“I don’t want to die!” I was covered in the blanket like a ghost.
“What the fu—the heck are you talking about, Victor?” My father didn’t let her curse around us, but I knew she could swear like a Geiger. Instead, my father would make up his own colorful exclamations and vociferations on every stubbed toe or bitten tongue: “Maanuggia!” “Your mother-in-law!” “Jiminy Cricket!” to name a few. I swear, the man could be getting his arm sawed off and he still wouldn’t say “Fuck!” or “Jesus Christ!”
“I’m going to die!” She got up from her rolling chair and checked the TV as I continued my tirade. “And you’re going to die and Tony is going to die…”
“What were you watching?”
“And Britney is going to die and Dad is going to die.” She grabbed the remote and pressed rewind.
Mum Mum and her friend Bill Clinton (not that Bill Clinton—he was from Philadelphia, and a Republican) came down the basement steps, cocktails in hand.
“And Mum Mum is going to die!”
“Victor!”
“Oh, am I, now? Then at least let me top off my Rob Roy first!”
Uproar.
“Mom, did you bring him this tape?”
“Yes, I sure did.”
“Well what the fu—heck was on it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Dinosaurs! That’s what he loves. Remember how he used to carry around those…”
“Well the poor kid is screaming bloody murder over here. You didn’t check it? Maybe you accidentally taped some Dateline episode or something. I’m rewinding it now, trying to figure it out.”
“Oh, you and your sisters think I’m so helpless with technology.” She handed her drink to Bill Clinton. “Just the other day, your sister came over to check the desktop…”
“I’m not saying that, Mom. All I know is that Victor—Victor, why are you crying? He just started screaming about all of us dying out of nowhere. I almost had a heart attack.”
“Don’t say that, with the way your father passed and all,” she said.
“Alright, well, I can’t figure out what he’s screaming about. There’s nothing here but dinosaurs.”
“Oh, he’ll be fine.” She grabbed her drink back from Bill Clinton and sat on the couch next to me. When she spoke, the whiskey odor smacked me in the face, forcing my lips to curl and my eyes to water. “I don’t know what it is that is making you cry, but listen up, sweetheart, because I’ve seen it all.” She took a sip from her drink and closed her eyes, savoring the whiskey like the water of life. “The world is a cruel and nasty place. I worked in Pennsylvania Hospital during the height of the Mafia Wars…”
“Mom, he shouldn’t be hearing this.”
“It’s fine. So sweetheart, I worked in Pennsylvania Hospital, where I met your Papa Ben, during those… tragic times, and I believe it was Hell on Earth.”
“So, Hell is in Pennsylvania Hospital, not Penn Station?” I said, calming down, rubbing my nose with the blanket.
“What’s that? Oh my, look at the time. We better get over to Nancy’s before she begins to worry. Bill, be a dear and grab the Dewar’s from the wet bar. There should be plenty left to get that old bat flushed, ha! Anyway, Victor, my dear, what I am trying to say is that one day I will die, you’re right. But if you’re so”—she seemed to finally realize that she was speaking to a seven-year-old—“sad about everyone dying, you won’t ever enjoy life. ‘A day without joy,’ or is it ‘laughter’? Bill, dear, what’s that saying? ‘A day without something is a day wasted?’”
Bill Clinton was analyzing a bottle of Chivas 18 Year my dad only drank after PTA meetings and hadn’t been paying attention.
“Never mind all that. Here is what I’ve learned after my too-many years than I’d like to admit.” Mum Mum had stopped having birthdays in 1987. “The world is as dangerous as it is dark, so sharpen those horns, little devil.”
It had snowed eighteen inches and we hadn’t had school for two days. I didn’t even like the snow, but sometimes I guess a release from Pierce Stone was worth shoveling the brown slush. We always had to shovel Mrs. Bailey’s driveway also—Nancy Bailey, the woman who lived a few houses down and was always drinking with Mum Mum. My dad would say that we had to take care of the elderly, that it was the right thing to do.
After Tony and I helped my father shovel the driveway and the path leading to our front door, and after we shoveled Mrs. Bailey’s driveway and the path leading to her front door, we went to the Geigers’ to hang.
