The Tutor

by Peter Abrahams

  Scott stuck two balls in his pocket, held up the third. Tom waited on the other side, a foot or two inside the baseline, which was annoying; not all crouched and intense like Gudukas, but relaxed. Quick for who?

  Scott thought of saying something light like, “Half fun,” but the idea was quickly shoved aside by the memory of that ninth blown match point—a memory unvisited for a decade or more. Scott could see it clear: a sure down-the-line winner that had caught the very top of the net and instead of dropping over—like Tom’s previous two shots, two!—fell back. Pure bad luck, Scott thought as he tossed the ball in the air. Bad luck, fate, Stanford, Duke: it was going to be now, the cracking through. Big things, so easy. He went with the kicker, right off.

  8

  Tom, 6–0.

  A quick set. After it was over, they shook hands at the net, eyes averted. Tom said something nice, something about flukes, good days, bad days. Scott couldn’t speak. His face, body, hands, were on fire. He left his racquet where it was, smashed on the court.

  Tom went into the locker room. Scott found himself back in the weight room, lifting crazily, trying to work it all out of him. He was no fucking match for Tom; Brandon was no fucking match for Sam. Seventy-fifth percentile versus ninety-ninth. That said what there was to say. Ninety-ninth was where all the cream was waiting, the cream of American possibility, the sweet life floating above all this shit. The ninety-niners probably didn’t even know it was a competition. Would it go on forever, this coming up short? He thought of Adam. Adam, who could have competed with anybody at anything.

  The thought of Adam calmed Scott. Not how Adam would have competed, what a star he would have been: just Adam. He got off the bench, stripped the weights, hung them on the steel pegs. Scott loved all his kids equally, of course, the way you were supposed to. Oh, but Adam.

  In the locker room, he changed into his bathing suit, walked past the steam room, not yet ready to face Tom, and outside to the deck. The club had installed a whirlpool out there, shrouded now in vapor. Scott lowered himself into the hot, bubbling water, parting the clouds with his own motion; and there was Tom, sitting on the far side.

  “You scared me,” Tom said.

  “Yeah?”

  They sat in the vapor cloud, up to their necks. The deck looked out on the town forest, the same woods that backed so close to Robin Road, but from the other side. The woods were just a dark mass through the vapor, but directly above was a clear patch, like the eye of a hurricane. A flock of birds flew over, headed for the trees.

  Scott tried to think of something to say, something to make up for the racquet smashing, the curses, all that. Would Tom tell Deborah about it, or even Sam? Scott didn’t know. Tom was hard to read sometimes.

  “Thought you didn’t like whirlpools,” Scott said. There’d been one up at Tom’s ski place years before, but he’d ripped it out and extended the kids’ dorm.

  Tom got a strange look on his face, almost as though he’d felt a sharp pain. “I don’t,” he said. “The steam room was packed.”

  Tom closed his eyes. Silence, except for the bubbling. Scott gazed at his brother’s face, wondering what he was thinking. He had no intention of bringing up Symptomatica, not now. Neither did he want to spend any more time in the whirlpool with Tom. He should just say good-bye, shower, get out of there, do some chores, chopping wood behind the house—maybe with Brandon—or cleaning out the garage.

  “What about the Symptomatica deal?” he said. Just like that.

  Tom opened his eyes. Their expression made Scott think: I should have stayed in Boston, gone back for an MBA, set up my own shop, anything.

  “After the performance Gudukas put on?” Tom said. “You really want to get involved with someone like that? Get the business involved? Mom?”

  Scott didn’t answer. Just don’t say we’re doing pretty good here, both of us. The wives, the kids, everybody.

  Tom didn’t.

  Brandon lay on the couch in the entertainment center. The entertainment center was cool, especially when he had it to himself. The picture, the sound—all great. The diamond in Unka Death’s front tooth showed every whatever the word was, not face but something like that, and he heard for the first time another rapper in the background, going “Where the sun don’t shine” in a deep voice every time Unka Death said “Fuck you.”

