The Tender Bar (14 page)

My heart beat faster. “I’m not sure,” I said.

Fuckembabe laughed and patted me on the head. “Chip off the old fooking blocker blick,” he said.

Uncle Charlie poured himself a drink, fixed me a Roy Rogers and told me to occupy myself while he and the men made some phone calls. I hopped on a barstool and spun in slow circles, taking in every detail of the barroom. Hanging upside down from wooden slats above the bar were hundreds of cocktail glasses, which caught and reflected the light of the barroom like a vast chandelier. Along a forty-foot shelf behind the bar were scores of liquor bottles, in a rainbow of colors, also reflecting the light and being reflected by the glasses overhead. The overall effect was like being inside a kaleidoscope. I ran my hand along the bar top. Solid oak. Three inches thick. I heard one of the men say the wood had recently been given several dozen fresh coats of varnish, and it showed. The surface was a tawny orange-yellow, like the skin of a lion. I petted it tentatively. I admired the tongue-and-groove floors, buffed smooth by a million footsteps. I studied my reflection in the old-fashioned silver cash registers, which looked as if they’d come from a general store on the prairie. With that same rapture and transport I normally experienced while pretending I was Tom Seaver, I now pretended I was The Most Popular Person in Dickens. The place was jam-packed. It was late at night. I was telling a story and everyone was listening.
Quiet, everybody—the kid’s telling a story!
I was holding their attention with only my voice, my story. I wished I knew a story good enough to hold someone’s attention. I wondered how Grandma would do at Dickens.

The back bar was two large panels of stained glass. Bobo appeared at my side and said I shouldn’t stare at them too closely. “How come?” I asked.

“Notice anything about them?” he asked, popping a maraschino cherry into his mouth.

I leaned forward, squinting. I didn’t notice a thing.

“Crazy Jane designed those panels,” Bobo said. “She’s a friend of Steve’s. See anything in that design right there?”

I stared at the panel on the left. Could it be? “Is that a—?”

“Penis?” he said. “You betcha. And that would make the other panel . . .”

I didn’t know what one looked like, but based on logic, it could only be one thing. “That’s a lady’s—?”

“Yup.”

Embarrassed, I asked what was in the back room.

“That’s where we hold special events,” he said. “Bachelor parties, family reunions, high school reunions, office Christmas parties, pizza parties after all the Little League games. And the fish fights.”

“Fistfights?” I said.

“
Fish
fights,” Colt said, appearing on my other side.

The bartenders, Colt said, often put two Siamese fighting fish in a bowl and bet on the outcome. “But the fish,” Colt said sadly, “they get tired, and we usually call it a draw.”

Uncle Charlie emerged from the basement and flicked on the stereo.

“Ah,” Bobo said. “‘Summer Wind.’”

“Great song,” Uncle Charlie said, raising the volume.

“I like Sinatra,” I told Uncle Charlie.

“Everyone likes Sinatra,” he said. “He’s The Voice.”

He didn’t notice my shocked expression.

Soon it was time for Uncle Charlie and me to go home. I fought back tears, knowing that Uncle Charlie would shower and return to the bar, while I’d eat a tense, inedible dinner with Grandpa and Grandma. I was being pulled from the men and the bar by the riptide of Grandpa’s house.

“It was a real pleasure having you with us at the beach today,” Joey D said. “You’ll have to come again, kid.”

You’llhavetocomeagainkid.

“I will,” I said as Uncle Charlie led me out the back door. “I will.”

I went to the beach every day that summer, weather and hangovers permitting. Upon opening my eyes in the morning I’d first check the sky, then consult with Grandma about what time Uncle Charlie had come home from Dickens. Fair skies and an early night for Uncle Charlie meant I’d be bodysurfing with Joey D by noon. Clouds or a late night meant I’d be on the bicentennial sofa, reading
Minute Biographies.

The more time I spent with Uncle Charlie, the more I talked like him, walked like him, aped his mannerisms. I put a hand to my temple when deep in thought. I leaned on my elbows while I chewed. I also sought him out, tried to engage him in conversations. I thought it would be easy.
Spending time together at Gilgo means we’re friends, right?
But Uncle Charlie was his father’s son.

