The Full Cleveland (6 page)

After Matt's crime, we really buckled down at our Breakfast Meetings. Having blamed Matt's failure to become a likely candidate for president, and his unlikely success at becoming a boxer, on the fact that she hadn't taught us to pray hard enough, Mother began to mastermind nine-day novenas to three, four, as many as six saints at once. To keep track of it all, Mother decided to appoint a “secretary,” really just a glorified scorekeeper. Still, I was thrilled when she offered me my very first job.

Our Breakfast Meetings became more purposeful, more organized, more businesslike. Once Dad was safely down the driveway, once Clarine barged out the swinging dining room door, the table came to order.

“Boyce, dear, what novena days are we on?”

“I've got the minutes here, Mother.” My brothers and sisters waited while I unfolded my notes, which I'd hidden under my thigh until Dad and Clarine, the Protestants, were gone. “Four for Saint Anthony. Two for The Little Flower. Ninth day on Saint Anne. We finished Saint Francis yesterday, and we begin today on Little Claire.” And all the while, I was also praying to Saint Theresa to be pretty, and to make poor people unpoor.

The funny thing is, not long after Matt's boxing equipment arrived, I realized Mother was also praying to Saint Theresa on the side. See, for weeks after the first big fight, she had been in a mood. I'd overheard complaints confided to Clarine. She'd say, “It's not really a sport, you know.”

And Clarine would say, “Well, but it'll teach him to stick up for himself.”

And Mother would look at Clarine as if to say, “When will he ever need to, in the Ivy League?”

Dad picked up on Mother's mood quite fast. He brought candy, he brought flowers. But the one thing he wouldn't bring was the one thing she probably was praying for: the boxing equipment back to Big Al's Sporting Goods Store.

I was sitting in the sunroom with Mother the evening Dad brought roses home. He had already tried the more exotic bouquets and New Age—looking arrangements, flowers that looked as if they'd led a wild, avant-garde sort of life on some chic, cold other planet. So now he was giving good old long-stemmed roses a whirl. When he brought them, they weren't even in a box. They were in a bunch, in his hand.

“Darling,” Mother said, fairly convincingly, though not exactly jumping out of her chair. “Yellow roses!”

She sent me to the kitchen to get a vase from Clarine. I rushed back with it, splashing water over the rugs in my haste. We then arranged the flowers the way Mother had learned to in her flower-arranging class. “The man, the earth, and the sky,” she said, clipping the last three yellow roses. “You cut some short, and that's the earth. You cut some medium, and that's the man. You cut some tall, and that's the sky.”

“Why?”

“Just universality,” she said, first shrugging, then stopping to stare into space. “Just grace.”

When the flowers were all done and duly admired, Mother suggested a stroll with Dad in the garden.

I walked between them. It was something that was sometimes done, go with them to the garden before dinner, and the way they did it, they walked up to a particular bed of flowers, said things to each other about its progress, and then they just moved along. But tonight, after they did the red roses, Mother didn't move along. Instead she grabbed Dad's hand, sort of spun him around, and planted a big kiss on his mouth. When it finally ended, she drew back and said, “Darling? The yellow roses you brought me are beautiful. Yellow roses mean happy love. But red roses mean passionate love.” A cloud crossed her radiant face. “George? Isn't our love passionate anymore?”

Now, most men can take a hint if you slap them in the face with it. And so could Dad. But most men would have simply reached down, broken off a single red rose, and forked it over. But not Dad. He wanted to declare their love was still passionate, but I guess he wanted to do it up proud. So when Mother finally gave up on him and went in to dress for dinner, he started whacking red roses off the bushes by the dozen. I followed him in horror back into the house. He got us all in the dining room and let us in on the secret. Mutely, I watched as he dumped the mountain of roses right on top of her plate.

We heard her come rustling down the stairs and dove for our seats. She entered the room and stopped cold. Two spots of red flashed to her face. “George!” she said, blushing so deeply and so beautifully that not one of them could have guessed it was not pleasure that heightened her color. I knew it was something else entirely. The infinite frustration of trying to get handed a single red rose.

