Beautiful Kate (23 page)

Toni made much of the bonanza, dancing around the house and singing out that we were all rich now and could retire to Malibu.

“For your birthday, J.R.,” she said, “how would you like a nice little pearl gray Mercedes SLR? Or would you prefer a Big Mac?”

In the face of such levity, I retreated to the library to scratch out a few more words. Junior meanwhile had hired a black youth who worked at a nearby service station—and who, unlike us gentry, owned a chainsaw—to come and cut up the tree. The resulting racket drew me from my desk and before I knew what I was doing I was out in the fresh air stacking the cut-up limbs and splitting a few of the massive stumps cut from the trunk. It was hard work for a man in my condition—soft and lazy, that is—and I was soon panting like a longhaired dog in August. At what I hoped were decent intervals I kept taking breaks to go into the kitchen and have coffee and cigarette, two of the habits that made such breaks necessary in the first place.

Throughout the afternoon I noticed that Junior and Toni had their heads together more than they normally did. For some time I could not imagine what they were discussing so secretively and then it dawned on me that they just might be planning a birthday party for me. Admittedly, neither of them was precisely the type for such a gesture, party-givers usually being an affectionate and sentimental breed. But it was also true that for each of them killing time had become something of an occupation. If the idle rich can try to fill their empty hours by party-throwing, why not the idle poor as well? In any case, for the rest of that day little visions of the party danced in my head: the four of us sitting around the kitchen table the next night, with me the shyly smiling center of attention, blowing out a candle atop a Hostess Twinkie as the warm voices of my family sang a rousing
Happy Birthday, Dear Gregory
.

So I was not at all put off by Toni’s show of cool antagonism throughout the evening, taking a shot at me every chance she got. And even that night in bed, as her belligerence gave way not to her usual languorous love-making but to an abrupt and desperate passion that ended in tears as she held me tightly and had me tell her over and over that she was mine and that I loved her now and would love her always. And for once I did not remember her falling asleep in my arms—possibly because she did not sleep at all. Sometime during the night she must have edged out from under my arms and crept out of bed and dressed in silence, taking with her the bag that she had packed earlier that day, while I was blissfully stacking firewood. Where she met Junior—downstairs or in the garage or in the driveway—I have no idea. I only know that they left together and that neither Jason nor I heard them go.

10

For days after Toni and Junior’s departure, Jason would not eat or listen to the radio or in fact do anything but lie there in Sarah’s bed like an old Indian waiting for death. Whenever I tried to feed him or talk with him, he would roll away from me and pretend to fall asleep. Finally I brought him some tomato soup and threatened that if he failed to eat it, I was going to pack up and leave within the hour, abandoning him just as Junior had done. And I guess that he believed me, for he finally permitted a few tablespoons of the lukewarm stuff to pass his desiccated lips. But he was not grateful.

“I wouldn’t miss you,” he said. “Not for a minute.”

Like him, I did not lack for self-pity. If ever there was a case of being hoist by one’s own petard, I felt that mine qualified. Coming here for asylum (as I prefer to think of it) I now found myself in the dicey predicament of being broke and wanted by the law while taking care of a dying old man in a three-sided house in the middle of winter. And like that man, I had a strong urge simply to crawl under the covers and let nature take its course. The only problem was that I had an even stronger urge to eat and stay warm, with the result that I was soon spending most of my time tending the fire and pottering around the kitchen, cooking up such delicacies as instant oatmeal from packages that were probably as old as Toni. And, speaking of my dear departed, I also spent a fair amount of time pondering her note to me, which I had found on the kitchen table the next morning.

Greg honey,

I’m really sorry about this but I just can’t take it here anymore. Please don’t think I’ve run off with Jr. I found out he was leaving & threatened to blow the whistle if he didn’t take me with. Maybe he can get me to Calif in one piece. Thats all I ask. If you ever leave this hole, look me up. I still love you—Toni

It was not much, I’ll admit, but it was more than Junior had left for Jason. For him, there was nothing, not one word from his youngest son as to where he was going or why or on what. I assumed he had closed out his own account at the bank, figuring that however little it amounted to, it would at least get him to California, where Toni would somehow grease the way for him, perhaps even put him onto a gay black crowd that would abuse only those portions of his anatomy that he wanted abused. Perversely, now that he was gone, Jason began to think of him in terms of saintliness that even poor Cliff could not have equaled. Suddenly Junior was the light of the old man’s life, the selfless son who had stayed with him and cared for him and Sarah all these years, protecting them from the “forces of darkness” in a slum community. Junior had been stalwart. Junior had been a joy.

“And now even he’s gone,” the old man wheezed. “Yes, they’ve all left me now—except for the one who wants to kill me in my sleep.”

I had nothing much to say to all this, being more concerned with the rattling sound of his breathing than with any words he cared to bandy. And, anyway, on the fourth day after his now-favorite son’s departure, he had all those sentimental words stuffed rudely, if innocently, down his throat by the local banker, who called to ask if Jason had been able to locate a buyer for the Krugerrands Junior had found in the safe deposit box. If not, the banker himself was now interested in purchasing them, and for cash, as Junior had specified. I learned all this firsthand, from the banker himself, after Jason had weakly thrust the phone at me, shaking his head in confusion. I identified myself and explained the situation here and the man patiently went through his message again. I had only one question for him.

“How many Krugerrands were there?”

“Didn’t your brother tell you? He took them with him.”

“No, as a matter of fact, he didn’t. And he’s gone now. My father would like to know how many there were.”

The man nervously cleared his throat. “There were twenty, Mister Kendall.”

