Toby looked down. Shaver gritted his teeth.
“Your tongue would never want to taste anything ever again. You’d starve to death inside a week. They’d find your shriveled body in the broadcasting booth, covered with cigarette butts and crushed paper cups. God love her, though, it’d be worth it, wouldn’t it, to lick your way up and down that terrific torso. A man’d be content to spend his remaining days swallowing his own spit.”
Kinross’s mood changed when he saw Murray Jay Siskind come in. It was just like Murray to be the only reporter there, and to show up even though he’d often criticized the Garden management in print, and to be carrying in both arms the gigantic manuscript he took everywhere, even on the road, and which he referred to only as the Work in Progress.
Kinross yelled across the room.
“It’s the lunatic fringe of the fuggin terrorist media. He’s come to watch the corpse rot. He’s gonna squat over my grave to make sure I stay put.”
“Just wanted to wish you the best,” Murray said quietly.
Kinross still held me by the hand.
“Now that he’s got me dead in the snow, he’s gonna come and collect the entrails and take them home to his dog. Look, he’s carrying tomorrow’s column. I love your stuff, Murray. Very fuggin taut. Pounding excitement. It’s like watching eels migrate.”
He laughed and hit the chair arm and turned red and began coughing and spitting and gurgling. The crowd had parted so that there was a clear lane of confrontation between Kinross and Murray.
“I love your beard, Murray, where’s the upper half? No, seriously, I think pussy transplants are very attractive on a certain type of face. All kidding aside, you’ve got a big following, Murray, they use your stuff in remedial reading on Death Row, I hear. What are you drinking? Seriously, get yourself a drink. We’re all drinking people here. We came here to drink. Nobody came here to snoop around and sniff the remains. God love you, I know you’re just doing your job and I respect you for it, Murray, we’ve had some honest differences of opinion, you fuggin four-eyed media assassin, no hard feelings, it’s all in the past, God bless, drink up, what’s done is done. Did you ever catch the Chinaman who sold you those eyeglasses?”
While Kinross was coughing and sputtering, the crowd broke ranks and things returned pretty much to normal. A man went up to Tyrone Penny and asked him how the weather was up there. Tyrone spit on his head and told him it was raining.
I tried to pull away, but Kinross drew me even closer, telling me he wanted me to meet his son. He shouted across the room, and I watched a boy about seventeen make his way through the crowd. He had longish but neat hair, sport coat nipped in at the waist, plaid trousers, shirt collar worn outside the jacket.
“This is Jamie Kinross, my firstborn and best pal who puts up with me, God knows why. I embarrass him, but he knows it’s only because I’m a crazy, unreformed drunk with no formal education. A terrific kid, Cleo, in all seriousness, and one of your biggest fans. He gets straight A’s. He plays ball. He takes trumpet lessons. And he jerks off in moderation.”
Kinross hit the chair arm and nearly fell off the chair laughing. Jamie looked at the floor. When Kinross started coughing, the phlegm sloshing around his throat made a sound like some radio broadcast from just out of receiving range. Jamie saw I was trying to break free, and while his father was preoccupied with choking and gasping, he gently lifted the fingers that circled my wrist.
We went and hid near the bar behind a dozen other people. Murray Jay was standing there with his manuscript.
“I’ve got to go, Cleo,” he said.
“Okay.”
“I’m doing a food piece. They need it in minutes. The paper’s loosening up. Sports writers doing food, food writers doing food, foreign correspondents doing food. Seriously, I’m delighted. Cooking is one of my passions.”
“This is Jamie Kinross,” I said.
“Hello, Jamie, what’s it like?”
We heard Kinross across the room: “Who’s not drinking? I’ll open their fuggin heads.”
“What’s what like?” Jamie said.
“Being his son.”
