Thrill Kids (3 page)

S
INCERE WAS EATING
. He was a snake — a king snake — and he was devouring a rat Manny had got for him that morning. He was swallowing it whole, his green-striped ebony skin stretching like rubber to take it into the canyon of his jaws. Manny was standing there in his bedroom watching him.

“You like to watch him eat, don’t you, Emanuel?” His mother’s rasping voice suddenly threatened the still apartment. “It gives you some sort of pleasure to see him gulp that little animal down!”

The boy kept his back turned on his mother. He said, “He has to eat too.”

“But you watch him!” she said. “You feel the way he does — the way he is — vicious!
Sincere!”
She gave a mocking little snicker. “Vicious is more like it! Cruel!”

She was a skinny, tired-looking woman who had once been willowy and vivacious. There was the smoking stub of a lipstick-stained cigarette between the thin fingers of her right hand, and her left hand pushed back wiry black hair that seemed never to be in place. Her dark-brown eyes appeared sunken, and their expression alternated, according to her moods, from dull and lusterless to bright and mean.

Manny dug his fists into the worn pockets of his old trousers and turned away from the cage he had built for Sincere out of wood and wire and a pipe for water. He kept his cage beside his desk, upon which were placed the jars containing the bugs and beetles that were the snake’s food. Over the desk there was a picture of a boa he had cut from the
National Geographic Magazine
and framed himself, and on the opposite wall hung his brother’s war citation, also framed, and a picture of his brother. Scribbled across it in green ink was the inscription “For the kid, for luck, and with love, from Irv.”

Manny said, “What time’s my appointment with Dr. Mannerheim?”

“You’re going to change your clothes,” his mother said. “You’re not going in those filthy rat-hunting pants.”

“What time she want me at her place?” the boy asked again.

“Five o’clock sharp,” his mother told him. “Are you going to the zoo first?”

“I’m taking Sincere up with me. Man there’s going to tell me how to get bugs out of his skin.”

“Oh, my God!” his mother moaned. “Bugs out of his skin!” She shuddered and started from the room. Then she turned. “What are you going to do with the thing while you’re at the doctor’s?”

“Be in a box,” Manny said. “Won’t harm.”

“Won’t harm!” Her eyes squinted at him. “Won’t harm! You just don’t drag vipers along with you when you go to see a doctor, young man. Your father will have something to say on this subject. You think you can get away with murder, don’t you?”

Manny did not say anything. A phone rang and then stopped abruptly. The cigarette in his mother’s fingers fascinated him. It was burning down closer and closer to the flesh. She was looking at him, but he would not let his eyes meet hers.

She said,
“Don’t
you?”

“I don’t want to fight,” Manny answered.

His father’s voice, calling out, “Phone, Manny!” made it possible for him not to.

The Pollocks lived in a five-room apartment facing Madison Avenue in the East Nineties. Often, late at night, Manny could hear the uniform, rhythmic thumping of horses’ hoofs on asphalt as the policemen rode into the Armory. When he and Irv were kids, they both had ambitions of becoming mounted policemen. Manny used to picture the two of them riding down Fifth Avenue on parade days, making the crowds stay back. He would think of how he and Irv would exercise the horses, running them around the reservoir in the early morning. And he would think of how they would play polo on the police team. Manny never thought of doing it without Irv. When Irv grew into his teens and announced suddenly one day that he was going to be an engineer, Manny was jolted into accepting a fearfully simple and awful truth: Nothing about the future could be guaranteed. The future, in a way, was like his father’s answer to virtually every question: “It all depends.” Irv began playing with a slide rule shortly after his decision, and he told Manny policemen didn’t earn much money at all. He said that Manny ought to figure out something else to be, and it hurt Manny that his brother did not invite him to be an engineer too.

Now, whenever Manny heard the horses’ hoofs, he wondered what to be.

The telephone was in the foyer. On his way to it, Manny passed his father, who was slumped in a worn leather armchair in the living room, watching an old Charlie Chan movie over television.

“Thanks, Pa,” Manny said as he went by him.

“You’re very welcome, son.”

On the phone stand in the foyer there was Manny’s father’s copy of
The Jeweler’s Trade Journal,
a glass paperweight with a picture of Irv magnified inside, and a thirsty ivy plant in a china pot shaped like an elephant.

