At the Burger King drive-thru we bought Whoppers and fries and onion rings and milkshakes, one vanilla, one strawberry. The girl at the window was pretty in a mean way, with skinny lips and dark-blue eye shadow. She glared at me when I offered the credit card and shook her head.
“Cash only. No school today, Reen?”
“No school this year, Lannie?”
“This your new boyfriend? Where’d you get the car, boyfriend?”
I had opened the glove compartment and was searching for stray coins or bills. Maureen’s legs, bare below the white threads of frayed denim, smelled of soap and sweat and grass. One knee was skinned and starting to scab over. I looked up into her face and she looked back, arching one eyebrow expertly.
“What’s the story, Reen, you got a new boyfriend for every day of the week?”
Maureen ran a hand back and forth over my flattop and smiled at the girl. “You put too much face on your makeup, Lannie.”
Lannie’s skinny lips curled back from her teeth as she leaned through the window. “You’ve got a real slut in your car, rich boy. I guess she already sucked up all your cash.”
Maureen pulled a ten-dollar bill from her pocket and handed it to me. I sat up in my seat, gave Lannie the money, and took back the change and the paper bags of food. “Thank you for choosing Burger King,” she told me, sliding the window shut.
We continued west, chewing on our burgers meditatively. When it became clear that Maureen wasn’t going to explain anything, I said, “You and Lannie like the same guy or something?”
“She’s my cousin. She’s not so bad. This place drives you crazy after a while.” She sighed and twirled an onion ring around her index finger.
“I’m heading to California,” I told her. “You can come, if you want.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Why not?”
“I’ll buy dinner on my credit card.”
After we finished eating Maureen burped delicately into the back of her hand and said, “Now we need dessert. You like chocolate?”
During wrestling season I competed as a heavyweight, which meant that for matches and tournaments I needed to weigh in at less than 275 pounds. That fall I’d gotten close to 300, and when winter came I was dieting for the first time in my life, jogging around the school’s steamy indoor pool in a rubber suit, and spitting into a cup during class, which my teammates assured me was good for at least six ounces a day. One of the things I gave up that winter was chocolate, and some nights I dreamed that I swam through a lake of melted chocolate, breathing chocolate, swallowing peanut-butter fishes when I could catch them.
“I like chocolate,” I told her.
“Take a left at the stoplight,” she said.
“Ooh, stoplight.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sometimes we just sit here and watch it change colors. Left, Leon. Your other left.”
We picked up Route 422 and sped along, the needle pointing directly at fifty-five. I ended up telling her the truth about the car and she thought I ought to call Tommy Byrnes Jr. and tell him everything was okay, but that I shouldn’t call him until we got our chocolate, and that would take a while. I told her about my family: my baby brother Ollie who was two years old; my father who had made a fortune selling life insurance on the Jersey Shore; my mother who taught at the school for the deaf in Elizabeth, an hour commute each way, and how much those kids loved her, and how kind they were, and how strange it was that deaf kids were so much nicer than kids with ears that worked.
Maureen told me that her parents got married in Las Vegas and they were divorced six months after she was born. Her father still lived in Vegas; he was one of the highest-paid blackjack dealers in town; he drove a Porsche with a license plate that read 214ME. Maureen was going to move there after high school and he would teach her the tricks of the trade. She could already shuffle like a pro. Her mother had made a big mistake by remarrying and losing her alimony—the stepdad was a creep and hadn’t held a real job in three years. Maureen had a little sister named Emily who was four and would be perfect for Ollie.
Each time the Clash tape ended I would flip it to the other side. We never got sick of it. I was getting hungry again, but I didn’t want Maureen to think my stomach ruled me, so I didn’t say anything for eight minutes. When my patience finally ran out I asked, “So where is this chocolate store?”
She smiled and punched my arm. “We’re getting there. Relax, big man. This is the good part.”
The girl was right. If the car had been stocked with sausages I could have driven with her to the southern tip of Chile, listening to London Calling the whole way, phoning Tommy Byrnes Jr. from Cape Horn to apologize. “But Jesus Christ, Tommy, have you ever seen the Southern Cross?”
“Anyway,” I said to Maureen, “they better not run out of chocolate before we get there.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think they will.”
We left the farms behind and the road cut across a series of wooded hills. I was now able to shift gears with almost no grinding noises whatsoever, and I began showing off for Maureen, fading into the turns, downshifting on the steep slopes, waving to the truckers who zipped by in the opposite direction.
After we came around a sharp curve I began to smell something different in the air, a wonderful smell, familiar and strange at the same time. It was a smell that reminded me of before I was big, when I stood in the kitchen with my thumb in my mouth and watched mom open the oven and peer inside.
“Chocolate,” I said. The hills smelled like solid chocolate.
“Chocolate,” agreed Maureen. She laughed diabolically—mwa-ha-ha! mwa-ha-ha!—her head tilted back, exposing that wondrous white throat, laughing the laugh of a jinni who has just tricked a man out of his final wish. We passed under an arched sign: HERSHEY PARK—THE SWEETEST PLACE ON EARTH.
We parked the Eldorado in a giant lot that was nearly empty.
