Bingo Brown and the Language of Love Page 8

  Bingo said in a loud voice, “Stealing people’s mail is a criminal offense.”

  At that Wentworth spun around. He had the grace to look momentarily embarrassed.

  “This isn’t mail.”

  “It was in my mailbox.”

  “It still isn’t mail—no stamp.”

  Wentworth turned the envelope around so Bingo could see for himself.

  “If it’s in the mailbox, it’s mail,” Bingo said coldly. In a lightning-quick gesture he whipped the envelope from Wentworth’s fingers and went into the house.

  Wentworth opened the door and started to follow, but Bingo gave him a cool glance and a quick raise of the new eyebrow. Wentworth stopped in place.

  “Look,” Wentworth explained. “That girl. Remember?” He swallowed and said hoarsely, “Cici? Well, I saw her over here, putting a letter in your mailbox, all right? And I thought maybe she’d got our houses mixed up and the letter was for me. I just wanted to make absolutely sure the letter was for you instead of me.”

  “All right, you’ve made absolutely sure.” Bingo looked at the envelope. He took a long time to read his own name. “Mr. Bingo Brown. Yes, I believe that’s me.”

  “What does the letter say?”

  “Well, I would have to open it to find that out, wouldn’t I?”

  Bingo slid the envelope into his back pocket with a deliberate motion.

  Wentworth swallowed again. Bingo thought he was working up the strength to say the emotion-filled word “Cici” again, but Wentworth was getting ready to come up with an even harder word, one Bingo was not aware was part of Wentworth’s vocabulary.

  “Please.”

  Bingo looked at Billy Wentworth while time ticked away. Then, like an actor, still looking into Wentworth’s rapidly blinking eyes, Bingo reached into his back pocket.

  Wentworth tried to move closer to Bingo so they could read the letter together, but with a quick lift of the black-belt eyebrow, Bingo stopped him.

  He opened the envelope slowly. “From the desk of Cici,” he read.

  He read the next few lines to himself.

  “Would you mind reading it aloud, please,” Billy Wentworth said.

  Bingo read:

  “Dear Bingo,

  I know now that you got Melissa’s letter! The reason I know is because, like, she got yours!

  She freaked out at me for writing you, and she told me she didn’t want to be my best friend anymore. She goes, ‘With a best friend like you, I don’t need any enemies!’”

  Bingo paused, and Billy Wentworth made a rolling gesture with his hand, indicating he would like to hear more.

  “I doubt if it gets any better,” Bingo said, “but if you want to hear it …” He shrugged and read on.

  “Please write Melissa! Tell her nothing happened between us.

  If you want to talk to me about this, you can come over to my house right away. I will be waiting! Or you can call me at the number below!

  Sincerely (and hopefully),

  Cici”

  “What does this mean?” Wentworth pointed with one dirty finger to the line, “Tell her nothing happened between us.”

  “It means for me to tell Melissa that nothing happened between us.”

  “And did anything happen between you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Positive.”

  “Could I read the letter for myself?”

  “Why would you want to?”

  “I don’t know. I just do.”

  Bingo handed over the letter, and Billy Wentworth read it, word by word. “She uses little hearts to dot the i’s in her name,” he said.

  “I saw that.”

  Billy Wentworth looked up. Bingo thought of the way Pepe Le Pew looks in cartoons when he falls in love with a lady skunk. Hearts actually radiate out of his eyes. That was the pitiable way Wentworth looked now.

  “So are you going?” Wentworth asked.

  “Where?”

  “Over to her house.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to.”

  “Can I go in your place?”

  “What for?”

  “To, you know, let her know you’re not coming.”

  “Do whatever you like. Good-bye, Wentworth.”

  With that, Bingo turned on his heels and went directly to his room. He reached under his bed for his notebook. He turned to a new page. He began to write.

  Trials of Today

  (minor)

  Triumphs of Today

  (major!)

