Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories (20 page)

“Hi,” was all she said, her voice rich and low like the waters of the Danau flowing past the ancient bridges of medieval Europe.

“Hi,” I answered, my rapier wit honed to its finest cutting edge.

T see my mother's been feeding you,” she said, smiling in a way that made my socks itch deep inside my Thom McAn saddle shoes.

“Yeah. It sure was good. Boy. Yessir.”

“Josie good cook,” said her mother, clearing away the dishes and preparing to serve what appeared to be a plate of spectacular plum dumplings topped with sour cream. “She make cabbage.”

“Josie
cooked the cabbage?” I said stupidly, struggling
to get to my feet and finding, unaccountably, that I seemed to be carrying several cast-iron bowling balls under my waistband.

“She make good wife one day.” A claw gripped at my intestines. There was something in Mrs. Cosnowski's eye that I had never seen in the eye of a mother before. I would learn to know that look well in later years. At the time, I thought it was just the cabbage clouding my eyesight.

“Well, what do you say? Shall we go?” Josie asked lightly, touching my arm suggestively with the tips of her fingers.

“You come next, we play pinochle?” Her father stood up, towering above me like a stone god from Easter Island, his head bowed under the ceiling. Seated, he was a human being; standing he became a monument of 6′5″ or 6′6″, wearing what must have been a size-75 shirt with probably a 22-inch neck.

“I play pinochle good,” I answered, which was the truth. We shook hands, or rather I stuck my tiny fist into the vise for a moment or two. My knuckles clattered and snapped.

“Next time Josie fix whole meal. You like.” Her mother seemed to think only of food. Josie put her coat on and we climbed the basement steps, groped our way through the darkened parlor and were out on the porch, Mrs. Cosnowski clucking behind us in her native tongue.

At last we were in the Olds, warm and redolent with muffler fumes. I felt her hand resting on my arm as I
shoved it into first gear. I had no idea where we were going.

“They liked you,” Josie said, her hand squeezing my arm affectionately as she snuggled closer.

“Yeah, they were sure great.” I wanted to ask her about the basement scene, but I figured what the hell, live and let live.

“Did you really cook that cabbage?” I asked, struggling with the defroster. She said nothing, but her grip on my arm tightened perceptively.

“Gee, I'm glad you got the car,” she sighed. What was she trying to tell me? I detected a double meaning in every syllable, every intake of breath.

“Yeah, my old man lets me have it any time I want.” This, of course, was a bald-faced lie. If I had gotten the car every time I wanted it, the old man would have had to walk to work, which was five miles away.

“Well, heh-heh-heh. Where to? Let's get over to that party.”

“Turn right on California and I'll let you know when to turn next”

“Who's throwing this party?”

“Ooh, look at the Santa Claus.” She ignored the question, peering through the clouded window at a hulking electrical Santa in a store window who seemed to be alternately hitting croquet balls and picking his nose.

We drove on. My anticipation over the approaching party was almost uncontainable. I'd always heard about great parties that other guys went to. They always described them in the clinical detail of a sex manual.
I had even pretended to have been to a few myself, which of course, like most of my life, was a sham and a fraud. The parties I had been to consisted mostly of shoving, standing around and drinking Cokes, turning up or turning down the record player and constantly going out for more potato chips. This pulsating creature next to me, so full of life and stuffed cabbage, obviously offered far more than potato chips.

The Olds banged along as it always did, bottoming familiarly in and out of potholes.

“Turn right!” she said suddenly. Her hand clutched sensually at my arm as I wheeled the Olds into a lumbering right turn, clunking over the rutted ice. I couldn't figure out where she was taking me. I didn't know anybody from school who lived in this neighborhood. We rolled past the Ever Rest Funeral Parlor And Furniture Store, its green-and-red neon sign glowing bleakly onto the snow.

“Tell me when,” I said, trying to sound like Robert Cummings.

“Turn left here.” Like most girls, she gave directions in retrospect, invariably telling you to turn just after you've almost passed the street. I spun the wheel wildly. A scurrying panel truck bounced in and out of the ruts, trying to avoid me. I caught a brief glimpse of a swarthy face mouthing obscenities. We crawled up a darkened street.

“OK. You can park here.”

