Whistling For The Elephants Part 8

'Harry's been mad since Billie Blake died.' Aunt Bonnie served up and didn't talk any more. She just shut down into a beer can. I knew I wasn't going to get any more from her for a while but I had a hundred questions. What had Harry to do with Billie Blake? He didn't even like the zoo. How come Pearl left? Could you leave home at sixteen? That was sooner than I thought.

After lunch I was hanging around the front yard when Harry came out and got in his car. I didn't know what to say to him. His daughter was dead. I didn't know about dead. Rocco was the only deceased thing I had ever seen and I really didn't feel that had gone all that well. I wanted to say something but Harry was such a, well, grown-up. It was hard to imagine he had ever had a little girl. I was terribly worried that if I said the wrong thing he would start crying. Grown-ups crying was terrible. Aunt Bonnie was just bringing me a soda when she saw him. She had been drinking a lot so she kind of tripped as she ran over.

'Harry, Harry, geez, Harry.'

Harry looked like his jaw hurt him. 'I have to open the store.'

'No, you don't. Come and have a beer.'

'Listen, I went to war and it didn't stop me getting on with my life. Just because ... because there's Commies causing trouble...' He drove off, leaving Aunt Bonnie standing in the street. It was all very strange. Judith had arranged to take Mother to the Corset Store that day to be fitted with one of the Playtex wonders and no one said anything about cancelling.

'Do you know about Pearl, Mother?' I asked as she smoothed her hair for the hundredth time in the hall mirror.

'Go and wash your hands, Dorothy. We're going out to ... it's arranged, et cetera,' she replied.

Everything was unreal. I remember it seemed completely silent. More silent outside than in my house. There was no wind and even the harbour gave off no sound. I felt like I was drowning. I wanted to run away but I was only ten. Mother stood with her gloves and coat waiting by the front door. Judith honked outside in her Oldsmobile and Mother and I got in as if everything was normal. n.o.body really said anything. Since lunch Judith had completely rebuilt her face and her hair. She looked as she always did - taut with make-up - yet possibly a little pale. She didn't say anything but I knew that look. It was the same one Mother got from her pills.

Harry's corset and bra.s.siere store was double-fronted, with a door between two bowed plate-gla.s.s windows. It had the curious effect of making the display itself appear to have been lifted and separated. Inside was a world of synthetic elastic, the corselette and, to my mind, pain. Harry stood waiting for us with a tape measure round his neck. I didn't know what we were all doing. Judith settled herself on the edge of a leather chair while Harry worked with Mother. Half-mannequins of women's bodies squeezed into a variety of torture garments loomed over me. I suddenly realized why Judith never relaxed when she sat down. She couldn't. Behind the fitting-room curtain Harry worked with his tape measure. Mother was wearing only her stockings and panties but no one seemed to mind.

'You have a fine figure,' said Harry tonelessly while he measured the depth of Mother's b.r.e.a.s.t.s. 'Hard to believe you have had children.'

I looked at Mother stripped down to basics.

'Two. Charles and...' She waved in my direction. Harry was right. It was hard to believe that Charles and I were anything to do with her.

'I am so glad you came in.' Harry eyed her chest professionally. 'So many women make the mistake of not having a proper fitting.' Harry swept off into professional patter, his voice on automatic pilot, while his wife sat immobile a few feet away. Mother tried various restraining garments and finally emerged with the beloved eighteen-hour model below her dress. She did look different. Her body seemed more sculpted. Less real. Even more unapproachable.

'Be your turn before you know it,' Harry said to me. Judith didn't move but tears silently began to run down her face. No one could look at her.

'It's a lovely day,' said Mother. 'I think we will walk home. You know it's...'

'Yes,' said Harry.

