The Books of Fell (12 page)

Try reading “Fra Lippo Lippi” and see if you understand it.

This poem by Browning, I’d
written on my test paper,
tells a rather disgusting story about the famous martyr St. Laurence, and about the painting Fra Lippo Lippi did of him roasting on a gridiron in 258 A.D.

After my father became a private detective, my mother started calling him “The Martyr” because of all the hard work he put in on the job.

But my father couldn’t hold a candle to St. Laurence, famous for telling the men who had him on a spit over hot coals, “One side is done; now you can do the other side.”

The only thing I could really remember the day of the test on Browning’s poetry was this fellow getting off that zinger while the Romans were cooking him.

I didn’t understand the poem.

John Fell, you don’t understand this poem,
Mr. Wakoski wrote in red ink across my paper.
It is not about St. Laurence. It’s about the monk who painted him. You make it sound as though Fra Lippo Lippi was being roasted. Painting while he sizzled. Neat trick. Reread this poem. It is also a defense of artistic realism…. What’s wrong with you, Fell? It’s not a hard poem, no more so than “Andrea del Sarto.”

Einstein’s theory of relativity might not be any harder than Newton’s law of gravity either, but you’d never prove it by me.

I was standing in the hall between classes reading Wakoski’s remarks with a sinking heart, the D- at the top of my paper making my stomach turn over.

“Another A+?” Dib asked me.

“Look again,” I said. He was already glancing down over my shoulder. He let out a surprised whistle and tried pushing back his blond hair from his eyes.

I’d roomed with him before I became a Sevens. We were both blonds, but there the resemblance ended. He was taller and younger and he lived on junk food, proving that metabolism may have more to do with weight than calories because Dib was almost a skeleton. If I ate all the Hostess Ding Dongs and Drake’s golden creme cups he put away in an afternoon, I’d be ten pounds heavier.

“Browning is hard.” Dib tried to make me feel better.

We started walking along together. I hadn’t seen him in almost a week. When I first got into Sevens and he didn’t, I made a point of looking him up at the dorm nearly every day, to try and let him know things weren’t going to be any different.

But things
were.
Once a Hill boy made Sevens, the others treated us differently … and I guess we contributed to the change, too, because we were on our honor never to tell the secrets of Sevens, and never, never to let anyone know how we got into the club.

That was the big mystery: How did someone get invited to join Sevens?

I wished I could tell Dib. He would have howled. He was right beside me our first day of school, when all of us had to plant little evergreen trees. That was the first thing you did when you arrived at Gardner School: You got into a line with other new kids, and all of you planted your tree … and named it something… Anything … I remember Dib named his after his dog: Thor.

I named mine “Good-bye,” on a whim. My old girlfriend, Keats, lived in a house called Adieu. I’d tease her about the French, tell her it was pretentious. What’s wrong with plain old good-bye? I’d ask her … It was good enough for me. Good-bye to her, and to Long Island where I’d met her. Good-bye to public high school. Hello to Pennsylvania and preppydom!

Nobody but a member of Sevens knows that what you name your tree is the most important thing you do at Gardner School. If you name it something with seven letters in it, you are automatically a Sevens member.

There’s no more to it than that. No one ever makes the connection. Everyone thinks you’ve done something special, or are someone special, to get asked to join, but it’s a fluke. Mere chance, as The Sevens like to sing. And from the moment you are initiated into Sevens, you live in the luxurious Sevens House, and eat in the Sevens clubhouse at the bottom of The Tower … You get a lot more privileges, too … The other kids resent you, and envy you … and like Dib, they can’t believe you won’t even give them a clue about how you got to be a privileged character overnight.

Dib continued talking about Browning. “The only line he wrote that I ever understood,” he said, “is:
Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.
And I’m not sure I agree with him on that point, either.”

“Why don’t you think the best is yet to be?”

“Because someone’s getting away with murder,” he said, “and I don’t think anyone gives a damn!”

“You had breakfast with Mr. Lasher. He seems to give a damn.”

“He’s the only one.”

“Are you going to the memorial service?” I was trying to change the subject, I admit. Five more months and I’d be graduated.

“Yeah, I’m going,” said Dib. “Shall I save you a seat?”

“I have to sit with The Sevens.”

