Gilbert Sorrentino - Aberration of Starlight

What was the single most awesome and terrible thing about his grandmother?

Her corset. The first time he saw it on a chair in his grandparents’ bedroom, he did not know that it was a garment. It seemed, rather, a mysterious object that his grandmother used for some malicious purpose secret to herself. Seeing it for the third or fourth time, he realized that it was something that his grandmother wore, hidden, for some strange reason, beneath her clothes. The vast expanse of white cloth, tinged yellow with age, the enormous elastic straps with their cruel-looking metal clips, the bony stiffness that permitted it to lie so rigidly on the chair — all these things together frightened him. That she should place this horrible thing on her body: perhaps it was the magic that made her so mean.

What further thoughts did these reflections give rise to?

He thought of his grandmother removing the corset, standing naked. He felt slightly sick and light-headed when this idea came to him. He wondered if she made his grandfather watch. He then wondered if his mother wore such a thing, and at this felt absolutely dizzy and sat down. Each time this latter thought subsequently came to him he exorcised it thus: He bit the flesh inside his mouth on the left side and said, silently, “one, two, three.” Then he bit the flesh inside his mouth on the right side and said, silently, “four, five, six.” Then he pressed his lips tightly together and said, still silently, “seven.” He then concluded by whispering, “that’s all, no more.”

Note a few curious things that happened after the move to Cousin Katie’s.

A ragged boy in the adjacent backyard asked him if he wanted some soup. When Billy said that he did, the boy handed him a rusted Campbell’s Soup can filled with worms and earth. Katie’s mashed potatoes had hard lumps in them, and he was expected to eat them all if he wanted dessert. Dessert was almost always lemon Jell-O, which latter possessed a tough and rubbery film on its surface. Katie’s younger son, Buddy, fell in the school gym one day and hurt his back and a few weeks later he died. Janet, Katie’s only daughter, taught him how to listen to college football games on the radio and smoked cigarettes in the bathroom. He was sent to various stores in the neighborhood to ask for wooden crates that Katie used for kindling in the big black kitchen coal stove. A month after the incident with the can of worms, the same boy threw some dead flies in his face, after asking him if he’d like some of the candy he had in his hand; Billy then hit him across the shoulder with a dead branch and was awed at seeing him scream, cry, and run away. Katie’s husband, Leonard, sat in a rocking chair all day, looking out the window and listening to the radio; he was something called “retired” and had a disease called “disability.”

How did he feel when his grandmother got sick?

He was glad that she now stayed in her bedroom all day.

How did he feel when his grandmother died?

He was frightened that she was not really dead because of how she looked in the funeral parlor.

The occasion for his mother’s first slapping him across the face?

His grandmother’s funeral. Walking toward the limousines from the gravesite, he asked if they buried Granma with her corset on and if they did, who put it on her.

What disturbing adventure did Billy have just about the time his parents began to have their quarrels?

Cookie and Honey Neumann, a brother and sister aged seven and five years, respectively, called him into their next-door garage one day. While Cookie giggled hysterically and pointed to a neat pile of fresh human feces, Honey lifted up her coat and dress and pulled her underpants down and he saw that someone had cut her birdie off. Although he later could not decide just why he ran home, he felt sick and knew that there was something wrong about what had happened.

What was his grandmother’s method of persuading him to do what she told him to do?

She hit him across the legs with a thin leather belt that came with one of her crepe de Chine dresses.

Did she thus discipline Billy only when alone with him?

No. She often did it when Marie was present, and when Marie protected her son from her mother’s anger, there was invariably talk about “roof over your heads” and “three meals a day” and “being eaten out of house and home” and “your poor father working like a nigger.” For some years after, Billy thought that all “niggers” worked in “credit,” whatever that was.

When it became clear to Billy that Margie was somehow the reason that his parents argued, and then left each other, and that he and his mother had to go to Jersey City, what did he feel?

He was chagrined because he liked Margie. She had shown him how to play jacks, she had taught him to put sugar on rice when he went to the Chinese restaurant, she smelled kind of nice — even his mother said she smelled like a five-and-ten counter — she called his father “Tone,” which sounded fancy to Billy, and she had bright-red hair.

As he grew older, what did his mother tell him apropos Margie?

That she was a snake in the grass. That she was cheap. That she had used him. That she had blinded his father. That she had broken her heart. That she was shanty Irish. That she lived in a cellar with rats as long as your arm. That her brother was a Judas. That she was older than she was. That she had even fooled his grandmother. That she was strictly dese dose and dems. That her mother kept coal in the bathtub. That she walked like a tramp. That his father would live to rue the day. That she liked her liquor. That she wasn’t even pretty. That she was shameless to call herself Mrs. Recco. That her brother’s gimp served him right and was the judgment of God. That she was a bad woman and he’d understand someday what she meant. That she hadn’t but one dress to her name when she met his father and that one from Namm’s. That her idea of a good time was a plate of boiled potatoes and a growler of beer. That she was Red Hook through and through. That she was the scum of the earth. That she needed row-boats to fit her feet. That she had wormed her way into her friendship. That she took and was glad to get one of her old winter coats, old, yes, but better than anything she had on her skinny back. That she had the nerve to come to Billy’s fourth birthday party, and all the time she, well, she wouldn’t go into it. That she’d go to fat like all the shanty donkey women in ten years. That that slob of a Jimmy Kenny liked her and that should have warned her. That she never even got out of grammar school. That her teeth were as green as grass, disgusting to look at. That you give a man a clean, fresh girl and he has to go and find one like Margie in the sewer. That God sees everything and that He is good. That time wounds all heels.

Apropos his father?

That she didn’t know what had happened to him. That they’d cast a spell on him. That they’d put the evil eye on him, it’s been known to happen. That he needed someone dirty and low. That some old witch had told Margie to dip one of her dirty stockings in his coffee. That he’d turned his back on all his brothers. That he was ashamed to look his father in the face. That she’d given him everything he ever wanted but it wasn’t enough for him. That she’d been a good wife, an angel to him. That she couldn’t see how a man could just abandon his own flesh and blood that way. That he’d been a prince when she first met him. That he’d never liked redheads, not that that was her real hair. That men are no good. That if he ever fell for anyone like Margie, she’d cut the legs out from under him. That he’d had the nerve to take her into her own house. That she’d be damned if he was going to get away with his phony Florida divorce. That she was Mrs. Recco and that she’d always be Mrs. Recco. That if he showed his face in New York before her final decree she had a good mind to have him arrested for bigamy. That she knew he’d have that shyster kike lawyer give her the runaround. That he didn’t care if they starved. That he very conveniently forgot when he was a greenhorn off the boat without a pot to piss in, excuse her French. That now he was the big shot high mucky-muck to people who didn’t know him when. That she’d heard how embarrassed he’d been when some man, some lovely man, told him that he’d met his real wife and lovely boy. That he bought a toupee and walked around like an accident looking for a place to happen until everybody was laughing fit to be tied at him. That he was no better than Jimmy Kenny with his cow of a floozy. That he’d treated her father like dirt when he went to try and talk some sense into him. That he didn’t know what to do with a clean, decent girl from a decent family. That he’d spent whole afternoons away from the office in the Wolcott Street cellar, someday he’d know what she meant. That he’d been married in the church just like she was and would have to meet his Maker some day. That he would get his because God is good. That time wounds all heels.