Al Capone Does My Shirts (7 page)

Annie catches it, no problem. “I have one. Piper has one. Jimmy has one. None of the little kids do.”

We’re tossing the ball back and forth in a hard fast rhythm that feels great. My arm is purring. The ball, my glove, my arm are all working together like greased motor parts. Annie is so good, I don’t hold back.

“Where is Piper, anyway?” I can’t keep myself from asking.

“Charm school.”

“Charm school? That’s a laugh. Is it remedial charm or what?”

Annie catches the ball and holds it. She walks up close enough to whisper. “You got to get along with Piper. Otherwise she’ll make trouble for you and your dad.”

“Can she do that?”

“She can do anything she wants,” she says, handing me back my glove, picking up her book and dusting it off. “I gotta go in.”

“You going to that party tonight?” I ask.

“Everybody goes,” Annie explains. She walks heavy, like she weighs two hundred pounds. She’s sturdy, but not fat, and she has the best throwing arm I’ve ever seen on a girl. Pete would never believe it.

I look around for Theresa and Jimmy, but they’re already inside. I toss the ball up in the air and catch it just as the four o’clock bell rings. On Alcatraz a bell rings every hour to remind the guards to count the cons and make sure no one’s escaped. I’m about to go in when I spot Piper.

“Well, if it isn’t our very own Babe Ruth.”

She’s being sarcastic, but to me this is the best compliment in the world. “I like to play. What’s the matter with that?” I say, tossing the ball in the air and catching it bare-handed.

She looks around the parade grounds, then starts walking back to the road like I’m not the person she’s looking for.

“Did you see me play after school?” Why am I asking this? I can feel my face heat up.

She snorts, but doesn’t answer.

“They teach you how to make those sounds in charm school?” I’m half skipping to keep up with her, that’s how fast she walks.

“They teach you how to be a nice little church boy in Santa Monica?”

“Oh, so now I’m a church boy? Talk about playing both sides and down the middle too.”

“You won’t help with our laundry service because you don’t want to get in trouble. How do you spell Boy Scout?”

“I just don’t feel like doing it.”

“Right. I’ll bet you don’t feel like doing anything against the warden’s rules.”

“How do you know?”

She makes a strangled little sound in her throat and pulls open her front door.

“Why do you need me for this laundry plan of yours, anyway? Why do you care?”

“I can’t put eighty shirts through in my laundry bag, now, can I? Annie and Jimmy will help, but that’s not enough.”

“How do you know I won’t tell your dad?”

She rolls her eyes like this question is too stupid to bother answering and slams the door in my face.

 

 

Back home, I check the clock. Quarter to five. Still not time to wake my dad.

On my bed, I spread out two double ham sandwiches, a bowl of potato salad and the tail end of a salami and crack open my book. I’ve just finished Chapter Eleven when I hear the knock. Somewhere in the back of my head the knocking has been going on for some time. I run through the living room. Before I even open the door, I know who it is by the whistling, wheezing breathing.

“Mrs. Caconi,” I say, staring out at the big woman framed against the green sea and the gloomy gray dusk.

“You losing your hearing, Moose? I’ve been banging on this door for five whole minutes,” Mrs. Caconi hisses between breaths. “You folks got a call.”

Mrs. Caconi is fat around the middle, with arms as big as thighs and bosoms like two jiggling watermelons. She is hot and out of breath from the walk up the stairs. But Mrs. Caconi is the one who answers the phone because it’s right outside her door. Given her size and her difficulty with stairs, she seems the wrong person to live in the apartment next to the phone, but nobody asked me.

“Go on ahead,” she wheezes, backing her big self against the wall so I can squeeze by.

I think about getting my dad. But he’s been so tired, I don’t have the heart to wake him early. There probably isn’t time to get my mom and she won’t want to go outside with all that stinky permanent goop on her hair.

At the foot of the stairs, I spot the receiver hanging down. “Hello, this is Matthew Flanagan,” I say.

“Matthew? You are . . .” The male voice hesitates.

“Moose, sir. People call me Moose Flanagan.”