“It’s all right. He provides. That’s what the siblings expect of parents. We live in this super comfortable middle-class house in Long Island. When I was fourteen, I went through a stage where I hated it, I hated them, I hated comfort and security, I hated their cars, their TV sets, their burglar alarms, the way they talked, the way they walked. But now I know that was just a stage I had to go through. I’m going to be seventeen soon. I think I know enough to accept good fortune when it smiles. I like comfort and security. Who doesn’t?”
While Jamie was talking, I had my eye on Shaver, who was diagonally across the room. He was standing alone. He shrugged his shoulders, jumped straight up in the air, and then did two deep knee bends. A couple of people were looking at him. He lifted one leg back behind him and studied the bottom of his shoe. He did another deep knee bend.
“My peer group feels the same way,” Jamie said. “You’d have to be pretty immature not to. We have a preferred cabana at the Locust Valley Country Club. When I was fourteen, I thought that was the worst and most disgusting thing in the world. I never went. Now I go all the time. My father doesn’t go because they won’t let him in anymore. But the rest of us go. We go all the time. Why not? It’s a great place. There’s tennis, golf, and a really nice swimming pool. Everything is great except the french fries, which taste like the french fries you get in restaurants in state parks.”
“I really have to run,” Murray said.
We watched him leave. I wasn’t sure how to handle this. I was afraid even to look. I looked. Shaver was talking to Toby Scott. He was blowing on his ginger ale. Shaver was. Toby was busy talking. When he quit blowing on his ginger ale, he sipped it slowly and cautiously, as if it was hot, hot coffee. But it had ice in it. It was ginger ale on the rocks.
I smiled at Jamie and said something vague and stupid about having to get my beauty sleep, and then I went over and smiled some more and took Shaver off to one side and told him I thought we ought to be leaving.
Toby had sidled up in his pudgy, rat-eyed way, and overheard.
“You can’t leave now.”
“Why not?” Shaver said.
“Mr. Kinross has a little speech he wants us all to hear. It’s something he’s worked on. Under all the bluster, Mr. Kinross is pretty sincere about things like friendship and loyalty. He’s a Christian and I’m a Christian, and aside from all the abuse he gives me in public and in private, we have a pretty solid common base of fellowship and love.”
What could I say? We stood around and waited until Kinross got up to address the group. A lot of people went “Sh, sh, sh” until they were the only ones making noise.
“This is what they call a soldier’s farewell,” Kinross said. “I’m going out on my shield, with my fuggin brains all over the Einstein Moomjy rug. That’s okay, it’s only right and proper, I opened my share of heads in my time. That was the real combat—not this corporate horseshit of moving people in and easing people out. Nobody remembers the streets the way they used to be. We were the guys. Everybody stepped out of our way. Our own mothers were afraid of us. We walked the streets like Vikings. Hell shit, we used to grab alley cats, stuff them in burlap sacks and swing them against the light poles. Self-preservation. You could do things without people telling you you’re ruining the environment. We used to build little wooden scooters with orange crates and skate wheels. You’d have the box standing upright on a single plank with the skate wheels under the plank and you’d put one foot on the plank and use the other to scoot along with. You’d nail V-shaped handles to the top of the crate. And you’d build a little shelf inside the upright box and you could put things in there, like the little wooden gun with the nails and the rubber band that shoots these tiny linoleum squares that can put out a fuggin eye if you aim it right, and your little bag of marbles, your immies, your puries and
so on, and the ball of tinfoil from cigarette packs that you were saving for the war effort—stuff like that. I loved my little wooden scooter. We owned the fuggin streets. We used to play Buck Buck, which in faggy neighborhoods they called Johnny on a Pony or some shit-ass thing like that. Every now and then we used to stoop over and let some guy come tear-assing across the street and go leaping into the air and then we’d all scatter out of the way and the poor bastard would land on the concrete and break a wristbone or two. Fuggin nuns got out of the way for us. We used to play football wearing combat boots. We stomped the shit out of each other. We played in the street, on actual concrete, blocking, tackling, stomping, no such thing as penalties, and when the street was full of ice we played on the ice, guys getting hit and skidding right along on their backs, guys skidding under parked cars, moving cars. Mack trucks, station wagons with real wood on the sides, cars with running boards, Packards, DeSotos, LaSalles, Hudson Hornets, guys stomping and trampling each other, forgetting all about the football to stomp, to trample, to kick, guys swinging cats in burlap sacks against the light poles, in the fuggin ice and snow, in the freezing twilight, turning purple with cold, in combat boots.”
