LITTLE KIDS SHOULD STAY HOME AND NOT WALK AROUND IN STREETS. SOMETHING BAD MIGHT HAPPEN
A FRIEND
We don’t go to school for the next two days. Mom won’t let us out of the house but Dad goes off to work. It’s like when we had the chicken pox and were quarantined but there’s no yellow sticker on our door.
When he comes home Friday night, Dad looks smaller, more than tired—worn down. He hasn’t been eating much at dinner and I can hear them talking all night in the bedroom. They talk about police and my father’s having borrowed a gun from Uncle Joe, his brother. Uncle Joe brought it home from the war. Mom’s afraid of the gun. I don’t mind missing school at all and I’m getting to play a lot with Cannibal; Mom even lets me play with Cannibal upstairs sometimes, but she still has to sleep in the cellar.
Cannibal’s learning to use the sandbox; it’s as if she knows that’s the place to do her mess. She doesn’t have any mother to teach her and I don’t teach her at all. She just starts going over there and scratching around when she has to go. It’s terrific to see because she’s still so little. It’s hard to describe how tiny she is and still how much she’s a real cat, not a kitten.
I’ve made a little house for her out of a Borden cheese box Dad always used to keep extra screws in. He told me I could have it and showed me how to make a nice little carrying box from it, with a handle. Those boxes are something beautiful. All the corners dovetail cuts and glued. Dad says the cheese is worth buying just for the box. They used to make the same kind of box for scrapple in the old days, Dad says, but now they only use a cardboard box. I like the song they sing on the radio about Philadelphia scrapple. It’s one of those songs I can’t get out of my mind. It goes:
Listen to this, friends of mine,
Philadelphia scrapple’s fine.
Try it once and you’ll agree
It’s the thing for you and me.
Some people say scrapple’s made from dead horses, cats, and dogs but I like it anyway. In our family we all like fried scrapple with our eggs; it’s almost’s good as bacon and a lot cheaper. It’s one thing that’s good with ketchup on it.
The top of Cannibal’s cage slides in little grooves and Dad drills small holes all around the sides so Cannibal can see out. I get down low next to the box and peek in at her through the holes; it’s like looking at a tiger or a lion at a zoo or in a circus. And Cannibal doesn’t mind being in the box at all; in fact, she seems to like it. I think she feels safe in there, and it’s hard for Cannibal to feel safe.
Saturday morning at breakfast Dad tells us we’re going to Wildwood! Nobody goes to Wildwood during school time. I look over at Mom but she won’t look back. I look over at Laurel, and she’s as mixed up as I am. She puts her spoon into her cereal.
“But, Dad, Sister Carmelina will get mad at me if I don’t go. She must already be awful mad because I’ve been absent two days and I’m not even sick.”
“Don’t worry, Laurie. I’ll fix it up with Sister. You, too, Dickie. I’ll explain everything at school. You don’t have anything to worry about; I’ll even get your lessons and homework for you. In fact, I’m going to the convent now; then we’ll start on our trip.”
I can’t believe it. I’m not going to mind missing school but it’s all so strange. I begin to think we’re going into hiding or something, the way they do in a cops-and-robbers movie; maybe we’re hiding from Alice the Goon.
Dad’s so serious, sad, and choked-up mad. Mom is just white, her freckles standing out like dark brown spots on her face against her deep red hair. Her eyes are the same pale green as Cannibal’s now. Everything’s so uncomfortable in the house I’ll be glad to go anywhere just for a chance to get away.
Mom has us ready and Dad comes back with our lessons for the next week. He doesn’t tell us anything about what Sister Anastasia or Sister Carmelina said. We pack the car and, just like that, we drive off and leave our house. Dad had gone around locking all the doors and windows while Mom vacuumed and dusted. It’s the closest thing to actually moving I can remember. When we moved into this house I was too little, so I have no idea what it really is to move, to leave the place you live in. Laurel gets to bring along two dolls and I can bring Cannibal and a deck of cards. Maybe if Dad isn’t working we’ll have time to play some Euchre. That’s one card game I really like, and sometimes I can even beat Dad.
