Getting Nowhere Read online

  “It was to be my Easter bonnet,” she said. We told my father and he gave her an Easter bonus instead of candy.

  When we calmed down, Tony said, “What about if Dad and Pat ever have a baby? I think that’d be neat.” He held his stomach, it ached so from laughing.

  “You’re out of your skull,” I told him. My voice sounded harsh to my own ears. “They’re too old.”

  “No, they’re not. Dad’s only forty and she’s thirty-six.” Tony unwisely plunged on. “Plenty of people have babies when they’re that old. My friend Jerry Matthews’ mother got married a couple of years ago and now Jerry’s got the coolest little sister. I wouldn’t mind having a little sister.”

  Way back, from the depths of my throat, I hawked up a wad of phlegm. I’d been practicing. Expertly, noisily, I shot it onto the mess of papers from the wastebasket, which were still on the rug. It lay there, a glittering gemstone, an oyster without a pearl.

  “That’ll give you some idea of what I think about that,” I said, pronouncing every word carefully. “Now let me alone. I’ve got stuff to do.”

  Tony went to the door. “All I can say about you”—he faced me—“is that you used to be a nice guy and now you’re a shit.” He closed the door noisily.

  I put my head in my hands.

  The door opened and I sat up straight, fast.

  “And another thing,” Tony said in an even voice, “don’t ask me for any favors. Not ever again. If it’s true that nice guys finish last, you’re a sure winner.”

  This time when he slammed the door, it stayed closed.

  After he left, I tried studying. The words rolled off my brain as if it had been coated with lacquer. Nothing penetrated. I went out for a walk, to breathe a little and let some air into my head. I felt clogged and mean. I found two dimes in my pocket. Enough for a candy bar and some change. Enough to take the edge off my appetite.

  As I crossed the street, I saw a couple of guys talking to a girl. The tall guy put his arm around the girl and she backed off and started to run. The short one put out his foot and tripped her. The books she was carrying spread out on the sidewalk as she fell.

  I ran the rest of the way. “Two against one,” I shouted. I was in the mood for a good fight. I hauled off and hit the big guy on the chin. He staggered back. I felt very good. Although I’d done quite a bit of practice fighting with Tony and some of my friends, I’d never actually been in a real fight. I turned back and began to pick up the girl’s books. It was Lisa. I couldn’t have planned it better. The knight on the white charger wins fair lady. Not bad.

  Her hair was wild and so were her eyes. Tears ran down her face. Her knee was bleeding.

  “What happened?” I said, handing her the books.

  “They asked me for money, the lousy little creeps. I said I didn’t have any and they started pushing me around.” Lisa screwed up her face and shoved her fists into her eyes and kept on crying. I didn’t want to look at her. She was ugly when she cried.

  The lousy little creeps attacked me from the rear. That’s the way. Always attack from the rear. The little one pinned my arms down and the big one started punching. I kicked back and caught the little one in the shins. He hollered and let go. I started swinging. The big guy aimed a kick at my groin. His feet were enormous and his aim was good. If anyone ever asks what it’s like to be kicked in the groin, tell him for me it’s everything they say and more. It’s agony. I rolled on the ground, holding myself. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t get up. I rolled around, sweating and groaning and grunting like a pig.

  The two guys took off, and when I managed to pull myself into a sitting position, I saw Lisa standing there, her hands up at her mouth, staring at me.

  “It’s all right,” I managed to say, “I’ll be all right. Go on, get out of here.” What I really needed was for her to see me like this. I turned over and retched into the gutter. God, make her go. Make her go, I prayed. A long time later, when I was able to walk, she had gone. I got home somehow and flopped on my bed.

  Some knight on some white charger. My insides were so full of rage and pain it was hard to tell which was which.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lisa said hello to me today outside biology class. I was going to pretend I hadn’t seen her—to save us both embarrassment. When she said it, she ducked her head and didn’t look at me. I think she’s shy. After yesterday, why not? Her hair is the color of a horse chestnut. She’s pigeon-toed.

