One Fat Summer

by Robert Lipsyte

  “Sit down.” She looked very serious. “The one thing I won’t stand for is being lied to.”

  Dumb. I really stepped into that one. Of course she must know that Joanie and her parents went back to the city.

  Michelle burst into the kitchen. “What a day. Those little brats are…” She stopped when she saw us sitting together. “Is this a secret meeting or can I join in?”

  “You might as well sit down, too. What did you do today, Bobby? The Millers are in the city.”

  “Well, I was going to surprise you. I’ve got a job.”

  “What kind of job?”

  Michelle’s Barnard sweatshirt gave me the idea. “I’m helping out Pete Marino.”

  Michelle’s eyes got wide, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Doing what?”

  “Oh, just sort of helping around. Sweeping up. He’s not going to pay me right away, but after I learn how to make sandwiches and collect money for the boats, he’ll pay me top dollar. Now I’m just sort of in training.”

  “Is that going to last all summer?”

  “If I want it. When Joanie comes back I’ll decide if I want to stay or work on the project with her. So I wasn’t really lying. I’ve been working on the project in my mind.”

  “I’m not sure your father will be satisfied with that.”

  “It’s too late to get into camp anyway.”

  “I’m sure we can still get you in.”

  I jumped up. “I feel like cutting the grass.”

  “You do?” My mother looked surprised.

  “Sure. Duz does everything. I want to surprise Dad.”

  “You sure will,” said Michelle.

  “Why should he have to cut the grass after a tough week in the city?” While they were looking at each other I ran out and got the mower.

  A narrow escape. I probably should have told Mom the truth. She would have helped me convince Dad. But then she would have interfered, driven over to look at Dr. Kahn’s lawn, maybe even talked to Dr. Kahn. I wanted this to be all mine.

  I cut grass like a demon and finished in a half hour, a world’s record for me. We didn’t have much lawn. Nothing to it for a professional.

  Michelle talked through dinner about the kids in her group at camp. She had the four year olds, boys and girls, and half of them sat and whined, and the other half kept running into the bushes. Mom didn’t seem too interested, but I kept asking questions so Michelle would keep talking. The conversation never got back to me and my job.

  That night, Michelle came into my room and closed the door.

  “Okay, what’s the story? You’re not working at the snack bar.”

  “Says who?”

  “I’d know, believe me. What are you doing?”

  “Do you swear you won’t tell?”

  “No.”

  “Then forget it.”

  “Look, Bobby, if you’re doing something bad, or dangerous, I can’t keep it a secret. I won’t take that responsibility.”

  She looked as if she really cared. I told her about Dr. Kahn’s lawn, but I left out a lot of the painful details.

  “How much is he paying you?”

  “Fifty cents an hour.”

  “That’s all?”

  “It’s better than nothing.”

  “I guess so.” She turned to study my wall. “Does Pete Marino know all this?”

  “No.”

  “Pete Marino’s a very honest person. Pete Marino’s not going to lie for you.”

  Just the way she repeated his name, like she loved to say it, gave me the idea.

  “I figured you’d talk to him for me.”

  “Me?”

  “That’s right. If you do that for me, then…well, you might want me to help you out someday, and I would.”

  She just turned and stared at me, the way they do in the movies just before they say “That’s blackmail.” She didn’t say that, she just nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “A deal’s a deal,” I said.

  9

  Nine A.M. Sharp. High Basal Time. My watch read 8:55. I rolled the green machine out of the shed, started it on the third try, and attacked the lawn. Good-bye, grass, here comes the quickest blade on Rumson Lake.

  Cutting grass isn’t boring if you have the right attitude. Now, if you keep looking at your watch, or thinking about all the things you’d rather be doing than pushing a heavy mower back and forth, back and forth, you’ll probably go out of your mind. But if you can understand that the grass is your enemy, that every row you cut brings you that much closer to victory, you might still go crazy but the time will pass much faster. One moment a huge lawn will be sneering greenly at you, a moment later you’ll notice that more than half the lawn is a lighter green than it was when you started. You’re more than halfway finished. And that last row, the very last time you stagger from one side of the lawn to the other, is like a victory lap after winning a race. It’s so sweet you forget that your back is broken, your legs are lead, your arms are dead and your hands are locked forever into curled claws that fit only the handles of a lawn mower.

