by Chip Kidd
And lucky him: he seemed to be lined with asbestos.
“Oh, that reminds me, Piggy Sutton told me a real oner in Miss Tell's today.” She poured herself more gin, coming back to life. “How many Surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?”
“I give.”
“Fish!” She was joyous.
I didn't get it. I didn't get anything. Of course I broke up anyway.
“Isn't that a panic?”
A stern voice sliced through our laughter.
“H, you're tighter than a snare drum.” Garnett, arms extended, leaned out the window and made me eight years old again, caught red-handed in Mr. McGlynn's backyard taking a whiz in the azaleas.
Hims looked at him. Her face held all the blackness of a Goya sky on the Third of May.
“If I throw a stick,” she spat, hanging her head, “will you leave?”
• • •
i v .
W I N T E R B R E A K
When we pause, amidst the Yuletide festivities, to reflect upon that which we have learned so far, and look eagerly towards what's to come.
C R E D I T S: 0
And so onto Christmas, when thoughts turned to good will towards men, the miracle of the manger, and at our house, Manhattans with six cherries as we gathered around the piano. At which point Dad, Uncle Joey, and I would carefully lift it up and struggle to move it to the other side of the den.
“See? The room's bigger already!” cheered Aunt Sophie, who saw holidays primarily as something of a Divine Mandate to get loaded and rearrange our furniture. “Just needed to get it out of the corner! Took! Where's my drink?”
“Not sure, Soph,” Mom lied. I fetched it from the piano stool and handed it to her. Mom shot me a poisonous look and went into the kitchen to finish shellacking the swollen ham with Karo syrup. Aunt Sophie drained her glass in a gulp—with Mom out of the room, the mice could play. They were sisters, and Soph was the Margaret Hamilton to Mom's Billie Burke—except that liquids didn't destroy her, they made her stronger.
“C'mon, Dom!” she said to Dad, sneaking to the bar, “just a halvsie!”
Dad was largely powerless to resist her, because she acted on every impulse he would himself have succumbed to if he thought he had permission. They refilled their drinks.
“I'm an alcofrolic, there's a difference!”
I was in a pretty good mood, for several reasons. First, I was finally allowed to drink at home, and quickly learned how to do it without ending the evening crouched over a toilet and waking up the next day in tears. Second, I was confident that I had aced my first term's finals. Third, Vermont was initiated into AGR and out of 613—bringing my restless nights in the garret to an end. The only thing missing was Himillsy. If only she could be here to expose how dopey it all was, we could get blotto and laugh at everything.
“That side table has got to go!”Aunt Sophie started to clear the faux teak wood postcolonial number that commanded the center of the den. “Dom, how many times have I told her? C'mon, let's just see what would happen if it disappeared.” That was our cue to move it to the carport. Mom would explode, but regardless (or just maybe because of), Dad and I picked it up with the gravity of pallbearers. We were halfway there when the doorbell rang. On Christmas Eve?
“Took, is that the Reardons?” shouted Aunt Sophie. “If it is, we're not here. They're shafers!” That was her term for anybody or anything unacceptable.
“What?” Mom wailed from the kitchen, “Soph! Whoever it is, c'mon in! Merry Christmas!”
I went to the door. It was a UPS worker, holding a box.
“Hi there,”
“Special delivery. Sign here, please.” I took it in.The return address read H. Dodd Industries, Inc. Guilford, Conn.
Holy shit.
Mom: “What is it dear?”
“Uh, it's a present, I think, for me.”
“Wow! Who's it from, hon?”
“A friend from school. A girl.”
She ran down the steps and into the den. “You met a girl? Why didn't you tell us? Where is she?”
“Mom, she's at home, in Connecticut. This is just something she sent me. It's not like that.”
She looked around the room, puzzled.
“Where's the end table? Soph!” Turning red. “Now that's enough! It's from Wanamakers! Dom, put it back.”
“Oh Took,” Aunt Sophie was practically speaking in tongues, “it's shafers! Look! The den's so open now. Don't you think? Live with it till New Year's. You'll thank me, you'll see . . .”
