The Tender Bar (15 page)

McGraw opened and closed his mouth, and I knew why. Yogi Bear.

Uncle Charlie drove extra fast, maybe because the car was cramped and he felt everyone was eager to get out. At Gilgo he bought McGraw and me hamburgers. He’d never bought me a hamburger, in all my times at Gilgo, but McGraw always looked so hungry. Wolfing down his burger in three bites, McGraw asked if they had any milk behind that bar. I shook my head. Then Bobo belched and I told McGraw that was the signal. To the sea.

McGraw and I followed the men across the sand, and like them we dropped our stuff and stripped to our bathing suits as we walked, hitting the surf in stride. McGraw, however, kept going. He swam past me, past the men, even past Bobo’s sandbar. Only Joey D noticed. As McGraw’s head grew smaller and smaller in the distance, Joey D yelled, “Bring it in, McGraw!”

McGraw ignored him.

“Believe this kid?” Joey D said as I treaded water beside him. He was speaking to me, ostensibly, but I didn’t answer, because I knew he was talking to his pet mouse. I wondered where he was hiding the mouse, since he was bare-chested. “Kid thinks he’s Johnny Weismuller. Mile from shore. Keep going, kid—next stop, Madrid. Get a cramp now and you’re fish food.” Joey D turned and saw Uncle Charlie on the beach, stretched out in his chair, calmly reading the newspaper. “Great,” he told his mouse. “Goose don’t give a shit.”
Goosedon’tgiveashit.
“I gotta keep an eye on his fucking nephew while he reads the paper. Fucking great. I’m not going to get any fucking relaxation today.”

I was furious with McGraw for irritating Joey D. If any of the men complained about our going to Gilgo—really complained, not like Bobo’s teasing—we’d never be welcome again. There were rules of conduct with the men, and when McGraw didn’t follow those rules to the letter I wanted to punch him. At the same time I found myself envying him. He was swimming to Madrid, while I was still heeding Grandma’s warnings and staying close to shore. It wasn’t just that McGraw had no fear. He seemed to want that riptide, to seek it, as if he longed to be carried away. He had a touch of crazy, which made him more like the men.

When McGraw came out of the water I gave him the evil eye and he pretended not to notice. He joined me in the center of the men’s circle and started to build a sand castle. I told him we shouldn’t do anything that might annoy the men, but Joey D said to go ahead, “knock yourselves out.” He turned to the other men and added, “Anything to keep Flipper out of the fucking water.”

Alongside the sand castle McGraw and I built a sundial, which he helped me monitor after the men passed out. The jet-engine whine of their snores—and the sight of Joey D talking to his pet mouse in his sleep—made McGraw roll onto his back and giggle, which made me giggle, and we had to clap our hands over our mouths to avoid waking the men.

It was later than usual when we returned to Manhasset. There was no time for a stop at the bar. Everybody needed to get home. McGraw hung his head as we walked to Grandpa’s. I gloated silently.
Ha! Serves you right. You went to the sandbar, but I got to go to the bar that matters.
Then I remembered the many bars McGraw had seen, the bars he’d been sent inside to ambush his father, and I knew he didn’t feel cheated about not seeing one more. He just felt sad about saying good-bye to the men.

McGraw and I sat on the bicentennial sofa that night, playing cards, watching
The Odd Couple,
and he couldn’t stop talking about Gilgo. He wanted to go every day. He wanted to live at Gilgo. He said Jack Klugman looked like Bobo. I warned him against getting his hopes up. There were variables, I explained. Weather and hangovers. You never knew from one day to the next which might flare up. In McGraw’s case there was a third variable. Some days Aunt Ruth wouldn’t let him go. Either he had to practice his baseball or else he was being punished. Sometimes Aunt Ruth didn’t give a reason.

When McGraw couldn’t go to Gilgo I found myself sitting in the men’s circle and missing him, wishing he’d never gone in the first place, because now the whole experience felt diminished without him. Everything was more fun with McGraw. He was someone I could share the men with, and giggle with at the astonishing things they said and did. A horsefly bit Bobo’s thigh, then flew away in drunken loops, plummeting to its death, and I wished McGraw were there to see it.

