Armstrong and Charlie

by Steven B. Frank

  She makes me promise I won’t disappear again like that. “Not on a bike. Not on a bus. Not ever again.”

  “I promise I won’t disappear,” I say.

  And she says, “I promise I won’t either.”

  She puts her arms around me, and that’s when I start to cry. For the first time since Andy died, the tears pour out. A whole year’s worth, in wave after wave. I can hardly breathe. I just keep on crying and crying like …

  Yeah, like a mama’s boy.

  And the mama whose boy I am holds me. She holds me with all eight of her arms.

  In Andy’s darkroom Mom sets up the tools she’ll need. A bottle opener to pop the canister, a reel to take up the film, and a drum to put it in. She fills a bucket with hot water from the teakettle and cool water from a jug. When the temperature is just right, she tugs on the light bulb chain and suddenly it’s pitch-black in here. She snaps open the canister, snips the end off the film, and winds it onto the spool. Once she has the film on the reel and the reel safely inside the drum, she tugs the chain again and the light comes back. She pours in the developer and asks me to rock the drum while she gets the next chemicals ready. The room smells like fresh copies from the ditto machine at school. And like Andy’s clothes when he’d work in here.

  When enough time has passed, Mom unspools the negatives, rinses them, and hangs them up to dry. While she’s filling the trays with new chemicals, we hear footsteps and then a knock on the darkroom door.

  “Safe to come in?” Dad asks from the other side.

  “Safe to come in,” Mom says. I pull open the door. Dad comes in and stands beside me.

  “We’re ready to print,” she says.

  Dad shuts the door and snaps on the Mystery Light. That’s what Andy called the red light he’d develop by.

  Mom slides the strip of negatives into the enlarger, dials up the focus, and does a test strip to get the exposure right. Then she begins to print ten of my brother’s favorite things.

  The first picture is of Dad on his Vespa. He’s wearing his white tennis jacket, an extra can of balls strapped to the rack.

  Mom sets a sheet of Kodak paper on the easel, turns the timer to eight seconds, and flicks on the enlarger light.

  Andy and I used to love getting rides on the Vespa. All that speed and wind felt like skiing, only uphill. And there was something else. As far as dads go, Marty Ross has never been much of a hugger. But when you’re on the Vespa, you have to wrap your arms all the way around him. You have to hug him to hold on.

  The enlarger light snaps off. In the red glow of the Mystery Light, I see Dad wipe his eyes.

  Mom slides the paper off the easel and drops it into the developer tray. She rocks the tray back and forth for about a minute. The same image we saw on the enlarger plate now comes swimming up in the tray. She moves the print to the stop bath, then to the fixer. Then she rinses the photograph and hangs it up to dry.

  Next is a shot of me in our Thinking Tree. Not the nicest angle. He got my butt hanging over a branch.

  Number three is a cover from MAD magazine. It shows a hand with a finger sticking up—​I’ll bet you can guess which one—​and the headline “The Number One Ecch Magazine.” “Ecch” was MAD’s word for disgusting. Andy loved his subscription to MAD. If you can laugh, he used to say, you can live through anything.

  Then there’s Kathy. He took her portrait at their make-out fort as the sun was going down. She’s got her skateboard in her lap and a daisy in her hair.

  Next comes the ski hat Andy wore when he was the Masked Marvel. The print is a double exposure over the Mammoth Mountain trail map.

  Six is Mom’s Mr. Coffee machine. When he turned ten, Andy started to wake up earlier than the rest of us. Somehow he knew, without ever being asked, to flick the switch for her.

  After that comes Dad’s KitchenAid stand mixer, the paddle dripping with chocolate frosting. A Neverfail Sunday.

  Eight is a portrait Andy took of Mom and Dad and me. We’re at the Farmers Market, standing under the bull’s horns at Bryan’s Pit Barbecue. Instead of one, two, three … SMILE, it was one, two, three … BITE. Andy caught us with our mouths full of his favorite sandwich, chins covered in dark sauce.

  Nine is our back slope in spring, looking down from the neighbors’ yard. The calla lilies look like soldiers waving white flags.

