The Rich Part of Life

by Jim Kokoris

  As my father began to shut the door, Mrs. Wilcott stepped forward. “Oh, Theo, I almost forgot, I would like to invite you and your boys over for dinner.”

  My father was extremely confused now.

  “What? Dinner? Now?”

  “No, of course not. I was thinking Friday.”

  At the exact moment Mrs. Wilcott said the word “Friday,” my father realized his zipper was down. “Good God!” he said. He began to fumble with it. Then he said quickly, “Yes, of course. Fridays are always good days. For dinner. Thank you.” He shut the door and walked quickly up to our bedroom to find Tommy the Dog.

  LATER THAT NIGHT when I walked past my father’s study, he motioned me inside with a cautious wave of his hand. He was sitting behind his desk, typing on his old blue Royal typewriter. His study was a very small room that I realized years later was actually a very large walk-in closet. It was decorated solely with Civil War souvenirs, mostly black-and-white pictures of generals, though a few faded maps depicting troop movements and battle sites hung on the walls. My father spent most of his time in this room, staring out the small rectangular window that overlooked our garage, after my mother died.

  “Teddy, I have to ask you something,” he said. I stood apprehensively in front of his desk. I seldom went into his study, it was his private and remote place and I respected it as much as I could. “Do you think your brother has been acting strangely lately? I mean more so than usual, his preoccupation with his nose notwithstanding?”

  “A little,” I said.

  My father looked worried. “Yes, yes. I think so too. This dog business, has it been going on long?”

  Over my father’s shoulder I could see the burning eyes of William Tecumseh Sherman, who, my father once told me, had been institutionalized for being thought insane. “Just a few days,” I answered.

  “He doesn’t do it in school, does he?”

  “Once I think.” I decided not to tell him that the day before, I had seen him crawling on all fours on the playground, barking with his friend Steven Ryan.

  “Well, we must keep an eye on him,” my father said. “I’m sure he’ll outgrow it. This desire to bark.”

  My father was about to go back to his typewriter when I asked him a question that I had been mulling over. “Do you think we can buy St. Pius a new furnace?”

  He looked up at me slowly. “I’m sorry?”

  I told him about Mrs. Plank’s comment and also about the new fund-raising drive that had been announced, starting with a bake sale that was scheduled for an upcoming night.

  “Your principal has specifically asked that I purchase a furnace for the school out of my own funds?”

  “She only asked once.”

  “Is it cold in school now?”

  “No, it’s hot.”

  “It is? Oh, yes, of course, it’s only September.” My father looked back down at his desk. “Well,” he said. “I see, a new furnace. Well, I’ll have to think about it. I don’t know anything about furnaces.”

  Just then Stavros wandered into the study, walking haltingly, his glassy eyes unblinking. When he reached the wall, he pressed his nose against it but remained standing.

  My father was startled by his appearance. “Dear God,” he said. “I didn’t think he could climb stairs.”

  We both watched him stand for a few moments, his sides moving in and out unevenly. I began to breathe out of my mouth, knowing that his odd smell would soon fill the small room. He moved away from the wall and walked closer to my father’s leg. When he reached my father’s shoe, he looked up at him and then wandered slowly out of the room, his listless tail dragging behind him.

  “Well,” my father said. Then he said, “Yes.”

  “How old is Stavros?” I asked.

  “Well, I’m not sure,” my father said. He attempted to go back to work but I could tell that Stavros’s presence had disturbed him. “He’s quite old, but apparently he still has some life in him yet.”

  My father gave me a short, tight smile and made a more serious effort to return to his typewriter. I knew I was asking too many questions, but having been invited into his special place, I wasn’t quite ready to leave. And I had another question to ask.

  “Can you come to Parents’ Night at St. Pius next week?” I looked at the floor when I asked this because I didn’t want to see the fearful look that I was sure was in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Parents’ Night. Mom used to go with us,” I said. “It’s next week. You talk to teachers.” Then I said, “They have cookies you can eat.”