The next Friday, we Catholics met at breakfast, as usual. Mother wore the red robe, as usual. Dad stood up, kissed her good-bye, as usual. Returned with the hat, looking perplexed, as usual. Clarine swiped his plate and tossed Mother hers, as usual, and barged back out, all as usual. Then Mother opened the meeting with, what else, business as usual.

“Will the secretary please read what novena days we are on?”

“I've got the minutes here, Mother.” Everyone sat up and waited while I unfolded my notes. “Eight for Saint Anthony. Three for Jude. Sixth day on Saint Anne. We start today again on Francis, and we might want to take another crack at Saint Claire.”

“Very good.” Mother nodded from the other end of the table. She smiled and looked around at all her guests of honor. “Are you all clear about that, or would you like Boyce to read the minutes one last time?”

One last time? Why had she said that? That was unusual.

But they all agreed they were all clear about it.

“I have a proposal,” Mother then said. “Boyce has been the secretary for some time now and I think it only fair we let someone else try his or her hand at the job.”

Dead silence. Everyone looked at me. I looked at my mother.

“Cabot,” Mother continued, “has asked if she may apply for the position. I think she'd be able to handle it, but I would like to put it to a vote.”

Dead silence. Everyone looked at Cabot. Cabot smiled modestly, behind her pure blond hair. Then, to my astonishment, every little hand in the room shot into the air, including Cabot's. My heart started thumping wildly against a cage in my chest. I looked at Lucy. She was voting twice, that is, with two hands, with a piece of toast in each, but she probably just liked to vote. But even if she were disqualified, there were still an awful lot of hands.

Mother said, “All opposed?”

I sat there, clutching my minutes to my pounding chest. I couldn't even vote.

“Boyce, dear. Would you please give Cabot the minutes? She will be the secretary from now on.”

I folded my arms and hung my chin to my chest. I began kicking under the table as if I was skating to get away.

“Boyce,” Mother said, “please give Cabot the minutes.”

If this were some lesson in Catholicism, it wasn't working. I crumpled my minutes and stuffed them right back under my thigh.

“Boyce? Please give Cabbie those minutes. Now.”

I skated a long way before answering. I wanted to choose my words carefully. The forbidden “No way” is what I finally chose.

Everyone gasped.

“She said no way!” cried Matt.

“Quiet, Matthew.” Then Mother asked me again. “Boyce, please give Cabot the minutes.”

Skating faster and faster, I repeated my answer. “No way.”

“Boyce Parkman.
What
did you say ?”

As if turning on a dime, I said, “I said
NO!!!”

This was like the cock crowing three times when Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus Christ. Except it was I who was being betrayed here, and in no way shape or form was I going to let them crucify me. In fact, I was going to stick up for myself.

I grabbed my minutes and made a flying camel for the door. Matt flew from his chair, lunged for my ankles, and toppled me to the floor. I rolled away. Then we were standing up. Then we were squaring off. Then we were dropping our chins. Then we were pronating our wrists. Then we were going to Sunday punch each other.

Except before we actually connected, Mother had sprung from her chair and Clarine had come steaming like a ring referee on speed skates through the swinging dining room door.

“I've had just about enough of this,” she said, picking Matt off me and tossing him aside like a used towel. She grabbed the tattered minutes, and held them high in the air.

“I'll take that, Clarine.” Mother made a swift pass and snatched the minutes out of Clarine ‘s hand. “They're fighting over … schoolwork.”

My mouth fell open. That was a
lie.

And it was just then that we heard the whir of a car in the driveway. We all turned to look out the window. Then we all spun back around to look at Mother, even Clarine.

Matt and I dove for our seats. Clarine went back through the swinging door, and when it swung back in, Dad was standing there, frowning at us. “Forgot my case,” he said. We sat, hands folded on the table, lined up like a board meeting. “Everything okay?”

It was my chance. I knew it. I could tell the truth, and he would defend it. But when I looked at Mother, I no longer knew what was right and what was wrong anymore. And then of course the moment passed.

Dad went down the hall and came back with his case. “Well, I guess I'm off to slay the dragon again.” He said that sometimes. When I was little, I thought it was what he did for a living. “Bye, then,” he said, and stood there a second longer before he shook his head a little and left.

