My father drew his long legs up as he sat beside me in the front of the Volvo, his leather briefcase across his lap. He inhaled his Camel, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled, and finally said, “I’m not about to tell you anything. You’ll be eighteen years old tomorrow. I’ve gone this long without telling you what to do, and I’m not going to start in at a point when you no longer have to listen to an adult.”
“But?”
“But I’d like to suggest that you divest yourself of this sudden fascination with The Roach.”
“I’m not fascinated by him, Daddy. I just like him.”
“You’re sorry for the fellow, Little Little.”
“I’m not sorry for him at all. I’d like him to come to my party.”
“I think if you examine your feelings closely, you’ll see you’re sorry for the fellow. Oh, he made a nice little gesture with the bouquet of buttercups, the balloon (I told you that a fellow like that would get the wrong idea if you talked to him), but you owe him nothing, not even sympathy.”
“He doesn’t even need my sympathy,” I said. “He’s a survivor.”
“Little Little, when you talk about survivors, you’re talking about being sympathetic. We’re all survivors, but those people you have to label survivors are usually people with strikes against them: dope addicts, alcoholics, him with his hump…. Little Little, slow down, I’d like to live to be forty-five, speaking of surviving.”
“I don’t even see his hump,” I said. “I talked to him and I didn’t even see his hump.”
“Then you’d better make an appointment with Dr. Baird for eyeglasses.”
“You’re talking the way Mother talks,” I said. “P.f. this and p.f. that.”
“It hasn’t got anything to do with that. A person who goes around impersonating a cockroach has got to expect to be stamped on. If I tried to do business for LBSB and took the name Mr. Stupid, I’d have to face the fact the odds wouldn’t be overwhelmingly in my favor that people would seek out my advice, or be eager to deal with me…. Your Roach has set himself up.”
“If you’re a ball in a world of blocks,” I said, “you shouldn’t keep from rolling, just because the blocks can’t. You should roll all over the place. So he’s different. Instead of trying to be like everyone else, he celebrates being different. He dramatizes it.”
My father said, “Well, what I say is if you’re a ball in a world of blocks, there’s no sense choosing to be a spitball. Why choose to be something offensive?”
“God made cockroaches,” I said, “so they must not have offended Him.”
“God’s not around to say,” said my father. “I’m talking about how people feel. I’m talking about most people.”
“The Roach and I aren’t in that category,” I said.
“You and The Roach aren’t in the same category, either.”
“I’m closer to his category than I am to yours, and to most people’s. I’m only a hump away from his category.”
“Little Little,” said my father, “it is not the hump. Now, I’m not your mother talking about who’s p.f. and who isn’t. I’m talking about the vulgar showbiz aspects of this fellow.”
“I wish he could entertain at my birthday party.”
“Well, that would have to be over your mother’s dead body,” my father said. “What’s Mr. Clean going to say about a fellow like this Roach? I thought your focus was on Mr. Clean this weekend.”
“Who’s Mr. Clean?”
“Mr. White Suit,” my father said.
“So you don’t like Little Lion either.”
“I don’t dislike him,” my father said. “I just wonder why he wears white all the time.”
“Ask him,” I said.
We were in front of the LBSB factory.
“The truth is no one’s good enough for me in your eyes,” I said.
“Well, you’re my sweetheart.” My father chuckled. He blew a smoke ring my way and I caught it with my finger, our old game we’d played since I was a child: “Rings on your fingers and bells on your toes,” he used to sing to me while he blew smoke rings, “and she will make music wherever she goes.”
I pulled over to the curb and my father opened the car door. Before he got out, he turned to me. “Little Little,” he said, “I love you and I want what’s best for you, that’s all. In my eyes, Best for You isn’t having The Roach around on your birthday, and as for Mr. White Pants, I’ll reserve judgment. Just don’t be in too big a hurry. You drive too fast. Don’t do anything too fast in life.”
“The Roach was the star attraction at the game,” I said.
“Well, tomorrow you’re going to be the star attraction,” said my father, getting out of the car.
I drove off thinking about the way Little Lion had begun his four-page letter to me: Wait till you see my new suit, Babe! I had it made by the same tailor Reverend Lucky uses. Some suit! And here’s something I read last night I like, written by a man who was little, too, Napoleon Bonaparte. “Great men are like meteors, which shine and consume themselves to enlighten earth.” I’ll be shining at you soon, Babe! Love! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
I remembered reading about Tom Thumb’s grave in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He had commissioned a life-sized granite statue of himself to be placed on top of it, with his name spelled out in large letters, and his dates (Over ten thousand people attended his funeral.) He had married a woman three inches shorter than he was, and when she died she was buried beside him. The words on her headstone simply said: HIS WIFE.
My favorite phone booth was the one in front of Cayuta Prison, across from the bus station. I could pull up to it, and reach the phone and the coin slot by standing on the passenger side in the front seat of my car.
While I shook some change out of my globe bank, I could see some of the TADpoles and PODs arriving. Elaine Letterman,
