Winning is Everything (2 page)

2 

Kip hated good-byes.

Go ahead, he told himself. Get it over with. Philadelphia had always been a good place to leave, and no time better than in June. The stifling late-afternoon heat robbed the Chestnut Hill atmosphere of oxygen. The fan in the bedroom window wasn’t producing any relief, and Kip had to finish packing, had to say good-bye to the folks, had to catch the train to New York, had to start living his life.

Lehigh had been great; four years of security and acceptance. In a society that believes that if you’re terrific-looking you’re dumb and, conversely, if you’re brilliant, you’re bound to look squirrely and underfed, Kip broke the mold. He was not only amazingly good-looking but also bright as they come. Although he had gone through Lehigh on a wrestling scholarship, he could have gotten one for his academic achievement as well. No wonder no one on campus had been more popular than Elliott Kip Bramer.

Kip threw the last of his polo shirts into the suitcase, snapped the two pieces of leather together, and clicked the snap shut. Lifting his suitcases, he toted them out of his room and set them down next to the front door. He then walked into the kitchen to say good-bye to his mother.

Jean Bramer was sitting at the breakfast table, still wearing the nightgown she had slept in the night before, staring blankly past a glass of orange juice, when Kip came in to say good-bye.

“Finished packing. Guess I’ll be shoving off now if I’m going to catch that train.”

Kip’s mother turned around slowly, stared straight through her son, looked up at the ceiling, looked out the window, looked back down at the glass of orange juice. “Don’t be afraid of the dark,” she said in a quiet little voice. “There’s nothing there that wasn’t when the light was on, you know….”

Kip walked over and knelt down next to the frail woman. “You take care of yourself. I know you can. Just make up your mind to get well. You know you can do it.”

Jean Bramer put her arms around Kip. “I don’t know why I never believed in God, Kip. For the life of me. I’ve been through alcohol and analysis and twenty-seven years with your father and I don’t know how many bulldog puppies and tranquilizers and a lot of scared and terrifying moments, but I’ve never believed in God. I bet you think that’s strange.”

“Not really.” Kip smiled. “I just want you to be happy.”

“Sometimes happiness is unavoidable,” Jean Bramer said to her glass of orange juice.

“I’ll call from Aunt Edith’s. Let you know how everything is.”

“You need money?” Jean asked, looking out the window.

“I’m fine,” said Kip.

“If I could give away affection as easily as I part with money …” She let the rest of her thought dangle.

“You’ll be fine,” said Kip, kissing his mother on the forehead as he stood up.

“I should have combed my hair for you,” said Jean Bramer.

“Not necessary,” Kip told her.

“Sometimes I think about taking a large pair of scissors and going through my hair zigzag, you know, making myself look like one of those crazy people in
Snake Pit
or something. That way people would know soon as they met me I’m a crazy woman and we could avoid all that embarrassment of always having to eventually explain me to newcomers.”

Kip took his mother’s hand. “I love you, Mom. You got problems, sure. More than most people. But I’ve never been ashamed of you.”

“I wouldn’t care if you were. Doesn’t matter to me,” said Jean as her eyes suddenly lost their focus. Kip could see her concentration waning. “Why would it matter to me? I’m a sick woman. If I wanted to care about such things, I would get well. But I can’t, so I don’t. No, I don’t care. Don’t care at all, do I?”

One of the bulldogs moseyed into the kitchen and sat down next to Kip’s mother. Jean leaned over and rubbed the dog’s ear. “I’ve always loved the dogs, though, Kip. Swear I have. Always. The more ugliness I see in people, the more beauty I see in bulldogs. Ask your father. He knows.”

“I know that too,” Kip said softly.

Jean Bramer refocused her attention onto her glass of warm orange juice. “You know, of course, the mind can do whatever it wishes….Sometimes I miss the control…”

Kip smiled at his mother, turned, and walked out the kitchen door. He walked through the garden, down the backyard path, into the kennel.

Elliott Senior was crouched over a whelping bitch who was busy feeding three round and fat tiny fur balls. A fourth puppy was being cradled in Kip’s father’s large hands.

“I don’t think she’s going to make it,” the large man said as he turned to find Kip at the kennel door. “Breathing’s bad. Not sure her little heart can pump hard enough. I think we’re going to lose her.”

Kip walked over and carefully took the sickly puppy from his father’s hands. Elliott Senior was right. The pup was failing. “Why don’t you take it over to Dr. Brenner’s?” asked Kip.

“If it lives through the night, I probably will. Sometimes you just can’t help the little suckers. They just don’t have what it takes to get there.”

