Pitching Pennies
I expected a different downfall for my wife’s brother, something akin to murder or forgery. Long ago — and you can ask my groomsmen, because I told them all about Lee Wayne at the bachelor party when he disappeared for a couple hours — I predicted kidnapping, grand larceny, felony DUI, drug and gun trafficking, bigamy, and any number of paternity suits. I thought Lee Wayne might finally get caught scamming people out of their retirement savings, or selling stolen goods, or hooking up with chop shop men working a tri-state area. That’s how it is for men who insist on being called two first names, one of which is “Wayne.” There’s scientific and sociological proof. I predicted that Lee Wayne would eventually make his way to Nigeria to teach those Internet people how to siphon money from one account to another without repercussions.
The maximum penalty for the mutilation, diminution, or falsification of usable currency, according to United States Code title 18, part I, chapter 17, is about the same as the maximum penalty for littering. If I ever get married again — it’s logically possible that it could happen — I’m going to mention this to my new set of groomsmen, who’ll all be different than the first team I employed, seeing as those friends, for the most part, advised me against marrying Monica. In my defense, I found out only later that my wife went by Monica Marie up until the time she went to college. I don’t know if there’s ever been a scientific and sociological study about two-named women yet, but there should be. Kate “Ma” Barker. Mary Lou Retton.
“Lee Wayne’s coming by to stay with us for a couple weeks, until he can straighten out his life,” Monica said to me one day, seven years into our marriage, nine months after the last time we’d heard from her brother. “I don’t want to hear any crap from you about this.”
A minute earlier we had been getting along fine, talking about how it would never be socially acceptable for women to chew Red Man or Beechnut tobacco in public until they learned how to spit cleanly. We’d gotten on the subject because neither of us was doing very well when it came to nicotine gum, prescription Zyban, nicotine patches, prescription Chantix, hypnosis, and cold turkey. Monica and I stood out in the middle of our backyard smoking one-hundred-percent additive-free natural tobacco, because at least we’d gotten away from the more popular name brands. We had agreed that A) we should not smoke in the house because maybe the cleaner smell would make us eventually stop; and B) once we ran out of money from buying the one-hundred-percent additive-free natural tobacco cigarettes that cost twice as much as, say, Camels, Marlboros, and Winstons, we would have no other choice but to quit, or start robbing banks in a way more suited to her brother Lee Wayne. I’m not all that proud to admit that when I smoked cigarettes outside I found myself looking at the tomato/Brussels sprouts/habanero/broccoli/ rosemary/basil garden and wondered how difficult it might be to grow actual tobacco plants there, and learn how to roll handmade cigars.
The neighbors next door had a cookout. It was a little more than obvious that they pretended they didn’t see us standing there, a half acre away, puffing like special lizards. These were new people who’d only moved in a couple months earlier. The old neighbors evidently didn’t pay their mortgage. I think their last name began with either an L or a T, but I can’t remember. I said to Monica, “Two weeks?” I said, “There’s no way that he can straighten out his life in two weeks. Did you mean years? Did I mishear you? Did you say two decades?”
“Not funny, Clewis.”
It’s my last name. People always call me by my last name, always — even when I was a child. Look at the other people in history known better only by their last name: Caesar, Einstein, Plato, Shakespeare. There are a lot of them. Maybe Geronimo and Crazy Horse. Hemingway and Faulkner. Castro. In the world of high finance: Rockefeller, Carnegie, Hearst, Astor, and Buffett. In regards to art: Picasso, Pollock, Dali, Renoir, Monet, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Warhol. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Nixon, and Reagan, when it comes to politics. Churchill. Gandhi.
I don’t count Hitler.
I didn’t know Lee Wayne would show up by the time Monica and I went inside, cooked supper, then came outside to smoke before going in to eat. I kind of wondered how come she made a big point out of fixing a special meal of fish tacos, asparagus, coleslaw, fresh-cut potatoes fried in olive oil, and a black bean soup concoction we’d never had in the past. She had already baked bread with forty-seven different grains and whipped up hummus from chickpeas. Monica made a regular tossed salad and cooked a pie made from canned peaches and pizza dough. I thought maybe I’d forgotten our anniversary, or my own birthday. I thought maybe it was Lee Wayne’s birthday, or perhaps he was coming over to ask us to be in a wedding he had forthcoming.
“Are we cooking for the rest of the week or something?” I said. Most nights we didn’t even eat together — I ate a bologna sandwich, and she ate unsalted, unbuttered popcorn with a side of eighteen-cheese quiche. I said, “When’s your brother showing up?”
She looked at her watch. She said, “If possible, try not to mention the word ‘penny.’ Don’t mention currency, copper, recycling centers, or that thing up in Chicago that’s not the stock exchange, really. I can’t remember what it’s called.”
I said, “Wrigley Field? Second City Comedy Troupe? The Sears Tower? Oprah? That German submarine inside the Museum of Science and Industry?”
“The Chicago Board of Trade. I think that’s where it is. Anyway, don’t mention pennies.”
I was about to ask why, there in the backyard, with the neighbors still grilling what smelled like nice rib eyes and our own tacos growing cold on the kitchen counter, when Lee Wayne drove up palming an oogah-oogah-oogah horn attached to the steering wheel of a late model Toyota hybrid.
“Pennies, or jail. Don’t mention either one,” Monica said. “He just got out of prison.”
My first thought, of course — maybe during my predictable and likely second bachelor party I would say to those gathered, “Prison?! When and why did Lee Wayne go to prison?!” but it would be an exaggeration — my first thought was, “Who leaves prison and shows up at a sister’s house driving a late model Toyota hybrid?”
Then I thought that stuff about when and why did Lee Wayne get incarcerated, and then the third thing I thought was, “Why would anyone put an oogah-oogah-oogah horn on a nice car?” There might’ve been some other considerations in between. I’m that way. I’ve been coming up with other considerations ever since I decided that I wanted to make more of myself than being a plain guy with a horticulture degree in charge of making sure city workers pick up branches, weed beds, and cut the grass in public areas.
Not to get sidetracked, but one time I made a movie of a man who cut the grass at his house, took a shower, then went to bed with his wife. They had sex for about two minutes. All of this was done in silence — even when he was on the Troy-Bilt 17.4 horsepower manual 42” riding mower in the front yard — until he got into bed. Then he said, audibly, “I’ll do the backyard tomorrow.” And she said, “You ain’t done the front yard yet, son,” like that, all symbolic and ironic. Then the credits came up saying how my friend Fred Bingham played the part of the Grass Cutter, and his then-fiancée Kay Sue Platt played the part of Disgruntled and Unsatisfied Wife. I sent the film off to one of those movie contests but never heard anything. It might’ve been too short. It ran right at two hours, because I slo-moed the grass-cutting scene.