Category: Just a story
Author's Spelling: phonetically, when it comes to Jersey
I pick up the ringing phone, and hear someone say, “I got a Schilke B3 for sale. Wannit?”
Wrong number, I start to say, but suddenly the voice sounds familiar. A flat voice, no expression, but even an autistic New Jerseyite has the state accent.
“Bobby D!” I exclaim. “This you?”
“Yeah. Wannit? The horn?”
“Bobby D! Bobby! What a…surprise!
Surprise? Sonofabitch, I almost dropped my antique Limoges egg cup! Putting my breakfast tray aside on the bed, I buzz the intercom for Maria Four to remove it.
“Bobby! I can’t believe… We haven’t spoken since ...how, how did you…even get my number out here?”
“Your cousin down the shore.”
“Which cousin? I’m Italian, remember?”
“Little Lina. But not little now. She’s real fat.”
I laugh to learn that Lina ran to fat from the side of her family I wasn’t related to.
“How many big moles she got on her face ?” I ask Bobby D slyly, knowing he will tell me whatever I want if I phrase it carefully.
“Seven” he responds.
You made my day, Bobby D, and it’s only noon.
I stretch under the silk comforter and look at my stiletto nails. True Jersey girls maintain long, pointy fingernails whatever the current fashion, and we painted our toenails well before it was the in thing to do everywhere else.
God how it all comes back. Jersey.
“How ya doin’, Bobby? Still in the sales business, I’m guessing.”
“Yeah. I sell stuff in my parents’ garage.”
“How are they, your parents?”
“They’re okay. They died.”
“Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
Really, it’s another shock. His parents, called the Bickersons in our neighborhood, were almost a force of nature. Their battles were heard the length and breadth of a city block. Hard to imagine them at peace.
He described them first as “okay.” Well, I reflect, the dead are okay in a sense. Bobby D has a way with words sometimes.
“So I guess it’s your house now,” I say.
“Yeah. I forget. So you wannit?” He didn’t mean the house.
“”Whatta yiz tryin’ to unload on me? A what? A “B” what? I mean, what is it?” I laugh inwardly, how I’m slipping back into my own accent, 3000 miles and 40 years removed.
“I said. A horn. A trumpet. Present for your boyfriend.”
Though I’m gazing out the window at the Pacific Ocean as he says this, I’m seeing another ocean, the one visible from the boardwalk of Wildwood New Jersey. I’m among a sqeak of squealers heading towards a club called - what else? - On The Boards. Our heels cha-cha in sync with the brakers, and we want everyone to hear them clicking on the wooden planks. We don’t even notice all the holes in which they could get caught. We don’t know from broken limbs and arthritis yet.
Tonight, Steve “The Bad Boy” Sheehan is playing his horn in a band. I’ve just told my five best girlfriends – and Bobby D, trailing at his usual few paces behind - that The Bad Boy and I slept together for the first time the previous evening.
The only reason we parted was so’s he could get to his gig in time. The last thing he said walking out the door was, “Watch my lips tonight when I play, baby. Later, they’ll be back on you.” It’s the kind of line a woman recalls for decades, wincing at her youthful stupidity. It will be my last thought before death, I’m sure.
“It sounds beautiful.” Bobby’s voice is in my ear and the word is drawn out, Philly & Jersey style. Bee-u-dee-ful. “Plays broke Christmas carols real smooth the man said.”
“Baroque,” I say automatically. Bobby D. doesn’t process new information easily, so he generally ignores anything he doesn’t understand. Whatever he learns in connection with the objects he sells, that’s pretty much it as far as he’s concerned. Same thing with people. Last time he saw me, I had a trumpet player boyfriend. Therefore, I will always have a trumpet player boyfriend.
“The Bad Boy and I split up when we arrived in California. I haven’t seen him since. So I’m not in the market for a trumpet, but it was real nice of you to think of me. ” I pause. “Got any anemometers,” I ask jokingly. My current boyfriend has a sailboat and talks about wind all the time.
“I’ll look,” he answers, seriously. “S’long.”
“Wait, what’s your hurry?”
It has been so very, very long.
“All these years…my God! Bobby! We were in kindergarten together!”
“Yeah.” He’s waiting for me to start a new conversation, since he already said what he called me about.
“So, what’s new?” I make my voice overly enthusiastic, to get him involved. “What’s the gossip?”
I haven’t stayed in touch with Jersey. My five best girlfriends went far away, like me. My mother died and I have no interest in the relatives that stole her stuff from me. I don’t even know how Lina got my number.
“My mom didn’t like gossip,” Bobby D. reports to me.
“Well, I mean, who’s left in the old neighborhood? ” I’m determined to get more out of him. He calls me up, brings Jersey right into my bedroom, and I’m damned well going to find out about people. “How’s Fourth Down?”
“Still paralyzed.”
“Who takes care of him? “
“His big sister . She never got married .” He stops talking in a way that sounds like a pause. I wait. “But she got engaged to Pam Polanski at Christmas.”
Ka-CHING! Good one, Bobby D! Lesbian senior citizens coming out in a blue collar New Jersey neighborhood!
“Who else is still around?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who do you run into at the WaWa?”
“It’s a tattoo place now.”
“Well, who’ve you seen wherever you food shop.”
“Mrs. Scott, at the new big WaWa.”
“Mrs. Scott? Our fifth grade teacher?! Holy Steel Pier, she still alive?”
“Yeah, and she don’t have wrinkles.”
“Maybe we just thought she was old because we were ten.”
I lean back on the pile of plump cushions in full nostalgia mode. Sure it’s annoying to have to keep prompting him, but I was warming up to the task. I think Bobby was warming up too, though only an expert could tell. And who was more expert at communicating with him than me, even after all this time.
Another scene from long ago, from kindergarden days, floats to my memory on this rogue wave from the Atlantic. My mother is telling me to take care of Bobby D, to watch over him in school so mean kids won’t hurt him.
“Don’t worry Mommy. He’s not really there, so nobody even sees him.”
I don’t understand why that makes her look sad. He’s just being Bobby D. His parents are the Bickersons. People are who they are. And me? I’m a little girl who dreams of love and other fancy things.
“Okay, who else,” I ask him now
There’s a silence.
“Toldja everyone.”
“Any more kids die?” I know he understands I’m speaking of our generation.
“Pip Lugasa did, cancer, then Angel dropped dead the same day. They only got one funeral.
I pictured these two, sweethearts since junior high. Sneaking a smoke together in the basement bathroom one day, Pip confided to me that she and Angel did it, all the time now.
“Oh it’s the best feeling ever,” she said then. “You just gotta fall in love, so you can feel it too.”
I wanted to, fervently, but was still a virgin at that point. And now, I couldn’t feel too sad about the Lugasas. They had a world class romance for most of their lives.
“Who do you pal around with, Bobby?”
“Mutt “
“Who? I must be getting old. I don’t remember anyone named Mutt.”
“He’s my dog.”
“That’s real nice, you got a dog. What kind is – oh, never mind.”
“Rescued him. They were gonna kill him.”
I look over at Pfeffer, a Shiatzu lightly snoring on her side of the bed. I got her after my last divorce. She rescued me.
My mind wanders a minute and there’s silence, a beat too long for Bobby D.
“Gotta go.”
“Thanks for calling, Bobby. Sorry I don’t want to buy your trumpet.”
“That’s okay. S’long.”
The receiver goes dead.
I sob for maybe 15 minutes straight after that. Life is broke and beeudeeful in California too.
