Twerp Page 9

  “Leave what to you?”

  “I will tell Jillian what is in your heart.”

  “You would do that?” I said.

  “I know it is not your fault. You meant no harm.”

  “Do you think she’ll be mad?”

  He looked at me as if it was a dumb question.

  “How mad?” I asked.

  “She is a woman, Julian.”

  “And?”

  He pointed to his heart. “She lives here.”

  I had no idea what he meant by that. “Oh.”

  He winked at me, the same wink as when he was walking off the playground at Memorial Field. Then he turned and walked toward the cellar stairs. I followed him without another word.

  I had a new perspective on Jillian’s dad when I came out of the cellar. Not that he wasn’t a goofball—I mean, he did still have on that MASTER GRILLER apron. Maybe what I had was a new perspective on goofballs. What I mean is, maybe you can’t write off a guy just because he happens to be one. Mr. Rifkin had done right by Eduardo, had changed his life, had rescued him from that orphanage and brought him to America. His heart was sure in the right place. Even if it meant I was now the second-fastest kid in P.S. 23.

  Lonnie and Jillian, meanwhile, were sitting in lounge chairs by the pool, yakking away. I knew that once he relaxed he would be fine. He was back to being Lonnie, talking a blue streak, and Jillian was cracking up, hanging on his every word. It was good to see. It even occurred to me that maybe, if she spent enough time with him, Jillian would start to like Lonnie. I mean, how could you not? Despite what Amelia said about him, Lonnie’s a great guy.

  Eduardo peeled off to help Mr. Rifkin with the grill, and I angled straight for Lonnie and Jillian. They didn’t even notice me walking up until I was right there—that’s what a good time they were having. Then Lonnie caught sight of me and nodded toward the lounge chair to his right. Jillian was to his left, so he was in between us, the center of attention.

  “Hey, Jules, I was just telling Jillian about the time you got caught stealing at Lind’s Department Store.”

  “C’mon, Lonnie!”

  “It was hysterical,” he said. “Eric the Red got away with a G.I. Joe, and Shlomo Shlomo got away with a Dracula model kit, and I had an entire box of baseball cards stashed underneath my shirt—that’s like forty packs, four hundred cards—and the three of us hooked up again a block away, and we’re standing around, waiting for Julian to come out, and he never made it. We must have stood on that corner for a half hour before it dawned on us that Julian got caught. It didn’t seem possible. The guy behind the counter was about a hundred years old, and he was half blind, and even if he noticed what was going on, what could he do? Julian could’ve dodged him and got to the front door like it was nothing.”

  Jillian looked past Lonnie to me. “So how did he catch you?”

  “I don’t know. I guess—”

  Lonnie said, “He came out from behind the counter, wagging his finger!”

  “I just panicked. I was trying to put back the stuff I took—”

  “Tell her what it was!”

  “What does that matter?”

  “It was a Gumby!” Lonnie shouted. That cracked him up again, and it made Jillian laugh too. I could feel my face going red, but I didn’t mind, honestly. Lonnie was on a roll. “So Julian’s sliding that Gumby back onto the rack, nice and neat, nothing out of place, and meanwhile, the old guy comes up behind him and grabs him by the shoulder—and that’s all she wrote. I mean, there are guys who are cut out for crime, and guys who are not cut out for crime. You can figure out what kind of guy Julian is.”

  “What happened to you?” Jillian asked.

  “The old guy called my dad to come pick me up.”

  “Your dad must’ve killed you!”

  “No, that was the weird thing,” I said. “I thought he was going to yell, or maybe even take the TV out of my room. But on the drive home he told me in a real calm voice how disappointed he was in me and then let it go. He never mentioned it again. The thing of it was … I know how weird this is going to sound. The fact that he didn’t make a big deal of it made it worse. It just gave me a bad feeling that lasted for months. I would’ve rather he yelled.”

  Jillian leaned forward and lowered her voice. “My dad would have freaked out if that happened to me.”

  “What about your mom?” Lonnie asked. “She seems pretty cool.”

  That made Jillian grin. “My mom wouldn’t have cared. She would’ve asked what I stole, like whether it was worth it.” She took another peek at her mother, then lowered her voice even more. “People always say I look like her, but I think I take after my dad. What do you guys think?”

