"Not good enough," Sam persisted. "I want one hundred percent. And if you don't give it to me, you're going to regret it for the rest of your life."
But Mitchell Blaine didn't prove as easy to badger as Susannah had been. "No sale," he said.
Chapter 14
Blaine was a fast reader with an almost photographic memory, and he devoured the printed word like other people consumed junk food. But he had been looking at the same page in Business Week since he had left San Francisco on the Boston-bound 747, and he didn't have the slightest idea what he had read.
He kept thinking about Sam and Yank and what they were doing in the garage. He couldn't remember being so excited by anything in years. They were doomed to fail, of course. Still, he couldn't help but admire them for making the attempt.
The flight attendant serving the first-class passengers was covertly studying him. She bent forward to speak to a passenger in the row across from him and her straight skirt tightened across her hips. As a married man, he had always been scrupulously faithful, but his days of being Mr. Straight Arrow were over, and he imagined those hips beneath his own.
She turned toward him and asked him if he needed anything. The whiff of her perfume killed his arousal as effectively as a cold shower. She was wearing an old-fashioned floral scent reminiscent of his aunts' bathpowder.
He had smelled like that bathpowder himself for years-not because he had used it, but because the scent clung to everything in that rambling old house in Clearbrook, Ohio. He shut his eyes, remembering the bathpowder and his aunts, and the oppressive, cloying softness of his upbringing.
"Mi-chull! Mi-chull!" Every afternoon at four-thirty one of his aunts stood on the front porch of the house on Cherry Street and called him inside for piano practice.
Their names were Theodora and Amity. They were his father's relatives, and the only ones willing to take on the responsibility of raising an asthmatic seven-year-old boy after his parents were killed in a fiery automobile accident one Easter Sunday.
They were maiden ladies. Although they insisted they were unmarried by choice, not because they disliked men, in actuality there were only three males in the town of Clearbrook of whom they entirely approved-their pastor, their assistant pastor, and Mr. Leroy Jackson, their handyman. From the moment they set eyes on the small boy who had come to live with them, they were determined to make little Mitchell Blaine the fourth male in Clearbrook to receive their unqualified approval.
It was all a matter of civility.
"Mi-chull!"
He dragged his eleven-year-old feet reluctantly up the sidewalk. Behind him, he heard Charlie and Jerry calling out taunts just loudly enough so that he could hear, but Miss Amity Blaine couldn't.
"Sissy boy. Sissy boy. Run home and get your diapers changed."
They always said that about the diapers. They knew he couldn't play sports because of his asthma, and they knew that he had to go home to practice the piano, but they always said he was going home to get his diaper changed. He wanted to curl up his fists and smash their faces, but he wasn't allowed to fight. Fighting might make him wheeze, and the aunts got scared when he started to wheeze. Sometimes, though, he thought that his aunts might be using the wheezing as an excuse to keep him clean, because more than anything in the world, they hated dirt. They also hated name-calling, dogs, sweat, scabby knees, sports, television, curses, and everything else that went along with being a boy growing up in Clearbrook, Ohio, in the 1950s.
His aunts loved books and music, church bazaars and crochet. They loved flowers and beautiful manners. And they loved him.
The hinge on the gate squeaked as he opened it. Everything in the old house squeaked, rattled, and clucked.
"Mi-chull, Mi-chull."
Aunt Amity reached out for him as he hit the steps. He tried to make a fast dodge to the side before she grabbed him, but she was too quick. She blocked the doorway with her bony, birdlike body and drew him into her arms. While Jerry and Charlie watched in the distance, she planted a kiss on the top of his head. He could hear their derisive hoots in the background.
"You've been running again, haven't you?" she said, tidying his already tidy hair, straightening his pristine white shirt collar, fussing over him, always fussing. "Dear, dear, Mitchell. I can hear that wheezing. When Theodora discovers that you've been running, I'm afraid she won't let you go out to play tomorrow after school."
