Me and My Manny (6 page)

Retrofitting Wolf

One day, as I sat on the living room sofa, admiring the cute little turned-up dowel that served as Wolf’s nose, I asked Harry if he’d ever noticed how refined, how almost aristocratic Wolf appeared.

“He’s from good stock,” Harry said. “Probably solid oak.”

For a moment, I mulled over Harry’s dislike for Wolf. I recalled when the two first met, Harry opined that Wolf didn’t really look like him—an understatement. For one thing, Wolf didn’t have the proper masculine equipment, to me irrelevant since my manny as a whole was greater than the sum of his parts, so to speak.

“Harry,” I started, wondering the extent of his resentment toward Wolf. “Don’t you think it’s silly to think that Wolf may be out to take you over? After all, he’s not qualified, considering he’s lacking in the manliness department.”

“That’ll be the last piece of me to go,” Harry said with conviction. “Once it happens, he’ll have all he needs to start on you.”

I was aghast. Did my husband actually believe that his major attraction was in his pants? I had to be careful; Harry’s sensitivity toward his masculinity was a minefield.

“Considering your attempt to turn Wolf into a drag queen, it seems you’re the one out to emasculate him, not the other way around.”

“You can’t take what’s not there,” he said.

“My point exactly.” I hesitated, since it just occurred to me that Wolf’s limitations might be regarded as a negative rather than a positive. “But it’s not a total loss. Wolf could be modified. A trip to a local woodshop, a few nails, a dab of glue, and viola!”

“You would do that, wouldn’t you?” Harry snapped. “You would actually retrofit him and blow me off.”

“I don’t see that rounding out Wolf’s anatomy would take away from yours.” I had no intention of tinkering with my manny’s deficiencies, I was only speculating.

Harry bristled. “All I’m saying is that the human body can’t tell the difference between an actual sexual act and a simulated one. It responds the same.”

“Are you accusing me of wanting to be intimate with Wolf?”

“Considering the way you fondle him, I’d say you’ve gone far beyond wanting to.”

I glanced at Wolf, a zoned-out space-case, on the cushion beside me. “Fondle what? Nothing’s there. You just said so yourself.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Ahhh, but if you had your way, all that would change.”

I felt as if zapped by a stun gun.

“Does Howdy Doody have wooden balls?” Harry delivered another shock. “Does a wooden horse have a hickory dick?”

“Harry, your mouth!” I cupped my hands over Wolf’s extra-large ears
.

Just because I maybe tended to caress Wolf too much was no reason for Harry to think I’ve iced him out. The idea struck me as outlandish. But human emotions, being the quagmire that they are, I still had to take Harry’s feelings into consideration.

“Okay. True enough,” I said. “Wolf’s many charms thrill me. But no way do I prefer the dummy to my living, breathing husband.

“It’s not like he mimics you in every conceivable way. I mean, plus or minus the wooden parts, he couldn’t even spread the seeds of his own tree,” I said to underscore the claim.

Seeing Harry brightened, I went on. “Sex can be a great experience, or it can result in profound misery, not to mention herpes, syphilis, gonorrhea, and a whole host of potentially lethal viruses. In the role of companions, mannys en masse could help ease the downside of human sexuality. On a grandiose scale, they could not only aid in reducing the incidents of sexually transmitted diseases; they could assist in curbing overpopulation and its associated tragedies—mass starvation, depleted resources, violent conflicts, and so on. Mannys could change the course of the world, and it all depends on their deficiencies.

“So you see, Harry, Wolf could never replace you because of his handicap.”

“That’s just grand. He not only gets to save the world; he becomes famous while at it.”

Harry’s hyperbole made me chuckle. “Wolf will hardly ever be famous. But, as more lethal strains of VD spread across the country, he and his kind could catch on.”

By advancing Wolf’s sexual inadequacy, I felt I’d easily dealt with Harry’s sexual anxiety. Harder to contend with was Harry’s bitterness over Wolf’s burgeoning celebrity. The publicity my manny received over our Seafair escapade made it clear that the wooden dude had superstar potential.

Watching me, Harry grumbled, “I’d like to hang him from the yardarm.”

