One Fat Summer

by Robert Lipsyte

  “Let’s just leave it there, Jim. I feel like walking around that nice clean pool again.”

  It was pleasant up on the roof. A good view of Rumson Lake sparkling in the afternoon sun and the low green foothills beyond. I could see meadows and farmhouses and the tiny brown and black dots that were grazing cows and horses. Dr. Kahn’s place looked beautiful from the roof. My lawn was velvety green, me hedges thick and neat. After a while I heard me clatter of tools being tossed into the back of the pickup, then I saw the green truck roll down the driveway. I thought a long tan arm sticking out of the passenger window waved to me.

  If I didn’t have to worry about getting down, I really wouldn’t have minded being up on the roof. The sun felt good, and the roof wasn’t so steep I had to worry about rolling off. I lay on my back and watched a chicken hawk glide and roll in the sky. That’s freedom, flying.

  “Are you sleeping on the job?”

  “The ladder fell down, Dr. Kahn.”

  “Right on me geraniums.” He set the ladder against the house. “Come on, come on, slow-poke, time’s money.”

  Less than a penny a minute, you old miser. I can afford to spend an extra thirty seconds coming down the ladder so I don’t fall and crack my skull.

  “How did you manage this little trick?” I’d forgotten how black and deep his eyes could get.

  “The ladder fell.”

  He shook his head. “I will not reward clumsiness. You will be docked for the time you were sunbathing on the roof. How long were you up there? A half hour?”

  “Dr. Kahn, it wasn’t my fault.” That came out before I had a chance to stop it.

  “I don’t like a boy who makes excuses.”

  “It’s the truth. Those Smith boys knocked over the ladder. While I was on it. I had to jump on the roof.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know.” I couldn’t tell him that I thought it was because they were friends of Willie Rumson, the boy he didn’t hire. “I guess it was their idea of a practical joke.”

  “That’s not my idea of humor at all, damage a gutter, ruin flowers, waste time. This time I won’t hold you responsible.” He walked away.

  I finished the gutters and put away the ladder and mopped the new black footprints on the tile pool deck. By that time it was a few minutes after three o’clock. I knocked on the front door.

  “Well?”

  “I’m all done.”

  He stared at me. “I suppose you want to be paid.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He disappeared back inside. I waited about a nickel’s worth before he came back with a handful of crumpled dollar bills and a small leather change purse. He counted out seven dollars and eighty-seven cents.

  “For the whole week?”

  “On Monday you worked six hours at seventy-five cents an hour, which is four dollars and fifty cents, minus thirty-eight cents for your half hour lunch break and four dollars and fifty cents for the broken mower blade. On Monday afternoon you owed me thirty-eight cents.

  “On Tuesday you received no pay since you had to redo Monday’s work. On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, at fifty cents an hour, you earned three dollars per day, minus twenty-five cents for each day for lunch.”

  He droned on. I barely heard him. Seven dollars and eighty-seven cents for the whole week. “If you want me to add it all up for you…”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I’m sure you will find it quite correct. I am a doctor of mathematics and until my retirement I supervised the actuarial tables of one of the largest insurance firms. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “I thought you were a real doctor.”

  “I’ve decided not to dock you for your time on the roof, or for the damage to the gutter and the flowers. I believe your story about the Smiths. However,” he raised a bony finger, “I must warn you that I do not like a boy who associates with bad company.”

  He turned toward the door, then turned back to me. “Monday morning. Nine o’clock. Sharp.”

  The further I got from Dr. Kahn’s house the better I felt. Seven dollars and eighty-seven cents is better than nothing. And he did want me to come back, so I hadn’t done such a bad job after all. And it was Friday. In school, we always said TGIF, Thank God, It’s Friday. In school I never really meant it, because I always liked school better than the weekends. But this summer, TGIF. I could use a couple of days off.

