God, look at that,” Ma said. “Charlie, please stop talking such nonsense and step away from the window. Tom, come here quick before you miss it. Collie, you too.”
Ma got up from the sofa and stood next to Pop, who had his back to the window, as Tom slowly ambled in from the kitchen, feigning annoyance. Curious, I abandoned the TV in the study that adjoined the living room and joined the crowd gathered around the window.
Bingo and one of his favorite dogs, a young Leonberger called Mambo, were playing a game. There was a small tree near the stable with a single branch that extended for a long way and hung about seven or eight feet off the ground. Mambo was running to the tree and leaping into the air, twisting midway through his jump, a giant, growling, furry corkscrew. He clamped his teeth into the branch and hung there for a couple of seconds.
After repeating the same jump sequence five or six times, Bingo joined him, and then the two of them would take turns snarling and spinning and hanging from the branch; sometimes they’d even perform their little trick in unison.
I could hear Bingo laughing and Mambo barking, and for a moment it felt like fun, the four of us assembled around the window to watch, the sun pouring in.
“Say, this is better than a fireworks display,” Uncle Tom said as Pop chuckled and Ma agreed. Agreed! Ma!
“The woman is an aphid,” Ma said, interrupting the moment, confusing me with her remark. “She was born pregnant.”
It was then I realized that we were looking at different things. Ma and Uncle Tom were deep in discussion, enjoying a rare conviviality, sharing their mutual contempt for the woman down the road. The Conceiver, Tom called her. She had seven kids under the age of ten and was expecting her eighth. I welcomed her pregnancies since they tended to produce a sitzkrieg in the war between Uncle Tom and Ma.
“That creature sets the cause of women back by generations,” Ma said, leaning forward, squinting to get a better look.
“The size of her, she looks like a Guernsey,” Uncle Tom said. “It violates the laws of natural science.”
“Have a little respect,” Pop said. “She’s doing God’s work. What else are we good for except to repopulate the world? I consider the boys to be my greatest achievement.”
“I know, Charlie. I know. You are an absolute bore talking about it,” Ma said wearily.
“Having kids is nothing. Chimpanzees have kids by the barrel. I once found a toad inside a hailstone,” Uncle Tom said. “Now there’s an achievement.”
“Wow,” I said under my breath as Mambo and Bingo jumped, soaring so high that they seemed to touch the edge of the sky, Bingo’s triumphant hoot blending in with the noise of the seagulls and the calls of the blackbirds as they scattered from the adjacent trees and circled overhead.
“What’s that, Collie?” Pop said distractedly, looking my way. He and Ma and Uncle Tom were still focused on the Conceiver.
“Oh, nothing,” I said. “You missed it.”
CHAPTER SIX
I WAS SENT TO ANDOVER FOR HIGH SCHOOL—SENTENCED TO Andover, was how Bing put it—a concession to my grandfather’s conviction that his financial support meant he could institutionalize any of us at will. By age sixteen, I was well established at school. It was 1979, and I’d grown accustomed to living away from home as a residential student, where I was a three-year upper, which is prep-speak for being in the eleventh grade. Reluctantly, I used to come home one weekend a month at the insistence of my parents. Trying to get back to school after any holiday was a recurring nightmare. Pop was always encouraging me to relax and forget about school.
“What’s it matter?” he’d say. “Good Lord, Collie, you’re due to inherit a bundle. Take an extra day at home. Jesus, if I had your situation, I’d live like a lawn chair.”
Ma held prep schools in particularly low esteem, labeling them capitalist propaganda outlets. The main reason I was at Andover was that the Falcon threatened to cut her off financially if she didn’t give in to him on the critical issue of our education. When it came to self-preservation, Ma could be flexible.
“The priests had them for the first eight years. Now they’re mine,” he said.
Although I pretended some consternation in an attempt to appease my mother, I was quietly thrilled by the Falcon’s edict. As usual, Ma saw right through me. She referred to Andover