“A-a-ow-ow. A-a-ow-ow,” she howled in chorus.
He put his fingers to his lips. “Shh, Cheryl is sleeping.”
Heinz looked back, lead-eyed. It was obvious the women did not care for each other.
Cheryl slept all afternoon, then staggered down to the couch and stretched lazily. “You were right. I was tired. I’m still tired. I don’t even feel like cooking dinner.”
“Don’t.”
“It’s important that you eat regularly.”
“Cook TV dinners.”
“Too much salt.”
“Too late to worry about it.”
She shrugged. “All right. There are a couple in the freezer.” But instead of heading toward the kitchen, she went and yanked down the gaping curtain, then flung it over the metallic lift. “We don’t need to use this thing anymore? I just guide you?”
“That’s right.” He beamed at her approvingly. She was slow, but eventually she caught on.
She fixed his favorite TV dinner, the one with thin sheets of lasagna, green beans, fruit, and pudding. What pleased him even more was that she sat down and ate with him.
They were almost finished when the doorbell rang. Startled, they stared at each other for a second. The paper boy had already collected. Who else would be coming to their door?
It was Rose. Cheryl let her in with obvious reluctance. Richard watched in amazement. The generally impeccable Rose appeared thoroughly unkempt. Her hair was greasy. Her eyes were red. Even the laces on her yachting sneakers were untied. “What happened?” Richard asked bluntly.
“Al’s mother died.”
“I’m sorry,” Cheryl said, and sat back down. There were no additional chairs in the room, and Rose stood there awkwardly. “Just wanted to see how you were. And it looks as though you’re doing fine.” She fiddled with her car keys nervously.
Richard pointed to the full coffeepot. “Have some coffee with us. There’s a chair right inside there.”
She peered at the chair in the dining room and hesitated, but when Cheryl handed her a coffee cup, she walked meekly over to the stove with it.
When Rose’s back was turned, Richard gave Cheryl a warning look: you are doing slightly better, but there’s room for improvement. Cheryl stared back haughtily with an expression she might have picked up from Heinz. He gave her an even graver look. Finally she dragged a cushioned chair from the dining room for her mother to sit on.
Rose smiled at her gratefully. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
“How was your trip?” Cheryl asked. Before her mother could answer she carried her dinner tray toward the sink and dumped it in the garbage pail.
Rose blushed. “I’ve interrupted your dinner.”
“Oh, no. We were just having a snack of TV dinners. All week I’ve been cooking big meals, so tonight we decided to eat lightly. I told Richard these things have too much salt in them for him, but he loves them.”
He had to interrupt, or she would prattle on with this nonsense all evening. “How was the trip?”
“The weather was kind of cold.” Rose crossed her arms as if she still might feel a chill. Then in a startling revelation, she announced: “And Al and I had a tiff. A serious one, I’m afraid.”
“Want to stay here tonight?” He looked to Cheryl for confirmation, but she was shredding their dinner napkins into the garbage pail.
Rose shook her head. “Oh, no, thanks. I’ve got lots to do at home. The funeral is the day after tomorrow.”
Shortly after that she left. As soon as Cheryl heard the ignition, she banged a serving spoon into the metallic sink. “All week I’ve cooked nourishing meals,” she wailed, “and she has to drop in the night we’re having TV dinners. It’s been like that all my life. She never sees me when I’m doing good. Though I don’t know why I care, after the way she left us high and dry last week. They’d still be on vacation if it weren’t for Al’s mother. She didn’t come back for us.”
“I’d like to go to that funeral.”
She smiled indulgently, as if he were a precious child fantasizing about some impossible feat. “I know you would.”
He smiled back. He was damn well going to attend that funeral.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
For most of his life Al had known he was stupid. His father helped him reach that conclusion at an early age. Sam Valerino skimmed his elder sons’ report cards with absentminded approval. But when Al brought his report home, Sam put on his brown-framed glasses with the gold hinges and retreated to his reclining chair in the living room. On those occasions he rocked steadily, instead of leaning back and putting up his feet, as was his habit. His worn moccasins smacked against the green rug as he scrutinized the C – reports. He appeared to be searching for something, and Al always hovered near the reclining chair awaiting the explosion that never occurred.
