The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy

17

THE WINNER of the name-the-school contest was announced about a week later. Since some ill feeling had developed toward the judges and the school administrators during the long time that had passed since the contest began, Mr. Simone decided that it would be a good idea to make a grand occasion out of the award ceremony. Invitations went out to all our parents to tour the completed school and then gather in the auditorium to learn the winning name and applaud the student who had submitted it.     I was sitting with Raskol, Margot and Martha, Matthew, and Veronica and Stretch; Stretch was on Veronica’s right and I was on her left. My parents were beside me. When Mr. Simone stepped up to the lectern, everything inside my chest and abdomen seemed to vanish, leaving only a cold hollow.     “The time has come at last,” said Mr. Simone. He looked at a sheet of paper, and then he looked out over the audience. “Will Peter Leroy please come up onto the stage?” he said.     Veronica squeezed my hand. I stood. I walked sideways out of the row of seats, and somehow I walked down the aisle and up the stairs to the stage and across the stage to Mr. Simone’s side.     “It wasn’t easy to pick a winner,” Mr. Simone said. “There were many, many good names submitted. I wish you could have seen some of the meetings we held when we were trying to pick a winner. Some of us liked names that had to do with nature and that sort of thing. Others liked names that gave you a sense of Babbington’s past. One that I happened to like was ‘Unfinished School.’” He waited while the adults laughed. “But we couldn’t seem to agree on a name that all of us liked,” he continued. “Finally, I said to the other judges, ‘Look, the school is nearly finished. The kids have been waiting for months. We’ve got to choose. Let’s go through all the names once more and see if there isn’t one that all of us can at least tolerate.’ Well, I’m happy to be able to say to you that there was one name that none of us really hated.” He turned aside and accepted a bronze plaque from Mr. Simon. Then he turned to me. “Peter,” he said, “yours was the winning name. Perhaps you would like to read it to the people.” He handed the plaque to me. In a voice tight with pride and nervousness, I read:

     Applause filled the hall. Raskol clasped his hands together and waved them over his head. Veronica and Stretch got up and slipped out the side door. At the door, before they left, Veronica paused, turned, and waved; Stretch gave me a salute and a wink. I held the plaque over my head. I felt the dizzying happiness that I later felt when I turned round and round, guiding my gasoline-powered flying model Piper Cub in a wide circle at the end of its tether.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” “Call Me Larry,” and “The Young Tars,” the nine novellas in Little Follies, and Little Follies itself, which will give you all the novellas in one handy package.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

