by M. E. Kerr
“Par-si-what?”
“Parsimonious, Mom. The opposite of what you are. Careful with a buck.”
Mom shot me a look. Pingree smiled. He said, “Yes. Fern is careful with a buck. She’s also convinced that I’ve spoiled Ping. She talked me into sending him off to this military school he hated.”
“If you ask me,” Mom said, “you’ve let her push you around.”
“Agreed,” said Pingree. “The heart has its reasons.”
“Isn’t she going to find out anyway, someday? She’ll wonder where the twenty thousand went, won’t she? And you have to pay Ping’s tuition in Switzerland?”
“Only half. The scholarship takes care of the rest. I have the money set aside to cover all that, Mrs. Fell … and if she finds out someday, well” — Pingree shrugged — ”I’ll handle it then.”
“What about vacations?” I asked.
“What about them? You’ll come home at Christmas, spring break, and summers, as Ping will.”
“They’ll probably speak French at that school in Switzerland,” I said. “People will expect me to rattle off French.”
“They speak English and French at L’Ecole la Coeur. But after Gardner,” said Pingree, “you’ll be able to rattle off French. You’ll get a first-rate education, far better than Ping will get at that country club he’s going to. But Ping can’t wait to get away.”
“And he knows I’ll get the twenty thousand?”
“He knows you’ll get ten thousand at the end of your junior year, and ten when you graduate, yes. Ping doesn’t give a hoot about money. But the Gardner diploma will be in his name — I care about that, strangely enough. Our family has always come out of Gardner.”
“And I’ll have this diploma from a country club.”
“A diploma that will surely impress all your customers in your fancy restaurant one day.” Pingree smiled at me. Then he stood up. “It’s time for your date, isn’t it?”
“I have to call her,” I said.
Mom said, “You’ve given us a lot to think about.”
“We’ll work things out,” said Pingree. “When you decide, if it’s a go-ahead, we’ll start by getting Fell’s passport.”
“Is Ping going to use my passport? We don’t look at all alike.”
“No. Ping will travel with his own passport. You won’t use yours. We’ll work out all the details, don’t worry.”
Mom said, “What an opportunity it would be for you, Johnny!”
I just couldn’t believe the offer was for real.
“Remember what I told you when I first came into Dressed to Kill?” Pingree said to Mom. “Your fate is set. Just lean into it.”
“I hope those pants fit,” Mom said.
“They’re too young for me, Mrs. Fell. I didn’t go in your store for pants.”
Mom walked him toward the door. “I thought you were this lonely man, just interested in hearing about my family.”
“I was interested in all you had to say about Fell.”
chapter 11
It was close to ten o’clock when I got down to the place where Delia Tremble was an au pair. On the phone she’d told me it wouldn’t be much of a date. The family she worked for went out, so she couldn’t leave. She said she was tired, too, and hungry, and there wasn’t anything in the house but eggs.
I said I didn’t feel like much of a date, anyway. I was tired, too, and I could do fantastic things with eggs.
It was a big stone house near the ocean, the kind with the front facing the dunes. When I walked in the door, the kitchen was right there on the left. Delia Tremble steered me that way.
“I ate about five, with the kids,” she said. “Then the Stileses had lobster, which I hate, and now I feel like something sweet and there’s only eggs.”
“Is there bread?” “Yes, a whole loaf.” “How about French toast?” “Can you make it? I love it!” I watched while she cleared away a cup of coffee and an ashtray from the butcher block table. She was wearing skintight jeans and spiked heels, with a white cotton sweater. Her earrings were tiny gold hoops and she wore several gold rings.
She looked back at me and smiled. “Do you really know how to make French toast, because I can hardly cook?”
“I like that.” I smiled and began rolling up the sleeves of my plaid shirt.
“What? That I can hardly cook?”
“Yeah, because I really like to.”
“Be my guest.” She laughed, pointing to the stove.
She got a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator and slid a loaf of bread down the counter. She was tall; with her high heels, as tall as I was. Her hair was very black and very long, touching her shoulders.
“I’ll need a bowl and a frying pan. I hope you have milk and butter.”
“I’m glad you came, Fell. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but now I’m glad you came.”
“The way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach.”
“Usually not.” She laughed again, and I looked at her waistline and figured she was telling the truth. She didn’t look like someone who lived to eat. She looked like someone who lived to dance or play tennis or swim. She had a good tan. She almost had dimples when she smiled. Very long black eyelashes, a straight nose, and straight white teeth.
I beat the eggs and milk, and added a little salt and sugar.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” she said. “It seems strange to have someone you don’t even know walk in and just start making you French toast.”
“Everything that’s happening to me lately seems strange,” I said.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I heard her scratch a match, and smelled a fresh cigarette.
“No, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Is this how we’re going to begin? With you keeping secrets from me?”
“Yes,” I said. “Tell me about Delia Tremble.” I put the slices of bread into the liquid.
“I look younger than I am. I never tell my age. I like serious guys who are good talkers.”
