Stealing Flowers (20 page)
“The Almighty sent his son to die for our
sins and Jesus left us the One True Church as a guide, and other
Christian institutions as well. I beg you all, read the bible for
yourselves. If you read with care, you’ll know the difference
between good and evil, virtue and sin, and wisdom and folly. A
Christian is allowed carnal love, but must do so inside the
sacrament of matrimony. He is granted the right to earn a profit or
a wage, but must give back some of it in charity of one form or
another. He’s permitted some worldly pleasures, while understanding
that his greater place in the world is to serve the Lord.”
His words seemed sound-minded and I realized
that if I married Sally our problem would be over, but, would the
church marry a brother and his stepsister? I decided that I should
read the bible and see if there were any loopholes.
My meeting with Mr. Drury that afternoon
took place in the Rose Room at the Tappet Mansion. He seemed much
less sad-looking than when I’d first met him. His bald spot was
bigger and he had gained weight. He no longer looked like a cop.
The back doors were open and the sounds of the summer afternoon
came in. He seemed genuinely happy to see me and I told him the
types of things I was doing at Tappets, about my school-grades,
piloting, basketball, baseball, piano, and other
accomplishments.
“My goodness,” he said with his trademark
reserve, “you’re living the life of Riley.” I didn’t know any Riley
and had never heard of the television series. “You have all of
these things, Christian, and you seem so happy, I just don’t
understand it.”
“I love Sally, and did so, from the moment I
first laid my eyes on her.”
“Everyone should love their sister.”
“Are you a Catholic?”
He looked confused. “I was raised an
Anglican, but I no longer believe.”
“Stan doesn’t either. I want to marry Sally.
Is there any way I can?”
He sighed and shook his head, rubbing his
hands together in trepidation. “I was born in Britain, you know,”
he whispered. “They have a saying there, ‘Keep a stiff upper lip.’
Do you know what that means?” I had never heard of it and shook my
head again. “It means that when you’re doing your duty,” he
continued, “to complain is betrayal, and that in life men are bound
by duty. To be a man, it must be done with honor or not at all.” I
swallowed. This sounded bad. “Duty is doing the right thing by your
parents, country, and morality,” he went-on. “Sometimes, it’s doing
a soldier’s duty and giving up your very life to protect your
nation. It’s hard, but you must do it without complaining. I know
you aren’t a coward and that if the Russians attacked America, you
would enlist. I can tell you love the Tappets. Don’t destroy them
by this continued behavior. Sometimes, you must deny your own needs
to do the right thing. It’s complicated, but I see that you
understand completely. Don’t touch your sister again! I know the
boys in orphanages start sex way too fast. I’m not blind or
heartless to your love for her. My advice to you is to love her as
a sister deserves and find a girlfriend for that other love, maybe
a high-school senior. But for today, I’ll be satisfied with a
promise. Give your word, now, that you won’t have sex with your
sister again.” I nodded. “Say it aloud,” he demanded softly.
I promised it out loud. He pulled out a
typed piece of paper from his briefcase which he read, “I,
Christian Donald Briner Tappet, swear on this Sunday, July 14,
1974, to refrain from any further intimate contact with my sister,
Sally Lynn Tappet.” He passed it to me, and without complaint,
doing my duty with honor, I signed it.
To see Sally, especially on the way to work
in the morning, became excruciatingly painful. In the next weeks,
Lloyd and I visited rock clubs in downtown New York City. I saw The
Police, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Talking Heads, Bruce
Springsteen, Southside Jonny, and many other bands who haven’t
become famous. For the first time in my life I smoked weed. Lloyd
seemed to always have some and it relieved the stress of the
loneliness from not seeing Sally. I saw Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, and
Gordon Lightfoot with Stan and had a very good time. Overall, these
events brought me only small comfort compared to the loss I felt.
At work, Ralph’s projects on rebuilding appliances remained the
highlight of my summer. From the refrigerator to microwave, my
reconstruction efforts were all passes. Some of them didn’t look
that pretty, but they all worked fairly well. I know Ralph was
exceedingly happy, and at the end of August on my last shift, he
gave me a hug, and a bonus of one hundred and twenty dollars.