Dad’s put the back seat in our car again. When he uses our car as a truck he keeps this seat in the garage. The car’s open to the air in back of us but that’s where Dad has put our two suitcases and tied them in so there’s no way we can fall out. He’s bolted the seats onto the floor again, too. The wind blows around some so it’s like a rumble seat; if we tip our heads back we can look right up at the sky. We’ve never ridden in a rainstorm so I don’t know if water would get in on us or not if it rained.
Both Laurel and I are leaning way out the car when we go over the Delaware River Bridge. I never knew there was anything so big. Alongside the bridge, they have an advertisement for Whitman chocolates. There’s a little man with a cap on and he’s outlined in different lights so the lights make him look as if he’s running with a big box of chocolates under his arm. I hold Cannibal up so she can see all this but she only looks at me. I don’t think she wants to look out the window of a car when it’s moving. I’m so happy seeing all these new things I’m hoping we don’t ever go home again.
Dad’s face is still white except behind his ears, which are red with the morning light shining through them. He has his hands gripped on the steering wheel so hard I think he might break it.
We have to pay twenty-five cents’ toll on the other side of the bridge. Most of the cars in the lines at the toll booths are newer than ours but I don’t think any of them is practically handmade by one man the way ours is.
Then we get on the Whitehorse Pike or the Blackhorse Pike, I’m not sure which. Laurel keeps looking out the window. I want to play Fish with her but she says she wants to see the horse first.
Mom is sitting quietly and tries talking to Dad once in a while, but he only hunches over tight, hard-driving the car, staring out the windshield, saying nothing. Finally, that is, after I explain how there won’t be any horse, that it’s only the name of this road, Laurel and I get to playing Fish.
Laurel never tries to cheat but lots of times she forgets she has a card or sometimes it gets hidden behind another card because her hands are too little to spread the cards right. So we get into a big argument when she asks for my three jacks after I’ve asked her for the same thing and she’s told me to go fish.
Cannibal is on the seat beside me in her box sleeping. I keep hoping she won’t do her business before we get to Wildwood. Dad’d said he’d stop a couple times on the way down but maybe he’s forgotten. I guess I’m scared about that, because I never should’ve started arguing and fighting with Laurel about three jacks. They don’t mean anything; it’s only a game we’re playing while we drive to Wildwood and she’s little, and maybe she just fished that jack. But I do it. She gets so mad she messes up the whole fish pile and pushes them onto the floor. That’s when I get mad and slap her hand, then she cries.
Dad turns around and starts hitting at both of us, keeping his other hand tight on the steering wheel.
“God damn it! You kids stop it. How can anybody expect me to drive with you two fighting all the time.”
He doesn’t even look back at us and he’s slapping left and right, hard. My dad’s strong and we both slip down off the seat into the foot space with the cards. Normally, Dad never hits us. Mom always says he’s going to if we’re not good, but he never does. Mom’s holding on to Dad’s arm.
“Stop it, Dick! For heaven’s sake, don’t take it out on them. They’re only playing. It’s not their fault. Stop it now!”
And Mom starts crying. Dad stops swinging his arm, turns, looks at Mom as if he could kill her, too, then holds on to the steering wheel even harder than before. The bump in his cheek is going in and ou
t faster, deeper than I’ve ever seen. There’s a line of muscle like a string going up inside his cheek almost to where his eye is, and it’s sticking out and disappearing every time the bump does. I see this by looking in the rear-view mirror from on the floor because he’s staring out at the road, not looking back.
Mom gets up on her knees and turns around to face us in the back seat. We’re still on the floor and I’m trying to pick up all the cards. Cannibal fell off the seat when I slid down and she’s on the floor with me. Laurel’s crying and I think I am, too; not because Daddy hit us, even though he does hit hard, but because it’s all so awful, everybody crying and even Dad practically crying, too.
“Look, you two, get those cards all picked up and sit back on that seat. Laurel, you stay on your side and, Dickie, you stay on yours. It’s hard enough for your father driving all this way without you two fighting and taking his mind off the road.”
