My Secret History (12 page)

I said, “Yeah,” and kept walking, glancing back to see her leaning against the rail. The slender poplar in front of her house blew and leaned, too, with masses of spinning leaves—the whole tree whirling madly.

The wedding cars had jammed the parking lot—crowded it worse than any funeral I had seen; and one of the cars, the largest, a Caddy, had white ribbons tied across its roof and its hood, with a bow on its trunk. I lingered, standing behind a tree on the Fellsway, watching the wedding party go in, all in suits, waving to one another, laughing loudly; the women wore corsages and hats and white gloves, and the men were smoking their last cigarettes before entering the church. Two little flower girls in tiny gowns were quarreling, and a small boy in a sailor suit was crying under the statue of St. Raphael.

I tucked my Mossberg under my arm and crossed the Fellsway to the church lawn, and I hid near the grotto that the Pastor had built in May—it was the Blessed Virgin in a cave, because May was Mary’s month. Watching from the edge of the cave, I saw Chicky DePalma run into the sacristy. He would be first, he would grab the cassock with the snaps, and have a swig of mass wine.

Chicky looks around, and seeing no one takes another swig of wine and thinks: I’ll tell him about Magoo, how she let me do something or other, and he begins fastening his cassock.

I’ve got the bells, he thinks. I’ll do the biretta. I’m moving the book.

Father Skerrit or the Pastor enters and says, “Let us pray,” and Chicky tumbles to his knees and stuffs the bottle under his surplice and prays for the conversion of Russia. The priest kisses his vestments under the stained-glass window of Saint Raphael—the saint has swan’s wings and a halo like a crown and a slender cross.

“Can I come in?”

It is the best man, in a new suit, a carnation in his buttonhole, new shoes, smelling of after-shave lotion, red-faced from nervousness and heat.

“Hope I’m not intruding!”

“Not at all.”

Envelopes are produced. “A little something. I didn’t think I’d have time after the mass.”

“Very thoughtful of you.”

“Hey, thanks,” Chicky says.

There is a moment of awkward hesitation when the best man looks around and says, “Where’s the other altar boy?”

“Not here yet,” Chicky says.

And the priest tugs his chasuble aside and claws at his alb to see his wristwatch, and says, “It’s Andy Parent, and he’d better get a move on, if he knows what’s good for him.”

Motionless, attentive, listening, I stayed where I was. Then I walked away and was aware in those seconds that my life had just begun—like a wheel slipping off an axle and rolling alone, and already it was spinning faster. I thought: A wedding is just a happy funeral.

*   *   *

The old heavy Mossberg was propped against a tree. In the course of the bus ride with Tina I had outgrown the gun, and now it seemed a silly thing, noisy and dangerous, something for a kid or an immature man.

We lay in the shade, on a bank of grass that was like an altar, rectangular, with a stump in the middle like a tabernacle. Beyond us were the cliffs and ledges of the Sandpits. The wind spun some dust up and it traveled in tall hobbling cones through the quarry. We were talking about some gulls we saw, did they ever land here, and about the clouds through the branches, about nothing, and I was glad when we stopped talking, so that my nervousness was less apparent to her.

“My mother’s going to kill me,” she said eagerly.

“What about me?” I said. “Missing the wedding!”

I had no choice but to sound brave and reckless, because I knew I was lost. We both were, and were thinking: What now?

I put my arm around her, and when she didn’t object I hugged her. After a while, I got to my knees, so that I could see her better. She lay crouched on the grassy mound, very quietly and a little fearful, like a sacrifice. I touched her arm and she got smaller—sort of shrank, without a sound, like a snail. Her eyes were wide open, watching me and making everything difficult. Then she shut them and I took this to mean that she trusted me and was giving me permission. I could see her bra and panties outlined beneath her blouse and her skirt. My hand went to her knee. I moved it higher, to where it was warmer, on her thigh.

She said, “No, don’t,” but made no move to stop me.

