by M. E. Kerr
I’m okay when I’m at the Blue Moon. I belong there, setting up the chips for the poker games, listening to old Mrs. Resnick cry that her hubby no sooner gets out than he goes right back in, answering the rattle of bells at the front door, always eager to see if it’s someone new, someone whose relative we’ve seen on Court TV.
Everyone there likes me too. Everyone knows I’ll sneak a peanut butter sandwich to them late at night. I’ll let the cats up the back stairs to sleep with those who need a little fur and purr around their necks. I’ll get them thrillers or romance books from the library with my card. I’ll watch the spooky stuff on TV with them in our parlor, and I can sit in for card games too. Bridge, poker, and gin.
Follow me out of the Blue Moon, down two blocks and over three, and you’ve seen me land in enemy territory: Redmond High School.
Mousey Moore, on the short side with thin brown hair and bird legs, arms just as skinny.
At the Blue Moon I babble and crack jokes and listen and hum.
In that puke-yellow brick building with the flagpole out front, I am duh. I scurry down the halls like the mousey they’ve named me. Not even mouse. I am littler. My whiskers bristle with fear. My nostrils quiver. Inside, everything trembles.
“Hey, Mousey, did you bring a cheese sandwich for lunch?” Someone has tossed an empty Coke can at the back of my head.
“Did the mousey bring cheese for himself? Did you, Mousey?”
“Yis.” I can’t even make it sound like yes. It hisses out of me between chattering teeth: Yisss.
“Is the cat after you, Mousey?” I feel a sneaker press down on the back of my shoe.
“Nip.” For nope—nip, and I skitter down the hall to get away, oh-oh, not in the boys’, it’ll be worse in there. Try by your locker. Just open the door and hide by your locker.
But there is no way for someone like me to hide at school.
I hide in my head, fantasizing that I’ve grown tall and strong enough to fight them. Or suddenly so unbelievably handsome and amusing they all long to be my friend.
I pray for days when something big is going on in the town or the world, taking their minds off me.
Now Onondaga John was at the end of his story, which was about his courtship of Polly Posh, how he adored her, and how frightened he was of Mr. Pullman, her father: rich and powerful, six foot three, with a booming voice. Pullman would look down his nose at John Klee and say things like “Don’t wear brown shoes again, fellow. It’s not a man’s color.”
“You don’t know what that’s like, do you, Johnny? To be scorned. Polly tells me you have lots of friends at your fancy school. What’s its name?”
“Oxford House, sir.”
“Yes. Your grandfather Pullman went there, and his father too.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you admire the Pullmans, Johnny?”
“Not really, sir.” Not from what I’d heard about them! Polly said Johnny’d become so spoiled living there. He instructed the maids to remove all magazine inserts before putting them in his room. He only wore a terry-cloth robe once, then threw it out and grabbed a new one from the shelf in his bathroom. The entire Pullman family were wastrels, said Polly—greedy and ungiving.
Onondaga John said, “I was afraid you’d come under their influence, since you’re their only grandchild. I’m glad you stuck with your mother!”
That was when he told me he was going to see that I received $240,000.
I swallowed hard. “But where would you get that much money, sir?”
“Let’s say from a partner of mine, Johnny.”
I had never asked him about the last bank robbery, though I did know it was the first time he had worked with partners. Before that he always went solo, and only robbed banks in Onondaga County, upstate New York.
There were three robbers in the Salina Bank robbery. I did know that one turned state witness and claimed Onondaga John shot the cop. Polly swore he never had, he wouldn’t, it wasn’t in him to kill anyone. Steal, yes! Kill, uh-uh!
The third man had apparently taken off with the loot from the heist.
“Johnny? You look slightly reluctant. It’s not dirty money, Johnny. It doesn’t belong to people. I’ve never robbed people. I’ve robbed banks, and banks reimburse depositors. Insurance is a business like any other, with its risks and gains. They bet someone like me won’t come along. I bet someone like them won’t be prepared when I do.”
“I never thought of it that way.” I’d never thought of it at all.
“This is just another little mystery story, Johnny.” Sometimes at the end of a story he’d say that, then add, “Life is mysterious. You don’t know that yet, but you’ll see.”
“It’s very hard for me to believe,” I told him.
“I plan to give you thirty thousand dollars a year for eight years,” said Onondaga John. “Your first payment will come to the Blue Moon, in cash, in six months.”
My mouth must have fallen open; my eyes must have been round with amazement.
“Don’t say anything, Johnny, just listen. It will be yours to do with as you please. I like the way you’ve turned out. I trust you, Son. Unlike me, you have a noble heart you will not disgrace.”
I don’t know about a noble heart. Do you know what I thought I’d do first with the money? I would hire a drama student from Redmond University, where theater was featured. He would be big and tough looking, able to handle himself in any circumstance. I would buy a Saab convertible for him to drive. We would get some Redmond University coeds to accompany us. We would appear at all the games together, at the dances, at Pizza Palace, all the places I never went, fearing the bullies would be there too.
I would no longer be Mousey Moore. Moose, maybe. The Moose.
