A Good American (30 page)

By then we had been singing together for so long that we no longer worried about getting the music right. We had begun to focus on other aspects of our performance: certain numbers now came with little dance routines, and we jazzed up our tunes with swinging finger-snaps. We followed our opening number with a languorous version of “Over the Rainbow.” Beyond the glare of the spotlights I could make out the silhouettes of young couples standing close together. I looked anxiously for a flash of Miriam’s gorgeous, flame-colored hair, but she and Kevin were nowhere to be seen. Julie Tippet stood alone by the wall, watching us. I wondered where Eugene had disappeared to.

A prom audience is a very different beast from a funeral congregation. That night everyone had other things on their minds besides us, and after a couple of tunes people sauntered off to refill their cups of punch, or went outside for a cigarette. Our finale was “Toot, Toot, Tootsie.”
With my clever new lyrics and a rousing last chorus crammed full of impressive vocal pyrotechnics, I had been hoping for a rousing send-off, but instead, as our final chord ended, we were greeted with slightly bored applause from the few prom-goers who remained.

So this is how it ends, I thought sadly. My brothers quickly left the stage, but I lingered there for a moment, looking out across the empty room. I didn’t want to relinquish my final moment in the spotlight, even if there was nobody watching me.

Finally I trudged off the stage and went to find my brothers, who were waiting for me outside.

Freddy looked at me, concerned. “You okay?”

“Someone might have stayed to
listen
.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.

Frank looked around him and put his dark glasses back on. “I’m going back inside,” he announced.

“You’re not coming home?” said Teddy.

“Business to attend to,” said Frank.

“Don’t worry, Ted,” I said. “He’ll be home five minutes behind you.”

“What is it, James,” said Frank, “can’t you bear the thought of someone else having fun?”

That was pretty much it in a nutshell, but I wasn’t about to admit it, least of all to him. Frank turned and sauntered back inside. We watched him go.

“He’s not
really
going to score, is he?” asked Teddy after a moment.

I shook my head. “Of course not. Even I have more chance of getting laid tonight than he does.”

Which was an interesting remark, given what happened next.

P
art of me wanted to leave the prom as quickly as possible, but I was unable to pull myself away. I knew that when I headed for home, I would be bidding my childhood good-bye. The future would be coming for me in the dim light of morning, and so I went back inside for one final waltz with my past.

I made my way back to the gym. The corridors thronged with excited seniors. There were one or two girls sobbing in the shadows, but even they were being consoled by a sisterly arm wrapped around their shoulders. Nobody was alone. Nobody except me.

“James Meisenheimer.”

I turned at the sound of my name and saw Mrs. Fitch walking toward me. “Heard you up onstage just now,” she said, smiling. “Nice job.”

I grinned at her. “Thanks. I couldn’t have done it without you.” We had had our final singing lesson together the previous week.

She looked pleased. “So how’s prom night treating you?”

I put my hands into my pockets. “All right, I guess.”

Mrs. Fitch cocked her head to one side. “No date?”

“No date,” I said, as brightly as I could.

“Want to keep me company, then? I’m on patrol.”

“Patrol?”

“Keeping an eye out for illicit activity,” she explained, arching an amused eyebrow.

I shrugged my acquiescence. We walked down the corridor in companionable silence. After three years of singing lessons, Mrs. Fitch and I knew each other pretty well. By then I had more or less gotten over my earlier infatuation with her. I wondered what her husband was doing tonight.

We passed the science labs. Mrs. Fitch opened each door and peered into the darkness. In the final classroom, I saw her stiffen. “There’s someone in here,” she said over her shoulder. She stepped inside and switched on the light. I followed her in. Beneath the blackboard, a curled-up figure had collapsed in a heap next to a pool of vomit. I heard a faint groan. “Do you know who that is?” asked Mrs. Fitch. “I can’t see his face.”

Neither could I, but the lime green tuxedo was unmistakable. “That,” I told her, “is the chairman of the prom committee.”

“Eugene
Jurgenschlitter
?”

Hearing his name, Eugene’s groans grew a little louder.

