Whistling for the Elephants (17 page)

‘Is
that why he’s so mad?’ I asked.

‘Harry’s
been mad since Billie Blake died.’ Aunt Bonnie served up and didn’t talk any
more. She just shut down into a beer can. I knew I wasn’t going to get any more
from her for a while but I had a hundred questions. What had Harry to do with
Billie Blake? He didn’t even like the zoo. How come Pearl left? Could you leave
home at sixteen? That was sooner than I thought.

After
lunch I was hanging around the front yard when Harry came out and got in his
car. I didn’t know what to say to him. His daughter was dead. I didn’t know
about dead. Rocco was the only deceased thing I had ever seen and I really didn’t
feel that had gone all that well. I wanted to say something but Harry was such
a, well, grown-up. It was hard to imagine he had ever had a little girl. I was
terribly worried that if I said the wrong thing he would start crying.
Grown-ups crying was terrible. Aunt Bonnie was just bringing me a soda when she
saw him. She had been drinking a lot so she kind of tripped as she ran over.

‘Harry,
Harry, geez, Harry.’

Harry
looked like his jaw hurt him. ‘I have to open the store.’

‘No,
you don’t. Come and have a beer.’

‘Listen,
I went to war and it didn’t stop me getting on with my life. Just because …
because there’s Commies causing trouble…’ He drove off, leaving Aunt Bonnie
standing in the street. It was all very strange. Judith had arranged to take
Mother to the Corset Store that day to be fitted with one of the Playtex
wonders and no one said anything about cancelling.

‘Do you
know about Pearl, Mother?’ I asked as she smoothed her hair for the hundredth
time in the hall mirror.

‘Go and
wash your hands, Dorothy. We’re going out to … it’s arranged, et cetera,’ she
replied.

Everything
was unreal. I remember it seemed completely silent. More silent outside than
in my house. There was no wind and even the harbour gave off no sound. I felt
like I was drowning. I wanted to run away but I was only ten. Mother stood with
her gloves and coat waiting by the front door. Judith honked outside in her
Oldsmobile and Mother and I got in as if everything was normal. Nobody really
said anything. Since lunch Judith had completely rebuilt her face and her hair.
She looked as she always did — taut with make-up — yet possibly a little pale.
She didn’t say anything but I knew that look. It was the same one Mother got
from her pills.

Harry’s
corset and brassière store was double-fronted, with a door between two bowed
plate-glass windows. It had the curious effect of making the display itself
appear to have been lifted and separated. Inside was a world of synthetic
elastic, the corselette and, to my mind, pain. Harry stood waiting for us with
a tape measure round his neck. I didn’t know what we were all doing. Judith
settled herself on the edge of a leather chair while Harry worked with Mother.
Half-mannequins of women’s bodies squeezed into a variety of torture garments
loomed over me. I suddenly realized why Judith never relaxed when she sat down.
She couldn’t. Behind the fitting-room curtain Harry worked with his tape
measure. Mother was wearing only her stockings and panties but no one seemed to
mind.

‘You
have a fine figure,’ said Harry tonelessly while he measured the depth of
Mother’s breasts. ‘Hard to believe you have had children.’

I
looked at Mother stripped down to basics.

‘Two.
Charles and…’ She waved in my direction. Harry was right. It was hard to
believe that Charles and I were anything to do with her.

‘I am
so glad you came in.’ Harry eyed her chest professionally. ‘So many women make
the mistake of not having a proper fitting.’ Harry swept off into professional
patter, his voice on automatic pilot, while his wife sat immobile a few feet
away. Mother tried various restraining garments and finally emerged with the
beloved eighteen-hour model below her dress. She did look different. Her body
seemed more sculpted. Less real. Even more unapproachable.

‘Be
your turn before you know it,’ Harry said to me. Judith didn’t move but tears
silently began to run down her face. No one could look at her.

‘It’s a
lovely day,’ said Mother. ‘I think we will walk home. You know it’s…’

‘Yes,’
said Harry.

