They got
no
after-school crowd. Philbin and his daughter Angie both had asthma and wouldn’t let kids smoke, so the hoods went to the poolroom up the street or the Catholic juv center instead. Heads went to Judy’s stupid head shop, which was called (I wish I was kidding) Officer McDoodle’s Shredded Wheat and Records Emporium. It had some tables and served herbal tea, and Judy let the fourteen-year-olds smoke. The jocks had practice, and the socials did cool extracurriculars like Show Choir and Key Club, so they hung out with the jocks at Pongo’s Monkey Burger later in the evening.
Angie was sitting at the counter reading last week’s
National Enquirer
, and Philbin was staring at an old black-and-white TV, watching the Indians lose as usual. “’Lo, Karl. Gettin’ dinner here tonight?”
“Guess so. But first I’m going to get something to read, and do homework, and soak up some of that
fine
coffee.”
I first started going to Philbin’s after school in eighth grade—right after Christmas, we had some big blizzards and I got a bunch of snow-shoveling jobs. It was the first time I had some extra cash, and a good thing, too, because food was getting pretty irregular at home—Mom sometimes just fixed baloney sandwiches and Campbell’s soup and went to bed, and other times took off to drink her paycheck. I could make mac and cheese or a sandwich, of course, if there was anything in the house, but often there wasn’t.
Back then with only the snow money and the paper route money, I had to squeeze every nickel till the buffalo shat, so I got to drinking coffee with the afternoon special, because it was hot, only cost a dime, and refilled for free. But I’d been raised pure Ohio: the Zeroth Commandment was Thou Shalt Not Be Any Trouble to Anybody Ever. I didn’t want them to make a new pot, even though the last customer had probably been about three hours before me, and what was in the pot was lukewarm, with a greasy sheen on the surface, and thick as motor oil.
Philbin poured the old stuff down the sink. “Ooops. Just spilled it. Have to make a new pot.” It was our particular joke. Not exactly a knee slapper, but it always made me feel at home.
I found a few new paperbacks in the spinner racks. I could buy them all if I wanted. I still had a ton of money, even after Mom’s most recent raid on my cash.
I touched her IOU in my pocket; not as much as I would have had. She was never going to pay me back. I had her IOUs for more than a year’s mortgage.
The first one had been right after she cleaned out my bank account—May 17, 1970, probably about two P.M., Mom took all $171.38 out of my savings account to buy wine, snacks, and pot, so she could “have some people over for a meeting to just share some feelings and talk about how everyone felt about Kent State and Cambodia and all.” It was about six months after my dad died.
The second time she cleaned out my savings account was that fall, when I started ninth grade: $392.67 of garden work, paper route, sweeping out Philbin’s, and some corn detasseling. Mom could take all the money in any bank account I opened because the law was, I couldn’t get an account without her as a cosigner till I was eighteen. So in fall 1970, I started keeping money in hiding places, and I never told anyone I was doing that, not even Paul. It took her almost till Christmas to figure out what I was doing and get together with Neil to rob one of my jars, and by that time I had several stashes scattered. It had been a long hard run, but I was staying ahead of her.
The Madmen didn’t know what I did with the money, but they sure knew I worked for it; Squid and Bon worked almost as much, after all. Every single shrink the group had ever had, since I was in ninth grade, said that the way I lived, always working and always making money, was a “defense.”
They always said it like it was something wrong.
There is nothing wrong with having a defense if you’re attacked
, I said, inside, where they couldn’t get on my tits, trying to make me say, “Oh, now I understand everything and I am all better Mister Shrink Sir and now I will live just like you think I should.”
Anyway, I could pretty much afford all the books, records, clothes, and meals out that I wanted, and still sock money away in my stashes. If I would’ve had a car I might’ve been able to do something about getting a bank account that Mom couldn’t get into—drive up to Toledo, with some adult I wanted to trust to never nark me out to Mom or take the money themselves, and have them cosign—but that’d mean narking out my own mother.
