She giggled. “Oh Tim, you’re so funny.”
When he thought about it, he was pretty funny. He began to hum, keeping time to the music.
Chapter 16
“How was it?” his mother asked.
“Not bad. Not as bad as I’d thought it would be.” Worse.
“Almost nothing is,” she replied.
Little did she know. He’d tell her in his own good time. Not now.
“I saw Sister Mary Teresa, Ma. We had a nice conversation.”
“How is Sister MT?” His mother had always called her that. “What’s she up to?”
“Same old stuff. We talked about souls. I told her what I thought about my soul and she said she didn’t think God would mind.”
“She probably thought it was a step in the right direction that you’re even thinking about your soul,” his mother said. “Sister MT always was a liberated woman. If she hadn’t become a nun, she might’ve been a stateswoman or a politician. Or maybe the president of a college. A very far-thinking woman. I’m glad you ran into her, Tim. I bet she was glad to see you, too.”
“Yeah, I think she was. She remembered me. I was kind of surprised. Although I guess I gave her so much grief she probably couldn’t forget me. She asked about Patrick, too. How’d your day go?” he thought to ask.
“Kev was here,” she said. “We went over the books, and it turns out we barely made the rent money last month. It’s very discouraging. If we had a better location, we’d sell more, and also command better prices. But we can’t afford the rents on Main Street, so we’ll have to stay tucked away in the alley.” His mother was clearly disturbed. “Kev’s not sure he wants to continue in the antique business.” She busied herself arranging a pile of books and magazines, keeping herself occupied. “He thinks he might like to head west, to Oregon or Washington State, something like that. He wants me to go with him.”
He took off his jacket and felt his armpits. “Boy, did I ever work up a sweat,” he said, pleased with himself. “Dancing is a lot of work. Even the kind of dancing I do, which isn’t exactly what Fred Astaire had in mind. Melissa and I were about even, I’d say. She looked at her feet a lot. She might be a star tap dancer, but when it comes to touch dancing, she isn’t any better than I am.” He loosened his tie and sat down. “What did you tell him? Are you going?” A picture of his mother and Kev wrapped in each other’s arms in the orange tent flitted briefly through his head. “Are you getting married?” With an effort he remained nonchalant and noncommittal, waiting for her answer.
“I don’t think Kev has marriage in mind.” His mother’s face was turned away from him, but he heard the quaver in her voice. “He wants me to go with him on a trial basis.”
“Who’s on trial?”
His mother laughed without mirth. “Me, I guess.”
Oh, boy. If Kev turned up now, he’d smash in his face, punch him out good. He’d get him in a shoulder lock and grind him down to pulp. He’d set the monsters on Kev and tell them they had carte blanche. Do your darndest, kids, he’d say. And the monsters would lead Kev away and that would be the end of him. A little taste of blood was a dangerous thing, he thought.
“That guy is something else, Ma.” He shook his head. “You’re well rid of him, if you ask me.” Which she hadn’t.
His mother frowned and chewed on her lip. “Does it seem extraordinary to you, Tim, that you and I are talking to each other this way? I mean, it’s as if you’re my contemporary and I came to you for advice. And you’re my son, my sixteen-year-old son.” She got up and went out to the kitchen. Presently, he heard the kettle singing, sounding off. She was making tea. She always made tea in a crisis.
“You want to know what I think?” She stood in the doorway, cup in hand. “I think the trend of parents becoming more their children’s contemporaries than their parents is a bad thing. I think children are forced into adult situations at a ridiculously early age. Here we are, Tim, talking like this. I wouldn’t have had this happen to us for all the world. I am your mother. You should be coming to me for advice, not the other way around. I’m supposed to show you the way, protect you, teach you how to cope with life. Now our roles seem to be reversed. It’s nutty. Absolutely nutty.”
“Ma, I need lots of advice,” he said. “You and Dad always taught me to think for myself, to work out my own problems. That’s what I try to do, but it doesn’t always work that way. Stuff piles up. There’s a lot going on out there that’s bad. We both know that. You’re a good mother. So you got tied up with a wimp. That could happen to anybody.”
