“They do in Florida.”
How did she even know things like that?
“So how much money you bring, Niece?” My uncle’s jovial tone brought me back into the present.
“Not much. I’m living on a shoestring, Uncle Richard. I haven’t worked since January.”
“Your luck will change. Don’t worry.” On the worry my uncle started to cough, until he was hacking away like he did mornings in the bathroom. He whipped out a handkerchief, hawked, and spat. It turned my stomach and I tried not to let him see.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine, fine. Okay, make a left here on Gandy Boulevard and go two blocks and you see a parking lot.”
You couldn’t miss it, it was so enormous, with DERBY LANE in ten-foot-tall letters over the main entrance. Fortunately the lot wasn’t very full, so I didn’t have to pull any fancy parking stunts. As we got out of the car I could hear a band playing and a loudspeaker announcing something over it. The other people going in looked fairly normal, plump blond tourists in shorts and T-shirts. My uncle was by far the most nattily dressed, in a yellow linen suit and white bucks.
As we walked toward the entrance he nudged me. “You like this tie?” he asked, holding it out for my inspection. It was unfashionably wide and had tiny brightly colored parrot heads on a black background.
“That’s Daddy’s.” Now I knew why it had bothered me. Ma and I had picked it out for his birthday and I remembered the last time I’d seen him wear it, at the eighth grade Christmas play where my sister had been the Madonna.
“I wear it for you, Niece. Plus, it happens to be my lucky tie.”
I wondered what Daddy would have thought about this, whether anything of his could ever bring luck to anyone. I wondered what he would have thought of Uncle Richard and me going to the greyhound track. I myself was afraid I’d hate the track, I didn’t know why I was there, except I was bored and humoring Uncle Richard. I was afraid the dogs would make me sad.
My uncle paid for the dollar apiece tokens to get us through the turnstiles, bought a program, and then led me through the infield over to a building he called the benching area, where the dogs were penned, ready to go, or cooling down. I wasn’t prepared for what it would sound like, that greyhounds were after all hounds, all that howling and yelping. They weren’t show dogs and didn’t have to be beautiful, although some of them were. Bred strictly for speed, their spare lines were not unlike horses’ and they weren’t just gray. White, some of them, one even pure black, blue-black, a whole range of tans, pintos, dappled. Uncle Richard was friends with a handler, who flipped back the ear of one of the dogs and showed me the tattoo. The hound stood lean and quiet beneath his hands. Her name was Shady Lady and she was scrawny, light gray with little black spots. Her face markings resembled a raccoon mask.
The dogs were barking, the announcer was barking, my uncle and I left the benching area and went back through the infield to the betting windows. As we walked he was scribbling notes in his program. Opposite the windows hung a row of television sets before which stood a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. I thought it must be closed circuit and then I saw that one screen was showing a horse race while the one beside it was displaying jai alai.
Uncle Richard placed several bets, talking and flinging down bills so fast that I had no idea what he was doing. “Tenth race, quiniela box,” I heard him say. Then he turned to me. “Okay. You pick a race, pick a number. We make it simple, your first time. You pick which one to win, place, or show. You know what that means?”
“Yes.”
I made my choice by name: Khartoum (named for a famous horse, I knew), Hotsplit, Greyghost the Fourth, and Shady Lady, a long shot in the seventh race, ridiculously long, twenty-five to one. Those were my kind of odds. I bet all my dogs to win and handed over thirty dollars in all. My uncle bought a plastic glass of beer and we went to lean against the fence. Across from us the odds flickered on the big board and a brass band played “The Girl from Ipanema.” In the center of the track was a carefully styled oasis, complete with pond and playing fountain. The whole scene wavered in the blazing, unforgiving savannah heat. I put my sunglasses on again.
Uncle Richard sipped his beer and pulled out his cigarettes and we smoked and waited.
