by M. E. Kerr
“Listen,” I said. (I prefaced a lot of my sentences with “Listen” when I spoke to him; I guess it was because I was always so aware that he was forced to stop really important things to tend to my little messes.) “Listen, Dad, how about letting me go somewhere where no one knows who I am?”
“And where would that be?” he barked back at me.
“Couldn’t I go live with Grandpa Blessing?”
There was a long silence. For a moment, I had this crazy idea that my father was going to answer, A.J., I want you with me. It was really an insane thought, not only because my father travels so much, but also because how the hell would he explain me? I mean, was a man like my father supposed to introduce me by saying, “This is my son, the troublemaker. No school will keep him. I have him with me because there’s no place else for him to go.”
During that silence, I was also thinking of a line from a Robert Frost poem: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.”
My father finally spoke. “Grandpa Blessing doesn’t even know you.”
“He sends me a Christmas card every year. He asks me to visit him. He says he lives all alone.”
“Maybe he could use a little extra money,” my father said.
I said, “What?” I’d heard him very clearly, though; I sometimes say “What?” when I’m in shock. The idea of paying someone to take me in was what shocked me. It shouldn’t have, I guess. After all, my father had paid Choate and all the other schools—why not a relative?
My father said, “I said maybe we can work something out with him. Maybe that’s not a bad idea.”
So there I was, one week to the day later, on my own, with this hick druggist dressing me down for something I wasn’t even sure I’d been that wrong in doing.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” I told the druggist as I picked up my books from the table. “You’re absolutely right.”
I was just going to have to learn . . . and to unlearn. . . . But I worried over how the girl felt about me, how Brenda Belle felt.
Oh, and incidentally, my grandfather refused my father’s offer of money. He also told my father that I wouldn’t need much of an allowance in Storm, either. No more than five dollars a week.
At Choate I’d been managing on one hundred and fifty a month.
Notes for a Novel by B.B.B.
Hairgo is a waxy substance you apply warm, let dry on your skin, and then rip off in exactly ten minutes. Seven minutes had passed that night when my mother entered my bedroom and said, “Always the clown, hmmm, Brenda Belle?”
What made her say that was the wax mustache I had made from Hairgo. It was colored pink and firmly attached to my upper lip.
I made a face and bowed low, letting her think I was just fooling around. I didn’t want her to know my mustache was a depilatory, for fear she’d go into one of her famous panics.
“You know, Brenda Belle,” she said, sitting down on the edge of my bed, “playing the clown isn’t a very feminine thing to do. A funny woman is rarely a lady. I’m telling you this for your own good.”
“You’re probably right,” I said, watching the second hand on my alarm clock. I had two minutes to go before it was time to remove the wax.
“I don’t want to criticize you,” my mother continued, “but it is a fact that very few female comediennes have happy lives.”
“I don’t particularly want to be a female comedienne,” I said.
“Men laugh at funny women,” my mother said, “but they rarely fall in love with them. A man likes a serious woman, a quiet woman.”
“I plan to be a quiet, serious woman,” I told her. “I promise.”
“You don’t seem to be headed in that direction, Brenda Belle. Even now you’re intent on being the funny girl.”
“I’m just practicing for a part in a school play,” I said.
“Brenda Belle, you’re not going to take a male role in a play, are you?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve decided against it.”
My fingers were playing with the wax mustache; I was seeing if it was possible to just pull it off in front of her, without her guessing its real purpose. The wax would not give an inch.
The ten minutes were up.
“You’re at an age now when you should begin to grow out of your tomboy stage,” my mother said.
“I intend to,” I said. “Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Just a moment, Brenda Belle,” she said.
“What is it?” I said impatiently.
“Please sit down, dear. I came to have a little . . . to discuss certain . . . to explain—” her voice drifted away without finishing.
I suddenly realized what she was up to. It was a rotten time for it. “I know the facts of life,” I blurted out, and I could tell by the look in her eyes that she was hurt because I wouldn’t sit down.
She stood up. “I guess you don’t have time for a talk with your mother.”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “I just want to go to the bathroom first.”
“I come in here for a serious talk with you, and you sit here wearing that mustache. Then you jump up and announce you know it all. I can see you’re not in a receptive frame of mind.”
“Just let me go to the bathroom first,” I said desperately.
“Never mind,” she answered, walking toward the door. “You’d rather be a clown and a know-it-all. I can see that.”
I think she was really relieved that she didn’t have to go through with it. She was hurt, too, but more relieved than hurt, because sex was number one on the list of the ten things she least liked discussing. My father was a close second.
I felt sorry for her, and sorry for myself, because there was nothing I could do then and there to make things better. I made a dive for the bathroom, and she went downstairs wearing that particular expression which I’d seen over and over that seemed to indicate I was her major cross to bear, if not the only one.
If you’ve ever ripped away a scab before it was completely healed, you know the feeling I had when I removed the wax mustache. The manufacturers of Hairgo weren’t kidding when they advised the user to remove the wax in exactly ten minutes. Along with the wax, I removed a good deal of the skin above my upper lip. There was no blood, but there was a bright red tender bruise in the exact shape of a mustache.
