The Turnaround Read online

“I remember when she did that commercial for All detergent.” Almeda liked to follow the careers of black actors and actresses, whom she read about in her magazines.

  “She was fine in that, too,” said Ernest.

  They talked through most of the show. It was predictable, and it was also a repeat of a show their father had seen the previous fall. As he did many times, Ernest mentioned that the actor playing Mannix wasn’t a white guy, exactly, but some kind of Arab. “Romenian, or some such thing,” he said.

  “Armenian,” said Almeda. “And they are Christian people. Orthodox Christian, matter of fact. Not Muslim. The ones I know are, anyway.”

  Almeda cleaned the house of an Armenian family up in Wheaton, out there by Glenmont. It was one of two daylong jobs she’d held on to since the riots of ’68. Many of the domestics she knew had stopped doing maid work after the fires of April. She had continued to work part-time because her family needed the money, but she had given notice to those she didn’t care for and stayed with the people she liked. The cutback in hours hadn’t even hurt her much. The homeowners who employed her, the Armenians and a Protestant couple out in Bethesda, had given her raises after Dr. King was assassinated. She hadn’t even asked.

  “One of you boys,” said Ernest, “go get your father a cold beer.” James got up off the couch.

  Ernest read from the paper. “Redd Foxx and Slappy White coming to Shady Grove. Since the Howard got messed up, they’re having all the good shows out in farmer country. Who’s gonna go all the way out there?”

  James returned with a can of Pabst and pulled the ring off its top. He dropped the ring into the hole and handed the beer to his father.

  “You tryin to choke me?” said Ernest. “Throw the tab away next time.”

  “That’s how I see other guys do it,” said James, who had only drunk beer a couple of times.

  “Those other guys are fools, then. I ain’t about to swallow a twisted piece of metal.”

  “I can get you another one,” said Raymond.

  “That’s all right. Now that it’s open I’m gonna drink it. Shoot, I paid for it.”

  “Barely,” said Raymond.

  “Watch your mouth, boy.”

  PBR was only a dollar and change for a six-pack up at the Dart. The Tiparillos that Ernest smoked were fifty for one ninety-nine at the same store. Ernest Monroe had habits, but they were cheap ones. Almeda never complained about his smoking or his drinking. The man worked hard and came home every night.

  James and Ernest began to talk about the difference between small- and big-block engines. Raymond said he was tired, kissed his mother on her cheek, and touched a hand to the shoulder of his father, who grunted by way of acknowledgment.

  Raymond went to the back bedroom, which he and James had always shared. There were two single beds placed against opposite walls. The beds had become too small for them as they had grown, and now their feet hung off the ends. At the foot of each bed was a dresser, previously owned, that their father had brought home, having found them or bought them for next to nothing. Ernest had strengthened the dressers with nails and fortified them with carpenter’s glue and vises. He had then refinished them, making them better than fine. One closet held shirts and church trousers that needed to be hung.

  On the wall was tacked a team photo of the 1971 Washington Redskins, who had reached the playoffs for the first time in twenty-six years. The man who ran Nunzio’s had given Raymond the photo, having obtained it in a Coca-Cola promotion, saying he had no use for it. Raymond suspected the man was just being kind. Raymond was into the Skins, but his first love was basketball. The Knicks were his team. He was a Clyde Frazier fan, and James was partial to Earl Monroe. Some folks called Earl Monroe the Pearl, and some called him Black Jesus. James and his friends just called him Jesus, but not around Almeda, who said that this was blasphemous.

  James had a white T-shirt on the back of which he had Magic Markered the name Monroe, with Earl’s number, 15, carefully written below. He’d put the number on the front as well. Raymond Monroe had decorated a T-shirt in the same way, with Frazier’s jersey number hand-printed on the front and back, along with the single name Clyde.

  Raymond picked up James’s Earl Monroe T-shirt off the wood floor and smelled it to see if it was clean. It didn’t stink much, so he folded it and went to James’s dresser, opening a drawer and placing the shirt inside. His hand lingered on top of the shirts, and he looked over his shoulder at the open door. He didn’t hear footsteps. There were the sounds coming from the television and the muffled voices of James and their father, still talking.

