My Secret History

  “We have meetings. Secret meetings. We’re all socialists.”

  “But what do you stand for?”

  “Destruction,” I said.

  On another occasion, to get her to sleep with me, I had told her that I had twice tried to kill myself. And I said that I took drugs—cough syrup with codeine in it, the Family Size bottle, chugalugged the whole thing. I told her I had hitchhiked to Florida, getting rides with maniacs. Anything so that she would remember me. But it just frightened her.

  Telling her I was a communist was my way of saying goodbye.

  “Can I help you?”

  That woke me from my reverie. It was a security guard. His question meant: What’s a kid in an army jacket and sunglasses and torn sneakers think he’s doing here at the Maldwyn Country Club?

  I said, “I have an appointment with Mr. Kaloostian.”

  “Go ahead.”

  But I was angry with myself for giving him this information. I should have said, It’s highly confidential and let him figure it out.

  The clubhouse ahead of me at the top of the driveway was a white building with a roof of green shingles. It was surrounded by fat trimmed bushes, and geraniums in plump pots, and in the bulgey bay window there were fat golfers going haw-haw! This was all supposed to be English. Another fat car went past and almost clipped me. I felt small and skinny. I smelled roasting meat. I was hungry, and being here made me feel hateful. I imagined starting a fire in the clubhouse and watching the golfers run out with burning hair. Help! they’d scream as I turned my back.

  The secretary’s signboard said MISS A. BERBERIAN.

  She said, “Is it about the lifeguard job?”

  I was annoyed that she guessed it and so I said, “That’s partly the reason. The rest is highly confidential, I’m afraid. You can tell him I’m here.”

  There were two men in the office. Mr. Kaloostian was the purple-faced man in the suit. He introduced the man next to him in the sports shirt. “This is Mr. Mattanza, our pool superintendant.”

  “Vic Mattanza,” the man said and squeezed my hand too hard.

  Standing up added very little to his height. He was short and dark. His black hair was pushed straight back. He was one of those Italians who looked to me like an Indian brave—dark, brooding, and with tiny eyes very close to his big nose. He was short, yet I could see from the way his shirt was stretched that he was muscular. But he was too muscular for his size. He reminded me of a clenched fist.

  “Sit down, Andrew.”

  “Andre,” I said, and they frowned at me.

  “It says here you live in Medford, you go to UMass, nineteen in April, you’re a medical student—” He was reading from my application in a way that embarrassed me. All these trivial facts made me feel small. I had the urge to tell him I was a communist.

  “Pre-med,” I said.

  “Hey, that’s great,” Mattanza said, “but we’re looking for someone who can swim.”

  “I can swim. And I thought a knowledge of first aid might be an asset.” I smiled at Mattanza. His close-set eyes were fixed on me. He was thinking: Wise-ass.

  “That’s a very good point,” Kaloostian said.

  “Except we need a lifeguard.”

  Mattanza’s teeth were very white and large and doglike.

  “That’s why I’m here.” I could tell he hated my smile.

  “It says here you worked at Wright’s Pond.”

  “Right. I was a lockerboy. Then I got my Red Cross lifesaving certificate and became a lifeguard. After the intermediate I got the advanced.”

  “You mind if we see your badge?” Mattanza said. “It’s not that we don’t believe you.”

  “My mother sewed it on my bathing suit.”

  Mattanza looked at Kaloostian. “His mother sewed it on his bathing suit.”

  “That’s where it’s supposed to go,” I said.

  He flashed his snake-eyes at me.

  “Is that the only proof of your proficiency?” Kaloostian said.

  “I’ve got the certificate,” I said, and pulled it out of my book and unfolded it.

  “You’re a reader, I see,” Kaloostian said, and he leaned over to look at the title. He couldn’t see.

  “The Flowers of Evil,” I said.

  “Gatz,” Mattanza said under his breath.

  “What did you do to earn this?”

