Did you know Niagara Falls was “pritty”?
Really?
How about majestic or powerful or even—Roger’s first word for it—gross? (“Gross” is going around as a popular slang term now to cover everything, a fad, and any fad Roger must be “on top of.”)
But “PRITTY”?
After four hours in the back seat with Uncle Jim driving (silent) and Aunt Irma watching the scenery (chirping) I was ready to scream if she claimed one more thing was pritty. With her way of saying it too, pretty was pretty awful.
Gross, indeed.
Roger didn’t seem to mind, he laughed at whatever she said.
“The rich are different”—one of the themes in The Great Gatsby we had to read in Senior English. And, of course, the teacher was quick to tell us Hemingway’s rejoinder, something like “Yes, Scott, they have more money.” Anyway, what I think, the more money you have the more money you spend down to the point where you feel as poor as anyone else.
Do you know how much a hot dog costs in New York City?!?
Well, Roger and I had both worked this last July, we both had about a hundred to spend (no, not on college tuition, not on new clothes to go away to college in)—first jobs and we thought for the first time in our lives we had money to spend however we wanted.
A trip to the World’s Fair in NYC!
The Park Sheraton Hotel!
A week to see the sites!
Decided when I found out my aunt and uncle were driving to visit their son and his wife in Pleasantville.
That’s commuter train distance from downtown Manhattan, that’s more money to spend though we’ll have to fly home, that’s a free place to stay the first night and more money to spend and a simple train ride and a hotel room and Greenwich Village and China Town and the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty and—
Oh yes, THE WORLD’S FAIR!
This uphill climb and dizzy, downward spiral exactly what it’s like to be rich.
Oh well, world, here we come!
Yes, Pleasantville was pritty, about as bland-happy as it sounds. And the little house my cousin lives in with his wife and his wife’s mother was pritty (if you like Hummel clocks, trivets, wall tiles, teapots as well as the multitude of fat-legged kids). Everything was pretty pritty except, to me, the warm German potato salad overdosed with vinegar. “Stewed chicken” that was tasty but didn’t seem much like chicken.
And then, surprise, Roger and I would get to sleep overnight in my cousin’s wife’s sister’s house since the sister and her family were away on vacation. The house was a “split-level,” modern, “very roomy,” and less than a mile’s drive. Less than a mile away from the train station too, and the train that would take us into the city tomorrow.
It was after dark before we got dropped off, the house maybe big with impressive double doors, marble entryway, and a railing right inside for a view of the big family room below, but stuffy the way houses get closed-up. (Anita didn’t know how to turn on the “central air” but we assured her we didn’t need it.)
Anita—my cousin-in-law—told us to make ourselves to home, that she was sure her sister wouldn’t mind, meaning her sister didn’t know, meaning we must be careful not to do— Anything that would—I couldn’t help feeling—anything that would leave evidence we’d been here.
I’d never met—I’d never heard of this sister before, but in a house like this I was sure she was rich—
Or—the two of us alone, looking around, I was sure she was—
Stuffy?
Something like that.
That she wouldn’t like us sleeping in her bed, her family’s beds.
Jet lag mostly, after all day in a car, looking down from the foyer—eight steps descending into a wide family room, gold shag carpet, the backs of two brown leather sofas, a big TV.
Watch TV?
No.
Sleep—maybe on the sofas?
Not yet.
Excited, nerve-deadened, bottled-up ecstatic (thinking of tomorrow).
“We should have a drink!” Roger declared.
“We don’t have—”
“There must be something. To toast to our adventure.”
There was nothing in the double-door refrigerator, nothing in the kitchen cupboards, no wine rack, no liquor cabinet, no—even a case of warm beer.
“They must have something.”
They had nothing.
Down in the family room again, and there was no basement, the room attached to this one was for the washing machine, dryer, bicycles and roller skates.
“They must have SOMETHING!” Roger insisted.
“Maybe they don’t drink.” I looked at him, he looked back at me. “We don’t drink,” I suddenly laughed. We couldn’t afford to buy anything to drink.
“But—your parents do.”
“Yes—not much.”
“My father drinks beer.”
“Mine too. One bottle. In the middle of summer. Always one bottle in the fridge keeping cold.”
“Oh, a cold beer!”
“I don’t like beer.”
“Come on, we’ve got to find it!”
The rich are different. Yes, maybe when they leave home they take their booze with them. Or, lock it in a hidden safe? Remembering the tale of The Three Bears (you remember, testing the chairs, the porridge, the beds), guilty as a pair of burglars, we “cased” the whole place. Looked in the bedrooms, the bathrooms (three!), the dining room, living room, the kitchen again. About the only place we didn’t look, the closet off the family room.
Spotting the door to this, surprised we hadn’t searched it first, sure this must be Eldorado—
On my hands and knees with the door open, carefully moving boxes aside, trying to memorize exactly the order they were in—
When the biggest cockroach I ever saw (I’d never seen any, really), at least four inches long, darted out from underneath. I hissed, I jumped up, I hit Roger’s elbow (he was investigating the shelves over my head). The giant cockroach disappeared in the shag carpet.
Headed, I knew, for beneath one of the sofas.
Or (I thought later) not “rubbing elbows with the rich and famous,” banging my head on the elbow of my fellow thief.
Would-be thief.
Making certain neither of us would get much sleep in this house.
A four-inch cockroach in a rich man’s house?
—