Whistling for the Elephants Read online

  I tried making friends with the Dapolito kids a few times before I finally got invited over, but it wasn’t a big success. I kept getting little things wrong. Like the time I was waiting with the Good Humour man on the corner, trying to decide what kind of ice cream I wanted from his truck. He stood there patiently in his short-sleeved white shirt, skinny black bow tie, black pants and matching peaked cap. Donna Marie and Eddie Jr came tornadoing over from their house.

  ‘Hey you, English, you wanna go to the zoo later?’

  I did. I desperately did but I didn’t want to look keen. ‘Sure. I mean in a minute. I was just getting a lolly.’

  Eddie Jr, who was only seven, looked at me and started laughing. ‘A lolly? What the hell is a lolly?’ And they began to chant the word. ‘Lolly, lolly!’ It was a cooties kind of chant and then Father arrived from the station and I could see him eyeing the Good Humour man’s ready-made bow tie with disgust so I went inside and never got the ice cream or went to the zoo.

  The second time I was trying to see if I could ‘pop a wheelie’ on my bike. Mother was asleep and Father was at work so I concentrated on my chopper. Trying to make the whole thing rear up on the back wheel like a high-spirited horse. I had just fallen heavily onto the hot tarmac when Aunt Bonnie drove past in her car piled high with kids. I had a leg full of grit and I could feel a small rivulet of blood making its way down the inside of my knee-socks but I got up and smiled.

  ‘Hey, kid, you oughta come. Get in,’ she yelled. It seemed like an order, so I leaned my frisky bike against the stop sign and got in. I felt really pleased with myself I had sussed car-getting-in technique. The very back of the Dapolito station wagon had a large window which was always wound down. You could open the back like a door if you wanted, but that was not cool. The trick was, if the window was down, never to open the door. You climbed in through the window. I climbed in and landed on a pile of kids. I don’t remember seatbelts in those days. I don’t even know if cars had them. If they did no one used them. Certainly in Aunt Bonnie’s car you were mostly held in by the sheer number of other kids. There were a lot of big boys in the back of the car. I listened as they talked, making myself as small as possible.

  ‘The minister is so weird.’ It was an argument not a statement. ‘He says he talks direct to God.’

  ‘Yeah, right. That’s only since he found his wife giving head to that Cuban refugee in the belltower during the Christmas service. You’d need to talk to God after that.’

  The big boys laughed. The world was becoming more and more incomprehensible to me. It wasn’t till we got to the Methodist church that I found out what we were doing. Boat safety classes. Presumably under God’s supervision. Being right on the water, Sassaspaneck was a big sailing community. All the kids in the neighbourhood took ‘Boat Safety’ down at the Methodist church. About a dozen of us, most from Aunt Bonnie’s car, fell into the church, where we stood giggling. The minister, Reverend Harlon, was wandering up and down the aisles babbling loudly. A man in desperate conversation with his Lord. He had once been famous for talking in tongues. Apparently it had been very impressive. Then his wife left him and he had a kind of breakdown. After that he only talked in tongues and no one liked to be the first person to be less than impressed so they just let him get on with it. Harry Schlick, Judith’s husband, boomed into view.

  ‘Come on, you bunch of little jerks. Let’s go. Hup two.’ We filed into the hall at the side. No one argued with Harry. Harry had been in the Army in Europe or, as Mrs Shepherd would have it, Yarrup. He had fought for Yarrup. Indeed if you met him you might think Yarrup owed its freedom to Harry. Apart from his role as Freedom Fighter for the old country, Harry had two claims to fame. He was Mayor of Sassaspaneck and he had been quarterback in his senior high-school year when the Sassaspaneck Senators had scored a perfect season. Amherst’s gift to women, he owned Schlick’s Corset Place (Est. 1946) next to the drugstore. He also ran Boat Safety. He was older than Judith. I guess he must have been around fifty that summer. A little younger than Father anyway. Still good-looking though. A large man with a chiselled face chipped straight off of Mount Rushmore. It was a hundred percent USA. He had a huge jaw and a fantastic number of straight teeth set under a neat pencil-line moustache. Far too many teeth to be of practical value except possibly to look good in team photos.

  ‘Okay, shape up, here we go. Grab a life preserver, your port and starboard reminder cards and take a look at this.’ Like a magician with an oversize rabbit at his disposal, Harry produced a large life-size rubber doll.

