Attila & Lyudmila

CHAPTER 2-1

CHAPTER 2For my first day of school, I took a long, steamy shower. For some weird reason I always had trouble tolerating a hot bath. I’d break out in hives and my heart would speed up like crazy. Sometimes I couldn’t catch my breath. After a sleepless night of tossing and turning and listening to the roar of jets as they took off and landed (that’s another thing: our new house was close to freaking Cleveland Hopkins Airport), I got up at the crack of dawn, scrubbed myself in the shower, put on a light blue dress shirt, gray trousers, and a brown sports coat. The final touch was a pair of black patent leather shoes with toes that came to a needle-point.

I rubbed some of my mother’s VO5 hair cream into my scalp and slicked my hair back. At the kitchen table, I fished out a Camel from a fresh pack, lit it with my Zippo lighter, inhaled deeply, and let the air out through my nose. According to the kitchen clock, I still had a two-hour wait.

With its arched windows and ivy, Fairview High School could’ve been taken for a swank private college you see in movies. The school had its own football stadium and an indoor pool and all that, and a humungous sign on the front lawn bragging that the Fairview Warriors were state swimming champs for the last two seasons. I wasn’t impressed.

And when I entered the trophied halls of Fairview High for the first time as a senior transfer student, I knew why the school would never become an academic powerhouse. Girls. Girls. Girls. Strutting down the halls in tight sweaters and skirts that ended just above the knee. No uniform here like at my old all-boys school of ties and blazers, and grim religious retreats where the priests harangued you about m**********n. Public school promised to be an interesting transition: in homeroom, when everybody stood up to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, I almost freaking crossed myself. Old habits die hard.

The uproar in the halls seemed to continue right into my first period class. U.S. Government. I was early. Mostly empty seats. I took one in the middle of the room behind a yellow-haired girl. As the room filled up, I realized how out of place I was. All the suburban guys wore Madras shirts, white denims, and penny loafers without sox. They all had the same surfer hair. Windblown and flyaway. Jesus. I could’ve skimped on the VO5 treatment. Might as well wear a button on my lapel that says Greaser. Should I slide my ballroom shoes under my seat? What kind of schule was this anyhow? Where guys kept brushing their hair out of their eyes? Either they had blow dryers or they just passed through a wind tunnel. Freaking surfers without a freaking ocean? I decided to relax and kick back. Let my kick-ass shoes blind these sissies! I tapped my pencil against the top of my desk in an absent-minded drum roll.

That’s when she sat down in the empty desk next to mine. This real cute chick with shiny black hair and super blue eyes, and these long, curving lashes. Man! She smiled and said her name was Millie Weiler. I introduced myself as Art Nagy with a stupid grin that exposed my Dracula fangs. I felt like an exchange student from Upper Slobovia. I said I was new. Millie nodded. She said she thought I was.

“Where you from?” she asked.

I told her I was from Hungary, that my family and I came here in ‘56.

“The revolution, right? I remember seeing some stuff on TV. Did you have to escape?”

“Yeah,” I said casually.

Her eyes grew wide. “Wow. Bet that was scary.”

“Ah, no big thing.”

She said my English was real good. Too good. No accent. In a gust of paranoia, I wondered if she thought I was trying to be more American than the Americans, just so I could fit in. The desperation of the weak – my father pointed out more than once – from my stupid, racy lingo down to my Americanized name. Attila was a grand name, the stuff of operas, but Art…? Art was a name for simpletons. And it rhymed with fart. I told Millie I still had trouble pronouncing the w so it doesn’t sound like a v. Like in “vow” and “verewolf.”

She had a laugh at that. I could see a hint of pink bordering a super-even row of Chiclets teeth. Which made me feel a little uptight, not only because of my own sharp incisors, but because this girl’s interest in me was verging on the obvious.

Millie had super fair skin and this teeny-tiny nose. Unlike my hawk-like schnoz, hers was so, so delicate. Like porcelain from my godmother’s china cabinet. The most beautiful nose I had ever seen. She wore heavy black eyeliner that stretched beyond the corners of her blue eyes. Sexy and scary. And kind of crazy. None of the other girls painted their eyes like that. Pretty frigging dramatic, man. Who did she think she was, Cleopatra? But, man, she was turning me on. Was that why she outlined her eyes? To turn guys on? What was she thinking? What was her mother thinking, letting her go out like that? What would my mother think if I brought a girl like that home? She’d think her son hooked up with a real w***e, because to my Hungarian mother, all American girls were whores. Too bad. That’s what she gets for sending me to a school full of whores. Because so far I was enjoying myself.

A yellow No. 2 pencil rolled off Millie’s desk. I picked it up and handed it to her. She had fine, small hands. That ready smile again, this time wider. Looks like Cleopatra was not afraid to show me her gummy smile. It was kind of weird and sweet at the same time. I really dug it.

On my long trek home after the first day of school, I felt pretty good. It was an unusually clear September day, and some leaves were already falling from the branches. These little propeller-shaped leaves, pale and thin like the wings of a butterfly, were helicoptering to the sidewalk in slow motion all around me.

At supper, when my father asked me if they taught Latin at the new high school, I said, “Nope,” as if I didn’t give a crap. And I didn’t. The only thing on my mind was this girl’s smile.