  The last picture is a giant capital A with a Rudolph light on top. It’s the radio tower on the hill above the Mulholland Tennis Club, the tallest point in Laurel Canyon. You can see the tower from our Thinking Tree and from way out in the valley. You can see it from the window of an airplane landing at Burbank Airport. Mom calls it our very own Eiffel Tower. Andy hoped to climb it someday all the way to the top.

  Maybe now he has.

  We watch the tower floating in the fixer tray. Then I realize something and say it out loud.

  “I’m not his little brother anymore.”

  Mom and Dad both look at me.

  “From now and forever, I’m older than Andy ever was.”

  I feel two arms come around me, one from either side.

  “Charlie,” Mom says, “in many ways, you’ve been older than Andy for a long time.”

  We stay awhile in the darkroom. My brother’s ten pictures dry on the line.

  · 20 ·

  Up in Laurel Canyon

  Armstrong

  ON THE FIRST DAY of sixth grade, they put us in two lines. Half got Mr. Mitchell, and the lucky half had Mrs. Valentine. Today and all this week, the two lines are back together again. Only one teacher is in charge of graduation, and I’m glad to say that’s Mrs. Valentine.

  Monday she brings us to the auditorium and sits at an old piano. She tells us it was a gift from the first class to graduate from Wonderland back in 1932. She says there’s a secret scratched on its back, and asks who wants to come see what the secret is.

  Forty-two hands rocket up.

  “Armstrong,” she calls.

  Even if you aren’t in Mrs. Valentine’s class, she knows your name.

  I step through all the pretzel legs to the front, then slide into the space between the piano and the wall. On the back of the piano, somebody has whittled the words to a song.

  “It’s a song,” I say.

  “Can you make out the lyrics?”

  They’ve been there forty-three years, but I can see them plain as day.

  “‘Up in Laurel Canyon,’” I read aloud, “‘there is a little school./ It is known as Wonderland,/ Where all sixth-graders rule.’”

  “Those are the opening words to our school song,” Mrs. Valentine says. “Forty-three graduating classes have sung it on a bright or foggy or rainy day in June. On Thursday you will be the forty-fourth.”

  She opens the piano and starts to play. “First me, then you.

  Up in Laurel Canyon, there is a little school.

  It is known as Wonderland, where all sixth-graders rule.

  Wonderland, Wonderland, friends so dear and true.

  Wonderland, Wonderland, we’ll remember you.”

  She leads us through the next verse and one more after that. On the second time through, most of us have it down. By the third, we’re sounding pretty good.

  Charlie

  On Tuesday Mrs. Valentine hands us blank squares of cardboard. She tells us to write down our predictions for the future. “Not for yourselves, but for a friend. Where will they live when they grow up? What job will they have? Will they be married? With children of their own?”

  The kind of questions that make your head hurt. I pick Armstrong and he picks me. We write down our predictions and make them small enough to fit on one square, so that when the squares get put together, copied into programs, and given to our families on Graduation Day, they’ll see we’re a class of future veterinarians, rock stars, painters, lawyers, doctors, astronauts, or, in Otis’s case, a psychologist, and in Shelley’s, an architect and a violinist and a teacher and a mom.

  The squares were all kept
secret until today, Graduation Day, when we’re placing the programs on the folding chairs.

  Armstrong stops to look at one. He doesn’t like what he sees.

  “Entrepreneur?! Ross, I plan on being president of the United States.”

  “But you already started your first business,” I say. “There aren’t a lot of kids our age who’ve done that.”

  “You don’t think I can be president?”

  “I never said that. But you can only be president for eight years. What’ll you do the rest of the time?”

  He thinks about that, then shrugs. “Entrepreneur, huh? Well, at least you spelled it right.”

  I flip a few pages to see what he put down for my future.

  “A writer?”

  “Didn’t you tell me that when your brother was sick and couldn’t read, he’d ask you for a story? And after the story, he’d feel better? Well, if you can help a boy forget he has asthma, think what you can do for the rest of the world.”

  “But I’m planning to be a guard in the NBA.”

  Armstrong’s upper lip starts to quiver. “I hate to burst your basketball, Ross, but I don’t think we’ll be seeing your face on an NBA trading card. You’ve got Zayde Moishe in your genes. I doubt they need a rabbi on the Lakers.”

