The Poison Tree (6 page)

“Why does Henry get all those marshmallows, and why do they look like that?” Neither of us paid any attention to his question. How could anyone not know what the number seven signified in New York in the 1950s?

“Thanks, Mom,” I said. “Hey, where is he?”

“Tennis.” That one word said it all.

“Oh.”

I was so happy about the seven marshmallows and the bowling that I barely noticed a blue swelling above her eye, or that she was wearing the
same dress she had on the night before. Or maybe I noticed it and ignored it. That's possible. After all, it was my birthday, and little else matters when you're ten.

At Doc's, there was a pinsetter named Jimmy, who Doc said averaged 185 per game, and almost made it as a professional bowler. Now he stood behind the pins as a pinspotter, perched up on a tiny shelf with only his shoes visible, waiting for the explosion of balls and the pins. Then he would slide down from his perch and set the pins up again after each ball. Jimmy could bowl as many free games as he wanted after hours. He only made an appearance if something broke or if a ball got stuck. Otherwise, he was invisible; no one knew he was even there. It seemed like a great way to earn a living.

I returned home, anxious to tell my father about my accomplishments. The nightmare of waking up in the middle of the night and seeing a policeman inside our house was just that—a nightmare that had vanished. I had bowled a 168, and wanted to report it to Dad. Mom saw the whole thing, but as a girl she was unable to ascertain the importance of the event. She smiled when I threw a strike, but she'd also smile if I threw a gutter ball. She didn't even know you got two extra balls after you got a strike in the tenth, or that three strikes in a row was called a “turkey;” Dad knew these things.

He woke up with a sleep-creased face. He always looked that way after his nap. I had the feeling that he didn't want me to actually see him asleep, as though it made him seem weak. He wiped his mouth and yawned, filled a tall glass full of ice, added J&B, and filled the rest of the glass with Canada Dry Club Soda, stirring it with a red swizzle stick, the exact color of my new water pistol. Then he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, which made him look like a sleepy child, and which was almost comical. He walked over to the TV and snapped it off without a word. Bobby was watching
Mickey Mouse Club
, and when it was suddenly turned off, he whimpered, “That's no fair!” Dad simply raised his hand above his head, and the threat was enough to send him scurrying.

Mom came in from the kitchen, smiling. She hadn't seen my father raise his hand to Bobby.

“Guess what we're having for dinner, Mister Birthday Boy?”

“TV dinner?” I said. I liked TV dinners much better than my mother's cooking, and the tiny individualized compartments with dried mashed
potatoes, shriveled peas, and Apple Brown Betty provided a sense of security and order, which our dinners never did. Mom shook her head.

“Hamburgers?”

“Of course not, it's my First Born's special day; my Number One son; my Hen-yee!”

“Then I don't know.” I was disappointed; I wanted that TV dinner. But I couldn't let on.

“Keep guessing!”

“I don't know, Mom.”

She then produced a huge stainless steel platter of steak from behind her back. The steaks were thick and bloody, and marbled with fat, and I felt immediately nauseous. But I smiled anyway.

“Voila! Porterhouse steak with baked potatoes and sour cream. Corn on the cob! How's that sound? Good?”

“Great, Mom!” I lied.

She left and went back to the kitchen, humming “You Could Be Swinging on a Star,” leaving my father and me sitting there in front of the blank TV screen. It was August, and our Christmas game with the Good Guys and Bad Guys was so far in the future it might as well have been a hundred years away.

We sat there in silence. Finally, I said, “The Yankees won today, Dad.”

“Umm.”

“Yeah, Mantle hit one.” Silence. Then I said what I longed to say. “Guess what, Dad? I bowled a 168 in my last game at Doc's.”

“Oh.”

Another long pause followed. My bowling exploits weren't getting me anywhere, either.

“How was tennis?”

“Umm.”

“You played with Sy?”

“Yup.”

“Did you win?”

“Huh?”

“I said, did you win?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know if you won or not?” I couldn't imagine playing any sport or game without keeping score or knowing who won, and by exactly how much.

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Can I turn on the TV?”

