The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin'

by Lamb, Wally

  But if Rosalie’s remark was inappropriate for a girl in the finals of the Blessed Virgin sweepstakes, then Zhenya’s conduct out on the playground twenty minutes before Madame’s big announcement that day was every bit as un-Marylike. Designated one of the day’s baseball captains, I was making my picks when, unexpectedly, Father Hanrahan appeared on the opposite side of the playground where the hoop was, dribbling a basketball and wondering real loud who wanted to play some Twenty-One? “Me!” all us boys shouted, throwing down our gloves and running toward him. Father Hanrahan was the only cool person at St. Aloysius—he even let you call him Father Jerry if you felt like it—and his appearance on the playground was almost like having Bill Russell or John Havlicek show up. But though Zhenya loved both “bezbull” and “dujbull,” she was indifferent to, and had no aptitude for, “bezgetbull.” Separating herself from the rest of us, she glanced over at the jump-roping girls and then walked by herself to the fence. Lonny, older and taller than the rest of us, was the best basketball player in our class. “Hey!” I called to him as he walked toward Zhenya. “Aint you playing?”

  “Nah.”

  A minute later, he had his arm around her. Two minutes after that, they were kissing, regular or French I couldn’t see.

  Jump ropes fell to the pavement and the girls clustered en masse, looking over toward the fence. Oblivious, Father Jerry and half of the boys were still playing Twenty-One, but the other half of us were staring in disbelief at Lonny and Zhenya, same as the girls. This was the most shocking thing our class had witnessed since Zhenya’s socking of Sister Mary Agrippina. Glancing back at the building for a second, I saw that Sister Cecilia’s third graders were crowded at their classroom windows, watching the show as well. I figured Sister Cecilia was probably out in the hall talking to Sister Godberta as usual. But if those two second-floor nuns were unaware of the passion on display, Mother Filomina was not. Her first-floor office window flew open with a bang, and she shook the bell harder than Ma shakes the thermometer before she sticks it in under my tongue when I’m sick. “Evgeniya Kabakova and the rest of the fifth grade girls should proceed immediately to the fire escape on the side of the building for an emergency class meeting with Sister Fabian!” she shouted. “Lonny Flood should come to the office, and any boy not playing basketball with Father should run laps around the school building. Now!”

  When the recess bell rang, panting and sweaty from all those laps, I trudged up the stairs beside Zhenya, who looked both teary-eyed and defiant. “What was the emergency meeting about?” I whispered, as if I didn’t already know. Instead of answering my question, Zhenya asked under her breath what those “guddamned pinguins” knew about “keesing boyzes.” But at the drinking fountain, Susan Ekizian filled me in on the gist of the fire escape confab. Addressing all the fifth grade girls, but mostly looking and shaking her finger at Zhenya, Mother Fil had assured them that young ladies who kept themselves pure for their future husbands ran a better-than-even chance of meeting those husbands in the confession line, and that God would reward them with happy marriages and beautiful children. She likewise had warned that any girl who made herself “the occasion of sin for a boy” just might be purchasing a one-way ticket to Hell. The meeting had closed with a recitation of the Catholic Legion of Decency pledge to embrace virtue and to resist lustful behavior and condemned movies.

  Back in class, Madame was missing and the girls were abuzz about how Rosalie, beyond a doubt, now had a lock on the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in our tableaux vivants. What were they doing with Lonny, I wondered. Torturing him? Making him sit across from Monsignor Muldoon and read that Saint Aloysius Gonzaga booklet? Not out loud, I hoped—Lonny wasn’t too hot at reading aloud. But when I got up to sharpen my pencil, I saw Lonny back outside again with Father Hanrahan. Father was doing most of the talking, and Lonny’s head kept going up and down in agreement with whatever he was saying. Plus, they kept bounce-passing the basketball between them. Then Father stopped talking and they began playing one on one.

  Madame returned, smelling like cigarettes and freshly applied lily-of-the-valley perfume. I had assumed she would simply announce her tableaux vivants decisions, but she’d prepared in advance while we were at recess. The world map had been pulled down and, with a bit of dramatic flair, Madame approached it and gave it a yank. “Voilà!” she said. Our tableaux assignments were revealed on the blackboard beneath.

