harris meet goodspeed
chapter 7
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The Goodspeeds were somewhat regularly taking me on such excursions like skiing or the amusement park in those days, especially since they had attempted many times to give Tommy a sibling, but, having been unable to do so, their disposable income readily accommodated other kids that were not their own.
Over the course of these many excursions and our friendship at large, it became clear that—having gone through the travails of the thumb-sucking controversy, the ski trip, amusement park rides, and various other matters of import—Tommy and I were friends to stay. It was also apparent that I was raised well, a boy with manners and values that at the very least matched or imitated their own. It was not unreasonable, then, for the Goodspeeds to feel that their friendship should be extended to my parents, if not to become their friends, but to get an idea of the family of the boy their child was spending so much time with and was undoubtedly influenced by.
Still, it was a surprise when the Goodspeeds’ landline number appeared on our caller ID and when I answered, it was Mrs. Goodspeed on the other end asking for my mother, rather than Tommy asking for me. They made plans.
We went out to dinner at one of the fine Italian restaurants owned by one of Veddersburgh’s oldest families. Me, Tommy, and our parents.
I had no idea what to expect at this meeting between the Harrises and the Goodspeeds.
On the one hand, I already knew that my parents were quite different from the Goodspeeds.
Mrs. Goodspeed (Kathy) was a stay-at-home mom, and as far as I knew, always had been, despite having attended Penn University for English, while my mom’s (Jane) defining trait was her commitment to complaining about work, loudly and often, to anyone who would hear her plight. Her job as a home health aide mostly involved wiping people’s asses.
Mr. Goodspeed (Tim) was a workaholic grocery store owner who I never heard talk about anything other than practical matters of money and business, while my dad (Dave) was a postman who left the bills and taxes to my mother and was practically a communist.
On the other hand, Tommy and I were friends, weren’t we? Perhaps there was some genetic component to our friendship that was latent in our parents as well.
Whatever the case, I found it an unnecessary meeting. What did it matter if our parents were friendly or not?
It started with compliments of the sort that were embarrassing to hear.
“Oh, Jane, your son is just such an excellently behaved little boy,” Mrs. Goodspeed said to my mom. “And I just love that name—Jude! Ugh, I love it.”
“Eh, he has his moments,” my dad interjected. I had heard this line from him so many times all I could do was roll my eyes. He was intent on spreading conversation around the table, but Mr. Goodspeed kept trying to lasso him into one exclusively for the men. My dad wore a button-down with the sleeves rolled up, unbuttoned to reveal a Nirvana t-shirt beneath. It was about as dressed up as my dad got.
“So anyway, Dave, labor is what’s killing us right now, always is, always has been. Turnover, employee turnover, that’s the biggest thing. It costs so damn much to bring someone new on, you gotta pay ‘em for training, then most of the time they’re useless anyway. No one wants to work anymore, see, that’s the problem,” Mr. Goodspeed said, as though it were an indisputable fact that needed no further elaboration.
“I used to work at the Big T’s Grocery on Central in Albany, you know,” my dad said, initiating a clearly pre-planned and harmless new trajectory for the conversation.
“Really! Jude never said so,” Mr. Goodspeed said, looking at me. He was drinking a Michelob Light.
It was news to me too.
“Uh-huh,” my dad said, sipping his Peroni. “Worked as a cashier. Most boring job I ever had. Me and my friends would go out to the parking lot on break and uh…” He looked at Tommy and me and chuckled. “And uh, well, let’s just say we didn’t get much work done when we got back from those breaks.”
Mr. Goodspeed smiled, the kind of smile that looked sick, like it was dying of cancer.
“And then you ended up a postman,” Mr. Goodspeed pointed out. “Working for the government,” he added as an aside, a comment my father chose to ignore. “What do you think Jude here will do with his life? Smart kid. Got any plans, Jude?”
“I have no idea,” I said with a dramatic flair that made both dads laugh. I had an idea, but I was too embarrassed to admit that I wanted to be something so unrealistic and impractical as a writer, especially to Mr. Goodspeed.