  “Swam a mile. Learned the rescues. Rowed. Surface dived. Picked up weights from the bottom. Jumped in with my clothes on and made a flotation device with my pants—you knot the cuffs and inflate the legs. And the first aid.” Kaloostian had asked the question but I was speaking to Mattanza. “That’s the advanced certificate.”

  Mattanza said, “Great. But what kind of practical experience have you got?”

  “Two years at Wright’s Pond.”

  “We’re talking about a swimming pool.”

  “It’s tougher at a pond,” I said.

  He moved his mouth at me. His lips said: Prove it. His teeth said: I’m dangerous—I bite.

  I spoke to Kaloostian. “In a pond you’ve got poor visibility, deeper water, noise, greater density of swimmers, and weeds. Last summer I pulled three people out. One of them went about two hundred pounds. I used a cross-chest carry on him.”

  “So why aren’t you still there at Wright’s?” Mattanza said, in a challenging way.

  I could just imagine this little twerp strutting in a tight pair of trunks.

  “This seems a nicer place,” I said, and when Kaloostian smiled smugly at this I said, “More congenial, and a kind of English atmosphere.”

  “We’re very proud of our club,” Kaloostian said. “It’s like a family here. The members, the employees. We’re all part of a winning team.”

  What bullshit, I thought. But I needed the job.

  “I guess I want to be part of the team.”

  Mattanza winced and put his finger on my application. “It says here your hobby is shooting. You got a gun?”

  “Not on me,” I said.

  “I hate guns,” Kaloostian said, and shook his face so that his eyes rattled at me.

  Everyone said I hate guns in the most virtuous way, as if all guns were murder weapons.

  “I shoot beer cans,” I said. “I think some of your members might be interested in marksmanship.”

  “Why do you want to work at Maldwyn Country Club?” Kaloostian said, putting his elbows on the table. I could not understand why his face was so purple—was it a tan or high blood pressure?

  “Why did you advertise?” I said.

  “We need a lifeguard.”

  “I need a job,” I said.

  “But we need more than a lifeguard,” Mattanza said.

  “It takes a lot of humility to be a lifeguard,” Kaloostian said. “Humility and perception and strength of character. Do you know what I mean by those words?”

  I don’t want this job, I thought. I’ll work in a bakery. I’ll sell papers. I’ll get a job with the state at an MDC pool. I’ll cut grass. I’ll steal cars.

  “He means you keep your eyes open. No reading. No blabbing. No backtalk. No college stuff.” Mattanza was getting so angry I decided that I wanted the job, just to spite him. “We don’t want a candy-ass.”

  “I’ve got references,” I said.

  “A very good one from Mike Bagdikian.”

  I almost said He’s an old friend of my father’s. He had told me to apply. Good hours, good money, a nice class of people. Had he met Mattanza?

  “You’re nineteen?” Mattanza said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Sheesh,” he said, exasperated. “We’re looking for someone who can take responsibility.”

  I said, “I pulled three people out of Wright’s, like I said. One I had to give artificial respiration. They would have died if I hadn’t fished them out. It was in the Medford Mercury. But I don’t know—maybe you don’t call a matter of life and death responsible.”

  “We’ll be in touch,” Kaloostian sa
id.

  Instead of going straight home I took the bus to Cambridge to kill time. I walked to Mount Auburn Cemetery and looked for the grave of Mary Baker Eddy. I had heard that she had a telephone in her tomb, so that if she woke from the dead at some point she could call the Mother Church at Mass Ave. and say, “Listen, it’s Mrs. Eddy—I’m back from the dead. Dig me up.” But I couldn’t find the tomb.

  I stretched out on a grassy knoll and read Baudelaire, a poem about a dead sheep with its legs upraised “like a lustful woman.” And I saw a couple kissing near a tree and the girl’s legs were like the sheep’s in the poem. I watched them, pretending to read, and felt like Baudelaire myself, wicked and watchful.

