[Just as the summer proceeds inexorably towards fall, or story marches towards resolution. SB SM]
Artie is busy on his cell phone.
Liam! Ready to plunge back into the academic grind? Are you free tonight? Your Godmother, Elaine’s in town, and I’d like to have a special dinner for her at Anna’s. She’d love to see you. Great!
I’m going to ask Shea to join us. Yeah … the Bitch. We’re friends now. Is that a problem? Believe it or not, she’s cool. Sure, I can meet you a few minutes early. What’s the subject? Not even a hint? OK, I can wait. Dinner’s at seven. Can you come down at six? See you then.
Hey, Cuzzin. Are you available for dinner tonight? Anna’s at seven? Last night was fun. More than you’ll ever know. Oh, you already know. I should have known. I’ve got a surprise. You do, too? Cool! Anna’s at seven.
Shea, Artie. Howyadoin’? Hey, my agent, Elaine, is in town, and I’m taking her dinner at Anna’s tonight with Liam and Cuzzin. It’s kind of a celebration. Will you join us? Great! Seven. You can ride with us.
Tell me the Truth
Artie puts on a polo shirt, his dress shorts, and sandals. He shaves, and after a moment of contemplation, puts on a drop of aftershave, Bay Rum, of course. He’s clean, slightly sun and windburned from the Flats, and feeling good about the world. He is making himself a gin and tonic when Liam comes in.
“Hey, Sonny. Would you like a g & t?”
“What’s that?”
“A gin & tonic.”
“Gin, bleuch-h-h.”
“Sometimes you have to accept that not everything in life tastes sweet. Here, take mine, I’ll make another.” Liam takes a sip.
“Crackly,” he says.
“The bubbles wake up your throat, the gin comes slicing through, and then the lime explodes into your nostrils.” He stirs his drink with his finger, and holds out a glass to toast, “Here’s to whatever you want to talk to me about.”
Liam clinks his glass. “I’m not so sure how you’ll feel about this in about thirty seconds.”
When Meiko was here we had fun going to the clubs. No big deal. Mostly swapping notes on different bands and stuff. Watching other guys drool over her. Anyway, she’s asked me to come out and spend a couple of weeks hanging out with her before school starts. I’d kind of like to do it. I haven’t been back to California for a while. But I don’t have the money, so I’d have to ask you, but I know this might be a sensitive subject for you so I thought we could talk it over.
“Did you have sex with her while she was out here?” says Artie, stiffening.
“No, I swear to God!”
“Tell me the truth, Liam!”
“I’m telling you the truth!”
“TELL ME THE TRUTH!”
Liam, quietly, “I’m telling you the truth.”
“Ok, I believe you. Jesus Christ. I don’t believe this. You know what’s happening, don’t you, Liam?” “What?”
“She’s using you to get back at me. I don’t know what her game is. Leading you along and breaking your heart. Probably giving you a venereal disease just for kicks. Telling you what an asshole I am. I’m not sure what she’s doing, but I guarantee you’re a pawn in her game.”
“I’d be crazy not to recognize that you might be right, but I don’t think you are. She’s really interested in music. I think we just hit it off, so she’s saying ‘come out to LA,’ and I’d like to do it. I’ll keep my eyes open. I’m a big boy now.”
“You’re 21!” says Artie. “”That barely gets you into adolescence these days. She’s 24. Why does a 24-year-old want to hang out with a 21-year-old. C’mon. How sick is that?”
Liam is smart enough to let the silence speak.
“Ok,” says Artie. “I take your point. Did you call your mother on this? And what did she say”
“To follow my bliss.”
“Oh my fucking word! Listen, Liam….I’m not trying to be a jerk, but there’s no way I see this as anything but big trouble.”
“How about we seek a second opinion?” says Liam.
“Who do you have in mind?”
“Uncle Cuzzin.”
Artie stares into his gin & tonic, which now has lost its fizz and appeal. He downs it in a single swallow.
Anna Scaffidee’s Mint Sauce for Fish
Warm olive oil and lightly sauté LOTS of garlic. Add white wine and vinegar to taste.
Simmer for ten minutes.
Add a handful (one per frying pan) of mint leaves. Add one cup of frush (fresh and crushed) tomatoes. Remove from pan. Add fish fillets. Saute until golden, turn once. Add white wine. Ladle mint sauce back over fish until flavors mingle. Serve immediately. Haddock is best.
“I’ll order for the entire table,” says Artie. “I feel inspired tonight.
Anna’s is buzzing. Everyone looks very spiffy and alluring. There is one empty chair. Anna herself is waiting to take their order. She stands poised and ready. “We’ll start with a bottle of the sparkling champagne, ok Prosecco will do. If it’s not cold enough, I’ll send it back, and if you don’t have at least five bottles, tell me so I can order something else. When one bottle is empty just bring another. Don’t ask.
