The Wisdom of Perversity (4 page)

Maybe I'm wrong and he's not the same Sam, she decided. She walked into the maid's room, which they had converted into a pantry with a small desk area for her use. She opened her old iBook, a computer Gary and Zack laughed at and that increasingly was threatened with uselessness thanks to how goddamn slow it was becoming, repeatedly stalling like an old car. She launched Safari. She kept her hands folded in her lap while it loaded the
Times'
home page . . .

There.
The featured story was about Sam Rydel: four accusations from poor boys, now grown men, saying they had been molested. In a slide show! Why the hell was the
Times
doing a slide show of this disgusting story, like it was a Fashion Week runway? She tapped her trackpad to freeze it on Sam Rydel. Instead a different face appeared.

She shrieked and jerked hard against the back of her chair to get away. She almost tipped over. She gripped the sides to steady herself. She stared at the appalling image. Time had transformed the jolly, rounded features and the confident smile. The once plump cheeks were sunken, wrinkled, and drawn, his now downturned mouth strained to form a grin, filled with dentures that looked too big and too white. And the full head of hair, whose color, incredibly, she couldn't remember, was gone, exposing a frail spotted skull. But even without the help of the
Times'
caption—“Richard Klein, Founder of the American Broadcasting Academy”—she recognized the true villain of her past. In two clicks of her mouse, she discovered he wasn't dead. He was eighty-four, retired and reported to be ill, but she learned that in 1983 he had founded both the school and Huck Finn Days, had hired Sam Rydel, and eventually left him in charge of both academy and charity. The final astonishing, most chilling fact she discovered was the absence of a fact: There were no child molestation accusations against Klein. Not even a hint of one.

She flipped the iBook shut.
Cleansing breath.
She felt better as she exhaled slowly.
And now it's time to clean.

She started with Zack's room. He was supposed to make his bed but rarely did and the thought of unmade beds, no matter how far from her sight, nagged as dangerously careless, as if she had left the back door unlocked. She found his sheets in a tangle, the navy blue quilt in a lump on the floor, pillows propped against open closet doors (thrown in anger?) dirty clothes half in, half out of the hamper, along with two clean pairs of chinos that had fallen off their hangers. She spread the pale blue sheet over the mattress, averting her eyes from two white stains, tucking in only the bottom, knowing Zack didn't like the sides to be battened down. She collected the comforter, finished making his bed and straightened his closet. Her mind had emptied. Shafts of sunlight glistened on the windows of the building opposite. A weak winter sun had fought through a cold gray sky. Maybe on the way home from work she'd stop at Bed Bath & Beyond and pick out new bedding. Zack ought to have pristine sheets.

She bent over to pick up her son's discarded denim jacket, worn yesterday to school but dropped in favor of a warmer goose down this morning. Maneuvering the sleeves onto the hanger brought the fabric near her nostrils.

She smelled cigarettes.

For a moment, she held the disgusting odor flush, shocked into paralysis at the true criminal revealed. Here was the source of the forbidden vice drifting through the apartment all morning.

This last blow was too much. She backed up to Zack's made bed and sagged on it, as near to fainting as she had ever come in her life. She sniffed the jacket's collar and sleeves to check her first impression. The burnt, sour smell was unmistakable. She patted the pockets. Something crinkled. She fished out a flattened pack of Camel Lights in the right pocket. Zack was smoking Lights. He was willing to brave cancer but not too boldly. How hilarious. How pathetic.

My God, she realized with a fresh jolt of dismay, he had smoked an entire pack! Her baby, only fifteen years alive on the face of the earth, lungs pink and vulnerable as a newborn's, and clouds of this poison had gone into him. She clutched the pack to crush it vengefully but then instinctively caught herself—an ancient precaution—when she felt a single cigarette still resident, nearly flat, cowering in the corner.

She tore the pack open and removed the malefactor. She hadn't held a cigarette in her hands in a decade. A tiny camel printed above the filter looked surprisingly elegant. She didn't remember the logo from her days as a smoker, didn't recall so distinguished an object impressed on the delicate paper.

Zack was ruined. The fact was a kick in the stomach. He was just another enthusiastic participant in the spoiled world. Keeping him innocent had been a fool's wish. Sooner or later everyone is defeated by their desires. Gary cared more about being a celebrity on television than loving his child, and Zack's lungs would be filled with the soot of his resentment. She was helpless to prevent them from sullying their once pure love. She remembered the amazed delight on Gary's face when she coaxed him to hold his newborn son. And Zack had lain happily and peacefully in his daddy's arms. Now they loathed each other.

