Armstrong and Charlie

by Steven B. Frank

  “Stopping to smell the lilies.”

  “They’re not real.”

  “Look real to me.”

  He sniffs again. A voice calls to us from a corner of the room.

  “Do you like it?”

  It’s Mom. She’s usually still in her bathrobe when I get home. But today she’s in powder-blue jeans and an embroidered work shirt. It’s a no-bandanna day too, which means she washed her hair.

  “I do. But I’m a little worried about it.”

  “Why?” Mom raises an eyebrow.

  “Because I’m allergic to flowers. Those yellow tubes with the pollen on ’em might make me sneeze.”

  Mom smiles and waves him off. “Oh, go on.”

  Then I say, “Mom, this is Armstrong. Armstrong, this is my mom.”

  He steps toward her and puts out his hand. She puts out hers and they shake. Her hand looks small inside his.

  “Those your initials in the corner, Mrs. Ross?”

  “They are.”

  “What else do you paint?”

  “Not much. Not in a long time, anyway.”

  “Well, you should start again. If I had a talent like that, I’d paint every day.”

  Mom looks at Armstrong, and then she shrugs. Like it’s a good idea. Like maybe tomorrow. Or another day ahead.

  “Are you going to take Armstrong upstairs, Charlie?”

  I wish she hadn’t said that.

  We go up, and Armstrong stops to look at our wall of family pictures. The higher up you look, the further back in time you go—​all the way to my great-grandparents on both sides. Near the ceiling is a photo of my great-grandfather sitting on a bench in a Russian village. He has a long white beard and wears a long white robe.

  “That your great-granddaddy?”

  “Zayde Moishe, they called him.”

  “Zay-dah who?”

  “It’s Yiddish. Zayde for grandpa. Moishe for Moses.”

  “Damn, he’s short. Legs don’t even touch the ground. But his beard does.”

  “He was a rabbi,” I say. “Had seven daughters.”

  “Seven! And look at him now, sitting on the top of the wall.”

  Armstrong’s eyes move slowly down the pictures. “That must be your daddy in a sailor suit.” Near the bottom he finds me when I was just five. “And look, they put you in one to match.”

  He looks back and forth between my young dad and me.

  “You look a lot like him, Ross.”

  Then he spots the picture of me and Andy when we were seven and eight. He looks at Andy with his gold-rimmed glasses, long hair, and freckles. He looks at a picture of my mom.

  “Your brother, he looks a lot like your mom.”

  Armstrong’s head turns toward the end of the hall, where a sign on a closed door says BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY.

  “His bedroom?”

  I nod.

  “You don’t have to show me if you don’t want to.”

  All of a sudden it feels okay to go in. Like I want to, almost. Or Andy wants me to. Not just me, either. Me and Armstrong.

  I open the door.

  “What’s that smell?” Armstrong asks.

  “Andy had a darkroom.”

  I walk over to the closet and pull open the door. The scent of developer and stop bath hits us in our throats. Armstrong leans back, then leans in for a closer look. The enlarger, trays, and supplies are all still there.

  “What kind of pictures did he make?”

  “Those,” I say, pointing back into the room.

  We look at the wall over Andy’s bed. It’s filled with eight-by-tens of seagulls frozen in black and white. When he first got his camera, Andy was crazy for those birds. He’d ask Mom to drive him out to the Santa Monica Pier, where he’d shoot them swooping down on the beach. Later he wondered what it was like to be one, so he started taking pictures from places up high. On countertops. Up on the fire road. In our Thinking Tree.

  I’m lost in all these pictures, all these birds, when I hear Armstrong say, “This the camera he used?”

  He’s found Andy’s camera bag and pulled out the Minolta SR-101 that Mom bought him for his eleventh birthday. That’s no kid’s camera, she told him. A real thirty-five-millimeter single-lens reflex.

  Armstrong looks through the viewfinder at me, then pans around the room. He stops at the wall of pictures. Like he’s going to take a picture of a picture.

  “Um, Armstrong,” I say.

