Lucky Leonardo

by Jonathan D. Canter

  “Maybe. Are you going to make your afternoon shift?”

  “I think I will. I’m feeling better.”

  “I just wanted to check. I was worried about you.”

  “Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “What do you think I think?”

  Leonardo walked back down the stairs to the minivan, and hopped in. “Who’s your friend, Uncle Lenny?”

  “Just a friend,” he said, as he headed for the highway, trying to spur performance from his suburban steed.

  “Why are you grinding your teeth?” Joan asked.

  What happened the night before when Lenny, at the behest of Chrissie, dropped by to see if Helen was OK was, as you may suspect, not exactly G-rated entertainment. “Tawdry” is a word that comes to mind. So skip a couple pages if you’re offended by genitalia being waved around in the air, and things like that. Pick it up again when Leonardo and Joan are calling Harriford Academy from the road, and you’ll be fine and unexercised.

  On the other hand, if you’re salivating for a steamy scene with Helen lying spread-eagle and butt-naked in front of Leonardo and manipulating herself to the edge of the world and holding it there, writhing, moaning, hanging by her finger tips until she can’t any more, that didn’t happen. Please rinse off and skip a couple pages yourself.

  For you non-skippers, the background on Helen is that she wasn’t born a cat woman, and didn’t jump from girlhood to cat woman overnight. Rather she got there by trial and error after a lonely adolescence spent looking for love in peculiar places, and dreaming of a career on Broadway. “I’m not married to the cat-woman costume,” she confessed to Leonardo on his evening visit. “I just need some life in my life, you know? I hate my hair. I hate my acne. I don’t have any money. I don’t have any friends. I like to run around in the dark in my costume. It makes me feel terrific. So shoot me.”

  Leonardo nodded and wondered.

  Helen subdued her thick black hair during daylight hours with cords and clips, and kept it out of her sight at night under a ski hat. When Leonardo asked to see her cat woman costume she pulled the hat off and flung it away—like an angry Mary Tyler Moore—and let her hair spring out like a black jungle.

  Then she disappeared to the back leaving Leonardo to inspect her sparse belongings, and look for clues to her past, which he didn’t find. No photographs, art, books, souvenirs, explanations. Just a battered television facing an old love seat in the living room part, and two beat-up stools at the counter in the kitchenette part. Helen—Leonardo decided—was living below the surface of things, with her secrets, waiting to be discovered.

  “Sit down,” she called from the wings, and as soon as he settled into her love seat the house lights dimmed and the music came on, Linda Ronstadt singing, wailing does her more justice, Smokey Robinson’s classic “Tracks of My Tears,” and cat woman entered stage left in full cat regalia, the ears, the tail, the skin-tight fit, singing along with Linda, holding a flashlight like it was her microphone, swirling the light around to showcase her arms and legs and butt, and lingering on her velvet-covered pelvic area.

  She sashayed close to Leonardo, with her spot-lit region moving in the rhythm of the thing, and reached down with her free hand, feeling around and around until she had a firm hold on what she was grabbing for, which was the loose end of a dangling strip of velcro which she jerked off with a quick yank to expose her privacy to the spotlight.

  Cut to black. Applause.

  “What do you think?” Helen asked from the darkness at the end of the song.

  “You’re a performance artiste.”

  “Yes. Did you like it?”

  “Very entertaining.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You have a nice singing voice too.”

  “Oh, thank you.”

  “Is this the show you were doing in my backyard?”

  “Umm, not exactly. I’m developing different material depending on the circumstances and the, umm, audience.”

  “Have you had many audiences?”

  “I’m just beginning to find myself on this, you know?”

  There was rustling in the dark like the sound of a cat letting herself out of the bag, followed by skittering and moaning like the sound of a cat taking a sharp turn on linoleum and smacking her knee into the radiator, and when the spotlight was turned back on it framed the empty cat woman costume curled forlornly on the floor, and then wheeled up the wall and across the ceiling like an outdoor spot heralding a Hollywood-style spectacle until it found the moving parts of the buff artiste as she serenely exited. “My encore,” she called from the wings.

