.

  “The part where he wrote ‘gub’ instead of gun on his holdup note, that was a riot,” I added, still laughing about it.

  “Woody Allen’s a four-eyed Jew who couldn’t fire a gun if his life depended on it,” Jimmy said, so loud other people turned around and glared.

  I stopped laughing.

  “But mark my word, that little kike’s goin’ far.”

  I turned red and wished that I could go far—far away—or better yet, he could.

  Lucky So-And-So

  Virginia turned twenty-one and soon after gave birth to a boy. When she went into labor, Wayne was still in Vietnam and Shirley and YaYa had to work and everybody said I was too young to be there, so Virginia was all by herself at the hospital. But the kid popped out like nothing after only three hours. The doctor said he was
surprised since Virginia was so petite. He thought he’d have trouble yanking it out. He said she was one lucky lady.

  “Figures,” sulked Virginia in her hospital bed. “It’s the only thing in my stupid life that’s ever come easy.”

  She named the kid Dustin, after Dustin Hoffman, because she had a crush on Hoffman like I did and because she’d never heard of anybody else with that name. She figured at least her kid would be special his whole life in some way.

  They sent her home from the hospital with a baby blanket and a box of diapers.

  “Well, you did it. You had a brat, you screwed up your life,” said Jimmy when he saw his first grandchild. “Congratulations, dummkopf. At least it wasn’t a girl.”

  He said Dustin was a stupid name and insisted on calling him Dunce-tin.

  Virginia cried for weeks after having that baby.

  Between crying jags she wrote Wayne ten-page letters telling him how happy she was and how coochie-coo cute his baby was because every day someone or something reminded her that Wayne could be blown up at any second and her last letter might be the last good thing he ever saw.

  Like Virginia, Dustin cried all the time. After a few weeks of Dustin's blubbering, Virgina got so sick of it she gave his bassinet a shove. She didn’t mean to do it so hard, she really didn’t. The bassinet went sailing down that slanted floor like a bullet. I caught it right before it smashed into the wall. Virginia and I were horrified, but Dustin just started giggling. Virginia learned he had a little daredevil streak just like her and fell in love with him right then and there and vowed to try to be a good mother even though she wasn’t sure what that meant or how to do it.

  Before long Dustin was sleeping through the night, with Sin curled up next to him licking him like he was one of her long-lost kittens.

  Virginia continued to write to Wayne all the time and noticed a big change in his letters. He no longer knew what he was doing over there or what he was fighting for. He’d sailed on a river of blood and now he wanted to jump ship. He finally decided war, all war, was wrong and asked to be reclassified as a conscientious objector. Wayne’s change of heart didn’t go over too well with his superiors. They didn’t believe that people could change their hearts or their minds. They made him stick it out.