And the car itself would’ve been another problem. I’d need to put deposits in a couple times a week, and she’d notice I was going somewhere that often. Not to mention insurance, which was fucking murderous; probably it was cheaper to just hide money.
So I was always spending it, too, because I got to keep things I bought, any money I spent was money Mom didn’t, and she couldn’t take a book or a record or a restaurant meal away from me and go spend it down at Mister Peepers.
Once, she’d sold a bunch of my records at Officer McDoodle’s, but since I handled that ad account for WUGH, I kind of leveraged Judy hard, so she gave my records back to me. It was kind of a wash; she pushed Mom so hard to pay her back that Mom finally dug out one of my cans and gave that money to Judy. Mom still brought that up sometimes when she got mad, about how I had humiliated her, and “blackmailed” Judy, and how she didn’t think she should have to pay on that one IOU.
“Hey Karl,” Angie said. “One of those books really pissing you off?”
I was grinding my teeth and balling my fists tight enough for my nails to dig into the palms. “It’s like a muscle thing,” I said.
She came over and started rubbing my back.
Not
what I had in mind. Angie was okay for a twenty-three-year-old fat chick still living at home and working in the family business, I guess. But it reminded me of the way some guys are always offering back rubs to cute girls, and I didn’t like it when Angie just started to, not even asking.
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to keep my hands from shaking because the fury was getting worse and I didn’t want anyone to see. “Really it’s okay. It goes away by itself in like a minute.”
“Jesus,” she said, continuing to rub, “your back is in
huge
knots. Maybe we should just
iron
you.”
“Angie, don’t fondle the customers,” Philbin said. “Or at least fondle someone like Tom Browning, who will like it.”
She let her hands slide down my sides and let go of me. “He’s so old God calls him ‘sir.’” She went back to her seat.
“Exactly. When Karl’s that old, you can feel him up.”
“I was
not
feeling—”
“Angie.”
“Well, I wasn’t.” She went into the kitchen and started slamming stuff around, pretending to clean it. That was weird. But I was glad her father had stopped her. When I got those black rages, I was really afraid I might hurt someone.
“So how’s the school year look so far, Karl?”
“Okay, I suppose.” I made myself keep my voice real soft and offhand. “Harder than I wanted. Mom said I had to take the college prep track.”
“How’s Betty been?”
“She likes to be called Beth now.”
“Right, sorry, Beth. I forget because I knew her for so long before.”
If Philbin’d been like most of the old people in Lightsburg, he’d have had to point out that my parents met when she was hopping the counter and he came in for lunch for three months straight, but Philbin knew that I had heard that story all my life, and skipped straight to asking, “So, anyway, how’s she been?”
“She’s fine, you know, same old. Working in the real estate office, studying for her license, she’s got her things with her friends.”
He looked right into my eyes. Nice a guy as old Philbin usually was, he had some of that closed mind that Lightsburg turned out like soybeans and corn. I knew what he wanted to ask.
Are you okay with the way she fucks around? Is she ever sober at night? Does she let Neil hit you? Should I call the cops about anything?
I knew he wanted me to nark on Mom.
I gave him a slack face, hoping I looked like I was thinking about hitting him, afraid I looked like I was about to cry, probably just looking like I was real dumb.
He left me alone while I looked through that rickety wire rack of paperbacks. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted a good story, or something that it would impress Larry to say I was reading. I settled on a Philip Dick novel,
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
, because it had a pretty cool cover and besides I always felt like Philip K. Dick, at least he had some idea about what the world was really like—full of hidden trapdoors with tanks of shit under them. People said it was because he took a shitload of drugs but I think he took the drugs because he knew what was going on, not vice versa. I couldn’t always understand his books, but come to admit it, that was another way they were like real life.
Philbin’s Drug Store was really dead that day. I read
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
for twenty minutes and no one came through the door until Dick, who cooked there.
I don’t mean Philip K. Dick cooked there. It was Dick Larren, a nice old guy, forty or so, my AA sponsor.
