I’m ready to smack him.
Kit looks politely out the window at the moving cars as we pull out onto Queens Boulevard toward the Long Island Expressway, but I’m sure his distraction is partly due to distaste.
“Oh,” Gene says a few blocks into our journey. “We have to also warn you not to laugh when you meet Eric.”
“Look, no more vitriol, please, really. Save it for a phone conversation.”
Kit coughs uncomfortably, but Gene has no shame: “Eric looks like your worst nightmare of Gene Wilder, and then toss in that he’s hard of hearing.”
I’m peeved at him for blatantly ignoring my warning, but the thought of Eric as Gene Wilder’s doppelganger makes me laugh out loud, and Gene sneaks me a triumphant grin. “All right, you get one point for funny,” I allow.
“Gene Wilder,” Kit says. “Do I know him?”
“C’mon, of course you do,” I say. “You know about regional African Mancala styling but not Gene Wilder?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“Really? You never saw Blazing Saddles?” Gene says loudly.
“No.”
“Producers?” he tries again.
“Never saw that.”
“You never saw The Producers!” This comes in a shriek; even before the Broadway hit, The Producers was Gene’s favorite movie. He has been known to hum “Springtime for Hitler” in his sleep.
“Don’t get carried away here,” I say. “Everyone has to watch the movies you watch?”
“What about The Frisco Kid? Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother?”
“You’re a big fan of this bloke, I see,” Kit replies tartly.
“Sharing a name with him has made him a buff.” Stop it, Gene, I say to myself. Even though my brother has an overall sunny disposition, he’s so pigheaded sometimes, with his cruel women’s body comments. And what I also didn’t prewarn Kit about Gene is how he relentlessly teases; he almost destroyed Alan’s sense of self when he decreed that Little Brother was definitely homosexual because he couldn’t climb the rope in gym. Our mother never figured out why Alan went into another of his terrifying dark funks that week—but before she sought professional help a noticeable swagger miraculously replaced his despondency. Gene told me everything Alan had that very day confided to him—and made me swear it was “in the vault.” Alan lost his virginity bonking a Roosevelt Mall rat named Robyn whom he’d previously avoided when she swanned up to him at school dances in skintight jeans and obscenely low-cut shirts.
“C’mon,” Gene persists. “Who didn’t see The Producers? That’s the greatest movie of the twentieth century!”
“What does he look like?” Kit says. “Maybe I’ll know his face.”
“Check out Eric when you meet him and you’ll know.”
“How is Alan coming to the cemetery?” I say tensely.
“His new girlfriend at the commune is driving in.”
“Yes, I meant to ask you about that commune, Shari,” Kit says.
And I was so relieved when you didn’t.
We pause the conversation when Gene decides he better stop to pee at Burger King now or he’ll be in trouble in fifteen minutes. Kit’s out for a smoke as fast as Gene stops the car. Time to fret about what family inferno lies ahead.
The last time I saw Alan was the week he had gone to the extraordinary step of inviting me to dinner at the sandal commune, and met me at the Staten Island ferry so we could take a bus there. It wasn’t a formal commune per se, as a San Franciscan might expect, but rather a series of houses on the same block bought up by the collective. They wore normal clothes, if a little thrift-storish. It’s established that I’m big on thrift store finds, but these were the dreg clothes you see after the sitcom stylists have already picked over goodies like the seventies dresses with kimono sleeves. A P.A. system wired between the houses called everybody into the communal dining room for dinner. The food served was nominally health food; each member brought a dish from his or her home kitchen, beet-colored macaroni, and some sort of dessert with wheatgrass. Instead of soda, they served Juicy Juice, for that lovely canned juice taste, and used off-brand ketchup that looked to be sitting in someone’s refrigerator so long that a dark maroon crust manifested around the bottom of the bottle. Alan leaned toward my ear and admitted that only half of the commune residents were there; the rest were out and about; I assume he told me this to quell my fears that he lived in a cult. During the meal they talked about group experience and conflict resolution. Someone had bought a used car, not from a friend, and as it turned out it was not in very good running condition. He was trying to figure out what he should do. Should he get some of the money back, or all of it? This discussion was led by an elderly man I assumed was the spiritual leader, a man with a beard named Xander. The thing that actually freaked me out most of all was that there was a member of the group who spontaneously got up and started rubbing Xander’s old callused feet. Nobody said anything, not even Alan, so apparently this was normal.