  The house is filled with the sound of slamming doors. At dinner last night the conversation reminded me of people rehearsing a play.

  May I have the gravy? Pass the butter, please. Or: I saw George Tully today. He asked to be remembered.

  It wasn’t a play that would be a huge success.

  Tony had seconds on everything. “Great, great!” he kept saying, shoveling it in.

  “The coach said we’re going to give a fencing exhibition at the end of the year and I’m going to be in it,” he told us. “He said I’ve shown enormous progress. Those were his words, ‘enormous progress.’ He didn’t say that to anyone else, just me.”

  “Good for you.” Pat smiled at him. She smiles at Tony a lot. Almost never at me. “That’s marvelous. You’ll have to show us your technique. Bring home your foil if they’ll let you and give us an exhibition.”

  I didn’t plan it. To say something mean. The words slipped out. “That’s like being called ‘the most improved player’ on the team,” I said. “What that means is the rest of the guys are a bunch of klutzes.”

  In the silence that followed, I could hear myself swallow.

  “Mark”—my father dropped the words, one by one, into the quiet—“you might have a more balanced personality if, once in a while, you said something nice, instead of invariably being nasty.”

  The telephone rang. It sounded unusually loud. “I’ll get it!” Tony shouted, pushing back his chair so violently it crashed to the floor.

  “It’s for you, Mark,” he said, coming to the door of the dining room. “I think it’s a girl. Either that or it’s a guy whose voice is changing,” he said, laughing.

  “Shut up,” I said softly, already half out of the room. “Just you shut up. How would you know the difference anyway?”

  “Hello,” the voice said. “Is this Mark?”

  “Yeah,” I answered, cool, like I had telephone calls from girls regularly. “It’s me.”

  “Mark Johnson?” she said. The woods are full of Marks, right?

  “Yeah,” I said again.

  “Well, this is Lisa. Lisa McClean?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. I’m a fast man with the repartee.

  “Well, I was wondering. I mean, I’m having a party Saturday night and I was wondering if you could come?”

  “I’ll have to check. To see if I’ve got anything on for Saturday,” I told her so she wouldn’t think I meant my parents.

  I held the receiver against my chest so she’d think I was checking. Then I moved it to my stomach. My heart was making so much noise she might hear it.

  “Yeah,” I said, slow, nice and easy, “that’d be great. What time?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Time. Well, about seven, I guess.”

  “O.K.,” I said and hung up. I went back into the dining room, whistling.

  My father looked at me, amazed.

  “That must’ve been some phone call,” he said.

  “Who was it?” Tony asked.

  “Somebody I know,” I said, clearing off the plates.

  “No kidding?” Tony’s eyes were wide with astonishment. “I thought it was a total stranger.” That kid can be an awful wise guy when he sets his mind to it.

  “I’m going to a party Saturday night,” I said casually. I didn’t ask them, I told them and hoped for the best.

  “I was going to take us all out for dinner Saturday, to celebrate,” my father said. He sounded disappointed.

  “Celebrate what?” Tony wanted to know.

  “Our anniversary.�
�� My father put his arm around Pat. “It’s our first anniversary.”

  “I won’t be able to make it,” I said. “But you’ll probably have a better time, just the three of you, without me anyway.”

  I swabbed down the kitchen counter, planning Saturday night. My modus operandi. I hadn’t been to a party with girls in about eight years. Since Cindy Benkiser’s sixth birthday party. We threw a few cupcakes around the room, ate the ice cream, broke a couple of balloons, and Judy somebody cried when her mother left her. That was right after my mother died, I remember. Everyone was very nice to me. Mrs. Benkiser, who had been a friend of Mom’s, spoke in a very soft tone to me and let me have the booby prize in the potato race which was better than the first prize. I’ll always remember that.

