KooKooLand (48 page)

“Get changed and let's hit the town,” he said.

With trepidation, I brought him inside to meet Keith, the actor boyfriend.

Keith looked as startled as I was to see Jimmy.

“You're a Jew boy, right?” he said to Keith.

“Yup,” gulped Keith, who had heard his share of Jimmy stories.

“You want a belt?” Jimmy asked. I thought for a second he meant a punch, but then he took a pint of whiskey out of his pocket.

“No thanks,” said Keith. “I gotta go rehearse. Maybe another time. You guys have fun.”

He squeezed my hand for moral support and took off, bingo bango.

After he was gone Jimmy said, “So, he wears contact lenses?”

“Not all Jews wear glasses!” I shouted, exasperated.

“Take it easy, Dracula. I'm just ridin' ya. He seems OK. Kinda short, though. Tell him he oughta dress like a jockey. Ya know, bright colors. It'll make him seem bigger.”

I said I'd pass on the fashion tip.

He lit a cancer stick and offered me one.

“I quit, remember?”

He held out the whiskey.

I shook my head.

“You don't booze it up, either?”

“Not much,” I admitted.

“Hard to believe you're my goddamn kid. Maybe your old lady was screwin' around on me. Just like you're screwin' around. You're shacked up with that Jew boy, aren't you?”

I edged away from him a little in case he lashed out.

“Yes,” I finally croaked.

But he didn't slug me. He just took another slug.

“Well, at least nobody back home knows about it. At least you're keepin' it on a stone wall. Just don't get yourself knocked up like your dummkopf sister. Don't let no brat crimp your style.”

“I won't,” I said, relieved that he was cutting me slack like I was a son.

He punched me playfully.

“C'mon, let's go get into some trouble.”

I changed my clothes. Jimmy said I looked like Annie Hall at a clown convention.

We headed to Times Square. Jimmy knew his way around. We checked out the dives he had gone to when he was in the merchant marine. Times Square was still seedy and a lot of the dives were still there.

Jimmy had a ball and I rolled with it.

It was like the old days, trolling around the Combat Zone.

Am I ever gonna grow up? I thought. Am I ever gonna be frickin' free of him?

Jimmy stayed the weekend, flopping on the couch in the living room. At
night, he watched porn tapes he'd purchased in Times Square from a guy like Uncle Barney.

Keith rehearsed all weekend and I stayed out of the living room.

At one point, Jimmy asked when we were going to hook up with Woody, but I told him, aw shucks, Woody was out of town.

At the end of the weekend, Jimmy said he'd had a blast and we should do it again real soon.

I said I'd be working most weekends from then on, so he better call first the next time.

But he didn't end up coming back. He'd gotten too busy with work himself. Or so I found out the next time I saw him.

That was when I flew home for a surprise visit of my own. It was the day before Christmas. I hadn't seen Shirley in quite a while. She'd been sounding tired on the phone lately and I was worried about her. I was afraid she was going to end up drinking and sleeping again.

I got out of the cab and hastily paid the driver, feeling a familiar embarrassment at being dropped off in the projects. I gave the guy an extra-big tip to show him I didn't really belong there. And because it was goddamn Christmas and he was a working stiff.

Right away, as I approached the apartment, I got a bad feeling.

A picture of a gun had been glued to the front door. The barrel of the gun was pointed right at me and any other dummkopf dumb enough to show their kisser around there. On the picture were the words
NEVER MIND THE DOG. BEWARE OF OWNER
.

I tried to ignore the sign and walked in.

A couple around my age—a guy I'd had a crush on in grade school and a girl I'd played hopscotch with—were lolling about in the kitchen. Their eyes were glazed and I could tell they didn't recognize me.

“Well, look who's here! Annie Hall!” shouted Jimmy. He was sprawled in a new chair that kind of resembled a throne, drinking a highball, smoking a cancer stick.

Shirley came running into the room, holding a shoe box. She was thrilled to see me, but flustered.

She did look tired, but she wasn't skin and bones like I'd feared. In fact, she'd put on a lot of weight. My mother, who'd always been as skinny as Olive Oyl, was now as heavy as Bluto.