He sat down, all red and trembling and out of breath. We were standing around stiff-legged like mourners lost in thought. Shaver whispered to me, “Immies and puries?”
I shrugged.
“Station wagons with real wood?” he whispered.
What could I do but shrug again?
Later that same night. Shaver sat up in bed eating Ralphies, with little Ralphie crumbs all over his bare, blondish chest. I sat next to him reading about myself in Hockey News.
It was a sub-zero night and cold in the apartment, but Shaver had just undressed as usual, walked around in his boxer shorts, brushed his tongue, and acted pretty much as though it was summertime down south. I guess those winters in Red Deer had hardened him and toughened him.
I had a feeling we were both going to need all the hardness and toughness we could muster.
“Don’t we have something to talk about, Shaver?”
“What’s that?”
“The things you’ve been doing. You know.”
“What things?”
“You know. Looking at the bottom of your shoe. Deep knee bends.”
He took a Ralphie out of the bag, then dropped it back in.
“Ridiculous, isn’t it?” he said.
“How long have you been doing these things?”
He looked away from me, toward the bathroom door.
“Close to two years now.”
“How often does it happen?”
“Comes and goes.”
“You mentioned a doctor once. I want to talk to him.”
“Won’t help, Cleo.”
“What’s his name?”
“Sidney Glass.”
“Is he an authority on this thing?”
“There are no authorities. The only authorities are track coaches, high-jump coaches, coaches of looking at the bottom of your shoe.”
“It’s unlike you, Shaver, to be bitter. Depressed and mopey, yes, but not bitter. Are there other people who suffer from this?”
“Untold thousands, in every walk of life. That’s what Dr. Glass says. He says it’s the great medical secret of our time.”
“What’s this thing called?”
“Never mind what it’s called. The name is worse than the dumb disease. Even if they cured me of the disease, it would still take me years to get over the name.”
“Might as well tell me. I’ll find out anyway.”
“Jumping Frenchmen.”
I couldn’t help laughing. I didn’t want to laugh, but out it came.
“See?” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s no worse than we deserve, people who have it. It’s the name a dumb disease like this ought to have.”
“Okay, with a straight face I have to ask, why is it called Jumping Frenchmen?”
“It’s not very interesting. About a hundred years ago, a neurologist identified the condition in some French Canadians who lived in northern Maine and Quebec. It’s a multiple tic syndrome. There’s a hundred variations. These Frenchmen acted as though they were jumping away from a kicking horse. For a while the syndrome was called Kicking Horse. But I guess somebody decided that wasn’t colorful enough. I don’t know what else to tell you, Cleo. I’m not one of those people who gets all caught up in the progress of his own disease. I don’t go to libraries or write letters to doctors in Switzerland. I’m not that fascinated by it. I just wish it would go away.”
“At least we’re getting somewhere.”
“Where are we getting?” he said.
“You’re talking about it. That’s got to help.”
“How does it help?”
“Doesn’t it make you feel better, talking to me about it, getting it out in the open?”
“No.”
“It’s not like you to be contrary, Shaver.”
He curled up under the covers, his back to me.
“Talking about it makes me feel worse,” he said. “Getting it out in the open makes me feel even worse than talking about it.”
“Well, they’re one and the same, aren’t they?”
“Let’s not split hairs, Cleo.”
“All right.”
