Apologize, Apologize! - By Elizabeth Kelly Page 0,20
to perform such a delicate operation.”
I argued for leaving him there permanently, but the nice old lady who owned the place wouldn’t be persuaded.
“It’s not right, Collie, he’s your father, and besides, think of the smell.”
“You’ve got me there.”
A few days later, Pop, a man of pure inspiration with a sanctimonious aversion to self-reflection, decided that Bingo and I were culturally deficient and needed exposure to the work of some of the great Irish playwrights. He also wanted to reward us for rescuing him from the chimney, so he took us into Boston to see a production of The Plough and the Stars.
For some mysterious reason, Pop hated restaurants. He loathed restaurants but loved hotels and longed to take up permanent residence in one.
“I could live in a hotel. As a matter of fact, I intend to retire to the city and live in a hotel suite, and then it’s a steady diet of plays, concerts, horticultural shows . . . no more homemade meals and nights in a rocking chair. Your mother is free to join me if she chooses,” he told us as Bingo scrunched up his face and looked at me, puzzled.
“Huh?”
“Crazy,” I whispered.
We roamed the old-world lobby of the Steinbeck, Pop turned out like the Prince of Wales, heads swiveling to look at him, everyone trying to figure out who he was—people always said he looked like a movie star. He was winking at every attractive woman in the place. We had dinner at Heliotrope, a formal dining room, where he got exasperated with Bingo for insisting on having a giant steak and nothing else. He just wanted one big, juicy steak on a plate. After we finished eating, Pop left us to our own devices in the lounge while he disappeared into the bar for an hour or so, looking like the Red Planet when he finally emerged, spinning wildly on his axis, his disheveled hair the victim of crazy weather patterns, toxic vapors spewing into the solar system.
Once at the theater, the other patrons cleared a path as Pop, leaning to the left and teetering to the right, attempted to find us our seats, loudly losing his temper with one of the ushers. It was at that point I began to scuff the carpeted floor with my shoe, focusing all my attention on the vast sea of cabbage roses under my feet.
The play was set to begin at eight o’clock. By quarter past eight, Pop stood up and hollered, “When will this performance begin?” as Bingo, thrilled at the commotion, looked over at me and giggled, field of freckles glowing against his pale skin, while I quietly burned away on a pyre of mortification.
At eight-thirty, Pop, radiating impatience, rose to his feet, shining like a beacon, and began to sing the Irish national anthem, his clear tenor voice ringing out like a church bell as stunned members of the audience shifted in their seats to stare, one giant set of eyes in one huge head on one enormous craning neck. Bingo was incandescent with joy and excitement, gasping and laughing, and me, well, I was somewhere on the ceiling looking down on the lifeless body I’d abandoned, pupils fixed and dilated, respiration and heartbeat ground to a skittering stop, skin the color of chalcedony, inner voice a dying squeak.
Bing adored Pop. As for me, well, Pop had a way of testing the fragile limits of my humor—there’s something about being a teenager and bringing your friends into a house where they’re met by a middle-aged man sunning himself in the living room window in February and bragging about his tan. All the while he’s wearing a skimpy bathing suit and scuffed black brogues with no laces, his ample stomach glistening, and he’s making elegant, expansive gestures with his long, perfectly manicured fingers, sporting sunglasses and a wide-brimmed lady’s straw hat, big turquoise chiffon bow tied under his chin.
“So much for the so-called experts who say you can’t get a tan through glass, well, I’m living proof the experts don’t know what they’re talking about. Everyone asks me if I’ve just come back from Florida. An hour a day in front of a sunny window is all you need to give Nat King Cole a run for his money.”
We were back at home—the embarrassment I endured at the theater days earlier still working its way through secondary skin layers—and I could hear Pop in the next room delivering one of his famous daily affirmations.