The Clarinet Polka (57 page)

The first thing you see is her eyes. Anyhow, that's what's always got to me. She'd been there, you know, watching the crucifixion of Our Lord, and she's seen every evil thing that anybody ever did to anybody ever since, and her eyes aren't just sad—they're way beyond sad—it's like after seeing all that evil and suffering in the world, she's just completely blown away.

I had no plan whatsoever of doing this, but I said, “Holy Mother, I commend to you the spirit of my friend, Ron Jacobson. He used to say, ‘My strength is the strength of ten because my heart is pure,' and he meant it as a joke, but his heart was pure. He was the nicest guy I ever knew. He got killed in Vietnam. And he wasn't Polish, and he wasn't even Catholic, but, please, Holy Mother, take him into your care and watch over him.”

Well, I must have passed out after that—or anyhow something happened—and I woke up again and everything felt real quiet. I'd thought that Our Lady of Częstochowa had been looking away from me, maybe looking off into eternity, but I was wrong, she was looking straight into me. I felt like this enormous power coming from her, and I knew she could see right down into my soul.

Well, a picture's just a picture, right? Even if it's old and holy and there's been lots of miracles happened because of it. But it's not the picture, it's what's behind the picture, you know what I mean? And what was behind that picture was Mary, the Blessed Virgin, the mother of our Lord, Christ Jesus. And I felt her there, and I wanted to pray for myself, but I didn't feel worthy. I felt like a total piece of shit, if you want to know the truth. So finally I prayed the only prayer I could, which was just, “Help.”

I knew after that I should go home, so I got up and went stumbling out of the church and went home.

The key to the house was still on my key ring with my car keys, so I unlocked the front door and just kept right on going, I guess on automatic pilot—trying to be quiet, you know, so I wouldn't wake Old Bullet Head—and I had a piss and climbed on up to my little room in the attic just the way I'd done a zillion times before—coming home dead drunk in high school. My bed was all made up for whatever guest might turn up, and I just crawled into it and passed out. It never crossed my mind that I lived in a trailer out on Bow Street.

About dawn I woke up and somebody was sitting there watching me sleep. Really scared me. I sat up and it was my sister.

“Aw, Linny,” I said, “I'm so fucked up.”

“It's okay, Jimmy,” she said. “Just go to sleep now. Just go to sleep.”

*   *   *

I slept all day and when I woke up, I felt pretty rocky but my mind was clear. I lay there staring up at those
Playboy
bunnies plastered all over my ceiling, and I thought, hell, man, you graduated from high school in 1962. What are those damn things still doing up there?

It was real quiet. Naturally I felt like an asshole. Even as drunk as I'd been, how could I have forgotten I didn't live at home anymore? I could hear my sister playing the piano, some pretty classical piece, the notes far away, drifting up the stairs, maybe Chopin, and I was going over all of it in my head—you know, Janice kissing me, and getting loaded and stumbling into the church and praying for Jacobson and all that, and it took me awhile to reassemble all those bits and pieces, and I thought, oh, Christ, everything's a mess.

I got up, pulled on some clothes, and went downstairs. My sister was flipping through some music books. “Mom and Dad gone out?” I said.

She nodded. “They're over at Uncle Stas's.”

I went in the kitchen and opened the icebox and poured myself a glass of milk, and then something stopped me. I don't know what. I looked out into the hallway, and I could see the sun coming in the windows around the front door—shining, you know, down the hall and into the kitchen—and it was so damn quiet I could hear my sister breathing all the way out in the dining room. I got that eerie feeling you can get sometimes— Well, it's not just that everything's familiar, it's that you've been there before.

I walked into the dining room, and Linda looked up at me, and I said, “Hey, you remember that night you gave me the polka lecture?”

“Oh, sure,” she said. “That was another time when you came home drunk and slept it off the whole next day.”

“Yeah, that's right,” I said. “Yeah, that's exactly right. Hey, play something for me.”

She gave me a little smile, and then she just started playing—something she'd memorized, you know. And I don't think I ever in my life listened to somebody playing the piano the way I listened to her that day. It was a real serious piece, and I couldn't begin to describe it to you, but believe me, it was complicated. And I swear I heard every damn complicated thing in it.