  At exactly 2:17 P.M., HBT, Wednesday, July 9, 1952, I beat Dr. Kahn’s lawn. I left that chlorophyll monster chopped to size, one and a half inches high.

  I took a minute to savor my triumph, imagine the brass bands and the cheering crowds. Ladies and gentlemen, the new heavyweight champion of mowing, Big Bob Marks.

  One minute was all I got. At 2:18 P.M., Dr. Kahn without a word handed me a pair of giant hedge clippers and pointed to the bushes that bordered the lawn.

  Snip, snip, snip, snip. Muscles I had never annoyed before, in my chest, upper arms and forearms, began to complain. A new crop of blisters tried to grow on my palms, but most of them didn’t make it through the old blisters. Sorry, fellas, it’s first come first serve on these tough old hands.

  At 3:05 P.M., HBT, when I returned the mower and the clippers to the shed, Dr. Kahn didn’t say a word to me. Not a single word from the evil Dr. K. I left him speechless. That’s praise from the devil, Big Bob.

  I dragged myself around the lake and collapsed on a stool at the snack bar. If ever a boy deserved a frosted malted, it was me, right now. But the thought of anything to eat gave me a stomachache. Most of my lunch was still in the bag on Dr. Kahn’s porch. Connie glared at me until I ordered a lemonade. I finished it in three gulps, then pretended I was still drinking until Pete saw me and came over. He had some scratches on his shoulder, and a purple bruise on his neck. I wondered if he got them making out with Michelle.

  Pete whispered, “Michelle told me.”

  She must have sneaked out of the house last night after Mom and I went to bed.

  “Is it okay?” I asked.

  “Bob, I hate to lie,” he said. “My father would be mad as hell. Connie and I are supposed to be running a business here.”

  “It’s just for a couple of days. Until the weekend. When my father comes up I’ll tell him the truth.”

  “Why do you have to lie in the first place?”

  “He doesn’t have any confidence in me.” I was surprised at how easy it was to talk to Pete. “He’s always afraid I’ll get hurt, or do a bad job and embarrass him.”

  “And you want to show him.”

  “Once he sees I can do the job, it’ll be all right, he’ll let me.”

  Pete clapped a hand on my shoulder. “That’s the spirit, big fella. You’re going to show your Dad he can be proud of you.”

  Now that would really be a record, I thought. But I just said, “That’s right.”

  “What if your mother calls you here?”

  “You could tell her I took a walk or something. Or that I’m in swimming.”

  He shook his head. “I really want to help, I really do. But I hate to lie.”

  “Well.” I tried to look as if I hated to lie, too. “Michelle and I made this deal to help each other out.”

  He squinted at me. “How are you going to help her?”

  “Well,
like I’d do the same thing for her someday.” I got very busy fishing in my pocket for money so I wouldn’t have to look him in the eye. “Like if she had any secrets or something, I wouldn’t tell anybody.”

  “Yeah. Right.” He didn’t look too happy about that, and I wondered now if he didn’t like me anymore. I almost wished he’d say “No deal,” or maybe “Let’s do this right, Bob, why don’t you come work here for real?” But he said, “Okay. But just till the weekend.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  He grinned. “You betchum, Red Ryder. Connie! Lemonade’s on the house for my pard here.” He rapped my arm in a real friendly way, winked, and went off to take care of a rowboat customer. Connie waited until he was gone before she asked me for my dime.