She blinked rapidly several times and drank her tea. He thought it would burn her mouth, she gulped it down so fast.
“If you want to keep going in the antique business, well, keep going. Things will improve. You’ll make some big bucks if you try. You don’t need Kev. Go it alone. I’ll help. Dad will want to help, too, I’ll bet.”
The cup rattled in the saucer as she set them down. “I don’t want Dad to know anything about this, Tim. That’s understood. This is between you and me.”
“Whoa.” He held up his hand. “I didn’t say I was going to tell Dad anything. All I said was he’d probably help if he knew you needed it. That’s all. My lips are sealed, Ma.”
She calmed down. “OK, I’ll see how it goes. Thanks, Tim. Would you like a cup of tea?”
“No, thanks. I swilled down enough punch to float a battleship. I’m going to change my duds, get out of these party clothes, and write a letter.”
“I can’t get over you.” His mother shook her head, smiling at him. “One minute it’s like pulling teeth to get you to write a thank-you note to your grandparents, and next, you’re borrowing stamps and firing off letters all over the place. What gives?”
“Ma, you have your secrets, I have mine. I’ll let you in on mine someday when we’re both older and wiser, OK?”
“Fair enough.”
“What smells so good?”
“Turkey. It was on special, seventy-nine cents a pound. I couldn’t resist. We’ll probably be eating it for weeks, though.”
Maybe this would be the moment for him to tell her about his recipe for Turkey Kev. Now that Kev was a has-been. Still, he didn’t tell her, not wanting to count his turkeys too soon.
On his way to his room, he heard the telephone. When he picked up the upstairs extension, his mother said, “It’s Patrick,” and hung up.
“Hello, fool,” said Patrick.
“Did you say that when my mother answered?” he asked.
“Yeah. Sometimes I get caught with my pants down,” Patrick admitted.
“What’d she say?”
“She said, ‘You must have the wrong number. There are no fools here.’ Then you got on. Tell your mother I’m sorry. Tell her that if I’d known she was going to answer, I never would’ve said that. How was it?”
“How was what?” He’d let Patrick dangle a while.
“The dance, clown. The orgy at St. Raymond’s. Melissa said it was peachy, but you know how girls exaggerate. Melissa also said you punched out Tony Montaldo. About time somebody did.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I saw Sister Mary Teresa. She wanted to know if you were still pushing a broom somewhere, or if you had become a junior executive. I told her you were maturing, but slowly, very slowly.”
“No kidding?” Patrick sounded very pleased. “She asked about me, huh? Well, whadya know.”
“Patrick, I have to split. I’ve got a big problem I have to work out. See you in the A.M., all right?”
“Not if I see you first,” Patrick said. “As far as your problem goes, I accept house calls. But not after midnight. Ciao.”
Chapter 17
He picked up where he’d left off.
“Have your affections cooled?”
What affections? Something like a sharp stab of pain struck near his heart as it occurred to him it was quite possible Sophie’s heart belonged to another. Someone who was undoubtedly tall and strong and good-lookin
g. Someone who was also a good athlete, good dancer, and all-around jock. That was the type she’d go for. He could tell. Too late, he could tell.
Maybe it was somebody in the school band, someone she saw every day, with whom she had much in common. This cat would play sweet music and, as Sophie swayed gently like a snake charmer, blowing on her oboe (for he’d seen her, stealing into band practice more than once), this guy would play the drums. The drums were what he’d be best at, although maybe he also played piano and the French horn. But it was the drums he starred at, playing them aggressively, with a jungle beat that stirred a caldron of emotions. Without this guy, the entire orchestra would collapse. This guy of Sophie’s was a golden boy. Make no mistake.
He groaned and rested his head in his hands. What good would anonymous love letters do against such an adversary? Probably the golden boy composed drum solos, which he dedicated to Sophie, solos without words, as it would be next to impossible even for this paragon to write words to a drum solo. All that pounding, that jungle beat, would get to her, though, and win her heart more surely than any love letter, anonymous or not.