  After that I walked to Harvard Square. There was a restaurant on the street corner beside the Coop. The menu was taped to the window, Special Today—Whale Steak $1.29. Never mind the coleslaw, french fries, dessert and coffee. I imagined a whale being harpooned, and a vast thrashing tail, and blood on the waves. In Moby Dick, one of the characters—Stubb or Daggoo—made a big deal out of eating whale steaks. And there was a whole chapter about eating whales. I made a mental note to look it up. But what I wanted at that moment was a whale steak. I hadn’t had any lunch and I didn’t have any money. So this hunger and inspiration just insulted me. I thought: This moment will never come again. Who should I blame for denying it to me?

  I looked in the bookstores, and then wandered around the Harvard Coop and, passing through the men’s department I stole a beret. I put it on outside and took the bus back to Medford.

  “What if you don’t get the job?” my mother said. “What are you going to do?”

  I didn’t have the slightest idea, but I was thinking that this house did not feel like home anymore.

  “I’ve got lots of irons in the fire,” I said.

  “Just don’t ask me for any money.”

  “I’ve got enough.”

  All I had was my bus fare back to the Maldwyn Country Club. But that was handy, because the next day Kaloostian called and said, “You’ve got the job. We’d like you to start tomorrow.”

  They could have told me that before. By making me wait they were trying to intimidate me: that’s what you did with employees—you made them wait. You did not realize they were reading Baudelaire and writing poems that began Snake-eyes, you dago dwarf with dog-like teeth …

  “It’s a new pool,” Mattanza said. Just as I had predicted, he wore a tiny bathing suit. He was short and broadshouldered and had a bunch of bulging balls and a hairy back. “Every morning it’s your job to seat the filters. You know how to seat a filter?”

  “I think I can learn.”

  “Sure you can,” Mattanza said. “You’re a wise guy. I hate wise guys. Ever been in the army?”

  I said no.

  “You’re lucky, because if you was in the army they’d break your balls for being a wise guy.”

  “What do we do with this filter?”

  “I don’t like the way you talk,” Mattanza said. “If you don’t get into line I’m going to have to let you go.”

  He was trembling as he said this, and he was avoiding my eyes. He seemed very strange—nervous and angry; so I decided to calm him.

  “Okay, Vic, you’re the boss.”

  “Yeah, don’t you forget it.”

  He showed me how to pour the white chlorine powder into the spool-like filters, and how to screw them into the holes beside the pool. He showed me vacuuming and brushing and how to scoop leaves. That was all, and I could tell from the way he did it that he wasn’t very good at it himself. He was too self-conscious and neurotic to be mechanical-minded. He made a mess of the filters and shook the head off the vacuum. I could tell that it annoyed him to see me calmly pushing the contraptions to and fro, but there was nothing he could do.

  The swimmers were mostly women and children. There were no boys my age and only a few girls. It was a new pool. The main characteristic of a new pool was that people actually swam in it, and jumped and splashed. I was sure that next year these people would be sunning themselves near it, and that probably no one would be in the water.

  “Hello there,” a woman said. I noticed that she had been drinking all morning. “I’m Mrs. Toomajian. You know my husband, Kevork?”

  I said I didn’t know him.

  “The Chrysler dealership on Commonwealth Ave.? With the big sign in front? Everybody knows Kevork. He gives deals on new cars.”

  I said, “Is that your daughter on the diving board?”

  I had seen the girl—who was about sixteen, and pretty—talking to this woman earlier. Guessing right made her cross.

  “Never mind her,” Mrs. Toomajian said. She swallowed some more whiskey. “She’s got a friend coming up from New Haven in a couple of weeks. Maybe you’d like to meet her. You could come over.”

  “And meet your daughter?”

  “Her friend,” she said, correcting me. “Also she does a little house-work for us.”

  I said, “I’ll think about it.”

  I did, and it occurred to me that this woman had an objection to my being friendly with her daughter, but was trying to pair me up with this friend, who was their part-time servant. It was a crude kind of Armenian snobbery and when I saw the woman near the pool after lunch I had an urge to push her in.