“What do you like to talk about?” I put some heat on under the frying pan and dropped in some oil and some butter.
“I like the way people talk on planes,” she said. “They just start in telling you about themselves.”
“Do you know why that is? It’s because people on planes don’t have the scenery people on buses and trains have to distract them.”
“Is that true?”
“My father used to be A detective. He said you could travel more unnoticed on a train. People don’t look at you as closely.”
“I never thought of that, Fell.”
“Okay,” I said, “we’re on a plane. Start talking.” I raised the heat and waited for the frying pan to get hot.
“When I first noticed you in Plain and Fancy I figured you for one of these prep school kids. A preppy. I figured you came from money.”
“Were you wrong!”
“Do you go to high school?”
“Umm hmm.” I dropped the bread into the pan. “I’ll need some paper towels in a minute. Were you after my money?”
“Maybe.” I liked her laugh. “I liked the way you moved, too. I figured you’d be a good dancer.”
“And that we could dance outdoors. That’s what you said you wanted. To dance outdoors. Why outdoors?”
“Because I smoke,” she said. “People are really getting to hate us smokers.”
“So that’s why,” I said, and she came up behind me and reached around me to put down some paper towels.
“Did you ever smoke? Do you drink?” she asked.
“I used to do both,” I said. “Name it, I did it.”
“I’m glad you don’t drink now. I don’t really like men who do.”
I noticed the “men.” Keats still said “boys.”
I said, “Do you go to boarding school or high school?”
“I graduated from high school.”
“Oh,” I said, “an older woman.”
“Not
that much older than you are. I was ahead of everyone.”
“Are you going to college?”
“I want to travel. I haven’t been many places. Have you been many places, Fell?”
“Not many at all.”
“Oh, Fell, it looks good!”
I dropped the fried bread on the paper towels. “Jam, or maple syrup?”
“Maple syrup,” she said. “I’ll get it from the cupboard. Will you go to high school again next year?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe I’ll go away to school. I might get a scholarship. I might go to Switzerland.”
“I want to hear all about it!”
“I’m not going to talk about it. It’s bad luck to talk about something that hasn’t come through yet.”
She had out plates and I put the French toast on them.
She said, “Let’s take this into the living room. If the twins wake up, I can hear them better from in there.”
I followed her, carrying some forks and napkins she handed me.
“Are you a happy type, Fell?” “What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. Are you a sad type or a happy type?”
I watched her bend over to put the plates down on the marble coffee table in front of this long, beige sofa. I saw the movement of her breasts under her white sweater.
“Right now I’m a happy type,” I said.
“When were you last sad?”
“The last time? When my father died.”
“That makes sense.”
“And you?”
We sat down side by side on the sofa.
“Sometimes I get a melancholy feeling out here, so close to the ocean, not really connected with anyone in Seaville. I think the beach brings out a sadness in you, if you’re alone. But it never stays with me. It comes and goes.”
“Now you know me, so you’re not alone anymore.”
“Now I do.” She took a taste of the French toast. “You’re a good cook, aren’t you, Fell?” “Yes.”
“And what else about you?”
I put up one hand. “Don’t rush us.”
She looked over at me. She wasn’t smiling.
“Oh, Fell, I like that you said that. That’s the best thing you’ve said all night. Do you mean it?”
“I do.” I did. I wanted to take my time with her. I liked the way she looked, and I liked her style. She was easier than Keats, wiser, less manic-depressive. I liked what she’d said about being at the beach alone, and the sadness it brought out in you. Keats wouldn’t have had the good sense to figure that out. She always made any sadness into something she was doing wrong, into failing and spending her life on nothing.
“We should have some music on, I guess,” Delia Tremble said.
“We don’t need it.”
“What do you like?”
“Everything, but I don’t know anything about classical stuff.”
“I don’t either. I like Whitney Houston. I like songs I can hear the lyrics in more than I like hard rock, and I don’t like heavy metal.”
She was telling me the names of singers and songs she liked when I happened to look across the room and see this painting of the ocean. Down in the lower right was the familiar fern.
I waited until she was finished talking. Then I said, “This family you work for …”
“The Stileses.”
“Did they buy that painting?”
“Mrs. Stiles owns the Stiles Gallery in town.
One of her artists did that.”
“Fern Pingree,” I said.
“Do you know her?”
“Not well.”
“How come you know her, Fell?”
I told her that I had dated a girl who lived next door to the Pingrees.
“What does she say about this Fern Pingree?” “She doesn’t know her.” “I’d be curious about her.” “Would be or are?”
“You listen too carefully sometimes, Fell. I would be, if I lived around here. She’d be someone I’d be curious about if I lived in Seaville.”
“Why?”
“Look at that painting.”
I looked again. It was an angry-looking ocean, with another sun above it that looked hot enough to fry eggs on the sand. There was a haze over the whole scene, the kind of whiteness that comes over a beach on a sizzling day when the sun just breaks through the clouds.
“Do you know what she named that painting?” Delia Tremble asked. “Arizona Darkness. Figure that one out!”
