Naked, Page 6

“They’re kids,” our father would say. “What do you want them to do, stand on my shoulders for Christ’s sake? Come on, pal, have a heart.”

  The big boys were playing that day, men whose names we recognized from the tedious magazines my father kept stacked beside the toilet and heaped in the backseat of his Mustang. We’d seen these players on television and heard their strengths and weaknesses debated by the bronzed maniacs who frequented the pro shop of our country club. These people chipped and parred. They birdied and eagled and double-bogeyed with an urgency that failed to capture our imagination. Seeing the pros in person was no more interesting than eating an ice-cold hamburger, but it meant the world to our father, who hoped their presence might kindle a passion, inciting us to take up our clubs and strive for excellence. This was, for him, an act of love, a misguided attempt to enrich our lives and bring us closer together as a family.

  “You kids are so damned lucky.” He placed his hands on our shoulders, inching us closer to the front. “These are the best players in the PGA, and here you are with front-row seats.”

  “What seats?” Lisa asked. “Where?”

  We stood on the grassy embankment, watching as the first player teed off.

  “Lisa,” our father whispered, “go get it. Go get Snead’s tee.”

  When Lisa refused, it was up to me to wander onto the green, searching for the spent wooden peg that might have been whacked anywhere from six to twenty feet from its point of origin. Our father collected these tees as good-luck charms and kept them stored in a goldfish bowl that sat upon his dresser. It was forbidden to wander onto the green during a tournament, so he used us to do his legwork, hoping the officials might see us as enthusiastic upstarts who decorated their rooms with posters of the masters working their way out of sand traps or hoisting trophies over their heads following stunning victories at Pebble Beach. Nothing could have been further from the truth. No matter how hard he tried to motivate us, the members of my family refused to take even the slightest interest in what was surely the dullest game ever invented. We despised golf and everything that went with it, from the mushroom-capped tam-o’-shanters right down to the cruel spiked shoes.

  “Oh, Lou,” my mother would whine, dressed for a cocktail party in her muted, earth-tone caftan. “You’re not going to wear that, are you?”

  “What’s wrong with this?” he’d ask. “These pants are brand-new.”

  “New to you,” she’d say. “Pimps and circus clowns have been dressing that way for years.”

  We never understood how a man who took such pride in his sober tailored suits could spend his weekends in Day-Glo pants patterned with singing tree frogs or wee kilted Scotsmen. You needed sunglasses to open his closet door, what with all the candy-colored sweaters, aggressive madras sports-coats, and painfully bright polo shirts all screaming for attention. Highway workmen wore such shocking colors so that motorists could see them from a distance. It made sense for them, but what perils did these golfers face? There were no jacked-up Firebirds or eighteen-wheelers racing down the fairway threatening to flatten their comfortable little four-somes. We were taught at an early age never to yell or even speak in a normal tone of voice while on the golf course. Denied the full use of their vocal cords, these people let their outlandish clothing do the shouting for them, and the results were often deafening.

  “I don’t feel so well,” Lisa whispered to my father as we marched from the sand trap to the putting green on the eighth hole. “I really think we need to leave.”

  My father ignored her. “If Trevino bogeys this hole, he’s screwed. That last bunker shot pinned his ass right to the wall. Did you see his backswing?”

  “I’m concerned right now about my back,” Lisa said. “It’s aching and I want to go home and lie down.”

  “We’ll be just another minute.” My father fingered the collection of tees in his pocket. “The problem with both you kids is that you’re not paying enough attention to the game.

  First thing tomorrow morning I’m signing you up for some more lessons, and then you’ll see what I’m talking about. Jesus, this game is just so exciting, you won’t be able to stand it.”

