Gilbert Sorrentino - Aberration of Starlight

In the morning, Tom was at breakfast before anybody else, dressed in a suit and tie, and when everybody looked at him he said that he’d been on the phone with his boss last night and damn if the man didn’t insist on him cutting his vacation short and coming back to close a sale. It was a big deal and the salesman who had got the contact just didn’t have Tom’s “expoit” touch, so the boss demanded that he come back in. Billy loved it when Tom said things like “expoit.” He was the same Tom no matter what his grandfather did! The close would take a couple of days at the least, Tom said, and then at least a day in the office and, well, he shrugged, that just about puts the old kibosh on my vacation. Billy’s mother was pale, and when Tom went out to his car with his valises she stood on the porch watching him while his grandfather sat in a rocker watching the both of them. And Mrs. Schmidt sat in another rocker watching all three of them. Billy wanted to cheer when his mother finally went across the road and she and Tom stood together a minute talking next to his car, then they shook hands and Tom started to get into the car. But then he stopped and waved at everybody, and called “Billy!” Billy jumped off the porch and ran across the road to him, and Tom gave him a hug and rubbed his head. He grinned at him and told him not to look so sad — that he’d see him in the city just like they’d agreed. Absolutely. Positively. Absotivolutely! He got in the car then and in a minute he was gone.

No matter what Tom said, Billy felt so bad that he thought he’d cry, so he ran from where he said goodbye to Tom straight down to the barnyard and stood watching Louis’ pigs for a long time. Tom would have to be invited to come and see him in the city and his grandfather didn’t like him — Tom was right about that. Tom would never be his father, not now. If his mother only hadn’t gone to the WigWam with him maybe everything would still be all right. What was the matter with his grandfather? Maybe he yelled like that at his mother when she was still married and his father left and just never came back. Maybe, though, Tom would come, maybe.

After a time he returned to the house to get his slingshot, well, he had that. Everybody was on the lawn and he could hear the dull clack of the croquet balls being struck, and his grandfather said, “ Now we’ll see how you like the woods!” The idea of them all just playing this game, just the idea of it made him angry and he went inside and into the deserted dining room. As he neared the stairs he trailed his fingers across the sideboard and they touched something. He stopped and saw that it was some kind of leather thing, a wallet or something, then he realized that it was Tom’s tobacco pouch, he’d seen it a million times. He picked it up and unzipped it, yes, the rich smell of Tom’s tobacco enveloped him. He forgot his pouch! He was rushing so much to get back to work that he just put it down and forgot it. Billy stood for a minute, then took the pouch and went upstairs to his mother’s room, hoping that she was there. He knocked at the door, then knocked again, and his mother said, “Yes?” He said that he had something to show her and she told him to come in. He turned the knob, holding Tom’s pouch before him in his other hand.

Penny arcade cigarette lighter that nobody ever filled.

Buddy was a pain in the ass but he didn’t have to die because of that. In Jersey City it was always grey and rainy.

The funny white stone pipes in the drawer with green ribbons tied to them.

Gramp’s fat guitar. Was that the kind of thing Tito Guizar played?

Uncle Joe talked funny and always gave him cold chicken to eat: “Boys gotta to eat.”

For his birthday when he was little Margie gave him a rector set. She had a green dress on and smelled sweet. “Like the five-and-ten.”

Daddy came in with one kind of suit on and went out with another one on right away.

Mrs. Herrick next door gave him and Dougie vanilla cookies and hot chocolate when the old hunkie’s police dog scared them.

Daddy took the tail off the zeppelin when he cut his heinie. “God damn mockie bastards at Shiffman’s!”

You could eat potatoes with big rats on your shoulder? How? They liked potatoes too? People could be anything!

“I’m sure you have to work tomorrow, don’t you, Tony?”

Once Gramp saw men pull a dead man out of his coffin and try to make him drink whiskey. Granma said the ice would melt under the coffin sometimes and the dead person would roll over.

Snow halfway up the door and Daddy dug a path like a big tunnel.

Everybody would die, even him.

A bunch of things like blotters attached together with a leather cover that said lake hopatcong, n.j., and had an Indian in a canoe on a river.

“Matches her shanty-Irish teeth.”

Buddy fell off a rope or something. He had a little backache and then he died.

The orange stuff on the salad was called French dressing Daddy wouldn’t eat: “That’s what makes the Americans all crazy.”

His other gramp was blind and he couldn’t understand what he said to him, they’d sit together in the backyard while the old man smoked licorice twists Uncle Angelo said were cigars. “Pop talks that damn Chinese to him all day long.”

The tin pig had a sailor suit on and a sailor hat and a drum and when you wound him up he beat the drum and walked funny across the floor until he stopped and then he fell over. He always smiled in a kind of scary way.

Once an old witch talked to him from behind the door in the kitchen that went down to the cellar. “Your mother told me to tell you to stop untying your shoes.” He ran around the house screaming and banging into the walls, the witch ate Mom!

“And I’m sure Miss Little Helper has to work tomorrow too?” Daddy pushed the salad away, “Give it to the pigs, O.K.?”

The dirty kid who smelled like coo-coo handed him a can of worms to eat. Cousin Katie told him to stay away from the filthy little dago.

A whole bunch of tiny little canes made out of blue glass tied together with a rubber band. Granma saw him looking in the drawer and hit him with her — skinny belt: “Like your father! Just like your father! Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Daddy maybe looked in the drawer and they made him leave home when they found out.

Mom worked at a steam table and got tired. It must have been hot, whatever you did there.

He told Mom the fat man on the corner outside the saloon smiled and tipped his hat, and she pinched his arm. “Sh! He’s a bookmaker. I had enough of Italians to last me a lifetime.”

Some kid who was a cousin or something, Frankie Caffrey, ate bananas all the time with sugar all over them. “My mother says that gives you pimples.” “Shut your fuckin mouth, you greaseball!” He asked Mom about these funny words that pleased him and she told him that Frankie was nothing but a thick ignorant Mick.

Uncle Tom always took him to a park to have a catch with a hardball and once showed him the guy who said “Call for Philip Morris!” playing Softball. When they went back to Uncle Tom’s house he’d make pizza in a stone oven in the backyard and talk to Aunt Marie like his other gramp did.

“You don’t even have a father and that’s why you can’t go to Cathlick school. You’re a Protestant.” He spit in Pat’s face and ran. “You’re as Irish as that Mick!” Mom was really mad.

In the dark church with all the statues wrapped up in purple cloth they had to walk in line down the center aisle and then there was Jesus on the floor on a crucifix and they had to kneel down when the nun slapped her wooden clappers together and kiss Him on the mouth. His stomach turned over and he gagged.