Closet Case (Robert Rodi Essentials) (6 page)

Aunt Ramona raised her eyebrows and in a hushed, awed voice said, “Like the Academy, like the Academy
Awards?”

“Kind of,” Lionel admitted, blushing at the comparison.

She put down her soup spoon and placed her right hand over her chest. “Oh, my word. My
word.”

“Should we watch for you on television, son?” the colonel asked, not even caring that he was demonstrating a shared enthusiasm with Ramona, something he was usually loath to do.

“Course not,” Lionel replied with a little laugh. He adjusted his napkin on his lap, embarrassed by the naiveté of the question. “These are just local awards, for the Chicago advertising community.”

“Oh, won’t there be,
won’t
there be any
stars
there?” Aunt Ramona whimpered, moving closer to the edge of her seat.

“Well, no — I mean, unless you consider Franklin Potter a star. He used to be a copywriter at an agency here in town, so he’s coming back to be master of ceremo—”

“Franklin Potter, Franklin
Potter,”
she gasped, clapping her hands to her face so forcefully that her left elbow almost upset the Eiffel Tower-shaped salt shaker.

Colonel Frank grimaced and wiped his lips with his napkin. “Who in God’s holy name is Franklin Potter?”

Ramona, almost bouncing up and down in her chair, blurted out the answer before Lionel could even part his lips. “Franklin Potter plays Toby on
Breadside Manor,”
she squealed. “You know, that show about, that
show
about those three brothers who own a bakery, and one of them is divorced with a little nine-year-old girl with a dirty mouth? Well, that’s Toby, that’s
Toby
 — that’s Franklin Potter! And besides which,
besides
which he’s dating Helena Clement, who starred in that movie that got nominated for a People’s Choice award with the name I can’t remember — you know, the one about the girl C.E.O. with polio and cute clothes who marries the circus acrobat who doesn’t believe in God? What was it
called?
I think it was, I
think
it was
The Wind at My Back.
Maybe he’ll bring her to the awards ceremony! Oh, Lionel — oh,
Lionel
 — hold
on
!” And she heaved her bulk out of her chair and careened out of the kitchen, like a Velikovskian planet hurling recklessly through space.

“Stop shaking the floor!” the colonel called after her. “You’ll disturb the chinchillas, and just when Eisenhower and MacArthur are mating!” He sighed in exasperation, picked up his spoon, and, before turning his attention back to his meal, cocked an eye at Lionel and said, “You appear to have impressed your aunt, son.” Then, a beat later, “Please keep in mind how easily this done.” After a mouthful of bisque, he added, with a barely perceptible grin, “Proud of you, boy.”

Lionel must have beamed at this, for Greta pursed her lips and said, “Pride goeth before a fall,” then angrily stuck her jet-black fingernails into a hunk of lobster to extract a tiny speck of some alien nature. She examined it closely, then flicked it away and ate the remainder.

Lionel couldn’t really expect congratulations on his success from the rhythm guitarist in a thrash metal band that in two years had managed to play only Saturday afternoon church socials. But Greta’s snarling admonition was a clear indication of jealousy, and Lionel, gratified, decided to take advantage of that.

“I know, I know,” he said to her, “but who’s proud? Man, not me. I deal with celebrities every day of the week; it’s not like there’s anything
special
about them. It’s not like it makes me
better
than anyone else.” He dipped his spoon back into the bisque, and from the corner of his eye could see Greta regarding him hungrily. She was plainly dying to ask which celebrities he meant, but of course she wouldn’t dare to, now.

Ramona vaulted back into the kitchen carrying a clothbound book. She shoved it at Lionel, upsetting a spoonful of bisque that had been on its way to his mouth — a spoonful with a succulent chunk of pristine white lobster tail arching up at him tantalizingly, as if to greet him. He almost groaned at the interruption.

He looked at the book, and despite its close adjacency to his face he managed to make out the word AUTOGRAPHS on the cover, rendered in a lovingly elaborate script. Aunt Ramona flipped it open to a random page.

