Beginner's Luck

by Laura Pedersen

  Besides, Marty is an institution. Parents needed to be able to threaten their teenage sons: "You're going to end up just like Marty-the-Town-Drunk if you don't straighten up, mister." And everyone knows what that means—a dilapidated vagrant in a stained suit reeking of cheap whiskey propped up on a park bench during the day and sleeping in the courthouse vestibule or, on cold nights, the church basement.

  In fact, if it weren't for Marty-the-Town-Drunk there'd be no one for those individuals just scraping by to look down upon. Or else to hand a crumpled dollar bill in order to relieve their guilt for something they did that nobody knows about. Herb probably slips Marty a crisp new twenty every time he drives Jemma home.

  As for food, there are still tomatoes in people's gardens and the church larder. I only resort to eating fruit and baked goods at the Star-Mart when it's absolutely necessary. I mean, it's not as if I stand in the aisle rotating a rump roast under a lamp. But it still means exiting with the merchandise inside my body. However, friends' houses are out of bounds now that my folks will be on the lookout for me.

  At about a quarter past eight I approach the Stocktons' front door and try to appear as if I haven't spent the night in their backyard. Just as I'm preparing to make my knock, a medium-sized man with dark brown hair and a neatly trimmed mustache pushes open the door using an overstuffed tannish-yellow leather briefcase.

  "Good morning. I'm Gilbert Rush. I'm the normal one here." He announces this breathlessly and quickly switches his briefcase to his left hand and then extends his right one in my direction. "They"—he indicates with a nod of his head toward the inside of the house—"don't know what day it is."

  I shake his hand. "I'm Hallie Palmer, the new yard person."

  He laughs good-naturedly. "Yes, I've heard all about you. Welcome aboard. Bertie says he's positive that you're not an alcoholic but you can't move in the morning without a chocolate Yoo-Hoo."

  "I guess it's my coffee."

  "It's lovely meeting you. I have to run off to a training seminar. Go right in. Bertie's in the kitchen." Just then the high-pitched shriek of an alarm blasts from deep within the house and we both wince. "Follow the smoke alarm," he adds, athletically taking the porch steps in a single leap.

  "Hello," I call out as I enter the front hallway and the screen door wails and then slams shut behind me. Whoa, what a bang. They need a new washer behind that spring.

  Mr. Bernard appears from the kitchen wiping his hands on a tea towel, seemingly oblivious to the smoke cloud trailing behind him and the deafening blare that's issuing from the plastic contraption above our heads. He pulls a dining room chair into the hallway and calmly steps up and removes the battery from the smoke alarm and then lets out an exhausted sigh. "Mother set fire to a bagel. A bagel. Can you believe it? She insisted on heating it in the oven because she's protesting the fact that our new toaster was made in Nepal by some outfit accused of employing child labor."

  Mr. Bernard says this with mock despair, as if the entire household is preoccupied with hatching one big conspiracy to aggravate him and he is the voice of reason crying out in the domestic wilderness. "Mother is not oven-approved. She burns everything in the large one and then puts tinfoil in the microwave. She's permitted to operate the toaster, teakettle, and the electric can opener. And that's if!"

  I just cough and wave at the smog streaming out of the kitchen.

  But just as suddenly he drops that act and tells me he's going to sing his version of "There's No Business Like Show Business" and bursts into: "There's no tuna like dolphin-safe tuna, like no tuna I know. The boats, the nets, the harpoons, the killing. One minute you're swimming in the ocean with your dorsal fin, the next you're being sold by Star-Kist in a tin."

  "I hear you, Ethel Merman!" Ms. Olivia shouts from the other room. "And it's not funny!"

  "Mother?" Mr. Bernard says with exaggerated surprise. "What are you still doing here? I thought you were scheduled to donate a kidney at half past eight." He glances down at his watch and then turns back to me. "Last week she forgot to poke holes in a baked potato," he reports in a stage whisper. "Ka-boom!"

  But just as Mr. Bernard throws his arms up in the air to illustrate his story, someone comes up behind me and covers my eyes with his hands, the way you do to a friend until they guess who it is. The fingers are extremely smooth, and I can tell by the coarse wool around the wrists that the person is wearing a thick sweater. Perhaps their housemate came back for a sweater. "Mr. Rush?" I guess.

