by Jim Kokoris
I looked over at Uncle Frank and swallowed hard at the mention of orphanage.
“Well,” he said, spraying something into his mouth. “Let’s go eat some shit.”
MY FATHER WAS WAITING for me at the playground fence after school was over. He usually picked the Nose Picker up at lunchtime—Tommy only went for half days—but seldom picked me up. After my mother died, the university let him work at home, doing research and writing articles about the Civil War. He did most of his work in the afternoons, calling different libraries or other professors from around the country, hoping to confirm the correct temperature that fateful day at Appomattox, the size of Robert E. Lee’s horse, or U.S. Grant’s preferred whiskey. It seemed, over his lifetime, my father had exhausted the study of the War’s major events and was now forced to hunt for the remaining bits and scraps. Earlier in the summer, I had overheard him debating William Tecumseh Sherman’s exact hat size with another professor from Memphis. My father would devour this information, recording every morsel in a leather-bound notebook in his meticulous handwriting, using a gold fountain pen the university had given him. Such attention to detail required time, so I was surprised to see him standing there on the edge of the playground. He looked upset as he took my hand and crossed the street.
“I received three phone calls today,” he said quietly. “One from your teacher, one from Sister Foreman the school nurse, and one from Mrs. Plank, all asking where you and your brother were. You shouldn’t have asked your uncle to take you to breakfast. You had a number of people quite worried.” Then he said, more to himself than to me, “I should have anticipated this.”
As we were getting into the Buick, a young woman ran up to us. My father appeared frightened and said quickly, “Get into the car and lock the doors.” The woman smiled at us. She had blond hair and was wearing tiny round sunglasses. I lowered the window.
“Mr. Pappas? I’m Leslie Bailer from People magazine,” she said. “I’ve been trying to reach you all week.”
My father deflated at the mention of the magazine, his shoulders sagging and rounding into an apprehensive hunch. “I’ve been receiving so many calls lately,” he said. “I haven’t . . .”
“I understand,” she said. Then she looked at me in the backseat. “And that must be your son, Teddy.”
“Um, yes,” my father looked back at me stiffly, straining his neck.
“I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about winning the lottery. We’d like to do a story on you and your family. Our readers are very interested in you.”
“Your readers?” my father said. “Well, I’m not sure this would be the appropriate time.”
“That’s why we’ve been calling you. We were hoping that we could set up an appropriate time. It will only take an hour or so.”
My father cleared his throat and once again glanced over his shoulder at me. A car passed by on the street, then another. “Well, I’m not sure we have much to say on the subject that would be of interest to anyone.”
“Oh, Mr. Pappas, you’re living the fantasy of every American,” she said. “We want to learn more about your family, your wife, how it feels to win all that money and why you took so long to claim the ticket. It would make a wonderful story.”
“My mother used to read your magazine,” I said suddenly.
The reporter looked at me and smiled. “She did, did she?”
“She always wanted to be in it,” I said. My father looked at me with disbelief. “She always wanted to be famous.”
The reporter took out a notepad and started quickly writing.
“Well,” my father interrupted. “Why don’t you follow us home where we can talk then, I guess that would work best, don’t you think? Yes, yes, follow us home.”
“Wonderful,” the reporter said and began walking back to her car. My father quickly jumped into the Buick and drove off. “Make sure your seat belt is fastened,” he said urgently. I had never seen my father do anything quickly in my life and this sudden outburst of energy and speed scared and excited me. I buckled my seat belt.
My father was silent as he drove. He clutched the wheel with both hands and pressed his face close to the windshield, squinting his eyes in a way that made me think they might burst. We were home in seconds.
“Please go inside and do your homework,” he said. He was breathing fast, in spurts.
“I don’t have any homework. And Charlie’s coming over.”
“Teddy, please. I’m sure Aunt Bess has a snack prepared for you. I have to move the car into the garage.”
Just then the reporter’s car came roaring up to the front of the house. “Let’s run,” my father said.
