The Books of Fell

by M. E. Kerr

  “Why does the dream come again and again, if it’s just junk the brain’s getting rid of? Why the same dream again and again?”

  “Because,” said Mrs. Pingree, “recurring dreams are those that wake the dreamer and cause him to learn instead of unlearn them. A recurring dream is a kind of neurological flypaper.”

  “Well, Freud would say you were wrong, Fern,” Ping said.

  “Not if Freud were still alive. A lot has been learned about the brain since Freud was around.”

  “You always have an answer for everything,” Ping said sullenly.

  Mr. Pingree said, “And we always have a solution.” He did something I thought was peculiar then. He put down his knife and fork long enough to reach across and grip Ping’s arm. “We always have a solution,” he repeated.

  Mrs. Pingree, in a white cotton jumpsuit, stood up and got the salad from across the room. “Do you like salad on that plate or a separate plate, Fell?” she asked me, and without waiting for an answer, added, “Daniel tricked Nebuchadnezzar, Fell. He wanted power over the Babylonians!”

  I didn’t have an answer to that.

  “I’ll take the salad on this plate,” I said.

  She stood in front of an enormous oil painting on the wall. It was the most barren landscape I’d ever seen. There wasn’t anyone in the picture. It was a painting of this field of weeds on dried earth, with an abandoned barracks far off in it, weathered and worn. Above everything was this burning yellow sun that looked hot enough to make an iguana pant. At the bottom left was a parched white cow’s skull. At the bottom right, a minuscule fern where the signature of the painter would have been.

  “Isn’t that one of your paintings, Mrs. Pingree?” I asked her.

  “One of my early ones,” she replied. “I did it long before I started at the Institute. Since I’ve been at Brutt, I’ve only painted the ocean.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at her strange landscape.

  She said, “I call that one Smiles We Left Behind Us.”

  That was just spacey enough for me to grin, but Mrs. Pingree wasn’t smiling. No one was.

  “I didn’t know you worked at the Institute, too,” I said. “What do you do there?”

  Mr. Pingree said, “She’s my boss, Fell.”

  • • •

  It was Mr. Pingree who walked me down to my car after dinner.

  “My son doesn’t want to go to Gardner,” he said.

  I wondered why he thought I gave a damn what his son wanted, and why I’d even been asked to Fernwood Manor for dinner in the first place.

  “Anyone would give his right arm to go to Gardner,” he continued. “It’s a wonderful school! But it’s in Pennsylvania, this little town filled with ragweed, hell on Ping’s asthma, and then there’s The Tower. A very tall one. New boys are made to go up in it. My son has a phobia about heights, as he mentioned.”

  I was already imagining how Keats and I would make up. We wouldn’t stay down on the beach, not with me in my dark suit, and not in the cold night air that was beginning to blow off the sea.

  No. I’d park my car behind Beauregard. We’d go there to make up. Keats and I had nicknamed the backseat of my Dodge “The Magnet.”

  Pingree said, “If you had the chance to go away to an excellent prep school, wouldn’t you jump at it, Fell?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Of course you would. But Ping has his reasons. They’re valid.”

  We stood by my Dodge.

  Pingree said, “Come back, won’t you, Fell?”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Thanks wasn’t yes.

  There was a moon rising with the wind and I thought of the way Keats sometimes touched my lips with her fingers, smiling promises.

  D.D.H., I laughed as I got into the Dodge and drove away from Fernwood Manor.

  chapter 7

  Keats had the kind of face that told you right away what her mood was, and that night in the moonlight it said down.

  “What’s the matter?” I said.

  “Mother’s reviewing this book by this poet named Lorine Niedecker, and I read one of her poems and I feel awful, Fell.”

  “Well, get over it,” I said. “It’s just a poem.”

  “You know what she wrote? She wrote, Time is white, mosquitoes bite, I’ve spent my life on nothing,” Keats said. “That’s exactly how I feel, Fell.”

  “You haven’t spent your life yet.”

