With a “draw,” the ball will hook slightly at the end of its apex and give you a nice long roll.
“You know, the thing about golf is it’s character revealing,” Mr. Valentine says. “People cheat using a foot wedge to get their ball out of the woods, can’t seem to count their strokes on a poor hole, or get mad as hell when it’s just simply a game.” A sly grin appears, probably conjuring up some past golfing escapade. “Yep, golf’s an ego leveler, especially on this course.” He gazes out at the course he’s just conquered like it’s his mistress, and I guess at some point in his life he must have had a professional golf career in mind—perhaps real life got in the way.
With this grip change, I would manage to thrash Owen for the first time the following Monday. The game of golf is growing on me, and I decide to play every chance I get this summer, along with getting some early loops on the bag with the likes of Mr. Valentine.
On a blistering summer evening, an owl’s muffled foghorn blows outside my TV room. I inhale sizzling Pop Rocks and devour Kate’s People magazine. Hollywood’s bionic couple are Splitsville, a white family fights to keep a black child—but a Connecticut judge says no—and Carol King’s daughter turns punk rocker.
Earlier that day, I’d bought a Rubik’s Cube at Kresge’s, and now it taunts my soul from the couch. I’ve pissed away two hours thinking about losing out on the Lund Gang diving-dare test, furiously turning the cube. Nick Lund once told me that no matter where your colors stood, you’re only twenty moves from solving Rubik’s Cube. The best I could muster was three colors in a row on one measly side.
Freaking impossible! Billy strolls in and ignores my presence as usual. Whatever. He picks up Rubik’s Cube, and I don’t give his frantic spins a second thought.
Ninety seconds of solitude.
“Did you hear about Lee Majors?” Once in a pale-green moon, I’d try to bond with Billy, but five years separating siblings might as well be a quarter century. “Turns out he’s a six-million-dollar idiot. Who breaks up with Farrah Fawcett?”
Billy tosses the cube on the window seat. “I’d like to give her a bionic whirl. He’d break her in half. If you’re the Bionic Man you can only date the Bionic Woman.”
I put the magazine down. “I guess you’re right.”
“Like you would have any clue.” Two long strides and he snatches the magazine from my hands.
“Hey, come back here. I wasn’t finished reading that!”
I turn my head and witness a miracle. The cube glows red from the couch—on one side! I pick it up and rotate the cube from side to side. Yellow, green, red, orange, blue, white. Solid color squares on all six sides. Billy solved the cube puzzle? Inconceivable! Billy’s a bloody genius. I rush upstairs and knock on the door of his forbidden roomdom.
“Go away, Ford.” A shoe brick thumps the door. “Now!”
I press my teeth to the door. “How’d you do that?”
“What did I say?” Billy never ignores me if I threaten to enter his room, so I pound on the No Entrance sign he’d taped to the door. He opens the door a sliver. “What don’t you understand?”
“Have you ever tried Rubik’s Cube before five minutes ago?” I’ve hidden the magical cube behind my back.
He opens the door a bit more. “No. Why?” Caught red-handed. Stoners would sooner play Dungeons & Dragons than waste time on Rubik’s Cube. He doesn’t know the degree of difficulty of the mind-bending puzzle. I show the solid colors to Billy. He has no idea mere mortals are lucky to get one solid row of colors. He snatches the cube from my hand, twists it to cover up his secret brilliance, and tosses it down the stairs. “It’s not hard if you’re not a spacetard.” He slams his door shut, opens it again, and flings the People magazine past my face. Cover girl Farrah Fawcett tumbles down the steps.
How fast you can solve Rubik’s Cube on your first attempt is directly proportional to your spatial IQ. Rocket’s brother, Basil, told me this to prove he had an IQ of 140. I hadn’t timed Billy, but I know it was around ninety seconds because I’d only made it halfway through the article on Carol King’s daughter’s obsession with the Sex Pistols before he’d stolen my magazine. That gives Billy an IQ close to Einstein’s. The son of a bitch has fooled Mom and Pop for years. A Quinn myth was perpetuated by Uncle Fred after he claimed Billy beat him in chess when he was only five years old. We had all figured it was a joke because Billy has never showed any intellectual curiosity. There’d been faint clues throughout his life that only dawned on me after the Rubik’s Cube incident. He can solve math problems in his head by adding from left to right, there’s no maze he can’t crack in microseconds, and he can take apart a transistor radio and put it back together again. And then there’s the clincher: He never gets lost. He’s got a sixth sense of direction.
