Kissing the Beehive Page 2

However the more I thought, the more I realized no matter how far or fast I drove up the parkway, my life would still be waiting for me at home. What the hell was I going to do about this stillborn novel that sat so lifeless on my desk? For the first time in my writing career, I had discovered that a novel could be like a love affair that starts off with long kisses and dancing in fountains, but then turns into your sixth-grade teacher before you're even aware of what's happening. It had reached the point when I didn't even like to go into my study because I'd take one look at that pile of pages and desperately want to beam up to another planet. Any planet, so long as there were no books, deadlines or Italian editors there. Evil Irene had said it best: "All the rats are jumping ship, Sam. Even your best friend in the world – your imagination."

  That was what astonished me most. Until recently it had been so simple. Every couple of years I would sit down with a couple of characters in mind and start typing. As I got to know them, got to know their habits and the way they saw the world, their story would walk out of the fog and right onto the page. I think it had also been easy because I was nice to them. I never forced them to do anything. Not all of these characters were my heroes, but I respected all of them and allowed them to follow whatever course they chose. Some writer said that in every book he wrote, there came a point when the character took over and he just let them do what they wanted. For me that happened on the first page.

  What was most disturbing about this new one was how embarrassingly flat it was. Characters said and did things but you didn't believe any of it because I hadn't been able to put any blood in their veins or a beating heart into their fates. I felt like Dr. Frankenstein, who had sort of succeeded at creating life, but not really. Like the doctor's monster, I could see how patched together and badly stitched my creation was. I knew it was going to go awry if it ever got up enough energy to stagger off the operating table and walk into the world.

  I was hungry. Hungry and tired and worried. I was going home to a house that was too big for just me and my dog, Louie. I'd bought the place when a house in the country with wonderful new wife Irene, a white puppy and a big room to work in sounded like the best things on earth. Now the house was haunted, the dog was a misanthrope and my study had turned into Room 101 from 1984.

  With these cheerful thoughts marching through my head as I entered Westchester County, I suddenly had an inspiration: I was going to go home. Home to Crane's View, New York, where I'd spent the first fifteen years of my life.

  Although I passed near the town every time I drove to New York, I hadn't been back there for at least a decade. I'd never been very nostalgic and spent almost no time thinking about my old days. My second wife Michelle once said she'd never known anyone who spoke less about their past. I thought about that, then said I was frankly suspicious of people who went to too many class reunions or pored over photo albums and high school yearbooks. It seemed to me something was wrong there – as if they had left something essential behind, or were realizing life was never better than back whenever. So I skipped all of my reunions, lost the few yearbooks I'd kept, and indifferently shrugged at who I had been growing up.

  The last time I'd been to Crane's View was when Michelle and I were married and she insisted I take her on a guided tour. She was a fanatical romantic and wanted to see everything. We visited the high school, had lunch at Charlie's Pizza, and walked up and down Main Street until even she grew bored of what little there was to see. But those were the days when I was happy and didn't need a history to sail on into my wonderful future.

  It was already seven o'clock when I drove off at the exit, but since it was high summer, the sky had the golden light of fresh-baked bread. The winding road to town went past beautiful trees and large estates hidden behind high stone walls. When I was young, my parents used to take my sister and me on Sunday drives. How many times had we ridden past these impressive houses and heard my father proudly announce the names of the people who owned them as if he knew them personally?

  And whatever happened to that nice institution, getting into the family car and just taking a drive? Sometimes you'd be out for hours, the parents talking quietly in the front seat, the kids swapping punches or whispers in the back, all of you delighted to be out together for the day in the big old black Ford or gold Dodge station wagon. Sometimes you'd stop for an ice cream or even better at the miniature golf course three towns over where other families out for their rides had stopped too.

  Memories like slow-moving tropical fish swam through my mind as I rolled toward Crane's View. That's the corner where Dave Hughes fell off his bike, Woody Barr's house, St. Jude's Church where all my Catholic friends crossed themselves whenever we walked by. As expected, everything seemed smaller and gave off the faint aroma of a cologne you had once used but not for years.

