KooKooLand (15 page)

Until a few weeks ago, Jimmy had been visiting Victory Bound almost every day. The horse had been living on a pretty farm not far from Manchester. The lady who owned the farm had been fattening up Victory Bound and exercising him so he could go out and win races and we could get our picture taken in the winner's circle. Now that Victory Bound had been moved to the track in Maine, the only people he saw were ding-dong grooms and Uncle Bobby the Trainer, who the horse had not warmed up to yet.

So Jimmy had talked to Victory Bound and told him not to worry. Told him we'd be up there in a week. Then Jimmy tied the old shirt he wore when he gutted fish onto the door of Victory Bound's stall. Apparently the horse, due to his superior sense of smell, could make out Jimmy's odor underneath the rotting fish smell. He began nuzzling that shirt right away. Then he ate all his oats, with an extra helping of molasses, while Jimmy rubbed the white markings above his eyes just the way he liked it, and whispered all gentle in his velvety ear.

He told Victory Bound he was the most beautiful creature on the face of the earth. He told him he could run like Seabiscuit and nobody could beat him. He told him he loved him more than anything in this godforsaken world.

I listened to Jimmy's story and began to feel all down in the dumps myself.

I wished I wasn't a crummy little pip-squeak.

I wished I was a big, beautiful horse.

I wished I was Victory Bound.

A
week later, I packed up Lambykins, Poochie, Barbie, and Chatty Cathy. Virginia packed up the record player and her OJ-can hair rollers. We dropped Squirmy off at YaYa and Papou's house because Jimmy said we could only bring one goddamn pet, and Sylvester was going because he could gobble up any fish guts left over from Jimmy's planned fishing expeditions on the Maine coast.

I could tell YaYa wasn't too happy about hamster-sitting. She told us to stick Squirmy in the basement. I kissed his furry belly good-bye and left him in her cobwebby dungeon, promising I would feed him a hunk of feta cheese when we returned.

As we were leaving, Jimmy invited YaYa to come up to Maine and get her picture taken in the winner's circle. YaYa spit on him to ward off the evil eye and told him she couldn't get away from the beer joint. Jimmy insisted she could get somebody to cover for her for a night, but YaYa said he was a dreamer and a fool and that the horse would probably fall and break its leg.

Let's get the hell out of here, Jimmy said to Shirley.

And we were off on our vacation. Off to win a race.

We were all wearing our Foster Grant sunglasses—quality-control rejects with a few missing rhinestones or off-color speckles in the plastic or misshapen earpieces so they sat on your head funny and you were always adjusting them.

The car was crammed with horse feed, binoculars, liniment, Jimmy's lucky hat, fishing poles, tackle boxes, waders, and the boat motor. Virginia was holding Sylvester and I was balancing a box of groceries on my lap. We were lugging our own groceries because the stores in Maine charged tax on everything and Jimmy would be damned if he was gonna pay it. New Hampshire had no taxes and the state motto as much as told you so: Live Free or Die. Maine's license plate said Vacationland, but Jimmy said they oughta change it to ClipJointLand.

We drove and drove forever. After a while the box of groceries made my legs feel numb. I tried to shift the weight from one thigh to the other. Virginia
took pity on me and shifted half the weight on her leg. Sylvester didn't like being crowded off her lap, but we all had to suffer a little.

Finally, we made the turn onto the main drag of Old Orchard Beach and I forgot all about my suffering. I remembered the priest at Blessed Sacrament describing how people would feel once they reached the promised land and now I knew what he was talking about. I breathed in the smell of saltwater taffy, clam grease, and coconutty Coppertone and my spirits soared. I ogled the souvenir shops as we drove past and wanted everything, absolutely everything—the giant towels that said
BEACH BUM
, the Styrofoam surfboards, the candy-striped umbrellas, the itsy-bitsy teenie-weenie yellow polka-dot bikinis on hangers swinging in the breeze.

Bam!
Jimmy slammed on the brakes.

Hordes of people were strolling around with their beach gear, crossing the street where they felt like it, forcing the line of cars to stop and let them cross. Jimmy said the ding-dongs were in the goddamn road where he had the goddamn right-of-way. I wished he'd just wait, just look at the people and see how much fun they were having. Instead, he blew his horn, swerved around the ding-dong drivers, and plowed through the ding-dong crowd. The tourists were shocked out of their beachy trance and scattered like ants when you poured Kool-Aid on their anthill.