16

I TOLD MY PARENTS that I wasn’t feeling well, and I went up to bed right after dinner, at about the time that Jack was dropping Stretch and Veronica off at the high school parking lot. I lay in my bed and tried to form in my mind a clear image of what Veronica and Stretch were doing.     Three buses were waiting in front of the high school when they arrived. They got out of the car, and Jack drove away.     “Which bus should we take?” Stretch asked.     “I don’t know,” said Veronica.     A line of very big boys and girls stood at the door to each of the buses. Boarding the first bus was that sad group of boys and girls who remain awkward throughout adolescence, who never find a cure for their acne, who either can’t lose weight or can’t gain weight, who are too tall or too short, too smart or too outspoken. Since Veronica and Stretch were so out of place, so much younger than the others, they probably belonged on that bus. Boarding the second bus were the clean-cut boys and girls with whom my mother would have wanted me to ride if I had taken Veronica. The third bus, however, was Bus Six.     “Oh look, this is Bus Six,” Veronica said. “It’s the bus Porky White drives. Let’s get on this one.”     They did.     “Let’s sit in the back,” said Veronica.     “Sure,” Stretch said. “Anywhere you want.”     The back of the bus was filled with smoke, loud talking, and boys and girls in leather jackets. Veronica and Stretch walked into the smoke, and one of the boys said, “Get lost, kids. These seats are taken. You’re on the wrong bus.”     “Yeah, I guess we are,” Stretch said. He grabbed Veronica’s sleeve and turned to go.     “Shut up, stupid,” said one of the girls, punching the boy on the shoulder and grabbing Veronica’s other sleeve. “They can sit right here,” said the girl. She pulled them onto the seat beside her, where in fact there was plenty of room for them.     “I think you kids look so cute,” the girl said.     “What’s your name, cutie?” asked another boy. He reached from behind Veronica and put his hands on her shoulders, brought his face next to hers. His breath was dank and sour.     “Veronica,” said Veronica. Her voice sounded a little hollow, but she smiled when she gave her name, and after she had spoken she tilted her head upward bravely and batted her eyelashes.     “And what’s your name, kid?” the boy asked.     Stretch stuck his chin out and said, “Stretch,” in a voice as deep as he could manage.     “That’s it, Stretch, don’t be afraid of him,” said another girl who was leaning over the back of the seat in front of them. “He’s just a big jerk. Knock it off, Sal,” she said to the big jerk.     Sal didn’t say anything to her, but he gave her a weaselly, calculating look. Then he gave Veronica a squeeze, pulling her back toward him. He bent his head downward and in a stage whisper asked her, “Veronica, you want a little drink?”     The girl in front of them looked furious. “If you don’t leave them alone, I’ll never talk to you again, Sal,” she said. Her teeth were clenched, and so were her fists.     “Hey,” said Sal. “Don’t get all upset with me. Stretch and Veronica are here because they want to play with the big kids.” He snapped Stretch’s ear. “Isn’t that right?” he asked.     “Oh, sure,” Stretch said.     “There you are,” said Sal. He flipped his hand in the air in a gesture that meant: “There you have it; there can be no further argument; the evidence that you have just heard is so conclusive that any unbiased observer would agree that the matter is settled.”     The girl pounded her fists once on the back of the seat and said “Ooooh!” She spun forward again, away from Sal, and slumped down so that her head was hardly visible. Sal made with his free hand a gesture, the meaning of which, “F**k you,” I didn’t learn for another couple of months.     By the time the bus reached the skating rink, Stretch and Veronica knew the names of most of the boys and girls around them, their breath smelled of bourbon, and their cheeks were flushed. They emerged as the stars of the evening. They were certainly the best skaters there, and the girls were able to admire Veronica without feeling jealous, since she was so much younger than they, only a child, while the boys were able to toss her around like a basketball, and they lined up for an opportunity to do so. Finally, the lights began to flash, and the skaters drifted off the rink, removed their skates, and boarded the bus. Shortly after Porky pulled out of the parking lot, the lights inside the bus went out. Stretch and Veronica peered into the darkness around them, squinting to try to make out just what the older boys and girls were doing. When Stretch put his hand on Veronica’s thigh, I smiled, stretched out in the cozy warmth of my bed, and fell asleep.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” “Call Me Larry,” and “The Young Tars,” the nine novellas in Little Follies, and Little Follies itself, which will give you all the novellas in one handy package.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

15

THE SKATING PARTY was scheduled for a Friday night. During school that day, I began to exhibit signs of illness. By the end of the day, I had made all the arrangements. I told Veronica that I was coming down with a twenty-four-hour virus and I was sure that I would begin vomiting at about the time that the skating-party bus left the high school lot. She was terribly disappointed, but she accepted Stretch as a substitute escort, since the party meant so much to her. Stretch was surprised. I gave him the tickets and lent him two dollars to make sure that he and Veronica had a good time.     By the time the school day ended, only one thing remained for me to do. On the way home from school, I sat in the seat right behind Porky, and I told him most—but not all—of the story.     “What?” said Porky. “You mean another guy is taking your girl to the skating party? Hey, don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on them. I’ll make them sit right up in the front of the bus and I’ll keep the lights on the whole way back. And I’ll drive straight back to the school, too. He’s not going to get away with anything while I’m driving.”     I opened Our Town and Its People and removed from it a new five-dollar bill. “Here, Porky,” I said, handing it to him. “Do me a favor. Take the long way home.”

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” “Call Me Larry,” and “The Young Tars,” the nine novellas in Little Follies, and Little Follies itself, which will give you all the novellas in one handy package.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

