KooKooLand (39 page)

One time at dinner I asked for a glass of milk. There was dead silence around the table.

“We don't mix dairy with meat,” my new friend, Robin, said.

“Oh,” I replied. “You're like on a diet?”

“We're Jewish,” she said.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I just forgot.”

“How about some juice? Grape? Orange? Apple?” asked Robin's mother. I couldn't believe there were so many choices, like in a restaurant.

“Apple, please,” I replied. “If it's not too much trouble.”

“It's no trouble. You're so polite,” said Robin's mother.

“What religion are you, if you don't mind my asking?” asked Robin's father with a pleasant smile.

“Greek,” I replied, starting to get anxious.

“You're Greek Orthodox? The ancient Greeks were brilliant, I'm sure you know that. They provided the foundation for philosophy. Have you read Sophocles or Plato?”

“Not yet,” I said. “But I plan to.”

“Do you know why we don't eat dairy with meat?”

I didn't have a clue.

“That's OK. A lot of Jews don't know either.”

He proceeded to explain all sorts of things about Jews, but not in a boring way. He told stories that made me laugh and I didn't miss the glass of milk one bit. Finally, he toasted Robin and me for making the National Honor Society. He didn't call me a brownnoser like Jimmy had when he found out.

After a while, I didn't feel I had to hide stuff, at least not as much. Eventually, I confessed to Robin's family that I was living with my parents in the South End. I told them I had wanted to go to a better high school. I didn't mention the projects, but I was pretty sure they'd figured it out since they were all so goddamn smart. But they didn't rat me out or anything. They praised me for wanting to get a good education.

Before long most of my friends were Jewish. It wasn't like there were that many Jews in Manchester, but whatever ones there were I made friends with.

Their fathers were doctors and lawyers and businessmen. They had their own bedrooms, with window seats, and their own bathrooms. They played tennis and had summer houses on Cape Cod. Like the Greeks, they were crazy about food, but the food was different.

Bagels, lox, chopped liver, matzo balls. I devoured it all.

A girl named Ellen became my best friend. One day she brought me to her house for a special dinner—a seder. Ellen's father sat me beside him and explained the meaning of all the weird things on the table, like a bone with no meat on it. The only thing I didn't like was the gefilte fish, but Ellen told me nobody liked gefilte fish, nobody under sixty anyway.

I was intrigued by the whole Exodus story. I related to the ancient Jews' longing to get out from under a bully's thumb. It seemed that for centuries, some people were always trying to make other people's lives living hell. But the Jews had finally gotten free, so I figured maybe there was hope for me.

Of course, I didn't spill the beans to Jimmy about going to Ellen's seder. Like my visits to the Catholic church, I kept it on a stone wall.

When Jimmy finally realized I was befriending a bunch of Jews, I expected him to blow a gasket. But he just kidded me about being a Jew lover and that was that. He had a problem with “the Jews” but not with individual Jews. Individual Jews, like the ones he did landscaping for—some of whom were the parents of my new friends—were OK. The whole thing made no sense, but, like most things with Jimmy, you didn't question it if you knew what was good for you.

Jimmy grew especially fond of Ellen. Maybe it was because she swooned over Shirley's Greek food and would've eaten the eyes out of a fish if Jimmy dared her to. Or maybe it was because she'd read more books than Jimmy, including his favorite ones. Or maybe it was because she was so goddamn funny Jimmy said she belonged on Carson.

Probably it didn't hurt that she had breasts the size of cantaloupes. I caught him gawking at them more than once.

My own breasts were only the size of grapes, but Ellen's father couldn't take his eyes off them either. It seemed like fathers were just fascinated by breasts and, even though their ogling felt icky, there wasn't much you could do about it.

Pretty soon, Ellen invited me to spend the weekend with her family on Cape Cod.

“Maybe you'll meet the Kennedys,” gushed my old pal Tina, who was still taken with the Kennedys even though one of them had drowned a girl in his car a while back.

“I'll get Caroline's autograph for you if I do,” I promised.

