by Wally Lamb
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 uniforn 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 Blessed 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…”
Mother Filomina again: “Three dozen reams of mimeograph paper! My stars, with our budget as tight as it is, we’re so grateful for this generous…”
Mrs. Twerski again: “…Sister Mary Agrippina having been transferred after the incident with that awful Russian girl…. And speaking not so much as an Advisory Board member but as a parent, it seems to me that if you’re at all interested in the permanent substitute’s position, you’d be a very viable…”
Rosalie again: “Please, Madame. Pleeease.”
I could tell they had poor Madame on the ropes, and since when was four against one a fair fight? Putting the last period at the end of my one hundredth I shall not distract my neighbors sentence, I grabbed my paper, cleared my throat, and walked back there. “Finished,” I said.
Madame took my paper. “Et bien, Felix. Then you may go now.”
I hesitated, scuffing the toe of my shoe against the floorboard. “Could I say something first?”
Rosalie shook her head. “This is a private meeting, in case you didn’t notice, Felix. Mind your own beeswax.”
“Now, sweetheart,” her mother said. Mother Filomina asked me what I wished to say. I didn’t know, really. I just wanted to stop the bullying.
“Just that I think Madame Frechette…as a teacher…is magnifique!”
Madame’s eyes blinked back tears. “Merci bien,” she said.
I nodded. Asked her if, before I left, did she want her boards wiped down and her erasers clapped? Madame said she would like that very much. Rosalie rolled her eyes.
Maybe it was the power of her leopard-spotted shoes and red beret, or my having just proclaimed her magnificence. Or maybe Madame hated Rosalie’s guts the same as me. Whatever it was, by the end of their meeting, she still had not yielded to the Twerskis’ and Mother Filomina’s full-court press. What she offered, instead, was un accommodement—a compromise. Pauline Papelbon would retain the role of the Virgin Mary; Madame did not have the heart to snatch the role away from the poor girl, she said. But if Rosalie didn’t mind a bit of cross-gender casting, she could be upgraded from a shepherdess to a king. “Caspar, Melchior, or Balthasar, mademoiselle. You may have your pick, as I’m sure any of the boys would be happy to become a shepherd instead of a Wise Man.” (The Kubiak brothers, through their 4-H contacts, had offered live lambs for our grand finale. Madame had vacillated for a while but finally had surrendered to our pleas.) “Now which of the Magi might you wish to be?”
“Not the colored one,” Rosalie blurted. I saw Mother Filomina wince a little, and Rosalie must have seen it, too. “Because Marion Pemberton said he really, really wants to be that one and so I think he should.” This, of course, was what Zhenya Kabakova would classify as “boolsheet.” Marion wanted to be a shepherd just as much as the rest of us boys.
“Well, let me put it another way,” Madame said. “What gift would you like to present to the Christ child: gold, frankincense, or myrrh?”
Mr. Twerski answered for his daughter. “What the hay, honey? Go for the gold.” Which meant that Turdski would be Caspar and Eugene Bowen was going to give up his crown in exchange for one of those live lambs, the lucky duck, and all’s I was gonna get to hold was my stupid pa-rumpa-pum-pum drum.
After they left, I heard Madame’s sigh all the way from the back of the classroom. She was holding a tissue in her hand and looking out the window. I was pretty sure she was crying. “Well,” I said. “The blackboards are done and I clapped the erasers. I guess I’ll go now.”
“And I will erase your check-minus for bothering Arthur,” she said. Then she turned toward me, daubing her eyes and smiling. “Monsieur Dondi,” she said. “Merci beaucoup.” She approached me, shook my hand, and then leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead the same way Ma sometimes did. I sneezed all the way down the stairs.
As it turned out, the recasting of Rosalie as Caspar did not placate her. (Nor did she find it amusing when, as we walked side by side in the boys’ and girls’ lines on the way down to the lunchroom, I began singing, “Caspar, the friendly ghost, the friendliest ghost you know…”) Determined by hook or crook to be the star of the Saint Aloysius Gonzaga Christmas program, Turdski sat down that weekend and wrote a play, which, on Monday, she submitted directly to Mother Filomina and Sister Fabian, having bypassed Madame Frechette. Rosalie’s script was so pukily worshipful that Mother Fil exulted even before Turdski claimed to have felt the hand of God pushing her ballpoint pen across the page as she wrote it. As a result of her experience, Rosalie said, she was now considering a life of Holy Orders.
But if Saint Aloysius’s Sisters of Charity were taken in by Rosalie’s fake piety, Madame Frechette was not. As director of our tableaux vivants, she now had a competing impresario—one of her very own students. Madame was not pleased. Her players would be required merely to stand in p
lace as the curtains opened, mute and still as statues, with the exception of a miscellaneous twitch or nervous tic. In contrast, Rosalie’s actors—her faithful disciple Geraldine, the browbeaten Ernie Overturf, and a somewhat indignant Marion Pemberton—were free to speak, move about, and if need be, scratch an itch.
It wasn’t an out-in-out battle between Rosalie and Madame; it was more like a tug of war. When Rosalie asked Madame if, instead of discussing our religion chapter, she and her actors could sequester themselves in the cloakroom for the purpose of practicing her play, Madame said non.
“Why not?” Rosalie asked. “It’s religious.”
“Why not? Because I said so, mademoiselle, that’s why not,” Madame said, in a tone of voice so contentious that, if you’d closed your eyes, you might have thought Sister Mary Agrippina had returned. A few minutes later, Rosalie said she had a headache and could she go see the nurse? And whether or not she really checked in with Nurse Gadle, it was obvious that she’d checked in with Sister Fabian, the assistant principal. The note she returned with, signed by Sister, gave her and her players permission to proceed to the lunch room on an as-needed basis during the ten o’clock religious instruction hour for the purpose of rehearsing “Jesus Is the Reason for the Season” for the upcoming Christmas program.
“Et bien,” Madame said through clenched teeth after she read the note.
But the following day she retaliated. Madame handed Ronald Kubiak her car keys and had Ronald, Oscar Landry, Eugene B., and me go out to her car, open her trunk, and bring back the boxes of Christmas decorations she’d brought in from home: wreaths with fake holly, strings of lights, a garland, a ceramic tree. There was a crèche in there, a plastic Santa Claus, some blow-up vinyl reindeer, a dozen or so Styrofoam candy canes with hooks at the top for hanging up. “We must make room for Christmas!” Madame declared just before we started our silent reading of the next-to-last Yearling chapter. And while the others read, I watched an energized Madame circulate about the room, yanking down the dozen or so posters that Rosalie had made for extra credit. When I looked over at Rosalie, I saw that she, too, was watching Madame, her nostrils aflare and her hands gripping The Yearling so tightly that her knuckles had turned bone white. “Madame Frechette?” she finally said. To which Madame responded, “Silent reading means just that, mademoiselle. Continue reading en silence!”