“Oh, my God, I look a fright,” she said as she grabbed me and hugged me so hard I nearly fell over.

“You should've let me know you were coming! I didn't make any baklava!”

“I just wanted to surprise you. I missed you.”

“How about me, big shot?” Jimmy grinned. “Didn't you miss me? Say yes, or I'll clock you one.”

“Sure,” I lied. “I missed you.”

“You're lucky I didn't plug you. I thought you were the fuzz.”

“She's back!” Shirley sang out. “It'll be just like old times!”

My stomach knotted up, just like old times.

Someone knocked on the door.

One knock. Two knocks. One knock.

Just like at the bookie joint.

A few more glazed-eyed hopheads came in. The first two got what they came for and scattered like cockroaches, never recognizing me.

If Susan knew about this place, I thought, she'd be next in line. Not that Jimmy would've sold to her. He would've drawn the line there.

I went up to my old bedroom.

It was now a drugstore.

Shoe boxes filled with pill bottles were piled on the top bunk. Back braces, neck braces, wrist braces, and a walker were scattered about the room.

It didn't take long for me to figure out that Jimmy's pill-pushing operation had really taken off. Percocet, Darvon, Valium. He was making money hand over fist.

Shirley, however, appeared to be doing the lion's share of the work. In addition to running back and forth to doctors to score the pills, she was answering the constantly ringing phone, taking the hopheads' dough, doling out the precious tablets from the shoe boxes, and keeping track of inventory.

I knew right away what Jimmy was doing. He was setting Shirley up to take the fall. He figured if they ever got pinched, she'd get off easy 'cause she was a goddamn woman.

But it turned out Shirley wasn't a total patsy. I discovered she had an operation of her own going on. Jimmy had taught her, by example, how to play the accordion, how to skim a little off the top. For every double sawbuck she took in, she was keeping a deuce. I found cash hidden all over just like I had found hidden booze. It was tucked under lamps. Stuffed into Kleenex boxes. Hidden inside my old board game, Candy Land. With the money, Shirley had been redecorating. I found stacks of curtains for every season—snowflake designs for winter, daffodils for spring, roses for summer, horns of plenty for fall—curtains to cover up the windows into Shirley's miserable life. In the living room there
was a fake Christmas tree with expensive glass ornaments to replace the ones Jimmy had pawned a long time ago. Shirley told me that when he threw a fit about the decorations, she said she'd found them by the side of the road. Just the way
he'd
lied to me about our ornaments.

I had to give her credit. She was pretty clever.

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Some of Shirley's ill-gotten gains had also been flowing my way. Over the previous several months she had been mailing me quite a few money orders.

“Buy yourself something fancy so everyone thinks you're loaded,” she'd whisper when I called home to thank her after Jimmy had gotten off the other line.

She'd told me lies about the money too. She said she'd gotten a big raise at the factory. Made a killing at the track. Found a C-note on the ground while walking home from the Temple Market. I believed her—or maybe I was just lying too. Lying to myself. I spent the money on beautiful shoes and nice haircuts. On records and movie tickets. On eating in Greek restaurants that were never as good as home.

But on that trip back for Christmas, I woke the fuck up.

When Jimmy left to go to the bookie joint, Shirley gave me one of her secret Christmas presents. An envelope with a thousand bucks.

I burst into tears.

“I can't accept this,” I told her. “I can't take any more money.”

Her eager smile vanished.

“Don't take away my only happiness. It's the only thing I'm living for, to make you happy.”

“This won't make me happy. It's blood money.”

“No, we're
helping
these people! They hurt like hell from lifting boxes and shoveling snow and mowing lawns and doing piecework like I used to do before I got promoted to quality control. You don't know what it's like. You went to college. You never had to dirty your pretty hands with anything but a typewriter.”

They were the excuses Jimmy was feeding her so she wouldn't feel bad about what she was doing.

“I've got a clean conscience,” Shirley insisted.

At least one of us did.

“You could go to jail,” I moaned.

She expelled a bitter laugh like she was spitting out sour milk.

