Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger (6 page)

Their food comes, including a salad that Jeffrey didn’t even order. At least it’s plain. Jeffrey eats it, then his pasta. He eats only one thing at a time. Now the personage and two other waiters are pushing several tables together to make one big table on their side of the room. The girl behind them sounds like she is crying. “I didn’t think it would be like this,” she says. Jeffrey can’t stand it, he turns around to look, and she
is
crying. Her breasts are slightly blue.

“Eat your steak,” his mother says. She notices everything, pouncing like a cat. His mother does everything too much. She is a mother like a battery cable, a mother like a laser (similes). Jeffrey knows that she loves him, but this is almost, he feels, the problem. There must be
some
problem, because he is excused from school one hour early every Thursday to spend the afternoon with Dennis Levering, a cool spiky-haired young man who is actually some kind of counselor. He asks Jeffrey too many questions and tries to take him out to do things like shoot baskets (no), ride bikes (no), kick a soccer ball around (no), take a walk (no), go to a museum (yes!). Next week they are going to walk around the Tidal Basin with a metal detector, Jeffrey is really looking forward to that.

He used to go to the afterschool program at his school, but there were these two bullies in that program, Sean Robertson and Max Gruenwald, who did something really bad to him and even though they had to come to his house with their parents to apologize, Jeffrey hates them now with implacable (word) force and will
never speak to them again or be in any cluster group with them or even discuss it with his teacher, the very sweet and voluptuous (word) Miss Hanratty.

So now he goes to Club Creative at the library. He is the top-scoring member of the Club Creative Team, which meets with Mrs. Rogers, he is a Shining Star because he read fifteen books in two weeks. He loves to read books, especially fantasy books and books about disasters such as the
Titanic
and the Chicago Fire. He feels that if he reads enough of these books, he will not be in a disaster. He also loves the Rice Krispies snacks they have at Club Creative. Every day, on his way home, he stops to hang by his knees from the monkey bars in the empty playground next to the library, to make himself stretch out and grow taller. Sometimes he hangs by his hands from the steel rod at the top of the garage door at home too, before Dar gets back.

This is a part of Jeffrey’s Invisible Life, which also includes his visits to this old couple who live on the corner, the Hampdens (Jeffrey calls them the Hamsters in his mind). The Hamsters are very old and very diminutive (word) and also very bent over, so that they are not much bigger than Jeffrey himself. He met them one time when he was walking past their house and Mrs. Hamster had fallen down beside their mailbox, and he helped her get up and walk back inside. “Come back!” they said. “Drop in!” Every time he drops in, the Hamsters are always doing the very same thing. Mr. Hamster is sitting in his big blue chair watching baseball on TV, and Mrs. Hamster is sitting in her big blue chair reading magazines that Dar will not allow in the house, such as the
National Enquirer
and
Midnight Star.
Jeffrey likes to sit in Mrs. Hamster’s chair with her (there’s plenty of room) and read these magazines and eat nonpareils, a flat kind of chocolate candy with
hard little white balls all over it. The Hamsters keep the nonpareils right there in a glass dish just for him.

Now Jeffrey eats every bite of his steak while Dar and Lindsay talk about their relationships. Dar has had a lot of relationships because she is so enchanting and intense, but the men tend to blur somewhat in Jeffrey’s mind, all kind, earnest doctors and professors, most of them wiry with dark hair and pointy little beards. Many of them have been hikers (no, thank you) and bikers (no, thank you). Jeffrey watches with interest as two girls in very tiny bathing suits run onto the beach and start twirling luminescent (word) hoops out on the dark sand, throwing them high up into the air, then catching them with professional expertise (word). Maybe they are practicing to be on television. Dar orders key lime pie for herself and Lindsay, tiramisu for Jeffrey. “It’s kind of like a chocolate sundae, you’ll love it,” she tells him. She orders Rusty Nails for herself and Lindsay, over Lindsay’s expostulations (word).

A big group of big men barge into the restaurant all at once, seeming to fill it up entirely. There’s a lot of hugging and shaking hands and clapping each other on the back. They seat themselves at the pushed-together tables and start ordering in loud voices. Dripping pitchers of beer and huge bowls of “u-peel-’em” shrimp arrive.

