Bingo Brown and the Language of Love (8 page)

He—
he
was supposed to leave the nest, and they—
they
were supposed to suffer from something called empty nest syndrome. Instead they—
they
had left him. And he—
he
had the disease. And it was an adult disease! How could someone eleven and eleven-twelfths be expected to handle an adult disease?

And—
and
how could they even consider having a second child when they had given their first a disease?

Sighing, he picked up the phone and dialed his grandmother’s number. The phone rang so long he thought no one was going to answer. Then his mother’s voice said cheerfully, “Hello.”

She probably thought it was a real estate call. Bingo said with forced cheer, “Mom, hi. Sorry, it’s just me again.”

“Hi, Bingo.”

“I just wondered if you’d had time to think about my offer, for supper.”

“Not really.”

“Mom, listen,” he went on in a rush, “I don’t want to say anything that will upset you, but have you ever heard of something called empty nest syndrome?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I think I’ve got it.”

“Bingo, Bingo, I’ll come if I can.”

And she was gone.

B
INGO WAS MAKING A
sign for his bedroom window. It said
DO NOT DISTURB.
A threatening sketch completed the sign.

The necessity for a sign of this nature had become clear, because last night Wentworth had come over four times.

Finally, at this fourth interruption, Bingo had lost control.

“Wentworth,” he had cried, “I’ve told you all I know about talking to girls. You talk to them like they’re perfectly normal, everyday human beings and then suddenly—and, Wentworth, I don’t know how this happens—but suddenly you’re talking a different language. You’re saying one thing and you’re meaning another. There’s a lot of eye contact involved. You can’t do it looking down at your feet. You can’t do it over the phone. Well, I can, but you can’t. Now that is all I know!”

Bingo had gone back to bed and the series of burning questions that had been troubling him.

When I am a man, if something goes wrong with my life, one of those cruel U-turns of fate like my mom had, will I want to come home like my mom? Will I want to sleep in this bed? What color will the Smurfs be then?

Will I be able to come home? Won’t there be a child in this room? In this bed? On these Smurf sheets?

At last Bingo had fallen into a troubled sleep.

Now it was morning, and making the sign made Bingo feel better. At last he was doing something positive.

He put away his magic markers and set the sign in the window. Then he went outside to see how it would look to someone ready to knock.

Arms crossed, head to the side, he judged his work. Any person in their right mind, seeing such a sign, would not knock, but then …

Shaking his head, he started back into the house. He was at the steps when the mailman handed him the letters. The top letter was for him.

It was another letter from Melissa. One yesterday, now one today, and both on top.

Bingo thought it was as if Melissa’s letters rose to the surface, as if they were lighter than bills and junk mail, because they were always on top, always.

It didn’t make him love her again, but still he admitted Melissa’s letters were probably the nicest things the post office had to offer.

He turned the envelope over. On the back was written:

Deliver

De letter

De sooner

De better

De later

De letter

De madder

I getter

Bingo sighed. Now he knew he no longer loved Melissa.

As a writer, words were naturally important to Bingo. He was affected deeply by what people wrote. He had once fallen out of love with a girl named Mamie Lou just because she had written a letter to Laura Ingalls Wilder that said, “I know that you are dead, but please write if you can and tell me where you get your ideas.”

And, Bingo thought, he was especially affected by what people wrote on the backs of envelopes.

Yes, he no longer loved Melissa. Regretfully, he opened the flap. As he took out the letter, he smelled the fragrance of an unfamiliar flower.

Then he saw the heading:
“From the Desk of Cici”

Cici!

Bingo drew in a deep breath. He should have known, but he was in such a state of personal agitation that he was blind to what was going on around him. In his agitated blindness, he had fallen out of love with a girl he had never been in love with!

This was the letter!
The
letter!

Bingo closed his eyes. If the first words in
the
letter were “Dear Melissa,” then he was honor bound—
honor bound
—to put it back in the envelope without reading it.

