Edge (12 page)

“What's going to happen to Bud now?” I asked my father, keeping my voice down. “Will he have a job?”

“Wait until we get home.”

E. F. Shoemaker Company and radio station WBEA were on the same side of Pilgrim Lane, a few doors from each other. Tuesdays Dad and Radio Dan went to Rotary together. Before Rotary, Dad would stop by the radio station to pick up Radio Dan and walk down to Sweet Creek Inn with him for the luncheon meeting.

And there the two of them were at the train station: one seeing his second son off to war, and Dad seeing Bud off to Colorado, about as far away from any war as he could get.

When Hope caught up with us, for the first time her eyes had a watery look, but she was holding her chin up, smiling.

She said, “Bud's going to be fine!” Then, probably for Radio Dan's benefit, “I'm so proud of him!”

“Well, we all are, we all are,” Dad said in a voice so low we could hardly hear it.

The four of us walked silently to the car, not talking, until Tommy suddenly blurted out, “This damn, damn war!”

THE FIRE AT FAR AND AWAY

A
round here they still talk about the fire at Far and Away. That small landmark cottage on the point of the bay, burned to the ground. Fishermen going for clams waded ashore and watched helplessly. My father was gone by then. Everybody said he'd set the fire. He used to work at Far and Away. He used to open his big mouth mornings he was getting coffee at Springs Store, nearby. He'd laugh about his bosses and call them names. I can hear him now.

“Ah, it's spring and the pansies are back,” my father said. He was checking our phone machine messages. “What do they want me to do now? Put a tub of posies out by their mailbox?”

I never said anything when Dad made fun of Paul and Robert. It made my life a lot easier than if I'd ever let on to him that I didn't think they were bad guys at all. The few times I'd been to Far and Away they didn't seem any different from other New Yorkers who came to spend the summer in our town.

I remember once I called them a couple and Dad blew.

“Don't call them that! Your mother and I were a
couple
! They're fakes! They're phonies!”

After Dad erased the messages on our phone machine, he said “This job at Far and Away has your name on it, Sonny Boy. They want their house opened.”

“Why does it have
my
name on it?”

“You're the neatnik. I'm not as good at dusting as you are, either.”

I let him get away with a lot. If I didn't, he'd see an opening and go in after me. He'd call me Girl instead of Gil. He'd make fun of my idea to be a chef one day. He'd go for the throat, as only Dad and his buddies could when they thought they saw a weakness in someone.

My dad called himself a contractor, but he was really a carpenter, a plumber, a yard man—he did what work came his way. He was more than an unskilled laborer but not much more. None of the men he hung out with ever went to college and like Dad, some of them never finished high school.

You can imagine how they resented the rich gay fellows who have summer homes here. Double it where my father was concerned. He was afraid his own son had tendencies.

Before my mother died he'd tell her I was beginning to look as pretty as her when they first started dating. I did have her blue eyes, and there were a few summers my blond hair was long. I liked to bake and I
was
a self-proclaimed neatnik. That was all Dad needed, to get on my back, when he was tired and depressed. Then he'd call me “Girlie” and he'd see if he could make me mad.

I felt so sorry for him, the way he missed Mom, and sorry for me the way I missed her, too. I let him say things Mom would have left the room over.

Now I have to confess something even Dad didn't know. It happened the summer before the fire. I'd worked as a waiter/bus boy for a big party Paul and Robert gave at Far and Away.

I was just fourteen. They were paying me fifteen dollars an hour to pass trays of food and keep the floors and tables clear of empty glasses and dishes. I wore a white jacket and black pants, a white shirt and a black bow tie.

I'd pop shrimp into my mouth before I passed a tray around. I tasted the baked clams, the raw oysters, and I had a hamburger and a hot dog fresh from the grill a cook tended in the back yard. There was that thin salmon, caviar, all the rich cheeses, then tiny pastries you could pick up in your hand. Or you could have big slices of chocolate cake, or key lime pie you could eat with a fork, sitting down somewhere to enjoy the string quartet playing on the terrace.

I was looking good and feeling good, just as though I was at parties like that one all the time. There were piles of throwaway cameras on trays in case anyone felt like having a photographic record of the evening. There were sterling silver key chains for souvenirs with round silver discs that said Far and Away.