Mrs. Fitch looked cross. “Oh, heavens. I suppose we should do something,” she sighed. We hauled Eugene upright. He was in bad shape. His jacket had been torn in a couple of places and he stank of stale puke. A crust of dried vomit had formed down one side of his face. He blinked at us miserably.

“Where’s Julie?” he mumbled.

I had a pretty good idea where Julie was, but I figured poor Eugene had enough to deal with just then. We propped him up against the wall with his head between his knees and told him to wait for someone to come and fetch him.

“I’ll send one of the faculty to take him home,” said Mrs. Fitch as we closed the door behind him.

Just beyond the science classrooms were the music rooms. As we reached the room where she taught, Mrs. Fitch turned to me. “Have you got a moment?” she asked. “I’ve been on my feet all evening, and these shoes are killing me. I could do with a sit-down.”

“Of course,” I said.

She smiled at me and pushed open the door. Inside we each unthinkingly assumed the positions we took each week—Mrs. Fitch on the piano stool, me standing to one side. She took off her shoes and began to rub her feet.

“So,” she said, “the diner awaits.” For the last twelve months Mrs. Fitch had sympathetically listened to my complaints about my fate after graduation.

“Like the grim reaper,” I agreed.

“It won’t be that bad,” she said.

“Right now it sure feels that way.”

A small smile played around her lips. “You’re not looking forward to the joys of adulthood?”

“Should I be?”

“Oh, it has its moments.” Mrs. Fitch stood up and walked over to the door. She slipped the bolt across and sat back down on the piano stool. Outside the room’s small window, it was completely dark. The corridors were silent. We could have been the last two people on earth.

“James,” she said, “there’s something I need you to do for me.”

“Of course,” I answered.

“Come here.” She reached out and took my hand. I watched in mute astonishment as my fingers touched the hem of her dress. She pulled my wrist upward. When the tops of her stockings came into view I let out a small cough of disbelief. As the dress continued to ride up her thighs, she opened her legs.

Finally I chanced a look at Mrs. Fitch’s face. Her mouth was slightly open. She was still gripping my wrist, more tightly now. She nodded at me gently and guided my fingers higher. When I touched her for the first time, she let out a small gasp. I froze.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She smiled at me then, and shifted her weight forward on the piano stool. I felt my fingers press up against her more firmly. “I’m just wonderful,” she whispered.

The next thing I knew, I was on my knees, her fingers in my hair.

A while later—I lost all sense of time—she pushed me away and stood up. She turned around and motioned to the back of her dress. “Help me out of this, will you?” she asked. I pulled down the zipper and watched hungrily as she stepped out of her clothes. She stood in front of me wearing only her stockings and a bra, a miracle of cantilevered wonderment.

“Now,” she said, taking a step closer. “Let’s see about you.”

No more words were spoken, until, about a minute later, I said, “Oh!”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Fitch.

Then I said: “Sorry.”

She patted me gently. “That’s all right,” she sighed.

I thought quickly. Mrs. Fitch hadn’t had time to take her bra off. I desperately wanted to see her breasts, but I was unsure how to ask politely. I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively.

“Couldn’t we do that again?”

Mrs. Fitch shook her head.

“It’s just that, you know, in a minute I’ll be—”

She put her hand up to my cheek. “James, please. Stop talking and get off.”

I did as I was told. Without looking at each other we quickly put our clothes back on. She went over to the door and pulled back the latch. I was being dismissed.

By the door I stopped. “Good-bye, James,” said Mrs. Fitch, patting me on the shoulder.

I nodded reluctantly, and trudged off.

“Enjoy the rest of the party,” she called.

THIRTY-FIVE

The following day I started work.

There was no fanfare, no grand ceremony. I just tied my apron around my waist and began peeling potatoes to make hash browns for the town’s hungry churchgoers. Nobody who came in that morning saw anything different; there we were, my father and I, slaving away at the grill, just like always.

But that Sunday morning felt very different, at least for me. All there was before me now was a future filled with eggs, bacon, and toast. And a universe of cheeseburgers. I was to spend my life fulfilling the greedy whims of strangers, one order at a time.

Just in case all that wasn’t enough, I also had Margaret Fitch to think about.