We both slide back onto the seat. We’re afraid to look at each other. I’m trying not to look at Mom. I don’t like to hear or see her cry and she’s been crying so much the last days. Everything seems so terrible, and I wish Dad was waxing floors at night and we could go back to building porches together. It’s that stinking, rotten J.I. job that’s made everything go wrong. I’m almost afraid to talk to my own mother, but I do.
“Mom, Daddy said we’d stop so Cannibal could go to the toilet. She hasn’t done anything yet but I’m afraid she might.”
Mom, still up on her knees, looks over at Dad. He looks at me in the rear-view mirror; his eyes almost smile.
“O.K., Dickie. We’ll stop at the next pull-over place. Maybe we can buy fresh fruit and vegetables. New Jersey grows some of the best tomatoes and corn in the world. It’s probably too late in the season but we might just be able to get some if one of these roadside stands is still open.”
Mom leans close, kisses Dad on the side of the head just behind the ear, and slides down on her seat, not against the door where she’s been all the time before on this trip, but near to him, where she usually sits when we drive anywhere.
Laurel and I look at each other; it’s so good having Daddy talk again. I don’t even worry much if he forgets and we don’t stop for Cannibal. But we do. Daddy sees a stand on the other side of the road. There’s practically no traffic, and he pulls across the road and parks on the dirt.
It’s a stand with a canvas top and they have all kinds of fruits and vegetables. Mom and Dad go over to buy stuff with Laurel while I go around in back to let Cannibal out. After she’s sniffed for a few minutes and fought two leaves, she does her business behind a tree, scratching away with her tiny paws and claws. When she’s finished, I pee too, then walk back to the car.
After they buy the fruit and things, Laurel and Mom go around behind the stand, on the other side, while Dad comes back to the car. He puts the bags in with our suitcases. He opens one up and takes out two beautiful pears. He gives one to me and bites into the other himself. It’s so juicy, juice runs over his hand and down his arm. He wipes it with the red bandana he always keeps in his back pocket. My grandfather keeps a red bandana in his back pocket like that, too. Sometime, when I’ve grown up, I’ll get a bandana and I’ll never go anywhere without it. I tell Dad how Cannibal did her business without any trouble at all.
“I don’t particularly like cats, Dickie, but that’s a smart one all right. Come on now, eat your pear. I’m sorry I took some whacks at you and Laurel like that. I’m just all mixed up right now about my job with J.I. and all the union business; then there’s that letter and all, O.K.?”
I can’t talk so I nod my head. I bite into the pear. I like pears actually but some of them have a grainy feeling. This one is smooth and delicious.
Dad climbs up into the front seat. We see Mom and Laurel coming out of the trees. Laurel’s running and Mom’s walking the way she does, as if she’s still a high-school girl and not a mother at all. Nobody else’s mother I know of walks like that.
We don’t have any trouble at all finding a place to stay in Wildwood. The place my parents finally decide on is built around a court and is only two squares from the beach. Our room is big, big as our living room and dining room at home put together, and is on the second floor. It opens out onto a little balcony, which goes around the inside of the court. We have our own sink in one corner of the room near the big bed where Mom and Dad will sleep, and there’s a toilet just at the corner of our floor, opening onto the balcony. The beds are metal and painted a creamy white. There are rugs on the floor. Laurel and I have separate beds next to each other at the other end of the room near the door you come in.
It’s such fun thinking of sleeping in a different bed in a different house in a different place. Mrs. Sykes says we aren’t supposed to cook in the room because of fire regulations, but then she winks at Mom and says something about it being O.K. to warm up some soup or hot milk for us kids.
Gee, I hope Mom doesn’t warm up any hot milk. I don’t like milk much anyway, but hot milk can make me sick; it brings out the smell of cows even stronger.
It’s fun unpacking, and each of us has two drawers to store our clothes. Dad and Mom are more fun and not so serious. I let Cannibal out and she decides to fight everything that hangs or moves, like the covers on the bed and a ball of dust in one of the corners.