  It struck me I didn't think much about my childhood because I had had a good one, albeit nothing special. A wholesome meal that filled me but didn't stand out in any way. My father worked for Shell Oil all his life and liked nothing more than to pad around our house in sneakers and khakis, smoking his pipe and fixing things that didn't always need to be fixed. My mother was a homemaker in the days when that wasn't a dirty word. They married straight out of college and enjoyed each other's company for thirty-four years.

  We spent our summers in a small house in a town called Sea Girt on the New Jersey shore. We had a dog named Jack, a series of station wagons; we ate dinner together in front of the television set watching either Walter Cronkite or Perry Mason. For dessert we'd have Breyers vanilla ice cream covered with Bosco chocolate sauce. Television was black-and-white, your hair was a crew cut, girls wore dresses. What could be simpler?

  Just past the high school, Scrappy's Diner was my first stop of the evening. Decent food, the closest pay telephone to the school, and the patient good humor of its owners made it one of the two important places for kids in Crane's View. The other was Charlie's Pizza, but it was so small all you could do there was buy your slices of pizza and hang around outside on the street while you ate.

  The diner, on the other hand, was large, air-conditioned and full of comfortable screaming-turquoise Naugahyde booths. There was music and a menu we could afford. It was ours. Kids own nothing – everything is either promised, borrowed, longed for or exaggerated. Scrappy's gave us a place to plan, dream and regroup. The way it broke down, if you needed to meet on your way to somewhere else, see you in front of Charlie's. If you needed to talk, it was Scrappy's.

  The place was almost empty when I entered. I stood a moment in the doorway and let a quazillion memories hit me square in the brain. Every corner and booth was full of my life. Just seeing the room and smelling the familiar aroma of Bunn-O-Mat coffee, frying meat, body odor, floor cleaner and wiped tables reminded me so vividly of another now that had once been as important as today's. I sat at the counter and turned the revolving seat left and right.

  A young waitress wearing too much lipstick and too little energy came over. Everything about her emanated that slumping spirit that comes from being on your feet too long or just being eighteen years old and life weighs too much for you.

  "What'll you have?"

  "A menu, please."

  She opened her mouth to say something but stopped and closed it. Instead she slowly reached under the counter and came up with a long red menu. "Today's specials are turkey pot pie and meat loaf." She sighed.

  "Do you still make the California burger?"

  "Sure! You want one?" To my surprise, her eyes brightened and she let loose a very friendly smile. Watching her, I saw that this young woman had only so much energy in her and would consume it all by the time she was only thirty-five or forty. After that, her life would be sighs and tired gestures but enough intelligence to realize she'd used up her share long before she should have. The thought crossed my mind like a shooting star and then was gone. I looked at the name plate over her breast. Donna.

  "Donna? I know a woman named Donna. She has two birds. Two coc
katiels."

  "Yeah? And?"

  "Annnd, well, I guess I'll have that California burger, Donna."

  As she turned to go, I put up a finger. "Wait a sec. Do you go to the high school?"

  "Unfortunately."

  "Does Mrs. Muzroll still teach there?"

  "She don't teach, mister, she naps. That's where you do your homework, in Mrs. Muzroll's class. You went to Crane's View?" She threw a thumb over her shoulder in its direction.

  "A long time ago."

  She smiled again. "I wish I went there a long time ago!"

  "Still bad, huh?"

  "Naah, not so bad. I just like complaining. I'll get your burger."

  I watched her walk away, then checked out who else was there. A moving van was parked outside and I assumed the two giants down the counter eating meat loaf belonged to it.

  I stared too long at a teenage couple in a booth who were having fun shooting paper wrappers off straws at each other. I remembered sitting in that same booth with Louise Hamlin one night after we'd had a heavy make-out session behind the school. We drank cherry Cokes and stared at each other with the delight and gratitude that comes only after hours of monumental fourteen-year-old kissing. Something deep in my chest tightened at the thought of that night, and of Louise Hamlin with her strawberry blond hair.

