Stealing Flowers (21 page)

She reached into her purse and pulled out a
clear plastic bag with weed in it. I realized at once that it was
mine. I swallowed my first whole glass of wine without noticing the
taste. My heart raced, and for sometime, I was dizzy and couldn’t
breathe. Was this the last straw? Had they had enough? Would I at
last be kicked out of the Tappets? I was quite aware of their
severe views on marijuana and other harder drugs. I looked into her
eyes and had no idea how to respond, however, I found myself also
angry that she’d gone through my private things.

“Maybe you should rate this for me,” I said.
“Put it somewhere between the shoplifting episode and my
pre-adolescent indiscretions with Sally. Then I’d know where I
stand. It’s not exactly in league with Richard Nixon’s cover-up of
the Watergate Affair.”

She and Stan were long time Republicans and
had both voted for Nixon. I could see my sarcasm hit home and I was
sorry I said it. “Are you making a joke?” she said. “It’s an
illegal substance.”

I shrugged. “I can’t have Sally as my
girlfriend even though I love her,” I said with indignation. “I
don’t drink, smoke, or slack off. I’ve done everything you’ve asked
of me. My marks are fine and my work at the office, according to
Dad, is outstanding. Why are you going through my things? Was Sally
right all along? Are you my jail-keeper?” I saw that I’d hurt her
feelings and was again regretful. “I’m sorry,” I said, “But I don’t
understand it.”

“I didn’t go through your things,” she said
bitterly. “Una found it washing your pants. We hoped it was a
willing slip, a cry for help.”

I chuckled a moment. Why would my mother
think I needed help? I tried another glass of wine and decided I
liked it. “I’ll do no more jaye, if you, Stan, and Una, agree to
allow me to drink.”

“Everything is a negotiation.”

“Look who’s talking.”

We ate a little more in silence. “Stan will
never agree to it,” she said after the waiter cleared our
plates.

I shrugged in disbelief and saw that I’d
ticked her plenty. She pointed at me in a threatening manner. “No
inebriation,” she said. “No drinking if you’re driving, piloting or
at work.”

I poured another glass of wine and ordered a
piece of chocolate cake. “Shall we shake on it,” I said.

She smiled and shook her head. “You are as
cutthroat as ever,” she said. “But I must say, you’re always good
to your word. Now, about university. We are very proud of you and
you may go where you wish, but if Sally is going to NYCU, Stan and
I insist you go elsewhere.”

I ignored the fact that she had me figured
out pretty well. “Now that we’re alone,” I said, “I’ve always been
curious about something. Some people say that Una runs the company.
I know that it’s partially true. Why do you and Stan encourage the
perception?”

“No real reason exists, it just happened
that way. We love her.”

It wasn’t the answer I expected. It seemed
too simple. However, that was the thing about the Tappets that was
so improbable, they were as good as it gets. That summer I was
accepted at Princeton and planned to follow my parents’ wishes. My
life still seemed to me somehow to be a Tappets’ life, not my own.
It scared me, and all the more, because I really didn’t object.
Stan bought me a Mercedes Benz, a red one that was two years old.
They also gave me a few hundred dollars to spend on clothes. Sally
didn’t get a car and I knew it bothered her, but she was attending
NYCU after all.

At the end of the summer, the
twenty-one-year-old heir to the Seagram’s liquor fortune, a family
Mary and Stan knew through their business circles, was abducted at
gunpoint from the driveway of his mother’s estate in New York
State. He was held for nine days in a Brooklyn apartment while his
multimillionaire father negotiated for his release. After over two
million dollars had been paid, federal agents rescued him,
retrieved the money, and arrested two men, a New York City fireman,
and an operator of a limousine service. The following week, Stan
put in a new security system and hired a New York City firm, The
Burgess-Veld Investigative and Security Agency to monitor the
family and make suggestions for our safety.

It was the first time I’d heard him openly
talk of our estimated worth and I was startled to discover that it
was in the billions. My head swelled, but even though I was stunned
by the amount, I knew better than to ever repeat it. Peter Burgess,
the co-founder of the security firm, personally came to the house.
He was an African-American man, muscular, trim, and with short
jet-black hair. He stood a half a foot taller than Stan, and was
younger by almost two decades. I thought that his brown eyes
radiated keenness and his muscular frame exuded a sort of killer’s
strength; he looked exactly like a hunter, yet to me, I felt
immediately comfortable with him and liked him.

