When Madeline Was Young (11 page)

He nodded slowly. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"I like Julia better."

"Understandable."

Lifting her fine chin higher, she said, "There's going to be a baby in this house."

"Imagine that." He raised his eyebrows down the table at my mother.

At last, a baby for the couple, however you wanted to slice that pair. In the photos, Madeline is holding me, bent over, absorbed in my downy newborn face, my mother near her on the sofa. There's a picture of the four of us, Madeline and my mother standing side by side, both of them smiling at the photographer, my father slightly apart, peering over at the bundle in Julia's arms. It does for all the world look like the future, two mommies with the guest sperm donor. Not long after my arrival, my father found Madeline asleep on the floor by the crib. I don't think they worried that Madeline would hurt me purposefully but, rather, that her solicitude, her extravagant care, might make her headstrong. She didn't waver in her dedication to her self-appointed job as night and day nurse, always on hand with supplies my mother needed at the changing table, warm wet washcloths, fresh diapers, pins, rubber pants. My mother took pains to teach her how to hold me, protecting the soft spot and the neck, fearful of the inevitable, that day when she would find me gone, the buggy missing from its place on the back porch.

The first time it happened, Mrs. Van Norman brought back the abductress and the booty in the pram. My mother had fallen asleep on the sofa during my afternoon nap, had closed her eyes for a moment while Madeline cut out pictures from a magazine. Mrs. Van Norman was large-boned, with coarse blond hair that she raked into a ratty pile on top of her head. Even though she had twelve children of her own, she had energy to spare for the rest of us. It was Madeline 's unusual speed crossing the street with the buggy, hurrying as if she already thought she was pursued, that had made Mrs. Van Norman wonder if the girl should be alone with the baby. When she had walked Madeline back home and stood on the front steps, she suggested that my mother employ any of the eight older Van Normans to help her with the on
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nfant. "One infant!" she crowed, as if a single child in the home, and as if assistance for one child, were both outrageous jokes. Rather than scold Madeline or hire Stacey Van Norman, my mother vowed to keep herself awake, to be vigilant through the afternoons.

Ah, but Julia was so tired. The next time Madeline made off with me, she did not take into consideration her route, did not imagine that everywhere, everywhere there were spies. Russia was beating a rug on the front porch of Mrs. Blum's house, several blocks away, when Madeline came prancing up the street. Where were we going? I wonder. Were we about to hop the Soo Line, my first ride in a boxcar, and would we sleep in haystacks and rob a bank and steal a Chevrolet Cabriolet? I picture Madeline dressed for the event in an aqua-andblack polka-dot skirt, the type Louise called a rwirly skirt, and black patent-leather heels, a matching pocketbook, and an aqua sweater, the sort that sheds, leaving behind her a trail of soft rabbity threads.

When Russia saw the fashion plate, she didn't waste her energy crying out. She threw the rug aside and tore down the sidewalk, going straight for the ponytail. Not just a yank or two, but a continuous pull as she shook. No one, not before the accident or after, had ever rattled Madeline Schiller's brains. No one had struck her. What satisfaction for Russia, finally, just like Miss Figgy said to do, giving the devil the business. Madeline's shrieks woke me, and I cried, too.

"You take this baby again, I'll steal you away, you hear? Russia's going to kidnap you for good, how you like that? Take you down to Black Irwin." Madeline screamed louder. "You think Russia don't know what you do? You think you can hide from Russia?" She gave a last rug. "Russia, she know everything."

Whether Madeline was most afraid of Russia or the idea of Russia's bogeyman, Black Irwin, she never took me out by herself again. Still, the hair pulling did not seem to affect her motherly pride. "Look at my baby," she'd say to strangers in the park. "My baby has a new tooth." Or, glancing into someone else's buggy, "My baby is bigger than your baby." Because my father was often gone, Madeline ma
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ave believed that I belonged far more to her than to the part-time husband.