  “You take after both of them,” Lonnie said. “You got the best of both worlds.”

  “What about you, Julian? What do you think?”

  I wanted to be careful what I said, given what Eduardo had told me about her feelings. I glanced behind me at Mrs. Rifkin. She’d tied her bikini top and rolled onto her back. But she looked like she had slathered on another layer of suntan oil. You could see the overlapping layers on her belly, the older one that had dried up into a film and the newer one that had more of a shine. I took a good long look at her. “I don’t know which one you look more like. Maybe it’s both of them, like Lonnie says.”

  “Do you think my mom has a good body?”

  That felt like a wrong question to ask, and I didn’t want to answer it, but Jillian was looking straight at me, waiting to hear my opinion. “I guess … I mean, for a grown-up.”

  “Your mom’s got a great body,” Lonnie said.

  Eduardo picked that moment to drag over a lounge chair. He sat down on it backward, with his legs straddling the sides and his arms folded across the back. “The food is cooked.”

  Jillian sat up straight and focused her eyes on him. “Lonnie thinks my mom has a great body. What do you think about that, Eduardo?”

  “Your mother is a beautiful woman.”

  “The neighbors think she’s a tease,” Jillian said. “They talk about her all the time.”

  “Hey, if you got it, flaunt it,” Lonnie said.

  Eduardo nodded in Lonnie’s direction without quite going along with what he’d said. “She believes in freedom. It is how she lives.”

  “But she’s my mom. It’s so humiliating.”

  “You should never be ashamed of your family,” Eduardo stated.

  Lonnie cracked up. “You wouldn’t think so if you met my mom.”

  “What’s wrong with your mom?” Jillian asked.

  I knew where the conversation was about to go, and I wanted to tell Lonnie to knock it off, but there was no chance. It happened too fast.

  “She doesn’t talk right. It’s like, ‘Thuffering thuccotath.’ I mean, it’s not her fault. The Nazis cut her tongue to pieces. But if you listen to her, it’s embarrassing. That’s the only word for it.”

  Jillian glared right at him. “That’s a terrible thing to say!”

  The color went out of Lonnie’s face. It was pitiful to watch. He was yukking it up one second, and the next second he had a look like that gladiator in Spartacus who gets a six-foot spear chucked into his back.

  “No, I mean, she’s still my mom—”

  “How could you say such a thing?” Jillian said.

  “It’s just that … I guess you had to be there. I mean, if you heard her talk …”

  Jillian looked past him to me. “Have you heard her talk, Julian?”

  “Sure he has!” Lonnie said. “Lots of times. He’ll back me up. Isn’t it embarrassing to listen to her talk?”

  “It’s noticeable, for sure,” I managed.

  “But is it embarrassing?” Jillian asked.

  I was grasping for the right answer. “I don’t know … I’m not sure I’d use that exact word. But the thing is, she’s not my mom, so it’s hard to say what’s embarrassing and what’s not embarrassing. But I’d definitely say it’s noticeable. Lonni
e’s right about that.”

  Right then, Mr. Rifkin walked over with a big plate of hamburgers and hot dogs. He came just in the nick of time. I had no idea what else I was going to say.

  “Hey, fellas. What can I do you for?”

  “I’ll have a hot dog!” I said.

  “One dog, coming right up!”

  He pushed the plate at me, and I grabbed a hot dog and bun. I didn’t even bother to ask for mustard. I just shoved the thing in my mouth and began chewing. That made Jillian crack up, the way I was wolfing it down. Her laughter cut the tension, and things started to feel normal. Awkward, but normal.

  Mr. Rifkin passed out hamburgers and hot dogs to Lonnie, Jillian, and Eduardo, so the conversation died down for a couple of minutes. I couldn’t remember the last time I was as grateful for silence. Mr. Rifkin went over to sit by his wife. There wasn’t much talking between the two of them either, though she did sit up for her burger. Also, he poured her a beer into a plastic cup. He had a beer too, which he drank from the bottle.

  Then Eduardo said, out of nowhere, “Julian, have you ever played fútbol?”

  “Do you mean soccer?” I said.

  “That is a word only Americans say. The rest of the world says fútbol.”

