“Who would take you?” Stan asked.
“I leaned over into Sally’s ear. “See? It’s
a yes already,” I whispered. “They’re just concern about who would
look after us?”
Defiance jumped to her eyes. “Why can’t we
go alone,” she said aloud.
Mary looked at her in shock. “If you don’t
want your mouth slapped, you’ll leave that attitude for your spoilt
friends or you’ll never see the inside of a disco. Believe me, it’s
totally unimportant whether you ever go to one.”
I could see Mary wasn’t really angry, but
only being hard. “Lloyd could come with us,” I said, now desperate
to make the point to Sally that she had it wrong about Una, Mary,
and Stan.
“Larry could drop you off at eight o’clock,”
Stan offered, “and you could be out in front at eleven.”
“Eleven?” Sally complained.
Una slapped her hands together and laughed.
“My sweet thing, listen to yourself. You aren’t past ten-years-old
yet and you’d be manipulatin` everyone of us who love and care for
you.”
When we got home I opened my birthday gifts.
Stan and Mary had bought me a video cassette recorder for my
television-set. I was floored.
“Tappet Tapes are making these to compete
with Sony Betamax,” Mary said. “Stan will show you tomorrow how to
work it.”
From Una I got a copy of the VHS movie, True
Grit with Robert Duvall and John Wayne, and from Sally another one,
Yellow Submarine, a cartoon movie inspired by the Beatles with the
songs, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, Nowhere Man, Sgt. Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band, and others.
The gifts from them were excessive, and I
couldn’t have dreamed of the cost. A video cassette recorder in
1970 was probably well over a thousand dollars. The bugger of it
was, though, it led a short time later, two days, to a direct
humiliation of the Tappets, a shameful event for me and Sally, and
one of the days that I thought at the time would be the worst of my
life. How mistaken I’d be in that conclusion; it can always get
worse. When you’re a kid, you don’t know that.
The next morning Una drove Sally, Kurt,
Andy, and myself to school. “Make you’re way directly home after
school,” she said, “there is no one to pick you up, today or
tomorrow.”
I’d heard Mary and Una talking. Mary had
asked Una to come to the Hoboken Head Office with her to work
against a plan of Tappets to buy a car company that was in trouble.
The Stanroids were determined to purchase it.
“Mary doesn’t like the American automobile
business,” Una had told me, “she thinks the employees are
belligerent unionists.”
I’d no idea what that meant and Una didn’t
offer anything further. Monday was much the same as any other day
and the four of us had good weather for our walk home after school.
The next day, Larry dropped me off for basketball practice at seven
o’clock in the morning. Almost every Tuesday, Principal Adam joined
Coach Kray and his son Terry for practice.
I had recently started shooting better,
especially from outside the circle, and was often getting the ball.
Kurt and I played well together, having practiced extra in his
driveway with Andy. Bert had set up a hoop above the garage door.
That morning I actually did better than satisfactory, receiving
more points in scrimmage than anyone else, even Terry, the coach’s
son. I remember being elated that day. I received perfect on a
mathematics quiz, too, and in a story I’d wrote about Snowball, I
received an A.
This pretty much sums up the way calamity
falls to people. You could be having one of the best days, or maybe
somehow, because you’re having that kind of great day, The First
Law of Life for orphans or other people unlucky by birth seeks you
out like a bloodhound of disaster.
“I saw Gimme Shelter for sale at Magnavox
Electronics,” Kurt said.
This is the comment I made which started the
incident. “How much?”
“Twenty dollars.”
“I don’t have that much cash,” I said.
“What about your credit card?” Kurt
asked.
I looked over at Sally with an expression of
self-righteousness. “Una took them away from us. We took out cash
on it and it wasn’t an emergency.”
“I was hoping we could watch it today,” Kurt
complained. “They say someone is really killed in it.”
“How?” Sally asked.
“Stabbed to death by a member of the Hells
Angels. Right during the concert. You’re supposed to be able to
pick it out.”
“I don’t believe that,” Andy said.
“I could just take the tape,” I offered.
“You mean steal it?” Sally said,
shocked.
I shook my head. “No, it isn’t stealing.