     Inside, Mrs. McCall helped me lace my skates.     “All right, Peter,” she said at last. “You’re as ready as you’ll ever be.” She stood up and gave me a pat on the shoulder. “Good luck,” she said.     Jack skated to the railing in front of us, all power, skill, muscles, chin, and teeth. “Hey, good morning, Mrs. McCall,” he said. He gave an odd emphasis to the words Mrs. McCall, and he smiled broadly and winked at her.     I told myself to do what Porky had told me, to imagine myself doing what it was I wanted to do. I stood at the railing, closed my eyes, and summoned all the strength of imagination that I could muster, and in a single brilliant instant I was able to imagine everything that was going to happen.     I would say, “Well, here I go!” and I would push myself onto the floor and be startled by the sensation of having lost all control over my feet. My right foot would insist on rolling farther and farther forward while my left rolled slowly backward. I would flail my arms as falling people do, as if imitating the herky-jerky rotation of the wings of an ornithopter. And I would, of course, fall. I would land on my right buttock, hard, my eyes locked on Veronica, and I’d watch her expression shift from surprise to concern to hilarity to embarrassment and back to hilarity. I would scramble to my knees and look over at Mrs. McCall, who would be trying awfully hard not to laugh, and at Jack, who would be roaring, so forgetting himself in his exuberant amusement that he had flung his arm around Mrs. McCall and was kneading her shoulder through the soft angora sweater. I would struggle to my feet and try to make myself move in Veronica’s direction. Try as I might, I would not be able to make myself move on a course that would get me to her side. Weak with laughter, she would finally come to me, put her hand on my waist, and try to show me how to change direction. The smallest movement would upset my balance, and at any moment, even when standing still, I would be on the verge of falling down. I would clutch at her, to keep from falling, and fall anyway, often taking her down with me. I would discover in the tumbles a surprising pleasure, and I would discover in the laughter an analgesic for the embarrassment of not being able to skate, for not being graceful and confident, for being, in that puzzling way, so very much younger than Veronica. I would begin to play for the laughs, and Veronica and I would wind up having a wonderful time. She would begin to anticipate my falls, and she would prove to be so at ease on skates that she could even play the clown. She could fake losing her balance herself, go through a wild parody of my attempts to recover my balance, recover hers at the last instant, make it look as if both of us had recovered, then give me a little nudge and send me sprawling. Jack and Mrs. McCall would be beside themselves with laughter, flinging their arms around each other in uncontrollable glee when Veronica resorted to simply holding me up and guiding me around the rink as if I were stuffed. When Veronica and I finally made our way back across the rink to where they were seated, they would stand and applaud us, Veronica would stop and deliver a graceful swanlike curtsy, and I would bend at the waist and fall in a heap.     “Bravo!” Jack would shout, when I had a grip on the railing again at last.     “Oh, Peter, you were so funny!” Mrs. McCall would say, gasping for breath, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. “I haven’t laughed so much in I don’t know how long.”     “You were hilarious, kid,” Jack would say. He’d pat me on the shoulder and add, “You’re really a good sport.”     Veronica would put her arm through mine and snuggle up beside me, and when I looked at her I would know that she was pleased with me, that she liked being with me, and that it would be quite possible for Veronica and me to be great friends once she’d transferred her lusts to Stretch.     “Here I go!” I announced through clenched teeth. I pushed myself out onto the floor. Porky White turned out to be right; everything happened just as I had imagined it would.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” “Call Me Larry,” and “The Young Tars,” the nine novellas in Little Follies, and Little Follies itself, which will give you all the novellas in one handy package.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