When the Buick was down the driveway, Mother handed the minutes to me. I then had to stand up and walk around the table and hand them to Cabot. In total silence and absolute humiliation, I accomplished this. Immediately, either from joy or from terror, Cabot burst out crying.

I could have lived with it. I really could have. I might have even learned from it. I might have learned lessons about selflessness, fair play, sharing. Stuff that was truly good to learn. I might have even learned one of the great lessons of the Catholic Church, to “turn the other cheek.” I might have. If it hadn't been for one simple, innocent, childlike gesture of Luke's.

See, when Cabot cried, Luke felt bad. He leaned over from his chair and patted her shoulder to make her stop. But that just made Cabot cry harder. So Luke tried kissing her arm. That made Cabot degenerate into sobs. So, in a final, Hail Mary effort to cheer her up, Luke stood on his chair, flung himself facedown on the table, and tackled the centerpiece. In the center of the centerpiece was one, single, red rose.

Before I had time to pounce on him, pummel him, kill him if necessary, Luke plucked the flower and threw himself back across the dining room table, landing, elbows bent, in Cabot's plate. Covered with old breakfast but still clutching the single red rose, clutching it like it was the ball and he was a Brown and this was his winning touchdown in the final seconds of the Superbowl, he handed it to her.

Cabot's sobbing stopped midsob. Her eyes lit up. She took the rose and smiled prettily, not to mention modestly, lovingly, and purely.

It was not a huge leap to assume, then, that somewhere in the world at some other Breakfast Meeting, the rich had just gotten richer, and those poor people downtown were still poor.

I stopped attending Breakfast Meetings, claiming I had pressing business elsewhere. Now that I'd been nominated for class president at school.

It was a black day
and I don't know why anybody would want to hear about it, but it was a Saturday in summer, and I was sitting on my bed with a cast and a crutch, writing a kind of letter in my head, to my grandfather, who I already said was dead.

I guess I just felt like letting him know what I thought of Canadian tennis is all. Also, I owed him a thank-you note, for the pearls he had given my father to give me when I turned thirteen, which was my birthday, the day before.

I knew it was crazy to write him the letter, even in my head, but I still started doing it anyway, mostly complaining about Canadian tennis, because it has three players, and though you do get a partner, then you have to switch off, so your partner becomes your opponent and then your opponent becomes your partner again. All I'm saying is, you shouldn't trust anyone in Canadian tennis. I really started to complain about it to my grandfather, saying what a sorry excuse for an export Canada had. How once they came up with the bacon and the quarters, maybe they should have quit while they were ahead. I also asked my grandfather to check on a few other countries, including our own, now that he could see the whole world from the vantage point of heaven, that is if there is a God.

I started in the morning, and it got to be quite an elaborate letter by later on. The first thing, when I woke up and found out I was wearing my pearls with my pajamas, I just began. I told my grandfather how I had played Canadian tennis on my birthday, with my two best friends, the two Mickeys. How when we switched partners my knee went numb, but I kept playing like a madman anyway, and then when I fell down and got up and then fell down again, the two Mickeys came and stood over me in their tennis skirts and Mickey said, Hey, maybe I had to go to the hospital or something. Which, when my Mother arrived in her golf skirt, is what we did.

At the hospital, they gave me a cast and a crutch to walk around on, then told me not to walk around.

The Mickeys bought me presents at the gift shop, including a
Seventeen
magazine, and Mother pretended not to notice it, I guess rewarding me for not crying too loud when the doctor turned my kneecap back around. Now I was on my bed, and I'd been staring at the cover of the
Seventeen
for about an hour. I was just getting incredibly stubborn about starting it. I told my grandfather I sometimes get perverse like that, wanting something all my life, then thinking, This isn't exactly philosophy, now that I have my hands on a copy. Besides, it was too quiet to read it. Dad was down there in his library with the door closed.

I told my grandfather it was a Saturday in summer, and I was all alone in the house with Dad. But I tried not to say too much about that one, because Dad was his son and I didn't want to blame my grandfather for him.