After Manny said hello, it took him several slow seconds to realize who his caller was.

The voice said swiftly and succinctly, “Bardo Robert Raleigh extends a cordial invitation to Emanuel Pollack to attend a get-together this evening at eight o’clock, in his lodgings at Ten-eleven Fifth Avenue. Dress optional.”

Manny said, “Oh, hi, Bardo,” and became immediately aware that in the living room his mother was complaining about him to his father.

“Can he count on you?” Bardo asked.

“A party?”

“A get-together.”

“Who’s coming?”

“Messieurs Heine and Wylie, I believe. Others, perhaps.”

“… all seems so unfair!” his mother’s voice whined. “They’re as different as day and night. God, remember how Irving used to fix things around the apartment? Whenever — “

Manny said, “Sure, I guess.”

“Ten-eleven Fifth Avenue. Eight
P.M.”

There was a click, and the dial tone came before Manny was certain that his conversation with Bardo Raleigh was over.

Lingering by the phone stand, Manny heard his father say, “… shouldn’t expect him to be like Irv. That’s what’s wrong with the world today. People expect everyone to be like
they
are. There’s no chance for the individual. My father thought
he
should run his sons’ lives, and look at us. Abe a jeweler, and me a jeweler, same as he was. No, Ruth, Manny’s going to live his own life. I’m not going to live it for him.”

“You’re not living his life if you merely explain right from wrong!”

“What does the boy do wrong?”

“Nat, he’s not passing his subjects! He has to go to a psychologist! He worships that crawling vampire in his bedroom! What more do you want?”

“They’re hard on a youngster these days in school. I saw Manny study with my own eyes. They oughtn’t to give a boy so much work, drive him so hard. He’s just a boy. I say leave him alone.”

“Well, it isn’t what his principal says, and it isn’t what I say. He’s going to Dr. Mannerheim, and he’s going today! And he’s not taking that thing with him!”

“I’m out of this, Ruth.” His father sounded weary. “I’ve always promised myself that if I had sons they’d do what they wanted to do. I wouldn’t tell them. They’d have their own lives.”

Manny knew what was coming next without even hearing it.

His mother’s voice broke as she said it. “The way Irving has his life, I suppose!”

There was a moment’s pause. Nathan Pollack replied softly, “He wanted to enlist. You knew that. He would have had to go anyway, eventually. Still, you blame me. You try to blame me for my own son’s death.”

At the familiar sound of his mother’s sudden weeping, Manny sat down on the green hassock. He waited there until he knew she was gone from the living room, down to the bathroom. The sobs sounded farther away, and muffled. A door slammed shut. Manny heard his father sigh and the leather creak as he sank back in it, and the sound of the television was louder now, and he heard gunfire and a voice saying, “Ah, once again we meet, you and I. But you are dead, old man, aren’t you?”

“Manny?” his father said to him as he passed him again on his way to his room.

“Did you hear it all, Manny? I suppose you did.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Manny said.

“Your mother just can’t get over it. She just never can!” “Yeah,” Manny said.

“And she gets all these crazy notions about psychologists and all. Manny, I want you to know something. Will you listen to your father tell you one thing?”

“Sure, Pa,” Manny said. “Sure.”

“Whatever anyone tells you, Emanuel, you do what you think. Emanuel, psychologists are just human beings themselves. They live in the same rotten world we live in. Their sons get killed in wars too. They have no corner on wisdom in this life. No one has. A person can only do what he thinks he should.”

“Yes, sir,” Manny said.

His father was a little thin man who looked too tired and wizened for his forty-five years. He seemed always to dress in saggy-kneed trousers of no particular color, and the same unmatching worn tweed jacket, which was too small for him. Whenever Manny thought of his father, he saw him always the same way. He would be bent over the workbench down at the store, dipping a tiny spring in gasoline, or humming off tune and peering with his round jeweler’s glass into a watch. He would be smoking, and the ash of his cigarette would be dangling precariously, ready to fall. His father’s face was yellow in hue, like some kind of mild-flavored cheese, and he had gone bald as a young man. His small gray eyes looked as though they had seen everything, and were no longer watchful. At the same time, Nat Pollock’s patient, weary face held the expression of a man who was waiting for still more to happen, as if there were no end to the burden of living. “Live your own life, Emanuel!”