“We can’t take that money,” said my mother. “Brian, what could you be thinking of? Stolen money? It’s bad luck, honey!”
“He didn’t offer it to us, Mom. He offered it to me. I can take it.” I gave her Onondaga John’s explanation about insurers being businessmen, about risks attached to business.
“Malarkey!” she said. “That’s how Onondaga John got where he is!”
That night after the poker game Polly said she was going back the next afternoon.
“Then send us an E-mail that Johnny’s been hit by a two-ton truck,” said my mother. “We are ready to end this charade.”
“Not me,” I said. “I’m not ready.”
“I can’t say that I blame you, Brian,” Polly said. “Now I understand why John wanted to meet his son. He told me what he’s planning. Better you than the real Johnny! And I’ll expect to be a nonpaying lodger after you get your first installment.”
“If that money comes to this house, it’ll go right back!” said my mother.
“Go right back where?” Polly said. “Apparently the third man is dying, and he’s already put the cash somewhere in John’s name.”
“We won’t have any trouble getting someone to take it away,” said my mother. “Particularly someone in navy blue with a silver badge.”
“That’s a lot of money,” said Polly.
“You keep it if you love having stolen money so much,” said my mother.
Polly gave me a wink. She said, “What boy couldn’t use some new clothes and music and something like a little Saab to get around in?”
“Convertible,” I said. “A Saab convertible.”
By the time Polly left, she had jollied my mother into thinking about it.
But my mother did ask me, “What kind of values do you have that you think it’s important to have new clothes, new music, and a new Saab?”
“Convertible,” I said. “A new Saab convertible.”
“What kind of values are those?”
“Teenage values,” I said.
“Do they teach you that at school?”
; “They don’t have to,” I said. “It’s our job to know it.”
Suddenly, back at school, this girl who was head of the drama club asked me if I would be in a play.
She can see the change in me already, I decided. I had a suspicion there was a new spring to my step and I might even have grown an inch since the thought that $240,000 could be mine … soon.
Polly had kissed me good-bye and said hang in there, we’ll work on Mom. I somehow could not believe my mother, upright and honest as she is, would really not go to sleep thinking of things we could have with $30,000 a year to spend. We needed a computer, since ours from the early eighties had finally crashed, and we needed a third bathroom, and we needed new poker chips. We were not unneedy at the Blue Moon.
I told the President of the Redmond High School Players Club that of course I would accept a role in the play. How many times had I tried out for parts that always went to someone else?
Making myself sound no more excited than I imagined Leonardo DiCaprio might be, offered a movie role, I asked what the play was called.
“What You Really Are Is What You Don’t Eat,” she said. “It’s an original comedy about food fads.’”
“What’s my part?” I knew I wouldn’t be the lead. It didn’t matter. It was a beginning.
“You’ll be a rabbit. You know how your nostrils vibrate sometimes, Mousey?”
So there was not a new spring to my step, new growth, or anything new to accompany the visions I had of cars and travel and college campuses spread out over lush green hills, some sweaters (cashmere), pants, coats, toss a cap in, keep going, keep going.
I was still not quite human by the standards at RHS. But I had progressed from a rodent to a hare.
That afternoon on my way from school I was tripped, pushed, made to flush like a toilet on the circular cement walk, and warned that life was short for shorties. Just another day in Paradise.
Ah, but then, as Onondaga John liked to say, Fate frolicked into the picture. Walking along Genesee Street, I saw the spanking-new Marshall Sylvester Saab Center. In the window was a beige convertible with beige leather seats.
I made a casual entrance—just slipped inside, you might say—and sidled over for a look-see.
“You’re the kid from the Blue Moon,” Mr. Sylvester said. “I remember you used to come into my showroom on Jefferson Avenue and say you just wanted to have a look-see. I don’t spend the day in a suit and tie to talk to little squirts about cars!”
“I’m not looking for myself. I’m looking for Johnny Klee Jr. Ever hear of him? He’s inherited a fortune.”
“No, I never heard of him. You are the kid from the Blue Moon, though, aren’t you?”
“So what? I’m not always going to be the kid from the Blue Moon. My friend, Johnny Klee, goes to Oxford House, in Boston, Mass. And he would prefer to have brown leather seats in his convertible, not those beige ones.”
“Yeah, yeah. Tell him to come in. Who did he inherit the fortune from?”
“His father.”
“Klee? From around here?”
“Did I say from around here?”
“Tell him brown leather seats will take eight weeks.”
“We’ll wait.”
“Yeah, yeah. How’s business at the Blue Moon? With all these dope addicts being sent up for grand theft and manslaughter, your mother must be rich.”
“The one who’s rich,” I said, “is my buddy, Johnny Klee Jr.”
There are people you just can’t impress, and that seemed to be the case with Marshall Sylvester. I slunk out of the showroom trying to whistle nonchalantly, telling myself: So what!