  I kept my eyes on the floor while my father cleared his throat. I had debated whether to talk to him about Parents’ Night. I knew that he wouldn’t want to go. He had never stepped foot inside St. Pius.

  “Was there some type of notification about this? From the school?”

  “Yes. I gave it to Aunt Bess.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “I do remember her giving me something.”

  We were both quiet and I tried to hide my feelings on the subject. I didn’t want him to know how badly I wanted him to come. I suspected that too direct of an appeal would frighten him. I knew it would be difficult for him to come and face questions about the lottery and my mother and everything in between, but still I wanted him to go. He was my father.

  “Well, yes,” he said.

  My heart leapt.

  “Yes. When is it exactly?”

  “The Thursday night after next,” I said. I looked up and watched my father check a small desk calendar.

  “Oh, no, Teddy, I’m sorry. I can’t attend,” he said. “You see, I’m scheduled to be in Atlanta for a conference that week. I have to give one of my papers. I am sorry. I wasn’t originally planning to go, but now that Aunt Bess and your uncle are here to watch you, I accepted.”

  We were quiet again. I tried not to show my disappointment. “That’s okay,” I said. I hadn’t really expected him to come.

  “Well, it might be possible that Aunt Bess could attend, though.”

  “It’s just for parents.”

  “Well, it might be possible that they could make an exception.”

  “I’ll ask Mrs. Plank,” I said, even though I knew I wouldn’t. I didn’t want Aunt Bess to come. Her being there would just remind everyone that I no longer had a mother.

  I looked up at my father. His face was tight and his forehead was beginning to perspire. He was clearing his throat so loudly that I decided to change the subject before he did serious injury to himself.

  “What are you writing?” I asked.

  “What? I’m sorry? Oh. Well, a paper or really a speech for the conference next week. I’m behind a bit, but I think I’ll be all right.”

  “What’s it about? Your speech?”

  He cleared his throat. “Well, I was invited to talk about a specific issue, a specific supply issue of the War.”

  “What?”

  He cleared his throat. “Footwear, actually. The shoes the soldiers wore.”

  My father waited for a reaction. I had none.

  “It was one of those small but essential issues of the War that often gets overlooked.”

  “You’re writing about the soldiers’ shoes?” I asked.

  “Yes, well, the types of boots and shoes the soldiers wore in battle and while marching is more interesting than people think. The fact that the South didn’t have any regulation footwear played a subtle yet important role in the War.” He leaned back in his chair and picked up his gold fountain pen. “The Union had a significant advantage with their footwear, an advantage they maximized. They were able to do, well, a lot more walking.”

  “Uncle Frank says you don’t have to work anymore. Why are you still working?” I blurted this out and immediately regretted it.

  But rather than clear his throat more, he merely gave me another tight smile and began typing. “Well, Teddy,” he said without looking back up at me, “I suppose I don’t know what else to do.”

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nbsp; LATER THAT NIGHT I lay in bed and listened to Tommy the Dog whimper. He was having one of his nightmares again, kicking his legs and turning about. I walked over and nudged him awake, waiting for his eyes to open and register where he was. When his eyes finally did open, he looked at me vacantly, then drifted back to sleep. Convinced he was fine, I got back into bed.

  I decided to attempt to sketch my father again. I worked on the drawing for quite a while, focusing mostly on his eyes. I often struggled with them. I felt my father was forever peering out at life from behind something and I could never capture that sense of watchful, protected isolation that shielded his vision. I knew that to draw something, you had to understand it first and I didn’t understand my father.

  When my mother died I felt stranded, a terrible left-behind feeling that would overwhelm me at night in bed. It was during those first weeks that I waited for my father to comfort me but he was incapable of doing much. One night though, after I had been crying facedown in my pillow for some time, he came into my room, sat down on my bed, and hugged me. He hugged me a long time in the dark without saying anything. Then, after I stopped crying, he wordlessly left. It was the first time I remembered him hugging me. It was that father that I wanted to draw now, that father that I knew was there, waiting in the dark. So I stayed up late drawing. I drew until our house was quiet and my wrist was tired. I drew until I was sure that everyone else in the world had disappeared into sleep and then I drew some more.