“With a sick man, you don’t split hairs. You give a sick man the benefit of the doubt. He needs that leeway or he’s liable to crack. You don’t use logic or common sense on a sick man. There’s only one way to treat him—like a child. You let him have his way every time. He needs more than compassion. Compassion is available just about anywhere, from anyone. Phone companies establish special lines for people who need emergency compassion. All you have to do is pick up the phone and a trained counselor will show all the compassion you could ever want or need. What a sick man really counts on is getting his way, every time, right or wrong. When you have a sick man on your hands, you have to forget about your own life, your own needs and wants and fulfillments. That’s why I didn’t want to talk about it or get it out in the open. I didn’t want you to feel you had to sacrifice your own life on my behalf. But now it’s out. It’s in the open. We’ve talked about it. I don’t feel better and you don’t feel better. It doesn’t make me feel better to know that you now realize how much care I need and how much you will have to sacrifice in order to let me get my way, right or wrong, I should feel better, but I don’t. I guess that’s how sick I am.”
He was asleep in a short time. All you have to know about the rest of that night is that I found it pretty hard getting back to the magazine I’d been reading even though the major story was about me, even though the face in the picture was my face.
I’ve always tried to have a sense of humor about my life. I’ve tried to see the humor in difficult, weird, or outright insane situations. I laugh at myself whenever I get the chance. This is what we grow up believing is a good way to go through life. It is smart, easygoing, noble, American etc. And I still believe it, and I hope I’ll always believe it.
But I have to report, as a factual matter, that my confidence in this belief was, as they say, badly shaken and sorely tested many times during the next few weeks.
First, during the Conference on Jumping Frenchmen, arranged and more or less presided over by Dr. Sidney Glass. Then, during the Rangers’ longest road trip of the season—a period I would come to think of as Fifteen Days in the Land of the Lost.
But first I took the Ralphies into the living room so that I wouldn’t wake up Shaver, munching.
6
Sidney Glass lived in a sprawling apartment that overlooked the East River. Houses are rambling, according to my mother. Apartments sprawl.
Living along the river is something they kill for in New York. Someone will have to tell me why. Constant noise and auto fumes come sweeping up from the Drive. The river is ugly and full of unspeakable stuff pumped out
by nearby hospitals. There’s nothing on the other side but factories, cemeteries, barrenness, gray-ness, industrial haze, and pepsi-cola in neon.
Anyway, Dr. Glass ushered Shaver and me into the living room, looking a little amused at the fact that I’d insisted on meeting him and finding out more. He was a mild-looking man with glasses who seemed totally ordinary in every way except that he had a blond streak in his hair and wore a fancy neckerchief.
On all the walls, everywhere, were dozens of paintings. Mostly abstract. The real thing. Just lines. Just squares. Just circles. All black. Practically all black. Huge, powerful, looming canvases.
“Friends and relatives have every right to find out all they can about this condition,” Dr. Glass said, looking more amused than ever. “When time allows, I’m happy to answer any and all questions.”
He winked at Shaver—a sort of Nelson Rockefeller wink. Hi, fella.
“What causes it?” I said.
“We don’t know.”
“Is there a cure?”
“None that we know of.”
“Is there any treatment whatsoever?” I said.
“That’s the most intelligent thing you can ask. That’s a super question. We are experimenting with major tranquilizer groups, with megavitamins, with insulin, with electroshock, with acupuncture, with prolonged sleep. We’ve also done surgical experiments. We’ve severed facial nerves, for instance. We’ve gone into the brain. We’ve gone way in, and right out the other side. We’ve tried psychotherapy, group therapy, family therapy, gestalt therapy, scream therapy, and hypnosis.”
“And?” I said.
He winked at Shaver.
“We’re compiling data. That’s all we can really do right now. It’s a curious disease, obviously. All disease is curious in a way. We don’t really know what disease is. When I go on the Carson show and say, ‘We don’t really know what disease is,’ I feel a kind of warming interest in the studio audience. People respond to human qualities. How intriguing, they think. All those instruments and machines and minds and years of fund-raising and decades of research, and we don’t know what disease is. People like hearing that. We’re all grappling together with the mysteries of life and death. They’re reassured to learn they’re not the only ones with no answers. No one has the answers. There probably are no answers.”
Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League Page 10