The next morning I bumped into her in the hall outside our class. What a warm and fuzzy feeling just to know I’d be bumping into her every day and sitting next to her for an entire year. Her hair and eyes were shiny and she had this fresh smell, not like perfume or anything like that, but the kind that hits you when you open a Christmas present. She leaned against a locker in her pink pastel sweater telling me she lived only a few blocks from the school. By Bains Park.

I no longer cared if my new high school was not an academic powerhouse and found myself thriving on the chaos in the hall and classroom. There was this short kid nicknamed Dwak, the class clown, who had our Government class in an uproar. Dwak had a talent for making little saliva bubbles on the tip of his tongue and launching them in the air. Our Government teacher proved to be powerless against Dwak and a rowdy class hell-bent on senioritis. Mr. Powers had come out of retirement from a career as a trial lawyer only to be abused. His nickname was Flako because the skin on his face flaked. Mr. Powers hated having to wear the silly button “Heads Up Football.” How about, “Heads Up Government Study?” Now that got a laugh.

When I wasn’t checking out Millie I was doodling my favorite cartoon character, Woody Woodpecker. Millie handed me a note asking if I would like to join the Art Club. She said she was the president. I was duly impressed but declined. I wrote back that I had zero talent as an artist, Woody Woodpecker being the only cartoon I ever drew. I’d been practicing it like forever. Then I tacked on a P.S.

The P.S. wanted to know if she liked football. My hand was sweating so much, the pencil was about to slide out of my freaking hand. Otherwise, I was in my cool mode.

“Yeah,” she said.

I took it to be a definite “yeah.”

Before the weekend, I dragged my mother to the Westgate Mall for a pair of loafers, sure I’d see Millie at the game. She was a no-show. s**t! I spent the entire first quarter scoping the bleachers. I went through a candy apple and half a pack of cigarettes. I was hoarse and pissed. Their kicker was no Pete Gogolak, that was for sure. I could’ve done better myself. By halftime I realized Millie wasn’t coming and headed home. Like Mr. Powers, I didn’t give a s**t about football, either.

I was a little rattled in class Monday. Had half a mind to pay attention to Mr. Powers’ nonsensical drone. After class Millie asked me if I went to the game. Yeah, I was there, no biggie. A week or so later I told her I was going to the school play, Our Town. Did she have any plans to go? Because if she did, I could meet her there.

A no-show. Again.

This time, she heard about it. I told her I was at the play scoping the audience till I got a stiff neck. She said she was sorry she didn’t go: she wasn’t about to take a chance going by herself. What if I wasn’t there? After all, it wasn’t like an official date or anything.

I was freaked by official dates. My older brother never went out on a date. It was such an American thing, corsages and all that. We had college and med school to worry about, and we were told that getting embroiled in boy-girl stuff before we had our M.D. in hand was not only stupid, but catastrophic. Our parents were doing everything in their power to make sure we got a college education, and that also meant I’d have to do my part which included forking over my paychecks from my part-time job to good old mom. Dating and anything resembling dating was out of the question. American girls, especially.

Looked like Millie was a lost cause. If I could just kiss her without all the fuss. As it turned out, I didn’t have to ask her out. She asked me. The Friendship Formal was coming up where it was okay for a girl to invite a guy to the dance. I was floored. Had to muzzle my excitement. I scribbled a quick note back. Yes! But there was a problem with – ahem – my car, the GTO. Impounded because of an unpaid speeding ticket.

“Oh nice,” Millie said nervously, “I mean the GTO. Sorry it’s in the pound.” Then she asked when I’d get my car back.

“Next Saturday probably.”

“How are you going to pick it up?”

“I was thinking of thumbing.”

“I can drive you if you’d like.”

“You drive?”

“I’ll have to ask my mom for her car but she usually lets me borrow it.”

“Great,” I said.

I let my lie ride for a few days of chain-smoking tension. I was walking her home from school one cold afternoon when I let the cat out of the bag. I loved American clichés like “let the cat out of the bag,” because for me they sounded cool and freshly minted. The air was so cold I could see our breath. Somehow we found each other’s hand. Millie said my cold hand meant I had a warm heart. Now was the time to come clean. So – I didn’t have a souped-up GTO after all. I didn’t even have a car.

Millie reclaimed her hand. She looked bamboozled. “Why did you say you did?”

I felt stupid. I mean real stupid. “Just trying to impress I guess.” Lame as s**t.

“You don’t need to impress me, Art.”

“Still want to go out with me?”

“If you tell me how you escaped, I might. You never told me how you got out of Hungary. What was it like?”

I hesitated, but once I got rolling I couldn’t shut up. “So, we’re all crammed together in this canvas-covered truck, right? Heading toward the Austrian border in the middle of the night. We had this armed guide riding with us. My father had given the man a wad of American bills to take us across the border. This guy had us smear shoe polish on our faces so the Russians don’t spot us. The ride was long and rough. The crappy roads were not exactly the Ohio turnpike, if you know what I mean. It was something, though, that ride. Ended up getting sick to my stomach. Our guide pointed his flashlight to a hole in the floorboards. Yeah, a hole. I ended up barfing in there.”