One night I found him alone at the dinner table, reading the newspaper and eating a T-bone. I sat beside him. “Too bad about the rain,” I said.

He jumped and pressed a hand over his heart. “Jesus!” he said. “Where did you come from?”

“Arizona. Ha.”

Nothing.

He shook his head and turned back to his newspaper.

“Too bad about the rain,” I said again.

“I like it,” he said, not looking away from the newspaper. “Suits my mood.”

I rubbed my hands together nervously.

“Bobo going to be at Dickens tonight?” I asked.

“False.” Still looking at his newspaper. “Bobo is on the disabled list.”

“What does Bobo do at the bar?”

“Cook.”

“Wilbur going to be there?”

“Wilbur’s on the wagon.”

“I like Wilbur.”

No answer.

“Colt going to be there?”

“False. Colt’s going to the Yankee game.”

Silence.

“Colt is funny,” I said.

“Yes,” Uncle Charlie said solemnly. “Colt is funny.”

“Uncle Charlie, could I watch the next demolition derby on Plandome Road?”

“Every night is a demolition derby on Plandome Road,” he said. “Whole town’s inebriated. You don’t mind if I say ‘inebriated,’ do you?”

I thought. I tried to decide how best to answer. After a full minute I said, “No.”

He turned away from the newspaper and looked at me. “What?” he asked.

“I don’t mind if you say ‘inebriated.’”

“Oh.” He turned back to his newspaper.

“Uncle Charlie?” I said. “How come Steve named the bar Dickens?”

“Because Dickens was a great writer. Steve must like writers.”

“Why’s he so great?”

“He wrote about people.”

“Don’t they all write about people?”

“Dickens wrote about eccentric people.”

“What’s eccentric?”

“Unique. One of a kind.”

“Isn’t everyone unique?”

“God no, kid! That’s the whole goddamned problem.”

He turned to me again. He looked at me hard. “How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“Sure ask a lot of questions for an eleven-year-old.”

“My teacher says I’m like Joe Friday. Ha.”

“Hm.”

“Uncle Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“Who’s Joe Friday?”

“A cop.”

Long silence.

“Eleven,” Uncle Charlie said. “Ach, that’s a great age.” He poured ketchup on his T-bone. “Stay right there. Whatever you do, stay eleven. Don’t budge. Follow?”

“I follow.”

If Uncle Charlie had told me to run and fetch him something from the moon, I’d have done it, no questions asked, but how was I supposed to stay eleven? I rubbed my hands together harder.

“The Mets going to win tonight?” he asked, looking over his betting sheet.

“Koosman is pitching,” I said.

“So?”

“Bet Koos, you lose.”

He stopped chewing his steak and stared at me. “You don’t miss a trick, do you?” He swallowed, folded his newspaper in half, and rose from the table, looking at me the whole time. Then he walked down the hall to his bedroom. I gulped the beer in his glass just before Grandma came into the dining room.

“How about a nice piece of gushy cake?” she asked.

“False. Cookies. You follow?”

Her mouth fell open.

If Uncle Charlie was too hungover for Gilgo, Grandma wouldn’t say he was hungover. She’d say he’d eaten too many potato chips at the bar and his stomach was upset. One morning she didn’t even bother with the potato-chip story, because Uncle Charlie was in a bad way, and the smell of whiskey from his bedroom was overpowering. I rocked in the backyard hammock, sulking.

“What’s shakin’, kid?”

I sat up. Bobo stood in the breezeway, Wilbur at his side. They had come to “rescue” me, he announced. “Why should Uncle Goose spoil everyone’s fun?” he said. “Screw Goose. Today it’s just you, me and Wilbur. The three amigos.”

I couldn’t imagine why Bobo would make such an offer, unless he didn’t know the way to Gilgo and needed my help finding it. Or maybe he actually liked having me around. Or maybe Wilbur did? Grandma was more mystified than I. She came outside and looked at Bobo and seemed on the verge of calling the cops. Only because Bobo was a friend of Uncle Charlie, and because Wilbur gazed at her so imploringly, did she say yes.

