Night Kites (2 page)

We excused ourselves, got the kite from the car, and walked down to the beach.

“What joke didn’t you get?” Pete asked me. “You got the one about the guy who bought stock in an umbrella company, and a few months later it folded?”

“I got that one. I didn’t get the one about the arbor, arbor—”

“The arbitrage trader who believed in reincarnation, and wanted to come back as a perpetual warranty,” Pete said. “It’s too complicated to explain, and it’s not that funny. What’s important is to know why Dad tells those jokes.”

“Why does he?”

“Because he’s nervous. Because Dad doesn’t know how to deal with Grandpa. Dad should say to Grandpa, ‘I brought you here because I thought you’d enjoy it, and I’m sorry if you don’t,’ and he should tell Grandpa to just butt out of his business dealings. Grandpa doesn’t know anything about investment banking. But Grandpa gets to Dad, so Dad tells jokes. He doesn’t know how to talk.”

“He talks to us.”

“Even with us he mostly gives advice, or orders. Be in by eleven, wear a tie, cut your hair, did you take out the trash, do your homework? That’s not really talking, Ricky. Mom talks, but Dad doesn’t know how.”

“Do I know how?”

“We’re talking right now. We’re talking about being scared, and people who are different, and we’re talking about not being scared to be different … Look at that kite dance up there! I think it likes the dark!”

I wasn’t so sure. There was something slightly eerie about that night kite. But I was always the cautious, conservative type—the last one in the water.

Pete had been a fan of
Star Trek
when he was younger. He’d chased off to all the Trekkie conventions in New York City. His favorite character on the show was Mr. Spock, the Vulcan with the pointed ears and no emotions, played by Leonard Nimoy.

Pete knew every episode. His favorite was one called “Counter-Clock Incident.” It was about a reverse universe, with black stars shining in a white space, and people who were born old and died young.

Pete got me to watch a rerun of that with him once, around the same time he made that night kite. It terrified me to watch the
Enterprise
crew turn into children, losing their knowledge and their space skills. Pete couldn’t believe I was actually afraid, but there was the big difference between us—Pete was the daredevil, the adventurer. My favorite character on that show was everyone’s hero, Captain Kirk. I never liked anything too exotic or oddball.

Even though I tried to be more like Pete, I always came off more like Dad. I sensed how badly Dad always wanted to fit in. He’d married into money, old money, not the glitzy new kind. Mom’s family practically founded Seaville. Dad had spent years trying to prove he was good enough to be one of them … plus all his life trying to get Grandpa Rudd to think he was anything but a loser. I felt for Dad, even when I was little, and I told Pete that night on the beach, “Dad thinks people don’t like him.”

I could see Pete’s freckles in the moonlight, and his mouth with that little half smile. “You know that about Dad, hmmm? Good boy!” Pete said.

“That’s why Dad always says our family is first, maybe. Family will always like you.”

Pete chuckled and mussed up my hair. Dad was always saying our family was first. I liked hearing it. I knew too many kids whose folks split up. I liked the feeling nothing like that would ever happen to us. “You boys sow a lot of wild oats
before
you marry,” Dad’d tell us, “because Rudds marry forever!”

We kicked around the idea of Dad not knowing how to talk, and some other ideas: Mom was the one to approach if you didn’t want to go in the direction Dad was pointing you toward. Dad was the one with good common sense—go to him for practical advice. Count on Mom’s heart. Count on Dad’s head.

We wound up as usual with Pete telling me to make up my own mind about people, though.

“Don’t ever let me influence you. Don’t let anyone tell you how to think … But try not to be too tough on people.”

I said, “Life is hard and then you die.” Pete had a T-shirt with that written on it.

“Yeah,” Pete said.

“Would you rather be a night kite or a day kite?” I asked him.

“Oh, I’m a night kite.”

I figured myself for the regular day kind.

I figured Nicki Marr was probably a night kite. She not only didn’t seem to mind being different from the other girls, she seemed to go for it.

Tuesdays and Thursdays I worked at The Seaview Bookstore, from five in the afternoon until nine at night. The store was right in the village, on the main street near the movies, so we got a lot of customers on their way to and from Cinemas I, II, and III.

