Chapter 45

 

By the next night Ron was feeling better about his mother. His father had come to visit, as he said that he would, that afternoon. Ron was right about the effect that it had on her. She brightened and did not cry while he was there. He even made her laugh. Harry never mentioned that Ron had come to see him. In the hallway, they shook hands again and Harry said that he would try to stop by most days. The hospital was very close and Ron suspected that Harry would keep these visits to himself. He was rarely at home and Betty was even more rarely given the privilege of knowing where he was.

Later that afternoon, the doctor stopped by and said that everything was holding steady and that there was no immediate reason for alarm. Jacob Gutberg had agreed to become her cardiologist under one condition: she had to stop smoking cigarettes.

“We’ll see about a treatment program to help you with that bad habit once we get you out of here. It isn’t an issue right now. There is no way that you could smoke in the hospital.”

Ron flashed back on his Aunt Dotty and how the two of them had snuck her out of her oxygen tent and down to the solarium for a cigarette after one of her heart attacks.

“I’m going to schedule you for a cardiac catheterization next week,” said Dr. Gutberg.

“What’s that?” said Marjorie.

“We run a very, very thin wire into your femoral artery and up to your heart. There is a camera on the end of it. It gives us an opportunity to see any blockages that you might have.”

“Will I be awake?”

“No, we’ll give you a light general anesthetic. The procedure will only take about fifteen minutes.”

“I can’t do it,” said Marjorie.

“There really isn’t anything to be frightened of, Mrs. Bombasco. Early next week, you and I can sit down and I will explain it all to you in detail and you can ask as many questions as you want.”

“Doctor, I don’t think that I can do it.”

“We’ll talk about that next week. Just remember that it is the best treatment option that we have to make sure that we are doing everything that we should be doing to help you get well.”

It took Ron an hour to calm her back down. He did it the same way that he confronted her agoraphobia. He talked with her using a soft voice and not being at all confrontational. He assured her that if she was not able to do it that there would be other things that they could do.

“What he’s talking about isn’t a treatment, Mom. It’s diagnostic and I’m sure that there are other tests that they can do that do not involve putting you out or giving you any needles.”

She held up the arm to which the heparin lock was attached. “Look at how black and blue I am already,” she said pitifully.

After he left the hospital, Ron headed straight for the French Maid. It was just getting dark as he got there and the place was almost empty. The girls worked shifts than ran from 12pm-6 pm and from 4 pm -10 pm and from 8 pm -2am. The middle shift was the least desirable because it started fast with the after work crowd and then sometimes was just slow and painful until the last couple of sets when it picked up. But by that time, the girls had been dancing in high heel shoes for a long time and they were really tired. Most of the girls tooted speed or cocaine to keep their energy level up, but eventually their feet just ached and throbbed so much that they did floor work. This entailed lying down on the floor and spreading their legs for the patrons, but at least it got them off their feet and usually it resulted in good tips.

Ron entered to the sound of Fly Like an Eagle and found a good seat.  Because of the shape of the stage and the bar that ringed it, some seats were further away than others. There was also a raised perimeter area in the back with tables and chairs, but it had been empty both times Ron went to the place.

The guy who spun the records also acted as an announcer and he introduced each girl as she came out to begin her set. “And let’s welcome to your favorite and mine, Emerald.”

There was no applause. There were, at times, hoots from the some of the guys. When Ron looked up to get his first view of Emerald, his mouth dropped open. She looked just like Robin. She was slender with long straight blonde hair. She had a thin face and high cheekbones. Her breasts weren’t as big as Robin’s but she had the same legs and the same beautiful ass.  Ron couldn’t take his eyes off of her. She walked across the stage with an easy rolling glide. She was wearing a tiny red skirt and a red pumps and an wisp like red bra that she could get away with because she was small breasted and did not to worry about them popping out. About two minutes into her set, Ron held up his first dollar. She looked at him and gave him a smile and sat down on the stage and swung her legs over the side and came over to him. She teased her nipples with her fingers as she stood in front of him and Ron watched as they hardened for him. He decided to give her two dollars. Five minutes later, he gave her two more and this time she removed her tiny red skirt and laid it next to him on the bar. The G-string was minuscule. By the end of her set Ron had given her $8.  She walked over to him when she was finished and said, “May I have my skirt back?”

Ron looked down at it and saw that it had been sitting on the bar next to him the whole time. He had not taken his eyes off her long enough to even look at it. The girls sometimes perfumed their skirts and the men would sniff them while they watched the girls. “Yeah, of course,” he said quickly.