We left
him with his silent wife. It was warm out on the sidewalk and Mother seemed a
little short of breath. I wasn’t surprised. She never really walked anywhere
and now she was being suffocated by eighteen-hour rubber. We had to walk past
Abe’s Ice Cream Parlour to get back so I asked if we could have a sundae. Abe
was opening a new barrel of Rocky Road when we came in. There were quite a few
people in the store sitting at the small marble tables. I went to order. Beside
the list of flavours Abe had put up one of the
Close the Zoo
posters. It
was the second one I had seen. I couldn’t think why everyone was getting so
worked up. I got myself a coffee cone with sprinkles and Mother some rum and
raisin in a cup and went to sit down. Mother picked at the ice cream with a
small spoon. Even eating dessert she was elegant. The spoon barely touched her
lips and there was never any suggestion that her tongue was even remotely
involved. The girdle had made her even more upright. She looked fabulous and I
was so proud. For a brief moment I thought maybe I could be like her. Maybe it
was okay. Suddenly the place went like a Western movie. It was a hot day when
any reasonable person might want an ice cream. The swing shutters at the front
door parted and Miss Strange walked in. She didn’t have Mr Paton with her but
instantly the place went completely silent. Everyone stared at her. Abe looked
up from cleaning his silver scoop and then made himself busy again.

‘Hello,
Abe,’ she said.

‘Miss
Strange.’

It was
as if she hadn’t noticed. ‘Vanilla please, no sprinkles.’ Abe set about getting
her the ice cream while she looked at the poster behind his head. After she’d
paid she turned and glanced at everyone in the store. She looked at me and
nodded. I knew I should introduce her to Mother. It was the right thing to do.
To my eternal shame I looked away and waited till she had gone. We ate our ice
cream and went home. Even though the girdle was good for another seventeen
hours, Mother went to bed. I felt terrible.

That
evening Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Eddie took Donna Marie and Eddie Jr to summer
camp. The neighbourhood emptied of children. There was just me left and I
shouldn’t have been there. Pearl never came home. The funeral was held out of
town in something approaching national hysteria. The Schlicks’ daughter had
become a symbol for the anti-war movement and the oppression of government. On
the news lots of people were getting very upset and they didn’t even know
Pearl. I still wasn’t really sure what the war was about but I knew you just
had to say ‘Vietnam’ and people got heated on one side or the other. Judith
wouldn’t talk about Pearl because Harry wouldn’t. Sweetheart talked about her
but only to Jesus. She was in and out of the impossibly white Methodist church
all the time. I guessed it was because Jesus was her friend. She even stopped
working as a candy-striper at the hospital.

Then
Perry came and she stopped going to church too.

Perry
was three and he was Pearl’s son. Well, he was, but Sweetheart seemed to be the
only person who knew it.

After
the funeral he arrived at La Guardia Airport with a big label on the front of
his coat that said
Perry Schlick, 2 Cherry Blossom Gardens, Sassaspaneck.

He was
a seriously cute kid with huge eyes and a great smile. You would think Harry
and Judith would have welcomed him with open arms, but there was a problem.
Perry was black. He was illegitimate too, and I don’t know which was the bigger
problem. Pearl had told them about him but as they hadn’t seen their daughter
for four years they had never met their grandson. She had told them the father
was a Negro but Harry had said, ‘That’s just another thing she’s saying to
deliberately upset us.’

Perry
came at a bad time. It was the summer of the election and for the first time
Harry was being challenged in his re-election for mayor. I couldn’t see how it
would make a difference but, apparently, what he didn’t need was some black
bastard turning up, claiming to be a relation.

To be
fair, Harry did give it a try. He collected Perry from the airport. I mean the
kid was three, you couldn’t leave him there. I think when Harry went to meet him,
he was still hoping that somehow the strong white genes of the Schlick family
would have overridden anything black. I don’t think Father had helped.

‘Theoretically,
Harry, if you look at this chart, it is possible that the child could be china
white.’