  Michelle seemed nervous at dinner, and Mom’s mind was somewhere else, so there wasn’t much conversation. It was Michelle’s night to do the dishes. I went into my room and turned on the radio. Nothing but baseball games on every station. The Yankees, the Dodgers and the Giants. It was such a clear night, I even got games in Philadelphia and Boston. I really didn’t enjoy listening to baseball games, but I never told too many people besides Joanie, who thought they were a big bore, too. Especially if you’re a lousy player like me and have to pretend you’re a big fan or the other guys call you a fag. All real men are supposed to love baseball. For a while I thought mere was something wrong with me, not even liking baseball, but then I figured it this way: If all you have to do to prove you’re a regular guy is pretend you like baseball, memorize some batting averages and argue if Joe DiMaggio is better than Ted Williams then it isn’t a real test. I saw a war movie once where a German spy got away with his disguise for a long time because he knew the score of every World Series game ever played. All the real American soldiers thought he was a great guy. They finally caught him because he didn’t know Legs Diamond was a gangster. He thought it was the nickname of a movie actress. Well, at least he wasn’t a fag, just a phoney.

  When I was about eleven my father took me to a Giants game. I don’t even remember who they were playing, but I remember he got mad because I kept asking for hot dogs and ice cream whenever the game got interesting. I don’t think he was all that involved in the game, either, but the people sitting around us kept making remarks about how much I was eating, and that annoyed my father. Not at them for making the remarks, but at me for giving people something to criticize.

  My father’s very particular. He likes things just right. He can’t stand it if the pillows on the sofa are messed up, or the car is dusty or his newspaper is wrinkled before he gets a chance to read it. Since my mother started studying to be a teacher he’s really been complaining about how she sometimes leaves books out, open, with a pencil between the pages she’s reading. Michelle thinks he doesn’t like the idea of her getting a job, but I think he just doesn’t like an untidy pile.

  The teakettle started whistling. I heard Mom go into the kitchen, pour her tea, and walk back to her bedroom. She’d be asleep pretty soon. I kept spinning the dial, but I couldn’t find a station with the kind of songs I liked. “Tennessee Waltz” and “Come On-a My House” and “Mockin’ Bird Hill” and “My Truly, Truly Fair.” Or Eddie Fisher singing anything, he was my favorite.

  So I just lay in bed and listened to my body for a while. If you concentrate, while you’re feeling your body, you can hear it, too. Your stomach doesn’t just hurt, it gurgles like water going through pipes. While your muscles are aching because they’ve been stretched, you can hear them squeak back into regular shape. Heart thumps, of course, bone crackles, and if you’re lucky, you can sometimes hear your brain waves bang against the inside of your skull. That would be like tuning in Chicago; you can’t be sure you’ll get it. I heard a lot of noise from the old body; I was so tired and every part of me was complaining. But it was a good kind of hurt because I knew I had really done a job on that lawn today.

  After a while, I started to drift off. A car came up the hill, moving fast in high gear, then slowed to shift into a lower gear to get to the top. Usually, at the top, cars speed up again, but this one stopped. I heard the screen door close softly. Michelle was sneaking out of the house. Was that Pete outside in the Marino Express? I thought I’d try to stay awake to check out what time she came back, but I never made it. I think I fell asleep while the car was turning around to go back down the hill.

  On Thursday, Dr. Kahn had me down on my hands and knees most of the morning pulling out tiny blades of grass growing up through the gravel driveway. I started out wearing gloves, but the thick fingers were too clumsy to grab the little shoots. I used my thumb and forefinger like tweezers, pick, pick, pick, the way Michelle plucks her eyebrows. The gravel kept digging into my kneecaps until both of them were scraped. My back was breaking. For a while I made believe I was prospecting for gold, but that got boring pretty soon. If gold was that hard to get, who needs it?

  I ate only half my sandwich for lunch. The greasy salami made me nauseous in the heat. In the afternoon I washed Dr. Kahn’s long black Buick, and that should have been fun except he kept peering over my shoulder.

  “Wipe, don’t rub,” he said. “You rub like that, one grain of sand, just one grain in that cloth, you’ll scratch the finish. You want to pay for a new paint job?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then keep the cloth slightly damp, and wipe, one continuous motion.” He made one continuous motion with his arm. He looked like a one-winged hawk about to take off. Didn’t he have anything better to do than watch me?

  I did the dishes Thursday night, and Michelle left right after dinner. She said she was going to visit her girlfriend across the lake, and then go with her to a counselors’ meeting. Another counselors’ meeting? I’ll bet. Probably go to the island. This time I didn’t even bother turning on the radio. I think I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.

