The In-Betweener

by Ralph Fletcher

  “I’m hungry,” Tommy said. “What’s for lunch?”

  Mom glanced over at Lainie. “There’s bologna. Can you make some sandwiches?”

  Lainie sighed. “Okay.”

  After we finished eating I ventured back into the living room to sneak a look at Mom. Her face was very still. I followed one big tear as it moved slowly down her cheek. Bobby climbed onto the couch next to Mom. He tugged at her arm.

  “Don’t cry, Mommy.”

  “It’s so sad,” Mom whispered, wiping her face. “The president and his wife had two small children, just like Joey and Kathy.”

  “But it’s not really real,” Bobby tried to tell her. “It’s just a TV show.”

  Jimmy snorted with disbelief. “Of course it’s real!”

  “No, it’s not!”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Shush,” Mom told them. “I’m trying to listen.”

  Ten minutes later the phone rang. Steve Fishman.

  “My mom said we had to cancel the football game.” He sounded frustrated. “Because of … you know.”

  Because of President Kennedy. Who had been assassinated.

  At first that news felt like one of my not-quite-real daydreams. But seeing my mother cry reinforced the fact that something profoundly important had happened.

  Dad came home from work and sat next to Mom. For the rest of the evening they never took their eyes off the television screen.

  Today when I remember that fateful day in late November, it feels like looking through glass. Standing on this side of the glass, as an adult, I understand I was living through a historic moment that would forever change American history. (I would have a similar experience on September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center burned to the ground.) And, having lost my own brother, Bob, I can empathize with the pain suffered by the Kennedy family.

  But as a kid, standing on the other side of the glass, I was only dimly aware of the gravity of what had happened. In fifth grade I wasn’t the least bit worried about death. I just wasn’t. Death was something that happened to other people in faraway places like Dallas, Texas. I was surprised to see my mother cry, and I felt sorry for her, but I didn’t experience John F. Kennedy’s death as a personal loss. It may sound cold, but my overriding emotion at that time in my life was being bummed out that our epic football game had been canceled.

  Driving at Night

  WE VISITED GRANDMA Annie and Aunt Mary in Arlington, Massachusetts, and drove home after dinner. It wasn’t easy to squeeze everybody into the car. Lainie got the prized front seat, flanked by Dad and Mom. The middle seat overflowed with Jimmy, Tommy, and me. Plus I had the baby (Kathy) sitting on my lap. Bobby, Johnny, and Joey were jammed in the wayback, sitting cross-legged, facing backward.

  Night fell. The combination of darkness, lights, and a belly full of Grandma’s food made me drowsy. Soon the car became quiet and Mom started to sing.

  I see the moon and the moon sees me

  The moon sees somebody I’d like to see

  Shine on the moon and shine on me

  And shine on the somebody I’d like to see

  Mom wanted us to sing along with her, so we did, though I would have been just as happy to stay silent and listen to her voice. I looked out the window, and sure enough, there was a moon peeping from between the tree branches.

  Dad lit a cigarette. He opened the window a crack to let out the smoke, and in that second sleep entered the car. I could almost feel it. In my mind I pictured it as some kind of lazy snake, friendly and invisible, slithering in through the window. A moment later I felt it brush past my legs. Behind me I could hear the little kids talking with low voices.

  The moon’s following us. Look. No matter which way we turn, it’s right behind us.…

  “See the moon?” I whispered to Kathy.

  No answer. Kathy’s sweaty head had gone limp against my chest, and when I peeked around to look at her face, I saw that her eyes had closed. She was sound asleep.

  Mom continued singing, working through her favorite songs: “Moon River.” “Tammy’s in Love.” “The Wonder of You.” She didn’t have a strong voice, but she sang every word like it mattered.

  No sound from the backseat. Swiveling around, I saw that those kids were dozing too. Three more gone! The sleep serpent continued moving around the car, silent, restless. One by one, every kid fell under the spell. I wondered who would be its next victim.

