Night Kites (3 page)

“In French?”

“Not in French, no. They were in English … After she died, you read that poem in French class. And you know what I thought?”

“What’d you think?”

“I don’t think it anymore. Right after someone dies you’ll think almost anything.”

“What’d you think?”

“I thought she was coming back through you.”

She picked up her keys and ground out the cigarette in the ashtray. “My mother was a little bent, but in a nice way. She believed Siamese cats carry messages from the beyond. Do you like Siamese cats?”

“I don’t know any,” I said.

“I’ll introduce you to some,” she said. “We’ve got six of them out at Kingdom.”

She was pushing her chair back, ready to go.

I wouldn’t have minded staying.

“
WHERE’S THE BOTTLE OF
wine I brought out for dinner?” Pete asked when we were all seated under the crystal chandelier in the dining room. He had on a sweater and cords, like me. His looked really baggy on him, he was so skinny. He said he’d picked up some kind of amebic dysentery in France last summer.

If there was anything going around, it always found its way to Pete. If he didn’t have something wrong with him when he came out to Seaville to visit, he came down with it immediately. Something between Dad and Pete brought out every kind of symptom from hives to postnasal drip.

“I put the bottle in the wine cellar,” said Dad.

As usual, Dad was in a business suit and tie. Dad had the Rudd red hair, but he was losing it now and, like Mom, putting on a little weight. But Mom was the dramatic type (directing
Come Back Little Sheba
for the Seaville Players that fall), and she hid her weight under capes and caftans. She had on a long white caftan that night. Her ash-blond hair was held back with a white ribbon; her blue eyes were shining, as they always did when Pete was home.

Pete said, “That’s a good cabernet. I picked it out very carefully for this occasion.”

“You and your mother already had two martinis,” Dad said. “Since when do you drink so much?”

“Arthur. Darling. It’s a special occasion. Pete’s home.”

“So am I,” Dad said. “I don’t like to see my son turning into a lush.”

“You’re home every weekend,” Mom said.

Pete got up while Mrs. Tompkins was putting down the soup bowls. “I’ll get it.”

“Your soup will get cold,” Dad said.

“I’m going to skip the soup.”

“It’s cream of broccoli your mother made especially for you.”

“He can skip the soup if he wants to,” Mom said. “But you’re so thin, Pete.”

I kept my mouth shut. You never knew when things were going to explode between Pete and Dad. Mom once said their problem was they both wanted to be autonomous. That’s when I learned the word autonomous, which means subject to its own laws only. I pulled it on Dill once, when we were having the usual argument in the backseat of Jack’s Mustang.

I said what kind of a relationship was it, anyway, when she wanted to be autonomous? Dill said I don’t know where you got that word, but it’s going to take more than a big word to change my mind on this subject. What’s it going to take? I said … A big gold wedding band, she said, sometime in the future, after I’ve worn the small diamond engagement ring for a while.

When Pete left the dining room, Dad pulled his chair back, lifted the tablecloth, and said, “OUT!”

Oscar, our fourteen-year-old English bulldog, crawled out from under the table with his head down and wobbled into the living room. He was really Pete’s pet; Pete had gotten him for his thirteenth birthday.

“I know we do a lot of things around here in honor of Pete’s infrequent visits,” Dad said, “but dining with a dog that smells like a dung heap under the table isn’t one of them.”

“Poor old Oscar,” Mom crooned.

Mrs. Tompkins was headed back into the kitchen when the phone rang. Dad told her to tell whoever it was calling that we were having dinner.

Pete poked his head through the door. “Erick? It’s Dill. She’s calling from a pay phone.”

I said I wouldn’t be long and Dad scowled.

While I walked toward the kitchen, I heard Mom say, “Don’t be cross, darling. Please. Not tonight.”

Pete was opening the wine. Mrs. Tompkins was taking a rib roast out of the oven. She was a big, blond widow who’d worked for us since before I was born and had an apartment over our garage.

“Erick?” Nicki said. “I just said it was Dill.”

“What’s up? We’re eating.”

“I just wanted to tell you the first weekend in October is perfect. There’s no game that weekend. It’s the one weekend Jack doesn’t have to play.”

“I doubt that we can get tickets, Nicki.”

“Tickets to what?” Pete whispered.

“Bruce Springsteen,” I said. “Don’t get your hopes up, Nicki.”

