Mooky

Several years ago, I submitted this piece to a teacher magazine at my place of work for their "End of the Day" column. "End of the Day" usually featured mawkish, sentimental stories about how a teacher had changed a child's life for the better. Several consecutive issues ran stories for "End of the Day" that were about how troubled children had made a dramatic turnaround. At their best, they were heartwarming. At their worst, they made one slightly apprehensive that the children described were still at large in society. I packaged up the following story with the requisite SASE and delivered it, via mail, to the executive editor at the time. She was taken with the unusual nature of the tale, and passed it on to the then Editor-in-Chief. After much debate it was deemed unsuitable for publication due to the violence in the story. "It doesn't send the right message," the Editor-in-Chief said. "Some teachers might even find this slightly...offensive?" The real perpetrator was later revealed, causing my coworkers to mistrust me to this very day.

You be the judge of poor Mooky! Discovering this in the files has led me to the belief that a life without pranks is a life wasted.

A SPECIAL CHILD
By Henrietta Figglesworth

During my first year of teaching, there was one special child who touched my heart and helped me to remember why I chose this noble profession. His name was Mooky.

Mooky was an unusually gifted child. He constantly astounded me and his classmates with his thoughtful responses, his wisecracking, and his artistic skills. Although Mooky was born without a nose and any predisposition for social skills, he did not let it get him down. He often lashed out uncontrollably, sometimes spearing other children with the scissors or filling students’ mouths with glue. Occasionally, Mooky would go into the corner and gnaw on his own arm. More often, however, he would viciously bite other children on the nose. I knew why—Mooky felt himself to be different, and he wanted the other kids to be just like him: noseless. His rather unconventional habits did nothing to mar the image of the bright, beautiful child that I, as his teacher, saw.

The other children were often cruel, and made fun of Mooky. “How would you like it if you were born without a nose?” I admonished them. “You’d probably bite people, too!” I had trouble keeping my temper in check, but Mooky’s sunny countenence never dimmed. One day, however, I saw him sitting alone outside the classroom. I went up and sat with him. Mooky looked up at me with tear-filled eyes. “I’m a biter, aren’t I?” he asked. “Yes, Mooky,” I said gently. “But we’re all special in our own special ways.”

Since Mooky was unable to smell, he had a great deal of pent-up rage at others who had that gift. I sometimes saw him in the school garden, trying vainly to shove daisies up the nostrils of other children. “Smell this!” he screamed, spittle flying from his lips. I knew that Mooky was troubled, but he was my special angel. A child like no other.

I recommended to Mooky’s parents that they purchase him a prosthetic nose. At first skeptical, they eventually had a plastic nose fashioned for their son. I remember well the day that Mooky walked into my classroom, proudly thrusting forth the prosthesis. “My very own nose!” he said. “Mooky, it’s lovely. Would you like to study some new vocabulary?” I offered. Mooky nodded his head joyfully. Then the nose fell off and was crushed under the foot of another student. That day, several children were beaten and brutalized under the force of Mooky’s fury.

Mooky was different. But it’s the different, special children who remind us why we teach. No, you don’t have to have a nose to be special—just a great deal of heart. Mooky had heart, and he touched mine.

They Have Secrets

When I passed by the boys' room earlier, they jumped out at me.

Elder son: If you hear us talking about a QUILT, don't listen, OK?
Younger son: Because it's a supwise!
Elder son: You weren't spying on us talking about a quilt?
Me: No, no. I know nothing.
Elder son: You don't know nothing, OK? If you hear the word "quilt," you don't listen. Because you are NOT supposed to know that we are making a quilt.
Younger son: Because it's a big SUPWISE.
Elder son: So get out and don't come spying around!

[The door is shut rudely. Then a head pokes out again.]

Elder. Mommy-did-you-hear-me! You know nothing about a quilt!
Me: I never heard about a quilt! I don't know anything about a quilt!
Elder son: About a what?
Me: A quilt.
Elder son: Aha! You WERE listening to us. Get out!

[The door is shut, more firmly this time. I slink away.]

My Outie Becomes an Innie

If you are ever to have surgery and need to change the dressing, I would advise you not to look at the wound. Ye gads! All my poor stummick needed was another ghastly scar, to complement the hideous "mauled by a wild lion" look with which birthin' babies leaves some unfortunate women. I had this little bitty hernia that was growing bigger by the year and threatening to turn my tummy button into an "outie." I fear the incident happened during this life-changing event. I wish I could say it was cute, but it wasn't. There's nothing that will ruin a nice new shirt like a poky outie shimmering through the fabric.