  The lake looked delicious. Could I go for a swim now! Just thinking about it made me feel relaxed, cool water covering me like a blanket, washing the heat and aches out of my body. Maybe I’ll come back at night when nobody can see me and swim. Glide through the water with long, silent strokes, like a shark. I imagined myself moving through night waters; Commander Marks leading an underwater demolition crew, closing in on the mines set to blow up the harbor in ten minutes unless we locate them and detach their fuses. Can we do it? One by one my gallant frogmen have to surface as their air tanks empty. Now I’m alone. I know how to breathe shallowly and conserve oxygen. The mines! But my tank’s empty, too. Just hold your breath, Commander Marks, you can do it, big fella; all those years of swimming underwater so nobody could see you is finally going to pay off.

  I was halfway home, walking along the edge of the county road, when I began to get the creepy feeling that something was following me. A little cold shiver up my spine straightened the hairs on the back of my neck. Don’t turn around too fast, don’t let on you know they’re there. I saw a movie once where the hero pretended not to notice the bad guys creeping up on him till the last second, then he jumped behind a tree and drew his six-gun at the same time. There were no trees along the road, but plenty of rocks as big as baseballs. I timed my steps. I’d take two long ones, a short one, scoop up a rock and whirl around. I was bending over, my hand on a rock, when someone yelled, “Get him.”

  A car door opened and a body jumped out. I was still bent over when something hard slammed into my backside and knocked me down. I turned over with the rock in my hand. A boot came down hard on my wrist.

  “Tried to put a rock through your windshield, Willie,” said one of the Smith boys.

  Willie Rumson strutted up. I was flat on my back and he was outlined against the pale blue sky. He looked about ten feet tall.

  “Next time you pull his ladder, make sure he’s still on it, Jim,” said Rumson.

  “Won’t be a next time,” said Jim. “You ain’t going back to Dr. Kahn on Monday. Right?” He put both boots on my wrist.

  “Answer the man, faggot,” said Rumson.

  “Drop dead,” I said.

  “You hear that?” Jim sounded almost as surprised as I was.

  “I’ve killed better men than you for a hell of a lot less.” Rumson lifted his boot over my face.

  “Hold on,” said Jim. “Don’t stomp his face.”

  “Can’t hurt that stomach,” said Rumson.

  “Just put your foot down,” said Jim. “If he goes crying to Kahn and Kahn tells my dad, I’ll get my head knocked off.”

  “Maybe I’ll just kick his ribs in.”

  “Kick his ribs, but just a little. Don’t break em.

  Another car pulled up. I couldn’t see it, but I heard its squealing brakes and felt the gravel spray from its tires on my face.

  “Whatcha got there, Willie-boy?”

  “A juvenile delinquent, Uncle Homer. Tried to throw that rock through my windshield.”

  “Let ’im up.”

  Jim Smith got off my wrist. A big, powerful hand grabbed my other arm and jerked me to my feet. “He’s a heavy one.” My face came up to his badge. He was very tall and wide. “Drop that rock, young fella.”

  I dropped it.

  “Now why would you want to break Willie’s windshield? You could cause a accident, somebody get killed.” He wore the uniform of a town policeman. He had sergeant stripes on his sleeves. “Huh? What you say?”

  “I…I didn’t…”

  “What’s your
name?”

  “Robert Marks.”

  “Summer people?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now you get on home, next time I hear about you, your folks’ll have to come down to the station, pick you up. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now get going.” He spun me around and booted me in the can.

  I jogged all the way to the foot of my hill, and I never looked back. I heard laughter behind me. It sounded like Willie and his Uncle Homer were sharing some big joke. About me.

  Mom and Michelle looked up suddenly when I walked in. I could tell I had interrupted some deep discussion. But when Mom said “Is everything all right, Bobby?” I knew the discussion wasn’t about me. If it was about me she would have looked a little guilty and offered me a snack before dinner. That was a relief. For a minute I thought maybe Homer had called her up.

  “I’m going to take a little nap before dinner.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Dad be home soon?”

