I Know This Much Is True (25 page)

Hanka let us pick our seatmates. Thomas and Channy both picked me, and I picked Channy. No one picked Eugene. At recess last week, Billy Moon asked Eugene to name five football teams and he couldn’t name
any.
Not
one.

My brother and I have been waiting for this trip a long time, but for different reasons. Thomas wants to see the Radio City Easter show. Ma went once; she said the religious part was so beautiful, it made her cry. It sounds boring to me; it sounds like church. I can’t wait to get to New York because then I’ll have visited four states and because I have spending money—thirty-seven dollars I earned from shoveling snow and walking Mrs. Pusateri’s dog and helping Ray on weekends. Last weekend, Ray and I installed a tool cabinet in his truck. Ray let me do some of the drilling and tighten the screws. It’s always me who Ray asks to help him, not Thomas. “Handy Andy”

he calls me. He calls my brother “Charlie Ten Thumbs.” Come to think of it, I was thinking about that squirrel up at Massabesic Lake when we were working on the tool cabinet, too—how a squirrel might get caught in there. Get trapped.

They show you a movie with the Easter show. The one we’re seeing is
The Music Man.
Mrs. Hanka—we call her “Muriel Baby”

behind her back—she saw
The Music Man
when it was a play instead of a movie. She brought in her record of all the songs and made us listen to it. Everybody was laughing because it was so corny. Eddie Otero started making pig snorts. Then three or four I Know[116-168] 7/24/02 12:30 PM Page 161

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other kids started doing it. Muriel Baby got so hurt, she stopped the record and looked for a minute like she was going to cry. She told us that if she hadn’t already bought the Radio City tickets, she’d cancel our whole trip. She gave us this big speech about how if we didn’t care about anything, then she didn’t care either. Then she did something weird. She turned off all the lights and went to the closet behind her desk and put on her coat. She just sat there. No social studies like we usually have. No nothing. Nobody said anything. All of us just sat there, nobody saying a word, until the intercom started calling the bus runs at 2:55. Like I said, it was weird. Creepy. The next day, everyone behaved, even Otero.

We might be able to go to a souvenir shop in Times Square if there’s time. If it’s the same one Marie Sexton from our class thinks it is, they have a whole aisle that’s nothing but joke gifts: snapping packs of gum, whoopie cushions, ice cubes with flies inside, fake vomit. When I asked Ma how much I could spend on the trip, she told me to ask Ray. He said five dollars, but I’ve brought thirty-seven: a ten, a five, and twenty-two ones. I might spend just a little of it, or I might spend the whole thing if I feel like it. Why shouldn’t I? It’s my money, not his.

Last night when Ma was making our lunches for the trip, she told us that when we ride on the Staten Island ferry, we’ll see the exact same view her father saw when he first came to this country in 1901: the harbor, the Statue of Liberty, the New York skyline. Ma’s always talking about her father. Papa, Papa, blah blah blah. At first, she wasn’t going to let us put our soda cans in the freezer overnight. “What if they explode?” she said, but I got her to give in. You can always get what you want from Ma if Ray’s at work. Right now, the sodas are in our lunch bags, in the rack above our heads. I just checked mine. It’s half-melted. By lunchtime, it’ll be melted all the way but still cold. In other words, perfect. Channy Harrington did the same thing with his soda. It was his idea. He says kids always do that with their sodas out in California. Channy’s father is one of the big bosses down at Electric Boat. When I visit over at Channy’s house, Ray says I’m “hobnobbing.” You can tell he likes me going over there, though. The I Know[116-168] 7/24/02 12:30 PM Page 162

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Harringtons have a housekeeper and a built-in swimming pool and a baseball-pitching machine for Channy and his older brothers. You can put it on three different speeds. The fastest speed goes seventy miles an hour. Sometimes the housekeeper makes us after-school snacks: oat-meal cookies, potato chips with onion dip, peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff sandwiches. Thomas has never been invited to Channy’s house. He says he’s sick of hearing all the time about that housekeeper and her stupid sandwiches and Channy’s stupid pitching machine.

