Ed looks puzzled, unsure if Lenny is joking.
“No, really.”
Ed laughs.
“He looked funny,” Lenny says.
“I bet. Humpty Dumpty in Pro-Keds.” He surveys the yard. “Now you’re going to have to do this? Man, I feel sorry for you. I once forgot to weed the lawn, and like a thousand dandelions came up almost overnight. He was so mad that he made me come out here with a flashlight and pull each one. It was a school night. I didn’t finish until like three in the morning.” He sighs. “I am so glad to be getting the hell out of here.”
He points to the lawn mower. “You try. Brace yourself with your feet, one foot on the engine. Pull with both hands in line with the cord. Not up or to the side, straight out.” He opens the throttle and motions to the mower.
Lenny follows his directions and yanks the cord, and the engine sputters, but then Ed opens the throttle even more, and the engine catches, roaring. Ed nods to him and walks sleepily back into the house.
25
Lenny sees this time as the beginning of the end of his parents’ marriage. A confluence of factors, including his mother’s surgery, Grandma’s truncated visit, Ed’s leaving for California, and, most important, her finding a job, all push her to leave his father. And this only heightens the tension between them.
The job comes easily. His mother applies for a slew of secretarial positions, and one of her first interviews is with a real estate broker, who hires her on the spot. She comes home after the interview, flushed, excited, and tells Lenny that she begins her new career on Monday. “I want to celebrate,” she says. “Do you want to get ice cream? Where’s Mira?”
“Out with her friend Stacy.”
Friendly’s restaurant is in Bellmore, less than a mile away from her old candy store, and they sit in a booth near the front; his mother eats a small bowl of ice cream while Lenny has a junior sundae. She explains her job—secretary and office manager—and says with excitement that her boss suggested that she study for the Real Estate Broker exam, taking night classes, because eventually he will be expanding.
“He said my speaking Korean will help expand the business. It’s a new career for me.”
Lenny nods his head, beginning to feel ill from too much ice cream. “Is Dad getting a new job?”
“He’s trying. He thinks he deserves a bigger job, a higher position, but no one else thinks that.”
“He’s drinking more.”
She doesn’t reply.
“He’s making me do all the yardwork.”
“I know.”
“Why is he like this?”
She says, “He used to be worse. Do you know that while I was pregnant with you we had a fight and he kept kicking me in the stomach?”
“With me there?”
“Yes. I was so scared for you. And when you were born with the cleft palate and so sickly, I always wondered.”
Lenny makes a mental note to research this at the library. “Was I okay?”
“Yes, but I was so mad that I grabbed a knife and went after him.”
“Really?”
“He locked himself in the bedroom. This was in New York. I stabbed the door at least a hundred times. I went crazy. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Lenny has trouble imagining this. “Then what happened?”
“I broke the knife. But there were many, many marks in the door that reminded me of how crazy I was. I think it also scared your father.”
They fall quiet. Lenny can’t eat any more ice cream.
His mother asks how Mira likes band, which she recently joined.
“I guess okay. I don’t understand why she chose the viola.”
“She likes to be different.”
“I’ve never even heard of the viola.”
“Let’s buy Mira something for when she comes home. What would she like?”
He’s surprised that his mother doesn’t know. He says, “Chocolate ice cream is her favorite.”
When they return home he climbs up the maple tree and stays hidden when his father drives up in his Cadillac and calls out to him, no doubt wanting him to do more yard work. Lenny stays quiet, thankful that the large, green maple leaves have grown in and shield him. His father has loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves. He looks tired. He trudges into the house and calls for Lenny again.
Sal rides up on his minibike, and Lenny quickly climbs down and meets him on the street. He tells Lenny that he tried to sleep out with the crops last night, but couldn’t stay awake. “I need to do this with someone in shifts.”
“Did anyone come?”
“No footprints, and the trip wire was fine, but maybe that was because he saw me. And it got cold. Can you tell your parents that you’re sleeping over my place?”
“Yeah. I’ll call you later.”
He says, “Thanks, buddy. You’ll totally get more money for this. This is a lot to ask, I know.”
Lenny’s father opens the front door, calling him. Sal rides away, and Lenny walks back to the house.
His father asks who that was.
“A friend. I’m going to sleep over at his house tonight.”
“No.”
Lenny looks at him, puzzled. He has never cared what Lenny did with friends. “What?”
“You can’t be friends with b-bob-tong like that.”
“A what?”
“Bob-tong. Dumb.” He juts out his lower jaw, imitating Sal’s underbite. “He is also low class. You should be friends with high class people.”
“Sal’s not dumb.”
“You get different friends.”
“You don’t tell Ed who he can be friends with.”
“And look at him. You can’t go.”
“You can’t tell me what to do,” Lenny says.
“I am your father. I can make you do anything. You finish raking the leaves now.”
Lenny is so sick of him that he says, “If you want the leaves raked, do it yourself.”
His father jumps down the steps so quickly that Lenny isn’t sure what’s happening. When Lenny realizes that his father, still in his socks, is heading for him, he turns to run, but he’s too slow. His father backhands him across the face, spinning him, and he staggers back and falls to the ground. His eyes blur, a dizziness swooning him.
