Chicky Testaverde came by a couple of times that summer to have grief-drinks with Dad after he’d already been at the bar, talking ironwork, having several after-work drinks with the guys. He never confessed to suffering days so stricken it took five after-work drinks to calm his once-nervy nerves. He never confessed to icing over with bone-seizing fear while on bridges now, unable to move in any direction, sometimes hugging a girder or a beam, eyes crushed closed for five minutes. But he spoke like a man indicting himself for murder, which implicated us as coconspirators, when he wept, “I shoulda known to keep my kid off the bridge.”
Later during the summer of the Pier business, the three of us — Dad, awkwardness, and I — got in the car, tooled around, listened to AM radio and the wind roaring through the open windows. The drives were probably his uncomplicated method of getting through the hours. His directions and destinations were always questionable and unquestioned. One night he’d gotten lost, maybe missed an exit if he’d had one in mind, near the Belt Parkway’s labyrinthine, accident-prone Ocean Parkway intersection, a snaky Mobius-mess of ramps, exits, merges, under- and overpasses. Traffic was slow.
He drove the Olds below an overpass on whose brick someone had spray-painted in darkest black, Hi Scummy.
We noticed it, read it, and looked at each other. Hi Scummy jetted us into laughter so belly-felt it was unbearable, like being too-tickled. Our hysterics were a relief, too, the discharging of something that needed letting out. Laughter was going to kill us, because Dad was losing control of the wheel, swerving like an alkie. He pulled off at the nearest exit and parked. We genuinely could not stop laughing. We were having An Episode. I was scared I might wet my pants, but I also didn’t care if I did.
When he could talk again, Dad asked, “You think the guy who wrote Hi Scummy was pissed off at somebody who drives under that overpass-thing every day? To make sure the other guy really gets the message?”
“How would Scummy know the guy’s handwriting? And would Scummy know to look up there for a message?”
“Hmm. Smart one. Good point. Also, how would Scummy know that he was the exact Scummy that the Hi was meant for? ’Cause for sure there’s more than one person who takes this route and fits that description.” He paused, changed tone, adding a grim voice to his voice. “That’s if we used words like that, Beth. And we don’t. Those words aren’t allowed, so we don’t use them.”
“Oh,” I said, earnestly. “What about words like Dummy-fuck-o?”
“Beth! Brat! Enough! You know the rules about words.”
“Rules schmules!” I waved away his admonition. Laughter was lots better. “What about this? Maybe the person who wrote… that thing… that Hi… is mad at the drivers.”
“All of ’em? In every single car?”
“Well, not mad, exactly, he just thinks they’re, you know, that they’re scummy!”
“What did you just say?”
“Scummy!” I hooted. I hollered. I spat a few spit-bubbles out my mouth, not on purpose, but a couple hit him, which was nice. “I can say that! You can’t stop me! I’m Scummy! You’re Scummy! Everybody’s so Scummy, Scummy, Scummy!”
He tried to paste his I-am-stern-and-strict face onto his face. “Cut out the crap, Beth! What did I just—?” Mid-scold, he gulped, gagged, as he tried to swallow back laughter, quacking glottally at the precise moment he was trying to play the part of an I-know-what’s-best-for-you type Dad — “What did I just tell you?”
“You told me not to say scummy But you also said crap and before that you said scummy a million-zillion times, so you can’t be mad. Nuh-uh. The rule is phony baloney. Like you.” He gunned the engine again, and we went quiet, listening to the Olds’ hum, meandering on small streets toward wherever he and I were headed, that night, that summer.
Then, I Eureka! — ed. Out my mouth, before I knew it was coming, I shouted, “But maybe it might be a nice thing! Think about it. Maybe the person who wrote Hi to Scummy isn’t a mean Dummy-fuck-o. Like it’s the opposite. Maybe he and Scummy are bestest best friends, and Scummy doesn’t mind. It’s only a bad name if it hurts Scummy’s feelings, but Scummy likes him, so he likes it, he likes his name, so it’s nice to be Scummy.”
Dad shook his head hopelessly. “I’ve been around a lot longer than you, kiddo, and I’ve heard all sortsa nicknames, but I never heard anyone call a good buddy Scummy. Nice try. Close, but no cigar.”
My hands fluttered up dismissively, then flopped in my lap as I kept myself from sighing, “Some people just don’t ever get it.” I twisted, faced him head-on. “Dad, will ya use the noodle God gave you? This guy went to a helluva lotta trouble. He walked on those highways, with the cars and trucks zooming by. Look! There’s no road shoulder. He must of been scared.”
“You got that right. He was shit-scared.”
“But we don’t use words like that, do we?” I inquired, all innocent. He reddened. I let him sweat that one out a minute, then continued, “This guy climbed up the walls, and he had to tiptoe around those No Pedestrian Traffic signs just to hang upside down, like bats do, off that overpass. It’s high up there, especially to be upside down, and the bricks are crumbling. That’s scary.”
“Well taken,” he said. “Go on. Argue your point.” His gaze burned a dimple into the side of my face.
“I’m tellin’ you. All that tsuris? Why bother with it? To say hi to some scummy stranger-type of person who wasn’t his friend? It doesn’t make sense. Not unless he likes Scummy.”
He added, in his dropped-register, this-is-cautionary-so-pay-attention tone, “But Beth-Bug, a lotta times people like things that aren’t so good for them. Especially small people like you.”
“You call me Boll Weevil all the time. A lot of people think boll weevils are icky and gross, and they would say you’re being a big Dummy-fuck-o by calling me by a bug-name, but we know you mean it nice. Same with Scummy. Personally, I think Scummy and his best friend have these private names. Scummy likes being Scummy.”
Leaning in toward the windshield, my father peered at the sky through the streaky, dirty glass. Refusing to look at me, he smiled. Then he tried to quash the smile by contorting his face, cranking his jaw around to set his lips in their man-who-means-business-no-kidding-for-real arrangement. Then his whole face relaxed, forfeited its struggle against its own mouth, and he smiled like he was the man who’d invented the light bulb. He touched my cheek. “And you, Boll Weevil. In my book, I’d have to say that you are one terrific allrightnik.”
You
We stayed stopped at the Stop sign for longer than a Stop sign mandated legally. He was staring ahead of himself, into the middle distance. Then his face changed, dropped, and he stared at his lap. His smile faded, his eyed looked darker and more heavily lidded than they had moments before, and the car’s temperature seemed to fall fifteen degrees. He was thinking, I could tell, and it wasn’t about anything good. “What now?” I asked. “Am I in trouble?”