In her sore muscles and aching bones Julie felt the countless hours of dreary errands she had performed energetically out of her longing to make a nurturing world for Zack. That goal had sustained her through the tedium of motherhood. She was a fool. She was a fifty-three-year-old fool.

She checked all of the denim jacket's pockets. She might as well know the worst. No other vices were discovered. No joints, no pornography, no Saturday Night Specials. Not even matches. He must have used up all the matches lighting nineteen cigarettes.

Needing a match was what gave her the will to stand up and get out. She called to the shut door of Gary's study that she was leaving early for work. Instead she went to Riverside Park, to the company of bare trees and frozen ground. There, despite dizziness and a wave of nausea, she enjoyed a lonely splendor while she smoked the last cigarette in her son's forgotten pack.

Birthday Present

April 1966

“COME ON, TELL
me. What did you get?” Brian demanded of his best friend. Jeff had telephoned to brag about the birthday present he had received for turning nine, given to him two days early so he could enjoy it over the weekend.

“Guess.”

“I did guess!” Brian twisted the kitchen telephone's long white cord tight around the knuckle of his index finger, watching the engorged tip turn crimson. “I give up. Okay? I give up.”

“A tape recorder. A portable tape recorder!” Jeff's perpetual whine, when excited by pleasure, added a squeak. “An
RCA,
” he emphasized.

“Is RCA the best?” Brian took the hint.

“Definitely. Cousin Richard says RCA is the best electronics company in the world.”

Brian unwound the phone cord, watching his fingertip pale to a normal hue. The mention of Jeff's cousin took him away from the pleasure of anticipating how he was going to enjoy his friend's new toy. It took him away from a bright world he understood and transported him into a darkened room whose shadows he could not describe.

Getting no reaction, Jeff added, “NBC uses all their stuff.”

“What do you mean?” Brian asked to cover the confusion brought on by a vivid memory of Richard Klein's fingers insinuating under the elastic of his Jockeys until he could caress each of his butt cheeks. “All dry. Let me check if anything spilled down your front,” he had said as his warm hand slid around and touched him where, as far as he knew, no one else had ever touched. Brian had said nothing to Jeff about those fifteen minutes in the bathroom. He had said nothing to anyone. It was the first profound secret of his life.

“What do you think I mean? I mean all the NBC radio equipment and all their cameras and things for television and stuff are made by RCA.”

“Wow,” Brian said, refocused on the fun of Jeff's good fortune. “So what does it do?”

“What does it do? It records and then it plays back, you know, what you record.”

“So what are you gonna record?”

“Come on up. We'll make a radio play.”

“A what?”

“A radio play. Like
The Shadow
or something.”

Brian whipped the knotted phone cord against the kitchen wall. “I've never listened to a radio show. And who cares about radio? Why don't we do a television show?”

Jeff buzzed contemptuously. “Can't do a television show with a tape recorder, dummy. Come up. We'll make a radio play. Just like a play, only on radio.”

“It's portable, right? The tape recorder's portable?”

“So . . . ?”

“Why don't you come downstairs?” Jeff lived on the fourth, and top, floor of their sixteen unit apartment building in Queens, Brian on the second. This allowed them unsupervised movement to each other's apartments, although ninety-nine percent of the time Jeff insisted Brian come up to him.

“My mom wants me to stay home.”

“Why?”

“She loves me so much.” Jeff slowed his whine to a moan. The drawl hurt Brian's ears. He moved the receiver away. Wisely, because Jeff's voice went up in volume and pitch as he added sarcastically, “She loves me sooo much. She loves me more than any mommy on the planet.”

“What planet?” Brian asked, willing to play the straight man.

“The planet Cuckoo. Come on. Ask your mom.”

“Mom!” Brian shouted. No response.

“What did she say?” Jeff asked, then prompted, “Tell her it's my birthday.”

“It's not your birthday.”

“I got my present today. We're celebrating it today.”

“Wait up,” Brian said, and he let go of the phone. It dangled on the long cord like a hanged man, receiver thudding against the wall. He walked past the living room where his mother sometimes did her reading for work. All quiet and clean in there. She must be making beds or something.

