How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (41 page)

I would be one of those people who hadn't. From the very first page when the moo cow came down the road and met the “nicens little boy named baby tuckoo” I thought to myself, “What is this crap?”

“Your assignment,” Mr. Lucas continues, “is to write your own
Portrait of the Artist—
a portrait of yourself as a young person, minimum twenty-five pages . . .”

There's a gasp in the room.

“. . . single-spaced.”

This elicits a lot of conversation, even from the Ivy League early decision types. Assigning a twenty-five-page paper the month before graduation is like making the winner of the Boston Marathon walk home. I mean, enough already.

“Settle down, ladies and gentlemen, settle down,” he says. “If you spent as much time writing as you do complaining, you'd be done in a week. It's not like you have to do any research. You already know who you are . . . pre
zoom
ably.”

He says it the same way he says
“uh
bviously” and the class laughs. “This assignment is more for you than it is for me. Very soon you'll go your separate ways and your lives will be never the same again, so I want you to stop for a moment and reflect on who you are today. Right now. I don't want an autobiography with all the details of your lives. I want you to do as James Joyce does and describe for me what it's like to be inside your minds. And I want to know what made you that way.”

Natie taps me on my shoulder. In the margin of his notebook he's written, “Saturday's the night.”

“For instance,” Mr. Lucas continues, “who can tell me why they think Joyce named his alter ego Stephen Dedalus?”

Underneath Natie's message I scrawl, “Are you sure?”

Natie nods. “He's going on a business trip.”

“How do you know?”

“What do I look like, an amateur?” Natie says out loud.

“Mr. Zanni,” Mr. Lucas says. “Perhaps you'd like to tell us. Why did Joyce name his hero Dedalus?”

“Daedalus is the Greek hero who escaped from prison by building himself wings,” I say.

Hey, at least I read the Cliff Notes carefully.

“And what is Stephen Dedalus flying to?”

That's an easy one. What does any artist fly to? “To art,” I say. Even without finishing the book I know that I am so like Stephen Dedalus, constrained as I am by bourgeois oppression. “And sex,” I say.

The class laughs.

“Egg
zellent,” Mr. Lucas says. “Mr. Zanni makes a good, if slightly crude, point. Like Joyce, I want you uncensored. Don't be afraid to include whatever tawdry and sordid details of your adolescent lives you wish. No one's going to read this but me.”

Some of us are going to need a lot more than twenty-five pages.

That Saturday,
a nun and a priest stand in the Nudelmans' darkened living room, their faces pressed against the picture window.

“Can you see anything?” Father Groovy asks.

Sister Natie shakes his head. “HEY MA,” he shouts, “DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE BINOCULARS ARE?”

Fran screeches back, “IN YOUR FATHER'S STUDY.”

Natie turns to me and shrugs. “He likes to watch the birds,” he says. From the other end of the house I hear Stan shout, “WADDYA WANT 'EM FOR?”

“WE NEED THEM TO SPY ON THE ZANNIS' HOUSE SO WE KNOW WHEN IT'S SAFE TO GO OVER AND TAKE INCRIMINATING PHOTOGRAPHS.”

Stan laughs. “YOU KIDS,” he says.

Natie's just gone to hunt for the binoculars when I see another nun and priest leave Al's house carrying a large cardboard box, which they place in the back of the Wagon Ho. They cross the street, heading toward us. “They're coming!” I shout to Natie.

I open the door for them.

“Good evening,” the nun says, “we're here on behalf of the Convent of the Bleeding Heart. Do you have any items you'd like to donate to our annual rummage sale?”

“Get thee to a nunnery,” I say.

Sister Paula pulls off her wimple and shakes out her hair.

“She must have fallen for it,” I say. “You filled a whole box.”

“Yeah, but it's all your old stuff.”

Stupid Austrian bitch.

Doug hands me Father Groovy's spectacles, then pulls off the mustache and goatee I glued on him. “I drank so much friggin' cocoa I thought for sure this damn thing was going to fall right off into my cup,” he says. “Say what you want about your stepmonster, but she makes a kick-ass
Kakao mit Schlag.”

Or in Doug's case, perhaps that should be
Kakao mit Schlong.

Dagmar's pride in her cocoa with cream was the key element for our little plan to work. “It was so easy, man,” Doug tells us as we sit on the back patio drinking lemonade and waiting for Kelly and Ziba to return. “The minute I said
Guten Abend
she was sweeter than a Sacher torte.”

“What were you two going on about anyway?” Paula asks.

“Mostly how you can't get a decent cup of cocoa in the States, which is true. Actually, it was kind of nice to talk with her. It's too bad she's such a psycho.”

“Well, you made a very convincing priest,” Paula says. “It was an
inspired
performance.”

Though certainly not divinely inspired.

Doug beams, “Ya' really think so?”

Paula reaches over with a tiny hand and twiddles his kinky hair, which has been slicked back into submission. “You might just be an actor, after all,” she says.