She rested her fingertips on his arm and looked into his eyes. Ron could see why she had chosen the name emerald. Her eyes were a deep green. “Thank you for being so generous,” she said and then she was gone.

Ron ordered another glass of wine and waited for her to come back. He watched the other girls disinterestedly. He checked to see how much money he had brought along with him. He had $30 plus what was on the bar. That meant that he had over $40. He could afford to stay there. When Emerald came back out, she had changed into a glittery white outfit but still was wearing the red pumps.  She stood in front of him and then turned and bent over and shifted from one leg to the other. Ron’s eyes were glued to the way that her ass moved as she shifted her weight. Then he saw that she was looking at him from between her legs. He held up two more dollars and she smiled and wriggled off the stage to get it. “Will you have a drink with me when you are finished?” he said.

“This is my last set, sweetie, but tomorrow afternoon I’ll be at the Hitching Post in Paterson.”

Ron was disappointed but when she said where she would be, it had almost sounded like a date, an invitation. “OK,” he smiled. “I’ll see you there.”

She gave him a curious crooked little grin and pressed his hand against her small breasts when she took the money.

 

Chapter 44

Ron saw George’s car parked in front of the house and let himself in with his key. He found George standing in the bathroom shaving. He had a suit laid out and had just taken a shower.

George came out of the bathroom with shaving cream still on his face. He saw Ron and said, “Oh… How’s your mother?”

“You really are a miserable piece of shit aren’t you,” said Ron.

“Don’t start with me, Ronald.”

“Don’t start with you?” Ron moved towards him. “Don’t start with you? My mother is lying in the cardiac care unit and you really don’t give a fuck at all, do you?”

George went back into the bathroom. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“You coldhearted, worthless fuck. The doctor isn’t even sure that she is gonna live!”

George stopped shaving. “I didn’t know it was that serious.”

Ron sprang for him and George backed into the bathroom and shut the door. Ron pounded against it. He beat his fists on it. “You were a worthless piece of shit when she met you. If it hadn’t been for her, you’d still be in debt to the goddamned bookies. She should have let one of them put a fucking bullet in you instead of paying off your gambling debts.”

George snarled and threw the door open. He shoved Ron back against the kitchen table. Ron picked a chair and swung it at him. George held up his arm and screamed as it hit him. And then he went into his pocket and pulled out a knife. Ron stopped and stared at it. Then he scrambled towards the kitchen drawer and George yelled. “Open that drawer and I’ll put this right in your back.”

Ron whirled on him and saw that George had moved after him. He stared at the blade of the knife and then into George’s face. It was bloated red with rage. His arm and face were bleeding from where the chair had caught him.

“Just go out and fuck your whore, you pitiful excuse for a man.”

“Get the hell out of here right now, before I lose my temper,” said George. “Go on. Get out! And leave your key.”

“Fuck you,” said Ron. “It’s my mother’s house. You never would have been able to get it without her and you left.”

“Get out,” snarled George.

 

Ron was breathing hard when he got back into his car. He knew that he was enraged when he went there, but the level of his own violence surprised him.  He drove across Ridgewood Avenue and turned down Bay Street and then onto the street where his father lived. The street looked unfamiliar in some way and then Ron realized that it had been made a one way.  He parked in front of his father’s house, went to the door and rang the bell. He was nervous. He was always on edge between the times that he rang that bell and the time that the door opened .He was not sure that he understood why. Because he had not been around his father. He did not know what kind of car that he drove or whether he was home. There was a car parked in the driveway, but it looked too old to be something that his father would be driving.

Harry Tuck smiled when he saw his son standing on the porch. Maybe the visit to Marjorie’s house had been worthwhile. Ron did not return the smile. He held out his hand and realized for the first time that his knuckles were bleeding. Harry shook his hand without mentioning the blood.

“Dad, I know that I should have called first, but I really needed to see you.”

“You don’t have to call,” said Harry. Then he looked over his shoulder and said, “Betty look whose here.”

Betty Tuck gave Ron a look that he knew was her attempt at a smile but it came onto her face like a grimace. “Hello Ronald. Come on in. Would you like some coffee?”

“Maybe some other time,” said Ron. He wanted to be polite, but he did not want a social gathering and he needed to talk to his father alone.

“Alrighty,” she said.

Harry was a clever man and he knew that his son had been raised to be polite. It worried him that he has refused the cup of coffee.  “Why don’t we go out onto the back porch?” he said.

