Child of My Right Hand (9 page)

Just before Halloween, Simon applied for a job at Burger King. Six dollars an hour, was that great, or what? When the manager, a short woman named Helen, who had light, almost colorless, bangs and raccoon circles around her eyes, disappeared with his application, he sweated and fretted and his leg twitched like a crazy man's; he just knew it was going to be no. But when she reappeared a few minutes later, a smile improved her plain round face.

“Simon, could you come in Sunday to be trained?”

He wanted to shout, You mean I'm hired? He would've hugged her, but didn't want to act like a freak. Instead he nodded and filled out forms, then headed home with a visor and a blue BK shirt feeling so full of himself he did all his homework without being told to. When Mom asked if he'd like to jog before dinner, he nearly said Yes, but remembered, just in time, that he hated to exercise.

Sunday morning Mom fixed blueberry pancakes, but Simon felt too giddy to eat more than three or four because he had to get ready. He showered and shaved, dressed in his BK shirt and visor. Okay, he looked lame, but he couldn't stop grinning. If he worked fifteen hours, he'd earn ninety dollars. Ninety dollars a week! Music burst out of him, as if he were starring in a movie musical. He sang, “Super-califragilistic-expi-alidocious.”

Where did that come from?

“Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious.”

Simon's feet tapped. His legs moved.

“If you sing it loud enough— ”

He sang so loudly the walls cheered. No, Dizzy Lizzie beat on his door.

“Shut up, Simon! Will you just shut up?”

Simon sang and danced for everyone in Movie Land.

***

Simon asked Mom to drive him, but she said Dad would.

“Don't worry,” she said, loading the dishwasher. “I'll make sure he leaves on time.”

“He's always late,” Simon said. “I'm sick of it.”

At twelve-thirty—he was due at one and the Burger King was ten minutes away—Simon headed to the driveway, climbed into the Camry he hoped would someday be his, and leaned on the horn.

After eighteen vicious honks, Dad emerged through the front door and walked towards the car. He looked pissed off, probably about the honking. He had the biggest nose Simon or any of his friends had ever seen; he also had one of the biggest heads. What a freak. With his best friend Martin, who visited every summer and sometimes Thanksgiving, Dad was always going, “Big nose, big humph.” Then he'd grin like he'd won the lottery.

Could that be true? Simon's nose wasn't large; he'd gotten Mom's nose. The last time he glimpsed Dad's penis he was five or six. They used to pee together, what Dad called crossing swords. Back then, Dad's penis was the biggest thing he'd ever seen. More like a sea snake, or a garden hose, than his own hairless little wiener.

Thinking about his dad's penis was disgusting. Then Dad—he tried to think of him as Jack, but couldn't—climbed into the car with this smirking grin on his big face, as if he knew what Simon had been thinking about

“You're pretty anxious to get to work.” Dad backed up, then cut forward to pull out of the long driveway.

“I don't want to be late.”

“You're never this anxious to do anything I want. Even when I offer to pay you.”

It's not the same.

“Maybe I should have thrown in one of those cool hats.”

He glanced at his dad, who was still grinning. Simon grinned, too.

“Shut up, Dad.”

“It's enormously cool,” Dad said. “Your first real job.”

***

They made him Fry Guy.

“Don't worry,” Helen said. “It's what everyone does first.”

Simon thought, An adult who apologized to kids, what was up with that?

He learned to drop frozen balls of potatoes into one of four baskets, raise the basket to drain when the timer dinged, then dump a glistening lawn of fries below heat bulbs red as Superman's sun. Salt, salt, salt, then he boxed fries, small, large and extra-large. And not just fries! Fry Guy kicked chicken nugget butt: drop, sizzle, fry and dump. Instead of bulbs, a heat lamp warmed them, its space heater coils glowing orange-juice bright. Below them, Fry Guy wore a halo of grease. Grease cologne. Grease deodorant. In his head, the hours chimed like a cash register. Six, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four; within the first hour he'd decided how to spend his money. Buy the Camry from Dad so when he got his license he could drive his friends to school and everyone would say, There goes Fry Guy. Ain't he cool!

Mom picked him up. He emerged wearing his visor, carrying a sack of food. Fountain drinks were free; sandwiches and shakes discounted 25 percent, but Helen gave him a free number five meal because he'd done such a good job his first day. He climbed into the minivan which stank of the cigarettes Mom smoked on the sneak.

