2 Grand Delusion (4 page)

Was I, in short, making a total ass of myself?

Evidently Wells thought so, because he counterattacked with gusto. "Mr. Burns, you have exceeded the bounds of civil discourse. To maliciously state these reckless accusations in a public forum, when you know they will be reported in tomorrow's newspaper, is
unconscionable
. My client is a respected twenty-year veteran of the Saratoga Springs Police Department. As soon as this hearing is over, I will recommend to Mr. Doyle that he institute immediate action against you for slander."

Jesus, could I really get sued for this? I looked over to Andrea for support, half-expecting her to be glaring at me. But I got lucky—she reached for my hand and squeezed it. That gave me strength. I stood up. "Mr. Chairman, I respectfully request that you postpone your decision on this proposal until your next board meeting, to allow me sufficient time to demonstrate the unanimity of community opposition."

The chairman gave a sigh so loud I could hear it clearly from my pew. Interestingly, all the other board members were sighing too. Why?

Then I figured it out. These were sighs of relief. With the media there watchdogging them, the board members were afraid to make any actual decisions. So they were grateful for an excuse to delay. Procrastination—the bureaucrat's best friend.

And procrastinate they did. The chairman mumbled briefly to the other board members, who rapidly nodded in agreement, and they tabled the issue until November. The battle was over ... for now.

Andrea and I gathered up Tony and our kids and headed out. As soon as we hit the hallway, the boys immediately started jumping around and practicing their fiercest Ninja Turtle karate moves, undoubtedly their response to all the heavy tension in the air. It took Andrea and me a full minute to corral our little warriors down the stairs to the first floor.

Which is where Pop Doyle caught up with me.

4

Pop put his short, stubby, muscular hand on my arm. "Mr. Burns," he said.

I jumped, startled. His piggy eyes shone meanly, and I was afraid he'd pop me one.

But there were other people in the hallway too, coming out of meetings or just hanging out. Surely Pop wouldn't do anything violent now. Too many witnesses.

In fact, as I would learn later, there were exactly twelve witnesses, not including my family and Tony. And all twelve of them eventually wound up giving statements to the police about what they saw, which was:

They saw Pop touching my arm. As far as they could tell, he was touching me gently.

The three witnesses who were standing close to us heard Pop say, in a friendly voice:

"Just wanted to say, Mr. Burns, no hard feelings. You're entitled to your opinion."

And here's what all twelve witnesses saw and heard next:

My face exploded with fury. I yanked my arm away from Pop and instantly shoved him backward so hard he reeled, all 220 pounds of him. Now I'm no Hulk Hogan, and ordinarily Pop would beat the stuffing out of me, but I caught him by surprise and threw him down like a wet towel. Then I stood over him and started yelling.

And here's what the witnesses heard me yell:

"You motherfucker, don't you dare do that again!"

And then a lot of things happened at once. Pop tried to jump up, presumably so he could attack me, but suddenly my three Ninja Turtles leaped into the fray. Babe Ruth karate kicked Pop in one leg and Wayne Gretzky karate kicked him in the other, while Tony, more wise to the ways of the world, karate kicked him right in the balls.

Pop howled with pain. Tony kicked him again, paying Pop back in spades for having beaten him up once. Andrea, shouting, got in the Ninja Turtles' faces and tried to push them away. But they had picked up my angry adrenaline and it was carrying them to superhuman, or should I say superturtle, heights. They darted around Andrea and jumped up and down on top of various parts of Pop's body, starting with his knuckles.

I would have tried to stop them—well,
maybe
I would have—except that a lantern-jawed man in his thirties who turned out to be an off-duty police lieutenant pushed me up against a wall, away from the action. I started to explain to him the reason why I had exploded, and what had really happened between me and Pop—because eyes can deceive, and what the witnesses saw was
not
what really happened, as I'll explain to you in a moment—but the lieutenant wasn't listening. He was just repeating over and over, like a mantra, "Calm down, calm down, calm down." But it was kind of hard to calm down when the man had one hand grabbing the front of my T-shirt and another hand balled into a fist, ten inches from my nose.

