Like People in History (4 page)

"I like to pitch," Alistair said, "but ever since I met Whitey Ford, I really like playing catcher."

Two spectacular shocks. None of us actually
liked
to catch. And he'd actually met Whitey Ford, who had explained to Alistair the importance of good catching to effective pitching.

We drifted in a tight, admiring crowd all the way up Spring Boulevard, where the others all but hoisted Alistair to their shoulders when we arrived.

As they left, I said to him, "You'd sure better know how to bat. And to catch."

"I learned all that crap when I was six. I had a sports tutor."

"I hope you know what you're doing, Alistair. Because it'll be my butt on the line tomorrow."

"Calm down, Cuz. They're only kids. When you've been wheeling and dealing with adults as long as I have, kids are a cinch!"

The next morning was Sunday: a big breakfast then church. My sister, Jennifer, had refused to join us for the past year, "out of principle." Alistair joined her, saying "No offense. I'm used to my own parish."

When we got home, Jennifer had gone off to some friend's house, "to help paint scenery," her note said. Alistair was just getting off the phone when I came in to change out of my good clothes. My parents remained outside talking to Mrs. Furst and her grumpy husband.

"Don't you ever get off the phone?" I asked.

"Don't worry! They're collect calls," Alistair said, and sat down dispiritedly.

"Who are you calling all the time?"

"Lawyers. My mother's lawyer and my father's lawyer. The custody battle," he explained, then added, "I think I'll take her lawyer's offer."

It must have been clear that I hadn't a clue to what he was talking about.

"You see, they both want me. For different reasons, of course. And since they know I'll influence the judge if it comes to a bench decision, they're trying to settle out of court." "What are they offering you?"

"The expected junk," he said airily. "Private school and college tuition. An Alfa Romeo when I'm sixteen. Of course, my dad has far more money than my mom does. But that could change depending upon whom she goes out with."

It all sounded so strange, I asked the next, natural question. "Which of them do you like better?"

"My mom's a tramp. But my dad's a hypocrite. He'd probably raise me better, but he once threatened me with military school. She'll probably screw up her finances until she lets me take over, but she'd never do anything to hurt me."

I was so astonished by his assessment I didn't know what to say.

"What's most important," Alistair concluded, as the phone began to ring again, "is that she'll interfere less in my life."

He picked up the phone and said, "Tom?... Uh-huh? Fine! Tell him I'll make no claims on him beyond my grandmother's trust.... He will? Then that's it. Oh, and Tom, once this is settled, why don't you connect my mother up to your investment person? She's a complete dip when it comes to money."

They spoke a few minutes more before I went off to change my clothing.

When I arrived back in the living room, my parents were on the sofa, sitting on either side of Alistair, my mother holding his hand.

"You'll be able to see him if you want, won't you?" my mother was asking.

"Twice a year, Fourth of July week and the week after Christmas."

"When do they expect the paperwork to be done?" my father asked.

"A week, week-and-a-half. Can I impose on your hospitality a little longer?" Alistair asked in a small, pleading, sad voice.

"Of course you can," my mother said, and hugged him to her breast. Both she and my father looked solemn and sad, the way grown-ups looked at funerals and whenever the accountant came by.

"Don't forget we have a ball game at two," I shouted.

"Are you up to going today?" my mother asked Alistair.

"He promised to catch," I reminded him.

"It'll help me forget," Alistair said in that same fake, melancholy tone of voice.

I could have puked right there.

The ball game was not the disaster I'd feared. Despite having had a sports tutor, Alistair's batting was nothing like the .340 average he claimed. He did get off a couple of exciting pop flies and batted two men home. His catching was better—quiet, almost professional, unextravagant. Until, that is, Augie got up to pitch.

We had a roster of pitchers: Augie, Ronny, and Bob Cuffy were the top. If one of them couldn't make a game, Tony Duyckman, Randy McGregor, I, and even Kerry White were listed. I was. a fair pitcher. At least my astigmatism didn't get in the way, as I could compensate for it by control of the ball. But we were seldom given the chance in a real game, and that was okay by most of us. Of the three best, Augie was the ace. There was something about that oversized, unkempt boy turning from hippo to gazelle on the pitcher's mound that staggered strangers we played and continually amazed his friends.

