Brokenhearted in Bakersfield

 

35 - BIRTH OF A BIRTHRIGHT

I retired to my childhood room over the garage.  After spending the night in my old bunkbed, I tied the tasseled belt on the rainbow-colored robe and headed back over to the main house.

I noticed I was feeling kind of queasy, and attributed my indisposition to a lack of solid food.  Or maybe it was a lingering case of gas.  Either way, I decided to investigate my way to Auntie’s kitchen and get some food.  While I wandered around the house, I stumbled upon Lars worrying himself among the countless bottles of booze behind the wet bar that stretched the full length of the living room.  He didn’t notice me watching as he sang to himself and mixed Aunt Fanny’s cocktail.  He laughed as he poured a tiny drop of vermouth into the huge enema bag.

Without saying a word I backed out of the room and resumed my mission to find something to eat.  This was not as easy as you might suspect, since I’d never been allowed in Aunt Fanny’s kitchen before.  During my boyhood days, owing to the initials-carving incident, Auntie was afraid of the damage a rambunctious boy like myself might do.  So my movements was strictly monitored.  I was mostly confined to my room over the garage, where a previous Lars delivered my meals on trays.  Once in a while Lars would bring me into the big house to spend time with Auntie.  Back then she was actually able to get up and move around a little, and sometimes we’d meet in the living room or sometimes her bedroom.  Usually my visits was restricted to out back on the patio where the furniture was made of cast iron.

Finally I found the kitchen and stood there in gaped-mouth wonder.  This kitchen was bigger’n most trailers I ever been in.  You could almost get lost in here.  I had to open door after door and drawer after drawer until I found the fixings for a fried egg sandwich.  Even more lucky, I found a bunch of frosty cold ones to wash it down with.

While I sat eating my sandwich, Lars swanned his way into the kitchen and tossed an empty gin bottle into the trashcan.  “Jour Auntie chur as chit loves da boost,” Lars said.  “Chee be out for hours now.”  His sly smile made me uncomfortable.

“Good God,” I shuddered.  “How can you do that?  For God’s sake, she’s so goddamn old.”

“I tink chee turn 112 years ol las May,” Lars grinned.  “Eets nah so bad.  Where else can jou make two gran a week an live dis good, meester boy?”

“Holy crap,” I gasped.  “She pays you two thou’ a week?”

“Jess!  Jour Auntie pays top Yanqui dollar to Lars.  Always.  Da udder Larses, dey had more work to do dan me, but dat part of her life eez ober.  All chee want now is da irrigation don tree or four times a day.  Chee tink eet keep her alive.  An eet makes da ol lady sooo hoppy.”

I was so jealous.  “Where does she get the cash to pay for a private assistant like you?”

“Cheezus, dun jou know?  Cheez rich!  Jour Auntie owns da controlling chairs of Ulele Natural Gas.”

I knew she’d been holding out on me about being a movie star, but now I was finding out there was something else my Auntie never told me.  Feeling even more betrayed, I shouted, “What chairs?”

“No, no,” Lars waved his hands.  “Chairs!  Chee owns da controlling chairs.  Jour Auntie toll me chee was almos broke when dis guy chee knows is keeled inna pool an chee gets dis house and all da land zat has da gas unner eet.”

Inside I could feel my surging rage like emotional lava, ready to erupt.  All these years and that old hag never gave me a damn dime.  I thought of all the mornings I have been waking up under a rented trailer when I could have outright owned one.  All the cheating and conniving I was forced to do, and the scheming and juggling just to survive, when it wasn’t necessary.  It about broke my heart just to think of all the energy I wasted that I could have spent talent scouting at The Stardust.  It was more than this boy could bear.

I ordered Aunt Fanny’s manservant to go get me some street clothes.  I had to get out of El Casa Grande and do some heavy thinking.  Alone.

Lars slinked away.  I barely had a chance to take another mouthful before he came prancing back.

“Deez eez from my fatty side of da closet.”

Slipping on the Armani dress shirt and slacks he offered me, I couldn’t help but notice how much taller I was than Lars.  The itchy wool pants crawled up my ankles and caught about my calf like sausage casings.  Catching a glimpse in the reflective chrome refrigerator, I could see they was oddly baggy in the front.

Lars looked me up and down critically, “Cheezus, jou dun do nuttin for dem, do jou?”

“Oh shut up,” I turned my back and zipped up the fly.

“I’m going out for a couple hours,” I declared.  “If my Auntie wakes up, don’t give her any more gin, you hear me?  Top or bottom.  I’m going to have a talk with her.  But for right now, I gotta do some thinking.”

I slammed the door behind me.  I needed to get away and think calm and hard about my birthright.  A cold beer would have tasted great, but I realized coffee was better at greasing up the old gray matter.  I went looking for a hot cuppa joe.

A few blocks away, shining like a lighthouse in the desert, was an old-fashioned railroad car converted and outfitted into a family-style diner.  The strong aroma of hot coffee cut through the odor of natural gas.  I was drawn though the swinging doors into chrome and Formica opulence.

I threw one leg over a stool at the counter as I ogled the cutie-pie waitress in a pink uniform.  She grabbed a pencil from her shellacked and piled-high hair and pulled a pad from the pocket of her apron.

“What’chu have in mind?” she asked.

“Coffee and a slab of punken pie,” I winked.

“Outta punken,” she pointed to a glass case with her pencil.  “Just banana cream or lemon meringue.”

“What d’ya recommend?”

“They both taste like paste.  Only one’s got cream, the other’s got meringue.”

She splashed coffee in a cup and slid it my way.

“Okay, gimme the paste with the whipped cream.”

She leaned over the counter and the issue of money reared its ugly head, “You sure you can pay for this?”

I suddenly remembered I was wearing someone else’s pants.  I reached into my front pockets and fished out what I can only call my lucky $20.  Lars must have forgotten to empty his pockets.  I slammed the bill on the counter.  “And make it a big slab.”