Karl and George hadn’t changed out of their pajamas all day. The Geigers paid a guy with a truck to plow their driveway. We went to the side door and threw off our wet boots and ran through the kitchen, where Mrs. Geiger was making raclette that stunk up the whole house. We descended the creaky steps into the basement, and Tony grabbed two Stewart’s Root Beers from the fridge.
“Awww, man, what do you two idiots want?” said George, flipping through channels aimlessly.
“Happy to see you too, slut-face,” said Tony as he handed me a Stewart’s.
“Ya know, there isn’t shit on TV. Do you idiots want to do something?”
“What the crap can we do? There is a crap-ton of snow and it’s getting dark.”
“I don’t know, but if I see this corny Maxwell House commercial one more time I’m gonna break something. Hey Karl…” Karl, again shirtless at the computer, even in the dead of winter, was deep in an orc campaign. “Karl!”
“What do you want?” he said without turning around.
“Well, shit, what do you wanna do? We gotta do something. You’ve been playing Warcraft all day.”
“Hey George, ya know what we could do?” Tony started, muffling his laughter. “You know we…”
“We could go look for weapons up in the attic!”
Uproar.
“I’m still going to murder you two for that,” said Karl, without taking his eyes off the screen.
“Vic was crying!”
“What an idiot!”
“Fuck you guys,” said Karl as he turned off the computer. “Hey Vic, wanna go throw snowballs at cars?”
“Yeah, okay.”
We put on our layers and trudged to the bottom of the Geigers’ cascading lawn blanketed in clean snow. By the time we made it down by the street, the sun had gone down and the moonlight made the white lumps sparkle; it was as if we were making snowballs from diamond dust.
I carved out a chunk of snow and molded it in my hands until it was thick and smooth. Karl did the same.
“Ya know, I’d really like to take this and smash it into George’s face,” Karl said, tossing the snowball up and down. “We’ve gotta get ’em back, ya know?”
“How can we do that? They’re older and better at that kind of stuff,” I said.
“Don’t worry, Vic. I’ll think of something. We’ll get ’em back. Don’t worry. Look, here comes a car. Let’s nail it.”
“Hold on, Karl. You sure we should be doing this? What if we get caught?”
“Caught? You’re the fastest kid I know. And me? I could fight any sock that tried to catch me. Shit, we should’ve brought weapons.”
“Hey, you idiots!” shouted George, wading down the front lawn with Tony.
“Oh, fuck, what do they want?”
When they got to us, their cheeks and noses were rosy from the cold. It was a biting cold, and I already regretted my decision to throw snowballs at cars; I just wanted to sit in the warm basement and drink as many Stewart’s Root Beers as I could before I had to return to my soda-less home.
“You idiots hit anything yet? I’ve seen you throw, Karl. You can’t hit shit.”
“Fuck you, George. I’ll throw this right at your face,” he said, presenting his white orb.
“Okay, okay, sorry. We’ll cool it. We wanted to come out here and help you… ’
cause we felt bad.”
“Yeah? Okay, fine then. Grab some snow and get throwing. Here comes someone.”
A white Mercedes cruised around the curve in West Road that bent right at the edge of the Geigers’ property.
“Oh shit, I’m not ready,” said George. “Karl, give me one of yours.”
“No, make your own.”
“Here, here,” said Tony, handing his to George.
“Okay, I got this fucker.” George could throw really hard for a twelve-year-old, and he whipped the snowball from behind the bushes we were using for cover. The timing was right, but the snowball whizzed over the top of the Mercedes and landed in the yard across the street. “Fuckin’ A. Just missed the asshole.”
“You suck,” said Tony.
“Really, George. You can’t hit shit,” said Karl.
“Fuck you guys. Vic, why didn’t you throw yours?” asked George.
“Well… what if we get in trouble? Or… if… if it makes them swerve and hit something. They could die, you guys.”