  Well, I stand by my predictions. For Armstrong and for me.

  Armstrong

  After we set the programs on the chairs, we line up outside just like we practiced, and soon the people start to come. There’s Mr. Orr, Ross’s bus driver, side by side with Miss Charles, a kindergarten teacher, who must be his sweetheart because he just offered her an Andes mint. And there’s Mrs. Gaines over by Mrs. Wilson, both of them wearing pearls today. And here come Mr. Mitchell and Mrs. Valentine. Everybody two by two like they’re stepping off the Ark. Me and Ross are jostling each other for a place in line, Shelley behind us, holding Ross’s hand. And I see Papa Ross and Mrs. Ross, holding hands too.

  Now a long yellow bus swings in through the open school gate. Mrs. Wilson arranged for the transportation so our families wouldn’t have to come by taxi or by car. The bus hisses to a stop, the engine shudders down, the door flaps open.

  First ones off are my five sisters. Then come Daddy and Mama, real slow. After them it’s Otis’s mom and his grandma and all nine of his cousins. Alma’s three brothers and the rest of her clan. Dezzy’s family—​they could’ve filled a bus of their own. And the families of some of the younger kids who traveled with us this year to Wonderland. Mrs. Wilson wanted to invite all the families who came on Opportunity Busing because this was the first year.

  People start to find seats. I notice Daddy talking to Papa Ross, who holds a brown bag. Then the two of them make their way over to the boys’ bathroom. I wonder what they’ve got going on.

  Oh, and here comes Mrs. Gaines to say hello.

  “Armstrong. Charlie.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Gaines,” we say.

  Lenai and Charmaine and Cecily and Ebony and Nika and Mama all walk up. Patches is here too, in Charmaine’s arms. Since Mr. Khalil passed, we can’t leave him alone or he howls like he’s calling the old man.

  Whose absence here today is the one thing I’m feeling sad on.

  “Mrs. Gaines,” I say, “I would like you to meet my family. These are my five sisters and my mom.”

  “Armstrong has certainly livened things up this year,” Mrs. Gaines says. “I have expended no small amount of ink on his behalf.” And then she adds, “We’ve been blessed to have him.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Mama says. “We feel the same way.”

  “Say hello to my dog, too, Mrs. Gaines. He’s real friendly.”

  She leans down and pats his head. Then Patches lets loose like he knows what she had for breakfast. He’s licking her hand. Licking her chin. Licking up her cheeks, too. Mrs. Gaines is laughing so hard you can see her fillings are made of gold.

  “Wha—​what’s his name?” she says when she finally gets a breath.

  “Oh,” I say. “Well, that’s Patches.”

  “Patches? Patches … Why, is this the same dog that—​Oh, LORD!”

  Imagine a black woman turning white as a ghost! She throws back her head and dashes off to the girls’ bathroom.

  INCIDENT REPORT

  Submitted by: Edwina Gaines, Yard Supervisor at Wonderland Avenue School

  Date of Incident: Thursday, June 12, 1975

  Time: 2:47 p.m.

  Location: the girls’ bathroom

  We experienced a delay of graduation this afternoon, and I must confess I was the cause. Among the friends and family milling about the upper yard in anticipation of the ceremony, there was one dog. Now, a dog at graduation might be reason enough for an Incident Report, but this one in particular caused quite the hullaballoo. His name is Patches, and you will recall from a previous report (October 10, 1974) that this was the same dog responsible for my taking a rare day off.

  I myself made the connection while he was enthusiastically licking my cheek. Overcome with disgust and horror, I ran into the girls’ bathroom to recompose myself. While trembling behind the barrier of a closed stall, I heard a voice call out.

  “Mrs. Gaines,” it said, “this is Armstrong Le Rois, stepping into the girls’ bathroom.”

  “Oh, Armstrong, please!” I cried. “Leave the dog outside!”

  “Now, don’t be afraid of Patches,” he said. “He’s safe in my sister’s arms. Besides, it’s time I told you the truth about him. What you put down in that Incident Report was lies. All lies. At the time, Mr. Khalil was healthy and breathing the same air as you and me. Patches never had a lick of a dead man’s face.”