He looked me in the eye and restrained
himself from repeating any platitudes to the son of a wealthy
costumer. I appreciated that, and I bet Stan did too. “He’d be gone
to bed,” Una whispered at one point when he was out of earshot,
leaning over to Sally and I. We both laughed.

“He’s very handsome,” Sally whispered back
and I became envious of his body and clear complexion.

“No perfect security system exists,” he said
after an hour of looking around. “The best in a free society are
still flawed. Criminals walk the street unmolested.” We were all
gathered in the main living room, including Isaac and Larry. “Much
needs to be done just to close the huge gaping holes in security
here,” he added. “I’ll check your office tomorrow. The cars should
go. Replaced them with newer smaller less-expensive black or grey
generic styles. Any brand will do, as long as they aren’t the most
expensive. If you need big cars, you should rent a limousine but
insist Larry drive it.

“The gates at the back and sides have to be
replaced at once with the uniform metal fence that surround the
property and which is otherwise pretty good. Outside cameras and
motion-detection lights should be installed on the grounds. The
front gate should close and lock automatically. Remote key codes
can be activated from inside the cars and an intercom system
installed at the gate for visitors.

“Inside, we’ll establish the whole gambit of
a modern security system, access codes, motion detectors,
bolt-locks, window bolts, and so forth. Don’t let this scare you.
It’s a radical change, but a necessary one. It’ll neither be as
hard nor as expensive as it sounds and our contractors finish up
fast. We’re number one in the city and our products have shown to
get results . . . to have literally saved people’s lives.”

“A word to the wise, Mr. Burgess,” Una piped
in from behind the couch, “Larry, Isaac, and myself, need
unfettered access to the mansion. I mean, I live here, but that’s
besides the point. The Tappets are busy and can’t make it through
their hectic days bogged down with letting us in and out of the
bathrooms to go pee.”

We all laughed. “You’re from the island,
Una?” he said with a friendly voice, obviously taken aback with
Una’s outspoken manner and not understanding her position inside
the family, but then, who would?

“You’ll see that where I’m from has nothing
to do with it.”

He looked at Stan and Mary as though for an
explanation, but they refrained from any remark and even Stan’s
constant rejoinder that Una was our mad housekeeper didn’t get
aired.

“I’m hearing you,” Peter said at length,
reading the whole situation correct. “Secured, but not
shackled.”

“Good,” she said, rising, and heading for
the kitchen.

“That means she really likes you,” I said
when she was out of earshot. We all laughed again. The next
morning, Stan and I drove to Princeton University. I had been down
alone several times to check everything out. The supplement classes
were to be small and well supervised. They expected first year
students to live in one of the assigned five residential colleges,
where they would study, eat, and socialize, but I wanted nothing to
do with that, or with the nonresidential eating clubs adjacent to
it.

After having met some of the students,
seeing them talk of their life and casually dropping the names of
their family, or friends of the family, or even neighbors in the
who’s who world of wealth and fame, I began to feel ashamed of my
own past behavior. I saw that they were as insecure as me and
understood why Stan and Mary so ardently avoided any such vanity,
and there was one other thing about them, none of them seemed
cool.

About this time, I was experiencing
roller-coaster cycles of blues and elation, but consistently my
esteem was low. My view of the kind of person I’d become, my body,
my behavior, and my overall appearance, began to sink. After Dad
and I toured the area of the main campus, we walked to each lecture
hall I would attend, and the tutorial areas off from them where the
lectures would be supplemented by post graduate teachers.

“This is where the real learning will take
place,” Stan noted.

How he knew, I’d no idea. Maybe he had been
told that by Una. Stan and Mary had paid over fifteen thousand
dollars for my five courses: Greco-Roman Civilization, The American
Novel, Reason and Probability, A History of Five Major Religions,
and Structural Engineering. I was dreading it, yet also excited. It
drizzled much of the day and I was glad when Stan offered to head
back.

