Getting Off Clean

by Timothy Murphy

  “Do you want it? Him? Her? Whatever?”

  “I’m twenty-one years old, for God’s sake!”

  “I know.”

  “Do I want it?” Suddenly, she was crying all over the place, as late-afternoon light filled up the room through Grandma’s sheer nylon drapes and the big maudlin-faced Jesus looking down on us like the moderator of a panel discussion. “Yes! I want the fucking kid! I want to be a fucking mother, all right? I think it would be nice.” I grabbed a handful of Kleenex off Grandma’s bureau and handed them to her, and she used the whole wad to clean herself off, violently. “And I want to get out of the fucking card shop and go to computer programming school like Kathy Fanuele and get a real paycheck and get my own house—and have a real life!”

  “So?” I said, trying to be as bright and optimistic as possible, just like my mother usually would. “What’s stopping you?”

  “I don’t know!” she bawled again. “I don’t fucking know!”

  I decided to lay it all on the line, since nobody else would. “You don’t want to marry Frank, do you?”

  She looked at me, horrified, and wiped the tears off her face as if Frank was going to walk in at any minute and her crying would be an admission of guilt—or lovelessness. “I didn’t say that!” she hissed.

  “But you don’t, do you?”

  “I don’t know! I just—I don’t feel for him like I did in high school. I know he’s sweet and he works hard and he’s Italian, and all that. And he loves me, and he can’t wait for the baby, but—I don’t know.” Then she looked at me, seriously, as though she really wanted me to concentrate. “Eric.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “There are just a lot of things that Frank doesn’t get.”

  I wanted to say, “No kidding,” but I didn’t. “Like what?” I asked instead.

  She looked at me, exasperated. “Like—Eric, like he said that when the baby came, I could bring it by the jail and he could show it to his work buddies. I’m not bringing any fucking baby into a jail! But I don’t say that. Instead, I say, ‘How am I gonna do that if I’m at work, too?’ And he goes, ‘You don’t have to keep that stupid job when the baby comes. You can stay home with it and I’ll work more overtime.’ And I’m thinking, How do you even know I want to stay home with it all the time? Maybe I’ll want a break from it. Maybe I’ll want to leave it with Ma sometimes. Or even Grandma, if she doesn’t scare it to death. But Frank isn’t laid-back like Dad, you know? He’s fuckin’ bossy. He thinks he’s got the right way to do everything.”

  She picked up with the underwear, frowning. She had stopped crying and now she just looked worn out and bewildered. I decided, again, that if I didn’t say something to her, nobody else would, including her friends.

  “Bren?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It sounds like you’ve got to tell Frank you don’t want to get married. Not just yet, anyway.”

  “Oh, Christ. How am I going to tell him that?”

  “You’ve just got to tell him, point blank. Just say that you weren’t expecting to get married so soon, and just because the baby’s coming, that shouldn’t be an excuse to rush it. Say it’s only because you love and respect him so much that you’re not jumping into a situation that might hurt you both later. There. Doesn’t that sound good?”

  She looked at me like I was crazy. “Eric!”

  “What?”

  “He’s gonna think I’m a fuckin’ freak. Everybody is! Just going ahead and having this baby and shutting out the father?”

  “You’re not shutting out the father. Frank can still see the baby whenever he wants. I mean, the right thing to do would be to split the taking care of the baby down the middle.”

  She let out a big, raggedy laugh. “Oh, no! No fucking way. I’m bringing up that kid, or nobody at all. Frank wouldn’t know how to change a diaper if he practiced for six years.”

  “Then wait six years until he knows how to change a diaper, then marry him. I guess by then, he wouldn’t need to change a diaper, would he? Unless you two have another kid.”

  The thought of that seemed too much for Brenda, who just stared at me blankly, and blinked. “Look,” she said. “Why don’t we just drop this, okay? I’m sure it’s all gonna work out. Let’s get outta here. This place is giving me the creeps.” She crumpled up the list, stuck it in her pocket, and started zipping up the suitcase.

  “Are you gonna talk to him, Brenda?” I asked again, feeling like I had to push the issue a little.

