Throw Like A Girl (10 page)

Maybe he didn't use those exact words. It's hard to remember. But the import was, we had benefited from privileges and largesse, and only when they were withdrawn would we cease to take them for granted.

“Vita-Juice is a patented, scientific formula. It was developed to meet the body's nutritional needs and is manufactured under the strictest health and safety standards, made in small batches to preserve freshness. It's invigorating. Appetizing. And available only from your authorized Vita-Juice distributor.”

This was the sales pitch. We were to hear it many times as my father practiced his delivery before the bathroom mirror. There was more. Test results that showed dramatic, beneficial increases in memory, digestion, circulation, restful sleep, and energy. (Energy was a big selling point, repeated again and again. It wasn't until years later that I realized Vita-Juice was in part being hawked as a kind of sexual tonic, meant to revive legions of pooped moms and dads.) My father rolled on. He was a good and forceful speaker. It was only his audience that was wrong. With Vita-Juice, one could translate continued good health and mental acuity into the expectation of a longer working career, and a corresponding increase in lifetime earnings. There were other, less tangible benefits, such as serenity, confidence, good will, etc., and though he stopped short of offering the keys to the kingdom of heaven, they were at least implied.

My father reached full stop. Again we were too bewildered and sullen to respond. It was Wayne, finally, who asked, “So where's the juice store?”

“Vita-Juice. There isn't any store. Each distributor sets up his own operation. Inventory, sales, ordering, the works. It's all going to be happening right here at home. Each of you is going to be part of the Vita-Juice team.”

“Not me,” said Ruth Ann. “I have band practice.”

“Track and field,” said Roy.

I was pretty sure I didn't want to be on the Vita-Juice team, but I couldn't come up with any good excuses, and so I remained silent. “That's just great,” my father said. “That's just the kind of negative thinking and bad attitude that gets you nowhere in this world.”

“Dad, I'm first-chair flute,” Ruth Ann protested, but my father was already stalking out the door.

Later I sought out my mother in her sewing room. No one has sewing rooms anymore. It was only a windowless cubbyhole, crowded with the heavy-duty Necchi machine, the cupboard filled with jewel-toned spools of thread, pieced-together garments on hangers, the box of patterns, and another for notions and zippers and cards of buttons. She was letting out the hem on one of my school dresses. There was always a worn line where the old hem had been, a dingy equator around my knees. “Why is Dad so excited about this juice thing?” I asked, and she looked at me over a mouthful of pins, trying to tell if I was being a smart aleck.

She considered her answer as she skewered pins one by one into the navy blue serge, then held up a length of rickrack trim around the bruised old hem. I shook my head violently, and she sighed. “Men always need a challenge. They get bored and impatient with things the way they are. It's just their nature. Your father wants to be his own boss. He sees other men running businesses and he thinks he's just as smart and hardworking as they are.”

“Well is he?”

“Cindy,” she scolded. “Of course he is. He's your father.”

We both looked at the neatly pinned hem and its telltale scuff marks. I thought about my father being bored and impatient with us. I thought of him as a boy, sitting at an oilcloth-covered kitchen table, eating his mother's thrifty soup during a silent mealtime. He must have warmed himself with the hope of having a family of his own, and presiding as Head Barcus. There would be high spirits and cheerfulness and good-natured kidding among his attractive, well-mannered children. Somehow he'd gotten us instead. My mother said, “How about if I cut out some felt appliqués and stitch them around the bottom? I could do flowers, different cute flower shapes.”

I burst into tears. “Oh honey,” my mother said, gathering me to her. “Never mind. I can save it for Louise and make you something brand-new. I could do pleats, maybe, or a little kilt, would you like that?”

But I couldn't stop crying. The sadness had gotten too deep inside of me. That first sadness, which comes from family, and never entirely goes away.