Betty made herself scarce. She went down into the basement to fold clothes that had just come out of the dryer. She figured that Ron needed money and she hoped that it wasn’t a lot because the truth was that things were pretty tight with them right now.

When they settled on the back porch, Ron said, “My mother’s had a heart attack. She’s at Mountainside Hospital.”

“Holy Shit,” said Harry. “When did that happen?”

“Today,” said Ron.  “I just left her. She is the cardiac Care Unit.”

“What are they saying?”

“The doctor said that he won’t really know if she is out of the woods until tomorrow or the next day. He called it a myocardial infarction. I don’t know what that means.”

“Me either, “said Harry.

“Dad, George left her. He is moving out to live with some woman.”

Harry was only really surprised that it had taken this long. He knew how difficult living with Marjorie was. Her phobias, her drive, her desire to always have more were not the kind of traits that a man usually signed on for. He shook his head. “I just don’t know what to say, Ronald.”

“I need a favor,” said Ron. He looked into his father’s eyes. “You know the kind of effect that you have on her. You always make her feel like a woman.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Harry. “You’re mother and I go back a long ways and it’s been a very long time since there was anything like that between us.”

“I do know about that,” said Ron. “She’s scared and she looks lost and she needs me, I understand that, but it would help me and her if you could drop in to see her while she is there. Let her know that one of the men in her life cares about her.”

“George might think that’s pretty strange,” said Harry.

“George doesn’t give a shit, Dad. He wasn’t even going up there to see her.”

Harry gestured. “Is that what happened to your hand?”

Ron brought the knuckles to his mouth and sucked them. “Yeah, I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

Harry scanned his son’s face and was quietly pleased to see that there were no marks on him. “I’ll get there tomorrow. But let’s keep this between us.”

Ron nodded. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

Harry let him out the back door and Ron hurried to the car, not wanting to see his brother or his sister right now.

Ron stopped to get a pizza on the way home and thought about what he still had to do. He wasn’t sure how to call in sick. He had never done it before. He hadn’t paid enough attention to it when he got the stacks of papers that they handed out on opening day, but he knew where he kept the papers.

Eating a slice of pizza, sitting on his bed, Ron dialed the convent. It was almost 9 o’clock in the evening and he had debated whether or not it was too late.

On the fourth ring, a hushed voice said, “Hello.”

Ron was taken aback. He thought that there would be some kind of official greeting, some way that was all their own that nuns answered the phone. “May I speak to Sister Irene Emanuel?” he said.

The voice took an immediate tone. ‘And who shall I say is calling her at this hour?”

“My name is Ron Tuck. I’m a teacher at the high school.”

“At this high school?”

Ron thought, why do they keep asking me that? Then he said, “Yes Sister.”

The tone continued. “Just a moment, I’ll see if she is still awake.”

Two or three long moments passed. Ron finished his first slice and bit into another. Then he heard Irene Emanuel’s unmistakable voice. ‘How can I help you, Mr. Tuck?”

“Sister, I’m sorry to disturb you. I think that I lost track of time.”

“Yes.”

Ron waited for her to say more but there was just silence. ‘I won’t be coming in tomorrow, Sister.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“My mother, Sister she’s had a heart attack.  I’m going to have to be at the hospital.”

Then the tone changed immediately. “Ron, I’m so sorry. Is there anything that we can do?”

“No Sister, I’m sorry for calling so late. If you could just remember her in your prayers,” he blurted. He wasn’t even sure where that had come from.

“Of course we will Ron, and if there is anything else that you need us to do, please don’t hesitate to call.”

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 43

When Ron got home that afternoon, he heard his phone ringing as he climbed the stairs. By the time he had gotten inside the door it had stopped. He put down his bag and took off his coat and then it started ringing again.

“Hello.”

“Ronald,” said a low and husky voice. “This is Lois.”

Ron’s brow furrowed. “Yes,” he said tentatively.

“Your mother is in the hospital. She’s had a heart attack.”

A cold rush like ice water flushed through his body and then he felt his face starting to get hot. “Where is she?”

“Mountainside.”

“I’m on my way.”

He drove like traffic signals and speed limits didn’t matter. He had one thought and it pounded in his head. Get there! Get there! He parked his car in the Emergency Room parking area and ran into the hospital. He had forgotten his jacket but didn’t feel the cold. His face was flushed and his eyes were darting in one direction after the other. He went to the desk.

