“Like being a gimpy retard,” one of his antagonists said.
“No. Like do you know there’s no antidote for blue octopus poison?”
“What the hell you talkin’ about, loser?” demanded the other antagonist. He had a whiny voice, like he was trying to echo and please the first guy.
“And I bet you don’t know that in Australia this is stinger season and jellyfish can kill you,” Tommy said.
Evidently, my brother had been reading the text of the displays. He was good at memorizing facts, even if he didn’t fully understand their meanings. Tommy was holding his own against the two tormentors who were becoming confused by the man-child.
“I don’t care about some shitty jellyfish, ’cuz I’m not going into the ocean, you ignoramus,” the first one said in an effort to regain the upper hand. I wouldn’t have guessed the guy knew a four-syllable word.
“Yeah, and you walk like you been bitten by a poison jellyfish,” the other added with his sniveling tone.
“Jellyfish don’t bite, they sting,” Tommy said, “And I know about poison spiders. They have a fumble web here but it died and it was really a tarantula and I could tell the difference.” He was getting flustered while they were getting confused—and aggravated. But a museum is a bad location for beating up a retarded man who won’t let himself be bullied.
Nina and I pulled back when we heard the two jerks mumbling insults as they headed toward us. The bigger guy was wearing a sweatshirt with Greek letters and his little buddy had on a letter jacket. Sweatshirt came around the corner of the alcove with frat boy attitude. I threw a shoulder into him. He stumbled backwards into Letterman, who crashed against the drinking fountain. Sweatshirt ended up on his ass, having lost both his balance and his pride. It was pretty comical, so I laughed. Nina scowled.
“Watch it, old man,” Sweatshirt said, getting back to his feet and balling his fists.
“You couldn’t outsmart my brother, and I guarantee you won’t outpunch me,” I said, grinding a fist into my palm. “But let’s take it outside if you want to try.”
Letterman took his place a step behind his buddy, a strategic position allowing him to look tough but let Sweatshirt do the swinging and bleeding if anything developed. Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as I first thought. I waited and stared until Sweatshirt snorted and grabbed Letterman by the sleeve, shoving him past me and into the hallway while muttering about my not being worth his time. They left as Tommy came lurching toward us.
“Nina, those guys were mean—and Riley showed them. I’m glad you didn’t hurt them Riley,” he said turning to me, “but you would have if they didn’t leave me alone.”
“You had them on the ropes with what you learned about deadly sea life,” I said, tousling his sandy blonde hair that looked no messier for my efforts.
“Yeah, I showed them who was stupid,” he said. “I don’t walk normal, but they didn’t know about jellyfish or spiders or anything.”
“I’m proud how you stood up for yourself,” Nina said, giving him a hug, “but let’s not call people stupid, even if they don’t know things that we do. And here’s what I know, a visit to the gift shop would be a fine stop before we get some lunch.”
~||~
At the gift shop, Tommy was struggling mightily to choose among wooden pieced-together models of insects. The cricket, mantis and dragonfly were studiously compared, selected, and re-shelved in a process that was both agonizing and joyful for him. I was looking at a rack of posters featuring images of Albert Einstein with various quotes meant to drive home the man’s genius.
The museum had an exhibit devoted to the fiftieth anniversary of Werner Heisenberg’s Nobel Prize, but nobody would lay out ten bucks for a poster of a physicist who discovered uncertainty. Hell, the older I get, the less certain I become and Swedish royalty aren’t handing me a check and hanging a medal around my neck. But from what I could gather as we passed the exhibit on our way to the gift shop, Heisenberg did something complicated involving electrons—and whatever it was, Einstein disagreed and turned out to be wrong. I took pleasure in Einstein having been mistaken about something.
Tommy came over to where I was scanning the posters. “Who’s that?” he asked. “He looks funny but nice. I like how he’s sticking out his tongue.”
“That’s a famous scientist, Albert Einstein,” I said.
“What did he do?”
