THE CRAZY ONE IN THE CAR--episode 10

Going to college 1964-1968

Freshman Year — Spring Break 1965

Mama Rose owns Rose’s Pizza Villa. It’s an addition built on to her house on Main Street a few blocks south of Baldwin Hall and across the street from the SAE house. She’s my idea of an Italian mother. She’s short and stocky. She has huge breasts and wide hips and a big stomach. Her hair is dyed black and it’s teased up around her head. She has black pencilled eyebrows. Her skin is mottled and her cheeks are red. She wears black dresses with splashes of red and yellow and blue. She laughs loud and often. 

So Jerry’s mom surprises me. Evelyn Battaglia Caraggino opens the front door of her house and comes out to the top step. She is tallish and thin, even angular. She’s wearing a brown A-line skirt and a beige blouse. She has soft brown hair combed back from her face, which is positively sallow. The skin at the outside corners of her eyes crinkles as she smiles. Jerry goes up the stairs and she puts her arms around him and she hugs him. She steps back and touches his cheeks with the palms of her hands and then the back of her hands and with comic plaintiveness she asks, “Why are you so grundy?” Her voice is quiet and her gentle demeanor and firm tone even as she smiles remind me of an elementary school librarian, which, it turns out, she is.

She hopes he brought his laundry. (He did.)

He didn’t shave this morning, did he? (There wasn’t time.)

Why did he go out for wrestling when he knows that’s not him? (He didn’t get to wrestle much anyway.)

She turns to me. “I hope you’re going to be a good influence on him, Dave.”

A little too quickly I say, “Well, you know, he marches to the beat of his own cello.”

In the living room Gramma Battaglia stands, her arms open to Jerry. Behind her, Gramps is pushing himself out of a stuffed easy chair. 

I am introduced and taken note of but all attention, all affection, is directed to Jerry, who stays calm—even passive—letting himself be kissed and touched and stroked.

March 18, 1965

The interior of the house must put Jerry’s grandmother and grandfather, both in their eighties, back to their youth. Flowery rugs, curling sofa with pawed wooden legs, candelabra all over the place. Everything about the house reminds me of the past—as if time was something that existed until you closed the front door and stepped inside.

I’m sitting on the edge of the bed in the guest room when Jerry comes in. I’m in my briefs and Jerry’s changed into jeans and a t-shirt. He’s holding blue and gray plaid bermuda shorts. 

“Well, how you are loved,” I say and quietly he says, “I wish we could spend more time at your house.”

“Ha! You take my place and I’ll stay here.”

He stands in front of me, pushes his thighs against my knees as he puts his hands on my shoulders. His big spaniel eyes look right at me and he says, “Mama wants us to go grocery shopping.”

I look right back at him. “And what does Mama want us to buy?”

His face changes to its mischievous little boy look. “Things we want to eat.”

I keep looking at him. “Does Mama know that what I want to eat most is not at the grocery store?”

He pushes his tongue against his lower teeth. “There’s a lot Mama doesn’t know. I’m going to change into these.” And he exits, wagging his invisible tail.

I’m not sure when this by-play between us began, but it has become routine. He says something perfectly ordinary, though another something in his eyes, his hands—he loves to touch things—or in his habit of leaning into and against something as he talks—provokes sexual innuendo from me and he laughs and a bit of tension between us is relaxed. 

He’s beginning to confuse me more than ECBIV ever has.

The next morning we wake up to fried eggs and toast and coffee. Everyone is at the table and Mama serves and then leaves to go to school. Gramps says little as he eats. Gramma wishes that Jerry and his friend would stay home and talk to her. And so we do. 

Gramma tells the story of each of Jerry’s several scars. She instructs him to show each and he does. She looks at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. Or the last. Or as if no matter how often she looks, there’s always something she hasn’t seen before. Maybe an hour passes before Jerry says he wants to show me his high school and we are allowed to leave. 

At school he introduces me to friends, to faculty. I shake hands and smile and say that it’s good to meet them and I step back and watch him with them. They clap him on the shoulder, they brighten, he laughs with a full-faced glee I haven’t seen in him—or perhaps I imagine that I haven’t. I’m beginning to feel bad about comparing him to a cocker spaniel, though here he truly does wag his invisible tail.