  "Stop that, Rocky!" says Mr. Bernard and I hear him jump down off the chair.

  The hands move away from my face and a loud whooping goes up behind me. Standing on a dining room chair is a full-grown chimpanzee, hooting, grinning, and clapping his hands.

  However, Mr. Bernard is not amused. "That's Rocky," he says in a curt tone. "I thought he'd be gone by the time you started work. We're just keeping him here temporarily."

  Mr. Bernard proceeds to ignore the chimp and indicates that I should follow him by waving his towel in the direction of the burning bread. Rocky darts off in the direction of the living room.

  I'm still rather stunned after coming face-to-face with a chimpanzee. Sure I'd seen them in zoos and on television, but I'd never known anyone to keep one as a pet. Furthermore, I can't help but wonder why Mr. Bernard lets his mother in the kitchen at all if she's off her rocker and dangerous. The old lady could kill herself or leave the gas on. But Mr. Bernard blithely pushes through the haze and doesn't appear at all concerned about the prospect of the whole house going up in flames. Instead he smiles at me, pulls back the curtains and opens a window above the kitchen sink, and removes the dark green apron he'd been wearing. Underneath it Mr. Bernard is nattily dressed in black pants with a faint gray check, a cream-colored corduroy shirt, and a gray suede vest.

  "I was hoping to devote the morning to acclimating you, but I must scout out an estate sale. However, I've created a list to get you started." He passes me a piece of letterhead stationery on which there's a neatly handprinted row of five tasks. "You need not accomplish them in any particular order. Do as much or as little as you like today."

  The items seem to be pretty straightforward yard person-type tasks such as mowing the grass and turning the gardens.

  "Mother," Mr. Bernard calls into the room where we had all met the day before. "Hallie is about to embark upon her work. She'll tell you if she needs anything."

  He turns back to me. "She's giving Father his breakfast." He quickly grabs a tweed sport jacket that's hanging over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. It has gray silk threads running through it that glimmer when they catch the sunlight that's now streaming into the room along with the morning breeze.

  I see a flash of color and Ms. Olivia appears from around the corner in a bright red dress and places her hand on my elbow. "Good morning, dear. It's splendid that you've accepted the position." She says this with a warm smile.

  "Quel est le date aujourd'hui, cheri?" Ms. Olivia asks.

  "Je ne sais pas. Hallie, do you know the date today?" Mr. Bernard translates.

  "Eighter from Decatur," I reply without thinking.

  They both look at me as if I've sprung another head.

  Whoops. Sometimes I forget I'm not playing poker. "The eighth," I say. "Today is September eighth."

  "Yes, of course. Thank you," Mr. Bernard says. Then he turns back to Ms. Olivia. "Did the Judge finish his oatmeal this morning?"

  "About half."

  "Father suffers from Alzheimer's disease," Mr. Bernard explains as he strides toward the front entrance hall. "Mother, please call down to the Senior Center and get me into that Hudson estate sale a day early. You've been friends with the sister since the Flood, and if Ethan Hill gets his hands on those Aubusson Oriental rugs I'll have to bite off his right ear in the manner of Turiddu and Alfio in Cavalleria Rusticana"

  "Stop being so melodramatic. It's not enough that I keep all of your accounts on my computer. No, you're always wanting me to procure for you amo
ng my widow friends." She raises her arms and her delicate fingers flutter about the sides of her head, but without touching anything.

  Mr. Bernard just rolls his eyes and pushes open the swinging door.

  But his mother doesn't really seem to mind the request. At least not like when my mother becomes exasperated by ungrateful, overdemanding children and threatens that she's on the brink of a nervous breakdown. In fact, Ms. Olivia complains as if it's an inside joke. And I decide that she may not be so senile after all.

  "Come and meet the Judge," Ms. Olivia says. "I'll introduce you as the county clerk, because whenever we're in the Florida Room he thinks he's in chambers. Or would you rather be a witness for the prosecution?"

  "County clerk is fine," I reply. Just Call Me Dick is always saying that I'm about one day of playing hooky away from reform school, and so I figure the judicial exercise will be good practice for my trial.

