Monkey Boy by Francisco Goldman (free ebook reader for pc txt) 📗

know about the French and Indian War. But it was my strictest policy never to contest a grade.

Will you goddamned look at that, our future Hemingway gets a D in writing class! bellowed my father after I’d resignedly handed him my subsequent report card. HaHaHa, the boy genius writer, he cawed without laughing. I ran down the stairs to the front door to escape his horrible mockery, and he shouted down after me: Hey Hemingway, I’ve got news for you. You don’t have the guts, you don’t have the goddamned character to be a writer!

Now that I think of it, probably it was through Lana, who sat next to me in Mr. Brainerd’s class, that I met Marianne.

Fred Tarrell said, Francesco, the reason I asked to meet with you today is that in her fax to us Lana Gatto alleges that you are not a Hispanic, err, or a Latino. She says that in high school your name was Frank and that you’re Jewish. According to Ms. Gatto you had a nickname that everybody knew you by, and he glanced down at a notepad he’d pulled from the pocket of his raincoat, folded open to the page he wanted, and said, Gols. He pronounced it goals and looked at me as if silently willing himself: Show no facial expression.

I answered, Yes, Mr. Tarrell, I admit it. I am Jewish, and all these years I’ve been hiding my true identity behind the last name Goldberg.

It would have been great if Fred Tarrell had published our exchange in his newspaper, but he ended up not writing any story. Probably wanting to recover some dignity, which is sometimes impossible to do for a person who, after all, has just lost it, Fred Tarrell said, As you might know, recently there’ve been other cases of authors turning out not to be what and who they claim, so we do need to follow up when something like this crosses our desks.

He must have been referring to the case of the novel about a Chicano that turned out to have been written by a Jewish guy using the surname Suarez or Sanchez. Book and publicity-spurning author from the barrio were a sensation until he was outed, then book and author were nuked. That’s what Fred Tarrell thought he was going to get to do to me, thanks to his Deep Throat source, Lana Gatto. But my answer landed like a clean punch to his puffy dwarf face.

You got me, man. My name’s Goldberg, I reiterated with a shrug.

And Francesco? Fred Tarrell asked tensely, a mean little curl to his lip. Lana Gatto says that nobody called you by that name.

Francisco, I think you mean. You know, like in San Fran, the California city? Nope, they sure didn’t, Mr. Tarrell. Growing up I always went by Frank, but I was named for my mother’s father. Come on, man, you know what people are like around here. You think I was going to run around my high school waving a Guatemalan flag and insisting kids call me Francisco? At home I was called Frankie, not Panchito. See that ship, the Boston Tea Party ship? I worked as a tour guide on that ship. That’s how American I was as a kid. Am.

Lana Gatto also wrote in her fax, said Fred Tarrell, speaking through visibly gritted teeth, that she was in your Spanish class and that you failed.

That’s not true, I said. I got a C minus. Do you want me to say something to you in Spanish?

That’s alright, said Fred Tarrell, slumping a little. Look, I’m sorry to have brought you out here only for this. He put his hands into his overcoat pockets and looked like he only wanted to go and get a drink.

It’s damp and cold here on the bridge and getting windier. My bad knee is starting to ache. I might as well go check into my hotel. It’s a pretty long walk, but it will do me good after the long sit of the train. I head back toward South Station, passing pedestrians in dark winter coats, confetti-colored parkas, scarves and hats. Bent into frigid harbor gusts or pushed forward by them, almost everybody resembles a clenched fist inside a mitten. Nevertheless, I keep an eye out for anyone who went to my high school, though probably not many can afford to live in our town anymore, not since the strip of suburbs outside Boston along Route 128 turned into Silicon Valley East. Lexi handled the selling of our house after my father died. I only know the house was sold to an MIT robotics engineer for about twenty times what Bert paid. Walking through this Boston gray winter gloom always brings back memories of coming into the city as a little boy with my mother to go shopping in downtown’s cold cavern of department stores and bargain basements, and with Feli on her day off, once to see Lady and the Tramp at the Paramount and afterward to eat pizza in the North End, my first-ever pizza, the unforgettable surprise of tomato-soaked elastic strings of hot mozzarella.

I need to remember to buy a tin of butter cookies, Mamita’s favorite, before I head there tomorrow, butter cookies from France, with a picture of the Eiffel Tower or some other Parisian scene on the tin. There should be a gourmet shop near the hotel.

One school night during that same autumn of tenth grade, Marianne and I were outside on her porch when she said, My mother says Jews are sexually perverted. Portnoy’s Complaint, its notoriety as a dirty book, had something to do with her mother’s opinion. My mom’s a little worried because we’ve been hanging around so much, she said. In that same baggy green sweater, Marianne was hugging herself against the chill, her beautiful lips twisted into a teasing pucker. How I wanted to reach out my hand to stroke her silky black hair, a yearning so vivid it