“I can’t make it, Dad. I’m meeting a friend.”
“Change the date, Billy. There are things we need to talk about.”
Girding my loins to do battle again with Mr. Williams, I called Duwayne’s house again. Busy. I called again. Busy. And again, and again. The phone must have been off the hook.
“Dad, I can’t reach my friend. So I have to meet him at one o’clock.”
“Where?”
“The Brothers Four.”
“We have exactly enough time to drive by there at one, and you can see your friend, and apologize, and make a date with him for some other time.”
“Dad, he’s not the kind of guy who’ll be there at one sharp.”
“Then you’ll leave a message for him, apologizing for the fact that you had to go to the airport.”
“Dad — no.”
“Billy, this business of saying no has to got to stop. You’re not a two-year-old. I told you last night at dinner that there was a limit.”
A kid of two or three said no, and you had any number of ways to sway him, including dragging him by the scruff of his neck. A kid of six or seven could be spanked, bribed, threatened, sent to his room without TV, or even yelled at, and he’d cave in. A kid of twelve or older was different. My dad could have physically overpowered me and hauled me into the car, but where do you go from there? Authority is the key. But the kid has to accept the moral right of the authority. And if he doesn’t…
There’s an amazing power in the word no if you’re not afraid to use it and stick by it.
And it helps sometimes to be clever.
“Okay,” I said, “we’ll go by the Brothers Four at one. Maybe Duwayne will show up on time.”
My dad smiled. He liked to win and he liked the loser to be gracious about losing. That’s how adults, especially lawyers, got on with business. He had told me that even after the verdict in a murder trial, where passions could run high, the prosecutor and the defense attorney usually had a drink together and shook hands.
At a quarter to one we piled into the Mercedes, which somehow always smelled new even though the odometer showed 19,500 miles. When I commented, my dad explained: “There’s a chemical imbedded in the dashboard leather. It’s called Very Expensive New Car Smell. Actually it’s composed of seventeen separate chemicals, and I used to be able to name most of them. Cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, ethyl heptylate, lemon essential oil, methyl benzoate, rum ether… you get the idea. It’s manufactured in Teterboro, New Jersey. I represented the manufacturer in a patent infringement lawsuit.”
I knew he wasn’t joking. Those were the sort of things that adults did. And they thought children were childish.
We reached the Brothers Four on Newtown Lane at exactly two minutes to one by the dashboard atomic clock. My dad kept the motor running because we were parked across the street in the sun and he wanted to keep cool.
“I’ll wait seven minutes,” he said. “Watch out for cars.”
Of course Duwayne wasn’t waiting in the pizza parlor. I asked the guy behind the counter if I could make a local call. He did that for the kids, who were his best customers. I punched out Duwayne’s number.
“Yeah?”
“Duwayne around, please?”
“Gone.” The father hung up.
I watched the second hand jerk its way three times around the circumference of my watch. The black minute hand moved more subtly, but it moved. There was no way Duwayne was going to get here before ten past one. He was a slow mover anywhere but the basketball court, and even there, they said, you thought he was just lazying along until the moment he shot past you and buried the ball in the hoop.
I had to time this right. I went out of the Brothers Four at four minutes past one, made a good show of looking up and down the street for cars, and then walked across Newtown Lane to where Jack waited, drumming his fingers on the leather dashboard with its Very Expensive New Car Smell. The tinted window slid down.
“Dad, Duwayne hasn’t showed up yet.”
“Then get in the car, Billy.”
“I’ll have plenty of time to hang with Simon when he gets home. And you and I can talk later.”
“In the car, Billy.”
“Dad, I promised this kid I’d wait for him.”
“I told you: leave a note and explain.”
“I promised.”
“Billy”—he suddenly looked agonized—”why are you doing this to me?”
I’m not doing anything to you, Dad, you’re doing it to yourself. Or, if you like, I’m doing it because I have the right to do what I please as long as it doesn’t harm anyone. Of course, Dad, if you’re having a heart attack, that falls into the category of harm, and I’ll rethink. But you’re not. You’re just pissed off, and dumbfounded. And nonplused. Another terrific word.
