Tales of the Madman Underground (23 page)

I guess if I was serious about my rule that you have to love any girl that cracks you up, I was stuck loving Mom.

 

 

Browning went on being creepy about Darla the whole way home. The truth was I was too fucked-up to ever have the confidence to try for her. Drunkenly groping Bonny—when she was drunk enough to pretend she didn’t know I was doing it or got carried away—was as far as I’d gotten (and now that I never got drunk, that looked like that was over). Darla probably would know exactly what to do, and would expect me to do it. That scared the shit out of me.

As Browning drove me home, we gossiped a little about whether the minister at First Assembly of God was going to come out against voting for Paul’s dad; it might matter because they had more real churchies and fewer C&Es than any other church in town. We worked through all the churches and how they voted, and shit that didn’t matter shit, so that by the time he dropped me off, Browning and me were friends again. Somebody liked me, even if it was a dirty old man. At least it was a
straight
dirty old man.

I trotted up the steps. I might have as much as an hour before I’d have to start walking out to McDonald’s.

A cat convention in the living room.

Six open cans of tuna, fresh from the store.

The little fuckers were jammed around each can, pounding it down. I yelled “Mom!” several times, just standing there, but she was already gone.

Besides something for the cats to share, she’d have bought herself an expensive blouse or a nice necklace. Very often she left some dumb present that I didn’t like—a faggy Qiana shirt, a carved-leather belt, a record album with a guy on the front she thought was good-looking, something that I wouldn’t like so she could tell me I ought to like it—on my bed upstairs. In the first hour after she got into one of my cans, she always was just crazy in love with everyone.

But after her little celebration, most of that money can was going into the cash register at Mister Peepers. She’d be buying rounds all night, hanging all over guys, being the center of everything. Then she’d come back here with Neil or some other guy she got off the rack at the Asshole Store, to get high and laid.

Fuck. Twice in two days. I could lose a month’s worth every three months or so, like I had been since freshman year, but I couldn’t fucking lose it every fucking two fucking days. Fuck fuck fuck. She couldn’t keep doing this.

But if I could stop her I’d already have stopped her.

I dragged my feet up the stairs, step by step. There were more money cans hidden in my room than anywhere else, so that was the place to start looking. I thought about just sitting down for a good cry.

Then I saw the great news, through the open door of my room. My dirty painter’s pants were in a different corner.

The rest of the room was undisturbed, and there were no little gifts to me like that time she left me a Fleet-wood Mac album on my bed because she thought Mick looked like a good lay. She’d just gotten the twenty from my painter’s pants, and everything else was safe.

I’d probably never been happier to lose three hours of my life. My spirits rising, I checked in the pockets of the painter’s pants and found nothing but lint, then ran around the house like a crazy bastard for like ten minutes, careful not to go too near any of my stashes, as if just looking at one might give it away.

Holy fucking lucky Jesus. It had worked out okay. All she’d taken was that twenty. I went back upstairs almost cheerful.

I realized that she had left my door open, so a fresh pile of catshit lay in the middle of my bed. I cleaned that up and went downstairs.

I still missed that twenty, and I was still mad that I had to live like this. But I took a deep breath, and my back relaxed, and I stopped seeing the world down a blood-red tube. I rubbed my tear-streaked face.

It occurred to me that accidents happened to Mom’s cats all the time. She wouldn’t take them to the vet because the vet used “chemicals and ucky ucky modern medicine”—and cost money. She wouldn’t get them spayed or neutered at the Gist County Humane Society because “kitties need to be free and the world needs lots of kitties and flowers and sunshine”—and because GCHS charged three bucks a cat, the price of a pitcher. She wouldn’t do anything to keep them from roaming. So since the cats had come into our lives—the same week, come to admit it, that I’d started drinking and she’d given up on being a mother, which I knew from the date of the first IOU in my book was May 17, 1970—I’d buried thirty-three of them, and maybe another ten had vanished.

