Aberration of Starlight

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What did Billy remember of the abrupt termination of his parents’ marriage?

The sudden turmoil of their one-family house in Flatbush the day that he and his mother left it for good and moved to his Cousin Katie’s house in Jersey City. The empty rooms seemed strange and frightening to him, the moving men huge and loud, and his mother wept when he asked her where Daddy was and was he going to Jersey too. That night he was put to bed on a couch in Katie’s living room and fell asleep listening to his mother and Katie talking in the kitchen, its light falling in the hallway eerie and unfamiliar. He woke up in the middle of the night and wondered where his metal zeppelin was.

Note some specific if disjointed recollections he had of the nights his father came home late for supper.

A bowl of salad made from lettuce, tomatoes, and green pepper rings. His father with tie loosened, sleeves rolled up, and vest unbuttoned, eating angrily and silently. A bottle of Worcestershire sauce. The cold coming in from the back porch as his father stood there, the door half-open, pulling his rubbers off. “Margie.” His mother sullenly washing dishes, her back to the table. A Big Little Book of Terry and the Pirates. “Your home is on Wolcott Street!” The Sun. His father carrying him up to bed. Darkness. Loud voices. Long periods of silence. His mother crying.

What were some things that Billy most liked?

Playing at being driver in his father’s parked car; stirring ice cream into a soup; tying his shoelaces very tight; walking in falling snow; smelling the gum packed with baseball cards; watching badly drawn slides about personal hygiene and/or nutrition in the school auditorium; playing running games like Caught Caught Blackwell and Ringaleevio; listening to his grandfather tell stories about Irish wakes, especially the one about the drunken men who pulled the dead man out of his coffin, sat him up in a chair, and tried to give him some whiskey; going to the penny arcades at Coney Island; the howling wolves on Renfrew of the Mounted; hearing his mother sing “Poor Butterfly.”

What was the single most awesome and terrible thing about his grandmother?

Her corset. The first time he saw it on a chair in his grandparents’ bedroom, he did not know that it was a garment. It seemed, rather, a mysterious object that his grandmother used for some malicious purpose secret to herself. Seeing it for the third or fourth time, he realized that it was something that his grandmother wore, hidden, for some strange reason, beneath her clothes. The vast expanse of white cloth, tinged yellow with age, the enormous elastic straps with their cruel-looking metal clips, the bony stiffness that permitted it to lie so rigidly on the chair — all these things together frightened him. That she should place this horrible thing on her body: perhaps it was the magic that made her so mean.

What further thoughts did these reflections give rise to?

He thought of his grandmother removing the corset, standing naked. He felt slightly sick and light-headed when this idea came to him. He wondered if she made his grandfather watch. He then wondered if his mother wore such a thing, and at this felt absolutely dizzy and sat down. Each time this latter thought subsequently came to him he exorcised it thus: He bit the flesh inside his mouth on the left side and said, silently, “one, two, three.” Then he bit the flesh inside his mouth on the right side and said, silently, “four, five, six.” Then he pressed his lips tightly together and said, still silently, “seven.” He then concluded by whispering, “that’s all, no more.”

Note a few curious things that happened after the move to Cousin Katie’s.

A ragged boy in the adjacent backyard asked him if he wanted some soup. When Billy said that he did, the boy handed him a rusted Campbell’s Soup can filled with worms and earth. Katie’s mashed potatoes had hard lumps in them, and he was expected to eat them all if he wanted dessert. Dessert was almost always lemon Jell-O, which latter possessed a tough and rubbery film on its surface. Katie’s younger son, Buddy, fell in the school gym one day and hurt his back and a few weeks later he died. Janet, Katie’s only daughter, taught him how to listen to college football games on the radio and smoked cigarettes in the bathroom. He was sent to various stores in the neighborhood to ask for wooden crates that Katie used for kindling in the big black kitchen coal stove. A month after the incident with the can of worms, the same boy threw some dead flies in his face, after asking him if he’d like some of the candy he had in his hand; Billy then hit him across the shoulder with a dead branch and was awed at seeing him scream, cry, and run away. Katie’s husband, Leonard, sat in a rocking chair all day, looking out the window and listening to the radio; he was something called “retired” and had a disease called “disability.”

