· 11 ·
BACK AT ROSS MANOR, we’re in one of the four bathrooms changing for dinner when Ross informs me that his daddy has an aversion to cussing of any kind. “If you use profanity around here,” he says, “it’ll cost you.”
“Cost me what?”
“Depends on the word. Come on, I’ll show you.”
The dining room table’s already set fancy with a white cloth and white plates, silverware, and white napkins. Shiny silver candlesticks hold up brand-new candles. Down at the far end something’s hiding under a blue and white cover with strange letters on it. I lift up the fabric and find a big loaf of bread. Looks like a girl’s hair in a braid; smells like melted butter.
“The challah’s for later,” Ross says, like he’s bringing up a loogie from the back of his throat.
“The what?”
“Challah,” he says again, with that same rasp in his throat. “Egg bread. Only fancy for Friday night.”
I tug the cover back over the ccchallah while Ross reaches up to this antique hutch they got. He pulls down a wooden box with a slotted rubber plug in the top, like you might see on a piggy bank.
“This is the Cuss Box,” he says, holding it close for me to read the poem on the side:
Cussing ain’t the nicest thing,
And friends for you it sure don’t bring.
But if you really gotta say ’em,
Here’s the way you hafta pay ’em:
A mild cuss is just a nickel.
A barroom cuss costs a dime.
For awful cusses you really oughter
Put in the box at least a quarter.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Ross says.
“You mean you want me to talk white around here.”
“Not white. Just clean.”
I put the Cuss Box back on the shelf and tell him not to worry. My mama raised me to be polite in front of other people’s parents.
But just in case I might slip, I reach down and pat the pocket of my jeans to see do I have a cussing budget.
Mom strikes a match and gets ready for the Friday night prayers. I can see Armstrong sitting up straight, like he’s witnessing something that’s sacred but not his and he doesn’t want to get in the way.
But that’s not how Mom wants him to feel. “Shabbat is our day of rest, Armstrong,” she explains. “We bless the candles, the wine, and the bread to show our appreciation for light, laughter, and food.”
She lights the candles and then covers her eyes while saying a prayer.
“Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha’olam, asher kidishanu b’mitz votav, vitzivanu, l’chad lich nehr, shel Shabbat.”
She pours grape juice for Armstrong and me and wine for herself but not for my dad. To him alcohol is like live electricity, a thing never to be touched. “It impairs your judgment, Charlie,” he always says.
“Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha’olam, boray p’ree hagofin.”
She sips her wine, we sip our juice. She puts her hand on the embroidered cloth that my grandma made in 1900. The Hebrew letters spell out “challah.”
“Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha’olam, hamostzi l’chem min ha’aretz. Amen.”
She lifts the cover like she’s revealing a prize. Armstrong says “Amen” too.
Mom breaks off a piece of bread, and from this piece she breaks off a small piece for herself before passing the rest around the table. When we’ve all taken some for ourselves, we eat.
“Can we get a second piece of ccchallah?” Armstrong whispers to me. I say sure and reach for some more, accidentally knocking over my grape juice.
“Dammit!” I say, sliding back from the table and stopping most of the spill with my napkin.
“Charlie.” Dad nods toward the Cuss Box.
I get up, go over, and drop in a nickel. I look at Armstrong as if to say, See?
Armstrong nods, and I sit back down.
“Well, boys, what stood out for you about this day?” my father asks like he always does. Only this time it’s “boys” again instead of just “Charlie.”
“We found out something in Andy’s room,” I say. “Actually, Armstrong found it out.”
Mom and Dad look at Armstrong.
“It’s about his camera, Mrs. Ross. It was there in the case by his bed, and I was curious because I’ve never held a camera like that before.”
Mom takes a sip of wine.
“There’s still film in it. The window on top shows he shot ten pictures. Tell what else we found, Ross.”
“A handout in his bag,” I say. “From Mrs. Valentine’s class last year. A Favorite Things project. That’s probably what’s on his roll.”
“Are you going to develop them, Mrs. Ross?” Armstrong asks.
“Someday,” Mom says with her rubber-band smile.
Dad asks what else we did today, and Armstrong glances at me, one eyebrow up, and grins. “Well, Mr. Ross, the highlight for me was the promenade we took through your neighborhood. A lot of lovely things to see.”
Under the table, I drive the toe of my tennis shoe as hard as I can into Armstrong’s leg. He grins through the pain.
“What did Charlie show you?” Mom asks.
“Well, Mrs. Ross, there are some nice houses on this street. And the view in some of the back yards, now that’s something I don’t get to see much of at home. Why, for instance, did you know that just across the street here—”
“Have some more chicken, Armstrong,” I say, dropping a drumstick onto his plate.
“Thank you, Charles. What I was saying is, across the street is a long driveway, and up that driveway you can see—”
“You’re out of mashed potatoes, too.” I ladle some more next to his drumstick.