“It’s hard to explain because I don’t really understand. But it had to do with some equation that explains lots of stuff about the universe.” As I flipped through the posters, Tommy suddenly told me to stop and called over to Nina, who was looking at a coffee table book of birds.
“What did you find, Tommy?” she asked.
With a triumphant flourish, he lifted one of the posters from the rack and held it up for her to read. There was Einstein, standing at a chalkboard covered in mathematical gobbledygook with a quote: “The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
“See,” Tommy declared, “a famous scientist said people are stupid. I bet he would have called those two guys who bothered me stupid.”
Nina smiled and shook her head, being smart enough to know when she was defeated. Tommy settled on the model of the dragonfly with a one-foot wingspan because he said that in the days of dinosaurs, dragonflies got that big or even bigger. Another fact that had surely eluded Sweatshirt and Letterman.
Settling down at the Academy Café with our trays of food—hot dog and fries for Tommy, hearty bowls of chili for Nina and me—I hoped that the earlier excitement would fade from my brother’s memory. The last thing I needed was his revealing to our mother that he’d had donuts for breakfast and an altercation at the museum. My hopes were futile.
“Riley, what’s an inner anus?” he asked, dipping a fry into a paper cup of ketchup.
“A what?”
“An inner anus. That’s what the mean guys called me. And I know that ‘anus’ is a bad word for your butt, so is the inner anus where the poop comes from?” I was baffled. Nina was doing her best to suppress laughter behind a napkin she was pretending to use.
“Oh dear, Tommy” she said, regaining her composure, “I think you mean ‘ignoramus’ which is just a fancy word for an ignorant person.”
“So, it’s like being stupid?” he asked.
“Sort of, but being ignorant just means that you don’t know something,” I said.
“Let me tell you a story,” Nina offered. As Tommy chowed down on his lunch, Nina recounted the life of Will Rogers, explaining that he was one of the most beloved actors and humorists in the olden days before television. I had no idea where this was going. Nina explained that she had learned all about Will Rogers because he had something in common with her. They both had Indian heritage. He was part Cherokee, having been born in Indian Territory which became Oklahoma. She was half Chowok, her mother having come to the city from the reservation when the government forced her people to relocate.
“That’s a good story,” Tommy said, “but Will Rogers wasn’t stupid, was he?”
“Not at all. In fact, lots of people thought he was very wise. And he said something important about being ignorant.”
“Tell me,” Tommy said, wiping up the last of the ketchup with the end of his hot dog bun.
“He said, ‘Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.’ So, I’m ignorant about football, and Riley’s ignorant about knitting.”
“And I’m ignorant about checkers,” Tommy said, “But Karsa knows everything about checkers, like I know about insects. He knows how to move the pieces and sometimes he can beat Father Griesmaier.”
After lunch, we hit the African wildlife hall and the earthquake exhibit. By the time Tommy got to the hands-on gallery with the antlers, bones and furs, he was running out of gas. On the way home, he fell asleep on Nina’s shoulder. I dropped them off at my mother’s house, so Tommy could nap before dinner and Nina could lend a hand chopping, stirring, and shredding.
~||~
I headed down Van Ness to The Groove Cellar—the best record store in the city. Cassette tapes may be outselling LPs, like sales of Michelob Light are outpacing Anchor Steam at O’Donnell’s Pub, but Americans have never sought quality in music or beer. Or politicians, food, or clothes. Or films, cars, or tools. Or ... you get the idea.
I was after a hard-to-find Grant Still album as a surprise for Dennis at dinner. If anywhere had this recording, it would be The Groove Cellar, and if anyone could unearth it from the overflowing, cobwebbed shelves, illuminated with a single sixty-watt bulb in the back storeroom, it would be the owner, who I’d befriended years ago through our shared taste for classical music.
