Bingo Brown and the Language of Love (4 page)

Bingo maintained a dignified silence.

“You were against the refrigerator, gasping for breath. Your face was red as a beet. Bingo, you did look guilty. And she was against the sink, also out of breath, also looking guilty. What was I supposed to think?”

Bingo shrugged. “Nothing … anything.”

For the first time in his life, Bingo was grateful for pronouns. Words that were used as substitutes were especially handy when you didn’t know exactly what words they were substituting for.

“Let’s just forget it.”

Bingo came up with, “Whatever.” It was a mark of how low his life had sunk, that the only thing he had to be grateful for were pronouns.

“Thanks. Oh, Bingo, did I tell you I think I sold the Maynard’s house?” She left without waiting for an answer.

Almost immediately there was another knock at the window. Before Bingo could answer it, there was a knock at the door. Bingo swung around helplessly.

His dad stuck his head in Bingo’s room. “You got a minute?”

“Sure.”

“I just wanted to say that I—”

Knock, knock.

“Excuse me, Dad, I’ve got to answer the window.”

“The window? People knock on your window?”

“Just one.” Bingo crossed the room. Wentworth’s nose was pressed against the screen.

“What do you want, Wentworth?”

“I’m going on vacation in the morning,” Billy said.

Bingo sighed. “I know that,” he said with what he thought was great patience. “I’m keeping your dog.”

“Well, if that girl—the blond one that likes me—Cici? If she asks where I am—”

“Yes?”

“Tell her I’m on vacation.”

“I will, Billy. Good night and good-bye.”

Bingo came back to the bed. His dad was reclining against the Smurf pillows, his arms behind his head.

“Does he do that often, Bingo?”

“Often enough.”

Bingo sat on the edge of the bed. “If it’s about this afternoon …”

“Your mom may have overreacted on that, Bingo.”

“May have? She thought this girl and I were—I don’t know exactly what she did think we were doing.” Bingo was genuinely offended. “Anyway I would never do stuff like that in a kitchen!”

“Look, Bingo, your mom has always worried that you’d be, well, sort of shy with girls.”

“Why would she think that? Were you?”

“No, just the opposite.”

“Then why should I be?”

“I don’t know. It’s what she thought. Then all of a sudden, in the course of a week, she gets a fifty-dollar phone bill from your calls to one girl and then she catches you in the kitchen with another.”

“So now she’s started worrying that I’m not shy enough.”

His dad smiled. “Something like that.”

“I didn’t even like that girl this afternoon. She’s not my type. But when I do like a girl, well, I really, really like her, Dad. I can’t help it.”

“I couldn’t either.” His dad looked up at the ceiling. “Over the years there’ve been, let’s see, at least ten girls that I loved like that.”

Bingo looked down at his hands in embarrassment. He wished his father would keep personal stuff like that personal.

“The first was JoBeth Ames in kindergarten. I actually married her.”

“Dad!”

“Yes, her older sister performed the ceremony. In second grade it was Lisbeth; it was Monica in third; Hazelann in Junior High. Hazelann had a pink angora sweater that used to reach out when I got close to her. Like, I’d pass her in the hall, and this angora stuff would come at me, like I was a magnet. It wouldn’t do that for anybody else.”

Bingo’s dad continued with his eyes closed. “I suppose it was something electrical between us, because the first time we dated, she got in the car and she had on the pink angora sweater and she slid across the seat—we sat close back then—and her hand touched mine, and a big blue spark flashed in the air.”

Bingo waited as respectfully as he could, under the circumstances, for his father’s eyes to open.

Finally they did and, to Bingo’s relief, his dad sat up. “It still happens to me every now and then, and I’m thirty-eight.”

“What still happens? Blue sparks?”

His father shook his head.

Bingo tried not to show his alarm. “You fall in love?”

“Well, I don’t guess you’d call it love, Bingo. Like last Saturday I went in Eckerd’s, and this woman was standing there spraying some sample perfume on the insides of her wrists. Then she touched her wrists together and lifted them to her face, and I fell in love right there in Cosmetics. Now don’t get me wrong, Bingo, I have never even thought about being unfaithful to your mom.”

“I should hope not.”