I couldn’t go to Redmond Prison just anytime at all. I had to wait for Polly to come to town. But my thoughts were on Onondaga John. When I wasn’t thinking of new things I would buy for myself, I would find something somewhere that John Klee would like: a tin of those Altoid peppermints he favored; Old English aftershave; a rhyming dictionary, since he told me he wrote poetry. I even found him a leather-bound copy of Great Expectations. It was an interesting story for me to read at this point in my life, for it was about a boy who also had “great expectations” of money. I was going to be a grateful and attentive recipient. I was going to be a son.
“Is Mrs. Moore in?” the guy said.
“She’ll be right back,” I said, looking him over, figuring he was probably in Redmond to see a brother or a father, his first time, shy about saying why he was there. Someone had given him the address of the Blue Moon, even though we were known to favor female clients. We liked help in the kitchen, clean bathrooms, anything but sports on the big TV in the parlor—and other things along those lines that a male clientele did not guarantee.
“Sit down,” I said. “You don’t have to stand.”
“I like to stand,” he said. He was one of those. How dare I suggest a course of action he should take?
I slung my schoolbooks on the couch in our parlor and took a good look at this long young man. The teeniest, tiniest gold stud in his left ear, black hair, probably shoulder length, tied back with a bit of leather.
“If you’re planning to stay here,” I said, “I can sign you in.”
“I don’t know if I’m staying or not. I’d like to know about the visiting hours at the … ahem … um … prison here in town.”
“Tomorrow you can visit between noon and three,” I said.
“Then I’m forced to stay, I guess.”
“I’ll sign you in,” I said, crossing to my mother’s small desk. “Your name?”
“John Pullman,” he said.
“John … Pullman.” Of course. He had taken his grandparents’ name.
“I want to stay on a smoke-free floor, in a room with a view and a comfortable chair with arms, a private bath, and a double bed.”
If I had imagined in my wildest dreams how the real Johnny would look and act, it would be exactly as the real Johnny looked and acted. Preppies always seem more confident, and feel free to order you around.
“Another thing.” I found out this was a favorite way for him to begin sentences. “Can you tell me anything about Marshall Sylvester?”
“He’s the Saab dealer here,” I said.
“Yes, so he announced when he called Oxford House looking for Johnny Klee. I haven’t been called that since I was eight years old! When it came over the intercom I about had a duck!”
He looked down at me and his lips tipped into a snide, lopsided grin. “And you must be the kid from the Blue Moon who said I’d prefer brown leather seats to beige ones in my new convertible.”
“The beige are harder to keep clean,” I said, everything inside me sinking to my shoes, heart pounding, nervous breakdown suggestions throughout my terminals.
“Another thing,” he barked, “what do you know about my father leaving me money?”
“I was just kidding,” I croaked. People really do croak in dire circumstances. I learned that.
“What do you know about that old jailbird? What do you know about the third man?” He bent down so that he could look me in the eye. “And how does my mother fit into this picture?”
What would be the ending to this story? Onondaga John might ask, if he was telling it. And is this a story about who gets the money, or is it a story about what the thought of getting the money can do?
Perhaps it’s both. As Onondaga John would point out, there are many levels to the best stories, and in life there are levels galore!
The thought of getting the money did not make much of a dent on Polly Posh, though she was curious about where it came from.
My mother reacted to the thought of getting the money with hostile threats.
Marshall Sylvester went to his computer as he thought of getting the money, and was able to locate a Saab dealer in Mattituck, New York, with a convertible, in stock, complete with b
rown leather seats. He made a phone call to Oxford House.
The thought of anyone else getting the money brought the real Johnny to Redmond, finally, to meet his father.
No one but the fly on the wall knows what was said between the two. It was the first and last visit.
Now me. The thought of getting the money made me strut away from duh and yissss and nip for whatever brief time. True, I was propelled by borrowed glory, and there are finer places than the Marshall Sylvester Saab Showroom to boast in … and a more receptive audience than the cynical and sarcastic Sylvester himself. But I don’t take that blame, for I was new to the promise of a windfall—impatient and flawed.
I did write a story about it, in the style of Onondaga John: Sit back, relax, and I’ll tell you a mistake I made—a whopper!
“The Fool in the Saab Showroom” was its title.
It was the only A+ that I ever received in any subject, and across the top my English teacher wrote: “How interesting! What an imagination!”
“Hey, Mousey!” a kid yelled at me as I hurried home from the trenches and minefields of RHS. “Where’d you steal that story from?”
Then there was a chorus: Is there any cure for poor Mouse Moore?
Instead of provoking respect in my predators, I inspired them to reach a new creative height: rhyming.
One day there was a postcard on my bed, where Mother left all mail: on people’s beds. It said:
Thanks for the look at your story, Brian! You’re a better actor than a writer, in my opinion, but then I saw you act three times, and this is the only story of yours I’ve read.
If it’s good enough to be included in your school literary magazine that should tell you something.
Out of our biggest difficulties, we make our little songs.
Do I mind that you put me in a story, you ask? It is the only justification I can think of for deceiving me. So I don’t mind. You wouldn’t have had a story without me.
I gave you a lot of material, so in a sense, you have great expectations, after all. (Thanks for the book etc.)