     Veronica put her skates on and rolled out onto the floor of the rink. She looked just terrific, skating around the rink as if she were the only one on it, and to my eyes she was. I couldn’t really imagine why she was taking lessons. What could any lessons teach her beyond the things she was doing already? She wore a tiny skater’s dress that hugged her at the top but had a skirt that flew outward whenever she turned, displaying her legs and her panties. I tried to maintain an appearance of detached interest in the sport without betraying the uneasy feeling I got each time Veronica skated backwards past us with her little skirt flipped up over her little bottom. As she skated, I began to understand what Porky had meant when he had said that she was quite a little number, and I began to understand that Veronica was growing up in a way that I wasn’t. At the same time, I became more and more convinced that I would be able to acquit myself quite well when I went out onto the rink. I began to wonder why I had ever worried about being able to skate. Watching Veronica, I could see that it was so much easier than I had imagined, and it was clearly lots of fun, such a delight to zip around like that, to whirl, to spin, to glide along with one leg stretched out in the air behind you. I was going to have a ball.     Then Veronica’s teacher arrived. As soon as I saw him, I knew that he was Jack, the Jack who had been forced to hide in the storage area under the eaves in Veronica’s parents’ bedroom. It took a moment longer for me to recognize that he must be Stretch Mitgang’s older brother. I couldn’t have estimated his age then, but I would guess now that he was twenty-two. He had jet black hair, heavy eyebrows, a clear and piercing gaze, a craggy jaw, a heartwarming smile, and straight teeth. Just watching him glide across the rink made me feel confident; surely Jack must have taught Stretch to skate.     Mrs. McCall put her hand on my knee. “Oh, here’s Jack,” she breathed. “Hi, Jack!” she called out. She waved at him with her other hand, and squeezed my knee so hard that I turned toward her with some alarm, wondering what I had done to upset her.     “Isn’t he cute?” she whispered to me. He didn’t seem at all cute to me. After all, he was a grown man.     “He’s handsome,” I said. “Veronica’s cute.” I paused. Distractedly, I corrected myself. “She’s more than cute, if you know what I mean,” I said. “She’s quite a little number.”     Mrs. McCall looked at me. She seemed to be noticing me for the first time.     “Why, you’re right,” she said. “She is, isn’t she?” She looked out across the rink. For quite a while she said nothing, just watched Jack and Veronica. Jack swooped up behind Veronica and gave her a pat on the rump. Mrs. McCall muttered, “My God.”     For several minutes, we watched Jack and Veronica cavort around the rink. Jack would grasp Veronica between the legs, his large hand forming a seat for her, her tight nates settling into his palm, his fingers reaching up toward the small of her back. I thought that Mrs. McCall might pass out. She breathed in short, shallow draughts, and she had begun languidly to massage my knee, as if she were trying to make up for the pain she had inflicted earlier. At last Jack put Veronica down, and he began directing her through a series of slow, precise exercises. Mrs. McCall sighed and said, “I’m going outside for a cigarette. You want to come?”     “Sure,” I said.     When we reached the parking lot, Mrs. McCall took a package of Kools from her handbag, and asked, “Do you smoke?” Before I could speak she put a hand to her forehead and shook her head. “Of course you don’t smoke,” she said. “What am I thinking of? I must be losing my mind. You’re a little boy.” I looked at the ground. “Oh, I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. “Peter?” I looked up. She let a long stream of smoke out through her puckered lips. She took another long pull at her cigarette and let the smoke out. “You’re very—advanced—for your age,” she said.     “Well, I read a lot,” I said.     She smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “So you think Veronica is quite a little number, do you?”     “Yes,” I said. I felt my ears redden.     “And Jack is handsome,” she added.     “Right,” I said.     “What about me?” she asked. She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head, waiting for an answer.     I knew the answer, if only by imitation. It was a statement that had shocked me when I heard my mother repeat it one Sunday morning at breakfast. She and my father had gone to a party, some couple’s anniversary party, the night before, and my mother was in an effervescent mood that Sunday morning. She actually danced around the kitchen while she made breakfast, humming and singing, and she recounted the entire evening, while my father stared at the paper and drank his coffee and I watched and listened wide-eyed and open-mouthed. I caught my mother’s delight in the memory of the evening before, the dancing, the toast with real champagne, the canapés, the high spirits, the flirting, and though I was shocked I was also proud and pleased when she repeated, giggling, what a man, some other woman’s husband, had said to her.     “You look sexy in that sweater.”     Mrs. McCall choked and burst out laughing. “Oh, thank you, Peter,” she said.     It was the truth. She was, I guess, about thirty-five at the time. She had dark hair and large, bright eyes. She was voluptuous. Her lips were full, and she used a bright red shade of lipstick. She had large breasts, a rounded belly, wide hips, and a lively bottom that could have been the inspiration for the tight skirts that came into fashion a year or two later. The sweater she was wearing, a white cardigan, very snug, with the top buttons open to display her cleavage, did make her look sexy. It was the truth, but I didn’t understand why it was the truth; my notion of sexy went no further than the décolletage of the sweater. I had no appreciation of what the décolletage was designed to inspire, what ultimately it was intended to offer. I wished that I had said nothing. I wished that my mother had said nothing. I wished that I could go home.     Veronica called to me. She was standing in the doorway of the plywood entry. Jack stood behind her with a hand on her shoulder.     “Come on, Peter,” she said. “We can practice together.”

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” “Call Me Larry,” and “The Young Tars,” the nine novellas in Little Follies, and Little Follies itself, which will give you all the novellas in one handy package.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

14

VERONICA’S ROLLER-SKATING LESSONS were held at a big, drafty indoor rink, a Quonset hut made of corrugated metal. The metal had rusted in spots, and from these spots brown and orange streaks ran down the corrugations. The parking lot was mostly mud, with a clamshell island here and there, and Veronica’s mother cursed under her breath as the car pitched across the lot, tossed like a boat on a day when the bay was choppy. The entrance was a plywood shed stuck onto one end of the metal building. Over it was a sign that had once been brightly painted in red and yellow. The paint had faded and peeled, so that the appearance of the sign belied its claim:

               FUNTIME ROLLER RINK

     The door was loose on its hinges. The girl at the ticket counter was chewing gum and reading a comic book. Veronica’s mother passed a card to the girl, and the girl cut a notch out of it with a conductor’s punch. Then she looked at me. I had brought ninety-five cents with me. Neither my mother nor I had had any idea what it would cost me to rent skates and skate for a while with Veronica, so my mother had told me to call and ask. I hadn’t wanted to do that, for a reason that persists to this day: I don’t want to appear to be ignorant of the ways of the establishment I’m patronizing. I dislike calling a restaurant, for example, to ask whether they will accept a personal check as payment for a meal. If the answer is yes, I become convinced that when I write out my check at the restaurant, the waiter is sure to say, in a voice that carries to the dimmest and most intimate corners, “Say, I’ll bet you’re the guy who called this afternoon to ask whether we take personal checks, aren’t you?” And if the answer is no, then I’m sure that when I pay with cash or a credit card, something in the way I handle the money or the rapidity with which I produce the card will bring on that booming voice anyway. So, rather than call the Funtime Rink to make the inquiries myself, I got Raskolnikov to call for me. Armed with the information that he procured, I was able to push my ninety-five cents at the girl with some confidence, bothered only by the small fear, which I have never outgrown, that between the time I have learned what to do at the establishment and the time when I actually walk through the door, all the rules will have changed; if I attempt to pay the restaurant bill in cash, the waiter will look at me with shock and embarrassment and whisper, “I’m sorry, sir, but we no longer accept American money.”    “What is this for?” asked the girl.     “Rent skates,” I said. “And skate for an hour.”     “Oh, that’s just right,” she said. “It comes to ninety-five cents.”     “Yeah, I know,” I said, relieved, pretending a familiarity with roller-skating that I did not have, hoping that the girl would assume that I frequented other, larger, more glamorous roller-skating rinks and was, therefore, familiar with the going rates.     “Oh, you must be Peter!” said the girl, clearly not deceived. “Your uncle called this morning to find out how much it was going to ‘set you back’ to go skating here.”     “My uncle,” I said, trying to smile.     “Yes, he told me it was your first time skating, and you wanted to impress your girlfriend, and he wanted to make sure you had a good time. Is Veronica your girlfriend? Veronica’s a really good skater. Is she going to teach you? I’m sure she can teach you a lot.”     “I really just need practice,” I said, weakly. I started for the door that led inside.     “How did your uncle get that nickname, Rascal?” the girl asked.     “Oh, it’s a long story,” I said. I kept on walking.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” “Call Me Larry,” and “The Young Tars,” the nine novellas in Little Follies, and Little Follies itself, which will give you all the novellas in one handy package.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