“I just heard that my mother has had a heart attack,” he said breathlessly to the matronly woman with white hair who sat in back of the desk.

“What is the patient’s name?” she said without showing any kind of emotion. Ron hated her instantly.

“Marjorie Bombasco,” said Ron, biting the words off and showing his teeth.

The woman leafed through the pages of a notebook and then the phone rang and she stopped to answer it. Ron gripped the counter hard, his fingers turning white. Then he saw Lois standing at the other end of the hall and started running towards her. People’s heads turned as he raced by. The security officer started to move in his direction but Ron had already reached Lois and stopped.

“They’re bringing her upstairs,” Lois said. She was fighting back tears and losing the battle.

“What do they say? Who is the doctor?”

Ron felt a hand on his shoulder and whirled on the security guard.

“What?” he said. His fists clenched.

The guard looked passed him to Lois. “Is everything ok, Ma’am?”

Ron shrugged his shoulder away from the grip.

“His mother just had a heart attack,” said Lois.

The guard nodded and took a step back away from Ron. “You have to calm down, Sir. You aren’t going to do your mother or yourself any good by getting all riled up.”

Ron tried to get hold of himself. He nodded. “OK, OK,” he said.

“Ronald, she wants me to go home and get her some things. She is very scared. I told her that you would be here.”

Ron looked around as if he could find his mother in one of these rooms. Everything was moving very fast.

“Sir,” said the security guard. “Just take a moment before you run upstairs. You look pretty upset and you don’t want your mom to be frightened by the sight of you.”

Ron took a long deep breath and forced himself to relax and to breathe. Then he said, “She couldn’t possibly be any more frightened than she is right now.”

The Cardiac Care Unit or CCU was for intense care. Ron found Marjorie lying on her back, the hospital bed raised in the back, staring at the machines that depicted the regularity of her heartbeat, her blood pressure and a number of other things that Ron did not understand. She looked up at him with the face of a frightened little girl, her eyes wide with wonder and terror. She did not smile when she saw him but tears started rolling down her cheeks. “Bruzzer,” she said, “look what happened to me.”

“How did this happen, Mom?”

“I don’t know. I was at the ceramics shop. I have been so nervous lately I had this pain in my chest and I told Bumpy that I thought that I needed to go to the hospital.” She stopped and looked into his face. “I don’t like it here. I want to go home.”

“I know,” said Ron, sitting down on a chair next to the bed, “but we can’t do that right now. You need to be here, but I’ll stay with you.” He reached out and took her left hand. She squeezed his fingers weakly.

“I don’t want to be like this,” she said and a sob came out of her chest.

It frightened Ron. His mother’s fears were always her worst enemy. And hospitals were one of her nightmares. “But Mom, it’s important to be smart right now. I know how upset you are. You know that I know.”

She looked at him and nodded in understanding. He had been her partner when she went through the hardest times of her adult life. Maybe he had only been a boy for most of them, but they had forced him to accept certain responsibilities and roles and she had grown to trust him and she needed someone to trust right now and he was one of the only people in the world who filled the bill.

“Do you know the name of the doctor who is treating you?”

She shook her head. “When we left the store, we couldn’t get the car out. It was blocked in by people who had double parked. We blew the horn over and over but no one came out. You know how that neighborhood is.”

Ron nodded and cursed the neighborhood silently. The loudmouthed jerks who parked wherever they wanted because some Uncle or Cousin knew somebody who would make everything right if there was ever any trouble.

“Finally, someone came out and by then the pain was so bad. It hurt so much, Bruzzer.” She began to sob again.

Ron squeezed her fingers and said, “OK, I understand.”

“When we finally did get out, we drove to Dr. Gunders office and he saw me right away but he said that he thought that I was having a heart attack and that I should get to the hospital.”

Ron snorted. “He didn’t call an ambulance?”

“No ambulance,” she said shaking her head from side to side on the pillow and then she caught sight of the monitors again and just stared at them.

Ron understood immediately. The doctor had wanted to get an ambulance but she hot gotten so upset that he thought it was worse to upset her in the condition that she was in. So he had told her to drive to the hospital. To Ron’s way of thinking, he should have gone along with her, but he knew that was expecting too much.

“When I got here, they took me right away and now I’m here.”

“And this is a good place for you to be. It’s a good hospital and they have good doctors. It isn’t Clara Mass, where you can get on the staff by being somebody’s whatever.”

Marjorie nodded.

