The place is a strip joint now. My father calls it his gentleman’s club. He insists it’s a clean, well-lighted establishment run by topnotch professionals. He makes regular use of the weekday All-you-can-eat buffet. He says he likes to sit stage-side, “up close and personal” and chow down while pretty women dance just out of reach. When I asked about the food, he said, “Out of this world. You’ll see. I’ll take you there on your birthday,” Which is rich. You’ll see how rich that statement is. Just give me a minute.
The outside hasn’t changed much. Still a low, squat building, all stucco and white brick; a smaller sign illuminated by four spotlights shines where the old neon used to buzz and hum. In the side alley, where a barber shop used to be, they’ve added a sort of gift shop where you can buy novelty items (mugs, glasses, key chains, car deodorizers, etc.) as well as signed glossy photographs and videos of the strippers. (They’ll make a custom video for a small fee.) My father owns a few tapes and though I’ve never watched them he has boasted long distance that a couple of the dancers are ‘local talent,’ girls I went to school with, women I could have dated, possibly even married, if I had “possessed half a backbone growing up.”
On a number of my visits home, I’ve driven by the place, and twice my father asked me to drop him off there. Both times he’s invited me in, once as adamantly as if he owned the place, and another time, viscous and drunk, clutching my shirt, begging me to join him for “one lousy beer,” then weeping and moaning, telling me to forget it, as if he understood the reason for my refusal.
You couldn’t pay me to go in that joint, not for an ice cold beer on the hottest day of the year. And not because of what it’s become, either. Since my own divorce I’ve been to my share of clubs, Gentleman and otherwise, and have had that one drink too many then drooled like a fool and spent more than I should. And personally I hold no ill-feelings against naked women, or the men who get a thrill slipping fan-folded currency into G-strings. I’m not against good old fashioned lust as long as it’s kept in check. No, I won’t go in this joint because of what the place used to be.
Years ago, before the whole downtown went to hell, that exact spot housed a Chinese restaurant called Lucky Luke’s. Among its distinctions was a marquee like a movie theater, valet parking, deep padded horseshoe booths, and a huge one-page menu the approximate size of a major league strike zone.
If I close my eyes, I can still see that menu, a poster-sized memory tacked into a small corner of my childhood. From about the time I could read, that giant menu filled me with awe. The scrolling fire-breathing dragons aside, there wasn’t a single price beside a single item, or any hint that money was involved. Even then I knew a thing or two about money. I knew we didn’t have any. I knew Lucky Luke’s wasn’t meant for people like us. Nevertheless, once a year my mother took me there for my birthday. Just the two of us.
I didn’t like Chinese food any more than my father, who year after year preferred to babysit my sister rather than come along, but I did enjoy my mother’s company immensely, and with the approach of each age relished the idea of having her full attention for a few hours. Just the two of us.
After dinner we’d take the long way home, strolling past houses we could never own, working our way down past the old mills, then back across the river, to celebrate with horribly sweet cake; and then I’d get to open my two or three presents, typically some cheap plastic toy I didn’t want, and some item of clothing I just happened to need. So in a sense I considered these private dinners — our annual date, my mother called it — the very best gift of all.
Usually I’d order the half-broiled chicken — listed under the small American Foods section of the menu — while my mother dined on a variety of exotic dishes, some of which arrived at our table still flaming. She’d always pay cash, taking money from a small book of envelopes with a red vinyl cover on which was printed BUDGET. I never got more than an upside down glance at the actual bill, and the one time I did the numbers only proved to make me dizzy.
Year after year my father grumbled at the unnecessary expense, saying we could eat for a week on what she’d be putting out for one night’s worth of “cat guts and noodles.” But my mother argued Luke’s was the best restaurant in town, and the only truly decent place within walking distance suitable for a proper birthday celebration.
If he tried to bully her, she pointed out that these private dinners had become a tradition. When called upon, I backed her one hundred percent. Even after I understood the dent this once a year extravaganza put in the family budget, I took her side, saying it was me who wanted to go. I knew firsthand the thrill she got from eating at Luke’s. I’d seen the shine in her eyes when the Chinese waiters, dressed in black silk pajamas, fussed over us like we were royalty. She adored how polite and soft-spoken they remained even when you couldn’t understand a word they were saying.
Mo warder, miss? Sum ting elks, miss? Howdah boy leek is chicken, miss? I ba-wing you for chun cookie, okey doe?