“Then from Eckerd’s I went to Bi-Lo, and a woman in Produce asked me to help her pick out a good cantaloupe, and as we were—”

“You fell in love in Bi-Lo, too?”

Now Bingo’s voice was high with alarm. It was bad enough to hear of old loves, old wedding ceremonies, old blue sparks. Hearing of new stuff made Bingo want to put his fingers in his ears.

His father broke off and said briskly, “Well, I’ve gotten off the subject. I didn’t come in to talk about my weaknesses.”

Bingo took a deep breath to calm himself. He had always known his parents were blind to the depths of his own feelings. They had proved that again and again. But apparently he had been somewhat blind, too.

As soon as he could speak normally, he said, “So what do you want to talk about?”

“Well, just that despite the incident of the phone bill, Bingo, your mom and I have been very pleased with you this summer.”

“You have?” Bingo felt they had managed to hide their pleasure rather successfully.

“I myself have had the feeling that the three of us, well, this summer it’s been more like three adults living in the same house. It’s been actually peaceful. Then, when you started fixing supper, well, your mom was so happy. It was a thrill for her to come home to a good supper.”

“I don’t know about good,” Bingo said. “She scraped every bit of oregano sauce off her chicken.”

“She was upset.”

“Well, I was, too, but I ate mine. Dad, I prepared that sauce under very difficult circumstances with a girl—only she’s more like a college girl, Dad—following me around. I need privacy to cook. I’m not the Galloping Gourmet.”

“Your mom’s under a strain right now.”

“What kind of strain?” Bingo paused. Had he been blind to his mother’s feelings, too? “I thought Mom loved her job. She never talks about anything else.”

“She does love her job. If anything she loves it too much.”

“She’s not going to get fired, is she?”

“No, but …” His dad got up quickly. “Look, I better let you get some sleep. Good night, Bingo.”

“I’d like to know what kind of strain,” Bingo began. “Wait a minute.”

But his father was closing the door behind him. Suddenly Bingo was very tired. It had been a long, hard day. He would find out about his mother’s strain tomorrow.

“Good night, Dad.”

Bingo lay down on the Smurf sheets and closed his eyes. As he tried to sleep, burning questions trotted across his mind instead of sheep.

When I am a father, will I fall in love in Eckerd’s and Bi-Lo?

Can a gene for this kind of masculine weakness be passed on from father to son?

Aren’t there some indications that the unfortunate gene has, indeed, been passed on?

When I am thirty-eight, if someone asks me to help them pick a good cantaloupe, will I be able to do this without blushing or—worse!
Worse!
Will I actually hang out at the cantaloupe counter, hoping someone will ask? Finally, at last, Bingo slept.

B
INGO HAD A STRANGE,
empty feeling.

It wasn’t hunger. He ate and he still had it. It wasn’t thirst. He drank a lot of pop, too. Bingo didn’t know exactly what it was. It was just a huge internal void.

It was as if some vital organ had been secretly removed from his body and beamed up to some alien. And now this alien was stretched out contentedly, saying, “Ah,” while on earth Bingo suffered in confusion.

Perhaps, Bingo thought, he could use this empty feeling later in one of his science-fiction novels, but now he could only wait for it to pass.

This was the third day of the emptiness. It had started that terrible afternoon when his mother had mistaken the incident in the kitchen for a romantic encounter. Ever since then, there had been this emptiness, which was not improving. If anything, he was getting more empty.

Bingo got up from the sofa. He said, “Come on, Misty. Let’s go to the store.”

At the sight of her leash, Misty began trembling with excitement.

“Don’t get your hopes up. I’m just going for some noodles and a can of tuna. Tonight I’m making tuna lasagna.”

Bingo hooked the leash on Misty’s rhinestone collar. He was glad to have Misty these days. With this terrible three-day emptiness, he needed both companionship and eye contact. Misty’s eyes watered a lot, so it was especially satisfying to tell her his troubles.

He and Misty were going down the steps when the mailman arrived. “I’ll take those,” Bingo said. He glanced down and stopped in place.

The top letter had his name on it. Mr. Bingo Brown. He loved the way his name looked with a
Mr.
in front of it. A name like Bingo needed a
Mr.

