Rita lowered her eyebrows. “The cops don’t follow you?”
“They’re too busy on account of the five guys who appear out of nowhere in our place,” I said.
“Who are the guys?” asked Rita.
Phil cackled. “He brought his goons along to the museum? The old man was an operator, no question! Wish my niece had an influence like that. Somebody to entice her away from bakin’ cupcakes and weavin’ flower crowns and expectin’ that to be sufficient preparation for adulthood.”
“What are goons?” asked Rita. “Is that a Sunset Park thing?”
I loved it when I got Rita sucked into a story. It made me feel like everything coming out of my mouth was true. Or that if it wasn’t, it should be. I had a sudden urge to show the Thing my teeth. Maybe I didn’t need Brett’s help. If we battled, who said I wouldn’t rip the Thing to shreds? I pulled out my photograph.
“Check it out, Rita. Grandpa Si is the one with the biggest gun.”
That day Rita was wearing a cream jumpsuit and a gold choker. When she put on the glasses with the chunky black frames, she looked even more swanky. Like the kind of person whose office has a waiting room the size of a hotel lobby.
“Grandpa always said I’m the best person to take over his business,” I said. “Because Dad—like we told you.” I gave Phil a look.
“Only place Claude’s father could run a business is into the ground,” said Phil.
“He never expected it’d be a girl,” I said. “Remember at the Wharfman’s Shore, how Grandpa would made a big deal in front of Dad and everybody about me being the one who would take over, even though I’m a girl?”
“I always thought that had to hurt,” said Phil.
“How would your father react?” said Rita.
“He’d play it off,” I said. “Laugh, or else ignore him.”
A group of loud, dressed-up people sat down. Phil switched into showtime mode, fancy-schmancy, greeting them in his work voice with the “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen! How may I serve you?”
Mom was heading our way, wearing silver high heels, a green outfit with a belt, and her hostess smile, which, as my math teacher used to say, Needs Improvement. It comes off like she’s making fun of the idea of being polite.
“Wow, you scared me!” said Rita, trying to smile back at Mom and not quite making it. “I’m sorry; I’ve been meaning to properly introduce myself. Claude is so great!”
Mom nodded in my direction. “Get moving.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Claude’s all right sittin’ here,” said Phil. “She ain’t disturbin’ nothin’.”
Mom’s hostess smile mixed with a Can I have this, please? eye thing as she took the photo from Rita’s hand and shoved it at me and went off to seat more customers.
Rita put a hand on her choker. “Your mother hates me.”
I watched Mom pulling out guests’ chairs. The way she did it, you got the feeling she’d like to yank them away at the last second. Let everybody fall on the floor.
“Not you, specifically, Rita,” I said.
“Lately Sara’s all pickle juice, no honey,” said Phil, shaking his head. “Used to be Sara could watch a guy steal cream from a newborn kitten’s mouth and never even blink.”
“I’m confused,” said Rita. “Pickle juice is an improvement from aiding and abetting crimes, isn’t it?”
“It is what it is,” said Phil.
On my way out the door I waved at Phil. He mouthed, “Take it easy.”
The city gave me the warm squeeze as I headed down Broadway, which was full of people drifting toward taxis and subways. It feels like everybody has someplace to go in New York City, including me. Even if I don’t, it feels like I do. I must. I’m here, moving along like everybody else, aren’t I? Add that feeling to the list of things I love about the place.
When I got on the N train, it was pretty empty. An empty train is the right place to think about stuff you don’t wanna spend too long thinking about. You can quit thinking as soon as you get to your stop, and if you wanna quit early, you can get off early, and get yourself involved with figuring out where you are, and where to get a decent slice of pizza, and, if you’re desperate, a movie theater to sneak into.
That night on the N train I thought about my mother. It hadn’t always been like this between me and her. It was never as fun as a commercial for boxes of cereal where everybody is drinking orange juice and checking their phones to not be late for their jobs, which they wear crispy suits for. But it was better.