  On the other side of the car I saw Jimmy leaning against the door, motionless. Then I realized that Mom had stopped singing—she was dozing too.

  Dad and I were the last ones still awake.

  The only noise I could hear was breathing, soft and regular, like a lullaby you might hear someone singing in the distance. That sound came from every corner of the car. The car seemed to be filling up with a sweet mist, which I thought must have been baby dreams and little kid dreams and mother dreams all mixed together. A mighty yawn tried to rise up from deep in my throat, and it took all my strength to swallow it down.

  Dad snapped on the radio.

  “Is the Red Sox game on?” I asked, piping up so he’d know I was still awake.

  “I think so,” he said. “But I’ll keep it turned down low—go ahead and sleep.”

  “I’m not tired,” I said, which wasn’t entirely true.

  Dad turned the dial. Moments later we heard the familiar voice of Curt Gowdy, the Red Sox announcer. His rich voice spilled into the dark interior of the car.

  “The game is tied, four–four. Tony Conigliaro steps to the plate.”

  Reaching back, my father handed me a piece of gum, which I took and popped into my mouth. That gum felt like a secret treat, something he could only give me because the other kids were sleeping. Chewing, I got that first flush of pure sweetness.

  “I hope Tony smacks one,” I said, using a quiet voice.

  Dad nodded. “We could use a big hit right about now.”

  We faced straight ahead—my father in the front seat, me sitting behind—peering out into the night. Dad was the driver, so sleep wasn’t an option for him. He absolutely had to stay awake. He was Ralph Joseph Fletcher, but I was Ralph Joseph Fletcher, Jr. As his oldest son, I decided it was my job to keep him awake, and I took that job seriously. I was determined to help him resist that sleep snake until we made it safely home.

  Smoking

  SMOKING IS BAD news. Everybody knows that now, but when I was growing up people had a different attitude about it. Almost everybody smoked, and cigarette ads were all over the media. We watched TV commercials for Kent, Kool, Marlboro, and Lucky Strike. We hummed along to catchy jingles on the radio: Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.…

  Both my parents smoked Pall Mall regulars, unfiltered. Our house was filled with a thin gray haze. That was the atmosphere in which we lived and breathed, not bad or good, just there, like the nonstop sound of jabbering kids, or the ever-present smell of food cooking in the kitchen.

  During art class, in school, every student had to make a papier-mâché ashtray. After the material dried and hardened, I carefully painted mine, wrapped it, and proudly presented it to Mom on her birthday. When my mother opened her present, she grinned and hugged me tightly against her blouse (which smelled like smoke).

  Mom often smoked a cigarette while cleaning up the kitchen, but she especially liked to smoke while talking on the phone. When the phone rang, she’d pick it up—“Hi, Paulie!”—and cradle it between her shoulder and cheek, freeing her hands to unsheathe a cigarette. Surrounded by babies, toddlers, noisy kids, piles of laundry, and dirty dishes, my mother would talk and smoke, her eyes closed, leaning back against the wall. At those moments I imagined that the telephone cord and the smoke coiled together to form an umbilical cord, a lifeline that transported her to another, calmer world, at least for a little while.

  Dad smoked almost everywhere: in the bathroom, in the car, and at the kitchen table after finishing a meal. I loved to watch him light his cigarette at th
e beach. He had a particular way of cupping a lit match against the wind as he brought it to the unlit cigarette held firmly between his lips. I thought his face never seemed so fierce, so concentrated and alive as it did when he lit a cigarette.

  My father didn’t stop smoking until he was almost sixty. We were proud of him for quitting, though by then the damage was already done. Fifteen years later he was diagnosed with lung disease.

  “The chickens have come home to roost,” he told me ruefully. “I should have never started smoking in the first place.”