Right in the middle of things I saw this wad of money held together by a gold dollar sign, on the floor of the hall closet.

I picked it up, took it into bathroom, and counted $100x10. $1000 smackeroos.

I put it in my pocket. I'd give it to Paul or Robert before the evening was over, I decided.

But it also occurred to me that no one could have seen me. And who walks around with $1000 in his pocket at a party? Somebody who'd probably never miss it.

I wasn't a bad kid. For one thing Mom had been too sick for me to give her more to worry about. I studied, took odd jobs afternoons and summers to make spending money and buy my own clothes.

Money was always a problem. Dad and I talked about it all the time. How much we had for this, what we couldn't have, and what there was so far in my college fund.

Dad said, “You're going to college if I have to rob a bank.”

“Things aren't that desperate,” I said.

“Don't kid yourself, Gil.”

The house Paul and Robert lived in was really a cottage. It was two hundred years old and it had been “fixed” by men like Dad time and again. One year during a hurricane, the bay rose and water came into the first floor. Dad said they spent a fortune repairing it, that they could have built a new house for what it cost. But it was one of those historic places. The original owner wouldn't sell it until he found buyers he trusted to keep it the way it was.

It only had two baths and three bedrooms. It faced the bay, no near neighbors, but beautiful gardens on both sides, mostly Robert's handiwork. My father used to say that you could tell which one took the garbage out in that house: it was Pauline, as he liked to call Paul. Roberta, Dad said, was the one with his nose in the daffodils and his hands in the salad bowl.

“Don't leave yet, Gil,” Robert said that first night I worked there.

I waited until the last guest was out the door. I was sitting on the terrace, looking at the moon's reflection in the water, wishing we didn't live in such a crappy house, dad leaving his clothes where he took them off, never washing a dish, never giving a damn how anything looked.

“You had a rough winter, didn't you, Gil?” Robert said from behind me.

Then Paul said, “We liked your mom a lot, Gil. We're so sorry.”

“Yeah. She liked you guys, too.” Mom had helped out at Far and Away nights they had dinner parties, but the three of them had had a kind of friendship, too. She'd given them cuttings from plants and they'd brought by lilac bushes or dwarf evergreens. Once, Paul gave her some goldfish complete with fancy bowl. Our cat ate them that very evening, but we never let Paul and Robert know.

They had sent a couple dozen white roses to the funeral home and later they wrote Dad and me saying how much they'd cared for her. Enclosed was a photograph of Mom stretched out on a chaise in their yard, with their black toy poodle in her arms.

I could feel the money clip in my pants pocket. I was thinking of all the stuff I could get with it. I'd never be able to put it in the college fund because Dad would want to know where I got it. But I could use it for special occasions, special treats.

I couldn't believe that Robert was smiling so sweetly yet asking me “Do you want to return the gold clip you found, Gil?”

I was about to deny it but Paul said, “We were going to pay the help with that tonight. Then I saw
you
pick it up.”

I could feel how hot my face and ears were. I took the clip out of my pocket and handed it to Robert.

I mumbled, “I meant to give it to you, then I forgot.”

“Bull!” said Paul.

“What?” I was surprised at the sharp tone of voice.

“I said bull! You were going to walk off with it!”

“Don't be harsh, Paul,” said Robert.

“When he stops lying and starts apologizing, I'll stop being harsh, not before!”

I heard myself let out this big sigh and say, “Paul's right. I was going to keep the money. I'm very sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” said Paul.

“Thanks,” I said. “I guess I'll never be asked to work for you again.”

“Sure you will,” Robert said. “It's over and forgotten.”

Paul drove me home.

He didn't say anything until the car stopped. Then he said, “Want to hear my rules for a good life?”

“Okay.”

“Keep your body clean and your head clear and earn your own money.”

I gave him a guilty smile and said thanks.

They weren't out from the city yet that afternoon I rode my bike over to open their house.

Enchanted Waters had already opened the little round pool in back. It was an unusually hot day for May, and I'd decided I'd take a swim later.

They had the kind of house that was a maid's dream. You had to look hard for any dust. I mostly opened and cleaned windows, and I mopped the kitchen floor. The funny thing was I liked to clean. I was good at it. I was fussy about my own things, too: my clothes, my room. I liked to try and create one little perfect area in our jungle house where I could be peaceful and forget what was in the other rooms.

