The Exchange

by Jon Fain

One family had twins, and wanted two Americans. In the German home, Pinkham and Scalzilli kept it simple. If Frau Mueller asked them if they wanted another Wurst, more Kartoffeln, or a piece of Kase, they’d tell her ein bischen. A little. If one of the blonde-haired brothers asked them if they wanted to play a game, or go see the statue of Frederick der Grosse, they’d say vielliecht später. Maybe later. That was all there was to it.

They hadn’t known each other well in their high school language class before the trip, but sharing a room in the German family’s home brought Pinkham under Scalzilli’s spell. He was there with Scalzilli when they found their way to the top floor of the Gymnasium and started throwing their American change off the balcony at the German kids as they left for the day, both to try to hit them, and laugh at the ones scrambling to get the coins. Scalzilli pulled him into the sex shops downtown after school, live shows in the back, where like the bars you only had to be sixteen. And every day, Scalzilli talked about jumping the trip—he had an older brother in London, but where he really wanted to go was Italy of course, and he wanted Pinkham to come.

They were older than the twins, who were the youngest kids in the class, and who were always teased by the other German students. They kept wanting to practice their English, and Pinkham indulged them more than Scalzilli. Scalzilli spent more time buttering up the mother. He’d pretend to be interested in all the family photographs on display, or the ingredients of the meals she prepared. Scalzilli had a way of enticing people to do things that you’d never think about without him. 

Frau Mueller gave them a key to the apartment and most nights Pinkham and Scalzilli met up with some of the other American kids on the exchange program. They hung in a club where long-haired Germans in black leather screamed out weirdo rock. The last time, a trio of American soldiers stationed at the local base came in. One of them was just back from Iraq. They sat with the students and started coming on to the girls. Becky Hawkins was one of them. 

She was one of the few girls who hadn’t yet gotten with another kid from home or a German boy. Pinkham had known her since first grade. They’d been in some of the same classes anyway, some years, same homeroom.

Pinkham was an under-encouraged only child, with strict parents. He was still a virgin, had never even kissed a girl. He had matured late; before that, was a small kid with big dreams of being a sports star, fantasies bullied out of him on every court and field. 

One of the soldiers started dancing with dark-haired Becky. Pinkham, watching from a nearby table, could tell she didn’t like it. Then she looked right at him and it was clear what she needed. Behind him, Scalzilli, sitting with the other two soldiers, laughed, and the beers and his new friend being literally at his back gave him confidence. He willed himself into believing he was Superman to the rescue.

Pinkham went onto the dance floor.

He tapped the soldier on the uniformed shoulder, expecting he’d be punched. But Becky stepped away from the soldier, who was shorter than Pinkham, and when he turned, Pinkham moved in.

As she came into his arms, she whispered that he’d saved her and that kept him bold. He thought about what to do next. 

Someone slapped his back.

Scalzilli, so drunk he swayed, managed to stay upright, a sturdy tree in a gale. 

“Man, we’re going to France! We’re driving…tonight!” 

Becky Hawkins tugged at him. When he saw what was happening, Scalzilli gave him a tongue-wagging grin, and went back to the table with the soldiers and more Bier.

After dancing, Becky said she had to leave. She asked Pinkham to walk her the few blocks to the Bahnhof so she could get a train out to where her host family lived. They talked about what they’d learned on the six week exchange, where they’d applied to college, how they weren’t ready to go back home. As the train pulled in, he did what he assumed he should. “Oh, he kissed me!’ Becky laughed. 

Scalzilli always had the key. After the taxi let him off, Pinkham stood in the driveway, looking at the house where he’d been staying. He threw pebbles against the window of their room, but if Scalzilli was in there, he didn’t hear. Pinkham went back to the front and rang the doorbell. Sleepy-eyed Frau Mueller came finally, holding her robe tight at her neck. She saw he was alone.

“Wo ist er? Wo ist Tommy!”

“He’s coming later,” Pinkham told her, not knowing if he was speaking English or German. “Vielliecht später.” He went to the room they shared.

He woke up once. He thought he heard something outside, but when he got out of bed and went to the window, he saw nothing. He opened it and let cold air seep in.

He woke up next with Frau Mueller shaking him. He’d been dreaming, in the warmth of the down comforter.

“Er ist tot!”

Pinkham got dressed and came out to find his German family—the mother, the tall bald father and the twins—and standing with them, just as serious, were his American teacher Frau Skoda, Herr Löffler from the Gymnasium, and two big men in uniforms, der Polizei.  As Frau Skoda told him about the accident, Pinkham knew that his new friend had worked his magic on someone else, talked the soldiers into letting him drive their Jeep. 

Scalzilli always had the key.

