Read Online Wishin' and Hopin' by Wally Lamb - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Wally Lamb
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away and then, a few seconds later, resume our staring.
One day during class discussion—I forgot how it came up—Zhenya revealed that she was thirteen years old, not ten like the rest of us, except for Lonny who, because he’d stayed back twice, was twelve and a half. She also divulged that the reason she smelled like mayonnaise was because her mother conditioned her hair with it, as did the mothers of “minny, minny geuhls in Soviet Union.” We all looked at each other, shocked, and Madame Frechette said something in québecois that, she explained, meant, “To each his owntaste.” Speaking of which, Ma had left the day before to compete in the Pillsbury Bake-Off.
W riting absentee excuses to the powers-that-be at St. Aloysius Gonzaga was usually my mother’s domain, and so a look of panic crossed Pop’s face that morning when I told him he’d have to write the note to get me sprung early. A maestro of the lunch counter, Pop was not exactly zippity-doo-da when it came to writing. (Like Chino, he was a high school dropout. But unlike Chino, who’d quit school because he suspected the lunch ladies were serving their students Gravy Train, Pop, the eldest of six kids, had had to quit to help his widowed mother support her family.)
Dear Whoever Is Suppose to get this Note ,
Please excuse Felix Funicello at 1 o’clock today so he can walk downtown to the Bus Station, we’re having a little shindig down at our Lunch Counter and he will get tosee his mother on TV. Which will be very educational. Your all invited, anyone who wants to come down there .
Your’s Truly ,
Salvatore P. Funicello
Pop had been fixing me breakfast when I hit him up for that note, and he concentrated so hard while composing it that he burned the bottoms of my pancakes. When I complained about them, he threw the spatula into the sink real hard and told me to quit my goddamned belly-aching. “Just eat from the top down and leave the rest!” It was weird, and a little scary, to witness my father blowing his top like that; he was usually the most even-tempered of men. Reading over his note as I attempted to surgically remove the burnt parts of my pancakes, I was pretty sure that Mother Filomina would be horrified by my father’s fragments and run-on sentences, not to mention his spelling, capitalization, and punctuation mistakes. Still, I decided not to suggest that he do it over. For one thing, I didn’t want to make him even madder.And for another, I figured Mother Fil might marvel at the giant leap forward I represented, grammar-and usage-wise. Given Pop’s note, how could she miss that evolutionary miracle?
But poor Pop. He was overwhelmed by Ma’s five-day absence and real nervous about that afternoon’s “shindig.” He was planning to lug our nineteen-inch black-and-white TV down to the depot, jury-rig a temporary antenna in hopes of pulling in the Bake-Off finals, and serve the assembled free coffee and pie à la mode. He’d ordered nine pies from the Mama Mia Bakery, five apple and four blueberry. “I just hope to hell that’ll be enough,” I overheard him telling Simone. Her and Frances were getting out of school early, too.
Everybody at my school that day kept telling me they thought Ma was going to win. And hey, hadn’t they all been right, two days earlier, about the President? In St. Aloysius’s mock election, LBJ had beaten AuH20 in every single grade. (And then beaten him for real, too—a “landslide” the newspaper had calledit.) During morning P.A. announcements, Sister Fabian, the vice-principal, said that everyone at St. Aloysius Gonzaga was hoping my mother won. After lunch, our whole class said a prayer for her. And when it was time for me to get excused, Madame Frechette hugged me—as usual, her lily-of-the-valley perfume gave me a sneezing attack—and said she wished my mother bonne chance , heh heh heh. Out in the corridor, even our janitor, Mr. Dombrowski, stopped mopping and gave me the
One day during class discussion—I forgot how it came up—Zhenya revealed that she was thirteen years old, not ten like the rest of us, except for Lonny who, because he’d stayed back twice, was twelve and a half. She also divulged that the reason she smelled like mayonnaise was because her mother conditioned her hair with it, as did the mothers of “minny, minny geuhls in Soviet Union.” We all looked at each other, shocked, and Madame Frechette said something in québecois that, she explained, meant, “To each his owntaste.” Speaking of which, Ma had left the day before to compete in the Pillsbury Bake-Off.
W riting absentee excuses to the powers-that-be at St. Aloysius Gonzaga was usually my mother’s domain, and so a look of panic crossed Pop’s face that morning when I told him he’d have to write the note to get me sprung early. A maestro of the lunch counter, Pop was not exactly zippity-doo-da when it came to writing. (Like Chino, he was a high school dropout. But unlike Chino, who’d quit school because he suspected the lunch ladies were serving their students Gravy Train, Pop, the eldest of six kids, had had to quit to help his widowed mother support her family.)
Dear Whoever Is Suppose to get this Note ,
Please excuse Felix Funicello at 1 o’clock today so he can walk downtown to the Bus Station, we’re having a little shindig down at our Lunch Counter and he will get tosee his mother on TV. Which will be very educational. Your all invited, anyone who wants to come down there .
Your’s Truly ,
Salvatore P. Funicello
Pop had been fixing me breakfast when I hit him up for that note, and he concentrated so hard while composing it that he burned the bottoms of my pancakes. When I complained about them, he threw the spatula into the sink real hard and told me to quit my goddamned belly-aching. “Just eat from the top down and leave the rest!” It was weird, and a little scary, to witness my father blowing his top like that; he was usually the most even-tempered of men. Reading over his note as I attempted to surgically remove the burnt parts of my pancakes, I was pretty sure that Mother Filomina would be horrified by my father’s fragments and run-on sentences, not to mention his spelling, capitalization, and punctuation mistakes. Still, I decided not to suggest that he do it over. For one thing, I didn’t want to make him even madder.And for another, I figured Mother Fil might marvel at the giant leap forward I represented, grammar-and usage-wise. Given Pop’s note, how could she miss that evolutionary miracle?
But poor Pop. He was overwhelmed by Ma’s five-day absence and real nervous about that afternoon’s “shindig.” He was planning to lug our nineteen-inch black-and-white TV down to the depot, jury-rig a temporary antenna in hopes of pulling in the Bake-Off finals, and serve the assembled free coffee and pie à la mode. He’d ordered nine pies from the Mama Mia Bakery, five apple and four blueberry. “I just hope to hell that’ll be enough,” I overheard him telling Simone. Her and Frances were getting out of school early, too.
Everybody at my school that day kept telling me they thought Ma was going to win. And hey, hadn’t they all been right, two days earlier, about the President? In St. Aloysius’s mock election, LBJ had beaten AuH20 in every single grade. (And then beaten him for real, too—a “landslide” the newspaper had calledit.) During morning P.A. announcements, Sister Fabian, the vice-principal, said that everyone at St. Aloysius Gonzaga was hoping my mother won. After lunch, our whole class said a prayer for her. And when it was time for me to get excused, Madame Frechette hugged me—as usual, her lily-of-the-valley perfume gave me a sneezing attack—and said she wished my mother bonne chance , heh heh heh. Out in the corridor, even our janitor, Mr. Dombrowski, stopped mopping and gave me the
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