With light-years of time on my hands, I make myself a mixtape with a bunch of songs that seem to fit my mood. “The Sound of Silence,” “Lost in the Supermarket,” “Space Cowboy,” “Hey Hey, My My,” “Call Me,” “Refugee,” “London Calling,” “Detroit Rock City,” “God Only Knows,” “Once in a Lifetime,” “Moonage Daydream,” “Wish You Were Here.” After listening to my tape, I lose my mind and mail it to Cleo with one line:
Enjoy!! Ford. P.S. Wish you were here.
One night during my purgatory, Billy knocks on my door. He tells me to follow him into his room. He’s never done that before. We climb out his window and onto the roof of the garage. Billy pulls out a pack of Kools and shakes out two cigarettes. He gives me one and tells me to light it. I ignite the tip and inhale like there’s no tomorrow.
“Hey, you’re a natural.”
I don’t tell him I’ve done a little smoking this summer. We sit there in silence for a few minutes, smoking and staring up at the stars. “You really surprised me, little bro.”
“I guess I surprised a lot of people.”
“Dude, it takes some guts to do what you did.” Billy breathes in the stars and a Kool cig without a care in the world. “You definitely took the heat off me.”
I think of the cash he’s been saving up from his Olga’s job and think I might not be the only criminal in the house. What’s he done this time? “What do you mean?”
He scratches his head and looks over at me. “Mom didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
He takes a long drag on his cigarette. “I might be leavin’ the den soon.”
“For college?”
“Yeah, with Jenny.”
I search the Rolodex in my head and can’t find any girl by that name in Billy’s life. “Jenny who?”
“Name one Jenny you know.”
A cat shrieks next door. Then it dawns on me. “Jenny from next door? Jenny Clark?”
Billy exhales a laugh along with a trail of smoke. “Pop doesn’t know I’m going to marry Jenny. I’ve saved up a little dough from work.”
“Jesus, Billy. You’re barely nineteen.”
“Right, but Jenny is totally cool. She’s going to study anthropology.”
Sounds about right; she’s already been studying a primate. Still, Billy’s become my hero. “You’re going to live together?”
He punches me lightly on the shoulder. “Yeah, you idiot, that’s what you do when you get married.”
“So you’re going to college?”
“Kind of. I’m going to the Ford Motor Institute. Uncle Mitt went to bat for me and got me in. Ford Motor likes to keep it in the family. Grandpa Quinn still pulls weight with them, even though he’s been retired for decades. Anyway, they teach you how to sell cars so some day you can run a car dealership. How cool is that?”
Billy flashes a wide grin, and I imagine him with a slew of brand-new Mustangs at his disposal. I haven’t seen him this happy in forever. Even Billy has his life figured out overnight, while I’m stuck in neutral. Billy does nothing and gets a potentially great gig. Go figure.
“When Uncle Mitt retires,” Billy continues, “he said Mitty and I can take over his dealership in Cocoa Beach.”
Surfing and driving convertibles up and down the Space Coast? Billy really is a genuine genius.
Pop’s going to blow a fuse when he finds out Billy’s marrying a Clark, but the Ford Motor Institute will soften the blow. “Have you told Pop?”
“He’s thrilled about me enrolling in the Ford Motor Institute.” Billy flicks ash at the Milky Way. “But he’s not going to find out about Jenny.”
“Ever?”
Billy arches his chin at the sky, mulling it over. “I guess he’ll have to at some point, but I’ll worry about it when the time comes.”
Maybe Kate will marry Pauley. Pop would dig his own grave first.
We recline under the stars for a long time, our elbows perched on the shingles and our ankles crossed. I admire Billy for doing his own thing. He lives with total freedom and doesn’t give a hoot about what anyone thinks. Why can’t I be like that?
I ask him if I can have his record collection before we head back inside. He looks me over. “Why not?”
A few days after Billy’s revelation, Pop hauls me down to the police station on Telegraph Road. The radio blares the song “The Year of the Cat” with its sad horns coming in and out. I think if my parents sang this song about me, they’d change the title to “The Year of the Ass.”