When we went back to Alan’s house, he said, nervously, “Pretty great, huh?”
Mom pumped me hard after my visit, but I didn’t want to break her heart. Alan would never go back to live with her in Queens, and although I didn’t think the place was a cult, it was a life choice that appalled me. Besides, if he left, where would he live? He never finished school, and his long list of phobias now included applying for a job.
“Aren’t you excited that Alan has a girlfriend?” Gene says as he climbs back in the car.
“Why?”
“That’s pretty fucking exciting. All he wanted to talk about the last time I saw him were drapes.”
“Curb it. You know he’s had other girlfriends.”
He waits to answer until Kit has his seat belt on. “Are you so sure? Have you met any?”
“No, but stop telling Alan he is gay. Maybe he’s just not as showy as you—”
“Showy? Is that what you call heterosexuality?”
“There’s new drapes on a commune?” Kit slips in.
“Oh, c’mon, drapes?” Gene turns to Kit: “What do you think, Mancala Man? This guy is sharp, sis, he’ll tell you like it is.”
Kit shrugs with a guilty smile, and Gene laughs in response. I’m a little mad for the mateship betrayal.
Gene turns his focus to his printout from MapQuest. “We need to take the I-87 North toward White Plains. But I want to stop for gas.”
“Oh,” says Kit. “We took that road to see Sam and the Tenth Mountain chaps.”
Gene crinkles his face in confusion. “You’ve met my uncle Sam?”
“Great guy. Amazing life. By the way, I’ll pay for the petrol.”
Gene waves him off. “It wasn’t your idea to get dragged to a skunk funeral. You’re not paying anything.”
“Actually he insisted on tagging along,” I say.
“Gene,” Kit speaks for himself, “is there a person alive who wouldn’t want to go to a skunk funeral?”
Gene chuckles. I think Kit is finally winning him over. He stops at the no-name gas station inside the boundary of the Bronx. “Bargain unleaded,” he explains. “What New Yorker can’t stop for a deal?” Gene wasn’t lying; he won’t let Kit pay. After a polite fight, Kit heads inside to the minimart to search out a can of Red Bull, or at the very least a Coke.
“You must be serious about this guy,” Gene says through my open window as he pumps. “He knows about Alan and the sandals, and man, he’s already met Uncle Sam?”
“Yes, I like him a lot. So maybe we should keep the dirty family laundry locked inside the den, whatever’s left of it.”
“I didn’t say anything that bad.”
“Let’s go to the videotape.”
“Ragging on your family is accepted the world over. Get over it, priss.”
The exit numbers Gene’s printout from MapQuest says we’re supposed to see coming up are not matching in the least. We’re miserably lost. I’m betting we went wrong somewhere earlier on the Bronx River
Parkway, and say so.
“We’re lost,” Gene barks, “that’s what I think.”
Kit tries his best to be invisible in his seat.
This does not bode well for our afternoon drive. Gene does not like to be lost, ever. “This can’t be fucking right,” he says a minute after his last outburst. “This is making me very nervous. Fuck. Christ.” He pulls out at the nearest exit and asks a young gas station attendant for directions.
“He said we’re too far. We have to take the Taconic back to Exit Fifteen. Shari, keep your eyes peeled for the first left.”
We soon find ourselves once again aimlessly driving down a long stretch of highway.
“I think that little turn out of the petrol station was to the left,” Kit says quietly.
We take another desperate exit and there’s not a business to be found. We’re maneuvering up and down hilly roads in a residential neighborhood, town unknown. I have a charley horse going on my left leg, but who would complain in this environment? I quietly shake it out.
