Last Notes from Home (35 page)

“He’s crazy, isn’t he? Uncle Fairley says he’s crazy.” Cass also thought he was crazy. She said he spoke to all the best-looking girls in the halls, including Cass, not so much spoke as growled like a rabid police dog (for the first time it struck me how easily saliva came to the coach’s lips). The only thing that rendered his growl friendly, Cass added, was that he actually conjured something like a smiling leer. When the coach was angry and brought his face next to an offending player, afterward the guy needed a towel to dry his face. From the opening whistle, the coach was as oblivious to the crowd as the players. During the Massena game, when I was being so punished by Borgosian that I tripped up our own quarterback, he substituted for me; while leaving the field I made the grievous mistake of removing my helmet and in view of a crowd estimated at ten thousand he hit me over the head with the clipboard on which he diagrammed plays, let me brood on that for two series of downs, then returned me to the game. Whether the coach was crazy depended upon the point from which he was viewed.

When Cass picked me up Tuesday night at nine, I saw immediately that she was driving Cookie’s yellow Lincoln coupe, either a ‘40 or ‘41, the last they made prior to the war (though the postwar cars were now coming out and Cass would doubtless have a new one soon), and it was a beautiful piece of machinery, with that yellow-and-chrome-encased spare tire mounted on the rigidly right-angled outside of what our Limey cousins call “the boot.” Alarmingly, and though Cass was an average five-five, I thought the automobile way too much for her, something about the strain it took for her lovely legs to reach the brake and clutch pedals, the petiteness of her leather-gloved hands on the wheel. It soon became apparent that Cass, like her aunt Cookie, was wonderfully dextrous and wheeled that baby around as if it was one of those miniature electric vehicles that bump each other on the wooden board tracks in the carnival section of a state fair. When we reached lower State Street, we found all the parking places taken, we circled Public Square a number of times trying to find a place at the east end of the square, in exasperated impudence, Cass, finally giving it up, turned the Lincoln into a no-parking zone in front of a fire hydrant. When I pointed out we’d probably get a ticket, perhaps even hauled away, Cass snapped, once again after the arrogant manner of her Aunt Cookie’s shooting a scratch round, ‘They wouldn’t dare touch a car owned by Uncle Fairley.” Increasingly disarmed by Cassandra “Cass” Mclntyre’s newly acquired and blatant confidence, I nonetheless wasn’t surprised when we left the theater and discovered that though lower State Street and the square were all but empty of cars there was no ticket on Cass’s windshield.

Wherever the occupants of the cars were (probably at a supper and social in the First Baptist Church across the street, the church whose high limestone tower’s four facades held the town clocks), they weren’t in the theater. Allowing Cass to lead the way, I found myself following her up into an empty balcony and coming out on a landing that separated the balcony into two parts. At this juncture we could have gone down left, which would have taken us into the loge seats closer to the screen and overlooking the spottily occupied orchestra. Instead, Cass turned boldly right and started up into the Alpine regions of the upper balcony. Cass may as well have proclaimed, “I haven’t come here for chit-chat, Exley.” Following her, I was again seized by a spell of vertigo, again thought it had to do with being dizzy with love, and to steady myself I gripped the outermost aisle seats as we ascended toward forbidden altitudes. We ended in the back row of the balcony, in the two seats against the easternmost wall, so far away one needed opera glasses to see the screen. As I had been with our punter Bruno, I was in any event seeing two and three images. Red Skelton was then at his prime. I’d never found him in the least funny or endearing and over the years, as he made the transition to television, I was appalled to find he was, if possible, becoming increasingly slapstick and even less amusing. Whenever I accidentally tuned him in, though, that night in the Olympic Theater in all its horrific ecstasy would rush nightmarishly back to me and I’d immediately switch channels.

