Linger (7 page)

He’d taken out ads in the county newspapers, and he had a commercial on WTGH:
LINGER THANKS OUR BRAVE ARMED FORCES
!

While I was writing Bobby’s name in, Mr. Raleigh came by to ask me if I’d speak to the substitute piano player that weekend about Mr. D.’s idea to have patriotic songs in every set.

“Where are you going?” I asked him.

“I’m going to Vermont to visit my son,” he said. “I might do some tobogganing, too. What do you hear from Bobby?”

“He says they travel like a train, fifty-eight sand-colored tanks on the move.”

“At least he’s inside.”

“When he’s not in the turret. He wrote one time ‘How do you get wet riding in a tank? You ride in the turret and the rain runs down your flak jacket, soaks your pants, your boots—try to sleep after that,’ he wrote.”

Mr. Raleigh hobbled away, calling over his shoulder, “Tell Bobby I’m praying for him.”

Dad was working late because the war was bringing more people to Linger. Usually everyone was gone by nine thirty or ten on a weeknight, but now they were staying.

I decided to go home and keep Mom company. I also wanted to watch CNN. I’d never seen a war on TV. I wasn’t even born for Vietnam. The only wars I’d ever watched were in the movies.

We sat in the living room for a while, viewing video-game-style bombs explode while reporters stood in front of planes and American flags talking about “sorties” and “Scuds” and “Patriot missiles.”

“I can’t watch anymore,” Mom finally said.

“Why don’t we watch a tape?”

“You go to bed—it’s midnight. I’ll watch a tape.”

“What have you got?”

“I taped the Sally Jessy Raphael show this morning. I had to go up to Linger to meet the decorator who’s doing Lingering Shadows over. I’ll sew the curtains.”

She’d started smoking again ever since the war began.

She was only going to smoke one Camel a day, outdoors.

I watched her light up. “Shall I get you an ashtray?” I said sarcastically.

She knew how to deal with me. “I hate it that he’s over there,” she said.

“Yeah, well … What’s Sally Jessy got on?”

“I find it so very hard to believe Bobby spread that cat rumor. Your father won’t even discuss it.”

“I don’t want to either.”

“It’s no way to remember your brother.”

“I don’t remember him that way,” I said.

“How do you remember him?”

“I remember him calling us the cool, cool Peel brothers and chasing Chike, stuff like that. And our Sunday walks. What
is
this?”

“Remember how protective he was?”

“What
is
this? He’s not dead.”

“No, but remember how he’d tell Daddy not to let Dunlinger use that tone of voice on him? And if Daddy didn’t want to go with me to a movie, Bobby’d go with me, always. I think he joined the Army because he wanted you to get all the college money. He always said you were the brain.”

I was sliding the tape into the VCR, trying not to get the guilts at the thought of the college money. Every time Dad didn’t want to replace something on its last legs, he’d say, “Gary’s too close to college now.”

Mom said, “Bobby wouldn’t hurt a fly, Gary. That boy, that Carlos, the newspapers said he was high-strung or something. What did they say he was?”

“They said he’d had emotional problems even before he was turned in. At least Bobby didn’t turn him in.”

“And Bobby didn’t realize what Mañana Meow would do to their business. Bobby was just a kid back then!”

“Dunlinger probably egged him on. He couldn’t stand the idea of having their kind for competition…. But let’s not sweat it, Mom.” I didn’t like to think about it.

Mom said, “We don’t say
sweat
in this house, we say perspiration. And we don’t say
their kind
anywhere!”

“Don’t perspire over it. I was being sarcastic, talking like Mr. D.”

“I never, ever heard Mr. D. talk like that.”

“Bobby heard him. He told me he did.”

“Mr. D. is one of the finest human beings I know.”

“Don’t get carried away, Mom.”

“I just hope Mr. D. and Bobby do make up, now that Bobby and Lynn are getting together.”

I didn’t even want to answer that. The tape was playing. I said, “Stop worrying, Mom. It’ll be okay!”

Sally Jessy’s show was beauty makeovers for spouses of Persian Gulf warriors.