  I’m thinking of parting my hair in the middle. Maybe that would make my nose look shorter. Or anyway divert attention from it. I have my grandfather’s nose, I’m told. All of a sudden it’s much too big for my face. If I had the money, I might have a little plastic surgery performed. I read in a magazine about what miracles they can do.

  “Thanks for cleaning up,” Pat said to me. “You did a good job.”

  I slapped the dishcloth against the sink. “Yeah, I figured it’d been a long time since the joint was really clean,” I said. I swear I didn’t plan to shoot her down like that. It just came out. I saw the expression on her face and on my father’s face too. He looked angry, very angry.

  “Mark,” he began in what I recognized was a controlled voice.

  Pat put her hand on his arm. “Let it go,” she said. “Just let it go. He didn’t mean anything.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  About a year and a half ago my father and I liked each other. On weekends he and Tony and I did things together. We’d go to the driving range and shoot a bucket of golf balls or go to the zoo or to a hockey game. We’d been perfectly happy, the three of us.

  So what if old Mrs. LeBlanc was a lousy housekeeper and a terrible cook? So what if when she was feeling poorly, which was a lot of the time, she nipped at the gin? At least she went home at night.

  The thing I remember best about Dad and me and Tony being together was a trip we took to the Danbury Fair pretty soon after my mother died. We took a kid with us who lived down the street. His name was David. When we hit Route 7, the traffic was backed up for miles. Everyone else was going too, it seemed.

  The weather was perfect. October’s bright blue weather. I can hear Dad saying that. “That’s what we get for waiting until the last day, boys. October’s bright blue weather brings them out in droves.”

  “What’s a drove?” Tony wanted to know. My father laughed. “A bunch of sheep,” he said. We stopped for lunch along the way. David had three bottles of soda. His mother didn’t let him have any at home, that’s why. He drank them fast, like he thought somebody might take them away. Then he burped a lot. We laughed until “Mr. Johnson,” David whispered from the back seat, “stop the car. I’m going to be sick.” We pulled over and the kid made it just in time. He barfed all over the rear wheel and looked pale green when he got back in.

  “I’ve got a weak stomach,” David said proudly. Then, when we finally found a place to park and went to see the booths of homemade stuff—afghans, jelly, quilts, stuff like that—and the oxen-pulling contest, which was our favorite, and smelled the sawdust and the animals and the people, David wanted another bottle of soda.

  “I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty,” he kept saying. He was a pain.

  “Keep your eye out for a drinking fountain,” my father said.

  “I’m not thirsty for water,” David said.

  “Too bad,” my father said briskly, “that’s what you’re getting.” Then, after we’d dropped David off, and he didn’t even say, “Thank you,” we went home and had waffles in the kitchen.

  “I wish Mom was here,” Tony said out of the blue. He was on his third waffle. “I really wish she was here because she liked waffles a whole lot.” He was only four at the time.

  “Yes.” I can see Dad’s face as clear as if it was yesterday. “I wish she was here too.” He told us a story and said we could skip our baths. We stayed up a half hour later than usual to watch TV. It had been a very good day. I expect I’ll remember that day when I’m very old.

  Now, on weekends, Pat and Dad played golf or else they went to antique shops or auctions, looking for bargains. Pat had a collection of enameled boxes and she was hoping to find another one to add to it.

  “I wish you’d come with us,” she’d said once or twice at first. “You might enjoy it.”

  Tony had gone. Once. It was boring, he said. “If we brought that stuff home, they’d tell us to toss it out,” he’d said.

  “I told you it’d be a bummer,” I said unsympathetically. “I don’t know why Dad lets himself be led around by the nose by that chiquita. He never went to any old antique shops before she came around.”

  “Oh, he enjoyed it.” Tony leaned into the refrigerator to see what was what. “I could tell. He enjoys anything if he does it with Pat.”