We used to watch television together. And eat takeout, such as dumplings or chorizo nachos. If there was nothing on television, Mom asked me to tell her a story. I’d add custom details, knowing her sense of humor. Which exists, although it’s not right on the surface, like her outfits. It’s someplace darker, Mom’s funny bone. A pitch-black cave between her belly button and her lower back. They don’t make maps that go there; you kinda have to stumble into it. For example. One night, I tell Mom this story.
MOM’S BEST BIRTHDAY EVER
At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.
—Albert Camus, philosopher
Sara LeBernardin is the luckiest lady in the tristate area. It’s her birthday, and Dad gives her front-row tickets to a concert of her favorite band, which is Jimi Hendrix, who is a guitar player, who is dead, but if he wasn’t. Plus an exclusive backstage pass to meet Jimi Hendrix in person.
“And you shall go to Madison Square Garden all by yourself,” says Dad, “on account of the well-known fact that you love your privacy.”
The concert is outrageous. The whole crowd knows it’s the best night in rock-and-roll history. Afterward, people tumble into the streets crying and dumping popcorn on each other’s heads.
Mom, all snazzy on account of the dress from Barneys that she has been dying for that Dad bought her, plus the blowout in her hair that she got for free for being a loyal customer, goes backstage and knocks on Jimi Hendrix’s dressing room door. And what does Jimi Hendrix do?
He opens it.
“Sara, baby!” says Jimi Hendrix. “You are my inspiration for every song I ever wrote, and if you do not marry me, I’ll stop with the music and become a plumber.”
“Don’t be desperate,” says Mom, kicking her heels across the room and stretching out like a cat on his green velvet couch. “You got doughnuts in this joint?”
Meanwhile Steve Martin, who is a comedian, who is alive, who is the only person on television I’ve ever seen my mother lose control of herself laughing at, shows up out of nowhere wearing a costume of an arrow shooting through his head. Steve Martin dances up beside Jimi Hendrix, drops down on his knees, and massages Mom’s feet.
And Mom says, “You call that a foot rub?”
And Steve Martin whispers, “I know, Sara. But baby, every joke I ever tell is because of my lifelong dream of cracking you up. Wanna be my best friend forever?”
While this is happening, a team of waiters from Corsica, which is the French island where Mom is originally from, swoops into Jimi’s dressing room to drop off bowl after bowl of shellfish, especially clams.
“These are disgusting,” says Mom when she takes a break from licking the bowl.
When she gets back to Brooklyn, Mom is so tickled that her face is hot pink and her eyelashes are flapping like flamingo wings.
“How was your birthday eve all by yourself out on the town, Sara, my love?” says Dad, with his arms wide open. “I do hope you enjoyed it to the maximus.”
And Mom yells, “Don’t you have anything better to worry about besides my night?!”
So I say, “Darling Mommy, welcometh home! Happiest birthday wishes, and bless us every one!”
And Mom yells, “Claudeline! If you don’t stop talking on and on about God knows what, I’m gonna scream!”
Shooting stars slam on the brakes to peek in the windows for a glimpse of the birthday girl, and the moon scarfs down an onion bagel lightly
toasted with sun-dried tomato cream cheese.
And Mom throws open the windows and chews their heads off, and her insults rain all over Sunset Park, washing garbage off the sidewalks, and the birthday girl collapses on the couch and falls asleep right in her Barneys dress, all out of insults, all happy.
“The end,” I tell Mom, but she can’t hear me—that’s how hard she is laughing.
My mother’s laugh is wet and snort-filled. She snorts, snorts, and snorts, and cries, and melts into the couch, like she’s laughing not just about this story but about her whole life, like that’s what’s the joke and you have no idea how funny it is. And you don’t.
