This Old Man Page 6

Quinn finally looked my way. He started at the top of my head and his eyes ran steadily down to my toes, as if he were an airport scanner. I had an urge to stand up and spin around, to confuse his eyeballs on their steady path downward. He said, in a voice I can only describe as nasty, “Are you willing to work your buns off, miss?”

  What could I say, after Mr. Saxe had just read the man my sordid history? Up to that point I hadn’t realized how bad my life sounded.

  Mr. Saxe jumped in with his assurances. “Indeed she is willing to work hard. Greta is very industrious. She did all the baking for the Open House at her … house.”

  Mr. Quinn’s eyebrow raised at the word.

  “Her group home, that is. Where she’s living now.” It was funny, but I had to look serious. After all, this was some sort of Job Interview.

  “Well, miss?” Quinn was making me more and more nauseated. His front teeth were flecked with brown cigar meat.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, as meekly as I was able. “I’m willing to work very hard.”

  “Good.” Quinn’s brown smile widened. Hating him felt so good, so therapeutic; not poisonous, like hating Hackey. I felt stronger all at once, like I’d grown to be his worthy adversary.

  “Out at Candlestick Park,” he was saying, “the Giants’ baseball stadium, in case you didn’t know, they need a pair of strong legs and strong arms to sell peanuts in the stands. You gotta carry this heavy wood box around your neck, you’ve seen ’em. It’s tough work.” He scanned me again, lingering here and there. “You look sturdy. It doesn’t pay much. Minimum wage, that’s it. But you get to see all the baseball you can stand. Are you game?”

  I didn’t like baseball. “When do I start?” I asked, staring defiantly at Quinn. I would learn to love baseball, just to spite him. I’d sell peanuts at the World Series, if I had to. Why stop there? I’d coach a Little League team.

  “You see? I told you Ms. Janssen was a highly motivated individual,” Mr. Saxe said proudly, as though I were his trained seal. “She’s well on her way to resolving her interpersonal conflicts, Mr. Quinn. A job like this is just what she needs to make the rehabilitation process complete and total.” I wondered how Mr. Saxe could grovel like that. He was practically kissing Quinn’s feet. “Ms. Janssen will make an excellent adjustment, with your generous help.”

  Quinn clearly liked a man to crawl. He muttered, “I don’t accept failure.”

  “You can count on Ms. Janssen.”

  They went on speaking as if I weren’t there. Quinn said, “Can she start Monday, June 18?”

  “Of course she can. She has a little transportation problem to work out, but we’ll take care of it.”

  “Five o’clock, sharp.”

  “On the dot.”

  I rose, like a robot on command, but I wasn’t programmed to smile at Quinn. I just glared at him and decided I’d never show up for work at Candlestick Park. And just as quickly as I decided I wouldn’t, I knew I would.

  There was something about that elevator that killed friendly conversation. We were silent going down, too, except for Mr. Saxe’s toying with the lock on his pitiful briefcase. Out on the street he looked harried. He avoided my eyes. “Well, that was even more successful than I thought it would be. I’ve got to dash. My five-thirty’s waiting for me at the office. You know how to get home, don’t you?” he asked vaguely. What if I had said no?

  “Sure I do, I’m streetwise, remember?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You know what, Mr. Saxe?”

  “What’s that?” he asked, shoving his sleeve over his watch. I didn’t know why he bothered, because the clock tower was striking the half hour. I guess he was trying to tell me to make it snappy.

  “I say this with all due respect, Mr. Saxe. You’re an S.O.B.”

  He seemed startled for a second, as if he had been accused unjustly, but he’d been trained not to respond to personal insult from clients, so he just turned around and said, “I’m not sure I know where you’re coming from just now, but we’ll discuss your feelings in my office on Tuesday. Put them on hold, okay?” And he was gone.

  Talk about feeling deflated. I walked in slow motion to the newsstand on the corner. The headlines were screaming things like MASSACRE IN LEBANON and 9.8% UNEMPLOYMENT and FIRST AMERICAN WOMAN IN SPACE. I looked over the magazines—the women’s magazines, the diet magazines, the mechanics magazines, the science fiction magazines, the girlie magazines, the puzzle magazines, the decorating magazines, the Pyychology Todays and Today’s Healths—and I picked out one called Major League Baseball. I decided I’d give myself two weeks to become the world’s expert on the San Francisco Giants.