  “I’ve spent eighteen years of it. On nothing.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I didn’t say on no one. I said on nothing. I’m going to be this terrible failure, Fell. I can feel it in my bones.”

  We started walking along the wet sand, Keats barefoot with her jeans rolled up, a cold wind coming off the ocean that made me shiver. Keats just had a sweatshirt on. She was never cold, even in winter in below-zero weather. I always was.

  “You have to try something first, before you can be a failure,” I said. “One step at a time.”

  “I don’t even know what to try. I want to be someone, but I know I’ll end up like Lorine Niedecker.”

  “At least she’s published.”

  “She’s dead, Fell. And no one ever heard of her but my mother and some other reviewers who got the book free in the mail, so they’d write something about it.”

  “Keats,” I said, “I didn’t come down here to talk about Lorine Niedecker. How did Quint Blade get over to your house so fast last night? Why did you lie in your note?”

  Silence, except for the sound of the waves hitting the beach and a plane passing above us among the stars.

  “Well?” I said.

  “I don’t like myself for any of that,” said Keats. “If I liked myself for doing something like that I’d have made it more foolproof. You found me out right away. I probably wanted to be found out.”

  “You didn’t want to be found out,” I said. “So don’t make it into something deep. I probably wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t run into your neighbor’s car last night.”

  I told her about it. I told her how I’d seen her get into the silver Porsche from the terrace of Fernwood Manor.

  “I would rather be anyone but me, Fell,” she said. “Daddy didn’t come home last night. He got home the night before.” “Great!”

  “He’d come out on the jitney with Quint Blade. Quint told him Tracy Corrigan had come down with the flu and he didn’t have a prom date. So Daddy said …”

  I cut her off. “Daddy said, ‘Why, you can take my daughter. My daughter will be happy to stand Fell up.’“

  “No, that’s not what Daddy said and you know it! Daddy didn’t even know we had a date! I couldn’t get Mother in hot water by telling him we had a date, could I? So Daddy just told Quint to call me, and Quint called me.”

  “You knew you weren’t going with me when you called to thank me for the orchid,” I said.

  “I wanted you to be happy for as long as you could, Fell.”

  “Then out, out, brief candle.”

  “Something like that. Only I kept you lit all day, right up to the last minute.”

  I slipped my arm around her waist. “You’re not spending your life on nothing. You’re spending it on deceit and manipulation.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t much like it, either.”

  “I didn’t have a good time at the prom.”

  “Tell the truth,” I said.

  “It wasn’t a rotten evening or anything like that, but I missed you, Fell.”

  “Well, at least my white orchid got to the prom.”

  “It wasn’t yours once you sent it to me. You always do that, Fell. You call my gold bracelet your gold bracelet, and you call the ring you gave me your ring.”

  “Sorry,” I said. We walked along with the ocean spray hitting our faces. “How come I’m the one saying I’m sorry tonight?”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Keats said. “Quint had four teensy little brown orchids on a branch fo
r my wrist, but I hate wrist corsages! I decided to wear the white orchid.”

  “You have a hard life, Keats,” I said. “Decision after decision to make.”

  “Don’t. I’m really down,” she said. “Daddy hates you.”

  “Well, I don’t exactly love Daddy, either.”

  “I think he’s going to send me to tennis camp, Fell.”

  “What do you mean he’s going to send you to tennis camp? You’re not ten years old! He can’t send you somewhere you don’t want to go.”

  “That’s just it,” said Keats. “I do want to go.”

  “This could be our last summer!” I said. “Do you want to spend our last summer in tennis camp?”

  “Daddy says he doesn’t want me to see you, anyway.”

  “So we’ll sneak around.”

  “I don’t want to spend the whole summer before I go away to college sneaking around!”

  “Keats,” I said, “I’m cold.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “In back of Beauregard.”

  “I’m afraid if we get into The Magnet we’ll just fight.”

  “We won’t fight,” I said.

  “We’ll just start talking about everything and fight.”

  “We won’t talk about everything.” “Do you promise?” “I promise.”

  “What will we talk about if we don’t start talking about all this?” “We won’t talk.”