  Then suddenly Dad was in the room, standing between him and the TV.

  “Does it have to be so loud?” Dad said.

  “I can’t see.”

  Dad moved aside.

  “Let’s go out and split some wood,” Dad said.

  “Huh?”

  “At the woodpile. There’s work to do.”

  “I’m relaxing.” Where the sun don’t shine, where the sun don’t shine. How had he missed that? It was so obvious. Unka Death got behind the wheel of his Rolls-Royce. The girl in the gold shorts and the old lady wig put her head in his lap.

  Dad snapped off the TV.

  “What the fuck?” Brandon said.

  “That’s your problem,” Dad said. “Too much goddamn relaxing. What’ve you got to be so relaxed about?”

  Dad looked really pissed. “I did the SAT thing, for Christ’s sake,” Brandon said. “Leave me alone.”

  “Leave you alone?” said Dad. “You’ve got a long way to go, Bran. What does lachrymose mean? Perfidious? Miscreant?”

  Brandon got up. “You’re such an asshole.” He started for the stairs but his father blocked the way.

  “Don’t you call me that, ever again.”

  They were face-to-face at the bottom of the stairs. Brandon got ready to call his father an asshole again. At that moment, they heard Mom from upstairs: “What’s all the yelling?”

  She came down, a calculator in her hand, a pen behind her ear. Dad backed away from him.

  “What’s going on?” she said, looking at one of them, then the other.

  Dad’s cheeks had red patches all over them. He said nothing. Brandon said: “He’s gone nuts,” and went up the stairs.

  “You’ve heard that?” Brandon said. “ ‘Where the sun don’t shine?’ ” He lay across his bed, feet up against the window, watching low dark clouds going in one direction, high light ones in the other, the phone to his ear.

  “How could you miss it?” Dewey said. “That’s Problem.”

  “The guy with the cleaver in the trunk of the Rolls?”

  “Not a Rolls,” said Dewey. “It’s a Bentley. You coming tonight?”

  “Don’t know,” Brandon said. “I might be grounded.”

  “For what?”

  For what? “Your mom forgot the New York thing already?”

  “Blew over,” Dewey said. “Your folks coughing up half did the trick. Money’s like Prozac for her.”

  Brandon laughed. That was pretty cool.

  “So I’ll see you if I see you,” Dewey said. “Might have some crack.”

  “Crack?” said Brandon.

  There was a knock at his door.

  “Brandon?” Mom.

  “Later,” Brandon said into the phone, and clicked off.

  “Can I come in?”

  “I guess.”

  Mom came in. “How’s steak for dinner?”

  “Sure.” This was new, not steak for dinner, although that kind of sit-down thing didn’t happen a lot, but getting consulted.

  Mom smiled. “Good.” She glanced around, kicked some shoes in the closet, closed it, noticed the open disc tray on the CD, closed that too. Oh, fuck. Next would come straightening the desk, the desk where nicely centered on the only unmessy part lay the Macbeth makeup test, with the big red F circled at the top. Might as well have been framed and hung on the wall.

  Brandon got up, went over to the desk as naturally as he could, stretching a little on the way, and sat on the test, arms crossed, casual. Mom gave him a funny look.

  “What’s on your mind, Bran?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “Are you upset about what happened with Dad?�
��

  “No.”

  “He just wants the best for you. So do I.”

  “I want the best for you too, Mom.” That just popped out. What a weird fuckin’ thing to say. Brandon felt his face getting hot.

  “Brandon!” She hugged him, kissed him on the cheek. Hotter and hotter. “That’s so nice,” she said, then let him go, stepped back. “You’re getting so big.” Her eyes were damp.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Am I still grounded?”

  She gave him another funny look. Maybe there should have been more lead-up to the grounding question, was that it?

  “I don’t know, Brandon,” she said. “How did the Macbeth makeup test go?”