“I came to say good-bye, Dad,” said Kip, handing the small bully pup back to his father. “Don’t want to miss my train.”

“You say good-bye to your mother?”

“Just now.”

“She’s going to have to go back, you know.”

“I know,” Kip said softly.

“I just can’t keep her here, Kip. Not when she’s like this. It’s only going to get worse; you know that as well as I, right?”

“Right, Dad,” said Kip. “I’ll call you from Aunt Edith’s, okay?”

“You tell my fat sister to take good care of you, understand?”

“Will do.”

“I sure don’t like the way this little puppy’s breathing,” Elliott Senior said as he put the tiny thing down by its mother. The baby bulldog nosed around until it found a vacant nipple, plugged itself in, and began nursing. Elliott Senior looked up at Kip for the first time and said, “Why go to New York for the summer, Kip? Gonna be so hot and sticky. Why work at the World’s Fair?”

Patience
, Kip told himself.
You’re almost out the door
. “It’s a job. A summer job. That’s all.”

“Well. I guess we’ve been all through this, huh? If you wanted to stay around the office this summer, pick up a few tricks, learn some ropes, you would have, right?”

“I worked at your office last summer, Dad, remember? I hated it.”

“Everything in life doesn’t always come easy, you know. You hardly gave it a chance.”

“I gave it the entire summer,” Kip answered, hoping his mounting impatience wasn’t showing.

“One summer!” Elliott Senior responded. “I had to work
every
summer, hauling cartons around my father’s factory. He never even wanted me to go to law school; wanted me to take over his business/’

“I know all that, Dad.”

“Then why, with this golden opportunity, are you being so stubborn?”

“I’m not being stubborn. I’d just like to do what I’d like to do for a change, that’s all. Look, I’ve always wanted to act. Always. You know that.”

“Please
/” Elliott Senior exhaled deeply and waved an impatient hand. “You can channel those energies, Kip. That’s all I’m saying. Do something really useful with your life. Remember how you used to win those elocution contests in high school? How articulate you were on the debating team? You could take any argument and create a worthy case for
or
against. I’ve been around a long time, and let me tell you something—I know a winner when I see one; you’d be a natural in a courtroom.”

“Thanks, Dad, but right now I’ve got a train to catch.”

“I know. But I’m still confused. Seems to me we were clear on everything up until you got accepted at Yale. Then suddenly it was what you
didn’t
want. The Yale Law School. Kip. Think of it!”

“I have thought of it, Dad. Quite a lot.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Elliott Senior looked straight at Kip. “Is it some kind of rebellion? You were always such a good kid.”

“Maybe it is a rebellion, Dad. I honestly don’t know. I worked like a son of a bitch for years, getting A’s in subjects that didn’t interest me because I knew it was expected of me. ‘Kip’s a good boy. He’ll come through.’ I was good at athletics because I knew how much it pleased you.”

“But
Yale,
Kip. Yale! What an opportunity. I’ve been planning it this way for years….”

“Did you hear what you just said, Dad? Ever since I was five years old you’ve introduced me at the country club as the future senior partner of your law firm. Ever since I can remember, you’ve been telling people how I’m going to be the first Bramer to make it to the Supreme Court. Christ, I was so programmed, it wasn’t until I’d actually been accepted at Yale that I first began to realize it wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

“But, Kip!” Elliott Senior raised a pair of determined fists into the air. “Even if you don’t practice law …”

“You can always use a law degree,”
Kip finished his father’s favorite saying.

“Exactly!” Elliott Senior dropped unclenched fists to his lap, pleased, at least, to have been quoted correctly.

“Look. Dad. Yale’s not going anyplace. If I don’t like New York, if I don’t like the acting scene, Yale will still be there when I’m ready for it. I just don’t feel like going back to school for a while, that’s all.”

“Lazy generation!” proclaimed Elliott Senior. “We beat the Nazis so we could raise a generation of sloths!”

Kip realized there was no winning this argument, so he smiled sadly, nodded a farewell to his father, and turned to the door.

“Want a lift to the station?” Elliott Senior said as he plucked one of the other pups from a nipple. He put his ear to the puppy’s belly, listened a moment, and sighed. “This guy’s doing fine. Could be the pick of the litter.” Elliott Senior smiled and turned to the door, offering Kip a chance to listen to the puppy breathe, but Kip was gone.

3 

Ron and his new friend, the girl behind the Bloody Mary, had been chatting for fifteen minutes before she finally introduced herself.