He was away for collecting expeditions in Africa for three- and four-month stretches. When he reappeared, tan and stringy and with a reddish beard, he seemed for a time a stranger. He brought with him bolts of hand-printed fabric, and pottery, not all of it broken, and the animals of the ark carved from exotic woods, the elephants with ivory tusks, the dark-brown seals so smooth Louise abandoned her dear blanket and walked around holding them against her cheek. I remember my father embracing my mother in the kitchen after he'd been away, his face in her short, nappy hair for what seemed like half a day. He had given her presents to show her how much he'd missed her, a muumuu with green and gold swirls, and a necklace of velvety black seedpods, and still he seemed to feel it necessary to prove his love by clinging to her. Madeline watched them standing together, and when she got tired of looking she turned to me, trying to get me to hug her. I wriggled away, running into the hall in hopes she'd come after me. Around the circle of the downstairs we went, time after time passing our parents in their clasp.

STATISTICALLY, with eighty-five children on the block, there were bound to be some abnormalities, a chance for a Down's-syndrome baby, a case of spina bifida, a clubfoot, a cleft palate. Whether it was the sheer volume of prayer in the St. Rita's parish or lady luck, the Gregorys had nine unscathed specimens, the Lembergers fourteen, the Van Normans twelve, the Pilskas also an even dozen. The Rockards had eight, counting their ten-year-old who was killed on the El tracks the year I was fifteen. "God," Mrs. Van Norman said, "and the older brother failed to watch out for one curious boy."

Madeline, then, was the handicapped woman on the 40
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block of Grove, and on the 3. block there was Mikey O'Day, neither of them, however, disabled by birth accidents or the roulette of genetics. Th
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ivide of the cross street was enough to keep us from Mikey's orbit when we were very young, his house far off, in a distant realm. But we'd heard the story and we knew what he was: birdbrain, screwball, goopus, dunce. His stupidity was a result, the older girls said, of meningitis. If it didn't kill you it would put your eyes out, an affliction, we'd thought, that was only likely to happen if you were running with a stick. Or your brains would shrivel, your skull like a gourd, nothing but dry bits rattling around, the seedy leftovers of intelligence. He'd had the sickness as a baby, Mary Beth Van Norman explained, so he didn't know he'd been born a genius. I used to lie awake thinking of Mikey, long before I met him, wondering if he would have liked to know that for fourteen months he'd had the potential to be famous and maybe rich. Even though Madeline's plight was similar, I didn't think about her in the same way, I suppose because she was always just Madeline, and because she often had tantrums over nothing at all. I could be pragmatic as well as soppy-hearted, and I thought that if she knew she'd once been smart she might never have stopped screaming.

The spring of 1963, when I was fifteen, Mikey began singing in the evenings at the ice-cream stand by the community pool. Despite the name, the Dari-Dip, it had always done a good business through the summer. No one could say what prompted Mikey, one night in May, to jump up from the picnic table as if he'd been stung. He began to belt out a Jerry Lee Lewis number, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On." There was probably even a recognizable rendition of the pianoand-guitar interlude. He'd been eating his cone one minute, and the next he was up by the trash can urging the world to shake it. "I said shake baby shake!"

The few people sitting on the benches were too stunned to laugh. Mr. O'Day was beyond being embarrassed by his son, or maybe he was worn out. He averted his eyes and stood by. Mikey wiggled his hips, his face to the moon, his eyes shut tight, his mouth wide open. There must have been enough applause, because he went right on with an instrumental, "Mau Mau," his lips pressed together for th
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rumpet embouchure, his cheeks puffed to the limit, his horn sound soft but always exuberant, always clear in his jazzy staccato. He found a stick for the metal trash-can lid and banged out, more or less, a regular beat. Irene and Stu, the owners, came from the kitchen, clapping and crying, "Satchmo! Satchmo!" There was another tune and another, and the next night he returned, and the night after, and the night after that, until Irene and Stu suggested he sing, when time allowed, two or three nights a week. For Mikey's sake and for the sake of his fans. If a singer kept such an unrelenting schedule, they explained, he might tire his voice. It might not be good for the long haul. So it was established that Mikey O'Day would be the Dari-Dip headliner for an hour on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights. The loyal customers might have avoided the drive-in after Mikey began his crooning, but instead for a time it was a hot spot. I like to think people stopped by not because they considered Mikey a freak show but because the local color was theirs.