A detective leads us into a small room and shuts the door. He flips through the paperwork on me with a puzzled face. I expect him to do the usual Kojack routine: mug shot, fingerprints, black-striped jumpsuit. Detective Reynolds carries a manila folder with “Quinn, Ford, Case No. 80-897812-CV” typed on the side. It seems strange they have a detective on the case when I’ve been caught red-handed and confessed.
“You’ve got a clean record with no history of trouble, Ford,” the cop says. “And straight As. The grocery store is going to drop the charges, and this won’t be on your permanent record when you apply for a job or college as long as you stay out of trouble. You got that?”
“That’s it?” I’m off the hook. My heart rate returns to normal.
“No. You need to go through counseling. It’s mandatory, even for first-time offenders. We don’t want potential mass murderers running loose in the Hills.” The detective chuckles to himself. I don’t understand what’s so goddamn funny.
Pop leans in over the desk. “A shrink?”
In the parking lot, Pop opens his door and says, “Are you still friends with that kid from the country club?”
I shake my head. I haven’t heard a peep from Jason Sanders, and I can’t blame him one little bit. Nor have I heard anything from Cleo since I sent her my new mixtape. I called her house a few times and hung up because her mom kept answering the phone. One time a familiar male voice I couldn’t place answered and said, “No, Cleo’s out, but I’ll tell her you called, Ford.” Click. I’m still waiting for the call back.
Then I think of Gigi. I haven’t called her back, either.
on’t relive your past lives. Think anew.” (Peabody, Mensa-Netics, Volume Three, p. 314) Virginia quotes this bit of philosophy to me before I leave for my therapy session with Dr. Clark to satisfy my criminal counseling sentence.
Pauley greets me at the door and leads me up their creaky stairs to Dr. Clark’s office. I notice Virginia’s fingerprint—a Rainbow vacuum cleaner behind the door. The room smells of red licorice. Two cats roam the floor.
Dr. Clark waves me in. “Have a seat, Ford.”
I stretch my legs onto a red chaise longue. Dr. Clark sits down across from me, and Fluffy’s sister jumps in her lap. She strokes the cat’s chin. A candle burns on a table with one of its legs carved into the image of an American Indian chief next to that month’s Journal of Abnormal Psychology. I wonder: Does the doctor know the tale about Billy Quinn and Jenny Clark?
Dr. Clark turns to the door. “You may leave now, Pauley.” The door closes, but he leaves a cranny opening. “PAULEY!”
BAM!
I’m careful to speak real soft, fearing Pauley’s tape recorder will pick up our conversation. Bracing for an interrogation into my most private, innermost criminal thoughts, I fidget like a pig caught in a volcanic mudslide. The doctor crosses her legs and chews on a red licorice stick. She asks me about my aspirations and what I am really passionate about.
We end up talking and laughing all afternoon. Somehow she gets me to tell her I read poetry and have written a few verses of my own, and how it got started in English class after Mr. Garoppolo had us analyze the lyrics of old sixties songs from The Moody Blues, Dylan, The Byrds, et cetera. I’ve never told a soul about that before. I won’t tell you everything we talked about, but somehow she made me fee
l better.
A typical shrink would have probably tried to psychoanalyze why I’d stolen the beer or how I feel about my mom and dad. Or blah, blah, blah. The Bob Newhart Show stuff without the corny laugh track. Dr. Clark doesn’t even mention the beer heist. All she says is “kids do stupid things; that’s why we call them kids.” We talk a bit about Cleo. How I’d helped her, and how I think Cleo doesn’t give a rat’s butt if I’m alive or dead. She also doesn’t give me any of the “plenty of fish in the sea” BS. She simply says, “Cleo’s not the same person anymore, Ford. You need to come to terms with that and move on.” So what she’s really telling me is Cleo moved on without me, so get over it.
“I thought she was different, that’s all.”
“All I can say is she doesn’t want to be different anymore.” Dr. Clark clasps her hands and leans forward in her chair. “She wants to fit in. Can you understand that?”
“I guess so.” Maybe I know that better than anyone.