That was the way they disciplined him. One of them would catch him in a misdemeanor and blame the punishment on the other. The punishments were always gentle and unimaginative-no play after school, sentences to be written fifty times. They thought it was the effectiveness of their methods that had turned him into the best-behaved boy in Clearbrook. They didn't understand that he tried desperately to please them because he loved them so much. He had already lost the mother and father he adored. In the deepest part of him, he was afraid that if he wasn't very, very good, he might lose his aunts, too.
He washed his hands without being prompted and settled himself behind the piano, where he stared at the keyboard with loathing. He had no musical ability. He hated the songs that he had to practice about sunshiny days and good little Indians. He wanted to be out with the other guys playing ball.
But he wasn't allowed to play ball because of his asthma. The wheezing didn't bother him much anymore-not like when he was a real little kid-but he couldn't convince the aunts of that. And so, while the other guys were out playing ball, he was playing scales.
But the scales weren't the worst. Saturday mornings were the worst.
The Misses Amity and Theodora Blaine supported themselves by teaching piano and giving deportment lessons. Every Saturday morning at eleven o'clock, the daughters of Clearbrook's best families dressed in their Sunday frocks and donned white gloves to knock politely on the Misses Blaines' front door.
Wearing a suit and tie, Mitchell stood miserably in the hallway next to his aunts and watched the girls enter. One by one they dropped a small curtsy and said, "How do you do, Miss Blaine, Miss Blaine, Mitchell. Thank you so much for inviting me."
He was required to bend neatly from the waist in front of girls like fat little Cissy Potts, who sat behind him in his sixth-grade class and wiped her boogers on the back of his seat. He had to say things like, "How delightful to see you again, Miss Potts."
And then he had to take her hand.
The girls settled in the living room, where they were instructed in such skills as the proper method of performing an introduction, accepting an invitation to dance, and pouring tea. He was their guinea pig.
"Thank you, Miss Baker, I'd love a cup of tea," he said.
Snotty little Penelope Baker would pass him his cup of watered-down tea and stick her tongue out at him when the aunts weren't looking.
The girls hated the Misses Blaines' deportment class, and they hated him in turn,
He spent his Saturday mornings gracefully balancing thin china saucers on his knee and taking himself to faraway places where no females were allowed. Places where a man could spit in the dirt, scratch himself, and own a dog. While he took Mary Jane Simmons's hand and led her to the center of the living room rug for a dance, he dreamed of feeling his legs fly out from under him and his hip hitting hard against the dirt as he slid into home plate. He dreamed of going up for a slam dunk and hanging off the hoop. He dreamed of hunting rifles, fishing rods, soft flannel shirts, and blue jeans. But the aunts' duckings and warnings and sighings held him in gentle, unbreakable bondage.
Only in the classroom was it possible to let himself go, and no matter how much the other boys taunted him, he refused to rein in his quick mind. He answered questions in class, did extra-credit projects, and got the best marks in sixth grade.
Teacher's pet. Teacher's pet. Diaper Boy is teacher's pet.
When he was fourteen, his voice dropped and his muscles thickened. Almost overnight, he shot up until he towered over his aunts' small, birdlike bodies. His wheezing disappeared, but they cont
inued to pet him. They made him wear a white shirt and tie for his first day of high school. Freshman year brought academic brilliance and gut-wrenching, aching loneliness.
The summer before his sophomore year, he was walking home from helping his aunts teach Vacation Bible School when a moving van and a paneled station wagon pulled up to the white clapboard house next to his own. The doors of the station wagon opened, and a man and a woman got out. Then a pair of long, suntanned legs emerged, followed by frayed denim cutoffs. He held his breath and watched as a beautiful girl close to his own age appeared before him. Her hair was arranged in a sprayed blond bubble kept neatly back from her face with a madras headband. She had a pert nose and soft mouth. A man's blue work shirt clung to a pair of high pointy breasts.
She turned to study the neighborhood and her eyes fell on him. He waited for the condescending sneer, the look of superiority, and could barely believe it when she gave him a shy smile. He walked closer, wishing the bible and curriculum book he was holding at his side would become invisible.
