Fragile Beasts (23 page)

“I’ve decided to buy Klint a pickup truck.”

He rubs his jaw again, sniffs, and looks past me toward the house, squinting.

“That’s an awful extravagant gift,” he says.

“It wouldn’t be a gift.”

“What would it be?”

“A necessity. Like buying the boy socks.”

He nods.

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ve provided both Kyle and Klint with a myriad of things since they moved here,” I explain. “I replaced Kyle’s iPod when it broke. I pay their cell phone bills. I bought them computers for their schoolwork. My grocery bill has tripled. But I don’t consider any of this extravagant. I’m providing for their basic needs. I am acting as a de facto parent, after all.”

He drops his gaze from the house to his hands and starts pulling off his work gloves. He sticks them in his coat pocket and pulls out his keys.

“I’m not spoiling him,” I go on. “I remember that car of Cameron’s when he was Klint’s age. The Thunderbird. I remember him driving it out here to show me. I remember how angry I was at Stan for giving it to him. He seemed determined to ruin that boy.

“This is different. I’m not trying to buy Klint’s affection or make him beholden to me. I’m simply trying to make both our lives—all our lives—easier.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was wondering if you would mind picking out the truck for him. Bert Shulman would accompany you. He’ll take care of the actual purchase. But I thought you’d be the ideal person to make the selection. You know about trucks, plus you know what Klint would like. What would be appropriate for him. Since you come from similar backgrounds.”

He abruptly takes his cap out of his pocket and sticks it back on his head, signaling the end of any meaningful exchange between the two of us.

“Okay,” he tells me.

“Would you have time later today?”

“I can make time.”

“Thank you, Jerry.”

He climbs into his truck.

I tighten my scarf and set out on my daily walk.

“Oh, one more thing,” I remember and call back to him. “I assume the make should be American.”

He leans out of his window and nods at me a final time.

“Yes, ma’am. A boy like that would never want to drive a foreign truck. We’ll get him something American made in China.”

I fully expect the truck-procuring mission to take weeks. I’m amazed when Bert calls me a few hours later to tell me he and Jerry have found a suitable vehicle: a dark blue Chevrolet that’s a few years old but in good condition.

He comes over later with some papers for me to sign, then he and Jerry leave again to pick it up.

Now it’s sitting in the driveway in front of the house waiting for the boys to get home from school.

I have to admit, I’m excited. I’m looking forward to seeing the joy on Klint and Kyle’s faces and knowing I put it there.

I’m not stingy with my money. I give quite a bit to various charities and community concerns but always without fanfare and public acknowledgment. However, I rarely give personal gifts because I rarely like anyone.

I suppose I’m going to have to accept that I like these boys. Even the one I don’t like.

Luis has already left to pick them up with instructions to bring Klint home directly after school at my request. Usually he drops Klint at his job. Today he’ll be told there’s something urgent at home and that he can go to his job a little late after the problem has been solved.

I’m settled here on my porch with a cup of strong tea in front of me, wrapped in my coat and scarf, reading a back copy of
El Mundo
. Luis reads all the Spanish newspapers daily on his computer but I could never do this. Even though it means getting the news late, I won’t sacrifice the feel of shaking open the paper and the crackle of turning the pages.

I make a mental note that I should do something nice for Bert. He’s always been a difficult man to thank for all the many kindnesses he does for me.
He won’t accept gifts or favors. The only thing he will accept is a dinner invitation. I try to have him over once a month.

Some people would probably consider me a heartless harpy or an unapologetic flirt in my dealings with Bert but I think it’s safe to say that at this stage in our lives, I can no longer be accused of leading him on.

Bert proposed marriage to me before we slept together, while we were sleeping together, after we stopped sleeping together, after a substantial mourning period after Manuel’s death, and then routinely after that, once a year, until I received my first Social Security check, and I asked him to stop.

In hindsight, I’m sure I hurt Bert when after years of trying to get me into bed I suddenly jumped in, stayed for a little while, then permanently jumped out again without any seeming rhyme or reason or so much as a single “I love you” or “Thank you. I had a good time.”

