Man of the Year Read online

  “It’s the skin,” I say as confidently as possible. “She doesn’t have real skin the way the wolf has real fur. The hair and wings look real but her body … It’s just an outline.”

  Penny considers this for a moment, nods and smiles. “You’re right,” she admits. “I had a sensation that you might be a member of the clan.”

  “My dad says I’m a member of the tribe.”

  “Tribe. Clan. Coven. Same thing. Want to come over after school?”

  I touch the tweed of my cap and say: “Yup.” I glance at Uli. He’s mouthing the words: That’s … so … pissah.

  *

  I tell Mama I’m not coming home when she rolls up in her battered Mercedes at pick-up time. She’s annoyed, having driven across town to get me, but the fact that I’ve found a friend seems to mollify her. I hand her the address on a crumpled piece of paper.

  “I’ll pick you up at five. Mr. Nusselblatt is coming for your Hebrew lesson. You’ve already missed two.”

  “I could miss all of them.”

  “You promised you’d try.”

  “Papa says he doesn’t even care if I get a bar mitzvah or not.”

  “I care. Your grandfather would have cared a lot. Will you try, just for me?” she asks.

  I smile and wave, running off to find Penny.

  We walk along Pickering Wharf, a faded briny little port where sailors unloading pepper and molasses have long since been replaced by fried dough stands and scrimshaw knickknack peddlers. The wind blows past the Misery Islands and surrounds us with the smell of the sea. We talk about movies, the new King Kong, how she loves Jeff Bridges (“He’s a god”) and I prefer Jessica Lange (“You just like when the monkey puts her under the waterfall and makes her all wet and see-through”), and which is better: Close Encounters or Star Wars.

  It’s the former.

  We agree.

  I stop in front of a Derby Street liquor store, whose unusual name is proclaimed in extravagant blue neon script. “The Bunghole? That’s disgusting.”

  “That’s what pirates call the part of the booze barrel where you stick a cork, dummy. I know this guy who works there—Timmy White—and he knows everybody thinks it’s your asshole.” I love the way Penny says asshole. I laugh freely. “The funny part is it used to be a funeral home.”

  I stop laughing. “This whole town is a funeral home.”

  “No shit. They used to make booze in the back, next to all the embalming fluid and the bodies, when it was illegal to drink, because the cops would never want to go back there.”

  “I should put some dead bodies outside my room. Then my sister would never come in again.”

  “Smart. Timmy says they still have all the funeral home stuff in the basement. I went down to see it once and he tried to kiss me on the stairs. I kicked him in the nuts.”

  I laugh again, but the thought grips my spine, unleashes such a flood of nervous adrenaline I actually consider turning around and running all the way home.

  “You want a smoke?”

  “I can’t,” I shrug. “Asthma.”

  “Sucks,” she says, slapping a pack of Parliaments on the heel of her hand. “Mom says I can’t smoke in the house so I have to do it before we get there.”

  “Your ma lets you smoke?”

  Penny takes a long drag on the white cigarette and stares at the sky thoughtfully. “Does your mom tell you what you can’t do?” Now that you mention it, I think, it’s been a while.

  *

  All the streets off Derby are stifling and constricted, packed with narrow little harbor homes pressed close together, each adorned with a wooden emblem in the shape of a house declaring its year of construction in thick black calligraphy: 1844, 1845, 1862. Penny’s house is around the corner from the Customs House and the House of the Seven Gables, local tourist spots that pale in comparison to the coming attraction.

  A huge pile of stuffed animals dominates the twin bed in her room, so we sit uncomfortably close together, along the edge of a crocheted afghan, browsing copies of Tiger Beat and Dynamite. The room is cold but Penny sheds her turtleneck anyway. Her stomach makes a brief appearance before she tugs her tank top back down and shimmies, cross-legged, alongside me.

  “Who do you like better? Shaun or Parker?” she asks. I stare blankly. I notice the Shaun Cassidy poster over her bed. “I like to look at him,” she says, catching the direction of my gaze. “But if I were a boy I would want to be Leif Garrett.” She holds up a copy of Tiger Beat. Cassidy and Garrett are pasted next to each other. They’re both smiling and next to Leif is a block of text that says “Leif: The Right Way to Meet Him (Yes! There Is One)! See Page 49.”