  Mattanza said, “You’re talking. You’re not supposed to talk. These people are members. You’re not a member. Eyes front.”

  He walked away before I could reply.

  We had lunch together in the kitchen—Mattanza; the security guard; several waiters; the assistant golf pro, Miss Berberian; and me. The cook’s name was Reuben. He hated serving us, but there was no one else to do it.

  Mattanza said, “Hey, how about more pot roast? I hate vegetables. I’ve got to have meat. See that?” He poked his plate with his knife. “Pure protein. Meat.”

  The only time I saw him smile was when he said meat.

  After lunch I worked until five, when children were not allowed into the pool. The mothers went home with their kids and the men—their husbands—came back from work and took a dip. They were hairy overworked men, very agitated from the day’s business—talkative and irritable. They had no pleasures, they looked stupid, they laughed like bullies, they never read. I was glad to leave.

  That was the pattern. It should have been an easy job but the people made it hard. I paced the edge of the pool and kept my mouth shut. I was not allowed to eat or drink near the pool, I was forbidden to read, and I could talk to members only if they spoke to me first. They seldom did. They were not unfriendly, just uninterested.

  “You’re not here to make friends,” Mattanza said. “You’ve got a job to do.”

  Mattanza had problems. He said he had two kids. “I get married. I sleep with my wife. She gets pregnant. She shuts me off—no more sex. She has a baby—Julie, lovely little kid. We start again—hey, it’s natural! She gets pregnant again. She shuts me off again. I says, ‘What is this?’ So if I want kids I can get laid, and if I don’t want kids I gotta play with myself.”

  He was silent, watching beautiful Nina Balakian preparing to dive and snapping her bathing suit over her buttocks as it rode up.

  “I used to have all kinds of broads,” Mattanza said. “I went into the North End. I told them my name was Joe Falco. I had all the broads I wanted. Want my advice? Never get married. The sex isn’t worth it, and all they do is talk—yah-yah-yah,” and he opened and closed his hand to indicate gabbing.

  Afterwards I think he was sorry that he had told me all that because he snapped at me when he saw me talking to a woman.

  “Eyes front,” he said. “How many times do I have to tell you? Jesus, I hope they get you in the army.”

  The woman was about fifty and very friendly. She was reading a book by Norman Mailer. It was unusual to see anyone reading here—and Norman Mailer! The book was Advertisements for Myself.

  “It’s a ragbag,” she said. “Some of it is kind of cute, but he’s too tough f
or his own good. Did you ever hear about how he stabbed his wife? It was after a party. She said, ‘He had a strange look in his eye.’ Then he knifed her. She didn’t press charges. What a ding-a-ling!”

  At that point Mattanza had interrupted.

  “I have to go back to work,” I said.

  At the end of the first week, Mattanza said, “I don’t like your attitude.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “See? Just the way you said that! Listen to yourself. You’ve got a bad attitude.” He brooded for a while, then said, “If you don’t shape up I’m going to have to let you go.”

  2.

  I had never worked in a place where I couldn’t read. Only reading made work bearable. I brought Baudelaire to the Maldwyn Country Club and sneaked looks at it, but when Mattanza saw me he told me to put it away.

  “What is it with these books?” he said. “Hey, know what I think? All this reading makes you crazy. Not only ruins your eyes. I mean, it’s no good for you.” He wagged his scaley fingers at his head, an Italian gesture meaning cracked.

  “So when your kids go to school you won’t let them read books, is that right?”

  “School books. That’s different.”

  “How do you know this isn’t a school book?”

  “The way you got your nose in it. You like it.” He winced at me. “You’re going to make yourself pazzo.”

  “I see. So school books don’t drive you crazy, because they’re no fun to read. It’s only enjoyable books that turn you into a mental case. Is that right?”

  We were doing the filters—Mattanza pouring the chlorine in while I screwed them into their holes. Mattanza put the bag of chemicals down. His tiny eyes were black with anger.