Gilbert Sorrentino - Aberration of Starlight

I hate it.

Well, when you get older you’ll see it’s a good thing. A young man … it’s a thing you ought to know. You escort a young lady out …it’s a gentleman thing. My Tommy always said he hated it too. Another wise guy — like you! Put ‘em up! Come on! I’ll knock you for a loop! Think you’re tough!

Hey! You’re too big!

Aha! That’s what they all say! All the tough guys! All the wisenheimers! Hey! Ouch! Not so hard, Dempsey.

I don’t really not like dancing. I mean if you go with Mom dancing at the WigWam it’s O.K. I mean if you like to. Do you? Are you a good dancer?

Well. I don’t know, really. My Tommy’s mother thinks so — she used to think so once upon a time. God knows what …

What?

I said at least I don’t have what you call two left feet.

What’s that? What’s two left feet?

It means that you just can’t — Well, suppose you had two left feet. How do you think, with these two left feet, you’d walk around?

Oh, yeah.

Pretty dopey, right? Well then, imagine two left feet, dancing.

Oh, yeah, sure. Sure. Oh you couldn’t dance at all good.

That’s the idea right on the noggin. That’s where they get the expression.

Is your boy as old as me?

Just about your age. You’d like him a lot, I bet. He’s a lot like you are too.

He looks like me?

No, I mean he’s like you in a lot of ways, he’s just sort of… like you.

Has he got to wear eyeglasses like me?

No. But so what? What’s so important about eyeglasses?

I hate them. Kids call me four-eyes. And cockeyes.

What? You don’t have any cockeyes! Those kids must be nuts. What you have will most likely just go away by itself when you grow up. I knew a couple kids with that when I was a kid. They call it a lazy muscle. It just went away, like that!

Just went away?

Just like that. I swear it.

I wish that — I wish — But how is he like me?

Oh, a lot of ways. You feel like sitting down in this shade? It’s pretty hot for an old man.

What old man? Oh! You’re not an old man. Gramp is old.

He’s a wonderful gent, your grandfather. I wish I knew why he didn’t like me too well.

I didn’t know Gramp didn’t like you. I thought Gramp sort of liked you.

Well. I don’t mean that your gramps doesn’t like me, I mean you know, that he hates me. I just get the funny idea that he doesn’t actually, you know, like me.

Well I like you. And Mom likes you too.

Thank you, Billy. That’s very nice. And nice of your mom. How do you know that?

What? Know what?

That your mother likes me. Too.

Well she sort of told me. I don’t really remember.

She told you what? How did she tell you?

Well she didn’t really I guess tell me really. Things. Stuff she says about you and all. About what a swell guy you are and a gentleman. And you make her laugh and things like that. And you’re spic and span. Just stuff like that.

Well I like her a lot too. I think that maybe she’s one of the nicest ladies I ever met. Your mother is a real lady.

I sometimes make believe that, you know, that you are sort of my father. I kind of sometimes wish that you are my father. Sort of my father.

Well …

I mean that I hardly even know my real father. The last time I ever really saw him for about an hour was when I was really little. I was about maybe seven. He took me to Coney Island and the penny arcade. I love to go there.

Me too.

With about a thousand pennies, I had about that many. I played one of those steamshovel games where you pick up the prizes from all these little candy beans or some stuff. It’s hard. You know that one?

Oh yes. Tommy loved that one too. See? You and him are just alike. I told you, Jack.

Jack?

Dempsey. Jack Dempsey.

Oh. I got a big round lighter for the house, for the table. I started to give it to him but he said to take it home and give it to Gramp.

Ah. That was nice.

Yeah. Gramp don’t even fill it. He never filled it once. He never even once used the rotten piece of junk shit!

Hey, hey, kid … take it easy … you don’t want to cry. Hm? Come on. O.K.?

I wish I had a real father I could see … like you. If you could be like my father.

Well. Well, I don’t know about that but I’ll see if maybe we can’t fix it up so that we get to see each other in the city?

Really? You mean it, Mr. Thebus?

I mean it. Tom means it. Right?

Right. Tom.

You like football?

I don’t know. I don’t know how to play it.

No. I mean to watch it, you know, real football with men.

Oh. I don’t know much about it. I used to listen to it on Saturday sort of on the radio with Janet at my Cousin Katie’s house in Jersey City when Mom and me lived there. But I was really a baby then.

Well, maybe we can go to some games this fall. How does that sound to you? You think your mom would let me take you?

Sure! Sure she would. She really likes you a lot. That would be really swell.

Now if I can manage to only get your gramps to like me a little— just a little bit — everything would be just hunky-dory.

He’ll like you. I don’t really think he don’t like you. Sometimes he just makes you feel like he hates you. Me too I mean. Even my mother. When he talks about my granma who died from a sickness last winter in her blood. When he does he makes you really feel like that. It’s really stinky. And other times too.

Well, it’s his privilege, Billy. It was very very sad for all of you, I’m sure. Come on, let’s start back, O.K.? That old dinner bell will be ringing soon and we should wash up.

I think that’s Mom over there coming over to us. Yeah, she’s waving.

Yes, that’s your mom. Let’s go and meet her, O.K.?

Can I tell her about the football games?

Why don’t we sort of—? Why not? Sure.

What did Billy remember of the abrupt termination of his parents’ marriage?

The sudden turmoil of their one-family house in Flatbush the day that he and his mother left it for good and moved to his Cousin Katie’s house in Jersey City. The empty rooms seemed strange and frightening to him, the moving men huge and loud, and his mother wept when he asked her where Daddy was and was he going to Jersey too. That night he was put to bed on a couch in Katie’s living room and fell asleep listening to his mother and Katie talking in the kitchen, its light falling in the hallway eerie and unfamiliar. He woke up in the middle of the night and wondered where his metal zeppelin was.

Note some specific if disjointed recollections he had of the nights his father came home late for supper.

A bowl of salad made from lettuce, tomatoes, and green pepper rings. His father with tie loosened, sleeves rolled up, and vest unbuttoned, eating angrily and silently. A bottle of Worcestershire sauce. The cold coming in from the back porch as his father stood there, the door half-open, pulling his rubbers off. “Margie.” His mother sullenly washing dishes, her back to the table. A Big Little Book of Terry and the Pirates. “Your home is on Wolcott Street!” The Sun. His father carrying him up to bed. Darkness. Loud voices. Long periods of silence. His mother crying.

What were some things that Billy most liked?

Playing at being driver in his father’s parked car; stirring ice cream into a soup; tying his shoelaces very tight; walking in falling snow; smelling the gum packed with baseball cards; watching badly drawn slides about personal hygiene and/or nutrition in the school auditorium; playing running games like Caught Caught Blackwell and Ringaleevio; listening to his grandfather tell stories about Irish wakes, especially the one about the drunken men who pulled the dead man out of his coffin, sat him up in a chair, and tried to give him some whiskey; going to the penny arcades at Coney Island; the howling wolves on Renfrew of the Mounted; hearing his mother sing “Poor Butterfly.”