  “You actually kind of look like him,” I say, looking at the cover and then at Penny. “You have the same kind of hair.”

  “Mine’s way curlier. Take off your hat, let me see yours.” I follow her instruction, shaking my hair loose. I’ve been growing it as long as I can. “You know, if you put some grease in it, push it back, you’d look just like Spike.”

  “Happy Days’ Spike?” That’s not what I want to hear. I hate Spike. He’s was the Fonz’s cousin—kind of a mini-Fonz—who they replaced with Chachi a few seasons in.

  “I love Spike,” Penny tells me. “I don’t know why they got rid of him so quick. Chachi’s a loser. Try this on,” she jumps up, pulls a black leather jacket from a tiny closet by the window and tosses it my way. “I’ll be right back.” She comes back a moment later with a plastic spray bottle and starts spritzing my hair with water before I can object. “Use this comb. Push it back. Put this cigarette behind your ear. Wear these mirror sunglasses. Yup, that’s good. You look just like him. You could be in Tiger Beat, no problem.”

  I move to close the door to take in my reflection but it hits unexpected resistance. A gentle, almost childlike woman’s voice calls from behind: “Why are we closing the door?”

  “Jesus, Mom, he’s just looking in the mirror.”

  “He? Oh. And who would this greaser be?” Laurie Cabot, the witch of Salem, sweeps past me to sit on the bed, her black robe covering nearly every inch of her body below her neck, black hair exploding out and upward like the silhouette of the tangled pear tree in our backyard. I shed the jacket and look at my feet. “Oh, don’t undress on my account,” she laughs.

  “This is Louis. He just started in our class. He’s from New York and he’s probably the only cool kid at school.”

  The only one!

  Her mother takes my face in her hands and scans my eyes as if she’s dropped a diamond ring in my skull and is trying to find it at the bottom of my soul.

  “Mom!”

  “Oh. Yes. He’s a good one,” the witch says reassuringly. “Keep doing whatever it was you were doing.” Two black cats emerge from under her robe and begin to tussle under Penny’s bed. As Laurie Cabot turns, a black Lab pushes through the door, claws clicking against the splintered wooden floorboards. She sniffs between my legs, lapping my green jeans’ crotch.

  “Alpha, stop it!” Penny yells, watching me squirm. “You’re being rude.” And then to me: “You can pet her. She’s a good dog. She just likes boys because we’re all girls in this house. Me and my mom and my sister.” Now the two cats emerge from under the bed, using my pant legs to claw their way up, and begin rubbing along either side of me.

  “Wow, you’re popular,” Penny says. “They don’t like most people.”

  “I just have a way with animals, I guess,” I offer, but my shoulders rise anxiously as I feel the brush of animal fur on nearly every bit of my exposed skin. Atjeh is the wildest dog I’ve ever seen—a white-eyed devil dog—but she’s also the only pet I haven’t been allergic to. Ever. Not Grandma Wini’s bitchy Siamese. Not the Weimaraner Papa had to return when I almost stopped breathing in the back of the car. (“Two hours back to return that beautiful animal,” Papa recalls more often than I would like. “And I had to pull over in the Pentagon parking lot so she could barf. What a dog. Even her politics were spot on.
”)

  Two more cats rush through the open door, leaping silently to the bed to sit beside me. Four cats, all black, all circling me, touching me, raising the skin on my arms and along the back of my neck. What is it about animals that makes them all want to play with the allergic kid? A fifth appears at the door but comes no further, choosing to stare me down instead, gold-flake eyes catching hold of my growing anxiety.

  The room, so small and hot now, feels like a snow globe, the air raining a shower of dust bunnies and dander down around me, filling my mouth, nostrils, lungs. I look at Penny, who has slipped back into Tiger Beat.

  I take a breath, prod two of the cats away, and try to stand. Alpha jumps at this, placing her front paws on my thighs and forcing me back to the bed. But I take a breath. Then another. The doorbell rings. I hear my mother introducing herself to Laurie Cabot. The two women chat happily about the Alternative School and the upcoming fundraiser as they navigate the hall to Penny’s room.