Mom, who had the whole rest of the holidays to cruise direct, said “Oh, I give up,” and went back to the kitchen.
“So, let's see what's cookin'!” Aunt Sophie eyed the box, ravenous for experience.
“Yeah!” said Uncle Joey, “Whadja get from Connecticut?”
“Um, shouldn't I wait till tomorrow?”
“Hell, we'll be at MaryBeth's. Here, let me get you another stinger.” She ran to the bar with my glass, bless her.
“Thanks.” I sat in the Barcalounger and started to unwrap it. Craft paper gave way to cardboard. I opened the flaps, and there was . . .
Baby Laveen. In swaddling clothes. With a noisemaker in his mouth made out of pages from the New Testament. He lay in a bed of at least two dozen shriveled balloons, half deflated, that said “Happy Birthday!” A halo made out of a glittercovered wire clothes hanger—anchored in his back and suspended over his head, and there were . . . stigmata on his hands and feet. He was clutching a sign that said, “No VACANCY?! I want to see the MANAGER!! Don't you know who I AM?! No, not MANGER, I said—”
I closed it up, pronto.
“Well, what is it? Here.” She handed me my glass.
“Thanks. Actually . . . it's not a present. Just some books I needed, for winter break. Nothing special.” I got up to take it to my room, my heart warm with the meaning of Christmas.
“Books? That's shafers!”
• • •
The Diner: second week of January. Our booth and God it was great to see her again. I checked my impulse to say something sappy and lifted Savior Laveen from his manger box with care. Hims had put in a note saying that he was strictly on loan to bring holiday cheer, and come the new term he was to ascend back into her realm. I was flattered to be entrusted with such a cosmic responsibility.
“So well behaved,” I remarked, returning Him to her arms. “Fixed Grandma's eyesight, made her walk again. Wouldn't take a dime.”
She giggled. “What did Mam· make of him?”
“You kidding? Thank God I opened it first.”
“I should have addressed it to her.”
“How did you know where to send it?”
“Information, natch. I hope you held Him high when Tiberius did the head count.”
“Wanted to, but the Wiseguys showed up a week late and hogged all his time. So pushy.” Yuckety yuck.“So what's on the agenda this term?” Classes started in five days.
“Oh, who cares? Art History 425, probably— Cathedrals. Fourth-level French. Quoits. The usual.”
“No studio classes?” Not taking something with her was just beyond bearing.
“Sure. We'll see.”
During a frigid Sunday afternoon stroll that weekend down the Mall (the main thoroughfare on campus, lined with a hallway of oaks that ran from the town line up to the library), Hims pushed Baby Laveen in the magnificent stainless steel streamlined art deco stroller she'd found at the Salvation Army for three dollars. I followed alongside and couldn't help but grin—our happy little family. “Hey, watch this!” she suddenly whispered, as a woman approached from about forty feet away. Hims stopped and leaned down to Baby Laveen.
“Smile, darling!” she sang to her charge. The woman, charmed, continued towards us.
“Come on, my little cheese monkey. A smile for Mummy!” she pinched his tiny polymer cheek. Footsteps, louder.
“I said SMILE!” She stood up and gave the stroller a mighty kick. The wheels rattled
with a steely clang as it spun away in a forty-five-degree pivot and knocked into the heavily initialed trunk of one of the trees. The woman, shaken, pulled up her coat collar around her gaping mouth and rushed past. Hims turned to me and announced, with the brightness of an H-bomb,
“Look, honey, he's smiling!”
• • •
Maybelle begged me to register for spring classes with her and I couldn't think of a tactful way to say no. Determined to learn from our Dantean experience of the fall, I said to meet me at eight, southwest corner of the Burser's. Foiled: so did everyone else. Found her by eight-thirty.
The same turmoil as last time, only colder outside. Was Hims among the throng? Didn't see her. Two hours later, in the Burser's with only three more kids ahead of us, a familiar voice rose from the discord.
“Darleeeengs! Woo-hoo!!” Himillsy parted the agitated multitude like Moses and sidled up to us, leaving a wake of angry, angry stares.