  1. I no longer fear Wentworth.

  2. I have created a black-belt eyebrow that will take me far.

  3. I may have a cameo television appearance on the six o’clock news.

  4. I have felt a baby’s touch.

  5. I am at last putting childhood behind me.

  With five good solid Triumphs to his credit, he decided to start a new category.

  Goals for Tomorrow

  1. Becoming a man.

  Play It Again, Bingo

  BINGO WAS SITTING ON the edge of the sofa cushion, watching the evening news. He was waiting for the electric moment when his face would—or perhaps mercifully would not—appear on the screen. Outside, a lawn mower droned as Billy Wentworth moved back and forth across the grass.

  The announcer said, “On the local scene …”

  With his thumbs, Bingo pressed the tape buttons on the VCR remote control. The tape began to roll with a hum. Bingo’s heart speeded up.

  “… members of CUT!—Clean Up Townsville!—today picketed a local convenience store on—”

  At that moment a knock came at the front door.

  “I’m busy!” Bingo called without taking his eyes from the TV screen.

  Another knock.

  “Wentworth, if that’s you—”

  “It’s not. It’s me, Cici.”

  “Well, I can’t talk now. I’m on TV.”

  “Oh, Bingo, where? Let me see.”

  Before Bingo could stop her, Cici was inside the house. She stood, back against the door, her hands clasped beneath her chin.

  Her attitude was so prayerful that Bingo didn’t have the heart to make her back out onto the porch and watch his TV appearance through the screen.

  They watched in silence. Then Bingo gasped. “That’s me. Right there, behind the Clean Air sign!”

  “I recognize your hands!”

  “Thank you.”

  “And the top of your head! That’s the top of your head!”

  “My grandmother’s in the Smut T-shirt. I made that for her.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that was your grandmother. Bingo, the announcer’s going to ask your grandmother a question! Your grandmother’s going to be on TV! She’s—”

  He cut off her piercing voice with a gesture he had learned from Billy Wentworth.

  In the silence that followed, his grandmother said she was proud that the people of Townsville supported the picketing and she was especially proud “that some of our fine young people are supporting us, too.”

  Here she placed one hand on the top of Bingo’s head.

  “What’s next for CUT!?” the announcer asked.

  “For far too long,” his grandmother said sternly, “local residents have been dumping waste material into Bohicket Creek. It’s become a joke. CUT! intends to turn Bohicket Creek into the garden spot of the county.”

  There was applause from the group, one last shot of the infamous convenience store, and the scene faded away.

  “Area dairy farmers,” the announcer continued, “are becoming increasingly concerned about the drought, and here’s Chuck Wertz, our weatherman, to tell us if there’s any relief in sight. Chuck?”

  Bingo pressed the stop button on the VCR, and Cici blinked her eyes rapidly.

  Bingo recognized that Cici was thinking, probably trying to remember why she had come over.

&nb
sp; As Bingo waited, he remembered with a pang how thrilling it had been to watch Melissa think. When Melissa thought, she lifted her head. That was it. But when she lifted her head—and Bingo knew she didn’t do this on purpose; if she’d done it on purpose it wouldn’t have been nearly as thrilling—when she lifted her head, it made Bingo think that some low-minded opportunist, like himself, could catch her by surprise and press his lips against—

  “Why are your eyes closed?” Cici asked.

  “They weren’t.”

  “Yes, they were, and you were leaning forward like you were getting ready to—”

  “I was not!”

  “—pass out,” she finished.

  Bingo took a deep breath. “I did feel a little woozy,” he admitted.

  There was a knock at the door. “Anybody home?” Wentworth asked innocently. He opened the door and came in the living room. His shorts, combat boots, and naked skin were flecked with sweat and grass clippings.

  “Hi, Cici,” he said. He took off his wraparound dark glasses.

  “Hi,” Cici said without enthusiasm.

  “What are you guys up to?”

  “Nothing, we were just watching Bingo on TV,” Cici said.