You just have to trust my mother that her life is funny. Because sometimes she tells stories about her mother, who lived all by herself in Corsica. Meme Alette was the toughest lady I ever heard about. She had her own gangster-type situation going over there until the day she died.
Like once, Mom tells me this story. She’s eight years old, and she’s visiting her mother in Corsica for the whole summer. One day she finds a puppy sniffing around some garbage cans on the street. It’s black and skinny, with a limp. So Mom takes the puppy home with her.
“He had big brown couches for eyes,” says Mom, “and he couldn’t talk, so I didn’t have to talk to him. I named him Buster. Buster was my only friend on that island. My mother refused to buy him food—said it was a waste. So I scraped meat and potatoes off my own plate. Then, one day, I wake up? No Buster. You know what my mother tells me? ‘The mutt belongs to the merchant now.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ I ask her. ‘I traded him,’ she says. ‘For a kilo of prunes.’ Oh, I cry my heart out. And you know what my mother yells? ‘They’re the good prunes! From Paris!’ And that’s it.”
And Mom laughs, and snorts, wiping tears from her eyes.
Naturally, I ask her how that story is even remotely funny.
And Mom says, “It wasn’t, until she died. Now, how can I not laugh? My own mother, sucking on those vile prunes, reminding me how special they are, while, thanks to her, my only friend on that island is gone. Laughing puts nonsense in its place, Claude. You got a better method, you tell me about it.”
But my favorite Corsica story is how Mom used to sneak out of Meme Alette’s house in the middle of the night to stand on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. Sometimes she fell asleep on her favorite rock. A person sleeping on a rock beside the sea could not be the same person who’d been acting like she wished I was never born.
So where did all the fun times go? That’s what I was wondering as I unlocked our front door. Maybe when Grandpa Si was alive, we didn’t have the perfect family with “family values” Mrs. Ramirez approved of, but at least our family existed. When Grandpa died, my family went extinct. Sure, Dad was around, but when was he gonna tell me how to wake up from this nightmare? And Mom had gone from Planet Mean, which you could visit if you wore enough armor, to Planet Meanest, where only she could survive. Not to mention that talking with Brett was all of a sudden like watching television on mute—hard to follow. Only one person had died, but I was way more alone than I used to be. Way more alone than I wanted to be. I’m kind of a people person, you know?
On my way to check the refrigerator, I picked up the big black purse Mom had left on the kitchen table and felt around for something that would make me feel better, such as money, or candy, or both. I would’ve settled for breath mints—I was that desperate. What I found was a fat stack of flyers, written by a dying poet.
Alma Lingonberry?
Again?
Then the front door was getting unlocked and opened.
Dad’s hair was falling out of its ponytail, and his face looked exhausted. He was carrying a plastic bag. “Hey, li’l gangsta.”
“Why does Mom have a bunch of flyers of that sick girl?”
The hall light put triangular shadows under Dad’s cheekbones as he walked in his quick, bouncy way into the kitchen. “What are we watching tonight?”
“Television, I guess,” I said. “What’s up with these?”
“With what?” said Dad, looking over his shoulder.
“The Alma Lingonberry flyers,” I said.
“No idea, Claude,” said Dad. The plastic bag crinkled as he pulled out a box and handed it over.
A dozen steaming hot dumplings.
Spicy oily happiness. Slick chewy perfectness.
I loved that man.
Dad flipped off the hall light, went into the living room, and snatched the remote. When he hit a rerun of Happy Days, he flopped on our green leather couch, which made a squishy squeak like it was happy to see him.
I went into the dark living room and sat beside him. The flickering screen lit up the box of dumplings on my knees. But even dumplings weren’t enough to distract me. Because finding Mom with an Alma Lingonberry flyer once—once was nothing.
But twice? And this time an entire stack of them?
What did Mom want with some cheesy girl who was clearly a scammer and possibly a psycho, who’d cropped up out of nowhere as lame and obvious as all the other New York City hustlers dealing weight-loss seaweed superpills and curing skin problems with lightsabers and selling secret ways you can earn twenty thousand dollars a week while you sit on your butt at home—Ask Me How!