Pop and Mom are just not smart enough to know how brilliant Billy is because for some reason he’s hidden it from them. I know better now. I have to work hard to get good grades or I’ll never become an astronaut. Billy isn’t stupid; he just doesn’t give a crap. Why’s he throwing his life away? Maybe we aren’t related after all.
On my way home from Rocket’s house a few weeks after Pop’s lot-sale scheme, I slip past a silver MGB convertible roadster blocking the driveway, and my heart leaps, thinking my car-dealership-owning uncle is visiting from Cocoa Beach, and we’d spend a few days buzzing ’round town with the top down. Turns out it isn’t Uncle Mitt’s car at all. The license plate reads: F-I-T-Z 6-8-3. I’ve seen that car at the country club.
Frozen panic fills my veins.
My TV room. I flash through the mudroom, grab a treat from the kitchen, and see Mr. Fitz puzzling over Pop’s treasure map in the living room. I lurk in the den, gobbling Twinkies, listening in on the two.
“It’s not a buildable lot, Mr. Quinn. You need an extra fifteen feet for setback.”
“Who’s going to notice?”
“Mr. Quinn, the new owner will need a building permit from the city before he pounds one nail.”
“So we’re dead? Is that what you’re saying?” Pop’s voice rises in steady volume. “Just plain dead?”
I swear I can see Mr. Fitz shaking his head through the bookcase. “No, no. Not at all. We have to obtain a zoning variance from the city. Just a bit of red tape we’ll have to cut through, that’s all.”
“Why didn’t you say so? Do I need a damn lawyer now?”
That could be a deal killer. Sweet! Lawyers cost a ton of money we don’t have.
“They’re worse than stockbrokers. Criminals in ties.”
You tell’m, Pops!
“Save your money. It’s just a formality. I’ll do all the talking.”
Don’t believe’m, Pop.
“Okay. Let’s talk about price.”
I rearrange the den in my mind to fit my TV on the shelf. The old 8-track player stereo will have to go, and the gazillion Encyclopedia Britannica volumes, along with Virginia’s Reader’s Digest collection.
“A similar lot over on Grover’s Lane just sold for seventy-six thousand dollars. No variance required.”
My ears suddenly tune to Radio FITZ. Seventy-six grand for one measly vacant lot?
“Where do I sign?”
Where indeed. That’d pay for some college. I guess I can trade my TV room for college tuition, but it’ll still be a close call.
oday’s the day Dr. Clark arranged for me to finally see Cleo at the hospital, along with Chimney—strictly in a medical capacity because dogs aren’t normally allowed in the hospital.
While I slept last night, Khomeini freed a single hostage “for health reasons,” and everyone knows it’s a publicity stunt by the Iranians because there’re still thirty-two of them left blindfolded in some hellhole prison in that desert country. It’s all everyone’s talking about today on the TV. Pop’s raving mad about it. Pimples, a caddy regular at the club, told me during
a loop that the shahs of Iran are like the Kennedys of America. Political royalty. This struck me as interesting because Ted Kennedy is running for president against Carter, who backs the shah. Not really sure where exactly Iran is on the map or why they hate our guts.
What I do know is my forensic search for my lost notebook has turned up nothing over the past weeks. I wonder who’s laughing out loud at my wanky poems. Probably Kate and her clueless friends who wouldn’t know the difference between Robert Frost and Sylvia Plath. I’ll gladly trade Kate’s diary for my notebook but don’t want to make the first desperate move because I haven’t found her diary key and don’t want to read cyclops’s deepest thoughts anyway, which is an oxymoron, of course.
Chimney and I meet Dr. Clark in the hospital lobby and follow her to Cleo’s patient room. Hospitals have a foul clean odor all their own, and this one’s no different. A sign reads “Oncology,” which I’m pretty sure is a fancy word for cancer. A lump grows in my throat, and I pinch myself not to tear up.