Though the men were unfailingly kind to me, they tended to ignore me, and in McGraw’s absence I went hours without hearing my own voice. When the men did speak to me directly, it could be awkward. One typical exchange went like this: Joey D looked at me. I looked at him. He looked harder at me. I continued looking at him. Finally he said, “Who the White Sox play tonight?” “Rangers,” I said. He nodded. I nodded. End of discussion.

Missing McGraw made me think of my mother, whom I also missed, more all the time. I stared out across the ocean one day, wondering what she was doing. Since we couldn’t afford long-distance phone calls, we exchanged audio letters, recorded on cassettes. I would play her tapes over and over, analyzing her voice for signs of stress or fatigue. In her most recent tape she sounded happy. Too happy. She said she’d rented a sofa, with a pretty brown and gold pattern—no faces of Founding Fathers. “We’ve never had a sofa before!” she said proudly. But I worried. What if we couldn’t afford the sofa? What if she couldn’t make the payments? What if she started to peck at her calculator and cry? What if I wasn’t there to distract her with some jokes?
I will not worry about something that will not happen.
My mantra didn’t seem to work at Gilgo. The worrisome thoughts came too fast.
Why am I here? I should be in Arizona, helping my mother. She’s probably driving through the desert right now, alone, singing.
With each wave that slapped the shore another unhappy thought crashed in my head.

To distract myself I turned to the men. Uncle Charlie was upset. “Can’t think straight today,” he said, putting his hand to his temple. “Goddamned Wordy Gurdy has me stumped.”

“The fuck is a Wordy Gurdy?” Bobo said.

“Puzzle in the newspaper,” Uncle Charlie said. “They give you a half-assed clue, and the answer is two words that rhyme. Like Hot Spot. Or Hell’s Bells. It’s child’s play. The first one I got right off. Jane’s Vehicles. Answer? Fonda’s Hondas. But the others, I don’t know. I must be suffering from Acute Sambuca Brain.”

“With a touch of vodka-itis.”

“That’s a chronic condition.”

“Give us one.”

“Okay,” Uncle Charlie said. “Let’s see how smart you dopes are. Richard’s Ingredients.”

Bobo closed his eyes. Joey D poked the sand with a stick. Colt rubbed his chin.

“Fucking puzzles,” Bobo said. “Life’s confusing enough as it is.”

“Nixon’s Fixin’s,” I said.

Silence fell over me like a shadow. I looked up from the sand and the men were staring, frozen. They couldn’t have looked more surprised if Wilbur had spoken. Even Wilbur looked surprised.

“The kid,” Colt said.

“Holy shit,” Bobo said.

“Give him another,” Joey D said to his mouse.
Givehimanother!

Uncle Charlie looked at me, then back at the newspaper. He read: “Terrific Gary.”

I thought. “Super Cooper?” I said.

The men threw their hands in the air and cheered.

That was the day everything changed. I’d always thought there had to be a secret password into the men’s circle.
Words
were the password. Language legitimized me in the men’s eyes. After decoding the Wordy Gurdy I was no longer the group mascot. The men didn’t include me in every conversation, certainly, but they no longer treated me as a seagull that had wandered into their midst. I went from being a vague presence to a real person. Uncle Charlie no longer jumped a foot in the air every time he found me standing beside him, and the other men took more careful notice of me, talked to me, taught me things. They taught me how to grip a curveball, how to swing a nine iron, how to throw a spiral, how to play seven-card stud. They taught me how to shrug, how to frown, how to take it like a man. They taught me how to stand and promised me that a man’s posture
is
his philosophy. They taught me to say the word “fuck,” gave me this word as if it were a pocketknife or a good suit of clothes, something every boy should have. They showed me the many ways “fuck” could release anger, scare off enemies, rally allies, make people laugh in spite of themselves. They taught me to pronounce it forcefully, gutturally, even gracefully, to get my money’s worth from the word. Why inquire meekly what’s going on, they said, when you can demand, “What the fuck?” They demonstrated the many verbal recipes in which “fuck” was the main ingredient. A burger at Gilgo, for instance, was twice as tasty when it was a “Gilgo fucking burger.”

Everything the men taught me that summer fell under the loose catchall of confidence. They taught me the importance of confidence. That was all. But that was enough. That, I later realized, was everything.