  She sighed, exasperated. “Yeah, I’m gonna talk to him. When the time is right.”

  “When is the time going to be right?”

  “Would you just drop it!” she yelled, and I did.

  We were both quiet in the car until Brenda said blandly over the music, “I suppose it could be worse. I could be Kerrie Lanouette, right?”

  “That’s a morbid thought,” I said.

  “But then again, Kerrie Lanouette doesn’t have any problems right now, does she? She’s sittin’ pretty somewhere.”

  “Brenda,” I said, fed up, “you don’t want to be Kerrie Lanouette.”

  “I guess you’re right,” she said.

  Neither of us said anything for the rest of the drive home.

  Four

  Before I can negotiate another thought about my world as I know it—a riot of thoughts that includes wondering where Sal keeps the extra saran I need to finish wrapping the tomato halves—I see him: a slender figure walking fast, hunched over, across the parking lot, straight toward the plate-glass front window of B.J.’s, where he stands and signals me from the outside, pointing to his watch. It’s ten-thirty and Jimbo and the card-playing old men are still here, but their backs are to the window and Jimbo is engrossed in his napkin-shredding. It only takes me a second to hold up all ten fingers and then one more, to signal eleven o’clock, and he smiles wildly at me and he’s gone.

  He came, I think, he didn’t forget, and I can’t say, frankly, that I’ve forgotten either—through everything, through the distractions of school and family and murder—I can’t say I’ve forgotten even once since the last time I saw him. I’m flying through my close-shop chores and at ten minutes to, the two old men gather up their cards and leave, without a word to me, and I’m over at Jimbo’s table, picking up his napkin shreds.

  “I’ve gotta close up, Jimbo,” I say. “You gotta go home now.”

  “Naw!” He laughs toothlessly. “You gotta go home now, Admiral. I gotta stay and fight T. Rex!”

  “No, Jimbo, you’ve gotta fight T. Rex at home. I’ve gotta close up,” I say, smiling back, thinking, Get the hell out of here, you crazy idiot. It only takes a little more doing on my part before I’m guiding Jimbo out the door, he all the while babbling about the impending duel with the mighty T. Rex, and then he’s on his old Schwinn and off in the night toward his mother, or whomever, whatever he calls home.

  I shut all the lights except the ones behind the counter and start giving the tables a second wipe-down, to pass the time, but the hit radio station calls 11:03, and, in tandem with that, he’s there again, on the other side of the glass door, gleaming in a white striped shirt and khakis and the same loafers shined to distraction. He’s got something in a paper bag under his arm, and he’s beaming tonight.

  “Hey,” I say, unlocking the door and letting him into the darkened shop.

  “Good evening,” he says, and he puts his hand over mine on the doorknob and we hold them there, just for a second, me peering out across the parking lot to see if anyone has seen, but it looks deserted.

  “You’re so dressed up tonight,” I say.

  He hurls himself into a chair and throws his legs up on a table, as though this is home to him, as though he’s been here a million times before. “Friday night is all-campus formal dinner, with prayers and candles and the idiotic glee club singing after the meal. You have to wear a coat and tie, but I slipped mine off before I came.” He peers around the darkened, fake wood-paneled shop. “Ca
n I have a drink? A Sprite or something?”

  I get us two Sprites from the soda fountain behind the counter (which is not against the rules, I tell myself, because Sal says I can have all the drinks I want from the soda fountain. I’m doing nothing against the rules) and sit down across from him. He takes one sip from his drink, grimaces, says “Syrup,” and doesn’t touch it again.

  “Where have you been since ten-thirty?” I ask him. I’m starting to worry about him creeping all over town.

  “I hid out in some shrubs near these apartments right behind here. Two old guys walking by almost saw me, but I ducked down. I blend in, in the dark,” he says, preeningly.

  “Not in that shirt you don’t. You look like a sitting duck.”

  He leans in toward me and lowers his voice. “I took it off,” he says, “and stuffed it in my pants.”

  “Oh,” I say, blushing, which is what he wanted, I suppose, because he laughs, robustly. He pushes the paper bag across the table toward me. “I stole you a book from the library.”

