Read Online Daddy Lenin and Other Stories by Guy Vanderhaeghe - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Guy Vanderhaeghe
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“You think I was born yesterday? Hey, I’d do the same thing in your shoes. No problem.”
And that was how Sabrina Koenig tangled her life up with mine. That first night she made me a tasty beef stew, a supper Father would have approved of, something suitable for a growing boy. She did the dishes, left the kitchen spotless, then went out the back door, across the yard, and out the gate like a cat burglar. Full marks there.
What surprised me was how quickly I began to look forward to Sabrina’s visits. And she began to make them earlier and earlier in the day, sometimes she showed up by one o’clock. For several weeks that summer the local TV station showed matinees that alternated Abbot and Costello movies one day, Dick Powell films the next, and we fell into the habit of watching them together. Abbott and Costello killed Sabrina, their antics made her yelp with laughter, squirm on the sofa like a little kid. The other side of her loved the Dick Powell musicals, the song-and-dance routines, the moony, dreamy, fairy-tale sundaes the old-time studio soda jerks served up.
Sabrina was a lot less chippy, a lot less belligerent off her home turf. By turns she could be goofy and serious, playful and big-sisterly stern. When it came to playing big sister, it wasn’t long before she started to ask me
What are you goingto do with your life?
I was fifteen, my ambitions didn’t extend much further than getting my driver’s licence in a year and maybe, if I could summon up the guts, inviting Jenny Likes to Play the Squeezebox to go for a ride with me in my father’s half-ton.
Sabrina put the big career question to me just after Dick Powell had finished singing and tripping his way through
42 nd Street
. As usual, although it was only three o’clock in the afternoon, all the curtains were drawn for security reasons, to make sure that nobody out on the street spotted who was hanging out at the Dowd residence. The room was full of heat and very dim, but in a little sparse light filtering through the drapes I could see earnestness gleam on Sabrina’s face.
“I don’t know,” I said, resorting to flippancy. “Be a fireman. Be a cowboy. Indian chief.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “Don’t act like a bonehead. You’ve got to think ahead, Billy. You’ve got to plan. At least start treading water now or you’ll sink.”
“That’s pretty extreme.”
“No, it isn’t. You think you can just float along and one day you’ll just float to the top of the world? No way, Billy, you’ll end up sinking like a stone. You’ve got to set your sights on something.”
“Okay, so tell me, what have
you
set your sights on?”
“Getting out of this town. Away from
them
.”
“That’s not much. Boy, what a huge ambition.”
“One thing at a time, Billy. One thing at a time. I’m saving money for the day I can wave goodbye to Groveland. That’s the first step.”
Setting your sights on something wasn’t the only thing Sabrina harassed me about. She was big on me improving myself. In fact, sometimes I got to feeling I was no different than a project for a science fair. Here’s this bucket of gritty sand and look what you can do with it, blast it with ambition, blow the glowing, heated mass into a very nice glass vase you can stick a flower in. Beautiful.
One afternoon she picked up the paperback copy of
Goldfinger
I was reading, started turning the pages, stopping here and there to skim a passage. When she finally put it down, she was in full big-sister mode. “Why do you waste your time reading this crap?”
I was annoyed. “Because it’s entertaining. I like it. That’s good enough for me.”
“No, it isn’t good enough for you. That’s my point. It’s idiotic. James Bond boinking women with names like Pussy Galore. How old is the guy who wrote it? Ten?”
In my defence, I dredged up something I had heard or read somewhere. “President Kennedy loved James Bond. If it was good enough for the leader of
And that was how Sabrina Koenig tangled her life up with mine. That first night she made me a tasty beef stew, a supper Father would have approved of, something suitable for a growing boy. She did the dishes, left the kitchen spotless, then went out the back door, across the yard, and out the gate like a cat burglar. Full marks there.
What surprised me was how quickly I began to look forward to Sabrina’s visits. And she began to make them earlier and earlier in the day, sometimes she showed up by one o’clock. For several weeks that summer the local TV station showed matinees that alternated Abbot and Costello movies one day, Dick Powell films the next, and we fell into the habit of watching them together. Abbott and Costello killed Sabrina, their antics made her yelp with laughter, squirm on the sofa like a little kid. The other side of her loved the Dick Powell musicals, the song-and-dance routines, the moony, dreamy, fairy-tale sundaes the old-time studio soda jerks served up.
Sabrina was a lot less chippy, a lot less belligerent off her home turf. By turns she could be goofy and serious, playful and big-sisterly stern. When it came to playing big sister, it wasn’t long before she started to ask me
What are you goingto do with your life?
I was fifteen, my ambitions didn’t extend much further than getting my driver’s licence in a year and maybe, if I could summon up the guts, inviting Jenny Likes to Play the Squeezebox to go for a ride with me in my father’s half-ton.
Sabrina put the big career question to me just after Dick Powell had finished singing and tripping his way through
42 nd Street
. As usual, although it was only three o’clock in the afternoon, all the curtains were drawn for security reasons, to make sure that nobody out on the street spotted who was hanging out at the Dowd residence. The room was full of heat and very dim, but in a little sparse light filtering through the drapes I could see earnestness gleam on Sabrina’s face.
“I don’t know,” I said, resorting to flippancy. “Be a fireman. Be a cowboy. Indian chief.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “Don’t act like a bonehead. You’ve got to think ahead, Billy. You’ve got to plan. At least start treading water now or you’ll sink.”
“That’s pretty extreme.”
“No, it isn’t. You think you can just float along and one day you’ll just float to the top of the world? No way, Billy, you’ll end up sinking like a stone. You’ve got to set your sights on something.”
“Okay, so tell me, what have
you
set your sights on?”
“Getting out of this town. Away from
them
.”
“That’s not much. Boy, what a huge ambition.”
“One thing at a time, Billy. One thing at a time. I’m saving money for the day I can wave goodbye to Groveland. That’s the first step.”
Setting your sights on something wasn’t the only thing Sabrina harassed me about. She was big on me improving myself. In fact, sometimes I got to feeling I was no different than a project for a science fair. Here’s this bucket of gritty sand and look what you can do with it, blast it with ambition, blow the glowing, heated mass into a very nice glass vase you can stick a flower in. Beautiful.
One afternoon she picked up the paperback copy of
Goldfinger
I was reading, started turning the pages, stopping here and there to skim a passage. When she finally put it down, she was in full big-sister mode. “Why do you waste your time reading this crap?”
I was annoyed. “Because it’s entertaining. I like it. That’s good enough for me.”
“No, it isn’t good enough for you. That’s my point. It’s idiotic. James Bond boinking women with names like Pussy Galore. How old is the guy who wrote it? Ten?”
In my defence, I dredged up something I had heard or read somewhere. “President Kennedy loved James Bond. If it was good enough for the leader of
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