“Charles Nelson Reilly,” she said proudly, presenting a signature for him to appreciate. He leaned back in his chair, but Ramona just moved the book along with him. “He was in
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
on TV, remember? He also played, he
also
played the major banana in that old Bic Banana commercial you used to laugh at when you were a boy. I got this, I
got
this from him when he was at the mall judging the Miss Western Springs pageant. And here,” she said, pointing to another stapled-in inscription, “Maria Ouspenskaya, who was a Best, who was a
Best
Supporting Actress winner sometime in the forties, and who was also in all those Wolfman movies I never let you watch. I got
her
when she was doing dinner theater in Evanston about forty years ago. Madame Arcati in
Blithe Spirit,
which closed after a three-day run because nobody went to dinner theater in Evanston in those days, and besides who on earth, who on
earth
could understand that accent? And here —”

“Ramona!” the colonel barked. “Get that ridiculous artifact out of my son’s face! You’ll suffocate the boy!”

She clicked her tongue, shut the book, and tucked it under her arm. Then, hoisting a shoulder at her brother, she turned to her nephew and said, “Honey, would you
please
see if you can get Franklin Potter to sign this for me? And Helena Clement
too,
if she’s there. I’d be so grateful.”

“Ramona, sit
down,”
Colonel Frank commanded, tossing his napkin down before him in a tiny spate of fury. “Get a grip on yourself. You can’t ask the boy to go loping after film stars like some prepubescent girl. You shouldn’t be acting that way yourself.”

Greta picked at the hole in the knee of her Lycra tights and said, “Only the Lord Jesus Christ is worthy of our worship, Aunt Ramona.”

Ramona squinted at her and said, “Young lady, no one said a, no one said a
word
about worshipping them.”

The girl pulled at a thread and watched as it unraveled, leaving a web of neon Lycra just below her kneecap. “But the adoration you have for celebrities,” she said, her voice as dispassionate as the HAL 2000 computer on Quaaludes, “is too much like the adoration you should have for your Savior.” She belched.

“There are different, there are
different
ways of showing love for God,” the older woman responded testily. She dropped back into her seat and placed the autograph book beside her on the table. “For instance, for
instance,
by keeping a clean and presentable appearance. Having good table manners. Embracing
humility.
I don’t need, I don’t
need
to be lectured on loving God by you, dear.” She was red in the face now, the blood showing bright beneath her thin skin, like the juice of an overripe tomato. She picked up her spoon and started to sup again.

“The girl has a point, Ramona,” the colonel said with delighted smugness. “It’s unbecoming in a woman of your advanced years to behave so fanatically about these show-business prima donnas. Keeping a book like that is bad enough — but
flaunting
it, as though it were some kind of achievement, is beyond understanding. I’d have expected you to
hide
such a ludicrous habit, not display its accoutrements to your family as though it were a Purple Heart or something.”

Ramona said nothing, but Lionel saw her artfully take her napkin, pass it lightly across her lips, then drape it over the spine of the autograph book, where, just before it was obscured from view, Lionel could see written in blue marker, VOLUME 8: N-R.

He grunted a laugh, then took up his own napkin and pressed it against his mouth, as if he’d merely choked a little. Then, feeling somehow endeared toward Aunt Ramona, and also feeling guilty for having to refuse her request, he decided to play up to her, to restore her confidence.

“Anyway, Aunt Ramona, how’s
your
business?” he asked brightly, balling up the napkin and reaching out to the tureen for a bisque refill.

She regarded him with a cocked eyebrow, as though she suspected him of having fired the opening salvo in a new barrage of mockery. But Lionel put on his most innocent, wide-eyed look, so she shifted in her chair, tossed back her mousy brown hair, and smiled. “Fine, honey, thank you,” she said. “As a matter of fact, as a
matter
of fact, I’m expanding.”

“Wonderful!” Lionel enthused, and his enthusiasm was genuine. Ramona, after all, was not only an entrepreneur (something which deeply galled her brother) but something of a local celebrity as well. She had developed a line of greeting cards that she sold through the mail: the cards were geared toward “nontraditional relationships.” “Very nineties,” she’d called the concept when she invented it, back in 1987. And indeed it had proven so; for over the intervening years, more and more orders rolled in for Ramona’s dainty valentine drawings with typeset messages that said things like
Best Wishes on the Anniversary of Your Domestic Partnership
and
Happy Birthday to Grandma’s Special Friend.
The walls of her attic office were lined with newspaper profiles of her, and local magazine interviews. The press attention had peaked three years before, but it had caused her to adopt a somewhat lofty manner that hadn’t, alas, declined along with the attention.