  “From the West Mendhem Library?” All he needs, I think, is to get picked up for theft in the middle of West Mendhem. That would be the end of that.

  “Of course not. From the J. Archibald Sloan Memorial Library of St. Banner Academy. Thirty-two thousand volumes and an international array of periodicals.” Tonight, I’m noticing, he seems to be talking somewhat more to me and less to himself.

  I pull out the book, and he laughs again when I see the title. It’s an old hardcover copy of Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger. Inside, there’s a stained yellow bookplate that says, “Property Sloan Library, St. Banner, 1924.”

  “Thanks,” I say, wondering how much the gift is or isn’t supposed to be a joke on me. “I haven’t read any Alger yet.”

  “He’s the patron saint of boys like you. Now you can write your college essay on how Ragged Dick inspired you to shoot for great heights of success.”

  Now I know the joke’s on me, and I’m a little annoyed. “Don’t you want to shoot for great heights of success?” I ask him. “You’re the one who’s going to one of the most prestigious schools in the country. You’re the one with everything going for you.”

  He’s quiet a moment before he looks away and says, “Yes. I am charmed.”

  “So why don’t you want to shoot for great success? Isn’t that what you’re trained to do up there?”

  “My dear Mr. Fitzpatrick,” he says, minutely examining his watch. “I am a success. I’ve already been successfully ejected from two of the finest institutions of secondary education on the Eastern Seaboard. And if I can maintain my dizzying record of success, I’ll have been kicked out of the third by the end of the academic year.”

  His logic flabbergasts me. “You’re trying to get kicked out of S.B.A.? I don’t understand you.”

  “Actually, I’m trying not to get kicked out this semester, so I can go back to Virginia for the holidays and not upset my great-aunt, who will surely keel over and expire—in a genteel, lace-curtain darky sort of way, of course—if she receives one more letter of termination about me just before Christmas. No. If I get myself expulsed, I’ll do it toward the end of second term, so I can leave directly for Paris from Boston and entirely avoid facing my great-aunt’s broken heart.”

  “You’re going to Paris this summer?”

  “Most likely, yes.”

  “For the whole summer?”

  “That depends. I may go to Florence as well. Or Greece, maybe.” He looks at me sharply. “Why? Are you wondering why I don’t work in the summers, like you?”

  “I guess you don’t have to, right?”

  “Precisely.” He pulls out a cigarette, lights it, inhales, blows the smoke out extravagantly through his nose, and taps the ashes into his untouched cup of Sprite. Only then does he lean over to me and enunciate quietly, “Because I am very very filthy rich.” Then he throws back his head and laughs.

  “So?” is all I can think to say. And all of a sudden I’m getting a sick feeling that, in a funny way, has nothing at all to do with him. I shouldn’t be here with him; it’s wrong; I don’t even know him, and even though we haven’t done a thing, I know—looking at him look at me, with some bombastic U2 song blaring in the background, Bono screeching “Sunday Bloody Blah-blah-blah.”—Oh, shit, I think, I know where this is going. I know exactly where this is going.

  Then, as if I’ve just told him all this, he draws my hands away from myself and pulls them toward the center of the Formica tabletop and puts his own hands over them. And he says, “I’m filthy rich. And you, Eric Fitzpatrick, are going to Yale University, which is certainly more than I can say. And you are getting the holy hell out of here.”

  “Thank you,” I say, like an idiot, and suddenly, looking at his hands clasped motionlessly over mine, I start to cry, and with that, it’s like everything’s mixed in—my home, my parents, my pregnant sister and my retarded sister, my brain-dead friends and good-for-shit hometown. It’s like they all come chasing up out of the pit of my stomach and I upchuck them all over the table, in front of him. And then I can’t believe it, I’m not crying, I’m sobbing, and I know I must sound like a choking fool.