  “Oh, my God,” Mama blurts.

  “Any god in particular?” Laurie asks.

  Mama’s hand flies reflexively to her chest, asthma alert on high. “Well, it’s just that, all these cats. And that dog. Louis is so terribly, terribly allergic. He shouldn’t have lasted five minutes in all of this.” She shakes her head, puzzled.

  The witch waves the thought away. “I wouldn’t let anything like that happen in my house.”

  Mama and I both stare at her. There isn’t even a whispered tickle or pinch in the lowest folds of my lung lobes or the most remote branches of my bronchial trees. Apparently some spell is at work here.

  “That’s … that’s truly remarkable,” Mama laughs nervously. “You … We normally … How long have you been here, Lou?”

  “I don’t know. An hour? A couple of hours.”

  “Amazing. Well, it’s time to go. Amanda and David are in the car. I left it running, so let’s hope no one’s driven off with them!” Mom and I both laugh, for different reasons.

  “See you at school, Spike,” says Penny.

  “Spike?” Mama and Laurie say together.

  “Later, Mom. Ugh.”

  Mama wraps her arms around Laurie Cabot before we leave. “I don’t know how to thank you.” She looks like she’s about to cry. “You don’t know what this means, for him to be able to do this.”

  “So, we’ll see him again, I hope?” Laurie asks.

  “Oh, yes,” Mama assures her. “You can have him any time. Yes.”

  Yes!

  *

  Nusselballs is waiting for me in the dining room when we get home, talking with Frank, who has let him in.

  “I love them!” Frank reaches out to touch the dangling curls falling around the ears of my Hebrew teacher. “Fetching. That’s what I’d call them, your little locks. Fetching!”

  “Peyes,” Mr. Nusselballs pulls away, turning plum. “A religious prohibition against shaving the corners of one’s head.”

  “I love a man who understands commitment.” Frank giggles like a girl gorilla. His furry shoulders, exposed by a tight white tank top, bounce up and down as he turns back toward his apartment. “Maybe I need a little coming-of-age ritual myself? Let me know if you do Italian.”

  I roll my eyes. “How does a head have corners anyway?” I ask. “It’s round.”

  Nusselballs ignores me, opens a workbook, and leans in close to run through the Hebrew alphabet with me.

  “I’m not going to go through with this,” I assure Nusselballs midway through the lesson. “They want me to, sort of, but they don’t care that much. And they’re really busy. And if I don’t care, they can’t make me. They don’t tell me what to do,” I say firmly. “So it’s really not going to happen.”

  “I can tell,” he says, that perpetually venomous shtetl-belch of his breath filling all the available breathing space. There’s nowhere to go. I slide my chair sideways, feel an asthma attack coming on.

  “Hey, hombre, how was day one?” Howie pops in, shirt open, smile brilliant. Thank you, God.

  I relay every detail of my encounter with my newfound crush.

  “I give you an A for the day. Just remember, a woman’s cherry is the most precious jewel in the known universe. Promise me you’ll do a little Lou-Howie powwow before you go all the way.”

  “Which way?”

  “Perfect,” he says.

  Nusselballs stands and gently closes his little Hebrew book. “This really should conclude our studies together. You need a different kind of teacher, I think.”

  In the Schvitz

  Howie and Carly don’t appear for Sunday bagels until close to noon. But when they do emerge, they are so beautiful: clothes flowing, all different colors. Silk. Linen. Velour. Fabrics none of us wear. And skin, showing out of all different places. It’s cold in the house but Papa stokes the fireplace in the dining room and flaps and folds of fabric loosen and drape as the temperature rises.

  “I love seeing you all around the table like this,” Carly says warmly. “This is what family is all about.” She leans forward to grab a bagel and I search her open collar for a line of cleavage. I love seeing you like this, too. But when she sits back I notice her eyes are red and swollen.

  “You’ll be our practice family, OK?” Howie says. “And the little ones are our practice kids.”

  “Take ’em away,” Papa says, handing his friend a section of the paper. “And read the op-ed piece by Milton Friedman. Calls LBJ an interventionist. Wants a complete withdrawal from the war on poverty.”