Even though this would mean that he would never know what Cici wrote to Melissa—and it had to be something about him—maybe even something hurtful. Maybe something to make Melissa fall out of love with him! And even though he was out of love with Melissa, he did not want her to fall out of love with him.

If his eyes—when he opened them—saw two words, “Dear Melissa,” then he would have to—be honor bound to—put the letter back in the envelope.

He opened his eyes. “Dear Melissa.” Bingo read faster.

I got his picture!

I went to his house. He opened the door himself! He said, “Hi,” and smiled. I was so blissed out that I honestly didn’t mind he had freckles! He held the door open. I almost died! I went into his living room
and
into his kitchen. Melissa, guess what? He’d been cooking! In an apron!

We went out in the backyard. He smiled. I took his picture. Melissa, I was so blissed out I got my thumb in front of the lens. He smiled again. I took another picture. Then a terrible thing happened. This nerd next door stuck his head over the hedge. Bingo and I had to go in the house to get rid of him.

We went in the kitchen. He put on his apron, and he looked sooo cute. We started talking. I was holding a poodle. He was cooking. We were having a blast!

Then—booo—something really awful happened. His mom came home. I was hoping she’d say, “Stay for supper,” but she didn’t. She freaked out. Like, the whole time I was explaining why I was there, her eyes were shooting darts at me. Finally she goes, “Bingo is not allowed to have friends in the house when either his father or I”—blah, blah, blah.

I hope you like the picture. I kept one for myself, the one of him with the poodle. I love that dog.

Bingo bent closer. It looked to him as if the word “dog” had originally been “boy.” She had originally written, “I love that boy.” The
d
had been a
b!
The
g
had been a
y!
Bingo could see it plain as day. He bent to read the rest.

Write and tell me if you like the picture I took for you. I’ll go over to his house as often as I can so I’ll have lots of interesting things to write you about.

Your #1 friend,

Cici

The two
i’s
had hearts over them instead of dots.

Bingo’s photo had fluttered unnoticed from the envelope to the floor. Now he picked it up, and looked at it with new intensity.

He went directly to the bathroom. He stood looking at himself in the mirror.

Could this be the face that two girls loved?

His eyes gazed first at the face in the mirror, then at the face in the photograph. Could there be something in this face that he did not see? What was it? Where was it?

And one final burning question: How long would it last?

B
INGO WAS LOOKING INTO
the dim recesses of the medicine cabinet. He had noticed last week that the Yogi Bear vitamins were gone. Bingo shook the can of mousse. They were out of that, too.

Every drugstore product that had brought him comfort in the past had been swept from the cabinet as he himself had been swept from the family. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find himself actually gone, vanished.

He turned the cabinet door around and peered in the mirror. No, he was still there.

As Bingo was closing the cabinet, giving up, his eyes spotted an unfamiliar container. He reached for it at once.

Perhaps this bottle had been there all along behind the mousse, he thought. Perhaps it was a product that his parents had even concealed behind the mousse.

He took it in his hand and read the unfamiliar words: Skin Bracer.

Well, everything about him needed bracing, Bingo thought, that was for sure. Might as well start with the skin. He applied the skin bracer to both cheeks and waited.

His skin was not braced. Maybe his skin was a little cooler. It certainly smelled better, but Bingo could not say it was braced.

Bingo decided to do something he had never done before—read the directions.

“Apply after shaving,” the directions said.

Bingo drew in his breath.

After shaving!

Bingo felt these were probably the two most important words he had ever read in his life. He was so moved he had to close his eyes and hold onto the basin for support.

He clung for a moment, head down, knuckles whitening. Then, slowly, he raised his head and had eye contact with himself.

For days Bingo had felt like the helpless victim of the entire world, a toy in the turbulent mainstream of life. Now, at last, he could do something positive for himself. With one stroke of the razor, he could put childhood behind him forever.

Bingo reached for his father’s razor, swallowed, and clicked it on.

The ensuing buzz was the most comforting sound Bingo had ever heard. He rubbed the razor tentatively over his chin. Then his cheeks.