  There we were on Tuesday in the same office, with the same moon-sized clock that clicked each time it advanced a minute. Mr. Saxe wasn’t about to bring up the Incident on Sutter Street. He was waiting for me to do it.

  “I was mad,” I blurted out.

  “Would you like to expand on that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, I guess I was just fed up with your patience and your monotone. Don’t you ever get mad?”

  “I try not to get mad here.”

  “What self-control.”

  “There was more to it than that, wasn’t there? After all, you called me a particularly hard name.”

  “Okay, you want to know?” Why not? He had promised he wouldn’t get mad. “You made me sick groveling in front of that pig Quinn. What could he do to you, that you have to get down on your knees?”

  “It’s not what he could do to me, it’s what he can do for you. For so many of my kids. He represents several corporations that are willing to hire, well, let us say, high-risk individuals. I need him.”

  I wasn’t satisfied. I was going for blood. “I think I’ll drop by my mother’s place tomorrow.”

  “What?”

  “You heard.”

  He regained his composure fast. “You realize what the risk is in doing that, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure.”

  “I will not be responsible for what happens, if you disregard my advice.”

  “Naw, I’m not going to hold you responsible.”

  “Greta, I submit that you’re just angry at Mr. Quinn, at me, I’m not sure at what all. But please, my dear, don’t do anything foolish. Don’t invite trouble.” The hand clicked toward the end of our hour.

  “Our time has expired,” I said, imitating his tone exactly, down to his thick s’s. Let him feel like a parking meter, for a change.

  He gave me a heavy sigh. “Nothing is resolved; we’ve only opened wounds.” I almost felt sorry for him. He was so used to tying things into neat forty-five-minute packages, and this one was popping out all over.

  “Listen, we’ll work on it next time,” I assured him flippantly. I hoped I had succeeded in spoiling not only my session, but the next kid’s, too. Maybe even his whole evening. All that was left was for Quinn to fall into a kettle of tar at the bottom of a manhole, and my day would be complete.

  8

  Darlene her family to go home to on weekends. I had this idea to go someplace to celebrate Darlene’s homecoming.

  Elizabeth nodded, dubiously. “I just don’t know, girls.”

  “Oh, come on, Elizabeth,” Jo pleaded. “You can trust us. And it’s broad daylight, what could happen to us?” We all pleaded and begged and watched Elizabeth’s face change as she nodded yes. I thought maybe she let us go so she and her boyfriend, Jeremy, could have a couple of hours alone together in the house.

  We decided to go to Fisherman’s Wharf and then possibly take the ferry out to Alcatraz. We rode the cable car past Chinatown. I hoped for the most unbelievable of coincidences—that Wing would get on and go with us to the Wharf. Of course, with thousands of people in Chinatown, and hundreds of Saturday tourists, I knew I wouldn’t see Wing. He would have been embarrassed to come with us anyway, and if he had, I would have been constantly checking to see how he liked things. As Chinatown dropped behind us in our climb up Powell Street, I r
emembered that Wing often spent Saturday afternoons with Old Man. I pictured him in the musty hospital room, hearing poems, and I wondered if he ever had any fun.

  The Wharf was packed with people. Some had obviously come to San Francisco believing it would be as sunny and warm as the southern California beaches, and now they huddled and shivered together in spring clothes.

  Elizabeth had given us each two dollars from the house entertainment fund, plus we had a little pocket money. Mine I spent on a shrimp cocktail “to go.” I made the six or eight little shrimps in the delicious spicy tomato sauce last for half an hour, and then I sucked the life out of the plastic spoon.

  Then we had a big decision to make. Should we go tour the battleship Balclutha, which was in dry dock, and see where all the horny sailors used to sleep? Or should we take the ferry out to Alcatraz Island and see where all the horny prisoners used to sleep?

  “Those poor monks,” Jo cried. “And to think, they were only out there for murder and rape and aggravated assault.” We opted for murder and assault rather than the chaste high seas, so we bought our tickets for the ferry.