—F
ROM THE JOURNAL OF
Private Robert Peel

Saudi Arabia

Iraqi deserters descend on us. They’re hungry and scared. They wolf down the MREs, the only ones ravenous enough to be thankful for them.

A few guys want souvenirs from them for the food: a ring, a chain, a religious medal, though it’s against regulations to loot.

Movie Star says he goes along with the regulations. His ancestors had this superstition some in his family swear is true. If you steal from someone, you steal their bad luck, too.

Do I have what would be left of Carlos Elizondo’s bad luck now?

All that summer I waited for Dunlinger to say something to me, to acknowledge it was no pipe dream. I’d pulled it off single-handed, with only mob psychology for help and an eventual assist from the police investigating the “anonymous” phone tip about illegals.

Dunlinger was in high spirits when Mañana turned into Mañana Meow. He never referred to it, though; he shrugged off the employees’ jokes about it. Only once did I hear him laugh and say we’d better keep Joan in, if the gossip was true.

I remember the night Mr. Yee told him Mr. Elizondo’s son and nephew were arrested as illegal employees. While Mr. Elizondo and his brother had papers, his wife and most of his children were still in Mexico. The son and his cousin had sneaked into the country to help at Mañana.

Mr. Dunlinger didn’t say anything, and a week or so later, when Mr. Yee said something terrible had happened to Carlos Elizondo, Mr. Dunlinger said, “
Who?
”

“The son who was arrested for being an illegal.”

“Did they send him back to where he came from?”

“He hung himself, Mr. D.”

He caught me by the arm that night, out in back of Linger, as I was leaving.

He almost whispered what he said; it took me a few seconds to realize no, he was
hissing.
That was the sound when he said didn’t I know the difference between idle chitchat and a deliberate plan of action? Did I
seriously
think he would have let me do such a thing if he had known my intentions? Well? Well? Did I?
Did
I?

I said, “You never tried to stop me.”

“When did I know you were a maniac? After it was
a fait accompli
!”

“You had to know it was me, Mr. D. I told you about the China Cat.”

“You talk to me when I’m busy. You think I remember every little word from your mouth?”

It must have been the day of the funeral when Mr. Elizondo showed up in Linger’s kitchen. He was in a black suit, carrying a hat that looked too hot to wear on a late-summer afternoon.

“I just want to see what kind of a face someone like you has,” he said to Mr. Dunlinger.

I was standing right beside them. I thought maybe he had a knife. His voice was so eerily soft, his brow beaded with sweat. He was breathing hard.

I should have said that it was me he should talk to, not Dunlinger, but all I managed to say to him was “Don’t hurt him.”

Then he turned and looked at me and shook his head.

“Hurt him?” he said. “I could never do to him what he has done to himself. He has become what he is, and now he lives with it.”

As soon as Mr. Elizondo left, Mr. Dunlinger said to me, “Let’s get out of here!”

He didn’t want to talk in front of the cook and the one busboy who was in the back stacking plates.

“Just forget it happened,” he told me out in the hall.

He was angry, and it made me hate myself and him.

I said, “Next time say it was me who did it. Don’t protect me, okay? Don’t do me any favors. Okay?”

“Don’t
you
do
me
any more,” he said. He slammed out of there. He didn’t come back until after dinner, when he had Mrs. Dunlinger with him. I never knew what he’d told her about it, if he’d told her anything or let her believe what most people at Linger thought: Some kids started the cat rumor. And the search for undocumented aliens was just routine, and a coincidence.

After I left work that night I never went back.

I never told anyone the truth.

I don’t think he did, either.

Carlos Elizondo was twelve,
The Berryville Record
reported, but he always looked older. He was sensitive, they quoted his father; he got scared when the police took him in. He’d only been in this country a year.

Why Mañana? the paper questioned on its editorial page. A few miles east a Thai restaurant has
never
been investigated, and across the Canal neither have a Chinese and a Japanese, nor the Mexican one in Kingston. And what about the summer inns throughout the county that hire itinerant help? Why was this one the scapegoat?

Once I thought I would write a letter to Mr. Elizondo and tell him I was the one, and I was sorry. But who knew where he was, where they had gone after they cleared out of Berryville?