“I have to get to the airport, Billy. I don’t want Simon to walk off the plane and not see anybody waiting. I cannot sit here all day and argue with you.”
Yes, I knew that. I wondered if he would slam open the door—if he did that, it would knock me flying—and wrestle me into the car. In that case, I would have to back away from him in the street. I would hate that.
“Get in, or face the consequences.”
“Dad, please forgive me.”
He turned his head from me, clenched his jaw, and hit the button that rolled up the window. He drove off without looking at me. I gazed after him.
Maybe all of this was wrong. Maybe I was going too far. Well, I’d find out.
I crossed to the Brothers Four. There came Duwayne, ambling up from the middle school where he’d parked his bike, raising his bony black fingers and ruby-pink palm to high-five me.
“What’s up, little bro? You lookin’ sad…”
Simon and his new electric guitar thumped up the stairs. His nose was peeling and he was picking at it. He looked bigger than when I’d last seen him.
“Hey, bro! Are you in deep shit. What the fuck’d you do now? Did I ever have a superior time at camp, I don’t even know why I bothered to come back. It was brilliant up there. Wait till I tell you about this incredible chick I met from Baaahston…”
My dad called up in a stony voice. “Come down, Billy. Your mother and I want to talk to you.”
In the den, as usual, he sat behind his desk, my mom and I on the sofa. She held my hand, I wasn’t sure whether to comfort me in adversity or keep me from leaping up and flying out the door. I looked outside. The sunlight was streaming through the foliage. The afternoon sky had a yellow tinge in it. But the coolness in the house, and the low murmuring hum of summer insects outside the open window, soothed me.
My dad spoke in a calm, firm voice.
“This is it, Billy. We feel you are in crisis — and if you are in crisis, that means that we, this family, is also in crisis.”
He paused to let that sink in.
“You’ve behaved in what we consider an abnormal and asocial manner. It started the day you climbed that rock out at Louse Point, which you knew perfectly well was against clearly-stated rules. Then you went off to the hospital in Southampton without advising us, which resulted in your bringing that villain, plus his dogs, into our home, with results that I needn’t elaborate. Out in Aspen you defied me by flying back alone after I’d said a definite no. And then, Billy, after you surreptitiously took whatever money you could get out of the ATM machine, you left home. You ran away with your girlfriend. Your mother had to come into Manhattan to see you. If Carter Bedford hadn’t tracked us to the theater that day and snatched his daughter off the street, you and she, for all we know, might still be there in Manhattan. I don’t know how we stood still for that — I think we must have been temporarily out of our minds.”
With that statement, he let out a loud, angry burst of air. In the sigh family, only louder.
“Last night you sneaked out of this house at two o’clock in the morning to meet with your girlfriend. That was another act of defiance against the rules. Today I as
ked you to drive to the airport with me because I wanted to talk to you. You declined. Sitting there on Newtown Lane, I practically begged you. You refused. You had a date, or so you told me, with a friend with the improbable name of Duwayne, whom your mother and I have never met, and who, for all we know, considering your recent deviousness, may not even exist.”
They really had it in for me. That was a long list of sins. And they’d left out that I’d refused to tell them where my money was.
My dad leaned forward across the desk and, enunciating each word, said, “Billy, you cannot do those things.”
He glanced at my mom. She nodded, meaning, I’m with you, honey, I see it that way, too.
“Billy, there’s a unwritten social contract between parents and children. Aside from comfort and sustenance, we do our best to see that you’re well educated and can pursue the reasonable desires and ambitions that come with age. We are rational people, and we wish you only the best — that you grow to manhood, achieve your goals, have a family if you so choose, and be a productive human being. To those ends, we give you all our love and support.
“In return you have to trust us. You have to obey our rules, which are time-tested rules for the common good. If you can’t do that, if you refuse to do that, if you run amok, we have to take steps to curb you. For your own good, as well as for the family peace.”