  “Bravo,” Leonardo exuded, although in his heart he felt uncertain.

  Chapter 39

  “Harriford Academy,” a pleasant female voice answered Leonardo’s call from the road. He had her on speakerphone.

  “I would like to speak with a student there, Harvey Cook.”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Harvey’s father.”

  “Hold for a minute, please.”

  Leonardo, with Joan’s cartographic assistance and taking into account the variable speeds permitted by the two-lane country road and the country drivers on it, figured he was about an hour away.

  “Hello,” a man’s voice said, “is this Harvey Cook’s dad?”

  “Yes, Leonardo Cook.”

  “I’m the weekend duty master. How do you do?”

  “Fine. I would like to speak with Harvey.”

  “I’m afraid you can’t right now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We have a rule, Mr. Cook…”

  “Dr. Cook.”

  “Dr. Cook, excuse me. A student is not permitted telephone usage when he’s in detention. That’s the rule. There may be some emergencies when…”

  “Why is Harvey in detention?”

  “I believe we reported the incident to Harvey’s mother, and obviously I don’t have all the papers in front of me, but I’m quite certain she’s our contact person…”

  “What?”

  “We reported the incident…”

  “What did Harvey do?”

  “Dr. Cook you should review these matters with Harvey’s mother…”

  “What did he do?”

  “He tried to run away. Now he’s in detention.”

  “I’m on my way to visit.”

  “The rule is no visitors for a student in detention.”

  “I’m his father.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s a fundamental rule. It’s fundamental to our mission to teach our students that there are consequences to bad behavior. I’m sure you can understand that. I can’t waive the rule without express direction from the contact person. Your son’s mother is the contact person. You should speak with her…”

  “Who made her the contact person?”

  “She’s the contact person.”

  “I never agreed she would be the contact person.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Cook. I don’t know what your custodial circumstances are, but for this weekend, on my watch, my responsibilities are clear. No visitors. This is the way it will have to be. You should call back on Monday.”

  Leonardo was chalk white, white as Xerox paper, white as the Republican Party, when he disconnected.

  “What, Uncle Lenny?” Joan asked.

  “Joan, this is unbelievable.” He was barely able to get the words out. “We might as well turn around…”

  “May I use your phone?” she asked.

  “Who’re you going to call?”

  She pushed buttons.

  “Harriford Academy,” the pleasant female voice answered.

  “Are there tours of the school for people who are thinking about applying?” Joan asked.

  “Certainly. When are you thinking about coming?”

>   “Well, my father and I are nearby now. We’ve been looking at a few schools. Could we come by?”

  “Certainly. In fact we have a group tour scheduled to go off on the hour. If you come to the admissions office, I’m sure we can accommodate you. May I take your name?”

  “Joan…”

  “Joan?”

  “Joan Jeepers.”

  “Jeepers?” asked Leonardo after she hung up.

  The school was situated on a hill about a mile up from the little town of Harriford, Maine. From a distance it could not have been prettier, with snow-covered fields circling solid red brick buildings circling a stone church like one might find in the English countryside, on a sunny winter afternoon. Leonardo didn’t start to sweat until he turned into the school’s curving driveway, and stopped at the gate house in front of the closed swinging-arm gate. A uniformed guard came out and asked if he could help. “We’re here to take a tour of the school,” Leonardo said.

  “Your name?”

  “Hal Eisenberg, and this is my daughter Joan Jeepers.”

  “Could you wait just a minute?”

  The guard jotted down the license plate number before going back into his little house. He emerged a moment later with a parking pass. “Could you put this on your windshield, Mr. Eisenberg? The admissions building is the first one on the left. There’s parking available. Have a nice afternoon at the school.” He opened the gate.