Didn’t seem like it would be such a bad idea to sort of select the next one I’d be burying, instead of leaving it to chance.

It felt weird to think about it. The cats actually liked and trusted me more than they did Mom, because I didn’t lose it and scream and hit them, and sometimes I fed them. So I knew if I found the bedshitter, I’d have no problem taking him off somewhere to kill him. And Mom never could stand to look at the bodies, so all I’d have to do would be bring the bedshitter back quietly and just plant cat number thirty-four with all the others.

And whatever I did would be quicker and gentler than a coon or a dog. Maybe I could just get Danny, who hunted birds every fall, to shoot the bedshitter out in a field; then it would look completely innocent.

I wasn’t sure whether I was thinking about this because I wanted my bed clean, or because I wanted to get even with Mom for taking that twenty. Browning had been proud of me, and you should’ve seen how nice I soldered those joints.

But come to admit it, it was my fault, too. I’d just left that twenty right there in my pants pockets with my pants out in plain sight, and I knew good and well that Mom went through the pockets of everything, all the time. She had my two little-kid sport coats, from back when we used to go to First United Methodist, hanging in the guest room closet—souvenirs or something—and last year I’d caught her going through
their
pockets, I guess looking for some long-forgotten offering envelope.

So I should have hid that twenty, put it in a stash or changed it to the pocket of my fresh jeans. Losing it was completely my fault; thanks to me getting stupid and being in a hurry, Mom was sitting in Mister Peepers. Some guy in sales (big-lapelled suit, wide blue tie, big teeth yellowed by tobacco and coffee) was nodding and laughing that big
uff uff uff
laugh they do.

She’d be telling him that Watergate was all just part of the plan, the Air Force had to get rid of Nixon because after Cambodia he’d become so infested with evil that his vibrations were keeping the saucer people from being able to land, and once they got him out of the White House, the saucer people could come down and establish universal peace. The sales guy would be nodding and talking about how interesting her ideas were, and what a strong smart independent woman she was, and looking at her breasts and trying to get up the nerve to put his hand on her leg.

Yeah, I guess I did mostly want to find that cat and kill it to get some revenge on Mom, but that wouldn’t bring my twenty back. It would make my bed cleaner, of course, but I could do something about that right now.

I went back upstairs, stripped the bed, and took my bedding down to wash. I was still pretty pissed off at Mom. I guess if I’d still been going to Alateen, Danny and Squid would’ve ridden my ass pretty hard about having enabled her.

By the time I moved the bedclothes from the washer to the dryer, and changed into my McDorksuit, I had the trig and French done, and I had scribbled
freedom
into every blank where it seemed to fit for honors gov, and
free enterprise
into the rest.

Christ, I wished I still had that twenty.

I GUESS IF there was really a low spot in my life it wasn’t so much when Dad died as when Mom threw that party. It was the start of booze and cats, and the point where I stopped being able to keep the house all the way nice. Also although by that time, my old Mom was mostly gone, replaced by Flying Saucer Lady, Beth with the Boots, or Neil’s Old Lady, somehow that party was like the wake for the mother I’d grown up with.

I don’t exactly mean Mom threw a party because Dad was dead. It was more that because Dad was dead, Mom
could
throw the party.

The date on the first IOU pasted into my account book is May 17, 1970. Eighth grade was about over, which was fine with me, since eighth grade stank. Actually that spring was when I’d just gotten comfortable enough with talking dirty to say eighth grade
fucking
stank.

I came home from Sunday afternoon track practice and Mom was running around setting out cereal bowls of potato chips and Fritos, and big bowls of that sloppy red tomato sauce that you got in the El Paso cans. Although I’d just walked two miles home on a warm, sunny day, after running a few miles, there wasn’t going to be a shower because the bathtub was full of ice and bottles of beer.

