12

For the rest of that day at Coney Island I gave Vera Virago as much of the time of her life as a buck and a half and patience could buy. She wasn’t a homely kid, just forbidding. Tall and broad shouldered, very husky, she had a round, ballooning Eskimo face that immediately made you think of blubber, and a long fall of coppery, curly hair framing closeset, beady black eyes that never looked or even stared, they pierced, so that the first time you met her you’d figure that some pretty strong Jesuit missionary had just brought her back from the Amazon following a memorable struggle at dockside there for possession of two of her personal effects: “No, Vera! No! U.S. Customs not allow! Blow gun bad, Vera! No! Machete bad!” There had also been a somewhat disquieting moment on that visit to the Museum of Natural History. While all of the rest of our class had moved on, Virago stood glued with these wide staring eyes looking in at an exhibit about Amazon pygmy headhunters and we had to go back and physically tear her away. She had a heart made of caramel custard, though, but even this could be unnerving to the point of irritation. As I’d mentioned, she was so deeply and neurotically insecure that whatever you did for her, like handing her a Kleenex to wipe catsup off her sneakers, or buying her a nickel paper bag of fries, she’d be totally all scraping and bowing, instantly becoming a Japanese geisha and saying, “Thank you! Oh, thank you so much! You are so kind! You are so very very very very very…!” until you wanted to slap her around a few times, or even push half a grapefruit into her face like Jimmy Cagney does to Mae Clarke in Public Enemy; but then always, by a monumental effort of will, I would see this Kurt Vonnegut guy Jane had mentioned sitting high up in a chair on a golden dais a few feet above me with a wooden leg and made up as Sam Jaffe playing Father Perrault in the movie Lost Horizon saying gently, “Be kind, my son,” although sometimes it wouldn’t be Vonnegut, it would be “Cuddles” Sakall, or even once Humphrey Bogart, though he didn’t say “Be kind” or anything else, he just kept twitching his facial muscles sympathetically.

That day I got home from Coney Island late, but Pop had saved dinner and warmed it up for me and then sat at the table to watch me eat. He said nothing, sort of studying me, as usual, and puffing on his pipe and blowing smoke to the side.

“You have very good time today, Joey?”

“Yeah, I did, Pop.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I see it in you face.”

Another puff, another blowing out of smoke.

“I think maybe today you make pray with your heart.”

I’d been lifting my fork but stopped to look at him now with little question marks in my eyes. “Yeah, Pop?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Should I tell him about Jane? I wondered.

But the question marks turned into exclamation points: No! He’ll worry and take me to doctors!

I lowered my head and finished dinner.

Late that night I was sitting on the edge of my bed with an elbow on my knee and the side of my head propped against my fist. I was thinking thoughts. You know: Stuff. What Pop said at dinner. Jane. Me finding the nickel and dime on the sidewalk and excitedly running across the street to Woolworth’s, dodging oncoming cars and coming close to getting hit. And then the look on Virago’s face on the subway ride coming back from Coney Island when I gritted my entire body and mind and put my arm around her shoulder for a second and gave it a pat and then a friendly squeeze. “Had a real nice time,” I half yelled in her ear above the roar of the train, and because of the softness of Virago’s voice and the apparently bottomless mercy of God, I didn’t hear even one of her seventy-six emotional thank-yous.

But I saw her incredibly happy smile.

And the glow that it gave me and is giving me now.

I got up and knelt down by the side of the bed.

“Now I lay me down to sleep…”