The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman (24 page)

“I can’t believe this,” said Duncan. “I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!” he said again, and he realized he was shouting, the way Nate Saviano sometimes did. It felt surprisingly good. He had barely known what his voice sounded like when it came out of him at such a high volume.

“I know, honey, I know. It’s a big shock. A big betrayal. Not a day has passed when I haven’t felt bad about it. Can you see why I did it, and maybe start to forgive me?” she asked. “I’ll understand if you can’t.”

He looked at her. There she was, the same person as ever. Her hair was blond and pulled back, and her eyes were blue. She was still his mother, his mom, the person who had raised him single-handedly. That hadn’t changed, and wasn’t going to.

Three seconds passed. “Yeah,” he said. “I forgive you, Mom.”

“Thank you, Duncan.” The conversation seemed to be coming to a close, but then she said, “One more thing. I know you think I responded strangely when you showed me that power of yours back in the fall. That funny fingertip thing; do you remember what I’m talking about?”

“Yes,” Duncan said faintly. One of these days, when he was brave enough, he would tell her all
his
secrets. But not now.

“The reason I was so worried about anyone else seeing it was that, after I lost my job in Michigan and we had to move back here, I just wanted to make sure we didn’t call too much attention to ourselves in town. I didn’t want people talking, bringing up the past. Mostly, I didn’t want
him
getting involved. I really appreciate that you respected my wishes and never showed your power to anyone else.”

There was a pause. “He’s
here
?” Duncan said. “My father’s here in Drilling Falls?” Duncan’s mother nodded. “Who is he?” Duncan asked quietly.

His mother took a breath and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Your father,” she said with a regretful little smile, “is Thriftee Mike.”

 

 

Duncan and his mother sat in Aunt Djuna’s squirrel-colored living room and talked until midnight, and she answered as many of his questions as she could. “Am I anything like him?” Duncan wanted to know.

“Well, neither of you is particularly tall, and you actually have similar hair,” she said. “But beyond that, no, I don’t think you have much in common. You’re a serious, thoughtful person, Duncan, and he’s just . . . a child. He’s more of a child than you are, in fact. No, I’ll go out on a limb here and say I don’t think you have anything in common at all. Which is a good thing, believe me,” she said.

They sat by the light of the glued-tail mermaid lamp. His mother had cried so much that her eyes looked like two boiled things. Duncan tried to make her feel better, and he even told her that he wanted to give her the five thousand dollars that he’d won in the tournament, but she brushed away the idea.

“Thank you, honey, that’s generous of you, but I can’t accept it,” she insisted. “We’ll get our own place eventually, I swear. We’ll figure it out. Hold on to that money. You’re going to need it.” His mother finally yawned and said it was time for bed. “We can keep talking about this,” she said. “I’m sure, someday, you’ll even want to meet him, and then we’ll have to find out if he’s willing. Not that I think you’d get much out of it. As I said, he’s entirely different from you.”

 

 

A little later, after his mother had gone to sleep, Duncan sat up in his narrow bed, hugging his knees. His right knee still looked disgusting. He’d taken off the bandage in the shower that evening and was surprised to see how impressively ugly the gash was. Probably it would leave a scar. For the rest of his life, he would remember where it had come from.
The time I went flying off a skateboard
. Or, more to the point,
the first time I ever went on a skateboard.

He longed to ride a skateboard again. Maybe he would take a little money from his winnings and buy himself one; there was a store in downtown Drilling Falls, right beside the pizza place. Duncan was very tired now, but his knee was aching and his mind was humming, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep at all. He had to go to school in the morning, and he would be a wreck.

As he lay wide awake, there was soft knocking on his door. Duncan was surprised to see Aunt Djuna standing in the hall in her nightgown, the green sweater draped over her shoulders as always.

“I saw the light under your door,” she said. “I wondered if you needed anything.”

“Oh, no thanks, Aunt Djuna,” Duncan said. “The brownies were good. But I’m pretty full.”

“I didn’t mean brownies,” Aunt Djuna said. “I meant a ride.”

 

 

She had heard the entire conversation earlier between Duncan and his mother, Aunt Djuna explained as she drove him in the night down Main Street. She drove fast and dangerously; he worried that pieces of her little old car were going to fall off in the street. The car had a faulty heater, too, and Duncan was freezing as he sat beside her.