Eugene Savitsky is giving my brother a lecture on how things break the sound barrier. He’s so jazzed up on the topic, you can hear him over everybody else. We’re not just going
to
the Statue of Liberty; we’re going
inside
it. They have stairs that go right to the top. Eddie Otero says he’s going to climb down the nose and hang out there like he’s the Statue of Liberty’s booger. He would, too.

Otero’s insane.

Muriel Baby comes to the back of the bus and makes us stop singing “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” It’s inappropriate for us to be singing about alcohol on a school trip, she says. We should know better. While she’s warmed up, she yells at Marty Overturf for eating his lunch already when it isn’t even 9:15 in the morning yet. What does she care? It’s his lunch, not hers.

Channy Harrington’s the only boy in our class who already shaves. Every single girl in our school is in love with Channy, just about. Debbie Chase asked him to sit with her on the bus ride to New York, but Mrs. Hanka told her no boy-girl combinations.

When Channy transferred to our school last November, he was automatically popular, even on the
first day.
He has swimming and basketball trophies from his old school on a shelf in his bedroom.

Channy says everyone in California has outdoor swimming pools, even poor people. His older brother, Clay, plays baseball in college.

He’s being scouted by the Cardinals.

Now Eugene is blabbing away to my brother about the planets.

Uranus this, Uranus that. Out of the blue, Otero yells, “Hey, Savitsky!

Stop talking about your asshole!” The whole bus looks back at us and I Know[116-168] 7/24/02 12:30 PM Page 163

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cracks up. Muriel Baby stands up from her seat at the front of the bus, scowls back in our direction, and then sits down again. The bus driver keeps staring at us in his rearview mirror. What’s
he
looking at? His job is to drive the bus, not give us dirty looks. “That dipshit driver should take a picture,” Channy says. “It’d last longer.”

Our seats are right next to that little bathroom. Mostly it’s the girls who have to use it. Otero and Channy and I say wiseguy things to them as they go in and out. “Don’t fall in now. . . . Don’t do anything in there we wouldn’t do.” We crack each other up. Channy’s been to Radio City before. Twice. He says when they open the doors, we should rush to the front seats so that when the Rockettes do their high kicks, we can see some good “crotch shots.” Even though it’s Channy who says it, Susan Gillis turns around and gives
me
a dirty look, and I go, real snotty, “What are you looking at?”

Susan’s mother was supposed to be our chaperone for this trip, but she came down with the mumps. Now Susan’s acting like
she’s
the chaperone. “You better stop talking like that,” she says.

“Like what?” I go.

“Like what you just said about the Rockettes.”

“Make us,” I say.

“You’re already made and what a mess.”

It’s not like Mrs. Hanka’s going to let us sit wherever we want to when we get to Radio City, anyway. She’ll make us all sit together in the same row, like babies, and I bet you any amount of money she plops right down next to Otero. Last week we had the word
incorri-gible
on our vocabulary list and Muriel Baby used Otero as an example.

I’ve been over to Channy’s house three times. The last time I was there, he told me he once saw all these women who were stark naked. At a beach in California where people don’t have to wear bathing suits if they don’t want to. Channy kept talking about the women’s “fur burgers.” At first, I didn’t know what he meant by fur burgers, but I kept my mouth shut. Later on, we snuck into his brother Trent’s room and Channy showed me Trent’s dirty magazines. That’s when I got it—what fur burgers were. I’d never seen I Know[116-168] 7/24/02 12:30 PM Page 164

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any women naked before, not even in pictures. I never even knew they had hair down there, like men. It was Channy’s brother Clay who took Channy to that beach. Him and some of his friends from college. From his baseball team. Channy says California has lots of those kinds of beaches. He’s always talking about how much better California is than Connecticut. He says in his old classroom, all the desks had little buttons on the side and, at the end of the day, you just pushed the button and the desks disappeared into the floor. I’m pretty sure that’s a bunch of bull. Maybe that stuff about the beaches is, too. But maybe not. I haven’t even been to four states yet. What do I know?

Thomas gets up from his seat, climbs over Eugene, and walks back toward us. Someone trips him accidentally on purpose and everyone laughs, Channy and Eddie Otero loudest of all. Thomas acts so retarded sometimes. I look out the window so that I don’t have to look at him.

He opens the bathroom door. “Don’t get any on you,” Channy says.