The ten-year-old was just outside the door the night Sam said to Marie, “If only he was lazy or a discipline problem, there’d be some hope. But effort and deportment are always his best marks. You can’t punish a kid for being naturally stupid.” Sam should have known Al was in hearing distance. But maybe he didn’t care. Delicacy was not his strong suit. Not that he was deliberately cruel. He had just never learned the fine art of tact.
Sam was an overworked clock repairman who was fascinated by Civil War memorabilia. He had once driven all day so he could photograph his three sons standing behind a pyramid of freshly painted cannonballs in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Al’s two brothers, Joe and Frank, shared their father’s interest. At the dinner table they would lean back in their chairs, relaxed and expansive, to discuss General Lee’s brilliance or Jefferson Davis’s alleged pettiness. Over dessert the discussion switched from personalities to political theory. State sovereignty was always a favorite.
Al and his mother took no part in the conversation. Marie watched the table with the mien of a hash-house waitress. Did a water glass need refilling? Should the second pan of lasagna come out of the oven? During the analysis of the battle of Bunker Hill, she would thrust the ice cream back in the freezer and rinse the metal scoop.
Al was not vigilant like his mother. He just ate. Faster and faster and faster. Sometimes he clocked himself, as if dinner were a marathon he might conquer by speed. By ten he was a master at being otherwise engaged. If your mouth was full, he reasoned, no one would ask you a question and your fundamental ignorance could be hidden for one more day. At school he faked allergies and blew his nose constantly, certain that no teacher would interfere with this important bodily need. Some did. Then afraid to hazard an answer, he sat mute and ashamed until a more verbal student responded. Sometimes a teacher remained staring expectantly at him. That was the worst. “Don’t you remember any of this, Albert?” Those teachers, Al was sure, would gleefully dismember dead birds. They had no mercy. So at dinner he shoved another clump of lasagna into his mouth and checked his watch.
“Don’t stuff,” Marie often reminded him.
He was never offended. She meant well and was the only one on his side. The night Sam proclaimed him stupid, Marie immediately disagreed. “His talents lie in other areas.” She spoke firmly and not just to spare his feelings either. She sincerely believed he was a mechanical genius. All on account of the laundry room door.
For two years none of them could close that door. Sam pulled on it, then Joe and Frank tried jointly to slam it. When none of them had any success, they forgot it. Then one day Al got down on his hands and knees, ran his hand over the floorboard, and discovered that a giant nail had worked its way out of the wood. After he hammered it down, they were again able to shut the laundry sounds out of the kitchen.
Marie was more than pleased; she was ecstatic. Because of his simple carpentry, she considered him brilliant until her dying day.
Al’s eyes started to tear again. He brushed the tears off his sore, swollen face and raised his arms straight out as if swimming on his back. He needed to reassure himself that he was in bed alone and able to c
ry openly. Then it came to him that Rose was gone, had left him. She had taken her beige luggage somewhere else. No matter. Don’t waste time thinking about her. She was alive. He needed to remember Marie while her face and voice were fresh in his mind or else she would fade and be forgotten the way Sam had been.
Marie’s hair had been coppery and she used to coil it on pink plastic rollers every Saturday night. She never went to parties unless she was the guest of honor. On those occasions she wore a gingery scent and a full-skirted electric blue dress. But mostly Al remembered her in white pedal pushers, washing vegetables at the sink, a big silver colander by her side.
Though never sickly, Marie had constantly monitored her health. When Sam had an outburst, she took her pulse. She believed a fever indicated the presence of cancer and kept a thermometer on her nightstand so she might discover the dread disease at an early stage.
