The Pigman (3 page)

“How’s The Marshmallow Kid today?”

Anyway, he’s the one who started cheating in the telephone marathons we were having. After Dennis had rung up that staggering record about having his nose bitten off, Norton started getting smart, and when it was his turn to pick out a phone number, he’d peek a little and try to make his finger land on a woman’s number rather than a man’s. You could always make a woman talk twice as long as a man. I used to ignore it because in his case it didn’t matter whom he spoke to on the phone. They all hung up.

But this one time I decided to peek myself. When it was my turn, I made believe I had covered my eyes with my left hand, then thumbed through the pages, and as I moved my finger down a column I happened to spot the words “Howard Avenue.” Now, Howard Avenue is just a few blocks from where I live, so I could pretend I belonged to the Howard Avenue Civic League or some other fictitious philanthropy.

There it was:

When this man answered, my voice was rather quivery because John was watching with his X-ray eyes and I think he knew I had cheated a bit. When he is an actor, I know he’ll be able to project those glaring eyes clear up to the second balcony.

“Hello,” this jolly voice said as I cleared my throat.

“Hello. Is this Mr. Angelo Pignati?”

“It sure is,” came the bubbling voice again.

“This is Miss Truman of the Howard Avenue Charities. Perhaps you’ve heard of us and our good work?”

“My wife isn’t home just now.”

“I didn’t call to speak with your wife, Mr. Pignati,” I assured him. I changed to a very British accent. “I distinctly called to speak to you and summon you to our cause. You see, my organization is interested in receiving small donations from people just like you—good-hearted people, Mr. Pignati—we depend on lovely people just like you and your wife—”

“What did you say the name of your charity was?” the voice asked.

Suddenly I couldn’t control myself anymore, and I burst into laughter right into the phone.

“Is something funny?”

“No… there’s nothing funny, Mr. Pignati… it’s just that one of the girls… here at the office has just told me a joke, and it was very funny.” I bit my tongue. “But back to serious business, Mr. Pignati. You asked the name of our charity—the name of it is—”

“The Lorraine and John Fund!”

“The name of it is—”

“The Lorraine and John Fund,” John repeated.

“Shut up,” I said, covering the mouthpiece and then uncovering it. “The name of our charity is the L & J Fund, Mr. Pignati, and we’d like to know if you’d care to contribute to it? It would really be a very nice gesture, Mr. Pignati.”

There was a pause.

“What was the joke the girl told you?” he finally said. “I know a lot of jokes, but my wife’s the only one who laughs at them. Ha, ha.”

“Is that so?”

“She really did laugh at them. She liked a good joke, she did, and I miss her. She’s taken a little trip.”

“Oh, did she?”

“Yep. She’s out in California with my sister.”

“Isn’t that marvelous!”

“Her favorite was the one about the best get-well cards to get. Did you ever hear that one—what’d you say your name was?”

“Miss Truman.”

“Well, Miss Truman, did you ever hear that one, the one about what the best get-well cards you can get are?”

“No, Mr. Pignati—”

“It was my wife’s favorite joke, that one was. She’d make me tell it a lot of times….”

There was something about his voice that made me feel sorry for him, and I began to wish I had never bothered him. He just went on talking and talking, and the receiver started to hurt my ear. By this time Dennis and Norton had gone into the living room and started to watch TV, but right where they could keep an eye on timing the phone call. John stayed next to me, pushing his ear close to the receiver every once in awhile, and I could see the wheels in his head spinning.

“Yes, Miss Truman, the best get-well cards to get are four aces! Ha, ha, ha! Isn’t that funny?”

He let out this wild laugh, as though he hadn’t known the end of his own joke.

“Do you get it, Miss Truman? Four aces… the best get-well cards you can get—”

“Yes, Mr. Pignati—”

“You know, in
poker
?”

“Yes, Mr. Pignati.”

He sounded like such a nice old man, but terribly lonely. He was just dying to talk. When he started another joke I looked at John’s face and began to realize it was he who had started me telling all these prevarications.