  He guesses why. “I wasn’t going to shoot one. Just looking through.”

  He glances at the frame counter on top of the camera. “What’s the eleven for?”

  “It must still have film in it. The eleven means he shot ten pictures.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Armstrong starts to put the camera back into the bag but sees a sheet of paper at the bottom. He unfolds it, and together we look at a ditto from Mrs. Valentine’s class.

  6th Grade Final Art Project: A Few of Your Favorite Things. Make a collage of your ten favorite things, from drawings you make, photos you take, or images you cut from a magazine. Give each a caption. Arrange them on a poster board. Due date: June 3, 1974.

  “You think that’s what’s on this roll? His favorite things?”

  “Could be.”

  “You should develop it, Ross.”

  “My mom will when she’s ready,” I say, putting the handout back into the bag and zipping it shut.

  “Listen,” Armstrong says, “about that time you told me he died.”

  “What about it?”

  “I wasn’t really paying attention. I was just thinking about me.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. It was wrong. And the thing is, I’m sorry for it.”

  We look at each other for a minute. It’s so quiet we can hear Andy’s clock radio click from one minute to the next.

  What do you say to someone who never apologizes when they finally do?

  “Ever see a naked lady swimming in a pool?”

  “Well, you know, Ross, the mind is a powerful place. That’s where I have seen such a sight. And in the occasional magazine.”

  “How would you like to see one for real?”

  “For real real?”

  “My across-the-street neighbor is a movie producer. His house has a big wall in back. Behind that wall there’s a pool. And every Friday afternoon at four, girls go skinny-dipping there.”

  Armstrong stares me down like he thinks I’m lying. Then he looks at his watch.

  In the 7.1 San Fernando Earthquake four years ago, we got lucky. There was hardly any damage to our house. But there was some to our neighbor’s wall.

  Andy found the crack—and waited a whole year before showing it to me.

  “Why didn’t you show me sooner?” I asked him.

  “You were too young for what’s on the other side of that wall.”

  “And now?”

  “Now you’re eleven, Charlie. That’s old enough.”

  So, as a kind of birthday present, he showed me what I’m showing Armstrong. We’re in the hidden space between the row of cypress trees and the wall. Armstrong’s got his eye pressed tight to the hole.

  “What are you talking about, naked ladies swimming in the pool? Nothing but empty rafts floating around in there.”

  “Keep looking.”

  “Ross, if you dragged me behind these scratchy bushes for a poor man’s peep show, and it comes out an empty peep, I am going to kick your ass.”

  “Keep looking.”

  “Every Friday at four. Already four-fifteen and the pool’s still empty. Kicking your ass won’t be enough. I will strip it naked and throw it clear over the top of this wall and into that—”

  His mouth stops moving. His eyes go wide. Like everything else about Armstrong Le Rois, his watch is running fast.

  “Oh,” he says.

  “What do you see?”

  “Wow!”

  “Someone there?”
<
br />   “That … is … something.”

  I hoist myself up and try to nudge him aside. Armstrong shoves me into the branches of the tree.

  “Wait your turn, Ross.”

  He leans a little to the left.

  “Oh, my!”

  He leans a little to the right.

  “Oh double my.”

  I can hear something skimming through the water, then a splashing that sounds like applause. I try to push in front of Armstrong, but he straight-arms me away.

  The applause turns to soft waves against the side of the pool. I hear the gloop gloop gloop of water going into the filter.

  “Okay, Ross, your turn.”

  Armstrong leans back. I push him out of the way and peer through the hole.

  And what I see is … wet footprints leading to the house.

  · 11 ·

  The Cuss Box

  Armstrong

  BACK AT ROSS MANOR, we’re in one of the four bathrooms changing for dinner when Ross informs me that his daddy has an aversion to cussing of any kind. “If you use profanity around here,” he says, “it’ll cost you.”

  “Cost me what?”

  “Depends on the word. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  The dining room table’s already set fancy with a white cloth and white plates, silverware, and white napkins. Shiny silver candlesticks hold up brand-new candles. Down at the far end something’s hiding under a blue and white cover with strange letters on it. I lift up the fabric and find a big loaf of bread. Looks like a girl’s hair in a braid; smells like melted butter.