“Oh, yes, Moose. We met yesterday. This is Mr. Purdy, the headmaster at the Esther P. Marinoff School where your sister, Natalie, is enrolled. Is your mom or dad available?”

“Not right now, sir.”

Mr. Purdy sighs. “All right then, you’ll need to give them a message. Natalie is not settling in as we had hoped. Tell them I’m terribly sorry, but as I explained to your mom, we were only taking her on a trial basis. They need to come and pick her up today . . .
tonight.
”

“Tonight? Is she okay?” I ask.

“Yes, yes, she’s fine, son, perfectly fine. She’s just not ready for the program we have here is all. Just not ready,” he says. “Tell your mom and dad they must pick her up tonight. Can you do that for me, son?”

“Natalie isn’t ready?” I ask. “But she’s only been there one day.”

“Thirty-six hours. Yes, yes, I know. These things become clear rather quickly, I’m afraid. Have your parents call me if they have questions. Otherwise, I will expect them this evening.”

The phone clicks in my ear and the questions flood my brain. Why? What did she do? What happened? How could they know anything about Natalie in one day? They didn’t even try.

I want to go back to Santa Monica, but not this way—not if it means giving this news to my mom. My feet feel suddenly too heavy. The stairs too steep.

I push open our door. My mom is back. Her dark hair is permed flat with one wiggly curl across her forehead. She’s wearing a dress I’ve never seen before.

“How do I look?” She whirls around, her whole face radiant. I get a big whiff of sour perm and heavy perfume smell.

I open my mouth, but no words come out.

“I got my hair done. Didn’t you see my note?”

“Mom.” The words are frozen in my chest. “It’s beautiful.” My voice cracks.

My mom’s eyes register that something is wrong. “Moose.” She touches my shoulder. “It was hard to leave her there. Of course it was. What did we expect? But this is her chance, son. She’s going to get better. I know it. I feel it right here.” She pats her heart.

I can’t look at her. “Time to wake Dad,” I mutter.

The bed creaks when I sit down in my parents’ dark room, but my dad doesn’t stir. His hair seems to have slipped back on his head. It isn’t growing thick and full across his forehead the way mine does. His bald spot, which used to be no bigger than a quarter, is now the size of a baseball. The creases in his face look deeper too.

I jiggle his arm. “Dad,” I say, “we have to go pick up Natalie. Mr. Purdy called. They don’t want her at the Esther P. Marinoff. She can’t stay there, not even tonight.”

My father opens his eyes. He looks as if he’s just stepped on a nail. “Come again,” he says.

By the time I finish explaining the second time, he’s sitting up in bed.

“Does your mom know?”

I shake my head.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out with a whistle. His eyes focus on a worn spot on the rug.

“Okay, son. I’ll take it from here,” he says.

 

When my dad tells my mom, she seems to have no reaction. She goes in her room, puts on her regular clothes and comes out with her purse and her gloves in her hand. “Let’s go,” she says, her face blank, her eyes dead.

“Sit down, honey,” my father says. “We don’t have to go right this minute. Let’s just take a deep breath here.”

“NOW,” my mom says, waiting like a child at the door.

My father’s shoulders are hunched. He gets his shoes, jacket and hat and starts to open the door.

“No,” my mother says. “You can’t go. You have to be at work at eight. I’ll go myself.”

“You can’t go by yourself.”

“YES!” My mom shoves my dad hard. His arm bangs the wall.

My mouth falls open. I’ve never seen her do anything like this.

“Moose,” my father asks, his voice quiet. “Will you go with your mother?”

 

On the boat, my mom seems better. Her eyes are angry now. Not dead. Here we go again, I think. Before the Esther P. Marinoff, the Barriman School was “It” and before that the heat treatments and before that the aluminum formula and before that UCLA.

At UCLA they made us cut Natalie’s hair. Shaved it right off. They tested her like she was some kind of insect. They tested the movement of her eyes, the sensitivity of her ears, the color of her pee. They tested allergies, reflexes, muscle strength. Her speech in a dark room. Her reaction to Tchaikovsky. The way she ate, slept, burped, blew her nose and even what she thought. Especially what she thought. Nothing about her was private.