“Sorry I asked.” He took a box of Old Crows from his pocket and offered me one.

“Didn’t you just eat lunch?”

He popped a couple of the licorice candies into his mouth. “Why don’t you want to talk about this, Fell? Did The Sevens say you can’t discuss it?”

“Come on, Dib. It’s not like that. I’m just trying to keep my nose clean this semester so I can get out of this place.”

“But you were the one who started me thinking it wasn’t suicide.
You
told
me
the thing about the smashed glasses.”

“I wish I never had.”

“But you did, Fell. And I told the Lashers.”

“Did you tell them he was screaming?”

“I couldn’t bring myself to.”

“We should have, I suppose. Nothing seemed to faze Lauren. Her eyes glaze over if you even suggest it might not have been suicide. The case is closed where she’s concerned.”

“And she let Rinaldo keep everything Lasher gave him.”

The class bell rang. I was due down the hall for Latin.

Dib said, “The VCR, the pen, et cetera! He got a lot of stuff from Lasher. He’s even selling some of it. I wish I could afford the word processor.”

“What kind of a word processor is it?” I needed one myself. “Maybe we could go in on it together.”

“A Smith-Corona,” Dib said. He grimaced and shook his head. “I feel like a vulture…. Maybe if I was trying a little harder to find out what exactly happened that day in The Tower, I wouldn’t.”

“All
right!”
I said. “Can you come to my room tonight, after dinner? We’ll talk about it.”

Everyone around us was disappearing into classrooms.

“You mean your suite, don’t you?” Dib gave one of his sarcastic laughs. “Yeah, I’ll come over about eight.”

“Eight thirty,” I said. “We eat our dinner slower at Sevens. You know how it is: You savor every morsel when you’re eating roast turkey with stuffing … and mashed potatoes … and giblet gravy.”

I decided to rub it in. At Main Dining they’d get something like chili over baked potato. He’d succeeded in making me feel guilty about Lasher’s so-called suicide, but he wasn’t going to do a number on me with The Sevens.

“Do they have doggie bags over there?” Dib said. “I wouldn’t mind a turkey leg.”

Second bell.

Then the carillon from chapel, playing “Farewell, old friend, farewell. Rest now, rest.”

I stopped at the end of the letter and crossed out 1, 2, and 3. My mother didn’t have a sense of humor about being a spendthrift. She’d take it as criticism. Trying to point anything out to her, such as the fact that every time she used a credit card she was borrowing money at around 19 percent interest, only made her mad … decided she was as entitled to her mistakes as I was to mine, even though I’d probably end up paying for my kid sister’s college one day, at the rate Mom was dancing through Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Savemart, and Sears.

Her birthday was at the end of February. She was a Pisces. She liked to remind everyone she was born the same day as Elizabeth Taylor … another great shopper.

I didn’t know where I was going to get $175, but I’d checked
Gold
7,
with necklace
on a Sevens order form and given it to Rinaldo … In a week it would be delivered to my room, gift wrapped in the special 7’s paper.

Although Mom liked to razz me about being in Sevens, I had an idea she was secretly impressed. We didn’t have a lot going on in our life that singled us out from millions of other families who spent too much time watching the boob tube, using credit cards, and reading the gossip about people who went to Paris on the Concorde to have breakfast.

I’d gone over to The Sevens clubhouse before the memorial service to write the letter.

A lot of Sevens did their letter writing there, not just because there was always a fire on cold days in Deem Library and it was quiet, but also because the Sevens stationery was there. It was not supposed to be taken from that room. It was watermarked, cream-colored paper with THE SEVENS in light blue across the top. The stamps on the table were free. There were Parker pens with 7 on them in gold, the old-fashioned kind that took real ink. When you were finished, you just put your letters in the light-blue box marked
CORRESPONDENCE
, and the help got it to the post office.

There were always vases filled with fresh flowers in the library, even in January, and apple or cranberry juice in carafes on the table outside the door.

These little extras were just another reminder that we were special and privileged. Spoiled, my mom said, and you did nothing to deserve it. But that’s what I liked about it. How could I feel guilty about things like having fresh sheets every day, and a maid to clean my room, when it all came about by mere chance?

I put my boots back on and got ready to walk down to chapel. It was snowing again, a wet one now, not the kind that sticks — and I walked along thinking about this girl I still loved — how she was out of my life without ever having been in it. I tried to picture her in winter clothes.