  The Language of Laughter

  TOMMY AND BOBBY were goofing around on the back porch. Sitting at the kitchen table, I could hear their voices through the window screen. That noise was plenty distracting, but the kitchen felt stuffy and I didn’t want to stop the cool breeze coming through the screen, so I left the window open and tried to block out their silly jibber-jabber. They were singing a made-up song:

  Daisy, Daisy,

  Long before the fashions came

  With her head cut off and her belly too

  She looked so much like a moooo …

  That stupid song cracked them up when they sang it, every time. I tried with all my might to ignore them until suddenly they got seized by a fit of helpless laughter. They couldn’t stop laughing, and didn’t want to, either.

  Was it really that funny? No, but for some fool reason my brothers found it hysterical. Then the sound changed. All at once my brothers stopped using words but continued “talking” using nothing but laughter. I made one last desperate attempt to concentrate on my homework until I felt my mouth twist into a reluctant grin.

  So finally I put down my pencil and surrendered. I closed my eyes and just let the sound of their laughter wash over me. And you know what? It was like hearing any other noise from nature, like a couple of songbirds calling back and forth at twilight, or a wave thumping a beach followed by its echo. My brothers hooted and cackled, first one and then the other, back and forth, back and forth, just like they were having a regular conversation. Honestly, it sounded like they were trading whole sentences of laughter. I wondered how you would diagram that kind of sentence, or if you ever could. It hit me that their laughter could be its own language like French or Spanish, one with its own rules and grammar and paragraphs and words … a secret language between blood brothers … and only they knew exactly what it meant.

  Hearing them made me smile, but I felt a little wistful too. I was eager to grow up, to climb the ladder from childhood to adulthood. But some part of me wished I could join in my brothers’ laughter, or return to a simpler time in my life when there was nothing better than spending an hour being silly like that.

  All-Chocolate Necco Wafers

  EVERY SUNDAY FOR weeks I stowed the two rolls of all-chocolate Necco Wafers in my lunch box. I wanted to show them to Gwen, but she still hadn’t returned to Sunday school.

  “Do you have any news about Gwen?” I asked Mrs. Wrenham.

  She shook her head. “Sorry, I really don’t.”

  One of the girls in my class also knew Gwen. She said she had heard vague rumors, an illness of some sort, but she didn’t have any hard information.

  Then, a week after school ended, Mom motioned me into the kitchen.

  “Did you know a girl named Gwen Givvens? Was she in your Sunday school class?”

  “Yeah, why?” And why did she say Did instead of Do you know her? “What’s going on?”

  “Well … she died.”

  I froze. “Died?”

  “Yes. It was in the newspaper. She had a brain tumor. That’s very, very rare, but…” She studied my face. “Did you know her well? Was she a friend of yours?”

  “No, not really.” But I felt a pang of disloyalty in saying that. “Well, yeah, in a way. Sort of.”

  “Are you all right, Ralph?”

  “Yeah.” Though right then I couldn’t make myself breathe.

  “We can go to the funeral. I’d be happy to take you.”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s okay.”

  Not sure what to do with myself, I wandered through Ale’s Woods. I found myself standing by the tallest tree there, an immense pine. On a whim I started climbing, and didn’t stop till I’d made it all the way to the top. It was always a great feeling to be up high, high enough to gaze down at the treetops, though today I couldn’t enjoy the view.

  I thought about Gwen. I wasn’t close to her like I was with Andy, Steve, and Freddy. There were several girls in school I felt closer to. But, still. I remembered the last time I saw her, when I said she looked nice in her red dress. I pictured her shy smile, the way her eyes crinkled when she looked at me. I wished I’d known that would be the last time I’d ever see her.

  * * *

  The news about Gwen hit me hard, but I couldn’t grieve. I didn’t know how. The sadness stayed buried in a place deep inside me, remote and inaccessible.

  A week later I bought a goldfish at a church fair. Honestly, I didn’t even want a fish for a pet until I spotted those pathetic little creatures trying to swim in cramped, tightly sealed plastic bags. I felt so sorry for those fish I wanted to buy them all, but Mom told me to pick one, so that’s what I did. The man gave me a sheet of instructions for taking care of my fish. I followed those instructions to the letter, but the next morning I found my fish floating on the surface of the water, lifeless.