13

“HEY, you made the right decision,” Porky told me. “You’re going to have a great time.” I had told him that I had invited Veronica to the skating party and that I didn’t know how to skate. I had not told him that the skating party was part of a plan to swap Veronica for a model airplane. Porky punched my shoulder in the good-natured way that men do when they’re going to start talking about sex. “Do you know what those roller-skating parties are like?” he asked me.     “No,” I admitted.     “Everybody meets at the high school,” he said. “You ride to the roller rink in a school bus, and everyone sings songs and tells jokes and has a wonderful time. In the back of the bus, they might do a little (he made the motions of puffing on a cigarette), a little (he made his hand into a fist and made the motion of drinking from his thumb), a little (he hugged himself and twisted from side to side). Then, at the rink, you skate and skate, and you take breaks for Cokes, and sometimes you walk out to the parking lot for some air, and a little (he made the motions of puffing on a cigarette), a little (he made his hand into a fist and made the motion of drinking from his thumb), a little (he hugged himself and twisted from side to side), and then you skate some more. You can have a hot dog or another Coke. Then everybody gets onto the bus again, and you ride back to the high school. This time, if the kids on the bus take care of the bus driver, he might take the long way home. You know,” said Porky, wearing an odd grin. “I’m going to be driving one of the buses to the roller rink and back. It might be arranged for me to take the long way home.”     I had a good idea what he meant. How? How did I know anything about taking the long way home? It was in the air. Just as a house, especially an old house, has an ambient odor that is only temporarily disturbed by a chowder simmering on the stove or a chicken roasting in the oven and soon returns to its more or less constant composition, of which we, the inhabitants of the house, are ordinarily unaware, noticing it only when we have been away for some time and return and inhale the comfortable odor of home, so a community, especially an old and established community, has an ambient Weltanschauung that may be temporarily disturbed by the arrival of outsiders or by the ideas in an influential book, but eventually returns to its more or less stable composition, of which we, the residents, may be unaware until we have been away and return and hear in a conversation the comforting ideas that were in the air around us when we were at home. One of the ideas in the air when I was a boy was the idea of taking the long way home. It was enough in the air so that I knew approximately what it was about.     I didn’t say anything in response to Porky’s suggestion. I just laughed. He winked and poked me in the side. I confided to him my fears that I might make a fool of myself when I tried to skate.     “Don’t worry about it, Peter,” said Porky. “It’s like anything else: if you convince yourself you can do it, you can do it.”     “You can?” I asked. I was young, but not so young that Porky’s statement didn’t strike me as preposterous. And yet, so strong within me was the irrational hope that he might somehow be right, that all it would take for me to turn in a creditable performance on roller skates was my convincing myself that I could do it, that I was poised for conversion, eager to believe Porky if he could provide even the flimsiest reason for my doing so.     “The thing to do,” Porky said, “is to imagine yourself doing what you’re going to try to do. You close your eyes and picture in your mind what you’re going to do. You picture every detail, from the first moment when your wheels hit the floor to the last spectacular spin and the applause of the crowd, and then when you really start to do it, when you glide onto the floor, you’ll feel as if you’ve already done all of this before, so it won’t be such a big deal anymore. You won’t be nervous at all. I do it all the time.”     I sat up straight. This was it. He was going to give me the evidence.     “Say I’m bowling, and I’ve left myself a tough split. I just take a few seconds to close my eyes and imagine myself making the split. I feel the ball in my hand. In my mind, I start my approach. I can feel the whole thing—my feet sliding toward the foul line, the release—and I can see the pins standing there, the ball rolling toward them, the hook, the way that it strikes the pin just right, the pin kicking across and striking the other. Then I’m ready. A calm spreads through me the way the smell of dinner spreads through a house. I’m ready. I think I can do it, so I can do it.”     It was a raw and drizzly afternoon. Porky and I were sitting in Bus Six, waiting for school to get out. Joy rushed through me. I believed Porky. I knew from the testimony of many people, including my father and Porky’s father, that Porky was a great bowler. If he had tried to convince me that this I-think-I-can technique had won him the love of beautiful women, I would have known that it didn’t work, but bowling was quite another story. It was easy for me to believe that it worked for bowling. And bowling, after all, was a lot like roller-skating.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” “Call Me Larry,” and “The Young Tars,” the nine novellas in Little Follies, and Little Follies itself, which will give you all the novellas in one handy package.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

