Waving away the potatoes I said, “It doesn’t matter. They’ll just make me fat. But do you mind if I ask you a question?”
Her hand didn’t come off her hip. “That depends. What?”
“Do you know this man’s son? Do you know Frannie McCabe?”
Her whole face slowly lifted into a great wide smile. “Sure I know Frannie. He’s a nice kid.”
“Nice? How? In what way?”
“Don’t you know him? You kinda look like him.” She checked Dad to see if he agreed.
“We were talking about him and wondered what other people who know him think.”
“I told you—Frannie’s nice.” The brick was coming back into her voice. I felt like launching my scrambled eggs into her cleavage but couldn’t because she had something I needed at the moment. If I pissed her off I wouldn’t get it.
“So that’s all, he’s just nice?”
The young waitress squinted across the room to see what her old man was doing. He was still nose-deep in his toilet paper, which gave her the green light to keep talking to us.
“When Frannie comes in here with his friends he acts tough and plays the bigshot. But when he’s alone he’s sweet and sometimes does real nice things.”
Bull’s-eye! Come on, Alice—tell Tom the story.
It looked like she was going to leave it at that so I goaded her on. “Nice? Like what?”
“Like me and my boyfriend have troubles, right? Like we’re not exactly Ozzie and Harriet. Well, one night in here we had this bad fight—” Again she looked up to see what the boss was doing. “And I really lost it. Luckily the place was pretty empty so when I started crying like a hysteric, nobody but Frannie really noticed. But he was so nice. He was here alone, like I said, and we talked for like two hours about it. He didn’t have to do that. He wasn’t playing Mr. Tough Guy or nothing, just being nice. And what he said was smart too. He said things about people, you know, in general which I thought about a lot after. Then the next day he came in? He gave me a copy of this record I said I like, Concrete and Clay that we both said we liked. He didn’t have to do that either. He’s okay, Frannie.” She said that looking straight at Dad.
I gave a satisfied hum. “Good story, Alice. Could I have my hash browns now?”
The warmth in her eyes snapped shut like sprung mousetraps. “What did you say?”
Leaning forward, I spoke loud enough so that Scrappy could have heard even if he’d been dead. “I said I want the hash browns you haven’t brought me yet, dear.”
“Wutz da problem?” said a voice like an incoming bazooka shell lobbed at us from behind the cash register. It launched our waitress double time toward getting my potatoes.
In the meantime I began eating the unwholesome food in front of me and it tasted great. After a few mouthfuls, I pointed the fork at my father and said, “Don’t always judge a thug by his cover, Tom. Sometime if you sneak into his room at night, you’ll probably catch him reading under the blankets with a flashlight.”
He grinned at the silliness of the image. Public Enemy Number One reading under a blanket? But something in it must have wrenched him too because the next moment he looked like he almost believed what I said might be possible.
We were quiet then but it didn’t matter because it was enough to be with my old man again, drinking weak coffee at Scrappy’s Diner. And morbid as it sounds, I appreciated him so much more knowing what life was like when he was gone. However long this lasted, this dream or nightmare or whatever it was, there was no other place on earth I wanted to be. Sitting at the counter in this dump, convincing my skeptical father his son had good stuff in him and would eventually prevail.
Although more people came and left, the diner stayed relatively quiet. We didn’t talk much while I ate. Alice brought my potatoes but sailed them down the counter at me as if they were a Frisbee. Dad ordered a blueberry muffin and a glass of orange juice from another waitress. When they came he ate very quickly. I was pushing a last piece of toast around the bare plate to sop up whatever last tasties were left. When I was done I looked to the left and saw her coming toward us.
Her name was Miss Garretson. Victoria Garretson. She taught music at Crane’s View Elementary School. Always a little hefty and rosy-cheeked, she had a 24/7 unflagging enthusiasm for her subject and job that invariably turned most of her students off from the force of its wind machine. For three years she had been my music teacher. You couldn’t hate her because kids only hate teachers who literally hurt or diminish them in some ugly way. We just couldn’t stand Miss Garretson’s arm-waving, cheek-puffing glee as she conducted us through Stephen Foster songs, or tingled triangles, shook the maracas. Thanks to her, if I never hear or see another maraca in my life that’ll be just fine. What did she look like? Like a youngish woman who sold bed sheets in a department store and talked about them for too long. Like a secretary in a failing real estate office. She looked like a picture of someone’s aunt.