  Most of Madame’s decisions were shockers, with two exceptions. I had been cast as the Little Drummer Boy in the nativity scene and Marion Pemberton, the only colored kid in our class, was to be the only colored Wise Man. But Franz Duzio, with his eight million detentions, as the Angel Gabriel? Lonny Flood as Joseph? Most shocking of all, neither Rosalie Twerski nor Zhenya Kabakova would be the Blessed Virgin Mary; both had been assigned the roles of lowly shepherdesses. Casting against type, Madame had chosen shy, chubby, cat’s-eye-glasses-wearing Pauline Papelbon to play the Virgin. “Sister Mary Potato Chips,” some of the mean girls in our class had dubbed Pauline because of her fondness for Ripples, Cheetos, Fritos, and Flings. I turned from the board to my fellow classmates. Zhenya looked indifferent. Rosalie looked outraged. Pauline Papelbon snuck something from her desk and put it in her mouth. I thought I glimpsed the trace of a smile.

  Whereas my mother’s humiliation had been televised nationally, Ranger Andy was only a local program. Still, part of my excitement about my TV appearance that afternoon was rooted in my desire to vindicate Ma. I would erase the memory of her Pillsbury Bake-Off disaster with my own televised triumph. Kids who were guests at the Ranger Station sat together in three rows of bleacher seats, but Ranger Andy frequently needed helpers. If, say, a magician was a featured guest, a kid with quick hand-raising reflexes might be chosen to step to the front of the room and become a magician’s assistant. A zoologist from the science museum might need a kid to come on up, pet the snake coiled around his arm, and verify that its skin was smooth and cool to the touch, not rough and scaly. And, of course, whatever the needs of that day’s featured guest, there was the daily need for a volunteer to carry the Ranger Station’s mail pouch up to the front so that Ranger Andy could pull out a letter or two and answer questions that kids had written in to ask.

  I was the only St. Aloysius Gonzaga student in my Junior Midshipmen corps. (To join, you had to have a father who’d been in the U.S. Navy like Pop, or the Coast Guard or the Sea Bees.) The other kids in our company—the two Michael M’s (Morosky and Morrison), Howie Slosberg, Peter Goldberg, Denny Dermody, Marty Andreadis, Terrence Evashevski, and Danny Baldino—all went to public school. (Or, as Lonny called it, “pubic” school.)

  Poor Danny. On the ride up to Hartford, he got bus-sick and puked all over his uniform, and everyone else was holding their nose and saying they were gonna puke, too, from smelling it and looking at it. Mr. Dean and Mr. Agnello had to have the bus driver stop at a gas station so’s they could go in the bathroom and help Danny clean up or else he couldn’t be on the show. And while they were in there, the rest of us started singing, “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” We were on either eighty-nine or eighty-eight bottles of beer when the bus driver turned psycho. He got up and yelled at us to all shut up or else he was gonna turn the bus around and take us home without ever going on Ranger Andy. So everyone shut up and looked down at our shoes. And by the time Mr. Agnello and Mr. Dean got back on the bus with Danny—the front of his uniform was soaked from getting the puke off—the bus driver wasn’t acting psycho anymore. He shifted into gear and continued on to Hartford.

  Hartford was big and it had tall buildings and traffic jams. Getting to the studio, the bus was moving like two inches an hour, but we still got there in time and the driver pulled open the door and all of us got out. The TV station was in this big glass building that had about four billion different floors. All of us squeezed into an elevator that had an elevator guy in a red uniform who had this skinny little mustache, and while he was taking us up to our floor, he was
whistling. And you could still sorta smell Danny Baldino’s uniform even though it had gotten cleaned off. I could, anyways, cause I was squashed in right next to him. And the front of his uniform was still kinda wet, even though, on the bus, Mr. Agnello had pulled open the window where Danny was sitting so’s it could get some fresh air and dry out, and Danny’s teeth had chattered and his lips had turned kinda blue because it was pretty cold out—cold enough for everyone except Danny to be wearing our Junior Midshipmen pea coats.