We left him with his silent wife. It was warm out on the sidewalk and Mother seemed a little short of breath. I wasn't surprised. She never really walked anywhere and now she was being suffocated by eighteen-hour rubber. We had to walk past Abe's Ice Cream Parlour to get back so I asked if we could have a sundae. Abe was opening a new barrel of Rocky Road when we came in. There were quite a few people in the store sitting at the small marble tables. I went to order. Beside the list of flavours Abe had put up one of the Close the Zoo posters. It was the second one I had seen. I couldn't think why everyone was getting so worked up. I got myself a coffee cone with sprinkles and Mother some rum and raisin in a cup and went to sit down. Mother picked at the ice cream with a small spoon. Even eating dessert she was elegant. The spoon barely touched her lips and there was never any suggestion that her tongue was even remotely involved. The girdle had made her even more upright. She looked fabulous and I was so proud. For a brief moment I thought maybe I could be like her. Maybe it was okay. Suddenly the place went like a Western movie. It was a hot day when any reasonable person might want an ice cream. The swing shutters at the front door parted and Miss Strange walked in. She didn't have Mr Paton with her but instantly the place went completely silent. Everyone stared at her. Abe looked up from cleaning his silver scoop and then made himself busy again.

'h.e.l.lo, Abe,' she said.

'Miss Strange.'

It was as if she hadn't noticed. 'Vanilla please, no sprinkles.' Abe set about getting her the ice cream while she looked at the poster behind his head. After she'd paid she turned and glanced at everyone in the store. She looked at me and nodded. I knew I should introduce her to Mother. It was the right thing to do. To my eternal shame I looked away and waited till she had gone. We ate our ice cream and went home. Even though the girdle was good for another seventeen hours, Mother went to bed. I felt terrible.

That evening Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Eddie took Donna Marie and Eddie Jr to summer camp. The neighbourhood emptied of children. There was just me left and I shouldn't have been there. Pearl never came home. The funeral was held out of town in something approaching national hysteria. The Schlicks' daughter had become a symbol for the anti-war movement and the oppression of government. On the news lots of people were getting very upset and they didn't even know Pearl. I still wasn't really sure what the war was about but I knew you just had to say 'Vietnam' and people got heated on one side or the other. Judith wouldn't talk about Pearl because Harry wouldn't. Sweetheart talked about her but only to Jesus. She was in and out of the impossibly white Methodist church all the time. I guessed it was because Jesus was her friend. She even stopped working as a candy-striper at the hospital.

Then Perry came and she stopped going to church too.

Perry was three and he was Pearl's son. Well, he was, but Sweetheart seemed to be the only person who knew it.

After the funeral he arrived at La Guardia Airport with a big label on the front of his coat that said Perry Schlick, 2 Cherry Blossom Gardens, Sa.s.saspaneck.

He was a seriously cute kid with huge eyes and a great smile. You would think Harry and Judith would have welcomed him with open arms, but there was a problem. Perry was black. He was illegitimate too, and I don't know which was the bigger problem. Pearl had told them about him but as they hadn't seen their daughter for four years they had never met their grandson. She had told them the father was a Negro but Harry had said, 'That's just another thing she's saying to deliberately upset us.'

Perry came at a bad time. It was the summer of the election and for the first time Harry was being challenged in his re-election for mayor. I couldn't see how it would make a difference but, apparently, what he didn't need was some black b.a.s.t.a.r.d turning up, claiming to be a relation.

To be fair, Harry did give it a try. He collected Perry from the airport. I mean the kid was three, you couldn't leave him there. I think when Harry went to meet him, he was still hoping that somehow the strong white genes of the Schlick family would have overridden anything black. I don't think Father had helped.

'Theoretically, Harry, if you look at this chart, it is possible that the child could be china white.'

But he wasn't. Whatever light you looked at the kid in, he was black all right. Now, in the world of nature, if any creature is going to show compa.s.sion then it is most likely to show it to a member of its own species. But not with Harry. Harry did not regard Perry as his own because Perry didn't look right. Judith didn't get a say. Harry tried to send the kid back to the Midwest but there was no one there who could take him and the airline refused. So Harry brought him to Cherry Blossom Gardens. He arrived back banging doors and left the three-year-old in the car. There was a lot more shouting.

'He is not coming in the house, Judith. Do you have any idea what this could do to me?'

'She didn't do it on purpose.'

'I don't want to talk about Pearl.'

Then Sweetheart got the kid out of the back seat and took him to her house. Harry never said anything about it. He just launched himself into his campaign with terrifying vengeance. Looking back, I think he thought Perry was his daughter's final Democratic ploy. Anyway, I guess it pushed him over the edge.