Still, he wasn’t giving up that easy. Hang in there, he told himself, gritting his teeth. Faint heart never won nothing. Isn’t that what his little voice told him again and again?
“Ah, Sophie, I beseech you, do not be ashamed of a friend you once favored. Have you not taken possession of me? Think of those times of happiness that, to my torture, I shall never forget. Look what I was and what I am now. How often was not your heart, filled with love for another, touched by the passion of mine?”
There he was again, the little drummer boy.
“Nothing in the world is sweeter than you.” That last line was his own. Nothing earthshaking about it, but just straight talk. Like dancing, the second time around in the letter department was also easier. Briskly, with a flourish, he signed his trademark, “Yours, Anon.,” and slipped his missive into an envelope, barehanded. Let the fingerprints fall where they might.
It was odd that writing those letters, largely made up of other people’s words, served to put words of his own into his head. He lay back and began yet another letter to Sophie in his head.
“I long to see you again. To embrace you, to look into your eyes, eyes of silence and melancholy, which render you even more mine. I want to be alone with you in some sunlit meadow, kid, your hand in mine.”
That was his meadow, flower studded, disturbed only by a sparkling stream, where the air was clear and the sun shone and the birds sang. And his dream princess turned out to be a narrow-boned, homely little waif masquerading as a princess with a voice like a chain saw, whose daddy came at him with a gun.
There was real life and there was imaginary. And never the twain shall meet.
His mother tapped on his door. “It’s Dad, for you,” she said, poking in her head.
“Tim, how about attacking a bucket of balls again this Saturday? Maybe we’ll have better luck this time.”
“Sure, Dad. And this time I won’t crump out on you. I’m really sorry about that.”
“No harm done. Glad you can make it. See you about ten, then, on Saturday.”
During the week he helped his mother after school. She had taken a booth at the antique show to be held at the high school on the weekend. “Fifty Dealers, Fifty!” boasted the signs posted in every shop window and on every telephone pole. As if Fifty Dealers, Fifty made the show special.
“Kev called,” she said when he got home after school on Friday. “He says he heard about a shop that may be available at the end of June. The location is perfect. Of course, the rent’s high but Kev says the new place would probably triple our business.”
“I thought he was on his way out west to go white-water rafting, or something,” he said, keeping his voice light.
“He hasn’t decided. Would you get me more of that plastic-wrap stuff, darling? It’s in the kitchen.”
Sophie must have gotten the second letter by now. He had mailed it three days ago, and was working on a third. He followed the same procedure he had before, keeping a close watch on her to see what, if any, emotions might cross her face when she saw him. He had thought the meeting at Mass might have cemented their relationship. She gave him no sign. Her eyes were as wary as before, her expression as aloof. He wondered what he could do to rouse some emotion in her. Or was she seething quietly inside, waiting for him to make some sort of move?
He planned to slip into the auditorium to watch her at band practice. The sight of Sophie swaying in time to her oboe music moved him beyond words. But a self-important senior, of whom there seemed to be many, stood guard, arms akimbo, legs apart, a regular SS type.
“No non-band members allowed in,” the senior stated, scowling.
“I’m doing a story for the local paper,” he said, peering nearsightedly from behind his nonprescription glasses, looking, he thought, as rumpled, as scholarly, and as intellectual as any college don. He carried a notebook and a pencil, which he whipped out and held at the ready, lending a touch of verisimilitude to his claim of being a reporter. “We’re doing a rundown on school bands in the area,” he said, acting very cool. “May even do a Sunday feature.”
“Back off, baby.” Evidently the senior was smarter than he looked. “You’ll have to clear it with the authorities.”
What a troglodyte.
“What is this, 1984 all over again?”
The senior sneered and turned away. Tim skulked outside, thinking he might catch Sophie on her way out. He would walk with her, maybe even hold her hand, her hot, dry hand, which he had shaken as a sign of peace. Surely that was a bond between them. Had she gotten his letter, or had the mailman been derelict in his duty, pausing perhaps, at a local videogame emporium for a couple of games, thereby delaying its delivery? He thought he heard the clear, pure notes of Sophie’s oboe rising above the cacophony of all the other instruments. But he couldn’t be sure.