I asked Mary to switch schools in September
when I started grade eleven. The thought of seeing Sally everyday
talking to other boys, drove me to depression. She and Stan agreed
that this would be best and thought it also wise for me to start
working weekends at the Hoboken Office through to Christmas. I knew
Sally was as sad as me. Over the Christmas Holidays that year, I
traveled to Japan with Mary and Hiroyuki Nakamura. It was my first
time there, and one of Mary’s assistants, Barbara Read, showed me
around Tokyo and bought me gifts to cheer me up.
While I was there I read The Silent Cry by
Ōe Kenzaburō. Sally stayed at home with Stan and Una. It was a hard
Christmas Season, but I saw what they were doing and appreciated
it. I seemed to be surviving better than Sally. She’d taken to
tantrums, and openly criticized Stan and Mary, even sometimes, me
and Una. I’d heard rumors that at school she was being sluttish and
smug, one time even lifting up her top to show the basketball team
her breasts, but anytime I asked her about it, she’d say, “Unlike
yourself, I would never betray you,” or some such hurtful
comment.
“I swore an oath not to sleep with you
again,” I answered. “I promised everyone.”
“You didn’t promise me.”
Sally’s body was developing, and she began
at times, and more and more frequently, to take on a stunning
charismatic quality to which everyone alluded when they saw it, a
pale exotic look of beguiled teenage beauty, a look of hurt, and of
the unreachable height of purity, all mixed with a mature
sexuality. Sometimes it was quite captivating.
We still had moments when we would talk
alone together, and our mutual tenderness and affection would
reassert itself.
“You’ve gained a lot of weight,” Sally said
to me on the May long weekend of that year. Both Mary and Stan were
away. I had taken off my shirt in the spring sun while we opened
the pool. It was true, I’d a flabby middle, but I didn’t care.
“Don’t let yourself go on account of what
happened,” she whispered. “I’m feeling better now. I still miss
you, but what they made you promise is beginning to make some
sense.”
I nodded. Una brought us out homemade pizzas
and juice and sat out in the sun with us. “It’s delightful,” she
said cheerfully, “the worst is over and spring has sprung.”
We agreed and ate with her in the warm sun.
“When I first met your parents in 1959,” she said, “I was a speaker
at the West Indies Federation Conference. I urged for continuation
of Jamaican’s association with the Federation. I felt too much
separatism would isolate the island economically. Back then I
weighed much less and was much more of a peacock.” We both laughed.
“Stan and Mary were on holidays there, but had come to the
conference to get a sense of the prospect of the island’s economic
stability. Tappets was thinking to build there. After the meeting,
they introduced themselves and we sat down and talked at length. I
immediately liked them, and being in business in Jamaica, I was
acutely aware of its problems. We had a frank discussion.”
“What does that mean?” Sally asked
clumsily.
She giggled and reached over and kissed
Sally on the cheek. “It means that I told them not to build in
Jamaica. They visited my Kingston Jerk Shack the next day and we
had a wonderful lunch. I spent the rest of their holiday with them.
They met my little Peewee, and thought him just fine. On their
invitation, I came to visit them that Christmas in Jersey. Your mom
was just pregnant with you, Sally, and they were very much in love
and happy, working on your bedroom and fixing up the mansion. It
was a wonderful visit. After my Sweet Peewee’s funeral, I began
demanding justice of the authorities in Jamaica. I sold my home to
raise money and moved in with Clara. Often I mentioned your mother
and father in my sorrow.
“One early morning, Clara always rises at
dawn, she put out a suspicious fire at her hacienda. It was then,
although struggling with English, she phoned Mary and begged her to
save me before I was stamped out by gun-toting crews of the dark
Jamaica. They’re especially bad in Kingston, where some
neighborhoods resemble armed Mafioso camps. Over five hundred gun
murders occurred in that city last year.”
“Mary came down to the island and saw you?”
I asked.
“Both of them came, begging me to leave and
work for them in New Jersey. I kissed and hugged them. It was a
wonderful gesture, but I couldn’t see myself leaving the island, my
sweet Peewee without vengeance and all. Three days later, a bomb
blew my car up in front of the Kingston Jerk Shack. I packed up
soon after and only returned to sell my businesses or see my
mother.”