  He ran his hand under the T-shirts and felt nothing. He closed the drawer and pulled on the one below it, which housed jeans and shorts. Beneath the shorts, Raymond found steel. A short barrel, a crenellated cylinder, and a checkered grip.

  It was as if a match had been struck inside him. Strength and manhood could come to a boy at once with the touch of a gun.

  Charles was about bullshit most times. But this time, Charles had spoken true.

  Three

  ALEX PAPPAS had the ticket stub from the Rolling Stones concert up on the bulletin board in his room. The Stones had played RFK Stadium on July 4, a few weeks earlier, and Alex and his friends Billy Cachoris and Pete Whitten had been there. Alex had spent hours in line at the Ticketron outlet at Sears in White Oak, waiting with the other heads to score seats, but it had been worth it. Alex did not think he would ever forget that day, not even when he got to be as ancient as his old man.

  Also on the board were tickets from Baltimore Bullets games he had attended with his father, who had generously driven him and his friends up to the Baltimore Civic Center. Earl the Pearl, Alex’s player, had been traded to the Knicks this midseason past, and with him had gone some of the attraction of the Bullets. It wasn’t the same, rooting for Dave Stallworth and Mike Riordan instead of Monroe.

  Alex was in his bedroom, waiting for his girlfriend to call. The record by that new group Blue Öyster Cult was playing on his compact stereo system, an eighty-watt Webcor home entertainment unit that included two air suspension speakers, an AM/FM radio, a record changer and dust cover, and a built-in eight-track deck. He had saved up his tip money and bought it with cash up at the Dalmo store in Wheaton. By the unit were some eight-tracks, Manassas, Thick as a Brick, and Broken Barricades, but Alex preferred records, which sounded better than tape and didn’t have channel breaks in the middle of the songs. Plus, he liked to take the shrink-wrap off a new album, read the credits and liner notes, and study the artwork as he listened to the music.

  He was looking at the Blue Öyster Cult art now, while “Then Came the Last Days of May” played in the room. The song was about the end of something, its tone both ominous and mysterious, and it troubled Alex and excited him. The cover of the record was a black-and-white drawing of a building that stretched out to infinity, stars and a sliver of moon in a black sky above it, and, hovering over the building, a symbol that looked like a hooked cross. The images were unsettling, in keeping with the music, which was heavy, dark, dangerous, and beautiful. This was Alex’s favorite new group. They were due to open for Quicksilver Messenger Service at Constitution Hall, and Alex planned to go.

  The phone on the floor rang, and Alex picked it up. From the tremor in her voice he knew Karen had been crying.

  “What’s wrong?” said Alex.

  “My stepmother is such a bitch.”

  “What she do?”

  “She won’t let me go out tonight,” said Karen. “She says I’ve got to stay and babysit my sister. She says she told me about this last week. But she never told me anything.”

  Karen’s sister was her half sister. The baby, no longer an infant, was the result of the union between Karen’s father and his youngish second wife. Karen’s mother had died of breast cancer. Karen’s father was a prick. Everything was wrong in their home.

  “Can you sneak out later?” said Alex.

  “Alex, the baby’s only two
years old. I can’t leave her.”

  “Just for, like, fifteen minutes.”

  “Alex!”

  “Look, okay, I’ll come over. After your folks go out.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “You know, just talk,” said Alex. He was thinking of Karen’s pink nipples and black bush.

  “We better not,” said Karen. “You know what happened last time.”

  Her parents had come home early and surprised them during a make-out session on Karen’s bed. Alex had emerged from Karen’s bedroom with a bone protruding from under the fabric of his Levi’s and some excuse about having gone in there to try and fix her stereo. Her father had stood there red-faced, unable to speak. He was a class-A jagoff who had been lousy to Karen since the new wife had come into the family.

  “I guess you’re right,” said Alex. “I’ll just go out with Billy and Pete.”

  “Maybe tomorrow?” said Karen.

  “Maybe,” said Alex.

  He hung up and found his friends. Pete could get the family’s Olds that night, and Billy was ready to go. Alex put on jeans with a thick belt, a shirt with snap buttons, and Jarman two-tone shoes with three-inch heels. He shut down the stereo and left the room.