In my defense, I didn’t know what to think about sex and love and how the two mixed or didn’t. I had entered adolescence without a mother. I had never had any female friends. I lived in an orphanage for most of my teen years, and what I learned from watching the other girls was confusing at best.

There were the quiet, frightened good girls who escaped their daily lives through fairy-tale dreams of swooning in a prince’s embrace while all along accepting the reality that their survival depended on giving themselves to men they didn’t love who would probably abuse them.

Then there were the predatory, promiscuous bad girls who blatantly used sex to get food and presents, yet these were the same girls who fell in love the hardest and would cry for days over men who treated them horribly.

Except for vocabularies peppered with French phrases and an absence of head lice, the girls at my Ivy League college proved to be no different when it came to dealing with men.

I remained a virgin until my midtwenties and when I finally decided to sleep with a man, it was purely out of curiosity. Despite Bert’s well-known regard for me and his long-established pursuit of me, when I finally decided to “rock his world” as the youngsters say, it was simply a matter of him being at the right place at the right time in relation to my rather selfish whim.

Granted, I cared a great deal about Bert and I even found him attractive (unlike Joe Peppernack or that poor DuPont boy with the lisp), but these were not exceptional emotions. I was certainly not in love with him or hot for his bod.

I was disappointed in sex. I did my best to find it exciting and pleasurable.
There were no obstacles in my way. I have no religious or moral objections to it, and I’m not shy about baring my body. I wasn’t afraid of the physical act of penetration, regardless of the stories I’d been told. To hear some girls talk, the average man’s member was the size of a rolling pin and just as hard. Even so, some of them seemed to find its insertion gratifying while others described it as an agonizing invasion of their bodies tantamount to being ripped in half.

I relaxed and gave myself over to Bert’s kisses and caresses, waiting for a spark of desire to ignite somewhere deep inside me and spread to all the nerve endings in my body. I waited to feel some wonderful physical assault on my forgotten country girl senses, something that made me salivate like the smell of fresh-baked homemade bread or the bright red sight of raspberries finally ripe amid their thorns.

Nothing happened.

Actual intercourse was even more frustrating in that it wasn’t bad or good. I was expecting something extreme and what I received was something mundane: a monotonous moving of muscles with an eventual useful goal in mind not unlike the process of kneading dough for dumplings.

Bert, on the other hand, seemed to have quite a good time.

I couldn’t understand how he could get so wound up about something that left me so unmoved. I wondered if there was something wrong with me as I continued to be unmoved by other men. Then I met Manuel and as much as my rational, sensible self fought against the illogical, romantic notion, I finally accepted that there is such a thing as chemistry.

I’m engrossed in an article about the exhumation of Spain’s mass graves filled sixty years ago with thousands of Franco’s victims when I hear a car coming.

I stand up from my chair and wait for the Mercedes to appear. Luis parks it in front of the barn. Klint and Kyle get out and begin walking slowly across the driveway toward me, their heads bowed, ball caps pulled down over their eyes, hands deep in pockets, backpacks hanging from one shoulder, kicking at rocks.

Luis follows with a bag of groceries. I see a loaf of sandwich bread and a box of Little Debbie snack cakes sticking out of the top.

“Hello, boys,” I call from the top of my front porch steps.

“Hi, Miss Jack,” Kyle replies.

Klint nods his head. I hate this.

“You got company?” Kyle asks, glancing at the truck.

“No,” I tell him as I join them. “This truck belongs to your brother.”

I smile complacently, immensely pleased with myself, and wait for their reactions.

Kyle’s mouth drops open, and he lets his backpack slip off his shoulder onto the ground

“What?” Klint says.

“The truck is for you, Klint.”

“No way!” Kyle shouts.

He runs over to the truck and throws open one of the doors.

“I thought you could use it,” I continue addressing Klint. “I know you and your brother don’t like being dependent on Luis for rides to and from school.”

Luis clears his throat.

“And Luis is also much too busy to drive you,” I quickly add. “I know once your practices and games start you’ll need your own transportation. Possibly you might want to go on a date someday.”