We both laughed.
Delia leaned back against the couch cushions. We were silent for a while. You could hear the sounds of the sea off in the distance. Delia was twirling a strand of her black hair around her finger.
“Fell? If you could have one wish now, what would it be?”
“That I could see you tomorrow.”
She smiled at me. “Not tomorrow. They’re having company. But maybe Monday night.”
“And what would you wish for?”
“What would I wish for?” She thought about it for a while. “I want to get away. I want to travel.”
Then we heard the Stileses arriving, heard Mrs. Stiles say, “Something smells good!”
“I told you it wouldn’t be much of a date, Fell,” Delia Tremble said.
I said quickly, “If you’d like to travel, how about traveling out to the Surf Club with me Monday night? You can dance outdoors there.”
She said okay.
chapter 12
I’m all for the idea [Mom had written]. You’ll get a good education, money to use for college or a restaurant, and don’t you think your father would want you to go? I’ve thought and thought and I vote yes! Jazzy and I are at church. Meat loaf for dinner is cooling, don’t put in fridge…. I think you should tell Mr. Pingree you’ll do it, before he changes his mind!
But I wanted to think about it, and talk more about it, and figure out how the whole scheme would work.
“All right,” Pingree said, “but don’t take too long to decide. If I can’t get you to take the offer, I’ll have to think of someone else.”
Pingree watched me through a cloud of his own cigarette smoke.
We were sitting out on the front porch of the Frog Pond, having Sunday breakfast. He’d called early and I had said I’d meet him at ten. I couldn’t sleep late, anyway. I usually liked to, when Mom took Jazzy to church and I didn’t have to get up, but I couldn’t. I woke up thinking about going to Gardner as Ping, and I laughed aloud at the idea. I thought of the way kids back in Brooklyn would say “Farrrr out!”
I kept thinking about Delia Tremble when I first woke up, too. I kept remembering the look in her dark eyes when she talked about sadness. I even got out of bed, pulled on my shorts, and tried to reach Keats at Four Winds. I guess I was guilty because I’d awakened thinking of someone else. Finally. After a year!
But Keats wasn’t around. They rang that cow bell of theirs and shouted, “Keats! Keats! Keats!” She wasn’t around. The girl who answered the phone asked me if I was Quint. I said yeah, Quint. She said someone just told her Keats was on her way to my motel; she’d left about ten minutes ago.
“You seem distracted this morning, Fell,” Pingree said. “Or are you just a sad type?”
I remembered Delia asking me if I was a happy type or a sad type.
“You ought to know the answer to that. You’ve done enough research on me.”
“All right. You’re not yourself this morning. Why?”
“I can’t imagine going through two years answering to the name Ping.”
“You don’t have to answer to that name. You can be Woodrow, Woody. My middle name is Thompson. You can be Thompson, Tom.” “Just kidding,” I said.
“I don’t like Ping, either. No one ever called me that.”
There was a young couple behind Pingree who looked as if they’d just left a bedroom somewhere and it was too soon, because they couldn’t stop touching each other. I remembered what that was like back last year when Keats and I wou
ld go anyplace. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. What was the word Pingree’d used to describe falling in love? He’d said he was besotted. I’d looked it up later in my Webster’s. It meant mentally stupefied, silly, foolish.
Pingree looked around to see what I was looking at. He shook his head as though he knew what that was like, too.
He gave me a wistful smile. “Do you miss Keats?”
“I miss her. But I don’t think she misses me. I might take your advice. I might cool it with Keats.” I’d already decided not to go up to Four Winds for the play. Let Quint Blade go.
“Good!” he said. “Cool it.”
“Not because I’m taking you up on your offer.”
“All right. It’s probably still a good idea.”
“I can’t trust her.”
“Can she trust you?”
“I don’t know, after last night.”
“I forgot about last night. How did it go?”
“Fine.”
“You liked her?”
“She was easy to talk to. She likes to talk.”
I watched the couple kiss. Everyone out on the porch was watching them. The waitress was standing there with orange juice on a tray, grinning, waiting for room to put the juice down in front of them. I counted to five, slowly. They were still at it.
Pingree said, “Let me tell you about this club at Gardner.”
“Another thing,” I interrupted him. “What if I get a thing for Delia Tremble?”
“If it’s ‘a thing,’ it won’t matter, will it?”
“You know what I mean. What if I fall for Delia Tremble?”
“Write her. That’s what you’d do anyway, isn’t it? She’s not from Seaville, is she?”
“No.”
“Well then?”
“But I’d want to see her.”
Pingree stabbed some bacon with his fork. “You can’t have everything you want. You can have a lot, but not everything. No one can ever have everything!”
I looked out at this fat pigeon waddling around on the green lawn, and bit into my English muffin. I said, “What club were you going to tell me about?”
“It’s called Sevens. It’s a secret club at Gardner. It’s the club.” “Like a fraternity?”
“No. No. It’s not like anything you’ve ever heard about. They have their own rules, their own privileges. They control The Tower there.”