  “Whatever you call it, I’ve never played it.”

  “You should try it,” he said. “You are a very fast runner.”

  Lonnie picked right up on that. “Have you seen this guy run?”

  Jillian said, “You never told me you were a runner, Julian.”

  “He’s not just a runner,” Lonnie said. “He’s greased lightning.”

  Jillian wasn’t going to let that slip by. “Well, Eduardo is the fastest runner I’ve ever seen. He won medals for it in Guatemala. He won trophies for fútbol and medals for running. Isn’t that right, Eduardo?”

  “Then let’s have a race!” Lonnie said.

  “C’mon, Lonnie!”

  Eduardo waved off the idea. “No, Julian is much faster.”

  “There, you see?” Lonnie said. “Even Eduardo knows it. You should have seen him at Track and Field Day last year. The bleachers at Memorial Field were packed. I mean, there must have been two hundred kids jammed in like sardines. The fifth and sixth graders were running forty-yard dashes against each other. Mr. Greetham was timing the winner of each heat with a stopwatch. So he’s calling out the times, and it’s like five-point-eight, five-point-nine, six-point-one, five-point-nine. You know? It’s like that for every heat. Then this Negro kid, Willie, runs a five-point-four. That makes the fifth graders cheer real loud because he’s one of them—even though, like I said, Willie is a Negro. But who cares? Five-point-four is still five-point-four. If you’re fast, you’re fast. So guys are still congratulating Willie, and they don’t even notice Julian’s heat is about to get started. Except then Greetham yells, ‘On your mark … get set … go!’ So they all turn to watch. It’s just sick, what happened. Four guys started the race, but three of them quit after about three steps. They stop dead in their tracks because Julian is so far out in front. So Julian finishes the race by himself, not even going full speed, and then Greetham checks his stopwatch, and then he checks it again, and then he says, ‘Four-point-nine.’ The entire place goes dead quiet. It’s like a miracle just happened. But Julian just jogs over to the sideline like it’s nothing.”

  “It’s just a number,” I said. But I have to admit, listening to Lonnie tell the story like that made me feel real good.

  “But that’s just a warm-up,” Lonnie said. “The guy runs another four-point-nine in the semis and then five-zero in the finals … only because he slowed up even more at the end. Willie came in second. It was a sad day for the sixth graders. I know that for a fact because I was one of them. Except I was real proud of Julian, so who cares?”

  I don’t think Lonnie even realized he’d just told Jillian and Eduardo that he’d been left back, that it was his second time through the sixth grade. I sure wasn’t going to point it out to him.

  “That is very fast, Julian,” Eduardo said. “Very fast.”

  Yeah, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I could have listened to them talk like that for hours. Except just when I began to think that maybe I was as fast as Lonnie was saying, that maybe I wasn’t a fake, that maybe the entire school wasn’t going to find out that I was now the second-fastest kid in P.S. 23 on Track and Field Day, Eduardo winked at me. It was that same wink from the playground. It cut right through me. It was as if he was saying, You and I both know what’s going on. We both know the truth. We both know talk is cheap, and that sooner or later we’re going to race … and we both know how that’s going to turn out, don’t we? It was as if he was using Lonnie’s bragging on me to get in another dig. That’s what it felt like.

  Lonnie got real quiet and thoughtful on the bus ride home after the barbecue. The bus was a rattler, even louder than usual, so that made the lack of conversation less noticeable. I felt awful for him. But what could I say? He shouldn’t have said what he said about his mom. Even if he didn’t mean it in a bad way, which I’m sure he didn’t, that’s how it came off.

  The bus rolled to a stop at a traffic light, and Lonnie looked up at me. He looked tragic. That’s the only way to describe the expression on his face. Like his entire life got blown to smithereens. “I should have let well enough alone.”

  “No, you did all right,” I said. “I think she likes you.”

  “She thinks I’m a bad guy. But I’m not a bad guy.”

  “If she thinks that, then she’s off her rocker,” I said.

  “Do you think it’s hopeless?”

  “How could it be hopeless? Nothing’s hopeless.”

  “So you think I can fix it?” he said.

  “Sure, just be natural the next time you see her.”

