The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims (161 page)

However, during Denny Brown’s sixteenth summer, he suddenly became Russell Kalesky’s best friend. He did not know how this had happened. He knew
when
it happened, though. It happened the day after Russell Kalesky bought himself a car, which cost $150. The car was a huge black eight-cylinder Ford sedan, which actually did not run at all. The previous owner of the Ford—an amateur stock car mechanic—happily towed the car over to the Kaleskys’ driveway and dropped it there for Russell “to work on.” Denny Brown happened to be walking past the Kalesky house on the morning when Russell began working on the Ford, and Russell said, “Hey, man. Check it out.”

Russell had the hood up and was polishing the engine with a rag. Denny Brown came over nervously, but trying not to look nervous. He watched for a while. Russell finally said, “There’s another rag, man. You want to help?”

So Denny Brown took up a rag and started polishing Russell Kalesky’s car engine. It was an enormous engine. Big enough for two polishers.

“Excellent, right?” Russell Kalesky said.

“Excellent,” Denny Brown agreed.

After that, Russell started coming around to the Browns’ place every morning, asking for Denny.

“Hey, man,” he’d say, “want to work on the car today?”

“Excellent,” Denny would say.

Denny Brown did not know a single thing about cars. To be honest, neither did Russell. Together, they would unscrew parts and peer at them. They would crawl underneath the car and tap on things with wrenches. They could pass hours this way. Denny would try to start the engine while Russell leaned over the hood, head cocked, listening. Listening hard. They never had the first idea what they were looking at or listening for.

During rest breaks, they would sit in the front seat of the Ford with the doors open, one foot inside and one foot flat on
the driveway. Heads back, eyes half shut. The only part of the Ford that actually worked was the radio, and Russell would find a station and turn it up. They would relax. The other guys in the neighborhood would come around, riding their bikes up to the Kaleskys’ house and dropping their bikes into the Kaleskys’ yard. Then the neighborhood guys would lean against Russell Kalesky’s Ford, arms folded, listening to the radio. Just hanging out.

Occasionally, Russell would say, “Excellent, right?”

“Excellent,” the guys would all agree.

They would listen to the radio like that until Russell said, “That’s it. Back to work.”

Then all the guys in the neighborhood would have to get on their bikes and ride away.

“Stick around, Dennis,” Russell would say.

Denny Brown did not know how he had suddenly come to be Russell Kalesky’s best friend. He did not know how common it is, in fact, for bullies to eventually befriend their victims. He was not yet completely sure that he would never be punched in the stomach again. Denny simply had no idea how happy it made Russell to have him come over in the mornings and work on the Ford. Denny did not know that this was the happiest thing in Russell’s life.

Denny Brown also did not know that Russell Kalesky’s older brother, Peter Kalesky, made fun of Russell’s car every single time he came home for dinner. Peter Kalesky owned a handsome Chevrolet truck. Peter was twenty years old and lived in his own apartment on the other side of Monroe. Unfortunately, Peter came home for dinner often. Denny Brown did not know anything about Peter’s attacks on Russell.

“You know what Ford stands for?” Peter would say. “It stands for ‘Fix or Repair Daily.’

“You know what Ford stands for?” Peter would say. “It stands for ‘Found on Road Dead.’

“You know what Ford stands for?” Peter would say. “It stands for ‘Found Out Russell’s Dumb.’

“You know why they have rear-window defrost features in Fords?” Peter would say. “To keep your hands warm while you’re pushing your car up a fucking hill.”

Russell Kalesky put himself to sleep every night with dreams of running his brother Peter over with his shiny Ford. Nobody knew about this. It was Russell’s secret comfort. He would dream of driving over Peter, dropping the transmission into reverse, and driving over Peter again. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. In his dreams, the car made a gentle
thud
every time it ran over Peter’s body. And it was that sweet
thud thud thud
sound that would finally send Russell off to sleep.

In the morning, Russell Kalesky would wake up and go over to Denny Brown’s house.

“Want to work on the car, man?” he’d ask.

“Excellent,” Denny Brown would say. (Still not knowing—never knowing—why he had been asked.)