The day of the pom-pom tryouts was a Tuesday, and I’d gone from there to work. When I came out of the bookstore that night, Nicki was standing there. The night, like the day, was unusually warm, more like summer than fall. A lot of people were strolling around. We always did good business on nights like that.

“I came by to pick you up,” Nicki said. “I’m staying in the village at my aunt’s tonight. Daddy’s got the whole V.F.W. out at Kingdom, so he wants me out of the way.”

Nicki was always dressed in a way Dill would dress for special occasions. She had on a black oversized camp shirt over a white tank top and a black-and-white-striped skirt. She was one of those girls who smoked on the street, something my mother always complained was too tacky for words.

“Jack’s home studying for the French test tomorrow,” she said. “I should be studying, too, but I’m flawed. I just talked to Dill, and she’s studying, of course. You don’t have to, though, do you? You’re something of a star in French class.” She smiled at me. I was still trying to get used to the idea she’d come by the store for me.

Then she took my arm and said why didn’t we walk around for a while? Nobody ever took my arm, except my mother sometimes in St. Luke’s Church, on our way up or down the aisle, and I was always awkward crooking my elbow, walking that way. Dill and I usually held hands. There was something almost formal about going around with someone’s arm in yours.

Nicki was right at ease. We started up the street, past the movies and Paper Palace.

“How come you talked to Dill?” I asked her.

“She called to tell me I didn’t make pom-pom girl.”

I was trying to think of something sympathetic to say when Nicki laughed. “I thought we’d celebrate. You can buy me a Coke at Sweet Mouth.”

I said okay. I said, “Why did you try out for pom-pom if you really didn’t want it?”

“You know why. Jack wanted me to. Jack wants me to be one of them. He’s one of them, so I suppose I should try to be one of them.”

I was thinking that I was one of them, too. Didn’t she know that? Jack and Dill and I were part of that whole Seaville High scene, part of
the
crowd.

“Does Jack know you planned to pick me up?” I asked.

“Did I plan to pick you up?” She bumped against me lightly, purposely, and laughed, as though there was a double meaning to the “pick me up” part of the sentence.

I felt a little sorry for her. I remembered Pete telling me Dad told jokes when he was nervous. Maybe Nicki flirted when she was.

When we got to Sweet Mouth, I held the door open for her. It was crowded. It was the kind of night that brought kids into the village to hang out. Every head in the place turned when we came through the door, then turned again for a second look.

I knew most of the kids there. I said hello, hi, how ya doin, all the way across the floor, to the table for two. Nicki didn’t greet anyone. She didn’t let go of my arm until we got to the table.

Roman Knight was there. He was the senior class wiseacre, a glitzy character, easily the richest kid in school, and the smartest, too. His dad was an international talent agent. He was the kind of kid who spent summers at the family villa in the south of France.

“
Hel
-lo, Nicki!”
he called out, but he wasn’t really talking to Nicki. He was showing off for everyone’s benefit, making some other cracks to the group with him. I knew the kind of cracks. She seemed to invite them. When she was hanging around with Ski, she even seemed to enjoy them, tossing her long hair back, hanging on to Ski on his Kawasaki, giving everyone the finger behind her back.

“Roman Knight is a sleazeball,” she said as we sat down. She fished a Bic lighter out of her pocket and put it down on the table. Then she put a Merit 100 in her mouth.

I took the hint and lighted her cigarette.

She was a no-hands smoker.

“Do you know how Roman got his name?” I asked her.

“I don’t care how a scumbag gets his name,” she said.

I told her anyway, grateful for any subject of conversation. I was getting that trapped feeling: What the hell was I going to talk to
her
about?

“Roman was supposed to have been conceived on a night in Rome, after lots of champagne,” I said.

“See, I don’t care about Roman Knight or any of that crowd,” she said. I don’t know what crowd she thought I was in.

We ordered Cokes.

“Jack’s birthday is the first weekend in October,” she said. “Bruce Springsteen’s going to be in New York that weekend. I thought we could all go.”

“Jack doesn’t know Bruce Springsteen from Rick Springfield,” I said.

“He says he likes him.”

“He’s just saying that to please you.”