Dr. Jacob Gutberg appeared in the doorway and looked at Ron and then at Marjorie. He was a short bald man with dark glasses a white coat and a pocket protector from which stuck a number a single slender silver pen. He moved to Marjorie and said softly, “How are you feeling?”

Marjorie smiled and took a breath. She tried to laugh. “I’m very scared, doctor.”

“I can understand that Mrs. Bombasco but we’re going to get you all better and on your feet in no time as long as you are able to do as we say.”

“I just want to go home, doctor.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t possible right now. You know that you have had an episode. We think that it might have been a heart attack. What a heart attack means is that a little piece of your heart stopped working. The rest of your heart took over and right now your heart is working fairly well considering what it has been through, but we are going to keep you in this unit for the next few days to monitor you and to make sure that you heart is doing what it should be doing to heal itself.”

“And then I can go home?”

“Then we can begin to talk about what treatment options we have, Mrs. Bombasco.  This is a serious situation and the hospital and I would not be doing our jobs correctly if we sent you home right now. It would not be in your best interest.”

Marjorie nodded. The tears began rolling down her cheeks again. Ron looked at her and then over at the doctor. They made eye contact.

“Are you a relative?”

Marjorie spoke before Ron was able to say anything. “This is my son, Ronald.”

“Good to meet you Ronald. I’m doctor Gutberg. I was on duty when your Mom came in. Do you know if she has a cardiologist?”

“No,” said Ron, “just a regular doctor.”

Jacob Gutberg raised his eyebrows. “Well she is going to need a cardiologist now. Mrs. Bombasco, we’ve given you something for the pain but maybe we should give you a sedative to help to calm you.”

“I don’t want to lose control.”

The doctor smiled. “You won’t lose control of anything. You will just feel more relaxed. Being frightened will more likely cause you to lose control than being calm.”

Ron liked the doctor’s approach. He was straightforward and at the same time soothing.

“Have you ever taken tranquilizers?”

“I took Librium 10 for a long time, but not recently,” said Marjorie.

“Ok, that’s an old drug. We will give you something very much the same only a bit more up to date.”

When the doctor stepped out into the hallway, Ron followed him.

“How is she, doctor?”

“It’s too soon to tell but what I said about the next couple of days is important. Sometimes one of these attacks is followed by a second one. When she gets through the next 48 hours, I will be more confident.”

“Could she die?”

“There are, as I’m sure that you know, fatalities connected with heart attacks. We have to just wait and see.”

Ron stayed with her and they talked about familiar topics and told old stories.  The time that she had wanted to go down to the shore and had started getting nervous before they even got on the parkway and how he talked to her and soothed her and talked her exit by exit, telling her that she could turn off again in just a couple of miles if she needed to but that she was doing so well and that she could get there. How he told her that she could do it and that after a while that she had believed him and heard nothing but his voice as he kept it up. Kept talking to her mile after mile, telling her how brave she was and how much he loved her. Marjorie smiled and closed her eyes and pretended that she was in the car with him again. He held her hand and then he told the stories about how he used to meet her after work every night. She asked him to tell her about some of the movies that they saw together.

“I remember that you used to get great movie passes and we would go to Woolworths and buy sandwiches and sneak them into the movies. I remember that when we saw West Side Story we sat in the front row of the balcony. We ate our sandwiches and watched the huge screen and the way that the movie started with the helicopter and the different buildings and then the playground and the guy snapping his fingers.”

She squeezed his hand. “You’ve got some memory.”

“Those were very happy times,” said Ron. “But we were so poor, Mom. We weren’t even sure that we could make the rent on the apartment and here we were going to the movies.”

“We were poor but we had fun and we enjoyed each other’s company so much. I wanted to be with you more than I wanted to be with anyone in the world. I never treated you like a little boy. Who could treat you like a little boy with that brain and that vocabulary?”

Ron laughed and patted her hand. “My brain didn’t make me older, Mom.”

“But it made it feel like you were older. I could talk to you about anything and you understood.”

It was dark by the time that Lois came back with her things. Ron had watched as she picked at her dinner and made faces at the taste of everything. Lois went through the list of the things that she had gotten for Marjorie.

Then Lois said, “George was at the house.”

Ron’s face hardened. “Did you tell him?”

Lois nodded. “Yes, he said that he hoped that you felt better.”

Marjorie began to weep again. Ron said, “That’s not going to help anything Mom.”

Marjorie said, “Why does have to be such a cold hearted bastard?”

Lois said, “That just what he is, that’s all.”

Ron said quietly, “Listen Mom, it’s getting late. I have to go and you should rest. I’ll be back in the morning.”