  “Joan,” Leonardo said as he drove up the hill, still sweating despite the frozen air which filled the car after he opened the window to speak to the guard, “I said I was your father because I didn’t want to be me, and it’s his car if they check the plates…”

  “What about me? I’m Jeepers. How come you’re not Jeepers?”

  “I think you changed your name because you hate me and what I stand for…”

  “Cool.”

  “And I’m looking for a school that will put you back on the right track.”

  “Fuck that. I want to go home.”

  “Exactly. I think we’ll pass…”

  They had about half a plan. They’d do the tour and then reconvene. “I want to see Harvey,” Joan said. Leonardo nodded, and dabbed his brow, and did a relaxation technique Dr. Ziggamon told him about which contained so many checkpoints it was supposed to divert the anxiety’s attention. Obviously I need more medication, Leonardo said to himself, which was one of the checkpoints.

  They parked in a visitor space, and walked into the lobby of the admission office which looked the way it should, Leonardo thought, putting its best foot forward with a fire in the fireplace, and an aerial photo of the campus taken at the peak of autumn foliage along one wall, and other photos of stern headmasters going back a hundred years, sports teams in formal pose, and newer ones of smiling teenagers being casual like in an advertisement for Abercrombie. A picture window showed off the snow-covered fields and their outcroppings of goal posts and backstops and the faint outline of a ball diamond. Beyond the fields, a pine forest stretched to a distant ridge.

  School publications and brochures were spread on a sturdy wooden table in the middle of the room. Comfortable-looking couches and chairs with the school crest were set along the sides. A boy with a sullen face stood at arm’s length from his apparent parents. A girl with a sullen face sat at the far end of a couch from her apparent grandmother. There was not a lot of love in the room.

  A perky woman with a big smile approached Leonardo and Joan when they entered, and introduced herself as assistant director of perkiness, Leonardo thought she said, but then he stuck a finger in his ear to fidget the wax. She welcomed them to the school.

  “We’re pleased to be here,” Leonardo said. Joan gave him a sidelong glance.

  “We’ll be starting the tour in a minute,” the perky woman said, “and I’ll be here at the end of the tour to answer questions.”

  “Thank you,” Leonardo said to her, adding in a low voice with his back to Joan, “I may want to speak with you after the tour, without my daughter.”

  “I understand. That would be fine.”

  The church bell tolled the hour—2:00 pm—and that coincided with the entrance of a perky and presentable boy and girl wearing blue blazers with the school crest on the breast pocket and striped ties in the school colors of blue and gold. “How do you do?” the boy said. “I’m Chuck.”

  “And I’m Karen,” said the girl.

  “We’re your tour guides this afternoon,” they said in unison, like they were wearing mouse ears. “We’re seniors at Harriford, and we love it.” Leonardo didn’t need an advance degree in secondary-school education to get the picture that Chuck and Karen were on the payroll. Joan gave him another sidelong glance. She was full of sidelong glances.

  The tour began. Karen narrated and Chuck added color commentary as they walked from the admissions office up a wooded path to a sprawling mansion called the Main House which, according to Karen, was built after the Civil War by lumber baron Ethan Harriford on a swath of his cleared acreage. When his heirs lost interest in the place after World War I, it fell into the hands of the Reverend Emmanuel Lamb who was working as a handyman and religious advisor to a prosperous Boston family, which staked him to start the school on the English model. He made a success of it until 1953 when he passed his pulpit and paddle to his son who continued the tradition until 1969 when he was involved in a scandal in New York and resigned, and was succeeded by his son who was a ranked squash player but not a successful educator. “He lost the school by foreclosure sale in 1995 to a group headed by my dad,” beamed Chuck, “who’s now the headmaster.”

  “Oh,” said Leonardo, looking for Joan so that he could exchange a sidelong glance.

  “Dad kept all the old traditions, or at least the good ones,” Chuck continued, “but he added a new vision and commitment.”

  “The rest is history,” said Karen.

