KooKooLand (20 page)

Since the Kennedys weren't Greek I figured nobody had spit on their baby. Maybe if some Greek had done that, everything would be different. Maybe that was why I had lived and Jimmy had lived, even though, according to YaYa, we had both been born too soon and both been sickly, just like the Kennedy baby.

“Who wants a nice cold root beer?” Shirley sang out.

I figured I could do more praying later and opened my eyes.

Virginia was walking up to the blanket carrying my sand bucket. Jimmy had sent her to the Normandie Inn to steal some ice from their cooler. Virginia handed the bucket of ice to Shirley, and Shirley plopped ice cubes into highballs for her and Jimmy and into root beers for Virginia and me.

“What have you been doing, dum-dum?” Jimmy asked me, gnawing on a hunk of ice.

I tensed up. I knew Jimmy wouldn't be keen on the idea of me praying. He might turn it into a joke. Or he might start talking about all the starving babies in the world and ask why I wasn't praying for them, too. He might make me defend what was so special about the Kennedy baby in relation to those other babies and I knew I wouldn't be able to do it to his satisfaction.

“Nothing,” I said. “I haven't been doing anything.”

“In other words, you're wasting your vacation. The vacation your mother and I worked so hard to take you on.”

“No,” I said. I didn't see how that followed. “I'm having fun. I'm getting a nice tan. See.” I held out my browning arm as evidence.

“Tanning is for idiots,” he said. “KooKooLand idiots. The time you waste lying there like a corpse you could be reading a book or the newspaper to make yourself less of a dum-dum.”

I obediently reached for the newspaper. A picture of President Kennedy looking sad was on the front page.

“They're making a federal case outta one dead kid,” Jimmy complained. “Kids die every day. It's a big, bad world.”

I nodded like I agreed with him.

“C'mon,” he said suddenly. “Let's go for a dip.”

I thought he must be joking.

There was a freak invasion of jellyfish going on at the moment and everybody was staying out of the water. Some of the jellyfish were pink and some were white and one kind was harmless and the other stung you and I couldn't remember which was which.

Jimmy insisted all the jellyfish were harmless. He said he knew all about jellyfish from being a merchant mariner and a fisherman and from swimming amongst jellyfish lots of times. Even if one kind did sting a little, it wasn't poisonous and you would barely feel the sting.

“What are you, a chicken?” asked Jimmy. “A little baby chicken?” He started to make his clucking sounds.

Pluck pluck pluck
.

“I don't think she should go in the water,” Shirley piped up.

“Oh, look, it's the mother hen trying to protect her baby chick,” said Jimmy.

“I don't want her to get stung. Even if it's not poisonous.”

“What about me?” asked Jimmy, draining his highball. “You don't care if I get stung? You only care about her? You don't care what happens to me?”

“No, of course not. Of course I care about you.” I could see Shirley was trying not to get boxed into a corner. “You said the stinging wouldn't bother you. But you're a big, strong man and she's a little girl. Besides, nobody else is in the water.”

“These goofball tourists are all chickens.”

“Jimmy . . . please. I don't want her to go.”

“Why do you have to take up for her all the time? Ever since she's been born you've been doing that and I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. You're always taking her side.”

“I'm not taking anyone's side,” said Shirley. “I just—”

“I don't see you taking my side. I don't see you ever taking my side. And you should be taking my side. You should be taking my side all the time. I'm your husband. I'm the head of this family and you treat me like I'm Joe Palooka.”

I knew he was going down a road that wouldn't end until Shirley cried and he told her they had been having a great time and she had messed it all up.

Unless I saved the day.

“I want to go in the water with Daddy,” I blurted out. “I'm not afraid of those stupid jellyfish.”

Jimmy looked over at me with his angry face, and for a breathless moment I thought he was going to start in on me.

But he broke into a grin.

“All right then. Now you're talking. That's my kid. That's what I like to hear.”

I jumped up. I prayed to God to protect me from the killer jellyfish. At least if I get stung, I prayed, please don't let it hurt too much 'cause I'll have to pretend it's nothing, really nothing, or she'll be right and he'll be wrong and then I'll get blamed for ruining the whole goddamn day.

