by M. E. Kerr
“I didn’t. Still don’t.” I never will want to talk about it, I thought. I’ll never be able to talk about it.
“Okay with me,” Dib said.
He looked out the window. The farm country was disappearing and the tacky suburbs of Trenton were coming into view. I’d get the train to New York City after we got off the bus.
“But thanks, Dib.”
• • •
My first night home I made spaghetti à la carbonara for Mom and Jazzy. Georgette was dressed in a long black gown with a gold crown on her head, in my honor. Jazzy had propped her up against a corn flakes box in the kitchen. There was a royal-blue ribbon across her gown saying WELCOME HOME, JOHNNY!
Jazzy was in watching TV while I fried the bacon to go into the spaghetti.
I knew Mom’d been wanting to say something she didn’t want Jazzy to hear. I thought it might have to do with Delia.
“There’s something on my mind, Johnny.”
“I know.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“Is it her? Because I don’t feel like talking about her yet, Mom.”
“No, it isn’t about her. You’ll have to work that out yourself. It’s about the money. It’s about the ten thousand dollars Mr. Pingree put in the bank for you.”
“What about it? Do you need it to get out of hock?”
“I don’t appreciate that crack, Johnny.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to put it so crudely. Do you need it?”
“No, I don’t need it. And you don’t need it, either.”
I dropped some onions in with the bacon. “I was wondering about that,” I said. “There’s nothing to wonder about. I don’t care that the money was left in the grandfather’s will — if that story’s even true. We’ve had too much to do already with those people and their money. I think any money that comes from them is bad money! Your father would roll over in his grave, Johnny! They sold our country’s secrets to the enemy! Your father fought for this country! He loved this country!” “I know.”
“You can’t help the fact your tuition was paid by that man, and you have to go back and graduate. But we don’t want that ten thousand dollars!”
“What’ll we do with it?”
“Give it to some good cause.”
“I’m not a good cause?”
“You know what I mean, Johnny. Your father used to get tears in his eyes when anyone sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’“
“Maybe because he couldn’t ever remember the words. He’d get as far as ‘Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s early light’ — then stop cold.”
“Can you go any further?”
“Not really.”
“Then don’t talk, Big Mouth!” I turned on the heat under the water for the pasta.
Mom said, “I thought you might give me a fight.”
“I never won one with you yet.” “We’ll figure out something to do with the money.” “Okay.”
“Are you planning to see Keats?” “Probably.”
“I knew you’d give in.”
“I’m not giving in. She’s going to come all the way to Brooklyn.”
“Big deal! She doesn’t deserve Brooklyn! Brooklyn’s too good for her!”
I said, “Tell Jazzy dinner in ten minutes.”
“Is that what they teach you at that fancy school? To order your mother around?”
“Please,” I added.
“Johnny,” she said, “there are nice girls in this world, honey. I don’t want you to lose sight of that. Keats and that other one — they’re the exceptions. I know you’ve been hurt but …”
“Not by Keats,” I said. My damn voice cracked. I couldn’t have gone on, anyway. I still couldn’t even get Delia’s name out. I didn’t want Mom to see my eyes start to fill, so I ducked my head around the corner into the living room. I shouted, “Jazzy? Georgette’s being whisked away by bandits!”
“Get their license numbers!” Jazzy yelled back.
• • •
The next day, I walked down to Carroll Gardens to visit my grandfather in the nursing home.
“I was named after Theodore Roosevelt,” he said when he saw me walk into the room. “Did I ever tell you why?”
“Tell me again,” I said. I gave him a kiss and sat down in the chair beside his bed.
“Well, it’s a long story,” he began.
“Take your time,” I said.
• • •
So that was how I spent my Christmas vacation. Like my father used to say, “You got your family. You got your health. You got Brooklyn. What else do you need?”
What is there to say about Delia?
From the time she first walked into Plain and Fancy to the time she wrote me letters saying things like Tell me if you think you made the right decision going to Switzerland, she was keeping an eye on me for Pingree.
I remembered so many things: the phone call Pingree made that first night I ran into the Mitsubishi, when he said to somebody that he wouldn’t be by, that something had come up. The time we’d all gone back to our house after dinner at Lunch, when he kept encouraging me to keep my date with Delia. I remembered him telling me he liked cards, too, but not card tricks: He liked to play cards. And Delia telling me how her life had changed after the gamblers took over her hometown, Atlantic City.
Pingree’d arranged everything, from her job as au pair at the Stileses’ to the cruise she went on until he warned her that he was turning himself in. Then she flew to Zurich to be with Ping.
I don’t know what Delia knew about Pingree’s double life, or even if she knew that he had one.
I don’t even know if there really was something in his father’s will about money for Ping when he graduated from Gardner, and more money if he made Sevens. I somehow think that all of that was true, but as my mother’s fond of pointing out: The man’s a liar.
