Lost Boy Lost Girl

weight.

At the back of the house, the sheer scale of the disorder makes Jimbo gasp. Some of that stuff is waist-high! What Mark called the “pup tent” slants downward, heavy as a scar, just past the kitchen door, ending at a stumpy little wall placed about fifteen feet out into the jungly yard. The addition is carelessly built, and although it is the newest part of the house, it will collapse long before the rest of the structure. Jimbo does not care for the look of that slanting roof, no he does not.

“All right,” Mark says, and sets off into the weeds on the suggestion of a path he had made earlier. Walking behind him, Jimbo sees the house inhale and exhale with every step he takes and starts to panic. Mark says, “For God’s sake, calm down,” and Jimbo realizes that the inhalations and exhalations are his.

Mark jumps the steps to the back door. Jimbo trudges behind him. He sees the empty pane in the kitchen door and peers in at what resembles a haze or cloud, then reveals itself as the kitchen’s grimy ceiling. Grimly, Mark smiles down at him, tilts to the side, and flattens himself against the door. He thrusts his arm through the empty panel. Mark’s smile curdles into a grimace. The knob turns, the door swings open. His mouth now a thin, hard line, Mark gestures for Jimbo to join him. When Jimbo places his feet on the step, Mark clamps a hand on his wrist and without further ceremony propels him into the kitchen.

The

Red

Sky

PART FOUR

15

Now and again during our childhood, Philip and I had the benefit of Pop’s discourses on the female gender— never when Mom was within hearing range, of course. Pop gave us the lowdown on women when we accompanied him on his Saturday “errands,” which involved visits to the houses of his companions Mom disliked or detested. Refreshing stops at local bars and taverns formed the connective tissue between his social calls. Maybe one-third of the time, Philip and I were allowed to come with him into his friends’ houses or apartments. We were allowed into the taverns in about the same proportion.

Going with Pop into his friends’ places and the bars he frequented on Sherman Boulevard and Burleigh was only slightly more satisfying than having to wait in the car. In the car, we could listen to the radio, and in the taverns we could order Cokes. In both the car and the Saracen Lounge at the St. Alwyn Hotel—or Sam n’ Aggie’s Auer Corner, or Noddy’s Sportsmen’s Tavern—we were essentially left alone to quarrel with each other while Pop carried on according to the requirements of the moment. Sometimes I saw money changing hands, usually from his pockets to another man’s hand, but sometimes the other way around; sometimes he helped one of his friends move boxes or heavy objects like electrical saws or water heaters from one place, say, like a warehouse, to another, say, like a garage. In the bars and taverns he installed us in a booth along the wall, got us set up with Cokes, and left us there for an hour or two while he drank beer or played pool with his buddies. Once he commanded us to stay in the car while he went into the Saracen Lounge to “have a talk with a guy,” and after half an hour I got out of the car and peered in the window to see Pop nowhere in the room. In the pit of my stomach, I knew he had left us there, really walked away and left us, but I also knew that he would come back. As he eventually did, from around the corner, his eyes filled with handsome apologies.

Pop’s theories and opinions about women seemed not to apply to Mom. Mom was understood to exist in a separate category, distinct from all other females by reason of being beyond criticism, mostly, and anyway too close at hand to be seen whole. When a single tree fills your lens, the rest of the forest takes on a degree of abstraction. By some such process, Pop enabled himself to arrive at a point of view largely hostile to women without including his wife in the general condemnation.

“Boys,” he said (and now we are in the smoky, beer-stained depths of the Saracen Lounge, where two scoundrels named Bisbee and Livernoise lean forward over the table as if they, not we, were the boys being addressed), “there are two kinds of women, and you better watch out for both of ’em.”

“Thass right,” chimed in Livernoise, commonly called “Legs.” Mom loathed this guy.

“The first kind acts like you’re the feed trough and she’s the pony. Everything you’ve got is fine with her as long as you’ve got it. Of course, anytime you can do better is aces with her, but she will expect you to stay at that level or higher. The deal with this kind of woman is, you don’t go back. Once you get up to steaks and onion rings, the peanut butter and hot dogs are gone for good. So there’s a strain on you, right away from the start. Unless there’s food in that trough, and the food is at least as good as it was the last time, the pony is going out the door. She’ll tell you she loves you, but she’s leaving anyhow, because self-respect means more to her than love. Get it? What you thought you had with her wasn’t what you thought it was, at all. You thought it was about love, or trust, or a good time, or something like that, but all along it was only about her self-respect.

“Now the second kind is like the first, only the part about self-respect is now all about status and possessions. Women like this don’t really have brains, they have mental cash registers. Marry one of ’em, and you’re so far up shit creek you not only don’t have a paddle, you don’t have a boat. You’re up to your neck, dog- paddling to keep your head above the floating crap. You might as well of joined the army, because all day long you’re basically following orders.”

“That’s a Jewish woman you’re describing,” said Bisbee, or maybe it was Legs Livernoise. “I went around with a woman like that, and she was one hundred percent Jew, named Tannenbaum.”

“Could be Jewish, could be Baptist, could be anything,” Pop said. “The Jewish one might be the best at what I told you, but a little Anglo-Saxon bitch with blond hair and no more tits than Legs here can cross her legs and say ‘diamonds’ just as good as if her name was Rachel Goldberg.”

“You just laid it all out, right there,” said Bisbee (I think). “Your boys should be taking notes, only this discussion is way above their little heads.”

“Now,” Pop said, with an odd look in his eye, “there is a third kind of woman, but she is extremely hard to find. Which you might or might not care to do, because this kind of woman will Mixmaster your brains a lot faster than those other two.”

“Don’t get into that now,” said Legs Livernoise, flapping his hands in the air.

“Spare these boys their precious innocence,” said Bisbee.

Neither one of these dodos had any more idea of what Pop was going to say than we did.

“My boys are old enough to handle this information, besides which it is a father’s sacred duty to oversee their education. They should know”—here he looked directly at my brother and myself—“that although the vast majority of the women they will encounter throughout their lives will fall into the first two categories, once in a blue moon the third kind will cross their path.”

“God’s own truth, lads,” Bisbee said.

“The first kind sticks with you as long as the going is good, and the second kind winds up appointing herself president of the corporation of you,” Pop said. “They both take all they can get with both hands, only the second kind of woman is up-front about it because she’s after more than you got right from the start. Now, the third type of woman couldn’t care less how much money you got in the bank, and she don’t give a shit about what kind of car you drive. And that’s what makes her so damn dangerous.”

“Pretty in pink, that’s what they say,” said Legs Livernoise.

“Egg-zack-tically,” Pop said. “This is a woman who can think around corners and see you coming before you get there. She’s always one step ahead. You’re not sure where she’s from, but you know for damn sure it’s not around here. There’s things about her that are different. Plus, she’s so far ahead you’ll never catch up. And believe me, she doesn’t want you to catch up. Because if you do, the fun is all over. Her whole game is, keep you guessing. She wants you up on your toes, with your eyes and your mouth wide open. If you should happen to say, ‘The sky’s a nice blue today,’ she will say, ‘Oh, blue is just blue. Yesterday, the sky was red.’ And you think back, and, you know, yesterday maybe the sky was red.”