The Shame of What We Are

By Sam Gridley

The American 1950s--a simpler, more innocent age? Not for an awkward, nerdy kid like Art Dennison. As Art grows up with a father who can explode at any time and a mother who just doesn't fit the required role, his life sometimes feels surreal. The "pieces" of this slyly humorous, compassionate novel reflect Art's fragmentary experience in a family always on the move--from one temporary home to another, from East Coast to West, always seeking the elusive American dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Door Books
• Release date: Feb 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9780978863661

Sam Gridley

Sam Gridley is the author of the novels THE SHAME OF WHAT WE ARE (New Door Books, 2010) and THE BIG HAPPINESS (available at Gridleyville.com). His fiction and satire have appeared in more than forty magazines and anthologies. He has received two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, and several honors from magazines. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and neurotic dog.

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The Shame of What We Are

by Sam Gridley, with illustrations by Tom Jackson

Smashwords Edition

Copyright: text copyright 2010 P. M. Gordon Associates, Inc.; illustrations copyright 2010 Tom Jackson

All rights reserved

Published by New Door Books

An imprint of P. M. Gordon Associates, Inc.

2115 Wallace Street

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19130

USA

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance herein to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-0-9788636-6-1

Cover design by Miriam Seidel

Cover illustrations: cactus by Tom Jackson; Sputnik adapted from a NASA image

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

Contents

Prologue

Lightheaded

Stupid Things

Ranger Ringo

The Power of Concentration

A Different Country

Carloochieland

The Smell of Rain

The Shame of What We Are

Dennison of the Deep

Foundations

Oasis Splendor #2

Other Universes

Acknowledgments

March 1958: Southern California

Prologue

Art studied the twin hills under the sheet for several minutes, mystified, until it dawned on him that they must be his feet. They poked up blurrily about three yards away, but he knew he wasn't that tall—didn't use to be, at any rate.

If he could find his glasses, maybe this would make sense. But it wasn't only the feet that puzzled, it was everything around him. The bed, for example, had metal rails on the side—when he flung an arm out accidentally, his wrist sent back a shock of pain. The blanket was thin and brown, the pillow hard and flat. On the left a large gray machine glared down at him. Beyond loomed an ugly green mass that must be a wall.

He'd been awake before but kept sleeping again. A while ago, he thought, somebody had brought him a white plate full of runny yellow eggs, and the air had turned a sickly green like the wall.

Did he throw up? Was this the same day? He remembered deciding to be brave; after all, he was 11 years old, no baby anymore. If he couldn't eat, he'd go on forever without food, that's all.

Earlier, today or yesterday, a woman in a white uniform said someone was coming to talk to him, to explain. Who would that be? Panicked suddenly, he recalled murmuring voices around him and wondered if he'd slept through an important visit. Would they blame him for that? What secrets had he heard them whispering? About his mother—or his father?

Yet he didn't want any explanations, especially from strangers. Despite the haze in his brain he felt he knew enough. In a way, he'd always known. He closed his eyes to make the secrets and the weird blurry feet and the ugly green wall disappear.

Summer 1951: Camden, New Jersey

Lightheaded

With his fifth birthday coming up, Art Dennison felt big enough to explore his neighborhood, or at least his block, which stretched a long way downhill from his front door. From the top of his stoop he could see lots of other stoops on Cameron Street—a hundred, maybe a thousand, he speculated, proud of his counting abilities—all of them identical, distinguished only by different railings and door colors. His was the one-two-three from the corner, with a blue door and no rail, important facts to remember when he set off on his trike.

Art had thought about the trike first thing this morning when the argument began. He was eating Cheerios, which were tolerable with exactly three teaspoons of sugar. He counted as his mother spooned because she sometimes forgot the correct number. Secretly he peered at the bowl first with one eye and then the other, testing the difference. Today he didn't have the patch on his right eye that Mom had made him wear for the past four days, ever since the doctor said, If you don't strengthen your left eye you'll have to wear glasses, young man. Art hated the patch because it made the world dim and lopsided, so this morning he had deliberately forgotten it.

He was tall enough now, sitting on a cushion, to rest his elbows on the pink Formica table, an act that sometimes brought a rebuke from his mother—an unfair criticism because his father did it all the time. In fact, Dad was doing it this morning, leaning hard on his left elbow while he used his right hand to cut his eggs with the fork, spear the slices, shovel toast in his mouth, tilt the coffee cup and turn the newspaper pages, all at once. He could shower, shave, dress, eat breakfast and read the paper in the time it took Art to drink a glass of milk.

Not again, please, Linda, Dad said, a little mushily because of egg.

Not again what?

I can see what you're putting on the bread. You've given me salami every day this week.

Not every day. One day was liver—

And you know I can't stand liverwurst. I couldn't eat it.