It hits home now how Virginia felt when Pop almost died. I’ve heard the story a zillion times from Virginia. When I was in the second grade, he’d awoken in the middle of the night with a horrible pain in his gut and drove himself to the hospital while Virginia slept soundly at home.
Two days later, the doctor had cut him open from his hip to his belly to get to his gallbladder. He got sick after the surgery with a fever and internal bleeding, and he couldn’t shake it off. On a snowy night, while I was sledding with my cousins down my uncle Mitt’s steep front yard before they moved to Cocoa Beach, the surgeon came out into the hallway with his mask pulled down under his chin and told Virginia, “Sorry, Mrs. Quinn, but it doesn’t look so good.”
Twenty minutes later, a flat line crossed the screen. As Pop reminded us, “I was a goner.” Virginia had sat in vigil, made the sign of the cross over her chest, and hailed Father O’Brien from his rectory chair. Before the good father had had time to gather his collar and cross, Pop had rebounded, the flat line turned wavy, and the next Monday he was sitting up in bed drinking coffee.
Pop recovered from his illness that spring, though he was half the man he was before the operation. He’d been a heavyset chain smoker. Once fat and happy, he became thin and grumpy. After the doctors made him quit smoking, he turned to drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon instead.
Dr. Clark doesn’t turn left toward the cancer ward but rather makes a hard right toward the psychiatric unit. Chimney pulls hard on the leash toward the cancer ward, sniffing killer cancer molecules like hot dog biscuits fresh from the oven. I tug on her reins and lead her toward the psych ward. We pass a few rooms full of patients. A man karate chops an imaginary villain. Two nurses hold the man’s arms down before stabbing him with a needle. A nurse spots me and closes the curtain shut. Another man, bald as Kojack, sits straight up in bed mumbling some pig-Latin curse.
“Dr. Clark.” She stops and turns around. “You went down the wrong hall.” I yank my thumb. “The cancer rooms are back there.”
“Well …” Something seems to be caught in her throat. “Chimney was sort of right.”
I scratch my head behind my ear, a nervy twitch, and ask her what she means by that.
“Chimney found a tiny melanoma, a form of skin cancer.” She rubs my dog’s floppy, silky ear. “It was just on the surface of Cleo’s skin near her hip bone, and it wasn’t making her sick yet.”
A woman runs out of a patient room screaming, “Aliens are in the bathroom and they’ve made a mess!”
“If she’s not sick with cancer anymore, why is she still in the hospital?” Uncle Fred told me once the longer you stay in the hospital the more likely they’ll find something else wrong with you just to jack up the room charges.
She twists her mouth end into a knot. “Some people think they are sick, when they’re not.”
“You mean she’s faking it?” No wonder kids are screwed up when you consider how adults can never answer simple questions straight up.
“No, not at all. She thinks she’s sick, which is just as debilitating. It’s called somatization disorder.”
Big words don’t help, either. “Sounds made up.”
She nods. “Precisely.”
“I just want to see her.”
“That’s why you’re here. She won’t eat and refuses to believe anything the doctors tell her.”
I can’t blame her one bit.
“She’ll only believe what Chimney says.”
Chimney doesn’t talk, Dr. Clark. “You mean if she doesn’t bark, she’ll think she’s cured.”
“Right.” Dr. Clark bends down and says, “You can do this, Chimney. Good girl.”
I knock lightly on the door and hear Cleo’s weak voice tell us to come in. Chimney lounges down next to her bed. Cleo wears a light-blue hospital gown over her frail frame and has an IV line attached to her arm but looks as beautiful as ever. I wonder why she has an IV line if it’s all in her head but just figure it’s only sugar water and won’t harm her. (This is the closest I’ve ever been to a girl’s bedroom that isn’t Kate’s.)
She’s still wearing the mood ring I gave her when we first met. The liquid crystal glows amber—nervous and unsettled. The week before, I’d finally bought a new Technics stereo with my caddy earnings. It plugs into my cassette tape player, and I made my first mixtape for Cleo so she can listen to it in the hospital. I choose a bunch of songs I think she might like, including, “One (is the Loneliest Number),” “Love is Like Oxygen,” “Rock with You,” “Upside Down,” “God Only Knows,” ELO’s “Livin’ Thing,” and The Vapors’ “Turning Japanese.” I put the mixtape and a brand-new That Was Then, This Is Now (which I haven’t gotten around to reading yet) on her bedside table next to an orange pill bottle.
