KooKooLand (13 page)

As I was standing there trying to figure out what I'd do if Little Joe proposed, the music downstairs stopped with a loud scratch as the needle was dragged across the record.

I heard the voice of the miserable Shirley.

I opened the door and leaned over the banister so I could hear how she was getting along with Hank so far.

Somebody's footsteps approached the bottom of the stairs and I ducked back.

“We're going now!” my mother shouted. “You girls get to bed by eleven.”

“We will!” we shouted back.

I heard the front door slam. I raced to the bedroom window and peeked around the curtain.

The miserable Shirley had dolled herself up and was making goo-goo eyes at Hank. Hank had his arm around her waist and was guiding her to his Cadillac. He opened the door and she slid onto the leather seat. He got behind the
wheel and pulled out fast to keep up with Jimmy's Pontiac, which was already halfway down the block.

I wondered if Hank and the miserable Shirley would end up getting married. If they did, I figured Susan would be pretty miserable herself. Tina had told me the pope put the kibosh on Catholics getting a divorce and then marrying somebody they liked better.

“Thank God they're gone,” said Virginia. “I thought
I'd
turn into an old maid before they cut out.”

She yanked the OJ cans out of her hair, put on too much face paint, and made me swear on our mother's life that I'd never tell anyone she'd gone out, not even if I was tortured to death.

I swore with my fingers crossed behind my back.

She took off into the steamy darkness and I locked the door behind her. I figured the Boston Strangler wouldn't be able to get in unless he had a crowbar. Or unless he found that key Jimmy lost out by the garbage cans a few weeks back when he was half-lit.

I poured myself another shot of ginger ale, which by then was flat and piss-warm. I checked for loose change under the seat cushion where Hank had been sitting. I found a peppermint Life Saver, rubbed the fuzz off of it, and ate it.

Then I danced around the living room, pretending I was on a double date with Susan and the Bonanza brothers—Hoss and Little Joe.

We were half-lit and rockin' the Ponderosa.

A
fter I got tired of dancing around by myself like a dummkopf, I settled down to watch a movie. The movie on TV that night was
Invaders from Mars
. In the movie, some space aliens landed a flying saucer in this kid's backyard and turned his parents into killer zombies. The parents looked the same, but they were mean instead of nice and they tried to turn the kid into a killer zombie too.

At the end the army blew up the aliens and the parents became nice again, but I didn't see how the kid could trust them. Once a Martian messed with your parents' brains, who knew what was going on in there.

When the movie was over, I went to the window and peered into the backyard. I didn't see any flying saucers out there, but the saucer in the movie had burrowed into the ground so you couldn't see it. If you stepped in the wrong spot you got sucked down into it. There could be a saucer out there and I wouldn't even know it.

I grabbed Jimmy's loaded gun from under the La-Z-Boy for protection and ran upstairs and turned on all the lights. I checked under my bed and then checked in Jimmy and Shirley's bedroom closet to make sure no aliens were hiding behind the ammo, rifles, and other firearms.

I saw the Super 8 projector. I saw the box of pancakes.

I forgot all about the aliens and picked up one of the pancakes. There was a rubber band keeping the film from unraveling. I slipped it off.

I unraveled the film and held it up to the light. The pictures were too small. I ran and found the magnifying glass I had gotten in a box of Cracker Jacks.

I put the magnifying glass up to the film. I saw a lady wearing an apron and high heels. She didn't have a top on. I unraveled the film some more. A man showed up. I unraveled some more. The lady bent over the kitchen table. I unraveled. The man took down his pants. I unraveled. He touched his Down There. I unraveled. He put his Down There between the lady's legs. I unraveled. Nothing else happened. The man just kept his Down There in the lady until the pictures turned into blackness. I stopped unraveling. The film was piled up
on my sneakers. My own Down There felt all tingly. I put my hand inside my pedal pushers and began to rub. It felt strange. It felt good. I couldn't imagine why I had never done it before.

Then I remembered YaYa had told me never to touch my Shame. That's what the old Greek ladies called a girl's Down There.

