The Pigman

by Paul Zindel

  “I think we’d better go downstairs,” Lorraine said.

  “All right.”

  “Dinner is served,” she announced, carrying this big plate of congealed spaghetti. We each sat at opposite ends of the table with the candles burning away. I poured us some wine in these long-stemmed glasses, and for a few moments we just sat looking at each other—her with the feather in her hair and me with my moustache.

  “To the Pigman,” I said softly.

  “To the Pigman.”

  She lifted her glass, and she was lovely.

  12

  I wish this one would hurry up and croak because her husband has been getting a little too friendly lately.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Any man who can even think of flirting with another woman while his wife is on her deathbed deserves to be shot.”

  “Can I have seventy-five cents to get my blue dress out of the cleaners?” I asked, though I could tell by the way she was fidgeting with her hairbrush that she was not finished with her own topic.

  “Get it out of my pocketbook, and hand me my compact while you’re at it.” She loosened the knot on her bathrobe and sat down at the kitchen table.

  “He calls me out into the hall and asks how his wife is doing, and all the time he’s got his hands in his pockets and is giving me this wink. I don’t know what he heard about nurses, but I think I set him straight.”

  I went into the bedroom and started straightening up, hoping she’d stop repeating herself.

  “I looked him right in the eye, and I said, ‘Mr. Mooney, I think it would be a nice gesture if you went in and held your wife’s hand. It might help her forget the pain from her cancer.’”

  “I have to leave for school now, Mother,” I said, wondering what she’d do if she was taking care of Mr. Pignati. “Give me a kiss.”

  “Be careful…. Lorraine, don’t you think that skirt is a little too short?”

  “It’s the longest skirt in the sophomore class.”

  “Don’t be fresh. Just because all the other girls have sex on their minds, doesn’t mean you have to.”

  John wasn’t at the bus stop that morning, but we finally got together during third-period lunch. His hair was combed for the first time in months, and he actually had on a clean shirt. I could tell he was still charged up over our having the Pigman’s house to ourselves.

  “I didn’t get in until the start of the second period.”

  “How come?”

  “Bore wanted to know how I could be missing forty-two homework assignments in Problems in American Democracy, and I told him it was because I can’t concentrate with the vacuum cleaner going all the time. Then he went off on this big new plan where he’s going to check my homework every night, which will last for a day or two until he’s too tired or busy.”

  As he spoke he dragged me to the pay phone in the hall near the principal’s office.

  “Operator?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I just lost my dime trying to get St. Ambrose Hospital. I got some saloon by mistake.”

  “What number did you want?”

  “Sa7-7295.”

  “I’ll ring it for you.”

  “Thank you, operator.” When the hospital answered, John passed the phone to me and stood in the hall to watch for any teachers, because the kids aren’t allowed to use the public telephone at Franklin High unless they get a special pass. And even then it’s got to be to call your mother to say that the school nurse has just diagnosed leprosy or something.

  They gave me the head nurse on Mr. Pignati’s floor, and she told me he was going to be in for at least seventy-two hours—the danger period when a lot of people take that second attack and die. She sounded very nice when I told her I was his daughter, and she tried to explain something about this high-voltage machine they’ve got which is supposed to come in handy if a second attack does come. “Saturday would probably be the earliest he should leave.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “But don’t you worry about your father. We’re taking very good care of him.”

  “Thank you.”

  “As soon as he wakes up from his morning nap I’ll tell him you called.”

  I hung up.

  “Is he all right?” John asked.

  “Fine.” I smiled.

  John had the idea it was going to be great fun going over to that house by ourselves, but it didn’t work out that way. Monday when we had the spaghetti dinner and put on those costumes was a lovely evening. It really was. I think when we looked at each other in the candlelight, it was the first time I was glad to be alive. I didn’t know exactly why. It was sort of silly I suppose—him with his moustache and me with the feather in my hair—but somehow it was as if I was being told about something, something wonderful, something beautiful waiting just for me. All I had to do was wait long enough.

  Tuesday night I made TV dinners in the oven and burned them. They were supposed to be pork chops, but John said they looked like fried dwarf’s ears. Wednesday after school we stopped by the house for some beer and pretzels, but I knew I wasn’t going to get out that night because my mother was on the warpath over antifermenting the kitchen. Thursday we didn’t go over there at all because we really had to go to the library for this report for Problems in American Democracy:

  Read the amendments to the Constitution and condense the meaning of each into one succinct sentence. Also answer the following: 1. Which amendment is most important in your life? 2. Which amendment is least important? 3. What amendment would you make to the Constitution if you were President of the United States?

  On Friday we cut school since that was the last day before Mr. Pignati was due home. We got to the house around eight forty-five in the morning, and I went right into the kitchen and started making breakfast. John wanted scrambled eggs with Sloppy-Joe sauce, and that’s what he got. I just had scrambled eggs with pizza-flavored catsup. I burned the toast a little, and that was the first of a long list of complaints from Mr. John Conlan.

  “Ohhhhhhhh!” he groaned.

  “I’ll put some more bread in.”

  “It’s too late now. My eggs’ll get cold.”