  “Look at you!” he says, laughing. “You’re a mess! The little plugger, Eric Fitzpatrick, is a mess.” And then he starts to sing, “Don’t cry for me, B.J.’s Sub Shop / The truth is, I never left you.…”

  “Cut it out!” I say, but he’s laughing now, and I can’t help it, so do I. Then he takes both my hands up to his mouth, and he’s kissing them all over, and I don’t know whether to be horrified or to do the same. I’m still blubbering, and he seems so intent on my hands. And I take just one of his peculiar slender hands in my own, and draw my head closer to his, hunched in, and hold his fist to my eyes and forehead, and he does the same. I’m quieting down, then, and we just stay that way for what seems like forever, in the dark, scored only by hit radio. I can smell his breath—it smells like cigarettes and some kind of pungent wood, maybe cedar—and I can hear it too, short and constrained, like he’s in a bush, hiding, which is exactly the way mine sounds, too.

  Finally, he whispers to me, “Do you want to go somewhere?”

  “Uh-huh,” I whisper back, but I can’t seem to make it sound quiet enough.

  “Okay,” he whispers. “Lock up. Let’s go.”

  I’ve done my work. I throw out our paper cups, stick the Horatio Alger book into my backpack, turn off the radio and the remaining light, and in a minute we’re both stalking across the parking lot toward my mother’s hatchback, lying, thankfully, beyond the scope of the security lights buzzing in the silence from high above.

  “What’s this?” he says, fingering the little St. Christopher medallion hanging from the rearview mirror, as I start the car and pull out of the lot and onto Main Street.

  “It’s St. Christopher,” I say, trying to sound derisive. “He’s the patron saint of travel.”

  “You mean he’s sort of like the secretary of transportation for Catholics?”

  “Sort of. I didn’t put it there. It’s my mother’s. She’s superstitious.”

  “Oh,” he says, leaving it be. “What would your mother say if she saw you right now?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, annoyed. “I’d say I’m hanging out with a friend. She wouldn’t care. She’s not prejudiced or something, if that’s what you mean.” I try to sound righteous, because I know my mother would have a million questions if she could see me right now.

  “I didn’t say that,” he says.

  “No. But maybe you were implying it. I can read between the lines.”

  He laughs, sounding contemptuous to me. “Can you?” he says.

  Here we go again, I think. I don’t answer. Instead, I say, “What would your mother think?”

  “I don’t know. She lives in Amsterdam, I think. Or Berlin now, maybe. I haven’t seen her in about—oh, dear—I guess about five years.”

  “Oh,” I say, ashamed for asking. “I’m sorry.”
r />   “I might look her up when I go over there next year,” he says matter-of-factly, rolling down the window and lighting a cigarette. “I think she might be amenable to lunch. Or drinks.”

  The whole idea of wondering if your mother is willing to meet you for drinks in Amsterdam is so bizarre to me, I don’t say anything except another “Oh.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask about my father? No boy can become a man without knowing his father, n’est-ce pas?”

  That makes me think of my own father, Arthur, whose own father died when he was three. Is my father not a man? I think to myself, but in an academic way, in the back of my mind, as though it were an essay question on an English test. What I say is: “You don’t have to tell me about him if you don’t want to.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to,” he says evenly. “I just don’t know that much. All I know is, he did some import-export thing because he couldn’t get hired at an American bank. He went away on business, and he never came back, but he sent me a calculator. I remember, they had just come out, and it was huge, the size of a notebook, made in Korea, and he had had my initials engraved on the back. But that was the last from him, except for checks every month, I found out recently, even though Auntie Fleurie didn’t need them. But it was my mother hoarding the checks, and in a year she left, too.”

  “She left without saying good-bye?” I gasp. I can’t believe the pathos of this story.

  “No. She said good-bye. She dressed me up in a little seersucker suit and took me out to a swank restaurant. She drank a lot, and I had three Buck Rogerses. She told me she was going on vacation and would be back in one month. But she didn’t come back in a month.”

  “And that’s the last time you saw her?” I ask.

  “No. She visited a few times, and Auntie Fleurie and I went to see her once in Amsterdam. The last time she came back to Virginia to visit I was thirteen. I was happy to see her—she took me out to dinner again, and bought me a new suit for it—but she and Auntie Fleurie had a ripping fight. Two educated Negro ladies tearing each other apart in three languages, such drama. Then, poof! Gone again. Auntie Fleurie hates her now.”