It seems incredible now that Harry thought what he did was okay, that he could get away with it, but that was then. Things were changing right across the US but the tide was only just lapping at the feet of Sa.s.saspaneck. Since the pa.s.sing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, forcing the desegregation of the public schools, there had been a lot more talk about black rights. In Sa.s.saspaneck it was all theory because we only had Hubert, a few Poles and some Italians down by the railway station.

After Perry came, Sweetheart didn't open the door to anyone and no one ever saw Judith. Things were getting worse at home. Mother spent all her time in bed eating pecans out of a bowl. I did try to sit with her sometimes but then Father would bring home something from the drugstore for her and she would send me out.

'Go on, darling, you're getting fat. Go and run outside, play some.., thing.'

And they would fight.

'I am not staying in this h.e.l.lhole for another moment,' Mother would begin.

'There isn't any more money,' Father would whisper.

'I'm telling you, Charles, I will leave.'

I ran a lot. Round and round the house. Sometimes I ran all afternoon and was still running when Father got home from work. He would go straight in and sit at the dining-room table. He had a large wood-and-crystal drinks tantalus which his father had given him, and he would put that in front of him. He kept the key in his pocket and if I heard it in the tantalus lock then I knew there would be no speaking to him. We had stopped even pretending to have dinner. Mother had gone mad in the A&P one day. Alfonso had persuaded her to try Italian food and she had bought the fixings for spaghetti. When Father got home it was on the table.

'What the h.e.l.l is this?' he whispered.

'It's spaghetti,' said Mother. 'Charles, I wanted to.

Father looked at the meal. I thought he would be pleased. I couldn't remember the last time Mother had made an effort. Instead he said, 'I don't want any foreign food,' and then did something quite extraordinary. He picked the spaghetti up and threw the plate at the ceiling. Italian food and china came raining down. No one said anything. Father didn't like change. He didn't want anything different. He would rather not have anything at all. Mother went to her room. She didn't bother after that. Father just sat in his chair under a great red stain and drank his whiskey.

I didn't really mind. I developed my own routine. Lunch I sometimes got at the Dapolitos' or made myself, and I had dinner every night at Walchinsky's Hot Dog Stand. I took a dollar from Mother's purse and went on my bike. The stand was across the street from the school. It had been there for ever. It wasn't some temporary thing. It was a regular building but with a paG.o.da roof. Green Chinese tiles which curved up into the back of a dragon. Not exactly hot-dog-like but I thought it was impressive. Frank Walchinsky Jr was the second Frank in charge. He had left school at sixteen when his father had had a heart attack while bowling what would have been a perfect game. Frank Jr just left his homeroom, walked across the street from school and put an ap.r.o.n on. I liked him. He was a big bratwurst of a man with a brilliantly red face. He made my dog for me himself every night.

'Hey, kid, how you doing today?' he would call as I arrived on my bike.

'I'm good, Junior. Real good,' I would reply. Everyone called him Junior even though he was as old as Harry. You know, maybe fifty. Old.

Junior threw some onions on the grill and smacked them down with his egg slice. 'So what do you know?'

'I know that there's never going to be a better shortstop than Bud Harrelson.'

'Amen. So did you think of a new name for the stand?' he asked.

A McDonald's had opened in town and Frank had decided he needed to update his business. We had been talking and I said he needed a snappier name than Walchinsky's Hot Dog Stand.

'How about Frank's Franks?' I said. 'And you could have a slogan; Be Frank - Frank's Franks Are Best.'

Frank screwed his eyes up and looked at me. 'A slogan? Like on a b.u.t.ton?' I nodded. 'I like that. Yeah, I like that. b.u.t.tons. Rockefeller, he's got b.u.t.tons. See.' He held up a campaign b.u.t.ton which read We Want Rocky. It was like a lot of American politics - simple and to the point. Frank shook his head in amazement at the idea. 'We could have b.u.t.tons,' he repeated.

If it was raining or business was slow, Junior would let me sit inside behind the counter and eat my supper. I would sit next to him while he cut up onions, tears streaming down his face. Inside the stand, on the wall, Frank had black and white photographs from the opening of the hot-dog stand. There were balloons and ribbons and everyone was dressed up. At the back of the picture was an elephant wearing a sequinned coat and a top hat.