  Chuck and Karen collected Joan who was lagging, chatting with a clump of students, and moved the tour out of the cold and into the Main House, which was also cold but not quite as. Some students milled in the ancient front rooms under the animal heads. Leonardo noticed he was looking for Harvey in each face, and clues for Harvey behind each balustrade and mantel, like Bruno the search dog reacting to stray molecules in the air. At one point he whirled around thinking he saw Barbara watching him from the shadows. I haven’t done that in a while. What a boost to find out I still know how to play make believe. I can’t wait to see what happens when I walk past a mirror. I wonder if I’ll start staring at my nose? Unfortunately I’m not carrying the proper anti-hallucinogens…

  The tour paused at the foot of a grand staircase. “The infirmary is on the second floor,” Karen said, “along with rooms for the new kids until they get used to the place.” Chuck pointed out the closed door of his dad’s office. “He likes to talk with all the prospective families, but he’s out of town this weekend, talking to families in the mid-west. He asked me to apologize to you, and say you can call him anytime…”

  “Psst,” Leonardo whispered to Joan, “do my eyes look peculiar to you?”

  “No,” she whispered back.

  “Are you sure?”

  They went back outside, where it was clouding over and getting colder, like they were in Maine in winter or something. They did the classroom building, and the pretty stone church, “…the pride of Reverend Lamb, and photographed in Life Magazine. We have traditional religious services here every day, which are completely non-sectarian,” said Chuck.

  At the main student dormitory they viewed a student room, a student bathroom, and a student lounge with three bodies lounging on a couch in front of the television, none of them Harvey. “How’s the food?” Leonardo asked, efforting to look like a prospective parent might look. Two of them rolled their eyeballs. The third, a fat girl, answered, “Not bad.”

  When the tour exited the do
rmitory in the direction of the gym, the last stop, the best of the afternoon was past. Leonardo shivered as he stepped outside, and wished he had worn a warm hat and gloves. A thick bank of clouds controlled the sky and darkened the view. The weak old winter sun was quitting early.

  ———

  There was, however, no quit in his distant Caribbean cousin who, at that minute, was beaming heat onto white sand and turquoise waters, and roasting the flesh of two of his favorite acolytes, Leonardo’s ex-wife Barbara and her boss Byron Plummer, as they lay belly-up and naked on adjoining chaises in front of Byron’s private beach-front bungalow, basting in coconut oil between meetings with clients. The next meeting was just five days away.

  “We can postpone if we’re not ready,” Byron murmured as Barbara diddled her fingers through his sleeked-back hair.

  “Boss,” she cooed, “I won’t be ready.”

  ———

  Closer to home, a funny thing happened to Helen on her way to the Starbucks for her afternoon shift. She ended up in Leonardo’s bedroom. Scratching and sniffing her way through his things, listening to his telephone messages, including the one from Chrissie. “Sweetheart,” Chrissie said, “I’m sorry. I’m still having car trouble. I’ll call you.”

  Helen listened to that one a few times, as she lay on Leonardo’s bed.

  ———

  Back in Maine, the Chuck and Karen tour reached the gym where an intramural basketball game was about to start. “No,” Karen said in response to Joan’s question, “we don’t play sports against other schools. That’s part of our mission statement, you know, that we are an independent community. You are all invited to watch the game…”

  Leonardo considered putting his cards on the table, and demanding to see his son, but didn’t. He continued the uncomfortable charade. On the path back to admissions he complimented Chuck on the school’s security and vigilance, and asked as casually as he could about student discipline.

  “Mr. Eisenberg, as you probably know,” Chuck said, giving a nod in Joan’s direction, “a lot of our student population comes to us with a history of trouble, whether it’s drugs, or alcohol, or juvenile delinquency, or just not doing what they’re supposed to do. We change the history by providing a disciplinary plan which no one, especially their parents, was willing to provide before. We have rules. The students know the rules. If a student breaks a rule, he’s disciplined. If he does it again, the discipline increases. And so on. And you know what? It works. I’ve seen it work. Our students learn the importance of not breaking rules. They learn to toe the line. They learn to be good, obedient citizens…”