As I pushed sausage links up and down the hot plate, I contemplated my encounter in the music room, beset by a variety of conflicting emotions. There was, of course, dazed disbelief that it had happened at all. Then there was an intense frustration that there was nobody I could brag to about it. (I’m ashamed to say that it was at this point that I
really
began to miss Magnus Kellerman.) I felt guilty, too—I knew that my behavior was unworthy of my grand feelings for Miriam Imhoff. And there was a profound regret that I had missed my chance to see Mrs. Fitch’s breasts.

Most of all, though, I was just plain terrified.

As I began to consider the implications of what we had done, my thoughts inevitably turned to Rankin Fitch. I knew that if he ever discovered that I had screwed his wife, however ineptly, he would wreak an apocalyptic revenge that would ruin my life forever. My imagination ran riot. I saw myself being sent down for a stretch in the state penitentiary, framed by the wily lawyer for a crime that I did not commit. I began to obsess about the Fitches, and what they might do to me. Such an obviously unhappy marriage, I thought, unable to suppress the lump rising in my throat.

That was when it hit me.

Mrs. Fitch—poor, sweet, lovely, sexy Mrs. Fitch!—had fallen in love with me.

Suddenly everything began to make terrible sense. Her advances in the music room that night had been a desperate plea to be rescued from her loveless union with her miniature husband. She had probably adored me for years, but knew that she could not declare her devotion until we were no longer teacher and pupil.

It was all very flattering, but I knew that I wasn’t going to be Mrs. Fitch’s knight in shining armor. There would be no heroic showdown on the courthouse steps between the ardent young lover and the cuckolded husband. Instead I decided to slink away and leave them to their lives together.

After that I began to dread singing at First Christian Church. Mrs. Fitch often played the piano at weddings, and she smiled bravely at me when we caught each other’s eye, but I could see the sadness and disappointment in her face. I wasn’t proud about abandoning her, but I knew it was the right thing to do. Yes, I wanted to see her breasts, but not
that
much.

Instead, I did my best to focus on my exciting new culinary career. In the absence of other options, I decided to try to be the best short-order cook I could possibly be. I immersed myself in my daily chores. By concentrating on the details of each task, I was able—for a while, anyway—to ignore the overall bleakness of my prospects. I discovered a measure of quiet satisfaction in small jobs well done. Nobody but me knew how precisely and efficiently I had chopped that day’s quota of green peppers, but that was all right. It helped me get through each long shift.

Once lunch had ended, Joseph and I got to work prepping for the following day. I enjoyed these afternoons alone with my father. He showed me how to layer up trays of lasagna, watched as I carefully followed his secret recipe for meat loaf. Now that I had officially joined him at the grill, Joseph proudly boasted about me to the regulars who ate breakfast at the bar each morning, telling them all that I was a natural. When he pointed an egg-covered spatula at me and called me his partner, it almost made the whole thing worthwhile.

Soon after I began working full-time, Rosa started to come in every morning for a cup of coffee on her way to school. She sat at the counter and sipped her drink, watching me as I fried bacon and buttered mountains of toast. No matter how much I whistled, no matter how loudly I laughed at the customers’ jokes, she persisted with her silent scrutiny over the rim of her cup. I didn’t fool her for a minute.

When Joseph and I had finished work for the day, I would sometimes stay behind in the diner and switch off all the lights. The lingering smells of the day’s cooking took on a warm intimacy in the darkness. I sat at the counter, enjoying the solitude. Every so often I would feed a fistful of nickels into the jukebox. My nighttime listening back then was Bill Haley and His Comets, Pat Boone, the Four Aces, and some young punk called Elvis Presley. I allowed my mind to wander, adrift on a sea of bright, uncomplicated melody. As the music washed over me, I wondered how I might clamber out of the black hole that I had inadvertently tumbled into.

A
few months after graduation, Miriam Imhoff and Kevin Kinney got married. By then Miriam was about seven months pregnant.

