The Laments (22 page)

“Are you English?”

“No, South African.”

Madge confessed that she was Scottish—adding that her favorite game was golf, and did Julia know that golf originated in Scotland?

“No, really?” she said, even as she remembered Mrs. Urquhart listing every great Scottish invention, engineer, writer, and poet.

“My favorite Scotsman is Rod McKuen,” confessed Madge.

Julia imagined Mrs. Urquhart tossing in her grave.

“You really ought to meet the Himmels,” said Madge. “They’re from Germany.”

JULIA VENTED HER FRUSTRATION
to Will as the twins watched a
Gilligan’s Island
rerun on television.

“I just don’t understand why people cling to these nationalities when they’re so obviously American!”

“Perhaps we’d like the Himmels,” he suggested.

Julia frowned. “After what the Luftwaffe did to London, I can’t quite imagine bringing them a basket of cookies!”

Will raised his eyebrows. “But you’re the one who said it was time for the English to forget about the war, Mum.”

This provoked an abashed glance from his mother.

“You’re quite right, darling,” she replied, adding skeptically, “I’m sure the Himmels are very
nice
Germans.”

THE HIMMELS WERE NOT
as gregarious as some of the other neighbors. Though their house lay beside the Laments’, they didn’t appear at the door with gifts or questions about the parquet floor. The Himmel house glowed at night, but not a Himmel was to be seen entering or leaving during the day. Julia understood from the mailman that there were two Himmel daughters, one Will’s age, one a year older.

“Why does everyone keep saying we should meet them; we don’t know the people on the
other
side of our house, either,” said Julius.

“Perhaps I’ll go over and say hello one of these days,” Howard said.

“That would be a first,” remarked Julia.

ABBY GALLAGHER’S HUSBAND
, Patrick, greeted Howard with a wave one morning. He ran a production line that made radios for Ford motorcars. But Abby hadn’t told the whole truth about their children; while they had two sons, Mickey and Kent, twelve and thirteen (who were never seen without their hockey sticks), there was a third son, Lionel, nineteen, an acid freak who had dropped out of Rutgers and spent his time roaming the neighborhood wearing cherry-tinted glasses and communing with the fire hydrants.

Three doors down were the Finches, from Texas, blessed with a freckled son and daughter, Wally, thirteen, and Tess, eleven. Frank Finch was a public relations man for AmGas, with a bone-cracking handshake; Madge, besides playing golf, liked Louis Prima records and always wore something plaid at their weekend barbecues.

The Imperatores had a large family of lazy-eyed children; the eldest boy, Vinnie, was also about Will’s age, and had confronted him shortly after the moving truck departed. Though Vinnie didn’t resemble Rillcock, Will detected a similar note in the boy’s manner.

“My house is twice as big as yours,” he declared, though their houses were identical, right down to the holly bushes on either side of the front door.

Before Will could respond, Wally Finch came over to argue that everything was bigger in Texas. This provoked Will to ask whether the toilets were bigger. Wally nodded, so Will suggested that a Texan’s backside must be larger, too, or else he would fall in. This friendship lasted no longer than the one with Vinnie.

The only neighbor without a wife or family was Rusty Torino, a former TV star who now owned a retail carpet business in Trenton. As an adorable towheaded youngster, Rusty had costarred with Tiny, a Yorkshire terrier who rescued him in every episode from kidnappers, burglars, and various other villains with English accents and white spats. The ensuing years had not been kind to Rusty; at thirty, he was a stocky fellow, with abundant chest hair and a blond pompadour that was dark at the roots. Each day he plodded out to retrieve his newspaper dressed only in a black silk bathrobe, clutching a terrier identical to his original costar.

“I think he’s, y’know,
funny
,
” explained Abby Gallagher.

Julia concluded that in Abby’s world there were two kinds of funny people, foreigners and homosexuals.

“But I do feel sorry for him,” sighed Abby on Rusty Torino’s behalf. “Nothing to look forward to but eternal damnation.”