“Maybe I'll hit a few and do the world a big favor,” Jimmy cracked. “A few less goddamn tourists.”

“Aren't we tourists?” I asked hesitantly.

“No, we're not goddamn tourists. We're goddamn racetrackers. In a few days these dubs are gonna be paying money to watch us have our picture taken in the winner's circle.”

As Jimmy swerved to get off the main drag, Sylvester leapt from Virginia's lap and tried to dive out the open window. Lucky for us, his leash got caught on the lever that moved the seat forward. Halfway out the window, he strained at his collar, his eyes bugging out with disbelief that his escape had been foiled.

“Don't let that putty tat get away or I'll moider you!” Jimmy shouted at Virginia, in a voice like Sylvester the cartoon cat.

Virginia wound the leash around her hands and held on for dear life.

Sylvester's meows of misery filled the car the rest of the way to our apartment.

W
e unpacked our crap on the double. Jimmy supervised the operation, barking orders like we were a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears merchant mariners who needed to shape up or ship out. I arranged Poochie, Lambykins, Barbie, and Chatty Cathy on my cot in the living room. I placed them far apart so they wouldn't engage in any hanky-panky. Then I opened the crammed suitcase that Virginia and I had borrowed from YaYa. It smelled like her basement and made me think of Squirmy. It didn't seem right he was stuck in a dungeon while I was going to be sprawled in the sun working on my Coppertone tan. I prayed to God to forgive our family for abandoning Squirmy and reminded God it was not my doing.

I pulled out my new one-piece bathing suit and shimmied into it, wishing it was a polka-dot bikini. Then I unpacked the beach ball that Shirley had given me for Christmas a few years back. At the time I'd thought Santa had given me the beach ball, but Jimmy had set me straight.

There is no Santa Claus, dumdum, he'd said.

There is so a Santa. I just had my picture taken with him, I'd shot back.

That joker with the phony beard? He's an alkie geezer who gets soused at Papou's beer joint the other fifty weeks of the year. Didn't you recognize him?

I know you're kidding, I'd insisted. I know there's a Santa.

There is not, kiddo. All that ho-ho-ho is just a lot of ha-ha-ha this country crams down people's throats so they'll shell out for more toys.

What about the reindeer? I'd pleaded, holding out hope that at least they were real. What about Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen? What about Rudolph?

Only ducks, geese, and Tweety Birds can fly, Jimmy had said, pretending to aim at one and blow it away. You oughta be smart enough to figure that out. You're supposed to be the egghead around here, with the straight As.

I started blubbering.

You killed Santa. You killed Santa.

Shirley rushed into the room and tried to comfort me. She asked Jimmy if
it had really been necessary to tell me so soon. I was still a baby. He said I was no squalling brat even though I was acting like one, and the longer I went on believing in Santa, the worse it would be for me when I found out. He said he had done me a big goddamn favor and she should quit making a federal case out of it. She was the killjoy 'cause she was the one picking a fight. And if she wanted a fight for Christmas he'd sure as hell give her one with a silver bow.

Then he turned on me.

You're always starting something. Always turning your mother against me.

His eyes were like two mad hornets.

I stood there, stung.

Shirley plastered on a smile thick as calamine lotion. Everything's fine, she cooed. Nobody was turned against anybody. Everybody loves everybody in this house.

Then she offered to cook Jimmy a steak, nice and bloody.

To make up for the fact that there was no Santa, Shirley got me more presents than Santa ever had—including the beach ball I had just unpacked.

I filled my cheeks with air and began to blow up the ball. I couldn't believe what a dummkopf I was to be thinking about Christmas in the middle of summer when there was a great big beach only a hop, skip, and a jump away.

I got the ball nice and full and bouncy, and capped it off. Right away, I could hear the hissing of air. I couldn't imagine how the ball had sprung a leak. I was always so careful with my toys. I never lost a LEGO or mangled Monopoly money. I wouldn't even play marbles with my marbles 'cause I didn't want them getting dirty.