  His brother, Matthew, fourteen, was in his bedroom down the hall. Matthew was close to Alex’s size and excelled on the football field, the baseball diamond, and in class. He was more competent than Alex in every way except the one way that counted between boys. Alex could still take him in a fight. It wouldn’t be that way for much longer, but for now, it defined their relationship.

  Alex stopped in the doorway. Matthew was lying atop his bed, tossing a baseball up in the air and catching it with his glove. He had thick, wavy hair and a big beak, like the old man. Alex’s hair was curly, like their mom’s.

  “Pussy,” said Alex.

  “Fag,” said Matthew.

  “I’m headin out.”

  “Later.”

  Alex went along the hall, past his parents’ bedroom, and stopped at the bathroom door, which was slightly ajar. The air drifting out smelled like soapy water, cigarettes, and farts. His father was in there, taking one of his half-hour baths, something he did every night.

  “I’m goin out, Dad,” said Alex through the break in the door. “With Billy and Pete.”

  “The three geniuses. What’re you gonna do?”

  “Knock down old ladies and steal their purses.”

  “You.” Alex didn’t have to look in the bathroom to see the small wave of his father’s hand.

  “I won’t be late,” said Alex, anticipating the next question.

  “Who’s drivin?”

  “Pete’s got his father’s car.”

  “Idiots,” muttered his father, and Alex continued down the hall.

  His mother, Calliope “Callie” Pappas, sat in the kitchen at the oval eating table, talking on the phone while she smoked a Silva Thin Gold 100. Her eyebrows were tweezed into two black strips, her face carefully made up, as always. Her hair had recently been frosted at Vincent et Vincent. She wore a shift from Lord and Taylor and thick-heeled sandals. Second generation, she cared about fashion and movie stars, and was less Greek than her husband. Their house was always clean, and a hot dinner was always served promptly. John Pappas was the workhorse; Callie kept the stable clean.

  “Goin out, Ma,” said Alex.

  She put her hand over the speaker of the phone and tapped ash into a tray. “To do what?”

  “Nothin,” said Alex.

  “Who’s driving?”

  “Pete.”

  “Don’t drink beer,” she said, as a horn honked from outside. She gave him an air kiss, and he headed for the door.

  Alex left the house, a small brick affair with white shutters on a street of houses that looked just like it.

  BILLY AND Pete had bought a couple of sixes of Schlitz up at Country Boy in Wheaton. They held open cans between their legs as Alex got into the backseat of the Olds. Billy reached into the bag at his feet and handed a can of beer to Alex.

  “We’re way ahead of you, Pappas,” said Pete, lean, blond, agile, and tall, a Protestant white boy among ethnics in the mostly working-to-middle-class area of southeastern Montgomery County. His father was a lawyer. The fathers of his friends worked service and retail jobs. Many of them were World War II veterans. Their sons would grow up in a futile, unspoken attempt to be as tough as their old men.

  “Drink up, bitch,” said Billy, broad of shoulder and chest. He carried a shadow of a beard, though he was only seventeen years old.

  Billy and Pete usually swung by Alex’s last, so they could commandeer the front seat. It was understood that Alex was not the lead dog in this particular pack. He was somewhat smaller than they were, less physically aggressive, and often the butt of their jokes. They were not cruel to him, exactly, but they were often condescending. Alex accepted the arrangement, as it had been this way since junior high.

  Alex pulled the ring on the Schlitz and dropped it into the hole in the top of the can. He drank the beer, still cold from the coolers of the store they called Country Kill.

  “You guys got any reefer?” said Alex.

  “Bone dry,” said Pete.

  “We’re gettin some tomorrow morning,” said Billy. “You in?”

  “How much?”

  “Forty for an OZ.”

  “Forty?”

  “It’s Lumbo, man,” said Pete. “My guy says it’s prime.”

  “Not like that Mexican ragweed you buy from Ronnie Leibowitz.”

  “Hebe-owitz,” said Billy, and Pete laughed.

  “I’m in,” said Alex. “But, look, pull over soon as you get off my street.”

