How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (33 page)

“Oh, sorry,” he says as he passes. “I didn't know you were there.”

L
ike Superman,
I jump into the phone booth at the Wallingford train station as soon as I get back and dial Natie's number.

Stan answers. “The Nudelman rrrresidence,” he says, trilling the “r.” Like Fran, he, too, becomes inexplicably British when he answers the phone.

“Hey, Mr. Nudelman, it's Edward. Is Natie there?” I pull back the receiver in anticipation of the usual shoutfest, but to my surprise he speaks like a normal person.

“Nathan went out for a little while,” he says. “Something about getting a real steal on computer equipment.”

I don't know and I don't ask.

“Will he be back soon?” I ask. The booth feels stifling and claustrophobic to me, so I stretch the cord as far as I can and step out onto the pavement to gulp the humid spring air.

“He's gotta eat sometime. Are you okay, Eddie?”

I don't know why, but his asking how I am both comforts and panics me at the same time. No, nothing is okay, nothing at all, and I can't possibly tell him why.

I want my mommy.

“Will you just tell him to wait for me when he gets back?”

“Sure thing,” he says. “Say, bet you're pretty excited about Juilliard, huh?”

I can't even answer him.

Naturally it starts to rain,
and not the cool, restorative sort of rain either, but the oppressively muggy New Jersey kind. Father Groovy's herringbone sports jacket starts giving me the itch, so I strip it off and carry it like it's some dead gray animal, switching arms every block or so as it grows heavier with wetness. Finally I quicken my pace to a jog, hoping that'll somehow make me less wet, all the while trying to work out in my mind what just happened. I can only guess that Frank Sinatra must have read the item in the
New York Post
and called Juilliard to inquire about it. In true Hoboken never-turn-down-a-freebie style, Frank probably mentioned he had a relative who qualified, and in true fund-raising suck-up-to-potential-donors style, Laurel Watkins made it happen.

Courtesy of my ten grand. It's a shame Natie won't live to see adulthood, but it's obvious I'm going to have to kill him.

By the time I get to the Nudelmans' I'm completely soaked. I lean on the doorbell and hear Fran scream, “FOR GOD'S SAKE, SOMEONE GET THE DOOR!”

I step out of my muddy Keds, partly out of politeness, but mostly because my feet itch like crazy and I can't wait to scratch them. I feel like I'm about to burst out of my skin.

Natie answers.

“Jeez,” he says, looking me up and down, “what have you been doing—gathering two of every animal?”

“Frank Sinatra stole my money.”

“WHAT THE FUCK . . .”

From the other end of the house Fran screams, “NATHAN, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”

“JUST A LITTLE TOURETTE'S, MA,” he hollers back.

“You don't have Tourette's,” I say, rubbing my bare feet on the mat to relieve the itch.

“They don't know that,” he says. “Why do ya' think they don't pay attention to anything I say?”

He really does scare me sometimes.

I drop my wet coat on the linoleum floor and lean against the carpeted wall to catch my breath.

“Let me get you a towel or something,” Natie says. “Fran just had that wall steam cleaned.” He scampers down the hallway, hitching up his sagging pants as he goes.

I bend over and rest my hands on my knees. The swirling patterns in the linoleum look like those meteorological maps you see on the news and it makes me dizzy. I close my eyes.

Natie returns with a robe that has Palm Beach Hilton stitched on the breast pocket, then leads me into the laundry room, where I stick my clothes in the dryer. I tell him the whole horrible story, putting special emphasis on how the scholarship was his idea. Natie doesn't look at me while I talk, but concentrates on tearing sheets of Bounce into tiny little pieces.

“Okay,” he says when I finish, “the first thing we need to do is eat something. Come on, I got rugallah in the kitchen.”

“I'm not hungry,” I say.

Natie blinks his little button eyes. “Jeez, you must be upset.”

I slam my hand on the washer, which echoes like a tin drum. “Natie, last month I had $10,000 in
cash
in my hands and now I've got nothing because I listened to your cheesehead scheme.”

“Don't be such a baby,” he says, Pooh-bearing over to the cookie tin. “You wouldn't have had that $10,000 in the first place if it hadn't been for me.” He opens the tin. “You sure you don't want some rugallah? It's good.”

I shake my head.

“This is just a momentary setback,” he says, chewing. “Think of it as the price of doing business. We've got Jordan as a backup, don't we?”

There's something about having blackmail as the backup to your failed money-laundering scheme that doesn't sit right with me.

Natie gives me a pat on the back. “You're just tired,” he says. “Let me take you home.” He grabs a set of keys off a hook by the door.

“You don't drive,” I say.

“I've got a license, don't I?”

“Yeah, but it's fake.”

“Only you and I know that,” he says, shaking the keys.

The house is dark
and quiet when I get home and I feel depression envelop me like a wet blanket. Ten fucking grand. I bend down to say hello to the cats when I hear a groggy voice call out my name from the living room. I stand up and go to the entryway and see a figure huddled in the elbow of the sectional couch. She's cleared a warren for herself among all the usual debris and sits with her knees pulled up to her chest, her blond head resting on them, shining like a light.

“Kathleen?”

“Kathleen's not here right now,” she mumbles into her knees. “Would you like to leave a message?”

Two wine bottles sit on the coffee table—one empty, another well on its way. “Yeah,” I say, “tell her I'm worried about her.” I pick up the bottles and move them to the piano where I put them on top of the score of
Godspell
so they won't leave rings.