“Oh my God, seriously? Die? It’s a fucking snowball,” said George. “And now look, we missed a chance at another one,” he said, pointing to a shiny silver Lexus SUV that glided around the West Road curve without noticing the four youths arguing over its demise.
“Okay, the next one is Vic’s. And make sure you get it, because it’s already dark and The Simpsons is on soon.
“Look look look. Here comes one now,” said Tony, crouching behind the bushes.
“Oh nice, a Beamer. Vic, you got this,” said George.
“A Beamer? That’s what my dad calls a poop. Tony, isn’t that what…”
“Shut up, Vic. You’re going to miss it,” said Tony.
“Go, go, now throw it.”
“Throw it!”
Scared I was going to miss it and then we’d have to stay out longer and George would miss The Simpsons, I turned and launched the snowball over the bushes on a perfect rope into the driver’s side window, and it smacked against the glass with a thud!
“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” said George as he ran back up his driveway.
“Crap. Vic. Run,” said Tony, as he turned to sprint across the Geigers’ front lawn and onto our property.
The car had stopped and pulled over to the side of the road. I turned and followed Tony and looked back to see Karl lying facedown in the snow. The driver got out of his car. Karl didn’t move.
“Tony! Karl is…”
“Shut up. Come on.”
Karl still hadn’t moved. The driver was young and pale and wore a long black coat that reminded me of Dracula. He stomped across the road, screaming after George. “I’ve got a fuckin’ kid in here! You little shit!”
Karl was a rock. You see, he knew the snow was too high for him to run up the front lawn, even if he stepped in the tracks we already made. So, thinking on his feet (no pun intended), he plunged himself facedown into the snow and played dead. And it worked; the infuriated driver shouted a little more at George—who had already run inside, taken off his boots, and turned the TV to Fox—and returned to his car, slamming the door. He couldn’t see Karl lying in the snow from the other side of the bushes.
It made me sick, leaving Karl in the snow like that to fend for himself—I knew we should’ve brought weapons—especially after he saved me from Hell’s serpent in the woods behind Glenwood. But I ran home anyway and opened the back door to the basement and could hear Britney yelling, “‘And now, a special sort of death... for one so fair. What shall it be... ahhh!’” as my father tried to drown it out with Sinatra.
We had reached February and Paxton still refused to take the three bead columns of six beads each—green, yellow, black, green, yellow, black—out of his hair from his trip to Jamaica over the holiday break. I was jealous of kids from school who went on vacation to sun-drenched islands and came back with tawny tanned skin.
I inherited my mother’s Germanic skin tone and would get so white in the winter that my uncles said I looked Swedish. They called me “Hans” or “Anders”; Andrius said I looked like one of his cousins from Vilnius.
One time we had a substitute and I told her my family was going to Puerto Rico in the summer just to see how it felt.
“Oh, that will be fun,” she said. “You can use your Spanish that Señora Steinman has been teaching you. And you’ll get nice and tan.”
It felt good to lie. After that I started lying all the time, and because I was the new kid, no one could say I wasn’t telling the truth. I spent holiday breaks in Turks and Caicos, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands; I pulled out my father’s heavy atlas (my dad had the towns of Avellino and Sorrento circled in red Sharpie) and would find new islands I had never heard of before and couldn’t even pronounce—MartInik, Montes-rat, Guadel-oup-ee. I never said Cuba, because I knew my mother hated them, and good thing too, because my jig would’ve been up—Americans weren’t allowed in Cuba. And I didn’t stop at islands, either; it was really anywhere with palm trees. I told Michaela Silves that I took a boat on the Amazon. She said she had family in Brazil and asked where else I went. When I couldn’t name any cities, she inadvertently saved me by saying most of her family was in Portugal, anyway.
It was recess and I was standing over by the fence that separated the grass and jungle gym from the parking lot. We weren’t allowed to play football after Kader Kalan’s lip was split open on Pierce Stone’s knee during a fumble.
After football was taken away, Lenny tried teaching us rugby—he had learned how to play in New Zealand. It wasn’t football, so we weren’t breaking any rules. Lenny grabbed one of those classic red balls ubiquitously associated with dodgeball (we weren’t allowed to play that either) and had us stand in the backline rugby formation and toss the ball to each other. Rugby was okay; it was like football, except you really didn’t go anywhere. But after only one and a half recesses, Mrs. Lydell caught onto us and took that ball away, too.