He entered the hallway to the bedrooms. Behind his parents' shut door he heard his father Danny energetically rehearsing lines. It was Saturday. Tomorrow he was going to be doing a reading of a new play by someone Danny knew, not a friend exactly, but someone he called a friend, as it was explained to Brian by his mother. His father wasn't being paid. Readings were something you did as a favor, but it might, as his dad put it, “do me some good,” because other important theater people would be there, see him, maybe think of him for other things, and also if this play found a “backer,” then he might end up in the cast. It was a little confusing because his father was teaching full-time so he couldn't be in plays except during the summer, and no one could know in advance when a play might go on. When he asked his mother to explain this contradiction, she said, “It makes your father happy to do readings.” In any case, Brian understood that his father was busy and not to be interrupted.

He found his mother, Rose, seated on his neatly made bed, reading his illustrated edition of
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
with a broad smile. “Mom?” he asked tentatively.

“It's marvelous,” she announced, as if the discovery had occurred that very moment. “I forgot how marvelous. Of course, it's a children's book, but still. So charming and funny and truthful.” She laughed again. Rose was a solemn woman when alone with her thoughts, but that seemed to make her all the more appreciative of anyone who could bring her out of the shadows. Brian often acted the clown for the pleasure of watching her light up. “You've read it, right?” she asked. Brian nodded. She closed the cover, running her hand lovingly over the raised letters of the title. “It's so funny,” she said wistfully.

“Mom, can I go to Jeff's?”

“Isn't it too early?” Rose asked, her way of disapproving. When the boys were toddlers, the mothers used to talk together for hours at the Fresh Meadow's playground. Those frequent contacts had declined and nearly ceased once the boys were able to play independently. A few months ago, Jeff's mother, Harriet, had asked Brian why Rose never called her. He reluctantly asked his mother for an explanation. Rose said Harriet's mean remarks about friends they had in common were “ugly to listen to,” and added, “I'm sure she's saying terrible things about me behind my back.” Her answer made sense, but he could hardly pass it on to Harriet.

“They're up. Jeff's dad is already at work.”

“Right, he opens the store on Saturdays, I forgot.” She studied Brian as if he were hiding something from her.

“Mom?” he prompted.

“What are you boys up to today? No mischief, I hope.”

“Nothing. Just playing Monopoly.” He didn't want to mention the tape recorder. You never knew how a grown-up might react to such a thing. At the very least she would be curious about the machine and he'd get stuck explaining something he'd never seen.

Rose continued to peer at him. She was prone to suspicions, although her guesses at wrongdoing were remarkably off target. “Why don't you wait an hour? It's only eight thirty.”

Only eight thirty? Brian had been up since six, suffering through
Modern Farmer
and
Sunrise Semester
until the relief of
The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show.
Mr. Peabody was especially funny this morning. But that was an hour ago. Practically the whole day was gone. “Harriet's up and Jeff's on the phone right now. Okay? Can I go?”

“Why don't you invite him here? I'll make you boys French toast.”

“He can't. Okay? Can I go?”

“Why can't he come down?”

Brian leaned his head against the wall and groaned. “Mom,” he complained.

“Just tell me why he can't come down.”

“Jeff needs me to help him with something.”

“Help him with what?”

Brian stared at the embossed gold letters on the cover of the book in her lap, calculating whether it might help to mention the tape recorder. He could omit that it was portable so going upstairs would seem unavoidable. A better idea struck: “Jeff's doing a really great thing today, Mom, and he says if I hurry he'll let me help him.”

She squinted skeptically. “Help with what?”

“He's gonna allow me to paint his fence white,” Brian said, making a dopey face.

She frowned while figuring out his joke. Finally her downturned mouth lifted. “I can't believe you got me to fall for that,” she said, laughing.

He pressed: “His mom wants him to stay home today. 'Cause it's almost his birthday or something like that. He's on the phone. Can I go?”

Still chuckling, she nodded.

Jeff was waiting for him at his front door, proudly cradling the tape recorder in his arms. It was the size of a large spiral notebook, housed in beige plastic, a row of shiny black buttons below two translucent reels.

As soon as the door shut behind them, Harriet's voice carried down the long hall from her bedroom, demanding, “Jeff? Is that Brian?”

Jeff ignored his mother's question. He pointed at the full reel of tape on the left side. “It'll record an hour on Long Play.”