  “But why did you tell such a dreadful tale?”

  And out poured the truth that the boy had been holding in all year. He was hiding in the bathroom from a test, he said, when I walked in and found him. He had to invent something, and the story about the old man and the dog is what came to mind.

  Then he told me it was wrong. And he was sorry for it. “Extra sorry,” he said, “because a month ago, Mr. Khalil really did die.”

  He began to sob. Not the crocodile tears he cried back in October, but real ones, born of true grief. I unlatched the door to my stall and stepped out. Armstrong stood weeping over by the sink.

  “Were you very close?” I asked.

  He sucked back tears. “He was like a grandfather to me, Mrs. Gaines. Loved me like a grandson, too. Did you know I’m a landlord now? Mr. Khalil left me his house. My daddy and I are fixing it up to rent so I can save for college.”

  And telling out loud how that old man had given him a future … well, that brought forth the tears again.

  “That’s the sweetness of life, Armstrong,” I said, patting his shoulder. “And the bitter. That you can love somebody one day, and another they’re gone.”

  I cranked out a good ten inches of paper towel and tore it off for him. “How lucky you are to have known him, and loved him.”

  I handed him the paper towel. “Now, then,” I said, “how are you going to fulfill that man’s dream for you to go to college, if you don’t step out of here and graduate from elementary?”

  Whereupon Armstrong dried his eyes, and together we stepped out of the girls’ bathroom, both of us feeling restored.

  This concludes the final Incident Report of the year by Edwina Gaines, Yard Supervisor of Wonderland Avenue School.

  Next year I’ll be moving on to Crossing Guard.

  Charlie

  While Armstrong is in the girls’ bathroom trying to rescue Mrs. Gaines, I realize I’m holding Shelley’s hand and all it would take is one tug to lead her away from the line and around to the back of the building, where we might have a minute, maybe two, of privacy.

  So I tug.

  And we run.

  “Where are we going, Charlie?” she says. “We’ll miss graduation.”

  “No we won’t.”

  Behind the building I lift a strand of Shelley’s hair and tuck it behind the ear
where that forty-seventh freckle is. She’s wearing new glasses today, boxy black frames perfectly straight on her nose.

  “I really like your new glasses,” I tell her.

  “Is that why you dragged me over here?”

  “No,” I say.

  Then I kiss her.

  Only this time it’s not just on the lips.

  She does that twirly thing to the back of my hair, and I hold my hand behind her neck, and—​well, what happens next is private. All I can say is, she tastes like candy and lip-gloss and the end of sixth grade. And I think, it wouldn’t be so bad to go on kissing past graduation, past summer, all the way to junior high.

  “Ross.”

  Armstrong’s head pops around the corner. “Hurry up,” he says. “Line’s starting to move.”

  Shelley and I make our way along the wall. We keep on kissing until we turn the corner.

  Armstrong

  After the speeches and the walks across stage and the diplomas and the cheers, we stand together and sing the Wonderland song for the forty-fourth time. Then we all pour out onto the upper yard for pastries and coffee and music from the school’s small band. Otis plays trumpet, Alex is on drums, and Alma and Dezzy are singing a duet of “Sunshine of My Life.”

  And then a crazy thing happens. Parents, grandparents, brothers, and sisters—​old, young, and in between—​all start to dance.

  Nobody closer than Ross and Shelley.

  Nobody slower than Papa Ross and the Mrs.

  Nobody more tangled up than my five sisters and me.

  And nobody, I’m surprised to say, more beautiful than my own mama and daddy.

  It’s like he’s dancing on a borrowed leg.

  “Daddy,” I say, “what happened to you? How in this world can you dance like that?”

  “I can dance like this,” he says, “on account of my new stump sock. It’s got gel and Velcro, and it gives me support without the pain. And it was custom-made for me by the father of your friend. The man you call Papa Ross.”

  He lifts Mama’s hand and twirls her under his arms. I look over little kids’ heads, past Mrs. Valentine’s shoulder, and I find Papa Ross’s eyes. He smiles at me, then pivots away to dance with his wife.