  “Why don’t you sit next to her at lunch? Then I’ll come over—”

  “No way. I’m out of this, Lonnie—”

  “C’mon, just sit down next to her in the cafeteria. What’s the big deal?”

  “She sits with her friends,” I said.

  “Well, you’re one of her friends now.”

  “You’re as much her friend as I am. Why don’t you sit down next to her?”

  “I need another chance, Jules. I can’t do this alone.”

  I didn’t answer him. That was how we left it.

  April 7, 1969

  Taking a Break

  I know I’m supposed to keep going, or else the deal to get out of English assignments is off. But the barbecue on Saturday got me real emotional, and then writing about it killed Sunday. Just killed it, the entire day. Sunday. It was a gorgeous sunny day, warm but not sticky or hot like Saturday, with just the right kind of breeze blowing through the window, and I was holed up inside, scribbling away before I forgot a thing. There’s no way I would’ve spent that much time on a regular paper, not even if I was writing about Julius Caesar.

  What I’m saying, Mr. Selkirk, is that I deserve a break. There, I said it. I deserve a break. I don’t want to write anymore for a while. I don’t know how long, exactly. But I need to stop doing this. I’ll come back to it sooner or later, but right now I need to give the thing a rest.

  April 14, 1969

  Ouch!

  It’s amazing how taking a break, or just thinking about taking a break, gets your juices flowing. I mean, I wasn’t going to write another word for the rest of April. But the truth is, I was itching to get going again after only three days. So then I decided I wouldn’t write for two weeks. Then that became one week, and now here I am, one week later, sitting down at the desk, Bic in hand, raring to go.

  It was a perfect week to take off, as it turned out. Nothing much happened, unless you count what happened to Eric the Red. I don’t know if I should even write about it since it’s squirmy. But it seemed to get Lonnie’s mind off Jillian. He let the entire week pass without nagging me to sit next to her at lunch. Whatever the reason, I needed a break from that too.

&nb
sp; The thing with Eric the Red happened Thursday afternoon. I guess I should mention right off that he’s all right. He rode in an ambulance to the hospital, sirens blaring, but came home that night. His mom and dad brought him back around nine o’clock. Quentin and I were hanging around in front of the Hampshire House, so we saw them drive up. Eric’s dad dropped off him and his mom, then went looking for a parking space, so we got to talk for a couple of minutes. Eric was worn out, but even he was cracking up about it.

  I mean, it was kind of hilarious. Not at the time, of course, but afterward, once we knew for sure that Eric didn’t get killed. The six of us were out back in Ponzini—Howie Wartnose, Shlomo Shlomo, Quentin, Eric, Lonnie, and me. It felt good to be there with the entire gang. It seemed like weeks since all six of us showed up at once. Also, I knew Lonnie would be his regular self. He never talks about Jillian to the rest of them.

  He was his regular self too. It was as though he’d been saving up the real Lonnie, keeping him under wraps, but now, back in Ponzini, surrounded by the entire gang, he let loose. He was on us from the second we got there. It was brutal how he was ranking us out, but it was beautiful. It was art, almost. He had us cracking up at one another and at ourselves. It wasn’t what he said. If I quoted him word for word, you’d just shrug it off. But the thing about Lonnie is, when he’s his regular self, what he says doesn’t mean as much as how he says it.

  So the six of us, like I said, were out back in Ponzini, and Lonnie was ranking on us, and just when it felt as though he was going to run out of insults, out of nowhere Eric decided he wanted to walk Ponzini’s Fence. Why he picked that moment, I have no idea. But he asked Lonnie to bring him the circus axle, and right off Lonnie went and got it for him.

  Now I guess I should explain about the circus axle. It’s actually a car axle that fell out of the bottom of one of the rusted-out wrecks in Ponzini a couple of years ago. Lonnie was the one who first noticed it and dragged it out from underneath the car. It’s maybe four feet long, solid metal, and heavier than you’d think. We call it the circus axle because we use it to balance ourselves when we walk the fence that separates Ponzini from the private backyards on the other side. It’s like a circus act. The fence is about sixty feet long and six feet high, and it takes nerve to walk the entire length because there’s nothing but concrete on the Ponzini side and cobblestone patios on the other.