“Yes, sir.”

“When I was a boy I always thought I’d be a doctor. Not one of these head-shrinkers like this Dr. Mannerheim, but a
real
doctor. A surgeon!” He held his hands out, looked at them, turned them over and back again. Then he dropped them to his lap in a gesture of resignation “Your grandfather had other ideas for me. That’s why I’m where I am today.”

“You make a good salary, don’t you, Pa?” Manny was not sure.

His father was noncommittal. “A boy should be allowed to choose for himself,” he said. “I’ll never interfere with what you want to do. Remember that, Emanuel.” “Yes, sir.”

On the television set a man was trying to sell reconditioned vacuum cleaners.

“Another thing, Emanuel,” his father said. “I’m your father, Emanuel. You needn’t ‘sir’ me. I’m just your poor old father trying to help you get along in this world.”

“Sure, Pa.”

“You’re a good boy, Emanuel. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

Manny said, “Thanks, Pa. I guess I’d better be going if I want to get to the zoo.” His father did not answer him. Manny said, “I guess I better come home before I go see the doctor. I mean, I suppose I should come home and drop off Sincere.” He waited, as though he anticipated some confirmation of the soundness of his decision, but his father only said, “Have a good day, son. Youth is to enjoy.”

Manny walked down the long hall toward the end, where his room was. When he passed the bathroom he heard water running, and he knew his mother was wetting a washcloth to hold to her eyes.

Inside his room, Manny went over to the cage and looked again at Sincere. The snake had finished eating, and was gliding back and forth across the cage in a sinewy, unsettled attitude. Manny grinned halfheartedly as he watched him, and he said softly to the snake, “What’s the matter, Sinny? Hmmm? Don’t you know what to do with yourself? Isn’t there anyone to tell you what to do with yourself, fellow?”

J
ELL
W
YLIE
had poured the coffee at precisely the right moment, as she always did, so that as Richard came into the dining room it had just begun to cool. After he had put in cream, the coffee would be exactly the temperature he liked. The soft rolls wrapped in a napkin in the silver service tray were, Richard knew, fresh from the oven, baked that evening by Jill, without the aid of ready mixes. Because it was Saturday, even though he had been late for dinner and somewhat unsure that he would be there at all, he knew that there would be Boston baked beans in the chafing dish, made after his mother’s recipe. Jill was that kind of wife. She knew he was a man who wanted things done in a certain way, and that was the way she did them.

“Hi, darling,” Richard said, standing for a moment in the open doorway.

The candlelight from the silver holders on the table was shining on her hair, and the jade color of her soft wool dress blended with the green of her eyes. As always, the lovely dignity of her startled and amazed and pleased Richard. He had felt it the first time he had ever seen her, taking dictation in the law firm of which he was now a partner, and he felt it still.

When she had first begun to gray, she had not waged war on the fact of her forties, with rinses, dyes, or treatments, as so many other women Richard knew had. She had accepted it graciously, until now she seemed even more stately and serenely beautiful than she had been when her hair was coal-colored and bound back tightly to her head, showing a profile Madonna-like in its perfection. The gray hair was cut short and skillfully curled around her face, making a kind of monk’s cap. Her skin was like burnished ivory. Her mouth, somewhat small, was always pleasant and agreeable. Jill Wylie had never been possessed of a young girl’s figure; she was a trifle broad and large-busted. At forty-three she had a body that Richard thought of as being fully developed, good, and somehow respectable.

Sitting across from her now, Richard shook out his napkin and said, “Johnny eat already?”

“He’s been invited to a party,” she answered. Then she added, “You look tired, darling.”

“I’m not really,” Richard said. “There were a lot of speeches that dragged on into the afternoon. I wonder why lawyers always have to make speeches, even when they don’t get paid for them. Who’s giving the party Johnny’s going to?”

Richard Wylie passed his plate to his wife, holding it in hands that were large and square-fingered and capable-looking. He was a very tall man with gangling arms and legs, thick black hair that had grayed only at the temples, and an angular face whose features seemed all to jut out suddenly, starkly. He was a serious, thoughtful man who, as a student at Princeton, had been well liked without being popular, respected rather than envied, Richard but not Dick. Both he and Jill were the sort of people who were more easily acclimated to their maturity than they had been to their youth.