For about an hour I rubbed the wound with vaseline, but nothing did any good. I was sitting on my bed, thinking of suicide and New York City again, when the telephone rang. It rang twice before my mother called up the stairs, “Brenda Belle, get that, will you? Faith and I are watching a movie.”
That may have been true, but my mother was not all that engrossed in the movie, because I heard the little click meaning she was on the line shortly after I said hello.
“It’s Adam,” he said. “Remember me?”
“Yes,” I said, and I tried to think of something funny to add, but I couldn’t, not just because I was miserable, but also because I was practically dumbfounded to think he’d call me. I wondered if he wanted to make fun of me, and I was afraid, too, knowing my mother was listening and he might mention the depilatory.
“How are you?” he said.
“Fine,” I answered.
“You’re not mad or anything?”
“No.”
“You sound different.”
“It’s hard to talk.”
“Why?” he said.
“I’m in the midst of something.”
“Oh . . . I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right.”
“I was just going to ask you if you wanted to go to a movie or something Saturday night.”
“Saturday night?” I said, picturing the scab I’d have over my upper lip by then. “This Saturday night?”
“Yes, this Saturday night.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“Are you sure you’re not mad?”
“Of course I’m not.”
“You sound different.”
“I’m doing something,” I said.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay?” I said.
“Good-bye, then,” he said.
“Good-bye.”
I pressed the receiver button down, then up, and heard the click from the downstairs phone.
Then I sneaked out into the hall and leaned over the bannister to hear the conversation below.
“Wait for the commercial,” my Aunt Faith said. “This scene has that marvelous Billie Kay Case in it; remember her, Millie?”
I could see my mother standing by the television set, waiting for the commercial, so she could turn down the sound and tell my aunt about my telephone conversation.
“Billie Kay Case is a very sad woman,” my mother said. “It depresses me to watch her.”
“She’s a scream, though. Look at her!”
“What did she think was going to happen when she married him?” my mother said. “She was at least twenty years older!”
“Just enjoy the movie, Millie, and forget her personal life.”
“It didn’t take long for him to dump her. Five fast years. I knew he would,” my mother said. My mother is something of an authority on the personal lives of all celebrities past and present. Once a week at the beauty parlor she thumbs through all the movie magazines and gossip sheets.
“Maybe Billie Kay dumped him,” my Aunt Faith said.
“Not on your life!” my mother said emphatically. “He ditched her. He’s going around with every young thing from Washington to Hollywood. He escorted a nineteen-year-old to a White House dinner, which in my opinion is a scandal!”
“Billie Kay must be in her late fifties now,” Aunt Faith said. “This movie was made in the fifties.”
“He used her,” my mother said, “and then he tossed her out when she began to show her age.”
“She is funny, though—look, look!”
Then the commercial came on, and my mother turned down the sound.
“Faith,” my mother said, “what boy in this town is named Adam? What boy Brenda Belle’s age is named Adam? I can’t think of one.”
“I can,” said my aunt. “It’s the new boy. Charlie Blessing’s grandson.”
“His grandson by which child?” my mother asked.
“I don’t know,” my aunt said. “Charlie had three sons and then poor Annabell. I just know he’s got one of his grandsons living with him.”
“That grandson called here for Brenda Belle,” my mother said. “He asked her out.”
“He asked Brenda Belle out?”
“He did.”
“Out on a date?”
“He did.”
“He did?”
“Yes. But wait until you hear this: Brenda Belle refused.”
“How odd,” my aunt said. “The whole thing. Odd.”
“Is he a nice boy?” my mother asked.
“I have no idea. I feel sorry for him, though, living down there with Charlie.”
“I’m worried about Brenda Belle,” my mother said.
“That isn’t news,” said my aunt.
“I think she’s too busy playing the clown.”
“Better that she’s doing something happy than something sad, Millie.”
“Clowns aren’t happy,” said my mother. “Boys don’t like clowns.”
“This Adam must, if he’s asking her for a date.”
“I wish I could question her about it,” my mother said, “but then she’d know I listened to her phone conversation.”
My aunt said, “Turn up the sound now, Millie. The picture’s going on.”
After my mother turned up the sound on the TV set, she headed for the stairs.
I ran back to my bedroom. I knew she was on her way up to try and see if she could get me to talk about Adam.
By the time she got to my room, I was ready for her. I’d tied a silk scarf across my mouth, covering my Hairgo wound.
“Reach for the sky, Pardner!” I said when she walked through the door. “This is a stickup.”
From the Journal of A.
“She’s probably been told to stay away from you because of me,” Grandpa Blessing said about a week after the day I met Brenda Belle Blossom in Corps Drugs. “Her mother doesn’t approve of me. Not many people do.”
“Don’t blame yourself for everything,” I told him. “She hasn’t even been in school. She’s probably sick.”
“It won’t be easy for you in Storm,” he said. “I’m not exactly a hero around here.”