After neatly folding a beautiful double-breasted midnight-blue cashmere polo coat, with great mother-of-pearl buttons and asking me to put it in the seat next to mine, Cass sat by the wall, I removed Uncle Fairley’s fire department slicker I’d worn with a view to returning it and placed it atop Cass’s. In those days I had a butch cut (imagine a guy today saying his hair was “butch”? Ah, semantics and the peculiar history of words), which due to frequent showers and lack of tending caused the hair to lie down in all directions, including down my forehead in piquant little bangs. I wore basketball sneakers, my best slacks, an old much-washed and faded football jersey, over which—the ultimate concession to the ritual of dating—I sported a beige corduroy jacket with dark brown leather patches at the elbows.

Abruptly Cass reached over and took my hand to hold, then as abruptly reached over with her left hand and placed her palm on my cheek. She said, “God, Ex, you’re burning up. And sweating too.” She laughed impishly and said, “Is this what you guys call ‘having the hots’ for someone?” I laughed too and said, “Probably.” And just as abruptly we were again into some heavy petting, my hand discovering when it went under Cass’s sweater that she hadn’t worn a bra, then finding she was directing me by gently clasping the back of my head and leading my lips from one nipple to the other, back and forth, back and forth. At last she pushed me gently away and, incredibly, began unbuttoning my trousers. When she had me out, she tried coming to me over the high rigid armrest. But this proved impossible. Hence Cass rose, took Uncle Fairley’s raincoat from the seat, spread it on the carpet at my tennis sneakers, and moved to her knees before me.

Other than Cass’s twice performing fellatio on me in that lightless balcony, I remember very little else and certainly nothing of the movie. On the first occasion I recall that with my thumb and forefinger I fiercely strangled my penis at my scrotum and that Cass kept prying my fingers away and mock-slapping my hand, as if demanding I allow her mouth to control the act. Then, too, when the ejaculation was imminent, I touched her lightly on the head, leaned over, and whisperingly stammered. “I’m… I’m going… I’m going to do it.” Although I couldn’t see well, when Cass looked momentarily up at me I sensed a movement indicating a so-what shrug and she was back at her business. Never, never shall I be able to draw a true analogy or accurately describe my unbridled terror, my immeasurable anguish, my boundless pleasure. I think of a memsahib of Empire experimenting with a wog servant while her husband, Captain Smathers-Welles, is out on the plains of India shooting dacoits, the stricken bewilderment and heart-pounding terror diffusing the wog’s entire being, realizing that if caught hell be chopped into bits and fed to pariah dogs at the same time he is utterly unable to stay himself from sitting there paralyzed, stunned by enormities beyond his comprehension, ravished by the damnably excruciating pleasure.

When Cass had finished, obviously having taken my semen into her, she rose and as if it were the most natural thing in the world picked up her pocketbook, took out a stick of gum, offered me one (I declined), sat, and almost instantly was laughing at Red Skelton. She sat as far from me as possible, as if she were trying to make a shoulder impression in the plaster of the wall, and I found myself sitting as far from her as I could, two strangers warily circling one another and trying to decide if it would be worth pursuing a friendship. But this is not, I think, entirely accurate. No doubt Cass knew exactly who I was, another goofy awkward male. What was needed, Cass seemed to be saying, was time for a rube like me to get used to who Cass not only was but who she had now become in my eyes. Apparently Cass decided I had had time enough. Fifteen minutes before the movie ended, she was back on the
Watertown Fire Dept.
slicker at my feet.

But I never learned to live with that night. No one who didn’t live through the forties and fifties has any comprehension of the tyrannical precepts, decorums, rules, and restrictions with which we were instilled and to have fellatio performed on one as well as to perform it was a good deal more damning to the participants than a simple loss of innocence, it was absolutely, believe me, nothing less than a fall from grace and a consignment to eternal hellfires. Moreover, and this is what would so shamefully beriddle me over the years, Cass saw me as some kind of jock-guru, like all converts she was embracing the faith with an outrageous passion that would have disarmed those born to the belief, metaphorically and literally she humbled and humiliated herself at my feet and with a kind of terrifyingly pathetic and gaspingly oral gratitude—that is what I loathed, the suggestion of gratitude—took my body’s sap into her as though it were the nectar of some reverent being rather than the sperm of a conniving wretch.

