by Lou Cove
“I need your help eating all of this…” Howie tells Grandma Wini, standing to grab her little body and hug her in a gentle restraint before she can fetch yet more nosh. “And I need your endorsement. I’m like Jimmy Carter going to the editorial board of The New York Times.”
“Oh, so I’m the Gray Lady now? Is that it?” Grandma Wini wriggles free from his embrace and heads reflexively back to the refrigerator.
“Come on now,” Howie coos. “You’re the platinum princess as far as I’m concerned. And your stamp of approval means everything. Can’t you see that? It will give the mothers of America license to join the fight. They’re afraid of letting their hair down, but you can change all that.”
“How about some chicken?” She says, staying the course while unwrapping a blanket of crinkled foil from a blue glass plate to reveal a pile of ashen, gelatinous leftover meat and bones.
“Have you seen this pupik?” Howie lifts his shirt, flashing my grandmother his flat, still-tan belly.
“Oh, it’s marvelous,” Grandma Wini says. “You know how I feel about you, Howie.”
“Then have mercy and give it a rest … and help me make it famous.” He takes a knee, braids his fingers imploringly. I can’t help but laugh at Howie, in prayerful worship at the foot of Grandma Wini, who is holding yet another plate, this one filled with pickles and herring.
“Howie! Get up, silly! This is ridiculous. Really. You’ll do just fine without me.”
“OK, I didn’t want to resort to this…” Howie says ominously. “Lou, go on. Show her.”
I try hopelessly to slide the food out of the way and make room. Reaching into my newspaper bag, I feel for the slick glossies, draw them out carefully, and lay them side by side on the table.
“Grandma Wini,” Howie says softly. “Please. Just look at these before you make your final decision.”
Back turned, still rummaging for something else to offer from the bottomless belly of her fridge, Grandma Wini calls over her shoulder: “I’ve seen the pictures, darling. And it’s wonderful for you. But I don’t need to see your altogether all over again. Once was enough.”
“That’s not what this is. One look. It’s all I ask.”
She emerges from the fridge with a green Jell-O mold, pregnant with canned mandarin orange slices. Sighing, she finally lowers herself onto the white vinyl cushion of the kitchen chair beside me. It exhales a familiar, satisfied whisper as she sinks into its softness.
“Oh, fine, let me see what you’ve got up your … Oh, the punim! That face. That plump little boychik! Howie? This is you?”
“Mmm-hmm.” He nods, sporting just a half pout. No need to overplay it.
“Well, you look just like Peter did when he was that age. A soft kneydlekh! A little ball of deliciousness. I had no idea.”
“He worked hard to get into shape,” I chime in, finally. “He didn’t always look like this.” I point to Howie, still amazed and believing every word. “We have to help him win, Grandma. He deserves it.”
“I look at these,” she whispers dreamily, “and all I can think about is what your polkes must have felt like. Chubby bundles of … ooohhhh … I bet you were the most scrumptious little baby alive.” She turns to Howie, caresses his cheek, pinches lightly at the end.
“I’m still the same inside,” Howie says softly. “I just look different now. But if I win this, it could change everything. It could make me into a star. Modeling. TV. Movies. Anything will be possible.”
“Well,” Grandma Wini shrugs, “I don’t see how I could possibly help you with this. What difference does a little old lady from Marblehead make, anyway?”
“Lou? How much difference does Grandma Wini make?”
“All the difference in the world,” I answer instantly. Truthfully.
She looks thoughtfully from me to Howie and back again, a shy smile emerging in spite of herself. “Who could resist two beautiful boys?” she asks, grinning. “Tell me what I have to do.”
The Crowd Melts in a Thousand “OY!”s
Grandma Wini’s a reader, not a card player. But she likes her ladies so she begrudgingly attends the weekly gathering. Everyone’s dressed up and the room is a riot of horizontal stripes, wide collar blouses, high-waisted polyester pants, and bleached bouffants.