I didn't care. I rubbed my Shame anyway. I rubbed until my hand got all tired and my eyes got all sleepy.

Then I heard the front door open. I tried to shove the film under the bed, but it kept getting caught around my feet.

I heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. I wished the ground would swallow me up.

Virginia appeared at the bedroom door.

She screamed like she had just seen a zombie.

“What are you doing?” she cried. “You shouldn't be looking at those.”

“I wanted to see our home movies,” I lied. “I was just looking for our home movies.”

“He'll kill us if he finds out,” she said.

She grabbed a pencil off the dresser and stuck it through the hole in the reel and began to roll the film back up, twirling it like a pinwheel.

It seemed like she had done this before.

It took forever to roll the movie back up. I could imagine the pictures going in reverse. The man taking out his Down There. The lady standing up. The man disappearing. Until the lady was just standing there without a man again.

Virginia put the rubber band back on the film and we went to bed.

After Virginia fell asleep, I rubbed my Barbie against Virginia's stuffed dog Poochie, who she didn't play with anymore. Then I rubbed my stuffed lamb Lambykins against my mute Chatty Cathy.

I heard Jimmy and Shirley come home, and when Shirley checked on me, I pretended I was asleep.

As soon as she left, I crept out of bed, put one of the free tumblers against the crack in the door, and squashed my ear against it.

I wanted to find out how the double date had gone.

I listened for a long time while Shirley made Jimmy a fried bologna sandwich and Jimmy complained about the cheap Greek who owned the club and watered down the drinks so it served him right that Jimmy had smuggled in his own bottle of booze.

Finally, I heard Shirley say, “I hope Shirley got home OK. Hank got a little grabby with her at the car.”

“Grabby, my ass,” Jimmy said. “That broad was all over him like a case of poison ivy.”

“She was a little forward,” Shirley quickly agreed.

“A
little
?”

“You're right. She was too forward.”

“I'll tell you one thing. Hank's probably making it with her right now.”

“She wouldn't do that. She's Catholic.”

“Those Catholic broads are always on the make. When I was in Italy and France in the merchant marine they were all over me for a pair of stockings. And in the whorehouses, they all had a cross hanging from the bedpost.”

There was a big empty space in the conversation. Every time Jimmy brought up whorehouses in Europe, Shirley would clam right up.

“Oh, come on, baby. That was before I met you. You know I don't tomcat around anymore.”

There was another big empty space. Then Shirley answered back in a sharp voice that only came out when she'd been drinking highballs.

“How do I know what you do? I work all night and the rest of the time I'm sleeping dead to the world and you're off doing who knows what with who knows who.”

“Look, don't start. I told you once I'm not making any other broads. I don't wanna have to tell you again.”

“You danced so close to Shirley it looked like you wanted to go home with her yourself.”

“You're crazy. I was just trying to give the miserable broad a little thrill.”

“Hank didn't like it. He looked like he was going to punch you.”

“You don't know what you're talking about. Me and Hank, we kid around like that with each other. Like when we're out in the marshes together and we see who can bag the most ducks. We try and get each other's goat. You don't know anything about it. So don't try and talk about what you don't know. You're a farm girl and you don't know the score.”

Shirley was quiet again. I heard her blue satin shoes start heading up the stairs and Jimmy's heavy black shoes follow.

My arm was getting tired. I moved the tumbler to the other ear.

They were now in their bedroom. Jimmy's voice had changed.

“Come on, baby. You got that Shirley beat by twenty lengths. You made every broad in the joint look like a hundred-to-one shot. You left them at the starting gate, for Chrissake.”

I heard some kissing. I heard the zipper on the blue and gold dress being pulled down.

“Come on, baby,” Jimmy said again. “Don't I show you a good time? Most wives gotta beg their husbands to take them out. But those pencil pushers are so tired from punching a clock all they can do is conk out in front of Lawrence Welk on a Saturday night. You get to go out clubbing and to the track. You're gonna get your picture taken in the goddamn winner's circle in a few weeks. Jesus, you had your own private fireworks show tonight, how about that? You never had any of that up on the farm. No Nova Scotia farm boy would show you the world the way I have.”