I studied the program. “SHADY LADY, number 7 Green and White. Night Shade—Lady Godiva. Rl Erly-Crwdd 1st Tn. Weaknd in Stretch. Sought Rl 1st—Bmpd. Led Briefly—Weaknd.” My uncle was watching the odds flip with the calm concentration of someone who could do intricate calculations in his head. A snowy egret wafted onto the oasis and stood, as if posing in the brilliant green by the fountain, then took off as the band began playing a march. The dogs were being led out.
Saddled by their colors, muzzled, they paraded before us from right to left to the starting gates, in order of number. They each had distinctive strides, held their heads differently. I saw right away that Number 6, tan and husky but with an extremely narrow pelvis, straining at the leash, was going to win. I told my uncle.
“You wanna change your bet, Niece?”
“No, I’m just telling you, I’m positive he’s going to win.”
At some signal the dogs were crammed one by one into the starting gates and the handlers, dressed identically in white polo shirts, khaki shorts, and running shoes, sprinted down the track to the grass by the first turn. And then, for the first time I heard the dogs, whining, barking, all their various impatient voices. “Here’s Rusty,” someone said, and somewhere a clattering bell, like an old fire alarm, shrilled. The sun caught a gleam off the little device on wheels that ran along the inside railing and suspended the bouncing white stuffed rabbit over the packed dirt. When the rabbit had just cleared the corner by the starting gates it tripped some wire and the gates lifted and the dogs were off, silently shooting out from their little gates like the professionals they were, eating up ground in giant gallops, those lean legs that were entirely muscle, the trim-hipped torsos, the tiny aerodynamic heads that contained just enough brain matter for survival and the knowledge to run. The human beings were the unruly ones, leaning forward with their tickets grasped in their fists, screaming numbers as if they were the names of drowning lovers. I followed the dog I’d bet on, Khartoum, Number 5, for about ten seconds, and then I lost him. “Shit!” my uncle yelled. “Watch that turn, just edge over, that’s right, beautiful.” As far as I could tell, his vision at that moment was about twenty-twenty. They ran around one and a half times and it was over.
Number 6, the robust tan I’d picked at the last moment but not bet on, won.
“Huh,” Uncle Richard said. He’d thrown his ticket to the ground in disgust the instant the dogs came in. “Well,” he said to me. “You were right. You should have changed your bet.”
My dog for the next race, Hotsplit, was scratched. “You could get your money back right now,” my uncle urged, poking me, but I didn’t want to bother. Again we watched the dogs parade by. “This time it’s Number One,” I said. Number 1 was jet black and although far from the largest had a confident step I liked.
“Okay, okay, you go put money on,” said Uncle Richard.
“Nope. I just want to watch.”
Number 1 came in an easy first. “Bad race,” my uncle muttered.
“Why was it bad?”
“Dirty. You see that first turn, that one big white dog, you see how he goes sideways like that, cheats all the others, not fair.”
“But dogs don’t know to cheat.”
“You think they can’t be trained?”
“Maybe.”
“I’m surprised the judge didn’t call. No, it was a cheat. But I tell you, Niece, you’re something. Two for two.”
Once Carey and I had gone to Saratoga Springs and I had won two hundred dollars on a long shot who looked good in the paddock. I don’t know how I did it. It’s like falling in love, your eye automatically picks out one in a crowd, you can’t explain why.
In the next race my uncle won seventy-two dollars. To cele
brate he bought another beer and a Coke and a sun hat with a visor for me. After that he began to lose steadily. I didn’t even bother to check my tickets. I hadn’t bet on a single winner, although I managed to call them all, four more in a row. I admit, it was some kind of a thrill.
“Jeez Louise, Niece,” Uncle Richard said. “Next time we place our bets right before post time. But you gotta pick second and third too. You practice, we can do superfectas.” My uncle’s face was distinctly gray in the sunlight and noticing this gave me a shock.
“Uncle Richard, maybe we better go home now.”
“One more race, Niece. You like this one, it’s that dog you met.”