The shipments of Vita-Juice began arriving. In spite of anyone's misgivings, it was a time of great excitement. The products arrived by special freight, and a delivery truck had to back up the driveway, assisted by shouted instructions from my father and Roy. It unloaded a wooden pallet packed with cardboard boxes. Each box was divided with a honeycomb cardboard inset to hold two dozen plastic bottles, like small-sized milk jugs. My father used his pocketknife to slit the cardboard and extract a single bottle, which he carried inside to the kitchen. We all wanted to see it. He shielded it in his hands as if it was a light-producing object, then put it down on the table.

The plastic was cloudy-clear so that you could see the contents. Vita-Juice was a hectic green color, like artificial Easter grass. Darker particles floated in it. Although the bottle wasn't moving, constellations of these darker spots eddied and circled in slow orbits. “What's in this stuff?” I asked.

“Vitamins,” my father said. “Vegetable essences.” He fetched a number of juice glasses from the cupboard, opened the bottle, and decanted an inch or so of the substance into each. “Go ahead, try it.”

Although technically a liquid, Vita-Juice had an uneven, clotted texture. We lifted the glasses and sniffed them and let the stuff approach our lips before it slid back down again. Roy mouthed something behind my father's back that I'm pretty sure was “turd juice.” “Oh come on,” my father said. “Quit playing around and drink it.”

I tried a tiny sip. It tasted grassy, with an undertone of something stronger, spinach or perhaps seaweed. I could see from everyone else's faces what my own must look like: quizzical, puckered, recoiling. “For crying out loud, it's medicine, not soda pop.” My father poured himself a full-sized glass and drank it down in one long gulp.

Fearful, we watched his Adam's apple wiggling. He tilted the glass to get the last drops, then set it smartly on the table top. Sweat beaded on his upper lip, but his expression was triumphant.

As always, just when we were ready to doubt and dismiss him, he revealed his powers.

The car was moved out of the garage to accommodate the new enterprise. My father set up a desk in one corner amid the Vita-Juice boxes. Each day he dressed up just as he had to work at Spratt's, in his white shirt and tie. The bathroom was fragrant with steam and his aftershave. He went out on sales calls, days and often evenings too, anytime he thought he might find a potential customer. He wangled invitations to lodge meetings and firehouses, book clubs and trade shows. Sometimes he took Louise with him, dressed up in her fanciest Sunday outfit, all sashes and lace.

In spite of what he said about us all being part of the Vita-Juice team, the rest of us weren't asked to do anything. Perhaps this was intended as a punishment for our lack of faith. In any case, once the new routine was established, it was almost as if nothing had changed. My father kept busy with work, which as always involved knowledge and decisions of a gravity and complexity that was beyond our understanding. We got used to the cartons of Vita-Juice arriving as deliveries and leaving in the trunk of the car. As always, my mother put meals on the table and kept her peace. Christmas would be on us before we knew; already she was cutting ominous patterns out of green felt. But all of this was overshadowed by a momentous development. Ruth Ann had acquired a boyfriend.

She was sixteen now, and we routinely teased her about the time she spent primping in mirrors and her goopy, giggly friends who tied up the phone talking about who was their favorite Beatle. An actual boyfriend was a gleeful shock. We could hardly believe our good luck in having such a target. At the same time it disturbed us in obscure but powerful ways.

His name was Arthur Kelly and he was in the high school band along with Ruth Ann. He played tenor sax, which wasn't as bad as clarinet or trombone, but not as virile as drums or trumpet.

This was Roy's contribution. I didn't understand it, but I appreciated that it was something dirty. Arthur was a tall, dark-haired boy with white white skin and spreading brown freckles. When he smiled, his gums showed. We thought he was a dork and made fun of the way his cheeks puffed out when he made the saxophone squawk and of the truly icky gesture common to all reed players, mouthing and tonguing the reed as if it was a baby bottle.

It was excruciating for Ruth Ann. We spied on her and mocked her any time she got one of Arthur's phone calls or came home from band practice with her collar looking lopsided and pawed. Arthur didn't have his driver's license yet, so they couldn't go out on real dates. Once that fall the band was playing at a football game across town, a night game, and it was arranged that Arthur's mother would pick Ruth Ann up and drive the two of them there.