Art saw a change in his mother's shoulders where she stood at the counter, her back to them. After a minute she said, You don't like baloney either, and you said peanut butter is for children. You wouldn't want egg salad because you have eggs for breakfast.

It's OK, I'll get lunch at the café.

Mom rinsed the knife she'd been using for mustard and let it clatter into the sink. She took off her glasses and rinsed them, too. Dad doubled a piece of toast and dragged it across his plate to sop up the yellow goo that turned Art's stomach.

His mother said, Gary, didn't we agree you'd take your lunch to save money? Are you ashamed to carry a brown bag?

Art's father cleared his throat in the way that said he was being patient. After a long moment and another slurp of coffee, he said in a low voice, The problem is the same old thing too many times. Kills the appetite. As hard as I work, I need a good lunch.

"Oh yes, I know you work hard, and I'm sorry if all I can give you is the same old thing that doesn't excite your appetite." Mom dried her glasses carefully and put them back on. Then she pulled the dish towel around her neck like a scarf as she gazed out the back window at the little yard.

Dad cleared his throat again, with an even greater demonstration of patience.

Having finished his Cheerios, Art sat small in his chair, hands in his lap, squinting at the grooves in the chrome edge of the table, which tended to wobble if he looked at them too long. He wanted another piece of toast with strawberry jam but he knew to keep quiet during arguments. Instead he took a mental ride on his trike, imagining the sidewalk scuffing his shoes, feeling wind catch his hair and cool his ears. He squeezed pretend handlebars and made rrmmm noises under his breath, the sound of wheels rushing on pavement.

Yet words kept tickling the outskirts of his consciousness. His fingers tightened, anticipating the blast. "S-s-sonofabitch! it came, I can't even eat breakfast without—" Art tried to ignore the slam of the fist on the table and the stomp of steps and bang of the front door, though the leftover milk in his cereal bowl rocked back and forth like waves in the bathtub. Rrmmmm, he hummed while his mother threw her towel in the sink and ran upstairs. Only a back part of his brain registered the sound of the bathroom door snapping shut.

After a while he got up to wander around the living room, pretending to steer his trike, but he kept whacking his knees on the coffee table. He tried looking at the table with one eye and then the other, watching it shift. When several minutes had passed he cracked open the front door, curving his neck to peer down the block. No sign of his father. Also no sign of the older kids who were out of school for the summer and sometimes teased Art about his hair, which his mother let grow

too long.

He fetched the trike from the back porch, wheeled it across linoleum and rugs and thump-bumped down the stoop. Today, with both his eyes available again, the sunlight came piercingly bright, angling over flat rooftops and nicking off lampposts and cars and the trike's shiny red paint. The world seemed sharper and more glittery than he remembered.

Straddling the trike with a professional attitude, like a cowboy heading to work on his favorite mount, he pedaled downhill slowly, keeping under strict control at first. A slight breeze chilled his forehead while the sun cooked his cheek and the handlebars warmed to his touch.

In his crisp white shirt and dark-blue suit, Art's father walked down this hill to work every morning, along with the other fathers. Once he had taken Art along, beyond the houses and around a park, across a wide road with blaring traffic to a cluster of huge brick buildings with dusty windows, where they passed through tall glass doors to an echoing lobby and then into a room full of gray steel cabinets twice Art's height, with narrow corridors between. Left in the maze while his father went to talk to somebody, Art had panicked, frightened of the engineers in suits who barged through, so hurried and important. He knew they were important because they and his father made radar things for planes that soldiers used for fighting Commies in a place called Korea. Radar let them spy on people far away. He had seen pictures of those planes and soldiers in magazines though the radar was invisible.

Art was careful not to touch the cabinets. If the engineers thought he didn't belong here with the secret radar, they might lock him in a closet. He was snuffling when his father found him.

Artie? What's wrong? What's the matter with you?

I don't know, Art whispered. I couldn't see where you went.

I was just around the corner. I knew where you were all the time. I was keeping an eye on you. His blue eyes were indeed fixed on Art.

But I have to go to the bathroom, Art whimpered, humiliated.

Dad laughed. Oh that's it. Don't worry, we have bathrooms.

In the strange men's room with mirrors and high shiny urinals Art had trouble getting started, and when he came out his father was pacing. Dad glanced at his watch and sighed.

Art had no interest in venturing that far from home again. Still, he could ride his trike down the entire block to the traffic light at the far corner, a manageable adventure. That was his goal today, but as he rode he got absorbed in the lines between the concrete squares. They came up one by one to whump under the wheels in hypnotic succession. Each crack was evil, a snake that wanted to grow bigger and bigger and destroy the sidewalk, or maybe all of New Jersey, but his trusty red trike squished each one beneath its front wheel and then bashed it again with two back wheels to make sure it was dead.

