the time. Any of us could have our home broken into and examined by thieves. If I can enter a tenant's apartment, who's to say that he can't enter mine? I have learned to destroy all the evidence. It isn't enough to hide it; you have to burn it and trust that the important secrets will be held in your mind.
I entered the Sportsman's apartment because I wanted to see him differently, to see through him with absolute conviction. I felt I deserved the sensation after everything he had put me through. So I went. I let myself in, quietly, and discovered my father and Aunt Margery on the foldout sofa bed. They were actively naked and it took them a moment or two to notice me standing there.
'Jesus,' my father said, covering my aunt's face with a sofa cushion.
'Jesus Christ,' my aunt said in a muffled voice, struggling against the pillow.
I said, 'Oh, Lord.'
It strikes me as funny that Jesus' name was invoked at this time and with such sincerity. Jesus, in pictures, has a beard and long, healthy-looking hair. His eyes are moist with pain and compassion, pretty eyes. That is all I know about him, yet, in times of crisis, his seems to be the name that comes to our lips whether we believe or not. In that regard he has a very good reputation. The details of my father's naked body do not bear reporting. When he stood up I looked away. I saw a dress neatly folded upon the TV set, placed beside a bra and panties. I saw my father's pants and briefs, a tangled ball beside the coffee table.
'Jesus,' we all said again, in unison. 'Jesus Christ.'
The Sportsman moved out toward the start of the upcoming baseball season, just before my father died. He left behind an NFL cigarette lighter, a sink full of dirty plastic dishes, three motel bath towels, countless newspapers and magazines, his unused broom and mop, and stickers: team stickers plastered to the windows, the refrigerator, the kitchen cabinets, even the bathtub! It took my mother and me hours with razor blades and lighter fluid to ease them off. The Sportsman left behind a real mess.
My father hadn't planned on dying and left behind everything, including a small notebook hidden in the drawer of his desk at work. It is a child's notebook, the cover decorated with satisfied cartoon bears presenting one another with bright balloons. Inside he stupidly recorded all of the women he had screwed with, their names, the color of their hair, a pathetic, juvenile assessment. In the notebook my mother is never referred to.
He died on a warm spring day when his company car was sideswiped by a Mayflower van. He looked over at the place where his arm used to be and literally died of shock. Many of the names in my father's notebook are familiar. These are women we know from the stores we frequent, from the neighborhood we live in. He died of shock but look at us, carrying on!
My mother was vacuuming the carpet in the basement apartment when she discovered some pictures on the floor of the bed-room closet. She takes her glasses from her smock pocket and holds them before her eyes. 'Oh, that Nick Papanides, I had him figured out right from the start. A Greek god on loan from Mount Olympus to the women of America.'
I ask to see the pictures and she tells me I am too young.
'Greeks,' she says, 'Greeks are just Jews without money.' Mom is down on the Jews since discovering my father had carried on with Sandy Ableman, a former best friend.
'Honest Ableman,' she says, raising her voice over the noise of the vacuum cleaner. 'She'd say 'Evelyne, who but your best friend can you rely on for the truth?' Then she'd say, 'And the truth is that you need to cut your hair. You're too old to carry off that length. It might work for a teenager, but face it, Evelyne, you're no teenager. Far from it.' So what did I do? I cut my hair! Then she got honest about my clothing and the shade of yellow I used on the front steps. So I stopped wearing bright colors and repainted the stairs that shit-brown color she recommended. I'd say, 'Oh, thank you, Sandy, thank you,' and all the while she was sneaking around with my husband. She'd say, 'The truth hurts, Evelyne.' The truth! Do you know what I'll say the next time I see her?'
'We can grow your hair back, Mother.'
'You know what I'll say the next time I run into that lying whore?'
I know. She'll say the exact same thing she said the last time we ran into Sandy Ableman. She'll say, 'Sandy, it's so good to see you.' Then Mrs. Ableman will take my mother's hand and say, 'Evelyne, I have been meaning to call you. How are you and Dale making out these days?' Then my mother will look at the ground and look at me and say, 'We get along.'