  “Haven’t got it back yet.”

  “What about the SAT lesson?”

  “Not bad.”

  “What did you cover?”

  What did they cover? Brandon couldn’t think of a thing. Then he surprised himself: there were the tips, three of them, all clear in his mind. Tip one—eliminate all kind ofs. Tip two—think like Sam, but just for the test. Tip three—make nice. “Analogies,” he said. “Like mustard is to hot dogs as something is to something.”

  “Tell you what, Brandon. Fill in those blanks and you can go out tonight.”

  What was he, a performing seal? There was no way he could come up with something like that just out of the— “Like icing is to cake,” he said.

  She actually clapped her hands. “That’s wonderful, Brandon. What process did you use?”

  She sat on the bed, like she was settling in for one of those intellectual discussions when guests came over. Process? He didn’t have a clue. “Julian gave me a few tips.”

  “Did he? Like what?”

  “They’re top secret, Mom.”

  She laughed again. He shifted a little and the Macbeth test crinkled under his butt.

  “What did you think of Julian?” Mom said.

  Brandon shrugged. “He was okay.”

  Mom nodded. He could feel her thinking, had felt her thinking all his life. She was the brains of the family, no doubt about that. “How was he as a teacher?” she said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Compared to your teachers at school.”

  Brandon thought of Mr. Monson and his Cliffs Notes. “No one could be that bad.”

  Mom nodded again, like things were making sense. “Maybe we should just forget about the Sally woman and have Julian do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “The lessons.”

  “I have to do more?”

  “Don’t start that. We have an agreement. Besides, look at the improvement from just this first time.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “I’ll take the lessons.”

  “But do you want me to call the agency and switch to Julian?”

  Brandon shrugged.

  “It’s your choice, Brandon.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Sally is supposed to be good with boys too. She plays lacrosse at Trinity and has five brothers.”

  “Call the agency,” Brandon said.

  Mom laughed. “I think that’s a good decision, Brandon. Unless you think that maybe—”

  Ruby came in with a phone. “For you,” she said, handing it to Mom. “That asshole from Skyway.”

  “Ruby!”

  “Mute’s on,” she said, and turned to Brandon. “Who’s the poor girl with five brothers?”

  “None of your fuckin’ business,” Brandon said.

  Mom made a frantic silencing motion with her hand and went into the hall.

  Sherlock Holmes’s method was founded on the observance of trifles. Late that night, reading in her bed with only the desk lamp on, making a little circle of light on the book but leaving the room in shadow, Ruby tried to observe what Holmes observed, tried to solve the mystery of “The Speckled Band” before he did. Without peeking, of course—Ruby never peeked at the end of any book.

  Observe, not just see. Holmes was always going on about that. Watson saw everything Holmes did but could never make it add up. Dr. Roylott was obviously the bad guy—a dangerous man, as he said himself during the poker-twisting scene. So the question was how. How had he killed the sister of the terrified Miss Stoner? How was he planning to kill her?

  What did Holmes observe? The dummy bell rope and the strange ventilator—must be vent—in Miss Stoner’s room; the little saucer of milk and the dog lash in Dr. Roylott’s room. Ruby read the part about the lash three times. Lash must be “leash.” It was tied to make a loop. So? Did the baboon somehow crawl through the ventilator, or the cheetah? Ruby leafed back a few pages. Miss Stoner’s sister had died without a mark on her, frightened to death, Miss Stoner believed, by the speckled band. Was a cheetah speckled? Maybe you could say that; and cheetahs were cats and cats liked milk. But cheetahs were big and this was a little saucer, as Holmes pointed out. Ruby was stumped.

  She turned the page. A ventilator is made, a cord is hung, and a lady who sleeps in the bed dies. Watson saw no connection. Neither, maddeningly, did Ruby. Holmes and Watson took up their late-night vigil in the complete darkness of Miss Stoner’s bedroom. Ruby’s bedroom was completely dark, too. Her light wasn’t a light, just part of the book in some way, and she felt suspended in midair, wrapped in absolute silence.