T
HANKS A LOT FOR
the photographs, Lynn,
my brother wrote.
Where were they taken? I have never tobogganed, myself. Maybe after this is finished you can show me how. How about it?

Thumbtacked next to Linger’s Guest Suggestion Box one Sunday morning in February was a petition to get rid of Jules Raleigh.

It was signed by twenty regular customers. It said:

How can we enjoy the patriotic songs he plays and sings when we know next day he’ll be back on the street with the antiwar demonstrators? We do not feel it is in the spirit of Linger to harbor a flag burner.

“He never burned a flag,” Lynn Dunlinger told her father. “That’s just hyperbole.”

She was home for the weekend, staying in Lingering Shadows even though things weren’t finished. My mother was still working on the drapes; the new carpeting hadn’t been installed either.

Mr. Dunlinger said, “Does your being here every other weekend mean you plan to take over the running of this place?”

They were standing in the hall, outside The Regency Room.

She said, “I just don’t think you should fire Mr. Raleigh.”

“I’m not going to. I’d have to boot you out, too, wouldn’t I?”

I was trying to sweep up around them. We were expecting The Pennsylvania Realtors for lunch. Everyone was talking about what a good summer it was going to be for rentals and sales and tourist business.

Everyone was afraid to go to Europe, figuring the terrorists would be out in full force now that the war was raging. My father wouldn’t even let my mother go down to Key West, Florida, to visit Uncle Paul as she did every year. Dad didn’t want her in the air, or in any airport, although President Bush’s wife had taken a commercial flight to Indianapolis to show air travel was safe.

“Mr. Dunlinger?” I said. “Shall I take the petition down?”

“No. Any customer who feels obliged to sign it is entitled…. What I want
you
to do, Gary, is get all those gifts for our servicemen down to the basement. We’re going to wrap and box them this afternoon.”

“Service
people
,” said Lynn.

“Get all those gifts for our service
people
out of the way, you hear me, Gary?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Hi, Gary!”

“Hello, Lynn.”

Where the Christmas tree and the toys for the Eloise kids were every December, Dunlinger had roped off an area and had a sign printed.

GIFTS FOR THE PERSIAN GULF HEROES

YOU BRING THEM HERE.

WE’LL WRAP AND MAIL THEM
.

My mother and I were the we.

No one came to Linger, anymore, without something for the box, and those customers who hadn’t known about it tossed in cash.

When Lynn offered to help me carry stuff down, her father said, “Let her wrap some for you, too, Gary. She turns gift wrapping into an art.”

“I’ve got a lunch date, Daddy, or I would.”

“Invite her here to have lunch on me.”

“Maybe it’s not a her, Daddy.”

“You got a boyfriend I don’t know about?” He laughed as though it was a big joke.

I could hear her coming down the stairs behind me.

“Be careful,” I said. “The light isn’t very bright.”

“Your mother’s making me the most beautiful drapes!”

“I heard.”

She put the boxes on the counter with the others. There was a small mountain of them. I figured I could kiss most of my Saturday goodbye. But Dunlinger was paying me double time to do it, and that would give me money for my date that night with Sloan Scott.

Dave Leonard had a date, too. We were all going to see
The Silence of the Lambs.

Lynn had on one of those real short skirts, a red one, with a sweater as black as her hair. She seemed to be waiting for me. I could feel her behind me as I was separating the small packages from the large ones.

I turned around, and she said, “I don’t know what to do about Bobby, Gary.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t keep writing to him.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s getting a little more serious each letter.”

I kept saying, “What do you mean?” even though I knew what she meant. It didn’t take any brains to figure out how he could want something to be real that wasn’t, stuck over there in the middle of a war.

“Gary, can I trust you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m in love with Jules and I think he’s in love with me.”

“I figured as much. That night you met him at the movie, I told the guys they were seeing things, but I knew they weren’t.”

“I got off the bus to school and made Gloria go there with me. I knew he was there. He was furious with me for showing up like that, but I can’t help myself sometimes.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. I could smell her perfume.

“I know he’s a teacher, and he’s older, but he’s not
my
teacher, and in July he’ll only be six years older than I am.”