“Sure, she’s okay.”
“She’s the best. You’ll see.”
“She’s not going to play the clarinet, is she?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Depends on if she wants to join in or not.”
“Why wouldn’t she want to join in?”
“Music isn’t her everything, isn’t her future, the way it is for you and me.”
“An amateur,” I said with a note of disdain.
“She’s good, though. She’s been playing since she was nine.”
“I’ve been playing since I was eight.”
“Yeah, but you’re only ten now.”
I had no rejoinder except, “Jeez.” I made the sign of the cross. Returning from the kitchen with just the clarinet, Amalia said, “I need some lively music, guys. I’ve had a boring morning. Did the laundry, half the ironing, cleaned the kitchen, washed the breakfast dishes.” Directly to me, she said, “My mother has far, far too many obligations to be able to do much housework. She’s committed to smoking two packs of Lucky Strikes a day, and she has to spend a couple of hours with Mrs. Janowski next door analyzing the sad marital relationships of our various neighbors, catch the afternoon soap operas on TV, the game shows later, to all of which, by the way, she has often applied to be a contestant. She’s most frustrated that she can’t get a spot on one of the nighttime game shows. She wanted to be on What’s My Line, but by ‘line’ they mean line of work, which is so unfair, and she wanted to be on I’ve Got a Secret, but the only secrets she has all regard the terribly sad marital relationships of our various neighbors, many of which are too risqué for TV.” She flopped onto the sofa. “Give me some music that makes me forget I’m an indentured servant.”
We went Ellington on her, starting with “Satin Doll” and moving on to “Jump for Joy,” trying as best we could to give the flavor and the essence of what the
full band might have sounded like, though we knew that we were fools for even trying, just two of us and kids to boot. When we started “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing,” Amalia sprang off the sofa and snatched up her clarinet, and when the reed was wet, she came in not note for note, because maybe she didn’t know it that well, but inventing riffs not of the song but totally in harmony with it, playing them over until she found a place to slip in and repeat a new one.
When we finished, she said, “Fabulous, you’re great, that was fun. Lunchtime. If you don’t want me to eat it all myself, you have to help me put it on the table, and don’t give me any boys-don’t-do-kitchen crap.”
She’d brought three amazing submarine sandwiches, potato salad, macaroni salad with black olives, and rice pudding for dessert, all of which she had made herself, the sandwiches that morning between laundry and dishes, the rest of it the day before. All of it was first-rate food, and I don’t know what impressed me the most—her ability as a cook or the way she could eat. She was about five foot five, slim as any model, but she sure could pack away the food, and she ate with great relish.
Malcolm’s appetite didn’t match his sister’s, but his approach to food was more colorful than hers. She and I made do with a single plate each, but he would employ his plate for only his submarine sandwich. He used two small dishes for his portions of potato salad and macaroni salad, and if his primary plate had been the face of a clock, the macaroni was placed beside it precisely at ten o’clock, the potato salad exactly at two o’clock. He ate the former with a fork but preferred a tablespoon for the latter. He sliced the ends off his sandwich and set them aside, never to be eaten, then cut the submarine in three equal pieces with such calculation that I expected him to pull out a tape measure.
Because Amalia didn’t remark on her brother’s table habits, neither did I. As the years have gone by, however, and as he has gradually become more obsessive-compulsive, I take some comfort in knowing that I couldn’t be the entire cause of his condition, that he had embarked on these rituals long before he ever knew me.
I don’t mean to imply that Amalia Pomerantz dominated the table conversation, which she did but in another way didn’t. She tried to draw me out, and by then she’d won me over, so I chattered a lot when I wasn’t stuffing my face. I didn’t want to dislike her anymore, couldn’t dislike her. Malcolm put in his two cents from time to time, as well, but I’m not going to tell you much of what he or I said, because for one thing, none of it was interesting, and for another thing, I’ve forgotten nearly everything except what Amalia said. She was the first seventeen-year-old, either male or female, I’d met who cared to talk for more than a minute to a ten-year-old boy. To some degree she probably pretended to be interested in what I had to say, but she convinced me that she really, totally cared.
I wanted to know why she took up the clarinet, and she said, “To annoy my parents, to annoy them so much that they’d make me practice in the garage, where I could breathe air that smelled of automotive grease and tires and mildew instead of cigarette smoke. They’re in a contest, Mom and Dad, to see who can get terminal lung cancer first. And in the garage, I didn’t have to listen to their endless awkward silence.”
“They say more to Tweetie,” Malcolm revealed, “than they say to each other.”
“Tweetie being the parakeet who lives in a cage in our living room and watches us with bitter resentment,” Amalia explained, “most likely because the poor perpetually molting thing just can’t stand cigarette smoke or can’t tolerate my parents talking baby talk to him until he wants to scream. If you ask me, something happened between Mom and Dad long ago, and they’ve said all they have to say about it, but they haven’t forgiven each other or themselves, so they don’t want to talk to each other about anything. Dad’s a lathe operator. In fact, he’s also a foreman overseeing a shop floor of other lathe operators, and he makes good money, I guess. But judging by other lathe operators I’ve met, people he works with, maybe it’s a trait of lathe operators that they’re the strong silent type. Because he doesn’t talk to me or Malcolm much, either.”
“Except,” Malcolm said, “to say, ‘Take it to the garage.’ Or, ‘I’m just tryin’ to watch a little TV here and forget what a shitty day I had at work, okay?’ ”
“But at least Dad’s not a mean man,” Amalia said. “He wouldn’t hurt my mother or us, and that’s something. He isn’t mean and he isn’t cold.”
“He’s cold,” Malcolm disagreed.
“Well,” Amalia said, “yes, he’s cold, but maybe that’s not his nature. Maybe he wasn’t born that way. Maybe life has made him cold. Maybe disappointment and regret and who-knows-what has made him the way he is. Maybe he wishes he weren’t that way, but he’s just stuck in that mode, kind of frozen and doesn’t know how to thaw.”
“He was born that way,” Malcolm declared, “and the last thing he wants to do is thaw.” To me, he said, “Amalia’s getting out. She’s got a full scholarship, food and board and everything, to the state university. Leaves in September. She’s going to be a writer. She’s brilliant.”
Her blush was lovely. “I’m not brilliant, Malcolm. I just love the language, I’m full of words, and I’ve got kind of a knack for putting them together. But I’m not sure I should go. Maybe I should get a job, wait a few years. The scholarship doesn’t come with any spending money.”
Malcolm looked pained. “You’ll have spending money. Even if the old man doesn’t want you going to college, he’ll probably cough up a little pocket change. And I know you—you’ll get a part-time job, and you’ll still get top grades.”
He had picked all the slices of black olives out of his macaroni salad, but it wasn’t that he didn’t like them. When he finished his serving of macaroni, he then ate the olives.
I asked Amalia, “Your dad doesn’t want you to go to college?”