As we pulled onto Plandome Road I thought Bobo must be very sleepy. I didn’t understand that he was drunk and stoned. He finished a Heineken in three gulps and sent me into the backseat to fetch him another from a Styrofoam ice chest. I found Wilbur hiding in the well back there and remembered what Joey D had said about Wilbur knowing when Bobo was over his limit.

About two miles from Gilgo, as I was climbing into the front seat with yet another Heineken, Bobo’s car went into a tailspin. We flew sideways, helicoptered across three lanes, and Wilbur and I slammed against a back door. Beer went everywhere. Ice cubes rattled around the car like beads in a maraca. I heard tires squealing, glass shattering, Wilbur whimpering. When the car came to a rest I opened my eyes. Wilbur and I were bruised, and soaked with beer, but grateful, because we both knew we should have been dead. We’d been saved by a large, soft dune, which absorbed the impact of the crash.

That night I had a dream. (Or a nightmare, I couldn’t decide.) I was at the beach. Darkness was coming on and I needed to get home. Bobo, however, was in no condition to drive. Wilbur will have to drive, he told me. While Bobo slept in the backseat I rode shotgun and watched Wilbur steering us down the expressway. Every now and then the dog would fiddle with the radio, then turn to me with a toothy, demonic grin, his expression saying—
What of it?

Aunt Ruth got wind of my Gilgo excursions and decided McGraw should go too. She dropped him off at Grandpa’s one morning and I’d never seen him so excited. As the morning wore on and Uncle Charlie didn’t stir, he lost heart. “Guess we’re not going,” he said, picking up a bat and walking out to the backyard. I followed.

Just then we heard Uncle Charlie slamming doors, coughing, demanding Coke and aspirin. Grandma hurried down the hall and asked Uncle Charlie if he was going to the beach. “No,” he snapped. “Maybe. I don’t know. Why?”

She dropped her voice. McGraw and I could hear only a few muttered words.
“Ruth wondered . . . take McGraw . . . good for the boys . . .”

Then we heard Uncle Charlie.
“Bartenders, not baby-sitters . . . enough room in the Cadillac . . . responsible for two little . . .”

After a few more exchanges we couldn’t hear, Uncle Charlie came into the backyard and found McGraw and me on the stoop, each of us wearing our swim trunks under our dungarees and holding an A&P bag with our version of travel provisions—one sports magazine, one banana, one towel. Uncle Charlie, wearing just boxers, stood in the middle of the yard. “You two mopes want to go to Gilgo?”

“Sure,” I said casually.

McGraw nodded.

Uncle Charlie looked at the treetops, as he often did when irritated. I sometimes thought he dreamed about living up there, in a tree house high atop Grandpa’s tallest pine, a fortress more remote and secure than his bedroom. “Two minutes,” he said.

McGraw and I sat in the backseat as Uncle Charlie drove around town. We stopped first for Bobo. When Bobo and Wilbur got into the front seat they looked at McGraw, then turned and looked at Uncle Charlie. “Goose,” Bobo said, “our little family is growing.”

“Yeah,” Uncle Charlie said, clearing his throat. “That’s my other nephew. McGraw, say hello to Bobo and Wilbur.”

“Exactly how many nephews you got, Goose?” Bobo said.

No answer.

“Goose,” Bobo said, “one of these days, I think you’re going to pick me up in a freaking school bus.”

As we pulled into Joey D’s driveway Bobo was still giving Uncle Charlie the business. “Goose,” he said, “I think I’m going to call you
Mother
Goose. Lived in a shoe, had so many nephews he didn’t know what to do.”

“Mother Goose,” McGraw said, giggling. I shoved him. No giggling at Uncle Charlie.

“Who’s that?” Joey D said, sliding into the backseat and pointing at McGraw.

“My nephew,” Uncle Charlie said.

“Ruthy’s kid?”

“Mm-hm.”

Only Colt seemed happy to see us. “What?” he said, squeezing into the backseat, forcing McGraw halfway onto my lap. “Another kid? More the merrier, huh, fellas?”