  ‘This,’ he announced proudly, ‘is Resussa-Annie, and she is going to teach you mouth-to-mouth.’ The boys snickered. Resussa—Annie was clearly what they went to Boat Safety for. Not only was she shaped like a full-grown woman, she was naked and actually pretty good-looking for rubber. She had long blond hair which spread down over quite realistic breasts.

  ‘What do you know about Annie here?’ bellowed Harry in a voice which had carried him to victory on the football field.

  ‘She’s naked,’ chortled Nathan Crystal, who lived over on Edgemont. Nathan went to remedial summer school and was into leather at a surprisingly early age.

  ‘Don’t be a wise ass, Crystal,’ warned Harry. ‘Your father can’t pass a ball worth a nickel. Yeah, so she’s naked. She is naked for a reason, okay?’ Harry held the doll up by the neck so that she sagged from his grip. ‘This woman is going to drown and you are going to save her. She does not have a top on…’ There was a great wave of snickering. ‘Thank you … she does not have a top on as we are supposed to be able to see her chest moving when one of you wisenheimers has successfully expelled air into her lungs. Who wants to be first?’ The answer was no one, but Harry had dealt with reluctant recruits before. ‘Come on, Donna Marie, let’s go, hup two.’

  Donna had no choice but to shuffle up to the front. She looked at naked Annie. Harry clipped on.

  ‘Okay, let’s get the head in the right position. Here, give me your hands.’ He took Donna Marie’s hands and moved them toward Annie’s head. Suddenly he stopped.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ he demanded, holding up her wrist. Donna Marie looked at her wrist as if for the first time. I think it took her a minute to know what he was talking about.

  ‘It’s my PoW bracelet.’ There was a terrible silence. The fate of Lt Hutton aside, I knew I was glad I wasn’t wearing mine. Harry looked at Donna Marie.

  ‘How old are you?’ he demanded.

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Twelve, huh. You go out with boys?’

  The boys snickered but one look from Harry and they stopped instantly.

  ‘No,’ said Donna, blushing.

  Harry looked at her in disgust. ‘Not a goddamn idea in your head.’ He grabbed her wrist and pulled at the offending chain. ‘Do you know where this kind of thing can lead, huh? Do you have any idea? Give me the bracelet.’ Donna Marie took it off and handed it to him. ‘Sit down, I’ll talk to your father.’ Harry cleared his throat. ‘Anybody else want to be a smartass?’

  I don’t know why I put my hand up. It wasn’t like me to push myself forward. I certainly didn’t want to be a smartass. It was pathetic but I had a terrible longing to breathe life into the sleeping creature, Resussa-Annie. Harry looked at me strangely. I don’t think he knew what to make of me. I was a girl but I looked like a boy. My hands stuck firmly in my pockets, the hair under my cap, neither one thing nor the other. A gender-non-specific. I could see that he had no idea whether I needed the hail-fellow-well-met slap on the back of a lad or the pinched cheek of a princess. Harry did neither but waved in the general direction of Annie and let me approach.

  He had laid her out on two chairs covered by an altar-cloth. There was something religious and yet pagan about it all. Annie had a very big but quite realistic mouth which was permanently open to allow easy passage down into her big bags of lung. I wasn’t sure what to do. I never touched anybody. I wanted to stroke her hair. I mean, if she had been drowning I tho
ught that would be nice but I knew all the boys and Donna Marie and Eddie Jr were watching. Maybe stroking was not cool. Harry became businesslike.

  ‘So the person needs your help. She can’t breathe. Whatcha gonna do? First tip her head back and make sure her airways are free of obstruction.’ He tipped Annie’s head back and her glazed eyes stared up into mine. ‘You put your hand on her chest like so, then take a deep breath and blow, one, two, three.’ Harry blew into Annie and her chest rose like a swelling wave. ‘Head to the side, blow out, one, two, three. Okay, kid, you’re on.’

  I shuffled to Annie’s side and looked down at her. She was dying. I had to save her. In fact, only I could save her. Gently I tipped her head back and looked down her mouth. Her pink rubber passageway was very free of obstruction. So free that on a clear day and with her legs at the right angle to the window, you could have seen our house.

  ‘Come on, kid, she’s dying for Christ’s sake.’