  WALKING HOME FROM SCHOOL a few days later, I noticed the red pickup truck for the first time. It was the first dreary day in September and the color of the truck stood out sharply against the gray skies I was sure were inspiring Miss Grace. She had spent most of the afternoon staring out the window in mournful repose. The week earlier, her first haiku, “Blind Butterflies,” had been published in the Wilton Doings and I was sure, with the weather turning gloomily haiku-like, others were in the works.

  I didn’t see the red truck right away because I was walking home with Johnny Cezzaro and Charlie Governs and Johnny and I were arguing over the ranch I had said we were going to buy. I had revisited my List of Things and decided to change our large farm in Wisconsin to an even larger ranch in Montana. The farm had begun to conjure up images of cow manure and square dances while the ranch offered open ranges, hunting, and cattle roundups, all in the shadow of majestic snow-capped mountains.

  “You ain’t gonna buy no ranch, Pappas. I don’t think your dad even won the lottery,” Johnny said loudly. His black hair was particularly greasy that day and I envisioned french fries cooking and sizzling in it. The first signs of pimples were forming on the side of his dark face as small red ridges. “You guys ain’t bought nothin’ yet. Your dad still drives that old car, you still live in the same lousy house, you don’t have a butler or a butler lady, or a satellite dish. No swimming pool, nothing. My dad says the money’s wasted on a nerd family like yours.”

  Johnny’s accusations were hitting home. I had begun registering a subtle but growing disappointment from my other classmates on our lack of purchases and felt an explanation was in order. Yet, I had none to offer other than our winning a hundred-and-ninety million dollars seemed to have somehow slipped my father’s mind.

  “The ranch is in Montana,” I said. Then, remembering Johnny’s grasp of geography, I added, “That’s a state. Out west.”

  “I know where it is,” he said. Then he said, “Hey, do you know that guy?” He pointed to the red pickup truck that had emerged behind us, driving slowly. “He’s following us.”

  When I looked over I realized I had seen that same truck the day before. I remembered noticing the Tennessee license plates and the dented front bumper. A man with long blond hair was driving the truck and when I stopped to get a closer look, he drove off, his engine sputtering, his tail pipe spitting smoke.

  We started walking again. “Do you even get an allowance?” Johnny asked.

  “No,” I said quietly. Johnny’s persistent questions about the lottery were beginning to annoy me.

  “Man, you don’t even get an allowance? My dad said that if he won the lottery, he’d give me a thousand bucks just for taking out the garbage.”

  “When I turn sixteen, I’m going to get ten million dollars,” I said. I surprised myself by saying this, though having said it, it didn’t seem at all unreasonable.

  “Bullshit,” Johnny said. Then he said, “Really?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Tommy gets five million dollars.”

  News of my pending windfall silenced Johnny for awhile. I suspected he was trying to figure out how many years it would be until I turned sixteen.

  “Hey, look at this,” Johnny said when we got to a street corner. Traffic was unusually heavy for a school day and we had to wait before crossing. “I said look at this.”

  From a plain, brown envelope, Johnny pulled out a photo of an almost-naked woman. She was standing backward on a table, looking over her shoulder, holding what looked like a whip and smiling cruelly. Even though she had whiskers painted on her face, she was pretty in an unsettling, threatening way. “This is Carla the Cat Woman. My uncle just hired her as another receptionist.”

  I took the photo and studied it in detail. Carla had a small tattoo of a cat on her shoulder. A long, furry rope (that I quickly realized was a tail) protruded from her backside. Her shiny black high heels looked sharp and dangerous seams ran up the backs of her black stockings in perfect straight lines.

  “What do your uncle’s receptionists do?” I said.

  Johnny shrugged. “They stand around and look hot so guys come there and buy cars. I’ll sell you it for eight thousand dollars.”

  “What?”