  Sitting in an armchair with a TV tray in front of him, which also acts as a stand for a small wooden gavel and half-eaten bowl of oatmeal, is the Honorable Judge Stockton. He has high prominent cheekbones, a ruddy complexion, and with that beard, mustache, and froth of white hair, holy shit, is he ever a dead ringer for Colonel Sanders. Ms. Olivia introduces me as the new clerk, and Mr. Stockton briefly looks up from sifting through a file folder on his lap.

  "Some days he's more communicative than others," she says cheerily. "It probably sounds silly, but we put on his judge's robe every morning and give him a docket to sort through. The routine seems to make him happy."

  Wow, if you didn't know something was wrong, he appears pretty normal sitting there—as if he's just about to smack that gavel into the oatmeal dish and send someone up the river for thirty to life. He really looks like a judge, too. Very distinguished, except for a yellow terry-cloth bib covering the front of his black flowing robe. He looks up at me for a moment, as if trying to situate me in the confused map of his memory.

  "Does he understand what he's reading?" I ask in a whisper.

  "No, I can't imagine he does. But I believe he comprehends that he used to do this every day and so it's familiar. There's always comfort to be found in the familiar," she says in an upbeat voice.

  When Ms. Olivia speaks, she's very animated and gestures with practically her entire body and so appears younger than she is. I mean, I don't know exactly how old she is, probably around sixty. Her movements are swift but graceful, almost birdlike.

  Not knowing what else to say, I move toward the door. "I'd better get started."

  "Be sure to ask if you need anything. There should be a pair of gardening gloves about your size in a basket in the shed, and there are ear mufflers, or whatever they're called, to be used when you operate that cacophonous mower. And don't worry about the rose garden—I'll tend to it this afternoon."

  Yeah, sure, I think. And I'll win the Kentucky Derby and buy a brand-new Mazda with heated seats and a CD player.

  Chapter 13

  What Are the Odds? ♥

  First I scope out the garage, but it's overloaded with furniture and rolled-up rugs and more old-fashioned lamps with shiny fringe dripping off the shade bottoms than there's crabgrass growing in the entire backyard. It finally occurs to me that this must be Mr. Bernard's business—he must restore old furniture. Only nothing in there is any good for doing yard work, unless I'm supposed to drag out the hundred-pound crystal chandelier and use it as a manure spreader.

  The shed, on the other hand, is neatly organized and has everything necessary for industrial-strength lawn care—rider mower, electric hand-push mower, edging machine, pesticide sprayer, and extra lengths of garden hose. There's a tree trimmer, leaf blower, leaf sweeper, two boxes of lawn and leaf bags, and at least six different styles of rakes.

  I decide to start by mowing the entire yard—front, back, and sides— since this gives the best visual effect and hopefully they won't worry that I'm another Lars-the-Alcoholic-Lawn-Mower-Man slacker. After checking to make sure no one is watching, I sneak into the summerhouse and retrieve my Walkman to wear underneath the ear protectors. Then I gas up that big Toro, turn on the tunes, and ride away. The sun shines down bright and clear but without warmth.

  Almost four hours elapse before I notice Ms. Olivia waving a bunch of scallions at me from the big bay window in the Florida Room. She motions for me to come inside and points to the green and white stalks with her free hand. I guess she's going to feed me scallions for lunch.

  "Bernard left us all sandwiches and fruit salad," she explains once I'm inside. "Or you can make some eggs if you prefer. He must have told you I'm not authorized to prepare food. Not even brownies from a mix. Bertie says that I don't cook, I burn." She laughs about the whole situation, as if it's okay to tell your mother that her cooking stinks, even if it's true. "He's right, of course. When I'm reading or writing, I completely forget about what's baking or boiling over in the kitchen."

  At first I wonder if I should take my lunch into the backyard and sit under a tree, since I'm just the hired help. But Ms. Olivia has set the table for two.

  "Roasted vegetable, roast beef, or tuna?" She passes me the platter.

  I carefully remove a tuna sandwich and she selects a vegetable one. I'd never seen a vegetable sandwich before. I mean, one without anything else on it—no cheese slices or Oscar Mayer bologna.