  Pete curbed the Olds and let it idle. Alex produced a film canister that held a thimble-sized portion of pot. “I found this in my drawer. It’s a little stale . . .”

  “Gimme that shit,” said Billy, who took the canister, looked into it, and shook it. “We can’t even roll a J with this.”

  Pete pushed the lighter in on the dash. When it popped back out, he pulled it and Billy immediately dumped the small amount of reefer onto the lighter’s orange coils. They took turns snorting the smoke that rose off the hot surface. It was only enough for a headache, but they liked the smell.

  “Where we goin?” said Alex.

  “Downtown,” said Pete, turning the car onto Colesville Road and driving south for the District line.

  Billy pulled a Marlboro from a pack he had slipped behind the sun visor and fired it up. The windows were down and the warm night air flowed into the car, blowing back their hair. They all wore it long.

  The car was a white-over-blue Cutlass Supreme. Because of the color scheme, and because it was not the 442, Billy often needled Pete about the vehicle, saying it was a car for “housewives and homos.”

  “What,” said Billy, “did your mother pick this out while your father was at work?”

  “Least we own it,” said Pete. Billy’s father, a Ford salesman at the Hill and Sanders showroom in Wheaton, brought home loaners. Pete’s father was an attorney for the UAW, a “professional,” which Pete never tired of mentioning to his friends. Pete got good grades and had recently scored well on the SATs. Billy and Alex were C students and had no special plans. They had gotten high and drunk the night before the test.

  The boys argued over the choice of radio stations all the way down 16th Street. Alex wanted to listen to WGTB, the progressive FM station coming out of Georgetown U’s campus, but Billy blew that idea off.

  “He’s hoping they play Vomit Rooster,” said Billy.

  “Atomic Rooster,” said Alex.

  “Nights in White Satin” came on the radio, but Billy switched it because they weren’t stoned. He switched off another station that was playing that Lobo song about the dog and stayed with another one only long enough to change the words of the Roberta Flack hit to “The first time ever I sat on your face.” Billy found a station that was spinning music with guitars an
d let it ride. They listened to singles by T-Rex, Argent, and Alice Cooper, and when “Day After Day” came on, Billy turned it all the way up. They were down near Foggy Bottom by the time the song had finished. Pete found a place to park.

  They walked to a nightclub owned by Blackie Auger. They weren’t old enough to drink, but all of them had draft cards they had bought from older guys in the neighborhood. The doorman had a look at them, saw three guys in jeans from the working-class side of the suburbs, and balked at letting them in. But Alex talked them through the door by saying he knew Blackie, the legendary Greek restaurateur and bar owner. Alex did not know Auger and neither did his parents. In fact, he was in an entirely different class of Greek American and had never come in contact with him. Alex’s family attended “the immigrant church” on 16th Street, while Auger and others of his standing were members of the “uptown” cathedral at 36th and Mass.

  The doorman let them pass. The chance that the kid might be telling the truth was their ticket in.

  They knew they were out of place as soon as they entered the club. The men were in their twenties and wore stacks and tight double-knit trousers, with rayon big-collared shirts opened to expose chest hair, medallions, crucifixes, and gold anchors. The women wore dresses and did not look their way. Those on the dance floor seemed to know the current steps. Alex, Billy, and Pete could do stuff they’d seen on the Soul Train dance line, but that was all. Their stay was cut short when a guy with a dollar sign for a belt buckle said something to Billy about being “in the wrong club,” and Billy, who was smoking a Marlboro at the time, said, “Yeah, I didn’t know this was a fag bar,” and flicked his live cigarette off the dude’s chest. The same doorman who had let them in told the boys to get out and “don’t never” come back.

  “Don’t never,” said Pete, out on the sidewalk. “Dumbass used a double negative.”

  Billy and Alex didn’t know what Pete meant, but they figured it was something about Pete being smarter than the bouncer. Being tossed had been momentarily embarrassing, but none of them felt bad about it for long. It had been fun watching the sparks fly off that dude’s chest, hearing Billy’s cackle of a laugh as the guy balled his fists but didn’t step forward, Billy not giving a good fuck about anything, which was his way.