“Jesus Christ, look at that!” And Exley, in his appalling ignorance, dwelled lingeringly on his limp dick, looking to no avail for lipstick stains. I cried, “What?”

“Can’t you see the red line running up the inside of your leg and the swelling in your right nut? The goddamn infection has gone to your right nut!”

When Charlotte returned, Stubby scrubbed the foot clean with soap and water, followed again by swabbing the area with cotton balls dipped in alcohol. This done, Stubby gave me a shot, explained to Charlotte that some patients reacted badly to the medication (it occurs to me it was my first shot of penicillin, the miracle drug of World War II), and told to her to call immediately if any one of a number of symptoms showed up. He also told her to keep my foot elevated and exposed on a pillow, gave her a bottle of capsules I was to take at three-hour intervals with orange juice, and said he’d return at noon to give me another shot. When he did return and he and Charlotte were ascending the stairs, I heard him say, “You know what that crazy bastard said to me, Charlotte?”

“Who?”

‘The coach,
the coach.
He tracked me down at the hospital making morning rounds, demanded I be interrupted, then ordered—not asked, mind you—me to have Fred ready to play by Saturday. I just laughed and hung up. Ex’ll be lucky if he’s running by Christmas. I mean, is he crazy, or what, Charlotte?” I smiled, thinking it was the second time in a week I’d heard the coach referred to as crazy, the first being Cass’s parroting Uncle Farley’s opinion.

Penicillin was indeed a miracle drug. The infection had pretty much cleared up by the following Monday, the telling red line running up the inside of my leg vaporized, the swelling in my nut abated. The fever, however, had laid heavily on me through Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. For those days I was only able to take juice, milk, cocoa, and beef and chicken broth with crackers and my weight loss was eight pounds. Jack Case, the sports editor of
The Water-town Times,
announced the games on the radio and though I tuned in the game, and because it was that wavering fluctuating tricky time before a fever breaks, I fell asleep before the end of the first quarter and that night had to ask my sister, a cheerleader, to discover we’d beaten Onondaga Valley. Early that night a number of players, including Hotdog Wiley, my substitute, who was considerably bigger and stronger than I, paid me a courtesy visit prior to their pilgrimage to the Circle Inn. Hotdog was kind enough to say he’d taken an awful beating that day and sure hoped I’d be back by Thanksgiving. A girl named Cass, my mother informed me, called religiously twice daily, inquiring after me. My sister, as curious as most sisters, continued to wonder aloud in my mute ironically smiling presence what Cass that could be? She said, “It can’t be Cass Mclntyre. She’s way too beautiful and way too nice for the likes of you.” I took counsel of my silence, which of course infuriated my sister. Siblings never understand what suitors see in their pain-in-the-ass brothers and sisters, in the way it took me years to understand what women saw in the Brigadier.

When I returned to school and practice (Stubby told my mother he’d assume no responsibility for the latter goddamn madness), the coach weighed me, had my game uniform taken in, and, unwilling to leave it to chance, in practice made me take calisthenics and run full out. It didn’t matter much. Thanksgiving Day against Lackawanna, the field was wet, cold, and muddy, precisely the field I abhorred, I was yet so weak and inept I was replaced by Hotdog at the end of the first quarter; and for the last three quarters I stood on the sidelines shivering in a Golden Cyclone parka, the occasional burst of rain matted my hair to my head, and knew, despite my continuing with basketball, that I was saying good-bye to all this, the rain and the cold and the infections and the pain and the brutality. After we’d had the family Thanksgiving meal, I called Cass, she invited me over and said she’d pick me up as she had a terrific surprise for me.