I waited in the front, aimlessly flipping through albums and concluding that although the worst classical music is probably more listenable than the best popular music, the rock groups have the upper hand when it comes to album covers. If only they were as adept at composing musical scores and lyrics. My ruminations were interrupted by the owner proudly producing the 1974 recording by the London Symphony, which included one of the most aesthetically interesting album covers I’ve seen on a classical LP—a feature I hoped would please Dennis, along with the music.
Back at my house, I did some chores while listening again to the Metropolitan Opera’s recording of Rigoletto. For some reason, that story drew me back. The opera opens with an orgy hosted by the Duke of Matua, disdaining fidelity and laughing at the jealous husbands of the women he beds. He mocks his hunchbacked jester, Rigoletto, who has no hope of partaking in his “kingdom of pleasure.” Verdi’s tale of depravity, set in the sixteenth century, was darkly reminiscent of my last week.
While mopping the kitchen, it occurred to me that the Riley brothers had much in common with Rigoletto. He was a social outcast because of his deformity—and Tommy constantly battled being different. But unlike Rigoletto, my brother had the goodness to resist becoming bitter.
As for me, Rigoletto wanted to shield Gilda, his vulnerable daughter, from the corruption of the world, the same as I wanted to protect Tommy. But despite—or maybe because of—his passionate concern, Gilda’s innocence drew her to a horrible end. Maybe Nina was right about allowing Tommy to stand up for himself.
The opera was as pungent as the mixture of turpentine and linseed oil I used on my insect cabinets and oak worktable. Rigoletto’s perverse fate leads him to make happen the very thing he most fears. I was left buffing the wood and wondering if my efforts would end up assuring the death of innocents.
CHAPTER 24
A soft, amber light leaked through the gauzy curtains. From the cars parked in front of my mother’s house, I could tell I was the last to arrive. I didn’t bother knocking as the clamor of voices and music would’ve masked any effort to announce my arrival. The women were packed into the kitchen having a lively conversation about whatever was simmering on the stove, baking in the oven, and cooling on the counter. As much as Carol objected to stereotypical sex roles, she and Anna were having a grand time in their roles as sous chefs. Sometimes activism gets in the way of having fun.
My appearance at the kitchen door produced a fleeting acknowledgment in the form of a quick peck on either cheek from my mother and Nina, who then gently shoved me toward the living room where the guys had gathered. I brushed the floured handprints off my tweed jacket which was too warm for the house, given the steaming kitchen and the long-suffering radiator that could never put out enough heat to satisfy my perpetually cold mother.
Larry and Dennis were in the midst of Tommy’s new, favorite card game. He derived as much pleasure from telling his opponents to “Go Fish!” as actually winning. Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf narrated by Peter Ustinov with the London Philharmonic Orchestra played in the background. That poor, scratched record had probably been played a thousand times and Tommy knew every word and note but never tired of listening. It calmed him during chaotic times such as our monthly dinners, which is almost certainly why my mother had it playing.
Once the guys had counted their points with Larry coming out on top, I handed Dennis his gift. He let Tommy unwrap it while Ustinov described hearing the duck quack inside the wolf which meant the symphonic fairytale was reaching its end. While putting the new record on the turntable, I explained that Dennis’s appreciation—however painfully phrased for a classical music lover—of Mozart a couple days ago gave me hope that he might enjoy Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony.
The opening strains feature the plaintive notes of a muted trumpet giving the piece a bluesy feel on top of the classical music, before sliding into a more symphonic movement and later picking up on a jazz theme.
“Reminds me of Gershwin,” Larry said. I must’ve looked stunned because Larry adopted a smug look and stroked his jawline with affected snobbery.
“How do you know about Gershwin?” I asked, knowing that Larry’s tastes centered on the lamentable collision of country western and rock music, a blend consistent with chicken-fried Oreos which appeal to Nashville stoners.
“Who dat?” Dennis asked.
“My good man,” Larry said, continuing his self-satisfied performance, “Gershwin was a famous composer of ...” the stroking slowed, “ ... of stuff that sounds like what we’re hearing.”
“You’re bluff is showing,” I said.