It's not like I could blame the damage on anyone else. Ever since Tina had pulled the string too hard on Chatty Cathy, I had a firm policy: Nobody plays with my goddamn toys. You never knew how something would come back—with a chocolate smudge on your favorite Barbie outfit or a spring that wasn't quite as springy or a page torn out of a good book, ruining a whole damn story. I'd been given secondhand toys when I was younger, but now that Shirley was doing piecework and buying me new toys, I sure as hell didn't want them looking like hand-me-downs.

I let the air back out of the beach ball and vowed to get Shirley to buy me a new one at one of those souvenir shops. Maybe I'd get one for Susan, too. I was already trying to decide what to bring her.

I skipped out into the kitchen in my new bathing suit. Shirley was putting away groceries and Jimmy was studying the
Racing Form
. Virginia was trying to coax Sylvester out of a cupboard.

Jimmy looked up and smirked. “Where do you think you're going, Esther Williams?”

“To the beach,” I answered.

Wasn't it frickin' obvious? Wasn't it why the hell we were here?

“We're not going to the beach, dummkopf. I got work to do. We're heading to the track.”

My happiness deflated.

Jimmy said he needed to check on Victory Bound's appetite and get some tips on that night's racecard from Uncle Bobby.

Virginia and I begged him to let us go to the beach instead. We reminded him that the sun was out and we hadn't gotten our daily dose.

“You'll get plenty of sun playing around the barns,” he insisted. “And we can take a dip when we get back.”

Shirley tried to make us feel better. “We'll be here for two whole weeks,” she reminded us. “Two whole weeks of fun in the sun.”

I put my shorts back on. Jimmy put on his lucky hat.

And we piled back in the car and left the beach behind.

V
ictory Bound was happy to see us.

He kept nudging me with his nose and pulling at my pockets for sugar cubes.

The horse was raring to go, Uncle Bobby told Jimmy. He was eating Bobby out of house and home and was kicking his stall like a wild stallion. He had even chewed Jimmy's fish-gutting shirt to shreds.

Jimmy thought the horse had bulked up real good, like a boxer before a big fight, and his coat had a nice goddamn shine to it. Jimmy looked into Victory Bound's eyes and said, “This baby's a winner. I'd stake my goddamn family on it.”

I spit on Victory Bound to ward off the evil eye the way YaYa had taught me to do.

“OK, let's talk turkey. Let's retire to the drawing room,” Jimmy cracked to Uncle Bobby, making a sweeping motion toward the shitty tack room where Uncle Bobby slept, right next to Victory Bound's stall.

They went in and plopped down on a creaky cot and began discussing the evening's wagering. Jimmy wanted to know which horse was lame, which jockey had been eating too many T-bones, which trainer was juicing his horse, and which trainer was pulling his horse 'cause some two-bit dago gangster from Providence told him he better or else.

I fed Victory Bound my last sugar cube. Well, it wasn't really my last—that one I was keeping for myself—but it was my next to last.

With no more sugar left, Victory Bound got sick of me and I got sick of him. He started to kick his stall and I began to kick at the dirt.

I wished my mother would save me. I wished she'd take me to the track kitchen for some gummy lemon pie or rubbery chocolate pudding. But Shirley had her hands full. She'd been cornered by Uncle Bobby's girlfriend, Aunt Hazel, a plump woman with hair like tangerine cotton candy. Hazel wasn't married to Bobby, so I didn't see where she got off calling herself my aunt, but since Bobby wasn't really my uncle, I let it pass.

“Take a load off,” Aunt Hazel said, offering Shirley a filthy lawn chair with a few dangling straps.

“Oh, I've been sitting all day,” Shirley stammered. “You go ahead.”

Aunt Hazel sank down on the chair and I held my breath to see if it would hold. Her ass nearly touched the ground, but the straps didn't snap. Right away, Hazel began telling Shirley her troubles in her high, squawky voice that sounded like a crow that had just found some roadkill. Her troubles were always the same. She was madly in love with Bobby, but he was a cheating lowlife who wouldn't make her an honest woman.

Jimmy just said Hazel was a fat pig with a big mouth. He thought a catch like Bobby could do better and told him so every chance he got.

I got away from Aunt Hazel's squawking and went looking for Virginia. I found her behind the barn. She had made friends with a litter of wild kittens and was petting them as they fought to lick her with their rough little tongues.