“Yeah.”
“There’s an iron burn.”
“Iron?”
“Yeah. Like the old lady does her ironing with?”
“She was burned with an iron?”
“Yeah. And pretty bad too.”
“You ever heard of that before?”
“Oh, sure. Job like mine, I’ve heard of everything before, McCain.”
“So what you’re saying is that her husband, David Squires, put all those bruises on her?”
“You said it,” Doc Novotny said. “I didn’t.”
Part II
Nine
My kid sister, Ruthie, said to her friend Debbie, who was sitting on the living room floor in front of that great postatomic social icon, the Tv console, “She shouldn’t dance with that blond guy. She looks better when she dances with dark-haired guys.”
“Yeah, like that cute Eye-talian,” Debbie said.
“Which cute Italian?” Ruthie said.
“There’re a lot of them.”
“The one who sort of looks like Paul Anka except his nose isn’t as big.”
“Paul’s gonna get his nose fixed.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Mom showed it to me. It was in the newspaper.”
“I wonder if his singing’ll be different. You know, when they whack off his nose that way and all.”
“Personally, I wish he wouldn’t get it fixed.”
“It’s pretty big, Ruthie.”
“Yeah, but it’s sort of cute.” Then: “I’ll ask my brother. Sam, do you think Paul Anka’s nose is too big?”
I said, “His nose isn’t. But his mouth is.”
“I think he’s a good singer,” Ruthie said.
“I’ll take Tony Bennett,” I said.
“He’s old,” Ruthie said.
“Your brother’s sure a wise ass clown,”
Debbie said.
“He sure is,” Ruthie said, glaring at me. She was pretty, like Mom, slender and fair. A lot of awkward guys trooped to our door to ensnare her. But at sixteen she wasn’t quite ready to get ensnared.
It was Monday at 3ccdg P.M. on the prairies of America, and for teenagers that meant just one thing: American Bandstand with Dick Clark. And conversations just like this, teenage girls (and boys, if they’d admit it) pondering the fates of the various stars Clark was featuring on his show to lip-synch their latest records. The Platters and Frankie Lymon and Gene Vincent and people like that. Some of them lip-synched pretty well; standing in front of a gray curtain they almost looked as if they really. were singing live. But most of them were pitiful, lagging behind the record or given to sudden vast melodramatic showbiz gestures. More important than lip- synching, however, were the questions burning in the minds of the girls watching at home.
Who were they dating? were they as lonely as the songs they sang? Would they ever consider dating a girl from a place like, say, Black River Falls, Iowa? What was their favorite color? What was their favorite dessert? Did they want to have kids of their own someday? Had they ever met James Dean? were they ever going to be on The Ed Sullivan Show?
Bandstand hadn’t been on the air long but it had gripped the teenage imagination like a scandal.
Small-town kids got to see how big-city Philadelphia kids dressed and danced. They became celebrities in their own right, the kids who danced on the show every afternoon. Justine and Benny and Arlene and Carmen and Pat and Bob were just some of the more prominent names. And the girls at home liked to match them up. Decide who should go out with whom. It was a kind of soap opera, because one day Bob and Michelle would be a couple and the next day here was Michelle, that slattern, in the slow spotlight dance practically dry-humping Biff right on camera.
Every once in a while it was all right to miss mass on Sunday (as long as your folks didn’t find out), but you could never (repeat) never miss American Bandstand.
The Great White Fisherman was just coming in from the back porch as I reached the kitchen. Dad had taken a week’s vacation to spend every afternoon up on a leg of the Iowa River with his rod and reel. This afternoon, still in his waders, his fishing hat jangling with a variety of hooks and lures, he stood in the back porch doorway and held out two pretty pathetic walleyes to my mom. “Here you go, hon, we freeze these for dinner Saturday night.”
Mom winked at me and said, “Your dad must be going on a diet if this is all he’s going to eat.”
“I’m surrounded by wiseasses,” Dad said, in his best Job-like voice. Then he grinned and said, “And I love it.”
Different types of men came back from the big war. There were the sad ones, often mentally disturbed, who spent their time in mental hospitals or seeing psychologists. There were the thrill seekers, who kept trying to duplicate, usually in illegal ways, the excitement that danger had given them. There were the petulant ones, who felt that Uncle Sam should forever be in their debt for what they’d done for the Stars and Stripes.
And then there were the men like Dad-the majority-who were just happy to be alive and exultant about being back in the arms of their loved ones. Sure, Dad had almost been killed, and sure, he’d seen a lot of terrible things happen, but most of the time he just thanked the Lord he’d gotten home safely.
He got us a couple of Falstaffs from the refrigerator and plunked them down on the kitchen table, a little quick-moving guy like me. He sat down and said, “Those Ford boys should be shot.”
“The Edsel?” I said.
“Damned right the Edsel.”
“It’s all he can talk about,” Mom said.
“He hates it almost as much as he hates Nixon.”
“Don’t get me started on Nixon.”
“And here I was gonna buy you a pink-and-puce one,” I said.
He laughed at me. “Give it to Liberace.
He’d probably go for it.”
“Now there’s nothing wrong with Liberace,”
Mom said from the sink, where she was putting the dishes in the dishwasher.
Dad had eventually gotten a good job after a spate of low-paying ones, so Mom now not only had the status symbol of the new tract house, she also had the status symbol of the new dishwasher. She was cute about it. She’d have a guest in and instead of seating them in the living room she’d lead them directly to the kitchen and say, “This is our new dishwasher.” I told her she should dress up like a tour guide and sell tickets.
“Liberace’s a cultured man,” Mom said now.
“That’s what you call him, huh? Cultured?”
Dad sighed. “Aw, hell, I don’t mean to make fun of him. I feel sorry for him. You know, how people pick on him and all. He just makes me nervous. I can’t help it.”
That’s a trait I inherited from Dad: feeling sorry for so many people. I guess because Dad was always so little and poor and awkward around people, he identifies with outsiders. I felt the same way about Liberace. I couldn’t sit down and watch him-he drove me nuts-but I didn’t like people making fun of him either.
“Don’t forget it’s a Tv night, sweetheart,” Dad said to Mom.
Mom laughed. “You and Tv night.”
