Nine Stories (21 page)

"That's
a Jesus-brilliant thing to say," Mr. McArdle said
quietly-steadily, addressing the back of his wife's head. "I pay
twenty-two pounds for a bag, and I ask the boy civilly not to stand
on it, and you tell him to jump up and down on it. What's that
supposed to be? Funny?"

"If
that bag can't support a ten-year-old boy, who's thirteen pounds
underweight for his age, I don't want it in my cabin," Mrs.
McArdle said, without opening her eyes.

"You
know what I'd like to do?" Mr. McArdle said. "I'd like to
kick your goddam head open."

"Why
don't you?"

Mr.
McArdle abruptly propped himself up on one elbow and squashed out his
cigarette stub on the glass top of the night table. "One of
these days--" he began grimly.

"One
of these days, you're going to have a tragic, tragic heart attack,"
Mrs. McArdle said, with a minimum of energy. Without bringing her
arms into the open, she drew her top sheet more tightly around and
under her body. "There'll be a small, tasteful funeral, and
everybody's going to ask who that attractive woman in the red dress
is, sitting there in the first row, flirting with the organist and
making a holy--"

"You're
so goddam funny it isn't even funny," Mr. McArdle said, lying
inertly on his back again.

During
this little exchange, Teddy had faced around and resumed looking out
of the porthole. "We passed the Queen Mary at three-thirty-two
this morning, going the other way, if anybody's interested," he
said slowly. "Which I doubt." His voice was oddly and
beautifully rough cut, as some small boys' voices are. Each of his
phrasings was rather like a little ancient island, inundated by a
miniature sea of whiskey. "That deck steward Booper despises had
it on his blackboard."

"I'll
Queen Mary you, buddy, if you don't get off that bag this minute,"
his father said. He turned his head toward Teddy. "Get down from
there, now. Go get yourself a haircut or something." He looked
at the back of his wife's head again. "He looks precocious, for
God's sake."

"I
haven't any money," Teddy said. He placed his hands more
securely on the sill of the porthole, and lowered his chin onto the
backs of his fingers. "Mother. You know that man who sits right
next to us in the dining room? Not the very thin one. The other one,
at the same table. Right next to where our waiter puts his tray
down."

"Mm-hmm,"
Mrs. McArdle said. "Teddy. Darling. Let Mother sleep just five
minutes more, like a sweet boy."

"Wait
just a second. This is quite interesting," Teddy said, without
raising his chin from its resting place and without taking his eyes
off the ocean. "He was in the gym a little while ago, while Sven
was weighing me. He came up and started talking to me. He heard that
last tape I made. Not the one in April. The one in May. He was at a
party in Boston just before he went to Europe, and somebody at the
party knew somebody in the Leidekker examining group--he didn't say
who--and they borrowed that last tape I made and played it at the
party. He seems very interested in it. He's a friend of Professor
Babcock's. Apparently he's a teacher himself. He said he was at
Trinity College in Dublin, all summer."

"Oh?"
said Mrs. McArdle. "At a party they played it?" She lay
gazing sleepily at the backs of Teddy's legs.

"I
guess so," Teddy said. "He told Sven quite a bit about me,
right while I was standing there. It was rather embarrassing."

"Why
should it be embarrassing?"

Teddy
hesitated. "I said `rather' embarrassing. I qualified it."

"I'll
qualify you, buddy, if you don't get the hell off that bag," Mr.
McArdle said. He had just lit a fresh cigarette. "I'm going to
count three. One, God damn it ... Two.. ."

"What
time is it?" Mrs. McArdle suddenly asked the backs of Teddy's
legs. "Don't you and Booper have a swimming lesson at
ten-thirty?"

"We
have time," Teddy said. "--Vloom!" He suddenly thrust
his whole head out of the porthole, kept it there a few seconds, then
brought it in just long enough to report, "Someone just dumped a
whole garbage can of orange peels out the window."

