Little Little (10 page)

I ran out of the energy to keep up my correspondence with Andrea Applebaum, but I am still reading the books on her list and have never since had such a good time on New Year’s Eve.

Once I got the shell over my body, and the sun came beating down, the stink of Endust almost made me upchuck. But I danced until I thought I’d drop, and right in front of where Little Little La Belle sat with all of her family.

I could watch her through the peepholes at the front of my shell. She was standing in the front row of the bleachers, clapping for me and laughing.

At the very end of my dance, I stopped in front of her.

From under my shell I stretched out my arm, my hand holding the red balloon and the bouquet of buttercups, with my note inside.

For a moment she just stared, a look of surprise on her face, her tiny mouth an
O
of wonder, until she took a few steps forward and accepted my gifts.

Then everyone cheered and applauded, and while I hobbled away under my shell on my poor aching feet, the band played the old Beatles hit “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

I remembered hearing that same song standing in my stocking feet on Andrea Applebaum’s lap, smelling the Joy perfume in her hair, and her saying, “Cinnamon and Applebaum. Put us together and we’re a pie.”

“L
ITTLE LITTLE,” SAID MY
father, “I’ve never told you that you had to do something, and I’ve never told you that you couldn’t do something.”

“But you’re about to now,” I said.

He lit a cigarette.

The Bombers had beaten the Boots 14-7.

Soon the TADpoles would be getting off the 3:30
P.M.
bus from Syracuse, and making their way to The Lakeside Motel. There was to be a buffet there that evening, and then a showing of the old film
Star Wars.

Cowboy and Mock had taken my mother home during the last quarter of the game, in my father’s car. She’d fallen asleep against Grandfather La Belle’s shoulder, after a severe attack of hiccups.

I was dropping my father off at La Belle Shoe and Boot, Inc., where he planned to do some last-minute weekend work, before the festivities started.

My father drew his long legs up as he sat beside me in the front of the Volvo, his leather briefcase across his lap. He inhaled his Camel, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled, and finally said, “I’m not
about
to
tell
you anything. You’ll be eighteen years old tomorrow. I’ve gone this long without telling you what to do, and I’m not going to start in at a point when you no longer have to listen to an adult.”

“But?”

“But I’d like to suggest that you divest yourself of this sudden fascination with The Roach.”

“I’m not fascinated by him, Daddy. I just like him.”

“You’re sorry for the fellow, Little Little.”

“I’m not sorry for him at all. I’d like him to come to my party.”

“I think if you examine your feelings closely, you’ll see you’re sorry for the fellow. Oh, he made a nice little gesture with the bouquet of buttercups, the balloon (I told you that a fellow like that would get the wrong idea if you talked to him), but you owe him nothing, not even sympathy.”

“He doesn’t even
need
my sympathy,” I said. “He’s a survivor.”

“Little Little, when you talk about survivors, you’re talking about being sympathetic. We’re all survivors, but those people you have to label survivors are usually people with strikes against them: dope addicts, alcoholics, him with his hump…. Little Little, slow down, I’d like to live to be forty-five, speaking of surviving.”

“I don’t even see his hump,” I said. “I talked to him and I didn’t even see his hump.”

“Then you’d better make an appointment with Dr. Baird for eyeglasses.”

“You’re talking the way Mother talks,” I said. “P.f. this and p.f. that.”

“It hasn’t got anything to do with that. A person who goes around impersonating a cockroach has got to expect to be stamped on. If I tried to do business for LBSB and took the name Mr. Stupid, I’d have to face the fact the odds wouldn’t be overwhelmingly in my favor that people would seek out my advice, or be eager to deal with me…. Your Roach has set himself up.”

“If you’re a ball in a world of blocks,” I said, “you shouldn’t keep from rolling, just because the blocks can’t. You should roll all over the place. So he’s different. Instead of trying to be like everyone else, he celebrates being different. He dramatizes it.”

My father said, “Well, what I say is if you’re a ball in a world of blocks, there’s no sense choosing to be a spitball. Why choose to be something offensive?”

“God made cockroaches,” I said, “so they must not have offended Him.”

“God’s not around to say,” said my father. “I’m talking about how people feel. I’m talking about most people.”

“The Roach and I aren’t in that category,” I said.