“Mr. Pappas, please wait!” the reporter yelled.
“Let me handle her,” Uncle Frank said as soon as we entered the house. “I know how to deal with their kind. Goddamn parasite. I’m going to send her straight to hell.”
I stood next to my father and peered out from behind the living room curtains at Uncle Frank as he waved his hands and pointed his chin at the reporter. Rather than leave as I had expected, the reporter appeared to be thoroughly enjoying being sent straight to hell. When she wasn’t flipping her hair out of her eyes with her finger, she was smiling widely and writing in a notepad. For his part, Uncle Frank looked like he was enjoying himself too. Whenever the reporter laughed, he would point his finger at her and cock his head to one side like a robin. Once he went so far as to shuffle his feet a bit like he was dancing.
“What’s a parasite?” I asked my father. I had obviously misinterpreted Uncle Frank’s intentions. Judging from the looks on their faces, I thought the reporter and Uncle Frank might soon start kissing.
“It’s a word,” he said. “Something that lives off something . . .” his voice trailed off. He was breathing heavily and clutching the drapes.
After Uncle Frank flicked a leaf off the reporter’s shoulder I asked, “Does Uncle Frank know that lady?”
“No,” my father murmured. “At least I didn’t think so.”
When Charlie Governs’s mother dropped him off in our driveway, the reporter tried to talk to Charlie. He stood rigid for a few moments, then dropped his art supply bag and ran off down the block. After Charlie was gone, Uncle Frank waved his hand and I thought I heard him say, “What’s he know anyway?”
“Dear God, I’m afraid he’s encouraging her,” my father whispered. Then he said softly, “He was waiting for her. Of course.”
A few minutes later, the reporter went back to her car and returned with a camera and began taking photos of Uncle Frank and our house. Uncle Frank cocked his head again to one side, put his hands on his hips, and thrust his chin proudly in the air as he posed.
“Dear God,” my father said. “The way he’s posturing, he looks like Benito Mussolini.”
After the reporter took a few more pictures, she put the camera away and she and Uncle Frank got in her car and drove off together.
THAT NIGHT AT DINNER, my father did not speak. Uncle Frank did most of the talking, touching on a wide variety of issues ranging from politics and history, to why a vampire dies when a stake is driven into his heart.
“When you think about it,” he said, swirling his glass of wine thoughtfully and thrusting his chin out in the general direction of Aunt Bess, “they really shouldn’t even have hearts. They’re not human. It’s obviously symbolic of the crucifixion. I always thought that was a flaw in the mythology. A major flaw.”
“How interesting, the crucifixion,” Aunt Bess said, looking at my father. She was nervously trying to engage him in the conversation. “Those vampires are really something, aren’t they, Theo? I wouldn’t want to run into any.”
My father silently rearranged the food on his plate.
“Are there really such things as vampires?” the Nose Picker asked.
Uncle Frank took a long swallow of his wine and then slowly and delicately wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “That’s hard to say. If you believe
in them, they exist,” he said. His jaw seemed to extend as he spoke, expanding forward. “If people believe in God, they should believe in vampires. Because if people believe in God, they must believe in the devil. And if you believe in the devil, it’s only natural to extend that belief to include his apostles, which could include vampires.” Uncle Frank looked around the room at us as if he had just imparted some deep knowledge.
“That’s interesting too,” Aunt Bess said, even though I knew she hadn’t been listening because she had been picking up some lettuce from the floor that had dropped from the Nose Picker’s plate. “Your uncle always had a wonderful imagination, even when he was young,” she said, sitting back up at the table. “We always knew he would grow up to be something special. He always directed the school plays. Do you remember that, Theo? The school plays, do you remember?”
My father pushed a small orange tomato around his plate, his face a number of interesting shades of red.
“Theo was always too busy with the books to notice his little brother,” Uncle Frank said. “Too busy writing and working hard. Now, of course, he doesn’t have to work at all. Now, he’s got it made. Mr. One Hundred and Ninety Million.”