All I really know for sure is that Pingree was planning to leave the country and begin a new life with Delia and Ping. Then a double agent named Wu Chu-Teng changed all that.
Fern Pingree was arrested three days before Christmas in New York City. I saw a picture of her in the paper, with those white-framed dark glasses on, being escorted by two FBI men. She had no comment.
• • •
Sometimes I still hear Fern Pingree saying, “Dreams are the trash bag of the brain!” But that hasn’t stopped me from going over and over certain dreams. Because I still dream of Delia. She’s flying with me through blue summer skies, dancing with me on wet grass, her eyes watching mine the way they used to. And she’s telling me again not to make her say she loves me. She never did say that, awake or dreaming.
• • •
About two weeks after I returned to Gardner, one cold Wednesday afternoon, there was a crowd gathered down by The Tower. I jogged that way to see what all the excitement was about. There were snowdrifts all around. We’d hit a record for bad weather in January.
“Fell! Hurry, Fell!” Dib shouted at me. I pushed my way toward him, and before I got to the front of the crowd, Dib said, “It’s Lasher! He jumped from the top!”
Someone else said, “He finally did it!”
Dib turned and told me, “He’s committed suicide, Fell!”
I stood there beside Dib, looking down at the cold pavement.
Beside Lasher’s body, I saw his thick glasses with the panes smashed.
Then, in less time than it takes a paper clip to inch over to a magnet, I said, “No. He didn’t kill himself.”
Those five words were going to get me into a lot of trouble.
Someday I’ll tell you about it.
This edition published by
Prologue Books
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
4700 East Galbraith Road
Cincinnati, Ohio 45236
www.prologuebooks.com
Copyright © 1987 by M. E. Kerr
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
; Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-3933-2
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3933-6
fell back
M. E. Kerr
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Copyright
Chapter 1
About two weeks after I returned to Gardner, one cold Wednesday afternoon, there was a crowd gathered down by The Tower. I jogged that way to see what all the excitement was about. There were snowdrifts all around. We’d hit a record for bad weather in January.
“Fell. Hurry, Fell!” Dib shouted at me.
I pushed my way toward him, and before I got to the front of the crowd, Dib said, “It’s Lasher! He jumped from the top!”
Someone else said, “He finally did it!”
Dib turned and told me, “He’s committed suicide, Fell!”
I stood there beside Dib, looking down at the cold pavement.
Beside Lasher’s body, I saw his thick glasses with the panes smashed.
Then in less time than it takes a paper clip to inch over to a magnet, I said, “No. He didn’t kill himself.”
Those five words were going to get me into a lot of trouble.
• • •
“No one who knows he is about to get a new Porsche for his birthday kills himself,” said Lasher’s father.
His sister said, “Oh, come on, Daddy! He gave his VCR away, his watch, the Mont Blanc pen you bought him for Christmas. He was planning it!”
I watched the snow fall outside my window in Sevens House.
“Why didn’t he even leave a note?” Dr. Lasher shook his bald head sadly.
“Because he wasn’t in control of himself, Daddy. You saw how he was at Christmas — never smiling, always sleeping.”
“He said nothing about suicide, however.”
“He said nothing. Period. He wouldn’t talk to anyone.”
“Paul was often moody and melancholy.”
“Not like that, no, never.”
“Are you listening, Fell?” Dr. Lasher asked.
I glanced across at him. He bore a faint resemblance to his late son. He had the same bad eyesight, too.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “You don’t think it was suicide. I heard you.”
“I know it was,” his daughter said. “I knew him better than anyone.”
No one would argue with that. Lauren was Lasher’s twin. “Poised” would not describe her adequately. “Conceited” would be going too far. She was somewhere in between. Miss Tyler’s School, over in Princeton, New Jersey, specialized in this type. Seventeen … but the kind of seventeen who had stopped reading the magazine by the same name at twelve.
She was blue eyed and beautiful. It was that sort of beauty helped a lot by great-looking clothes — a soft, black cashmere suit the same color as her straight shoulder-length hair, and the kind of sophisticated makeup that looked natural until you realized eyes weren’t outlined in black, lips weren’t glossy, and cheekbones against olive skin did not have pink tones.
She was thin and tall. If she wasn’t rich, she looked it. She wasn’t poor. Both her parents were Philadelphia shrinks who cost upward of one hundred dollars an hour.
“We didn’t know him at all, apparently,” said the doctor.
Just where his blazer buttoned, I could see the bulge of his potbelly, fighting the alligator belt holding it in. He was the blue-blazer (gold buttons), gray-flannel pants type — Bean boots (the kind that lace), a storm coat (with a Burberry lining) tossed on my couch.
Lauren’s coat was the female version of his, but her boots were high-heeled ones with fur tops.