His mother bought him a toy microphone, a prop that looked so real in his clutches you almost believed it made his voice louder. A reporter from the local newspaper showed up to do a feature, to write about Mikey's remarkable memory and repertory, from Tony Bennett to Peggy Lee, from Buddy Holly to Dionne Warwick. The article was also about the Dari-Dip's generous support of the retarded man. I remember my mother reading the Journal at the breakfast table. "Isn't that nice about Mikey O'Day," she said. "Isn't it interesting that he's developed an imaginary radio show, that he does traffic updates and weather reports in between his songs."

What was she thinking might happen when, on a Saturday night in June, she asked me to take Madeline to the Dari-Dip? Would I mind walking the few blocks with her to get a cone? Would I mind? It wasn't that I was humiliated by Madeline. I had realized much earlier that if I was going to be ashamed of her I'd have to be ashamed of the whole family. That not only seemed impractical but also required more energy, more vigilance than I could give to the project. I don't rule ou
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he fact that because Madeline was attractive it was easier to shoulder the burden of a handicapped sibling.

Oh, but there was a price to be paid for that beauty. After it was established that we were walking to the Dari-Dip, we couldn't simply stroll out the front door, slap down the stairs in our sandals and along the sidewalk, buy our ice cream, and then turn toward home. No, no. Madeline must change her clothes to step out. "What's wrong," I said, "with your green shorts? And your shirt?" The small yellow-andgreen flowered print was very ladylike. She looked fine enough to order a dessert as extravagant as a banana split, if she was to go that far.

She didn't dignify my question with a response. I could hear her up in her room, the hangers sliding along the pole in the closet, and she probably took out every single one of her shoe boxes and lined up her pairs of heels across the rug. As if for once she might be quick with her toilet, I waited for her in the hall downstairs, pacing and snapping my fingers. Little did I know that in a few days my impatience would be something I'd look back to fondly, an irritation so mild it would look like serenity in retrospect.

Twenty-seven minutes later, she tap-tapped down the stairs to the landing, where she stood, allowing me to admire her. Her head was high, turned to show off her noble profile. There's probably a name for the kind of dress she had on, the square neck, open to the cleavage, the short sleeves, the gathers along the breast, the lowered waist falling into a skirt flouncy with pleats. She might have gone to the opera in that satiny blue dress, and with the pearl necklace at her smooth girlish throat.

"We're going to the Dari-Dip, right?" I finally said.

"Ready," she breathed, as one dainty foot in a pair of white slingbacks--I believe that's the term--reached the bottom stair.

Had my mother told her about Mikey O'Day's entertainment, or was she outfitted for the public on general principle? Since she always dressed with care for any occasion, it was hard to say. She had a handbag, the color of her frock, large enough to hold a puppy. Inside, it'
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ikely there was a stuffed dog, a few pennies, a comb, a shell, a spare necklace.

Mikey O'Day and Madeline were about the same age. She had seen him any number of times through the years, at the pool, at the library, from afar down the block, but I guess she hadn't really looked at him. I later wondered what he'd been so busy with, for decades, that he'd never strayed down our alley; I wondered if he'd had plenty of girlfriends who lived north or east or west of us. It's safe to say that if they'd both had normal intelligence Madeline would never have given him a second glance, but even so he was, as my mother testified, cute. A darling, she said. He had thick red hair that had a furry softness, and enormous shiny blue eyes that were magnified by his glasses. His mouth was red, noticeably bright, and unusually elastic, so that his funny faces were clownish and in fact did make us laugh. In the beginning Madeline often stared unabashedly at his lips. He was shorter than she was, and goofily, pleasantly plump. If he hadn't walked with his head to the sky, bobbing as if his neck were a spring, you wouldn't have known at first that there was anything wrong with him.

The Dari-Dip DJ always announced each number knowledgeably and with veneration. "This next one," Mikey would say, "is the Everly, the Everly Brothers, Don and Phil. They, they are brothers, they are very, they are very great, the greatest s-s-s-songwriting artists, song-writing artists ever, ever to be heard." Before he started, he screwed up his face, the skin of his nose bunching toward the bridge, his lips stretching to the ears, the effort of bliss. His brow was always rippling with wrinkles, and sometimes his eyes would pop open, out of amazement, probably, at what had come from his mouth.