MEANWHILE, THE HIMMELS
had continued to inspire Will’s curiosity. To him, their foreignness implied a potential kinship. Their two-car garage housed two old Mercedes. One white 1959 two-door sedan with rusted wheel rims, and one powder-blue four-door coupe. Once he spotted the father, wearing a homburg, rolling out in the white car at 6:45
A.M.
The garage door closed with a well-oiled hum. The next day Will set his alarm to 6:44, and a minute later the door went up; Mr. Himmel was always on time. At around ten or eleven the second car would emerge, mother in front, hair whipped into a big blond meringue, cigarette in the hand dangling from the window. The girls’ heads were usually visible in the back, always as far apart as possible. When they returned, the blue Mercedes drove into the garage, and the door rolled shut behind them. Did these girls never play? Were they prisoners? Did they yearn to escape?

Abby Gallagher’s theory was that the Himmels had inherited wealth from one of the German weapons manufacturers during the war, and while they lived a modest existence, their fortune gathered interest in a Geneva bank. “Why else would they get so uptight whenever anyone mentions World War Two?” she asked.

Three weeks before school began, Will took up a position behind a tree, armed with binoculars and a red apple for sustenance. It was a cool day with an impulsive breeze. Fast-moving clouds swept by the sun, bringing the Himmel house in and out of shade while the cicadas droned.

Finally, that faint metallic hum announced the emergence of Mrs. Himmel’s car. Smoke curled from the cigarette in her window hand, but just one silhouette was visible in the backseat.

Where was the other Himmel daughter?

Will thought he spotted a movement behind the lace curtains on the second floor. He trained his binoculars on them for fifteen minutes before giving up. Was she watching him watch her? he wondered.

At noon, frustrated, he tossed the uneaten apple onto the Himmel lawn and wandered inside for lunch.

HE FOUND THE TWINS
watching TV. Julius loved the reruns of
Star Trek
and
Bonanz
a
; the pyromaniac in him loved the way the Bonanza ranch curled up in flames at the beginning of each episode. Marcus adored the commercials. His favorite was a soft-drink ad of a blond girl singing on a hilltop. She was beautiful and sweet, and he watched television simply to see this girl again and again.

“I want a Coke,” Marcus said to Julia at lunch.

Julia disapproved of soft drinks, not just because they were loaded with caffeine and sugar but because of the shady American merchandising that went with them. Ask for a Coke in an English restaurant and you’d get a can of it, probably lukewarm, but a can nevertheless; ask for the same thing in America and you’d get a glass of ice with a dribbling of syrup at the bottom.

“Wish again,” she snapped. “It’ll destroy your teeth and ruin your life.”

“How could it ruin my life?” asked Marcus, thinking of the pretty blond girl in the commercial. Her smile would surely make his life perfect.

“The answer is no,” Julia declared.

After lunch, Will found the apple thrown back on his lawn with a bite taken out of it. He glanced at the Himmel house and detected a fluttering of the lace curtains in the upstairs window. After taking a fresh bite from the apple, he tossed it back onto the Himmels’ lawn.

The next morning, Will found the apple back on his side of the yard. There were three bites in it now. Clearly, it was a reply, but what was its meaning? Will took a fourth bite from the apple, but no sooner had he tossed it back than he noticed Vinnie Imperatore squinting at him from across the street. The boy’s huge overbite looked like a smile until he approached; then it became a territorial sneer.

“What’ja do
that
for?”

Will glanced at the lace curtains and sensed that Vinnie had followed his gaze.

“They don’t
ever
come out,” Vinnie said.

“Why not?”

Vinnie shrugged. “Foreigners,” he explained, and squinted at Will. “What the hell you wearin’?”

In spite of the American clothes Julia had bought him, Will preferred his Avon Heath school uniform. It made him feel closer to Sally somehow. In a few weeks, when school started, he would switch to jeans and shirts.

“Goin’ to church today?” asked Vinnie.

“I don’t go to church.”

Vinnie sneered again. “You don’t go to church? Then you’re goin’ straight to hell. Are ya Catholic?”

“Catholic? No,” said Will.

“Then it don’t matter—you’re goin’ to hell no matter what.”

Vinnie was Catholic. He explained that all Catholics were oppressed by non-Catholics.

“That’s why the non-Catholics are goin’ to hell. Yessir. Burn in flames a mile high.” He then named all the families in University Hills who would burn in hell for
not
being Catholic.

“What about the Himmels?” asked Will. “Are
they
Catholic?”

Vinnie paused and peered up at the lace curtains.