12

VERONICA AND STRETCH began spending some time together, but they didn’t seem to be making much progress. Veronica seemed, now that she was getting a closer look, not to see anything attractive in Stretch. I was close to giving up, letting Veronica rob me of my childhood, of my innocence, resigning myself to spending my money on dates and never being able to set enough aside for a model airplane with a real gas engine, when I saw the poster for the roller-skating party. The whole plan came to me at once. I would invite Veronica to the skating party. She would be delighted, flattered, and thrilled. Not only was the roller-skating party likely to be appealing to Veronica for itself, but this was a high-school roller-skating party, sponsored by the junior class to help raise money for the traditional junior class barge for the annual Babbington Clam Fest. Veronica was sure to consider it, as I did, a sophisticated event. I would fall ill on the day of the party. I’d ask Stretch to escort her. At the party, Veronica would fall in love with Stretch and drop me like a hot potato. I would be able to buy the model airplane.     I saw Veronica next in the cafeteria, where she was buying her lunch. She slid her tray along the shelf formed by stainless steel tubes and took a plate of a macaroni dish called American chop suey, a bowl of boiled green beans, and a bowl filled with cubes of green Jell-O. “Do you want to go to the high school roller-skating party?” I called out to her. Veronica stopped and spun around. Her eyes were wide with pleasure. Her mouth was open. Her Jell-O was quivering. She put her tray down on the rack and ran to me and took both of my hands in hers.     “Do you mean it?” she asked.     “Sure I mean it,” I said, with the confidence that a well-wrought scheme could give a boy my age at that time.     “I’ve always wanted to go to one of those skating parties,” she said. She hugged me, right there in the cafeteria, with everyone watching.     “Oh, Peter,” she said. “I can’t wait. I bet I can skate just as well as any of those big girls.”     “You can?” I asked, bemused. The idea of actually skating, it suddenly occurred to me, had not been part of my vision of the evening. As I had seen it, Veronica would be happy enough just to be there, to sit somewhere with Stretch and eat popcorn, drink root beer and orange soda, and watch the high school boys and girls perform intricate and fluid routines that had required most of their high school years to perfect.     “Just wait till you see me skate,” she said.     I looked at my hands, and since they looked awkward just hanging there at the ends of my arms, I began wringing them. I was worried that perhaps Stretch couldn’t skate. If in fact he couldn’t skate, Veronica wouldn’t be likely to fall in love with him at the skating party.     “Oh, no,” said Veronica.     “What?” I asked. She looked concerned.     “You can’t skate, can you?”     I nearly told her that it didn’t matter whether I could skate or not, but I thought better of it in time. I doubt that pride would have allowed me to admit that I couldn’t skate anyway.     “Well,” I said, “It isn’t that I can’t roller-skate. It’s just that I’m—I’m a little rusty.”     I risked looking her in the face. There were signs that she might smile, that all might be well, if I could just say the right thing now.     “But it’s like riding a bicycle or doing multiplication,” I said. “It comes right back to you. I just need some practice. Of course, I won’t be as good as you are, but I’ll bet we’ll look pretty good together.”     Her face had lit up, and she gave me a quick hug. “We can practice together!” she said. She began to hop up and down. “I’ll get my mother to let you come along to one of my lessons. After my lesson is over, you and I can practice together for a while.”     “That would be great,” I said. To preserve the illusion that I would be taking her to the skating party, I was going to have to practice with her. I felt the sinking feeling that I have always felt when I know that I am getting myself in over my head, but I felt at the same time the other emotion that accompanies my diving into the dark waters of overreaching: an intoxicating self-confidence, all the more intoxicating because it is groundless. After all, since I had never roller-skated before, I had no reason to believe that I was not a roller-skating prodigy, awaiting only the sensations that would rush through me when the wheels of my skates first touched the floor to unlock the grace and power that lay within me.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” “Call Me Larry,” and “The Young Tars,” the nine novellas in Little Follies, and Little Follies itself, which will give you all the novellas in one handy package.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

10

I MAY SPEND a good deal of time in confused indecision about what I ought to do next, but when I have at last seen which way is the right way, I run right along it. The next day, in the cafeteria, when Stretch Mitgang passed Veronica and me, I asked her, “Why does he wink at you like that?”     “Did he wink at me?” she asked. She smiled and looked in Stretch’s direction; then she turned quickly back toward me and twisted the smile into a scowl.     “Yes,” I said. “He winked at you.”     “He’s probably just being friendly, or he’s teasing,” said Veronica.     “Oh, no,” I said. “It’s more than that. He thinks you’re quite a little number.”     “Do you think so?” asked Veronica. The smile returned.

11

“STRETCH! WAIT UP!” I called. I had overheard our teacher, Mrs. Collingswood, talking with Stretch about his work. I knew that he was having a difficult time with everything, but that he was particularly bad at arithmetic. He looked morose.     “Stretch, I’ve got an idea for you,” I said.     “Yeah?” he asked. He still looked morose, but his eyes flickered with a small hope.     “Yeah,” I said. “I think you ought to study with someone and do your homework with someone. If you do that, it will help you keep your mind on your work.”     “I do have trouble with that,” he said. “Are you going to work with me?”     “I’m afraid I can’t,” I said. “I’m too busy with my paper route. I was thinking of Veronica.”     “Veronica?”     “Sure,” I said. “That way, you’ll be doing both of us a favor: me and you. You’ll do better in arithmetic, and you’ll be able to keep an eye on Veronica for me. See, I don’t get to spend much time with her now that I have my paper route. I’m getting a little worried that some other mule might start kicking in my stall, you know what I mean?”     “No,” he said.     “Never mind,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. Just try studying with Veronica and see if it helps.”     “All right,” he said. “I can ask her the problems and she can give me the answers.”    “I think she should ask you the problems instead, and you should figure out the answers,” I said.     “How come?” he asked.     “Because she’s better at arithmetic than you are,” I said. “You’re the one who needs practice.”     He expelled one sharp laugh. “That’s a joke, right?” he asked.     “A joke?”     “Yeah. Say—you’re not making fun of me, are you?”     “Oh,” I said, “now I see what you mean. You mean, what’s the sense of Veronica asking you the problems if you don’t know the answers? Is that it?”     “Yeah, that’s right.”     “You and Veronica are going to get along really well, Stretch,” I said. In a corner of my mind, I did a little further development work on my vague hunch about the contributions of Frankie Paretti’s parents to the vacant look that Frankie wore and arrived at a more coherent theory, a theory that allowed me to predict that Veronica and Stretch would be likely, if they were to have a child some day, to have one about as bright as Frankie, a theory that was to be confirmed several years later, during a high school biology class devoted to the work of Gregor Mendel.     “Would you do me a favor when you go to Veronica’s?” I asked.     “What?” asked Stretch.     “I was going to get Veronica some flowers, but I don’t have time now. It’s already late for me to be starting my route. Here’s a dollar. Stop at Anderson’s on the way to Veronica’s and get whatever you think she’ll like, okay?”