So we watched, although I was distracted and didn’t even bother to pick a winner this time. I tried to focus on Shady Lady instead. She didn’t cut a very promising figure, slightly splay-legged, her head bowed down in a deferential manner. Beside her the competition looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger dogs. By the time the starting bell sounded the odds against her had climbed to twenty-seven to one. I was afraid to look, but when I did, she was right in the middle of the pack. At the first curve she slid into third place. I imagined I could see her ribs heaving under her colors, and I wondered what the hell was driving her on, didn’t she know how outclassed she was? As the leaders bounded toward us, it looked like the second-place dog was losing ground. Shady Lady had taken his place when they whipped past. The crowd was on its feet. Someone was screaming louder than anyone else, right in my ear, and I realized, later, that it was me.
She stayed a close second right to the finish. It cut me to the quick, I don’t know why. It wasn’t like I had a lot riding on it. My uncle put his hand on my shoulder. I had completely forgotten that he was there.
“She had the most heart, that’s for sure. Good race.” He coughed and reached up to unbutton the pocket of his shirt. “Hey, Niece, maybe you could help.” I reached in to his pocket and found the vial and unscrewed the top. My uncle opened his mouth and I tried not to breathe in the blast of his breath—cigarettes, beer, Chinese heart medicine, old-man decay—as I slipped the pill under his tongue.
The band was playing “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”
“So much excitement.” Uncle Richard’s color was still off but he was smiling. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to be casual. The gesture reminded me of Carey. “Next time we sit upstairs in the air-conditioned part. I take you to the infield because it’s your first time, you want to see the dogs close up.”
“I really think we should go home now.”
“What if I really have a heart attack? Can you drive fast to the hospital? How fast can you drive? Can you break speed limit?”
“Not funny. Remember the boy who cried wolf.”
“I don’t fake, Niece.” Uncle Richard put on his glasses and leaned forward in the plastic seat to scrutinize yet another batch of racers. “Who do you pick this time?”
“I don’t want to play anymore.”
“You with this power, you don’t want to use. Okay, okay. We go home now.” He got up, brushed off the seat of his pants. “How much money you lose?”
I told him.
“Not too bad. You are cautious, like a crab.”
“What about you?”
“I net about what you lose, so we just break even.”
“It was fun.”
“Yeah. More fun make money.”
“Better than losing.”
“You are funny, Niece. You expect to lose. No gambler’s spirit.”
We collected my uncle’s winnings at the window and went back to say good-bye to his friend, who was in a good mood because Shady Lady had performed so well. He let me give her a Milk-Bone and she licked my hand. She was just a normal dog, way too normal to be racing.
In the car I was already beginning to feel like an old hand, easing us around the lot to the arrowed exit. The little Toyota had its quirks, like the way it would slip out of gear between first and second, but I was learning to put that little extra pressure on the heel of my hand while pulling back. At the exit, as I waited for a window in the traffic I told myself, Watch it, Sally. You’re not totally yourself yet. Your reflexes aren’t up to snuff.
As if contradicting my thoughts, Uncle Richard said: “Good driver,” and I looked at him and saw that his eyes were beginning to blur over again. He manipulated his seat back, loosened the parrot tie. “Okay, back to the movie. What happens to the good couple?”
I made the turn out of the parking lot and we were on our way back to town. “Well, they get together, you know, and it’s obvious they’re having an affair and their spouses are furious, but they don’t care, they’re happy. They deserve each other. She cuts his toenails in bed.”
“What?”
“They meet in a hotel room and she loves him so much she says she wants to trim his toenails.”
“Boy-oh-boy.”
“What?”
“So French.” The traffic was getting sluggish, it was four o’clock already, the start of rush hour. “Could you turn up AC, Niece?”
I fumbled around the dashboard. “It’s already cranked up to high. Are you sure you’re okay? I’ll take you to the emergency room. Or we can stop somewhere and I can phone your doctor.”
“I tell you, Niece, I’m fine now. And don’t mention to your aunt, you hear me?”
“Uncle Richard, she’s worried about you.”
“Yeah, yeah, you just see, she die before me, she kill herself with worry.”