Besides the random lessons the men also gave me specific tasks. They would send me to the Gilgo bar for drinks and cigarettes, or have me read them Jimmy Breslin’s column, or dispatch me as their emissary to a blanket of attractive girls. I relished these tasks as a show of their trust, and threw myself into accomplishing them. When the men played poker at Gilgo, for instance, the wind whipping off the water was always a problem, and it was my responsibility to hold the face cards and the pot onto the blanket. It was a job for an octopus, but I managed, and when a card flew away I flew after it. I still remember with fierce pride the looks on the men’s faces when I chased the jack of diamonds fifty yards and snared it just before it flipped into the ocean.

thirteen
| PAT

I
WOKE TO DARK SKIES, AN UNSEASONABLY COOL JULY DAY.
No Gilgo. I lay on the bicentennial sofa and opened
Minute Biographies.
When Uncle Charlie woke, however, he told me to get dressed. “Gilgo?” I said.

“False. Mets, Phillies. Doubleheader.”

I’d been promoted.

As if going to Shea Stadium weren’t astounding enough, Uncle Charlie said I could wear one of his hats. I picked a lime green number with a plaid hatband and stood at the mirror, admiring myself, tilting the brim this way and that, until Uncle Charlie told me to get a move on.

We picked up Joey D first. He complimented me on my new “chapeau.” Then we picked up a bruiser named Tommy. He was large like Joey D, and while he didn’t look as much like a Muppet, his features did have that same quality of haphazard and temporary attachment to his face. It was a fleshier face than Joey D’s, more elastic, and when Tommy frowned, which was every two minutes, his lips would fall and the features would follow—nose, mouth, eyes and cheeks plunging toward his chin as if being sucked down a drain. Tommy complimented my hat also, then said with a frown that he too was “wearing a new hat.” He had a new job, he said.

“Tommy just got hired at Shea,” Uncle Charlie explained, looking at me in the rearview. “Head of security. Runs the joint. Hence today’s outing. Tommy’s getting us in gratis.”

We stopped at Manhasset Deli for iced tea and cigarettes. Then, instead of steering toward the expressway, we circled back to Dickens.

“Who else is coming?” I asked as we all took stools at the bar.

Uncle Charlie looked off. “Pat,” he said.

“Who’s he?” I asked.

“She,” Uncle Charlie said.

“Pat’s your uncle’s girlfriend,” Tommy whispered.

We sat around the barroom, waiting for this Pat person. I didn’t like the idea of a woman joining the group, and I certainly didn’t like that she was late. At last she entered with a whoosh, as if a gust of wind had opened the door and she’d been blown through in its wake. She had hair the color of scotch, bright green eyes, and freckles that looked like tiny wet leaves stuck to the bridge of her nose. She was lanky like Uncle Charlie, a fellow flamingo, though more high-strung. “Hiya gents!” she cried, slamming her purse on the bar.

“Hey Pat!”

“Sorry I’m late. Traffic was a bear.” She lit a cigarette and looked me up and down. “You must be JR.”

“Yes ma’am.” I hopped down from the barstool, took my hat off and shook her hand.

“My, my, my. A real gentleman. What’re you doing with these bums?” She said she only wished her son, who was my age, had such nice manners. “You must be the apple of your mother’s eye.”

In ten seconds she’d found the quickest route to my heart.

Our seats at Shea were three rows behind home plate. Uncle Charlie and the men spread out, stretched their legs, made friends with everyone around us. Uncle Charlie told me if I needed to go to the bathroom, I should feel free, “but take note of where we’re sitting and don’t stay away too long.” He spotted the beer man and waved him over. “Take note of where we’re sitting,” he told the beer man, “and don’t stay away too long.”

“Who do you like today?” Joey D asked Uncle Charlie.

“I’m torn. My head says Mets, my bankroll says the Philadelphia Brotherly Lovers. Who do you like, JR?”

“Um. Mets?”

Uncle Charlie pursed his lips and squinted at me as if I’d just said something very sensible. He went to phone in his bet and Pat turned in her seat to face me. “So how’s your mom?” she said.

“Good.”

“She’s in New Mexico?”