It's all horribly unfair. I used to have a very nice tummy. I wore bikinis, even. If I wore a bikini now, it would have to be one of those high-waisted ones that goes all the way to your neck and contains a wonder bra. I have noticed that all the one-piece bathing suits for sale are horribly boring and mono-colored, while the bikinis for sale are always in bright, fetching patterns and look adorable on the models.

I certainly cannot tell if the outie is even gone, due to the black and blueness of the region and the grotesque swelling. I have a cute little band-aid over the area that I think would look fine were it in a paisley or geometric print.

Right after having the surgery, I relaxed on the porch while reading Assegai, by Wilbur Smith. I opened to the chapter when someone gets gored through the tummy by an irate African buffalo. Ouch! Wilbur Smith is an incredibly prolific author who writes all about Africa, and his books invariably feature big game, wars, angry elephants, guns, strong drink, and scenes of frightful yet poetic violence. I read my first Wilbur Smith as a tween on the island of Crete--stole it from my dad when he was done. It was called Men of Men. I was hooked.

Yet Smith is rather difficult to read when he writes of big-game hunters being gored through the tummy and tossed into the air. I seem to have a knack for this sort of thing; soon after giving birth I read this.

Back to my vanity, and enough of literary ramblings! I used to think that a tummy tuck would be a nice resolution to the horrors bequeathed by childbirth, but no more. It sounds like no fun at all. Besides, if you plan to hunt big game, you might as well accept the fact that you are going to wind up with a few scars. When I look at my three boys, I wouldn't trade one of them for the greyhound-like stomach I used to have. (Sssh. It WAS greyhound-like!) I wouldn't trade a hair from their heads.

The Scent of Fear

I have to go in for surgery tomorrow to fix two little bitty hernias and I'm sure I shall die during the surgery. There! I've said it! I recently heard about someone who died during surgery for something minor like this and of course I will suffer the same fate. I've really been panicking all day because if I had really had one day to live I wouldn't spend it:
1. ruminating about death
2. cleaning out the front hall coat closet
3. sending a few work emails
4. walking around aimlessly biting at my lower lip

I tried to figure out the source of my distress and then I hit upon it! It was surely the arrival of a bunny-repelling product from Critter Repellant. That, and the presence of a plastic horned owl with glittering, orange eyes perched just outside my kitchen. The owl must be filled with rocks to prevent it from tipping over in a light wind, but it is fearsome indeed. I sometimes see it in my dreams, descending with claws outstretched.

This morning, the Shake-Away (aka Shake Away Your Composure) product arrived via a visibly-disturbed UPS man and was unveiled within my home. It stank of Fear.

The product is basically made up of the urine of very bad and feral animals who wish to bite bunnies. Upon smelling it, I became alarmed and ran about the house in mad, wild-eyed panic. The Scent of Fear is supposed to hit these creatures where they live and scare the living bejeezus out of them:

Chipmunk
Gopher
Groundhog
Porcupine
Possum
Rabbit
Skunk
Squirrel
Woodchuck

We have all these animals on our property! Well, not any more. I would suggest that they are ruminating in their little dens right now, wondering why they never wrote that novel nor pursued their dream career. They are lousy with FEAR!

Honestly, I just wanted to save my punkins. Now I have the Scent of Fear in my backyard! Some have suggested that the Scent of Fear is really Paco Rabanne cologne. I had once thought it to be the Stuffed Scrod at the work cafeteria.

Obviously, I won't die during surgery tomorrow because this post would be a really stupid and lame epitaph to an otherwise dazzling career.

Waiting for Godot at the A & P

When we moved to Mamaroneck, our proximity to the New Ro Stop-N-Shop came to an abrupt and tearful end. No more would we see Shuffles, bagging with an alacrity rarely seen in these here parts. Trader Joe, always a favorite, became our go-to destination for all things edible.

But woe: There are items that Trader Joe does not carry.

For that, we must turn to the local A & P, the branch of Mamaroneck Avenue fame. First of all, the place does not even have a sign out on the road, so unless one is in "the know," one would never happen upon the store for any reason whatsoever. We got the tip-off from a neighbor, and felt very smug about our little find. That is, until we realized that the A & P is merely a front for an old-age swinger's club. As relative youths, we had obviously trespassed into the forbidden zone, where cantankerous old birds nearing their 90th birthday pushed carts down narrow, wanly-lit aisles.