It got even harder to calm down when I heard a loud clattering noise and saw, out of the corner of my eye, a gun sliding along the floor. It must have come loose from Pop's holster when the kids were mauling him.

The next thing I saw was Babe Ruth racing for the gun.

Immediately I visualized the whole thing: my six-year-old son grabbing the gun, firing at Pop and the lieutenant too, and ending up on the cover of
People
.

I ducked down so fast I left the lieutenant grabbing a fistful of air and dove for the gun, desperate to reach it before Babe Ruth did.

My hand and his found the gun at exactly the same time. I grabbed the barrel and his hand tugged at the handle, with one finger way too close to the trigger for my comfort. "Let go!" I screamed.

Thank God, he did.

I held the weapon gingerly, by the barrel, with two fingers. Then I walked up to Pop, who was still down on the floor, protecting his battered body from the continued onslaughts of Tony and Gretzky.

"Kids, stop it!"
I shouted.

They looked up at me. "But, Daddy, he's a bad guy," Gretzky complained.

"Here, Mr. Doyle," I said, holding the gun out to him.

"Don't give him the gun! He might shoot us!" Babe Ruth called out.

Pop sat up and glowered at me, his relief mixed with hatred and shame. Finally he took the gun and put it away in its holster.

Instantly everyone in the hallway began breathing again, and talking nonstop. Lieutenant Lantern Jaw angrily told Pop he should press criminal charges against not just me but my children, too; Andrea started shouting at the lieutenant; Pop collected himself and yelled at everyone in sight; the bystanders put in their two cents; Gretzky whined that he was thirsty; Babe Ruth whined that he was hungry; Andrea screamed at them; Judy Demarest came down from the stairway where she'd witnessed the whole thing and tried to help us with the kids; and as for myself, I was trying to make myself heard over the din, so I could explain what Pop had done to me before that no one had seen. But no one was listening to me.

Now Lieutenant Lantern Jaw was bellowing at Andrea that the city would send in social workers to take a good hard look at our kids because they were obviously heading straight for a lifetime of crime unless there was firm early intervention. Pop was making noises like he would take the lieutenant's advice on pressing charges, so the lieutenant grabbed my shoulder roughly and said, "Come with me," to jail I guess he meant. My entire family started wailing, and Gretzky and Ruth wrapped themselves around my legs to keep me from leaving, but then right at the last moment, just as the lieutenant was leading me off, Pop called out for him to stop, and it finally became apparent that Pop's noises were just that and he had no real intention of pressing charges against me or my boys. Nervously eyeing Judy Demarest, who was standing quietly to one side, Pop stopped blustering and put a wan smile on his face. He started in about how the whole thing was just a silly little situation that got a bit out of hand, so let's not make a big deal of it, boys will be boys, he'd give us all a break, just this one time.

He was trying to play it like a nice guy, but it didn't take a Ph.D. to figure out what was really going on in his swinelike little mind as he cast sidelong glances at Judy. He was frantic to avoid publicity for the fact that three young children, ages nine, six, and four, had overpowered him and made him lose his gun. Also, I doubt he wanted me testifying in court about what had really happened between us in the hallway.

Lieutenant Lantern Jaw wasn't the swiftest guy in the world, but he eventually figured out that Pop wasn't going to change his mind. So after giving Andrea and me a stern lecture about the responsibilities of parenthood, he let us go. His main theme was that we should take our kids to church every Sunday, and Andrea and I bobbed our heads solemnly up and down and promised to do exactly that. We figured this wasn't the right moment to tell him we were Jews, and agnostic Jews to boot.

Then Pop went downstairs to the police station and Lantern Jaw told everyone in the hallway they could go home, he wouldn't need to take their statements. It turned out he was wrong about that, though we had no way of knowing it at the time.