Leaning over, I kissed her, and as soon as our lips touched she opened hers and began sucking on my tongue. I was too happy to think of anything but my happiness. We had gone there alone and ignorant, and lay stupidly under the trees; but now we knew a little more. I could not tell where my flesh ended and hers began.

Wickedness entered me. My soul darkened and I felt a shameful thrill as it tottered and began to fall. It caught fire, and Tina was crying softly but holding me, and then we were both burning.

With a name like the Maldwyn Country Club I knew it had to be one of these fake-English places with a look that said Keep Out. I was right, and the reason for the Englishness was that it was all Armenians. And it took over an hour to get there from Medford Square. But I needed the job.

Walking up the long driveway to my lifeguard interview, I thought: No girlfriend, no car, no money, no job—nothing except funerals dragging past in a procession in my soul, and sorrowing hopes, and the tyrant Pain planting his black flag in my skull. I had been reading Baudelaire on the bus.

Big cars went past me. It was not the
Nixon
stickers in the windows, and not the speed; what made me feel small was the way they swished by, missing me by an inch, as if I didn’t exist or didn’t matter. They didn’t see me, or else they figured a pedestrian had to be a bum. Their business sense was: Money talks, bullshit walks. They didn’t know that I was in college, and that I was plotting their downfall, putting a curse on them. They had everything. Pretty soon they might even have me.

On my left was the ninth hole—one man hunched over his putt, the other golfers watching. I hated them for being fat, for being happy; hated the look of them, the breeze blowing their plaid pants, the way they were doing just as they pleased. I gave the putt the evil eye and the ball slid past the cup. When the foursome moved off they seemed to be browbeating the caddies—two kids carrying doubles in this heat. I thought: Why not kill them?

“I’m a communist,” I told my brother Louie, when he said he had joined Students for Kennedy.

“You don’t like him because he’s a Catholic,” Louie said.

“I don’t like him because he’s a bad Catholic,” I said. “I’m voting for Gus Hall. American Communist Party. It’s legal!”

It was wonderful to see how this little pronouncement shocked him. I tried it again with Mimi Hardwick at Kappa Phi. She had said she couldn’t go out with me. She made excuses, and when I badgered her she said, “I’m afraid of you.” It was simply that she didn’t want to sleep with me.

I said, “I’m a communist,” because I knew I would probably never see her again, and I wanted to leave her with a worry.

“I don’t believe you,” she said. “What do you mean?”

I was looking at her and thinking: Girls get up in the morning and wash themselves carefully and put on four different types of underwear, not including a girdle, and choose a certain color sweater and clean socks and a matching skirt. They take the rollers out of their hair. They put in ribbons, they do their eyes, they rouge their cheeks, put on perfume and lipstick, earrings, beads, a bracelet on one wrist, a tiny watch on the other, and all day they go on checking themselves in mirrors. It was an amazing amount of trouble, but it worked. Why were they so surprised when we wanted to squeeze them and feel them up? Mimi Hardwick smelled of lavender and I wanted to push my nose against her.

“We have meetings. Secret meetings. We’re all socialists.”

“But what do you stand for?”

“Destruction,” I said.

On another occasion, to get her to sleep with me, I had told her that I had twice tried to kill myself. And I said that I took drugs—cough syrup with codeine in it, the Family Size bottle, chugalugged the whole thing. I told her I had hitchhiked to Florida, getting rides with maniacs. Anything so that she would remember me. But it just frightened her.

Telling her I was a communist was my way of saying goodbye.

“Can I help you?”

That woke me from my reverie. It was a security guard. His question meant: What’s a kid in an army jacket and sunglasses and torn sneakers think he’s doing here at the Maldwyn Country Club?

I said, “I have an appointment with Mr. Kaloostian.”

“Go ahead.”

But I was angry with myself for giving him this information. I should have said,
It’s highly confidential
and let him figure it out.