“Okay, that’s it,” Gene says testily. “We’re going in that diner and someone is going with me if we are getting to Dot and her skunk on time.”
“I’ll go,” says Kit.
“No, the someone is Shari. And then, when Shari has written down the instructions, this time we’ll all be looking for the right signs.”
“C’mon, Gene. I’m the worst person for navigation, you know that.”
“All you have to say to yourself is ‘I am not pathetic’ ten times and you’ll be okay.”
I take the punch again. I hate him so much when he gets road rage, but he needs to calm down if we’re not going to let Aunt Dot and my mom down.
We enter a local eatery with a lonely, forlorn-looking exterior. The sad look continues inside. The only visible staff is a world-weary cashier with an orange-hued tanning salon tan; she’s mid-discussion with an elderly female customer.
“Is that really the right amount?” the customer asks suspiciously.
“It is.”
“I’m not blaming you. It’s the machine. It cheated me twice already. The machine. Not you. Please check. Yesterday the other cashier charged me for two muffins. I’m not saying it was his fault. It was the machine. I’m not blaming you. Can you check?” Next she turns to Gene and says, “I’m not blaming the cashier, you know. It’s the machine. Twice it cheated me.”
Gene says nothing. He points her back to the exasperated cashier who’s looking over the bill.
“Sorry, ma’am, that’s how much it is for coffee and poached eggs,” she says. She shakes her head angrily as the old woman gives up and walks away murmuring.
I watch outside of the window where the customer is walking past the parking spaces and toward the open road. Gene pokes me. “Your job here is to listen!”
I see the anger management course Jill the Ex insisted he enroll in didn’t do much.
The cashier assures Gene that she can get him to where we need to be. I borrow a Bic propped up against the cash register and write everything down on the back of a catering flyer.
“How did it go?” Kit says when we’re back in the car.
I answer for the both of us. “Well, this lady sounded like she knew more of what she was talking about.” I carefully read my notes out. “Down to the bottom of the hill, past the train tressle.”
“Trestle,” Kit corrects with a sharp letter t.
I glare at him. “Not the time for an English lesson.”
Kit and Gene look at each other conspiratorially.
“There’s the tress-t-le,” I say pointedly a minute later. “Okay, make a left to Taconic South.”
“Aha! So it’s not so impossible for you,” Gene says. “This is the year Shari is going to stop looking at the world in autofocus.”
When we’re safely on the highway I respond. “This is rather empowering.”
After a silent tense stretch of road the whiff of a road-kill skunk overwhelms us.
Kit zings a perfectly timed tension buster: “We must be near Galoot now.”
Gene breaks into a smile before me. “Maybe we can scoop him up and chuck him in Galoot’s grave for a bereavement buddy.”
After I laugh, too, Gene says, “So what do you do in England for fun?”
“The usual,” Kit says. “Drink a bit, watch a bit of telly.”
“Sounds like me,” he laughs. “You like to fish? I’ve been getting into fishing lately.”
The only fish Gene knew about last time I checked was gefilte fish, Nova lox and herring.
“I’m an angler,” Kit says.
“Me, too,” my brother says.
“Angling?” I say to Gene, with an amused look. “Is that so?”
“Hey, you, fuck off again. Don’t insult the driver.” He then directs his voice toward Kit, “And you, listen good, there’s some of the best fishing in the world two hours away in the Catskills Mountains.”
Kit listens attentively. “Really? Two hours outside of Manhattan? What town?”
“The best is in Roscoe.” Kit writes the town name in his memo book. “You planning to go?” Gene follows up, amused.
“No, no, I just keep a travel journal.”
“Yeah, well good thing as it’s the wrong season of course.”
“But still, angling two hours from Manhattan. Brilliant.”
Gene turns around and smiles at me. “Told you I was brilliant. And everyone said it was you with the clever head.”
“Don’t get too excited. Every word out of his mouth is brilliant.”
“Look at the arrogance I put up with here,” Gene says to Kit. After a momentary slide of conversation, he adds, “You like music, Kit?”
“Of course.”