'Only hot-dog stand in America designed by an architect and opened by an elephant,' Junior would say. Then he would put down his knife and go through the people posing from the past. 'That's Mr Burroughs, everyone called him John Junior; Sweetheart and her son Harry; my father; Billie Blake; and that's Grace carrying Phoebe. Used to bring her down here all the time.'

I knew Grace from the magazine and the others were starting to be familiar too.

'Phoebe. She had a wheelchair.'

'John Junior's sister. Frail as a bird. She had polio when she was a kid. It didn't matter how much money John Junior made, he couldn't make her better. Then Grace came along. You never saw two people happier together. Grace would carry her everywhere. Everybody said she was Phoebe's legs and Phoebe was her heart. That's how come Pop got the stand. Phoebe wanted a hot dog so Grace got John to build her a hot-dog stand.' Junior wiped his sweaty red face with a towel and sat down.

'You been out to the house?' I nodded and he smiled. 'What a place. Took three years and every builder in the county to build it. Of course, it didn't help that Billie kept changing her mind. She was a gal. She had been to Europe once and she wanted all of it in one building. She used to sit drawing pictures of houses and driving John crazy. "Billie," he would say, "you can have what you want but you have to decide on one style." In the end I think it was a little wacky. The front was that place in Venice - the Doge's Palace, I never been - and the tower from Madison quare Garden in New York. And big. Thirty bedrooms, fourteen baths, plus kitchens, pantries and servants' quarters. People came from Paris to do the plaster on the walls, they got chairs handmade in Florence, floors from South America, artists to paint ceilings, wood walls from Italy You should see the organ in the tower gallery. Four thousand pipes. Fifty grand. I don't think anybody ever played it. I was only little but there was money then. The parties my dad used to cook for. But it couldn't last. There wasn't the money to make it last. One time Billie wanted a gondola so John Junior gets a gondolier too. You know the Dapolitos? That was Eddie's father, the gondolier. I think it's why he still lives by the water.'

So that was my life. Walchinsky's in the evening, driving at night, and the zoo during the day. I was learning a lot at the zoo. Cosmos gave me jobs to do and the insect woman, Helen, let me in for free. I already knew that when the rear ends of female baboons went red and swollen they weren't sick, just in estrous. That meant they wanted mating. I also knew that the books said Girling the Gorilla was supposed to be mainly foliverous. That meant he was supposed to like leaves and stems and things from plants, but you got nowhere with him unless you gave him spaghetti with tomato sauce. He wasn't like Father, he loved it. Girling was also scared of the plastic dividers in ice-cube trays. Miss Strange didn't know why but he would back off as soon as she produced one.

I didn't see a lot of Miss Strange. She kept in the office when the zoo was open. Cosmos had done a great job on the pets corner - Manitou Manor - and for a while a few families even came. The kids loved Cosmos. She would sit on a bale of hay, tooting her flute, while they fed the goats and stroked the rabbits. The angora rabbit had babies and I spent for ever holding them. They were just the same colour as their mom.

'That's genetics,' I told Cosmos with ten-year-old knowing.

She looked at the bunnies. 'Yeah, neat. Aren't mothers just the most? They are like ... everything. The Algonquin believe that Gluskap made the whole world from the body of his mother.'

I found that hard. Everybody had these weird ideas about mothers. I was sure you couldn't make anything out of mine. Not even sweat.

If Cosmos wasn't telling stories then she was whistling, and if she wasn't whistling she was carving new whistles and giving them away. She also made a thing out of old sewer pipes for us to crawl through and feel what it was like to be prairie dogs. None of this could really hide the fact that the place was falling down, but I loved it. I became kind of a mini-know-all, standing in front of the polar bears declaring to all and sundry: 'The girl is Hypatia. She was far out. She was like, a scientist, mathematician and philosopher. In her time she was the leading intellectual of Alexandria. She taught philosophy, geometry, astronomy and algebra at the university. She invented the astrolabe and the planisphere. Anyhow she had this really powerful philosophy about scientific rationalism. That you could sit and figure everything out. Well, Cyril, the boy? He hated that. He was like, this big Christian, which was really new then. It was like, the fourth century and Cyril was Patriarch of all Alexandria but I mean if he was going to have that job then I think he could have had like a better name. So Cyril hates her because she's so smart, and he gets this mob of monks to drag her from her chariot, strip her naked and torture her to death by slicing her flesh from her bones with sh.e.l.ls and sharpened flints.'