“You and The Roach aren’t in the same category, either.”

“I’m closer to his category than I am to yours, and to most people’s. I’m only a hump away from his category.”

“Little Little,” said my father, “it is not the hump. Now, I’m
not
your mother talking about who’s p.f. and who isn’t. I’m talking about the vulgar showbiz aspects of this fellow.”

“I wish he could entertain at my birthday party.”

“Well, that would have to be over your mother’s dead body,” my father said. “What’s Mr. Clean going to say about a fellow like this Roach? I thought your focus was on Mr. Clean this weekend.”

“Who’s Mr. Clean?”

“Mr. White Suit,” my father said.

“So you don’t like Little Lion either.”

“I don’t
dis
like him,” my father said. “I just wonder why he wears white all the time.”

“Ask him,” I said.

We were in front of the LBSB factory.

“The truth is no one’s good enough for me in your eyes,” I said.

“Well, you’re my sweetheart.” My father chuckled. He blew a smoke ring my way and I caught it with my finger, our old game we’d played since I was a child: “Rings on your fingers and bells on your toes,” he used to sing to me while he blew smoke rings, “and she will make music wherever she goes.”

I pulled over to the curb and my father opened the car door. Before he got out, he turned to me. “Little Little,” he said, “I love you and I want what’s best for you, that’s all. In my eyes, Best for You isn’t having The Roach around on your birthday, and as for Mr. White Pants, I’ll reserve judgment. Just don’t be in too big a hurry. You drive too fast. Don’t do anything too fast in life.”

“The Roach was the star attraction at the game,” I said.

“Well, tomorrow
you’re
going to be the star attraction,” said my father, getting out of the car.

I drove off thinking about the way Little Lion had begun his four-page letter to me:
Wait till you see my new suit, Babe! I had it made by the same tailor Reverend Lucky uses. Some suit! And here’s something I read last night I like, written by a man who was little, too, Napoleon Bonaparte. “Great men are like meteors, which shine and consume themselves to enlighten earth.
”
I’ll be shining at you soon, Babe! Love! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

I remembered reading about Tom Thumb’s grave in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He had commissioned a life-sized granite statue of himself to be placed on top of it, with his name spelled out in large letters, and his dates (Over ten thousand people attended his funeral.) He had married a woman three inches shorter than he was, and when she died she was buried beside him. The words on her headstone simply said:
HIS WIFE.

My favorite phone booth was the one in front of Cayuta Prison, across from the bus station. I could pull up to it, and reach the phone and the coin slot by standing on the passenger side in the front seat of my car.

While I shook some change out of my globe bank, I could see some of the TADpoles and PODs arriving. Elaine Letterman, the fattest member of TADpole, was waddling to the back of the bus for her luggage, with her mother at her heels. Gus Gregory from New Jersey, who always dressed as though he was from Texas, looked like a walking mushroom under his enormous ten-gallon hat as he came off the last step of the bus. Ozzie Schwartz, the TADpole bully, came up behind Gus and pushed his hat down over his eyes, swatting shy three-foot-tall Norman Powers with his Pan Am bag; on and on.

I figured out that The Roach was staying at The Stardust Inn, since I had first seen him there in the park.

I got the number from Information.

When he answered the phone, I said, “I hated Spanish. I nearly flunked Spanish.”

“I never took it.”

“So I don’t know what your note says.”

“Hello, Little Little.”

“But thanks for the buttercups and the balloon.”

“I was just resting up and reading,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“I said I was just resting up and reading.”

“I mean what are you reading?” I said. “Take down this number and call me back? I’m at a pay phone.”

Down the street, across from the bus station, people had stopped to watch the arriving PODs and TADpoles.

A
FTER I’D FINISHED READING
the book about the dwarf detective, I’d begun to read the last book on Andrea Applebaum’s list,
The Obscene Bird of Night,
by José Donoso.

It was this book I described to Little Little, the story of a hunchbacked dwarf, harelipped and suffering from gargoylism, born to the wealthy Jerónimo de Azcoitia. Don Jerónimo called his son Boy and isolated him in the world of La Rinconda, a plantation he populated entirely with other monsters, so Boy would never know he was different from other people.

Then I told her about my life at Mistakes, about Sara Lees—we talked so long my ear hurt from having the phone’s receiver pressed against it, and a carillon in La Belle sounded “Old McDonald.”