My mother cleaned other people’s houses for a living and sometimes had to assist at dinner parties and snotty little get-togethers; she’d have to dress up in a black house dress and a frilly white apron and walk around all night in four-inch heels carrying a tray of foods she couldn’t identify. Lucky Luke’s charged an arm and a leg for a breast and a wing, but sitting in their horseshoe shaped booths, with a frilly paper lantern overhead, a dozen willing waiters no more than a finger-snap away, made her, I believe, feel as wealthy and powerful as the people she scrubbed toilets for. Sometimes she’d point out a group of people and whisper, that’s Mrs. So-and-so, her husband owns the supermarket, or, There’s Mr. What’s-his-face. His company built the dry cleaners where your father worked, and they’re putting up that new donut shop beside it.
If somebody she recognized looked our way, she’d give a snappy little wave, and nod her chin while stretching her mouth into a tight smile. I can’t remember anyone ever waving back, and on a couple of occasions I pointed this out to her. She’d then insist, quite vehemently, that so-and-so had indeed made some sign of recognition but that I’d merely missed it. I was usually up to my eyeballs behind the huge menu, squinting at a dragon, guessing at the contents of, say, Egg-drop soup so I never doubted her for a moment.
My mother, you see, wasn’t hard to look at. Tall and slender (what my father called “leggy”) and with the delicate doll-like features of a ballerina, she was exactly the kind of woman most men stretched their necks to get a second glimpse of.
The night I want to tell you about, the night of my thirteenth birthday, someone not only spotted my mother but came over to our booth and slid in beside her. The man’s name was Frank Zorn and I later learned he was a big shot lawyer with a wife and two kids of his own. He sat down and smiled at my mother as if he had just returned from the men’s room and we’d been holding our breaths, and our orders, until his anticipated return. He was about the same age and build as my father, though much better looking, with more hair, and wearing red suspenders over an open collared flowery shirt. He held a ceramic pineapple from which a tiny pink umbrella sprouted, pitching and rolling in whatever fluid was contained therein.
“Emperor Qianglong couldn’t get waited on tonight,” he said, addressing the room at large.
From behind my menu, I watched my mother slide over a little. Her face was flush red, and her eyes were scanning the room. She shuddered a breath, then placed her folded hands on the table’s edge as if she were praying. She didn’t say a word.
“So, what’ve we got here,” Frank said, eyeing me over the top of his pineapple.
My mother cleared her throat. “This . . . is my son,” she said weakly. “We’re celebrating his birthday.” She closed her eyes, seemingly exhausted from this tiny speech. “Say hello to Frank, Marty.”
“Hello Frank,” I said.
Frank instantly sat up, thrusting his shoulders against the high cushioned seat. His face took on an expression I can only describe as outright shock at my ability to speak.
“Well, now,” he said “Isn’t he the polite little guy.” He set down his pineapple and reached across the table. Before I knew what he was doing he’d seized my right hand in both of his. He held it as if it were a dead sparrow that had just crashed head-first into the table top. I looked at my mother for help. Frank’s fingers were ice cold and somewhat clammy, but beyond that I was generally opposed to hand-holding, period, particularly with a man.
My mother sighed heavily. She couldn’t have looked more bewildered if Frank had brought out a meat cleaver, chopped off my hand at the wrist and begun to eat it in front of her. Fearing something along those lines, I pulled back, a blundering move on my part, because Frank mistook my second, more forceful tug, as an invitation to arm wrestle. He tightened his grip and effortlessly brought my hand closer. I felt the seat of my pants lift and the table’s edge cut into my belly. He might have succeeded in pulling me out of the booth entirely if a smiling waiter hadn’t appeared.
“All set for ardor?”
Frank released his hold on me and I flopped into my seat. He showed the waiter his pineapple.
“Yea. Another shanghai,” Then he smiled at my mother, who at the waiters appearance had picked up her menu and was using it to fan herself.
“You want a shanghai, babycakes?” Frank said.
She shook her head. It was more of a tremor, really. The “babycakes” had startled me and I examined her face for some reaction. Once, at a bus stop, a man who’d been ogling her legs had called her “sweet stuff” and she’d threatened to take his eye out with her umbrella. I couldn’t believe she was letting Frank get away with “babycakes.”
“You want to ardor food now,” the waiter said.
“No,” my mother said, finding her voice. “Not just yet, thank you.”
The waiter smiled, then bowed, then moved off. I watched him stop at another booth and launch, whole-heartedly, into a similar routine. When I looked at Frank, he was thumbing through a folded stack of crisp currency. The outermost bill was a hundred and my eyes shot open. I held my breath as he flipped past a number of fifties, pulled a twenty from the middle, and tossed it nonchalantly across the table.