  Inside the studio, this director guy had us practice walking in and sitting down when, later, we heard Ranger Andy say, “Who’s that coming down the trail?” and he told us about how, when we said our names, a microphone was going to move over our heads but that we should look straight ahead at Ranger Andy and not up at the microphone because people watching us on TV wouldn’t see the microphone and would go, “Why are those kids all looking up?” There were two other groups who were gonna be on the show with us, a Girl Scout troop, plus some kids from some Hebrew school. We all sat down on the bleachers (us Junior Midshipmen were in the back row), and the lights were so bright that they almost made you blind, and so hot that I was boiling to death in my uniform. On TV the Ranger Station looked like a log cabin, but in person it was real fake and made out of cardboard, not real wood, and even Ranger Andy’s desk wasn’t wood, it was whatchamacallit—particleboard, that Pop says is real cheap-o.

  When Ranger Andy came out, he was pretty nice but older than he looked on TV and kinda wrinkly. And he had makeup on. Rouge, over what Ma called “five o’clock shadows.” And these kinda yellowy teeth. He told us that when the show started, we had to be real quiet and pay attention because it was “live,” and if we talked out of turn, it would make the show stink. (He didn’t say “stink,” but that’s what he meant.) When he asked who wanted to bring the mail bag up during the show, both me and Michael Morosky were the first ones to raise our hands, and Ranger Andy looked right at me and I thought he was gonna pick me, but then he picked Michael instead.

  Besides us and the other two groups of kids, Ranger Andy’s guest was this guy and his pet raccoon that he’d tamed, and the raccoon’s name was Felix. Which all the other Junior Midshipmen thought was funny, but I didn’t.

  Then the director guy went, “Three, two, one…and we’re on!”

  First, Ranger Andy played his banjo and sang the Ranger Station song, which I knew the words to, on account of I get to watch Ranger Andy if my sisters aren’t home from high school yet, except when they are home, it’s two against one, so they get to watch their boring show, Bandstand, and dance with each other. (When they slow-dance, Simone’s always the girl and Frances is always the boy and gets to lead.) But anyways, this is how the Ranger Station song goes. It goes:

  My name is Ranger Andy and I’ve traveled all around

  And I will tell you many things about the things I’ve found

  I’ll sing about the mysteries of animals galore

  And hope to show you many things you’ve never seen before

  Come along, sing a song, da da da da da da da da

  (I forgot that part.)

  After Ranger Andy sang the Ranger Station song, he said, “Who’s that coming down the trail?” so we all walked in and sat down, and then that microphone moved over our heads and we all said our names, except most kids forgot that they weren’t supposed to look up, but I didn’t. I looked right at Ranger Andy like they said to do, and Ranger Andy was probably going to himself, Jeeze, I should have picked that kid to bring up the mail bag cause he really pays attention.

  They showed this movie where beavers were building a beaver dam, and a Farmer Alfalfa cartoon where the mice shoot off a cannon and it makes the cat go bald. Then the guy with the raccoon came out. He asked who wanted to feed Felix and all the other Junior Midshipmen looked at me and kinda laughed. One of the Girl Scouts got picked. And guess what she got to feed Felix? This empty ice cream cone with no ice cream in it, and he sat up on his hind legs and held the cone between his paws and ate like crunch, crunch, crunch. It was pretty funny. Then Michael brought the mail bag up and Ranger Andy opened some of the letters from kids and answered their questions like what was his favorite river and did Old Faithful ever not erupt when it was supposed to? Then Mr. Agnello told Ranger Andy some stuff about what Junior Midshipmen was, and the Girl Scout lady said stuff about the Girl Scouts, and this guy, Rabbi somebody, who was wearing one of those little beanies like “Cowboy” Zupnik down at the lunch counter wears, talked about what kids learn in Hebrew school. And during a commercial, the director guy told Ranger Andy that they were running ahead of schedule and he should stretch it because they had two extra minutes to kill. So after the commercial, Ranger Andy asked did anyone have any jokes they wanted to tell?