“Well, he’s right. That pleases me … Jack says your dad has an apartment in New York he never uses on weekends.”

“Do you know how hard it is to get tickets to a Springsteen concert?” I said.

“We could watch everyone go in, if we couldn’t get tickets. Then we could see New York.”

“It costs an arm and a leg to see New York, Nicki.”

“Just
see
it. See Times Square. See Greenwich Village.”

“See us all get mugged,” I said.

“Jack says he’d love to get away for a New York weekend.”

“If that’s what he said, okay, I’ll ask my father—but don’t count on seeing Bruce Springsteen.”

“I never
count
on anything,” she said.

When our Cokes came, she put out her cigarette, picked up a fresh one, and waited for me to give her a light.

“Don’t say anything to Jack until you’ve asked your dad, okay?” she said.

“I can ask him tomorrow night. He’s coming out to dinner with my brother.”

Nicki said she didn’t even know I had a brother. Where was he?

“He lives in New York. He’s ten years older than I am.”

“What does he do?”

“He teaches French and English at a private school, but he really wants to be a writer. He writes science fiction.”

I told her about the one story Pete had published. It had won all sorts of prizes. It appeared in a little magazine called
Fantasy.
It was about a world where everyone was both male and female except these characters called Skids. They were male or female, not both, and they needed each other to reproduce … Pete’s story, called “On the Skids,” was about a male and a female who fell in love, and were being hunted down for “skidding,” which was against the law.

Since Pete had written it, it’d appeared in a lot of anthologies. Pete was expanding it into a book. He would work on it off and on. He was always upstairs typing away on something when he still lived with us.

I told Nicki about Pete’s world, called Farfire, and the inhabitants, called Farflicks, who were all capable of self-fertilization. I told her that I’d been the first one in the family he’d tried it out on, and how Dad said Pete’d been dining out on that little short story for all of his adult life.

Nicki Marr wouldn’t win any Best Listener prizes. Some people listened to other people’s conversations while you were talking to them; Nicki listened to songs. Her eyes were glazed over while I talked, and Bryan Adams sang “Somebody” in the background. She tapped her fingers on the side of her Coke glass and seemed to be whispering some of the words to herself, the cigarette dangling from her lips.

She finally said, “Bryan Adams used to wash dishes in a restaurant.”

Then she said, “I’m sorry. You were talking about your brother.”

“Pete.”

“That’s why you’re so good at French? He teaches it?”

“Pete and I talked French when we were little,” I said.

Mom had grown up bilingual. She was speaking French by the time she entered kindergarten. She used to talk with Pete in French most of the time. Dad finally stopped her doing it with me. Dad was rotten at languages. He didn’t like being left out that way.

Nicki said, “I still remember that French poem you translated for class two years ago. I’ve never forgotten it. Are you surprised?”

“‘Poem to the Mysterious Woman,’” I said.

“Yes.”

Pete got the credit for that one. He loved that poem. Old Stamiere, who’d been teaching French at Seaville High since the building was erected, remembered that, and made some crack after class about next time finding a poem on my own—“You’re Erick Rudd, aren’t you? Not Peter Rudd.”

Nicki was playing with some keys. She had long, thin fingers, and long nails, manicured but not colored. They were the kind of hands you imagined did nothing but arrange flowers in vases or stroke Persian cats, or touch silk and velvet. Dill had little square hands that felt small in mine, the way my hands, when I was little, must have felt in Pete’s.

“Say something from that poem, can you?” Nicki asked me.

“‘J’ai tant rêvé de toi que tu perds ta réalité.’”

“Now in English.”

“
You
take French,” I said.

“Something about dreaming of someone too much.”

“‘I have dreamed of you so much that you lose reality.’”

She didn’t say anything right away. There was some song of Madonna’s playing. I was thinking that she looked a little like Madonna. She was looking out the window, where there were some kids on bikes under the streetlight, talking. Beyond them, people were sitting on the benches outside the A & P, enjoying the warm night.

“It reminds me of something my mother’d write,” Nicki said when she looked back across the table at me. “My mother did this automatic writing? She was sort of psychic. She’d go into her room and just write these poems she said came to her from the spirit world. They were all love poems.”