“This place is packed in the summer,” she said. I thought it would be a good idea to put the top up, but neither of us could figure out how it worked. “It’ll be safe,” she said. “It’s the sweetest place on earth.”
We walked down Cocoa Avenue. The tops of the street-lights were shaped like Hershey’s Kisses. Everything smelled like chocolate. We strolled through Hershey Gardens, where the tulips were blooming, and stopped for a snack at the Hotel Hershey. The doorman shook his head and told us, “No shoes, no service.” He said it as if he were the first person to think of the line. I went in alone and bought three tuna-melt sandwiches, six hard-boiled eggs, two hot dogs, a one-pound chocolate bar, and two Styrofoam cups of milk, carried the food outside in a plastic bag bearing the Hershey’s logo. Maureen and I sat down to eat on the hotel’s patio but the doorman left his post to tell us that the patio was for guests only. The anger started pouring through me and it felt good; it felt pure. I stood and stared down into his blunt, sullen face, ready to squeeze his skull until snot popped out his nostrils, but Maureen grabbed my hand and led me to a bench near the Gardens, and we finally ate in peace. Or I ate and Maureen watched. She didn’t seem disturbed by the quantities I consumed. She seemed to think it was normal.
After lunch we went to the amusement park and rode on a roller coaster, a Ferris wheel, and a carousel. We gave each other whiplash in the bumper cars and then Maureen said, “I ought to get home pretty soon. My sister gets scared when she’s alone with mom too long.”
The drive back east seemed faster. Maureen took a nap, her head resting on my shoulder. She talked in her sleep, excitedly, but the only words I could make out were, No fair. I turned the radio’s volume down and when I looked at the road again I saw that we were about to slam into a refrigerator lying on its back. I swerved into the opposite lane and missed it by inches. One lone car followed me a ways back; I flashed my hazards as a warning for him. After my follower slowed and switched lanes, he blinked his headlights to thank me, and Maureen slept on. I felt beloved and loving, at peace with my fellows, a good man making his way through th
e world.
When we got back to North Wales I woke Maureen and she directed me to the spot where she had dumped her bicycle. She got out of the car and stepped lightly through the clover and long grass that grew between the pavement and the farm field. She found her bike lying in the green crops, lifted it upright, and walked it over to the driver’s side door. I thought I should get out of the car to say good-bye but Maureen didn’t let me; she bent down and kissed me on the mouth. A truck rumbled by, blowing its horn.
It was the first good kiss of my life. Her lips tasted like chocolate. When it was over she reached into her hip pocket and handed me a folded candy-bar wrapper. On the inside she had written her name and telephone number. She had drawn a pig’s face, and from the pig’s mouth a dialogue bubble with the words Don’t forget about me!
“I won’t,” I said, and I wanted to say more but I was sixteen and dumb, and Maureen got onto her bicycle and pedaled away.
I drove back to New Jersey with the tape deck silent. I didn’t want to listen to Joe and Mick if Maureen wasn’t accompanying them on backing vocals. The whole ride to Mahlus was miserable. I wanted it to rain, I wanted the weather to match my mood, but the sun kept shining and I thought, some day, California.
When I got to the high school parking lot I expected to see cops waiting for me, but there was nothing but the usual beat-down faculty cars and snazzy senior cars. That was one problem with Mahlus High. The students didn’t respect the teachers because the teachers were poor, and the teachers didn’t respect the students because the students were rich.
I parked the Eldorado and walked over to the baseball diamond. I found Tommy in the outfield, shagging fly balls. He played baseball, basketball, and football, he wasn’t much good at any of them, but he never missed a practice. He saw me coming and threw down his glove. I walked up to him, waiting for him to swing. I knew I deserved it but I also knew that if Tommy punched me I would have to punch him back, that once I started on him it would take the whole baseball team to tear me off, that Tommy would get hurt and I would be labeled a bully. He never swung. I handed him the keys and started to speak but Tommy turned away from me and walked off the field, leaving his mitt behind. A baseball hit the grass a few feet from me and I picked it up and threw it back to the batting cage, where the coach was hitting fun-goes with an aluminum bat.
Maureen and Hershey Park seemed very far behind me, very distant, as if they were another boy’s memories, stolen with the Eldorado, returned now to their rightful owner. I sat in the grass and watched the baseballs fall from the blue sky into the outfielders’ waiting gloves.
2
Fourteen years later I was at home by myself, watching a rental movie on the VCR, an old James Cagney gangster flick. Midway through came a few seconds of static and then two sweating black men, one of them on his knees giving the other a blow job. For almost a minute I stared at the screen, trying to figure out what all this had to do with bank heists, fedoras, Tommy guns. The man getting sucked off had the most amazing smile on his face—the gates of paradise were opened wide and he was marching through, saints by his side. I’ve never smiled like that, I said to myself; I never will smile like that. What am I doing with this life?
It’s not what you’re thinking. I didn’t decide that what I really needed was a blow job from a black man. Maybe that’s exactly what I need, maybe that’s the cure for all that ails me, but that’s not where my mind was going. I thought: this is me, this is how it goes, not one movie with logical plot progression but a wild medley of every genre: porno and screw-ball comedy and teen romance and horror. No cowboys, not yet, and no starships, but give it time.