“Fell,” she said, “unless you have some definite information, you’d save Daddy a lot of agony by simply saying you know less than we do.” She was one of those girls who called her father “Daddy,” as my old girlfriend, Keats, always did. She treated him the same way Keats treated her father, as though there was no way he’d ever know as much about life as she did, but she was going to be patient with him just the same.
Girls like that can usually wrap Daddy around their little fingers when they want to. Me, too.
I told them what she wanted to hear. “I know less than you do.” I was glad to comply. I hadn’t asked for this meeting. It was my only free period before lunch, then on to English class and the bad news probably awaiting me on my paper about Robert Browning. You don’t think I understood “Fra Lippo Lippi,” do you?
“No, no, no, no,” Dr. Lasher said. “We came here to hear what you have to say, no matter how vague and uninformed. I’ll listen to hunches at this point.”
I told him my major reservation, about Lasher’s death being a suicide wasn’t a hunch, exactly. My feeling was based on something my dad had told me about suicide: that a person who wore eyeglasses removed them before he jumped from a high place. He left them behind or put them in his pocket. I told him my father’d been a private detective, and a cop before that; it was just something he’d pointed out to me.
Lauren said, “My brother couldn’t see his fingers in front of his face without his glasses. He’d have worn them.”
“What else?” her father asked me.
I lied. “Nothing.” The last thing I wanted was to get involved.
What I had to do was stay out of trouble that term. I’d been in enough last term to hold me for a lifetime, living up to my father’s prediction that I’d head for trouble like a paper clip to a magnet: It was my nature.
I’d opened my mouth without thinking when I saw Lasher’s body, and his broken glasses beside it. Someone had told Dr. Lasher what I’d said. Maybe even Dib, my best friend on The Hill. Dib had his own reasoning about Lasher’s leap from the top of The Tower. When had Lasher screamed? Does someone scream when he’s planned to jump … or does he scream when he’s pushed?
“What can you tell me about this fellow named Creery?” Dr. Lasher asked.
Dib had decided Creery’d pushed Lasher. He’d overheard a fight between them just before Christmas vacation. During that fight Lasher had threatened to kill Creery. Dib had theorized Lasher’d tried to do it, and Creery had pushed him while he was defending himself.
Both Lasher and Creery were in The Tower that fatal afternoon.
Lauren jumped in to answer her father’s question herself.
She said, “Cyril Creery is just a goofball.” She laughed a little, as though there was something really cute about being just a goofball. “Cyr wouldn’t harm a fly.”
I noticed she was wearing a gold 7 around her neck. Only a member of the secret Sevens could buy one of those. I’d never heard of a Sevens giving one of those to his sister, not even Outerbridge, whose sister, Cynthia, looked like Madonna and sometimes came over from Bryn Mawr to be his date at dances.
Usually Sevens gave these things to their girlfriends, or their mothers, the same as Air Force men did with their wings.
I’d always known that Lasher had a thing about Lauren. He’d brought her name up any chance he could, and her photographs were all over his room.
Often, on weekends, Lashe
r’d disappear, telling us later he’d gone away with his sister. He’d never say where.
I was remembering that while Lauren sat there sighing, saying in a somewhat exasperated tone, “Cyril and Paul didn’t like each other, that’s for sure. But Cyril’s no killer. Mon Dieu, Daddy.”
I thought about someone blithely saying Mon Dieu, Daddy, dangling one great long stockinged leg over another while right that moment in chapel they were festooning the walls with black-and-white-striped mourning cloths for that afternoon’s memorial service. Black for sorrow. White for hope. Her brother’d been buried only a few days ago.
“Fell?” said Dr. Lasher. “Is there anything you’re not telling me?”
“If you’ve spoken to Dib, there isn’t.”
“To whom?”
“Sidney Dibble,” said Lauren. “The one we took to breakfast.”
I thought so.
“He knows what I know,” I said.
Dr. Lasher said, “Tell me about Twilight Truth, Fell.”
“We’ve gone all over that, Daddy.”
“I want to hear Fell’s version.”
I said, “Damon Charles, The Sevens’ founder, seemed to have a fondness for twilight. Sevens get married at twilight, and buried at twilight. No one knows why…. Then there’s Twilight Truth, on the second Wednesday of the month. Any Sevens who feels honor bound to confess he’s done something to make him unworthy of the privileges of Sevens leaves a written statement in the top of The Tower. The officer of the day rings the tower bell and reads it over the bullhorn.”
“And then?” the doctor asked.
“We come up with an appropriate penalty. If it’s serious, we ask him to live and eat at the dorm, or we give him the silent treatment … If it’s not that serious, we suspend certain privileges. We whistle ‘Twilight Time’ in his presence … Sometimes we whistle that to force Twilight Truth on him, if he doesn’t seem likely to step forward on his own.”
“So ridiculous!” said Lauren.
“It’s just ritual,” her father said. “All clubs, including sororities, have their rituals.”
“Which is why I’d never join one!” she said.
The doctor passed me something Xeroxed.