There was heavy turbulence on the plane back to New York. Becky sat with him, her head on his shoulder. When he thought she was asleep, he ran his fingers back and forth against the side of her breast, and then knew she was awake because she dropped her hand down onto his thigh.

But it turned out she was involved with someone, an older boy from another town. She didn’t dump Pinkham herself, she had a friend of hers do it, someone else on the German trip. A big girl with a boy’s name, Sidney, who told him how it was. Like usual, he couldn’t compete. And he hated that he felt relieved—not have to prove himself in something he didn’t feel ready for. 

The last time Pinkham saw Becky, it was at their graduation in the school’s fieldhouse, the boys in red gowns and tasseled hats, the girls in white. He almost hadn’t made it to the ceremony, almost flunked out after they got back from Germany. It was Frau Skoda, in spite of what she knew had happened, Scalzilli and all that; it was Frau Skoda who threatened to fail him, who sent the note to his parents about how Pinkham had stopped doing the assigned work. 

Pinkham only got in to his safe school, nearby Stony Brook, the only place he’d applied to that wasn’t 500 miles away, where he majored in business like everyone else. His freshmen year he finally slept with a girl, another first timer, but not until late spring. It ended before they left for the summer. He had another experience his sophomore year, with the same end result. In his junior year he met Natalie. It wasn’t until almost two years later, when they were out of school and living together that she told Pinkham she’d gotten pregnant from one of the first times. After they married, they had the child they’d delayed unbeknownst to him.

Three years later, combining an experience he’d long imagined with an opportunity he was too stupid to avoid, he got involved with a neighbor, the mother of his son Tommy’s best friend. He knew she didn’t even like him much, that he was a fulcrum for some phase she was in, that she wanted to be lifted free from. She proved that she liked his wife even less, by telling Natalie what happened. After the separation from his wife, Pinkham went back the twenty miles to his hometown. 

He supposed it was good that he was there when his parents had medical appointments, or needed things done around the house. They were still in the ratty ranch he grew up in, but it didn’t look much worse, at least from the outside. He’d tried to stay as close as he could to Tommy, but his wife got a boyfriend, and their son took to him right away. Pinkham and his son might as well have been 500 miles apart.

He assumed some people from his school were still around town, no doubt the ones who tortured him when they were kids. In spite of that, Pinkham went to his tenth reunion. The music was too loud, it was a cash bar, and the chicken was dry. One classmate looked the same as he had at recess in the first grade, but everyone else, including Pinkham, he suspected, looked like their parents. He heard some guy keep saying to everyone, “Less hair… more stomach!”

He talked near the end with a couple who had been on the Germany exchange, who’d gotten together on that trip and lasted. They remembered him as being much shorter. Not long after they asked what he did and he told them underwriting, property and casualty, business clientele, Happauge regional office, they spotted another couple that they knew better and hurried away.

Before that they’d told him about what had happened to other kids who’d been on the Germany trip but weren’t at the reunion. That Cash, the football star, took over his father’s roofing business and that Morgan, the class valedictorian, had gotten skin cancer and died at 26. Cayo, the musician who wanted to be a jazz trumpeter, became a lawyer instead. And Becky Hawkins had married, had a family, got divorced—moved to Maine, they said, in a second marriage, to a woman.

Pinkham sat at a table by himself, and watched kids grown old dance to one last old song.

If Becky was there—maybe he could have, would have danced with her. He could have, would have told her that that first time they danced, she saved his life. Gave him a life, such as it was. Kept him from Scalzilli’s last ride.

He might have asked her: Could she, would she? Work her magic again?

That night, no one talked about Scalzilli; he didn’t hear anyone say Scalzilli’s name. Maybe they remembered that Scalzilli and Pinkham were friends, and didn’t want to upset him. Or maybe they knew that Pinkham preferred not to share his memory with anyone else.

Pinkham over the years had shared his name, though. 

“Scalzilli!” he’d go, instead of “Shit!” 

His wife thought he did it, and he didn’t tell her otherwise, because he didn’t want to swear in front of their son.

The morning after the reunion, sleeping in his boyhood bedroom, Pinkham had a dream in which everyone—but no one he knew—spoke German. He turned the key of the car he was in, drove the strangers toward somewhere, somewhere they, but he, didn’t want to go. Coming awake, he thought he understood what had been said, but it wasn’t so, not even a little bit. 

He heard his parents as they worked at their breakfast in the kitchen down the hall. They’d be at it for a while, bickering, louder than they used to do it; neither one heard very well anymore.

By now, he had forgotten all of the dream, and remembered details from the reunion the night before, instead.

“Scalzilli!” Pinkham shouted to the stained, peeling ceiling. 

Probably not for the last time.

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