Sally and I could hardly speak. The world
was a horrible place beyond the borders of the Tappets. Recently in
both Jersey and New York City, there had been a sharp rise in
murder, kidnapping, rape, and other violent crimes. It was expected
that New York City would default on its loans and declare
bankruptcy. America was vilified around the world as a society of
runaway greed. Guerrilla fighting in El Salvador, Bolivia, Chile,
Argentina, Nicaragua, and Uruguay, had left thousands dead. The
Khmer Rouge Communists had taken over Cambodia. The North
Vietnamese had taken over the South. The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia,
and China, had increased their grip over their citizens. In the
Middle East, the situation was horrifying. In Lebanon, the
Christians and Muslims openly fought with one another. Thousands
were being killed. Just a few weeks ago a Palestinian bomber
attacked a Passover crowd of shoppers in Israel and had killed
thirteen persons and wounded seventy-two. A survey undertaken of
the population of Ireland confirmed it was the most churchgoing
place in Christendom, yet Catholic and Protestant continued to kill
and terrorize each other. No wonder so many people became
Communists.
I’d a baseball game that afternoon, and Andy
and I left at about two o’clock to Pulaski Park. Our team was quite
seasoned and our pitcher had a mean fastball. We won an easy
victory and when we were shaking hands afterward, I was surprised
to spot Mary sitting in the bleachers. How long she’d been there, I
had no idea. I came over at once and kissed her on the cheek.
“What brings you here?” I asked, “I thought
you were in the office all day?”
“You and Andy both played well. I’ll drive
you two home, and Christian, you can quickly get changed. We’re
going out to supper.”
I knew something was up and was anxious.
This was quite exceptional. “Why is Mom taking me out to supper?” I
asked Una.
“You’ll soon see.”
I frowned and dressed in dark green cotton
pants and a brand-new white turtle neck. I applied bactericidal
medicine to my facial pimples and looked at my reflection in the
mirror. Again, I’d the impression of a stranger looking back at me.
I’d just reached a height of six feet and my blond hair had turned
a dirty sandy color. Quite often, it was greasy even though I
showered every day, but I knew it was my diet. I looked to my own
critical eye, unattractive, but I couldn’t say that I actually
cared about it either.
Mary drove to a restaurant downtown near the
lake, Michael’s Tin Island Bar and Tavern, a new large eatery with
a separate jazz bar which faced the massive parking lot. A table
had been reserved for us on the other side of the restaurant in the
back corner, near the glass-doors leading to an unopened patio-deck
which looked out on the skyscrapers of New York City and faced
Riverdale Street.
The tables were covered in white linen. The
candles were also white. Clusters of them sat on the large tables,
all aflame, and the white walls were hand-painted in thin light
cherry-red sketches of famous New York City areas such as the
United Nation Buildings, Times Square, and Central Park. The
ceiling was also white and the floor was crimson red. Candles
burned on the columns as well, and on the mantels above the five
fireplaces which were all burning softly. I couldn’t make up my
mind if I liked the whole effect, but it was something which
certainly caught the eye.
When we sat, Mary selected dry white wine
from France. I agreed to try a glass. The waiter was a tall sturdy
man who reminded me of one of my favorite high school teachers. I
watched him serve other tables. My marks this year had been
exceptional and the Scholastic Assessment Test scores were high as
well. Stan thought I would be accepted at any of the eight Ivy
League Universities and so I had applied to them all. Unlike many
young men, I wasn’t looking for a way out from under the thumbs of
my parents. I’d a lot of freedom and was quite happy to go wherever
they wished, but my first choice was NYCU. That’s where Sally was
going. However they wanted me to go to Princeton and had bribed me
by offering me a new car.
“That would be an hour every day both ways,”
I’d said.
“Much less than that, Christian,” Stan said.
He’d answered me with that look he had down pat which meant that I
should accept the inevitable.
My hamburger and her fish Creole on rice
were served and we ate in silence. “Is there a reason why we’ve
come here?” I asked at length.