“How was it?”

“Fine.”

“That's all you're going to say?”

They started down High Street. Fry Guy and Fry Guy's mom.

“I liked it.” He saw her eyeing his food. “Don't worry, the food was free.”

“I'm not worrying about you paying for it. I'm worrying about you eating it.”

“Mom,” he said, “don't start.”

***

With Rich gone (and unheard from), Simon's fantasies turned to Peter, whom he saw every day in Animal Chorus. They stood beside each other, and Peter's hip grazed his when they sang. Peter often forgot his sheet music, and sometimes Simon hid his when he saw that Peter had remembered, so most days they shared. After Simon had heard a song more than once he didn't need music, anyway. His mind recorded and played back the melodies. If only it worked that way in French he'd tell Peter, who stood beside him in Animal Chorus on Monday morning, how beautiful his eyes looked,
les yeux
, or how handsome Simon found him.
Vous etes tres beau, cheri
.

But Simon's gift lay not in words but in music, which Mom had told him was the food of love. He feasted on Peter, who smiled back without opening his mouth. Peter had a crooked front tooth. Oh hon, Simon longed to say, you don't need to be ashamed. The rest of you is so beautiful!

But he couldn't say that. Not in Tipton, Ohio. So who knew if Peter felt even a little for him what he felt for Peter. But he must, look at him smiling, his left hand coming up to cover his mouth, his right hand holding the sheet music for “Mariah (They Call the Wind)”. Even if Peter did feel some of those gay and faggoty feelings (Sticks and stones can break my boner, thought Simon), would he be willing to admit them? Look how much crap I've taken. So even if he wanted to say something—and he did, Peter's peter—he'd promised Mom not to put anything in writing. But saying anything to Peter's face—and what a cute face it was, a dusting of freckles, a button nose and that hennaed hair—was impossible, at least in school. That left the phone. He'd been thinking about calling Peter for a week or two, since Rich disappeared, but he didn't know Peter's number. Every day for at least a week he'd thought about asking, but he didn't have the balls. Simon Barish didn't have the balls, but the Fry Guy might. He grinned. Peter returned the grin, then his left hand covered his mouth.

Fry Guy imagined lowering a basket of fries into bubbling oil. He imagined a visor on his spiked blond tips, a blue BK shirt on his chest.

“Peter,” he whispered. “What's your phone number?”

Peter looked alarmed. “Why?”

Simon was almost too nervous to answer. Then he saw the music teacher, whom they called Donut, stand up from behind his desk and shuffle his papers, which meant rehearsal was finally going to start.

“Maybe we could hang out sometime.”

A gaggle of emotions flew across Peter's face. Donut approached the music stand in front of the room. He'd had another haircut over the weekend, his worst ever. His ears looked like wings on a bowling ball.

“Let's start with ‘Mariah,'” Donut said. “Section leaders pay extra attention. We'll do break-out later.”

Donut had designated Simon section leader for the basses. Not that he had much choice. No one else could sing one frigging note. But it made Simon proud to be one of the leaders. Not the bell cow, Donut had joked. The bell bull. Carry the other basses on your big strong back.

Donut said, “Basses and baritones come in on four. And-one, and-two, and-three, and…”

Simon glanced at Peter, who smiled shyly. They sang, “Away out west, they got a name…”

Simon forgot about Donut, he nearly forgot about Peter, and listened to his section. That wimpy fucker on the end, what's his name, wasn't even singing! Simon sang louder, the bell bull of all bell bulls, and the others lowed behind, “…and they call the wind Mariah. Ma—ri—aaah. ”

Donut waved his soft hands, and music flew through the air like kettling birds.

***

The weekend before the election, Jack agreed to canvass apartment complexes in the student ghetto south of campus. These were cheaply constructed two and three story brick walk-ups: eight or ten contiguous entrance ways, arranged in U's around a parking lot. There was a shortage of student housing in Tipton and even the shabbiest, butt-ugly ones stayed full. Genna had also signed up, but at the last minute decided to canvas in Roscoe Township, which many of their university colleagues and TUTS co-workers referred to as the Redneck Quadrants, although technically, Tipton was too far north to have rednecks.

