Chapter Text
Oswald Cobb was not so bad, Margie reasoned.
At least– there were other guys in the class who were worse. Oswald kept his mouth shut. And he didn’t smell. She’d never seen him raise his voice at a woman, not even their US History teacher, Mrs. Martinez, who all the other boys couldn’t help but give so much shit. It wasn’t really their fault; she was a soaked napkin of a lady. Sometimes, she got choked up enough when the boys razzed her she cried, right there in the front of the class. And she never protected the girls when the guys were creeps, which some of the other female teachers did. She was just too weak. Margie felt bad for her. Oswald didn’t chase skirts or corner girls, though, at least that she saw. He kept to himself.
They had fifth period together and sat in the same row, Margie closer to the windows, so she’d had a chance to watch him. He wrote his papers in this jagged, dark writing, like he was strangling the shit out of his pencil. He furrowed his eyebrows so deeply while he worked they were going to get stuck that way. His clothes were not nice, or new, but never so ratty as to call attention to himself.
It wasn’t like a lot of people at their school were going to college, but he seemed to get okay grades, she reasoned, from what she saw when she peeked over at his red score marks. He was not so bad.
That’s what she leaned over and muttered to her girlfriend Val after all the pairs were assigned for the project: could be worse. Val wasn’t so sure. She was dubious. But she’d been so distracted by getting paired up with Alan, a cute boy– a well-known boy– that she hadn’t wanted to talk about Oswald much. It was all such a drag. They had weeks of work ahead of them, partnered, capped by a joint presentation worth fifty percent of their grade. The topic was to be chosen together with the partner. By consensus, everyone of course knew they were doomed. But Margie wasn’t going to be. She couldn’t be.
Oswald came up to her at the end of the class with the slow, awkward walk of his. He stared down at her, dimly, like he wasn’t sure what she was. He was still much taller than her, even at a slant, hair flopping into one of his eyes. Val was too busy talking to someone else about Alan to notice. There was a dance coming; things were getting important.
“Hi,” Margie said.
“Uh. Maggie?” He had a croaking voice.
“It’s Margie.”
“Oh. Margie.” He hooked into the hard ‘g,’ trying it out. “Okay.”
“As in Marjorie.”
“Nice to meet you, Margie.”
“Well, I guess we’re partners,” she supplied, when he seemed to run out of things to say after that.
“Uh-huh. This project is some bullshit.”
“Yeah, totally,” she agreed without thinking about it. She was probably going to do most of the work. But also, she was used to that. “So, wanna meet at your place?”
“Huh?” He seemed suddenly completely flustered, for a second. Like she’d just surprised him.
“Like, to work on it. Mrs. Martinez said we should probably meet once a week, at least.”
“Oh,” he said, pasty skin a little flushed. “Right.”
In reality, they ended up deciding to meet at his place, not because anyone actually wanted to, or that it was even a good idea, but because they had nowhere else to go. The local library branch wasn’t too far from Oswald’s, but dreadfully far from Margie’s in the other direction. None of the restaurants or coffee shops around were exactly great for studying. And the school library was only open until about four thirty. Sometimes she Xeroxed papers for Mr. Volpendesta on the clattering machine in there for extra credit.
“What about your place?” Oz had demanded, after she had floated his.
Actually, Margie figured they could probably go back to hers if they went on the later side, since Dad was usually too out of it to be a problem after eight, or so, give or take, but nobody wanted to be thinking about US history that late at night. She knew she didn’t, if she could help it. Besides, her sister was an absolute asshole.
“Dad’s out of a job right now. He’s no good,” she shrugged.
“Hm,” Oz huffed. “He a bum or somethin’?”
“Sort of. Lost his job.”
Really, he’d had three fingers blown off his right hand working for a man Margie wasn’t technically supposed to have heard about. The three middle ones, like he was permanently making the cowabunga dude hand sign. That made it kind of hard to do anything like hold a pencil, or type on a keyboard, or stay sober after eleven in the afternoon. Or, heck, open doors. But that was all complex to explain.
Oz shook his head. “Not doin’ much and around too much at the same time, huh.”
She wanted to laugh. It was such a middle aged lady thing to say.
“Yeah,” she said, instead, putting her books into her bag. “Way too much.”
Oswald stared down at her chin, like he was too nervous to look her in the eye, then just nodded. She was thankful; she’d get a pop on the ear, or worse, if Dad caught her bringing a boy around, even if it was just to make sure she didn’t fail this stupid boring class. At least– his left hand was weaker than his right one. It was kind of funny, if you were messed up like that, which maybe she was.