Andrea, the kids, and myself hightailed it out the front door and escaped as fast as we could. Finally, after endless minutes of Lantern Jaw shouting me down, I'd get a chance to tell Andrea my side of the story.

5

But Andrea, as it turned out, didn't want to hear my side of the story right then. She was far more interested in imparting some basic rules of gun safety to our children. And when I say basic, I mean basic.

"Don't
ever
touch a gun," she said to Babe Ruth and Gretzky, holding them firmly by the shoulders as we stood together on the sidewalk outside City Hall.

"But Mommy," Babe Ruth said.

"Don't
ever
touch a gun." Andrea was so riled up, the veins were sticking out all over her face. She's never shaken our kids, and I'm sure it took all of her willpower not to shake them right then. "Do you hear me? Don't
ever
touch a gun. Don't
ever, ever, ever
touch a gun."

This time the kids wisely didn't argue. They just nodded.

After Andrea and the kids got the gun thing straightened out, I eagerly told her the Real Story about what went down with Pop in that hallway. But she was surprisingly, and very annoyingly, unsympathetic. So later that night after the kids were asleep, I tried again. We were sitting together on the living room sofa, but about as far apart from each other as two people could get.

"Andrea, you have to understand, he
pinched
me," I repeated, exasperated.

"I don't
care,"
Andrea replied, equally exasperated.

"He pinched me hard, on some weird pressure point. It was like getting a hundred tetanus shots at once. I'm still aching there." I pulled up my sleeve and rubbed the tender spot.

"That's still no excuse for turning into a total lunatic—"

"Okay, so I overreacted. Look, I was in excruciating pain. How about I pinch you as hard as I can on one of your pressure points, and
you
see how it feels!" I snapped, my voice and my temper rising.

"Please be quiet—unless you want to put the kids to bed all over again."

"He was
smiling,"
I hissed quietly, desperate to make Andrea understand. "The prick stands there smiling like he's my best buddy, and the whole time he's squeezing me like he's studied some top-secret North Korean torture manual—"

"The prick was a cop, for God's sake. You almost got yourself thrown in jail!" She pointed a finger at me. "Don't start acting like some macho jerk!"

"Thanks for the sympathy," I said, and stood up from the sofa. I stormed into the kitchen, grabbed a beer, and guzzled it, feeding my rage against Andrea, Pop, the Zoning Board, the neighbors, and the rest of the world.

I came up with some really nasty things to say to Andrea, and started back to the living room to say them. But just in the nick of time, I decided I'd be better off going outside and walking off my anger. My impulses had already gotten me in enough trouble tonight; no need to add to it. So I put on my jacket, stepped out the side door, and took a deep breath.

The sweet smell of ripe grapes instantly surrounded me, miraculously lifting my mood quicker than pot ever did in my younger years. Maybe those aromatherapy people are onto something, I thought. Our fruitful, century-old grape arbor was in full harvest, so I grabbed a handful of big luscious purple grapes and rolled them around on my tongue, spitting out the seeds as I ambled down Elm Street, letting life's worries fade away and blithely ignoring the fact I was probably adding a few more stains to my T-shirt.

It was the kind of crisp autumn evening when you can feel both summer and winter simultaneously. I always find that strangely soothing. Way up high the North Star was beckoning, and in front of me Jupiter was strutting its stuff. Meanwhile the Nightmare House on Elm Street was dark and silent; maybe they were taking the night off from drug dealing, and Andrea and I would sleep for ten hours and wake up refreshed.

I walked down Elm and up Maple. The whole West Side was eerily quiet tonight. I whistled an old Yiddish lullaby,
Rochinkes mit Mandlen,
and it reverberated in the deserted streets. There were no cars whizzing by, no loud music, no children crying. What a magical night, I thought . . .