They have insurance and everything. They want you to do it. It
makes jobs.” Kurt laughed nervously. “I’ve done it plenty of
times,” I added, “it’s easy.” Kurt and Andy were scared, but we
decided to go to the mall and consider it. They wanted to see for
themselves if it was as easy as I claimed. The store was small and
had row after row of products like radios, televisions, music, and
related items. “Do you have the new Rolling Stones’ video?” I asked
a tall middle-aged store-clerk; a nice-looking man.
He nodded. “It’s in alphabetical order,
second row back in the video section.”
I walked to where it was, the area was
small, and tucked Gimme Shelter under my belt. My heart hardly
skipped a beat. I took another one to the counter. “How much to buy
it?” I asked.
“I don’t think that’s for sale,” he said.
“We just rent them.”
“My friend out there, says he saw it for
sale here for twenty dollars.” The man shook his head. “It’s not
for sale,” I said after I’d come out of the store. “Let’s go.” When
we were out of sight of the store, I pulled out the video tape and
showed them. I could see that they were impressed. “I could steal
anything?” I bragged.
“Get me a television,” Kurt asked as a joke.
Kurt and Andy could only watch television with their parents and
they were jealous that Sally and I had our own.
“I didn’t mean things like that. Small
items.”
“Makeup?” Sally asked.
“What would you do with it? Una says you
can’t have it.”
“I would hide it in my locker at school,”
she said.
This struck me as reasonable. “Let’s go to
Macy’s and you can show me what you want.”
She picked out lipstick, nail-polish,
mascara, blush and eyeliner, five items in all, and only two of
them, the lipstick and eye-liner-sets were of any size. I told
Sally and Andy to wait out in the mall on a bench just outside the
store entrance. I asked Kurt to go to the cosmetic counter and talk
to the woman there about getting something for his mom’s birthday.
While he distracted her, I gathered up the items, then I joined
Sally and emptied my pockets into her purse.
“I need nail-polish-remover too,” she said
quite elated.
I hoofed it back in. “Let’s go,” I said to
Kurt, who was still at the counter. He headed for the concourse and
I took a detour through the health and beauty section, pocketing a
bottle of nail-polish-remover, a package of cotton swabs, and a
pair of sun glasses. We sat on a mall bench, whispering and
wondering what else we could have.
“Do you have a receipt for the things you’ve
taken from Macy’s?” a tall black man in a security uniform
said.
I shot to my feet ready to dart, but to my
dismay saw that my three companions were paralyzed. “Jesus,” I
whispered to myself and shook my head. “They didn’t take anything,”
I confessed softly. “It was me alone.”
The man’s eyes fell to me in such away to
imply both sympathy and genuine regret. “All of you will have to
come with me.”
He sat us in his little office, and when he
phoned the police, Sally began to cry. “What have you done,
Christian,” she whispered.
I saw that Kurt and Andy were trembling with
fear. Andy repeatedly mumbled that he hadn’t done anything wrong,
which of course was perfectly true, but he was about to cry, and it
seemed to me a little sad that he was so cowardly. The man emptied
Sally’s purse and took out the makeup accessories.
“Where’s the tape you stole from Magnavox
Electronics?” he asked. I passed it to him without argument. Once
you’re caught, you might as well come clean and be polite. There’s
no point in making matters worse. “This was just reported stolen,”
he continued. “I do believe the shop owner described you to a tee.”
I frowned, but said nothing further. “What are you kids doing with
this fellow?” he asked Sally, Kurt, and Andy, genuinely
interested.
“He’s my brother,” Sally answered between
tears.
I felt ashamed and stupid, however, I was
neither afraid nor genuinely sorry. Perhaps mostly, I was annoyed.
Left on my own, I’d have at least escaped. I’d done it many times
before. He asked for our names, and because of Sally, I couldn’t do
anything but tell the truth. The Police took a long time to arrive.
They talked to us and wrote an incident report, but we weren’t
charged. It wasn’t until I saw Stan’s face, that the full force of
what I done, hit me. He talked several moments to the officers and
then we were released. Stan didn’t say a word, until we were
home.
“What in the world were you thinking?” he
asked when we reached the foyer where Mary and Una stood to meet
us.
Mary looked quite afraid and Una was
frowning, but she left at once. “I was showing off,” I answered
truthfully and faced my parents with my head up. “I bragged to
Sally that I could steal anything. I asked what she wanted and
proceeded to get it.”