“Hey Marky boy. How ’bout doing me a tremendous favor and getting me change for that.”
I looked at my mother who was pinching the bridge of her nose. Her cheeks had drained from red to white. I waited for her to explain that my name wasn’t Marky boy, or Marky anything, but Marty, more preferably Martin, plain and simple. Her own name was Rose and she’d bite your ear off if you stretched it to Rosy.
“So whadaya say,” Frank said. “Can you do that for me?” His left hand disappeared beneath the table.
I watched her focus on the paper lantern suspended above our booth. There was a snaky red dragon, shaped like an S. It was diffused by the light, slightly pinkish, but it was the same dragon from the doors and the menu. She was starring at it as though she’d never seen a dragon before.
“Yo!” Frank said. “Earth to Marky. Come in, Marky.”
“My name is Marty,” I said through clenched teeth. I didn’t take my eyes off my mother. If anyone was in orbit, she was, and I’d firmly decided I wasn’t running any errands until she gave the okay.
“Didn’t I say Marty,” Frank asked. “What did I say?”
I was about to tell Frankie Boy what he’d said, when my mother picked up the twenty and handed it to me. “Go on,” she said, blinking. “See if they’ve got change.”
At that moment a scream of laughter erupted from the booth behind us and I stretched my neck to look. I glimpsed a woman in a tight silvery dress that appeared to be made of metal squares raise a stemmed glass high over her head. “To Custer,” she said, “and to the savage bastards that cut his hair!”
Frank said, “So, how ’bout we take a little walk. Just you and me. I want to show you my new car. Va-room, va-room.”
My mother leaned into him just as I whipped my head around. She replied something I couldn’t hear above the howling group behind us, but Frank’s face revealed an obvious refusal to his invitation. “Come on,” he said, pleading. “Ten minutes. Then I’ll buy you and the kid dinner.”
She was looking straight ahead– not at me, not at the group behind us, but at something or someone far across the room. Frank raised his pineapple. He smiled at me, as though suddenly realizing I hadn’t left.
“You don’t mind if I borrow your mother for ten minutes, do ya, son?”
It was a face-freezing question. I felt my jaw lock up as I quietly slid out of the booth. I couldn’t have answered if I’d wanted to.
As I zigzagged through the maze of clustered booths, making my way toward the register, I glanced back once. I wasn’t tall enough to get a clean look but I’m almost certain Frankie boy had an arm around her. It was the unsettling after-the-fact type of certitude that makes one wish they’d been born blind.
At the register a stunning Asian woman asked me how I wanted my change. She had straight black hair that fell past her hips, and for a dozen or so heartbeats I was honestly more concerned with her huge eyes and prominent white teeth than with the breakdown of Frankie boy’s twenty. When she asked a second time, I stammered, “Quarters, please.”
“Oil quotas?” she said.
I nodded at a butterfly curved around her breast.
She handed over two orange rolls. I clenched one in each fist, and as I made my way back, I worked my arms like I was flexing dumb bells.
When I saw my mother alone in the booth, with Frank no where in sight, I stopped pumping the quarters and picked up my pace a step. I took a short cut between two identical waiters talking gibberish beside a small rocky island of fake greenery. The area was divided by a narrow stream of running water, with wavering blue lights beneath, to give the effect, I assumed, of the ocean. As I stepped across, I hoped we’d seen the last of Frankie boy. I slid into the booth, put the quarter rolls on the table, and immediately realized we hadn’t. He’d most certainly be back for his change. I frowned at my mother, who angled her menu to shield herself from my accusing eyes.
“So where’s what’s his face,” I said.
“Excuse me,” she said, in a voice shaky and weak.
“The asshole,” I said.
She slapped her menu down, and thrust her face forward. “Watch your mouth, Marty. For god’s sake, remember where we are.”
She looked like she was deliberating wiping the look off my face, and suddenly I thought of my father, at home, eating tuna from a can, and feeding Cheerio’s to my sister while we sat in a fancy restaurant where no one spoke English. “Who is that guy,” I said.
“Lower your voice, please.” She picked up her menu again. “It’s not important who he is.”
I fired a warning shot across her bow. “I bet dad doesn’t know about him.”
She lowered her menu halfway, revealing all but her chin, then dropped it to her lap.
“That man,” she said, “not that it’s any of your business, is Frank Zorn, a very respected attorney, and a former selectman. He and I went to high school together. On occasion I see him at the parties I work at.”
“Well, he forgot his money,” I said, pushing the quarters at her. She stopped them from rolling off the table, then relocated them to the center. She straightened up a bit, looking wounded and hurt.