People were sometimes impressed. It was thrilling. Then the campaign over the zoo heated up and folks started feeling uncomfortable about coming. There was a rally in the town, a Meet the candidates event in front of Torchinsky's Funeral Parlour where both parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, announced their mayoral tickets. Harry, as the inc.u.mbent, was announced first. He began his speech with a sure-fire winner.

'How about them Senators?' The Sa.s.saspaneck Senators, the high-school football team, had had a very good year. The crowd went wild, waving red and blue banners and tossing fake boaters in the air. 'Was that some season or what?' More cheering. Everyone in the crowd could have run a touchdown themselves. Judith sat at the back, perched on a chair from Torchinsky's. She had a fixed smile on her face which only make-up remover could shift. She never said a word. She didn't clap or cheer either. Just sat. It was kind of spooky.

'When I was quarterback for the Senators, people used to ask me what I felt, and I told them: pride. I was proud to be from Sa.s.saspaneck. Proud to be quarterback for the best high-school team in the county. And I'm still proud. The Senators represent everything that is good about this town. They are young, talented men and they are winners. And we need to reward that. I have been your mayor for four years now and I am going to spend the next four years giving this town a place to show off our pride. At my own expense I have commissioned architect's plans for a new Senator stadium. It will be the latest, the greatest and the most modern stadium in the state.'

'Where you gonna put it, Harry? In your yard?' came a cry from the crowd. Harry laughed and held up a map of the town.

'Right here.' He pointed to the zoo. 'If elected I will close the zoo. I think we all agree that the place has become a health hazard and it has had its day. I say, let's clean up this town. Close the zoo. The Senator stadium is the future.' Abe and Hubert surprised themselves by cheering together. So that was it. Harry's close-the-zoo platform. Then the Democrats had their turn. The local party gave the announcement the usual build-up and then declared: 'The Democratic candidate for Mayor of Sa.s.saspaneck is Joey Amorato!'

To be honest, the place didn't exactly erupt. There was more of a murmur which went through the crowd.

'The dog catcher?'

'They chose the dog catcher?'

'Do they mean Joey?'

'I didn't even know he was a Democrat.'

I don't know why, but Joey had decided that 1968 was his year to stand tall. Maybe everybody knew that Harry was unbeatable so they let Joey stand as a token. Whatever, little Joey came out fighting.

'Hey. I'm Joey Amorato and I don't just know you, I know your dogs!' As an opening line in a fierce campaign it probably lacked something.

'What about the stadium, Joey?' called Tony from the door of his pizza parlour.

Already Joey was into tricky territory. In his time at Sa.s.saspaneck High, Joey had never been on a single sports team. Everybody knew this. He had always been on the chubby, unfit side. Indeed, it was his inability to run which had led to him being bitten by a dog in the first place.

'I think there are more important things in this town,' he began. - 'Like the zoo? You gonna come out for the zoo 'cause you like dogs?' shouted someone, and everyone laughed. It was not an auspicious start. Harry laughed loudest of all. Joey stood on the platform looking at him. Judith, seated between them, didn't move a muscle. The two men had very different agendas. Harry wanted to close the zoo, but Joey didn't care about that. He wanted to close out Harry. The zoo was about to get caught in the middle and so was I.

One night I had slipped out to drive the car as usual. It was always the same time. I would watch TV till a commercial came on with a deep man's voice.

'It's ten o'clock,' he would say like he was Orson Welles. 'Do you know where your children are?' It was delivered in such a way as to suggest you might also know where some other people's children were. Father would have been sitting at the tantalus for some time by then, so he never noticed me leave. I drove very slowly because even on my fruit box I couldn't see real well. Down to the Yacht Club entrance and round and back to the stop sign. Then I had to back up to avoid going on to Amherst, which I figured, as it was a main road, probably wasn't allowed. That night I had tried a little spying, but it hadn't gone well. The neighbourhood was very tense since Perry had arrived. Uncle Eddie had sided with Sweetheart.

'You can't turn away any kid,' he said, almost raising his voice.