(Though holy
shit
it would’ve been cool if Philip K. Dick
had
been cooking there, I can tell you that. The Young Republicans, which was a group of middle-aged ladies—definitely
not
super super ladies—had coffee together there on Wednesday mornings, and I’d’ve
loved
to see what would happen after Philip K. Dick fixed them up with some extra special apple pie.)
Dick came over to say hi; that was okay, talking to your sponsor is a good thing to do. “Hey, are you feeling okay? Or is it a depressing book?”
“I’m a teenager. I
live
to read depressing stuff.”
“Yeah, I remember that. Wait’ll you hit your mid-twenties and find out smiling is okay again. But you’re okay?”
“Hey, are you my sponsor or my mother?”
He blinked for a second, but then just smiled. “Well, sponsor is more than enough work for me. And I know what you eat like, so I’m glad I’m not buying the groceries. Anyway, you always know where I am if you need to talk. One day at a time, Karl.”
“Betcha. Really, I’m just kind of tired, is all.”
“Okay. Not a problem. Just making sure you’re okay.”
Really feeling better, I smiled. “Nothing worse than the usual.”
From the first days I’d started coming here for meals, long before I’d started going to AA, Dick had been slipping me extra food. He lived alone, in a big apartment over a furniture store downtown; he had it fixed up nicer than a lot of people’s houses—very clean, and actually decorated rather than just furnished. When AA met there, the coffee and the sandwiches would always be way better than average. It would have been fine with me if we met there every time, but Dick said it always took forever to get the stink of the cigarettes out of his drapes and rugs, and you can’t ask people not to smoke at AA, you really can’t.
When he wasn’t working he dressed neat and fussy, so there were rumors he was a homo. I was pretty sure he wasn’t.
After two more chapters, I had to admit to myself that I pretty much didn’t get
Three Stigmata
, though it seemed very cool. I decided I’d finish it anyway. The Indians lost and Philbin and me talked some about that, just enough to establish that we were friends again. Philbin was about as nice a shop owner as you’re going to find in a little Ohio town—nicer, actually, most of them are fat hollering self-satisfied flag-waving assholes for Jesus, not to mention their bad qualities. I hadn’t meant to get so close to a quarrel with him; just sometimes, when people got nosy about Mom, I got pissy.
I pulled out my homework. The math was all review so I took about ten minutes to do that. Then I filled out Harry Weaver’s standard twice-a-week worksheet; he had transcribed some sentences from the book onto a mimeograph page, leaving a blank, and your job was to replace the blank with the word. Every other blank, the word was
freedom
. Pretty silly that we had gov at all; if you were going to vote and stuff, you’d learn all this, and till you wanted to, why learn it? I mean nobody learns the rules to poker until it’s time to play, do they?
Then I looked over the chem. So far that was all stuff I remembered from eighth-grade science. The French worksheet was all review from last year, too. Coach Gratz had said not to start reading
Huckleberry Finn
till he put the magic mojo on us, so I didn’t look at it.
Now it was 4:30 P.M. Dick was thumping around in the back getting ready for the old couples that came in to eat dinner here. The water he splashed on the grill to test the temperature made a little
phit!-sput-sputter
. I grabbed a pad off the counter and scribbled “CB/dlux—cof—apl—choc S,” wrote my stool number at the top, and clipped it to Dick’s turntable.
I had hopped the counter here, off and on, usually whenever Angie took classes at the community college, ever since the summer after eighth grade, so Philbin had long ago told me to just grab a pad and scribble an order, and if I was in a hurry or they were busy, just ring it up on the register when I finished.
Like always, Dick way overloaded my plate. My cheeseburger came with about a triple load of fries, the slice of apple pie was like half a pie, and somehow or other not only was the shake all the way to the top of the glass, but the can was brim-full too, which seemed to defy both the Law of Conservation of Matter and the Law of the Five-Pound Bag.
I ate it all and read another few pages of
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
. More and more confusing, but
still
very, very cool.
By now it was happy hour at Mister Peepers, a safe time for a fly-through of the house. I needed to change my shirt, get my McDorksuit together, and grab a shower before going out again. I was shoving homework and notebooks into my old Boy Scout pack when Philbin put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Ask me about a possible job.”