  Alcatraz Island is twelve acres of solid rock a mile and a quarter out in the middle of San Francisco Bay. It used to be a federal prison site, and I’d grown up hearing Hackey’s stories about daring escapes through the icy waters. He even knew someone who had made it, or at least told me he did. The prison was closed by the government when it got to be too expensive to run. After all, everything had to be brought in by boat, even the prisoners. Then some militant American Indians occupied it for a couple of years, until California got it back and made it a national monument. The ferry guide had a few other things to say about Alcatraz, but I didn’t pay that much attention. The view around the boat captivated me. How awful it must have been for the prisoners to be on that bleak rock with the spectacular view of San Francisco, so close, but just out of reach. Maybe they’d rather have had no view at all than to be tantalized that way.

  The bay was calm, gently rocking the ferry boat. Darlene seemed very uneasy and finally admitted she was “sort of scared of water.” We made a circle around her. Jo tucked Darlene’s arm under her own. The wind off the bay blew carelessly, and our hair lashed our faces. Jo just stood up and defied the wind, which carried her cheap perfume away with it.

  As we neared Alcatraz, I imagined how it must have been to be banished to that island and to have the unrelieved wind turning your skin to leather through the years. The rock was so forbidding and cold. I pulled my coat tighter and no longer wanted to see the murderers’ cells.

  “What?” Jo yelled into the wind. “Don’t you want to see the toilets they shouted through to the cellblock downstairs?”

  “No,” Sylvia said.

  “I don’t understand you,” Jo cried. “Aren’t you interested in seeing the Hole? That’s the solitary confinement cells. No light, no sound, no TV. Bread and water, that’s it.”

  “Who wants to see that?” Darlene said.

  “I hear there’s a display of all the homemade weapons the guards captured. Did you ever hear of a pig sticker?”

  “What’s a pig sticker?” Pammy asked.

  Jo gave us a patronizing look. “That’s prison slang for knife. I thought you guys would at least know that much.”

  “How come you know so much about prisons?” I asked her.

  Jo shrugged. “I read a lot. Like, I read about this guy who sliced through the bars of his cell with dental floss.”

  “Dental floss? Sure!” said Sylvia. “How?”

  “This guy, he dips the dental floss in cleanser, like Ajax, you know? And he wets it, and saws through the bars. I guess it took a long time.”

  “I can’t believe that,” Sylvia said.

  “It’s like your dentist says, floss every day.”

  “Shut up, Jo,” Darlene said, not unkindly.

  “You guys don’t have any adventure in you. Don’t you want to see where the Birdman of Alcatraz used to hang out?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Al Capone. How about Al Capone’s cell?”

  We stuffed the end of her poncho into her mouth and got back onto the ferry for the return trip. A few hearty tourists, probably people from Minnesota or Alaska, got off to tour the prison and wait for the next ferry, but not us.

  The mile back to shore seemed longer and rockier, and Pammy was quite green. “If I have my baby at sea, what country is it a citizen of?”

  We all laughed and then realized Pammy was absolutely serious.

  “It’s going to be a U.S. citizen,” Sylvia said, “no matter what.”

  “Then it can get welfare?” This seemed to relieve Pammy’s nausea.

  “And you know what? It’s going to be a beautiful kid,” I assured her. I felt a little like the proud father myself.

  “Not only beautiful,” Pammy said quietly, “but it will be a boy.”

  Ten Thousand Pieces of Gold, I thought.

  “And he will look just like his father,” Pammy mused.

  “My God, then pray, sisters,” Jo said, waving her arms like a tent preacher. “Pray that it gets some brains, if nothing else.”

  When we got home Elizabeth was in a housecoat and was just finishing up her paper on British social agencies. Jeremy was nowhere in sight. Elizabeth said, “By the way, Greta, Mr. Saxe called.”

  On Saturday? He never worked on Saturdays, and even on weekdays he never called me at home.

  “Your mother’s fine, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” Elizabeth assured me.

  “Then why would he call on the weekend?”