  “The challah’s for later,” Ross says, like he’s bringing up a loogie from the back of his throat.

  “The what?”

  “Challah,” he says again, with that same rasp in his throat. “Egg bread. Only fancy for Friday night.”

  I tug the cover back over the ccchallah while Ross reaches up to this antique hutch they got. He pulls down a wooden box with a slotted rubber plug in the top, like you might see on a piggy bank.

  “This is the Cuss Box,” he says, holding it close for me to read the poem on the side:

  Cussing ain’t the nicest thing,

  And friends for you it sure don’t bring.

  But if you really gotta say ’em,

  Here’s the way you hafta pay ’em:

  A mild cuss is just a nickel.

  A barroom cuss costs a dime.

  For awful cusses you really oughter

  Put in the box at least a quarter.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Ross says.

  “You mean you want me to talk white around here.”

  “Not white. Just clean.”

  I put the Cuss Box back on the shelf and tell him not to worry. My mama raised me to be polite in front of other people’s parents.

  But just in case I might slip, I reach down and pat the pocket of my jeans to see do I have a cussing budget.

  Charlie

  Mom strikes a match and gets ready for the Friday night prayers. I can see Armstrong sitting up straight, like he’s witnessing something that’s sacred but not his and he doesn’t want to get in the way.

  But that’s not how Mom wants him to feel. “Shabbat is our day of rest, Armstrong,” she explains. “We bless the candles, the wine, and the bread to show our appreciation for light, laughter, and food.”

  She lights the candles and then covers her eyes while saying a prayer.

  “Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha’olam, asher kidishanu b’mitz votav, vitzivanu, l’chad lich nehr, shel Shabbat.”

  She pours grape juice for Armstrong and me and wine for herself but not for my dad. To him alcohol is like live electricity, a thing never to be touched. “It impairs your judgment, Charlie,” he always says.

  “Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha’olam, boray p’ree hagofin.”

  She sips her wine, we sip our juice. She puts her hand on the embroidered cloth that my grandma made in 1900. The Hebrew letters spell out “challah.”

  “Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha’olam, hamostzi l’chem min ha’aretz. Amen.”

  She lifts the cover like she’s revealing a prize. Armstrong says “Amen” too.

  Mom breaks off a piece of bread, and from this piece she breaks off a small piece for herself before passing the rest around the table. When we’ve all taken some for ourselves, we eat.

  “Can we get a second piece of ccchallah?” Armstrong whispers to me. I say sure and reach for some more, accidentally knocking over my grape juice.

  “Dammit!” I say, sliding back from the table and stopping most of the spill with my napkin.

  “Charlie.” Dad nods toward the Cuss Box.

  I get up, go over, and drop in a nickel. I look at Armstrong as if to say, See?

  Armstrong nods, and I sit back down.

  “Well, boys, what stood out for you about this day?” my father asks like he always does. Only this time it’s “boys” again instead of just “Charlie.”

  “We found out something in Andy’s room,” I say. “Actually, Armstrong found it out.”

  Mom and Dad look at Armstrong.

  “It’s about his camera, Mrs. Ross. It was there in the case by his bed, and I was curious because I’ve never held a camera like that before.”

  Mom takes a sip of wine.

  “There’s still film in it. The window on top shows he shot ten pictures. Tell what else we found, Ross.”

  “A handout in his bag,” I say. “From Mrs. Valentine’s class last year. A Favorite Things project. That’s probably what’s on his roll.”

  “Are you going to develop them, Mrs. Ross?” Armstrong asks.

  “Someday,” Mom says with her rubber-band smile.

  Dad asks what else we did today, and Armstrong glances at me, one eyebrow up, and grins. “Well, Mr. Ross, the highlight for me was the promenade we took through your neighborhood. A lot of lovely things to see.”

  Under the table, I drive the toe of my tennis shoe as hard as I can into Armstrong’s leg. He grins through the pain.