We go to the stadium. When we’re dressed in t-shirts and running shorts, when we’re on the field with everyone else dressed as we are, when we stretch out, each of us has his own routine and yet it seems less like two separate activities than a subliminally synchronized duet—not a dance, not partnered improvisations—but chance synchronicity. We sit on the turf, reach toward our toes; he goes to the low stone fence and stretches the right calf, the left calf, while I do hurdler leg stretches. He leaves the fence and I take his place to stretch my calves. Some of the track men come by and stop to talk. They’re glad to see him. We jog together around the track. Once, twice. There are hurdles, but I decide not to work on them. There’s a pole vault area but he doesn’t go to it. We jog together.

I want to meet his high school girl friend and when she comes home for spring break, we go on a movie date with her and a friend of theirs. Sue is vital and funny, involved and engaging. She knows what’s going on in the world, what’s happening with civil rights, and she makes me aware of how disengaged I am. 

“How many Afro-American families are there in Latrobe?” she asks. She’s the first person I’ve heard use the term “Afro-American” and not “Negro.” 

I decide on humor. “Only a few in Latrobe and I can’t think of any in Lawson Heights, and they aren’t Afro-Americans, they’re still Negroes.”

Sue scowls but she puts a little forgiving energy in her eyes. 

I describe the first time I learned about Negroes. In Whitney we used outdoor toilets and two or three times a year the honey dippers came. They were Negroes—everybody called them niggers—who drove a truck with a huge tank at the back and they went down the alley from outhouse to outhouse putting a big hose in the toilets to suction out all the crap into the tank. It took several days to cover the two streets—about fifty houses—and the smell stayed in the air. Mom said that when she was a child the honey dippers would have to get into the toilets up to their waists and shovel it out by hand. I remember her sweeping her arm in the direction of the town garbage dump, which was down by the coal mine, and saying that the niggers lived somewhere back there in the woods.

Jerry says nothing and Sue’s friend, whose name I missed, sits with her mouth agape. I go on. “My sister caused a stir this year when she asked the one Afro-American on the football team to be her date for senior prom. He has a girlfriend at another school so Jane assured him it wasn’t romantic, she just wanted him to be able to go to the prom. He accepted and then a few days later he told her he thought it best if he didn’t go. He didn’t offer a reason and she didn’t press him.” 

Sue looks at Jerry. “How many Afro-Americans at Allegheny?”

He’s not sure. He looks at me. “In our class,” he says, “there’s Harry Ellers.” 

“And the foreign exchange student from Kenya,” I say. “And Bowie Diamond, who’s a senior and the only black Crow.” I think there’s a joke in there, but no one else seems to.

Sue continues to instigate charged conversation for much of the evening. We talk of civil rights and equal opportunity and growing opposition to the Vietnam War. She’s fascinating and provocative and next to her I feel provincial and self-centered. On the way home, I mention this to Jerry and he says she’s always been passionate.

One afternoon after we work out at the school gym, we go to the wrestling mats to cool down. We sit, we stretch, we lie back, we talk. It’s easy. It’s quiet. I’m lying on the mat, looking at the high ceiling, sensing Jerry sitting next to me as he massages his calves.

“Hi, Jerry!” 

I turn and see behind us a man in his late twenties or maybe older—I’m not good at guessing ages. He’s wearing a white t-shirt and blue running shorts and tennis shoes. “No need to get up,” he says, “you both look too comfortable to make you move,” and Jerry and I stay on the wrestling mat. 

I am introduced to Mr. Harlan, Jerry’s senior year English teacher. He leans in and extends his hand. “Good to meet you, Dave.” He lets me see him smile as some thought buzzes in his mind. He turns to Jerry and asks how he likes school, what courses he’s taking, was he out for wrestling. He doesn’t quite pose as he talks, but he leans against the wall and he repositions his feet and he stands and then leans again and he’s aware that I’m watching him. He touches his crotch and as he adjusts it, he turns to me and says, “Since Jerry went to Allegheny, I’ve had three different baby sitters. I have two sons four and six. They don’t like anyone the way they like Jerry.”

It feels like a challenge about something. I smile what I hope is a knowing smile as I say, “Jerry’s a man for all ages.”

An instant calculation flashes in Mr. Harlan’s eyes and he turns to Jerry and says, “I was going to ask you if you would come to Chautauqua for a couple of weeks this summer.” Back to me. “I own a house in Chautauqua and the boys would love it if Jerry could spend some time there this summer.”

Jerry says, “That’s a tempting offer—“

“But there’s no way in fucking hell you’ll do it, right?” He smiles and turns to me, bolstered by having said fuck. “Summers in Chautauqua used to mean going to the symphony and getting laid all the time. Then I got married.” 