  “Eight grand. Cash. That’s nothing to you, that’s nothing.”

  I looked at the photo for a few minutes longer and felt my cheeks grow warm. I thought Carla, minus the whiskers and tail, bore a distant resemblance to Miss Grace—an evil, older sister perhaps. Over my shoulder, I felt Charlie’s quick hot breath.

  “I’ll give you four dollars for it,” I said. I had never owned a picture of an almost-naked woman before and thought Carla would be an impressive start to what I thought could eventually turn into a vast but tasteful collection.

  “No way,” Johnny said. He took back the photo. “Ten bucks. It’s autographed.”

  “I don’t have that much,” I said.

  “I’ll give you the rest,” Charlie said. Johnny and I looked over at Charlie, surprised.

  “Done deal,” Johnny said, handing me the photo.

  After we paid Johnny, I went over to Charlie’s house. Charlie’s father was a surgeon and the McGoverns lived on the nicest block in the neighborhood, a wide street with a canopy of arching trees. His house was large, even by Wilton’s standards, and had tall white columns in the front and a sweeping lawn that somehow seemed green even in winter. The outside of Charlie’s house had been in one of the movies filmed in Wilton and, according to my mother, the pond in the backyard had been the setting in a poignant scene involving a boy who tried to drown himself after he saw his father having sex with the family nanny.

  When we got inside, we went straight upstairs to Charlie’s bedroom and locked the door.

  “If you hear my mom coming, let me know,” he said.

  For the next half hour or so, I watched Charlie scan the photo of Carla into his computer. Then he did something that truly amazed me.

  “Watch this,” he said. I looked on as he slowly and carefully cut out a photo of Mrs. Plank’s head from the St. Pius Meet Your Teacher booklet the school sent home at the beginning of every school year and scanned it onto the body of Carla. He then printed it out and gave me a copy. I found it repulsive. Mrs. Plank was old and ugly and Charlie hadn’t made her head nearly large enough. She looked like an ant.

  “Can you do this with another picture?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Charlie said. He adjusted his glasses.

  “Can you do that with Miss Grace’s picture?” I
asked casually.

  Without a word Charlie went to work. Within minutes, Miss Grace’s sweet, unsmiling face rested crookedly on Carla the Cat Woman’s naked and tattooed body. My face felt warm again.

  “Her head is on crooked,” I said.

  “No, it’s not. She’s turning her head in the picture,” Charlie said. Then he said, “You love her.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said putting the picture carefully away in my backpack.

  “Yes, you do.” Charlie readjusted his glasses, pushing them back onto his head. He wore round wire spectacles that magnified his eyeballs, giving them an unfocused, fluid look. “She tried to kill herself once. When the man she was supposed to marry didn’t show up at the church. They were supposed to be married at St. Pius but he never came. He wrote her a letter later saying that he discovered he was homo. My mom told me.”

  “Really? He was homo?” I thought about this for awhile, but instead of expressing concern over Miss Grace I asked, “How do you discover you’re homo?” I thought there might be some type of process involved, a written test possibly.

  Charlie shrugged and pushed back his glasses again, his eyeballs swimming. “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “You just do.”

  On the way home, I considered Miss Grace’s suicide attempt and ran through a number of scenarios: Miss Grace tried to hang herself but the rope snapped just as her face was turning blue; Miss Grace tried to shoot herself but the gun misfired; Miss Grace jumped off a bridge into a river, but was pulled to safety by alert fishermen; Miss Grace tried to jump in front of a speeding train but mistimed her leap and rolled over the tracks, down a hill, into a camp of friendly and compassionate hobos. The images upset me and I felt immense guilt over the photo. Under no circumstances would Miss Grace allow herself to be photographed almost naked wearing a tail. I concluded that keeping the picture was wrong and vowed to look at it just one more time when I got home, before ripping it up.

  I was deep in thought about Miss Grace when I saw the red truck again. This time it was heading my way from the opposite direction. As it approached, I saw the driver looking at me. He stopped the truck and lowered the window.