“That's Bach,” she said. “On the pianoforte, that's as good as it gets— Okay, Jimmy, tonight's my turn,” and she took me out to dinner at Franky Rzeszutko's. Of course that's where she'd want to go—back to where the nights were magical when we were growing up.

It was nice being with my sister, drinking an iced pitcher of beer and eating the combination dinner. “What did Mom and Dad say?” I asked her. “There I am stumbling into the house last night— God, I feel like such an idiot.”

“Mom was really mad at you, but Dad said, ‘What do you want him to do? I figure it's better he comes home when he's drunk instead of driving around and killing himself.'”

I had to laugh at that. “Well, that's big of him.”

Sitting there with Linda, I couldn't shake this feeling—I don't know how to describe it. Like things coming around full circle, or something like that. And I had these real clear memories of her as a kid—sitting at a table there at Franky's with her glasses and her bangs and her patent-leather shoes and her coloring book. She was such a serious little girl. I used to clown around a lot just to see if I could get a smile out of her. And it hit me I'd been neglecting her for months—like I couldn't remember the last time we'd had a real conversation.

Well, I told her about going into the church and praying to the Holy Mother, and a little bit about having dinner at the Dłuwieckis', but I didn't tell her about Janice kissing me. Maybe I should have. Yeah, I probably would have felt better if I'd told her—or told somebody—and Linda was just about the only person I could tell, you know what I mean? I don't know why I didn't tell her.

So we're talking about one thing or another, and Linda says, “Janice called for you. Around two.”

“Oh, yeah? So what'd you say? He got dead drunk last night and he's upstairs sleeping it off?”

“Oh, sure. Of course. That's exactly what I said— She said to tell you she's got a lot of homework. You're welcome to stop by there later on if you want.” She kind of shrugged when she said that.

I looked at my sister, and I could feel where she was headed, and it was bothering the hell out of me anyway, so I said, “Oh, God, Linny, I don't know what to do.”

I thought for a minute she wasn't going to take me up on that one, but then she said, “The funny thing is, Jimmy, she's not too young for you. But you're sure as hell too old for her.”

“Yeah, that makes sense in a weird kind of way.”

We just looked at each other for a minute. “She's a wonderful girl,” Linda said. “I can see why you love her. But she's in high school.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Yeah, well— Okay, I
will
tell you about it. You know, everybody's talking.”

“I figured they were. I got the big-time lecture from Mom.”

“Oh, I know. She's worried sick. She thinks Janice is going to be pregnant by spring.”

“Yeah, that's what she said.”

“I know you wouldn't do that, Jimmy, but— It's just that you're not a kid anymore, and Janice is. You're a grown man with a grown man's needs. Doesn't she deserve the chance to be a kid for a few more years?”

“Linny, you're not saying anything I haven't thought myself. I'd rather die than hurt her. But what am I supposed to do?”

The Holy Mother, you know, doesn't have a body down here in the world. So when she wants to act directly in the world, she usually uses a human being to do it for her. Linda opened up her purse and got out her checkbook and wrote me a check for five hundred dollars. “What's this?” I said.

“You know that buddy of yours from the air force? The one who lives in Austin?”

“Yeah. Jeff Doren.”

“Well, he must be out of the service by now.”

“Yeah, he's been out for about a year.”

“Okay,” she said, “what are you waiting for?”

*   *   *

When we got home, I called Jeff and I said, “Well, I'm a little late, but I'm on my way.”

He said, “You're never late, Koprowski. Whenever you show up, you're right on time.”

He was working for Braniff. That was an airline they had in those days, operating out of Texas. It went belly-up in the early eighties, so maybe you've never heard of it, but it used to be one of the major carriers in the States. “You think I could get on there?” I asked him.

“You know, I think you might have a pretty good chance. My supervisor was just bitching to me about how short we are. How fast can you get out here?”