I mean, was she friends with her?
I tried to focus on Happy Days.
Happy Days is this reruns show where a guy in a leather jacket hangs out in a diner. It’s semi-funny, but Dad thinks it’s super funny. He watched a lot of television when his mom got cancer. When she died, Dad was younger than me.
When Dad thinks something is funny, he chuckles like a kid. I ended up watching Dad watch the show more than the actual show.
There was a burst of canned laughter from Happy Days. And then the front door was getting unlocked again.
Mom was outlined in light. The two purple drawstring bags she kept her heels inside dangled over her shoulder. “Guillaume let me go early,” she said, shutting the door and sliding the chain to make a double lock. As she kicked off the sparkly slippers from the dollar store that she wore for her commute, Mom and Dad looked at each other with their tired faces. Then Mom came over and perched on the edge of the couch and immediately started chewing her nail, which perfectly matched her lipstick.
I poked her in the arm. “Are you friends with that fake dying poet?”
Mom poked me back. “No poky. Didja see ’em, Si?”
“I asked you something,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Dad. “I’ll go out later.”
“What did you see?” I said. “Mom’s flyers? Where are you going?”
Dad put one arm around me and one arm around Mom and turned up the volume with the remote. When the leather-jacket guy came on, Mom snorted.
I yelled, “ANYONE FEEL LIKE PRETENDING I EXIST?”
Dad kissed me on top of the head. “She’s real.”
Mom pinched my cheek.
“Ow!” I said.
“Sure feels real,” said Mom, in a voice that had the edge of a smile in it.
I should’ve kept asking questions. But I just sat there, feeling my parents wrapped around me like an old blanket. A blanket I loved and had been worried was lost, forever. Mom and I put our heads on Dad’s shoulders, and for the first time in a long time, and the last time for a long time, our family felt like it used to feel.
Almost.
RITA THE PRODUCER
Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life.
—Simone Weil, philosopher
As soon as I woke up the next morning I stumbled like a barefoot zombie in a nightgown into my parents’ bedroom, all ready to get some answers from Mom about those flyers. But the bed was made, the pillows were fluffed, and both of the parents were gone.
I went back into my own room and sat at my desk.
My room is not decorated with posters of fairies or a rug with purple tassels like Lala’s. It is normal and plain, which I like,
because it is easy to clean. My clothes live in my red dresser and my old dolls live in the closet. They don’t mind the dark, I’m pretty sure.
My curtains are red like my dresser, and my window looks out at Brett’s apartment. Have I described Brett’s apartment? Imagine bricks for the face, windows for the eyes, and you always wanna know what’s happening inside. Leaving him alone until Thursday to do his mysterious things he had to do was not easy.
As I sat there, staring into Brett’s apartment-eyes, I remembered a long time ago, when we were sitting on our bench making observations. And Brett said, “I’ve observed that when your parents say they trust you to take care of yourself, it’s like they’re just saying that because they don’t want to do the job themselves.”
And I said, “Well, I’ve observed that, unlike most kids, I have the freedom to go wherever I want, whenever I want, so when you think about it, who’s missing out?”
Last night watching television was like the old days, when I didn’t care what anybody thought about my family. But this morning, with nobody home, I was afraid Brett was right. If Mom wasn’t worrying about me, who was she worrying about? Alma Lingonberry?
Well, it shouldn’t take long to prove the girl didn’t exist. When I did, Mom could Snap out of it!
I opened my laptop to search for Alma online. Immediately I found a bunch of links to become her friend, but nothing else. At least nothing I didn’t know already. If you don’t find much about somebody online, you’re halfway to knowing that no such person has ever walked the planet. But the best way to find out how real somebody is is to look her dead in the eye.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Dear Alma Lingonberry,
The Bad Kid Page 4