“Is that all?” Amparo asked, once Shrimp had produced her last pious excuse for Lottie’s various awfulnesses. “Can we go downstairs now that I’m properly ashamed?”
“Unless you want to tell me your side of the story?”
“I didn’t think I was supposed to have a side.”
“That’s true when you’re ten years old. At eleven you’re allowed to have your own point of view.”
Amparo grinned a grin that said, Good old democratic Aunt Shrimp. Then she was serious. “Mama hates me, it’s as simple as that.” She gave examples.
Shrimp appeared unimpressed. “You’d rather bully her—is that your point?”
“No.” But giggling. “But it would be a change.”
“You do, you know. You bully her something dreadful. You’re a worse tyrant than Madame Who’s-It with the goiters.”
Amparo’s second grin was more tentative. “Me!”
“You. Even Mickey can see it, but he’s afraid to say anything or you’ll turn on him. We’re all afraid.”
“Don’t be a silly. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Because I say sarcastic things now and then?”
“And then and then. You’re as unpredictable as an airplane schedule. You wait till she’s down, completely at the bottom, and then you go for juggler. What was it you said this morning?”
“I don’t remember anything I said this morning.”
“About the hippopotamus in the mud?”
“I said that to Grummy. She didn’t hear. She was in bed, as usual.”
“She heard.”
“Then I’m sorry. What should I do, apologize?”
“You should stop making things worse for her.”
Amparo shrugged. “She should stop making things worse for me. I hate to always harp about it, but I do want to go to the Lowen School. And why shouldn’t I? It’s not as though I were asking permission to go to Mexico and cut off my breasts.”
“I agree. It’s probably a good school. But you’re at a good school.”
“But I want to go to the Lowen School. It would be a career, but of course Mama wouldn’t understand that.”
“She doesn’t want you living away from home. Is that so cruel?”
“Because if I left, then she’d only have Mickey to bully. Anyhow I’d be here officially, which is all she cares anyhow.”
Shrimp was silent for a while, in what seemed a considering way. But what was there to consider? It was all so obvious. Amparo writhed.
At last Shrimp said, “Let’s make a bargain. If you promise not to be Little Miss Bitch, I’ll do what I can to talk her round to signing you up.”
“Will you? Will you really?”
“Will you? That’s what I’m asking.”
“I’ll grovel at her feet. Anything.”
“If you don’t, Amparo, if you go on the way you’ve been going, believe me, I’ll tell her I think the Lowen School will destroy your character, what little there is.”
“I promise. I promise to be as nice as—as what?”
“As a birthday cake?”
“As nice as a birthday cake, absolutely!”
They shook hands on it and put on their clothes and went downstairs where a real, rather sad, rather squalid birthday cake was waiting for her. Try as she might, poor old Grummy just couldn’t cook. Juan had come by during the time they’d been on the roof, which was, more than any of her crumby presents, a nice surprise. The candles were lit, and everyone sang happy birthday: Juan, Grummy, Mama, Mickey, Shrimp.
“Make a wish,” Mickey said.
She made her wish, then with one decisive gust, blew out all twelve candles.
Shrimp winked at her. “Now don’t tell anyone what it was or you won’t get it.”
She hadn’t, in fact, been wishing for the Lowen School, since that was hers by right. What she’d wished instead was for Lottie to die.
Wishes never come true the way you think. A month later her father was dead. Juan, who’d never been unhappy a day in his life, had committed suicide.
7. Len Rude (2024)
Weeks after the Anderson debacle, when he’d last been able to assure himself that there’d be no dire consequences, Mrs. Miller summoned him uptown for “a little talk.” Though in the long-range view a nobody (her position scarcely brought her to middle management level), Mrs. Miller would soon be writing up his field summary, which made her, for now, a rather godlike nobody.
He panicked disgracefully. All morning he couldn’t think of anything but what to wear, what to wear? He settled on a maroon Perry Como-type sweater with a forest green scarf peeking out. Wholesome, not sexy, but not pointedly not-sexy.
He had a twenty-minute wait outside the lady’s cubbyhole. Usually he excelled at waiting. Cafeterias, toilets, launderettes—his life was rich in opportunities to acquire that skill. But he was so certain he was about to be axed that by the end of the twenty minutes he was on the brink of acting out his favorite crisis fantasy: I will get up, I will walk out the door. Every door. With never a word of good-bye nor a look backward. And then? Ah, there was the rub. Once he was out the door, where could he go that his identity, the whole immense dossier of his life, wouldn’t trail after him like a tin can tied to his tail? So he waited, and then the interview was over, and Mrs. Miller was shaking his hand and saying something bland and anecdotal about Brown, whose book had been decorating his lap. Then, thank you, and thank you for coming in. Good-bye, Mrs. Miller. Good-bye, Len.
What had been the point? She hadn’t mentioned Anderson except to say in passing that of course the poor man ought to be in Bellevue and that a few like that are statistically inevitable for anyone. It was better than he’d expected and more than he deserved.
Instead of the axe there was only his new assignment: Hanson, Nora/ Apartment 1812/ 334 E. 11th St. Mrs. Miller said she was a nice old lady—“if a little difficult at times.” But all the cases he was put on this year were nice and old and difficult, since he was studying, in the catalogue’s words, “Problems of Aging.” The one odd thing about this Hanson was that she had a sizable brood under her wings (though not as large as the printout had indicated; the son was married now) and would not seem to be dangerously lonely. However, according to Mrs. Miller, her son’s marriage had “unsettled her” (ominous word!) which was why she stood in need of his warmth and attention four hours a week. A stitch in time seemed to be what Mrs. Miller had in mind.
The more he thought about it the more this Hanson woman sounded like an impending disaster. Mrs. Miller had probably called him in to cover herself, so that if and when this one went in the same wrong direction Anderson had gone, it would be his fault, not the nice old difficult lady’s, and not absolutely Alexa Miller’s. She was probably doing her memorandum for the file right now, if she hadn’t done it in advance.
All this for two miserable dollars an hour. Sweet fucking Jesus, if he’d known four years ago what he’d be getting into, he’d never have switched his major from English. Better to teach assholes to read the want ads than be an emotional nursemaid to senile psychotics.
That was the dark side. There was also a bright side. By the fall semester he’d have cleared up his field requirements. Then two years of smooth academic sailing, and then, O happy day, Leonard Rude would be a Doctor of Philosophy, which we all know is the next best condition to out-and-out freedom.