“I'll race you to the shore,” he said.

As I got into my starting position, he turned back to Shirley for one more parting jab.

“Your daughter's got more goddamn guts than you do.”

Shirley looked at me helplessly. Her eyes said I'm sorry. I put on a big smile so she wouldn't feel so bad.

I raced him to the shore. Raced him faster than I ever had, dreading the destination.

I'm gonna beat you, you bastard, I thought. I'm gonna beat you if it kills me.

He let me get close. He let me get my hopes up and then he pulled away like Victory Bound.

He charged into the ocean ahead of me, splashing water back into my face.

“You'll never beat me. You'll never beat your old man,” he crowed, and dove head first into the water thick with pink and white jellyfish.

I edged into the water, trying to avoid the jellyfish, but it was impossible. They sloshed against me, blobs of pink and white potential pain.

There was nothing left to do except ask God to protect me, even though I knew he was probably busy right now with the Kennedys.

Jimmy waved me out into the deep water and I went toward him, pushing my way through the sea of fear.

I closed my eyes and pretended I had a force field all around me. Like the robot in
The Day the Earth Stood Still
, nothing could touch me.

I went in over my head and somehow I didn't get stung.

“See?” Jimmy laughed. “I was right. Remember, your old man is always right.”

“You're right,” I repeated, and this time it was true.

I lay back and floated in a sea of beautiful jellyfish and never wanted to go back to shore again.

I
t was our last night at the beach and I had to make up my mind once and for all. I needed to find the perfect present for Susan. I felt like our whole friendship was riding on my decision.

There were several items in the running. There was a framed Jesus that had
OLD ORCHARD BEACH, MAINE
stamped across the sea he was walking on. There was a bongo drum, which was what
I
wanted, but which I thought Susan might like too since she already played the clarinet and might want to learn a new instrument. There was a jewelry box shaped like a pirate's chest that smelled like cedar when you opened it. I figured Susan could store her gold cross in there. That is, if she ever took the cross off, which was something I didn't know about one way or the other.

The truth was I was beginning to realize there were lots of things I didn't know about Susan. Like what her favorite color was and whether she liked chocolate better than vanilla or Top Cat more than Huckleberry Hound. I began to see Susan as a mystery and realized how few clues I had. I felt Nancy Drew wouldn't be in such a predicament. She'd know what to buy her best friend. She'd have solved that goddamn mystery by now.

To make matters worse, as I dragged myself up and down the main drag, Virginia was breathing down my neck. I'd begged her to come shopping with me, but she was dying to get back to the arcade. She wanted to spend her last night with Tommy. She'd gotten crazier and crazier about him over the two weeks we'd been there. She said he reminded her of James Dean, but all I could see was a freeloader who bummed money from her to buy pizza and then wouldn't even give her a bite.

As we went from souvenir shop to souvenir shop, Virginia kept pushing me to make up my mind. I hadn't told her I was buying something for Susan, so she thought I was just dicking around trying to pick out something for myself.

“How about that bongo drum?” she suggested. “You haven't stopped talking about that since we got here. Or those giant sunglasses? You thought those were a riot when you first saw them.”

“I thought they were
cute
. I didn't think they were a riot. I thought the giant pencil was a riot. I thought I could write a whole lotta mystery books with that.”

“So get it then.”

“I really want a lot of things. That doesn't mean I'm gonna buy 'em.”

“What about candy? You love candy. What about that chocolate lobster?”

“I don't want to think about lobster ever again.”

Virginia frowned. I figured like me she was thinking about those lobsters on the train.

“Daddy's crazy,” she suddenly said. “You know that, don't you?”

“He's not crazy,” I said. “He just gets mad when he loses at the track.”

“Yeah, stark raving mad. I can't wait till I'm eighteen. It'll be sayonara, Hitler.”

“Fat chance. He won't let you go. You oughta know that, dummkopf.”

“It's the law, dummkopf.”