He watches for my response. 

“Still go to the symphony, do you?” 

He leans against the wall. “Are you an athlete or do you just lie around semi-nude for people to look at you?”

A little burst of adrenalin fires in my guts. “I’m on the track team, thanks for asking.” I open my legs slowly and keep looking at him as I lean forward and grab a foot with each hand. “Though I do enjoy lying around semi-nude.” And looking toward my feet, “You never know who’s getting off watching you.” 

He tries a crafty half laugh and he leaves. I look at Jerry and he blushes.

Jerry’s downstairs with his mother and Gramma. When he said we’d be going to Latrobe tomorrow, Mama and Gramma made a fuss about staying longer. Mama looks at him and smiles; she likes to touch him. He’s the last thing she has left, I suppose, besides two aging parents. Gramma has arthritis and she complains constantly in the sweetest, most genteel way.

As I’m lying on the bed, hoping he’ll come, there’s a gentle knock on the door and he steps in and sits next to me. He puts his hand on the mattress at my waist. It’s deliberate. “My grandmother likes you, she approves.”

“She does?” I put my hand on his. 

“She says for me to stick with you and bring you here any time. She doesn’t say that about everybody.” 

As if this is a normal occurrence with us, we interlock fingers. Should I be happy? because I am. Should I cry? because I know it isn’t true, because he shouldn’t stick with me. 

It seems a long time that we say nothing more. Finally he moves his hand away and stands. “Okay, up. I’m supposed to get you to come to lunch.”

The next morning Brother Bacon picks us up and Gramma Battaglia and Mama Caraggino wistfully wish us a safe journey to my house. 

*****

Dad has always had a camera. He’s always taking pictures. He likes technology. If we had money, he’d have the latest everything. A few years ago he bought a Canon something-or-other and he always gets slides made from the film. Mom keeps saying she’d rather have “actual pictures, real photographs,” and Dad never explains why we don’t. He would get the slide projector and arrange the slides in the carousel—he liked to say the word “carousel”—and set it on a hassock in the living room and make Mr. Hunter from across the street look at slides from the one time we went on a vacation and drove to Niagra Falls or my brother John’s wedding this past summer. 

He brings out his camera as Jerry and I are getting back from walking to Joe’s, a little store that stands by itself at the corner of Monestary Drive and Center Drive. I’m wearing cut-offs and a white t-shirt and loafers. Jerry’s wearing his blue-and-gray plaid bermudas and a white t-shirt and tennis shoes. As we come up the gravel driveway, Dad comes out the front door. “Stay there,” he says and he puts the camera to his eye. “No, step up onto the patio here so I can get your feet in too.” 

As we both step up—I don’t know why I do it—I cup Jerry’s right butt cheek with my hand and he jumps, kind of giggles, and grabs my hand. I look at Dad. He has lowered the camera and I see in his eyes something I have seen before. 

We kids of Loretta Street played on Loretta Street. We played Red Rover and Kick the Can and we jumped rope and when I was ten, we caught the hula hoop craze. One afternoon as we all were vying for the title of unofficial hula hoop champ of Loretta Street, Joe Chrinock came out of his house next door and joined Dad standing at the mailbox just off the street watching us. Joe was one of those people who live in quiet envy of others. It seeps into their relationships and it puts just the subtlest twist of bitterness in their voice, which may otherwise be gentle, easy, as playful as jugglers on The Ed Sullivan Show as they pitch glinting knives back and forth to each another. 

Joe stood with Dad and they watched silently. I knew they were watching so I added an extra wide swivel to my hips and I let the hula hoop slide a little farther down my thighs before I dipped and swirled it back up to my waist. And then I heard Joe Chrinock say casually, almost without inflection, “Better be careful with that one, people’re gonna think he’s a fairy.” I didn’t know what kind of fairy Joe thought I might be, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that Joe Chrinock, standing with Dad next to our mailbox on Loretta Street and watching us kids at play, had deliberately pitched a glinting knife into Dad’s heart. 

And I saw the pain in Dad’s face. 

And I’m seeing that face now as he holds the camera.

*****

We dress in our workout shorts. We warm up, we stretch out. We go to the track. The coach welcomes us. I work out with the hurdlers. He works with the pole vaulters. We jog around the track together. (“Your lung capacity is greater than mine,” he says). What is it about working out that lessens tension, that increases interplay? 

Why am I so happy?