"Out
the window. Out the window," Mr. McArdle said sarcastically,
flicking his ashes. "Out the porthole, buddy, out the porthole."
He glanced over at his wife. "Call Boston. Quick, get the
Leidekker examining group on the phone."

"Oh,
you're such a brilliant wit," Mrs. McArdle said. "Why do
you try?"

Teddy
took in most of his head. "They float very nicely," he said
without turning around. "That's interesting."

"Teddy.
For the last time. I'm going to count three, and then I'm-"

"I
don't mean it's interesting that they float," Teddy said. "It's
interesting that I know about them being there. If I hadn't seen
them, then I wouldn't know they were there, and if I didn't know they
were there, I wouldn't be able to say that they even exist. That's a
very nice, perfect example of the way--"

"Teddy,"
Mrs. McArdle interrupted, without visibly stirring under her top
sheet. "Go find Booper for me. Where is she? I don't want her
lolling around in that sun again today, with that bum."

"She's
adequately covered. I made her wear her dungarees," Teddy said.
"Some of them are starting to sink now. In a few minutes, the
only place they'll still be floating will be inside my mind. That's
quite interesting, because if you look at it a certain way, that's
where they started floating in the first place. If I'd never been
standing here at all, or if somebody'd come along and sort of chopped
my head off right while I was--"

"Where
is she now?" Mrs. McArdle asked. "Look at Mother a minute,
Teddy."

Teddy
turned and looked at his mother. "What?" he said.

"Where's
Booper now? I don't want her meandering all around the deck chairs
again, bothering people. If that awful man--"

"She's
all right. I gave her the camera."

Mr.
McArdle lurched up on one arm. "You gave her the cameral"
he said. "What the hell's the idea? My goddam Leica! I'm not
going to have a six-year-old child gallivanting all over--"

"I
showed her how to hold it so she won't drop it," Teddy said.
"And I took the film out, naturally."

"I
want that camera, Teddy. You hear me? I want you to get down off that
bag this minute, and I want that camera back in this room in five
minutes--or there's going to be one little genius among the missing.
Is that clear?"

Teddy
turned his feet around on the Gladstone, and stepped down. He bent
over and tied the lace of his left sneaker while his father, still
raised up on one elbow, watched him like a monitor.

"Tell
Booper I want her," Mrs. McArdle said. "And give Mother a
kiss."

Finished
tying his sneaker lace, Teddy perfunctorily gave his mother a kiss on
the cheek. She in turn brought her left arm out from under the sheet,
as if bent on encircling Teddy's waist with it, but by the time she
had got it out from under, Teddy had moved on. He had come around the
other side and entered the space between the two beds. He stooped,
and stood up with his father's pillow under his left arm and the
glass ashtray that belonged on the night table in his right hand.
Switching the ashtray over to his left hand, he went up to the night
table and, with the edge of his right hand, swept his father's
cigarette stubs and ashes into the ashtray. Then, before putting the
ashtray back where it belonged, he used the under side of his forearm
to wipe off the filmy wake of ashes from the glass top of the table.
He wiped off his forearm on his seersucker shorts. Then he placed the
ashtray on the glass top, with a world of care, as if he believed an
ashtray should be dead-centered on the surface of a night table or
not placed at all. At that point, his father, who had been watching
him, abruptly gave up watching him. "Don't you want your
pillow?" Teddy asked him.

"I
want that camera, young man."

"You
can't be very comfortable in that position. It isn't possible,"
Teddy said. "I'll leave it right here." He placed the
pillow on the foot of the bed, clear of his father's feet. He started
out of the cabin.

"Teddy,"
his mother said, without turning over. "Tell Booper I want to
see her before her swimming lesson."

"Why
don't you leave the kid alone?" Mr. McArdle asked. "You
seem to resent her having a few lousy minutes' freedom. You know how
you treat her? I'll tell you exactly how you treat her. You treat her
like a bloomin' criminal."

"Bloomin'!
Oh, that's cute! You're getting so English, lover."