“I’m Jackie Deutsch,” she said, extending her right hand. “That’s German. But my mother’s Hungarian. We live in Rego Park. That’s in Queens. I work there as a secretary for IBM. But don’t get me wrong; I’m moving into the city with my girlfriends Erica and Sheila soon as Erica gets a job. We already have the building picked out. Sixty-ninth and York. Sheila’s sister was in an apartment there with three other girls for only two and a half months before she met a predental student, and before you could say ‘Here are your X rays,’ they were pinned, then engaged, then they got married and moved to Wantaugh, that’s on Long Island, so Sheila thinks the building might be lucky. What about you?”

“Oh, I’m sure the place is lucky, too,” said Ron, suddenly wondering what he was doing in the middle of this conversation.

“No, I mean, what’s your name?” Jackie asked.

“Ron. Ron Zinelli.” Ron forced a smile.

“Hey, Italian, right?”

“Right,” Ron allowed. “Except my mother’s Jewish.”

“That’s great,” said Jackie. “Jews and Italians make the best husbands. It’s a fact. My girlfriend’s cousin Ethel married a Jewish fella, and he wasn’t even a doctor. Just a successful linoleum salesman.”

“I’ll remember that next time I redo my kitchen,” said Ron as he started to turn around, determined to extricate himself from this too-cozy-too-soon spot.

“Tell me, Ron. Do you believe in love at first sight?”

“Not with my vision,” said Ron, looking at Jackie through his eyeglasses.

“I mean, can a couple connect psychically, that is, in the cosmic sense?”

“I tend to doubt it,” said Ron.

“Really?” Jackie was fascinated. “What’s your sign?”

“I’m Taurus with a penis rising.”

Jackie didn’t hear the vulgar part of Ron’s remark. She had turned around, to greet a friend. “Oh, hi,” she said to a rather attractive buxom and befreckled strawberry blond. “You’re back.”

“Yeah.” The girl yawned. “We just spent the most boring fifteen minutes talking to some guy about car insurance. Erica’s still with him. Gawd, how you do meet the most awful creeps in these places!”

“This is Sheila, who I told you about already,” said Jackie to Ron. “She’s a receptionist in the Seagram Building. We went to high school together in Forest Hills.”

“Hi, Sheila,” said Ron, suddenly interested in this new development. “Ron Zinelli.”

“What do
you
do?” asked Sheila, batting eyelashes.

“I’m an awful creep, just like everyone else in here,” said Ron, with the same devilish wink he’d bestowed upon Jackie not fifteen minutes earlier.

“No, I mean for a living,” asked Sheila.

“Just graduated from the University of Michigan,” Ron told the girls. “But I’m from Buffalo.”

“But what is your professional endeavor?” Sheila pressed on, apparently collecting information for her own instant Dun & Bradstreet evaluation.

“Nothing yet,” said Ron, wondering why he suddenly felt unqualified for this conversation. “But I was a business major. Came to New York with a fraternity brother, got a job at the World’s Fair. At the Ford Pavilion. Start working there tomorrow.”

Sheila and Jackie looked at one another, perplexed. Neither of them knew where on the scale of acceptability lay the World’s Fair. Definitely below engineering and probably just a coupla notches above auto mechanic.

“How fascinating,” said Sheila, anything but fascinated. “So it’s a summer job, then, yes?”

“I guess so,” Ron told her.

“Well, what’re you gonna do when the World’s Fair ends?” Sheila wanted to know.

“Oh, I’m not sure,” said Ron with a lazy shrug. “Whatever it takes to become very rich and very successful.”

Sheila snapped back with renewed interest. “Gawd, I’m thirsty,” she proclaimed. “How
does
one get a drink around here?”

“I’ll battle my way to the bartender,” Ron volunteered. “What’re you drinking?”

“Apricot sour, please.” Sheila smiled.

“What about you?” Ron looked over to Jackie.

“Surprise me,” said Jackie, the thrill-seeker, punching a tiny fist into an open hand.

It took Ron four dollars, seventy-five cents, and five minutes to return with two light apricot brandy sours for the girls and a sturdy Jack Daniel’s, rocks, for himself. In his absence, Sheila and Jackie had agreed it was Sheila and Ron who, God willing, might make the better match, and not Jackie and Ron. So by the time Ron delivered the drinks, Jackie was already giggling over a short and cherubic future CPA.

“Cheers!” said Sheila, extending herself to drinking both hers and Jackie’s drinks. “And welcome to Noo Yawk!”

“Nice to meet you,” offered Ron.

They each took a sip of their drinks. Sheila was wondering if Ron maybe came from old Italian-Jewish-European money, and Ron was hoping Sheila’s more-than-ample breasts were still going to look supple and enticing once she had taken off her clothes.