Ellen drove over to the projects to pick me up. She was sporting a shiny BMW that her father had just given her for her birthday. It was the color of crisp new money and smelled like no car I'd ever been in since I'd never been in a new car.

As I slid onto the buttery leather seat, Ellen popped a few quaaludes.

“You want one?” she giggled, waving a prescription bottle. It was filled with what looked like a couple hundred quaaludes she had conned her family doctor into giving her for migraine headaches.

“Thanks but no thanks,” I said. I'd smoke pot any day of the week, but pills were too frickin' scary. I'd felt that way ever since I'd swallowed too many Flintstones vitamins when I was stoned, forgetting they were medicine and downing them like candy. Too many Freds and Wilmas made me puke.

Ellen gulped down a few more quaaludes and drove ninety-five miles an hour all the way to the Cape. Except for swerving up onto the sidewalk at one point, she did OK. I was used to Jimmy driving fast and loaded, so I knew what to do. I closed my eyes.

Unfortunately, I didn't meet the Kennedys that weekend, but I had a blast anyway. I ate lobsters—bought, not stolen—but they tasted just as sweet. I went antiquing with Ellen and her mother and watched them pay a bundle for old junk like what was lying around Grammy's Nova Scotia barn. I drove that BMW, drove it like a man.

At one point, Ellen's mother sat me down and quizzed me about where I was planning to apply to college.

I got tongue-tied and lied and said I hadn't decided yet. Even though for years I'd dreamed about following Susan to medical school, I had no idea what it actually took to get into college. Ellen, who hated being put on the hot seat by her mother herself, came to my rescue. She offered to be my college guide.

“I'll be your Timothy Leary for higher education,” she laughed, high as a kite.

Ellen, much to her parents' horror, wasn't applying to any colleges. In fact, she'd just dropped out of Central, the latest in a series of high schools and prep schools that she'd either left or gotten booted out of.

“I'll tell you all the schools my mother wants
me
to apply to and you can apply instead!” Ellen plotted.

“Cool!” I said, not letting on there was no frickin' way I could go to college unless Shirley won the sweepstakes and then managed to hide it from Jimmy before he snatched it away to buy a bunch of half-crippled racehorses.

“And don't worry about the tuition,” Ellen assured me, like she was reading my mind. “You can apply for a scholarship and you'll get it 'cause you're such a brain.”

Here's the thing—I didn't know what a scholarship was. But I was determined to find out.

I was in a great mood when I got back from the Cape, but that didn't last long. Jimmy was waiting with more bad news about Susan. She'd checked herself into the state loony bin, the same place Hank had been locked up in.

“I don't know what the hell's the matter with her,” Jimmy ranted. “She should be a goddamn doctor, not a goddamn patient.”

“Maybe she's still sad about Hank killing her mother.”

“Baloney. That was six or seven years ago. Besides, he gave that kid everything—horseback lessons, ski lessons, golf lessons. She was treated like a princess, just like her goddamn mother. Maybe that's what's wrong—he spoiled them both. They were spoiled rotten.”

“Can we go visit her like we visited Hank?”

“You think I can just take off and go places like you, my big-shot daughter who swans around Cape Cod with the Kennedys and the Jews? I gotta work for a living. You'll find out soon enough what that's like. The kiddie gravy train's ending pretty soon and you're gonna have to get a rat-race job in a rat-race maze like the rest of us.”

So we put off going to visit Susan, and to be honest, I was relieved. I didn't really want to see her in that place, and besides, I had other things on my mind. I had become obsessed with learning about colleges and spent hours at a bookstore poring over the
College Handbook
. I didn't have the money to buy the book but nobody seemed to mind that I sat on the floor reading it from cover to cover. But the more I read, the further down on that floor I sank. There were
hundreds
of colleges—I had never dreamed so many existed—all filled with serious-but-carefree, brilliant-but-normal Leaders of Tomorrow. I didn't see how anybody could pick one college out of the bunch or how any one of them
could pick me. I was feeling like a kid bound for a rat-race job in a rat-race maze when I came to the chapter on Radcliffe. I suddenly remembered Susan talking about it and Jimmy saying I'd never in a million years get in. That sealed the deal.
That's
where I wanted to go.