  I took a deep breath, leaned down and blew so forcefully that her lungs popped up and shot my hand off her chest. I’d save her, I would. I got into the rhythm of it. Breathing in, one, two, three, blowing out, one, two, three. Annie’s chest rising and falling. It was the most incredible feeling, breathing life into something. I had an overwhelming sensation of usefulness, of purpose. It was as close to a religious feeling as I had ever had. At which point I fainted.

  When I came round I was lying on Annie’s chairs and she was looking decidedly deflated in a corner. All the kids had gone. Harry was looking down at me with disgust.

  ‘Listen, kid, you’re new, right?’ I nodded vigorously. ‘Don’t rush the plate. Girls oughtta take their time. That’s what girls do. Let the boys rush the plate.’ Harry nodded, pleased with his own statement on life. He really was trying to be helpful. I thought I ought to comment on this unexpected piece of advice but I didn’t quite know what it meant. He drove me home in silence. As we pulled up to our yard he spoke out of the corner of his mouth. Not looking at me but talking quite intently to the steering wheel.

  ‘Be smart, kid. Don’t wear the tie. Don’t be so… different, right? Kids’ll tease you. You know, give you a hard time in school and like that. Don’t be so… different.’

  I knew he was trying to tell me something important but I didn’t really get it. I still hadn’t gotten used to the idea of conversation with adults whose first names you knew. I nodded again.

  ‘Thank you.’ I got out of the car and carefully shut the door. ‘Sorry I was such trouble,’ I mumbled into his exhaust.

  I didn’t go to Boat Safety again. Partly because Father didn’t let me and partly because of what happened with the zoo and everything. Most of the other kids got their certificates but I don’t think Harry had his mind on the course that summer. He didn’t really pay attention ‘cause for a while the boys were happy just breathing on Resussa-Annie. Then Harry got caught up in the election and stopped taking the classes. The minister took over but he never noticed what was going on. Unsupervised, Nathan discovered he could jerk off in Annie’s wide mouth. I learned so many things that summer. Pretty soon all the boys wanted a go. After a couple of months she was full up with semen and went a strange colour. A kind of black pallor developed all over her, as if it were the plague she needed rescuing from, not drowning. Not surprisingly, none of the girls wanted to save her and there was an almost entirely male pass rate for Boat Safety in town. Not that it mattered at the certificate ceremony. Reverend Harlon was supposed to call out the successful students, but no one could understand a word he said so in the end a lot more kids got a certificate than should have.

  That was my first outing with the Dapolitos. Then there was the time I went to dinner.

  ‘Hey, kid,’ Aunt Bonnie yelled as I cycled past for the twentieth time one afternoon. ‘You want a meatball wedge?’

  I had no idea whether I did or not but I nodded. I just wanted to come inside their house.

  ‘The kids are watching TV … in the den.’ Aunt Bonnie nodded into the dark interior.

  I knew it. What a great place. They didn’t have a lounge. They had a den. A dark, snuggly place for baby lions. That was the first time I ever saw a colour TV. It was a huge wooden box with a panel of three lights at the front — green, blue and red. We sat on their endless sofa (dark wood with quilt-pattern cushions from the Pioneer collection — Sears, Roebuck Catalog 1961) and watched Gilligan’s Island followed by I Dream of Jeannie. Aunt Bonnie was unpacking things from a large brown cardboard box.

  ‘Donna Marie,’ she would call and toss cellophane packages at her daughter. ‘Eddie J.’ More packages rained down on the sofa. Clothes, endless clothes. Donna Marie opened her packets. Shorts. Shorts in bright colours, and really soft. Not tailored at all. Shorts with pockets. And T-shirts, striped T-shirts to match the shorts. Maybe six or more sets in different colours. It was the most fantastic box of clothes I had ever seen.

  ‘Excuse me, Mrs Dapolito,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Mrs Dapolito! For Christ’s sake, Aunt Bonnie.’ Aunt Bonnie dragged on her Salem cigarette. ‘Everyone calls me Aunt Bonnie.’

  ‘Where do you get such a box?’