Everyone is the A & P is at least 76 years old, and there are usually about 345 of these individuals patrolling the aisles during any one visit. The lighting is ghastly, and doesn't do much to help the poor dears' complexions. The produce (which, by the way, is of very fine mettle--who knew?) looks yellowed and decrepit under the dim lighting, and some of the aisles are practically pitch black. You can hear the canes thwapping at the cereal boxes and the shouts of the geriatric patrons, trying to find Cream O' Wheat and other toothless-friendly foods. Sometimes an arm will reach out from the gloom and grope for assistance.

The store is also organized just to meddle with its elderly clientele. Where else can you find ant traps in the aisle next to the baby foods? I went looking for breads near the bakery, but they were down near the peanut-butter, mustard, and ketchup area of the store. I've been in the place several times but find myself wandering, hopeless and confused, unable to even consult my list in the inky darkness. I invariably return without a crucial item, and am at a loss to explain how I failed to see it. Someone is having a laugh at an old biddy's expense, no doubt!

It is when one enters the checkout lanes that the true "Waiting for Godot" nature of the A & P becomes apparent. The lines move sluggishly, if at all, and one can see the oldsters reading whole novels and withering away into nothingness as they wait their turn. Shoppers have vacant looks, and their hands dangle uselessly at their sides for whole minutes. Carts piled high with meat and Cheez-Its seem to simmer under the lights, and the air grows hot and stale. Sometimes, one feels like weeping. Each person brings 58 coupons to scan, and there is invariably a problem with 57 of them. Crabby Tina or Crabby Gert the cashier has to call the manager, and all the old ladies down the line moan and groan like a bunch of histrionic dominoes.

Every cashier is old, funny-looking, and kind of crabby. Actually, some are nice, but you get the feeling that crabbiness is but one unscannable bar code away. One time, we actually brought a coupon. It was for something significant, like $5. Of course, the cashier didn't know what to do with it. She fretted over it for several minutes, turning it this way and that, before calling on Crabby Sally to come help her out. Crabby Sally had to finish with her own customer first, thank you! That took about 6 1/2 minutes, including a cawing conversation about so-and-so's relatives. We sweated bullets while the people in line behind us shifted and murmured and some old ladies made growling noises. Should we call it off, just say forget it? No! We would stick it out, damn it! For God's sake! We wanted our $5 off! We paid for it, my friends, in the glowering disapproval of the octogenarian army.

Despite its aged population, the A & P is very strict in its alcohol carding policies. The first time I visited was my 40th birthday, and I was carded for a 4-pack of Guinness. I danced and skipped all the way to the car. My youth! My youth! I still had it.

Later, I learned that they will card anyone, and they will card them every single time they come through. No exceptions. They will card every old goat who shuffles through with walker and cane. Then, after carding the guy celebrating his 100th birthday, they will enter the alcohol purchase on a little chart and run it through the register for some kind of official validation.

If you are ever feeling vaguely old and wrinkly, just head over to the A & P and fill your cart with beer. Not only will you get carded, but you will be carded in a manner that suggests that you, feckless youth, are trying to pull something over on the eagle-eyed cashier. Not on Crabby Tina's watch, sister!

Tom and Buddy, Chapter One

Found this one in the files.

Tom Harkes was a hack journalist, the kind of journalist whose article referring to the tragic April 1st bombing began with the line: "This was no prank." That his editor had failed to excise the offending line was a stain on the whole staff, the whole newspaper, in fact. But the sad fact remained that Tom was its author. Before turning to journalism, Tom's penchant for puns had made him the darling of a small advertising agency—the very same that produced the subway placards reading: "Foot Pain Got You Down at Heel?"

Tom had a small son, and he felt very keenly that he and his wife bore the mental weight of his existence together, like an army of two who hold the fate of an entire country in their hands. Tom felt that it would be too much to bear that weight alone; he often wished that a phalanx of other caregivers and relatives could share some of that burden of bearlike, raw love. Yes, Tom was an old, churlish bear in a young man’s body, and he would stumble to tear the throat of anyone who harmed his young son in any way. The world was full of bad people, as evidenced by the April 1st bombing, which had given him dreams of toothed things and metal and water flooding dank tunnels.