“I listened to what your mother said to you,” Aunt Djuna said. “I’m sorry I eavesdropped, but in another way I’m not sorry one bit. You know, I was there years and years ago, when your mother was a teenager and first met Michael Scobee. I watched her fall in love with him. And when she found out she was pregnant, I was the one she came to talk to. Her own parents didn’t want to hear. She’s always been a brave woman, going through everything on her own. She had to grow up overnight.”

“I know.”

“It wasn’t right of her to lie to you. But she always said to me, ‘Djuna, if you know a better way, please tell me.’ I called Michael Scobee and got him to give her a job at the superstore this fall, after she lost her own job in Michigan. I love your mother to pieces, Duncan—she is my favorite niece—but I politely disagree with some of the things she said to you about him. I figured,” she said, “that you needed to find out some things for yourself. I know she told you that maybe you’d want to meet him ‘someday.’ But Duncan, you’re twelve years old. To a twelve-year-old, the only good ‘someday’ is today.”

Duncan knew that Thriftee Mike often came to his superstore at night when no one was there but the security guards. He went through the books and took care of business, which he wasn’t comfortable doing during the day when his employees were around.

“The chances are fairly high that you can see him tonight,” Aunt Djuna said as she drove.

“But how will we get in?” Duncan asked. “It’s not like they’re going to open the front door just because I knock on it and say, ‘Let me in! I’m your son!’ ”

Aunt Djuna turned to him and laughed, taking her eyes off the road a little too long. “That’s why I brought this with me,” she said, and she reached into the pocket of her green sweater and took out a card. It said EMPLOYEE ID, and on it was a picture of Duncan’s mother, staring red-pupiled at the camera. “I got this from your mother’s purse after she finally conked out.” Aunt Djuna pulled into the parking lot of Thriftee Mike’s, parked the car sideways across the handicapped spot, and killed the lights. “Here we go,” she said.

Duncan swiped the card into the card-reader at the employees’ entrance just as easily as he had swiped the hotel key in the door lock of his room at the Grand Imperial. The door opened now, permitting entry. He realized that he didn’t feel nervous, just
strange.
He and his great-aunt walked down a short hallway until they were in the main part of the store, which appeared dim and ghostly in the nighttime. Duncan could make out the giant bins of items in the enormous space. He saw electric pencil sharpeners; he saw dental floss and containers of microwavable artificialshrimp-flavored ramen noodles. He and his great-aunt walked along the gleaming linoleum until they reached a door that read: ABSOLUTELY PRIVATE. DO NOT ENTER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Aunt Djuna nodded. Duncan paused, walked up to the door, and knocked.

Within seconds, a security guard appeared. His name tag read I’M THRIFTEE TODD. When he saw Duncan, he said, “How the heck did you get in here?” He spoke a few words into his walkie-talkie, his other hand moving lightly onto the gun in his holster.

“The child would like to see Mr. Scobee,” said Aunt Djuna. “We thought he might be here.”

“He’s not,” said the security guard, looking back and forth between the boy and the woman, unsure of what to make of the situation.

“Oh, come on, Todd,” she said, reading his name tag. “It’s late, and I’m old. Please don’t keep us waiting.”

“Who are you?” asked the guard, looking straight at Duncan.

Duncan paused, and then he said, “I’m Thriftee Duncan.”

The security guard gave a little snort. “Clever. Just a minute,” he said, and he shut the door in their faces. Soon the door opened again, and the guard said, “He’ll see you. I have no idea why.”

Duncan and his great-aunt walked through the messy business offices. The guard opened an inner door, motioning them inside, and they walked in. That led to a huge, deep office; in the midst of all the fluorescent light and plastic around it, the office was luxurious, paneled and dark. A fish tank bubbled quietly along the length of one wall. In the distance was a desk, and at the desk sat a man.

Aunt Djuna and Duncan walked across the deep carpet until they stood right in front of the desk, and the man behind it stood up. He wasn’t very tall. He had a face similar to Duncan’s, though wider and more closed. His hair was wavy and a little wild, the same shade as Duncan’s hair. He was slightly thick-chested like Duncan, too, and he wore jeans and a mustard-yellow shirt.