  We had serious doubts that it was exciting, but he was right when he said we wouldn’t be able to stand it. A tight man with a dollar, our father had signed us up for our first lessons when we could barely hold a rattle. No, we could not have a nude maid, but he was more than happy to give us an expensive set of child-sized clubs, which sat in the dark corners of our bedrooms, the canvas bags clawed and tattered by our cat, who was the only one who seemed to enjoy them. He bought green carpet for the living room and called us in to observe his stance as he sank balls into a coffee can. The driving range, the putt-putt courses — he just didn’t get it. We didn’t want advice on our swing, we wanted only to be left alone to practice witchcraft, deface fashion dolls, or sit in the privacy of our rooms fantasizing about anything other than golf. He had hoped that caddying might provide us with a better understanding of the game. My sisters and I collapsed beneath the weight of his clubs, barely conscious when he called out for a nine iron or a sand wedge. Caddying was a thankless job, especially in North Carolina, where by mid-March the humidity is fierce enough to curl paper. Ninety-eight degrees on the second hole and we’d crumple to the green, listening as children our own age shouted and splashed in the nearby pool.

  The tournament dragged on, and by the time we reached the fourteenth hole, Lisa had begun to bleed, the rust-colored spot visible on her white culottes. She was close to tears, sunburned and frightened when she whispered something into my father’s ear.

  “We’ll just get one of the gals,” my father said. “They’ll take care of you.” He turned to a handsome white-haired woman wearing a lime green visor and a skirt patterned with grinning pandas. “Hey, sweetheart, I wonder if you could help me out with a personal problem.” Like my father, this woman had followed these players from hole to hole, taking note of their every move. She had come out that day to bask in the glow of the masters, and now a strange man was asking her to accompany his daughter to the clubhouse and out-fit her with a sanitary napkin.

  She didn’t seem to appreciate being called “sweetheart” and bristled when my father, his eyes never leaving the ball, suggested that if she shake a leg, she might make it back in time for the next tee off. She looked at my father as if he were something she had scraped off the bottom of her shoe. It was a withering gaze that softened once it shifted direction and settled on Lisa, who stood shamefully staring at the ground, her hands cupped to hide the stain. The woman nodded her head and, placing her hand on my sister’s shoulder, reluctantly led her toward a distant cluster of buildings. I didn’t understand the problem but very much wanted to join them, thinking perhaps we might talk this person into giving us a ride home, away from this grinding monotony and the cruel, remorseless sun. With Lisa gone, it would become my sole responsibility to fetch the splintered tees and pester the contestants for their autographs. “Lou,” I would say, holding out my father’s scorecard. “My name is Lou.”

  The game finally over, we returned to the parking lot to find Lisa stretched out in the backseat of the Porsche, her face and lap covered with golf towels.

  “Don’t say it,” she threatened. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.”

  “All I was going to do was ask you to take your lousy feet off the seat of the car,” my father said.

  “Yeah, well, why don’t you go fuck yourself.” The moment she said it, Lisa bolted upright, as if there might still be time to catch the word between her teeth before it reached our father’s ears. None of us had ever spoken to him that way, and now he would have no choice but to kill her. Some unprecedented threshold had been passed, and even the crickets stopped their racket, stunned into silence by the word that hung in the air like a cloud of spent gunpowder.

  My father sighed and shook his head in disappointment. This was the same way he reacted to my mother when anger and frustration caused
her to forget herself. Lisa was not a daughter now but just another female unable to control her wildly shifting emotions.

  “Don’t mind her,” he said, wiping a thin coat of pollen off the windshield. “She’s just having lady problems.”

  Throughout the years our father has continued his campaign to interest us in the sport of golf. When Gretchen, Amy, and Tiffany rejected his advances, he placed his hopes on our brother, Paul, who found the sprawling greens an excellent place to enjoy a hit of acid and overturn the golf carts he borrowed from their parking lot beside the pro shop.

  Our father bought a wide-screen TV, an enormous model the size of an industrial-sized washing machine, and uses it only to watch and record his beloved tournaments. The top of the set is stacked high with videocassettes marked 94 PGA and 89 U.S. OPEN — UNBELIEVABLE!!!!

  Before our mother died, she put together a videotape she thought Lisa might enjoy. The two of them had spent a great deal of time in the kitchen, drinking wine and watching old movies on the black-and-white portable television that sat beside the sink. These were just a few favorites my mother had recorded. “No big deal,” she’d said, “just a little something to watch one day when you’re bored.”