  “He didn’t exactly call. I called him. I’ll tell you what, we’ll go upstairs, and you can call him back from my phone.” She whispered something to the other girls and led me up to her room. Things were tossed helter-skelter, but the phone was in the very center of her bed. I realized she’d planned all along to have me use her phone. She even dialed for me, then pretended to be busy cleaning out her desk drawer.

  I did not expect a child to answer the phone; I didn’t think Mr. Saxe was a father. So I almost hung up when the sweet voice asked, “Whossis?” Mr. Saxe was on in an instant.

  “Greta, how are you, dear?” I heard the other extension in his house click. I imagined that the child had gone back to The Muppet Show. “Greta, I’ve had a call.”

  I didn’t have to ask who it was from. I already felt as cold as Alcatraz.

  “Not directly from Hackey, but about him. There’s nothing to worry about, but I just wanted you to know what’s happening.”

  “What’s happening?” I asked, sounding like a computer.

  “He saw you at the Chinese Hospital and asked a nurse about you. She didn’t know you, but she gave him Wing’s name. Next thing you know, he called Wing’s father, who doesn’t speak much English, I gather, so Wing got on. Hackey asked a lot of questions about where you were living and where you go to school.”

  My jaw felt locked with cold: I could barely get out the words. “What did Wing tell him?”

  “Nothing, nothing. The boy is smart. He got suspicious of this man calling out of the blue and asking a lot of personal questions. He told Hackey he hardly knew you. Right away Wing called Anza House to find out what was going on. You were out.”

  “We went to Alcatraz.”

  “Um-hmm. So he talked to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth called me, and now the story’s gone full circle. Now don’t worry.”

  “No, I won’t worry.” Worry? He could follow me home any time, and then what?

  “The message is pretty clear—stay away from Chinese Hospital.”

  I nodded, stupidly, as though Mr. Saxe could see me over the phone.

  “Did you have a good time at the Wharf?”

  I nodded again, squeezing the plastic coin purse in the pocket of my coat. “I bought a shrimp cocktail.”

  “That’s great, great!” he said, as though I’d just told him I’d won the national spelling bee. “Hang in there, Greta.”<
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  I hung up.

  “I can’t go with you to the hospital anymore,” I told Wing.

  He nodded. He accepted things too easily. “It’s got something to do with that man who called me?”

  I was afraid he’d ask questions I couldn’t answer. We walked along Stockton Street, the dinner basket swinging between us. We passed the Chinese Elementary School, with its uninviting door open. Wing took me up the front steps to get a closer look at the gold dragons painted on the columns out front.

  “See? The dragons are chasing their own tails,” Wing explained. Did he mean me? I counted three flights of stairs straight up inside the building before the first floor began. Children in a room somewhere upstairs were reciting nonsense sounds together in a sleepy rhythm, peppered from time to time by the teacher’s high, straining voice.

  “See what I escaped?” Wing asked. “Do you know how many years I was up there after school mumbling with the rest of the kids?”

  “Did you hate it?”

  “Of course I hated it.”

  “Will you make your kids go?”

  “Of course I’ll make my kids go.” He laughed.

  “Oh, it’s like, if you had to suffer, they have to suffer, too.”

  “No,” he responded seriously. “It’s because Old Man will be gone before my children are born.”

  Old Man, it always came back to Old Man, and with a sharp pang I realized that now I would never see the man whose voice I would recognize in the dark, even in an arena filled with old men. Hackey, Hackey, you’ve given me nearly everything I’ve ever had in my life, and you’ve always taken everything away …

  I’m sitting on the stage with the rest of the sixth grade graduates, and like all the other girls in my class, I’m wearing a white dress with a pink rosebud pinned to the collar.

  My mother’s in the audience, apart from the other women: the PTA mothers, the Girl Scout mothers, the Room Mothers. She looks more fragile than the rest of them, with her huge, tinted glasses, and her dark, thin hair swept to one side over her shoulder. The school band is painfully tuning up when I see a slash of light in the back of the auditorium. It’s Hackey, late as always. But that day he hadn’t even been expected. He spots my mother, whose hair dances over her shoulder and back when she sees him. She pats the seat beside her. (I’m watching all this from the stage, mind you, while Maryanne Bucher is delivering a speech on the great future world of junior high school.)