“What did you see?” Dad asks.
“Why don’t we let Armstrong eat his dinner before it gets cold?”
“I might be hungry for the food,” Armstrong says, “but your mom and dad are hungry for the story. You tell it, Ross, while I eat.”
This is going to be fun. Eating mashed potatoes and ccchallah while Ross tells what he showed me across the street. I know he won’t want to lie on the Sabbath. Won’t want to tell the truth either. I wonder which one he’ll get caught in.
“I took Armstrong across the street,” he says, “and we looked into Reggie’s back yard.”
“That’s snooping, Charlie,” Mr. Ross says. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“What did you see?” Mrs. Ross asks. She’s curious like her son.
“A swimming pool,” Ross says. “An empty swimming pool.”
“What did you see, Armstrong?”
“I saw one of the Lord’s most attractive creations.”
“Yeah?”
“Something every boy ought to see at least once.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“Sunlight on clean blue water.”
“That’s all you saw?” Ross says, all surprised.
“That and the pool man cleaning the pool. You must’ve got the day of the week wrong, Ross.”
The best part of Shabbat dinner is the dessert. That’s when my father serves some fabulous sweet he’s either baked or brought home from Viktor Benês Bakery near his store.
I ask him if he stopped at the bakery. Maybe he picked up some black and white cookies or chocolate-chip rolls.
“The line was too long. There’s a box of Flaky Flix in the pantry, though.”
Armstrong and I look at each other. Half a box, maybe.
“And you’re welcome to eat a common store-bought cookie if you like. Or you can have a slice of the Neverfail.”
My father baked!
He gets up from the table and goes into the kitchen. Soon he’s back carrying the glass cake stand that my parents got for their wedding. He sets the Neverfail in front of Armstrong.
“I’ve always let the boys slice their own,” my dad says, handing Armstrong a silver spatula. “You can slice your own too, Armstrong. But you’re on the honor system.”
The honor system is a policy our dad came up with when, many cakes ago, Andy and I got into a fight over whose slice was bigger. I said his was; he said mine was. We started stealing bites off each other’s plates. When the plates were empty, we went on fighting for a bigger piece. Like savage animals going for the last scrap, we bit and clawed each other until I, smaller but faster, squirmed free and dived for the cake, landing mouth first but knocking over the stand. The Neverfail was in ruins.
The next cake was served on the honor system. Instead of handing us our own slices, Dad handed us knives! He told us to “cut your own slices. But remember, boys, you’re on the honor system.”
We translated honor system to mean as-much-as-you-want system. We cut such big slices that there was nothing left on the stand but crumbs. Thirty minutes later we took turns barfing into the toilet.
Months went by, and at Thanksgiving the honor system was again announced. This time we made smaller cuts. From cake to cake, our self-guided slices grew thinner, more honorable.
Armstrong holds the silver spatula, eyeing the great round cake before him.
“You mean I can cut my own?” he says.
“That’s right. On the honor system.”
I’m wondering, is it honorable to use the knife as a fork and call the whole damn cake my slice? But the whole cake for me would be greedy, and Papa Ross and the Mrs. are waiting their turn. So I line up that knife about halfway across the cake. I figure since it’s my first time I should get half and the three of them can divide the rest. But then I start thinking about Lily in the kitchen, waiting her turn. So I move the knife back a bit, making my piece about one-third the size of the cake.
It still feels like a selfish slice. And what if Papa Ross’s Neverfail looks good but tastes like dust? Then I’ll be stuck having to eat it all just to be polite. I move the knife over to the left. But that looks like the kind of slice Otis would take, all twiggy, like his legs. Back over to the right some. That looks like a good, hungry boy’s slice of cake. But what if this cake really is as good as Ross said? Then I’m going to be wanting more, but if we start out on the honor system and then ask for seconds, is that dishonorable? Little more to the right. That’s good. Small enough to satisfy Mr. Khalil if he was watching. Big enough to satisfy me.
That’s where I start to saw. But you don’t need to saw one of Papa Ross’s cakes. It’s so light and moist, gravity makes the cut for you. My hand is just the guide. Pretty soon I’m lifting my honorably sliced piece onto my plate.
The whole Ross family is staring at me like I’m on TV.
Armstrong’s fork breaks off a square and lifts some cake to his mouth. We watch the cake float past his lips. We watch the bite go in.
He doesn’t say a word. You can see tiny bulges appear and disappear inside his cheeks, his lips, and just above his chin as his tongue roams around the inside of his mouth. He looks at his plate, then takes a second bite. This time, as the fork comes out it gets stopped by his teeth, which bite down on the tines, scraping them clean.