His father says, “Never talk back to me like that again.”
It has been almost a year since he last hit Lenny like this, and that time had been more of a hard swat on the arm, punishing him for spilling his juice all over the rug. That stung, but this feels like he had rattled loose Lenny’s brain, and he’s too stunned to cry.
“Do you understand me!” his father yells.
His mother then appears in the doorway and cries out something in Korean. When his father turns to her to tell her to shut up, Lenny gets up and runs.
Lenny waits for Sal at the crawlspace door, and when he hears the minibike he walks out from the side of his house. Sal seems puzzled, and says it’s too early to camp out.
As he approaches he peers at Lenny’s face. He hesitates, as if trying to decide to ask about it, but says, “My mom lets me bring my dinner down here. Want anything?”
Lenny is still full of ice cream and shakes his head. Sal unlocks the door to the crawlspace and tells him to wait here.
He returns with a plate of meatloaf and greenbeans, and they sit hunched over while Sal eats and Lenny leafs through one of his porn magazines. Lenny asks how Sal got these.
“Stole them. You slip it under your shirt while you buy a comic book or something. It’s real easy. You can have that one if you want. I’m sick of it.”
“Thanks.”
“You don’t have a sleeping bag or anything?”
“I didn’t have time to get it.”
“Can you sneak back to get it later?”
“Probably.”
“All right. We’ll wait until it gets dark, and then head out.” He finishes his meatloaf and throws his green beans outside. He says, “Your dad do t
hat?” He motions to Lenny’s face.
Lenny keeps looking at the magazine.
“Tommy’s father is like that. When he was younger his dad used to take a belt to his bare back to the point of bleeding. He once showed me the crazy marks. He’s got scars now.”
“Does his father still do that?”
“Tommy left home a couple years ago. He lives with his brother in Freeport.”
Sal turns on a mini black and white TV, and he watches a game show while Lenny continues reading. He finds an issue of Penthouse, and likes the letters. He becomes so engrossed that he’s surprised to see Sal preparing to leave—it’s dark out.
Sal packs a sleeping bag and some gear into a duffel bag, and they walk to Lenny’s house where he sees the lights on in the kitchen. He tells Sal to wait in the back yard while he walks in through the back door. He finds broken plates and glasses strewn throughout the kitchen. He hears his father mumbling to himself in the living room. Luckily his sleeping bag is stored in the basement, so he doesn’t have to walk by the living room. He creeps downstairs, grabs the bag, and goes into the garage to get a flashlight. He’s about to sneak back outside when his mother appears in the kitchen, asking where he’s been.
He tells her he’s sleeping over Sal’s.
She sees his face and she bites her lip. She says, “I told your father that I am divorcing him.”
This makes him pause. “Okay.”
“He was very mad.”
Lenny nods his head.
“I met Sal’s mother. She is an artist.”
“I didn’t know that.”
They’re quiet for a moment, then his mother says, “Don’t stay up too late.”
“Okay.”
“I will see you in the morning.”
“Okay.”
“You know how much I love you, right?”
“I know.”
Lenny walks out the back door. As he and Sal leave the yard, he sees his mother watching them from the kitchen window. She looks so alone and sad.
Sal and Lenny’s steps are out of sync—Sal has long shuffling strides and Lenny hurries to catch up. Lenny asks what they’re going to do if they catch someone.
He says, “Scare him.”
“How?”
He pulls out a handgun from his bag.
“Is that real?”
“It’s a BB-gun. It can’t really do more than sting, but it looks good.”
“Can I see it?”
He hands it to Lenny, the gun heavy and too large for his fingers.
Sal says, “You can’t do anything but have target practice. You can barely even kill a squirrel with it.” He takes it and shoots a garbage can. Lenny expects to hear an explosion, but it’s only a small click and the ping of the metal garbage can.
Once they reach the woods, Sal pulls out a flashlight. Lenny turns his on. Everything looks different at night. The trees and bushes crowd them, their flashlights hitting the branches and casting shadows around them.
Sal says, “It’s so quiet.”
“I can’t even tell which is the right way.”
“I know. I almost got lost last night. Just keep looking for the trail marks.”
Lenny follows Sal as he leads them through the woods and to the crops. He shines his light down onto the trip wires, which are undisturbed, and along the smooth dirt. “Looks good,” he says. “I was thinking we’d sleep over there.” He points his light to the bushes. “I cleared an area behind them.”
They kick clean the area again, and lay out their sleeping bags.
“I can take the first shift,” Sal says.
“I’m awake.”
“All right. You take the first shift. Wake me up in like two hours. Here’s the gun. If you hear anyone, wake me up.”
Sal curls up in his bag and falls asleep almost immediately. Lenny sits up, wrapping the sleeping bag around his shoulders, and listens to the crickets and the faint water sounds from the nearby stream. His cheek and temple still hurt from his father’s backhand, and he hopes for a huge bruise so his father will see it.