I also told my grandfather he may want to have a meeting about eliminating the thirteenth birthday along with Canadian tennis. I suggested they try what they do in some tall buildings, when the elevator skips you straight from twelve to fourteen. And nobody has to worry they've landed on the most unlucky floor.

Anyway, the advantage to this kind of letter is you can do it all day long. There's no time limit. It's not as if you have to get it to the post office or something, or have it ready for when the mailman comes. Also, you don't have to go in logical order, and there's not a lot of extra explaining to do. The person in heaven, that is if there is one, already knows the past and the future. Like Grandfather knew that I would get the message from Mickey Knight that day that I wasn't too beautiful at the moment, and how Dad would get the envelope back in the mail, and how I would solve the issue of world poverty, just not for very long. It made it easier to write the letter, because my grandfather already knew it was going to be a disappointing day all around.

I did it anyway, despite what the doctor said.

I took my crutch and got off my bed and hopped out to check on the library door. I wanted to do it quickly, and be back in my room in case Mickey Knight came to give me the makeover, which is something you learn in magazines, how to get instantly transformed from an ugly duckling into a swan. It was almost the first thing Mickey said when she saw my cast and my crutch. “Oh my God. I am so giving you a Before and After after this.”

I got to the landing and stared down at the library door. I was beginning to feel I was the first in the family to ever be alone in the house with Dad. The silence was total. You could hear a knee crack.

He must be in there thinking something elevated, I thought. I decided I should do that too, you know, go back to my room and emulate. Why else would you have a Dad.

Then I had this idea to go down to the library, hop in, and just plop myself down. You see someone come in on a crutch, and what can you do. I debated it, I really did. Debated whether to be brave enough to interrupt Dad. Then I felt kind of silly, just standing there staring at the door, with a crutch no less, like one of those beggars they won't let in church because nobody wants them around while they pray. So I gave up and hopped back to my room, determined to emulate once I got to my bed.

But on my bed, there was the
Seventeen.
So I sat in my chair.

My grandfather already knew: my two best friends already were Afters. Mickey Joslyn, who we called Jo, and Mickey Knight, who was actually born more of a Before. We lived within six blocks of one another.

Jo was beautiful. She had those pure, angelic looks that made her fine blond hair as radiant as a halo and her big blue eyes as round, innocent, and fathomable as country club baby pools. Mickey Knight wasn't, but wanted to be, as beautiful as Jo, the other Mickey. Mickey Knight's parents wanted that too. So they redid their daughter. Doctors redid her nose and chin, stylists bleached her hair, and opticians made her special contact lenses to brighten up her hazel eyes. So Mickey and Mickey ended up looking almost like twins. And I was the only remaining Before.

But that's not what I wanted to think about now. It wasn't elevated, it was almost the opposite. I decided to try my other armchair, even though I had the cast and it was clear across the room. On my way over, I stopped at the dresser and looked in the mirror, wondering how Mickey was going to do it, turn me from looking like a boy into a miniature movie star like she was. I still had that kind of crew cut Mother had always assured me was “darling.” Other than that, I had a few freckles. Maybe I looked like Huck Finn. Or if he had a sister. I went to my other armchair and settled in, determined to forget about it and emulate Dad.

It was a good idea, to change chairs. Because the minute I got there I got the idea. I would just
end
poverty. I'd think up a solution. That way I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore.

Particularly, I thought I should work on world hunger. I had heard the phrase a lot, and it was easy enough to figure out what it meant. It meant that somewhere in the world, even as I debated which armchair to choose, people were starving.

After contemplating the subject for almost an entire half hour, I felt I had moved beyond mere comprehension of the facts. I had moved so far beyond that, I felt I was on the verge of a sort of revelation, and was beginning to believe if I just thought long and hard enough about world hunger, I would definitely solve the problem. Through sheer force of will, my mind would become one with the cure. So sitting there, I guess I reached a state as close as I'd ever come to true prayer.

But then, at the very second I figured out how to make everyone rich, the screech of tires shattered my thoughts.

I got up and hopped to the window. But it wasn't Mickey Knight down there. It was the blue-and-white mail truck. And Andrew John Hague, our postman, was climbing out, toting an envelope.