“I’m not exactly a hero, either,” I said, “so we’re even.”
We’d just finished dinner and we were sitting in the living room watching the evening news on television. Grandpa Blessing was polishing off another beer. My father never drank beer because he said it gave a man a big belly, but it hadn’t done that to my grandfather. He was tall and lean with the weathered face of an old Maine fisherman. He had thick white hair he wore in a brush cut, and blue eyes the color of a summer sky. I really liked his looks, and the kind of clothes he wore: old plaid flannel shirts and corduroy pants and those heavy ankle-length boots he ordered from Sears. He smoked a pipe, and I liked that too. My father chain-smokes cigarettes. You sit across the room from my father for a long time and you get the feeling his insides are a tangle of strained nerves, but my grandfather always looked calm and ready to deal with whatever came down the runway. That’s the great thing about being around someone who’s lived a long time: Not much will surprise him anymore; he’s ready for you and whatever’s happened to you, and you can talk to him about it.
The only trouble with Grandpa Blessing was he didn’t really appreciate himself; he had this feeling he hadn’t amounted to much. Late at night when he was really bombed, he’d call up this radio talk show that originated in Boston. He called himself “Chuck From Vermont,” because when he was a young man during World War I, his army buddies used to call him Chuck. He’d been a cook in that war—it was long before he studied to be a vet. He knew a lot about food and traditions involving food, and Late Night Larry, the man who ran the show, treated him like a real authority.
“Well, it’s Chuck From Vermont,” Late Night Larry would say. “What nugget of knowledge can you pass on to our listeners this morning?”
“This concerns saltcellars,” my grandfather might answer. “In the Middle Ages the saltcellar stood in the center of the table, and was the symbol that divided high rank from low rank. Noblemen and others of rank sat above the salt, and commoners sat below the salt.”
“Chuck From Vermont, you are something!” Late Night Larry would enthuse. “You always give us food for thought—ha, ha—and we appreciate hearing from you. How’s that book coming along; have you finished it?”
“I’m working on it,” my grandfather would tell him.
My grandfather wasn’t working on a book at all. He told me he just liked to kid Late Night Larry. I think there was more than that to it, though. It was sort of his way of being someone. If Late Night Larry suspected that my grandfather was in his cups, he never mentioned it. He treated my grandfather with respect, and I suppose that alone was worth the price of the calls to Boston, even though my grandfather didn’t really have the money for long-distance telephoning. My grandfather kept track of the cost, spaced his calls, and saved up to make them. It was his one extravagance.
Sometimes my grandfather would fall asleep over his beer with his clothes on. I’d wake up the next morning to find him still slumped in the living room chair, and all the lights still burning. And I’d cover him with a blanket before I set off for school.
He was a great talker on every subject but my mother. Once he’d taken a picture from his wallet to show me, one of my mother and father bringing me home from the hospital after I was born. It was years old and he hadn’t looked at it in a long time, I could tell, because it was taken with an old Polaroid camera and the snapshot had never been coated (the old Polaroid pictures were preserved with a coating you had to apply yourself).
There we were, all right, all three of us, but our faces had faded away. . . . My grandfather didn’t like to talk about my mother. Once he asked me what my father said about her, and I told him my father felt badly because she loved him more than he loved her. My grandfather’s comment was simply, “She was very young, A.J. Just a kid, not much older than you.”
That night while we were watching the news on television, I’d asked him what Brenda Belle Blossom’s mother was like.
“She was real pretty once,” he said, “but she’s like a present that stayed gift wrapped. No one ever got to appreciate it, though I think Hank Blossom tried hard. He was her sister’s beau before he met Millie. Everyone thought Hank would marry Faith. He came from Omaha, Nebraska, and he rode in the rodeo. He was handsome as sin, a rascal who’d rather laugh than eat, and Faith and Hank were always howling their lungs out over just anything. But Faith wasn’t the pretty one of the sisters.”
“So he married Millie.”
“Yes. She set about trying to get him out of the rodeo and into a suit of clothes with his hair slicked down. He left her a couple of times. It was Faith who always tried to get them to patch it up, even though it was Faith who loved Hank better than I love beer. The last time Hank left Millie, Millie was pregnant with your friend Brenda Belle. Faith found out Hank was in a rodeo out in Missouri. She talked Millie into going to see him. The one thing Millie’d always refused to do was to see Hank ride.”
“What happened then?” I said.
“What happened was Hank looked up and saw Millie sitting there beside Faith, and Hank fell off his horse. Millie told it that he was drinking and couldn’t stay on the critter, but Faith told it that the shock of seeing Millie’s angry face threw him.”
“Was he hurt?” I asked.
“Mortally,” my grandfather said. “The horse kicked him in the head.”
“Then Brenda Belle never knew her father?”
“Nope.”
“Did Faith ever marry?”
“Faith was married for a short time,” my grandfather said. “She married old Doc Hendricks, used to be county coroner. He was a good man, a kind man, but he was old and he died, and Faith and Millie moved in together.”