Freaky Deaky

Chapter 5

Saturday noon in the kitchen of his dad's apartment in St. Clair Shores, Chris said, "This doctor, he not only won't look you in the eye, he doesn't listen to a thing you say. I tell him why I'm leaving the Bomb Squad. I don't see where it's any of his business, but it doesn't make any difference anyway, he's already made up his mind. I'm leaving 'cause I'm scared, I can't handle it." Chris was getting a couple of beers out of the refrigerator.

Chris's dad, Art Mankowski, was frying hamburgers in an iron skillet, working at arm's length so the grease wouldn't pop on him. His dad said, "Get an onion while you're in there, in the crisper. Listen, you'd be crazy if you weren't scared."

"Yeah, but this guy wants to read a hidden meaning into everything, like with the spiders."

"You want your onion fried or raw?"

"I'd rather have a slice of green pepper, if you have any, and the cheese melted over it."

"I think there's one in there, take a look. Get the cheese, too, the Muenster. Where'd you have it like that?"

"It's the way Phyllis makes 'em," Chris said. "You put A-1 on it instead of ketchup. See, if you don't like spiders there's something wrong with you, you're queer. So I know, after we get through the spiders and have I ever been impotent, if he brings up why am I going to Sex Crimes, there isn't a thing I can say the guy's gonna believe. I must be a pervert, some kind of sexual deviant."

Chris's dad said, "Well, I can understand him asking. Why not Homicide, Robbery, one of those? They seem more like what you'd want to get into."

"I asked for Homicide, I told the shrink that. There aren't any openings."

"Sex Crimes," Chris's dad said. "You know the kind of people you'd be dealing with?"

"Yeah, women that got raped and the guys that did it. Also different kinds of sex offenders. You sound like Phyllis. She can't understand why I'd want it. I told her I didn't. You go where there's an opening and they think you'll do a job."

Chris's dad said, "I can't imagine, with all the different departments you have in the Detroit Police . . ." He said, "You want to put your things away before we sit down?"

"I'll only be here a few days, a week at the most. I have to find a place in the city."

His dad said, "So you're gonna leave your things out in the middle of the floor?"

In the front hall three sportcoats, pants, a dark-blue suit, poplin jacket and a lined raincoat lay folded over a mismatched pair of canvas suitcases and several cardboard boxes. Chris carried his possessions through the hall to a room with a hospital bed, where his mother had spent her last three years staring at framed photographs of her children and grandchildren. The pictures were taken at different ages so that Chris, his sister Michele and her three girls became a roomful of kids. Faces that gradually lost identity as they stared back at his mother from the walls, the dresser. . . . Chris had stood at the foot of the bed watching Michele comb their mother's hair, Michele saying, "Look who's here, Mom, it's Christopher." His mom said, "I know my boy." Then looked up at Michele and said, "Now which one are you?" He was hanging his clothes in the empty closet when he heard his dad's raised voice and answered, "What?"

"I said why don't you go back to Arson?"

Chris walked through the hall to the foyer. His dad was across the formal living room in the dining-L, the glass doors to the balcony behind him, filled with pale light. His dad was placing the cheeseburgers and a bag of potato chips on the table, ducking under the crystal chandelier, his dad in a plaid wool shirt, sweat socks, no shoes. Art Mankowski was sixty-eight, retired from the asphalt paving business. (Chris had grown up thinking of that black tarry substance as "ash-phalt" because that was the way his dad had pronounced it, and still did.) His dad went up north deer hunting in the fall, spent the winter in the Florida Keys bonefishing, and would stop off in Delray Beach to visit Michele and her family on the way back. After being with the three grandchildren Art would call his son the cop and ask him if he was married yet. In the spring he'd look out the window at Lake St. Clair, wanting it to hurry up and thaw so he could get out in his 41-foot Roamer.

They sat down to lunch. Chris said, "You remember the Huckleberry Hound cartoon where Huckleberry smells smoke, he goes looking for it and sees all this heavy smoke coming out of the birdhouse?"

His dad held his cheeseburger poised, picturing the scene. "Yeah?"

"Huckleberry Hound climbs up the pole and looks in. There's a crow sitting in there smoking a cigar, watching TV."

His dad, starting to smile, said, "Yeah, I remember."

"Huckleberry Hound says, 'Hey, are you burning garbage?' And the crow looks at him and says, 'No, I like garbage.' "

His dad said, "Yeah, you know what I remember? The way the crow was sitting there with his legs crossed. Talked out of the side of his mouth. 'No, I like garbage.' Your mother would look at us and shake her head, like we're a couple of nuts."