  “What was the Worm Brain doing on TV?”

  Bingo realized suddenly that Billy Wentworth was the only boy he knew who sweated like a man. Bingo knew too that Wentworth did not—and probably never would—use deodorant. He knew this for a fact.

  “Enemy attack dogs,” Wentworth had told the class once last year. It was an assignment on little-known facts. Bingo could see him now, standing at parade rest, announcing in the voice of a sergeant, “Enemy attack dogs have keen senses of smell and are trained to seek out and attack Right Guard, Brut, Arrid Extra Dry, Mennon’s Stick, and Five-Day Underarm Deodorant Pads.”

  This was such a little-known fact that even their teacher, Mr. Mark, had not heard of it. “Where do you come up with these things, Billy?”

  “Training manuals.”

  The class had sat in awed silence, with their arms pressed tightly at their sides. On his way back to his seat, Wentworth told them, “So don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Bingo now felt he had to somehow get it across to Wentworth that before you could even attempt the language of love, you had to smell worthy of it. Bingo felt he was up to this task now that he had the eyebrow for it.

  Billy Wentworth stepped closer to Cici. He said, “I was going to come over to your house later.”

  “What for?” Cici asked, blinking her eyes.

  “To tell you Bingo wasn’t coming over, but now that you’re here, I can tell you now. Bingo’s not coming over.”

  Cici stepped closer to Bingo and said, “Let’s see it again, please.”

  “Well, all right.” Bingo rewound the tape. “Though you really couldn’t see much of me.”

  “I could,” Cici said. “I saw both your hands and the top of your head.”

  “I wasn’t sure both my hands were on …”

  “Play it again, Bingo,” Cici said.

  “Well, all right.” Bingo pressed the play button and waited, eyes on the screen, for the group in front of the convenience store to appear. He turned off the sound and began his own commentary. “That’s me … behind the Clean Air sign … that’s my right hand, but you can only see two fingers of my—”

  “Wait,” Cici said. Then in a different, deeper voice, she cried, “Oh, Bingo, look! There’s a little baby’s hand on your shoulder. A tiny little baby is patting you.”

  Cici was so moved by this that she threw one arm around Bingo’s neck and began to jump up and down.

  The suddenness and violence of the attack—there could be no other word for it—made Bingo feel he was the helpless victim of a force of nature, a tornado or an earthquake or one of those baboons that kill their mates by twisting off their heads.

  His desperate thoughts were interrupted by his mother’s voice. She spoke coolly from the doorway.

  “And just what is going on here?”

  Bingo’s Father-Mother

  “I DON’T KNOW HOW these things happen to me!” Bingo cried as soon as Wentworth and Cici had left. “Mom, I have a very simple, sometimes a pitifully simple life. Sometimes it’s even as if I’m the victim of life, and then—and this always happens just before you appear—some sort of cruel twist of fate occurs, and I seem to be doing something I am not doing, something I have no intention of doing, something I would never do in my own living room. I know exactly what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I invited this girl over, aren’t you? You’re thinking I called her up and said, ‘Look, my mom is pregnant and has walked out on me and my dad, so this would be a good time for you to come over. We can have the house to ourselves.’ Is that what you think of me? Because if that’s what you think of me, then I want you to say, ‘Yes, that’s what I think of you, Bingo.’ And after that I’m going to go over to Grammy’s. You’re not the only one who can desert the family, you know.”

  “Are you through?” his mom said.

  “For the moment.”

  “You’re quite wrong, you know.”

  “About what?”

  “About what I think of you.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think you’re terrific.”

  “Huh!”

  “It’s true.”

  “Then why—tell me this—why did your eyes get very little when you looked at me? The answer is that your eyes always get very little when you look at something you don’t like. So when I see little eyes that means one thing. Mom does not like—”

  “Oh, Bingo, don’t let’s fight. I’m too happy to fight.”

  Bingo stopped in midsentence. “You’re happy?”