My relationships with females are a lot like the snow I was walking in, not the kind that stick.

There’d been Keats, who actually stood me up on the night of her prom, and that was just for starters … and then there’d been Delia.

My memories of Delia could melt the snow and turn the winter day into a July night with an orange ball up in the sky, a thousand stars, and the scent of roses, and I could even hear the sounds of that old Billy Joel song we danced to … but I wouldn’t let myself go back.

Forget Delia, I told myself, and I almost laughed when Kidder gave my arm a punch down near chapel. “Fell?” he said. “Come down from outer space. We need you here on earth. You were just light-years away. What were you thinking about? You walked right past me.”

“I was just reviewing the quantum theory,” I said, “relating it to blackbody radiation, relativity, and the uncertainty principle.” Kidder didn’t laugh at my joke.

“You know what I’ve been thinking about? How much I’m going to miss Lasher around the poker table. Did you ever play with him?”

“I couldn’t afford it.”

“Yeah, who could?” (Kidder could.) “He was good at cards, anyway.”

Kidder had named his tree Key West, where his own little yacht was berthed. He could have been a model for Colgate toothpaste or jockey shorts, if he’d needed the money. He didn’t.

We were both wearing our black-and-white-striped mourning bands on our overcoat sleeves. On our heads sat the black top hats Sevens wore outside of the clubhouse only for funerals.

“Look over there,” said Kidder, nudging me, nodding toward a black Mercedes with MD license plates. It was stopped in front of the chapel, and I could see Lauren Lasher getting out of it, then her father.

But I think Kidder was calling my attention to the woman already standing on the curb. She was wrapped in mink from shoulders to ankles, sucking one last drag from a cigarette. A tall lady with black hair, black shades, and a face you’d pass on the street, then whirl around to see again.

I suddenly remembered Lasher’s face when he wasn’t wearing his glasses. He’d had a certain beauty too, broken and bloody last I’d seen it … as though he’d landed on the icy pavement headfirst.

• • •

Inside, the organist was playing “Just a Song at Twilight” like a dirge. There were red roses everywhere, including one across everyone’s hymnal.

We put them in our lapels.

After all the guests had filed in, the organist stopped playing. The Sevens Sextet stood in front of their chairs on the platform, their top hats over their hearts. They sang a cappella, the song played all afternoon on the carillon:

I tried to think of worse things than Lasher dying, which should have been easy since I’d never liked him. I pictured droughts in Africa, and the war-torn Middle East. Still, there were tears right behind my eyes. My mother was the same way at weddings, and whenever bands marched in parades. The floodgates opened.

Next it was Dr. Skinner’s turn. He was Gardner’s headmaster, a big, bald, roly-poly fellow who always wore a vest so his Phi Beta Kappa key would show.

He was the eulogist.

Finding words to praise Paul Lasher was a challenge to anyone who hadn’t played cards with him, but Skinner came up with some. They were mild enough for all of us to keep straight faces. He didn’t pour it on. Sevens were always called by their last names, so he stood there fondling his gold key and said Lasher was always a presence on The Hill. He said Lasher loved this place, more perhaps than anyone he’d ever known. He said Lasher was a loyal member of Sevens. He said the song that would be sung next always meant a great deal to Lasher.

Outerbridge appeared then. When he sang his Sunday-morning solos, you were tempted to turn around and see if he was in a dress, his soprano was so high and tremulous. But now he was up in front, the single red rose in one hand, the top hat in the other, across, his chest.

He sang the school song.

I looked around the chapel. All dry eyes except for Lauren and her father. At least I think Lauren was crying. She had a handkerchief to her eyes. The lady in mink wore the black shades, but she didn’t seem to be weeping, though her chin was stuck forward in the gesture of someone steeling herself.

Creery was the only Sevens not present. He had spent two nights in the infirmary. There were rumors he couldn’t sleep, and others that he slept around the clock. It could be either way with Creery — he was famous for his changing moods. We’d heard that his stepbrother had been summoned from Florida, that Creery was threatening to leave Gardner.

I had last seen him the night of Lasher’s death, at the assembly Skinner’d called us to, warning us not to discuss “this accident” with outsiders. He looked like the same old Creery to me: eyes that said no one’s home, no one’s expected.