Cars were parked on both sides of the street and in a parking lot on my left. I eased into a slot. For a brief
moment, I squeezed her hand in the dark, and her lips brushed my ear. Then we were out in the cold and going up some kind of gravel walk between snow-covered shrubbery. I could see in the darkness a great stone-turreted building. I thought, God almighty, I've hit the jackpot! I could see the headline: “
ORGY AT WEALTHY HOME. TEENAGERS ARRESTED
.” I saw other people going in a side entrance, and brief flashes of light from within. We stood now in the gloom cast by a vast stone façade. Gargoyles leered from black nooks wearing tiny caps of crusted ice. Josie's eyes gleamed with an exalted light. NO! I thought, it CAN'T be!

It was. The heavy wooden door swung open and we stepped into the vestibule of St. Ignatius R. C. Church. A throng of pious merrymakers eddied somberly around me. I had been euchred beyond human depravity. I had been tricked into a church Christmas party, something I had avoided like the plague for all of my atheistic years.

“Ah, my son, we haven't met you, have we?” A bald priest wearing gold-rimmed glasses leaped forward, taking my hand and clinging to it for a long, agonizing moment.

“Ah, I see you're with our little Josephine. Ah, yes, I remember her baptism, and now she's a grown lady and bringing her young man here for us to meet. Well, we'll grow to know each other well, my son, and….”

Her young man! We'll grow to know each other well! What is this? Our little Josephine stood at my side, her arm linked in mine, eyes shining.

“Yes, Father, he could hardly wait to get here.”

I looked her full in the face, expecting to see a wink, some sign that she was kidding, but no! A look of benign piety glowed on her magnificent face. I began to feel like the worm in the apple, a butterfly on the pin. The crowd moved forward, the priest greeting newcomers and pointing me out. I heard snatches of conversation: “Josie's young man,” “My, one minute they're babies and the next you're marrying them….”

Heavy men with mustaches and ladies with shawls beamed at me. Hundreds of little kids bumped and milled at my knees. From somewhere in the bowels of the church, I heard a deep steady thumping. We moved on in the great throng, downstairs, through corridors, the thumping growing louder and louder. Again I was seized by a paroxysm of fear, some instinct telling me to flee before it was too late.

And then it
was
too late. We were in a huge room heavy with the scent of sweating bodies and Polish cooking. The heavy rhythmic thumping made the floors jar, the walls shudder. Sweat coursed down my shoulder blades. Josie grasped my right hand.

“Darling, do you dance?”

I was known as a particularly tenacious dancer in my somewhat limited set, but I had never seen anything like this. On a stand on one side of the room, dressed in suspenders, funny pants, embroidered shirts and plumed derbies, were Frankie Yankovic and His Polka All Stars, thumping out the
Dawn Patrol Polka,
a particularly insistent and violent example of the genre. I was yanked almost
off my feet by a single powerful motion of Josie's left arm. Her beautiful feet thumped the floor maniacally. I bobbed up and down like a yo-yo on a tight string. Elbows jabbed me in the ribs, deep and hard. I caught brief images of sweating faces, clumping feet. Frankie Yankovic and His All Stars—led by Frankie himself, playing a mother-of-pearl accordion—rose to thunderous heights that would have made coleslaw out of the most powerful electronic rock groups. Every third beat, feet rose and fell like great balls of concrete.

For some unaccountable reason, I discovered I was a consummate polka dancer. The polka is a true soul dance. You don't learn it; it engulfs you and sweeps you on in a flood of braying cornets and tootling clarinets and the thundering syncopation of bass drums and cymbals. The drummer, a heavy-set Pole, squatted like a toad and his equipment, operating with the machinelike precision of a pile driver. I bounced and sweated, Josie clinging and hopping, ducking and bobbing as one born to the beat. As we danced she seemed to grow progressively more alien and foreign.

In the midst of the 23rd chorus of the Stars
and Stripes Polka,
as we swirled past a group of shawled ladies standing like vultures along the wall, I caught a glimpse of a pale, harassed, hawklike face. We swirled around the floor again like a merry-go-round out of control. Deedledeedle
BOOM
Boom deedle deedle
BOOM
Boom! The drummer's heavy foot rose and fell like an air hammer, booming out the bass notes.

