Chapter 4
We had supper at Harold’s place that Sunday evening to celebrate his dead father’s sixtieth birthday. Nobody seemed to find it unusual but me, however the food was so magnificent it didn’t even matter to me why we were there. After dinner, Harold, Danny and I headed for the living room to watch re-runs of The Ed Sullivan Show and Bonanza. Harold’s mother and my parents remained in the kitchen where Ma and Mrs. K. could be heard giggling together over Joe Senior’s corny stories and jokes. They were a good audience for my father; their laughter and delight just encouraged him to perform even more. He should have been on The Ed Sullivan Show. Beth’s parents arrived at old man Luoto’s house later that evening without her. Harold and I watched as they pulled up in their shiny black car and got out. She was wearing a white cotton pantsuit with a red scarf tied loosely around her head Audrey Hepburn style and he had on white slacks and a navy golf shirt. They were the epitome of style, so shockingly out of place in our shabby little neighborhood that I wanted to laugh out loud but instead I watched in utter fascination as they made their way to the back of the house.
“Wow!” Harold cried, “That’s some car eh!”
“It’s just a car,” I said, straining to get a better look, hoping that Beth might actually be with them. “It’s not like an airplane just landed. I wonder where Beth is?”
“Beth?”
“Yeah, old man Luoto’s granddaughter. I wonder why she isn’t with them?”
“Who knows?”
“Not you. That’s for sure.”
“I bet I know where she is,” Danny said with this really serious look on her face like she was about to announce some breakthrough cure for cancer.
“Where squirt?” “I bet she ran away to the river and got drowned.”
“Ah jeez Danny. How do you come up with things like that?”
“Well it coulda happened. Right Harold?”
“I don’t think so Dan. She’ll probably show up later. Who cares anyhow?” Harold sounded annoyed or depressed. It was hard to tell with him sometimes. He slumped back down into the easy chair to watch another phony fight between Hoss and Little Joe that Pa had to break up for about the third time. It’s weird how these old guys acted like they were children, saying goody goody things like “ah shucks Pa, we didn’t mean it” and we were supposed to believe something like that actually happened back then. It was a corny show but we all “lapped it up like there was no tomorrow,”as Joe always said.
There was no sign of Beth in the following days. I was beginning to wonder if she really was a part of my imaginary life, just another one of my fantasies or someone real. Her parents came and went, neither of them bothering to get acquainted with the neighbors. I can’t say I held that against them though; we didn’t exactly have the kind of neighbors worth getting to know.
I had given up all hope of ever seeing her again when early one morning, as I was actually languishing in sleep—a rare occurrence that summer—my mother’s voice made its way into my dreamlike state and nudged me awake. My room was suffocating already. Between the unbearable heat and constant humidity, I thought I was going to die. The smell of freshly perked coffee and fried bacon wafted up from the kitchen where I could hear my mother chatting with someone. At first I thought it had to be Mrs. K. because Ma always sounded lighter whenever they were together but then there wasn’t the familiar Finnish accent punctuated with laughter and suddenly I realized it was Beth. I threw myself out of bed and pulled on the shorts and tee shirt that were lying in a heap on the floor in the middle of the room. I paused in front of the mirror for a second, ran my fingers through my hair, checked my breath which was foul (but since I wasn’t going to be kissing this girl I wasn’t too concerned) and flew down the stairs.
“Jo-Jo Fasano! It’s about time you got up. Your mother and I were just getting acquainted. Best coffee I’ve tasted since New York,” she said in that liquid American accent of hers, holding her mug up to my mother for another refill. My mother blushed with pleasure. She looked horrible, paler than when we first met and much thinner like one of those starving children in Biafra that were on the six o’clock news a lot lately. She was wearing this hideous scarf tied around her head like an old Polish woman and her eyes looked like two green stones. If it hadn’t been for her smile and the sound of her voice I wouldn’t have recognized her. How could someone change so much in such a short time?
“Hi!” I said, lowering my eyes just for a second so she couldn’t see how mortified I was at her appearance. “Where have you been eh?” I asked in this phony cheerful voice sounding just like Harold. I sat down at the table next to her and reached for the mug of coffee my mother had just poured for me. “Thanks Ma.” I picked up the sugar bowl, dropped in three lumps, one at a time so I could watch each cube dissolve before I added the milk and began to stir, clanking the sides of the cup as though it were a church bell. I tapped the rim three times when I was finished stirring and placed the spoon on the table. My mother watched as I performed this ritual; it was one she was all too familiar with since my father did the same thing with his coffee only he always stirred to the same crazy tune he made up. That was the extent of my father’s musical talents. As if on cue, she slipped out of the room, the same way she always did whenever I had friends over, leaving me to my privacy—a quiet, thoughtful act that was so typical of my mother.
“Away,” she said casually popping a sugar lump into her mouth and taking a sip of coffee.
“Away,” I repeated and gave her this puzzled look like she said she’d been to Mars. There she was being all mysterious again like when she asked me about that euthanasia thing.
“Hey!” she said all excited. “Do you want to see what I got for my birthday?”Without giving me a chance to answer, she grabbed me by the arm and dragged me across the street. Parked in the driveway was the prettiest, bright red convertible Mustang that I had ever seen in my whole entire life. Truth was, it was the only Mustang I had ever seen, for real.
“Whadoya think?” she asked. Without waiting for my opinion, she jumped into the driver’s seat and started to pretend she was driving. “Isn’t this just the coolest, I mean the absolute grooviest machine you have ever seen? Get in!”
“The grooviest!” I squealed, climbing into the seat next to her and running my hands along the upholstery. “Is it really yours?”
“Uh-huh!”
“Can we go for a ride?”
“You bet!” she laughed. “I’m thinking of calling her “Sally” like in the song. Whadoya think?” she asked as she turned the key in the ignition and backed out of the driveway.
“Mustang Sally! It’s perfect!”
I waved to Ma who was standing in the doorway of our house. She looked tense; the two creases between her brows deepened like they did when she was nervous. She was saying something to me but I couldn’t make it out over the roar of the Mustang. I was too thrilled to be riding down the street with Beth Luoto in her shiny red sports car—living proof that she was on her way to stardom and definitely bigger than Elizabeth Taylor. For that brief moment in time I didn’t care about anything, and for sure not about Ma and her worries. Beth and I were two young teenage girls with our whole lives stretched out before us. We had it made. Or at least that’s the way I felt sitting in her car. It had that much power.