'You know what I'll do the next time I see that flowering Judas?' My mother lifts the vacuum cleaner by the hose and gives it a violent jerk. It falls to its side, helpless and struggling. Something has been shaken loose, and she stands there, glaring down at the vacuum cleaner, both of them panting.
'Let's take a little break,' I say. We've brought a can of Pepsi and a thermos of coffee a thermos, even though we live right upstairs. The thermos allows us to feel that we've gotten away. I pour her a cup of coffee and hand her a couple of Tums. My mother washes her hands and looks around the room in a panic.
'That Greek bastard, where's the little TV I loaned him? Can you believe this? He stole the television set and I can't even take it out of his security deposit because he never gave me a god-damned security deposit. He said, 'Next time, next time,' and I trusted him and he walked off with my TV set. It wasn't much, but it worked. That lousy shit. 'You can't trust anyone' I'm going to have that tattooed on my hand in capital letters.'
She eats her Turns and they seem to have an immediate effect. 'What the hell,' she says, her lips chalky. 'Why let ourselves get so worked up over a black-and-white TV set? The damned thing didn't even have an antenna. Who cares? Let him choke on it. He was garbage just like all the rest of them. And speaking of trash, have you run into that Spacely woman at school lately, your father's favorite brunette?'
'That's Spakey, Mother, and no, I haven't seen her. She's a junior high teacher, and I'm at a different school now, remember?'
'Well, won't she come to your school sooner or later for a PTA meeting or something?'
'She'll have PTA at her own school.'
'Well, won't she have to visit your school for some kind of a conference or something?'
I know what she's getting at, so I give up and say, 'Yes, sooner or later I guess she will.'
'And what are you going to say when you see her?'
This is one of my mother's tests and I have no choice but to satisfy her with an appropriate answer. I take a sip of my Pepsi and stare out the window where I watch the Dinellos' dog squat and void in our front yard. 'I'll say, 'Oh, Miss Spakey, that was very nice of you to give me an A in your class. My father only gave you a C.'
'You can do a lot better than that,' my mother says, lifting the thermos cup to her mouth.
'All right, I'll say, 'Miss Spakey, isn't it ironic that while I was busy adding and subtracting you were dividing and trying to multiply.'' I know this is bad. My cheeks flame. My mother looks away, a kind gesture on her part. 'OK, how's this? I'll say, 'By the way, Miss Spakey, are you still teaching math or did they transfer you over to home wreck?'
My mother laughs, my reward. 'Oh, that's rich,' she says. 'Home wreck, that's very good.'
I think it's just OK. Given time, I'm sure I could think of something better but, unlike my mother, I lack the ability to dwell on these vengeful scripts. I do it for her but personally I just don't work that way. I'm certain that, when and if I ever see Miss Spakey again, we will both look away. She was my seventh-grade math teacher. Seventh grade, that was two years ago. Did she sleep with my father while I was her student? Did their union affect my grades? Did she look at me any differently? I, personally, do not care one way or the other. I don't wish her the worst, nor do I wish her the best. I don't wish her period. Her very existence is a mistake, but it is not my mistake, so I'd rather not waste my time thinking about it. My mother, on the other hand, can't stop thinking about it. I can practically see the thoughts as they stomp about my mother's skull. They are the size of a cigarette lighter, yet their feet are heavy and dangerous and they give her no peace.
'Have you given any more thought to that W.S.?' she asks.
W.S. was my father's only initialed blond encounter. 'W.S. Blond (today) Sack of Hammers!!!'
My mother went through his address book, his wallet, his file cabinet, and, finding nothing, resorted to the phone book. It's the not knowing that kills her. Unlike the adulteresses she does know, my mother had taken to calling these W.S.'s. She calls and says, 'I am the widow of Les Poppins.' I listen in on the other phone as they say, 'What? Who?' A few of them she has taker to calling very late at night, a dangerous thing to do if you're going to give out your last name.
'I think I've got it narrowed down between Winnona Spears and Wendy Sidawell,' she says. 'That Spears gal has the nerve to say I'm harassing her that's a guilty conscience talking. She's cagey that one. On the other hand, we've got Wendy Sidawell, an absolute moron. 'Huh?' she said the first time I called her, 'What is this, some