The clubhouse ahead of me at the top of the driveway was a white building with a roof of green shingles. It was surrounded by fat trimmed bushes, and geraniums in plump pots, and in the bulgey bay window there were fat golfers going
haw-haw!
This was all supposed to be English. Another fat car went past and almost clipped me. I felt small and skinny. I smelled roasting meat. I was hungry, and being here made me feel hateful. I imagined starting a fire in the clubhouse and watching the golfers run out with burning hair.
Help!
they’d scream as I turned my back.

The secretary’s signboard said
MISS A. BERBERIAN
.

She said, “Is it about the lifeguard job?”

I was annoyed that she guessed it and so I said, “That’s partly the reason. The rest is highly confidential, I’m afraid. You can tell him I’m here.”

There were two men in the office. Mr. Kaloostian was the purple-faced man in the suit. He introduced the man next to him in the sports shirt. “This is Mr. Mattanza, our pool superintendant.”

“Vic Mattanza,” the man said and squeezed my hand too hard.

Standing up added very little to his height. He was short and dark. His black hair was pushed straight back. He was one of those Italians who looked to me like an Indian brave—dark, brooding, and with tiny eyes very close to his big nose. He was short, yet I could see from the way his shirt was stretched that he was muscular. But he was too muscular for his size. He reminded me of a clenched fist.

“Sit down, Andrew.”

“Andre,” I said, and they frowned at me.

“It says here you live in Medford, you go to UMass, nineteen in April, you’re a medical student—” He was reading from my application in a way that embarrassed me. All these trivial facts made me feel small. I had the urge to tell him I was a communist.

“Pre-med,” I said.

“Hey, that’s great,” Mattanza said, “but we’re looking for someone who can swim.”

“I can swim. And I thought a knowledge of first aid might be an asset.” I smiled at Mattanza. His close-set eyes were fixed on me. He was thinking: Wise-ass.

“That’s a very good point,” Kaloostian said.

“Except we need a lifeguard.”

Mattanza’s teeth were very white and large and doglike.

“That’s why I’m here.” I could tell he hated my smile.

“It says here you worked at Wright’s Pond.”

“Right. I was a lockerboy. Then I got my Red Cross lifesaving certificate and became a lifeguard. After the intermediate I got the advanced.”

“You mind if we see your badge?” Mattanza said. “It’s not that we don’t believe you.”

“My mother sewed it on my bathing suit.”

Mattanza looked at Kaloostian. “His mother sewed it on his bathing suit.”

“That’s where it’s supposed to go,” I said.

He flashed his snake-eyes at me.

“Is that the only proof of your proficiency?” Kaloostian said.

“I’ve got the certificate,” I said, and pulled it out of my book and unfolded it.

“You’re a reader, I see,” Kaloostian said, and he leaned over to look at the title. He couldn’t see.

“The Flowers of Evil
,” I said.

“Gatz,”
Mattanza said under his breath.

“What did you do to earn this?”

“Swam a mile. Learned the rescues. Rowed. Surface dived. Picked up weights from the bottom. Jumped in with my clothes on and made a flotation device with my pants—you knot the cuffs and inflate the legs. And the first aid.” Kaloostian had asked the question but I was speaking to Mattanza. “That’s the advanced certificate.”

Mattanza said, “Great. But what kind of practical experience have you got?”

“Two years at Wright’s Pond.”

“We’re talking about a swimming pool.”

“It’s tougher at a pond,” I said.

He moved his mouth at me. His lips said: Prove it. His teeth said: I’m dangerous—I bite.

I spoke to Kaloostian. “In a pond you’ve got poor visibility,
deeper water, noise, greater density of swimmers, and weeds. Last summer I pulled three people out. One of them went about two hundred pounds. I used a cross-chest carry on him.”

“So why aren’t you still there at Wright’s?” Mattanza said, in a challenging way.

I could just imagine this little twerp strutting in a tight pair of trunks.

“This seems a nicer place,” I said, and when Kaloostian smiled smugly at this I said, “More congenial, and a kind of English atmosphere.”