  “Gimme that,” Howie pulls the page from Papa’s hands.

  “Where were you last night?” Mama asks Howie, passing him a piece of Grandmother’s Famous Cranberry Bread.

  “I went into the city for a bit. Mmmmm! This is incredible, Princess.”

  Amanda, still clad in her nightgown and curled in her chair, looks wonderingly at Carly. “You have puffy eyes,” she says timidly.

  “Shhhhhh.…” Mama hushes her. “It’s not polite.”

  “Do you need a hug, Carly?”

  Carly nods, closing her eyes. Her tears come quickly, in a big stream down her cheeks. She’s so raw it hurts. I look down at my bagel, a weird fist of shame pressing inexplicably inside me.

  “Oh, honey, what happened?” Mama asks, standing to join Amanda and Carly, who have come around the table to wrap themselves in a standing hug by the fireplace.

  “It’s nothing,” Carly sniffles. “Don’t worry.”

  “It’s my fault,” Howie says. “I hurt Carly’s feelings. We’re working through it, but it’s hard.” He stands to join the hug.

  “Can we not discuss it with the group?” Carly pleads.

  “But it’s family,” Howie objects.

  “No, Howie. Please.” She looks as if she’ll cry again.

  “Cranberry bread?” Papa asks.

  “What happened?” Amanda repeats.

  “I wanted to spend some time with a new friend last night,” Howie says, “and Carly is feeling a little jealous.”

  “I’m not jealous.”

  “Hurt.”

  “Ouch,” Carly says softly. “That’s all I want to say. Ouch.”

  “Where did you meet a new friend?” Amanda can’t help asking. For the rest of us, it’s a slow-motion car crash we can’t prevent.

  “Actually, at your dad’s office,” Howie says, like that makes this all a bit easier to swallow.

  “Not Joyce?” Papa sighs.

  “Re-Joyce!” Howie trills in a tone rife with admission, apology, and reverie. I recall the woman at the reception desk listening in on our conversation, blushing when Howie said her name. Joy to meet you, Joyce.

  Carly leaves the room and Papa makes angry eyes at Howie. I’ve never seen him do that to an adult.

  “Too much?” Howie asks.

  “Might be,” my father replies.

  “I’ll go talk to her.”

  “No,” Mama says. “Let me.”

  “Well, I reserved the court for two o’cl
ock,” Papa says, clearing his dishes. “Still game?”

  “Never more,” Howie says, shaking off the mood that has soured the room.

  “Good, because you could use a beating.”

  “Can I watch?” I ask.

  “You never come to the Y,” Papa notes, rightly.

  “I know, but I want to see you play.”

  “I think he wants to see you play,” Papa pats Howie on the back on his way to the kitchen.

  “My game is ten times better when I have a cheering section,” Howie assures me. “I prefer taller and blonder. But you’ll do.”

  *

  It’s true, I don’t care about racquetball. I bring a pile of comics but take breaks now and then to peer through the Plexiglas porthole when there’s a heavy thump and Papa or Howie bounce off the wall. Howie shouts “FUCK!” every time he misses a shot. Papa says “Lucky, boychik,” the few times he does.

  After the second game they emerge, drenched and winded.

  “Who’s winning?”

  “I came close that first game,” Howie says to me, slick with sweat. “Fifteen-twelve. The second was tougher. Your old man’s a killer. Killer instinct.”

  “Come on,” Papa urges. “We only have the court for another twenty minutes.”

  They’re out in seven. Howie’s breath is labored and he’s wheezing. Papa, on the other hand, is bouncing, ready for more. My father is hairy, weedy, and lithe. I think of him as strong, but with a toughness more mental than physical. His style is to cajole rather than menace. To outsmart rather than outmuscle. Howie is how many years his junior? Cut like a G.I. Joe doll! Ready for action! And now sliding to the floor in an exhausted pile.

  “What was the score?” I ask, proud of Papa but totally disoriented by the scene.

  “Fifteen–zip,” Papa says, nonchalant in victory.

  Hearing all that grunting on the other side of the wall, I pictured Howie clobbering him. “Zero?” I ask Howie, lying in a puddle of his own sweat on the dusty black linoleum.