I frowned, aware that lynching Wolf would amount to Harry hanging himself in effigy. Yet I realized that’s not what Harry had in mind. Allowing that Harry usually thought in nautical terms, I began to see Wolf the way Harry must have envisioned him, out on the briny, dangling from the mast with an albatross around his neck.

Harry probably wanted to string him up in a metal cage and make an example of him just as centuries ago sailors had made examples of pirates. It was not by accident that Harry reckoned that the manny was constructed of solid oak, one of the sturdiest woods used in the historical construction of ships.

Attacking Wolf

It was nearing ten in the morning when I had returned to Whitehall after cycling for an hour or so on a bicycle built for two. With Wolf still balanced on the rear seat, I steered the bike out of the elevator and across the hall to my apartment. In the living room, I opened the sliding glass window to the balcony where I kept the bike stored.

“I didn’t know you were out,” Harry said, standing by the slider, watching me remove Wolf’s clunky feet from the pedal’s stirrups and free his thin wrists from the bungee cords on the handlebars.

“You were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.” I removed my helmet and hooked it over the handle bars.

The creases on Harry’s face deepened. “You should have. Then you wouldn’t have had to take
him
.”

The way Harry pronounced
him
made me think things were about to get ugly. “I didn’t mind. Nobody seemed to notice he wasn’t real.” Though in truth, it seemed that everyone within a five-mile radius of Whitehall had heard about Wolf and me. On our treks outside these days, neighbors whispered and shrank into doorways as we went by.

Harry appraised Wolf’s outfit, the almost taunting set of his cap and the black-and-white-striped pullover I’d shrunk to fit snuggly on his slight frame. “He looks like a small-time gangster out of some cheap mafia movie.”

“Well, blow me down!” I attempted to lighten the mood. “You always looked like Popeye in that outfit.”

He began pacing the room, at times pausing to rub his temples. “Popeye. How fitting. Popeye in an endless struggle over Olive Oyl.” He punched his fist into his hand. “For months I’m confined to a ship at sea. For months it’s nothing but the same old, same old. And you don’t think I’d like to go on a bike ride when I get home?”

“Well, then why didn’t you say so?” “I don’t want to share you with him,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Wolf is not a him. He’s an it,” I said, hoping to diffuse the tension.

Suddenly, a crazed looked jumped into Harry’s eyes. Bellowing like an expert at martial arts, he angled his hand and charged Wolf, ripping him off the bicycle seat. Throttling Wolf, Harry pinned him to the wall. His wooden joints clacked as he jerked like a shaken puppet on strings.

“Stop it! Stop it! You’re hurting him.” I tried to pry Harry’s fingers, but they remained curled around the manny’s neck. “Let go; you’re squeezing the life out of him,” I cried, slapping Harry’s knuckles.

Blinking as if coming to his senses, Harry opened his hand and Wolf dropped to the floor. Harry stepped back, shaking. He lifted his palms to his face and stared at them. “I don’t know what came over me.” He looked at Wolf’s limbs, in a mangled heap. “I could have snapped his scrawny little neck.”

I knelt on the floor, sat Wolf upright, and examined his face. He looked like a cartoon character just beaned over the head, now sinking, and cross-eyed as cuckoo-clock birdies encircled his head.

“Oh my gosh, you’ve given him a concussion.”

“A dummy can’t have a concussion.” Harry raked a clawed hand through his short hair.

“Then explain his crossed eyes. He was normal until you attacked him.”

“He was never normal. Not the way you mean.” Harry sounded worried.

I let Wolf drop onto his back, watching as one of his eyeballs, now slanted inward, opened and closed slower than the other. “He’s cockeyed. He never used to be cockeyed.” I glared at Harry.

Harry inspected Wolf’s misaligned eyes. “He’s just shaken up; he’ll come around.”

I jiggled the manny; his eyes rattled in their slots, but remained off center. “I knew it…I knew it, he’s brain damaged.”

“Don’t be ridiculous; he’s got sawdust for brains.”

I slid my arms under the manny’s body, rose, and dragged him to the sofa. As he lay with his head raised on a pillow, I looked into his skewed eyeballs.

“He’s ruined…ruined.”