As far as I knew, not one soul had signed up to speak at this memorial. The night before, I’d seen the sheet hanging on the Sevens bulletin board, still not a name on it.

I wasn’t surprised, then, when Dr. Skinner said a member of the family, Dr. Inge Lasher, would say a few words.

She had the long black mink coat draped over her shoulders, the dark glasses pushed up on her head. She had the kind of eyes you’d think a shrink would have: radar ones, sending out as much as they took in, searching all our faces. They were as dark as brown could get.

The thick German accent was a surprise.

When she said we, it sounded like v. All her v’s were w’s, her w’s v’s. There were other things too.
She
vould haf said dere vere udder tings. That’s just to give you an example.

Her very short speech turned out to be a minilecture on a new view of adolescent suicide. According to Inge Lasher, her son had a chemical abnormality in his brain.

It has been proven, said she, that young people who suffer from major depression, and attempt suicide or dwell on suicidal plans, secrete less growth hormone than other depressed but nonsuicidal young people or other healthy youngsters.

No one, she insisted, was responsible, or should feel guilt.

All her speech did for me was make me remember the scream. I’d never heard a scream like it. Not even in the worst splatter films. It was so unlike any everyday human sound, I hadn’t known what it was until I’d seen him, what was left of him, crumpled there on the ice.

See what happens when you don’t secrete enough growth hormone?

I couldn’t buy it.

After she sat down, and before we Sevens gathered at the front to sing our song, Dr. Skinner made an announcement that caused a ripple through the chapel, all heads turning toward the rear when he was finished.

“And now, someone else who knew Lasher would like to read something. Rinaldo Velez … Would, you come forward, please, Rinaldo?”

Rinaldo was The Tower jester. Although he had no accent, he affected one when he felt like it, sometimes peppering his conversation with Spanish words like
pijos
(yuppies) and
fachas
(fascists — said, with a grin, of The Sevens). He tried to teach certain Sevens
salsa sensual,
the song-and-dance craze he was master of, but he claimed we had
blanco
hips that didn’t swivel, and our hearts weren’t beating hot enough inside our bodies.

All last semester he’d belted out
“Ven Devorame Otra
Vez” from the kitchen:
“Come and Devour Me Again.”

He was skinny, and very tall, with silky black hair he slicked back and wore in a short cut.

Although he was a townie, Rinaldo sometimes had a proprietary feeling about Sevens. He stood behind me once in the dining room when we sang, ‘The Star-Spangled Banner” on Veterans’ Day. I’d forgotten the Sevens habit of placing your hand over your heart when you came to the words “at the twilight’s last gleaming.” Rinaldo reached around and put my arm up across my chest. I glanced over my shoulder at him and he gave me a stern look, the kind a parent would give a thoughtless child.

Had I ever seen him with Lasher anyplace but in the dining room, waiting on him? If I had, I didn’t remember it.

Had anyone? Had anyone in Sevens even been asked what their connection was?

• • •

I had never seen Rinaldo when he wasn’t wearing a white waiter’s jacket and a black clip-on tie. I had never seen him look so uncomfortable, either.

There was already perspiration dotting his forehead, where a lick of black hair dangled. His tight, black, two-buttoned double-breasted suit had wide shoulders with the waist nipped. He wore a black mock turtleneck.

His hands were shaking. He tried holding up the piece of paper he carried, but he could not read it until he’d flattened it on the top of the podium. Then he had to lean over and bend down his head.

His voice carried well, though it quivered and slipped out of its register a few times into a higher one, which made him pause and clear his throat.

No one could doubt that he had written the strange poem himself, though he had nothing to say in the way of introduction.

He just read.

I got up then, along with the other Sevens, and we went to the front of the chapel.

Once again I felt slightly choked up. It had to be something about Rinaldo’s poem … or maybe just that it was sad someone who hardly knew Lasher was the only one of us to come forward to say good-bye. Not even someone from The Hill … And Rinaldo was probably shamed into doing it because Lasher’d given him stuff.

We sang with feeling; the words rang out. Maybe we were all thinking of the same thing: the way Lasher belted out those words:

like a Marine singing “from the halls of Montezuma,” like some newly freed hostage joining in on “God Bless America.”