He lifted the envelope and held it in his hand, as if weighing it. He smelled it for the scent of gingersnaps, but the letter only smelled like U. S. mail.

Bingo wondered if he would be able to control himself when Melissa started using perfume. If the scent of gingersnaps sometimes drove him mad, what would perfume—which was a chemical actually designed to drive men mad—do to him? Could he—

Misty whined at the end of her leash.

“In a minute, Misty.”

He put the rest of the mail in the box and, slipping the end of the leash on his wrist like a bracelet, he opened his letter.

Dear Bingo,

I was really glad to get your letter, because after your phone calls stopped, I thought you had forgotten I was alive.

I’ve seen my new school, but I know I’m not going to like it as much as Roosevelt Middle School. For one thing, you won’t be there.

A girl in my apartment building says the science teacher is neat. As you know, I’m going to be a scientist and a rock star, so this is important to me.

Bingo stopped for a moment, remembering the day Melissa had announced her dual careers to the class. “I am going to be a scientist and a rock star.” It had been like a movie he had seen recently, and he had fallen instantly in love with Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde. He went back to the letter.

I wrote Mr. Mark a letter, giving him my new address, but he hasn’t written back yet. I think of you a lot, Bingo. I hope sometime I’ll get back to see you, or maybe you could come out to Bixby for a visit. You ask your mom and I’ll ask mine.

Love forever, Melissa

P. S. I asked my best friend, Cici, to come over and take a picture of you. You probably don’t know Cici, but she knows you because I pointed you out to her in the hall one day. If you don’t want to have the picture taken, you don’t have to.

Bingo stopped at the corner. While waiting for traffic, he put the letter in his pocket. Then he picked up Misty so they could cross the street. He had already learned that Misty was so afraid of cars she tried to run under them for safety. Above all, he did not want to have to say to Billy Wentworth, “Remember that dog I was keeping for you? Well, she got run over.”

He put Misty down on the sidewalk, and they continued walking.

Bingo said, “Misty, I could never go to Bixby. For one thing, my mom wouldn’t let me. And also, Misty, I don’t particularly want to go.

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind going somewhere. I like to travel. A plane ride, even a train or bus trip would probably do me a lot of good right now.”

He paused before he went on. “What I wouldn’t like would be getting there … being there …”

He stumbled and gasped. Misty came to the end of her leash and looked around, her wet eyes startled.

“Oh, Misty,” he said.

He clasped his free hand over his heart.

Now Bingo realized what had happened to him. He realized what the terrible, empty void was.

He looked up at the sky as if the answer had come directly from there.

Of course he was empty!

He had every right to feel empty!

He would be an inhuman beast if he didn’t feel empty!

“Misty,” Bingo said with infinite sadness. “I am no longer in love.”

Misty was looking back at him, holding eye contact. Her tail trembled.

“I don’t know how it happened. How could a person be in love for eternity, no, for infinity, and then”—he shrugged helplessly—“then,
nothing.”

Misty waited.

“This is the first time in six, no, seven months that I’ve been without a real burning desire, and I don’t use that word ‘burning’ lightly. No wonder I’ve been feeling terrible. I’m the kind of person who has to have a burning desire.”

He picked Misty up and tucked her under his arm for comfort.

“Perhaps I won’t have any trouble falling in love again. After all, one time I fell in love with three girls in ten minutes, and my dad still falls in love at drug stores and supermarkets. I got the gene from him.

“But, Misty, would anybody other than Melissa fall in love with me? Having Melissa fall in love with me was pretty much a miracle, to be honest with you, and how many miracles happen to a person in one lifetime?”

The Bi-Lo doors parted, and Bingo entered the store. He walked purposefully through Produce, Dairy Products, and Cold Cuts.

“I must do one thing before I get the noodles. I want to go to the cookie aisle and smell the gingersnaps. This is a test, Misty. Because if I don’t feel like calling Melissa when I smell gingersnaps, then I’ll know for sure. See, the first time I rode in a car with Melissa—our substitute teacher was taking us to the hospital to visit Mr. Mark—as we got in the car, Melissa brushed against me, and I smelled gingersnaps. Ever since then …”

Bingo trailed off and reached for the gingersnap box. He took it down and stood looking at the picture of the round, cheerful, brown cookies.