Once after eating lunch, she had gone into the downstairs bathroom to brush her teeth and screamed, “I’m hemorrhaging.” Al dashed in and stared at the sinkful of pinkish suds and saliva; he then gently reminded her that she had just eaten strawberry Jell-O. She patted his shoulder, letting him know she considered him both sensible and wise.
Since she was the only one who recognized his talents, he stayed in her presence as often as possible—drying dishes while she washed, dusting while she vacuumed. Sam wouldn’t have tolerated such sissy behavior in Joe or Frank, but with Al it was different. He had no expectations for his youngest son.
At the onset of his teens Al himself began to wonder if he wasn’t spending too much time with his mother. He was developing, but not in the right way, and he did not know what to do. He certainly couldn’t tell Sam.
Sam took all troubles personally. If there was a noisy party in the neighborhood, he thought the ruckus was produced solely to disturb his sleep. When children trampled the edges of his garden in their running games, he mopped his brow and proclaimed, “They hate me. They all hate me.” So if Al confided in him, Sam would immediately seek out a willing listener, glance dramatically skyward, and pronounce, “God is punishing me. My youngest son was born stupid, and now he’s growing tits.” Then Sam would mop his brow and grin mischievously. It was impossible to dislike him. Unless, of course, he was your father.
But Sam was dead and had been for fifteen years. Al forced himself out of bed and stumbled toward the shower. It was ironic, but in trying to preserve Marie’s memory, Sam was becoming clearer and clearer. That had not been Al’s intent at all. He switched on the shower head and soaped himself. His chest was broad, hairy, and appropriately masculine, but that had not been the case when he was thirteen.
He had worn loose T-shirts all the time to mask that he was about ready for a training bra. Finally he told Marie. She did not betray his confidence. When Sam demanded to know why she needed extra money, she did not tell him about Al’s weekly hormone injections. Instead she backed up against the sink and proceeded to cry. In between sobs she sputtered, “It’s just awful. It’s just awful. I’ve worked hard all my life—just as hard as you. And I haven’t got one cent to call my own. I have to account for every miserable penny.”
It was a persuasive performance. For the rest of his life Sam left an extra twenty under the sugar bowl on Monday mornings and never asked how it was used.
The shots worked. The growth stopped. But what was already grown did not subside. Al began lifting weights. The additional muscles did the trick. Except that Al, in his father’s and brothers’ eyes, officially became a beast of burden.
At his father’s request he mowed the lawn and painted the house. He took off the storm windows and carried down lawn furniture from the attic. He lugged the phonograph downstairs for his brothers’ parties. Joe and Frank were close to finishing high school and in the winter they wore insignia jackets with washable white vinyl sleeves, which were a dull yellow by the time Al inherited one of them. It never quite accommodated his wrestler’s shoulders.
Both his brothers were interested in girls. Joe, slim and doe-eyed, dated; but Frank, facially blemished and awkward, just watched. Neither felt any pressure. They were both going to college and convinced that the best still lay ahead.
Al, by the time he inherited a jacket, was himself attracting some female attention. One classmate in particular was drawn to him—a bleached blonde who wore pungent perfume and eye shadow the color of the sky in a child’s paint-by-numbers picture. He didn’t like her. The girls he fancied had shiny hair, well-scrubbed complexions, narrow feet—and no interest in him. Though he could not win these elegant girls’ affection, he could get their attention—by scaring them.
He began following them home—not obviously and only partway. After a couple of blocks their narrow feet would start churning faster until they were practically running with their hair jiggling in a seemingly terrified way. Two of them even started walking together. He followed them both. No matter how fast they walked, he could keep a discreet ten paces behind without appearing to hurry. He was just out for a stroll. Nobody could accuse him of anything, aside from bearing a vaguely menacing air. He was big, swarthy, and lumbering. Apparently that was all it took to frighten those well-dressed squirrels.