I’d slept over at Paul’s on Saturday night, the night before, too, sitting up with Paul and Dennis, watching Houlihan and Big Chuck, two dumb guys that showed stupid old movies and made fun of them. I had stayed to dinner after Mr. Knauss had taken us all into Columbus to see the Jets play—Dad and me were Mud Hen fans, but this was going to be the Jets’ last season in Columbus, and Mr. Knauss, a Jets fan forever, had grabbed up a lot of tickets and was always taking his kids’ friends along. Between the Jets, Houlihan and Big Chuck, and track, I hadn’t actually had a shower since Friday night.

Looked like I was just really going to stink. I’d already learned not to argue about weird shit like a bathtub full of ice and beer.

Mom already looked real different than she had when Dad was alive. Her hair wasn’t long yet, but instead of the ash-blonde pageboy, she now had an untidy mop of hooker-blonde yellow hair; she looked sort of like a dandelion smoking a cigarette.

Just now she was in a tie-dyed halter top that she’d bought the week before, and a lot of clunky jewelry, and very low tight jeans. It was like she was going to a costume party as Darla.

She had a cigarette burning in her mouth and she was sticking up posters she’s gotten from Judy—Hendrix and some old Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel posters, the kind that came inside the album cover, with these big gross fold lines. They looked shabby as all hell just stuck to the wall with thumbtacks.

I went and got the level so that I could at least get all the posters straight, but she wouldn’t let me fix them. She said that worrying about them hanging straight was fascist. “Honestly, Karl, you’re more like Doug every day.” The way she said it, Dad’s name was something like “cocksucker” or “Nixon.”

My eyes stung a little, I think because she was standing too close to me with the cigarette and kind of yelling, really, and all of a sudden she was holding me, hanging on to me, and saying, “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry, Tiger Sweetie, that was such a mean thing to say to you. Sorry.”

She didn’t hug me very often anymore, usually only in front of her new friends from the bar, to show off what a good mother she was. They were always telling me that Mom was a great mother and a fabulous woman and really coming into her own now . . . (after that “now,” I could hear them thinking
. . . that your father is dead
). They all thought she was a “super super lady.”

This time there was no one around, but she hugged me anyway. “Tiger, I have to tell you about something and give you something.”

Poor dumb stupid little eighth-grade me, when she said she was going to “give me something,” I still thought she meant something good.

She handed me a piece of typewriter paper, neatly lettered in her precise handwriting. I looked down and read,
May 17, 1970. From Elizabeth (Beth) Shoemaker to Karl Shoemaker. I.O.U. $129.38.

“It’s an IOU,” she explained. “I took the money out of your account yesterday, because the bank was open, and I needed to do the shopping on Saturday, while the liquor store was open, to get ready for tonight.”

All I could think to ask was, “What’s tonight?”

“Well, it’s kind of my coming out, my emergence, you know, as a free woman. It’s been seven months since your father made the transition,
exactly
seven, and seven is a very powerful number. So I wanted to do something about that and all, anyway. And then, too, it’s been two weeks since the terrible thing at Kent State with all those children killed. We just need somewhere to get together and talk and share some feelings, kind of create a safe space where we could talk about Kent State and Cambodia. And, well, besides, this is sort of my coming-out party, to celebrate really being who I am.”

I had no idea what to say.

Then for just a second she was almost her old self. “Tiger, I didn’t have the money. I can give you some out of—well, not my next paycheck, but the paycheck after that, and then it shouldn’t be long before I’ve paid it all back. I’m sorry, I know it’s your money, sweetie, but I need this party. You know you never spend your money on anything, it’s not like you’ll miss it before I pay it back.”

I just stood there, so confused I wanted to slap myself. My pathetic little savings account had been home to my birthday money; my first paycheck from my paper route, because Dad made a big point about what a great thing it was to save the first money you ever earned; some snow-shoveling money I had left over; some garden-spad ing and yard-work money, which I’d just started to get about a month ago; and a couple school prizes. I felt like I remembered every deposit there had ever been, and the much less frequent withdrawals.

It was childish of me to feel that it wouldn’t be the same when she put the money back, like a little kid worrying about having the exact same dollar bill Grandpa gave him.