“Okay,” Oswald agreed. “We can meet at mine. Ma’s got a Smith Corona, she doesn’t use it a lot. But she won’t like you being there, I’ll tell ya right now. She’ll be spittin’ fuckin’ lava.”
“You got a table and chairs? And a place to pee?”
“God, yeah, of course we do, who do you think I am?” He was getting genuinely irritated, now. But Margie wasn’t afraid.
“Then, what about Thursday?” she asked, pulling her bag over her shoulder.
—
Oswald’s Ma was pretty in a falling apart kind of way. Like a tattered bouquet that had faded a little bit, loose flowers barely held together in your fist.
“Who’s this woman in my house?” she yelled as soon as Margie walked through the door. She was sitting at the dinner table of the fourth story walk-up, papers spread all around her, a big, gray calculator at her elbow. She wasn’t even looking at Margie, still finishing off a scribbled row.
It was Wednesday. It turned out Oswald worked Thursdays– most other nights, too– at one of the restaurants down on the strip. Margie picked up shifts at the senior center some Saturdays, but Oswald worked a hell of a lot more. Something like twenty five hours a week.
“She’s just in my history class, Ma. I told ya,” Oswald said, taking off his jacket. He’d started to sweat through it on the way up, laboriously climbing each step. Margie didn’t say anything, though.
She smiled. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Cobb.”
Mrs. Cobb wasn’t having it.
“I’m sure you’re great at history, honey. Just great.”
“Pretty good, ma’am,” Margie admitted. She was pulling an B+ or better in all her classes. She wanted to apply to some good schools this year. Maybe even get a little money for it.
“Oh, and she’s mouthy. You disrespect me by bringing her here, Oswald.”
Oswald grumbled something in response but he was too busy shuffling into the kitchen. Margie watched through the narrow doorway as he started to sort left out cartons of take-out into the fridge or the trash, throw a few dishes into the dishwasher. Margie was still holding onto her backpack, standing at the threshold of the apartment. The place looked pretty big for just two people.
“What’s your name, sweetie?” Mrs. Cobb asked. Sweetie didn’t sound very sweet.
“Margie,” Oswald supplied immediately, shouting at the kitchen sink.
“Margie what?”
“Margie Sutton,” said Margie, when it was clear Oswald was out of information.
“Sutton, huh?” Margie could see Mrs. Cobb flipping through the mental East Side rolodex. She’d sat back in her chair, arms crossed, all these lists and tallies spread out before her. It was no business of Margie’s what Mrs. Cobb did for work. But she was a bookie. She had the blue, wet fingers of a bookie, and the defensiveness. Margie knew the type.
“Your people down near the port?” Mrs. Cobb asked.
“Closer to it, yeah.”
“Seventh?”
“Foundry Blocks.”
“Mmm. The Blocks. Bet your daddy’s a menace.”
“Ma, c’mon—“ Oz yelled from the kitchen, but Margie talked right over him.
“He ain’t much of anything, now,” she explained, and realized when Mrs. Cobb gave a little twitch of her face that it sounded like he’d died. But she didn’t care. Go ahead, let her think he was dead.
Mrs. Cobb just made a sound and went back to whatever she was working on.
Oswald bustled back in, carrying a glass of something, and a plate of something, which he set on the table next to her. She eyeballed him as she grabbed the glass.
“Don’t think you’re using the kitchen table,” she said. “That’s where I’m doin’ my work.”
“‘Course, not, Ma,” Oswald agreed, softly. Margie stood there, staring at her. Mrs. Cobb stared back.
“What’re you lookin’ at?” Oswald spat.
“Nothing.” Margie really was looking at nothing. She wasn’t even looking at the other half of perfectly fine, clear table space and empty chairs.
“Then stop gawkin’ and go over there.” Oswald pointed to the little coffee table all the living room furniture sat around. So Margie went. They weren’t exactly far away; they were still in the same room. Oswald sat heavily on one of the armchairs and watched as Margie knelt on the ground beside the table and spilled out a notebook and pen to start writing with. There wasn’t much room and they were wasting the evening.
“Don’t fuckin touch nothin’, don’t do nothin’. She’s not happy you’re here,” he warned, nervously kneading at his bad leg, like Mrs. Cobb couldn’t hear every word.
“Okay, I won’t,” Margie agreed. “What should I do with this?” She pointed at the giant 60 Years of Film History coffee table book that took up pretty much all the space on it.
“Oh.” Oz said. “Uh.”
She watched as he somewhat awkwardly stood up again.
“I can move it–”
“I said don’t touch nothin’.”
He picked up the book and took it to the glass-fronted hutch against the wall, then sat back down.
Once he was re-settled, Margie cracked open the crisp pages of her notebook. She hovered the tip of her pencil at the top of a page.