But he
wasn’t. Whatever light you looked at the kid in, he was black all right. Now,
in the world of nature, if any creature is going to show compassion then it is
most likely to show it to a member of its own species. But not with Harry.
Harry did not regard Perry as his own because Perry didn’t look right. Judith
didn’t get a say. Harry tried to send the kid back to the Midwest but there was
no one there who could take him and the airline refused. So Harry brought him
to Cherry Blossom Gardens. He arrived back banging doors and left the
three-year-old in the car. There was a lot more shouting.

‘He is
not coming in the house, Judith. Do you have any idea what this could do to me?’

‘She
didn’t do it on purpose.’

‘I don’t
want to talk about Pearl.’

Then
Sweetheart got the kid out of the back seat and took him to her house. Harry
never said anything about it. He just launched himself into his campaign with
terrifying vengeance. Looking back, I think he thought Perry was his daughter’s
final Democratic ploy. Anyway, I guess it pushed him over the edge.

It
seems incredible now that Harry thought what he did was okay, that he could get
away with it, but that was then. Things were changing right across the US but
the tide was only just lapping at the feet of Sassaspaneck. Since the passing
of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, forcing the desegregation of the public
schools, there had been a lot more talk about black rights. In Sassaspaneck it
was all theory because we only had Hubert, a few Poles and some Italians down
by the railway station.

After
Perry came, Sweetheart didn’t open the door to anyone and no one ever saw
Judith. Things were getting worse at home. Mother spent all her time in bed
eating pecans out of a bowl. I did try to sit with her sometimes but then
Father would bring home something from the drugstore for her and she would send
me out.

‘Go on,
darling, you’re getting fat. Go and run outside, play some.., thing.’

And
they would fight.

‘I am
not staying in this hellhole for another moment,’ Mother would begin.

‘There
isn’t any more money,’ Father would whisper.

‘I’m
telling you, Charles, I will leave.’

I ran a
lot. Round and round the house. Sometimes I ran all afternoon and was still
running when Father got home from work. He would go straight in and sit at the
dining-room table. He had a large wood-and-crystal drinks tantalus which his
father had given him, and he would put that in front of him. He kept the key in
his pocket and if I heard it in the tantalus lock then I knew there would be no
speaking to him. We had stopped even pretending to have dinner. Mother had gone
mad in the A&P one day. Alfonso had persuaded her to try Italian food and
she had bought the fixings for spaghetti. When Father got home it was on the
table.

‘What
the hell is this?’ he whispered.

‘It’s
spaghetti,’ said Mother. ‘Charles, I wanted to.

Father
looked at the meal. I thought he would be pleased. I couldn’t remember the last
time Mother had made an effort. Instead he said, ‘I don’t want any foreign
food,’ and then did something quite extraordinary. He picked the spaghetti up
and threw the plate at the ceiling. Italian food and china came raining down.
No one said anything. Father didn’t like change. He didn’t want anything
different. He would rather not have anything at all. Mother went to her room.
She didn’t bother after that. Father just sat in his chair under a great red
stain and drank his whiskey.

I didn’t
really mind. I developed my own routine. Lunch I sometimes got at the Dapolitos’
or made myself, and I had dinner every night at Walchinsky’s Hot Dog Stand. I
took a dollar from Mother’s purse and went on my bike. The stand was across the
street from the school. It had been there for ever. It wasn’t some temporary
thing. It was a regular building but with a pagoda roof. Green Chinese tiles
which curved up into the back of a dragon. Not exactly hot-dog-like but I
thought it was impressive. Frank Walchinsky Jr was the second Frank in charge.
He had left school at sixteen when his father had had a heart attack while
bowling what would have been a perfect game. Frank Jr just left his homeroom,
walked across the street from school and put an apron on. I liked him. He was a
big bratwurst of a man with a brilliantly red face. He made my dog for me
himself every night.

‘Hey,
kid, how you doing today?’ he would call as I arrived on my bike.

‘I’m
good, Junior. Real good,’ I would reply. Everyone called him Junior even though
he was as old as Harry. You know, maybe fifty. Old.