“Tom! What on earth are you doing here this early?”
Tom? Miss Garretson knew my father? Knew him so well that she called him by his first name?
“Vicki! Hey there! I should ask you the same question.”
Vicki?
She simply stood with her hands held in front of her, staring at me. She had big lips and wore too much dark lipstick. It took me a few moments to realize she was either waiting to be introduced or for both of us to stand and show we were proper gentlemen. Eventually Dad stood up but I didn’t.
“Vicki Garretson, this is Bill Clinton.”
I nodded and gave her a midrange smile. She gave me an unsubtle once-over with her eyes. It sent me back forty years to the days she used to give me another kind of visual once over: to check if my seven-year-old zipper was open or if there was breakfast jam on my Mickey Mouse Club T-shirt.
“Vicki is a teacher at our school.”
“Music theory and choir.” She said proudly and dishonestly. The only theory this toots taught was take your finger out of your nose, child, and read the notes. I loved it though—Miss Garretson was lying to impress me.
“And what do you do, Mr. Clinton?”
“Bill’s in politics,” Dad chirped, full of admiration.
“How interesting. May I sit down?”
“Sure, of course, Vicki.” He gestured to a stool where she proceeded to rest her not-small can.
We talked for a while about nothing. Miss Vicki was boring and self-involved. It was plain she liked the sound of her own voice and the trivia of her life. But my mind was only half on what was being said because I was mesmerized watching the body language going on between them: It didn’t take long to read between their lines. When I had, I started grinning like a lunatic and I’m sure acting strange. Because it was clear Tom McCabe was parking his skin Pinto in Vicki’s garage. Their conversation was full of in-jokes, references, secret sexy looks, and a casual history of things they’d done together. Not to mention the serious electricity bouncing back and forth between them. Dad was screwing my old music teacher! They spoke to each other in an intimate unguarded way because who was I? A stranger they met in a diner who neither would ever see again. Some guy who sits next to you on a plane or you strike up a conversation with in the station while you’re both waiting for an overdue train. The only thing that gave me a little distinction was I looked like Tom’s son who Vicki had had as a student years before.
After that egg hit the heated skillet of my mind and started sizzling, another dropped right after it. Why was Dad coming out of that house across the street earlier this morning? Did he have another lover over there that he visited on his insomnia rounds? The secret life of Thomas McCabe. My father—Mr. Drip Dry, cap-toed oxford shoes from Florsheim, Robert Hall suit, one whiskey before dinner and never more. Always paid his taxes on time, his dues, his respects. My mother couldn’t pick him out of a crowd. But now here he was doing the Wawatusi with my elementary music teacher and maybe others too. Yee ha! Isn’t life wonderful? I wanted to
take him in my arms and dance a jig. I’ve heard people say that one of the worst experiences of their life was discovering their parents betrayed each other. I was thrilled. I wanted to know details—every iota in Cinemascope and Dolby Surround. Crane’s View was small; the walls had eyes and ears. Did this odd couple sneak off to the Holiday Inn in Amerling with a bottle of cheap champagne, a collection of Rod McKuen love poetry, and a transistor radio that played Ravel’s “Bolero”?
I wanted to hug Dad. Or at least pat him on the back, but in these circumstances that was out of the question. I loved what I had discovered and I loved him. Even more oddly it made me love my mother more for being so totally 180 degrees wrong about her beloved partner. Ma, he’s a hound!
“Tom, I’ve got to hit the road. But it has been a pleasure.” We stood up and shook hands. I remembered he didn’t give a very strong shake and there it was again after all these years. Tears came to my eyes. Shaking hands with your father. If you love him, there’s nothing greater. And I did love this man. Silently I thanked and blessed him for having had so much loving patience. For putting up with a terrible, frustrating son who had made him suffer and worry for almost twenty years. I wanted to say to Tom McCabe, I’m your kid, Frannie the thief, the good-for-nothing you should have hated but didn’t because you’re a good man. But I’m all right now. I survived, Dad, and I’m fine.