As for Paulette Kalesky, she was Russell’s older sister. She was eighteen years old. She was the best baby sitter in Monroe County, and she worked constantly, tending to the children of a dozen different families in the neighborhood. Paulette was short, brunette, with large breasts and a careful, neat mouth. She had lovely skin. She walked up and down the streets of the neighborhood, pushing other people’s children in carriages, with more children following her on tricycles. She gave piggyback rides and supervised ice cream cones. She carried Band-Aids and Kleenex in her purse, just like a real mother. The Kaleskys were not the best family in Monroe County, but people liked and trusted Paulette. She was very much in demand as a baby sitter.

At the end of June, Denny Brown was invited over to the Kaleskys’ house for dinner. It was Russell Kalesky’s birthday.
Mrs. Kalesky made spaghetti. Everybody was there. Peter Kalesky had driven over from his apartment across town, and Paulette Kalesky had taken a rare night off from baby-sitting. Denny Brown was the only nonfamily member at the party. He was seated across the table from Russell, wedged between Paulette Kalesky and Mr. Kalesky. Russell started to open his birthday gifts and Paulette just went ahead and put her hand on Denny’s leg, hidden under the table. Denny and Paulette had only spoken to each other once before this incident. The hand on the leg made no sense. Nevertheless, Denny Brown (age fifteen) slid his hand under the table and put it on top of the hand of Paulette Kalesky (age eighteen). He squeezed her hand. He did not know where he had learned to do
that
.

Over the course of that summer, Paulette Kalesky and Denny Brown developed a system. She would let him know where she was baby-sitting that night, and he would ride his bicycle over and visit her after eight o’clock, once she had efficiently put the children to bed. Alone together, Denny Brown and Paulette Kalesky had hot, hot sex. Incredible sex. He did not know how or why this system had been established, but there it was. They were terrifically secretive. Nobody knew anything about Denny and Paulette. But there it was. Hot sex. Out of nowhere.

At age fifteen, there was so much that Denny Brown did not know about Paulette Kalesky. She had great big breasts. He knew that, but he only knew it by discreet observation. Hot sex notwithstanding, Paulette would never let him see or touch her chest. She kept her shirt on all the time. Denny did not know why. The fact was, Paulette had gotten her breasts in fifth grade. Way too early, way too big. Her brothers, Peter and Russell, had obviously made huge fun of her about it, as did her schoolmates. There was a period during sixth grade when she was getting so regularly mocked that she would cry every morning and beg her parents not to make her go to school.

Paulette’s father had told her, “Big breasts are nice, and someday you will be happy to have them. In the meantime, you’ll just have to be ridiculed.”

Paulette continued to get ridiculed throughout high school, with a new twist: some girls in her class were now jealous of her. There was one group, in particular, who called her Paulette the Toilet or Paulette the Slut. But it was not that she was taking anybody’s boyfriends. Not by any measure. Denny Brown was her first boyfriend, her first kiss. By that time, she was already finished with high school.

Denny did not know why Paulette Kalesky suddenly liked him any more than he knew why Russell Kalesky suddenly liked him. He had no idea what this was all about.

There was, in truth, a very good explanation for Paulette’s attraction to Denny, but it was a secret. Denny Brown would never know about it. Denny Brown would never know that Paulette Kalesky had been a baby sitter for several months in a home where Denny’s own father was a visiting nurse. It was in the home of an affluent local family named Hart. Mrs. Hart had a new baby in the very same year that Mr. Hart’s father was dying of cancer. In the same house, therefore, the Harts had to tend to a colicky baby girl and an eighty-year-old senile man with a rotting liver. Paulette Kalesky was hired to care for the baby. Mr. Brown was hired to care for the old man. Paulette and Mr. Brown did not spend a lot of personal time together during these months, but their paths did cross in the Harts’ house, usually in the kitchen, where Paulette would be making up a bottle while Mr. Brown would be puréeing carrots.

“Do you want a cup of tea?” Mr. Brown would ask Paulette. “Maybe a glass of water? You look tired.”

“No, thank you,” Paulette would say, who was shy of an adult treating her as if she herself were an adult.

“You’re doing a very good job,” Mr. Brown once told Paulette. “Mrs. Hart would be lost without you.”