Dar and Lindsay roll their eyes and lean closer so that they can hear each other. The man with the bird leaves. The kissing couple leaves. Jeffrey watches the girls with the luminescent hoops out on the beach. These girls are very curvaceous (word). He knows that the women are talking about him.

“Why don’t you send him to the Friends School, then?” Lindsay asks.

“What?” Dar says.

These are the largest, noisiest men Jeffrey has ever seen.

“The
Friends School,
” Lindsay says. “Don’t they have a really good Friends School in Washington?”

“I can’t afford it.” Dar drinks her Rusty Nail. “Also, if I did that, then I’d have to pay for all the special ed, which he’s getting for free now. It’s sort of a Catch-22 situation.”

The personage puts the tiramisu down in front of Jeffrey; it is nothing at all like a sundae. It’s like pudding, which he hates. The girl at the table behind them suddenly runs out by herself, creating a little breeze; the boy follows more slowly, looking harassed and disconsolate (words). Now there is a wide margin of empty tables around the loud men, no more regular diners except for Jeffrey and Dar and Lindsay.

Jeffrey is interested in these men. He has never seen any men like them. They radiate a kind of vitality (word) that he finds enchanting. Though some appear to be a little younger, mostly they are great big middle-aged men with their hair still on.
Men in the prime of life,
Jeffrey thinks. This phrase just comes to him. They wear huge Hawaaian shirts in outrageous (word) colors and patterns. These shirts hang loosely over but don’t really hide their big tight bellies. They have baggy Bermuda shorts. They have white veiny muscled legs which end up in shiny loafers or maybe athletic shoes, new looking, as if they have just bought them for this trip.

But it is their manner that Jeffrey especially likes. These are brash (word), confident, public men,
happy
men. Their cheeks are red, their eyes snap and sparkle, they throw back their heads to laugh, they laugh so hard they have to wipe their eyes with their big white napkins.

Then the guy on the end jumps up and announces, “Okay!
Showtime! Horse walks into a bar — “ All the other men groan in unison (word), drowning him out. This does not seem to bother the man one bit. “
So a horse walks into a bar,
” he shouts, striding back and forth, “and the bartender says, ‘Hey buddy, why the long face?’ “ When the other men whistle and boo and throw their napkins at him, he does a funny skedaddle walk, like a clown, back to his chair.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Dar rolls her eyes.

“I don’t get it,” Lindsay says.

“
Horse,
” Jeffrey explains. “Horses have long faces.”

“Oh!” Lindsay starts giggling.

A tall guy with curly blond hair and thick glasses takes the floor. His yellow shirt has red lobsters on it. “So a three-legged dog walks into a bar and climbs up on a stool and orders a beer, then another, then another, looking all around. Finally a cowboy says, ‘Okay, dog, what are you doing in this town?’ Dog says, ‘I’m looking for the fellow that shot my paw.’ “

Everybody groans, but Jeffrey laughs so hard he starts choking. “
Paw,
” he explains to Lindsay. “See, it’s a dog . . .”

“I got it,” she says, laughing too.

Dar is not laughing. She does not like jokes and has only told one of them in her whole life, so far as Jeffrey can remember. He picks up a spoon and starts eating his tiramisu very slowly, so they won’t have to leave.

“All right!” The fattest man hops up and does a funny duck waddle over to the open area which has now become a stage. The bar has emptied out, people moving their chairs into the dining area to watch. The fat man wipes his glistening face and puts his handkerchief back in his pocket. He has round blue eyes, like marbles, and fat hands with fingers like hot dogs.

“It’s been a very busy morning at the police station,” he begins. “Two cops have gone out on a robbery call, two cops have gone out on a murder call, and another cop has just radioed in for additional help at a wreck when the phone rings again and the guy at the desk picks it up. ‘Hello?’ he says.

“ ‘Help! Help!’ a woman screams into the receiver.

“ ‘Whatsa matter, lady?’ the policeman asks.

“ ‘Oh, please, you’ve got to help me!’ the woman cries. ‘I’ve got an elephant in my backyard.’

“ ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake!’ the policeman says. ‘Look, lady, I’ve got a wreck, a robbery, and a murder to deal with this morning. Whaddya expect me to do about an elephant? Take him to the zoo!’ He slams down the phone.

“But the next morning he’s feeling guilty about this, so he calls the woman back and says, ‘Okay, lady, what happened to the elephant?’