  ‘Sears, Roebuck. Goddamn finest store in the country. Here.’ She tossed a catalogue the size of a small child at my feet. Then my new-found aunt went into the kitchen. She returned with great submarines of bread overflowing with Italian spiced meatballs. Wonderful food that you just couldn’t eat neatly. Food that you ate with your hands! In the lounge. The den! On the settee. Not at a table. I ate, I looked at pictures of smiling girls in shorts in my catalogue and on the TV Barbara Eden came out of a genie’s bottle with a bright green face. I had died and gone to heaven.

  Uncle Eddie sat silently in a huge reclining chair with a great footrest. He didn’t really watch but occasionally he would click his fingers to show he wanted the channel changed. He was definitely in charge of the TV. Looking back, maybe it was a testosterone thing.

  Father rang the doorbell and Aunt Bonnie went to answer.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Dapolito,’ he whispered. ‘I was wondering if you might have seen my daughter, Dorothy?’

  ‘You got a problem with your voice?’ asked Aunt Bonnie straight out.

  ‘Yes.’

  She shrugged. ‘Too bad. She’s in here.’ Aunt Bonnie nodded toward the den. Father was unmoved.

  ‘Perhaps you might call her?’ he suggested, it never occurring to him to enter someone else’s home without prior arrangement.

  ‘Hey, kid, your dad’s here,’ Aunt Bonnie yelled with a paint-stripping voice.

  ‘You have been most kind.’

  Father was cross. I knew he was. I had eaten between meals. I had red sauce down my tie.

  ‘They have colour TV,’ I said as we walked home.

  ‘It is vulgar,’ whispered Father, even less audible than usual.

  I didn’t think so but I didn’t say anything. I thought I’d never seen anything more exciting in my life, but I knew Father wanted me to stay away. He never banned me, or anything as straightforward as that. I just knew I wasn’t to go to the Dapolito family. At home Father sat reading at the dining-room table. Mother’s door was closed and the air was thick with silence. My tie was ruined. In my room I took it off and put it in the bin.

  Chapter Four

  The dead end that we lived in had five houses. Ours was next to the stop sign on to Amherst. Next to us, on the same right-hand side of the street, lived Sweetheart, Harry Schlick’s mother. Next to her and at the head of the close were the Dapolitos. Next to them was the drive to the Yacht Club. Then on the left side were Harry and Judith and next to them Joey Amorato, the dog catcher, who lived alone.

  The Schlicks invited us for a barbecue as part of the Welcome Wagon’s welcome to the neighbourhood. I guess it was the barbecue which started everything rolling but I didn’t pay that much attention to the invitation. I was still obsessed with the idea that, like the spider, Father and Mother might be harbouring a rich, internal em
otional life about which I knew nothing. I hadn’t been up to the Burroughs House again after that first time. I spent most of my time hanging around our road, improving on the number of things my bike could be. Whatever the bike was, a horse, a pioneer wagon, I was mostly alone. Cherry Blossom Drive was not a great address for activity. Rich people mainly used it to get to the back entrance to the Yacht Club.

  At weekends Father was home but he spent most of his time sitting at the dining-room table working on his project. Our family, the Kanes, came originally from a small village in England called Ickenham. Father had been researching the town’s history for some time. This was difficult as Ickenham was pretty much the sort of English town which history had entirely passed by. It was not mentioned in the Domesday Book and no one of any consequence had ever thought it was a good place for a battle. It suggested somewhere not worth fighting over. However, Father had a trump card. While examining the guest register of the Ickenham Arms he had discovered the signature ‘ER 1598’. He was convinced that Elizabeth I had once slept there en route to whatever it was she was en route to. Consequently he was in endless correspondence with specialists in the field. Father always meant to be nice. If I came in he would look up from his work and I always felt I had to stop by the table. Neither one of us could ever think of a suitable subject for conversation.

  ‘How’s school?’ he would whisper.

  ‘It’s the holidays.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ He paused. ‘When it was school, how was it?’

  ‘Fine. We did World War One.’ I searched around in my mind for a fact. ‘It was a terrible war.’

  ‘Second one was better. I fought in the Guards, you know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Father nodded. We had done enough bonding and I would go to my room. There I pulled out my secret weapon from Aunt Bonnie. I spent even more hours with it than my Chinese present, until at last I felt ready. The night of the barbecue, I wandered down the corridor with it to Mother’s room. I thought she might be up as she would need to get ready for the outing. I knocked and heard her light, ‘Come in.’