  Danny Baldino (whose uniform was dry by then) told an elephant joke that was like: How can you tell when an elephant’s been in your refrigerator? I don’t know. How? Because you can see his footprints in the butter.

  And this Hebrew school kid went, “Why is it impossible to starve in the desert?” And Ranger Andy said he didn’t know. Why? And the kid went, “Because of all the sand which is there.” Ranger Andy said that was a good one.

  Then he looked over at the director and the director made this stretching move with his hands like that guy who makes salt water taffy down at Ocean Beach. So Ranger Andy said, “Looks like we have time for one more. Anyone else have a joke?” And I was the only one who raised my hand, so he picked me.

  “How is a lady like a stove?” I asked.

  “Hmm, you got me,” Ranger Andy said. “How?”

  When I said the answer, nobody laughed and one of the kids in the Hebrew school row went, “Whoa!” Ranger Andy looked for a couple of seconds like he forgot where he was. Then he looked over at the director and the director was doing this thing where it looked like he was karate-chopping himself in the throat. Then all those hot lights went off.

  On the bus ride back, nobody said much and nobody wanted to sit next to me, except Mr. Dean sat with me for a few minutes and I was like, “How was I supposed to know it was a dirty joke?” and trying not to cry. And that night, Mr. Agnello and Ma talked for a real long time on the phone, and Ma kept saying how I certainly didn’t hear a joke like that at our house because no one in our family ever talked like that.

  The next day at school wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Madame didn’t say anything, and neither did any of the nuns. I’d been kinda worried that they were going to make me have another talk with Monsignor Muldoon, but I was also kinda hoping that Father Jerry might take me out on the playground to have the talk and maybe him and me would shoot some baskets. But neither of those things happened. None of the kids in my class said anything snotty about what I’d said on TV, not even Rosalie. I thought it was because her and everyone else was still so hepped up about the tableaux vivants, but then later on Oscar Landry told me it was because, when Madame made me bring that note down to the office first thing in the morning, she warned everyone that if anyone made fun of me about what had happened, she was giving them not just one check-minus but two. The only kid who said anything mean was this dumbo sixth grader who, out on the playground, came up to me and said, didn’t I think meatloaf was so-oooo delicious? But that was it. Oh, and Lonny? He said he thought that, because of me, it was the best Ranger Andy show he’d ever seen, and that for once it wasn’t boring.

  And this was weird: after school? After I got home? I put Ranger Andy on, except they made this announcement that, due to something-something circumstances, the Ranger Station was closed until further notice. And instead, they showed this real old program called Boston Blackie. Boston Blackie was this detective guy who had a real skinny mustache like that elevator operator at the TV station up in Hartford, and he looked like him, too, so it might have even been the same guy, but maybe not. I’m not sure.

  6

  Drama

  Madame’s decision not to cast Rosalie as the Bl
essed Virgin in our tableau carried repercussions, as I discovered the afternoon Madame made me stay after school for making cross-eyes at Arthur Coté to try and make him laugh instead of doing my silent reading. I was on the last six or seven of my hundred sentences she was making me write—I shall not distract my neighbors—when the four of them appeared at the back door of Madame’s classroom: Rosalie, her parents, and Mother Filomina. “Bonjour, bonjour,” Madame called back to them. “Thank you for coming.” She slipped her feet back into her leopard-spotted high heels, adjusted the angle of her red beret, and swallowed noticeably. Then she rose and walked back to join the lynching party—hers.

  I couldn’t hear everything that was being said, just bits and pieces—the kind of information you picked up by eavesdropping in the confession line.

  Mother Filomina: “I think we can all appreciate that Mrs. Frechette is newly arrived and might not necessarily…”

  Mrs. Twerski: “…is, I’m sure, a lovely young lady, but from what I’ve heard—and I hope I’m not telling tales out of school—her overeating most likely stems from the fact that her mother is very unstable emotionally.”

  Rosalie: “I just feel that the smartest kid and the hardest worker in our whole class should get to…”

  Mr. Twerski: “And as usual, Twerski Impressions will be printing the program free of charge, with a three-color cover this year. And we’re…”