“You're sweet,” Kathleen says, and makes room for me on the couch by shoving aside a transistor radio, a roll of paper towels, and two phone books. She pats the spot, the Internationally Recognized Signal for “Sit here on this stained, crumb-infested piece of furniture,” then regards me with moist, fermented eyes.

“Do you think I'm an alcoholic?” she says.

I nod.

Kathleen sighs. “Yeah, me, too. I suppose that means I should get some help, what with being a mental-health professional and all.” She blinks, like she's not sure she's seeing right. “Why are you wearing a bathrobe from the Palm Beach Hilton?”

I pull the robe across my legs to make sure I'm not hanging out. “Fashion statement,” I say.

Kathleen rests a slender hand on my wrist. “You know,” she says, apropos of nothing, “Brad really liked you.”

I guessed that from the way he ground his crotch against my ass when he cracked my back.

“I wish I could say I felt the same about him,” Kathleen says, tracing figure eights on the sofa cushion. “Don't get me wrong. I love my son. But just between you and me, I can't say I like him very much.”

That seems to me a remarkable thing to say about your own child. Kathleen blinks back a tear. “He's turned out just like his father.”

If she only knew.

She gets up and takes the bottle of wine off the piano. “I shouldn't be surprised,” she says. “Everyone's always said that Brad's just like Jack and Bridget's just like me.”

“What about Kelly?” I say.

Kathleen looks at the bottle and puts it back down again. “Kelly,” she says. “Who knows what Kelly is like? She's got so many secrets. Just when I think I understand her, she surprises me again. She's like those Russian dolls; you know, the kind where one is inside of another.” Kathleen staggers along the wall of family photos, peering at them like she's never seen them before. “Kelly is my great hope for this family.” She points to my senior portrait, which I rescued from the junk drawer. “You and Kelly. Neither of you are willing to do what people expect of you.” She smiles. “I admire that.”

It feels weird to have a grown-up admire you.

Kathleen turns and appraises her wedding portrait, Miss Chastity Belt 1961. “Look at me,” she says. “I didn't have a fucking clue. I dropped out of college my junior year to get married and I got pregnant with Bradley on my honeymoon. I told both of my girls that when it came to having sex, stick with oral. No one ever got knocked up giving a blow job.”

Words to live by.

She stumbles back over the couch and rests on the arm. “You know I love you kids; there's not a thing I wouldn't do for any of you: lie, cheat, steal—kill if I had to. But I've got to say I understand how your mother felt. Of course, I don't approve of her leaving you and your sister, but you just can't imagine what it was like for us back then. Here we were in the suburbs, driving the kids to Little League and making brownies for the Brownies, and suddenly there were all these books and magazines telling us we should be self-actualized and liberated and free. But we had noses to wipe and diapers to change. It was like we had missed the parade.”

“But you stuck around,” I say.

She smiles and tousles my hair. “I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But if I had a chance to do it all over again, I'm not sure I would have had my kids when I did. I don't know. It doesn't really matter now anyway.” She brushes the hair out of my eyes and looks at me. “What I'm trying to say is this, sweetie: don't let twenty years of your life go by before you join the parade.”

I reach for her and she puts her arms around me. Her touch isn't anything like her daughter's, or her husband's, or her son's for that matter. It's a mother's touch, warm and comforting, and I lay my head on her lap as we sit silently in the dark together, both enjoying our dozy, miserable happiness together.

We're both startled by
a banging on the front door. The cats scurry, making scratching noises on the floors as they go. “I'll get it,” I say.

I open the door and there, like a blast of hot air in my face, is my evil stepmonster.

“Azz
huuuuuuuuuull!”
she screams.

I shut the door.

“Who was that?” Kathleen calls from the other room.

“Jehovah's Witness,” I say.

Dagmar bangs again. I pull the curtain aside in the little window next to the door. She looks distorted through the beveled glass, like her face is all banged up.

If only.

“What do you want?” I yell.

“I know it vas you!” she screams.
“You
did tsis!
You
did tsis!” She shoves what looks like a bank statement against the glass.

“Go away. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“OPEN TSIS DOOR!” she bellows, and pounds again.

From the living room I hear Kathleen mutter, “Oh, for Chrissake.” She gets up and weaves her way into the entryway, where she opens the front door. “Now listen,” Kathleen barks, “in this house crazy people belong in the basement, not on the front porch.”

Dagmar takes a step back and shakes her head, her tangled curls writhing like Medusa's. “He stole money out of my account,” she says, handing the bank statement to Kathleen.

Kathleen glances at the statement, then turns to look at me, her face just inches from mine. “Sweetie, is this true?”

I may be one of the Best Young Actors in America, but I'm not sure I've got it in me to lie to Kathleen anymore. About anything. I take a deep breath and look her right in the eye.

“I don't have her money,” I say.

Hey, it's true.

“There must be some mistake,” Kathleen says to Dagmar. “Maybe Al withdrew it and forgot to . . .”

“No!” Dagmar barks. “He doesn't . . . it is not possible.” Dagmar snatches back the statement. “First tsing Monday mornink I vill be callink tse Financial Aid office at Juilliart,” she says, sounding like the gestapo in a World War Two movie.

I feel my stomach drop to my knees.

“And maybe tsey can tell me who tsis LaChance Jones is.”