  I was turning her around, and she was almost following.

  She stopped. “What will we talk about on the way?”

  “The Pingrees,” I said.

  “Oh, hey,” she said, “I forgot to tell you something.” She was going with me back toward Beauregard then. “Mr. Pingree actually spoke to Daddy today, right down here … and it was about you, Fell.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Out of the blue,” Keats said. “Daddy was down here letting Foster run, and Mr. Pingree said hello, and then Mr. Pingree said he was thinking of hiring you and he wondered what Daddy thought of you.” “Hiring me for what?”

  “He didn’t say. He just said he knew you dated me and he wondered what Daddy thought of you.”

  “So what did Daddy say?”

  “Daddy would never blacken your name, you know that. Daddy’s always said you might be right for some other girl, you’re just not right for me.”

  “So what did Daddy say?”

  “Daddy said we used to date, but we don’t date anymore. See? We’re starting to talk about it.”

  “No, we’re not starting to talk about it! What else did Daddy tell Pingree?”

  “Daddy just said you’d probably be a good worker. That’s all. Daddy said we weren’t dating anymore and you’d probably be a good worker. He said the conversation didn’t last two minutes.”

  “I wish you’d told me this!”

  “How could I tell you? It only happened this afternoon.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me a few minutes ago, when I told you about running into Pingree’s Mitsubishi?”

  “It slipped my mind, Fell! I’m depressed tonight! I don’t have any real goals!”

  “Never mind all that!” I said. “Don’t start in on all that again!”

  “What does Mr. Pingree want you to do, Fell?” “It beats me!”

  “I think that’s why Daddy just suggested tennis camp. He doesn’t want me around with you working right next door.”

  “I have a job,” I said, “at Plain and Fancy.”

  “Then what does Woodrow Pingree want to hire you for?” Keats asked.

  “It’s the first time I heard about it,” I said.

  “Didn’t he mention it at dinner?”

  “No. Maybe he changed his mind.”

  “Maybe you picked up the wrong fork or something.” Keats bumped against me playfully, more like her other self.

  I laughed. “I guess he got turned off when I drank out of my finger bowl.”

  “You know what Daddy said?” Keats asked. “Promise not to get mad?”

  I put my thumbs in the corners of my mouth, screwed my features into a monster face, and said, “Do I look mad, my girl?”

  “Daddy said maybe their cook quit.”

  “Oh, Daddy’s a riot!” I said.

  “I knew you’d get mad.”

  “For Daddy’s information, there are chefs, there are restaurant owners who make just as much as Daddy ever made!”

  “See? We’re doing it, Fell,” Keats said. “That’s what I mean. We can’t stop talking about it all!”

  “Yes, we can!” I said. “C’mon!” I grabbed her hand and we began to run until the lights from Adieu and Fernwood Manor were back in the distance.

  chapter 8

  At the end of June, Keats went off to Four Winds, a tennis camp in Connecticut. She said we could do our sneaking around up there, and some weekends I drove up to Greenwich and we did.

  Four Winds also had a theater program. Keats couldn’t resist any kind of dramatics, whether they were her own or Tennessee Williams’s.

  “You’ve got to come up a week from next Saturday,” she said. “I’m going to be in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

  “I’d rather come on a weekend you’re not in a show,” I said. “You’re too hyper at showtime.”

  “I’m only in this damn thing to impress you, Fell!”

  I was getting the eye from Keith Cadman, the owner of Plain and Fancy. It was a Friday, late in the afternoon, and the weekend animals were arriving in their Audis and BMWs. The line at the cheese counter was all the way up to desserts.

  “I’ll be there,” I said. “I’m already impressed, though, or didn’t you notice?”

  “I noticed, but I can’t get enough. I’m insecure. Speaking of which, I had a terrible dream that you were dating Skye Pennington, and I could see you through Daddy’s binoculars in her bedroom at Beauregard.”

  “Dreams are just mental noise,” I said. “They’re neurological junk the brain is discarding.”