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” “Call Me Larry,” and “The Young Tars,” the nine novellas in Little Follies, and Little Follies itself, which will give you all the novellas in one handy package.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.

     I began giving outstanding service, or the illusion of outstanding service, every payday and on any other day when an opportunity presented itself. On rainy days, I rolled the newspapers in wax paper. I learned to ask about customers’ children, grandchildren, pets, arthritis, or whatever else interested them. I often apologized for the paper itself, anticipating the complaints of the customers that an issue was too thin, that the news on the front page was all bad, or that three words had been misspelled in a single headline, and I offered to knock a penny off the price of such defective issues and absorb the loss myself on the grounds that it embarrassed me to charge full price for “a rag like this.”    On one occasion, inspired beyond anything I’d done before, I tore the front page of one copy and put it at the front of the stack in my canvas bag. At each customer’s door, I would pull the torn copy from the bag and say, “Oops, can’t give you this one,” then add, with a wink, “I’ll have to give that one to somebody else.” They loved it. Of course, when I got to my last customer, Mrs. Blynman, I had no other copy for her. To Mrs. Blynman I said, “I can’t give you this. It’s torn. I’m going to ride my bike downtown to the Reporter printing plant and get you a fresh copy.”     Mrs. Blynman didn’t say anything. I started down the walk. Suddenly I turned and ran back to her door.     “Oh,” I said. “Before I go, could you call my mother and tell her I might not get home for dinner, Mrs. Blynman?” I asked.     Mrs. Blynman said she would. Again I started down the walk. Again I turned suddenly and ran back to her door.     “And ask her to save me a piece of her birthday cake, would you please?” I said. Mrs. Blynman swallowed hard, insisted on taking the torn copy of the Reporter, and pressed a dollar bill into my hand.     I collected on Thursdays. Each Thursday afternoon, when I got home, I would spread the money out on my bed and count it. I kept a ledger, and I also made a graph that showed how much profit I had made each week. On a slip of paper in the back of the ledger, I calculated how long it would be before I had enough money to take Veronica on a date. I paid Mr. Creeley with the change and with the oldest, dirtiest bills, and I kept the newest, crispest ones for myself. On occasion, when my mother was ironing, I would get my capital out and press it. It was on one of these occasions, while I was ironing my money, that the thought ran through my mind that I had enough to buy a model plane kit with a real gas engine.     How strange it is that one’s mind works independently of one’s efforts to direct it, that the solution to a knotty problem eludes one through hours of concentrated effort and then appears unbidden but certainly welcome while one is running to the dock with the last of the trash cans, hoping that the trash boat will wait. Only when the image of the model plane kit appeared in my mind did I understand that I would rather have a model plane than go on dates with Veronica McCall, and the question returned: “How am I going to get out of this?”      The next morning, while my classmates and I were seated in our classroom, holding manila cards with new schedules on them, puzzling through the schedule and Mr. Simone’s explanation of it, the door opened, and into the classroom walked Stretch Mitgang, the boy who had won at Simon Says on the first day of school, the boy who hadn’t been certain about whether he should stand or sit. He stopped just inside the door and surveyed us. From his bravado, the defiant way he chewed his gum, his slouch, the way he hooked his thumbs in his pockets, I understood why he had come into our classroom. He had been sent back, thrown out of the sixth grade. From the way his eyes rested on Veronica and the way she turned abruptly away from him and tossed her hair, the way she pouted and pretended not to have seen him at all, I understood that Stretch might be the answer.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

* You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

* You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

* You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

* At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” “Call Me Larry,” and “The Young Tars,” the nine novellas in Little Follies, and Little Follies itself, which will give you all the novellas in one handy package.

* You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.