“Would you like to go to the Gusto for
supper?” he asked. It was my favorite steak place and was very near
to where we played hardball at Pulaski Park. We sat in front of the
window which looked on Willow which connected one way or another to
the Skyway, the Turnpike, the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels and JFK
Boulevard. The busy streets were still wet but the drizzle had
stopped.

We were served by a pretty blond-haired
waitress who over the years we’d come to know. “Look,” she said in
shock just as she came to greet us.

I stood up. A naked burly man, flailing his
arms and shouting madly, ran down the middle of the street into
oncoming traffic. If he was yelling anything discernible, I
couldn’t make it out from the restaurant. I sighed loudly and
grabbed my chest, as a huge city sanitation truck barely missed
him, then a car screeched to a stop in front of him, then another
behind that one. The naked man ran past them, hitting their hoods
with his open palms in anger, returning to his shouting, and
flailing. Two other cars sped past him, oblivious to his plight,
then a city bus hit him dead-on. He flew back to the pavement. I
gasped in shock.

Stan raced across the street toward the
accident. My leaden feet slowly followed him. I feared to go any
faster, but had to see what Stan was doing. The crowds and traffic
had stopped for a moment and the streets seemed almost silent. Stan
checked the man for vital signs, getting blood on his hands. The
man was bleeding from the back of his skull, and pretty much
everywhere else that I could see. His face was smashed, it had
abrasions everywhere, and it appeared as if he’d stopped breathing.
I felt sick. Stan looked up as though to say to me, ‘Why aren’t you
down here beside me, helping.’

“He’s just a bum,” I answered to myself. I’d
always despised panhandlers, druggies, and street-people. By the
time the ambulance came, the man was dead. I couldn’t go back to
any meal, and I think, Stan felt the same.

“I wonder why he did it?” I asked.

“Some folks call people like him the
backwash of the system, but you have to feel sorry for them. Life
is hard.”

We thanked the waitress and left without
ordering our meal. That night I dreamt of lying with Sally, but
every time I reached out to touch her, I saw the man’s face on her
body.

When September came, I was jittery, but the
year flew by like a cyclone. It struck me as an entire unified
event, like a well written poem. I drank plenty of wine. Everyone
who taught me seemed to like my posture toward them, my work-ethic
to schooling, and my genuine manners. Of course, the other students
thought I just kissed butt, I was friendless, and whether it was
true or not, I didn’t care.

On the other hand, they did laugh at many of
my jokes. I wished I’d been humble enough to say that I thought all
the professors were geniuses. I thought some of them dull. Also, I
ignored students on a social basis. I didn’t attend their parties
and such. I completely extricated myself from any internal campus
politics. My marks were exceptional, beyond even what I’d hoped. I
felt I could ask Mary and Stan for the summer off. They held a
conference on it. I spied on them, even though I was going on
eighteen-years-old. Following Una’s advice, they flatly turned me
down. Una’s view was that I wouldn’t get a jump on my second year
school work as I promised, but would laze around all summer and be
in her space. For the life of me, I couldn’t say she was being
unfair. But it seemed so unfair at the time and she hurt my
feelings. Was life nothing but work and more work? Even for the
rich?

To compensate me for the fact that they
turned me down, Una said I could have the cottage for a whole week
at the end of the summer if I took Lloyd as a chaperone. Lloyd had
completed his college in 1977 and now worked directly under Ken
Roxton as a junior manager at Modal, with part-time training for a
management position at Poss Fast-Discs under Hiroyuki Nakamura. I
saw that the Tappets thought the world of Lloyd and he had hung his
fate on our hook, but that didn’t trouble me, even though it should
have.

When I spoke to him about the cottage, he
laughed and said he would get us some young girls. It sounded
exciting. A major heat wave struck New York State in July, and
Sally, Andy, and I took to the pool for hours every evening. My
body by that point was outright sloppy and I weighed over two
hundred pounds. It was at that time that I half-heartedly began to
workout and skip lunches. I visited a dermatologist, who convinced
me to drink three to four quarts of water a day, combined with
constant applications of accutane and tretinoin skin-cream, to
clear up my acne. Over the year, it had become acute, or at least
to my eye. By the time the end of August came, I’d lost twenty
pounds, but my body still looked lumpy to me and my skin wasn’t
completely free of pimples.