  Then: a soft sound like steam escaping, and Holmes was on his feet, lashing at the bell rope with his cane. Watson saw nothing. Holmes was deadly pale. Through the ventilator came a horrible cry. Ruby felt icy all up and down her spine, and her heart beat fast. Holmes and Watson entered Dr. Roylott’s room. The words went by so fast Ruby hardly caught them: Turkish slippers, the looped-up lash, Dr. Roylott’s dreadful rigid stare. What was this? A peculiar yellow band with brownish speckles around his head. Another bit of Turkish clothing? And then the speckled headband moved, and there reared up in the dead man’s hair the squat diamond-shaped head and puffed neck of a loathsome serpent.

  Ruby cried out, jerked her head up from the book, glanced wildly around her room, saw nothing but woolly darkness, full of movement. She slammed the book shut, sat up, breathing fast, close to panting. A snake! She hated snakes, couldn’t bear the sight of them, not even the thought.

  Ruby picked up the book, holding it at arm’s length, as though the snake might be trapped inside, took it out into the hall, laid it on the floor. The house was quiet and dark, except for her reading light. She closed her door, went back to bed, leaving the light on. After a minute or two—or more, or less, she’d lost all track of time—she got back up, opened her closet, looked inside, checked under the bed, and climbed back in, pulling the duvet—blue with yellow sun faces—up high.

  Ruby had made up a peaceful dream she sometimes used to get to sleep. In it she was a cavewoman, sitting in the mouth of a nice dry cave. Outside, only a few feet away, blew a wild storm, sometimes rain, sometimes snow. She sat there, safe and warm. The snow variation worked best. Ruby tried it now, a raging screaming whiteness, and her just out of reach.

  Dewey did have a vial—he showed it around—but Brandon didn’t want to try it, so he stayed on a log overlooking the pond with a few other kids, including Trish. It was cold and dark in the woods, but they were warm inside, at least Brandon was. They drank out of two bottles, one Coke, the other a forty-ouncer of Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum. They mixed them in their bodies. Never a problem getting booze when Frankie J was around, and there was plenty more tonight. Frankie J was the captain of the football team and the coach’s son. None of the liquor stores in West Mill ever carded him. He sold to the kids in the woods for a five-dollar premium per bottle, plus drinking free.

  “You went to New York?” Trish said.

  “Where’d you hear that?” said Brandon. Trish wasn’t one of the cool girls. She sat beside him on the log, her knees tucked up under her chin.

  “It was all around the school.”

  “Fuck,” said Brandon, but he
wasn’t displeased.

  “What was it like?”

  “Decent.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Not much. Went to a bar in Soho, me and Dewey.”

  “That sounds pretty cool.”

  “Yeah,” Brandon said. The bottles came around. Trish took a big hit off the Captain Morgan, didn’t touch the Coke. Some kid on the other side of her lit a match, lighting up Trish’s face. It struck Brandon that she was as good-looking as most of the cool girls, maybe all of them. When had that happened? She’d always been more or less a loser, lived in the apartments behind the Rite-Aid, worked at the cash register sometimes, like her mom, or stepmom or whatever it was.

  The bottles came to him. He took a big chug of the Captain Morgan, just so he could talk to Trish a little better, even if she wasn’t one of the cool girls, felt a nice boing inside his head, made him sit up straight. He dropped the Coke. The bottle rolled down the bank and into the pond; not into, exactly, but on.

  “Hey,” said a kid down the log, “it’s fuckin’ frozen.”

  “Go for a walk,” said Frankie J.

  “No way,” said the kid.

  “It’s safe,” said Frankie J. “I was skating this morning.”

  The kid shook his head.

  “Five bucks if you do,” said Frankie J.

  “No way.”

  “Twenty.”

  “Twenty?”