When we enter, Howie and I are assaulted with offers of powdery mints, supermarket cakes, and big glasses of milk. We’re directed to our seats at the end of the room while the ladies assemble on an orange velour couch and scattered rope chairs. The chatting and gossiping commences, each seeming to feign surprise, shock, or delight. But the moment Howie instructs me to fire up the projector and flash the black-and-white fat boy photos, everything changes. Pearl, Belle, Shirley, and Zella melt spontaneously into a collective grandmother’s ooze, helpless against the lure of a plump little boy and his innocent smile. “It’s frickin’ Pavlovian,” Howie observes in a whisper.
The idea of helping a California hippie with no tan line and a bulging shlong is a nonstarter for the little old ladies of Marblehead. They’re not so rigid as to reject him out of hand, they simply can’t wrap their heads around how, in the social circles they run in, they can justify even speaking about his campaign. But the picture of that dressed-up little fat boy, tie tight to his neckless chin, hair parted painstakingly so? It’s too much for them to bear. They can’t not help him.
“I don’t believe it,” the ladies say. “That can’t be you!”
And Howie tells his story. Not about getting his picture taken in a fancy studio with Jacqueline Smith’s photographer and dog, or having the women on set help him pop a boner. No, the one about a fat little boy who makes good: a story they can all relate to. One they had wished for their own children but didn’t come true.
Howie points to the black-and-white school photo of himself. “They didn’t call kids like me ‘fat’ back then. They called us ‘husky.’ Wonderful euphemism. I’m thirteen here.”
And the crowd melts in a thousand “Oy!”s.
“Wini! Where did you find him?”
“He just fell into our lives. Isn’t he delicious?”
“Around the age of seventeen, after a poor showing on the college boards and not much success at … boyfriend-girlfriend activities…” Titter titter. “… it was time to do something serious about it. It’s not easy to connect with girls when you’re carrying around all that blubber and you have the largest cup size in the seventh grade. I had to change.”
“He’s so funny! But it’s not funny, it’s sad. Just imagine. My Earl was like that. Amy Finkelstein broke his little heart.”
“So I stayed home from school for two months during my junior year. I lifted weights and ate nothing but lettuce and meat and studied for college boards. And in two months’ time I dropped from heavyweight to welterweight.”
“See? A little discipline.”
“What? You want Eugene dropping out of school just to lose weight?”
“I went back to school confident, in charge. I took the college boards again and raised my scores a hundred points. I got elected class president.”
“I’m pulling Eugene out tomorrow. What’s a couple of months?”
“And having this body was like having a new toy.”
“And what a toy.”
“Ethel!”
“The first half my life I was Quasimodo. I wanted the next half to be Clark Gable. And let me be clear, ladies: I want to be healthy and handsome, yes, but I don’t take it too far. When the frog turns prince, he still knows he’s the exact same person inside. That’s when you realize how silly it is, what people reward you for. This?” He points to a photo of his washboard. “It’s so superficial,” he says softly, dropping his gaze and pausing for effect.
“And values! He has his heart in the right place. After all that getting naked. It’s a mekhaye. A mekhaye.”
“But it sure feels good when the ladies want to take a second look!”
The ladies erupt in laughter and questions.
“Howie! Howie! What kind of diet are you on? Wait! Let me get a pen.”
He smiles, circulating among his new fans. “It’s not a diet you just jump on. You want to get it off and keep it off. So you need to live a diet. I eat one meal a day.”
“That’s not healthy. Look at him. He looks famished.”
“Oh, shush. He’s a doll.”
“And since these days I make a living off my body I keep that one meal real lean. I eat a lot, but I eat foods that don’t make me fat. Vegetables and meats. Brussels sprouts and chicken. No skin.” My back to the audience, I make a barfing face at him but he ignores me, his gaze moving skyward, appealing to the heavens. “Oh, but I do look forward to a time when I can let my natural pig emerge and just turn into Orson Welles.”
“That’ll be the day!”
My presence at these events provokes a predictable reaction. The well-meaning ladies look aghast when I join Howie at the center of the circle to discuss our campaign for Playgirl Man of the Year. They try to shuttle me away, into their arms, covering my ears or eyes with their warm, wrinkly hands, holding me tight against their soft chests. It’s like being taken into the bosom of a thousand Grandma Winis. And while none of them could ever come close to the love super nova she showers onto me, I allow myself to fall fully into the fine galaxy of their affection.