  “No, he’s tied up in the city.” She bit her lower lip. “He won’t be able to make it up this weekend. Business.”

  Michelle stared out the window.

  Best news all week. Give me some time to think. Rumson, Dr. Kahn. Jim Smith, Homer; some mess. If I had to deal with my father, too, forget it.

  I went into my room and I did what I always do when the going gets tough. I went to sleep. I didn’t wake up until Saturday.

  10

  Without Dad, it was very quiet in the house. I kind of liked that. He always has something to say about everything. The weather, Mom’s meals, my clothes, Michelle’s makeup, an opinion for every occasion whether you ask him or not. And he’s always organizing something, he just can’t stand to see people lying around. Wasting your life, he calls it. Get out and do something, anything, he says. Mow the lawn, take a swim, read a book. I don’t think he ever stared out the window in his life. Or had a daydream.

  I just loafed around all day Saturday, looking at magazines, dozing, listening to the radio. Usually, I eat a lot on days like that, but for some reason I wasn’t too hungry. My stomach muscles were still sore from all that bending. Of course, I had a few peanut butter sandwiches, and a few dishes of ice cream, but that was more for taste than for hunger. Peanut butter and ice cream are two of my favorite foods, but you’ve got to be careful eating them. They can hurt you. The only thing worse than a peanut butter strangle is an ice cream headache. A few times in my life I’ve had both at the same time, and that’s murder.

  They both come from eating too fast, and I’m a fast eater; you’ve got to get it down quick if you’re afraid of being caught in the act. The peanut butter strangle hits you right away; the instant you take that first swallow and feel a lump the size of a golf ball in your throat, you know you’ve got it. I’ve tried to wash it down with cold milk or soda, even jam it down with bread crust, like you do with a fishbone, but that only makes it worse. There’s nothing to do but suffer, tough it out like a man. You’ve got to keep swallowing, feel that golf ball move slowly down your throat until it enters your chest; it’s as big as a baseball by then, shoving your heart out of the way, pressing against your breastbone, slowly, working down the alimentary canal, leaving a path of agony and destruction; as big as a softball by the time it finally falls into your stomach and lies there, heavy and hard as a cannonball, for hours, until your stomach acids slowly dissolve it.

  An ice cream headache is sneakier; it takes at least a couple minutes after you swallow a too-big mouthful for the message to get back up to your brain. Torture time. Then, blam, a shot between the eyes sending you reeling against the refrigerator door, it spreads across your forehead, a dull ache boring through your skull, you can’t think, you can barely focus your eyes. Wheew. I can’t get too excited about some creep standing on my wrist. I’ve known real pain, self-inflicted.

  Saturday was painless. I could take my time eating. Michelle was down at the beach, watching Pete, and Mom was studying. She wouldn’t have heard a bomb go off. But Dad has radar. No matter how quietly I open the refrigerator door, if he’s somewhere in the house, when that light goes on he senses it and appears in the kitchen. Without him around, I didn’t have to rush.

  Michelle left right after dinner. Mom asked her if she was seeing Pete, and when Michelle said yes, Mom just sighed. She didn’t say anything else. Then she went back to her books.

  I tried to read for a while, but I was so tired the words wiggled on the page. Normally, I have 20-20 vision. Once, when I was in the sixth grade and having a little trouble reading, I wore glasses for about two months. It was my mother’s idea, and she got the eye doctor to go along with her. The glasses were like windowpanes, but I felt better wearing them. My real problem was the teacher, a very skinny woman who used to make fun of my weight. Well, she didn’t actually make fun of me, but she always laughed when some kid in the class made a crack, like “Here come Robert Marks.”

  And she would say, “You must use the singular, here comes Robert Marks.”

  And the kid would say, “When you talk about Robert Marks you’ve got to use the plural. There’s at least two of him.”

  And the teacher would laugh.