That’s why I was over by the fence during recess, because we didn’t have anything to do. I sucked on a Tootsie Pop that Karl gave me. It had a blue wrapper, but the candy was actually purple—that bothered me. I fiddled with the wrapper, folding it over and over again into tiny squares and triangles until it was too tight to keep folding.
“Hey, that have the ‘Indian Star’?” asked Paxton as he approached me, leaving Pierce Stone’s circle underneath the monkey bars.
“The what?”
“The ‘Indian Star.’ Ya know, the boy with the feathers on his head and star? It brings good luck. But if it doesn’t have it, you have to throw it out.”
“Why?”
“Because that brings bad luck, duh.” I unfolded the wrapper until it was completely flat. “Doesn’t have it, doesn’t have it! Throw it out, Vic!”
“That isn’t true, Paxton. Why are you always lyin’? This isn’t a white lie either. You can’t just talk about luck like that.” And I gave him “the horns”—the infamous symbol used by Italian grandmothers to put a hex on enemies and by my father when the Cowboys or Eagles were kicking a field goal. (The symbol was introduced to the world by Ronnie James Dio of Black Sabbath, who, unsurprisingly, had an Italian grandmother who frequently needed to ward off evil. And now the gesture is forever associated with all things metal.)
“Hey! What the heck was that?!”
“A curse. You tried to put bad luck on me, so I’m it putting back on you.”
“That’s not funny, Vic! I’m telling Mrs. Lydell.”
“Okay, okay, okay. I take it back. I’m sorry.”
“That’s alright. Hey, come here, I gotta tell you something.” And as we walked down the fence, he looked over both shoulders to make sure we weren’t being followed. “I got some news about Pierce, but you can’t tell anyone, okay?”
“He’s being sent to boarding school far away? In like, Mendham or Morrist
own?”
“What?”
“My cousins live out there and it is so far away.”
“No. Pierce…”
“Oh! Or maybe military school? That way he could be sent to Iraq.”
“Iraq? Where is that?”
“I don’t know. Out in the desert somewhere, like Tatooine, where Luke Skywalker lives in Star Wars.”
“Oh, cool.”
“But Luke Skywalker doesn’t live in Iraq. My mom says it’s where the bad guys are.”
“Vic, this isn’t about Iraq. Vic, listen, Pierce’s parents are getting divorced.” And after he said it, he grinned and stared, soaking in the pleasure of sharing the secret. “But listen…” He looked over his shoulder again; Mrs. Lydell was chasing Lenny and Andrius around the blacktop as they tossed the red dodgeball to each other, screaming, “Rugby!” “You can’t tell anyone, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Seriously, Vic. You can’t tell.”
“Okay, Paxton. I won’t tell. I got it.”
As Paxton ran across the blacktop to add a third to Lenny and Andrius’s game of keep-away, I scanned the jungle gym to select someone worthy of divulging my tender secret. Michaela Silves, Kelly McCallister, and Olena Lazarenko were in the tower perch, pointing and giggling; Michaela blew me a kiss. I dodged the wet missile and hid behind an oak tree that typically served as the respawn point for manhunt. I peeked around the other side of the trunk and saw Silas, the white African, and Maine Ogden throwing pinecones at the fence.
I trotted over to them, hiding and ducking behind foliage so I wouldn’t be struck by a Michaela lip-bomb, but when I reached the two chuckers to share my morsel of knowledge, nothing came out.
“Spit it out, Ferraro. We have cones to chuck,” said Maine Ogden, impatient and disgruntled.
“Oh, uh…” Now I looked over my shoulder and saw that Mrs. Lydell had somehow wrangled the red dodgeball away from the guys, and that Paxton was already scheming up something new beneath the blue spiral slide. “I, uh… I heard that Pierce’s brother had head from Rachel Feinberg… or Feinstein.”
Lunchmeat Page 5