“But we could go in anyway. Couldn’t we?”

“I’ll ask Dad,” I said. “Are you sure Jack wants to?”

“I already hinted around, and he does.”

When Pete and I got back into the dining room, Dad said, “Who’s the fourth glass for?”

“There’re four of us, aren’t there?” Pete said.

“Your brother doesn’t drink.”

“He may have one glass,” Mom said, “if he promises to paint the kitchen chairs.”

“Sneaky,” I said. She’d been after me to do those chairs.

“Do all the teachers at Southworth School drink?” Dad asked Pete.

“Yes, sir,” said Pete. “I think it’s because they all regret not choosing business careers where they can make upward of sixty and seventy thousand a year.”

“Oh, Pete.” Mom giggled. “Pete.”

“Yes, encourage his sense of humor,” Dad said sourly. “He needs it when he cashes his paycheck.”

“Pete,” Mom said, “tell him.”

Pete got to his feet.

“Tell me what?” Dad said.

“Hold your horses,” Pete said. “I want to make a formal toast.”

“A toast!” Mom said. She held up her glass. I held mine up, too. Dad looked reluctant, but he went along with it.

“Here’s to all of you for
not
asking me how my novel was coming along, more than once or twice a year.”

“We were afraid to ask,” Dad said.

“Wait!” Mom said.

“For your faith in
The Skids.
Particularly
you,
Mom.”

“Did you sell it?” Dad asked.

“There’s a Hollywood producer who’s interested in it for a screenplay, or a TV series. Shall we drink to that?”

We all clinked our glasses together.

“Congratulations, Pete!” I said.

“Isn’t that good news?” Mom said.

“I didn’t know you’d finished it,” Dad said.

“It’s not finished. I have five chapters and an outline.”

“Oh, it’s not even finished?” Dad said.

“I don’t have to finish it. I’m going to turn it into a screenplay.”

“It’ll make a superb movie!” Mom said. “Or TV series!”

“Well, that’s good, Pete, that’s good,” Dad said.

“Pete might make enough money to leave Southworth,” Mom said.

“I don’t know about that,” Dad said.

Somehow during the middle of dinner, after Pete finished filling us in on all the details about this producer, who thought
The Skids
was a hot property, the subject of S.A.T. scores came up. I know I didn’t bring it up. I was going to take the S.A.T. over again in October. I’d gotten a 500v and a 580m. Pete had gotten a 700v and a 720m when he’d taken them. But typically, Dad wasn’t on my back about my scores; he was on Pete’s back about Pete getting such good grades all through high school and college, then “throwing everything out the window” to be a prep school teacher—“Not even,” Dad threw in, “a university professor—I could live with
that.
”

“I offered to stay at Princeton and finish my Ph.D.,” said Pete.

“You
offered
?” Dad sputtered. “Who needs such an offer? That’s an offer I find easy to refuse! Education is a privilege, not something you
offer
to put yourself through to please someone else!”

“Well, now we don’t have to worry about it,” Mom said. “Pete’s going to get to work on this screenplay.”

“Fine,” Dad said to Pete, “but don’t leave Southworth.”

“Don’t leave Southworth? You’re always telling me it’s a dead end!”

“It is, but at least it’s a bird in the hand.”

“So is this. I might make enough to write fulltime.”

“You’d be better off using the money to go back to graduate school,” Dad said. “You could teach at a university and write on the side. Philip Roth does that. Many writers do.”

“I can’t afford to go back to graduate school
and
support myself writing!”

“You can’t afford
not to,
Pete!”

It was the same old thing; it was the same kind of thing that always happened when Grandpa Rudd and Dad were together, only then Grandpa Rudd was the one
Dad
couldn’t win over.

Dad would say, “There’s just no pleasing him!”

Dad got so hot under the collar, he didn’t even notice Pete pouring me a second glass of wine. I began to get a slight buzz on. It never took much. I began tuning out.

Before dessert was served, Pete had to leave the table and run to the bathroom.

“He had too much to drink,” Dad said.

“He’s had diarrhea for weeks,” Mom said.

“Do we have to hear about it at the table?”

“You never let up on him, Arthur!”

“If he’s had diarrhea for weeks, what does my never letting up on him have to do with anything? He shouldn’t sock away so many martinis if he’s had diarrhea for weeks!”