Paulette thought that Mr. Brown did a good job, too, the way he nursed old Mr. Hart. She’d seen how he’d brightened and cleaned the sickroom since taking over the role of the primary visiting nurse. Mr. Brown had brought a large, cheerful calendar into the sickroom, which he hung right across from Mr. Hart’s bed. He’d also brought in a clock with bright hands, which he propped where the patient could see it. He spoke to old Mr. Hart in the most clear and specific ways, using direct references to time and location. He gave out every possible piece of information, always trying to keep the vanishing Mr. Hart alerted to the world.

“My name is Fred Brown,” Mr. Brown would say, at the beginning of every shift. “I am the nurse who takes care of you. I’m going to be here with you for eight hours. Your oldest son, Anthony, hired me. You are staying in Anthony’s house.”

Throughout the day, Mr. Brown would explain his every move this clearly. And at the end of a typical day, he would say, “Good night, Mr. Hart. It is seven in the evening, and time for me to go home. I will come by to help you again on Wednesday, October fourteenth, at eleven in the morning.”

Paulette Kalesky thought that Mr. Brown was a wonderful person and a wonderful nurse. She thought he was the nicest man she had ever met, and she secretly fell in love with him. Eventually old Mr. Hart died of liver cancer, of course. Mr. Brown moved on to another case, so Paulette Kalesky did not see him anymore, except in brief glimpses around the neighborhood. But then, suddenly, Denny Brown started hanging around her house, working on her little brother Russell’s Ford.

“Your dad is Fred Brown, isn’t he?” Paulette asked Denny, way back in June. It was the first time they had ever spoken. In fact, it would be the only time they spoke before the night that Paulette put her hand on Denny’s leg. Denny would never know why she had asked this particular question.

“Sure,” said Denny. “He’s my dad.”

Paulette did not think that Denny looked like his father at all. Nonetheless, she very much hoped that he might grow up to be like his father. Somehow, in some manner. So she secretly fell in love with Denny Brown, for that reason. With that hope.

Naturally, Denny Brown did not know anything about any of this.

As an adult, Denny Brown would look back on his sixteenth summer and think that it was a wonder he was even allowed to leave the house. He would realize how woefully uninformed he was, how woefully unprepared. There was so much information that Denny Brown was missing at age fifteen. Any of it would have helped him. No matter how minor. Later in life, Denny would believe that he had been sent out there knowing nothing. Nobody ever told him anything about anything. He did not know what people did with their lives or what they wanted or regretted. He did not know why people got married or chose jobs or chose friends or hid their breasts. He did not know whether he was good at anything or how to find out. Everybody just let him walk around without knowing a thing.

His education was so incomplete. Denny Brown (at age fifteen) did not know the meaning of any of these words:
ethereal, prosaic, fluvial, paucity, gregarious, vitriol, umbrage, nihilism
, or
coup d’état
. These were among a list of words that he (and every other high school junior in the region) would be taught by the end of the following school year. But he would have to go through his sixteenth summer without having the use of any of those words.

Denny Brown did not know about Euclid or mitosis or Beethoven’s deafness, either, but the Monroe County Board of Education was all geared up to teach him those things as well, come September.

And another thing Denny Brown knew nothing about was the very name of his town. What did “Monroe” even mean? He
had somehow been allowed to pass through ten grades of Monroe County public schools without ever having learned that his town was named after an American president, James Monroe. Denny Brown thought that “Monroe” was just a word. Denny did not know, therefore, what “Monroe” was referring to, when used in the very central contexts of his life, like Monroe Memorial Hospital or Monroe High School or Monroe Country Club. Denny Brown did not know that James Monroe was a wounded Revolutionary War veteran and a two-term president. Denny certainly did not know that, during his 1820 re-election bid, James Monroe had received every single vote in the electoral college except one—that of a New Hampshire delegate named William Plumber. William Plumber had withheld his vote intentionally, taking it on himself to ensure that no man would ever share with George Washington the honor of a unanimous election to the United States presidency. William Plumber (who was notable in his life for nothing else) believed that stripping George Washington of that singular achievement would have been a national shame, remembered and regretted by every citizen throughout American history.