Instead I smiled at Victoria Garretson (Vicki—never in my life would I have addressed the woman by that name) and turned my back on Thomas McCabe for the last time.
“Bill? Excuse me, Bill?” I was on my way to the cash register when he called my name.
“Yeah, Tom?”
“Could I pay for your breakfast? I’d really like to do that.”
“Why?” Here came my tears again. I looked at Scrappy.
“Because of what you said about my son. Because maybe you’re right and I just worry too much. Because, I don’t know, it’s a nice morning and meeting you was an unexpected surprise.”
I handed him the check. “You’re a prince, Tom.”
He made a strange face. I asked if anything was wrong.
“Frannie says that sometimes. ‘You’re a prince, Tom.’ But when he says it he’s always sarcastic.”
I tried to sound cool and offhand. “Well, you said we looked alike. Pretend for a minute I am him and am saying it for real. You are a prince, Tom. Have a good life.”
“And you too, Bill.”
I couldn’t resist. “Vote for me when I run for president.”
He laughed and went back to his lover.
How does weird get weirder? I’ll tell you. Feeling pleased and lifted by what had just taken place, I left the diner smiling and cheerfully blissed out. That lasted maybe five minutes. Out the door and turn left toward the heart of downtown Crane’s View—all one block of it. Curious to know what would be there, I tried to remember what Main Street had looked like then. My town, thirty years ago. How much had they charged at the Embassy Movie Theater for a ticket? How much had a box of Goobers chocolate-covered peanuts cost at their candy counter? What were the names of the different candy they sold? Charleston Chew, Zagnut, Raisinets, Good & Plenty, Fifth Avenue... Retarded Johnny Petangles knew every one of their television ads and would recite them ad nauseum. The theater had been torn down two years ago and was replaced by a Blockbuster video store, which I thought was ironic. Trading the big screen for the little one. Let’s keep walking down McCabe’s memory lane. Back then the Embassy Theater stood next to Dan Pope’s Bar and Grill. It was where we all had our first legal drinks the day we turned eighteen. In my mind I could still smell the place—boiled cabbage and cigarette smoke. Next to Pope’s was—
A man wearing one of those helmets that had kebab’d my brain. The learning helmets from my last days in Vienna. That’s right—walking down Main Street in 1960-something Crane’s View, New York, was a guy wearing a black full-head helmet. Slapping a hand over my mouth, I made some kind of strangled uh-oh sound. It felt like someone had spilled cold raw egg down my spine. What’s more, there were people around but none of them paid any attention to him. Brian Lipson in his Crane’s View varsity letter jacket stood talking to Monica Richardson in front of the town library. Helmet Head walked right past them. They both looked, no expressions changed, they went back to their conversation. My town is conservative and changeless. Always has been that way. Anything new is instantly noticed and discussed endlessly. Whether it was Crane’s View today or thirty years ago, if someone walked down the street wearing one of those goddamned goofy helmets people would notice. Watching these two kids glance but turn away indifferently meant they were used to the sight. That gave me the big bad creeps. Everything was possible now—chaos reigned. Back when Lipson and I sat in geometry class and I cheated off his exam papers, I never saw any helmet heads go by. If I had, I sure as hell would have told the world about it.
I decided to follow this guy. See what happened when other townspeople caught sight of him. See if—
“Hey, Frannie!” said teenage Brian Lipson looking right at forty-seven-year-old me.
“Hello there, Frannie McCabe” echoed scrumptious Monica Richardson but with a smile dirty enough to melt any fellow’s underpants.
If I had been a cartoon character at that moment you would have heard all around me the sound of car brakes screeching and seen smoke billow up from the bottoms of my shoes.
I stopped so abruptly that I really needed a moment to regain my balance. “You know me?”
They looked at each other. Lipson snickered. “Why wouldn’t we, Frannie? I mean we sit next to each other in geometry class.”