“He came out here to give us the good news,” Mom said. “He was celebrating.”

“The time to celebrate is
after
the screenplay sells.”

Mom and I groaned.

“Am I being hard on him?” Dad said.

“
You
, Dad?” I said.

“Not
you
,” Mom said.

“If I was hard on him, I’m sorry,” Dad said.

“Tell
him
that,” Mom said.

But when Pete appeared long enough to tell us he was skipping dessert to sack out for a while, Dad said, “Gin will do that.”

I figured I had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting Dad’s apartment the first Saturday in October. I decided not to mention the rock concert. Dad got MTV in New York. He said he only had to watch it five minutes to understand why this entire generation was going to hell in a hand barrel. He’d seen Julie Browns video “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun,” and never gotten over it.

“Just you and Jack want to borrow it?” Dad said.

“And our dates.”

“No dates,” Dad said.

“Dill’s mother would never allow that anyway,” Mom said.

“She might, Mom. She trusts me.”

“You and Jack are welcome,” Dad said, “but your dates are not.”

“Even if Dill’s mother agrees?”

“I’m still responsible,” Dad said. “I decline that responsibility, thank you.”

After we finished eating, I went up to Pete’s room and sat down on his bed. Oscar was sleeping next to him. Oscar really did stink—not only his fur, but his breath, too. Oscar was aging fast.

Both Pete and I had tight, curly red hair. His looked damp, and I put my hand on his forehead. “Are you okay?” He was cold and wet.

“I’ve been feeling crappy lately. I can’t shake that bug I picked up.”

While Pete had spent the summer in Europe, I’d stayed in the sublet he had on East Eighteenth Street in New York. Pete had thought I’d like to be independent of Dad, but the truth was I spent most of my time at Dad’s place on East Eighty-second Street. I was too lonely at Pete’s. I wasn’t ever the big reader Pete was. I wasn’t the loner he was.

“Do you want to sleep?” I asked him.

“No, stick around.”

The wall above Pete’s bed featured a montage of Pete sailing, skiing, swimming, surfing. Pete had been a real beach boy when he was my age. Most of the pictures had been taken in the sun. I hated the sun because of the bad burns I’d get, but Pete would burn, peel, go back for more. In some of the pictures his nose, ears, and under his eyes were coated with white sun blocker. Pete was alone in all the pictures but two. He was in one picture with Stan Horton, his boyhood pal and fellow Trekkie. He was in another picture with Michelle Stanton. We’d called her Belle Michelle. She’d been paralyzed after she’d been hit by a wave that damaged her spinal cord, and in that picture Michelle was in her wheelchair. Pete was in her lap, pulling a sun visor down over her eyes, both of them laughing.

“Whatever happened to Belle Michelle?” I asked.

“She got married about a year after Stan married Tina,” Pete said. “Tell me about this rock concert you want to go to.”

“Dad just said no girls in his apartment. … We’ll never get tickets anyway.”

“Who’s Nicki? A new girl?”

“She’s Jack’s girl. I’d go with Dill.”

“Jack’s got a steady girl? The Neanderthal Man’s making out?”

“Who said anyone was making out? She lives out at Kingdom By The Sea. Nicki Marr’s her name.”

“Any relation to Annabel Poe Marr?”

“That was her mother.”

“I remember Annabel from when
I
worked at the bookstore,” Pete said. “She’d always come in for books by Edgar Cayce. Books like
Seth Speaks.
She’d head right for the Occult section. She claimed she was a distant relative of Edgar Allan Poe.”

“Her daughter’s more down-to-earth,” I said. “A little on the fast side.”

“‘On the
fast
side’?” Pete hooted. “I didn’t think your generation made those crappy value judgments anymore. That sounds more like Dad’s generation. I thought we paved the way for you in the seventies, but ‘on the fast side’ sounds like the fifties all over again. What happened to women’s liberation?”

“Dill happened to it,” I said. “Dill’s even talking about an engagement ring. She says if I’m going to be miles away in another college while she’s at Wheaton, I’d better cough up an engagement ring.”

“Does she really think that’ll stop you?”

“I think she thinks it’ll stop her. She says she wants to be a real bride, wear white, and have a real old-fashioned wedding night.”

“Oh, one of those. With the groom so twisted on champagne he can’t get it up, off somewhere in the mountains with a heart-shaped tub in the bathroom.”