  “FELL!” Cadman yelled. “Get back on the floor!”

  “I need my ego boosted, Fell,” said Keats.

  “I specialize in boosts to the id,” I said.

  “Because you’re a dirty-minded high school boy,” she said, “getting your kicks with an older woman. Hurry, Fell! I need any kind of boost you can give me! I miss you!”

  “Miss you, too,” I said.

  I hustled back to the floor to wrestle with the wheels of brie and the crocks of goat cheese. I was trying to look at my watch without Cadman seeing me do it. He was already p.o.’d with me for baking a couple of their famous White Raisin Dream cakes and forgetting the raisins. I’d frosted them and renamed them “Remembering Helen,” in Keats’s honor.

  “What the hell does that mean?” he barked at me when he showed up that noon. “First you leave out the raisins, then you stick that pink guck on them and name them that!”

  But they’d been selling all morning and were almost gone by the time Cadman was simmering down.

  “People like kinky names on things,” I told him.

  “I’m running this place, Fell.”

  “If we renamed the Black Walnut cake something like ‘Smiles We Left Behind Us,’ we’d sell that out, too.”

  “We’re not in show biz here, Fell.”

  The Pingrees were still on my mind, way into July. I wondered if I’d ever know what Woodrow Pingree had wanted from me that night in June. I doubted it. I suspected that it had to do with Ping. I figured that he’d changed his mind when he’d noticed that magic tricks didn’t really thrill me.

  I sold a lot of brie and a lot of blue cheese dip, all the while looking forward to a date I might have that night. I wasn’t dating Skye Pennington, but I was going to try dating. Keats was, too — I’d bet anything on it. Four Winds was coed. I knew Keats. She was up to something at that place on weekends I wasn’t there. Neither one of us formed our A-one relationships with the same sex.

  My “maybe” date that night was with
a summer girl named Delia Tremble. She was always coming into Plain and Fancy to buy the latest fads for the woman she worked for: fiddlehead ferns, or sun-dried tomatoes, or green peppercorns. She’d always wait for me to help her: pitch-black hair spilling down her back, dark eyes, a sexy body — Tremble was right. I’d go up to her and she’d start grinning and looking all over my face while she talked to me. She said she was hired to take care of these twin kids who were always with her.

  After about ten days of convincing myself I needed a dark lady in my life, I asked her if she liked going to movies. She said no, they had a VCR where she worked, but she liked to dance outdoors. I told her I knew where they did that, and she said if she could get off that Friday she’d like to go. I was going to call her at nine-thirty, after she got the kids to bed.

  She gave me the address where I could pick her up. It was an address south of Montauk Highway, meaning it was near the ocean, like Adieu was — and Beauregard, and Fernwood Manor.

  My mother said, “Aren’t you ever going to get out of that neighborhood? Maybe you should get a job in Kmart so you can meet your own kind.”

  “She’s my kind,” I said. “She’s just an au pair there. She’s your average person you’re always talking about.”

  “Don’t get too attached to her,” Mom said. “We’re not staying out here.”

  It was the summer of my discontent, as Shakespeare put it once about Richard the Third’s winter. Keats was away doing God knows what besides playing tennis and acting in plays. Even if I got really turned on by Delia Tremble, she’d said she lived in New Jersey … a long way from Seaville, or Brooklyn. Fall was right around the corner, and where would I be then?

  Lately Mom was saying your fate is already set; you just lean into it. The Mysterious Mr. X had told her that. He was this customer who came into Dressed to Kill, bought things like ninety-dollar pants in about two minutes, didn’t even try them on, then stayed to chat with Mom for an hour at a time.

  “Is he flirting with you?” I asked her.

  “If he is,” she said, “he’s a glutton for punishment, because all I ever talk about is you and Dad and Jazzy.”

  At about two minutes to six, Cadman rang the chimes that meant everyone out. I began to undo my apron strings. I was planning to use my employees’ discount to get a Droste Dark Chocolate Apple for Delia Tremble. I walked up toward the candy and heard a voice call, “Fell!”