He hadn’t even been at the bomb site, for God’s sake; he couldn’t handle it. He’d made a few calls. He’d talked to a woman whose last words to her husband had been a sort of joke (she hadn’t had the will to play the joke to its fullest, she said, as she was never a very good liar. So her husband had gone off confused and slightly irritable. Did she think that was funny? It wasn’t, and he was late for work. Late for the train that held the bomb, cleverly concealed inside an Aunt Jemima pancake mix box, concealed once more inside an errant shopping bag. How innocuous it all was!)

Tom Harkes had failed to receive any literary prizes, and was sore about it, even though he knew he deserved nothing. He drank too much boxed wine and smoked his cigarettes by halves, saving the other half for later even though it stank up his coat pockets and soiled his fingers with black.

Tom’s best friend, Buddy Owens, worked in the factory that made the synthetic owls that perched atop the water towers throughout New York City. Specifically, he put the eyes in the owls and tipped their feathers with white paint. The owls hearkened back to a fine tradition of craftsmanship, and few things exposed to wind and weather day by day were made with such care. There were a fair number of such owls, but Buddy had not become rich through his association with them.

Buddy noticed things—stupid things, such as the fact that his friends Kelly and Kevin were always referred to in that order, but that in the case of Peter and Helen, the names were interchangeable. Helen and Pete, Pete and Helen; it didn't matter. And Buddy, who had never had a female “other” to link his name with, was always part of “Tom and Buddy” but never “Buddy and Tom.” It irked him, and made him wish to trip Tom, or step on him.

Tom’s wife, Susan, thought of Buddy as an odd lump, and Buddy sensed her disdain and disregard. There was a lot of anger in Buddy. Susan and Tom had a fight once, right in front of him as if he wasn’t there. He was eating some chocolate pudding that Susan had made and simply dipped his head lower and spooned great soupy puddles of it in, wishing it were firmer and more puddinglike. He had secretly gloated over the fight and felt privileged to witness it, even though it exacerbated his feelings of rage and nothingness.

Together, Tom and Buddy were losers, and they knew it.

All the One-Sentence Memories I Can Write Down in the 20 Minutes in Takes My Dinner to Cook

Sitting on our Brooklyn stoop at my birthday party several years ago, offering passers-by cheese from a tray.
The baby in the afternoon sunlight today, chubby legs pulling him upward as he bit my arm for leverage.
Chasing the full Allagash moon by canoe.
My eldest son on a scooter, sailing down "Big Boy Hill" at breakneck speed, and the sucked-in breath of my neighbor who was watching him go.
Hiding in a pile of leaves, with their suffocating lightness and the scent of fall.
Running naked with my cousin down the street to hide in a ditch in the woods, and the shrieks of our mothers on the wind.
A photograph of me, age 11 and looking for all the world like an unattractive boy, on the dock with my grandfather.
A walk with a good friend to the cemetery at the top of Swett's Hill, when we talked of a boy who had been raised by badgers.
The last dive I made into my parent's pool, before they left that house forever.
Once, I was riding the exercise bicycle in the basement, and noticed that the digital clock read 4:48, and that the day was almost over.
Reading Annie Dillard in a tent while the flashlight swung above on a thin cord.
My first night in my first New York apartment, and the fierce din from 6th Avenue and Bleecker Street below.
Running over the rooftops in London with Sully, and bending down to light a smoke on the Serpentine and singing my eyelashes off.
Those awful red pants I wore when I visited New Haven, age 19, in a failed attempt to make someone fall in love with me.
One night in Cabin 11, playing "Late in the Evening" on bongos and guitar.
I swung an axe while wearing sandals, and the blade of the axe struck the dust next to my toes.
My friend Jenny leaping from a tree fort we'd made into a hammock, and the rope breaking, and Jenny tumbling unhurt to the ground.
Picking off flakes of fresh-caught and grilled Lake perch in Michigan.
My friend and I were running around the perimeter of the college campus, and I carried clementines clenched in my palms to hurl at the men who heckled us.
My counselor at camp reading us The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test while we lounged on multi-tiered bunks in a hut high in the White Mountains.
A dancing lesson at the Colony Club, and how he said he liked my short skirt when we departed up the street.
My husband's pale hair glowing in the sun from the bathroom window, in Princeton; a nimbus of light.
Another photograph: This time I'm getting dressed for my wedding, and surprised into open-mouthed gaiety.
In the next photograph from that series, I am peering around my mother's slightly-anxious profile.
Sitting on my father's shoulders in Big Sur, and him asking me to remember that moment always.

Time's up.