“ ‘Oh, hi there,’ she says. ‘Thanks so much for the tip. He loved the zoo, so this afternoon, I’m going to take him to the movies!’ “

The fat man duck-waddles back to the table, to great laughter and applause.

“I think it’s time for us to go back to the hotel,” Dar says. “We’ve got another long day tomorrow.”

“Just a minute, Mom,” says Jeffrey. He has almost finished his tiramisu.

A trim little white-haired guy, maybe the oldest, steps up smartly. He salutes the table of men, then bows to Dar and Lindsay, which seems to disconcert (word) them, though it does not disconcert Jeffrey, who waves his spoon and grins right back at him.

“Military,” Lindsay whispers to Dar.

Sure enough, “You guys may not know I was once in the army,” the little man begins. “The first day, they gave me a comb. Then they cut off all my hair. The second day, they gave me a toothbrush. Then they pulled seven of my teeth. The third day, they gave me a jockstrap . . . and now they’ve been looking for me for forty-seven years!” He marches back to his place.

Even Dar laughs at this one. But she picks up her purse just as the personage arrives with a tray of fresh drinks, two Rusty Nails and another Coke. “We didn’t order these,” she says in her professor voice. “In fact, I’d like the check now, please.”

“The check has already been taken care of by those gentlemen over there. They send you their compliments, and hope very much that they haven’t spoiled your dinner.”

Dar looks over at the men, who raise their glasses as one. “To the ladies!” they shout. Dar blushes, smiles, and raises her own glass in their direction. “Thank you,” she calls.

A younger guy with a buzz cut gets up next, he looks like he’s about dad age, though Jeffrey cannot imagine any dad at his school ever acting like this.

“Waal, old Farmer Jones raises pigs,” the dad-type guy begins in a fake country accent, “and one time he had this special baby pig he just fell in love with, see, that had a wonderful personality. So he was just spoiling this little pig to death. The little pig especially loved apples, see, so every day old Farmer Jones would pick him up and hold him up in the apple tree, so he could eat an apple. But then the little pig started getting big, and then he started getting bigger and bigger, and it was all that old Farmer Jones could do to hold him up there while he ate his apple. So his friend comes along, and he says, ‘Wouldn’t it be a lot quicker if you just picked
an apple off the tree, and put it down on the ground for the pig?’ Waal, old Farmer Jones stared at his friend for a while, and then he said, ‘Lester, time don’t mean nothing to a pig.’ “

Though the men laugh and pound on the table, ordering more beer, Jeffrey thinks this is a stupid joke. In fact, it’s the worst joke he’s ever heard in his life. But then suddenly, Jeffrey thinks of a joke himself. This joke simply
comes to him,
just like that. Before he has time to think about it, before he even knows what he’s doing, he’s on his feet, he’s dodging his mother’s outstretched hand, he’s in the center of the floor. Everybody is looking at him.

“Okay! Showtime! Dyslexic horse walks into a bra!” Silence. Jeffrey looks around the restaurant at all their still white faces, like so many moons.
What were they thinking?
he will wonder years later. What in the world were they thinking, to see this skinny knock-kneed child, this pale, unlikely little boy come forward in such a place to tell his joke? Jeffrey swallows hard.
“Okay! I said, dyslexic horse walks into a bra . . .”
The laughter rises with a roar like a freight train, as the men at the table leap to their feet and everybody in the restaurant claps and whistles and cheers for him.
For him,
Jeffrey, the formerly Invisible Boy.

More jokes follow, many more jokes, doctor jokes and psychiatrist jokes and yo’ mama jokes and sex jokes about Bill Clinton.
They took a poll of American women, and they asked, “Would you have an affair with Bill Clinton?” and 70 percent said, “Never again.”
More drinks follow too. Dar and Lindsay and Jeffrey stay until the very end of the evening, Dar firmly refusing all offers of a ride back to their hotel with the large men, who finally give up and pile into their rented vans.

“Hey!” Jeffrey yells as the last van pulls out of the parking lot. “Hey! Who are you guys, anyway?”

“Toastmasters!” the fat man, driving, yells back. “From Cincinnati!”

“What are toastmasters?” Lindsay asks.

“Some kind of a club, I think. Oh God, I feel terrible.” Dar sinks down on the curb, her long skirt dragging in the sand.

“
Mom,
” Jeffrey says. “What are you doing? You’ve got to drive us back.”