Teddy
lingered for a moment at the door, reflectively experimenting with
the door handle, turning it slowly left and right. "After I go
out this door, I may only exist in the minds of all my
acquaintances," he said. "I may be an orange peel."

"What,
darling?" Mrs. McArdle asked from across the cabin, still lying
on her right side.

"Let's
get on the ball, buddy. Let's get that Leica down here."

"Come
give Mother a kiss. A nice, big one."

"Not
right now," Teddy said absently. "I'm tired." He
closed the door behind him.

The
ship's daily newspaper lay just outside the doorsill. It was a single
sheet of glossy paper, with printing on just one side. Teddy picked
it up and began to read it as he started slowly aft down the long
passageway. From the opposite end, a huge, blond woman in a starched
white uniform was coming toward him, carrying a vase of long-stemmed,
red roses. As she passed Teddy, she put out her left hand and grazed
the top of his head with it, saying, "Somebody needs a haircut!"
Teddy passively looked up from his newspaper, but the woman had
passed, and he didn't look back. He went on reading. At the end of
the passageway, before an enormous mural of Saint George and the
Dragon over the staircase landing, he folded the ship's newspaper
into quarters and put it into his left hip pocket. He then climbed
the broad, shallow, carpeted steps up to Main Deck, one flight up. He
took two steps at a time, but slowly, holding on to the banister,
putting his whole body into it, as if the act of climbing a flight of
stairs was for him, as it is for many children, a moderately
pleasurable end in itself. At the Main Deck landing, he went directly
over to the Purser's desk, where a good-looking girl in naval uniform
was presiding at the moment. She was stapling some mimeographed
sheets of paper together.

"Can
you tell me what time that game starts today, please?" Teddy
asked her.

"I
beg your pardon?"

"Can
you tell me what time that game starts today?" The girl gave him
a lipsticky smile. "What game, honey?" she asked.

"You
know. That word game they had yesterday and the day before, where
you're supposed to supply the missing words. It's mostly that you
have to put everything in context."

The
girl held off fitting three sheets of paper between the planes of her
stapler. "Oh," she said. "Not till late afternoon, I
believe. I believe it's around four o'clock. Isn't that a little over
your head, dear?"

"No,
it isn't ... Thank you," Teddy said, and started to leave.

"Wait
a minute, honey! What's your name?"

"Theodore
McArdle," Teddy said. "What's yours?"

"My
name?" said the girl, smiling. "My name's Ensign
Mathewson."

Teddy
watched her press down on her stapler. "I knew you were an
ensign," he said. "I'm not sure, but I believe when
somebody asks your name you're supposed to say your whole name. Jane
Mathewson, or Phyllis Mathewson, or whatever the case may be."

"Oh,
really?"

"As
I say, I think so," Teddy said. "I'm not sure, though. It
may be different if you're in uniform. Anyway, thank you for the
information. Goodbye!" He turned and took the stairs up to the
Promenade Deck, again two at a time, but this time as if in rather a
hurry.

He
found Booper, after some extensive looking, high up on the Sports
Deck. She was in a sunny clearing--a glade, almost--between two
deck-tennis courts that were not in use. In a squatting position,
with the sun at her back and a light breeze riffling her silky, blond
hair, she was busily piling twelve or fourteen shuffleboard discs
into two tangent stacks, one for the black discs, one for the red. A
very small boy, in a cotton sun suit, was standing close by, on her
right, purely in an observer's capacity. "Look!" Booper
said commandingly to her brother as he approached. She sprawled
forward and surrounded the two stacks of shuffleboard discs with her
arms to show off her accomplishment, to isolate it from whatever else
was aboard ship. "Myron," she said hostilely, addressing
her companion, "you're making it all shadowy, so my brother
can't see. Move your carcass." She shut her eyes and waited,
with a cross-bearing grimace, till Myron moved.

Teddy
stood over the two stacks of discs and looked down appraisingly at
them. "That's very nice," he said. "Very symmetrical."

"This
guy," Booper said, indicating Myron, "never even heard of
backgammon. They don't even have one."