“I just turned it off.”

“Oh.”

From the kitchen Mom's song wafted in along with the aroma of broiling meat. “A pig is an animal, with dirt on his face…” She had a nice singing voice in those days, but here she was singing about dirty pigs with terrible manners. Loud enough so that my father could hear. As she cooked, she went on breathlessly humming bits from “You Could be Swinging on a Star.”

“What the hell is that she's singing?”

“Just some song by Bing Crosby.”

“Oh.”

She must have noticed how quiet it was, because she said from the kitchen, “Let him turn on the television, Norman. It's his birthday.” Dad said nothing, but he took a swallow of scotch and soda, and grunted something that I figured out meant it was okay to watch.
The Honeymooners
was on, and Mom set the table. Setting the table meant she took a bunch of silverware and flung it on the table in a pile. For some reason, that was how she always set the table, throwing the silver down like that; she never realized how this made my father's blood boil. I noticed his moustache twitch, as it always did when he was simmering and about to explode, but Mom never saw it. Neither could she hear another telltale sign; a faint whirr like a hum which he emitted when he was about to storm. Mom cheerfully called Bobby in. He said, “Hey—I thought we couldn't watch TV!”

“It's my Hen-yee's birthday today,” Mom sang. She brought out individual shrimp cocktails in glistening crystal sherbet cups. These cups were wedding gifts and were almost never used.

“Where's the cocktail sauce?” Dad asked.

“There's lemon and there's ketchup,” she said. “You want ketchup?”

“What for?”

“For the shrimp cocktail, of course. You just said—”

“I like ketchup!” chirped Bobby. No one listened or cared.

“Don't bother,” Dad said. He took a large shrimp, pulled off the tail and devoured the meat. Then he sucked the tail to make sure nothing was left. It made a slurping sound.

“I'm sorry, but I've been out all day with my Birthday Boy; that's why there's no cocktail sauce, Norman.”

“What else is there?”

“Porterhouse steaks comin' right up!” she sang in a falsetto, clearing the shrimp cocktails and exiting towards the kitchen as she sang about moonbeams in jars and swingin' on stars.

“Shaddup, Rita!”

She either ignored, or didn't hear this, and returned with four huge steaks, gurgling in their own blood with blobs of curdled brown fat.

“Look at this! Did you ever see meat like this? Special for Hen-yee!” Mom always talked baby talk when she was in high spirits. I usually hated it, but today, for some reason, it didn't bother me.

“How do you expect me to cut this, Rita?” My father was sorting through a dense thicket of knives and forks looking for a carving knife. To illustrate, he actually bit into one of the steaks, holding up one end in the air with a fork. Always immaculately dressed and supremely careful about his appearance in public, my father deliberately allowed steak juice to trickle down his chin and onto his plate.

“I'll find us some sharper knives.”

“Don't worry, we can eat it with our teeth,” he said, winking at Bobby.

“Yeah, we'll eat it with our teeth—right, Dad?” Bobby squealed with high-pitched laughter.

“Stop imitating your father, Robert!” Mom said, as he reached for one of the steaks with pudgy fingers.

“Look what you've done, Norman!” she said, and scurried over to the break-front, rummaging around for a carving knife. “See—the boy's imitating you.”

“What I've done?” my father said innocently, grabbing one of the knives, and trying to slice the meat. “These won't cut, either!”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry, my ass.”

Mom didn't respond, but left and promptly returned with a set of gleaming, sterling silver steak knives, still in their Tiffany blue box.

“Do you know how hard I worked on this, Norman? All you've done is play tennis, sleep, drink Scotch, and criticize. How, after the day I've had, can you criticize me? Cocktail sauce? I took him bowling all day long—five games! What did you do? Play tennis? Where's a boy's father on his son's birthday?”

On the black and white television in the room behind us, Ralph Kramden balled his fist and held it up in the air dangerously close to his wife's face. “To the moon, Alice, to the moon!”

“Go ahead and try!” Alice said, defiantly.

“Bang zoom!”

“You don't like it?” Dad challenged.

“No, Norman, I don't like it. Not one bit.” Mom put her hands on her hips.

