Read Online The Tender Bar by J. R. Moehringer - Free Book Online

knew that my mother would refuse it and be mad at me. I’d stack the bills in neat piles, noticing that Ulysses Grant looked like one of the men I’d seen at the Dickens softball game. Then I’d stretch out in Uncle Charlie’s bed, propped up on his goose-feather pillows, and be Uncle Charlie. I’d watch the Mets and pretend I had what Uncle Charlie called “heavy timber” on the game. I’d wonder if Uncle Charlie ever bet heavy timber against the Mets. A thing like that would bother me more than knowing he was breaking the law.

    During a rain delay one night I changed the channel, hoping for an old Abbott and Costello movie, and happened upon
Casablanca
. “I’m shocked—
shocked
—to find that gambling is going on in here.” I sat up. That man in the tuxedo—he was Uncle Charlie. That hound-dog face, that wistful squint, that furrowed brow. And not only was Humphrey Bogart a dead ringer for Uncle Charlie—except with hair—he also talked like Uncle Charlie, lips never wider than the width of a cigarette. When Bogart said, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” the hairs on the back of my neck tingled, because it sounded as if Uncle Charlie were in the room with me. Bogart even walked like Uncle Charlie, that flamingo-with-sore-knees gait. Then the topper: Bogart spent every waking hour in a bar. He too had suffered a run of bad luck, apparently, and a bar was where he chose to lie low, along with scores of other refugees playing hide-and-seek with the world. I didn’t need much help romanticizing Dickens, but after discovering
Casablanca
I became a hopeless case. At eight years old I began to dream of going to Dickens as other boys dream of visiting Disneyland.

     

 

    seven
| NOKOMIS

    W HENEVER SHE FOUND ME IN UNCLE CHARLIE’S ROOM, Grandma would try to lure me out. Walking in with a stack of clean Dickens T-shirts for Uncle Charlie’s dresser, she’d see me stretched across his bed and give me a look. Then she’d scan the room—stacks of money, betting slips, hats and dice and cigarette butts—and her ice blue eyes would darken. “I’ve got Entenmann’s coffee cake,” she’d say. “Come have a piece with me.”

    Her words would be clipped, her movements hurried, as if there were something contagious in that room and we were both at risk. I didn’t give it much thought, because Grandma was always afraid of something. She set aside time each day for dread. And not nameless dread. She was quite specific about the various tragedies stalking her. She feared pneumonia, muggers, riptides, meteors, drunk drivers, drug addicts, serial killers, tornadoes, doctors, unscrupulous grocery clerks, and the Russians. The depth of Grandma’s dread came home to me when she bought a lottery ticket and sat before the TV as the numbers were called. After her first three numbers were a match, she began praying feverishly that she wouldn’t have the next three. She dreaded winning, for fear her heart would give out.

    I pitied Grandma, and rolled my eyes at her, and yet when we spent time together I found myself dreading right along with her. On my own I was a terrible worrier—I knew this about myself and worried about it—and now and then I worried that if I spent too much time with Grandma, added her dreads to my worries, I’d eventually become paralyzed by fear. Also, Grandma was always teaching me girly things, like how to iron and needlepoint, and while I liked to learn anything new, I worried what these skills would make me.

    Still, no matter how much I feared Grandma’s influence, I craved her attention, because she was the kindest person in that house. So when she invited me to the kitchen for cake I always abdicated my throne on Uncle Charlie’s bed and followed close on her heels.

    Before the first bite of cake was in my mouth she’d be well into a story. Uncle Charlie was a superb storyteller, as was my mother, but Grandma was the master. She’d learned her craft as a young girl, haunting