“What about work?” said Marjorie.

“I’m gonna take the day off. I haven’t taken a sick day since I started there.”

“Don’t get into trouble Bruzzer.”

“There won’t be any trouble,” said Ron.

He kissed her goodnight. Lois said that she was going to stay with her until they made her leave. Ron nodded.

 

Chapter 42

 

Ron’s technique for doing the play was one that he’d thought out. He had tried having the students read the play out loud in class, assigning each of them a role. But the language was too difficult and the girls had struggled with it and not enjoyed the experience. That was when he went to the Bloomfield Public Library and found that they had recordings of all of Shakespeare’s plays. From then on, he played the recording while he and the girls followed along and listened to the actors read their parts as they were meant to be heard. He would frequently stop the recording to discuss what they had just read and listened to.  But today he had a new approach to start with.

“How many of you have heard of Bruce Springsteen?” he asked at the start of the class. A few scattered hands went up into the air and Ron saw immediately that they were not the hands of the Spanish speaking girls. “I want you to listen to these words,” he said. Then immediately he changed his mind and turned to the blackboard and wrote as it scribbled, printing in large block letters that pressed hard into the chalkboard and reciting as he wrote.

“All men want to be rich and rich men want to be king and a king ain’t satisfied until he controls everything.” Then he turned back to them and let the words sink in. Then he repeated it slowly and underlined each word as he spoke. What do you think of that?” he said.

“I don’t think that all men want to be rich,” said Patricia Nieves.

“You don’t?” said Ron.

“I think some men want to be rich but some people just want to be happy. If they can be rich and happy, that’s great. But they would not want to be rich and unhappy.”

Ron stopped. He smiled. “That was an incredibly insightful thing of you to say.”

The girl beamed and wiggled in her chair for him.

“But,” said Barbara, don’t most people think that being rich is what will make them happy?”

Ron smiled again. This was going to be a good day. The girls washed away all thoughts of the previous night like they were bugs that were stuck on his windshield and they had an incredibly powerful squeegee and just slid them away like easy stains on glass.

“Once you get on that bandwagon though, it might be hard to stop,” said Ron. “Mac was happy. He was loyal. He was living comfortably. Why did he need more?’

“Cause his wife was a witch with a b,” said Imelda.

Ron wondered if she had made the reference to calling Lady Macbeth a witch on purpose or if she had just stumbled into it. Then a thought hit him and it silenced him. “Let’s listen for a moment,” he said and started the play.

It didn’t matter if it was on purpose. How many thoughts had he stumbled into? They were still his thoughts. Afterwards he would reflect upon them and think  ‘damn, how did I think of that?’ but he had grown to accept that it was what happened to him while he was being Mr. Tuck in front of  his classroom. Maybe it was the same for them. And then the refrain, ‘Time and place and people’ went through his mind again and he stopped the recording perfectly at the end of the scene.

 

Chapter 41

 

“Motif is a literary term that means,” Ron turned to write on the chalkboard as he spoke, “a repeating theme or image that gathers significance as it is repeated.” He wasn’t sure that was the dictionary definition but he knew that it wasn’t far from being the truth. “Shakespeare uses lots of motifs in Macbeth. One is clothing. The way that people’s clothes are described as fitting them and the way that people’s lives are described with images of clothing is one of the motifs. Mac says, ‘Why do you dress in borrowed robes?’ when the witches first call him the Thane of Cawdor. Now what are some of the motifs that use clothing that we use today?”

Connie raised her hand. Smiling she said, “That girl dresses like a slut.”

The girls laughed their nervous laughter when one of them made a reference to sex. Ron stopped as if he had been frozen by the comment. “Now that’s not exactly what I had in mind.” The girls laughed again.

Barbra raised her hand. “Is it like when we call the nuns penguins?”

She said it in a hushed voice and the class was quiet after she said it.

Ron smiled a big grin. “That’s it exactly! Now that image is considered a bit insulting, but that is exactly what I am talking about. What do we learn about people from their clothes?”

Immelda said, “Whether or not they have any taste.”

The girls were in a comfort zone again and laughed merrily.

“Whether or not they have money,” said Barbara.

“Sometimes,” said Ron, “but people make lots of mistakes by judging others based on their clothes, don’t they?”

The girls nodded but Ron knew that they didn’t believe him. He knew that they judged everyone by the appearance that person made, maybe more than any one single thing.

Connie had a devilish look on her face. “What about the way that you dress, Mr. Tuck?”