  Yeah, the dark side of my mind sneered, he sure does.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I was in my room, trying to make up my mind if I should call Lisa or not. I wasn’t much for using the telephone, but lately I felt more like it. Maybe I ought to call her, just to talk. To ask about the party, who else was going, ask her if she wanted me to bring some of my records. I saw her in school today. She smiled at me. At least I think she smiled. She keeps her head down a lot. Last night, when she telephoned, I realized, was only the second time I had really heard her voice. You can’t tell much about a person’s voice when almost all they’ve ever said to you is “hello.”

  I’d just about gotten up my nerve when I heard the car pull in. Pat had driven Tony to a basketball game at the junior high. I looked out the window and saw her beat-up old car, the body all rusted out, sitting in the driveway. When she married Dad, she brought that car as her dowry. Some dowry. It had more than seventy-five thousand miles on it. My father usually used it to drive to the station. Today he’d taken his Chevy to leave at the garage for an oil change.

  I put off the call until I was alone. God knows when that would be. For not having a big family, it seemed as if the joint was teeming with bodies. There was hardly any privacy. Some girls I know have their own telephones. I don’t know any guys who do. I can see my father’s face if I asked him to let me have my own phone. I can just see it. Forget it.

  After a few minutes Pat called up to me, “Supper’s ready.”

  I went down, taking my time. “Where’s Dad?” I asked her.

  “He’s staying late for a dinner meeting.”

  We were alone in the house. Together. That had never happened before. The two of us.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said. Which was a lie. I was, very. But I wasn’t going to eat with just the two of us staring at each other across the table. I’d do without.

  “I want to talk to you, Mark,” Pat said. “I’d appreciate a few moments of your time. I have a couple of things I want to say to you.” She turned and took something off the stove.

  Yeah, babe, I have a few things I want to get off my chest too.

  “I’m not asking you to love me,” she said suddenly. “I’m not even asking you to like me. I’m simply asking you to cooperate and not make every waking minute a battle between us. You’re making your father’s and my life hell.”

  I hooked my thumbs into my pockets. “Man,” I said, “I’m into self-preservation. That’s all I’m interested in. I figure if I don’t watch out for myself nobody else is going to. You and my father, you’ve got something going. That’s your business. I’m into self-preservation, like I said.”

  It came off exactly the way I’d rehearsed it. I was proud of myself.

  Pat put her hands flat on the counter. For a minute she looked at them as if there were words written on her fingernails.

  “No,” she said slowly, “no, it’s not self-preservation
you’re into. It’s self-contemplation. Navel contemplation. You spend so much time looking deep into yourself, trying to figure out why you’re not happy, trying to figure out what you’re getting out of life when you haven’t even begun to put anything in, that you don’t have time for anything else.”

  Her eyes glistened and her cheeks were very red.

  “I’ve tried everything. I’m at the end of my rope. You’re doing your level best to make us unhappy and, if it makes you happy, you’re succeeding.” She ladled something that looked like stew onto a plate and handed it to me.

  “Here’s your dinner,” she said coldly.

  “I said I wasn’t hungry.”

  “I took the trouble to fix it, now you bloody well are going to eat it,” she said, measuring each word carefully.

  “O.K.” I shrugged. “If that’s the way you want it.” I sat down and started in, remembering to chew slowly so I wouldn’t look too eager.

  We heard a car door slam. My father came in. He was excited. I could tell.

  “Put down everything and come with me,” he said to Pat. “You too, Mark. I have a surprise. Outside.”

  Pat blew her nose and took off her apron. “What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s a present,” he said, taking her by the hand. “For you.” They went out to the garage. I wanted to see what the surprise was. On the other hand, after what we’d just said to each other, I figured it might be better if I didn’t go. Curiosity took over and I followed them.

  My father was saying, “It’s for our anniversary, darling. I bought it for you.”

  Pat ran her hand over the shining silver surface of the beautiful little Audi. It had steel-belted radials, front-wheel drive, electric rear-window defoggers, plus dual diagonal brakes and independent front suspension. Plus tinted glass and power steering. The whole garage was filled with the smell of a new car. It was such a beautiful thing I could hardly stand it.