“What’re you into? What’s on the special compilation?”
Kit thinks. “Wagner is my favorite composer. Vivaldi. Special? I guess Bach’s Minuet in G deserves a spot on the list. What about you?”
I nervously await Gene’s response. Classical was never played in our house, and I imagine this answer will threaten him as much as it threatens me.
Gene simply asks, “You like the Beach Boys? I heard they were incredibly popular in England.”
“They are. They still tour all the time. But I just know a few songs.”
“They’re my boys. The Beatles are Shari’s boys.”
“I thought Colin Firth was her boy,” he says, and leans back toward me to check on my smile.
“Who?” Gene doesn’t wait for a reply. “Did my sister tell you she is the biggest Beatles freak in New York City?”
“I’m pretty far gone,” I say, “but there are Beatles fans who know what minute John’s mother went to the hospital for labor. I’m freak-lite.”
“I never got the buzz off them,” Gene says. “I saw some documentary on cable of when they were young. I couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying.”
“Liverpudlian is hard,” Kit says, matter-of-factly. “First time I ever heard George talk—when I saw A Hard Day’s Night—I thought he was saying ‘Can I have a jam butty?’ but I wasn’t sure at all.”
“What’s that?” Gene clucks.
“It’s a jelly sandwich,” I say to Kit. “Jam on buttered bread? Correct?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“You knew that?” Gene says with glee in his voice. “What did I tell you about her? The whole earth likes ‘Yesterday,’ and, well, what is the name of that crazy Beatles song you said is your favorite?”
“I just said I like it, I’ve never said it’s my favorite.”
“What was it?” Kit asks.
I hate when Gene goads like this. I hesitatingly lick a back tooth. “Blue Jay Way.”
“What?” Kit asks. “I didn’t hear you.”
“Blue Jay Way,” I say, louder. “Even you might not know it,” I address Kit. “It’s a bit culty, a drug-addled stream-of-consciousness song written in the flower-power era. You know, ‘There is a frog upon the lake…’I think i
t’s on Yellow Submarine.”
“Magical Mystery Tour,” Kit corrects. “The Beatles had three albums that really were kind of rubbish, they had leftover scraps. But I like that song, too.”
A black Corvette dangerously cuts ahead of us. “Jesus!” Gene says after he gives the bonehead an angry honk. “‘Blue Jay Way,’ yeah. Shari could write a second dissertation on them Beatles.”
I cringe at the unwelcome D word. My dissertation. Oh fucking yeah. How can I face the shame when I tell my family my research has come to a sudden halt? Man oh man. I’ll wait until I’m back from England. Not having a passport in my hands is stressful enough.
“Every obscure Beatles song,” Gene continues. “Yet somehow she doesn’t appreciate the genius of the Beach Boys.”
“Well, as I said, I don’t know much about them either,” Kit says. “I know their hits of course—”
“Your lucky day! I have a CD I burned. Can I play it?”
“Brilliant. I look forward to the liner notes.”
“Okay with you, sis?”
“Brilliant,” I say, and Kit pokes me on my neck from the back seat. Gene’s wrong. I’ve always enjoyed the Beach Boys. It takes a far bigger snoot than me to dislike the Beach Boys. But he’s teacher now, and why undercut his authority?
“It’s right on top of the glove compartment, Shar, can you get it for me?”
I hand it to him, and while the door is open I quietly shuffle through his books on tape collection, Winning Every Time, The Da Vinci Code, and the bottom one he quickly tugs out of my hand and puts back, Mars and Venus in the Bedroom.
It’s not long before we fall under the spell of the Beach Boys’ most singalong pop.
“‘Can’t remember what we fought about,’” Gene sings along to Brian Wilson’s falsetto in “Kiss Me, Baby,” and Kit even joins the party during “California Girls.”
“‘Wish they all could be California girls,’” he sings in his own Oxbridge take on falsetto.
After “Help Me Rhonda,” Gene leans away from the steering wheel and dramatically pauses and says, “When I first heard this next one it made me cry.”
The Anglophile Page 13