The bell rang. I hobbled out to the landing and hung back, waiting to see what Dad would do. And when the bell rang again, the library door did click open and I saw his battered old canvas shoes stride into view before I pulled back, out of sight. Then I sat down on the landing with my cast out straight and looked through the spokes of the railing, just in time to see the thick manila envelope change hands.

You would think Andrew John would have left promptly, having already delivered the mail. But he didn't. Instead, he attempted the impossible, or at least the unlikely—that is, small talk with my father. When this failed, he just sort of hung out down there, watching Dad receive his envelope, which Dad felt pressed to do more than the customary one time only. Dad kept reenacting this routine which meant, Thank you for bringing me this envelope. See? I have the envelope. Nice day, fat envelope. Thank you for delivering the mail, Andrew John, but why are you still here?

Andrew John stayed. It was a prolonged awkward moment. Dad wanted to get on with his envelope, but Andrew John apparently had something he wanted to add to that. Finally, he found a way. Reaching adroitly to take a corner of the envelope, Andrew John positioned himself beside my father, as if about to share a menu or a map. Then, pointing to the postmark, he said, “It's strange how they always come back in a month, to the day. I wonder if that's why they call it the ‘Monthly.' You know, the
Atlantic Monthly?”

Dad's eyebrows arched up. “You don't say.”

“I'm a rejected writer myself, sir.” Andrew John beamed.

No reaction this time from Dad, but as for me, I found the news disturbing. Dad held his envelope bravely while Andrew John talked about modern fiction and poetry. Then he offered to recite some of his own for my father. Without waiting for the okay, he launched into it in a great, booming voice and when it was over, he bowed deeply, turned suddenly, and left. There was a resounding silence in the hall.

I peered down at my father. “Daddy? Did something tragic just happen?”

But he just laughed up at me. “Zu, your head's too big to fit through that railing. Someday, you might lose it.” And he made that jokey gesture where you clutch your throat and bulge your eyes and pretend you're being strangled to death. “Now go back to your bed and take care of your knee. Time heals all wounds.” And he headed back to his library and closed the door.

I sat there for a long time after Dad retreated to the library with the envelope, my good leg cramping under me, staring into the spot in the hall where Andrew John had just recited his debatable poetry. Here, Dad, who really could be quite eloquent when he felt like it, had tried to speak his mind for once, and had met with rejection for it. I struggled back to my feet and went back to my room and sat down. But I couldn't even get started on my solution to poverty again. Almost immediately, I heard another car in the driveway. It was Clarine in a blue Buick, home from the shopping. What Dad called, the Getting and Spending.

For no real reason, I took a walk on my crutch to Cabot's room, even though she was at the country club pool with the others. But if she was home—and as it was turning out, even if she wasn't—I'd definitely go straight to tell her about Dad's envelope. We always kept each other informed about Dad and the various things that happened. These private conversations always took place in her room, because she had a little suite of them, and they were at the remotest end of the back stairs. It would have been the maid's quarters, except Clarine slept in a bigger, nicer room adjoined to mine by a bathroom, more the room of an older sister than a housekeeper. That's because Clarine was more like an older sister than a housekeeper, except of course she was the sister who had to do all the housework. Come to think of it, Clarine was sort of like Cinderella. Except I'd hate to think who that made me and Cabot. Anyway, we called Cabot's room “The Tower.”

I went to Cabot's canopy bed and climbed on. If Cabot were there, she'd probably be at her drawing table, sketching a picture. While she was doing it, she'd probably be asking if Dad were rich. Ever since that one Easter drive, she asked it kind of chronically, usually while she was drawing pictures of beautiful models from
Vogue
magazine.

“Who? You mean Dad?”

She'd glance up from her sketchbook. I was being sarcastic.

So once again I'd add it all up for her: the house we lived in, even though it just cost a dollar, the four cars in the garage (three Buicks plus Grandfather's old Dream Machine), the vacations we took, the schools we attended, the sports we played, the company we kept, and arrive at the usual answer. “He better be.”

Cabot would shake her head. “I think Grandfather paid for everything. I bet they didn't even buy the dumb Buicks themselves.”