  "Here you go. Something to look at while you're waiting." Donna put a book down in front of me. It was the Periauger, the Crane's View high school yearbook. "It's from last year. I thought you might like to see what it's like there now."

  "Wow, Donna, that's really sweet! Thank you so much."

  "I've been keeping it in the back. You can see if Mrs. Muzroll looks any different."

  "I doubt it. Thanks again."

  It was the perfect yellow brick road back into my old hometown. So much was familiar, so much wasn't. I knew none of the kids but the faces in any yearbook always look the same. Same unnatural smiles, straight posture, tough guys, geeks, future poets and fools. Only the size of the hair and the styles change but the faces were the same everywhere. The school had built a new gymnasium and had knocked down the old auditorium. Mr. Pupel (known and hated far and wide as Mr. Poodle) still taught French and looked as gay as ever. Mrs. Bartel still had the biggest tits in the world and Coach Ater still looked like a warthog thirty years on. All these things heartened me and I read through the yearbook, even after my good cheeseburger with all the trimmings had arrived.

  "See anyone you know?" Donna leaned over the counter and looked at the book upside down. Her long brown hair was luminous and thick. Up this close, I could smell her perfume. It was smoke and lemon at once.

  "Lots! It's hard to believe some of these people are still at the school. Pupel used to make the best-looking boys in class sit in the front rows. He once tried that with Frannie McCabe, but Frannie knew what he was up to and sneered, 'What, so you can look up my dress?' "

  Hearing the name of the infamous McCabe, Donna reared back and put her hands on her hips. "Frannie McCabe is my uncle!"

  "Really? He's still in town?"

  "Sure! What's your name? I'll tell him I saw you. You were in his class?"

  "Yes. My name is Samuel Bayer. Sam. We were great friends. He was the toughest guy I ever met. What does he do now?"

  "He's a cop."

  "Frannie McCabe is a cop? Donna, there's no way on earth Frannie McCabe could be a cop."

  "Yeah, well, he is. He was bad when he was a kid, huh?" The pleased look in her eye said she'd heard her share of stories about Uncle Frannie.

  "The worst! Donna, when I was a kid, if there was one person I knew who'd end up on death row, it was your uncle. I do not believe he's a cop."

  "He's good too. He's chief."

  I slapped my forehead in astonishment. "When we were kids, if I'd said he was going to be chief of police here one day, he would have been insulted."

  "Hey, Donna, how 'bout some coffee down here?"

  She looked at the moving men and nodded. "You should go to the station and say hi. He'd like that. He's always down there." She picked up a coffee pot and walked away.

  I continued looking through the book as I ate. The football team had done well, the basketball team hadn't. The spring play was West Side Story. The makeup on the kids was so bad, all of the actors looked like they were from The Addams Family. I flipped through the pages past the computer club, chess club, kitchen and janitorial staff. Ninth grade, tenth grade and then there it was, a face I didn't know, but a name I did know, and a memory as large as my life: Pauline Ostrova.

  "Jesus Christ! Donna? Could you come here a minute?" My voice must have been way too loud because both she and the moving men looked at me with wide eyes.

  "Yeah?"

  I pointed to a picture. "Do you know her? Pauline Ostrova?"

  "Yes. I mean I know her, but she's not like a friend or anything. Why?"

  "What's she like?" For a moment I didn't realize I was holding my breath in anticipation.

  "Sort of weird. Smart. Into computers and stuff. She's a brain. Why, you know her family? You know about them?"

  "Uh-huh. I know a lot about them."

  She leaned in closer, as if about to tell me a secret. "You know about the other Pauline? Her aunt? What happened to her?"

  "Donna, I found the body."

  I left the diner feeling so good that I could have rumbaed around the parking lot. In the car I turned the radio on full blast and sang along to the Hollies' song "Bus Stop."