“Before you go, I want to give you a present.” With a bright smile, she hands me a brown paper lunch bag. The paper bag drops from my hands, and out slides That Was Then, This Is Now onto the floor. I pick it up and calculate the chances of both of us buying the sequel to The Outsiders. Same as me solving Rubik’s Cube after a zillion turns—ZERO. Cleo probably gave it back to Dr. Clark without reading a word of it and is on her fiftieth Jackie Collins romance novel.
She tells me I can come back, but I know I won’t see her again in therapy. There’s nothing else to discuss. I hug Dr. Clark, grab a licorice stick from a jar on the table, and head out the door. There is one thing I don’t confide in to Dr. Clark.
Like hell I’m giving up on Cleo.
During my purgatory, Virginia and Kate clean the house like mad, right down to using Mix-Fare Super-V cleanser on toothbrushes between the cracks in the blue-tiled bathroom for Pop’s prospective house buyers while I coach from the sidelines. A guy in a cheap three-piece suit came by several times in the evening. Pop hoped the man might make an offer. The blowhard went on and on about how his wife would love to live on Dot Ave because it’s close to uptown and the schools once they start a family. I figure if Sir Winston had won the PGA, my winning share could have paid off the real estate taxes and given the house a reprieve from its death sentence.
I don’t return to caddying right away, too embarrassed to show my face in public. Instead, I hang out at the waterfall with Chimney, lounge around town, and eat baklavas and three-cheese sandwiches at Olga’s Kitchen served up by Billy.
One foggy, soupy day, I bump into Fat Albert at Hamburger Heaven, who’s shoveling a cheeseburger into his mouth at the lunch counter. One down, three to go. Even though he’s already living up to his name, it seems like he’s gained a Volvo in weight since he shoved me into the country club swimming pool.
“There’s an empty seat. Sit down,” Fat Albert says. I figure there’s nothing he can do to me in public. Plus, we’re headed for high school and will be driving real cars soon, not just bumper cars at Boblo Island. Kids mature as they got older, don’t they? So I sit on a stool next to him and order two cheese sliders smothered in grilled onions and ketchup. “Sorry about shovin’ you in the pool. Lund just makes you do crazy shit.”
“Where is Nick the Prick today?”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass.” Another plate of steaming sliders slides under his chin. “He booted me out of the gang.”
I notice his bottom lip quiver and ask him why Lund kicked him out of the Fantastic Four.
“Wendall Lober has somethin’ called Home Box Office. It’s got ten times the number of channels as ON-TV.” He stacks two burgers together and pours ketchup on the top layer. “I became pretty worthless to them. Wendall’s in. I’m out.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Nick’s a dick. Plus, we’re about to start high school, and he’s still reading comic books in his stupid tree fort like he’s still in the sixth grade.” It occurs to me I haven’t read a comic book in ages. “I could pound him if I wanted to.” Fat Albert swallows a double-onion cheeseburger whole.
“No doubt about that, Gene.”
“Geez, nobody’s called me Gene since the first grade. It’s always Fat Albert. Hey, you want to come over some time and watch a movie with me? Mad Max is showing on ON.” A fried onion dangles from his mouth.
“That’d be great.” He holds out his oniony paw. I shake it and think we don’t need Nick.
No doubt we aren’t cool, but we’re real. I’m not changing for anyone. Why waste my time trying to impress the likes of Lund? I’ll take Gene Duncan, thank you very much.
Mom starts nagging me to start caddying again. I don’t want to go back and face Father Steve. Instead, I ride off in my caddy shirt and towel every day to go to the movies or the arcade. I’ve now seen Airplane!, The Blues Brothers, Friday the 13th, and The Shining.
On a beautiful Friday afternoon, as the sky glistens with a fresh coat of light-blue paint, I exit the back door of the movie theater that leads to a field, and beyond that, Freddy’s Go-Cart, Slippery Slide and Golf Range. The go-carts and water slide are so fun that kids hardly use the range. After watching a middle-aged man in a dress shirt and loose tie hit worm burners, I realize I miss playing golf every Monday with Owen and Pimples. For five bucks, kids can hit balls all day long at the range. I wander over to Freddy’s and borrow a 5-iron. Kids fly around the go-cart track with their hair pressed back while I bash ball after ball off green AstroTurf.