  On Friday morning there was a truck parked at the top of Dr. Kahn’s driveway, a rusty green pickup with sloppy red lettering on the driver’s door. JACK SMITH AND SONS LANDSCAPING. RUMSON LAKE-9-9448. The open bed of the truck was filled with rakes, hoes, bushel baskets, shovels, chicken wire and bales of fertilizer. Three men I had never seen before were crawling around the flower beds. One was a short, stumpy old man in overalls and a plaid shirt. He was puffing on a pipe and grunting as he smoothed earth around a cluster of yellow flowers. So that was the famous Jack Smith who decked his foreman. I guess you don’t have to look like a hero to be one. Of course, he was a lot younger when he saved the baby.

  The other two looked like his sons. They were both around twenty, tall and lean, and they weren’t wearing shirts, even though it wasn’t too warm yet. They had smooth, tanned skins pulled tight over muscles that flexed and popped as they weeded. And lots of veins.

  For a minute I felt scared and angry. Dr. Kahn called them to replace me, I thought, I’m going to be fired, but then I remembered he had said he had a weekly gardening service.

  As I passed them, they all looked up. Old Jack Smith just moved his teeth so that his pipe nodded at me. One of his sons said, “You still here, beach ball?”

  The other one said, “But you better be rollin’ along,” and they both laughed.

  “Boy, come over here,” called Dr. Kahn. He pointed toward the swimming pool. “There’s brushes and soap and a mop in the cabana closet. I want that deck shining.”

  I was glad to be off by myself. It was nice and quiet up at the pool. There was a little white house, just big enough to change clothes in, with a bathroom and a closet filled with cleaning equipment. There were three white iron tables with closed umbrellas in the middle, and a dozen wrought-iron chairs arranged on a white tile deck that surrounded the pool, which wasn’t too big. Pete Marino could cross it in two strokes. I could probably go back and forth underwater twice without coming up for air. Maybe three times. Except for a few leaves floating on the surface, the water was clear.

  I scrubbed the tiles with soapy water, careful not to let any of
it slop into the pool, then mopped until the wet tiles glistened in the sun. It looked nice.

  “Huh,” said Dr. Kahn. I hadn’t heard him come up behind me.

  “Is this okay?”

  He nodded and walked away. It must really look nice. I felt good about that. I washed out the brush and the mop and the pail, and put them back into the closet. When I came out of the cabana, there were black footprints all over my clean deck. I heard the Smith boys laughing.

  I did it all over again, and this time I didn’t put the stuff away, I just stood guard at the pool until Dr. Kahn came back.

  “Are you going to look at this all day?” he asked.

  “What should I do next?”

  “I don’t like a boy who doesn’t have initiative. There are a thousand things to do to make this place look beautiful for the weekend. Sweep the porch, wash the garbage pails, get the leaves out of the gutters. Just look around, you’ll find things.”

  The porch was easy, and so were the garbage pails, but the gutters scared me. I hate to climb ladders, and the gutters, long wooden troughs that catch the rainwater running off the roof, were pretty high. I found a ladder in the shed, a long wooden one with round rungs, and set it against the house. I started feeling shaky on the third rung, but as long as I didn’t look down I was all right. The gutters weren’t really clogged, just a few leaves and acorns and junk the rain had washed off the roof. I had forgotten to bring a bag up, so I stuffed it all in my pockets. There seemed to be more room than usual in my pockets.

  “What’s this ladder doing here, Jim?” It was one of the Smith boys.

  “Let’s put it away,” said Jim. He started to shake the ladder.

  “Hey, I’m up here,” I shouted.

  “You hear that, Jim?”

  “Hear what?”

  “That sound.”

  “Let go of the ladder,” I yelled.

  “There it is again.” They were really shaking the ladder now.

  “Cut it out.” I nearly lost my balance and grabbed the gutters.

  “Okay, Jim, one, two, three, heave.”

  The ladder was moving out from under me. I grabbed for the roof. My knees hit the gutter. There was a cracking sound as the gutter broke loose from the edge of the roof. But I scrambled up on the roof just in time. The ladder toppled slowly over, crushing a few flowers.