Part One DICK 1 Get Out of Bed (1928) Rit liked to stay in bed in the morning. To sleep in. In his favorite room in his favorite house of all the houses of all of his whole entire life of twelve years. The house on Myrtle, the yellow clapboard two-story with the uncut grass. He had his own room at the top of the backstairs, off the kitchen, and he'd lie awake, eyes half open, peering at the world through a gauze of lashes, dreamlike, listening to breakfast, to his brother's bare feet scudding across the orange and grey linoleum, to Teddy, his Mama, her laughter belting up towards him in hacking sheets. Cut it out, Karl! (Cough.) Damn you! His 10 year old brother had untied her apron, the threadbare one with the blue and white Lilies Of The Valley and the torn pocket, jiggled it loose, nicked it with his knuckles and, as it slid to the floor, spun backwards - naughty retreat. He thrust his carrot topped head, chin forward, into the icebox, meaty hands around a thick blue glass milk bottle, the guilty flap of his long Johns peeled, chubby pink grinning vertically through the gap. Rit rolled onto his side, pulling the covers over his head. He could picture the whole scenario. The repetitive motifs of the Kinscherf family engraved on his spirit like a secret code. I am this family, he thought. Mama is me. Her smell, like clean laundry, her thick, waist long hair, her big green eyes, my face against her chest. My brother Karl. I am Karl. I know him like I know my own foot. Nothing he thinks falls far from my head. Even laughs like me. Something dirty about it. Dad - ink black eyes, dark, nappy hair, widow's cowlick, same again, same as me. And he has my name. I am Papa. Before I get outa this bed, before I make one sound, before I see my ugly mug in the mirror, I am these five people. I own 'em like the Brooklyn Dodgers. C'mon, Ma. It ain't fair. Rit said trashout's his turn this week. He knew Karl knew he was listening, but he wouldn't take the bait. Wouldn't shout back and have to drag those damn cans outside in the knife cold air. Nice to hear his name said, however. He liked that. Being known in that taken for granted way, a piss warm secure sensation creeping up the inside of his pajamas, sound as a silver dollar. They are me and they are saying my name, he smiled. (They called him Rit. His name was Richard, like his Dad, but they nicknamed him Rit. Something about how he couldn't pronounce Dick as a child.) He hated getting up, facing the music, leaving the womb of bed. He hated flipping the covers off, being jerked awake by the cold, scuttling into the unheated bathroom. When they'd yell up for him to get the hell out of bed, get dressed get ready for school, he'd delay by not answering. By playing a silent game with himself trying to predict how things were. His corduroys, where were they? (On the floor, kicked under the bed.) In what position? (Rag doll, face down, dead.) What's to eat? (Bacon. French toast. Shove half of it into my mouth with fingers. Teddy'd yell.) Stay mad? (She'd laugh. Shake her head. Wipe her soapy hands on his shirt. Ma!) What kind of day would he have? (Grey? Yellow? Yeah. A yellow day.) There's no yellow day, sneered Karl. You're nuts. Anyhow he usually got it wrong about weather. Couldn't visualize it right. Unless it was extreme, like snow, something he could overhear Mama commenting on. Karl, look at it come down. (Cough.) Holy Jesus. (His Mom was Teddy ever since she was a kid; idolized Theodore Roosevelt. Dick called her Ann. When he met her that's how she introduced herself - Ann Maynard McCauley. Met her on a stinking hot beach in Cape May. Wasn't interested that his wife was a former Rough Rider. He hated Teddy Roosevelt anyhow, and later, FDR. Hated any Roosevelt.) Karl. Run up and pinch that good-for-nothing brother of yours outa the sack. Ma, hey! Somethin' died up there. You know it, I know it. Somethin' rotten and bad, and Rit's jus' layin' in it, waitin' for me t' come up an' suffer. No, Maam, I won't go. The spatula hit the floor. Teddy laughed and then she coughed. She coughed and laughed. Then she farted. The laughing forced out the fart, and the fart made her laugh. The circle of flatulence. Rit shook his head. My Mom's a god-damned farter. She'd read somewhere that letting out wind was good for you. Ri-it, she called up, dividing his name into two syllables, sliding down to the second. You up yet? He rolled onto his belly. Slid his arm into his flannels, cupped his fingers under his genitals. He'd wait for the second call. Ann would take a few steps up the stairs and tap on the wainscotting. You alive or are you dead? Karl thinks you're dead. Mm mm. Get up and get down here. Hear me? I'm serious. Yes Maam. I sincerely do. He couldn't help the sincerely, his latest overused word. Teddy went back to the stove. Lighting up. Pack of Camels a day, he figured. A shattering cough. The cigs looked right on her. Sharp and defining. Always within reach. A snapshot of her with Dick, when they first met, fell in love, barely twenty, arm-in-arm on that hot beach in Cape May. Dick in a full body, skin tight bathing suit, his sex sticking out like a stone. Ann, the carefree flapper in a big straw hat. Cig stuck on her lips then, just like now. Crisp and smart. Like a Life Magazine ad. In love and smoking, you own the world, he sighed. Sincerely. Rolled over for the last time. The sun hit him square, making his eyelids red. He could see microscopic tadpoles swimming in blood. Time was up, his conversation with himself evaporated. Dick was in the john clipping his moustache with cuticle scissors. Slow, deliberate and imprecise. It always came out crooked, like a picture which never hung straight. Rit wanted to adjust it, to clip it right, but never said a word. One of a million things that raced through his head. Got a job, Pop. And what is that? Paperboy. Delivering, on my bike, just like you did. Gazette? Sincerely. Good for you. Clipping moustaches was too formidable a concentration to interrupt. News like a paper route rarely made a dent on the old man. Worried more about politics. Or Ann's cough. Or about Yankee Jewelers, where he worked until his eyeballs fell out. It wasn't that he didn't care about the paper route. His muted reaction seemed artful to Rit. He didn't appreciate this fully until later when he got further along and realized how much pretense passed for authenticity. How people performed responses to things out of calculation and habit. He would learn and love to spot a phony (one of his future trademarks). Today was Tuesday, February 5th, 1928. Winter nearly over, spring about to hit, and it felt like the rest of the school year would float away like a helium balloon. More time outside. A dog's life. A baseball summer. It was easy then. Plain old life. At least that's how he remembered it. Disarmingly easy. Easy to look into his Mama's eyes. Easy to not doubt himself. Easy to have thoughts of his own that didn't threaten anybody. Easy to believe in the self-evident: a father and his boy silent before the sink in their underwear, a son who can laugh at his Mama's irritated mood, a brother - his unselfconscious best friend. The whole portrait - his life and the people in it - made exquisite sense. Had a room to himself, a job, knew the trees, the backway to school, how to charm the sweater off his teacher, heart unbroken. 2 - Fake Intelligents