  A few weeks after the funeral Lisa searched my parents’ house for the tape, finding it on the downstairs bar beside my father’s chair. She carried the cassette home but found she needed a bit more time before watching it. For Lisa, these movies would recall private times, just her and our mother perched on stools and reeling off the names of the actors as they appeared on the screen. These memories would be a gift that Lisa preferred to savor before opening. She waited until the initial grief had passed and then, settling onto her sofa with a tray of snacks, slipped in the tape, delighted to find it began with Double Indemnity. The opening credits were rolling when suddenly the video skipped and shifted to color. It was a man, squatting on his heels and peering down the shaft of his putter as though it were a rifle. Behind him stood a multitude of spectators shaded by tall pines, their faces tanned and rapt in concentration. “Greg Norman’s bogeyed all three par fives,” the announcer whispered. “But if he eagles here on the fifteenth, he’s still got a shot at the Masters.”

  true detective

  My mother had a thing for detectives, be they old, blind, or paralyzed from the waist down — she just couldn’t get enough. My older sister shared her interest. Detective worship became something they practiced together, swapping plotlines the way other mothers and daughters exchanged recipes or grooming tips. One television program would end and then the next would begin, filling our house with the constant din of gunfire and squealing tires. Downstairs the obese detective would collect his breath on the bow of the drug lord’s pleasure craft while up in the kitchen his elderly colleague hurled himself over a low brick wall in pursuit of the baby-faced serial killer.

  “How’s your case coming?” my mother would shout during commercial breaks.

  Cupping her hands to the sides of her mouth, Lisa would yell, “Tubby’s still tracking down leads, but I’m betting it’s the Chinesey guy with the eye patch and the ponytail.”

  Theirs was a world of obvious suspects. Looking for the axe murderer? Try the emotionally disturbed lumberjack loitering near the tool shed behind the victim’s house. Who kidnapped the guidance counselor? Perhaps it’s the thirty-year-old tenth-grader with the gym bag full of bloody rope. It was no wonder these cases were solved so quickly. Every clue was italicized with a burst of surging trumpets, and under questioning, the suspects snapped like toothpicks, buckling in less time than it took to soft-boil an egg. “You want to know who set fire to the retirement home? All right, it was ME, you satisfied now? That’s right, ME. I did it. ME.”

  It’s easy to solve a case when none of the suspects are capable of telling a decent lie. Television took the bite out of crime, leaving the detective as nothing more than a lifestyle. It seemed that anyone could solve a murder as long as he had a telephone, a few hours of spare time, and a wet bar. My mother had all three ingredients in spades. The more suspects she identified over the course of a season, the more confident she became. Together, she and my sister would comb the local newspaper, speculating on each reported crime.

  “We know that the girl was held at knifepoint on the second floor of her house,” Lisa said, tapping a pencil against her forehead. “So probably the person who robbed her was… not in a… wheelchair.”

  “I’d say that’s a pretty safe assumption,” my mother answered. “While you’re at it, I think we might as well eliminate anyone confined to an iron lung. Listen, Sherlock, you’re going at it all wrong. The guy broke in, held her at knife-point, and made off with three hundred dollars in cash, right?”

  “And a clock radio,” Lisa said. “Three hundred dollars and a clock radio.”

  “Forget the clock radio,” my mother said. “The important thing is that he used a knife. All right now, what kind of person uses a knife?”

  Lisa guessed that it might have been a chef. “Maybe she was at a restaurant and the cook noticed she had a lot of money in her pocketbook.”

  “Right,” my mother said, “because that’s what cooks do, isn’t it. They crawl around the dining-room floor looking through purses while the food sits in the kitchen cooking itself. Come on now, think. Who uses a knife to commit a crime? In a world of guns, what kind of person would use a knife? Give up? It’s just two little words: drug addict. It’s that simple. A professional thief would use a gun, but even secondhand, a gun costs money. Drug addicts can’t afford guns. They need all their money for their dope and smack — the hard stuff. These dopers have a habit to feed every minute of every day, which means they’re always on the lookout for their next mark. This was a heroin addict who followed the girl home from the bank, parked his car around the corner, broke into the house, and robbed her at knife-point.”