"Hi," she said.
"How do you do?" he replied, and immediately cursed himself for not being more casual. But he didn't know how to be easy like the other guys.
She looked down at the sidewalk. He spotted a little speck of dandelion fluff caught in the top of her blond bubble, and had to fight back a nearly irresistible urge to brush it away. As she continued to stare at the sidewalk, he realized that she was shy, and he felt a great surge of protectiveness toward her.
"I'm Mitchell Blaine," he said, using the skills that had become second nature to him after nearly a decade of deportment classes. "I live next door. Welcome to the neighborhood."
She looked back up at him. Only a dab of soft pink lipstick remained at the bow of her upper lip. She had eaten the rest away. "Mitch?" she inquired.
No one had ever called him Mitch except the parents he barely remembered. He was Mitchell. Mitchell-Mitchell-Diaper Boy.
"Yes," he said. "My name is Mitch."
"I'm Candy Fuller."
They stood on the front sidewalk and talked awkwardly. Candy and her family were from Chillicothe, and she would be a sophomore at Clearbrook High that September, part of the class of '64, just like he was. Candy had been a junior varsity cheerleader at her old school, and she wanted to cheer for Clearbrook this year. When they finally parted, Mitch felt as if his life had begun all over again.
For the rest of that summer they met every evening after dinner on the old metal bench beneath his aunts' grape arbor. Candy had to wash the dishes before she could come outside, and she always smelled like Joy detergent. They sat on the bench with the flat dark grape leaves curling about their heads and they talked.
Candy spoke of the friends she had left behind in Chillicothe and her worries that she might not be able to make the varsity cheerleading squad at Clearbrook High. Mitch talked about how he'd like to have his own car and whether or not he would be able to get a scholarship to college. He kept the darker bitterness of his life hidden away, out of fear that her affection for him would turn to disgust.
The adoration in Candy Fuller's deep blue eyes grew stronger every evening. Her reaction left Mitch breathless. No girl had ever looked at him that way. His stomach cramped as he remembered that Candy was from Chilli-cothe. She didn't know about the sissy boy, the diaper baby who wasn't allowed to play sports. All she saw when she gazed at him was a tall, lean fifteen-year-old, with sandy hair, light blue eyes, and a broad, handsome face.
They lived in splendid isolation through those dog days of summer, drenched in the scent of grapes and Joy and the infinite, unspoken promise of young love. The night before school started, they were quieter than normal, each sensing the changes that the next day would bring. Candy scratched a thin white line in the suntan on the top of her thigh.
"I don't hate moving here anymore, Mitch. This month, it's been special. Meeting you. But I'm scared about tomorrow. I'll bet all the girls at school are crazy about you."
He shrugged, trying to act cool, although his heart was thumping so hard it was painful.
She studied the toe of her once-white sneaker and her voice began to quiver. "I'm afraid you won't still like me after school starts."
He couldn't believe it. This soft, pretty, bubble-haired cheerleader with her sweet mouth and pointy breasts was afraid that she would lose him. The stirring of emotions that gripped his chest was the sweetest pain he had ever experienced. "I'll still like you tomorrow," he murmured. "I'll always like you."
She tilted her face up to him, and he realized that she wanted him to kiss her. Closing his eyes, he leaned forward and touched that sweet Candy-scented mouth with his own. Although dark, sexual thoughts of her had tormented him for weeks, the kiss was pure. It was a gesture of adoration, a symbol of promise, a farewell to summer.
"Will you walk me to school tomorrow?" she asked when they finally drew apart. Her eyes were large and beseeching, as if she still wasn't certain that he cared for her.
"Of course," he replied. He would have walked with her to the moon.
And then they kissed again. This time it was different. Their mouths met hungrily. Their young bodies joined with a raw, untried passion. He felt the thrusts of her young breasts against his chest and the small bumps of her spine beneath his fingertips. Dark longings raced through his body and heated his blood. A man's need surged through him, its urgency blocking out everything but the feel of Candy's body pressed next to his.