“For your information,” she said, “he left that money for you. He told me to tell you happy birthday.”
“I don’t want his stupid money.” I said, and rolled the quarters at her again.
She picked them both up and put them in her purse. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll keep them.”
“Fine,” I said.
“And the next time you want spending money, you can think about the twenty dollars in quarters you threw away.”
I positioned my menu so I wouldn’t have to look at her. I was afraid I might say something I’d be sorry for.
“All set for ardor now?”
I looked at the waiter. His perfect smile made me want to puke. What the hell were these people so god damn happy about, anyway?
“I’ll have the mandarin duck,” my mother said. “Chop suey, small. An order of egg rolls, and a bowl of won ton soup.”
The waiter smiled as she handed him her menu. He put it under his arm and smiled at me.
“I’m not hungry,” I said and handed him my menu, too.
“What do you mean you’re not hungry?” my mother said. “Marty, it’s your birthday.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
The waiter looked at her then at me. He held our menus as though we might want them back.
“Marty, why are you doing this?”
“What?” I said. “I’m not hungry.”
“Marty, please don’t be like that.”
“Like what? I’m not hungry.”
“Marty?”
The waiter said, “You wan mo time, miss? I give you mo time.”
“Yes, please. Thank you,” my mother said. She held her smile until he’d moved off.
“Marty, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I want to go home.”
“But why, Marty?”
“I feel sick. This place makes me sick, okay? I want to go. I don’t want to eat here. I don’t like the people here. I want to go home. Take me home,” I said.
“All right, Marty. Okay. If that’s what you want to do, that’s what we’ll do.”
“It is,” I said.
On our way to the door she pinched the sleeve of another waiter and told him to please cancel our order. “I’m very sorry,” she said. He smiled politely, glanced over at our table, then bowed at my mother, as though the two rolls of quarters she’d left were meant for him.
Outside on the sidewalk, she held my arm and I walked beside her for a while, matching her step for step. I kept my head down, my eyes on the sidewalk. I tried to step on every crack.
As we turned a corner she suddenly stopped and said, “There’s still cake, you know.” She smiled weakly. I stared at her, my eyes like slits, until her smile faded. As we crossed the street, she released her hold on my arm and without looking at me, she said, “Now when we get home, don’t do anything stupid.”
“Stupid like what?”
“Like shooting your mouth off about things you don’t know anything about. Remember your father’s blood pressure,” she said.
I gave her what I hoped was a mean and vicious look — as powerful a look as I could manage in the days before I learned what love and marriage and heartache meant, before divorce taught me the pain of losing someone who’d vowed to love you forever. It was probably my most painful look to-date, and I’m sad to report my mother missed it entirely.
We walked the rest of the way in silence. I lagged several steps behind, watching the shine of her patent leather heels in the glare of streetlights. Outside our building, when she stopped to fix her lipstick, I ran ahead. I bolted up the stairs, leaving her a solid two flights behind. I knocked on our door and waited. There was no sound on the stairs. I imagined my mother admiring her reflection in a grease-fogged window. I pounded on our door until my father opened it. His hair was wet, wild looking, and he was holding a box of blue candles.
“What’s happened,” he said.
I watched his face and tried to control mine.
“Where’s your mother?” he said.
After an exchange of dead-eyed stares, I threw myself at him. He wrapped me in his arms.
“Hey now,” he said. He smelled of tuna fish, Old Spice, tobacco. “What’s all this?”
I heard the click-clack of my mother’s heels on the stairs.
“Rose,” my father shouted. “What in hell happened?”
I opened my mouth to speak. I wanted to answer before she did, before she scolded him for shouting in the hall then calmed him with some calculated lie. I wanted to explain that the world had changed. Our world. His and mine. But I was shaking uncontrollably, unable to catch my breath, and it was my mother who said, in a sing-song voice that resonated through our empty hall, “What can I tell you, Jack? The boy lost his taste for Chinese food.”
Bob Thurber is the author of “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” and other titles. Over the years his stories have received a long list of awards and honors, appeared in Esquire and other notable publications, been selected for over 50 anthologies and utilized as teaching tools in schools and universities throughout the world. “Nothing But Trouble” a story collection accompanied by photographic images, was released in April 2014 from Shanti Arts. Paperboy is being re-released and put back in print and made available in a number of digital formats, by Shanti Arts. Release date is ‘before’ May 1st, 2016. Bob resides in Massachusetts. For more info, visit: BobThurber.net[/author_info.
