Gilbert Sorrentino: Aberration of Starlight

There is a photograph of the boy that shows him at age ten. He is looking directly into the camera, holding up a kitten as if for our inspection, his right hand at her neck, his left underneath her body, supporting the animal’s weight. The sun is intensely bright, and he squints at us, smiling, his white even teeth too large for his small face. Because of this squint we cannot see that his left eye is crossed. Behind him are the edges and planes of farm buildings faded watery red, and the deep shadows that they cast on the ground. In the shade of a haymow a half-grown Holstein calf lies, also looking directly at us: although we cannot see them, because of her distance from the anonymous photographer, flies swarm and settle, rise, swarm and settle around her pacific eyes. The kitten is striped, her eyes slits in the sunlight.

The boy’s hair is black and freshly combed, glistening with a brilli-antine known as rose oil, given to him by Tom Thebus and bought at the five-and-ten in Hackettstown. To the boy, this dark-pink, almost cerise liquid, its odor unlike any rose ever grown on this earth, is a palpable manifestation of a world of beauty and delight. In this world his mother will be happy. In this world the memory of his dead grandmother will fade subtly into lies about her goodness. In this world his grandfather will be, always, the confident and arrogantly serene gentleman that he is when he plays croquet.

The thick, smooth croquet lawn that borders the white farmhouse a hundred yards away is not visible in the photograph, but the boy may be able to see one corner of it, and on wooden lawn chairs in that corner, in the thick shade of umbrella trees, his mother and Tom Thebus, the latter’s hair gleaming with the same rose oil that the boy wears. White smoke from his pipe hangs in the calm late-morning air.

One might say that the boy is arrested at a moment of happiness, although photographs, because they exclude everything except the split second in which they are snapped, always lie. Still, one stares at them, urging them to give up their truths: here one wishes to see trapped forever in the boy’s eyes the image of the photographer, to know whether that irregular shadow that blots the gravel next to the cooling shed is cast by Louis Stellkamp, the owner of this farm, to see, not merely what is behind the boy, but what is in front of him. Perhaps the lawn chairs are unoccupied.

Perhaps the boy’s smile is caused by the fact that the photographer is Tom Thebus, and that next to him stands, in a pale-green slack suit that sets off her blond hair, his mother. If this is so, it may be that a moment after the picture is snapped, the boy’s smile disappears, for he sees in that corner of the croquet lawn visible only to him, the figure of his grandfather, in white shirt and flannels, a croquet mallet over his right shoulder, standing and looking at them, stiff with resentment. White smoke from his cigarette hangs in the calm late-morning air until a brief cat’s-paw tears apart and disperses it.

Dear Danny,

How are you? Is the City hot? I’m fine. I was going to write this letter before but I had to wait until I could get some stamps in Hakketstown when we go there Friday nights. Thats fun because we go to the five and 10 and, then walk around and then go to the Warren house, that a guy called Dave Warren owns a guy going to marry Eleanor Stellkamp whose mother and father own this place. Eleanor is pretty ugly but she’s nice. They have clams and I get orange drink and they have pokas there. And they have potatoe chips. I bet the City is hot. It gets hot up here too. We go to a lake, Bud Lake or, a little river they call the locks every day. There is a man up here this summer called Tom and he is neat. He drives us mostly and yesterday I sit in the rumble seat with a girl who is up here this summer too. I never sat in a rumble seat before. A funny thing is that they have milk here at supper that is still warm. From the cows. Well I have to wash up, for supper. This guy Tom made me a sling shot and I’m going to try after supper in the field. I hope that your feeling fine and say Hello to your perents.

Your old pal and see you soon, Billy

Your gramps can really play croquet! A champ! He just beat me without half-trying.

I think you’re pretty good, Mr. Thebus. You give Gramp a good game.

Ha! And I keep asking you to call me Tom. What’s the matter? You don’t like me? Mister Thebus! I’m not a schoolteacher. Do I look like a schoolteacher?

Mom told me I should call you Mr. Thebus.

What about your gramps?

What?

What did he say you should—? Nothing. But your mommy doesn’t call me Mr. Thebus … she calls me Tom just like you should too.

Mom’s different. I mean that’s different. I’m a kid and I’m supposed to show grown-ups respect. Mom says.

Billy, if you call me Tom you’ll show me all the respect I want. I’ll have a talk with your mother about it so you won’t get in dutch. How’s that? O.K.?

O.K. That’s swell.

How’s that slingshot coming along?

Neat! I can almost always hit a bottle and cans from about, oh, a pretty long way, twenty feet. Mom says I can’t take it back to the city.

And she is absolutely right. That’s a dangerous thing.

I wouldn’t shoot it at anybody.

But supposed you missed and hit somebody anyway? Or a window? It wouldn’t matter if you didn’t want to hit anybody. Your mommy’s got the right idea … do you realize how lucky you are to have a mommy like her?

I always just call her Mom. Just Mom. You know.

Well. You’re a very fortunate and lucky young fella. Believe me. I hardly knew my mother, she died when I was younger than you. How old are you?

Ten and a half, about. But I could maybe shoot it in the backyard in Warren’s house who’s a friend of mine in the city around the corner.

Yes. I was about nine I think… there’s an old saying that you never realize what a mother is until she’s gone. That is very true. Believe me. God couldn’t be everywhere, that’s why He made mothers.

Or down at the pier where the kids go crabbing maybe? You can’t hit people there. Mom don’t allow me to go there because she says the crabs have disease and you can fall in. A kid got killed there last year when he fell in down between the pier and a barge. He got squashed.

As usual, I have to agree with your mother. We see eye to eye on a lot of things.

Is she a good dancer? Mom?

Dancer? Your mommy? Mom?

She said you might go dancing with her. At the WigWam? They have a real band there, you know that?

Oh. Oh, we just talked about it — maybe, maybe. Almost like a joke. I haven’t danced in years and years.