My dad looked at me, and his face scrunched into the half-smile my mother cursed for making her love him. “He’s got time. He’ll figure it out,” he said, and nothing truer had ever been said about someone going into eighth grade.
“Well, Tommy—he’s going to be a lawyer. Best thing you can do if you’re a reader. That’s what he does, read all the time. Jude too, right? Should look into doing something with that. But that’s what law is, at first anyway, just reading stuff, reading the law, understanding the law, then talking, arguing, and Lord knows Big T here is good at those,” Mr. Goodspeed said.
“I don’t want to be a lawyer,” Tommy said, the most abrupt and unenthusiastic I’d ever heard him be. A grimace was withheld from his father’s face.
“Sure, well, you’ll be something other than a grocer, that’s all, and if you’re gonna take care of yourself without the Big T Grocery stores, you gotta get into something lucrative, let me tell you,” Mr. Goodspeed said, swilling his beer.
Meanwhile:
“Your house is so beautiful,” my mom was saying to Mrs. Goodspeed.
“Oh, thank you, you’ll have to come over for dinner sometime!” she replied. It never happened. “Now, you live up on Lindbergh, right?”
“Yep!”
“So is it a multi-family, or…”
A fair question, Lindbergh Street and that section of town was mostly multi-family.
“No, not ours, we have the whole house. It’s very uhm…well, it’s very old. Always something to fix,” my mom said, chuckling.
“Oh, our house is very old as well,” Mrs. Goodspeed said. I knew firsthand it was not ‘old’ in the same way ours was.
“Is Mr. Goodspeed handy? For all those little problems that pop up?” my mom asked, perpetuating standard gender roles. I could tell she forgot Tim Goodspeed’s name already.
“Handy at taking out his wallet,” Mrs. Goodspeed laughed.
“Dave is pretty good with fixing stuff, fortunately,” my mother said. The handiness of my father with DIY projects was a quality I’d seen her flaunt to other moms before.
A silent moment. “No wine for you?” my mother ventured, sipping her own glass of pinot noir.
Mrs. Goodspeed waved her hand. “Sober 15 years,” she said.
“Well done.”
And so on.
All the while, Tommy remained quieter than I’d ever heard him. For once, he was fascinated by the conversation around him rather than the words from his own mouth. In the short span of that dinner, we had established a system of eyebrow raises, head jerks, and table taps that formed a secret code between us: ‘listen to this!’ or ‘not good over here’ or ‘great, here we go again.’
The food came and mercifully slowed the rate of conversation. Utica greens and calamari for the table, a steak for Mr. Goodspeed, chicken parmesan for my dad, pasta for Tommy and me, a salad for Mrs. Goodspeed and—not to be outdone—a salad for my mother as well.
The check arrived, deposited like raw meat into a lion’s den. I had already drilled my father on what to expect from Mr. Goodspeed. Under no circumstances would Tim Goodspeed allow him to pay the entire check. I forced my father to accept that in the car on the way over, pointing out that it was only fair, since objectively the Goodspeeds had more money than us, and it was they who had invited us out to what was the most expensive dinner in Veddersburgh.
My father and I arrived at a compromise. If the night went well, and he thought they would have dinner again sometime, my father would insist on splitting it, and I would come to his aid. I was confident that Mr. Goodspeed might make this concession if I personally insisted upon it.
If the dinner went poorly, and there was little chance of them hanging out again, my father would do the normal dance—indignant, insistent, perhaps even a little insulted, then soften at the next assault from Mr. Goodspeed, saying: “Well, we did get drinks, at least let us pay for those,” or “It’s the least we can do, all you do with our son,” and finally “Are you really sure?”
What transpired was the latter.
“Thanks so much, Tim. Next time, next time, I’ll get it,” my father promised once the dance was done. He winked at me. There was no next time.
“Jude-dude, your father is a righteous, awesome man. Walking the beat of the sidewalk must make you really wise and cool. Too bad our parents will never be friends,” Tommy told me in school the next day.
I never thought of my dad as ‘righteous,’ but Tommy was right about our parent never becoming friends.
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