Ron paused dramatically. He stood close to the girl’s desk and said with feigned sternness that they knew by now was not actually real, “And what about the way that I dress?”

More giggles.

Connie was silent as if his nearness had taken away her courage but Immelda, who Ron had cast as the traitor, said. “It is kind of corny.” Then she added quickly. “I’m not saying that you are corny, Mr. Tuck but the way that you dress is.”

Ron smiled. “And what is so corny about it?”

Carmella said. “A pale green leisure suit, Mr. Tuck. Are you really asking us what is corny about that?”

The girls cracked up. They laughed really hard and Ron laughed with them. Then he said, “Well Carmella, the truth is that I didn’t have anything to really wear when I got this job. I spent my life living in jeans t-shirts and work shirts. So when I got hired here, my stepfather gave me some clothes.” Then he repeated. “Borrowed robes. What does that mean?”

Connie said, “What do you call it… hand downs.”

“The phrase is hand-me-downs and that is exactly right. So what does it mean?”

Connie said, “Is Mac insulted because he thinks that they are saying that he is poor?”

“Not exactly,” said Ron, “but you’re on the right track.”

Then Barbara’s face lit up. Without raising her hand she said, “Why are you saying that I’m something that I am not.”

“Perfect!” exclaimed Ron and he smiled triumphantly at the girl.

Barbara continued, “Cause you aren’t corny even if you look like you are.” And then everyone, including Ron, laughed too.

 

That afternoon Ron drove up to meet James Devin. He was a tall kid and very pale. His hair was dark and curly and piled up on his head. He answered the door promptly and called up to his mother saying that the tutor was here. She answered with an OK, but Ron was a bit surprised that she didn’t come downstairs to meet him. He made a mental note to stop upstairs and say good-bye to her unless she came down during the lesson. For some reason, Ron expected him to be disheveled but his shirt was neatly pressed and so were his jeans. They even had creases. Then Ron looked down and saw that James was wearing purple flip-flops and that his toenails were painted black. He made a mental note. It was the kind of detail that Charlie would want to know.

The young man’s voice was very soft. He caught Ron up on where he was in each of his classes and slowly Ron reviewed each of the assignments that the teachers had provided. He was annoyed when James told him twice that he had already done the assignment that had been given to Ron.

“We did that before I stopped attending,” James said in a voice that Ron thought seemed dignified.

“OK,” said Ron. “I’ll work on getting you new assignments but in the meantime do this.” Ron looked ahead in both the history and English books and assigned the next story or chapter along with the study guide questions that accompanied it. It was a boring approach and Ron knew it, but it was also what the teachers wanted to see.  Ron had the feeling that it was also what they did in their classes. He knew that when he talked to the kid about the chapters or stories that it was then that there might be an opportunity for some learning to take place.

About forty-five minutes into the review of where James was with his studies, Mrs. Devin came down the stairs. She was shockingly pretty. Ron smiled and stood up but James just sat back and seemed to shrink.

“I’m Sheila Devin,” she said extending her hand.

Ron took her hand and found it warm and dry and soft. He introduced himself. And they both remained standing while Ron reviewed the rules of Home Instruction. She nodded from time to time and said that there would be no problem for her to be home for each of his visits. Ron scheduled him for two days during the week and a Saturday appointment.  James seemed to grow smaller and smaller as the conversation continued. When Mrs. Devin left, James had actually brought his knees up to his chest and turned on his side facing away from Ron. One flip-flop was dangling off the end of his foot. He did not respond to Ron’s first question.

Finally he said in a voice that was barely audible, “Did they tell you why I am at home?”

“They told me that you had trouble leaving the house.”

“That’s a joke,” said the boy.

“What do you mean?”

“I never leave the house. I never leave the basement.”

“You will,” said Ron.

“Sure,” said James. “I will.”

Ron tried to turn the conversation back to history but James didn’t respond. Ron said, “Why don’t we call it a day. You have plenty of work to do.”

“Will you come back or am I too much of a freak?”

“I don’t think you’re a freak at all,” said Ron.

“Yeah, right,” said James his voice trailing off.

He did not get up to see Ron out the door.

 

When Ron drove back to his house, he checked his mailbox as he normally did. He was surprised to see that he had mail. Usually when his checks came from tutoring, he knew to be expecting them, but he had just gotten that check last week. This was a postcard and Ron was half expecting that it was some advertisement until he recognized the handwriting on the other side.

