KooKooLand (12 page)

“Hi, Uncle Barney,” I said, as I scrunched over next to Jimmy to let Barney into the front seat, and also because he smelled.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said. “How's my little girl?”

He gave me a wink. He was cockeyed and you never knew which eye to look in.

“Never mind the hearts and flowers. What've you got for me?” snapped Jimmy, who said Barney would talk your ear off and then keep blabbing into the hole in your head.

Barney reached into one of his shopping bags. He always had three or four bags with him at any one time and you never knew what would be coming
out of them. Cartons of cancer sticks in brands nobody smoked. Gillette razor blades. Last year's model of genuine ladies' Timex watches. Sometimes the items were large, like chain saws or watermelons, and you had to follow him to a shed where he had stashed them.

Uncle Barney pulled a windup monkey out of his shopping bag.

“Look at how cute this damn thing is,” he said, as he wound it up and set it on the dashboard. The monkey clapped its cymbals once and tumbled into my lap. Its motor continued to make a grinding sound.

“What am I gonna do with a bunch of goddamn windup monkeys?” snarled Jimmy.

“There are a lot of kids in the projects,” Barney said. “Many of them have allowances.”

“You know you get goofier by the day,” Jimmy told him. “What else you got?”

I started to hand the monkey back to Barney.

“Keep it, sweetheart. Consider it a birthday present from your uncle Barney.”

My birthday was in February, but I thanked him anyway.

“C'mon, hurry it up, Barney. I haven't got all day. Some of us have to work for a living.”

“OK, you're gonna flip over this,” Barney assured Jimmy. He pulled a Roman candle out of the bag. “Some guy in Revere got them off a boat from China.”

Jimmy had gotten fireworks from Barney before, but that shipment had all been duds and he'd had to give some people their money back even though he never sold anything with a money-back guarantee.

“I'll put you on a slow boat to China if these are like the last ones,” warned Jimmy.

“These are real Fourth of July quality,” Barney assured him.

So Jimmy gave Sad-Sack Barney some of the big-shot's money and took a shopping bag of Roman candles home to the projects.

The fireworks were hot sellers with the greaser punks in the neighborhood. I watched them come and go all afternoon as I jumped rope in front of the house, singing:

Mickey Mouse

Had a house

Couldn't pay his rent

So he got kicked out.

By early evening most of the punks had left. Jimmy warned them to be careful and not blow their stupid hands off or he'd get fingered. The punks laughed and said they knew what the hell they were doing.

After the last punk left, Jimmy told Virginia and me to go get our friends and bring them around the back of the building. He said he'd saved the best fireworks for us. So we rounded up everybody—Tina and her brother and his wiseass friends; and the Greek girls, Aphrodite and Stephanie; and the Loomis family, who never got to go anywhere; and the Riggs kids, whose old man was in the Valley Street jail sleeping off a bender. Word spread and other kids showed up, and some of their parents, carrying a six-pack under one arm and a baby under the other. Jimmy said the babies could stay as long as they didn't squeal, but one peep outta them and they'd be booted out like a football. Somebody had a transistor radio tuned into the Red Sox game and Jimmy said he'd be booted out too if he didn't turn those bums off.

Shirley was upstairs getting ready for her double date with Hank and the other Shirley, but Jimmy told her to get her keister outside. Her hair was still half up in pin curls, so she tied a kerchief around her head.

Jimmy had all the fireworks set up and ready to go. Whenever some nosy kids got too close, he'd tell 'em, “Don't touch the merchandise.” He lit the fuses with the glowing end of his Lucky Strike and, one after the other, they shot up into the starry night.

They were the loudest and brightest fireworks any of us had ever seen.

And only a couple were duds.

After the last one, Jimmy said, “That's it. The show's over. Beat it.” He went in the house to get ready for the double date and Shirley went back to undoing her pin curls.

But none of the neighbors wanted to go home. They stood around behind the building under the cloud of white smoke that had settled there, breathing in the burnt odor that lingered.