John has made an art out of it. He prevaricates just for prevaricating’s sake. It’s what they call a compensation syndrome. His own life is so boring when measured against his daydreams that he can’t stand it, so he makes up things to pretend it’s exciting. Of course, when he gets caught in a lie, then he makes believe he was only telling the lie to make fun of whomever he was telling it to, but I think there’s more to it than meets the eye. He can get so involved in a fib that you can tell he believes it enough to enjoy it. Maybe that’s how all actors start. I don’t know.

One time last term Miss King asked him what happened to the book report he was supposed to hand in on
Johnny Tremain
, and he told her that he had spilled some coffee on it the night before, and when the coffee dried, there was still sugar on the paper and so cockroaches ate the book report. You might also be interested in knowing that the only part of
Johnny Tremain
that John did end up reading was page forty-three—where the poor guy spills the molten metal on his hand and cripples it for life. That was the part he finally did his book report on—just page forty-three—and he got a ninety on it! I only got eighty-five, and I read the whole thing. Of course, writing book reports is not exactly the kind of writing I want to do. I don’t want to report. I want to make things up. In a way I guess that’s lying too, except I think you can tell the real truth with that kind of lying.

And John lies to his mother and father. He told them one time that he was hearing voices from outer space, and he thought creatures were going to come for him some night, so if they heard any strange noises coming from his room would they please call the police.

“Don’t be silly,” his mother told him and laughed it off with just the slightest bit of discomfort. His parents don’t know quite what to make of him because neither of them has the imagination he has, and in a way they sort of respect it. Actually, I think they’re a little frightened of it. But they’re just as bad as he is when it comes to lying, and that may be the real reason they can’t help John the way they should. From what I’ve seen of them, they don’t seem to know what’s true and what isn’t true anymore. His father goes around bragging how he phonied up a car-insurance claim to get a hundred dollars to replace a piece of aluminum on their new car, which he had really replaced himself. Mrs. Conlan goes to the store and tells the clerk he forgot to give her Green Stamps the last time she was in, and she knows very well she’s lying. It’s a kind of subconscious, schizophrenic fibbing, if you ask me, and if those parents don’t have guilt complexes, I don’t know who has. I only hope I won’t be that kind of adult.

“I don’t know where you get that from, John!”

I do.

“Miss Truman, are you still there?”

“Yes, Mr. Pignati,” I muttered.

“Well, did you get that joke? I didn’t hear you laugh.”

“No, I’m sorry I didn’t get that joke.”

“I didn’t think you did. I said, ‘In many states a hunting license entitles you to one deer and no more. Just like a marriage license.’ Ha, ha, ha!”

“That’s very funny, Mr. Pignati. That is very funny.”

I must have sounded uncomfortable because he said, “I’m sorry if I’m taking up too much of your time, Miss Truman. You wanted a donation, did you say—for what charity?”

“The L & J Fund, Mr. Pignati.” I bit my lip.

“I’ll be glad to send you ten dollars, Miss Truman. Where do I send it?”

John bolted upright from his ridiculous position of pressing an ear against the receiver.

“Tell him to send it to your house.”

“I will not!”

“Let me talk to him,” John demanded, taking the phone right out of my hand. Just from the look in his eyes I knew what was going to happen. You just have to know how John does things, and you’ll know one thing will always happen. He’ll end up complicating everything.

Y
ou have to know how demented Dennis and Norton are to understand that when I told them Angelo Pignati caught on Lorraine was a phony and hung up, they believed it. I could tell them I went alligator hunting in St. Patrick’s Cathedral last night, and they’d believe it. I just didn’t want them to know Mr. Pignati had invited us over to his house the next day to give us the ten bucks for the L & J Fund. Especially Norton. If he knew about it, he’d try to hustle in on the deal, and he’d never stop at ten dollars. I didn’t want anyone really to take advantage of the old man. Some people might think that’s what I was doing, but not the way Norton would have. In fact, if Lorraine felt like saying one of us murdered Mr. Pignati, she should have blamed Norton. He’s the one who finally caused all the trouble.