“Ha! The law doesn't scare him.”

“Then I'll just take off one night. Just disappear. And he won't know where to find me.”

“If Hank could find Doris all the way in KooKooLand, he'll find you, that's for sure, 'cause he's a better hunter than Hank.”

“Then I'll go far away. Across the ocean. To France or England or anywhere.” She corrected herself. “Anywhere but Greece.”

“Anywhere but Greece,” I echoed.

And then I saw it. The perfect present.

A snow globe. A giant snow globe with a beach scene inside. With palm trees and beach umbrellas and two girls—two teen-ragers—in bikinis and Foster Grants lying in the sun.

I shook it up. Snow swirled around the girls like they were in a blizzard on the beach. It didn't make any sense why it would be snowing at the beach, but it looked so pretty I didn't care.

I held my breath and turned it over to see the price. I had enough. I had enough and would still have enough left over to buy the giant pencil for myself and a few pieces of saltwater taffy for Tina.

“This is it,” I told Virginia. “This is what I want.”

“Whoopee-do,” said Virginia. “Let's beat it.”

I carried the snow globe around the rest of the night like it was an A-bomb. Don't drop it, I told myself. Whatever you do, don't drop it, dummkopf.

Virginia disappeared down to the beach with Tommy for a while. After
they came back, Virginia went to the bathroom, and I heard Tommy's friend ask him if he'd got any. Ask if he'd opened her box.

“Nah,” said Tommy, sulking. “She's just a cool way to get my finger wet.”

I didn't know what it meant, but I felt my face get all red.

“You're a lousy goddamn pinball player,” I snapped at him, and stormed off.

The next day, we packed up the car. I said good-bye to our apartment and good-bye to the beach and good-bye to a flock of seagulls. I waved good-bye to the last train conductor on the last train that was going by, hoping he had gotten a few of those poached lobsters for himself.

I realized I was gonna miss it all so much. I was trying not to start blubbering when I noticed Jimmy take his handicapping pen out of his shirt pocket and scribble something above the front door.

I love this place,
he wrote. And he signed his name,
J. Norris.

“Someday,” he told me, “you'll remember this summer and you'll realize it was the best one of your whole goddamn life.”

“Someday,” he repeated. “We'll all be dead and no one will even know we were here.”

I ran out of the apartment, trying to block out what he'd said. But I knew I never would.

On the way home, nobody said a word. Jimmy and Shirley smoked and drank, Virginia petted Sylvester, and I played with the snow globe, pretending I was living in a beachy bubble with Susan.

Since we'd eaten up all the groceries, at least I didn't have to carry a box on my lap.

Or that's what I thought anyway, until we pulled over at a truck stop somewhere near Rochester, New Hampshire. Jimmy got out of the car and climbed into a tractor-trailer with some guys I had seen at the house. Chubby Somebody and Louis Somebody Else.

Shirley, Virginia, and I waited in the car. We heard laughter coming from the truck.

Shirley started up a game she'd taught us years before to keep us entertained while we were parked outside of bookie joints, truck stops, or junkyards.

I'm thinking of something red, Shirley would say. Then you'd have to guess what it was. The bull's-eye on her pack of Lucky Strikes. A Baby Ruth wrapper in the gutter. A bloodstain in the snow. We played for matchsticks like the clodhoppers in Nova Scotia. Sometimes we played until we ran out of things to guess.

Finally, Jimmy emerged from the tractor-trailer carrying a big box. I
managed to snatch the snow globe from between my legs a second before he slammed the box down on my lap.

“Here's a present for you,” he joked. I could smell fresh booze on his breath.

“Ain't that merchandise a little heavy for the kid?” asked Chubby Somebody.

“Nah,” replied Jimmy. “Dracula's OK.”

“Don't worry, kid,” snorted Louis Somebody Else. “The way your old man drives, you'll be home before your legs need to be amputated.”

“Shut up, numbskull,” said Jimmy, before he sped off.

I balanced the snow globe on top of the box of merchandise. I didn't know what was in the box and, for once, I didn't care.