Tina began to worry that just watching illegal fireworks might be a sin, even if you hadn't bought them yourself or even touched them. She told me she was probably going to have to confess the whole thing to Father McSomebody.

I said if she squealed on my father and the cops stuck him in the Valley Street jail with Mr. Riggs I would never speak to her again if I lived to be a million billion trillion years old.

Telling a priest was like telling God, she assured me. Even if the Boston Strangler came and confessed, the priest would have to keep his trap shut. The pope made the rules and Rule Number One was no squealing.

“The pope oughta make an exception for the Boston Strangler,” I said.

“The pope knows what he's doing,” Tina insisted, starting to get hot under the collar. “If you're going to bad-mouth the pope, I won't be your friend anymore.”

“I didn't say anything against the pope,” I argued, knowing Susan wouldn't like that. “The pope's OK in my book. Anyway, I don't think the Boston Strangler is the churchy type, so he probably won't be confessing any sins.”

“The Boston Strangler couldn't be a Catholic,” stated Tina. “President Kennedy is a Catholic.”

Tina was always bringing up the fact that President Kennedy was a Catholic whether it made sense to or not.

I figured now was as good a time as any to drop my big surprise on her.

“I'm thinking of becoming a Catholic.”

Tina looked confused.

“I thought you were a heathen. That's what my mother said.”

“I am not,” I said, not knowing what a heathen was. But it didn't sound good.

“If you're a Catholic, you have to go to church.”

“I know that. I'm not some ding-dong,” I replied. “I have another friend who's Catholic who I might go to church with.”

Tina looked jealous, which was just the reaction I was going for.

“I was your friend first. You oughta go with me.”

I acted like I was thinking it over. Who was my favorite Catholic? Her or Susan? Finally, I slipped my arm through hers.

“OK,” I said. “It's a deal. I'll go with you.”

We locked pinkie fingers.

Then we talked some more about President Kennedy. And about Mrs. Kennedy, who I said looked like a movie star, even though she was as big as a house from being in the family way.

And that got us to talking about sex. We'd picked up a few things about sex from our older sisters—a guy put his thing from Down There in your pee-pee and then peed in you. It seemed like something no girl would ever want to do. It gave us the creeps to picture the president and Mrs. Kennedy doing it.

“They're good Catholics. They only do it to have children,” Tina said. “I'm sure they don't like it.”

“They do it for the country,” I added. “So there'll be a First Family.”

Shirley opened the back door and told me to come inside. She was wearing a blue satiny dress with gold flowers on it. It was fitted but not too tight.
Around the knee but not too short. Colorful but not too loud. She was wearing a little face paint, but not too much. And her hair was done up but not too high.

Tina gawked at her and told her she looked prettier than Annette Funicello. I felt bad for Tina. Her mother didn't have a husband and was big like Tina and never went out clubbing or double dating. She only went to church as far as I could tell.

Shirley smiled and said thank you and told Tina to run along home before her mother had a conniption fit. Then she went back inside.

I promised Tina I'd ask my mother to keep an eye out for another millionaire for her mother and then maybe they could all double-date.

Tina said her mother didn't like men 'cause they only liked one thing. She spelled it out. S-E-X.

Some of them also like hunting and fishing, I said, and went inside.

I
n the living room, Hank was slow dancing with Shirley.

Not the miserable, husbandless Shirley. My mother Shirley.

They were waiting for the miserable Shirley to show up so they could head off to the Pericles Club. They were already half-lit.

Jimmy had put on some music and was crooning along with it.

You belong to my heart

Now and forever . . .

I ran into the kitchen and got myself one of the free tumblers. Jimmy poured me some Canada Dry ginger ale so I could pretend I was having a highball and join in the fun.

I watched Hank give Shirley a twirl. She was stiff as a dead duck. I knew she didn't want to look like she was having too good a time or dance too close to Hank, or Jimmy might give her a hard time about it later.

I heard Hank tell Shirley her dark hair was beautiful.

That perked Shirley right up. It had taken her half an hour to twirl all those pin curls after coming home from Foster Grant and at least her effort was paying off.