“No he’s not. I’ll get him fixed. I’ll take him back to where you got him,” Harry said in an apologetic voice.

“What if he can’t be fixed?”

“Oh geez.” Harry dropped his arms to his sides.

Dismayed, I scrutinized Wolf’s anatomy, trying to figure this out. I’d seen Harry lose his temper before, but never resort to violence. Harry’s outburst indicated that I should never again request Wolf’s company in our bed.

As a precaution, I transferred Wolf from the sofa to the entryway closet. While Harry decompressed, I removed the matches from the kitchen and the hacksaw from the toolbox. Harry was no longer trustworthy.

The Rink

For an entire week after the attack that left Wolf cockeyed, I kept him in the closet out of Harry’s sight. Sometimes, when Harry wasn’t around, I would visit Wolf’s dark enclosure and commiserate with him over the injury he’d suffered.

On one such occasion, while Harry was back at the naval base, I happened to nudge against my old high-top roller skates. I lifted one of the skates and a wad of rawhide shoestrings fell out. Getting an idea, I unraveled the strings. Since Harry wouldn’t be home for hours, Wolf and I could go to Skate King, a local roller-skating rink where, owing to the dim lights, Wolf’s imperfections would go unnoticed.

Less than an hour later, I purchased two tickets and filled out two chances to win a new pair of skates that came with an opportunity to stand in as master of ceremonies at next month’s roller derby. I then sat Wolf on a bench, put my own skates on, and tied Wolf’s ankles to mine with the extra set of rawhide strings I’d found tucked in my high tops. The lights dimmed, the disco ball over the rink began turning, and music played from large speakers in the corners. I rose with the soles of Wolf’s painted-on shoes affixed to the tops of my feet. I then took his hands and, holding him face to face, maneuvered him backwards onto the hardwood floor.

In time with the music, we glided along, moving smoothly as we circled around. That night, as often happens at this particular rink, a group of hardcore skaters hit the boards for a workout. From their similar glitzy shirts and helmets that matched their knee and elbow guards, I could tell that they were in the same club. “Oops, pardon me,” I said, trying to get out of their way as they moved in one fluid motion past me.

While I didn’t mind steering the manny around other skaters, hiking his feet up with my own proved awkward. So we started going in small circles around the perimeter of the rink, but I began to get dizzy. I reached out to hold onto the railing, but instead, someone else’s hand grabbed mine. What happened next was all a blur. I knew only that Wolf and I were linked to a human chain, the end of a whip, as they call it. And, as often occurs under these conditions, some smartass cracked the whip and sent Wolf and me flying into a group of kids that appeared to be on skates for the first time. They fell like dominos and drew the presence of their mothers.

“I’m sorry,” I said, getting my balance just as a pudgy man wearing red suspenders, the manager I presumed, showed up and apologized again for Wolf and me.

Wasting no time in restoring the trust of his other patrons, he’d made a display of angrily escorting us out the front door, after I’d collected my shoes and purse. I offered him a few choice expletives of my own when he turned his back on us.

The next morning as I wrapped in a towel prepared to enter the shower, Harry entered the bathroom and stared at my legs.

“Where’d you get the bruises?”

“The bruises,” I repeated, checking my thighs and insteps. “I went shopping. Last night, while you were out. Macy’s down at the Redmond Town Center had a five-hour sale. You know how those crazy bargain hunters are.”

“Oh?” He eyed me with suspicion then said, “I checked the closet. Wolfs as messed up as you.”

He regarded me a few more seconds then gestured toward the phone. “By the way, you got a message from Skate King. A Wolfgang Kin, at this address, missed the late-night drawing.” Harry smirked. “He won a pair of roller skates that are to be turned over when he emcees at the Skate Queens’ competitive derby next week.” Harry started to leave the room but turned back. “One other thing, the answer is no. N-O,” he spelled for emphasis. “I will not officiate at some whirligig.”

“Oh, please, Harry.” I followed him to the doorway with my hands curled upward in supplication. “Those skates are worth a couple hundred bucks. High quality leather tops with killer wheels. You know he can’t be the one to collect the skates.”

“You should have thought of that before you signed him up for the drawing,” he said, completing his exit.