I met with the guidance counselor and relayed my grandiose plan. The counselor smirked and said that it was unlikely Radcliffe would take me and that I better apply to a few safety schools.

When I told Ellen I was set on Radcliffe, she wasn't encouraging either, but for a different reason.

“It's for squares and eggheads,” she said, sounding a lot like Jimmy.

Ellen was more keen on colleges where artists and weirdos went. She suggested Bennington in Vermont, where a famous modern dancer, Martha Graham, had modern-danced on the front lawn.

“It's the most expensive school in the country, but don't worry about that,” she said.

Yeah, right.

When Jimmy saw college applications arriving in the mail he had a conniption fit.

“People like us don't go to college! Who the hell do you think's gonna fork over the dough for it? Not me, that's for goddamn sure!”

“They have something called s-s-scholarships,” I stammered.

“I know all about scholarships, dummkopf,” he said. “But you're a little white girl. They only give those to the niggers.”

“Ellen says they'll give me one.”

“What does she know about it? She's a rich Jew who could buy her way into any college in the country. So don't get your goddamn hopes up.”

I thought he was probably right. I tried not to get my goddamn hopes up.

While I was sweating over applying to colleges, things were getting worse over at Virginia's. Wayne was smoking more pot and getting even weirder. Virginia was reluctant to leave Dustin alone with him, but sometimes she just had to. One day they had no clean clothes and she needed to go to the Laundromat. It was raining cats and dogs and Dustin had a cold and she didn't want to get him any sicker.

She wasn't gone that long.

When she came home lugging a mountain of laundry, she found Wayne painting a weird picture but no sign of Dustin.

“Where's Dusty?” she asked, coming out of the bedroom where she'd expected to find him napping.

Wayne didn't answer. He just kept on painting the weird picture.

“Wayne, where's Dusty?” Virginia asked again, starting to get a queasy feeling.

“He's in the hospital,” Wayne said matter-of-factly.

Virginia shrieked.

Wayne told her to chill out. He said Dustin was fine. He'd just drunk from a glass of turpentine Wayne was using to clean his paintbrushes.

“You numbskull!” Virginia yelled, and threw the closest thing to her—a frypan—at his head, missing him by a mile 'cause she had never had a good aim.

Then she ran out of the crooked apartment, down two creaky flights of stairs, through the rain turning to snow, into her crappy Pontiac. Drove to the hospital like a maniac over the slippery streets, stalling a few times on the way.

But she was a lucky so-and-so.

Dustin didn't die. He hadn't drunk very much of the turpentine. He just cried a lot and he was OK.

Kids are always getting into stuff, Wayne, shrugged. It could happen to anybody.

But Virginia didn't see it that way. After Dustin got out of the hospital, she packed up her stuff, took him, and moved in with a friend.

“Greek women don't leave their husbands!” YaYa screeched when she heard. “He didn't even beat you!”

“He almost killed Dustin!”

“That's what you get for leaving him with your husband! God was punishing you! A good Greek wife takes care of the children! Go back and tell him you're sorry. Get down on your knees.”

But Virginia wouldn't do it. She wouldn't get down on her knees. She wouldn't live any longer in that crooked apartment with a man who felt like a stranger. Who'd always felt like a stranger. Wayne had served his purpose. He'd gotten her free of Jimmy. But now she saw an out and she took it.

“What're you gonna do for dough?” I asked Virginia, scared she'd end up panhandling in front of city hall.

“I dunno. I hate work,” she said. “That's one thing Daddy's right about. It sucks.”

“Maybe you can move to a commune. There's always a lotta kids running around those places. Maybe you'd meet, like, a cute farmer.”

“Mummy didn't want to marry some smelly farmer and neither do I,” she replied. “I got bigger plans than that.”

The friend Virginia had moved in with had just started working at a massage parlor a few towns over and said there was easy money to be made there. So Virginia decided to give it a try.

She told Jimmy she was doing a little babysitting.

She bought a platinum-blond wig to wear as a disguise. She bought a jet-black bikini 'cause that was the uniform.