  “Yes.” She sat down on the sofa.

  “What about?”

  “Oh, the baby.”

  “I didn’t think you were happy about the baby. Otherwise, why would you run away from home?’!

  “I didn’t run away, Bingo. I went to spend some time with my mother. It always helps me to talk to Mom.”

  “It looked like running away.”

  “Well, anyway, I am very happy now. For once in my life, Bingo, everything is going to work out the way it should.”

  “It is?”

  “Look, here’s the situation. I love my job. Bingo, I can really sell real estate. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to have something I like to do and that I’m good at.”

  She breathed in some new air.

  “Your father has never liked his job. You are aware of that, aren’t you, Bingo?”

  Bingo nodded.

  “Selling insurance just isn’t what he should be doing. Your father’s a very sensitive and creative man. In college he always wanted to be a writer, and lately he’s started getting back to it. Your dad’s writing a novel, Bingo.”

  Bingo gasped. “Are you sure it’s a novel? It looked more like a short story to me.”

  “It’s a novel—sort of a funny crime novel. Anyway, after the baby comes, your dad can stay home and write. I can work.”

  “Does Dad know about this?”

  “Bingo, your dad suggested it himself! He will be a house husband, and—Oh, Bingo, it just made me appreciate him so much, and your little casserole made me appreciate you so much, and it made me feel that I was the only one in the family who wasn’t acting mature and terrific.”

  “Well, actually, I wasn’t going to say anything, but since you brought it up—”

  The phone rang then, stopping Bingo.

  “I’ll get it,” his mom said. Then, “They have accepted the offer? Wonderful! …Yes. … Well, I can pick you up right now. … Yes, I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”

  “Mom—”

  “I’ve got to wash my face and run, Bingo.”

  His mother went into the bathroom, and Bingo went directly into his parents’ room to the typewriter. He wanted to read his father’s novel. There were only six pages. Bingo got them in order.

 
“My father, Lewis,” Bingo read, “had five wives, but I was his only child, so it was up to me to bust him out of jail.”

  Was this a novel? Would anybody want to read a novel that started out like that?

  His mom had to be mistaken. He leafed through the pages until he came to the title page.

  “Bustin’ Lewis, a novel by Sam Brown.”

  Bingo heard his mother in the hall, and he dropped his father’s novel. “Mom?” he called quickly.

  She came to the bedroom door. “What is it?”

  “There’s something important I’ve got to ask you. I’ve been wondering about this ever since I heard about the baby.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Will the same doctor be delivering this baby that delivered me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Mom, when this baby pops out, if the doctor says, ‘Bingo’ again, he’s not naming the baby.”

  Breaking into a smile, she said, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “One Bingo is enough.”

  Still smiling, she said, “I don’t know about that.”

  “Mom!”

  “There’ll never be a Bingo Two.”

  She threw this over her shoulder as she went out onto the porch.

  The words and the bright way she said them caused Bingo’s face to flush, as if he were close to a warm fire.

  Later that evening an unflushed Bingo opened his journal. He wrote thoughtfully.

  Triumphs of Today

  1. Attaining the mainstream of life and, despite the unexpected strength of the current, not paddling in panic for shore.

  2. Accepting calmly the thought of having my father for my mother.

  3. Continuing to go over Bustin’ Lewis and realizing that if my father needs my help in his writing career, I will give it willingly and unselfishly.

  Trials of Today: none!

  The Mainstream of Bingo’s Life

  MELISSA’S LETTER WASN’T ON top of the mail this afternoon. It was sandwiched between two sweepstakes entries, so Bingo didn’t get it until after supper.

  “Letter!” his mother called, sailing it into his room as if it were a Frisbee. Since it was not a Frisbee, it only fluttered a few feet into the room.

  Bingo got up from the bed to retrieve it. Bingo’s mother was in a wonderful mood. In the past week she had sold a condo and had a contract on a Tudor split-level.