Saturday morning, Jack kissed Genna goodbye in their driveway. Ten minutes later, he climbed out of his Camry in front of Fairview Commons on South Elm, carrying a small backpack and a plastic shopping bag emblazoned with the pro-levy logo: Be Smart for Tipton Schools! Eyeing the first of twenty identical complexes, he felt the loneliness of the political grunt. The last time he'd gone door to door, he was an undergrad working in Carter's first campaign. What a part of history he'd felt, leafleting a working class Poughkeepsie neighborhood, Greeks and Italians in row houses, Jack with his curly hair long then and all the world and future before him. As he stood in front of Fairview Commons, it was hard not to feel that the world and his place in it had diminished. Then, a presidential race, now, a school levy fight in Tipton. That's life, he thought, stepping inside entryway one. Those teachers deserved raises, the students needed languages and sports. And if it were more virtuous, as the argument had been made to Galileo, to believe the Church's geo-centered explanation of the solar system in light of contradictory scientific evidence, was it not more virtuous to work in a school levy than in a national election?

He knocked on the battered door of apartment A. He knocked again, then wedged a folded flyer into the crack between the door and its jamb just above the knob, crossed the hall and tried apartment B. An old black man answered, leaning on a cane. A yellowed undershirt showed beneath his white short sleeve dress shirt; the whites of his eyes were slightly yellow, too. He was not the white Tipton undergraduate Jack had expected.

“I'm Jack Barish, here to ask you to be smart for Tipton schools.” He paused to gauge reaction; the old man didn't seem to have one. “Are you registered to vote in Tuesday's election?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Then I want to urge you to vote for the school levy. Tipton hasn't passed one in twelve years and the schools…”

“Let me stop you, young fella. My kids are grown and gone.”

“The schools still need more money.” Which I have not got, Jack imagined the old man replying, though he didn't speak. “A community is judged by its schools.”

“Then Tipton is in trouble, isn't it?”

Jack grinned. “Not if we pass this levy. Can we count on your vote?”

“You always could.”

Jack handed him a flyer and a roll of Smarties. Be Smart for Tipton Schools.

“My niece is gonna take me to vote. She's got two kids.”

“Well then.” Jack passed him a handful of Smarties rolls. “Thanks again.”

It was unrewarding work. Most apartments were empty. In more than half of the apartments with someone home, the inhabitants, mostly students, weren't registered to vote or were registered at their parents' address. The apartments, which he glimpsed through half-opened doors, were uniformly small and dingy. In one of them, four students trading bong hits didn't bother to hide it as a marijuana cloud rose to the ceiling. Another entranceway smelled strongly of Indian spices. Graduate students, he assumed, but when the door opened, a small boy with enormous eyes stood beside an Indian woman Jack's age, quite a lovely woman, too, with jet-black hair.

“We are not being citizens,” she said, when he finished.

Jack gave her Smarties for the boy and a flyer to pass to a friend. He descended the stairs and exited entryway six of Fairview Manor. The November sun shone weakly. The storm front, he thought, looking up, would be here sooner than later. He set out for entryway seven. After just forty-five minutes, Jack wanted to pitch the Smarties and flyers into one of the green dumpsters dotting the apartment complex landscape. Instead, he stepped into entryway seven, and knocked on apartment A. Be strong, he thought, and waited.

***

Genna parked her minivan in front of a gray double wide set back from the main road. She'd been working her way south from Tipton for two hours and had just entered Roscoe. A hundred yards ahead, the Roscoe Roadhouse hunkered beside a one-lane bridge. The old Roscoe School, if she remembered correctly, was half a mile further, on the road to Milton.

God, she thought, but Roscoe was the end of the line. If she lived here, she would rot from the inside out, like an apple too long in the crisper. As a teenager she'd felt the same way every time she crossed her parents' wide front lawn pimpled with dandelions.
Help! Someone, help me!
Daddy, not her real father as they said back then, but the only father she'd known, sipped Chivas—Cocktail hour, Genna—most afternoons on the screened porch and in the evenings in his study. Judge William O. Gordon had retired young. No fault of his own, he always said, but the Democrats. As a teenager, Genna felt everyone was watching them, the old-money Gordons
sans d'argent
.