Gilbert Sorrentino - Aberration of Starlight

He moped around the rest of the afternoon, only it wasn’t really moping, even though he wished that he’d gone to Budd Lake with Mr. Copan and the girls. He was just waiting for the time to pass because he wanted to see his mother and Tom get all ready and leave in Tom’s car. He fooled around on the lawn with a croquet mallet and Mr. Sapurty came out and asked him if he’d like to have a game and he said sure. It was always embarrassing to play with Mr. Sapurty because he could usually beat him and Mr. Sapurty would get annoyed and chew away at his cigar and say something about the wrong glasses he had and how he meant to get them changed. But he was just a lousy player. It was really funny to see him play his grandfather or Tom, they could beat him without paying attention to the game at all.

As usual, he beat Mr. Sapurty and he was going to play him another game when Tom came out on the lawn and sat down under the umbrella trees near the vegetable garden. Mr. Sapurty said that he had to clean out the inside of his car, but Billy knew that he didn’t want to play him and get beat with Tom watching. Billy went over to Tom and they sat together and Billy played with his China Clipper for a while but Tom didn’t say a word about the WigWam and he thought maybe that his grandfather had told his mother that he wouldn’t allow her to go. But just as he was thinking that maybe that was exactly what had happened, Tom said that he hoped it would be a cool night because he had to wear a tie. He said “a goldurned dadblasted tee-eye,” to make Billy laugh. Well, that was that. Tom would never wear a tie unless he was going somewhere special.

At suppertime everything went along as usual. Tom sat at their table and talked about Germany and how things looked bad and the Depression, and his grandfather looked at him with a kind of disgusted look. Billy knew that Mrs. Schmidt was a German and so were the Stellkamps and he figured that when Tom talked about Germany and that things were bad there he was probably doing what his grandfather called mortifying everybody. His mother smiled at Tom when his grandfather wasn’t looking and Mrs. Schmidt at the table with the Copans and Dave Warren was smiling every once in a while at his grandfather like she was sorry for him. Once she said something to Mrs. Copan, who was the skinniest woman Billy had ever seen, his mother said she was a bag of rags tied in the middle, and after she said it Mrs. Schmidt shook her head like she was very sad and smiled over at his grandfather again.

Then Billy just sat on the porch with the Copan girls and Dave Warren. His mother and Tom were getting ready and just about the time it was getting shadowy over in the churchyard where it always got dark first, Tom came out on the porch smoking his pipe and dressed in his blue coat, white pants, a white shirt and blue tie, and his white shoes. He sat on the porch railing and talked to Billy about the Dodgers and Giants and looked at his wrist watch once. The Copan girls were giggling and whispering together and Dave Warren sat smoking a cigarette and said just one thing, that it looked like it was going to be a nice evening. Then his mother came out. She had on a white dress with a white belt and a string of white beads that matched her earrings and her new white shoes. She was wearing silk stockings. She was carrying a white crocheted shawl and she looked really swell with rouge and lipstick on, really pretty and young, better than Helen Copan. She and Tom smiled at each other and he looked at his watch again and said that it was time they got going because it was kind of a drive. Dave Warren got up from the steps to let them pass and the Copan girls told his mother that she looked just beautiful. His grandfather came out on the porch and stood there with his hands in his back pockets and Billy kissed his mother and then looked over at his grandfather but his face was stiff and angry, even though Billy thought he said to his mother to have a nice time. He didn’t say anything to Tom. Tom and his mother walked down the path to the gate that opened on the road and everybody on the porch stood at the railing and watched them and Billy wished and wished that his mother would take Tom’s arm like Helen Copan but he knew that she wouldn’t in front of everybody, she looked, even, like she was blushing. When they got in Tom’s car and started off, everybody waved except his grandfather, who just stood at the railing with his arms folded the way he did when he made a good shot in croquet and he was waiting to see what the other player would do. Tom backed the car out of the spot he always parked it in next to the church and they started down the road the way you went to the Hi-Top and the Copan girls and Billy waved and his mother put her hand out the window and waved back and Tom blew the horn twice, just two short little beeps.

Billy went inside for a while and looked at the Stellkamps’ Sears, Roebuck catalogue, skipping all the pages with ladies in their underwear because Eleanor was still there pulling off the tablecloths and polishing. The pictures made him feel very strange and sometimes a little dizzy and hot. He couldn’t figure out why a lady would let somebody take a picture of her in her underwear. Maybe they were hooers. The pictures fascinated him because he learned the names of all those things that ladies wear under their dresses. There were a lot of pretty ladies wearing corsets but they didn’t look like his grandmother’s. He put the Sears catalogue back and went out on the porch again. His grandfather was sitting next to Mrs. Schmidt, both of them rocking back and forth. He was smoking. He told Billy that he had been looking for him to tell him that he was going to take a walk and that he expected Billy to take a bath and get to bed at the usual time. “Nothing special about tonight, young man.” Then he went in and came out a few minutes later with a sweater, a flashlight, and a bottle of citronella, and he and Mrs. Schmidt left together. It was funny that while his grandfather was gone, Mrs. Schmidt told him what a wonderful man his grandfather was, that he was a lucky boy to have such a man to take care of him and his mother, and that they should always be grateful to such a prince. Billy said he was glad she liked his grandfather and she got red and said that that was not exactly what she meant.

He didn’t take a bath but just ran water in the tub to get it wet. He washed his hands and arms and face and skipped brushing his teeth. It was a strange but very good feeling that his mother wasn’t there to make sure he took a bath and everything else. Maybe if she got married to Tom she wouldn’t pay so much attention to him. When he turned the light out in the bathroom he looked out the window that faced the farm buildings and the fields beyond and saw that it was a clear night but that there was no moon that he could see. The dark was full of fireflies. He went into the room he shared with his grandfather, said his “Now I lay me,” and got into bed. Right now, he guessed, his mother and Tom were at the WigWam, probably having a fancy drink in one of those glasses with the long stems, a Horse’s Neck or a Manhattan. He knew a Manhattan was a really fancy kind of drink because when they first came up this summer they had to wait for Louis to pick them up at Netcong and they went into a little café to get out of the sun and cool off and his mother said she felt like a Manhattan. He remembered his grandfather said, “These hicks will give you a Brooklyn , damn all they know about it,” and his mother laughed and had a Tom Collins instead and gave him the cherry.

The WigWam must have white everything. He figured that’s probably why his mother wore white and Tom had on white pants and stuff. Sure. He was absolutely delighted thinking of them dancing and talking and Tom smiling as he lit his pipe. Maybe they’d do this again. Maybe Tom would come to see his mother in the city all the time and take her out to the movies and to night clubs over in New York, maybe even to Coney Island and they could go to Feltman’s. That would be great, the waiters sang songs and everything. He fell asleep thinking of his mother and Tom chatting over a little bite of something, little sandwiches cut like diamonds. They had that liquor you put in a pail.