“Klint, check it out!” Kyle shouts. “It’s a Silverado! It’s got camo seat covers!”

Klint ignores his brother’s excitement, but his cries bring Jerry out from the barn. He pauses to spit a stream of chewing tobacco into the grass, then begins one of his long-legged strolls toward us.

“You’re giving me this truck?” Klint asks me.

“Yes, I am.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to.”

“A truck?”

“Yes.”

I pull the keys from my coat pocket and dangle them until he puts out his hand and takes them.

He stares at them for an exceedingly long time. When he finally looks up at me I expect to see joy on his face, but it’s twisted with an emotion I can’t define. I think it might be rage, but then I notice tears in his eyes.

“I don’t want it,” he blurts out.

“What?” Kyle cries. “Are you nuts?”

“I beg your pardon,” I say.

He stops and searches desperately for the right words and comes up empty-handed.

“It’s wrong.”

“What do you mean? It’s a simple gift,” I explain.

“It’s not simple. There’s nothing simple about a truck.”

We all stare at the innocent vehicle.

Klint’s gaze returns to the keys in his hand. He stares at them with a terrible longing, then turns and throws them with a relaxed, fluid stroke of his arm that seems to require very little effort but sends them over and well beyond the barn.

I gasp in outrage.

Jerry makes a low, complimentary whistle.

Klint takes off running down the driveway.

“Sorry, Miss Jack. I better go talk to him,” Kyle says.

“You do more than talk to him,” I reply, trying to control the quiver of anger in my voice. “You tell him to come see me. Immediately.”

Luis sighs, sets down his bag of groceries on the porch, and begins walking in the direction of the thrown keys.

Jerry comes up beside me.

“Why does that boy dislike me?” I ask him. “I’ve done so much for him.”

He works the plug in his mouth a few times.

“That would be the reason,” he says.

I excuse myself and go back inside the house. I stop by the kitchen to get a glass of ice water and gulp it down standing at the sink, a practice I abhor. My heart is racing from the shock of what just transpired.

What kind of teenage boy turns down a vehicle?

I fill my glass again, then go to a drawer where I keep a Spanish fan. I snap it open and wave it rapidly in front of my face. I know I must look flushed.

Luis enters the kitchen with his bag of groceries.

He nods and smiles.

“Go ahead,” I sigh. “You obviously have something to say to me.”

“Yes. I’ve decided to serve a potato and anchovy gratin with the veal tonight.”

He begins humming as he puts the food away. I join him and take the milk jug to the refrigerator.

“You think I handled it wrong.”

“Yes.”

“How would you have handled it?”

“The right way.”

I pick up the box of snack cakes and examine it.

“What are these?” I ask Luis.

“Butterscotch Krimpets. They’re not bad.”

I open the box and take out a little blond cake wrapped in cellophane.

“Maybe this has all been a big mistake. What made me think that I could be a mother this late in my life?”

Luis laughs.

“You’re not exactly a mother. Why not think of yourself as a guardian angel?”

“That’s very nice. I like that.”

“These boys don’t need a mother. From what you’ve told me, much of their grief and torment comes from the fact that they have one. They need someone to care about them.”

“You mean like a zookeeper?”

“Not someone to take care of them. Someone to care about them. I think my English has become better than yours.”

“But doesn’t giving someone a truck show you care about him?”

“No. It shows you have a lot of money.”

I tear open the cake. Luis does the same and devours his in two bites.

“You hurt his pride,” he says, brushing crumbs off his hands into the sink.

“That’s ridiculous. And even if it were true, there was a better way to handle it. He didn’t have to be so horribly rude.”

“You see rudeness. I see a boy who doesn’t waste his words.”

“When he does speak, the words are always offensive.”

“Not always. Often they’re just concise answers to questions that should have never been asked.”

I bite into the cake, and I’m surprised by the softness of the spongecake. They’re not bad at all.

“You think any answer that isn’t the one you want to hear is a rude answer,” Luis goes on. “I understand him. Don’t you remember? When I worked for Manuel I hardly ever talked. It wasn’t because I was rude or sulking or dumb. I was humble.”