“He’s a big boy,” Howie assures the ladies of Marblehead. “And I promise that all the adult images are for your eyes only, and only for those who wish to see them. This is a G-rated presentation and my campaign manager is privy only to those photographs and materials that fall under that strict rating.”
“Isn’t that lying?” I whisper.
“Selective omission.”
“Lying?”
“Prestidigitation.”
“Lying.”
“Don’t be a buzzkill.” Then, to his audience: “Who here has a grandson with a punim you can’t help but squeeze?”
Out of the Closet
Howie and I have not just hit on a path to victory, but the jackpot for being smothered in love gravy. It’s a bonanza of affection that satisfies so many needs. But the warm glow of any success proves challenging to sustain in the midst of a Salem winter. The bricks freeze, the streets empty, and the natives get restless.
And so does Amanda. Feeling left out of the adventure Howie and I are on, she voices her dissatisfaction and Howie promptly offers to take her on a date. He wears a sports jacket similar, but frumpier, to the corduroy job he wore in the Mr. November spread, and dons a pink tie, to the amazement of all. “A bit of dining at the York Steak House for the lady?” he asks in his best Clouseau, pinning a corsage to her red gingham dress. “Followed by a little Revenge of the Pink Panther?”
“Mama!” Amanda squeals. “A corsage! A corsage!”
My sister’s joy can’t be contained.
*
The next morning Carly tells us an odd story of how she and Howie put Amanda to bed after the movie and then Amanda sleepwalked into their room in the middle of the night. They called to her but she ignored them and proceeded to step into a big bag behind the bathroom door filled with toilet paper rolls.
“It looked like she was in a sack race,” Howie chuckles.
“It looked like she wanted to pack up and live with us,” Carly gives her own impression. “Poor little pooh seemed so lonely.”
Atjeh and I retreat to my room after breakfast, reading comics and Hustlers on the bunk. The door swings open without a knock and Gretchen appears, shaking a Howie flier at me from down below.
“My sistah found this in the guhls’ room at the high school yestahday,” says Gretchen, her voice like foil on fillings.
“What are you doing in my room?” I groan. Atjeh, who I’d pulled up the slatted ladder to laze alongside me, raises her eyebrows sleepily at the sound of Gretchen’s voice. She makes a jealous Her again? teeth gnash, smacks her lips, and drops back to sleep.
Gretchen climbs the ladder, jamming herself between me and my dog. I let Howie’s Hustler slip down the back side of the bunk between the bed and the wall, safely out of sight.
“How come you didn’t ask me to bring it ovah there? You know my sistah goes to the high school.”
“I don’t know. It was some girl from Dunkin’ Donuts. I didn’t do it.” I feel defensive, and annoyed.
“Who? Mahcy? Was it Mahcy Dubriel?”
“I don’t know her name. She does gymnastics.”
“That’s Mahcy. She’s a wicked bitch. I can’t believe yuh gave these to huh!”
What is it about me? I’m like a magnet for the weirdos—mutant girls, outcasts, bullies.
“She seems nice to me.” Nicer than you, I want to say. It’s a miracle Howie likes me at all, now that I think about it. The one person in this town I genuinely want to be around who feels the same way.
“Whatevah,” Gretchen repeats, then starts to explore my room. She leans over the edge of the crate to look at Bunny Yabba. “There’s no rabbit in here. Just his dookies.”
OK, two people. Grandma Wini never equivocates—the unambiguous maharani of love.
“Good-bye…” I nudge from the top bunk, staring at the ceiling.
“What’s in this closet?”
I pop up. A shriek of adrenaline stabs me in the throat. She fingers the latch. “Stay outta there!” I shout as the door flings open.
“Oh my gahd. There’s a frickin’ million paypahs in here. Didn’tcha delivah these? What the hell?” She laughs, kneels down to rifle through the little landslide that’s spreading across the shiny green paint of the floorboards. “And Hustlahs? Lookit all these dirty mags!”