When I had finished my housework at Far and Away, I shed my jeans, and T-shirt and took a swim. Then I flopped down in the rope hammock and enjoyed an eyes-shut daydream of owning this place, of having a gorgeous wife and well behaved, great looking kids who were off at the beach.

“Well! Well! Well! Our little Girlie is having herself a sunbath.”

“And you've had a few beers, hmmm, Dad?”

“You walk around in your underwear here?”

“I went for a swim.”

“Where are Pauline and Roberta?”

“We're right behind you, Mike.” And there they were suddenly, and there was my father red-faced but with that defended posture, hands on hips, jaw stuck out, speechless for once. Furious, again—that pointless, humongous fury smoking away inside him ever since Mom died. I wasn't afraid of him, but I knew not to count on him anymore.

“Hello, Gil,” Paul said, and Robert asked me “Is the water warm?”

“He's coming home with me now!” said Dad.

“Water's fine,” I said.

“Get your clothes on, Girlie!” Dad said.

I said, “I'm coming.”

“I don't want him swimming here!” Dad said. He was shaking his fist at them.

Paul said, “Whatever.”

“Hey, Dad,” I said, “Dad, for Pete's sake.”

“What is whatever supposed to mean?” Dad demanded.

“It means whatever you say, that's fine,” Paul said.

“You bet it is!” Dad said. “He's my son!”

“Cool it, Dad,” I said. “I'm coming.”

“He only
works
for you,” Dad said, “and you remember that!”

“Not to worry, Mike,” said Robert.

Then Dad said, “Wipe that smirk off of your face!” and went for Robert. And knocked Robert down.

Blood was running from a corner of Robert's mouth.

“You get out!” Paul shouted. “Get out now!”

“C'mon, Dad,” I said. “C'mon, it's time to go.”

Dad wasn't all bad, believe me. The next day he felt terrible about punching Robert. He told me I should go over there and give them his apologies, and before I could do it, he said no, he'd go himself.

He called them up to be sure they'd be there, and he drove off after bragging that he was an honorable man and an honorable man always owned up to his mistakes.

“Let that be a lesson to you,” he said.

“Let it be a lesson to
you
,” I said. “Don't lose your cool.”

The thing was Dad stopped off for a few beers to work up the courage an honorable man needed. When he got over there, Paul and Robert were gone.

“Hey, Gilly boy?” he shouted at me over the phone. “I'm alone here at Far and Away. I've got an idea!”

“What, Dad? You've had a few beers again, haven't you?”

I could always tell by his voice when he'd been drinking.

“Before I got here I stopped off to do some thinking. You're right about not losing my cool, son. We need the work.”

“And they've been darn nice to us, Dad.”

“You're right,” he admitted after a short pause. “Your mother liked them … So I'm going to do them a favor over here and you could help me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to paint that little kitchen of theirs without charge. I've got that can of white enamel in my truck and I just had it rotated yesterday.”

“Dad, they may have their own ideas about it.”

“Naw, no, they spoke before about painting that little room. Paint's peeling in there. I know what I'm doing.”

“All right,” I said. “I'll come over just so you don't mess it up!”

No surprise: Dad was sleeping in the rope hammock when I got there. He'd only finished one wall.

“What was destroyed was priceless,” said Paul. “We saved for years and year to buy the Pollack painting. We couldn't afford to insure it.”

“Our family photographs, our books, oh, everything,” Robert said. “Everything. And this house … This house.”

“Where is your father now?” the policeman asked me.

“He took off. The fire was raging and he just got into his pickup and went for help.”

“Why did he set the fire?”

“He
didn't
,” I said. “Why don't you listen to the truth?”

“Gil,” Paul said, “don't protect him.”

“
I
set the fire!”

They still wouldn't hear that.

Robert said, “Mike claimed he was coming here to tell us something. He sounded furious!”

“That's just his way,” I said. “He knew he was wrong! He was going to apologize.”

“Let's go downtown,” said the policeman. “Let's get all the facts straight.”

All the while I painted the kitchen that afternoon, I thought of how Dad ruined things, of what a ruin he was himself since Mom had died, of how I didn't think I could stand living any longer with damn Dad, out there snoring in the hammock!