They ask me how I’m doing and how I’m feeling and what I want for dinner, where I want to go this weekend. It feels like exhaling after holding your breath for so long. Like I’ve been crouched in a flinch, the way you tense up before getting socked in the face, and I can finally let my guard down. We both get tan. Fatter. We fight less. We eat more. We lie with eyes closed in the sun thinking of precisely nothing.
Some nights the music fills the place and there’s nothing to do but dance. Bonnie puts Michael Jackson on and Thriller booms through the little apartment. Let’s put on a show! So we go into the back bedroom and work out a dance routine.
It’s close to midnight, and something evil’s lurking in the dark …
We coordinate jumping jacks and push-ups, rolling on the floor in unison, high-fiving when we get up, moonwalking away from each other then spinning back together to grab our elbows and drop to our knees for the big finale. When we are ready, we go out into the living room and Bonnie drops the needle next to Michael Jackson’s head as he lies there in his white suit. We stand with arms stretched downward and eyes closed as Vincent Price’s voice comes out of the speakers until the moment the beat kicks in and we launch into our steps, dancing around the living room, moving in unison, our long blond corn-silk hair, our deeply tanned, ice-cream-fat tummies hanging out as we jump and spin and Bonnie sways her hips in her blue silk robe and Dad pumps his knees and fist in rhythm from his perch on the couch.
We dance, thinking only of the music, the steps we’ve memorized, the fullness in our chests as we leap across the carpet with wild abandon in nothing but our matching tighty-whities.
* * *
AT THE END of the summer, Dad takes us to Hollywood Park. Bonnie says he goes almost every Sunday when we are in Oregon. He has a bunch of phrases he likes to say, things he picked up from horse racing. “I’d rather be lucky than good.” Or “Nothing like a day at the races. You got the world by the ass.” Or “Favorites usually lose.” This one is like a slogan to him, the kind of thing you’d put on a poster if he was famous: Jim Jollett … favorites usually lose.
Dad is a fan of the underdog. That’s what he says. I think maybe it’s because he thought he’d be dead by now. Between the heroin and the prison and the disorganized crime, he can’t believe his luck that he’s “still kicking.” He says he feels lucky he gets to live in an apartment with Bonnie, work six days a week in an auto shop and take us to the beach or the track on Sundays.
Sometimes he comes home from Hollywood Park and hands us each twenty bucks. “I caught a horse,” is all he’ll say with a wink. We can’t believe our luck. But he says not to be too happy, if the horse had lost, he’d be taking twenty bucks from us but he never does.
He says he’s going to teach us how to bet, that he’ll “stake” us, which means if we win, we get to keep the money but if we lose then we don’t have to pay him.
The grandstand is enormous, rising like a spaceship from the sea of blacktop of the parking lot. Dad is chatty as we walk from the car to the gates, he keeps his hands on my shoulders, the heat from the asphalt warming our feet, the smell of hot dirt and car exhaust and the distant sound of a bugle filling the air. “Okay, we’ll get some food. We gotta have some lunch. Then we’ll lay some bets.” He’s got a pen in his mouth and little reading glasses on the end of his nose as he pays our admission and we buy a racing form.
A few of the men recognize him when we walk in. They’re studying racing forms in their old hats, visors. An enormous white man in an old blue windbreaker, his huge gut hanging out, yells, “Hey, Jimmy. Those your boys?”
Dad introduces us.
“Ehhh, Jimmy! Who you got in the fifth? I’m twelve ways into the Pick Six, but I ain’t got a horse in the fifth.” A skinny, older black man in a purple hat yells from the next table.
Dad looks his way and tells him his pick and then, turning to us, he says with pride, “These are my boys.”
“You gonna teach them the fambly business?” The man laughs. I feel a swelling in my chest like a warm wave that washes over me with Dad’s hands on my shoulders. I watch their faces as they look at him and me, comparing our sizes, looking for the resemblance. I wonder if it’s hard to see.
To be a son, to have a father, to be out at the track, with the men all trying their luck. Is this what the men do?
Dad has reserved a box for us near the finish line, on the edge of the perfect dirt oval surrounding an infield of palm trees, hot dog carts, a playground and a small lagoon with white waterbirds swimming in it like a postcard. The smooth brown oval of dirt is a mile around, slightly wet and combed by three green tractors after every race. A man in a green jacket and top hat with khaki riding pants and knee-high boots lifts a long bugle to his mouth in front of the starting line:
buh buh buh bup buddah bup buddah bup bup bup bup buhhh
buh buddah bup buddahdah bup bup bup buddahdah buhhhhh
Dad once told us he came straight to the races the day he got out of prison. He just wanted to be outside and free for a day in the sun. He wore a new hat and came with his brother Pete. They had a few beers and laid some bets and he always remembered that moment of freedom.
He buys us two corned beef sandwiches, some chips, a drink and a chocolate ice cream. We take the food to our box where he opens a racing form and shows us how each page is a different race and each name is a different horse. He says the numbers say how likely it is a horse will win. So if a horse is five to one, that means you get five dollars for every one dollar you bet.
Tony says he already knew that because they studied fractions last year and I’ll learn it in a few years too. Dad takes his pen and circles the odds. “Five to one. Does that make sense.” He does this a few times, with a few horses he bets. “So this one is eight to one. So how many dollars do I win for every dollar I bet?”
That’s easy, I say. You win eight. It seems as good a way as any to learn fractions since I’m usually bored in school.
He lets us choose horses for the two-dollar bets he’s going to place for us and gets us tickets we can hold when he goes to lay his bets from the wad of twenties in his wallet.
It’s impossible not to scream during a horse race. The horses march like royalty to the white starting gate. Everyone goes quiet once the last horse is in place. The bell goes off and you hear “and away they go” through the tinny speakers. You watch as they tear down the far straightaway into the final turn, and then your horse jumps forward, right to the front of the pack. You scream, “Go, Seven! C’mon, baby!” Because your dad is next to you and he’s screaming it too since you bet the same horse. You can’t help it. The queen of England would scream at that moment. It’s instinct. All animals understand speed. So number seven crosses the finish line and you go to the window with your dad’s hand on your shoulder and you hand the man your ticket and suddenly like magic your two dollars has become ten dollars and at that moment the future seems different. Like anything is possible. There’s just the crowd and the track and the horses and your dad picking you up and squeezing you and telling you it’s good to have some luck. “You and me, kid, we got the world by the ass.”