So after pissing around in Raysburg for a year and a half, I got everything done in a day and a half. I don't know why it seemed so important to me to do it, but I cleaned out my old room up there in the attic. I hauled all those ridiculous clothes from high school off to the Sally Ann, and I packed up that picture of me and Dorothy Pliszka at the senior prom, and my yearbooks, and my football trophies, and, you know, all that nostalgia stuff, and I crammed it into a couple cartons and shoved them into the back of the basement—
way
back, if you know what I mean. And I ripped down all those damn
Playboy
bunnies. And then I took Linda up there and said, “Now isn't this a nice place for you to practice your trumpet?”

“Oh, Jimmy, it's so sad!”

“No, it's not. Everybody's got to leave home sometime. Just keep the bed there for when I come back to visit.”

I closed my bank account and bought some whiskey and beer so I wouldn't get thirsty driving to Texas. Gave notice on my trailer, slapped new tires on my car and tuned the sucker, broke the news to Vick Dobranski, told him I was sorry I didn't give him at least a couple weeks' notice. “Aw, hell,” he said, “I don't care about that. Good luck to you, Jimmy. You're a good worker when you're halfway sober.”

I had a few drinks with Georgie Mondrowski and said good-bye to him. “Hey, I'm really going to miss you, buddy,” he said, which kind of surprised me. Well, he was my best friend, and I was going to miss him too. I said good-bye to Mom and Dad and Linda. Got some road maps and worked out my route. I wasn't going to bust my ass driving. The first day I figured would put me in Nashville, the second day somewhere between Little Rock and Dallas, and the third day in Austin.

So what about Janice? On the list of shitty things I've done in my life, this one sits pretty high, but I just couldn't face her. I was afraid if I looked into those big blue eyes of hers and tried to tell her I was leaving town, I'd end up not going anywhere— Well, no, it was even worse than that.

When it came to the topic of Janice, I kind of switched back and forth between total panic and deep denial. Like half the time I couldn't even admit to myself how serious it was. But what if I'd decided to talk to her about it? I mean, I couldn't imagine doing that, but just suppose I did. Well, she might be real surprised and say, “Oh, I thought we were just friends,” but somehow I was pretty sure that's not what she'd say. And then what? Knowing the kind of kid she was, she'd— I don't know, she'd be writing me a letter every ten minutes, and I don't know what all, and even though I was in Texas, I'd still be screwing up her life.

So I told Linda to say good-bye for me—to tell Janice I had to leave real sudden because there was a job opening for me, and that I'd write to her. Which I fully intended to do.

*   *   *

Did I need to say good-bye to Mrs. Constance Bradshaw? Hell, I must have thought I did—maybe that I owed it to her or something. I can't quite recall what I was thinking about her at that point. The sensible thing to do would have been just to hit it on down the road and not give Connie a second thought, right? But sometimes the sensible thing ain't what's happening. So anyhow I called her up. “Great to hear from you,” she says. “I thought you'd written me off.”

I'm going, “Aw, come on, honey—just been up to my eyeballs, you know what I mean? So what are you doing tomorrow afternoon? Thought I'd pop out and see you.” Terrific, she says, it'd be nice to catch up. Why didn't I come out for dinner?

So I drove out to St. Stevens on whatever day it was. I'd given my TV to Mondrowski—hell, I could always salvage a TV—but I had my stereo and my tools, and all that junk you accumulate that seems absolutely essential to the maintenance of human life. Took up the trunk and most of the backseat. I figured I'd crash at Connie's, and if that didn't work out, I'd just drive west until I crapped out and grab a cheap motel out in Ohio somewhere.

She met me at the door and gave me a little kiss, and she was wearing one of her leather outfits and— Well, it's not like she was all tarted up or anything, but she had made an effort—you know, her hair and makeup all nice—and I felt that ZAP between us just like in the old days. She got me a beer. She'd been cutting back on the sauce, she said, so she was drinking white wine.

Well, if you're a total pig, you go to bed first and tell her later, but I couldn't do that, so I broke the news to her straight out. I don't know what I expected. Like I wasn't expecting her to jump up and down with joy and say, “Wow, I'm so glad this is the last time I'll ever lay eyes on you, you hopeless asshole,” but on the other hand, I didn't think she'd be, you know, crushed. But she looked pretty damn crushed. “I just don't believe you,” she said. “You don't see me or even call me for two months, and then you come out here to tell me you're leaving town.”