“No, they ain’t Catholic, but they ain’t gonna burn in hell.”

“Why not?”

“They’re just not! Well, the parents might, and Marina might, but Astrid won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Never mind,” said Vinnie, marching away. Then he cast one last warning over his shoulder. “If I were you, I’d see about convertin’!”

Will’s notepaper had been lost on the trip to America, but he couldn’t shake the habit of keeping his grandmother informed, and sent her a long letter that included a few choice quotes from Vinnie Imperatore.

I was just sitting down to the Thursday luncheon at my club—a particularly delicious vichyssoise concocted by our Belgian chef—when I opened my grandson’s most recent letter.

Imagine my shock and surprise when it turned out to be a rather emphatic expression of his concern that I might suffer the flames of hell for eternity if I did not convert to Catholicism as soon as possible!

Well, it quite put me off the soup, not to mention the roasted lamb and walnut salad that followed! What has become of my grandson?

I can’t imagine anybody in our family succumbing to such religious extremism except under incredible duress. Of course, I remind myself that America is first and foremost a country of religious fanatics. What else but lunatic theology could compel anyone to brave the Atlantic to start a new life in a wilderness with nothing to show for itself but the tomato and the turkey?

The Garden Party

It was a beautiful Sunday in early September when the Finches held their end-of-summer barbecue party. Frank Finch liked to echo the picnics of his childhood in the Houston suburbs, with checkered tablecloths, a beer keg, and a big, black oil-barrel-shaped barbecue rig with three kinds of sauces, stainless-steel carving knives, and enough smoke to simulate a midsized brushfire.

Mrs. Urquhart had taught Julia that Shakespeare liked to use storms for his pivotal moments, but Julia would note that disaster struck the Laments in docile weather. It was their fifth week in America. A crisp breeze sent the silver birches whispering; Rusty Torino’s maple had turned early, the fringes of its lower leaves ignited in amber and yellow tips. The boys were impatient for school to begin, and Julia hoped the garden party might be the perfect ice-breaking opportunity; perhaps she could finally meet an American friend like Trixie.

Frank Finch wasn’t a talker like Buck Quinn, but he reminded Howard of the man as he hacked and wheezed in the smoke, checking and rechecking his glorious tenderloins and brushing sauce over the Cornish hens huddled in one corner of the grill.

“Beautiful sight, man,” said Lionel Gallagher, peering over his cherry-colored shades.

“Yes, that’s Black Angus beef, son.”

“I meant the smoke.”

Frank glanced in the direction of Lionel’s parents, who had brought deck chairs and were bathing in the sun’s last rays, sipping tall glasses of rum and Coke.

“Lionel,” murmured Frank, “do me one favor?”

“Sure, man.”

“Keep your clothes on at my party. Will you do that for me? I don’t want a scene like last Christmas, d’you understand? Not in front of the kids.”

“Last Christmas?” murmured Lionel; he had forgotten the day when the Finches and the Imperatores came caroling to the Gallaghers’ house. Lionel had opened the door, naked from head to toe and clutching a three-foot bong. This caused a stampede among the carolers, and the collapse of the second verse of “Good King Wenceslas.”

As Lionel fondled the curly stubble on his chin, Frank entertained a brief impulse to clip it off with his stainless-steel cleaver. Sensing Frank’s hostility, Lionel retreated to the porch, put his hands together in prayer, bowed eastward, and assumed the lotus position. Meanwhile, the Laments were greeted by Cosmo Imperatore, husky-voiced, with a thick neck and a habit of blinking furiously when he spoke.

“Nixon’s gonna win this war,” he told Howard. “Makes me crazy seeing these hippies make fun of the president. Just once I’d like to see some freaks in Vietnam getting killed by the communists, just so they could understand what we’re fighting for!”

“War is over if you want it!” Lionel sang in a falsetto, from the porch.

“Thank you, Lionel!” growled Frank through the billowing smoke; his three chins glistened with sweat. In his leather apron, tongs in hand, Julia thought he looked like Vulcan at his forge.

“Have you met all the neighbors?” asked Frank.

“Most of them, except for the Himmels,” Julia replied. “We haven’t met any black families yet. Do any live here in University Hills?”

Frank smiled as if Julia had just arrived from a distant planet. “Oh, no. Not around here. I guess they like to be around their own kind.”