Ron,

I won’t be coming to visit. I have decided to move in with Keith. Good luck.

Robin

He turned the card back over to the front and saw that it was a picture of the Guthrie Theater. He turned it to the back and reread it. He walked up his stairs heavily and found a small plate in front of his door with four cookies that were wrapped in a napkin . He opened the door and went in and threw the cookies and the postcard into the garbage.

He walked into the front room and then walked back out to the kitchen. He just couldn’t face being alone in the apartment right then. He dropped the book-bag that was still slung over his shoulder onto his kitchen table, locked his door and went back down the stairs.

He turned on his car and began to drive not sure where he was going. Then he was on the Parkway and heading south.  At first he thought that he was going to drive to Rahway, but quickly he knew that was a silly idea. He thought about how he developed an attachment to people and places and how once the people were gone, he revisited the places hoping for the same feeling to still be there. He found that it was people and place and time and when all three did not come together, then it was different.

He got off the parkway at Elizabeth and drove down to Cherry Street where he and Robin had lived in their last apartment in New Jersey together. His car rolled passed the place slowly and he looked and saw a weird familiarity combined with an emptiness that reassured him of his earlier thoughts: people and places and time. Now the place just had ghosts. The car continued down the street and went passed his old apartment. An image of the fire sprang up in back of his eyes and seemed to be calling to him. He continued down the street and turned off onto a main street and realized why he had come here.

The French Maid was a go-go bar.  Ron had not been able to afford to go to it when he lived in Elizabeth but now he had extra money from tutoring and he could not remember the last time that he had been with a girl. He wanted to sit in the dark with some wine and stare at them gyrating on the stage and imagine that they were twisting and wiggling for him as he listened to the loud bar songs.

He walked into the club and the music almost blew him back out the door. It blared painfully loud. The room was filled with a haze of smoke and spotlights burned down on the rectangular stage. There was a pole on each end of the stage and 3 girls wearing G-strings and tiny bras were twisting and turning to the incredibly loud sound. Ron slid into bar chair and almost immediately a barmaid in French Maid t-shirt was in front of him putting down a cocktail napkin. She was chewing gum and had short dark hair.

“What can I get you, honey?”

“Some white wine please,” said Ron.

She was gone in a wink and back with a large tumbler that was filled to the brim with white wine. Ron laid a twenty dollar bill down on the bar and it too disappeared almost before it hit the wood. When she returned with his change it was all in single dollars.

Ron sipped and sat back to watch. Slowly his eyes and ears adjusted. He drank from the glass again. One of the dancers was in front of him and shimmying her hips back and forth and smiling down at him. Ron watched her and grinned back. She stayed on the ends of his eyes for about ten seconds and then she strutted away proudly and took up position in front of another guy. Ron watched as the guy stared at her and then saw the man take a dollar bill and hold it out. The dancer sat on the bar floor and then hopped down and held her breasts out to the dollar bill. The guy slipped it between them and the girl squeezed them closed on it and then hopped back up on the stage. Ron thought, so that’s how it’s done. The girl stood in front of the man who had given her the dollar and then turned and bent over and looked at him from between her spread legs. She waved to the guy and then moved away, strutting and moving her eyes down the bar. As Ron watched, he saw a pattern develop. Two of the girls would dance against the poles and on the stage but the 3^rd girl would walk along the bar and deftly pull the skimpy bra to the sides revealing her nipples to the men who would then slide the bill towards her.  She would clasp it in her fingers and then squeeze her breasts alongside them as she moved on to the next man. A girl could get called down for a tip, but then she went right back up on stage until it was her turn in the rotation to work the bar. Not every guy would tip her and as she moved along the bar she would smile and wiggle and watch to see if the man’s hand moved towards his money. If it did not she would toss her head to the side like she was discarding him and move to the next patron.

The bar walk signaled the end of her set and then she would disappear and a new girl would come out and begin to work a pole walk the stage and one of the other girls would come down from the stage and begin to work the bar. It was continuous.

Ron waited nervously as he saw the girl coming to his side of the bar and beginning to make her way from one stack of bills to the other. He reached out dutifully and folded his bill lengthwise and when the redhead was in front of him and standing straight and wiggling her shoulders and making her breasts shake back and forth, he extended his arm. The bill projected out from his fingers and poked her in the chest as she leaned towards him. She clasped and smiled for him. He had been awkward and didn’t get a chance to feel her smooth breasts slide along his fingers. He would do better next time. The hour went by in a comfortable haze of light and sound and wine.