“We’ll start with two orders of onion rings. Follow that with green salads all around. Then bring us three orders of steamed clams. Those are fresh, right? Where are they from? OK.
“Then bring the entree of Anna’s Haddock With Mint Sauce with steamed new potatoes and whatever. Which is better, the green beans or zucchini? OK then, we’ll go with the zucchini. Could you put a little parmesan and fresh ground pepper on that? Tell you what, do it at the table. Thanks.
“People can order their own desserts, although I can tell right now I want the Indian Pudding with hard sauce. And don’t start bringing the food, except the champagne and onion rings, until Cuzzin gets here, which, from the sound of it, won’t be too long.”
Everyone agrees that Artie had done a masterful job of ordering. The only missing piece is for Cuzzin to arrive. As is often the case, he can be heard before seen.
“What’s that?” asks Elaine. Someone, or something, has put the bar area into an uproar.
“Either Nomar has just put one out of the park, or our boy has arrived.”
Vroom-vroom-vroom. He ripples through the room like a sandpaper wave. Pebbles falling into a pot.
Suddenly he appears.
There is silence.
There is confusion.
This is Cuzzin. Then he laughs. This is Cuzzin!
Making Up Games
“How do you like the new me?” Cuzzin has been shaved and shorn. He is clothed in a suit and tie. He smells good. He is entirely transformed from a paunchy piece of gristle, until he opens his mouth.
“And who is this tasty morsel?” he says, looking at Elaine.
“This is Elaine, my agent. We’re celebrating, a little prematurely, but celebrating nonetheless,” says Artie. The waitress brings the first bottle of bubbly.
“I’m celebrating, too,” says Cuzzin, then aside to the waitress, “Bring me a club soda, willya.”
Liam falls off his chair.
“It’s simple,” says Cuzzin, pressed for an explanation. “Tomorrow I go to the bank to see if they’ll loan me money for the restaurant, because someone sitting at this table can’t make up his mind whether or not he wants to be my partner. I looked in the mirror this morning and asked myself ‘Would I take this guy seriously? Would I loan me a half a million bucks?’ The answer was a resounding NO. If I’m going to ask the banker to dance, I better look like someone worth dancing with.”
“Then, will you go back to being Cuzzin?”
“Oh, shit yeah.” The whole tables vroom-vrooms.
“Tell me about this restaurant,” says Elaine, not realizing that she has opened the door to the entire saga of the Gordon’s critical, but largely unrecognized role in the development of the fast-food industry in America and the world. She actually seems interested.
Artie is digging into his Indian Pudding when Shea asks “What are we celebrating?”
“There’s so much to celebrate,” says Artie. “I don’t know where to begin. Indian Mound or Pissawagassett has been returned to its owners in more ways than one. Elaine, my agent and Liam’s godmother, is here. Both are on the edge of the brink of new lives. Cuzzin has decided what he wants to be when he grows up. Shea and I have overcome our differences. (Cuzzin can’t resist a subliminal vroom.) Nucking Fuff construction has gotten the cottage into shape … ”
“And Stephen Spielberg wants to make the sequel to My Mother, My Lover…!” blurts Elaine.
“We haven’t decided which way to go with it,” hastens Artie.
“But in any case,” adds Elaine, “Hollywood’s biggest loser is soon-to-be Hollywood’s biggest winner.”
“I thought maybe you had caught your fish.” says Cuzzin. “Who’s Stephen Spielberg?”
Over coffee, the family council goes into executive session. First Artie presents the Meiko situation, then Liam follows with his own version.
“If you don’t go, I will. That girl was hot!” Cuzzin is unequivocal in his support.
“We’re asking advice from the most irresponsible man on the face of the earth,” says Artie.
“I’m not kidding,” says Cuzzin, “Meiko was the nicest piece of ass to ever hit the South Shore. Who cares if he gets used, so long as he gets used, if know what I mean.” Lubba-lubba.
“Elaine, what do you say?”
“I like Meiko. A spaceshot, but all your girlfriends are, Artie. She was very calm when I called her about getting her things. She said ‘I know all about The Drill. You won’t get any problem from me. I’m the one who broke it off anyway.’ And having come here to your cottage, Artie, I’ve gotta say she had a decent reason to be upset.”
Liam says, “What do you think, Shea?”
Shea smiles, obviously pleased at being part of the family council. “I think you have to go by the record. Liam’s been very responsible all summer. He’s done everything asked. He’s helped around the cottage. If he wants to do this, and you’ve told him about the potential pitfalls, you should trust him to do the right thing.”
“Ok,” says Artie, putting his hands on the table, signaling acceptance, “but there’s got to be a quid pro quo, something I get out of the deal.”
“What do you want?” asks Liam.
