“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.”
And it. was kind of funny. Bishop Sheen was always warning about how the family Tv set was actually pulling the family apart. Instead of eating dinner at the table the way they used to, families now sat in front of their Tv sets and ate. So Dad had made a deal with Mom.
Two nights a week he got to eat in the living room and watch Douglas Edwards with the News on Cbs. He got to use the Tv tray he’d bought for himself and he got to eat a Swanson Tv Dinner. Personally, I thought Tv dinners tasted like cardboard a dog had left damp. But Dad was never so happy as when he was in his Tv mode.
“Oh, Lord, I forgot,” Mom said. She smiled at me. “I was going to make him a pot roast stewed in vegetables and potatoes. But he’d rather have a Tv dinner. If you can believe that.”
“Why don’t we have the pot roast tomorrow night?”
Dad said.
“All right,” Mom said, “if you’ll take me to that new Debbie Reynolds picture this weekend.”
“You got yourself a deal,” Dad said. Then, to me: “The one I’d be lookin’ into is that young doctor she worked for.”
“Todd Jensen?”
“Yeah. I was fishing out at the park one day and I saw the two of them arguing. I couldn’t hear them but I saw him push her.”
“When was this?”
“Three weeks ago or so.”
Dad never kibitzes on legal stuff but he has no hesitation about kibitzing on matters of investigation. It was from him that I got my habit of reading Gold Medal original paperbacks.
The way he figures it, he’s read enough whodunits to qualify as a detective himself.
He shook his head. “Life is like that sometimes, though.”
“Come again?”
“You know. Couples. She’s going with this doc and everything seems to be fine and then all of a sudden she starts running around on the side with Squires. I don’t know any of them personally, but she sure looked to be better off with that doc. The way Squires treats the little people, he’s a hard one to stomach.”
The little people. That’s what he always called the working class. And that was how he always saw himself. Because I’m an attorney, I get invited to some of the more high-toned events around town. I invite my family whenever possible. Most of the time they don’t go-they always have a graceful excuse-but when they do I see how deep their sense of inferiority runs. Mom with her J. C.
Penney dress and sweet goofy flowered hat and Dad with his blue suit from Sears looking ill-at-ease with all the local gods, the mayor and his cronies and the country club crowd.
I guess that’s why I like John O’Hara.
He’s one of the few American writers to understand our caste system in Iowa. It’s heartbreaking to see how uncomfortable Mom and Dad are around people they consider their betters.
I took out my Captain Video notebook and wrote in a line about Todd Jensen shoving Susan Squires.
“That’s some notebook,” Mom said, laughing.
“Aren’t you a little old for it?”
“Got a deal on a bunch of them.”
“Long as it’s not Mickey Mouse, you’ll be Ok,” Dad said.
Ruthie came in and took two bottles of Pepsi from the refrigerator. “Gee, I wish Bandstand was on for three hours,” she said dreamily, and floated out.
“Hurry up!” Debbie called from the living room. “The spotlight dance is on!”
I probably should have laughed about this in a superior older-brother way, but the truth was, the more I was out in the world, the better my high school days looked to me. I hadn’t been especially popular but I had my ‘ch Ford and my collection of science-fiction magazines with Ray Bradbury stories in them. And I had that greatest luxury of all, time to call my own. I could hang around garages and watch mechanics work on cars; I could take in a double feature, a Randolph Scott and a Robert Ryan if I were lucky; and I could sit in a booth at Rexall’s and feast on a burger and fries while I read all the magazines I didn’t plan on buying. When they make you grow up-or at least make you pretend to grow up-all that changes. Take my word for it.
“Kids today,” Dad said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Kids today.”
“That Dick Clark is a con man if
I’ve ever seen one.”
My dad has a bullshit meter that is impeccable. I’d been thinking the same thing myself about Clark. Alan Freed goes to prison and his life is destroyed for a pittance in payola money. But somehow Clark remains untainted by the whole thing. It didn’t make a lot of sense.
Mom said, “He looks like a very decent man to me. I was reading about him in Tv Guide and they said he’s a real family man.”
That was all my mom needed to hear.
I spent another half hour at my parents’ house. Mom cut me a big slice of pineapple upside-down cake, and while Ruthie was in the bathroom Debbie peeked her head in the kitchen and asked who I thought was a better singer, Tab Hunter or Sal Mineo, and then Dad said he was going to take a nap, and Mom joked that he’d need all his strength to chew through that Tv dinner, and then I gave them both a kiss and left. I give Dad a kiss because I like to see him blush.
Family members.
Those are generally your first suspects in a homicide.
I learned that in my criminology courses, and it’s stood me in good stead as an investigator.
Family members frequently kill other family members, as the guys who wrote the Bible will tell you.
I’d already questioned David Squires, sort of, so now I needed to question his ex-wife, Amy.
I called and she told me to come out only if I brought her a bottle of Chablis. She was having a small dinner party tonight and didn’t feel like running into town and standing in line at the state liquor store.
I guess we’re lucky. Some states are still dry. Iowa at least has liquor stores. Every time you buy a bottle of booze, they write your purchase down in a book. This serves two purposes: it allows the state to keep track of how much you’re drinking, and it forces you to face your alcohol problem, if you’ve got one. Cotton Mather, I think, came up with this particular system.
The liquor store is usually busy, especially when a holiday’s coming up.
I got the Chablis in record time and drove out to the east edge of town.
You had to give Squires credit. He’d dumped his ex-wife, true, but he left her in good financial shape. The house was a split-level, a part stone, part wood, Southern California-style place with large stretches of sunlight-sparkling windows. Hard to sit around the living room in your underwear in this house, with or without your frosty can of Falstaff for company.