“One side! Whew! What a rhubarb! Am I too late?”
Amazing: I conjured her.
“Just in time, sugar!” Maybelle hollered. “We're just about to go!” She prodded me. “I think he should do it for all of us, he's so good!”
“Swell!”
We devised a strategy of choices, and in ten minutes, it was our turn.
Behind the Registrar's window #6 sat a jowlish brunette in her late forties with a jones for Mary-Janes and hairpins. “Audry” was stenciled on her nametag. Not easy on the eyes—compared to Audry, Nikita Khrushchev was an airline hostess. At least she didn't tell us we were in the wrong line. Maybelle and Hims handed me their registration sheets, filled out sans Art classes. We got through all of the nonelectives, then,
“Alright, Studio requirements.”
“Great.”
Hims egged me on. “Hit one into the bleachers, slugger.”
I leaned into the slotted circular aluminum opening. “Drawing two-oh-one, please. For three.” She riffled her papers.
“Filled, dear.” Rats. I opened the catalog.
“Two-oh-two?”
“Same.”
Scanning a page. “How about Painting One-oh-three?”
“Sorry.”
“Color Theory?”
“ 'Fraid not.”
Flipflipflip.“Intro to Life Drawing?”
“Umm. No.”
Shit. I pulled out my emergency list—scrawled last night onto a Baby Ruth wrapper. “Advanced Life Drawing?”
“Let's see now . . . no, dear.”
“Death Drawing?”
“What?”
“Kidding, sorry. Intermediate Still Life?”
“Oh isn't this awful . . . no, nope.”
“Light and Landscape.”
“Just closed.”
“Perspective and—”
“Goes fast—”
“Lord love a DUCK!! WHAT'S OPEN?!” I don't, usually, ever lose my temper. Audry unwrapped a piece of the peanut taffy and poked it into her mouth.
“My, goodness. Aren't we being . . .” She licked her fingers and surveyed her papers. “Let's see . . . Oh! There's a new class they just added, not even in the catalog. New teacher, too. A Miss . . . Sorbeck. Art One-twenty-seven: Introduction to Commercial Art.”
Hims sneered. “Sign painting? Forget it.”
“You find an alternative,” I said. She rustled through her bag and pulled out her compact, pretending she didn't hear me—giving in and saving face.
“Sounds good, I think,” said Maybelle. “Couldn't hurt to have a few practical skills, right?”
“Three slots?” I asked Audry.
“Yep, just.”
“Sign us up.”
• • •
S P R I N G S E M E S T E R
1 9 5 8
i .
A R T 1 2 7. I N T R O D U C T I O N
T O C O M M E R C I A L A R T.
INSTR.: PROF. W. SORBECK , B FA
Tues. & Thurs. , 2 : 25 p. m.
R O O M 2 0 7, B A X T E R B L D G.
(F O R M E R L Y W E X L E R S C I E N C E H A L L)
DESCR : A fundamental exploration
of the applied arts.
C R E D I T S: 3
I got there at quarter past two. A dozen or so kids dotted the benches and floor in the hall facing the classroom—I recognized Treat Dempsey and two other guys from North Halls. Himillsy was seated, her shiny black helmet of hair and raccoon mascara glowering over a sundress she'd made in Textiles 202. The fabric was covered with a pattern of oranges and bananas that would have seemed perfectly benign on anyone else. She was talking to a very tall boyish man with terrible skin. The door to 207 wasn't locked, but a sign, ink on horizontal notebook paper, was taped to it:
INTRODUCTION TO GRAPHIC DESIGN
Formerly mislabeled
INTRODUCTION TO COMMERCIAL ART
ENTER THE CLASSROOM AT EXACTLY
2:25 P.M. —WS
“I think you should go in.”
Hims was smirking, sunbeam bright. I recognized the look and prepared myself—it was the sort of smile that made you check your fly. Suddenly she was nudging me to the door, giddy with girlish urgency—I was Rin Tin Tin and she lay pinned under a tree. “Go on, hurry! Don't think about me! Run! Save yourself!”