“I know how seductive the scene out there can be. You’ve got to promise me, no matter what, you will graduate from Berklee.”
They shake. Deal.
More on band names from Liam:
I think now that I’m going to call my band RE:AM. First of all, it just sounds good, like you know this band can really rock. If nothing else you’ve got four-fifths of “scream” in the name.
I like the gender neutrality of “ream.” Plus, there’s a suggestion of violence to it. Well, maybe more than a suggestion. Maybe a lot more.
But there are other overtones, too. There’s a “ream” of paper to give it a literary association. By capitalizing it and adding the colon, you accomplish two things. First of all, you’re only one letter away from R.E.M., one of my favorite old-time bands and a heavy influence on Nirvana. But by separating “ream” with the colon, the meaning becomes “in reference to being.” Get it? “Re” as in “regarding” or “in reference to” and “am” as in “I am,” or, more specifically, as in “I think, therefore I am.”
I’ve never quite understood what it means, and I forget who said it, but he was a famous philosopher. “I think, therefore I am.” I don’t get it, but I’m sure some critic who is a lot smarter than I am will find deep, cosmic meaning, especially if our music is good.
If the music is bad, this will be seen for the shallow, superficial pretension that it is. And I have a backup plan. If RE:AM doesn’t fly, we’ll be Uncle Cuzzin or Nucking Fuff.
Making Up Games
An Indian Mound tradition is making up games. There were a few tattered board games in the cottage,–jigsaw puzzles missing pieces that could be put together in minutes, and a deck of cards for rainy days, but otherwise the summers of Artie’s youth were spent in an almost complete void of toys. Until he learned differently as an adult, Artie thought that mumblety-peg was a game made up by Tubby Tropiano. Similarly, games like kick the can, red rover/red rover, flashlight tag, and hide & seek were all customized to their seaside location. There was never a television in the cottage.
Indian Mound was not about being entertained, but rather, about being so bored that you find ways to entertain yourself. Liam and Artie are ferociously competitive with a game they’ve invented which involves kicking field goals with a styrofoam coffee cup from Dunkin’ Donuts. You get three points for kicking it into the trash can, plus one additional point for each step you are away from the can. Near misses count for naught. By mid-August the cumulative score is Liam 48- Artie 44. Both men have adopted the strategy of kicking relatively easy short field goals. Longer kicks are reserved for desperation catch-up situations. First one to reach 50 wins. They’re still talking about the 10 yarder that Liam nailed when Artie was ahead 32-25 and threatening to blow the game wide open. But Liam came through in the clutch to vault ahead 35-32 and hasn’t looked back since.
Liam tees his cup up on the grass. He concentrates, takes a deep breath, kicks … wide right. Artie picks up the cup and follows the same ritual. His kick is up, a perfect end-over-end, it catches the back lip of the trashcan, and bounces in!
“YES! YES! The grizzled veteran comes through, and suddenly all the pressure is on the kid. This is choke time. This is when you need nerves of steel, not butterflies in the stomach. If you make it, I get a last kick.”
“No you don’t. First one to fifty is what we said.”
“I know, but you kicked first.”
“I won the toss!”
“That doesn’t mean you get an extra kick.”
“What is it about ‘First one to 50 wins’ that you don’t understand?”
“You’ll probably choke, and I’ll win anyway. I wouldn’t even want to win if I was winning just because I had more chances that the other guy.”
“OK, suppose I make mine, giving me 51 points, and then you make yours, giving you 50. Who wins then?”
“It’s a tie.”
“A tie!” Liam is apoplectic. “How can you have a 51-50 tie!” “We’ve both made it to 50 with the same number of kicks.
We’ll have to devise some kind of a tie-breaker.” “Sudden death or tennis format?”
“I dunno. I haven’t thought it through.” “Let’s finish this out.”
“Keep kicking.”
Artie fishes the cup out of the trashcan and flips it to Liam. He talks with the upper epiglottal thrust of a sportscaster: “Liam Gordon will now make what is undoubtedly the biggest kick of his young life. A hush falls over the huge throng at Indian Mound Stadium as he tees up the cup. Now he adjusts it. He stands over it, his mind racing with the implications of failure. He kicks … it’s wide right, wide right! He had the distance, but he pushed it to the right. And now, it’s up to the Old Man.”
Arthur lowers his voice dramatically as he picks up the cup and places it just so. “It all comes down to this, and how many times have we seen the Old Man come through in situations like this? The crowd is on its feet, but the Old Man doesn’t show a flicker of emotion. He’s been through it all before.” Artie kicks a low line drive that hits the trashcan about a foot off the ground. Now, it’s Liam’s turn to be animated.