“Someone named Raleigh. Someone he just met, I believe,” she answered.

“Raleigh who?”

“No, darling, Raleigh’s the last name. A Barton Raleigh, I believe.”

“Did he look over those catalogues I left on his desk this morning?”

“I’m afraid without much enthusiasm. He claims it’s too early to be worying about what college to attend. He just isn’t interested.”

Richard said, “Delicious dinner, darling. It isn’t too early at all. Has he left yet?”

“He’s in his room. I think he’s peeved. I told him we wanted him in by midnight.”

“Quite right,” Richard agreed. “And I want to talk with him before he goes.”

Johnny was not in his room. He had gone up to the roof of the apartment house; he wasn’t sure why. Dusk was breaking and Johnny was watching it.

The apartment house was on Ninety-first between Madison Avenue and Park. From where he stood, Johnny could not see the East River, but he could smell the water and hear the barge whistles toot. He could see the television aerials, clotheslines, and the myriad lighted rooms of strangers. He could see a few trees, and terraces where bushes grew. Johnny watched without seeing anything closely; he seemed to be waiting for something else, yet he was unaware of what it was, even when the roof door slammed, and he knew she was standing there behind him.

He did not turn and look around until she said, “Hot! Huh, Johnny?”

All summer long she had been wearing halters. This one was red, backless, with a neckline that dipped down to the crease between her breasts. Her black hair shone in the twilight. She had a beautiful young face with round, dark eyes, and lips that were not painted, but were pink and wide and moist. Her smile was shy, almost apologetic. Standing there, she sank her hands into the large pockets of her full black cotton skirt and curled her toes in her open sandals, and she looked at Johnny with uncertain wonder.

He said, “Yeah. Scorcher today. Going to get even hotter, I bet.”

“It couldn’t get hotter!”

“Why couldn’t it?”

“I don’t know, Johnny.” She laughed.

“No reason why it couldn’t,” he said.

She stood beside him then, leaning over the brick wall, her white arms resting on its top. Always she smelled like lilacs.

“What are you going to be, Johnny, when you grow up?” Feigning an indifferent tone, he said, “I might be a disc jockey.” “Really?”

“Sure. I listen to them late at night when I’m in — my room.”

“I don’t have a radio in mine.”

“I got a lot of records, too. Millions. All the old ones. They’re the best.”

She raised her arms high in the air and stretched. He could see her breasts swell up, and through the V of her halter he could see the white oozing of flesh that was lighter than the skin that had been tanned by the summer sun.

He said, “You know something, Lynn? You and me aren’t such kids any more.”

“I know it. Remember when we were? You used to run away from me whenever I wanted to play.”

“I was always like that,” he said.

She laughed, leaning back against the wall. “You were so scared of girls. It was funny.”

“Maybe I still am.” Johnny’s face got hot. “Not of
me.”

“Not of any girl, really. Cripes! What’s there to be scared of?”

“Did you ever — kiss a girl, Johnny? To see what it’s like?”

“That’s a dumb question!” he said angrily. “That’s a dumb thing to ask a guy!”

“I’m sorry.

She looked sad and hurt, and she pushed herself away from the wall and walked a step away. His face was sullen and petulant. Neither said anything. She stood with her back to him, her arms folded, her hands rubbing her arms. Johnny looked at her hair. It was so long and soft. It could cover his face.

He said finally, “You don’t ask guys things like that.”

“I’m sorry, Johnny.”

He said, “Aren’t you cold with your bare back hanging out like that?” He sounded disgusted. “It’s hot,” she said. “I’m hot!” “Lynn?” “What?” “You mad?” “Uh-uh.”

“You got your back to me and stuff.” She turned to face him. He looked at her eyes, at her halter, and at her eyes again. “Lynn?” “W-what?”

“Can I kiss you?” His voice was husky, his words thick. “I — don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what it’s like.”

He walked to her until he stood before her. She was not smiling, and neither was he. In the street a fire engine sounded, but they did not hear it. It had grown darker, but it was still light.