And then I turned onto Ash Street and realized it wasn't magic after all. Ash was lined bumper to bumper with parked cars, and the huge lot outside Pirelli & Sons, Scrap Dealers, was filled to bursting. The reason the rest of the West Side was so quiet tonight was because everyone was at the big S.O.S. meeting at the corner of Ash and Walnut. Even though it was ten-thirty already, and the meeting had started at eight, it was evidently still going strong.

I was feeling so peaceful, and the night was so serene, I had half a mind to walk away. But the other half won out, and I soon found myself walking up the steps of the Orian Cillarnian Sons of Ireland Hall.

I couldn't get any farther than the front door, though. The joint was jammed, no doubt breaking several fire laws. All two hundred folding chairs were occupied, mostly by elderly folks. The aisles were crammed with rows and rows of mainly younger people standing up and craning their necks to see over each other. A lot of them were fanning themselves with stapled handouts, because it was seriously
hot
in there. Even from where I stood at the door, I started sweating after about five seconds.

The mood in the room was just as hot as the temperature. One irate citizen after another was railing at the rank injustices of the universe in general and Saratoga Springs in particular. Their vituperations were aimed in the general direction of Hal Starette, the president of the Saratoga Economic Redevelopment Council, who sat at a table up front with a pained smile on his face and huge stains under his pits. I knew Hal, having played chess with him at the Saratoga Knights Club, so I recognized his pained smile and even his sweat—it was how he'd looked and sweated when I trapped his queen on my back rank. He was a good player, but sometimes took too many chances.

Next to poor nervous Hal sat Lia Kalmus, who was moderating the meeting and not sweating one bit. She looked absolutely at ease. She gave deep-throated laughs when the speakers made jokes, hushed them good-naturedly when they babbled on too long, and in general basked in the spotlight. With her good eye shining brightly, and her scarred cheek and droopy, bloodshot eye turned away from me, she actually looked almost pretty.

Meanwhile the air in the room was redolent with catchphrases and buzzwords. "Property values" was a biggie. So was "sick and tired." Also, "people coming in here and . . ." followed by some clause like "messing up our neighborhood!", which inevitably inspired wild applause.

Half of me agreed heartily with these folks, but the other half thought they were narrowminded right-wing pains in the ass. I was doing an awful lot of splitting in half lately; part of turning forty, I guess.

"Why don't they just stick all these homeless people on the East Side for a change!" one feisty old gent shouted, and two hundred other feisty old gents cheered as one.

A sweet grandmotherly type got up and said, "You know, a lot of homeless people are perfectly normal folks, just like you and me. All they need is a little helping hand." Then she added, "But let's face it, most of them are diseased, drug abusing, mentally insane criminals!" More clapping and cheers.

Half of me agreed with her, but half . . . et cetera. And I wasn't the only one who seemed torn. As I stood on tiptoes and gazed around the room, I noticed a lot of people biting their lips and looking like they wished they were somewhere else. Most of them were about my age, and I guessed they were just like me—ex-hippies feeling ex-hippie guilt.

There were also a bunch of people at the meeting who actively supported the SERC plan for the Grand Hotel. One suit-wearing, professional-looking woman in her forties stood up and identified herself as "Jennifer Hopkins, a longtime West Sider who's lived in this neighborhood for ten years." (I saw two old women share a look—"She thinks
ten years
makes her 'longtime'? Phooey!") Then Jennifer began what sounded like a prepared speech. She was probably a lawyer, but I tried not to hold that against her.

"People," she declared, "with every passing month, the Grand Hotel is falling even deeper into decrepitude, disgracing our neighborhood and driving down these very property values we're all so concerned about. Now instead of just sticking our heads in the sand, why don't we take a serious look at this SERC plan, instead of getting caught up in ill-considered scare tactics?"

"Scare tactics?!" an outraged old-timer yelled, pointing his cane at Jennifer. "You'd be scared too, if you were an old fart like us and you couldn't run away from these sons of bitches when they mug you!"