But Aunt Bonnie said the kid ought to go. That it was upsetting Judith. I couldn't figure it out because Aunt Bonnie liked kids. She said it was all about family. I parked the car for a while and went round the back of the Dapolito place. Maybe Aunt Bonnie was having ice cream. In the backyard I could just see her lying on Eddie Jr's trampoline. I knew she was in estrous because she had a very red bottom and Harry was mating her. When I looked across the yard to the edge of the water I could see that Joey was watching, which I didn't think was nice. I ran back to the car.

I don't know why but it made me feel panicked so I shot the car into reverse and pulled straight out on to Amherst. There seemed to be cars coming from every direction and I drove kind of wildly down the road. I didn't know what the h.e.l.l was going on. Mating, that was about reproduction, but Aunt Bonnie already had kids. She had kids and then she sent them away for the summer. Harry had a kid who he didn't want to talk about and now she was dead but her kid was here and Harry didn't want him. Perry was family How could you not want family? And why was Jocy watching? It wasn't nice. I knew it wasn't nice. I thought he liked Judith more than he was supposed to, but why was he watching Aunt Bonnie? Nothing made any sense. I don't know how long I was gone. Maybe a half-hour, because I couldn't find any place to turn around. I would keep seeing a good s.p.a.ce, then lose my nerve and pa.s.s it. When I got back, I turned the car round at the end of the street and pulled up outside Sweetheart's house kind of shaking. Karen Carpenter was singing to me on the radio but it didn't help.

Sweetheart's front door was open and I could hear that she and Harry were arguing. I could see them half lit through the screen door. Sweetheart was holding Perry and Harry was trying to grab the kid off of her.

'You know what it did to me. Don't do this again,' he was yelling.

'It is not his fault,' said Sweetheart, clinging on to Perry, who was crying. Harry made a grab for the kid.

'I am not going to let this ruin my life.'

I was just about to pull off home but the next thing I knew, Sweetheart ran out with Perry in her arms and got in the car.

'Hurry up! Drive! Drive!'

Harry came storming out of the house and ran at the car so I just floored it. We hit Amherst so fast the car fish-tailed round the corner. This was new. This was real driving. I had people in the car. Pa.s.sengers. I pulled on the huge steering wheel to try and sit up more and see more while still pressing the accelerator. I knew to stay on the right-hand side of the road but I didn't know how to get anyplace except the bit of Amherst which I had just tried, and I really didn't know anyplace off Amherst except the zoo. Perry was crying and Sweetheart was trying to comfort him.

'Where are you going?' she asked.

'The zoo,' I said.

It was as if she expected it. 'Yes. Good.'

When we got there it was completely dark. I knew my way around so it wasn't a problem. I opened the car door for Sweetheart and kind of held her by the elbow. She had Perry in her arms and she just let me guide her like I knew what I was doing. I liked that. Like Father leading Mother across the road. What was strange was that I didn't need to. She knew exactly where we were going. As usual the place was wide open so we wandered in through the Tibetan ticket booth. It should have been like one of my silent spy moments but we all jumped when the fire siren went and the timber wolves began to howl. It woke Mr Honk up. He fanned his feathers at me. I'd have liked to show Perry how handsome he was but it would have to wait. Sweetheart had started making very still crying sounds and I didn't know what to do. I mean, she was too old to cry.

'It's real good you're not wearing a hat,' I tried. 'Queen Sammuramat, she's the ostrich, she's taken to attacking anyone wearing a hat. Do you know about Queen Sammuramat? She ruled a.s.syria for forty-two years. She irrigated the whole of Babylon and led military campaigns as far as India.'

Maybe it wasn't appropriate but it was all I could think of. I don't think I had ever thought about what Cosmos, Helen and Miss Strange did when the zoo was closed. I just presumed they would be there, and that night they were. The lights were on in the food store. Miss Strange was sitting with Sappho, the female orangutan. Sappho had a big flat face like she had swallowed a Frisbee, a neat beard and a sad expression. Actually everyone looked serious. There was a discussion going on between Cosmos and Miss Strange. The orangutan seemed to be taking an active part, or at least a more active role than Helen. As usual, Helen, all-brown Helen, was curled up in a corner so that I didn't notice her at first.

They couldn't have been expecting us but when Miss Strange saw Sweetheart she stood up. Mr Paton was perched on her shoulder but he didn't move or speak. I'm sure I hadn't thought about what would happen but I know it surprised me.