I resisted, with success. “Rage before beauty . . .” I held one arm to my chest and extended the other towards the door. She returned a howl of delighted disapproval and slid over to make space for me on the bench.
“This is Mike,” she gestured vaguely to the beanpole, who, now that I was seated, seemed even longer and lankier. Mike Crenck was ancient— maybe even thirty. As he nodded my way and made a small noise, the expression on his face made me want to say “Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you.” His hair was sandy colored, in a shade which reminded you that sand was also dirt.
“What are y'all waiting for?” Maybelle was at the far end of the hallway, lugging her burden of paints, pencils, rulers, and drawing tools— charging towards us with epic resolve. Only Mabes could turn walking down the hall into Lee's campaign at Gettysburg.
“For you. Go on in.” Mills was swinging her legs.
Maybelle ignored her and read the sign. “Well. Miss Sorbeck is very specific, isn't she?”
“Probably moonlights as a Swiss cuckoo,” said Hims, as she tortured a paper clip.
I sighed and leaned against the wall. What a bore this was going to be, like every other class at State. At least I talked Mills into taking it. She'd liven it up.
At twenty-five after, we made our listless way into 207 and found seats. A minute or two of silence.
Then, from behind us:
“That was lousy. Do it again.”
It is beyond my powers to tell you what that voice really sounded like. But I can tell you what it did. I can say it pinned me like a Monarch to its specimen box and made me squint. It turned the air into a hot solid. Wait—that's not good enough—it . . . was a wave you thought you could ride, until you did, and came up bloody. I can tell you it was the sound of Ultimate Discontent—the voice that, after a long life of committing horrible crimes, you could expect to hear just after you died.
I turned, opened my eyes.
There, leaning against the back wall, was Gary Cooper's fraternal twin (High Noon-era) in a white dress shirt and loosened rep tie, gray flannel trousers, and a pipe driven into his clenched teeth.
But I bet Gary never forgave him because between the two this guy got all the looks— which were now on the other side of Stellar—but not far. He was big. Not fat, not at all. Big. Like a cliff you were just pushed from.
To look at him was to disappoint him.
“I said. Do it. Again.”
And boy, did we ever.
We rose with a collective jolt, filed out into the hallway, and exchanged puzzled glances. What to do next?
“There must be some mistake,” offered Maybelle. “He must think we're here for something else. Maybe he's not the right teacher at al
l. Once at Miss Cress's I spent an entire term in Pillows when I was supposed to be in Napkins. I almost didn't graduate. It was just crazy.”
Treat and the two he came with were heading down the hall for the stairwell. I called to him.
“Where're you guys going?”
He turned. “To see if we can still audit Psych One-ten.” Then he shot a wild-eyed face to the door of 207 and they were gone.
Hims was jubilant—fortified by the weirdness and confusion. “Love it! Kicked out already and we didn't even do anything. Let's go back in!”
“But we did it wrong somehow last time.” Maybelle bit her lip. “What did he mean?”
“He means do it with some style,” said Mills. “Go in like . . . oh . . . Isadora Duncan.”
“Who?”
“Jesus. Agnes de Mille, then.”
“I don't—”
“Like a dancer in Oklahoma. Go ahead. Kick up your heels. He'll love it. We'll be right behind you.”
“Are you sure?” She pondered it. “I loved Oklahoma, saw it three times. They had such spirit, those poor people. Do you think . . . ?”
“Absolutely. He wants theater. I'm going to be Blind Pew from Treasure Island. I'll use my ruler as a tapping stick. Be fun!” She turned to me. “What are you going to be?”
In eternally horrified thrall to you, alas. “I'm still deciding.” Everyone else had started to go back in, some with a little more enthusiasm than before. Maybelle bounded into the room, clicked her heels, and shouted, “Yeeeehah!!”
Sorbeck was stone-faced. Himillsy followed her up and gave him a very desperate, apologetic glance. I was next, and before I sat down, something came over me and I pivoted, clicked my heels together, and did a slow, courtly bow.