I flip over the side of the bunk, scraping my stomach on the wooden lip as I slide down. Atjeh leaps after me, spinning on her paws before banging into Bunny Yabba’s crate. I try to slam the door to the closet shut but it’s blocked by the surge of yellowing North Shore Sundays. Papa can’t know. Atjeh starts digging at the pile as if a wharf rat just disappeared down a hole in the floor. She shreds dozens of papers as she burrows, destroying the collector’s edition scratch ’n’ sniff issue of Hustler—“WARNING: to be smelled in the privacy of your home”—before I can tackle her. Not anymore.
Gretchen starts laughing again, that Salem townie laugh that betrays an accent, even though there are no r’s or aw’s to soften it. That chortling version of fahkin’ A versus fucking A, yuh muthah versus your mother. Atjeh must smell my shame over the scratch ’n’ sniff because she turns from the tattered ribbons of newspaper and hops to her hind legs, black nostrils flaring, white eyes reddening with fury, and slams her front paws right into Gretchen’s little boobs, pointed teeth clacking shut with a spray of tongue lather, a hairsbreadth from Gretchen’s stunned face. The girl falls backward, wailing: “Get yuh dahg offa me! She’s gunna kill me! She’s gunna kill me!”
I grab Atjeh by the collar and fling her aside, watch her spin across the floor.
I turn back to Gretchen but she’s out of the room and down the hall, shrieking at the top of her lungs: “That dahg tried to kill me! I’m tellin’ my fahthah! I’m tellin’ my fahthah!”
I trail her down the stairs, through the second-floor hall, and around the bannister to the second set of stairs, which empty at the door to the living room. Carly is leading her first women’s group, and Mama is sitting on the stairs just outside, within earshot but not participating, reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
“Shush!” Mama hisses. “What the hell is going on? Gretchen? What are you … What’s wrong honey?”
“His stupid dahg…” Her normally alabaster cheeks are splotched red. She can’t catch her breath. “My face … bit … my sweatah…”
“That’s it,” Mama says, menacingly. “That dog is out of here this weekend.”
“What? No! It’s not her fault. She didn’t bite her … she was … defending me. She thought Gretchen was going to…”
“Was going to what? Gretchen? Little Gretchen? What was Gretchen going to do
to you?” She points at the frantic girl who is pulling on her down vest and heading for the foyer. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“He nevah delivahd his paypahs,” Gretchen shouts, standing before the open front door and pointing at me. “Look in his clahset. Theahs a million paypahs in theah. And pahno magazines! I’m tellin’ my fahthah that. And he can get yah fieahd from the Naht Shah Sunday and get tha dahg catcha’ to come and put that stupid mutt ta sleep. That’s what he’s gunna do!” She screams this last part at the top of her lungs. Her voice cracks in a way that makes me laugh out loud. Mama whips around and glares at me. Gretchen, hair flying in all directions with the wind, screams again, even louder, as impossible as that seems: “I FAHKIN’ HATE YOU, YOU LOOZAH!!!” And with that, turns and runs down the front steps without closing the door behind her.
“Jesus Christ,” Mama says, palms out toward me, begging for an explanation. “Are there papers in your room? Papers you never delivered?”
“A few,” I lie to the defunct iron heating grate at my feet.
“I want you to go upstairs,” Mama says softly, moving to close the door against the wind, “and get Atjeh and get those papers and go bring them to the houses that are still waiting for them.”
“Mom! They’re old. And it’s Thursday! Come on!”
“Deliver every last one of them, and then take that dog and tie her up in the backyard.”
“I’ll keep her in my room. I’ll bring her food up…”
“In. The back. Yard.” She grabs me by the ear and drags me to the stairs.
“I’ve never had an orgasm…” A woman’s voice trails from the living room. “I mean, not with Bruce.”
“Go!” Mama whisper-yells.
“I come all the time, but only when I’m watching the soaps.” A chorus of women’s laughter erupts from just beyond the doorway.
“Ugh!” Mama pushes me to the stairs. “And don’t come back until they’re all where they belong.”
