Chapter Four

It's funny how physical characteristics played a role in all of this. Take the case of Joey Anthony, the UPS driver. He had this thing against Carrie. I remember he never wanted to deal with her. With everyone else he was fine, his usual happy charming self, that big grin on his ever sweaty face. Joey Anthony (we always had to call him by both of his names, never just Joey. He was apparently sensitive about that and would actually get this pouty look on his face before patiently explaining to the wrongdoer that his name was not just Joey, it was Joey Anthony and he would appreciate it if the wrongdoer would do him the courtesy of addressing him by his real, full name. Joey, I mean Joey Anthony, was about five eight or nine and weighed around two hundred pounds. He wasn't fat, he was solid, and strong like a UPS driver has to be. He had thinning curly black hair that he wore long and always looked wet. Joey Anthony himself always looked wet, now that I think about it. It's the same as the parking lot always seeming hot. I guess it's because he worked hard and was just naturally sweaty.

Carrie thought he was repulsive and liked to imitate what she called his "phoney-baloney" Italian-American accent, his kind of old-world mafia pretension. I don't think he knew she did that, but even if he did it was only a reaction on her part to the way he acted towards her, which was to literally act like she wasn't even there. If she was the only one at the front counter he would park his hand truck, slide the boxes out, and call out across the store to Marshall or my dad or me or anybody else to come and sign for delivery. Carrie would roll her eyes and sometimes she would say something like, "hello? I'm standing right here! Am I invisible to you?", to which he would not respond, not even acknowledge that he'd heard her.

Marshall told me it was because of his prejudice. I didn't get that at first. When I think prejudice I don't think of skinny, freckled pale-faced pretty redheads, which is what Carrie was. I would think of maybe Marshall, because he's African-American, or maybe me or my dad or my mom, but not Carrie. When I explained that to Marshall he laughed and told me that Joey Anthony was actually married to an African-American woman and that his kids were "black", in the same way that I'm "Japanese" because I look more like that than Mexican, even though I don't know very much about Japan or Japanese culture or traditions because my dad was basically an American hippie pot-head who never gave a crap about the old country. I actually know a lot more about Mexican stuff because of my mom, but I never looked very Mexican so there you go.

It was all about appearances. I was used to the occasional taunting growing up but I guess it was nothing like what my dad went through in his time. Of course it was not only a different time back then but also my dad is pretty small (he's only about five three) so he got picked on a lot. I was bigger than both my mom and dad by the time I was twelve, and bigger than most of my classmates too. Most of the kids I grew up with weren't even white, so we had a wide assortment of confusing bigotries. The Asian kids who were supposed to be so smart weren't very, and the Mexican kids who were supposed to be lazy weren't very, and the African-American kids who were supposed to be tricky weren't very, and so on. We used to laugh about how everything was definitely all fucked up when you couldn't even count on the old stereotypes being true.

The problem Joey Anthony had with Carrie was her red hair. It was because she was Irish, or so he thought. She was actually of German extraction, but Joey Anthony would never have believed that. Red hair was Irish and Irish was red hair and that was that, as far as he was concerned, and I don't know why, and nobody does it seems, but he really had this thing against the Irish. Maybe he got it from his family. Maybe he got it from his neighborhood. I really can't say. All I know is he refused to have anything to do with her, but other than that, you would have thought he was the nicest guy in the world.

My mom didn't really think much of Carrie either. She always had this idea that people ought to live up to their potential, and she knew that Carrie was a world-class violinist who could have had a spectacular career if she had only "applied herself", which meant not working in a little old music store in a stupid old strip mall in a boring old town. One of these days, my mom would tell her, you're going to wake up and smell the coffee. My mom was very big on smelling the coffee. She used to say that to me too. She was haunted by the notion of people getting old and suddenly realizing that their life was shit and they'd wasted the whole damn thing.

Carrie just laughed it off and would say something like "yum, I love the smell of coffee". She was happy, completely and even deliriously happy. She loved her husband, Miles (another suspiciously Irish-like name) and her little boy Kelvin (who is only seven right now and a total delight. Miles is a solar roofing contractor and Kelvin spends his after-school time right there in the store, like I used to do when I was his age. Carrie has been with the store for years, ten I think. Marshall's been there even longer, maybe almost twenty. That seems right, because I remember him there when I was only nine. He taught me a lot of what I know about piano, which is not to blame him or anything. It's not his fault that I never got the hang of it properly.