The other old-timers hooted and hollered, and Lia had to work her ass off to quiet them down. She finally succeeded, but then a woman with a thousand wrinkles on her face stood up and screamed, "And what about these teenage kids skateboarding on our streets every hour of the day and night? I can't even go outside my house anymore, I'm so scared they'll run me over!"

The old-timers went berserk all over again. Finally Lia restored order and Jennifer continued on determinedly. "As I was trying to say—before I was interrupted—this plan calls for the bottom two floors to be SERC office space. Surely no one objects to that?" She paused; no one objected. "The third floor will have computer training and G.E.D. classrooms. Surely no one objects to that, either?" She paused again, very smoothly. Definitely a lawyer.

"Now it's true," she said, "that the fourth floor would house homeless men, and I know a lot of folks have problems with this. But how many homeless men are we really talking about?"

"Too many!" someone shouted, but before the place could erupt into applause, Jennifer shouted back, "Twelve! Only
twelve
units for homeless men! And the SERC will be right there in the building, keeping an eye on them! So tell me, what is so gosh darn horrible about this plan?" She jabbed the air with her index finger. "How could this plan be any worse than what's happening right now, which is that this abandoned building is a boarded-up haven for crack users! Is that what you people really want for our neighborhood?!"

Suddenly, as if on cue, the room burst into frantic applause. But it was a different set of folks cheering this time: the younger set, the ex-hippies, the thirty- and forty-somethings who'd been uncomfortably chewing on their lips for the whole meeting.

Without even noticing, I started clapping myself. Well, at least now I knew which side I was on.

But as the debate raged on, I realized there were still a lot of people who
didn't
know which side they were on. The room was full of people—Irish, Italian, black, old, young, middle-aged—who were scratching their heads, shifting their feet, and generally looking confused, not clapping or cheering or saying anything at all.

Then one of them did say something. It was a five-foot-tall white-haired woman with a standard-issue little old lady voice but surprisingly large ears. Lia had to shush people three times before the hall got quiet enough for everyone to hear this female Ross Perot.

"Lia," she said, "I'm sitting here and just feeling more and more mixed up. First I think no, and then yes, and then no again." She threw up her hands. "I'm in such a tizzy. So my question is: Lia, which way are you going to vote?"

BOOM!

Three hundred people stopped moving.

Three hundred people stopped whispering.

Three hundred people turned their eyes to Lia Kalmus.

Lia cleared her throat. She scratched her chin thoughtfully. She rubbed her eyebrows. She had the power here—and she was loving it.

The sweat stains under Hal Starette's pits instantly grew another six inches. His smile was so grim, he looked like someone was sticking needles into him under the table. No doubt he assumed, as I did, that when push came to shove Lia would show her true colors as a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary nimby.

"Well," Lia finally uttered, in a deceptively casual tone, "as you all know, I want what's best for our community. But in this case, I have to admit to you, I can't
tell
what's best. We're caught between a rock and a hard place. Either we leave that disgusting building the way it is, and maybe wait another five years or even longer until someone else comes in and offers to fix it up, or we go with the SERC plan, with everything that brings. I'm like you, Helen," she addressed the elderly Ross Perot, "my head can go either way. And when that happens . . . there's only one thing to do. You have to listen to your heart.

"And my heart tells me, when I have two choices that seem pretty equal—but one choice will provide homes to twelve people—then there's no question what's right. Because when I was growing up, my whole family was homeless!" Lia's voice had been growing almost imperceptibly louder and stronger, and now it suddenly exploded in the hot Orian Cillarnian air. Her good eye somehow seemed to be looking directly at every single person in the crowded room. "Friends, if you're positive the SERC plan is bad for us, then vote against it. But if you're like Helen and me, and you're not sure, then you have to vote
for
it! Those twelve men tip the scales! Speaking for myself, I'm not just a West Sider. I'm not just the president of this S.O.S. Association. I am also a Christian! And Jesus Christ teaches me that every man is a child of God, and as much as I love the West Side, there are things in this world—and the next—that are more important than
property values!"