He went faster. Whumpity-whump-whump, deadity-dead-dead-dead. Like the brave soldiers he was slaughtering his foes, but it got harder to keep the snake-cracks from tipping him over. They were fighting back. Watch out! a woman's voice yelled as he zoomed past her stoop. She didn't understand the enemy at her own front door.

His wrists ached from the jarring, and a wide crack with ragged edges ran up and clobbered him. It jerked the front wheel one way while the back wheels skidded the other, wrenching his ankle and knee and scratching rubber off his sneaker. He ended up half tipped over.

Was the woman on the stoop still watching? Art's face burned. He supposed his father, too, could see, using the invisible radar from the high brick buildings. I know where you are all the time, Dad said, I'm keeping an eye on you. Art tried to sense the expression on his face. Was he worried about the crash? Or upset at Art's clumsiness? Or snuffing twice and sucking in his lips so they disappeared, the way he sometimes did when Art interrupted his concentration?

Art hitched his belt and bit his own lower lip. After straightening the trike he stole a glance up the block. The spiky sun hurt his eyes, but he was amazed at the length of blazing concrete behind him. The woman was gone, unless she was that blur getting into a car. A couple of other fuzzy grownup figures crossed the street, paying him no mind. He thought about going back, reminding himself he lived one-two-three from the corner. But in the back of his mind he heard the fist on the kitchen table, the bathroom door clacking shut, and he decided he wasn't going home until lunch, or maybe tomorrow. His mother didn't even know he'd gone out.

He faced downhill again, defiantly, and let the trike coast. As soon as he picked up speed, though, he got terrified and scrunched both sneakers down on the sidewalk. His fingers shook on the handlebars. Water filled his left eye, the one the doctor said was weak. The big toe of his right foot smarted.

Yesterday he'd gone much faster, probably as fast as a bicycle or an airplane until he stopped to avoid an old lady with groceries. Today he was a coward, and the sun's glare made him shivery. He wanted to mash something, anything, to get rid of this helpless feeling.

Ahead he noticed a gap between the brick houses. Art knew from his mother that these were called rowhouses, meaning the whole line was connected. But this one spot, he'd seen yesterday, had an open space where a house ought to be, a swatch of dirt and weeds and strange other stuff. There he might find a slug or caterpillar to squish, so he walked his trike cautiously to the edge.

Clumps of grass grew to his chest, dangling brown fluff at the ends. Between them, little bushes poked up, mixed with white scraggly flowers and weeds that crawled out over the sidewalk. Half-hidden in one clump lay a stinky pile of dog-do. Way in the back of the lot was a red square thing. One day his mother had said, turning her lip, that this was a dirty neighborhood. She probably meant places like this, because the street itself didn't look dirtier than other streets he saw from the car.

Art wrinkled his nose and sneezed twice, three times, and the attack of hay fever left him wobbly. To boost his courage he recalled a book his mother had read him about a famous explorer in the wilds of Africa. Wilds must be something like this, except with tigers and lions in them, and an explorer wouldn't be stopped by allergies.

Parking the trike with the front wheel cocked so it wouldn't roll, he took a tentative step into the dirt. His mother wouldn't like him doing this in clean T-shirt and jeans. If he got into dog mess, it would be disgusting and she'd find out about it. Yet this thought prompted him to go farther, with large tiptoeing steps across the crumbly ground.

The weeds itched his hands and arms. A little ways in, he found an old car tire, graying and covered with skillions of dusty cracks like a spider's web. Scattered here and there were cigarette butts, bottles and cans, a mitten, a baseball with a torn cover, a doll with no arms. Art kept an eye out for a green rubber ball he'd misplaced months ago.

To the right was a mound of sparkles. This proved to be glass—huge sheets, cracked and broken and stacked higher than Art's waist, with long slivers glinting in the sun. One time Art had seen a truck carrying mammoth glass plates, and this must be what happened if they fell off the truck. Somebody must have gotten mad about the accident, cussing like Art's father. The pieces were nice in their own way, though. Slick on their edges, gleaming along their flat tops, they twinkled in the sun, and when he moved closer their reflections danced around his shadow. His right eye gave them flickers of blue and green, while his left eye softened them to gray tinsel.

With a nervous glance back at his trike, he moved on. Was his father's radar eye still on him? Bits of twig clung to his socks and pricked him through the cotton. He was getting hot and his forehead sticky, but as an explorer he needed to investigate the red thing at the rear of the lot.

It turned out to be a table lying on its side. Like the one in Art's kitchen, it had a Formica top and metal legs. It was bigger, though, and red instead of pink, with deep scratches in the Formica like somebody had whacked it with a knife. Weeds curled around it and bird poop splattered one leg that was bent. It upset him to think a family would treat a table this way.

He thought of the broken chair from his house. Often Art woke at night to the sound of his parents' arguments, Dad