Imagine, then, my surprise when in the middle of the eighth inning, Alistair called time, stood up, and went to the mound to talk to Augie. Though the diamond was hardly regulation size, I was still far enough away from them in the backfield to not hear a word they said. What I saw was Augie's initial acceptance of criticism, his subsequent surprise, and the way he angled out his chin slightly to the left as Alistair went on talking. I'd learned that that jaw angle meant "No! Absolutely not! Not on your life."

Evidently Alistair didn't read the silent protest. He went on jawing a while longer then returned to home plate. I could see his fingers working signals behind the mitt so intensely the batter had to have seen too. Alistair was asking for a curve down. Augie threw a straight ball. The batter missed. Alistair asked again for a curve down. Augie threw a side curve. The batter struck out again. Alistair almost poked holes in the dirt under his fingers demanding a curve down. I could see Augie shift his stance as he did whenever he felt overpowered by someone. He threw a curveball down, and the batter smacked it dead on. The ball flew fast enough and tantalizingly low enough for Augie, the shortstop, and me, running at top speed, to grab at and miss it. It hit the streetlight pole on the corner of Vanderveer Street so hard it shattered the glass—yards from where it hit—and left the pole strumming like a tuning fork.

Augie moaned, then turned over the mound to Ronny. Ronny pitched well, but we had only an inning to make up for the three runs Augie had allowed on that homer, and we just couldn't do it.

Still, the game had been exciting, and nearly twenty of us sauntered up the street into the local White Castle for soda and burgers in pretty high spirits. Augie and I hung back so I could try to comfort him silently. This almost worked until Alistair dropped back from the others just as we reached the parking lot of the White Castle, to say, "You should have pitched the curve down when I asked for it."

To which Kerry and Tony replied loudly, "Yeah!" before going inside and helping the others send the middle-aged counterman and his teen-queen-daughter waitress into total confusion with a score of conflicting orders.

Augie didn't want to go inside.

"I know he's your cousin, Rog, but...," he stammered, "he shouldn't just go around, you know... telling people... what to... do!"

"Ignore him, Augie. He'll be gone soon."

"What if he was right?"

"He wasn't."

"He was taught by Whitey Ford!"

"He
met
Whitey Ford!" I corrected.

"I don't know, Rog."

"Let's go inside. Or there won't be anything left for us to eat."

That motivated Augie. Even so, it was clear that Alistair had been bad-mouthing him to the others. Augie and I sat alone, and only Bob Cuffy came to talk to us, the others remaining among themselves.

At home, later, I caught Alistair leaving his room to go take a bath. He had enough towels for five people and was carrying a small leather bag which I knew from my father held toiletries.

"That was a rotten thing to do today!" I said.

"What are you talking about? Oh, that game! They're all just kids, you know."

I was about to ask what he thought I was, or for that matter, he was.

"All you need to do to control kids like that is learn a little psychology," Alistair concluded shrewdly. "Believe me, it will make your life a lot easier."

The split among us fourth-grade boys only seemed to widen in the next few days at school. I didn't much mind, but Augie was feeling ostracized for the first time in his life, and for something he hadn't even done. To make him feel better I decided to try to bring him and Alistair together. I hoped this would accomplish two things: let Alistair see how hurt and confused Augie was by what he'd done and thus bring out whatever good qualities might still lurk in my second cousin's breast; and show Augie that Alistair hadn't meant to hurt him specifically, that he pretty much did it naturally, running roughshod over everyone, moving from one scene of destruction to the next without much thought and little care for his effect. Maybe, just maybe, I was foolish enough to think, they'd even come to like each other, befriend each other, thus healing the wider social rift among us.

I chose Thursday afternoon to do that. "Thor's-day," Alistair explained. "He was the thunder god of the ancient Teutons. Always causing a storm. You wouldn't happen to know any Wagner? No, I thought not."

"Why won't you come over to Augie's?" I argued. "His garage is full of all sorts of neat things. Augie's dad's an inventor for Bell Labs."

"No, thanks," Alistair said, plumping himself down on the family room sofa. "There's a movie on TV I want to see.
Shall We Dance"
he confided.

I didn't know it.

"It's terrif," Alistair assured me. "Astaire, Rogers, Gershwin."