I return to the range early the next day with my own clubs. Mr. Valentine had explained to me once how to play different shots: a fade—open your stance, a hook—close your stance and rotate your grip counter-clockwise, a Texas wedge—use a putter instead of wedge to run the ball up to the green. A great golf shot mirrors the sensation of a slingshot. The ball launches off the clubface if properly struck, along with a small divot. If you hit it sweet, the divot is like the solid rocket boosters falling off the Saturn V at takeoff.
From that day on, I keep my hours at the golf range the same as my caddying hours. That way, Pop and Mom won’t suspect I’m not looping. I want a college scholarship, but I figure there might be a better way.
The following week, Pop talks me into trying out for the junior varsity golf team for the upcoming high school year.
“Gee,” I lie, “been so busy caddying again, I haven’t thought about playing golf much.” At this point, I got nothing to lose by trying out for the team.
Tryouts are held at a golf range, where the coach watches us hit balls. At my turn, I hit the ball straight as an arrow ten times in a row. As a freshman, it’s hard to make the JV squad because only seven guys are selected. The tryout lasts a total of ten minutes. After watching me for a while, he comes up to me and says, “Kid, you have a real nice swing. Show up next week for the Kensington City Golf Tournament. It’s the second leg of the tryout.”
I trudge over to Pop’s car. “How’d it go?” he asks.
“I made the first cut. I have to play in the city golf tournament for the next round of cuts.” A smile emerges from my lips for the first time in ages. I’ve finally something to look forward to.
“You had the smoothest swing out there.” He rolls the window all the way down. “If you don’t make the team, that coach doesn’t know his head from his ass.”
I back away from the car. Don’t worry, Pop. I’ll make it. If I make the team, it’ll salvage my summer and give me a head start in high school. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you have to distinguish yourself in life. Or was it stand out in life? It’s Grandpa Quinn’s expression, and I know stealing beer isn’t what he meant. Making the golf team might make Pop forget about the Farmer Jack’s debacle.
he following Monday, I show up at the city golf tournament. Nine holes will be played on the first day at Logan Springs, and nine holes the next day at the other public g
oat track called Willow Hills. Golf has become a serious passion now. A Quinn has to be good at something. I tee off that morning with three other boys while Pop lurks in the shadows of a two-headed maple tree. Three miserable putts and a double bogey on the first hole. A depressing slog to the second tee. I’m hoping Pop has left, but it’s too far for me to see him.
Things turn around for me as I manage a tricky up and down for par on Number 2, which settles my frayed nerves. I barely miss a putt the entire day with Sir Winston’s Bulls Eye putter. In the zone! I fire a personal best of thirty-six, several shots in front of the field. Afterward, I eat a baloney sandwich and bake on a picnic bench as other players trickle in with their scores. A tournament “official” writes the scores on a large board in black magic marker.
Some mom waiting for her son shouts out, “Who’s Ford Quinn?” I proudly raise my hand as the owner of the score. “What a wonderful score,” she gushes.
The golf coach from Catholic High approaches me and says, “That’s quite an impressive score for an incoming freshman. Another round like that and you could even make varsity.” After I thank the coach, he adds, “What country club do ya play at?”
Monday’s North Kensington Country Club—by special invite only. “I don’t belong to any country club.”
Playing a varsity sport as a freshman would launch me from the bottom rung of the social ladder to orbiting Jupiter. I’ll be heading to parties with seniors, making out with cheerleaders, signing autographs for third graders. Not even football players make varsity as a freshman unless their last name is Lott. Freshman letter winners get to go to the homecoming dance, and I’ll have my pick of dates for sure, but I’ll take Cleo. Duh! I’ll be the famous freshman Tiger and maybe even get elected class president. (Plus, players who win the tournament get their photos taken for the local paper, and maybe then Cleo will take notice—and we can double date with Jason and Pip.)
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