I had only seen my father lose his temper once, when my mother accidentally threw out some of his Civil War books to make room for her Precious Moments collection of miniature figurines in the basement. The books had been signed by my father’s idol, Civil War writer Bruce Catton. He ended up retrieving all but Grant Moves South, which for some reason he could never find. That night, he accused my mother of deliberately throwing them out, a charge my mother loudly denied. It had been the only time I could recall hearing my father raise his voice.
I feared I was about to hear it again. His cheeks were moving in and out, vibrating, as he continued to push the orange tomato around with his fork.
Uncle Frank was also observing my father. “Stop torturing that tomato and eat it already,” he said casually, reaching for his wine.
With that, my father stood up and sharply threw his napkin on the table. He looked at my uncle, then over at the Nose Picker and Aunt Bess, then finally at me.
“I’m leaving,” he said evenly. “I’m going for . . . a walk.”
As soon as my father left, Aunt Bess said something in Greek and began clearing the table. The Nose Picker slipped from his chair and began crawling on all fours and barking, something he had begun doing recently.
Uncle Frank looked at me and said, “What?” Then he too got up from the table, walking over to the dining room window, where he stood with his hands in his pockets. “Where the hell do you walk around here?” he said. “It’s not like we’re in Manhattan or anything.”
That night I laid awake in bed and waited for my father to come upstairs. He passed by our room exactly at ten o’clock every night, on his way to his small study, to read the New York Times. When he finally walked past our doorway, I quietly called out to ask him who was a better general, Robert E. Lee or U.S. Grant. It was a question that I thought he would enjoy, considering his respect for both generals was high.
He hesitated before entering our room, then approached my bed slowly and carefully. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat. In the next bed, the Nose Picker sighed deeply and rolled over, asleep. “Well,” he said again, putting his hands in his pockets. His cotton-candy hair hung limply to the sides and he looked old and thin and in the fading light I thought I could see through him if I looked hard enough. “That’s a question that has been debated for more than one hundred years. And I don’t think we have time to discuss it tonight. It’s late. We can talk about it tomorrow after school. There are some very good books I can give you.”
“But what do you think?” I asked. As usual, I had no genuine interest in the answer, but I knew that my father needed some cheering and nothing cheered him up more than a good dose of the War.
“Well, Lee, of course was a proper man and a brilliant man, probably the finest general America has ever produced, the finest military mind. If he had accepted the command of the Army of the Potomac, the Union Army, as Lincoln had wanted, if he had, the Civil War would have lasted only four months. He would have attacked. I wrestle with the question of whether Lee was a completely moral man though. Despite his insistence that he was fighting for Virginia, and despite his being a proper man, he was fighting for slavery all the same, in defense of a horrible institution. Sometimes I think that if he was as great a man as we all claim, he would have chosen the greater cause—the freedom of men. Still he was a brilliant leader who had no equal. As for Grant. . .”
I tried to stifle a yawn, but failed. My father saw this and caught himself. “Let’s talk about this some other time. Tomorrow,” he said.
“You remind me of Abraham Lincoln,” I said.
For the first time in a long time my father smiled what I thought was a real smile. “I am nothing like Abraham Lincoln,” he said.
“Where did you go on your walk?” I asked.
He looked embarrassed and shifted uneasily on his feet. I had asked too direct a question and immediately regretted it. “Nowhere actually,” he said. Then he cleared his throat. “I was afraid the neighbors would be confused if they saw me walking. I never walk. I thought it might invite suspicion or concern. Possibly alarm.”
I looked at him.
“So,” he continued. “Actually, I was in the garage. I stood there for a while. I needed some air.”
The image of my father standing alone in our cluttered, dark garage saddened me. I wanted to ask him why he had gotten angry and why he didn’t want to talk to the reporter from the magazine, but instead I simply asked, “Do you feel better now?”