It was the first time he had ever been considered a bully and that worried him—because he enjoyed it so much. While he was following the girls he felt on a high. But in the evening he would develop a crummy taste that no amount of mouthwash could erase. He never slept well on those nights either. He didn’t discuss the situation with Marie because that was the year he began perceiving her as an innocent who needed to be protected from the seamier side of life. So it was just as well that Sam found him a part-time job.
He was to be an orderly at Deaconess Hospital. Marie didn’t regard the post with favor. “If it’s depressing,” she advised, “just quit.”
But Al loved the job. He especially loved hearing his name broadcast over the public address system. “Albert Valerino. Please come to the third-floor nurses’ station. Albert Valerino. Please come to reception.”
At any given moment someone in that vast hospital needed him. It was often an orthopedic case waiting for a push to rehab or an old person, frail as a wren, trapped on a commode. Being an orderly didn’t require much talking either. All you had to do was push, lift, and take orders. Sam had given him a lot of experience in those areas.
One day a pretty nurse’s aide remarked that he had the same forename as Albert Einstein. He sniggered and said, “Ain’t that something. ’Cause I was born stupid.” The aide just took him at his word and walked away.
Soon after he became an orderly he failed the Scholastic Aptitude Tests. The guidance counselor told him he hadn’t failed; the tests were just an indicator. But she didn’t advise him to apply to any colleges either, so he knew he failed.
He stayed on at Deaconess after high school graduation until he knew he was about to be drafted. Then he enlisted in the Marines. He chose the Marines, he supposed, in response to all the hype about the best and the brightest. At Parris Island, after Al and other inductees were shown a twenty-minute training film on brushing one’s teeth, he knew he was not among the country’s intellectual elite. (Both his brothers got deferments—they who loved to talk about war.)
Marie’s cookies followed him everywhere, even to Vietnam. At his Quonset hut, they arrived in crumbs. He was a medic then and not crazy about his work. He hated the Huey pilots because they never looked back at the cargo of carnage he had to deal with. It was as if being college men exempted them from the messier misfortunes of war.
After Al was discharged Marie wanted him to interview with the large corporations that were moving to Connecticut. “No way,” he told her. He did not want to spend his life working for college men. Her eyes watered when he said that. She knew he was never going to belong to a pension plan.
At first he just worked on building his house. He was still living at home when Sam had his heart attack. While Marie called the rescue squad, Al administered
CPR. Sam was conscious and did not want to go to the hospital. “You have to,” Marie told him.
That evening, just hours after Sam had died, Al and Marie sat at the big round table. They were waiting for Sam to appear, slam his fist on the table, point a pudgy accusing finger at them, and say, “I told you not to send me to the hospital. Now you’ve killed me. You hate me. You both hate me.”
It was Marie who acknowledged their foolishness first. She got up for the whiskey bottle and poured two shots. “We’ll drink to your father’s safe passage.”
Now Al lifted his coffee cup and drank to his mother’s safe passage. Then he checked his hands and fingernails. They were as clean as a long soak in Clorox could get them. Marie always hated the state of his hands, especially lately when he had been doing so much logging and carpentry. She had wanted him to have an easier life.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cheryl was dressed up for the first time since her wedding—nothing fancy, just a white eyelet blouse and a black skirt. But it was a flattering outfit. Because the skirt used to be skintight, Cheryl kept sliding her thumb under the waistband to confirm that it was a bit loose.
But her half-slip was not. It parasitically clung to her middle. So when she hooked her thumb under the skirt band, she also gave the elastic on the slip an outward tug.
Her behavior might have appeared odd had anyone been watching. But no one was.
Richard was forking up bits of broccoli quiche. It was pointless trying to get his attention while he was eating. He could only do one thing at a time. At home if she tried to talk to him while he was reading the nutritional information on the cereal package, he never answered. She didn’t know if this single-mindedness was a result of brain damage or a heightened form of concentration left from his football career. Whatever the reason, the results were the same. She was at this postfuneral luncheon with no one to talk to.
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