“Okay. Polio or Reuther’s Treaty of Detroit?”
—
They decided on the Treaty of Detroit. Cars were cool, Oswald reasoned. He could write a good amount of stuff about cars. They divided up the work for the project, mostly headed by Margie: she’d research the UAW and Ford; he’d take Chrysler and GM. She had a whole plan. Mrs. Cobb worked silently at the table the whole time, pen scratching. After a while, she got up and put on a record on an old Victorola in the corner– So Long, My Love. Margie’s uncle liked that kind of stuff. The singer’s voice was sweet and low.
As soon as Mrs. Cobb put on the record, Oz seemed to wake up a little, snap-to.
“Is there anything else?” he asked, blinking. “I mean, besides spendin’ the next few years at the library?”
Margie shook her head. She’d figured out their next few weeks, researching, writing, refining. Neither of them seemed amazing at presenting but they’d figure that out when they got to it. Maybe Oswald would surprise her.
“Then get outta here,” he said. “I gotta do dinner.”
Margie paused for a second.
“Like, make it?” she asked.
“Yeah, exactly, I gotta make dinner,” he said, like she was stupid. “What of it?”
“Nothing.”
She got up to leave. She’d been kneeling long enough that her legs hurt as they unbent. Oswald suddenly seemed anxious to have her out— his moods changed fast.
“Do you like meeting on Wednesdays?” she asked him. “I could do weekends—“
“I got stuff on the weekends,” he shrugged, already returning the big film book to its original place on the coffee table, like they’d never been there at all. He didn’t elaborate, so Margie gathered up her things.
Carefully, like walking past a sleeping lion, or a live landmine, she went around the dining room table. Oswald followed her, but only as far as his mother’s chair, which he stopped behind, resting both hands on the back of it.
“Bye, Oswald. See you in class,” she said, turning back once she had her hand resting on the doorknob. It was a picture, the two of them, him looming behind her, her sitting there like a queen with all the hair whisping out of the pile on top of her head.
“See ya,” Oz grunted.
“Goodbye, Mrs. Cobb. Thank you for having me.”
Mrs. Cobb didn’t say anything– she had pulled Oz down to tell him something, close to his ear. He curled huge and dark above her. She was still looking at Margie when the door closed behind her, slicing her sharp gaze in half.
—
“Margie?” her sister shouted, too loudly. “That you?”
Margie cringed, then hollered that it was her, then stomped off her boots on the front mat. Mom was still at work. Lauren was in the living room, watching television and smoking.
“Late,” she observed. Highlander was on TV.
“School project.”
Lauren exhaled, filling the air. “Sure.”
Margie didn’t want to let herself be annoyed, but she was. She was hungry– the bus ride from Oswald’s place was twenty five minutes long. Her backpack was starting to feel heavy, full of homework she hadn’t done yet. “It’s an important one,” she said. “With a partner. I’m gonna be over at their house working all the time.”
But her sister had already flipped back to the TV, ashing her cigarette on the dinner plate in her lap.
“Check on Dad, would ‘ya? I put him to sleep an hour ago.”
Margie used her toes to pry her feet out of her sneakers, then dropped her bag, leaving them both sloppily in the middle of the carpet. She padded down the hallway. Her parent’s room was the last door on the left. She opened the door, carefully, casting the dim yellow light that had made its way over from the living room into the darkness. She stared at the shape on the bed, the featureless curve of a back wrapped in sheets. She stayed very still, watching, until she saw for certain that the shape was moving a little: up and down, up and down.
—
Margie sat and allowed herself a second to just stare at the wall before she flicked the desk lamp on. There were a few brochures pinned up to the cork board with pictures of very smooth, very green lawns. Oswald Cobb was kind of weird. But not so bad, she reasoned, not really. Not yet.
—
It wasn’t like they started talking to each other more at school or anything. The change was hardly noticeable. Margie said ‘hi’ when she sat down at her desk and Oswald grunted ‘hey’ when they wouldn’t have before. Enough for Val to shoot her a look, on her other side, but not enough to mean anything– she’d already heard all about thow Val had touched Alan’s hand when he passed her a piece of paper while they were working on their project at the library the other night. It was a warm hand, allegedly. A very nice hand. They were presenting about the Manhattan Project, or maybe it was just Hanford, something nuclear. Oswald was both befuddling and fascinating to her.
“What’s his place like?” Val asked, while they were fighting their way to English together. Last class of the day, the final trial. Val was good at using her elbows to make a path.
“Fine. Normal.”
“C’mon, Margie.”
“I haven’t really seen much of it. I’ve only been over once.”