“Okay, I know Gershwin from the musical,” he said. “An American in Paris is etched into my memory because it was the only flippin’ movie my unit had to show during lulls in the action. I must’ve seen that thing twenty times. It was more entertaining than building rattraps from empty C-ration cans by baiting them with cheese and blasting caps, then counting little explosions all night.”
After the music reached its big finish, I told Dennis about Grant Still being the first African American composer to have a symphony played by a world-class orchestra and the first to have an opera performed by a major company. He was impressed, particularly by the revelation that Still had died just a few years ago, since Dennis figured all classical music had been written by white guys in powdered wigs.
Our discussion was abandoned as the women brought dinner to the table, festooned with candles and eight settings of Belleek china. Along with an enormous potato casserole loaded with bacon and sour cream, a tray of garlic-roasted cabbages, a heaping platter of boxty, and an overflowing basket of Irish brown bread, my mother took great delight in having worked with Nina to prepare cocido—a wintertime stew from Spain composed of every edible part of a pig, along with turnips, potatoes, and cabbage.
My mother was thrilled by the similarity to skirts-and-kidneys, a dish from my childhood involving pig parts and potatoes, which was increasingly difficult to make given the paucity of pork ears, feet, and innards in today’s grocery stores. Nina explained that cocido is usually served in three courses: soup, vegetables, and meat. But she’d learned the difficulty of moving about in a dining room filled with Goat Hill Extermination’s extended family.
Nina had also brought special wines from her parents’ restaurant. The Monastrell and Bobal were intense, red wines that complemented the rich flavors of our melded meal. If my very Catholic mother could accept Carol and Anna being a couple, then intermingling Irish and Spanish cuisines was not so radical. What mattered was that her loved ones were happy—maybe not sinless, but that was God’s business.
For a while, everyone dug in and murmured approval. The talk was all about the food, which was fantastic. Simple and honest. I’d flipped over the album to play some works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a mixed-race composer called the “African Mahler.” It was enough to prompt my brother to use his new vocabulary.
“Mom, Dennis was ignorant of the music Riley gave him,” Tommy declared, once the dishes has been passed a second time and our plates refilled.
“Goodness, Tommy,” my mother said, “that’s not a nice thing to say. Wherever did you hear that word?”
“Nina told me what it meant. It just means that you don’t know something,” he
said.
“Sounds about right to me,” Larry affirmed while sopping up cocido broth with a slab of brown bread.
“I don’t like it when people are ignorant of what it’s like to be retarded,” Tommy said, sticking with his topic and heading in a problematical direction, “Like those mean guys at the museum—”
“You’re right, pal. Most people don’t know what it’s like to be you,” I interrupted, hoping to avoid a recounting of the museum altercation. My mother knew that Tommy was often teased, so there was no reason to upset her with the morning’s events. “But then, we’re all different in some way, right?”
“Mos’ people don’ know what it’s like to be Black,” said Dennis, “havin’ folks watchin’ you all the time and wondrin’ if you gonna grab a purse.”
“Or to have fought in a war,” said Larry, “to do what your government says is right and get called a baby killer.”
“Or to love another woman,” said Anna, looking at Carol who flashed a smile.
“But that’s not like me,” insisted Tommy. “You’re all regular grownups. I want to be like you.”
“What do you mean, dear?” asked my mother, slipping another boxty onto my plate, knowing how much I loved the potato pancakes.
“I want to be normal,” he said and then paused. “I wish I was smart like all of you, then nobody would make fun of me.”
“What matters,” Nina said, “is not what’s in your head, but what’s in your heart. I think you’re more honest and kind than anyone at this table. And these are some of the best people I know.”
“It’s normal for adults to lie and be mean,” said Carol, setting a forkful of potato casserole on her plate to focus on Tommy. “So being normal isn’t always a good thing.”
“You know what you are?” Larry asked. Tommy looked at him with pure admiration. Larry had a special place in the kid’s world. “You’re one hundred percent natural.”
Lethal Fetish Page 18