Doug doesn't say anything, but I can tell he's pleased. A true Play Person at last.

Paula goes on to explain how, when she went to use the bathroom, she opened the shades on the window facing the street so we'd be certain to get the signal, and I tell them how excited Dagmar sounded on the phone when I pretended to be a dealer interested in her entire photo series of blow-dryers in bathtubs.

“It was perfect,” Paula says. “You kept her on just long enough for us to get the sedative in her cocoa, but not so long that it cooled off. Excellent job.” We all clink glasses of lemonade.

We have to wait for what feels like a very long time until Kelly and Ziba return from their own reconnaissance mission, or maybe it's just that I'm restless.

I sit listening to the buzz of cicadas in the air, wondering if something's gone wrong, when finally I see the silhouette of two nuns sneaking through the bushes at the back of the Nudelmans' property. I cross the lawn to meet them.

“What took you so long?” I say.

“We would have been here a lot sooner, darling, if you hadn't made us come around the back way,” Ziba says. “Plus, she took this really long shower, which got us very worried. We were beginning to think she must have passed out and hit her head or something.”

“Where is she now?”

Kelly laughs, a machine gun. “In the living room,” she says. “She came back to turn off the lights but just sort of curled up on the floor right there and went to sleep.”

“It was terribly undignified,” Ziba says.

I make the six of us
go around the back way again. After my brush with the law I'm determined that none of us get caught, and we might have a hard time explaining to the neighbors why a gang of nuns and priests keep going in and out of a house owned by Jews. Lucky for us we're all wearing black. We sneak around the side of the house as inconspicuously as half a dozen nuns and priests can and let ourselves in the back door. The house is quiet, naturally, but the lights are still on, which feels vaguely sinister to me, like in those old detective movies when they arrive at the scene of the crime and the needle on the phonograph is stuck on the end of the record while the victim lies splayed across the floor. We tiptoe to the entrance of the Museum of Furniture and peer in at our victim, who is also splayed across the floor, but more in the drug-induced comatose manner of Patty Duke in
Valley of the Dolls.

“We should make sure she won't wake up,” Paula says.

“Good idea,” I say, and then call out Dagmar's name softly.

She doesn't stir.

“Hey, Dagmar,” I say louder.

Still nothing.

I move closer. “Hey, Dagmar,” I bark, “you're a gold-digging bitch who ruined my life.”

She rolls over and starts to snore. I glance up at my friends. “It's showtime,” I say.

The last official act of CV Enterprises
is to take incriminating photos of my evil stepmonster in compromising sexual positions. As with Jordan, we realize that naked pictures of Dagmar won't be enough (there are probably a few of those floating around from her modeling days), so nothing short of an orgy will do.

Since Paula has actual onscreen experience going topless she's been cast as Dagmar's lesbian lover, Sister LaChance, who has risen from the grave for one final appearance. Doug and I are to be Juan and Jesús, two convent groundsmen we've invented (A) to give an excuse for there being someone else in the room to take pictures and (B) to make sure Al gets upset. We figure that seeing photos of his hot wife and a woman with big knockers might only succeed in livening up his sex life; but photos of her with a well-hung illegal alien are certain to piss him off.

Along with the photos, we'll send Al the following letter on Catholic Vigilance Society stationery:

Then, enclosed on perfumed stationery and forged in Dagmar's handwriting, will be this note:

Cecil B. DeNudelman takes over. “Okay, places everybody,” he says.

“What places?” Doug says. “We don't have places.”

“Right,” Natie says. “Okay, first thing, we need to . . . uh . . . take off Dagmar's robe.”

We all stare at each other. Okay, this is weird.

“Oh, for God's sakes, I'll do it,” Ziba says. She kneels down and unties the terry-cloth belt and spreads open the robe. “Oh my,” she says.

Dagmar's completely naked underneath.

“I hope my body looks that good when I'm her age,” Kelly says.

I feel my mouth go dry. There was a time just a couple of months back when I would have been grateful for an erection, but the fact that my naked stepmother is getting me hard really disturbs me, particularly since I'm dressed as a priest. I turn to Natie to move things along, but he's just standing there with his mouth open.

“Okay,” I say, clapping my hands together, “uh . . . Sis, if you wouldn't mind getting undressed, we'll start with you.”

“Certainly,” Paula says, the professional actress at work. She turns her back to us and undoes the snaps on her gown and lets it drop to the floor, revealing a silky lavender bra and panties. Paula reaches behind her and undoes the thick bra strap. Just as she hooks her thumbs under the elastic of her panties to pull them down she says, “Now I'm trusting everyone will be mature about this.”

“Absolutely,” I say. “Right, everybody?”

“Right,” they say, except for Natie, who's suddenly auditioning for the role of Helen Keller.

Paula slides off her panties and turns around.

“Holy shit!” yells Doug. Her breasts are the size of milk jugs. Kelly gives Doug a smack.

“Doug, you
promised,”
Paula says, covering herself up.