“You’re Caroline’s kid,” said Thriftee Mike.

Duncan nodded.

Thriftee Mike nodded, too. “I assumed we’d meet at some point. I just didn’t know it would be now, in the middle of the night, with no warning. Hello, Djuna. You’re looking well.”

“Not really, but hello, Mike.”

“I suppose,” Thriftee Mike said to Duncan, “your mother sent you? She’s been remarkably restrained up until now, living here so discreetly this fall. Insisting on not taking a penny from me, since she was your only ‘acknowledged’ parent. But I’ve always wanted to contribute from afar. It’s only fair. I don’t mind that she sent you.”

Duncan stared at this man who dressed like a boy and was supposed to be his father. “I’m not here for money,” he said coldly. “My mother doesn’t even know I came. We have our own money.”

Thriftee Mike looked surprised. “Your mother’s salary isn’t great,” he said. “But that was the only position available at the store right now—”

“I won five thousand dollars in a Scrabble tournament,” Duncan interrupted. “I plan on giving it all to her—
most
of it to her,” he corrected himself, thinking of the skateboard—“though she says she won’t take it. But I’m going to make sure she does.”

Thriftee Mike kept gazing at him. His expression shifted very slightly. “I did know about that tournament,” he said.

“You did?”

“Yes,” he said. “It was on the news. ‘Drilling Falls Boys Win Big.’ When I saw it was you, I was . . . well, I was . . . startled.” He put his hand to his face, covering his eyes, and now this boyish-looking, deeply uncomfortable man seemed upset. Duncan couldn’t understand it.

“Why were you startled?” Duncan asked.

“We have something in common,” Thriftee Mike said after a moment. He smiled faintly, crookedly, embarrassed. “I play a little.”

“You
do
?” Duncan’s mother hadn’t said this, and surely she would have, had she known. Maybe she didn’t know; maybe he had taken up the game after he had left her and Duncan over twelve years earlier.

Michael Scobee nodded. “I’m not all that good. I could be a lot better. I used to play sometimes with your mother,” he said. “We were so young then. She had one of those classic sets, the old-fashioned kind. It was in a maroon box. We’d play downtown at Slice’s.”

Duncan remembered the old score sheet that he had shown his mother. She had been the one to keep score in that long-ago game. She had written “Caroline,” versus “Ms.,” and she’d told Duncan that “Ms.” had been her teacher, Ms. Thorp.

Duncan understood that once again, while trying to protect him, his mother hadn’t told him the whole truth. “Ms.” hadn’t stood for “Ms. Thorp.” It had been a set of initials, “MS.”

His mother had played Scrabble with his father long ago, getting a little oil from their pizza on the score sheet, before Duncan Dorfman was even born. She didn’t want him to know any of this now, because she was still so angry at Michael Scobee for walking away forever, and she didn’t want Duncan to think he had anything in common with this man. This man who was his father.

“I’d say we should sit down right now and play a game,” his father said, drily. “But I have a feeling you don’t want to do that.”

“No,” said Duncan. “I don’t.” Playing a game with this man was the last thing in the world he wanted to do.

“I can understand that. Perhaps sometime, anyway, you can give me some tips,” said Michael Scobee. Then, bizarrely, he added, “I hate you.”

“What did you say?” said Duncan. He knew his father hadn’t wanted to be a father, but . . .
hate
? How could he say such a hostile thing to his son?

“I said I hate U,” his father repeated, and this time Duncan heard it right. “I hate V, too,” his father went on. “Those two letters always give you a lousy rack, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” said Duncan, his shoulders relaxing slightly. “I do.”

They stood and looked at each other, continuing to size each other up. “I have to tell you,” said his father, “that I never wanted it to be like this. This isn’t me. Not me at all.” His voice sounded choked and faraway. “Your mother is a very proud person,” he went on. “After I told her I didn’t think I could . . . be in your lives . . . I offered to take care of the two of you financially. She said no. I believe you that she didn’t send you here tonight,” he said. “But I want you to know that years ago I made a few provisions for you on my own. They’re here whenever you want them.”