I'd never heard of any of them.

"It never ceases to amaze me! Here you are, living not thirty miles from the Chrysler Building, and for all you care you might as well be in... Paducah!"

The film on "Million Dollar Movie" began, and I could see in its first ten minutes that it would be just like all the other movies Alistair had watched since he arrived: well-tailored people in over-smart settings saying clever things and occasionally breaking into song and dance.

I waited for a commercial before saying, "That's not what it's like, you know!" "What?"

"Manhattan."

"How would you know?" Alistair asked.

"Because I've been to Manhattan. To Radio City Music Hall and the Roxy Theater and to the circus at Madison Square Garden and to Broadway to see
South Pacific
and to Central Park and to the Plaza Hotel and to the Empire State Building. And it's not like in those movies."

"You still wouldn't know," he said, unfazed, "since the Manhattan in those movies takes place after you've gone to bed. At nine," he added, rubbing it in.

"I've been up late in Manhattan," I said. "I even went to dinner at '21."'

"When?" He clearly disbelieved me.

"For Jennifer's birthday. My parents took us."

Now, it was true that they'd taken my sister; I'd just slept over at Augie's that night. Still, she'd come back with so many details of the event and brought them up so often over the following days that I felt I actually had gone with them. Details, I might add, I now began to enumerate.

"We had snails for appetizers. They looked burnt, but they tasted okay."

"Escargots au beurre noir
," Alistair said.

"There was a waiter whose only job was getting us wine."

"The
sommelier."

"There were waiters everywhere, coming and going all during the meal, emptying ashtrays, filling our glasses of water. A special one brought us dessert. I had cold ice cream inside a cooked crust," I added, thinking surely this impossibility would get him.

"Baked Alaska," Alistair murmured.

"So I know! And it's not like it is in those movies."

"It sounds exactly like those movies!"

"But that's not the way people live," I argued.

"That's the way I'm going to live. In a penthouse in Manhattan with a chauffeur and servants and wonderful, talented Social Register friends and beautiful things all around me. Quiet now, the commercial's over."

Not five minutes later, Ronny Taskin and his gang pulled up outside the house on their bikes. There must have been ten of them, yet Kerry White was delegated to come inside and ask if Alistair wanted to go biking with them.

To ask Alistair—not me.

"I don't have a bike here," he said apologetically, clearly torn between watching his movie and joining an outing in which he would have a starring, or at least costarring, role.

"What about Rog's bike?" the only recently insignificant Kerry had the temerity to ask.

"I'm using it!" I said.

"Well, you could borrow one of mine," Kerry told Alistair.

Who'd ever paid enough attention to the pipsqueak to notice he had more than one bike?

"At home," Alistair said, "I have a Schwinn Black Phantom, with three speeds."

"Me too," Kerry said. Then, lest Alistair consider him forward, he explained, "What I mean is, you can ride that one. I'll take the other."

Outside the others were shouting for Kerry to shake a leg.

Alistair waffled. "Well, if you really want me to."

"I do! We all do!"

Alistair hopped on Kerry's Black Phantom, while its owner jumped onto Tony Duyckman's handlebars and they all took off. Ten minutes later, as I was coasting down the hill of Spring onto Watkins Avenue, headed toward Augie's, I saw the group several blocks away. Kerry was on his older bike, riding between Ronny Taskin and Alistair in the vanguard of a flock of other boys.

That spelled an end to my peacemaking efforts.

I kept telling myself that Alistair wouldn't be around much longer. But somehow that didn't seem to work. He'd usurped my place—or a place I'd been looking forward to filling—among my classmates without even going to school with them. Except for Augie Herschel, virtually none of them spoke more than a word or two to me anymore.

At home it was just as bad. My mother would come into the family room late in the afternoon. I'd be struggling with math homework on the carpet in front of the TV. Jennifer would be on the sofa painting her toenails different colors to see which one she liked best. Alistair would be propped up on pillows in front of the coffee table, playing solitaire and humming along with my sister and her small pink plastic portable radio, to the sounds of the hit songs of the day—"Hernando's Hideaway," "Steam Heat," "They Call the Wind Maria." Mom would say, "I'm about to start dinner. You like veal cutlets, don't you?"