Bingo moved with special care over his upper lip, where, for all he knew, a latent mustache lay below the surface.

Then he went over his sideburns; they were latent, too. In his eagerness, he even took off a little bit of one eyebrow.

Then Bingo clicked off the razor and stepped back for the result.

It took his breath away.

His face was—he loved this description—clean shaven.

He actually liked himself better without that part of his eyebrow. And—and! It gave him a quizzical look, as if he questioned the very nature of existence—which he did.

He looked at his reflection for a long time, turning this way and that. Finally satisfied, he reached for the skin bracer.

Bingo splashed it on liberally. It was bracing! It was so bracing it stung. It actually brought tears to Bingo’s eyes.

The phone rang.

Blinking back well-deserved tears, Bingo went to the phone and picked it up.

Fortunately the phone had a long cord so Bingo could take the phone back into the bathroom and watch himself in the mirror as he talked.

“Hell-o!” This was the first cheerful hello he had heard from himself in months.

“Bingo, it’s your dad.”

“Oh, hi.”

“Are you busy?”

“Not really.”

“Well, listen, what say we get some flowers and go see your mom?”

Bingo lifted his shortened eyebrow quizzically. He loved it. He loved it! He looked like, a famous rock star. He looked like—

“Bingo, are you there?”

“Yes.”

Bingo brought the eyebrow down. It looked good down, too! Down it was a suggestive snarl, like the curl of Elvis Presley’s lip. But up! Up it turned him into a totally different person. Up! Down! Yes, up was better, but down wasn’t shabby.

“Bingo, what are you doing?”

“Nothing. Nothing, Dad. I’m not doing anything. I’m talking to you.”

“Well, I’ll get the flowers, Bingo, and pick you up in, oh, a half hour.”

“I”—up—“will be waiting.” Up! Up!

The last two ups gave Bingo a sobering thought.

Now that he had this eyebrow, he would have to use its powers as carefully as a person with a black belt. Perhaps even have cards printed up. “Warning: The bearer of this card has a black belt in eyebrow.”

Bingo smiled. With one final up/down, he backed reluctantly away from the bathroom mirror.

B
INGO SAT BESIDE HIS
father in the car. His father’s flowers, a dozen yellow roses, were in a box on the back seat.

On Bingo’s lap was a small casserole, Hot Dog Surprise, although Bingo knew the hot dogs weren’t going to be much of a surprise, since they were now sticking up through the grated cheese.

When Bingo’s dad had proposed taking the flowers to his mom, Bingo had been so exhilarated by his new eyebrow that he had not questioned the wisdom of the plan. He had rushed directly into the kitchen, whipped open
The Three Ingredient Cookbook,
thrown together Hot Dog Surprise, and gone out on the front steps.

He had sat on the steps, smiling in anticipation of their triumph.

Now, gazing down at the small unappealing casserole, Bingo realized how doomed the plan was.

Burning questions plagued him as they sped toward his grandmother’s condo.

Was this his role in life, to accompany the less fortunate on doomed missions of the heart? First Wentworth, now his own father? Was he himself doomed to share the stupidity of others forever? Was this the price one paid for skill in the language of love? Was—

They pulled up in front of the condo. Bingo could see his face in the side mirror as he got out of the car. His face was so flushed he could not see his freckles, but he knew they were there. “Freckles are forever,” his father had told him once.

Even his new eyebrow seemed to have lost some of its power. It just looked like a shortened version of his other eyebrow.

Bingo and his father made their way up the walk. His dad was holding the box of roses over his arm like a bridesmaid would. Bingo held his casserole in front of him.

Bingo’s dad rang the bell.

“They’re not here,” Bingo said immediately.

“Give them a chance.”

His father rang again. His grandmother’s doorbell was one of those cheerful, uplifting ding-dong ones, but Bingo was neither cheered nor uplifted.

They waited in silence. Bingo shifted his weight to one hip.