  “If he can’t afford a gun, what’s he doing with a car?” Lisa asked. “And what about the clock radio?”

  “Screw the damned clock radio,” my mother said. “And as for the car, it was stolen. He took it last Thursday from that couple on Pamlico. You saw the report in the paper. The brand-new Ford Mustang, remember? You thought it had been stolen by Gypsies, and I said we don’t even have Gypsies in this part of the country. I said the car had been taken by a dope addict who’d use it for a couple of burglaries before selling it to a chop shop. Bingo. And there you have it.” She crushed her cigarette and used the butt to trawl an X through the residue at the bottom of her blackened ashtray, her way of pronouncing that this particular case was closed. “What’s next on our roster?”

  Vandalism at 318 Poole Road, breaking and entering at the Five Points Pharmacy, a hit-and-run traffic accident in the parking lot of Swain’s Steak House — it was always the work of a drug addict or former police officer, a “renegade,” a “rogue.” To hear my mother talk, you’d think the sunny, manicured streets of suburban Raleigh were crawling with heroin addicts, the needles poking through the sleeves of their tattered police uniforms. It embarrassed me to hear her use phrases like “copping a fix” and “the pusher man.” “I have to go now,” she’d say to the grocery clerk. “My mother-in-law is back at the house, jonesing for her lunch.”

  “I beg your pardon?” they’d say. “Come again?”

  Only on network television did people talk this way.

  “I call the TV,” my mother and sister would say. It didn’t matter what you were watching, when they laid claim to one of the televisions, you surrendered it the same way cars gave up the road at the sight of an advancing ambulance. I couldn’t bear the detective shows but made it a point to regularly check in with The Fugitive. This was the story of Dr. Richard Kimble, a man on the run, falsely accused of a crime he did not commit. We are told in the opening credits that “he changed his name… and his identity. The notion of identity was illustrated by a can of shoe polish sitting on what appeared to be the scuffed surface of a motel dresser. This had me stumped for m
onths. “What,” I asked, “would nobody recognize him with freshly shined shoes? Did he use it to blacken his face? I don’t get it.”

  “His hair, stupid,” Lisa said. “He used it to dye his hair.” Lisa liked The Fugitive because, she said, “He’s easy on the eyes.”

  The way she saw it, Dr. Kimble needed only two things: a one-armed suspect and the love of a good woman. She failed to understand that despite his brooding good looks, a man of his nature could never be happy. Unlike her nightly lineup of swaggering gumshoes, the Fugitive had both a soul and a memory and would remain a haunted man long after his wife’s true killer had been brought to justice. Most programs discouraged you from concentrating on the hero’s dark inner workings. If the girlfriend was gunned down at her makeup table, you knew there’d be another one to replace her, no questions asked. The Fugitive had no fancy convertible or stylish wet bar. He was cut from a different cloth, my kind of cloth, the itchy kind. Lisa wouldn’t know a sensitive loner if he crawled into her lap with a fistful of daisies, and it annoyed me when she labeled The Fugitive as “my kind of show.”

  It was one thing to sit in front of the television second-guessing a third-rate detective program, but quite another to solve a real case. We were well into the summer reruns when our household was shaken by a series of very real crimes no TV detective could ever hope to crack. Someone in our family had taken to wiping his or her ass on the bath towels. What made this exceptionally disturbing was that all our towels were fudge-colored. You’d be drying your hair when, too late, you noticed an unmistakable odor on your hands, head, and face. If nothing else, life in the suburbs promised that you might go from day to day without finding shit in your hair. This sudden turn of events tested our resolve to the core, leaving us to wonder who we were and where we, as a people, had gone wrong. Soul-searching aside, it also called for plenty of hot water, gallons of shampoo, steel wool, industrial scrub brushes, and blocks of harsh deodorizing soap. The criminal hit all three bathrooms, pausing just long enough to convince the rest of us that it was finally safe to let down our guard. I might spend twenty minutes carefully sniffing the towel only to discover that this time the asshole had used the washcloth.