He said, “Please?”

“Johnny,” she said. “Johnny, you’re —
trembling.”

His arms were full of her, and as he kissed her he was surprised, and afraid, and glad of how much there was to her. He had never held a girl in his arms before, so he held her too tightly, as though his strength were necessary to keep her from falling, and his mouth on hers pressed hard. He heard her breathing and his own with a certain awe, and he felt her hair tickle his cheek, and he smelled her with excitement that was growing in him in a way he did not want it to. Then his hand happened suddenly on her breast, before he knew he had touched her there, and when she gave a fast little cry, he withdrew his hand, the fingers still curved from the roundness. She pulled away from him, and they stood apart. Immediately he realized that he had to go. He could not stand there like that.

He started to say something, but he did not know what, so he simply left her there, unsure of the look on her face, because her head was bent. He walked to the roof door, opened it, and went down the stairs.

• • •

“Is that you, Johnny?” his father’s voice called out when he entered the apartment, “ ’S’ me.

“Where’ve you been?” “No place,” he said. “Come in here, John.” “In a minute!” Johnny snapped. “You march yourself in here right now, young man!” “Can’t you wait a minute, for cripes sake? I got to go to the head.”

There was no answer, and Johnny went down the hall and into the bathroom. When he finally emerged and entered the living room, Richard Wylie looked sternly at him. Jill Wylie was mending a pair of Johnny’s khaki pants, sitting on the low-slung gray couch under the goose-necked lamp. The room was very modern, all the walls lined with bookcases. In the places where there were not books, there were small marble statues of headless goddesses or thin-necked ceramic vases.

Richard Wylie tamped the dottle out of his pipe and regarded his son thoughtfully.

“When you came in just now, Johnny, I asked you where you had been.”

“I was up on the roof, Dad,” Johnny said. “It wasn’t an unreasonable question, was it?” “No.”

“And unless my questions are unreasonable, I expect a civil answer.”

Johnny said, “I’m sorry.”

“Did you glance through those college catalogues today?” “Some.”

“You have absolutely no enthusiasm about college, have you, Johnny?”

“I just don’t want to be a lawyer, Dad. I like music.”

“Johnny, the interests you have now are going to change — the same way your friends will change as you grow older. Now, there’s nothing
wrong
about having an interest in music. There’s nothing
wrong
with wanting to be a disc jockey. But with a law degree you can do anything — even those things.”

“You’re always trying to change me — change my friends. What’s wrong with my friends?”

Jill Wylie said, “By the way, Johnny, where did you meet this Raleigh boy who’s giving the party tonight?”

“I suppose there’s something wrong with him,” Johnny said.

“Your mother simply asked where you met him.”

“Flip and Manny met him at the Club,” Johnny said tiredly. “He went to the store with us after.”

“Is there something bothering you, John?” his father said. “You’re crabby tonight.”

“Everyone’s nagging at me, for the love of Pete.” He looked at his watch. “I’m late now. Party began at eight.”

“Where is it?” Richard Wylie asked.

Johnny sighed. “On Fifth Avenue, in the Nineties.”

“Will you sit down with me tomorrow and go over those catalogues, John?”

“All right, Dad. All right. But I don’t want to be a lawyer!”

His mother said, “Your father wants to help you. Listen to him.” “I
listen!”

“Then that’s a promise about tomorrow?”

“If it’s so important to you, Dad.”

“It’s important to
you,
young man,” his father answered. “Very well, run off to your party.”

Johnny walked with heavy steps across the thick gray carpet into the hall, where he took his jacket from a hanger in the closet. He had his hand on the door when his father said, “Johnny?”

“What now?”

“Midnight,” his father said. “Do you hear?” “Me and Cinderella,” Johnny muttered. “And Johnny?”
“Yes,
Dad!”

“Before you go, you might put that package on the hall table in your room. I passed Doubleday’s on my way to the bus this evening, and I picked up that new Brubeck album for you. That was the one you wanted, wasn’t it?”

Johnny hesitated before he spoke. Then he said, “Now, why’d you go and do a thing like that, Dad?”

“It’s strictly a bribe, young man. I want you to get busy with those catalogues.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal!” Johnny answered. His face relaxed, and he grinned.