He looked again at my mom. She nodded.
“The first thing we’re going to do, Billy, is put you into therapy. You know what that is?”
“A shrink without a degree.”
“That’s a way of describing it. Grace recommends a family psychotherapist in Sag Harbor. We’re going to set up an appointment for you. And we’re going to see her as well, with you on certain occasions, and without you on others. We accept part of the responsibility for this situation. Is all that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m not going to ask you, Billy, if you agree to this therapy, because I don’t want to hear — I refuse to hear — another ‘no’ from you. It’s going to happen. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And we are going to punish you,” he said, “which perhaps we should have done more of in the recent past. I don’t mean that I’m going to take off my belt and spank your bottom the way my father might have done to me for the kinds of offenses that you’ve committed. I don’t believe in that. Blows, no. Punishment, yes.”
He leaned back in his chair. I could almost see him sitting in black robes high above a courtroom. He would have made a terrific judge.
“Your mother gave you some signed checks on your money market account. She wants them back. Then, as your trustee, I’m going to revoke your right to control any investments with your Modern Age account. Those sums will revert to the trust and go into an interest-bearing account. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Billy, you’re grounded. Just the way you were grounded when you were nine years old and you nearly lost a thumb sawing Simon’s drumsticks in half with Mr. Papademetriou’s power saw. You were grounded at that time for a weekend. You’re grounded now for a month. You are forbidden to leave this property except for sessions with the therapist, and then Inez will drive you to Sag Harbor and pick you up. I’m going to chain your bike to the rack in the garage. There will be no more night assignations. You can dispense with any mythical Duwaynes. Is all that clear?”
The breeze had dropped. The greenery outside didn’t stir. Humbly — and hypocritically — I said, “Yes, sir.”
Chapter 36
You’ve seen those movies where the hero is at the end of a narrow tunnel, cornered by a deadly King Cobra, with a ten-ton boulder rolling his way that will crush him if he manages to evade the cobra, and if the boulder doesn’t flatten him the bad guys are waiting at the only exit to the tunnel with six ravenous attack dogs straining at a leash, eighty seven machine guns, and a flamethrower. How does the hero escape?
The answer to that question is always the same. He deals with one problem at a time.
Using a yellow lined page from a legal pad, I made a list.
+SET ALARM FOR 2:30 A.M.
+CHECK ROPE BAG
* ROPES
* HARNESS
* RUNNERS & QUICKDRAWS
* BELAY DEVICE
* BINERS
* HELMET !!
* CHALK BAG
* KNIFE
+AMY’S DUFFEL BAG
+MY DUFFEL BAG & BACKPACK
+PEBBLES
+FLASHLIGHT (PUT IN NEW BATTERIES)
+EAT FRUIT FOR ENERGY.
+WATER BOTTLE AND THERMOS WITH JUICE
+LETTER FOR MOM & DAD
+ CASH FROM SOCKS
+$500 IN ENVELOPE FOR Duwayne
+BANANAS FOR IPHIGENIA
+IPHEGENIA
I have a theory that if you make a list of what you have to do there’s less stress in your life. Without a list, you have to keep all those to-do items in your head, which is worrisome. With a list, you only have to remember one thing — to look at your list. And there’s a lot of satisfaction in crossing off those items, one by one. .
My main worry was Duwayne. He didn’t have the same motivation that I had to shake the cobwebs out of his brain and rise up from a comfy bed in the darkest dark and slip out of the house and be at the corner of Hedges Lane and Main Street at 3:30 a.m. The $500, yes, but money can’t always make you hear the alarm clock if you’re sixteen years old.
So, in the blackness of Monday morning, when I reached Main Street at twenty five minutes past the hour of three, and there was this skinny black shape standing and shuffling its feet in front of brother Robert’s old Chevy high-rider parked by the hickory trees across the street from the Talkhouse café, I let out a sigh of satisfaction.
“Hey, dude!”
We high-fived.