I’m wishing we could stay here forever. Maybe Dad and I could get to building porches around Wildwood and make a good living. We’d never tell anybody I was here so they wouldn’t make me go to school. Even in this one place I see plenty of porch work that needs to be done. There are at least four boards on the balcony that’re cracked and need replacing, and I’m sure most of the posts holding up the balcony are rotting at the bottom because the floor of the balcony leans out and some of the railings are wobbly.
Later, down at the shower, under the toilet, I find that most of the wood is rotting from all the water. There must be at least a hundred places like this in Wildwood where we could fix things up. Dad doesn’t need that darned J.L. for anything. We can be free. We’d just go back, pick up his tools, then live here. Those company goons could never find us.
We get unpacked and eat lunch. We eat apples and pears while Mom cooks some of the corn on a little hot plate in a pot we brought with us. Dad keeps feeling the wires to see if the hot plate is going to overheat them but it’s O.K. After he’s convinced the wires aren’t getting hot, he goes out to the fuse box on the porch near the bathroom, unscrews one of the fuses, the one with the number of our room on it, and puts a penny down in the bottom of the hole, then screws the fuse back over it.
“That’s not a very safe thing to do, usually, Dickie, but now we won’t blow any fuses and those wires are heavy enough to hold any current we use. We’ll have to cook here because we can’t be going out to restaurants all the time, you know.”
I know. I’ve never even been to a restaurant; neither has Laurel. When I see movies of people at restaurants I try to figure it out. Somebody you don’t see seems to do the cooking and then people all dressed up bring you the food and nobody ever does the dishes.
The corn is delicious; Mom even has plates, butter, and salt to go with it. We eat more fruit for dessert. We put the extra fruit back in the paper bag they gave us at the fruit stand and slide it far under the bed. Cannibal goes under to see what it is, maybe some kind of monster she can fight, but I squeeze under and pull her out.
It’s sure hard catching a cat when it doesn’t have a tail. She’s still just as liable as not to bite my hand when I put it under her body pulling her away from something she wants to investigate.
After lunch, Dad goes out the door with his bathing suit over his shoulder.
“I’m going down to that shower and put on my suit. Who knows how many nice days like this we’ll get. You people change up here, and when I come back I want everybody ready to jump into that big old ocean out there with me.”
Mom stops putting the eating things away and jams her hands on her hips.
“Don’t be in such a hurry, Dick. Try to relax, enjoy yourself.”
“That’s just what I’m going to do, honey, in that soft blue ocean: relax. You guys better be ready if you want to come with me.”
With that he’s gone. I’m already slipping my shirt over my head. I know where my bathing suit is. I turn my back on Mom and Laurel and slip it on. I must have grown since summer because it’s hard getting the straps over my shoulders.
When I turn around, Mom and Laurel are practically ready, too. Mom’s wearing a bathing suit but she won’t go in the ocean. For some reason she’s always been afraid of the water, even little ponds or Morton pool.
“Put your clothes away, Dickie. If we’re all going to live in this one room you’ve got to put your things away before they get spread all over the place.”
Laurel’s already folding and putting her things in her drawer. She’s like that even at home. It must be discouraging for my folks having a boy; I never think of putting things away, and even when I do, I usually forget again before I do it.
I put Cannibal in her box. She seems to like it in there; lots of times she crawls in herself when she wants to sleep. I think she’d even slide the top on if she could, just to feel safe.
“Can I take Cannibal with me, Mom?”
“What, take a cat to the beach? Oh, I guess so. But you ask your father.”
Just then, Dad comes to the door. He has his clothes over one arm and his towel on the other. He’s wet and his hair’s dripping as if he’s already been in the ocean but I think he only took a shower. He’s wearing his bathing suit with holes in the sides and the big K Mom’s sewn on each of our suits. We all have black suits with big white K’s sewn on them. Mom says it’s so she can find us on any crowded beach or at any pool but I think it has something to do with her idea of being a family. Maybe it’s my idea of being part of our family, too. I know I really like having a big K sewn on like that. It’s as if our family is a varsity football team.