How did he feel when his grandmother got sick?

He was glad that she now stayed in her bedroom all day.

How did he feel when his grandmother died?

He was frightened that she was not really dead because of how she looked in the funeral parlor.

The occasion for his mother’s first slapping him across the face?

His grandmother’s funeral. Walking toward the limousines from the gravesite, he asked if they buried Granma with her corset on and if they did, who put it on her.

What disturbing adventure did Billy have just about the time his parents began to have their quarrels?

Cookie and Honey Neumann, a brother and sister aged seven and five years, respectively, called him into their next-door garage one day. While Cookie giggled hysterically and pointed to a neat pile of fresh human feces, Honey lifted up her coat and dress and pulled her underpants down and he saw that someone had cut her birdie off. Although he later could not decide just why he ran home, he felt sick and knew that there was something wrong about what had happened.

What was his grandmother’s method of persuading him to do what she told him to do?

She hit him across the legs with a thin leather belt that came with one of her crepe de Chine dresses.

Did she thus discipline Billy only when alone with him?

No. She often did it when Marie was present, and when Marie protected her son from her mother’s anger, there was invariably talk about “roof over your heads” and “three meals a day” and “being eaten out of house and home” and “your poor father working like a nigger.” For some years after, Billy thought that all “niggers” worked in “credit,” whatever that was.

When it became clear to Billy that Margie was somehow the reason that his parents argued, and then left each other, and that he and his mother had to go to Jersey City, what did he feel?

He was chagrined because he liked Margie. She had shown him how to play jacks, she had taught him to put sugar on rice when he went to the Chinese restaurant, she smelled kind of nice — even his mother said she smelled like a five-and-ten counter — she called his father “Tone,” which sounded fancy to Billy, and she had bright-red hair.

As he grew older, what did his mother tell him apropos Margie?

That she was a snake in the grass. That she was cheap. That she had used him. That she had blinded his father. That she had broken her heart. That she was shanty Irish. That she lived in a cellar with rats as long as your arm. That her brother was a Judas. That she was older than she was. That she had even fooled his grandmother. That she was strictly dese dose and dems. That her mother kept coal in the bathtub. That she walked like a tramp. That his father would live to rue the day. That she liked her liquor. That she wasn’t even pretty. That she was shameless to call herself Mrs. Recco. That her brother’s gimp served him right and was the judgment of God. That she was a bad woman and he’d understand someday what she meant. That she hadn’t but one dress to her name when she met his father and that one from Namm’s. That her idea of a good time was a plate of boiled potatoes and a growler of beer. That she was Red Hook through and through. That she was the scum of the earth. That she needed row-boats to fit her feet. That she had wormed her way into her friendship. That she took and was glad to get one of her old winter coats, old, yes, but better than anything she had on her skinny back. That she had the nerve to come to Billy’s fourth birthday party, and all the time she, well, she wouldn’t go into it. That she’d go to fat like all the shanty donkey women in ten years. That that slob of a Jimmy Kenny liked her and that should have warned her. That she never even got out of grammar school. That her teeth were as green as grass, disgusting to look at. That you give a man a clean, fresh girl and he has to go and find one like Margie in the sewer. That God sees everything and that He is good. That time wounds all heels.

Apropos his father?