What had he done before he started writing love letters to Sophie? He couldn’t remember.
Perhaps she was ill, he thought, as the band members filed out and she wasn’t among them. Perhaps she was lying even now, at this moment, in a delirious state, asking for him over and over. Her parents bending solicitously over the sickbed, perplexed at her reiteration of, “Anon, I want Anon. I will never get well if I do not see my dear Anon.”
The parents, brows knitted, would clutch each other and whisper, “Who is this Anon our daughter seeks?”
Who indeed.
Chapter 18
Saturday morning he was out on the sidewalk, waiting, when his father pulled up. Alone. Yeh.
“Joy had some errands to run. She’ll meet us there,” his father said.
“Dad, what say we play tennis next week? You think Joy’ll let you off the hook for once?”
His father, always a careful driver, kept his eyes on the road.
“I thought you’d enjoyed hitting golf balls, Tim,” his father spoke at last. “It’s not a question of being ‘on the hook,’ as you put it.”
Once again, he’d put his foot in it.
“Sorry, Dad. I only meant I’d like to play tennis with you once in a while. I have a feeling golf isn’t my sport.”
“You haven’t given it a chance, Tim. I know it’s discouraging, but you’ll see that time and practice will improve your game.”
“That’s just it. I’d like to try a game instead of this just hitting the balls. If we played an actual game, I might get with it.”
“You have a point. We’ll play next week. Either at Joy’s club, or we can try the nine-holer here, at the driving range.”
They hung around, waiting for Joy to show. “Len Feeley must be off his feed this morning,” his father said. “He usually comes out to say hello.” They could see him inside his office, pacing, once in a while pressing his nose against the glass to see how things were going.
They waited for quite a while. His father took several practice swings and he did the same
. Loosening up the old muscles. All the while, he was conscious of Sophie’s father looking at them through the window.
“Maybe we ought to go ahead without her,” his father said, checking his watch for the umpteenth time. “She must’ve got held up in traffic.…”
“All right.” He was pleased. He and his father could drive balls to their heart’s content without Joy giving them instructions on the right way to do it.
They got a bucket of balls and started in. “The blind leading the blind,” his father joked. “Watch me, Tim.” His father’s feet rooted around in the grass, seeking the perfect stance. Elbows in, keep your eye on the ball. It looked so simple. Still, Tim got off a couple of good swings, and the feel and sound of the club hitting the ball just right was exhilarating. When you got it just so, you knew it.
“Not bad, fellas.” Len Feeley stood behind them and, as they reached the bottom of the bucket, he came forward. “Where’s the lady? You guys on your own today?”
“She’ll be along,” his father said. He knew his father didn’t like Len, could tell by the stiff way his father spoke.
“What say, Tim? You want to buy another bucket? We both seem to be doing pretty well today.”
“Any amount of balls you want, we got ’em. I might even throw in a couple extra, you fellas are such good customers.”
“That isn’t necessary,” his father said. “You’re in this to make money, after all.”
Obviously, Len had something on his mind. He puffed ferociously on a cigarette. “I try to give these things up, they’re killing me, and then I get hit with the latest. My wife says I oughta get outa the business, into something less stressful. I can’t handle these things. What with one thing and another, my nerves are shot.”
“That so?” His father handed him a new tee. “This one’s for luck, Tim.”
“My kid’s getting these sicko letters in the mail,” Len confided. Tim felt himself blush and quickly knelt to tie his sneaker, afraid his face might give him away.
“It’s enough to drive me outa my skull.” Len let another cigarette from the one he held. “I call the police; they give me the nothing-we-can-do routine. The guy’s a crazy is what I say. Lock him up before he kills somebody. Like he’s the kind puts razor blades in kids’ Halloween candy, you know?”
The Love Letters of J. Timothy Owen Page 9