The next day Lorraine chickened out and said she wouldn’t go with me to collect the money.

“Give me one good reason,” I demanded.

“Because it’s wrong to take money from an old man, that’s why.”

“All through history artists have survived by taking money from old men. There’s nothing wrong with having a patron.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Don’t you know anything?”

“I said I don’t—”

“We can tell him the L & J Fund is intended to subsidize writers and actors if you want.”

“You’re crazy.”

I decided not to push the matter, but I did need a dollar and a quarter for a six-pack, so when I got home I asked my Old Lady for it.

“No, no, no,” she said in her best grating voice, all the while shining the coffee table in our sparkling living room, which sparkles because nobody’s allowed to live in it. She’s got plastic covers on everything. I mean, I like my Mom and all that, but she runs around like a chicken with its head cut off.

“Your father says you’re not to have another penny until he speaks to you!”

“What did I do now?”

“You know very well what you did.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, you just ask your father.”

“I’m not asking him, I’m asking you.”

“Kenneth never gave us any trouble,” she just had to add, neatly folding the polishing rag.

“You just never caught him.”

Kenneth is my older brother who’s married and carries an attaché case to Wall Street every day. He’s eleven years older than me.

“Get yourself a glass of milk, but rinse out the glass,” she babbled, darting up the stairs. I could tell she just got back from the beauty parlor because her hair was frizzed like she had just rammed her fingers into an electric socket.

“What did I do?” I yelled from the kitchen as I opened a Pepsi. Whenever she tells me to get a glass of milk, I feel like a Pepsi and vice versa.

“What did I do?”

“You know!”

“
Please
tell me.”

She came to the top of the stairs with a bottle of hair spray in her hand. “You put glue in the telephone lock!” she wailed.

“I did
what
?”

“You heard me.”

“I put glue in the telephone lock? Are you crazy?”

“When your father comes home we’ll see who’s crazy.” She gave her hair a quick spray to make sure none of the frizz would disappear.

“I’m innocent.”

“It was a very mean thing to do. Your father tried to call his office this morning, and he couldn’t get the lock off. He couldn’t dial!”

“I didn’t do it.”

“Then who did?”

“The ghost of Aunt Ahra.”

“Your father’ll have to talk to you,” she said and ran upstairs. Then I heard her vacuuming in her bedroom.

I blame an awful lot of things on the ghost of Aunt Ahra because she died in our house when she was eighty-two years old. She was really my father’s mother’s sister, if you can figure that one out, and she had lived with us ever since the time she took a hot bath in her own apartment and couldn’t get out of the bathtub for three days. They found her when she finally managed to throw a bottle of shampoo through the bathroom window, and it splattered all over the side of a neighbor’s house. The neighbor thought it was the work of a juvenile delinquent at first, which is sort of funny if you think about it awhile.

“So you’re not going to give me a dollar twenty-five; is that what you’re trying to communicate to me?”

“He couldn’t even dial his own office.”

“I told you the ghost of Aunt Ahra did it.”

“This is not a joking matter.”

“Mother, your hypertension is showing.”

Well, that severed maternal relations for the afternoon, and I had no intention of waiting for Bore to come home. I decided to give Lorraine the signal to meet me, so I picked up the phone and tapped the connection button ten times, which is the same as dialing
O
. The keyhole of the lock was still expertly crammed with glue.

“Yes?”

“Hello, operator? Would you please get me Yul-1219?”

“You can dial that number yourself, sir.”

“No, I can’t. You see, operator, I have no arms.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“They’ve got this phone strapped to my head for emergency calls, so I’d appreciate it if you’d connect me.”

“I’ll be happy to, sir.”

As soon as I could hear the number ring once I hung up. That was always the signal for Lorraine to meet me at the corner of Eddy and Victory Boulevard if she could get out of the house.

“You’re ruining your lungs with that thing” was the first remark out of her mouth besides a cough from a misdirected puff from my cigarette. She sounds just like her mother when she says that.

“I’ve been thinking, and I’ve decided we’d better go over and collect the ten bucks.”