“What's Long Play?”

“I'll show you,” Jeff said, and he walked down the hall toward the bedrooms.

“Jeffrey? Who is it?” Harriet called. Jeff continued to ignore her, carrying the tape recorder before him, power cord trailing in his wake. Brian picked up the plug to prevent it from being damaged by bumping on the floor, and that's how they appeared to Harriet when Jeff paused outside her room, friends tethered like mountain climbers. “Hi, Brian,” Harriet said as faintly as if she were about to expire. She lay above the covers of her bed wearing a pale pink slip, a heating pad on her meaty right arm and shoulder, her torso and left leg under a red and black knit afghan, the right leg and its varicose veins exposed. This pose was unvarying, except for the location of afghan and heating pad. They were shifted daily, according to new and recurring maladies.

It felt to Brian as if he had never seen Harriet on her feet for longer than a few seconds. She worked for New York City's Parks Department, not implausibly as a ranger but as a safety inspector, a job suited to her critical nature. She reviewed the equipment and condition of the more than one hundred playgrounds in Queens. When exactly she rose from her bed and went outside to check on them was a mystery to Brian. Sometimes she wasn't in the apartment, so she was up and about somewhere, but those occasions were unusual. While Harriet was at home, Brian occasionally caught her moving a few steps from the bed to fetch an errant section of the Sunday
Times,
but no greater a jaunt than a few feet. If Brian stayed for supper they ate in Jeff's room, usually TV dinners they prepared themselves. Sometimes they ordered pizza and Harriet ate her slices in bed off a tray. When Harriet's physical complaints migrated to her stomach they went out with Saul, Jeff's father, to Zolly's Deli for franks and a knish. But under no circumstances could he remember eating a meal with Jeff's mother in their dining room. Of course, Brian knew there were occasions when Harriet left her bedroom. While on his way to the bathroom in the hall he'd sometimes notice it was empty and later discover she was back under her cherished red and black blanket sipping chamomile tea, but her arrivals and departures always escaped his scrutiny.

“Why are you carrying your present around?” Harriet asked. “You'll drop and break it.”

“It's portable, Mom. I'm portabling it to my room.” Jeff walked out of his mother's line of vision.

“Bri, how is your mother?” Harriet asked Brian, still a visible target.

“Fine.” From the hallway's shadows Jeff motioned for him to keep moving.

“I haven't seen or talked to her in so long. Did she get a job? Is that why?”

Jeff tugged the electric cord taut, to urge Brian away from his mother's interrogation. Brian didn't dare go without her permission. Harriet intimidated him: the raspy voice, her ill temper, her invalidism, and especially the fact that she worked for the City of New York made her seem capable of terrible vindictiveness, although exactly what harm she might inflict remained fuzzy. “Yes, she's working,” Brian said, puzzled that Harriet was asking this question for the fourth time since his mother started her new job six months ago and that each time Harriet behaved as if she had never heard him explain it before.

“Where is she working?”

“
Time
magazine.”

Jeff jerked the electric cord. The plug flew out of Brian's hand and smacked into Jeff's concave chest. He doubled over, sagging to his knees melodramatically, pretending a mortal wound. Brian moved partway out of the doorframe to enjoy the performance, but Harriet apprehended him, demanding in an astonished voice, “What does she do for
Time
magazine, for God's sake.”

“She's an assistant editor,” Brian said. He added tentatively, “I think I told you about it.”

“Brian has to come and play now, Mom,” Jeff called, careful to keep himself out of her line of vision.

“Don't be fresh with me!” Harriet snapped. Jeff gave up, head down, walking ahead to his room. “What did you say, Brian?” She waited with a frown.

He decided against repeating that he had already told her all this. “Mom works for the books editor . . . ?” Brian said so plaintively it came out as a question.

“Oh, she's a secretary,” Harriet said, as if that were a great relief from the terrible confusion Brian had created.

Brian considered whether he could just say yes and run into Jeff's room. Harriet would never get out of the bed to pursue him. He hoped. The specter of being chased by Harriet in her pink slip on blue and black varicose legs was dreadful. He remained anchored to the doorsill and said, as he had the other times, “I think she's his assistant, you know helps him read the books they might review, but I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.”

Harriet grunted. “You don't know. Of course you don't. What do you care what your mother does. As long as she cleans up after you, right?”