  “What did Charlie show you?” Mom asks.

  “Well, Mrs. Ross, there are some nice houses on this street. And the view in some of the back yards, now that’s something I don’t get to see much of at home. Why, for instance, did you know that just across the street here—”

  “Have some more chicken, Armstrong,” I say, dropping a drumstick onto his plate.

  “Thank you, Charles. What I was saying is, across the street is a long driveway, and up that driveway you can see—”

  “You’re out of mashed potatoes, too.” I ladle some more next to his drumstick.

  “What did you see?” Dad asks.

  “Why don’t we let Armstrong eat his dinner before it gets cold?”

  “I might be hungry for the food,” Armstrong says, “but your mom and dad are hungry for the story. You tell it, Ross, while I eat.”

  Armstrong

  This is going to be fun. Eating mashed potatoes and ccchallah while Ross tells what he showed me across the street. I know he won’t want to lie on the Sabbath. Won’t want to tell the truth either. I wonder which one he’ll get caught in.

  “I took Armstrong across the street,” he says, “and we looked into Reggie’s back yard.”

  “That’s snooping, Charlie,” Mr. Ross says. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “What did you see?” Mrs. Ross asks. She’s curious like her son.

  “A swimming pool,” Ross says. “An empty swimming pool.”

  “What did you see, Armstrong?”

  “I saw one of the Lord’s most attractive creations.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Something every boy ought to see at least once.”

  “Which is … ?”

  “Sunlight on clean blue water.”

  “That’s all you saw?” Ross says, all surprised.

  “That and the pool man cleaning the pool. You must’ve got the day of the week wrong, Ross.”

&
nbsp; Charlie

  The best part of Shabbat dinner is the dessert. That’s when my father serves some fabulous sweet he’s either baked or brought home from Viktor Benês Bakery near his store.

  I ask him if he stopped at the bakery. Maybe he picked up some black and white cookies or chocolate-chip rolls.

  “The line was too long. There’s a box of Flaky Flix in the pantry, though.”

  Armstrong and I look at each other. Half a box, maybe.

  “And you’re welcome to eat a common store-bought cookie if you like. Or you can have a slice of the Neverfail.”

  My father baked!

  He gets up from the table and goes into the kitchen. Soon he’s back carrying the glass cake stand that my parents got for their wedding. He sets the Neverfail in front of Armstrong.

  “I’ve always let the boys slice their own,” my dad says, handing Armstrong a silver spatula. “You can slice your own too, Armstrong. But you’re on the honor system.”

  The honor system is a policy our dad came up with when, many cakes ago, Andy and I got into a fight over whose slice was bigger. I said his was; he said mine was. We started stealing bites off each other’s plates. When the plates were empty, we went on fighting for a bigger piece. Like savage animals going for the last scrap, we bit and clawed each other until I, smaller but faster, squirmed free and dived for the cake, landing mouth first but knocking over the stand. The Neverfail was in ruins.

  The next cake was served on the honor system. Instead of handing us our own slices, Dad handed us knives! He told us to “cut your own slices. But remember, boys, you’re on the honor system.”

  We translated honor system to mean as-much-as-you-want system. We cut such big slices that there was nothing left on the stand but crumbs. Thirty minutes later we took turns barfing into the toilet.

  Months went by, and at Thanksgiving the honor system was again announced. This time we made smaller cuts. From cake to cake, our self-guided slices grew thinner, more honorable.

  Armstrong holds the silver spatula, eyeing the great round cake before him.

  “You mean I can cut my own?” he says.

  “That’s right. On the honor system.”

  Armstrong

  I’m wondering, is it honorable to use the knife as a fork and call the whole damn cake my slice? But the whole cake for me would be greedy, and Papa Ross and the Mrs. are waiting their turn. So I line up that knife about halfway across the cake. I figure since it’s my first time I should get half and the three of them can divide the rest. But then I start thinking about Lily in the kitchen, waiting her turn. So I move the knife back a bit, making my piece about one-third the size of the cake.