Again I saw that white, pinched face staring directly at
me like some despairing ghost. It was Howie.
Howie!
Our eyes met. He was trying to tell me something. I saw a round little fat girl clinging to his elbow and around them, like so many toadstools around a rock, three other short, squat children, noses running, some crying, some yelling, all with the look of Howie around the eyes. Old Howie, who could handle a basketball like Bob Cousy. Howie, who had worked 18 hours a day at Pulaski's, lugging potatoes and weighing salami, ever since he married his Polish girlfriend.

It was then that I knew I had to get out of there fast. Josie was wearing some kind of perfume that must have been brewed by the Devil himself. The more she danced, the headier it became; but I was impervious to its siren lure, for every time we spun around, I saw Howie standing there like a dead man stood among the shawled women with his round little wife and his brood.

Frankie Yankovic did a rippling riff on his squeezebox to signal a brief break in the gymnastics. Even though I was in top shape and had been playing basketball, football and Indian wrestling for months on end, I was wheezing badly.

“I'm so glad we came. You're going to like the Father. He's a wonderful man.” I saw large numbers of the celebrants pushing their way into the next room, where there seemed to be some sort of table set up.

“Uh … I'll get us a drink or something, OK?”

Josie was now in confidential conversation with a girlfriend. They appeared to be talking about me. Her girlfriend nodded in what looked suspiciously like approval.

“I'll get a couple of Cokes. And one for your friend.”

Josie smiled. Like a greased pig. I darted off through the doorway, threading my way through the crowd like a halfback on an off-tackle slant. I edged past a table where nuns were selling gingerbread men and cider. Again I caught a glimpse of Howie, who looked more harassed than ever as he handed doughnuts around to his crowd of kids. It was a sight that chilled the marrow. I worked my way up a stairway against a stream of people who were working their way down. I was in the vestibule, moving like a shadow. And now I was at the door.

Suddenly, without warning, a heavy weight descended on my left shoulder from behind. For an instant I thought I was having a paralytic stroke brought on by too much dancing. Some immense force spun me counterclockwise. A great hulking form blocked out the rest of the room from my vision.

“Uh … hi, Stosh.”

He looked at me with a kind of joyous hunger flickering in his beady eyes, the way a Kansas City lineman must look when he's closing in on Joe Namath.

“Yuh havin' a good time wit' Josie?” he asked rhetorically.

“Yeah! Sure! Great!”

It was then I became aware that he was not alone. He had a friend with him. He looked vaguely familiar.

“This is Josie's fella.” He introduced me. T want you to meet Uncle Stanley.”

“Pleasta meetcha,” the stranger muttered, sticking out a gigantic mitt. Something in that voice rang a bell. Good
Lord, no! It was the steel puddler from the Buick! He looked at me with cool, malevolent eyes, and then I remembered that brilliant conversation in the back seat of that wreck he drove, about
scoring
and all that!

Uncle Stanley looked down at me and for a second or two I hoped he didn't recognize me. “Howya doin', kid?” The way he said it, I knew he knew, and it didn't sound good. “Hey, Stosh, where's Josie? I wanna talk to her.” Uncle Stanley sounded like he meant it.

They both turned to look for Josephine. I saw my chance and took it. Like a flash, I was out the door. Behind me I could hear the Polka All-Stars going into high gear for the second set. I darted across the crusted ice, catching a fleeting impression of the door slamming open against the wall behind me as Stosh, all his magnificent killer instincts turned up to full, lumbered into the backfield. I knew I'd have to come back for the car later. Around a concrete wall I shot, Stosh huffing behind me, through a hedge, across a street, down an alley, through a used-car lot, past the Ever Rest Funeral Parlor And Furniture Store, down another alley and then a long, dark street. Stosh moved surprisingly well for a giant, but after what seemed hours, he finally gave up the chase. I continued to run, blindly, hysterically, sensing that I was running not from just Stosh or Stanley but from what happened to Howie, from the doughnuts, the toadstools, the ladies with the shawls—all of it!

I found myself in a familiar neighborhood. There was another huge building with thousands of cars and gleaming yellow lights. The Civic Center! The Whiting Oilers!
The big game! I ran up the long concrete steps, gasping for breath, fumbled through my wallet at the turnstile and found my ticket.