  So I had some trouble reading, but the phoney glasses fixed it up. It was all psychological. I found out about it one night when I heard my parents arguing. My father thought it was a waste of money to get glasses when I didn’t need them to help me see. After that I wouldn’t wear them anymore, but my reading got better anyway.

  Sunday was a draggy day. Loafing around wasn’t so much fun when nobody seemed to care whether I did anything or not. Michelle was down at Marino’s Beach, of course, and my mother was studying, although she seemed to be walking around the house a lot, taking breaks for tea and stepping out on the porch to stare at the lake.

  Usually, we spread the Sunday newspapers around the living room, and tried to read while my father made comments about the news; but today I had all the papers to myself, and after reading Terry and The Pirates and Dick Tracy, I lost interest. I had nothing to do. By noon, I was bored.

  Usually, by noon, we’d all be out of the house doing something, taking a ride through farm country or going to an auction or walking over to the community field to watch the Sunday softball game between the bachelors and the married men. The bachelors around Rumson Lake were mostly older teenagers and a few guys in their twenties who were engaged. My father sometimes played for the married men. He wasn’t that great a hitter, but he was pretty good at third base; he had a really strong arm, and he never shut up the whole game—“Make ’im a hitter, chuck easy, baby, chuck easy, no hitter there, no hitter there”—and they always seemed glad to see him show up for a game. “Big Mart” they called him up at the field, even though he wasn’t so big. On the way back from softball he’d go for a swim. He really liked to fill up a whole day with things to do, and he liked to have the family with him. I sort of missed him.

  Around three, my mother sent me down to the beach to get Michelle. I hated that long hot walk up and down our hill. There were always battles about that walk; my father thought it was a waste of gas to drive down to the lake, and the rest of us complained that after a nice cool swim we’d get all hot again walking home. I couldn’t understand why my mother didn’t drive down and get Michelle herself, but the way she asked me, as if it was a great favor, and the way she looked, her mouth twitching nervously and her eyes kind of red rimmed, I didn’t put up too much of a fuss.

  Michelle was spread out on the sand, turning herself into a raisin, her head propped up on a beach towel so she could watch Pete show off his dives. The way he looked over at her as he walked out on the highboard, it seemed as if he was giving her a private exhibition. He was great. When he sprang off the highboard, he seemed to hang in the air for a moment, as if he was just about to take off and fly, then slowly jackknife, straighten out, and on the way down turn like a corkscrew until he went into the water as smoothly as a knife. Some
times I felt jealous of guys who dove off the highboard, but there was no way to feel jealous of Pete, he wasn’t really human, the way he looked, the things he could do; it was like watching one of those Greek gods we read about, Mercury, maybe, or Apollo.

  “Mom wants you to come home now,” I told Michelle.

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know, but she’s pretty upset about something.”

  She got right up and stuffed her things into a beach bag. “Did she say anything last night? About Pete and me?”

  “We didn’t talk at all.”

  “About anything?”

  “She was studying.”

  “No bedside chat?” Michelle shook her head.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing for you to worry about,” said Michelle. She waved good-bye to Pete. He waved back.

  I sang, “They tried to tell us we’re too young…”

  “Dry up,” said Michelle.

  I sang, “They tried to sell us egg foo young…”

  She laughed. “That’s better. Now if you could only carry a tune.”

  By the time we got back to the house, Mom was dressed and made up, sitting at the dining room table drumming the top with a pencil.

  “I’m going to need your cooperation,” she said. “I’m going into the city. Right now.”

  “When are you coming back?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. Probably Tuesday afternoon. There’s enough food in the house to tide you over, and I’ve left money in my jewelry box if you want to eat out. Michelle’s in charge, Bobby. I’ll expect you to do what she says.”

  “Are you going in to see Dad?” I asked.

  Mom shot Michelle a look, then said, “Of course, I’ll see him. But I’m going in to get some more books I need.”

  Michelle asked, “Is there anything special you want us to do while you’re gone?”