We sang at the wedding, of course. Miriam’s father glowered furiously throughout the ceremony next to his silently weeping wife. Their daughter had been supposed to go to university a long way from here—Harvard, Princeton, somewhere like that. They hadn’t paid for all those private tutors to have her knocked up by some sweaty, bone-headed jock. The groom’s family, in contrast, thought it all a tremendous lark. The swelling in the front of Miriam’s wedding dress was a source of loud sniggers and admiring nudges. The Kinneys smirked and the Imhoffs shuddered through the service, the two families barely looking at each other. But I may have provided the oddest spectacle of all as we stood at the front of the church and sang “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You.” I stood ramrod straight, chest puffed out, and sang my broken heart out as tears ran steadily down my cheeks.

Two months later, Miriam gave birth to twin girls. I grew accustomed to having my heart crushed every time I saw them roll by in their enormous station wagon. The fact that Miriam was now married and a mother to boot did nothing to diminish my silent devotion. I had adored her so completely, worshipped her so devoutly, that I couldn’t simply turn those emotions off. I was unable to turn away and look elsewhere. It was enough just to have Miriam close by, if only to gaze upon from a distance. So when, the following year, Kevin Kinney joined the army and moved his family to Kansas, I was devastated. All of a sudden there was a gaping, Miriam-sized hole in my life. I had come to define myself, at least in part, by my hopeless love for her, and her absence threatened to unravel me completely.

One easy avenue of escape still lay in my aunt’s library of Wodehouse novels, although the refuge provided by those daft aristocrats and steel-eyed maiden aunts was only temporary. Soon I would be reluctantly pressing the pages back together, bracing myself for reentry into the world I was trying so hard to escape. But from the bliss of all that reading, an idea took root inside me.

I decided to write a book myself.

Without telling anyone, I saved up and bought a portable typewriter. It came with a sturdy carrying case that clipped neatly onto the base of the machine. I kept it hidden beneath a bench in the back room of the diner. Every night I lugged the typewriter to one of the booths, where I would insert a sheet of blank paper and stare thoughtfully at the keys, waiting for inspiration to strike. I should have been trying to decide what to write about, but it was more fun to dream about what would happen once my novel was published. I would move to New York and embark upon a life of celebrity and glamour. I dreamed of bohemian parties in brightly lit Manhattan apartments, of cocktail-fueled brilliance and beautiful women. I knew that P. G. Wodehouse now lived on Long Island, and I supposed that he and I would become fast friends. We would compare notes on current projects, and nonchalantly toss off wickedly funny plot twists over long, martini-drenched lunches. He would dedicate his next Jeeves and Wooster novel to me. I, the grateful young apprentice, would acknowledge his influence in my next acclaimed blockbuster. Critics would note this in their rapturous reviews, and ponder in print whether one day I might even surpass the master.

For now, though, I was stuck in Beatrice, Missouri, chained to an unforgiving hot plate and reeking of fried onions until I could think of something to write about. Then one day my novel crystallized before me: I would just tell the very story I was so desperate to live. My hero would be a humble young writer from the rural Midwest whose brilliant first novel thrust him into the literary limelight and brought him fame and fortune in New York.

Now that I had my subject, the words flew out of me. I named my fictional alter ego Buck Gunn—a strong, unpretentious name, I thought, manly and indisputably American (unlike, well,
Meisenheimer
). I gave Buck all the adventures I wanted for myself, dispatching him into the jungle of Gotham, where he encountered an army of eccentric geniuses, jaded celebrities, and exotic goddesses, all of whom wanted to sleep with him. He’d had a girl back home, of course, a beautiful redhead, his high school sweetheart. She had begged him not to go east. Did Buck Gunn listen to her tearful entreaties to stay? Did he stop to console her in her sorrow? He did not. He simply patted her on the cheek and rode out of town, not once looking back at her as she lay on the sidewalk, prostrate with grief.

I enjoyed writing that scene.

Every evening I hauled out the typewriter and wrote long into the night. I did not tell a soul what I was doing; this was my little secret. I was unconcerned with tedious stuff like grammar and spelling; that, I reasoned, was what editors were for. Besides, I did not want to dilute my raw talent by worrying about humdrum concerns with syntax, and the like. Gradually, the pile of pages grew.