While waiting for the police, I’d scratched
the remaining trace of the scar on my forehead until it had bled.
Una came back and put on disinfectant and bandaged it. “But why, my
full-grown child?” she asked softly.
“It’s one of the things I used to do for the
older boys at Carling Street,” I said honestly.
This seemed to take the steam out of their
anger. “This will go down on your record now,” Mary said with
resignation.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means you’re a damn fool to be closing
doors before they’re all open,” Stan said. “Go get cleaned up for
supper and don’t let it happen again.”
That Sunday, needless to say, we all set off
to mass, even Stan. I believe it’s the only time he went to a mass
that wasn’t related to a funeral or wedding. I saw the significance
of it, but it only served to make me feel guilty about shoplifting.
If I ever did it again, I’d go alone. After the mass, the five of
us stayed and met with the priest, only this time we were formally
introduced.
“This is Father Mackay,” Mary said, “he’ll
speak to you in private for a moment and then you can decide what
to do.”
I followed him dutifully. Although he was
obviously an ascetic, his lean build, clean shaven face, haunting
eyes, and narrow cheeks told me that, he smiled warmly and took me
by the hand to a pew to the side of the church, into an alcove
called the apse, which lay before a marbled sculpture of the Virgin
Mary with the crucified Jesus laying dead in her arms. Many of the
candles before it were burning, their flames lightly swaying from a
breeze of unknown source. I could see Una, Mary, Stan, and Sally,
as well as the altar from where we sat.
“Do you know of Jesus, son?” he asked
softly. I wondered about his memory. When I’d first met him, I had
told him about my visits from Jesus in my dreams, but at the time,
it had seemed to make him fretful, so this time, I just nodded. “Do
you understand the Holy Trinity?” he asked.
I shrugged to this question. I didn’t have
the slightest idea how the system worked, three persons in one God.
Who could understand that? Not even Aristotle. “Try to think of the
Holy Trinity like this,” he explained solemnly. “God, the Father,
gave up his only son, Jesus, to redeem us from original sin. That’s
why he died on the cross. Even though he rose again, he died a
horrible mortal’s death. The horrendous suffering he endured, he
did for all mankind, for each and every one of us. We all live in
sin and must be forgiven. The love of the father for the son, is
itself attested in the Holy Spirit. He speaks in the tongues of
angels and comes to those believers with the greatest faith. I
myself have been all over the world and have seen many worshipers
speak in tongues of the Holy Spirit, it’s truly eminent proof of
God’s presence in our lives, if anyone still needed it. Do you
believe in God?” I nodded. Father Mackay rose, looking down, his
height well above me as I sat. “Would you like to be born again
into Jesus?” he asked. “To be baptized into the one true church of
St. Peter?”
Since I didn’t know what baptism included,
and wasn’t willing to show my ignorance, I nodded. Besides, I told
myself, whatever happened, I had it coming for my stupidity in
getting caught shoplifting and embarrassing myself in front of
Stan. However, as it turned out, the ordeal wasn’t too bad. He
poured a mixture of olive oil, holy water, and balsam from a
container called an ampulla over my head.
“The oil signifies grace and spiritual
strength,” he said, “and the balsam symbolizes virtue.” He repeated
what he had already said about being in original sin and added that
I was a cousin of Adam and Eve’s and shared the very first sin that
had been committed by them at the dawn of mankind. This was news to
me, and it seemed rather mean of God, to punish me for something
cousins did long ago, but I must admit, as I’ve said, I had it
coming for the shoplifting thing. He also talked about the Mother
Church, the Roman Catholics, the Pope, and finally, Jesus. It was
fairly painless and took only fifteen minutes or so. Everyone
seemed happy, even Stan, and so, I was happy too.
This is The Second Law of Life: Things
happen in threes. From the beginning of moving in with the Tappets
I became fascinated with details. I observed the four of them as an
act of the most importance. They were not just my family, but the
earth I walked upon, and were quickly becoming the standard I used
to judge the rest of the world. If Stan said America was great,
then Richard Nixon must be great. If the Arckon family were our
friends, then they must be like us and could do no wrong. After
supper that evening, we sat to watch The Wonderful World of Disney.
Near the end of The Alamo, the Davy Crockett Story, Mary was called
away to the phone.