That she didn’t know what had happened to him. That they’d cast a spell on him. That they’d put the evil eye on him, it’s been known to happen. That he needed someone dirty and low. That some old witch had told Margie to dip one of her dirty stockings in his coffee. That he’d turned his back on all his brothers. That he was ashamed to look his father in the face. That she’d given him everything he ever wanted but it wasn’t enough for him. That she’d been a good wife, an angel to him. That she couldn’t see how a man could just abandon his own flesh and blood that way. That he’d been a prince when she first met him. That he’d never liked redheads, not that that was her real hair. That men are no good. That if he ever fell for anyone like Margie, she’d cut the legs out from under him. That he’d had the nerve to take her into her own house. That she’d be damned if he was going to get away with his phony Florida divorce. That she was Mrs. Recco and that she’d always be Mrs. Recco. That if he showed his face in New York before her final decree she had a good mind to have him arrested for bigamy. That she knew he’d have that shyster kike lawyer give her the runaround. That he didn’t care if they starved. That he very conveniently forgot when he was a greenhorn off the boat without a pot to piss in, excuse her French. That now he was the big shot high mucky-muck to people who didn’t know him when. That she’d heard how embarrassed he’d been when some man, some lovely man, told him that he’d met his real wife and lovely boy. That he bought a toupee and walked around like an accident looking for a place to happen until everybody was laughing fit to be tied at him. That he was no better than Jimmy Kenny with his cow of a floozy. That he’d treated her father like dirt when he went to try and talk some sense into him. That he didn’t know what to do with a clean, decent girl from a decent family. That he’d spent whole afternoons away from the office in the Wolcott Street cellar, someday he’d know what she meant. That he’d been married in the church just like she was and would have to meet his Maker some day. That he would get his because God is good. That time wounds all heels.

How did Billy’s left eye become crossed?

He tripped on the stairway carpeting, fell, and struck his forehead, just above his left eye, on a small knickknack table on the landing. Two days later, while he ate breakfast, his mother looked in his face, made him stare at her, had him move his eyes to follow the movements of her index finger, after which he became frightened enough to cry when his mother gave a short shriek and clasped her hands at her bosom.

To what did Billy assign the cause of his eye becoming crossed?

His mother and father’s separation.

What did his mother persist in calling his crossed eye?

A “tired” eye.

What did he most hate about his crossed eye?

The fact that certain boys and girls his age called him, on occasion, “cockeyes.” The glasses that he began wearing at age six, when he entered the first grade; there, certain boys and girls called him, on occasion, “four-eyes.” The black celluloid patch that his mother made him wear over the lens covering his “good” eye upon returning each afternoon from school. The monthly visits to the clinic at Brooklyn Eye and Ear. The eye drops administered by the doctor, which drops half-blinded him for the remainder of the day.

What was most puzzling to Billy in terms of his grandmother’s attitude toward his mother after he and she had moved from Flatbush to Jersey City?

She seemed angry with his mother, not his father.

How did Billy think of Tom Thebus?

As a hero; as a movie star; as a possible new father; as someone who would maybe go and beat his father up; as a man his mother liked a lot; as someone who made him laugh without even trying to.

Recount Billy’s sweetest and most mysterious memory.

One morning he awoke and realized from the way the sun looked on his window shade that it was Sunday. He heard his mother and father laughing quietly and got out of bed, walked down the hall to their bedroom, and opened the door. His mother was sitting up in bed, propped against two pillows. His father was sitting on the edge of the bed in his undershirt and shorts, his face turned toward his mother. He was bouncing up and down on the bed and Billy noticed that the bed seemed lopsided and close to the floor at its foot. His mother and father turned toward him as he entered and his mother said, “Your father broke the bed.” At this she began to laugh, putting her hand over her mouth. His father, wagging his finger at her, got up, grabbed Billy in his arms and sat down again with him on his lap. “Don’t believe Mama,” he said. “She’s the one who broke the bed!” Then he began to laugh. Then he shouted, in mock anger that made Billy giggle, “Pancakes! Bacon! Gallons of coffee! Eggs! Rolls!” His mother reached over and put her hand on his father’s shoulder with a tenderness that gave Billy a chill of intense delight. There was, he considered, nothing more wonderful and funny than breaking a bed if you were a mother and father.