I could hear another zipper being pulled down. And the bedsprings on their half-paid-for bed creaking.

I pressed my ear harder against the tumbler and listened to the S-E-X sounds. I knew it was wrong to listen but I did it anyway.

I knew they weren't doing it to make a baby. I'd once heard Jimmy tell Hank they each had two brats and that should be enough for any man. More than that could crimp a guy's style.

When the S-E-X sounds died down and the creaking stopped, I got back into bed. I lay there putting the pictures from the pancake I'd seen with the sounds I'd just heard. Making my own movie. My own dirty movie.

If there was a God and if I died in my sleep, I knew I would go straight to hell.

Susan would be playing her clarinet in heaven and I would be sucked into an underground world like in
Invaders from Mars
except instead of aliens, the devil would be there stabbing my keister with his red-hot pitchfork.

I vowed to change my evil ways.

I vowed that the next day I would save myself.

L
ucky for me, Jimmy dragged Shirley off to Maine early the next morning to see about Victory Bound. Uncle Bobby, the horse's trainer, had called from Scarborough Downs and said Victory Bound wasn't eating his oats. The horse appeared to be on a hunger strike. Uncle Bobby thought Jimmy oughta come by the barns and talk to the animal, since Jimmy knew how to look right in a horse's eyes and tell what the hell was bugging him.

While Virginia was still dead to the world, I put on the outfit YaYa had bought me for Greek Easter but which I hadn't gotten to wear. YaYa had bought the outfit in case Jimmy would let her take me to Easter Mass, but Jimmy had said no frickin' way and had taken me to see Alfred Hitchcock's
The Birds
instead.

When I stepped into the Blessed Sacrament church that morning, I was afraid God would strike me dead. Either that or the priest would look into my eyes the way Jimmy looked into Victory Bound's eyes and see I was a sinner and toss me out.

But I wasn't struck dead, and nobody rushed up to kick me out. Instead, a man in a dark suit smiled at me and handed me a program like what you got when you entered the racetrack.

I followed Tina and her mother up the aisle, holding on to the doily Tina had bobby-pinned to my hair. I didn't want the doily falling off because Tina had told me God didn't like it if you didn't have a doily or a kerchief or a big, frilly Easter bonnet on your head. I didn't know why, but I figured I'd be finding out soon.

We sat on a bench up front. It was hard as a rock. I wondered why they didn't put some throw pillows on it or something.

“Boy, this bench is hard on your keister,” I said.

Tina's mother gave my hand a little swat.

“We don't say bad words like that in church. We don't say bad words at all unless we're little heathens. You don't want to be a little heathen, do you?”

“No, ma'am,” I said. “I want to be a good Catholic.”

“That's good. The Lord has spoken to you.”

“Yes, he has,” I chirped, realizing as soon as the words were out of my mouth that I had just lied. I hadn't been in church five minutes and I had already committed a sin.

“It's not called a bench, stupid,” Tina corrected me. “It's a pew. And it's supposed to be hard so you don't fall asleep or anything. Everybody knows that.”

I could see Tina was really enjoying lording it over on me, since I was usually the big know-it-all.

“You better just follow me,” she said. “Like in Simon says, do what I do. Except when I go up to the altar to eat the body of Christ and drink his blood. You have to stay put for that.”

“That's fine by me,” I choked. It sounded like
Blood Feast
up there at the altar.

“It's just a cracker and some grape juice,” Tina snickered. “I bet I had you going. I bet I had you quaking in your Mary Janes.”

I was dying to tell her I knew all about the cracker and grape juice, but I kept my mouth shut so I wouldn't tell another lie.

The priest finally showed up wearing a dress. He started spewing a bunch of mumbo jumbo.

“Is the whole thing in Greek?” I asked Tina.

“It's Latin, stupid,” she hissed. “The Greeks got their own church. You'd know that if your father wasn't a heathen.”