I flicked on the radio. Warmer tomorrow, less humidity, and then some news about a guy who had set his girlfriend on fire and stuffed her charred body into the trunk of his car. He was being arraigned on charges of first-degree murder. I turned the radio off and we drove in silence. I thought my uncle had fallen asleep when he suddenly said: “It’s funny, Niece, how you two, you and your sister, both turn out to be artistic type. Everyone always think one of you be a scientist, like your father.”
“I know.”
“You hear what they tried to do in PRC,” Uncle Richard continued. “Remember the Four Modernizations! Everyone in the country is gonna be scientist at the turn of the century. Or businessman.”
“Well, that’s kind of sad. What about the artists and intellectuals?”
“You know your ma-ma always say you’re made to be a surgeon. Because of your hands.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Whatever it was, we knew you were gonna be something special.” My uncle cleared his throat and then he said, “You want to know about your father. I tell you this: if his luck is better he’d be very famous. You should be proud of an ancestor like that. You should live up to inheritance.”
“Uncle Richard, I don’t even like science.”
“That’s not what I mean. You have good genes. Brilliance of your father, tough character of your mother. No reason in the world to waste.”
“Last chance,” I said. We were passing the hospital with the palm trees.
My uncle ignored me. “I waste my life. You see me? I end up in Florida, who knows where this is, live on pension and disability, gamble away my money. But you, you could do anything. What an education you have. What connection. All this American stuff.”
“Okay, okay.”
We drove in silence for a while and then Uncle Richard sighed. “You are a good girl. Your aunt always tells me this, what a good girl you are. No more old-uncle lectures.”
When we got back to the house I realized that there was no point in even trying out our movie story. We hadn’t fooled Aunty Mabel at all. “Ding-ah!” she said, and gave me, what was for her, a dirty look. She made him go to bed immediately. There was already a pot of medicine bubbling on the stove.
19
Dear Fran:
Yep, this is the year we hit twenty-eight, two years till the big three-oh. Thanks for the birthday card. Still vegging away in the sun but I am drawing a little. My uncle has to go for some tests, but they think he’s going to be okay. T
alk to you when I get back.
Love, Sally
While Aunty Mabel took Uncle Richard over to the hospital every day for a week, I ran what errands I could for her on foot: grocery shopping, bank, dry cleaning—kind of like I’d planned to do for Ma in New Haven before I got sicker. Suburban therapy. I trimmed the hedges in front of the house using giant power clippers borrowed from the pastel lady next door. Lally Escobar would have been proud. But my piece de resistance was the garage. I covered it with a fresh coat of Antique Blue and even did a little scallop design on the eaves in off-white.
Aunty Mabel was impressed. “Like professional!” She’d finally forgiven me for the greyhound expedition.
I contemplated quitting New York City and becoming a house painter. It wouldn’t be the worst of fates. I’d be a nice dumb girl with muscles.
Mornings, before the humidity got too mind-numbing, I went out into the backyard with my sketch pad, like I had on Woodside Drive as a teenager. Only now I was doing automatic drawing, something I’d learned way back at RISD and never appreciated until recently. A trick to plumb the depths, like stream-of-consciousness writing. I’d started keeping the pad on my nightstand in the hospital, and more mornings than not, as soon as I’d wake up I’d start to scribble. These drawings were completely abstract, full of floaty pieces and jagged, broken-off lines. I had no idea what they were about.
Later in the day I drew from life. The vegetation in Florida had a wildness to it, things would grow rampant the minute you turned your back.
In the house I drew my uncle asleep on the sofa under the violet and kelly green afghan, the black cat a ragged splotch at his feet, his wire-framed half glasses splayed on the teeming coffee table before him. I drew my aunt, a tall thin shadow with no features, standing out on the patio shading her eyes and gazing out onto the back lawn, which was already beginning to look unruly again.
One lazy afternoon after lunch I was out on the patio, having given up on the St. Pete Times and wondering what was up with Mel, since I hadn’t heard from him. My uncle’s tests were finally over and I could hear him in the house on the phone to his bookie while my aunt was out grocery shopping. A few minutes later the sliding doors scraped open.
Monkey King Page 19