I pushed the stop button and imagined the laughter of some bored prankster, rubbing his palms with glee as he hatched this scheme weeks or months before. Whoever he was, he knocked me for a loop. I sat on the sofa for an hour with the lights and television off, with no beer in my hand, with no sounds at all to disturb me except the occasional car passing on Rickover Street.
I had always expected to be famous. I figured I’d play professional football and there would be a room in Mahlus High devoted to my memorabilia; I would appear with my model wife in television commercials for the United Way; in the postgame interviews my quarterback would never forget to thank me for saving his ass. Things didn’t work out. Senior year of college I broke my neck blocking on a halfback sweep; I was paralyzed for sixteen hours and the doctors thought it might be for life. The surgeons fused two vertebrae and a month later I was relearning how to walk.
My father sat with me in the hospital room day after day. One morning I started crying and could not stop. I told him how sorry I was, because I knew how much he loved watching me play. I told him that it felt like I had lost a fight, the fight, that I wasn’t tough enough, and my father shook his head and said there never was a fight. It was just an accident. I said it was a fight and I lost. My father could not look at me. He watched the floor and repeated that it was just an accident, and even if it was a fight, there was no shame in losing a fight—everyone but Rocky Marciano did.
When graduation came I sat with the rest of my class in our black gowns and mortarboards. I had lost eighty pounds since the accident. My old shirts flopped around my shoulders, mocking me with the memory of when I was huge. When my name was called over the loudspeaker, I stood up and walked very deliberately to the platform, climbed the four steps—left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot—and accepted my diploma from the beaming university president. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss me on the forehead and everybody there—the seniors, their parents, the alumni, the faculty—stood up and cheered for a minute straight. Le-on! Le-on! Le-on!
At the end of that summer dad took me into his office and began teaching me the insurance business. It turned out I was made for it. People around Mahlus knew who I was, they remembered what had happened to me, and that was always good for starting conversations. “We were rooting for you,” they would tell me. “We prayed for you.”
After seven years my father decided I had figured the racket out. When he turned sixty he announced that he was sick to death of winter. He bought a house in Jupiter, Florida, and moved down there with my mother and little brother, leaving me to run the business, and I’ve done all right so far. I work hard. Some nights I go drinking with friends, other nights I stay home and watch the sitcoms or a rented movie.
On that night, the night of the Cagney/blow job prank, I couldn’t get the porn actor’s smile out of my mind. He was happiness. He was exactly where he wanted to be. Only two things ever made me that happy, football and women, but these days I’m not much of a football fan. I only loved the sport because I was good at it; I was made for the game. I’m too goddamn big for anything else.
Football couldn’t make me happy anymore, so I thought about women. Ex-girlfriends, one-night stands, insurance brokers I knew from work, friends from college who had married and disappeared from my life, women I saw at the gym, my buddies’ wives. I got them all partying in the same nightclub in my mind, and I looked at them from every angle—their smiles, their thighs, their ankles—and I listened to bits of conversation, snippets of dialogue I remembered from various encounters. They were all there, looking as good as they ever had, speaking their most memorable lines. And I was happy keeping them in that imagined nightclub. I didn’t have any desire to yank them into my reality—the dark living room, the sofa, me.
A new girl walked into this party and I studied her face. She was familiar but I could not place her until my mind’s camera panned down and recorded her paint-splattered T-shirt, her denim cutoffs, her bare and dirty feet.
After fourteen years Maureen’s face had blurred and finally disappeared from memory. Now, though, in my empty living room, I could see her again perfectly: her brown eyes, her chipped front teeth, her home-cut dirty-blond hair.
In college I loved telling people about the stolen Eldorado. First, because it’s a true story, and second, because it made it sound as if my
adolescence were impossibly dramatic, as if my life would be made into a road movie starring a brooding teenager who flicks his cigarette butts into the gutter and wins fistfights started by big men with tattoos. Except I was the big man with tattoos and nobody wanted to film my life.
After remembering Maureen’s face and how comfortable I had felt with her, how happy we had been for five hours, I wondered where she was and if she had already found her man. For some reason I doubted it; for some reason I was positive that she was sitting in the dark somewhere, alone, remembering faces.
The next morning, a Monday, I called my secretary and told her I would be in Pennsylvania for the day, scouting a few leads. I couldn’t remember if Maureen had ever told me her last name. She had given me her number, she had written it on the back of a Hershey wrapper, but I had lost it years before. The first few weeks after we met I was too nervous to call, and then I got scared that she had already forgotten me, and then came junior year and a spectacular season and I grew cocky. If I could chance upon girls like her in a no-account town, what beauties waited for me in the big city?
By the time I got to college, Maureen was just a story I told. The thing about breaking your neck is it humbles you in a hurry. It’s hard staying arrogant when you have a halo brace screwed into your skull, when a nurse comes each morning to empty your catheter bag, when your father pulls your lip down so he can brush the bottom teeth. By the time I realized that I might have missed a real catch in Maureen, I didn’t want to interfere with my favorite memory.
When the Nines Roll Over Page 10