“Fine, I'll eat out with Sy.” Dad rose from the table, scraping the parquet floor.

“I mean it, Alice!”

“What do you mean, you're eating with Sy? It's Henry's birthday! You're certainly not eating out with Sy!”

“Go ahead, Ralph! I'd like to see you try!” Alice said again.

“One of these days, Alice, one of these days—
Pow
, right in the kisser!” The TV audience laughed.

I turned my neck to see the TV screen, but when I turned back, Mom was rubbing her cheek, even though Alice Kramden was unscathed.

“Bastard! You filthy bastard,” she growled, eyes bright. My father was already halfway down the hall, wallet and keys in hand. “Children, do you realize your father is a filthy bastard? Well, now you know, and you can imitate him some more. How dare you, Norman!” she shouted after him. “And on his birthday, too!”

The front door slammed, and my mother got up slowly and walked away from the table. After a few minutes, she returned. She reached for the bowl of steaming baked potatoes, each one wrapped in its own tinfoil jacket, with crystal dishes for sour cream and butter beside them. Mom slit a cross in the foil of one of the potatoes, added plenty of sour cream and butter and
salt, and mashed it all together in one delicious goop. Then she did the same thing to another potato, then a third, until all four potatoes were fixed that way. Although my stomach started hurting from the moment they'd begun fighting, those baked potatoes looked good, and I could imagine eating one as Mom mashed the soft insides of each one with a fork. But she didn't offer either Bobby or me a baked potato. Instead, we just sat there watching her smash the potatoes with the tines of her fork, frantically, over and over again for a long time. Then she returned to their bedroom, and emerged with the oblong bag Dad used for tennis. She carefully removed the rackets from their wooden presses, and, with a sterling silver spoon, scooped out all four potatoes and slathered the mixture all over his Slazengers. Then she took his shorts, shirt, and jockstrap, and packed them up in the tennis bag, and ladled the rest of the mess in with the clothes, and zipped it up again. She continued to sing “You Could Be Swinging on a Star” as she worked.

When she was finished, my mother announced she was leaving.

“Where ya' goin', Mom?” Bobby asked.

“I don't know.”

“What do you mean, you don't know—when are you coming back?” I asked, voice cracking.

“I don't know if I'll ever come back,” she said, “or where they might find me.” Bobby began howling, “
Noooo
!”

“I want you to know if I don't return, or if they find me somewhere dead, I've always loved you both, and none of this is your fault.”

“Mom! Don't go! Please!” Bobby and I said in unison. I thought about standing in front of the front door, but was frozen to the spot.

“Farewell, my children, goodbye!” She waved and put a pink silk scarf over her head, shrugged into a light topcoat, and slammed the door.

Bobby sat with his back to the door, rocking back and forth, Indian style, sucking his thumb. I told him she didn't mean it; she would be back soon. But of course I wasn't sure. She had done this before and always returned, but I couldn't really be sure this time. Not after the mashed potatoes on my father's rackets. This was something new and dangerous.

After a while I wandered into their bedroom. In my father's drawers, everything was perfect: his laundered shirts folded and stacked neatly, back to front, so they formed neat, symmetrical piles, each wrapped with a thick
blue strip of paper like a birthday present. He used to fold his handkerchiefs so they had five little points like a king's crown, and tuck them carefully into the breast pocket of his suit. I took one of the monogrammed handkerchiefs and inhaled its rich fragrance. It smelled like pine trees in Maine or some-place hours from the city. In a box, I saw an assortment of gold collar stays and cuff links, each tucked away in its own neat compartment. Ordered, like a Swanson's TV dinner. I walked into the bathroom and saw my mother's nylons splayed out over the radiator, panties in heaps on the floor, a girdle slung over the shower rod like a flayed carcass. The contrast couldn't have been more marked.

I went back to the dining room to make sure Bobby wasn't doing something stupid, but he was in our bedroom, reading a
Richie Rich
comic out loud, laughing. As I passed the TV, I noticed
The Honeymooners
was still on, and heard Ralph taking Alice in his arms.