So the news that she was expanding her line was intriguing. Even Greta emerged from beneath her neon halo to take note of it. “You never told Pop or me this,” she said accusingly.

“I only just today, I only just
today
confirmed it,” Ramona said, bringing a brimming ladle of bisque toward her bowl with her tongue wrapped firmly around her cheek. “I sent out a sample kit of the new cards to some specialized vendors to see how they did, and I got back some
very
interested inquiries.”

“So what’s the gimmick here?” Lionel asked, sopping up the dregs of his bowl with a wad of doughy dinner roll. He popped it into his mouth and swiveled toward Ramona, the better to watch her respond.

“It’s a line,” she said, returning the label to the tureen, “it’s a
line
for the
gays.”

Lionel started to choke on his half-swallowed roll. It had been making its way effortlessly down his esophagus to his stomach, but when Ramona had muttered The Word, it had seemed to swell to ten times its original size, stopping up his throat. He clutched his neck and doubled over, accidentally hitting his nose on the table, which only caused him to sputter even more dramatically.

“No one make a move,”
commanded Colonel Frank, rising from his chair like the Archangel Michael, his hands held out in a gesture of calm. “I’ve spent half my life dealing with emergencies. Leave this to
me.”
Rolling up his sleeves, he moved nimbly around the table to where Lionel was gasping for air; Aunt Ramona and Greta stepped gratefully back as he passed them. Then he took Lionel, whose eyes were wide and watery and anxious, grabbed him around the stomach, and with a grunt somewhat more frightening than that of Conan the Barbarian in mid-slaughter, drew his massive forearms to him, crushing his son’s abdominal muscles in the process.

Lionel screamed, and a little projectile of bread and butter and phlegm shot from his mouth and onto the tabletop. Greta curled her upper lip like an unhappy horse and said, “Guh-
ross.”

Lionel, dangling now from his father’s arms like a rag doll, somehow managed to find voice enough to croak, “Pop, for — Christ’s — sake, I’m — okay, let me
down —
”

The colonel released his grip, and Lionel dropped back into his seat like a load of wet laundry.

“You all right?” Greta asked meekly, her black fingernails pulling against each cheek.

Lionel nodded, still gasping.

“Oh my word, oh my
word
what a relief!” Aunt Ramona exclaimed.

“Just take it easy for a moment, son,” said the colonel, patting him on the pack.

“God is merciful,” said Greta reverently. Then she nodded at the table and said, “You wanna clean up your puke now? It’s makin’ me gag.”

Lionel took a paper napkin and wiped up the glob of bread he’d hacked up. As he did so, Aunt Ramona scooted over to him and gave him a warm, moist hug. “Oh,
honey,”
she cooed, “what
happened?
Was it something, was it something I
said?”

Lionel balled up the napkin and dropped it onto his placemat, then looked up.

They were all staring at him, as though awaiting his reply. A chill of fear scampered up his spine.

Did they
suspect
it was something Ramona had said? Or were they merely watching him to ensure that he wasn’t going to have another seizure?

“I’m fine now,” he said. “Really.” Ramona and the colonel returned reluctantly to their seats.

And then, before he could devise some more subtle way of squelching their suspicions, he blurted, “Have I told you about this girl I’m seeing, Tracy? She’s my date to the Trippy Awards banquet I mentioned earlier. I — I met her at the office, and — uh —”

He ground to a halt. But no matter. He looked up at his father, and could clearly see in the older man’s eyes a glint of joy — untrammeled, unhoped-for, undreamed-of joy. It was a look that said,
My name shall not die.

And Lionel began to feel uneasy, as though he were standing on the slippery edge of a great hole he himself had dug, and he was losing his footing, and at any moment might fall in and be swallowed up entirely.

As if she were reading his mind, Greta gulped down a mouthful of milk and gave forth with an audible burp.