  "I don't consume anything that had parents," Ms. Olivia confides to me as if someone might be listening—like the roast beef, for instance. "I'm a vegetarian."

  "Oh, you don't eat meat," I say.

  "Bertie claims I'm starting to bend toward the window on sunny afternoons. He says we wouldn't have incisor teeth if we weren't carnivores. But I don't believe in unnecessary killing."

  She's not normal by any standards, but she's definitely not hiding her own Easter eggs, either. Besides, they wouldn't allow her to care for another senile person if she were senile, would they?

  My tuna sandwich is really good, not canned tuna and blobs of mayo. This tuna is brown, not white, and slightly drier and the chunks are bigger. Though I'm not picky about what I eat. Basically, if it's free, then it's for me.

  Ms. Olivia calls into the sunroom, "Rocky, do you want a sandwich?"

  The chimp comes darting out from the other room, long gangly arms dangling below his kneecaps, and his velvety brown eyes are bright and expressive, incredibly humanlike. So are his hands. He deftly makes a plate for himself with a sandwich and uses the serving spoon to take a big helping of fruit salad. Then he removes a napkin from one of the drawers in the highboy and easily balances the plate as he exits.

  "That's amazing," I say. "I had no idea chimps were so ... that they could..."

  "Rocky is very special. He's been trained to work with people who have disabilities, specifically paraplegics who require insulin shots."

  "Oh. So he helps the Judge."

  "No, no," replies Ms. Olivia, "though he's wonderful with him, and the Judge seems to like him. He worked with my friend Geraldine for years, but she passed away last week and so now he's between engagements."

  "Sorry about your friend" is all I can think of to say. Just when it seems as if these people can't possibly say or do anything weirder, they do. But the thing is, they act as if it's all perfectly normal!

  After a few moments of silence Ms. Olivia politely inquires, "Do you attend school?"

  Oh damn. Here it comes. "Oh yeah," I lie. "I go at night."

  "Everyone must bow to his or her circadian rhythms," she states breezily.

  I don't know what that means, but it doesn't seem to be a question or criticism and she doesn't pursue the school matter.

  My sandwich disappears quickly, though I don't talk with my mouth open or anything table-incorrect like that, and then I say how tasty it was in an effort to encourage her to offer me a second one. Over the years I've discovered that the more you compliment the food, the more people want you to eat it. It actually makes them happy. And I'm all in favor of spreading joy in this manner. Al
so, operating as a professional vagrant is like being a bear— you get into the habit of storing up calories for later on.

  "Help yourself to another one, dear. All that work must build your appetite."

  I thank her and select a vegetable sandwich. To be honest, I had my eye on the roast beef, but as a general rule I never take the most expensive item on charity's plate. And also, now that my hostess has declared herself against slaughter, my good-guest instincts tell me to eat whatever she's eating. Ms. Olivia seems pleased by my selection.

  "How's the work going? I saw you riding around on that gigantic machine and it appeared as if you were singing."

  I don't mention the hidden Walkman, because the last thing I want her to think is that I'm goofing around on the job. Old people in particular have this habit of assuming that you can't walk and chew gum at the same time— like if you're playing a video game you can't simultaneously listen to them and concentrate on the screen.

  "Yeah, I like a little music," I say.

  "It soothes the soul. The term music of course comes from the word muse, to inspire. Some people are happy because they sing, and others sing because they're happy. Into which category do you imagine you fall?"

  Huh? "It makes the time go by fast. But if you mind getting bugs in your mouth, then you shouldn't sing while on a rider mower."

  "Excellent observation." She smiles as if this is not the right answer but is just as good as the right answer.

  The phone rings and Ms. Olivia hastily rises, places her napkin on her chair, and darts into the kitchen. It's easy to overhear the conversation, since the door between the two rooms is open. Though what she says doesn't exactly make sense. There's some polite chitchat along the lines of "How are you? Fine, thank you." Then Ms. Olivia instructs the caller to stop by in an hour, and that they're to meet in the living room of the main house and not in the summerhouse. Apparently she's going to give the person some sort of medication. My imagination returns to the mysterious Druid Circle in the backyard and then to Mr. Bernard's herb garden, and I wonder if she really does sell magic potions. Or have I just been reading too many of my brother Teddy's Harry Potter books?