I thanked him for the information and for his offer and asked him to forget about the whole matter, because it was strictly a family affair and that we expected Junior to be returning soon, either with the Krugerrands or with the cash he had gotten for them.

“He also closed out his savings account with us,” the banker said.

“A family affair,” I repeated.

After hanging up, I explained to Jason that in addition to the cash, Junior evidently had found some gold coins in the box and had taken them with him. The old man looked baffled.

“Gold coins?
”

“South African Krugerrands. Twenty of them.”

“Gold, huh?”

“Yes—twenty ounces. Twenty coins.”

He shook his head in bewilderment. “I don’t remember. Isn’t that funny? I just don’t remember buying them.”

“Maybe Mother did.”

He snorted at the idea. “She never handled any money. I gave her a housekeeping allowance. That was all she ever had.”

“Anyway, they were in the box. And now they’re gone.”

“With Junior.”

“Apparently.”

Jason nodded stoically. “Well, that completes the picture, doesn’t it? I have five children, and they all fail me or run out on me. And now one even robs me.”

He said this to me as if I were a third party, not one of the peccant five myself. And I went along with him, in the same vein.

“Twenty Krugerrands would be worth about eight thousand, the last gold price I heard.”

He shook his head in amazement. “And to think, I didn’t even know I had them. Oh well, at least
you
can’t steal them from me now.”

“That’s the attitude. No sense letting it shake your faith in human nature.”

He looked up at me with those eyes which had seemed so clear and black upon my return, but which now appeared only rheumy and old. “When will you leave?” he asked.

“Not yet. I still haven’t finished my story.”

“Ah yes. The movie writer’s magnum opus.”

Hardly that. Just a record actually.”

“Of what?”

“Things that happened.”

“A diary?”

“That’s what Toni called it.”

“That slut,” he said. “Junior never would have left if it hadn’t been for her.”

“Junior was a saint.”

He looked away from me, as if he were disappointed by my lack of contentiousness. “How much food is there left? Will we starve?”

“There’s some. And you have the four hundred from the bank.”

He shook his head. “Just one-seventy now. Groceries and cutting up the tree took the rest.”

He coughed feebly, as though to demonstrate the frailty of his lungs. “Not that it matters. Soon I won’t be needing food.”

That was enough for me. I told him to be of good cheer and that if he wanted me, he could ring his little bell; I would be down in the kitchen. Taking me at my word, he began to rattle the bell before I even reached the stairs. I kept moving, however, telling myself that the exercise would do him good.

In the days and weeks following my return from St. Louis everything changed. I for one became the somber family drudge, working on the farm like an indentured coolie, some days from six in the morning until after nightfall. Cliff and Kate meanwhile had metamorphosed into a pair of cockroaches as far as I was concerned. Cliff seemed more and more like a scared and silly twit when he was around Kate, staring after her and jumping for her at the slightest glance, as if she were some visiting princess, which at times she seemed to believe she was too. Suddenly she was all smiles and sweetness and propriety. She put on makeup and set her hair almost every day and wore dresses except for those increasingly rare occasions when she would take her pony out for a ride. Cliff bought her a small record-player and for the first time in her life she began to share her gender’s mysterious passion for the grosser troubadours of the day, papering her room with glossies of Fabian and Frankie Avalon and of course Elvis.

The greatest change, though, was that she had begun to date, thanks to the efforts of her big brother. For some time Cliff had been going out with a girl named Sally Fielding, who was a fair paradigm of everything Kate herself now seemed to want to become. Still a senior in high school, Sally was your typical bright and pretty National Honor Society future coed and Successful Homemaker. As such, she naturally saw in Cliff some inordinately solid husband material and consequently dated him whenever he asked. And best of all, the dear thing also had a brother, Arthur, a sophomore at Urbana now home for the summer and working in his father’s hardware store. What could be more natural than that Sally and Cliff fix Arthur up with Kate and all of them go out on a jolly double date? The only problem with it was mine, in that I clearly remembered a younger Kate referring to the Fielding siblings as Spanky and Alfalfa, the latter being the brother. In point of fact, though, she dishonored the memory of the real Alfalfa, who at least was funny and likable, which was not so with Arthur. A slender, humorless fellow with a leg up on middle age, he had always struck me as someone just marking time until he got his big chance—behind the hardware counter. Nevertheless he became, with Cliff and Sally’s promotion, the first date Kate had had since her memorable outing with the black-eyed Waldo Fixx.

It was my misfortune to come in early from the fields on the Big Night, having just finished mowing the west hay ground, which, with luck and sunshine, would be ready for baling the next afternoon. At the time, though, the only thing on my mind was getting my tired and filthy body into a shower as fast as I could. So, approaching the house, I was quite unprepared for the vision of splendor that suddenly came towards me around the front corner of the house, heading for our ’53 Packard Clipper in the driveway. I immediately jumped off the flagstone walk, bowing and scraping like any other field nigger abruptly confronted with the white folks all gussied up for a social occasion.

“Pardon me, young Massuh!” I cried. “And young Missy! My my, but don’t you all look fine!”

In reality, Cliff was wearing nothing grander than a sportcoat and tie, and Kate had on a simple summer dress with white pumps and purse. But they did have that look of terminal spiffiness I had no choice but to mock. Then too I was feeling a touch of jealousy—a touch like that of a tractor rolling over me—at seeing her this way, about to go out on a date
with another man
. And this in turn filled me with anger and guilt. When would I ever see her again as only my sister, my twin?

But my words had no effect on Cliff. He was so obviously happy in the moment, so pleased with this brand-new sister of his shiny and friendly and
normal
—that he merely smiled at my sarcasm. Kate, however, was not as totally reborn as she looked.