  Dad gave my shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. “Too bad.”

  “Yeah.” I felt dazed. “It happened so fast, I mean, I didn’t even get around to naming the little critter. So … what should I do with it now?”

  He cleared his throat. “Well, the traditional burial for a goldfish is flushing it down the toilet.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve got a better idea.”

  I wrapped the goldfish in a napkin and took it to the woods. I walked farther than I usually did. This time I went all the way to the Unexplored Territory, a place I’d never gone before.

  I found a stream with lots of young white birches on both sides. Very peaceful. I dug a hole about six inches deep and placed the goldfish inside. But the moment I started to cover it with dirt, an idea popped into my head. I sprang up and ran all the way back to the house. In the top drawer of my dresser I dug out the two rolls of chocolate Neccos I’d been saving. I brought them back to the hole and placed them on either side of the goldfish.

  I’d come to bury my dead goldfish, so why was Gwen Givvens the only thing I could think about? This felt way different from when President Kennedy got killed, way different. Gwen was the first person I’d actually known who had died. True, she wasn’t exactly a friend, but she had gone out of her way to be nice to me. It felt horribly cruel and unfair that a sweet kid like her should get such a rotten deal.

  I stared down at the rolls of candy. Necco Wafers had been our bond, a private joke between us. I remembered the day we told each other that chocolate wafers were our favorite. Nobody would have appreciated these rolls of chocolate Neccos more than Gwen. Nobody.

  As I stared at the candy something shifted in my gut—a gush of tears started spilling out. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to prepare myself. I cried. I sobbed so hard my vision blurred and I couldn’t see the goldfish or those rolls of Neccos or anything else in the world. In one way it was a relief, to finally let out my feelings. I felt glad to be in a far part of the woods with my own thoughts and tears as I crouched over that tiny grave.

  Bird’s Nest

  A CATBIRD RETURNED to our house every spring. We knew it was the same one by the peculiar notch in its tail feathers. It had a regal look, a queenly bird with smooth gray feathers until the sun hit them and you saw a cool streak of blue.

  Every year she (Dad insisted it was a female) built a nest on the cherry tree in our backyard. A few weeks later the male would show up. Those catbirds were a sign of spring, and everyone looked forward to their arrival. It made me feel special, or honored, that these beautiful creatures chose to spend the summer at
our house.

  One morning I watched the catbird fly to the tree with a strand of grass in its beak. I kept my distance to avoid spooking it. Mom, Jimmy, and Joey came outside and stood beside me, watching.

  “What’s she doing?” Joey wondered aloud.

  Mom smiled. “Making a cozy nest where she can lay her eggs.”

  “What’s inside the eggs?” Joey asked innocently.

  “Chocolate,” Jimmy told him.

  Joey’s face lit up. “Really?”

  Mom shot Jimmy a disapproving look. “Not chocolate. Chicks. That’s what they call baby birds. She has to make a safe place for them to live and grow until they’re strong enough to fly.” She rubbed the top of Joey’s head. “All moms do that.”

  * * *

  The following year we waited and waited for the catbird, but it didn’t show up. We started to get worried.

  “It’s getting late,” Lainie fretted. “It’s already spring. She’s running out of time!”

  I should mention that there was a “family nest” in another part of our neighborhood that wasn’t very peaceful. Months earlier, the McKenzies had moved into a house down the street. This young couple argued day and night. And they were loud! More than once I heard them yelling at each other when I walked past their house.

  “What did you just say?”

  “You heard me!”

  “I asked you a question!”

  “Why don’t you get a job?”

  Mom and Dad squabbled once in a while, but their arguments never got nasty like that. And they kept their voices low. The loud arguments between the McKenzies were shocking.

  “They’re going through a hard time,” Mom said one night at supper, “but we should give them their privacy. It’s none of our business.”