  I had it. I finally had it again and the fact was so glorious and exciting that I felt bullet-proof. I had it! It was almost nine at night when I picked up the car phone and started dialing the office number of Aurelio Parma, editorial gargoyle, afrit and human Ebola virus to tell him Ha! I have the idea for an incredible new book! Plus everything is already there: no need to create a thing. The phone rang in his office until, through the rocket's red glare of my enthusiasm, I realized he had gone home hours before. But I had to talk to someone about this. I got out my address book and found Patricia Chase's home number. In all the years we had worked together, I had never once called Patricia at home. Now I knew I'd have an embolism if I didn't.

  I waited while her phone rang. Across the street was a gas station that had once been Flying A, then Gulf, Sunoco, then Citgo. Now it was Exxon and looked very hi-tech modern, although there was no garage where cars could be repaired. Just the gas pumps and one of those tiny markets that cater to people's addictions – cigarettes, lottery tickets, junk food and The National Enquirer.

  In its earlier incarnation, the station had been where we always rode our bikes after school to the bright red Coke machine in front. Drinks cost a dime and that vaguely green glass bottle would come banging down from inside, ice-cold and curving perfectly into your hand. We'd stand there with our bikes balanced between our legs, drinking in long bottle-emptying glugs. In between, we'd watch cars pull in and out for gasoline or to be repaired. We'd name the makes if they made the grade. "Fuckin' 4-4-2." "Nice 'Vette." "That Z-28'd kick your ass!" Eavesdropping on the mechanics' conversations as they worked in the garage had taught us the importance of these great machines, as well as all the dirty words a nine-year-old needed to know. At home, the pictures on our walls were of Shelby Mustangs or Cobras, a Chevrolet 327 engine, a tucked-and-rolled custom-leather interior, the drag racers Don Prudhomme or "Swamp Rat" Don Garlits.

  "Hello?"

  "Patricia, it's Sam Bayer."

  "Sam! Is Aurelio holding you prisoner?"

  "Better, Patricia, much better! Listen to this . . ."

  I told her the idea for the book. When I was finished, there was a long silence that could have meant anything coming from the formidable Chase. She has a strong, impressive voice but when she did speak, it was the softest and most tentative I had ever heard it. "You never told me about that, Sam."

  "It happened a long time ago."

  "It doesn't matter. It's still a hell of an experience!"

  "It is, but
what do you think of my idea? Do you like it?"

  "I love it and so will Aurelio."

  "But it doesn't necessarily mean I'll find anything, Patricia. I'm just going to look."

  "I think it could be that big book we were talking about today, Sam. The gods must be happy with you to offer this idea seven hours after we talked. Where are you, by the way?"

  "In Crane's View! I just had a California burger at Scrappy's Diner and am going down to the river now to see what I can remember."

  "I think it's going to be great, Sam. I'm very excited."

  "You never say that!"

  "You never wrote anything like this."

  I was about to answer when I saw something that knocked me back into my past with the force of a punch.

  While we spoke I had watched the comings and goings at the gas station. My window was down so I heard the constant mutter of traffic and street noise outside. Nothing special, until someone nearby started speaking in a deep, dead monotone that part of my brain recognized instantly. It was repeating word for word a Honda Accord commercial I had seen on television so many times that, against my will, I'd memorized the words to it, like a terrible pop song that will not leave your head. I recognized the slogans a moment before recognizing the voice. That voice doing exactly the same thing it had always done when I was a kid – perfectly repeating the words of television commercials. Thirty years ago it had been ads for Cocoa Marsh and Newport cigarettes, Tide detergent and Rambler cars. Today it was a Honda but that made no difference: It was a Crane's View ghost alive in my ear. Shocked, I slowly turned to look for the face.

  There he was, still walking in those big glumphing steps, arms swinging too high up from his side, his feet encased in shoes that looked as big as the boxes they'd come in.

  "Holy shit, it's Club Soda Johnny!"

  "What, Sam? What did you say?"

  "I'll call you tomorrow, Patricia. I gotta go. My past just walked by, doing a Honda ad." I put the phone down and jumped out of the car. Johnny was walking toward the school and as always moving so fast that I had to jog to catch up.