As a result of my literary endeavors, my days at the diner became easier to bear. I consoled myself with the thought that this would not last much longer. The stories that I spun each night were a buffer against the dread tedium of my existence. The staccato rim shots of the typewriter were a percussive hymn to my future life, far away from here. I bashed away at the keys like a man possessed, every downward jab freighted with boundless, impossible hope.

I
n the spring of 1956, Freddy moved out of the house. Joseph had never been able to forgive him for his decision to go and work for Oscar Niedermeyer, and the atmosphere at home had remained arctic ever since. The rest of us had been tiptoeing around the two of them for so long that we were relieved when Freddy finally carried his suits across the lawn and moved in with our grandmother next door. By then Jette was seventy-seven years old. A few months earlier there had been a small fire in her kitchen after she had set a pan of grease to heat on the stove and then fallen asleep in front of the television. The house stank of scalded fat for weeks afterward. She moved slowly now, her limbs tight with arthritis. Her eyesight had deteriorated. Too much television, she would cheerfully explain to us all, but we all knew the truth: she was getting old.

Although she would never have admitted it, Jette had always been fondest of Freddy. She saw the kindness in his eyes, and worried about him as a result. The twins had no need of anyone’s sympathy or concern, and I was well hidden behind my own defenses. Freddy’s big heart left him ill-equipped to deal with life’s dangers and disappointments, and his grandmother loved him a little more for it.

Each morning Freddy prepared breakfast for them both and read the front page of the
Optimist
out loud to her—her eyes could no longer bear the strain of all that small print. It was Freddy who picked Jette up when she stumbled. It was Freddy who cooked for her and bathed her. Before long, there were precious few secrets between those two.

Little by little, with Freddy there to look after her, Jette’s grasp on the world loosened. Later we would discover that her brain had been ravaged by postencephalitic Parkinson’s disease. All we knew back then was that sometimes her universe slowed to an impossible crawl. Tasks that had once taken a moment to perform now took an entire morning. Freddy once returned from work late in the afternoon to find Jette sitting at the kitchen table, quite motionless, a forkful of lunch in her hand, frozen halfway to her mouth.

Thankfully, Jette was unaware of the unsettling spectacle she presented: as her brain changed gears, it hoodwinked itself. She had no idea that her internal clock was crawling forward a thousand times more slowly than the rest of the world. She began to mumble disjointed German phrases, a mournful echo of long ago. Her brain staged a full retreat from the horrors of old age, and her punctured body mirrored that inert collapse. Now she was just a mess of enfeebled limbs, chaotically arranged in her favorite chair.

When he wasn’t looking after his grandmother, Freddy spent as much time as he could at Morrie’s house. By then his best friend was nearly eight feet tall, and could barely move. He spent most of his time on the floor of his parents’ living room—he had grown too large for beds or sofas—splayed out on a makeshift pallet of rugs and cushions. His immune system was so fragile that even a common cold posed a serious threat. His overburdened heart still beat on, but there was no hope left.

My brother was twenty years old, too young for all this. He spent his days at the funeral parlor, shepherding strangers through their grief. Then he returned home to tend to his own dying loved ones. By then both Jette and Morrie were just waiting for the end. There was nothing Freddy could do but wait with them. There was no consoling hand on the shoulder for him when he mourned, no softly whispered words of comfort. He faced his sorrow alone.

E
ven with Freddy gone, our bedroom was still crowded.

In the fall of 1957, Frank and Teddy began their senior year. They were the undisputed stars of the varsity football and baseball teams, although by then they were far more interested in chasing girls than sporting glory. The subject had been a sore spot between the two of them ever since the night of my senior prom. Frank had returned home long after midnight. The next morning his neck and lower lip bore evidence of substantial bruising and abrasions. It was the sort of damage that could only have been inflicted by the metalwork on Julie Tippet’s teeth. According to Frank, he had found Julie alone and drunk in the gym. It transpired that it was Julie who had borrowed a car that night, not Eugene, and before long she and Frank were on their way to Gants Bluff, in convoy with a score of other lovebirds. Julie hiccuped morosely as she drove, which caused the car to swerve precariously into the middle of the road. Frank had been scared out of his wits, but the journey was a risk worth taking.