At home she’d spend hours in her room rocking like a boat in a terrible storm. But it was
UCLA,
my mother would remind us. When she said the name, it had a golden glow. They had promised us a cure,
if
—a word my mother can’t ever seem to hear—Natalie’s problem fit the diagnosis they were studying.

And so I spent months riding in the rumble seat of my gram’s car to and from Westwood and hours sitting in the waiting room, until the day they let us know their findings. “An interesting case,” they said. “But not what we’re looking for. You should consider donating her brain to science when she dies.”

“When she dies?” my mother said. “She’s ten years old.”

They shrugged their shoulders and handed my dad a bill.

Things fell apart at my house after that. Ants in the sink. Flies on the garbage. Cereal for supper. No clean dishes. Natalie in the same dirty dress. The blood of picked scabs on her arm.

It was months before my mother left the house again. And that was with my mom’s sisters, my gram and grandpa, her friends and cousins all around.

I don’t remember when my mom decided Natalie was going to stay ten. But I think it might have been then.

Sitting in Mr. Purdy’s office, I imagine punching him in the nose. My arm twitches just thinking about it.

“I’m afraid,” Mr. Purdy explains when he comes in, “she’s more involved than we can handle right now. We’re equipped for boys with the kind of challenges your daughter faces, but not girls. You might want to look into Deerham in Marin County.” Mr. Purdy hands my mother a card with an address scribbled on it.

“Deerham?” My mother’s voice catches. “Isn’t that an asylum?”

“I don’t think it’s helpful to get caught up with words, Mrs. Flanagan. We’re looking for a way to help your daughter. Let’s not let words come between us.”

My mother takes her green feathered hat off as if she’s staying. “The kids who graduate from your school get jobs. They have lives.”

“Some of them do get jobs, yes.”

“That’s what I want for Natalie.”

“I understand that, Mrs. Flanagan, but it’s not working out for her here.”

“It’s only been two days. Surely even a . . .
usual
child would have had some adjustment to a new setting. . . .”

Mr. Purdy grunts. Mr. Purdy is the kind of man who can make a grunt seem polite.

“My husband and I,” my mom continues, “have done a lot of research on this and we believe this program—your program—is the best in the country. You are turning out kids who can function in the world.”

“That’s kind of you to say, but—”

“And I don’t think”—my mother is unstoppable—“that we will be able to replicate your success elsewhere. So I wonder if there isn’t some way we could make this work. . . .”

Mr. Purdy shakes his head. “She can’t stay here now, but if you wish, I can put you in touch with someone who might be able to help Natalie. Help her . . .”

“Get ready?” my mother offers. She sits up straighter in her chair.

“Yes.” Mr. Purdy smiles, his ladylike hands fingertip to fingertip. He tips them toward my mother like he’s rolling a ball to her. Then he swivels in his squeaky chair to get a folder behind him. He copies a number down on a slip of paper and hands it to my mother. My mother looks at the page, then folds it closed. Mr. Purdy stands up, to signal the end of our meeting. I stand up too. My mother does not. Mr. Purdy and I sit down again.

I’m proud of my mother for this. Proud of her for getting all she can from this man, but I’m angry too. No matter what this little paper says, my mother will do it. Once she sent away for voodoo dolls and carefully followed the instructions some witch doctor in the West Indies wrote about how to relieve Natalie’s condition. Another time she took Natalie to a church where everybody stood up and waved their arms. She read the Bible to her for two hours every day while Natalie sat staring at her right hand as if there were a movie playing on her palm and she couldn’t bear to pull herself away. And then there was a school where my mom taught music classes for free until they let Natalie in. And when they did, Natalie just sat in the fancy classroom tearing bits of paper into tiny pieces. With Natalie, there never is a happy ending. But my mom won’t ever believe that.

“Forgive me, Mr. Purdy, I’d like to know what happened,” my mom says, her brown eyes staring him down.

“I had hoped Mr. Flanagan would be here with you.” Mr. Purdy looks at me.

“My husband is working the evening shift.”

“Of course.” Mr. Purdy nods. He looks around his cluttered office as if he’s searching for a way out. “Natalie is, I would say, unresponsive.” He peeks at my mother to see if this will do. My mother doesn’t blink.