He squinted his eyes. “Better? Yes,” he said, thinking. “Yes, I do. I felt things were closing in on me, you see, tightening around me. So much has been happening that it seems difficult to grasp things. People don’t understand the responsibility. They simply see everything on the surface. The things we can buy. They want to live their lives through us and they don’t want to be disappointed. I feel that something is expected of me, something I cannot possibly deliver. And of course, they don’t understand the consequences, in our case, consequences they can’t imagine.” He stopped talking and glanced down at the floor.
I looked at him. His rush of words and the intensity in which he had spoken them surprised and embarrassed me. I felt I had been caught looking at something illicit and rare, something I had not been intended to see.
He stood in the middle of the room and predictably cleared his throat. Then he said softly, “I feel better now, though. Thank you,” and quickly left. Across the room, I heard Tommy ask “Daddy?” but I told him to go back to sleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
MRS. WILCOTT STOOD on our front porch, looking divorced. She might as well just wear a sign that says, “He left me,” my mother used to say about her. I remembered Dr. Wilcott, her ex-husband, as a tall dark man with golf clubs and very white teeth. There were three children in the Wilcott family, two older girls in college and Benjamin, who was a year ahead of me in school and made it a point to ignore me at every opportunity.
My mother didn’t like Mrs. Wilcott much. “She thinks she’s Jane Pauley or something,” she once said as she watched Mrs. Wilcott jogging past our house in her blue and pink running suit. Mrs. Wilcott had her own television show, Access Wilton, on Channel 87 where she baked cakes and bread and pies with holiday themes. Sometimes, though, she had guests on to discuss local issues. My father reluctantly made a brief appearance on it once to help raise money for Civil War Month, which was being celebrated at the Wilton Public Library. Even though my father was a guest, my mother changed the channel after just a few minutes. “I’ve had enough of Mrs. Middle-Aged Miniskirt,” she said.
“Hello, sweetheart, is your father at home?” Mrs. Wilcott now asked as I opened the door.
“He’s at work in his study.”
“Could you tell him that Gloria is here? Oh, hello, Theo!”
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My father had emerged from the bathroom, the only room in the house with a lock, where he had been reading. He had begun this practice ever since Uncle Frank’s arrival. He would disappear for hours, causing Aunt Bess great concern over the prospect of another bout of spastic bowel, an attack she believed to be imminent.
“Oh,” my father said. Then he said, “Hello, Mrs. Wilcott.”
“Gloria,” Mrs. Wilcott said and smiled.
“What?” my father said. “Oh. Yes.”
“I was wondering if you had a chance to consider our invitation to appear on Access Wilton. We’d love it if you could.”
My father was confused and, for some reason, looked at his watch. “Is it Civil War Month already?”
“No.” She laughed a little. “We’d just like to interview you about your big news.” Mrs. Wilcott’s eyebrows went up after she said this and I thought she looked pretty. She was close to middle age but still wore bows in her hair and still bounced when she walked, her arms swinging like twirling batons. She had very clear blue eyes and a moon-shaped face that had a delicate but definite shine about it. Her blond hair hung over her forehead in bangs and was tied in the back today with a red bow that reminded me of an unexpected Christmas present.
“We’d like for you to come on our show,” Mrs. Wilcott said again.
“Oh,” my father said. Then he looked at me and I noticed that the zipper of his pants was down. “Oh, I see. Well, I am very busy right now on several projects.”
“We would love to hear about them,” Mrs. Wilcott said. “We want to know what you do all day now.”
“What I do all day,” my father repeated. “Now. Yes. Hmmm. Teddy, why don’t you go find out what Tommy is up to?”
“He’s trying to crap like a dog on his bed,” I said truthfully.
My father looked down at me with his mouth open, then back up at Mrs. Wilcott, who was still smiling. “I really don’t. . . could you call me and we can discuss this? Tonight, call me tonight. Thank you so much Mrs. Wilcott. Gloria.”