  Then he didn’t like my coffee. I tried to explain to him that you can’t ruin instant coffee, but he kept insisting I did. I showed him the directions on the label—how you take a level teaspoonful and just add boiling water—but he insisted there was some kind of skill involved.

  After breakfast I asked him very nicely to take the garbage out, and he refused.

  “Why should I put out the garbage when you’re the one who makes it?”

  “You make just as much as I do.”

  “I do not.”

  “Your beer cans take up most of the space.”

  “Shut up and do the dishes.”

  That’s the kind of day it started out to be. I wanted to put the place in order so that when Mr. Pignati got back, he wouldn’t find a pig house, but the way John was acting I was beginning to feel sorry for his mother if he was always so infantile at home.

  “Could you do the dishes?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “You could at least do your own dishes!”

  Every now and then I’m startled at how good-looking John is, but he glared at me from under the shock of hair that fell across his brow and scared me a little. I knew something was bothering him—and I don’t mean the dishes or the garbage. If I didn’t know how maladjusted John is at times, I would have simply walked out of that house and not spoken to him again as long as I lived. But I let him pout in front of the television and watch a rerun of Doris Day’s called By the Light of the Silvery Moon.

  This particular mood in John had been building up ever since the night that he kissed me in the bedroom. I don’t know whether he had just started thinking about our relationship—that I might possibly be something more than his straight man. I really don’t know. But suddenly we had become slightly awkward in front of each other. Of course
I had always been clumsy around him, but at least I knew I had been in love with him for months. I also knew he liked me a lot but only as a friend or a dreamboat with a leak in it. But now suddenly he was wearing shaving lotion, combing his hair, and fighting with me. There was something about all that which made me smile as I scraped the Sloppy-Joe sauce off his plate.

  “I’ll take the garbage out now,” he said, appearing in the doorway.

  “I’d appreciate that very much.”

  “I’m only doing it because the Pigman’s coming home tomorrow, and this hovel better look good.”

  “Of course.”

  We really went to work on the house and fixed it up better than ever before. The only room we didn’t touch was the one with the pigs in it. There was something almost religious about that room, as though it contained a spirit that belonged only to Mr. Pignati, and it was best left alone.

  Once I had a nightmare about that room. I was walking down a long hall and saw the curtains on a doorway at the end. Even though I was dreaming, I knew exactly where I was, and I felt an icy chill run through me. I wanted to run away, but something was pushing me toward the curtains, and I started to scream for John.

  “Help me… help me… please.”

  I couldn’t stop my legs from moving closer and closer—as if large hands were fastened to them.

  The room was very dark though I could make out the shapes of pigs all around me. But instead of being on a table the pigs were arranged on a long black container, and as I started to realize what it was the fingers propelling my legs tightened and moved me closer. I felt the same horrible force taking control of my arms, and I couldn’t stop my hands from moving down to the lid of the box. When I touched it my hands went cold, and I knew I was about to open a coffin. I started to cry and plead and call to God to stop me as the lid began to rise.

  That was when I woke up screaming. Right there and then I should have known the dream was an omen of death.

  “Lorraine!”

  “What’s going on in there?” I called from the sofa where I was admiring how clean everything looked. I heard John rummaging through the closets in the kitchen and a banging of bottles. I went to see what he was doing, and he had the kitchen table loaded with all the beer in the house. It wasn’t enough to keep the Stork Club in business, but there were a few quarts of beer and some wine.

  “John, what are you doing?”

  “Is there any more beer in the icebox?”

  “What’s going on?”

  He opened the refrigerator himself and counted about nine loose cans of beer. Then he slammed the door and went into the living room to the telephone.

  “We’re going to have a few friends over for drinks tonight.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Just a few intimate friends for a quiet little drink. Don’t you think Mr. Pignati wants us to have a social life?” He smiled, his great big eyes glowing.

  13

  I really did think Mr. Pignati would have wanted us to have a few friends over. Of course, he would have liked to be there so he wouldn’t feel he was missing anything. I knew how much he’d enjoy hearing about a party when he came home. He’d want to know every little detail, just like he asked about everything we did in school.

  Dennis came over first around seven thirty because I told him to steal a bottle of 80 proofer out of his father’s whiskey cabinet. His father’s a building inspector, and everybody who doesn’t want to be inspected too much slips him a bottle and a few bucks each month. Dennis also brought some soda mixers and two dozen glasses he got from his mother by telling her I was having a birthday party and they were needed for the lemonade.

  I told Dennis not to invite Norton because if there was one thing this little cocktail party didn’t need, it was Norton Kelly. Norton has a reputation for going especially berserk at parties. Even when we used to have kiddie parties and play spin the bottle, the girls were terrified when it was his turn because he’d bite.

  “I don’t think we should use all of Mr. Pignati’s food,” Lorraine said, munching on a saltine.

  “He only got the stuff for us.”

  “He likes snails, so I think we should save all of them for him,” she said generously.

  Once she started turning out the hors d’oeuvres, she gained momentum. In fact she started eating every other one she made. It was one for the plate and one for her stomach. She put ricotta cheese on crackers, frogs’ legs on crackers, bamboo shoots on crackers, and fish killies, still with their heads, on crackers. The only thing she didn’t put on crackers was the chocolate-covered ants, which she just put on a plate so they looked like miniature chocolate candies.