"The point I want to make," Chris said, "that crow would love the Arson Squad; you live with that smell, it clings to you. I can smell a burnt-out building just thinking about it." He took a bite of his cheeseburger with green pepper; it was good. "But what you said, Mom not understanding how we could sit there watching cartoons, that was exactly the way Phyllis looked at me."

"When you told her."

"Yeah, we're at Galligan's, it's Friday, so all the secretaries and young executives from the RenCen are in there looking for action. I get us a drink and tell her, Well, I'm no longer with the Bomb Squad. She just looks at me for a minute, sort of surprised. Maybe even a little disappointed, and I'm thinking, What is this?"

"Yeah?"

"I tell her I'm now with Sex Crimes and she gets a funny look on her face and says, 'Sex Crimes?' Real loud, everybody turns around and looks. She says, 'You're gonna associate with perverts, rapists, filth like that and then come home and tell me about your day?' I said, 'When'd I ever tell you about my day? When'd you ever want to hear about it?' She says, 'You don't tell me anything, you never talk to me at all.' She's crazy, we talk all the time."

His dad said, "You seem to have a lot of trouble with women. They keep throwing you out."

"I do what she wants, she comes up with something else, I don't talk to her."

"I don't know what it is," his dad said, "you're not a bad-looking guy. You could give a little more thought to your grooming. Get your hair trimmed, wear a white shirt now and then, see if that works. What kind of aftershave you use?"

"I'm serious."

"I know you are and I'm glad you came to me. When'd she throw you out, last night?"

"She didn't throw me out, I left. I phoned, you weren't home, so I stayed at Jerry's."

"When you needed me most," his dad said. "I'm sorry I wasn't here."

"Actually," Chris said, "you get right down to it, Phyllis's the one does all the talking. She gives me banking facts about different kinds of annuities, fiduciary trusts, institutional liquid asset funds . . . I'm sitting there trying to stay awake, she's telling me about the exciting world of trust funds."

"I had a feeling," his dad said, "you've given it some thought. You realize life goes on."

"I'm not even sure what attracted me to her in the first place."

His dad said, "You want me to tell you?"

"She looks like a bed doll--you know what I mean?"

"A big healthy one. I know exactly what you mean."

"But she's so serious all the time. She doesn't have much of a sense of humor."

"I'll say this for Phyllis," his dad said, "I like her idea, the green pepper with the cheese and the A-1. It's not bad."

"You can get tired of it," Chris said. He took a sip of beer. "I called you first thing this morning, you still weren't home."

"You were worried about me." His dad would study his sandwich before taking a bite. "I wasn't far, if it'll make you feel better. Two floors up. I was at Esther's."

"You spent the night with her?"

"Why, you think it's a mortal sin or what?"

"I'm surprised, that's all."

His dad said, "Esther's sixty-four, she weighs one eighteen on the nose. She's attractive, knows how to dress, was married forty years to a doctor and now she's having fun. I take her places--she never been to Hamtramck, if you can imagine that. Never listened to WMZK, the polka hour. You know what her favorite song is now? 'Who Stole the Kishka?' "

"No, I think it's nice you spend the night together now and then," Chris said. "Why not?"

"Couple times a week," his dad said. "Plus Saturday night if we're out late, which is usually the case. Esther likes to party."

"You mean you stay with her three nights a week?"

His dad looked up from his sandwich. "What's the matter, you surprised or what?"

"I never thought about it before, that's all."

"You remember when I told you the facts of life?"

"You took me to Little Harry's for lunch and after we went to the show, Our Man in Havana with Alec Guinness. But I already knew all that. Ernie Kovacs was in it too."

"Maybe you thought you knew it. I told you the facts of life and your eyes open and you said, 'You do that to Mom?' And I said, 'That's it, there isn't any other way to do it.' I was just about the same age when I told you you are now. You see what I'm getting at? Your mother and I were married thirty-seven years. Counting before that when I was in the service, and then add on the five years since she passed away and I been seeing different ones, I'd say I've done it, conservatively, about five thousand times." Chris's dad raised his can of beer. "And not all of them done that conservatively, now that I think about it. You see my point?"

"I'm not sure," Chris said.

"What I'm saying is, going to bed with the opposite sex is part of life, it can even become routine. But at the same time, unlike the cheeseburger with the green pepper and the A-1, it isn't something you ever get tired of."

"I'm glad to know that," Chris said. "I was wondering about it."

"You know who Esther thinks you look like? Robert Redford."

"Come on."

"I'm not kidding you. She says that, it means she wants you to like her."

"I like her," Chris said, "and I'm glad you and Esther have fun together."

"We do, that's for sure."

"And I appreciate your taking the time to help me with my problem."

His dad said, "What problem?"