There isn’t any talk between us about her condition. Chimney’s not barking or sniffing Cleo, so I know in my heart her skin cancer is gone, but I guess Dr. Clark already told me that. She reaches out her skinny arms, pulling an IV line with her. “Put Chimney in the bed with me, Giff.”
Why is she in the hospital still if her cancer’s gone?
I lift Chimney into the bed and pray she won’t bark. She pants silently at her feet on the end of the bed, licking her rear paws. Dr. Clark’s feet shuffle uneasily underneath the curtain. She’s told me what to ask her.
“Looks like you’re cured. Chimney isn’t barking or sniffing.”
A smile comes across her lips. “That was a close call, Giff. If it wasn’t for Chimney, I’d be in serious trouble.” She grabs a Polaroid picture off a side table and shows it to me. A picture of her hip, covered by a large bandage where they sliced off her skin cancer. “Dr. Clark wants me to look at this every time I feel sick as a reminder I’m cured, but how does she know they got it all or it didn’t travel down my leg? My leg itches right now.”
She scratches her leg, and I realize she’s in the mental ward because she can’t shake the feeling she’s sick when she’s really not, like Dr. Clark told me. “Will you hold my hand?” she says. “I’m scared.”
“You’re fine now. Chimney’s sleeping.” Her tail swings back and forth, probably dreaming of a nice run in a sunny meadow. “My dog would be making a huge fuss if she thought you were still sick.” I’m trying to avoid the “C” word.
“You think so?” She reaches over, palms facing up in the air for me. I hold her hand. Her skin is soft and thin like cellophane, and my heart’s melting like a stick of butter in a microwave. The last time I held a girl’s hand was back in the 7th grade when Polly Ledbeder grabbed my hand and we stormed the Holy Redeemer gym floor to “Crocodile Rock” during the Fall Dance.
Cleo has a faraway look in her eyes and turns her head toward the window. The sky’s a swirl of pink and gray. Inmates scream down the hall. “Do you ever wonder what’s beyond the planets? What’s in the next universe?”
Just about every waking
hour. “I’m trying to deal with my own universe.”
She gives me a weak punch in the shoulder. I know it’s stupid and selfish for me to have said that. Cleo wants to know there’s a universe beyond the living, but all I can talk about is my own small, pathetic world.
“I’m serious.” She shifts in her bed so she’s now lying on her side. Her eyes are like two black marbles. “If we die, maybe we get transported to a different place in the universe. We don’t become dust. I don’t mean physically, but like our souls.”
Her parents are atheists; they won’t have anything to say on the subject without sounding like frauds. Perhaps I’ll convert her to Catholicism after she gets released from the hospital and we start dating like a real couple.
“I’m sure that’s true,” I finally say.
“How do you know that?” She lifts her chest and her eyes lock onto mine like a fighter pilot on an enemy pilot. For our future’s sake, I better come up with something plausible.
“Souls exist.” Every book of poetry I’ve ever read talks about loneliness and death, and eventually the poet just can’t resist writing nonsense about unearthly souls.
An innocent foal must have a soul, and if you take a lamb to slaughter … Or something like that. If my Catholic teachers talked about souls, it hadn’t registered.
She scoffs at me. “Is that just something they tell you at church?”
“No, science.”
Her tone tightens. “You better not be fooling with me, Ford.”
“It’s true. It was proven by Hunter McDougal in 1907. Did you know that?” This isn’t a lie. I read it somewhere, maybe in one of Rocket’s Mad magazines—the one with the title, PSSST! KEEP THIS ISSUE OUT OF THE HANDS OF YOUR PARENTS! or in one of my Omni science magazines.
“Get out!” She shoves me in the chest with what little strength she can muster. “How’d he prove it?”
“The scientific method. He weighed people before and after they died. The soul weighs exactly twenty-one grams ... the weight of a hummingbird.”
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