It was a big deal, a boy coming to the house for my sister and riding in the back seat of a car with her, even if she was dressed up in her marching band uniform with the ridiculous gold trim and scratchy wool pants. Wayne and Roy and I were beside ourselves. Roy said, “I bet old Arthur's excited. I bet he's trimming his nose hair right now.”

Wayne said, “I bet he's practicing his kissing. I bet he's running all over the house, kissing stuff.”

“Shut up! Mom! Make them shut up!” Ruth Ann was near tears. My mother had given her a permanent the day before and it hadn't cooked right. Her hair was lopsided and frizzy, and her nose had broken out in pimples. “Mom, I'm not going! I look like a freak!”

My mother soothed her and led her into the bathroom. I snuck in and sat on the edge of the tub to watch. My mother worked brilliantine through Ruth Ann's hair so that it resolved itself into separate, if greasy, curls. She dabbed some dark pink foundation over the pimples and stood back to gauge the effect. “There. Don't you think that helps?”

“She looks shiny,” I volunteered from my seat on the tub, and Ruth Ann shrieked and my mother shooed me out.

I rejoined my brothers. Just then my father came in from the garage, where he'd been doing his Vita-Juice work. He looked tired and irritable, as he often did after a long day of Vita-Juice. “What's going on?” he asked, sensing the peculiar energy of the moment.

Wayne said, “Ruth Ann has a date.” We heard the bathroom door open. Ruth Ann walked in, her hair flattened and kinked, her face patchy with dabs of makeup. She looked so fiercely grotesque that even Roy and Wayne fell silent.

My father spoke first. “What's this about a date?”

My mother came in, rubbing cold cream on her hands. “She's getting a ride to the game from Arthur and his mother, that's all.”

“Who's Arthur?”

We couldn't help it. “He's Ruth Ann's
boyfriend!
” we chorused. Ruth Ann's mottled face turned raging red.

I don't know what we expected my father to do or say, maybe join us in our hilarity, but we instantly saw our mistake. His jaw locked in the fury position. “Since when does she have a boyfriend?”

My mother began to say something patient. My father cut her off. “Where does she know him from?”

“Oh for heaven's sake, Walter, they're in the band together.” My mother produced a comb and attempted to smooth Ruth Ann's tragic hair.

“He plays sexophone,” Wayne offered. It was a joke we'd been making, although not in our parents' hearing.

My father kicked at a plastic truck and sent it crashing into the wall. We gaped at him. “How can you have company when this place looks like a pigsty?” There was a pile of small phonograph records on the floor, the kind Louise played on her kiddie phonograph, “March of the Wooden Soldiers” and “Lonely Little Petunia in an Onion Patch.” He brought his heel down on them and they splintered. “I want things cleaned up around here, pronto!”

The doorbell rang. We froze, waiting to see what would happen next. Ruth Ann shook herself loose from my mother's ministering hand and went to answer the door. But first she stopped and surveyed us calmly. “I hate each and every one of you,” she said.

Later that night, after Ruth Ann had gone out and returned without speaking to anyone, I heard my parents talking. The laundry chute in the basement was next to their closet, and I'd learned that if I crept downstairs quietly, I could eavesdrop. My father's rumbling was harder to make out than my mother's softer tones. “Well if you didn't spend all your time in that garage, you might have noticed.” I didn't hear my father's reply, but I knew he was saying that he had to work hard, that he only did it for us and he got no appreciation. “And they'd appreciate you more if you didn't charge around screaming at them.”

My father got up and padded down the hall to use the toilet. I endured the sound of his falling urine, and the flush, and then he came back to bed. I heard him say clearly, “Do you remember how great it was when they were all babies? Each one of them was like a little ray of sunshine.” I couldn't make out what my mother said.