“She's not bad-looking for a Nova Scotia farm girl,” joked Jimmy as he cut in. He began to croon in Shirley's ear. I watched her loosen up and try to follow his fancy footwork.

Hank sat next to me. He hadn't bothered to get too dressed up, but he acted like he didn't have to bother.

I sat very still beside him and tried not to stare at the line of dried blood under his chin where he had cut himself shaving or at his much-broken nose or at his hands like meat hooks.

He downed one beer and Shirley quickly replaced it with another. He took out a cigar and Jimmy lit it with one of his phony-baloney gold lighters that he had to click a half-dozen times before it would light.

Hank's cigar smoke found its way right into my kisser. I wanted to get the
hell out of there, but I didn't want to blow my chance for getting more dough out of Hank. I figured if he was really looped I might get a deuce. Or if he was really, really looped he might mistake a fin for a buck and I'd have my candy covered for the foreseeable future.

While I was racking my brain for a compliment to butter him up, he spoke to me.

“Who do you think looks sharper, me or your old man?”

I wanted to tell him he did, but I didn't want to get on Jimmy's bad side.

“You both look sharp,” I offered. “Super-duper sharp.”

“Ah, I've got that two-bit Greek beat a mile,” he boasted.

“Screw you, you ugly Polack,” Jimmy called out. “You got the dough, but I got the looks.”

“Not with that Greek hook of yours. You could use it to catch a barracuda,” Hank shot back. He was talking about Jimmy's nose, which had gained him the nickname Captain Hook when he was a kid.

“Look who's talking. Your schnoz looks like you went twenty rounds with Dempsey.”

“Where the hell is that Shirley, anyway?” Hank suddenly snarled. “If she's not here in five minutes, I'm takin' off.”

“Cool your keister. Have another beer.”

Hank drained his beer and started searching around for the bottle opener to pop open another.

I spotted the opener next to Jimmy's La-Z-Boy, snatched it up, and handed it to Hank.

Surely my efforts deserved a little reward, I thought. But Hank just took it, didn't even look at me.

I tried another angle. “We watered your lawn,” I blurted out, including myself in the lawn maintenance, even though I hadn't lifted a pinkie finger to help.

The subject of his house did not put Hank in a generous mood.

He glared at me. “That's my goddamn house. My goddamn lawn.”

I knew right away I had blown it. I wouldn't be adding any dough to the Good & Plenty box that night.

I took off and nobody noticed.

I went up to my bedroom. Virginia was sprawled on her bed reading
True Confessions
magazine. Her hair was slicked with Dippity-do and had been wound around a couple of empty frozen OJ cans.

“Aren't they ever gonna leave?” she wailed. “If I have to hear any more of that old-fogy music, I'm going to kill myself.”

“The other Shirley isn't here yet,” I informed her.

“Maybe the other Shirley is going to stand Hank up.” Virginia smirked. “Who would want to go out with him anyway? He's about a million years old.”

“He's loaded,” I said. “Whoever marries him will lead the life of Riley.”

“I'll never marry for money,” declared Virginia. “Only for love. Mad, passionate love.”

“I never want to get married,” I announced.

I was going to be a lady doctor like Susan, a stewardess, and a writer of detective stories. I didn't see why I needed a husband to do any of those things.

“You don't want to be an old maid,” Virginia insisted. “There's nothing worse.”

“I wouldn't be an old maid,” I argued. “I wouldn't.”

“That's what an old maid is. A girl who doesn't get married and turns into a prune. Do you want to turn into an old prune?”

“No, but I don't want some guy p-p-peeing in me,” I stammered.

“It's not like that,” Virginia said. “It's not pee that comes out. And it's supposed to be wonderful, except for the first time, which hurts like hell.”

I was convinced.

“I'll never do it.”

Virginia started to tease me.

“What if Little Joe wanted to marry you?”

I had it bad for the youngest of the Cartwright brothers on
Bonanza
and Virginia never let me forget it.