As he sits quietly in the woods in the middle of the night, Sal sleeping deeply, he closes his eyes and practices meditation. Some of the Kung-fu books discussed breathing techniques and how to use the flow of chi through your body, but he usually skipped those parts for the cool kicks and hand techniques, but now now he wonders if he should learn more about chi and breathing.
There’s a rustling in the nearby brush, and he opens his eyes. It sounds like a small animal. Lenny raises the gun, aims the flashlight toward the sound, and stands up slowly. The flashlight beam hits a small raccoon. It freezes, its eyes reflecting the light and blinking back at him. He aims the gun and fires. The BB pellet hits the hind leg, and the raccoon jumps, letting out a startled cry, and then scurries away. Lenny sits back down, his heart beating loudly in his ears.
He closes his eyes and tries to meditate.
26
Although Lenny is exhausted, he likes being outside. But the lack of sleep and the cold have worn him down and he’s beginning to feel sick. Sal and he didn’t hear anyone in the woods and they walk home in the morning, shivering and aching. Sal confesses that he doesn’t think he can keep doing this. He says, “This is just too fucking hard.”
The next day Lenny gets the flu. He spends two days in bed, feverish and coughing, reading about meditation. One story appeals to him, about a Shaolin monk who achieved such a deep state of meditation that he learned how to slow down his body functions, including his heart rate and breathing. He lived to be one hundred and ten years old. Lenny decides to practice this as well.
Elementary school graduation is approaching, just a simple ceremony in the main auditorium, but he doesn’t tell his parents about it. Even though they both want him to do well in school, they hardly know what’s going on. His mother checks his report cards before she signs them, but since he receives all E’s and V’s—”Excellent” and “Very Good”—she doesn’t ask him about it.
By the end of the week he recovers, but pretends to be sick in order to miss more school. His mother, busy with her new job, barely has time to prepare meals or clean the house, let alone worry about what homework assignments Lenny is neglecting. She and his father fight a couple more nights, but toward the end of the week they must have resolved something because an uneasy silence floats between them. His father drinks more, but broods quietly, and seems to have forgotten his vigilance with the yard work.
The first day back to school Lenny finds himself taking a standardized test. It’s a strange day. They are in the final week of classes, with their graduation next week, and after their usual current events session during which two students present an article to discuss, Mrs. Trilly hands out a booklet and Scantron forms. Lenny, so unused to sitting in a classroom, and definitely not ready for a test, barely pays attention to the instructions. They have to use number two pencils, mark their answers on the forms, and they have until the lunch recess bell to answer as many questions as they can.
When the tests begin, he notices that some of the other kids seem nervous. He shrugs this off and looks through the questions. Some are math-related, some are reading comprehension, others are puzzle and visual problems. They all seem stupid to Lenny, but he answers them without much effort. Some of the questions are strange, involving which shapes “fit” with which groups, or which lines and circles come next in a series. He doesn’t understand why he’s wasting his time with this.
After forty minutes, one of the students finishes early. Mrs. Trilly collects her booklet and answer sheet, and tells her she may go outside for recess early. The girl, Christina, smiles smugly at the rest of them, and heads out to the playground by their window. Some of the other kids work faster. Lenny watches Christina bouncing a red kickball by herself, waiting for them. A few others finish early, and they quickly hand their booklets and forms in, and run out.
Now everyone hurries to finish, and when Lenny looks at the remaining que
stions he’s annoyed at this inconvenience. He skims, marking off the answers randomly. He finishes the test, hands it in, and runs outside.
That night, while Lenny reads a new martial arts catalog, he hears his father tearing through the garage, tools clanking and boxes scraping the cement ground. He moves into the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets, and yells, “Where is the flashlight! I hate it when things aren’t where they’re supposed to be!”
Lenny suddenly realizes that he must have left the flashlight in the woods. He stands in his room, wondering what to do.
But then his mother returns home from work, and asks his father what’s going on.
His father replies, and the only thing Lenny understands are the curses. Lenny peers out into the living room, and sees his father pointing to the garage. He totters off-balance. He whirls around and points his finger at Lenny. “Do you know where the flashlight is?”
“No,” Lenny says.
“You are a liar. You always go through my tools.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come here.”
His mother steps forward and says something in Korean, something about her job. This distracts him. Lenny slips outside. He still feels weak from his bout with the flu, and doesn’t want to stray too far. He climbs the maple tree, and settles into his favorite nook. He hears his parents arguing in the garage, and his mother says in English, “I found a job in four days.” And then reverts to Korean.
Lenny hears her deriding tone; she’s taunting him, comparing their job searches. Lenny doesn’t like when she pushes him like that, but she does it so well that it only takes a few minutes for his father to become angry. He throws a roll of electrician’s tape at her, missing her, and it bounces and rolls across the street.
His mother yells at him. “I can’t wait until we divorce!”
His father comes out onto the front lawn and stands there for a moment. Then he looks up and sees Lenny.
His father asks where his sister is.
“At a friend’s house.”
His father says, “Come down and clean the tools up.”
Lenny hesitates, not sure if his father could climb up here after him.
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