“Yeah but—”
Down the block I watched Helmet Head disappear around a corner. But I had to let him go because this was ground zero for the moment.
“You know me like this?”
Monica gave her head a cute little twist to the side like a dog hearing a harmonica for the first time. “Like what?”
“Like I am now, like this!” I pointed to my chest, my face, to McCabe almost fifty years old.
“Well sure, why wouldn’t we?”
“I gotta go.”
“Don’t forget tomorrow night, Frannie; Dionne Warwick.” Monica crooned, like a siren luring me to her rock. And then the memory hit me like a rock. Junior year in high school I had been trying every way I knew to get Monica Richardson to do the dirty deed with me. But she was cleverer than I was. Whenever I thought I had her, she slipped out of my paws. Finally I decided to give it the full-court press and spend serious money on her, which I proceeded to steal from my mother’s purse over the course of three weeks. The plan was a Dionne Warwick concert in White Plains and a Surf’n’ Turf dinner at Dick’s Cabin restaurant. Everything went great until I took her home. I had never been to Monica’s house. When she invited me in that night I thought for sure I had won. As we were going through the front door she said offhandedly, “My parents might be awake, but that’s okay. They’re cool. We’ll just say hi and go up to my room.
They were sitting in the den. Mr. Richardson had a pipe in his mouth and held a newspaper in his free hand. Mrs. Richardson was knitting a yellow sweater. Both of them were stark naked. I was so stunned by the scene that I basically ran out the door back into the comforting night. After that, whenever I saw Monica at school I didn’t know what to do. And I was so embarrassed by what I had seen that I never told a soul. That’s why it was only years later I learned her parents were nudists.
Looking at her now and remembering that moment at her house, I didn’t hear the car come up behind me and stop. Both of the kids looked over my shoulder and their mouths tightened.
“McCabe!”
The car was black with a single red light on top. That’s all– no deck of high-speed blues that strobed and flitted nervously back and forth across your eyeballs as it approached. No metal grate between the front and back seats to keep the human animals at bay when you were bringing them in. No shotgun rack bolted to the
dashboard because in the 1960s guns were either on the cop’s hip or stashed safely in the trunk of the car. The trunk of a Chevrolet Biscayne because the Crane’s View police department only used Chevrolets. The chief of police was brother-in-law to the only Chevy dealer in town.
“Pee-Pee!” I was so happy to see him that for a moment I forgot who I was/where I was/when I was, etcetera. I simply walked across the sidewalk and made to shake hands with patrolman Peter Bucci. This guy and I went back a long, long way. When I was young, Crane’s View had three full-time cops and two part-time. Pee-Pee joined the force right after high school and for the first few years he was a bullying, lazy bum. But somehow he managed to meet and marry Camille, a great woman who turned him completely around and gave him a happy life. When I returned to town after Vietnam and became a cop, we got to be good friends. It was a hard blow to both the town and our police force when he died so unexpectedly three years ago of a stroke. But like my father a few minutes before, here was Pee-Pee again, looking young and strong and, best of all, alive.
He grabbed my face in an iron hand and squeezed my cheeks so hard I had to open my mouth. “Always the wiseguy aren’t you, McCabe? You criminal piece of shit! Always got the mouth going. Well guess what, smartass? You’re going to jail. Say bye-bye to your playmates and get in the goddamned car.”
“Pee-Pee—”
He still held my mouth and squeezed harder. In a minute my teeth were going to see stars. “Don’t call me that. Only my friends call me by my name and you’re not even an acquaintance. You’re shit on the bottom of my shoe, McCabe. You’re green snot I hawk up on the street. Get in the car.”
What must that have looked like: a squat twenty-five-year-old butterball in a badly fitting uniform squeezing the face of a tall middle-age man who could have knocked Patrolman Bucci into next week if he had chosen to.
But I didn’t. Like the good law-abiding kid I’d never been, I just got into the patrol car and stared straight ahead. He came around to the driver’s side and got in with a grunt and a slide around on the seat in search off a comfy spot for his fat ass.
The Wooden Sea Page 15
