I’ve heard her stories so many times.
“. . and Dad told creepy Uncle Pete.”
Dad had to hear them too, whenever we all got together.
“I mean, Uncle-friggin’-Pete, for chrissake! You believe that? Like, he wasn’t even our uncle! He was a retired Drill Sergeant of female troops. Whose insistence was on observation and reprimand.”
The past is a rerun, Janine. We must try and fast forward.
“I showered in my underwear for, like, a year.”
Tell it to your new shrink. Or to Ellen, or Judge Judy.
Danny leans in to her, says, “I know, sis, I know.” His right hand rattles the keys in his suit pants, while the left lovingly pats Janine’s back. He whispers something in her ear, and she shakes her head, mouthing, It’s okay, I’m all right. Danny then orders an Amstel, and marches it into the bathroom.
I take a deep, calm breath. “Dad’s dead, Janine. We need to find something.”
“You’re lucky,” she answers, her lousy breath on my face. “Know what I thought about today, Bobby? I mean, baby?”
“Shhh. I’m right here, sis. What?”
She leans in, whispers, “Sometimes I’m glad. Sometimes I’m jealous that Pickle died.”
This is unacceptable. With her mention of our baby sister I can’t help the thought of slapping Janine. I grind my teeth, then turn back to the television. Try to conjure something joyful.
Janine and I learned to ride a bike together, out at Percy Warner Park. The sunshine was spectacular, was white and blue and everywhere — only not in your eyes. White-blue sky, and she had white plastic tassels on her handlebars and a pink frame with periwinkle flowers on the white chain guard. I had a red, chromey Schwinn. And Dad and Danny took us to the top of this small grassy hillock and had us mount our bikes, side by side. The two of them held us upright, and kept telling us to calm down, to trust them, and that we didn’t need any pansy training wheels. They then counted down together, Three-two-one — push!
Rushing down that slope, gravity took care of balance, and gave Janine and me confidence as we pedaled through the free fall. By the time we hit the bottom of the hill we knew how to ride. We pedaled out and into the open field, intuitively peeling off into separate circles, me to the left and Janine to the right, our tires matting down an infinity sign in the grass, in and out of each other’s vision as Dad and Danny cheered from above. I can’t remember who collapsed first, but at some point Janine and I simply stopped pedaling, slowed, and finally flopped with our bikes into the thick grass. (We didn’t know how to brake!) Dad and Danny clapped as they lumbered down the hill to hug us.
“Come on, sis,” I say now, wishing Dad hadn’t been too cheap to buy a video camera. Evidence of that bike ride, of the good times, would’ve fixed all of us. As is, it’s as if her memory has crushed out the love.
“Don’t ‘Come on’ me,” she says. “You don’t know what it was like to be a girl in a military dictatorship.”
My barstool scrapes the linoleum as I get up to go find my brother.
THE men’s room is white-tiled and pungent. Danny urinates while glugging the Amstel, gently rocking back and forth.
“Can I talk to you, Danny?”
He doesn’t answer, but only wobbles, back, forth, his Armani belt clattering. He suckles the bottle, nipple-like, his piss traversing the mouth of the urinal.
“Danny?”
“Mmm,” he grunts, peering sideways at me. His eyes are those of a cow trapped in a railcar. He won’t take the bottle from his lips to speak. He can’t.
“DANNY?”
He gurgles, pees, grunts — but won’t stop. The way he rocks brings to mind a show I watched about Hasidic Jews praying at that Wall.
“You’re off, man,” I say, and then wash my hands and stare at the mirror.
WIFE after wife had nice bits to say about Dad at the memorial. Wife after wife, all women whom I’d only caught wisps of, being the baby and all, got up and noted their remembrances.
A) Danny’s mom, Marie, noted that Dad “was so dedicated to his work.” She has that raspy Memphis drawl.
B) “I remember when he surprised me with our dream house,” said Janine’s mom, Betsy, from beneath a veil of fly-screen lace.
C) Elaine — my birth mom — said, “I don’t think I found Frank’s heart, until little Pickle died.”
I don’t suppose I knew anything until little Pickle died. I was four and a half, and she had been the baby. Incredible: She would grab my thumb all the time, just grasp my thumb with her tidbit fingers. Danny would laugh at this and call me Fonzie, and I’d say, “Ayyyy.” Everywhere we went people would swoon and tickle her, down in her stroller.
After the memorial, Elaine (C) came over to chat with me. “Hope I didn’t disappoint you there, kiddo,” she said, her smile now hatched by the drag of a million cigarettes.
“I’m not sure I follow,” I answered. “I thought you were great.”
“Oh, you know. The ‘not finding Frank’s heart’ comment? Guess I got caught up in the chance at one last dig.”
We stared at each other. “Oh!” I said. “‘Heartless Frank!’ Got it. No, no problem, Elaine. This is a hard day for everybody.”
“Huh.” She squinted, and briefly cocked her head. “Anyway, you look good, Bobby. You good?”
“I think so.”
“Good,” she said. “See you graveside.”
I smiled as Elaine then seeped back into the Land of the Lost, her heels clicking the funeral home marble. This was, and is, just fine. I’m at peace with our relationship being not so very. From what I hear, over and over, Danny and Janine didn’t give great ratings to the various women who dabbled in their childhoods.
MY list: Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Both Jo and Blair in The Facts of Life. Wonder Woman. Chubby Tiffany-Amber Thiessen — with a secondary nod to the rest of the girls on the original Beverly Hills, 90210. Annie Hall. Vanna White. Showtime or Cinemax after ten p.m. in the old days. Nerdy Velma from Scooby-Doo. Audrey Hepburn. The woman from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The vast majority of Eastern European female tennis players. Nicole Eggert, circa Charles in Charge, no later. Mrs. Huxtable on Cosby. Girl #3 in the “Urban Rebounder” infomercial. Madeleine Stowe, Ellen DeGeneres. Jaclyn Smith in Charlie’s Angels. Daisy Duke. Vanessa Williams. Both Barbarella and Hanoi Jane. The gal from Footloose (back then, not now, not the goddamned remake). Susan Sarandon. Christina Ricci. Bette Davis. Jenna Bush. Never Katie Couric, sorry. Always — I mean any hour of any day — both Pam and Sissy from Urban Cowboy.
DANNY says he has to make a call. He pulls his BlackBerry out, but also walks to an old phone booth at the end of the bar. Janine orders another whiskey sour, then explains that she has no control over the “testing” of her current husband, Jeremy.
“It started out solid,” she says. “Like the rest.”
“Janine,” I respond. “You’ve got to let—”
“I really loved him. You know I did, right?”
“You’re too—”
“I think I still do. Plus, the twins.” She grips her new drink. “The twins helped for a while.”
Help or no, regardless, now, she’s fallen back into the same old cycle. She sleeps around, religiously, throwing the litter of her liaisons in Jeremy’s face, straight lie to sext to the Plan B boxes in the bathroom trash can, if only for the very necessary reason of making him prove how much he loves her. Prove that he would never leave her, never screw around or keep secrets.