He explained that he hadn’t gone to bed. “I knew if I’d’a put my head down on that pillow, I’d’a slept till kingdom come. Couldn’t do that to you, little bro.”
“I appreciate that, dude. How do you feel?”
“Hammered. You got coffee in that thermos?”
“Apple juice. Want some?”
“No, man, thanks. Say, is it gonna rain?”
That heavy metallic smell filled the night air.
“I hope not,” I said. “Did you bring your harness?”
“In there.” He pointed to the car. Then he pointed to my duffel bags, the rope bag, and Iphigenia’s gym bag. “How’d you haul all that to Main Street?”
“Made a few trips.”
“I’d’a picked you up, dude.”
He didn’t understand all that I was doing and what it meant. I had decided to conduct this enterprise like the ones I’d read about in a book on CIA covert operations: on a need-to-know basis. Duwayne knew what he had to do to help my plan succeed out at A-1 Self-Storage, and he knew he then had to drive me and Amy to the Montauk railroad station, and that was all he knew.
“Here’s the money,” I said, pulling the envelope out of my back pocket.
“Not till we’re done, dude.”
“Well, you never know.”
Even in the dark I could see that he looked puzzled, as if he wasn’t sure what I meant. I wasn’t sure, either.
He took the money. “Billy, what’s movin’ around in that bag?”
“My monkey.”
“No shit. The one on the TV?”
“Yeah. Can we go?”
The Chevy made a lot of noise. The springs squeaked and some of them poked through the streets. I stuffed all the gear in the back seat.
“How’s the gas?”
He looked. “Near a quarter full.”
“Is that enough to get us up to Springs, and then to Montauk, and then get you home?”
“Maybe not.”
“Duwayne…”
“Hey, it’ll get us out to Montauk. Then I can fill ‘er up on the way back. Not your problem. See?”
“What
if the cops stop us?”
“Why the cops gonna stop us?”
“I don’t know. But if they do, how do you explain that you don’t have a license?”
“Hey, dude, you ever hear of any cops drivin’ round here at four a.m. on a Monday morning? They asleep like everyone else got even a quarter of a brain.”
He showed those big white teeth. I was a nag and Duwayne was a realist. I shut up. Reaching into the Adidas bag, I stroked Iphigenia.
The Chevy chugged stubbornly through the darkness of the summer night. There were no stars or moon. We were on Amagansett Springs Road, well past the country club and coming up on Red Dirt Road, and I was going over the plan and the scenario in my mind, when I realized what I’d done — or rather, not done — and I let out a yelp to wake the dead. I dug into my pants pocket but I knew I wasn’t going to find what I was looking for.
Duwayne’s head whipped round. “What happen’?”
“I forgot the key.”
What I’d really done was forgot to put it on my list. If it wasn’t on my list, it didn’t exist. That’s the only problem with making lists. You get to depend on the list and not on your memory.
“What key you talkin’ about?”
I groaned. “There’s a key to a gate and I’ve got to have it. I left it in my other pants. I had it in my pants pocket last night and I put the pants over a chair, so I didn’t have to write it down on my list, about the key — it was done, see? — but then when I woke up in the dark at two thirty in the morning, I put on another pair of pants, and then I was so busy checking off stuff on my list, that I forgot about the key… oh, shit!“
“So let’s go back and get it,” Duwayne said, “and you be cool. Calm down, you live longer.” He stamped on the brake. “Watch the way I turn this little mother round, like, on a dime. You think Robert can do this? No way, dude.”
He spun the wheel to the left and flung the Chevy round. I heard the tires screech in rubbery pain and felt my side of the car, as well as my stomach, rise up off the road. I thought that it was all over, that I’d never rescue Amy, that I’d wind up with a cracked skull on a road in Springs, that my parents’ hearts would break, and that Amy would be doomed to submit to Carter Bedford forever, because clearly that Chevy was going to tip and roll, and smash into a tree. A fate worse than a King Cobra, thundering boulder, and flamethrower, all put together. Because it was real.
Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller Page 31