Still no verdict. Here comes a third bite. Armstrong’s eyes never leave his plate. Our eyes never leave him. Soon there’s nothing left but crumbs and a streak of frosting. He presses the back of the fork onto the crumbs, drags them to the edge of the plate, and brings them up to his mouth for his final bite.
“Well?” my father asks. “What do you think?”
Armstrong sets down his fork slowly, like a kid giving up a toy at the end of a turn. Then he drinks the whole glass of milk my mom poured for him, cleans the corners of his mouth with his napkin, and looks straight at my dad.
“Mr. Ross,” he says, reaching into the pocket of his jeans, “that was the finest . . .”
He looks at the shiny coin in his hand.
“The most— . . .”
He rubs the coin between his finger and his thumb. He takes a deep breath, sighs, and shakes his head.
“It was the BEST GODDAMN CAKE I’VE EVER HAD!”
He drops a quarter into the Cuss Box and we all bust up, as Armstrong would say, laughing, really laughing, all of us, for the first time in a long time.
After dinner we go up to Charlie Ross’s bedroom. I see some Hardy Boys books, a record player with some speakers attached to it, and a Nerf hoop hanging from the closet door. On the wall beside his bed he’s got a signed poster of Roman Gabriel, which is nice but would be nicer if it was Deacon Jones.
“You don’t got a TV in your room?” I say.
“Do you in yours?”
“Oh, yes. Sometimes I let my sisters watch it. And sometimes I let my mama and daddy, too.”
“That’s lucky. I have to watch in my parents’ room or downstairs with my dad.”
Ross finishes packing his bag for Clear Creek. Toothbrush and toothpaste go in one plastic baggie, hairbrush in another. That’s something I never have to give much thought to: my hair. But Ross has so much of it, long and wavy, he probably loses time every morning getting it right. Whenever we play basketball, he has to dribble with one hand and whisk the hair out of his eyes with the other. That’s how I know he’s about to shoot. If he got a haircut, he’d be harder to guard.
He opens up a drawer in his desk, takes out some batteries and a pair of walkie-talkies, changes the batteries, and tosses the walkies into his bag. Then he zips up the duffle and sets it on the floor next to mine.
Now, his bedroom has got two beds. One is a single bed like my sisters get to sleep in at home. Long enough for growing legs, high enough to keep the dust out of your nose. It’s made up with the pillows tucked under the bedspread and a squeaky stuffed dog peeking out from underneath.
Next to that is an army cot. Looks like a half-thick mattress on chicken wire with wheels under the metal frame. Nothing on it but a blanket and a pillow and already it’s starting to sag.
“You expecting a soldier?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“What exactly is that thing?”
“A rollaway bed.”
“Where does it roll away to?”
“A closet, when it’s not being used. My dad rents them to his customers when they’ve got around-the-clock nursing. That way the night nurse has someplace to stretch out.”
“I see,” I say. “Which one of us is going to be the nurse?”
Charlie Ross blinks a few times like he doesn’t comprehend the question.
“I mean, which one of us will be attempting to sleep on that thing?”
“I don’t sleep well on a rollaway,” he says.
“Who does? But the thing is, Ross, etiquette.”
“Etiquette?”
“Etiquette says you give the guest the good bed. But since you’re already showing me a lot of hospitality—for which I’m grateful—toss me that Nerf ball. We’ll start the game at sixteen–nothing, you in the lead. First one to twenty gets the good bed.”
“There’s no room for a court.”
“We’re playing rugby hoops. It’s a game I just made up. You take it out over there by your desk. You can be traveling, jumping up onto the beds, rolling across the floor—any method of transportation you want. All you got to do is get the ball in the hoop. I’ll even let you take it out.”
I toss him the ball.
He steps back to his desk, then leaps onto his bed, and that’s when I ram my shoulder into his thigh like Deacon Jones would do, flipping him onto his back. Then I Indian-burn his wrist. He lets go of the Nerf, and I fly up to the hoop. Slam dunk.
We’re five minutes late to bed. It takes me that long to score the rest of the points and tuck Ross into the rollaway, along with his little stuffed dog to comfort him after his loss.
The door opens and Mrs. Ross steps in, wearing Andy’s camera around her neck. She holds up a powder-blue jacket, all puffy like it’s full of feathers.
“This was Andy’s parka,” she says. “Your Windbreaker will be warm enough during the day, Armstrong. But I checked the weather and the nights might get cold. Would you like to take this along?”
“You sure you want to let it out of the house?”
“I’m sure.”
“I appreciate that, Mrs. Ross. I’ll take good care of it.”
She sets the jacket on my duffle bag and says, “Good night, Armstrong. Good night, Charlie.”
She says it in one breath, like we’re brothers.
After a few minutes of lying beside him in the dark, I say, “Ross?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“For what, missing almost every shot I took?”
“For volunteering to have me stay at your house.”
I’m awake half the night, wishing that I did.