  At seven thirty Deanna Deas arrived with her best girl friend Helen Kazinski. The two of them together are known as Beauty and the Beast. Helen is so fat you need a shoehorn to get her in the door. Then a few others arrived: Jane Appling, Rocky Romano, Nick Cahill, James Moon, Marlon Brewery, Josephine Adamo, Tony Remeo, Bernie Iatoni, Barney Friman, and Janice Dickery. They were a real nice bunch, but each one of them had a problem all his own. For instance, Jane Appling is six feet two inches tall.

  “Saaaaaay, this is a nice house. Whose is it?” That’s the kind of mind Jane has.

  “My uncle’s,” I told her, with just enough hesitation so she’d know I was lying. There’s no point in having a house unless kids wonder how you got it. We really didn’t start out inviting too many kids, but the more Lorraine and I thought of the parties we had been invited to, the more we had to call. After all, it was the first time either one of us had a chance to return the invitations we had gotten. Lorraine’s mother wouldn’t allow anybody in her house, and my mother would’ve insisted on DDT-dusting anyone I wanted to bring home.

  Lorraine dragged Jane away from me and over to the telephone while the kids were still quiet and nervous.

  “Hello, Mother?” Lorraine started, looking like a thief. “I’m calling from the phone booth at the corner of Jane Appling’s block. Her mother just made dinner for us, and I’m going to stay for a couple of hours, and we’ll do our homework together.”

  There was a long silence, and Lorraine’s face looked like she was tiptoeing across thin ice. Jane was all set to give her routine because she’s the only girl who doesn’t have a telephone, so nobody can call back and check out the story.

  “Saaaaay, Mrs. Jensen, I really would appreciate it if you’d let Lorraine stay awhile because I don’t understand this biology we’ve got, and your daughter’s a real brain.”

  Most of the kids had been going to a dance down at St. Mary’s Hall, but when they heard Lorraine and I were having a party, they ditched that idea. Rocky Romano is the real social organizer of the group. He looks a little bit like a constipated weasel, but he really keeps the party moving. Mainly it’s this idiotic face of his.

  Nick Cahill’s problem is that he’s terrified of girls, and Marlon Brewery would be fine if he’d learn how to drink. I mean he reads too much, and he’s always worrying about getting liver trouble and things like that. Josephine Adamo is a complete waste not worth mentioning, and Tony Remeo’s problem is that he likes opera.

  “I think we should save the rest of the ricotta cheese for Mr. Pignati,” Lorraine blurted as she went by with a serving tray.

  “Miniature chocolates, anyone?”

  Barney Friman is the big phony in the group and nobody can stand him, which is the main reason I invited him. Janice Dickery is the only nice one of the first pack. She’s really a lovely, sweet girl who dropped out of school in her junior year. I also invited Jack Brahn, but he asked if Janice Dickery was coming. When I said yes, he said no. That was because Jack Brahn was the reason Janice Dickery dropped out of school in her junior year.

  The band didn’t arrive until much after eight because they had trouble with their amplifiers in the snow. Once they got set up, the house really started to jump. Gary Friman, Barney Friman’s brother, played the drums. He was sort of the hero of the teen-age music world
ever since he got drunk one night at a party last summer and played the drums in the middle of Victory Boulevard. Billie Baffo was on guitar and Chicken Dee had bass. Melissa Dumas was there too because she goes steady with Gary Friman, and she always sings two songs with the band. She only sings two songs because that’s all she knows. She’s got a lovely voice, but her memory is like that of a titmouse with curvature of the brain.

  Three girls came from the church dance because Jane Appling had invited them, and I think she had one @#$% of a nerve. A few guys crashed with them, and we ended up with not much more than forty or so kids, so—I mean there could have been more—it wasn’t bad for a cocktail party.

  The chocolate ants and frogs’ legs were gone in no time. You can count on kids to eat anything when they’re at a party, especially if they don’t know it’s ants and frogs. And the beer was holding out pretty good. Most of the girls were drinking the wine, but Melissa Dumas had drunk too much. You should’ve seen her, half loaded, singing:

  Angel, baby…

  Myyyyyyyyyyy angellllll baaaaaaaaaby,

  It’s just like heaaaaaaaaaaaven…

  dreamin’ of yaaaaaaa…

  armmmmmmmmmms….

  We moved most of the furniture out onto the enclosed porch and took up the rug in the living room, so there was a great dance floor. Janice Dickery did this fantastic shaking that got everybody upset, with only Gary Friman on the drums. Like I told you, she’s very mature, and when she shakes, you can understand how come she had to drop out of school in her junior year. Then the guitars came back in, and they had to really show off. They turned the amps up so loud the window panes were rattling.

  “The nuns across the street are going to complain,” Lorraine yelled to me over the racket.

  “Oh shut up,” I bellowed back, getting a little high myself, but still rather furious about her telling me I made most of the garbage. I really can’t stand it when anyone tells me something like that.