Little Little said, “It can’t be six o’clock!”

I was about to describe my summers at Leprechaun Village, but my appointment with Mr. Palmer and Mr. Hiroyuki was at seven, and Little Little said she was due somewhere a half an hour ago.

She gave me a number where I could reach her later.

“How much later?” I asked.

“Much later,” she said. “Midnight.”

“What about your family?”

“It’s my own private number,” she said. “My sister and I have a phone in our room.”

As soon as I’d hung up, Digger called to invite me for another dinner at his trailer, and to complain that he’d been trying to get me for hours. I thanked him anyway and he said while I’d been yakking away the whole town was being invaded by people my size.

“If you want your shell polished or you want a ride anywhere tomorrow, call us,” he said. I could hear the babies
ant
ing in the background. “We won’t be leaving until after we see Little Lion.”

In the bathroom, the tub faucet was built so high that I could shower under it, instead of turning on the overhead shower.

I wore a gray flannel suit I’d purchased in the boys’ department at Wilton Big Store, a white button-down shirt I’d bought in the same place, and a navy-blue-and-white-striped bow tie. Then I put on my size 5 shoes and took the elevator down to the lobby, in time for my dinner appointment in the Stardust Room.

“Sydney,” said Mr. Palmer, “order the sirloin steak!”

A child’s seat had already been placed at the banquette reserved for us, and I was seated in it, across the table from Mr. Hiroyuki. Although he was Japanese, he was American-educated and spoke faultless English. His son, he told me, was still struggling with the language.

“Cost is no consideration tonight, Sydney,” said Mr. Palmer. “Have the steak.”

My arms and back still ached from my stint as The Roach that afternoon, and I was not up to sawing my way through a steak. I ordered fish.

“Sydney,” Mr. Hiroyuki said after our orders arrived, “I leave it to Mr. Palmer to tell you later all about our new product, Roach Ranches.”

“Notice he said
our,
Sydney,” said Mr. Palmer. “Mr. Hiroyuki and I came to a very satisfactory agreement early this evening.”

“Congratulations,” I said.

“But I want to talk to you about another matter,” said Mr. Hiroyuki.

“How would you like to settle down in La Belle, Sydney?” said Mr. Palmer.

“How would you like to be a dragon as well as a roach?” Mr. Hiroyuki said.

While we ate dinner, Mr. Hiroyuki described a new venture he was undertaking: a pachinko parlor.

“You know, Sydney,” Mr. Palmer said, “a place with pinball machines in it. They’re all over Japan.”

“We need a trademark,” Mr. Hiroyuki said.

“The same way Palmer Pest has The Roach.”

“A dragon,” Mr. Hiroyuki said.

“A little dragon,” said Mr. Palmer. “How’s your fish, Sydney?”

“It’s fine,” I said.

“I think a pink dragon would be interesting,” said Mr. Hiroyuki.

“The Pink Pachinko Dragon,” Mr. Palmer said. “Would you like to be a dragon, Sydney?”

Mr. Palmer didn’t wait for my answer. He said to Mr. Hiroyuki, “This kid got pulled out of school before he graduated. He ought to go back to school. He could go to school here in La Belle.”

“A little pink dragon with smoke coming out of his nostrils,” said Mr. Hiroyuki, “and this long wiggling tail.”

“You want to go back to school, don’t you, Sydney?” said Mr. Palmer. “This kid,” he said to Mr. Hiroyuki, “reads more books in a month than I’ve read in a lifetime. Tell him how much you read, Sydney.”

“I wish my son would read,” said Mr. Hiroyuki. “Mock is too interested in television.”

“This kid reads and watches television at the same time,” said Mr. Palmer. “I tell him he doesn’t get the full benefit of either, but who am I to tell anyone that who reads more books in a month than I’ve read in a lifetime?”

“La Belle isn’t going to like our pachinko parlor at first,” said Mr. Hiroyuki. “We need to soften the blow.”

“A little pink dancing dragon ought to do it,” said Mr. Palmer.

“What do you think of our idea, Sydney?” said Mr. Hiroyuki.

“I think I’d be a good dragon,” I said. “Well, you’ve been one hell of a good Roach, I’ll tell you that,” said Mr. Palmer.