"You can touch my chest if you want," she whispered.
He couldn't believe he'd heard her right. For several seconds he did nothing, and then he gingerly slid his hand between their bodies. The well-worn fabric of her blouse was soft beneath his palm. When she didn't stop him, he let his hand creep upward, still staying outside her blouse. He felt the bump that marked the bottom edge of her bra and waited in agony for her to push him away.
But she didn't move. He slid his fingers higher until he touched the slope of her breast. Through the fabric of her blouse and the sponginess of her padded bra, his hand closed over her. He groaned and held the soft mound as if it were a fragile baseball. They kissed and he gently kneaded it. The Fuller's back porch light snapped on and they sprang apart.
Her eyes were misty with the depth of her feelings for him. "I never let a boy do that to me," she whispered. "Don't tell anybody."
He shook his head and silently pledged to keep the precious gift she had given him their secret forever.
At seven-thirty the next morning, she met him on her front porch. He could see that she was embarrassed about what had happened between them the night before, and he was overwhelmed by her fragility. She was so vulnerable, so needful of his protection. As he watched the tip of her tongue flick nervously over her lips, he determined to shield her from all the spiteful demons at Clearbrook High.
"Do I look all right?" she asked, as if her entire future depended on his response.
He took in her white blouse with its gold circle pin on the collar and her pleated green plaid skirt. "You'll be the prettiest girl in the sophomore class," he replied earnestly.
They walked to school hand in hand, her small fingers curled through his bigger ones. He felt the morning sun warming his face, and shortened his strides so she could keep up. His shoulders drew back. A slight swagger appeared in his walk. With Candy Fuller walking at his side, he was no longer Mitchell Blaine. He was Mitch. Mitch the Indestructible. Mitch the Mighty. Mitch the Manliest of the Manly.
"Do you think the other kids will like me?" she asked.
An uneasiness passed through him, a vague foreboding. But he was Mitch the Fearless, Mitch the Brave, and he shook it off. "You shouldn't pay too much attention to what the other kids think."
He could see that his response mystified her, and he remembered that she was a cheerleader-part of a group that was dedicated to conformity. His uneasiness grew.
"Don't you think they'll like me?" Anxiety had crumpled her brow.
"
Of course they will."
The American flag cracked in the morning breeze as, hand in hand, they walked into the school. They were in different homerooms, and he had promised to stay with her until second bell. As they walked down the main hallway, he was lulled by the joy of entering Clearbrook High with Candy Fuller at his side, and so he wasn't prepared when he rounded the corner by the sophomore lockers and the taunts began.
"Here's Mi-chull," the boys clucked, imitating his aunts. "Mi-chull, Mi-chull." There were five of them leaning against the metal locker doors, five scrubbed-up would-be rebels made omnipotent by banding together.
"Who's that you got there, Mi-chull? Hey, baby, come on over here and meet some real men."
Candy looked first at the boys and then at Mitch. She was bewildered by their behavior. None of the boys was as good-looking at Mitch, none as tall and well-built. Why were they taunting him?
Mitch tried to appear tolerant, as if they were children and he was a world-weary adult. "Why don't you guys grow up?"
They hooted with laughter and catcalls, pounded their fists in merriment against the locker at his absurd attempt to defy them.
Candy grew more befuddled. She gazed at him, accusation and betrayal beginning to form in her eyes. She had thought he was one of the special, one of Clearbrook's chosen. Now she realized that wasn't true. She had somehow managed to ally herself with an outcast.
He felt her fingers slackening in his and panic filled him. She wanted to get away from him, to distance herself. In those few seconds, everything changed. Without knowing any of the facts, without understanding a single detail of his past, she understood that he was a social pariah and that she should not have let herself be seen with him. He was going to lose Candy Fuller, and with that knowledge came the certainty that he didn't want to live anymore. If he couldn't be Mitch the Brave with Candy Fuller at his side, he didn't want to be anyone.
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