“He skulls it. What a choke! He’s been there before and he’s choked before!” He places the cup and deftly lofts it into the can with his foot. “And it’s all over! It’s all over. Liam wins! Arthur Gordon has snatched the agony of defeat from the jaws of victory.”
“Wait a minute. I still get my last kick.”
Sony makes a “pre-empt” bid for the film rights to make a sequel of My Mother, My Lover… of $2 million, meaning that their bid needs to be accepted or rejected before the property is offered to others. Artie, through Elaine, rejects it.
Stephen Spielberg, casually, calls to see how Artie’s summer is going. Artie tells he’s been trying to catch a fish. “Moby Dick?” asks Spielberg. Artie invites him to come to Indian Mound and to try his luck. Spielberg says he just might, and meanwhile, give him a call when he decides which route he wants to follow with the sequel. “I don’t mind being patient, but I do mind being asleep at the switch, and that’s what I’ll feel like if someone else signs this up while I’m being patient,” says Spielberg. Don’t, he reiterates, make a commitment before checking with him.
Elaine, who has been on the cell phone nearly non-stop since her arrival, finally crashes. She sleeps for twenty straight hours. When she finally rises, Artie makes her coffee. They’re sitting at the kitchen table and she says, “So, this cousin of yours, is he married?”
Artie looks at her dumbly, trying to contemplate the strands in the universe that have connected. Life just doesn’t make sense. Or does it? The Red Sox, meanwhile, are in second place, behind the Yankees. They appear to have a good shot at a wild card slot in the playoffs.
Cuzzin comes by that evening. He brings a half-bushel of oysters and a fresh bluefish that someone gave him at the bait shop. He is fresh from the bank, wearing his suit and looking good. His mood, however, is low:
“They’ll loan me up to the value of the real estate, which is two hundred grand, but they think my estimate for renovations is too low. And my business track record and credit history are, in the words of Mr. DeFalco at the bank, ‘on the light side.’ That’s when I lost all respect for him. Anyone calling my business track record ‘on the light side’ doesn’t know crap about business.” He pauses, chuckles:
“My credit history ‘on the light side?’ Puh-leese. Can’t we agree it’s completely ‘on the dark side?’ Jay-sus. I didn’t file my income taxes for eight years. My credit cards are long gone. I’m two months behind on my rent. I owe small change to every bar within 10 miles. My shop has not shown a profit in five years. My checking balance is -$25. C’mon, that is not ‘on the light side!’ That is on the heavy, fuckin’ dark side.”
This put him in a much better mood. VROOM-VROOM- LUBBADUBBA-VROOM. “How can you be the quintessential fuck-up and not be insulted when a pissant banker says you ‘on the light side’? Cuzzin shows Elaine how to properly shuck and eat an oyster. She gives him her rapt attention.
Cuzzin’s How-to Oyster Guide
First of all, only eat oysters from cold water. I’ve had those flabby oysters from the Gulf of Mexico. You might as well be eating tofu on a shell, for chrissakes.
I use a screwdriver to open oysters. An oyster knife is good, too. Everyone has their own technique, but don’t use a sharp knife. You’ll wreck the knife, and if you slip, you can cause yourself grievous damage. Oysters should be kept cold and eaten cold. This West Coast thing of barbecuing oysters? It’s bullshit. The only reason they do it that way is because they are too damn lazy to do it the right way, so they put them on a grill. That way they don’t have to deal with the oyster’s firm grasp on life. Don’t get me started on the West Coast. Not only do they eat the oyster hot, but they cover up the flavor with hot sauce. Passive aggressive motherfuckers! That’s what happens when life is too easy.
Wear a heavy glove on your left hand if you’re right- handed, on your right if you are a lefty. Helpful hint: throw the other glove away immediately. Otherwise you end up with a drawerful of right-handed gloves. Don’t believe me? Check the third drawer of the porch bureau.
Put the oyster in your left hand, with the deep side of the shell down and the hinge facing toward you. This is very important. Jam the tip of screwdriver into the hinge of the oyster, and give it a good twist. If you do it right, she’ll pop. If you are a little off, which is easy to do, you’ll end up with a chipped shell, and the fun will just have begun. What follows is often not pretty.
Pry the shallow half of the shell off, using a knife, not the screwdriver, to scrape any flesh into the deep half. Make sure not to lose any of the liquor, or juice from the deep half. Run your blade under the oyster to make sure it is free of the shell.
Rotate the oyster 180 degrees, without spilling any liquor, so that thin edge is facing you. Slide it, liquor and all, right into your mouth. Chew it two or three times, just enough to taste the sea, then let it slither down to your gullet.
You may now take a sip of beer.
I know some people arrange them on shaved ice, and serve them with lemon wedges or cocktail sauce, but those things just get in the way. You could eat a cold turd with enough cocktail sauce. Eat the oyster the way a starfish would, as close to the sea as possible.