“That’s kind of disappointing. He’s weird, you know?” A lot of people were weird in Val’s book, at least half the whole school, but also Margie didn’t think that was a bad thing. It helped make sure the wrong people didn’t get too close. And Oswald also was very firmly in the weird category by most people’s standards, anyways.
Margie threw her a bone: “He lives with his mother.”
“Ooh, juicy! What’s she like?”
“Well. We talked.”
“Did ya get along?”
“Gangbusters.”
“Oh, no,” said Val, because she understood.
“Yeah.”
“It’s too bad. That you got Oswald, I mean. Alan really is so fine. And I didn’t even pick him, it was, like, fate, I think.”
“Yeah,” Margie agreed, again.
“Godspeed, sister,” Val said, shoulder-checking a kid.
—
The next week, they took the city bus together to his place. It was her idea, which Oswald, in the way he did a lot of things, initially rejected but then came to accept. It made sense, she reasoned. It was efficient. They rode next to each other in near total silence, all twelve stops of Oswald’s school commute, which took them along the edge of Chinatown, then four stops up the hill. She’d already picked up the necessary books at the library– big tomes, Trade Unionism and Labor Problems, Walter Reuther: The Autocrat of the Bargaining Table, Walter Reuther and the Rise of Auto Worker– which Oswald helped her carry up all those steps to his apartment.
This time, Mrs. Cobb didn’t talk at all, completely ignoring them, which was fine, expected. Sinatra was blasting the whole time they worked, poring over the books. After an hour, Margie was bold enough to use the bathroom. It was a normal bathroom with the same creaky pipes her parent’s place had, the same crust around the faucet because East Side water was hard enough to mill diamonds. The whole thing was incredibly neat, not even a toothbrush on the counter.
On the way back, a door was open in the hall. It was a boy’s room, for certain, blue covers on the bed, big posters of Fred Astaire and a guy named Gene Kelly all over the place, very old-school. No girl would ever have so many of the same looking pairs of plain black sneakers lined up in front of the closet like that. The bed was so neatly made it looked like it belonged to a soldier. There was a very empty feeling about it, Oswald’s room.
When she came back, Oswald was slowly flipping through one of the books on the auto industry.
“I was reading this thing, and I think we should put in a part in the write-up about how many guys got their shit wrecked while working in the factories,” he said. “Like the deaf guys who got their eardrums blasted. We can say it was an important part for, ya know, the workers.”
Margie considered it. “That’s a good idea,” she said. “You’re right. I think we should. Hand me that encyclopedia, would you?”
“Hm,” Oswald huffed. He leaned over and handed her the encyclopedia, which was down by his knee. She could tell he was pleased.
—
“Second base,” said Val. “In his dad’s shed. ‘Cause he went out there to show me his HAM radio setup.”
“Oh, shit,” said Margie.
They walked a little further down the road.
“You and Oswald— Oswald never—”
“No, no, never,” Margie said, quickly.
—
The next week, on the city bus after school, Oswald had to pinch his hand to keep awake. His blinks kept slowing down, until they were so long his eyes were closed for a good three or four seconds, until he’d shake himself and sit up straight again. His own fingers were thick against the meat between his thumb and forefinger, turning the skin white.
“You okay?” Margie asked, feeling where Oswald’s arm was pressed up against her own. With her peripheral vision, she was noticing how he had these random, dark moles on his face and neck.
“Fine. Just work. Been doin’ a lot.”
“Mm.”
“Makes good money, though.”
He seemed self-satisfied by this. Like he was staring at something far-off in the distance without looking out the window. There were a lot of reasons for a guy to want to make good money in the East Side, and Margie didn’t want to pry, so she let them fall back into silence. At some point, silence had become less awkward and more comfortable on these bus rides.
“Your dad. How long he been like that?” Oswald asked.
“Oh, gosh,” said. Margie. It was a wild thing to actually think about, to stack up the years. She didn’t really want to talk about it. But also, Oswald had a bookie mom.
“A long time,” she finally said.
“How long, though?”
“I was in elementary school.”
“Hasn’t left the house since then?”
“Oh, sure he does. To go down to Malone’s. But then he comes right back.”
“I mean— he hasn’t worked since then?”
“My mom works.”
Oswald nodded. “There ya go.”
“‘There ya go,’ what?”
“Just like my Ma.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“What’s she do?”
“Typist. For an optometrist’s office.”
“Oh. Nice.”
“It pays something.”
He didn’t ask her if she wanted to do something like that, which she was thankful for. Maybe he already knew; maybe she radiated the feeling of does not want to be a typist so strongly he could sense it. That you could see it from space.
He let her have her silence back for the last five stops.