“If Althea comes down here, I’ll send her in for you,” Otero promises. He means Althea Ebbs, this big fat girl in our class who has BO and cries all the time. Thomas doesn’t answer them. I hear the bathroom door click shut. Hear him slide the bolt.

Five minutes go by and he’s still in there. Then six or seven minutes. I heard him flush a long time ago. Marie Sexton and Bunny Borsa have both gotten out of their seats about a million times to see if the john’s free. “Who’s in there?” Bunny asks us.

“His brother,” Otero says, jabbing his thumb at me. “He’s taking a two-ton dump.”

“Either that or he’s pulling his pud,” Channy jokes.

They laugh when Bunny calls us dirty pigs.

Then the door handle starts clicking back and forth like crazy.

“Dominick?” It’s Thomas. “Dominick?”

He’s locked himself in there. He can’t get out. I can hear the panic in his voice, in the frantic clicking of that door handle, the thump of his fists against the door. Channy and Otero are busting a gut.

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Marie Sexton and Susan and I start calling instructions to Thomas, but he’s either too scared or too spastic to follow them. “I’m going to get sick if I don’t get out of here!” he warns. That makes Otero and Channy laugh even harder.

“Calm down,” I keep telling him. “Keep your voice down. You’re making it worse.”

“It’s stuck! It won’t budge!”

Five or six other kids are standing there now; everyone’s shouting orders at Thomas. Some of the girls are complaining that they really have to go. Mrs. Hanka starts down the aisle. In class, she likes my brother better than me. You can tell. Mr. Goody Two-shoes. Mr. Perfect. But now she’s mad at him. “To the left! Push it to the left!” she shouts, in the exasperated voice she usually saves for Otero or Althea Ebbs.

I know it’s serious when the driver pulls over to the side of the highway and stops the bus. “Sit down! Sit down!” he’s yelling at everyone, elbowing his way down the aisle. I can’t believe it: my stupid, retarded brother is wrecking our entire trip to New York City.

“
Together!
Move the handle and the bolt
together
!” the driver keeps screaming at the locked door. He takes off his uniform jacket and the back of his shirt is soaked in sweat. His face is the same color as rare roast beef. We’ve been on the side of the highway for fifteen minutes.

“Let . . . me . . . out . . . of . . . here!” Thomas keeps shouting.

“Please! Please! LET ME OUT!” His body keeps making thudding noises against the door. My stomach feels like I’m on this elevator that’s dropping way too fast. If I start crying in front of Channy and Otero, I don’t care what anyone says. I’m changing schools.

“Twelve years I’ve been driving these things,” the driver tells Mrs. Hanka. “And I bet I could count on one hand the number of times I forgot my tools.” He says we’ll have to get off at the next exit and get to a gas station. Maybe with a flatbar, he can jimmy the door open. Or maybe the gas station will have a drill he can use to unfreeze the bolts. If not, he’ll have to call the bus company and have someone drive down with the right tools.

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“Well, how long will that take?” Mrs. Hanka demands. “Our Radio City tickets are for the 2:30 P.M. show. We have to get on the ferry by 10:45 at the latest or we’ll miss the Statue of Liberty.”

“I don’t know how long it’ll take, lady,” he says. “I can’t give you any guarantees.”

“I’m sorry, Dominick!” Thomas screams from behind the door.

“I’m sorry!”

The bus gets off at the next exit and is crawling through traffic on some main street. Eugene Savitsky has gotten up and come to the back of the bus. He stands there, picking at his seat and staring at the locked bathroom door like it’s a science problem. “Have him push the bolt the opposite way,” he tells me. “Have him push it to the right instead of the left.”

“It doesn’t
go
to the right,” someone says.

“But just tell him. Maybe he’s mixed up.”

“Push it to the right,” I tell Thomas.

The bolt thunks. The door squeaks open.

Thomas emerges to the sound of hoots and applause. He’s so pale, his skin looks blue. At first, he smiles. Then his face crumples up. He begins to cry.

I feel bad for him. And mad. And humiliated. Kids are looking at me, too, not just at Thomas. The Birdsey brothers: identical twin retards. I’d like to punch that smirk off of Channy Harrington’s rich little stupid face. Bust Eddie Otero’s big, fat Spic nose.