“Your father's too smart. He'll never get caught. He's done everything under the goddamn sun and never got caught.”

“I can't take this money,” I repeated.

“It won't change anything if you don't. Your father's never gonna stop doing this. He loves it. He's got more money than ever to blow on the horses. The only thing that'll happen if you don't take the money is I'll feel worse. Is that what you want? You want to make me feel bad?”

She cried and begged me some more to take the money.

I took it. She felt better, but now I felt worse.

“Buy yourself something fancy so everyone thinks you're loaded,” she said again.

Me and the hopheads. We were all loaded.

And, the next day I found out, so was Shirley.

She had become a pothead.

I smelled it when she came out of the bathroom.

No doubt it was taking the edge off that guilty conscience she didn't have.

Like a parent confronting a teenager, I sat Shirley down and grilled her about the pot.

She said Jimmy—who else?—had gotten her started with it. He had gotten fed up with her being a teetotaler. He thought it made her a goddamn stick-in-the-mud. He was sick of getting half-lit alone. He wanted her to get half-lit too. He thought two halves made a whole lot of fun.

He made her a highball.

But Shirley had stood her ground. She flat out refused to drink it. The shrink at the rehab hospital had convinced her she'd be a dead duck if she started up again. He'd shown her pictures of her pancreas and liver, which looked like they'd been peppered with buckshot. Shirley reminded Jimmy that if she was a dead duck she wouldn't be able to get him any more pills.

He didn't like the sound of that. Maybe his dummkopf wife had a point for once in her stupid life.

So he talked her into smoking a little weed instead.

I could just hear his arguments.

For Chrissake, pot's safer than Luckies! Every goddamn longhair in the country is doing it! You're a big chicken—
pluck pluck pluck
—if you don't give it a try!

Finally she caved.

Light me up, she said.

Yabba dabba doo, Jimmy said.

He bought her a hash pipe.

And he got her the good stuff. Got it from Richie, a dealer in Boston he
was supplying with pills. He gave Richie some extra pills and Richie gave him some extra pot. It was perfect. Nobody had to lay out any dough.

The pot explained Shirley's weight gain. Now instead of drinking booze and wasting away, she was smoking pot, getting the munchies, and ballooning up. After Christmas dinner, I watched her eat an entire coconut cream pie.

I told her that wasn't so good for her pancreas either.

She didn't like hearing that. I can't say as I blamed her. She was fed up with people telling her what the fuck to do.

“You're not a doctor,” she snapped. “You just wanted to be one like that hophead Susan!”

It was time for me to leave.

I blubbered when I said good-bye and so did she.

As usual, Jimmy told us to quit our blubbering.

Then he told me to come back soon, he'd put me to work. He'd pay more than that cheapskate Woody Allen.

I didn't return home for a long time.

I threw myself into my job. I worked on three Woody Allen movies. I got a raise. I began writing my own screenplays. Screenplays about murderers and child killers.

I stopped calling home every Sunday. I skipped a few now and then.

I tried not to dwell on the bad things that were happening in Manchester. I was supposed to be the one who got away. I was supposed to be the goddamn success story.

But I didn't feel like a success story.

Thanks to Jimmy I was a glass-half-empty kind of gal.

Thanks to Jimmy I felt like throwing that half-empty glass against the frickin' wall.

I felt mad most of the time, but did my best to try to hide it. My best wasn't good enough.

I snapped at slowpoke cab drivers, was rude to rude people, yelled at my boyfriend for trying to make me feel better about my teeth.

“They're not frickin' ‘cute'! I look like frickin' Dracula!” I screamed. Our relationship wasn't going very well.

One rainy night, I went out with a guy friend to pick up pizzas for us and a bunch of our friends. I'd already called in the order. When we got to the pizza joint, the lard-ass behind the counter had gotten the order wrong but wouldn't cop to it. He refused to make the pizzas over. I suddenly felt like killing him. “It was supposed to be sausage, not pepperoni, you dummkopf!” I screamed. I
was not gonna pay for those goddamn pizzas. He could take those pizzas and shove 'em up his ass.