Stealing Flowers (5 page)

“Watson’s Jamaican Jerky,” I whispered,
reading the small plaque on the bottom of the frame. It seemed far
away, perhaps exotic, and I guessed that the whole family traveled
together. My eyes wandered to Una’s. Even in the photograph, they
radiated mischief and love. She dressed in a brilliant crimson red
dress and had a red carnation in her hair. Certainly, she was a
mysterious creature. I wondered what it was about her and decided
I’d have to find out at the first available opportunity.

“She’s my confidant and best friend,” Mary
said softly from behind me as though reading my mind. I spun and
saw that she was dressed for work and even had a briefcase in hand.
“She’s been with us since the birth of Sally,” she continued. “She
manages our affairs in such a way that Stan and I just can’t do
without her. That was her place. She owned several of them. We have
pictures of them in the kitchen. She was quite a successful
business woman in Jamaica. Of course, she is here too.”

I scratched my head. I think that was what I
wanted to know, not that I knew completely what it meant. The piano
stopped and Sally came in and kissed her mom, who said good bye and
left. After Mary was out of sight, Sally hugged me and kissed me on
the lips. “You’re my scrumps,” she whispered.

“What’s that?”

“Something delicious.”

I was very happy. We returned to the kitchen
hand in hand, and I studied five pictures of small Jamaican Jerk
Shacks hung on the wall. The restaurants were all the same general
size, and their smart appearance and large tinted front windows
made it obvious they’d done well. They were each in different
locations and the ten-by-twelve pictures were labeled accordingly:
Kingston, Montego Bay, Savanna la Mar, Santa Cruz, and Spanish
Town. Una stood front-and-center in all the photographs, and in
each one wore a different colored, but equally brilliant, dress.
“Una, why did you leave there?” I asked.

“It’s called Jamaica,” Sally said. “It’s in
Mexico.”

“It’s not in Mexico,” Una said with a laugh.
“It’s one of the largest islands in the Greater Antilles of the
West Indies. I left long ago. I studied at the University of the
West Indies in Kingston, the capital city of Jamaica and won a
scholarship to finish my education in London, England. That’s the
time when I first left, a dozen years ago or so. When I returned to
the island, I started a business, but then I met your mother and
father and came to work for them.”

“What did you study in England?” I asked and
sat at the table with Sally, having no idea where England was.

Una served breakfast and sat down to eat
with us. “I studied business.”

“Why don’t you have your own children?” I
asked.

This question was met with the very first
frown I ever saw on Una’s face. Stan came into the kitchen dressed
in casual clothes and sat down with us. “Are you two ready to go
flying?” he asked. Sally and I both nodded. It was like a dream.
“Eat up,” he added, “we’ll head to Teterboro.”

“The Turnpike is closed this morning,” Una
said, rising after eating very little and beginning to clean up.
Stan nodded.

“Shall I have Larry bring the car around?”
she asked.

“He is gone with Mary. I’ll drive.”

Stan drove a black Lincoln Continental and
we both sat in the backseat holding hands. He asked us to put on
the seatbelts. I’d never heard of such a thing and it took a few
minutes to figure out. When we reached the airport, I remembered
seeing what struck me as a sea of airplanes. We parked and walked
up to what, to me, looked like a brand-new white jet. I’d never
seen a plane so close before, nor had I even been near the inside
of an airport. So much was happening at once, I could hardly take
it all in. The plane was beautiful.

“It’s set to go,” he said. We boarded the
roomy cockpit up a small stair. “Let Christian sit in the front for
now, Pumpkin,” Stan added.

Though the inside was smaller than the
Lincoln, it held four seats and was comfortable enough. The
dashboard was alive with lights, buttons, gauges, and meters. Stan
talked on the radio for a minute to get clearance. While he waited
for a response, he showed me the safety checklist and named many
moveable parts aloud, pointing to the right and left flaps, the
ailerons, the rudder, and other equipment.

I focused on his every word and knew
instinctively that if I wanted to get close to him, I would have to
learn how to fly, which was perfectly fine with me. He indicated
the largest gauges on the control panel.

“Those are the four important ones,” he
said. “This tells how high you are, then there are the fuel and
oil-pressure gauges, the air speed, and the compass or heading
indicators. This is the tachometer which tells you the
rotations-per-minute of the motor. This is the speedometer and the
hydraulic gauge for the landing gear.”

I pointed to one in the center with a small
picture of a plane on it. “What’s that one?”

“It tracks for vertical speed or the rate of
the plane’s climb. The other two important things in this type of
plane are the half-wheel, what’s known to a pilot as the stick, and
the red dial over here, which governs the rate of fuel going into
the engine, the choke.”

I nodded enthusiastically, trying with all
my might to act like an adult, but very excited as well, as though
it were Christmas morning. “Okay,” he said into the radio and drove
the plane out to the liftoff area. “Here we go.”

The engine roared and we sped down the
runway. As we gathered speed, I thought for sure we would crash and
looked back at Sally who stared calmly out the window. When we
lifted off the ground, I thought I would pee my pants. “Wow,” I
gasped softly.

The ground rushed away and the houses and
farms became small quickly. The wonder chased away any fear, and it
seemed that in only minutes, we were flying over Niagara Falls.

“I can’t imagine anything better,” I said,
although I could at least imagine one thing. Sally. I was so in
love with her, even so as to be dumb-headed, yet I was determined
not to make a slip.

“For an American,” Stan said, “flying is one
of the greatest skills to obtain and our history is dotted with
many brilliant aviators from the Wright brothers to Charles
Lindbergh.”

“Don’t forget Melia Earhart, Daddy,” Sally
said. “She’s American too.”

“Amelia,” Stan corrected her. I hadn’t even
heard of the Wright Brothers let alone Earhart or Lindbergh, but
didn’t show my ignorance by admitting it. We flew for over an hour
and the landing was as exciting as the take off. After we returned,
Una made us sandwiches and fresh cinnamon rolls. Stan sat with us
for a moment.

“I’m leaving shortly for the office,” he
said to me. “Mary and I have meetings there this afternoon and well
into the evening. Before I go, Professor Vondt will arrive. He’s
your new private instructor. You’ll be a student with him from one
to five o’clock, Monday through Friday, until September. If
everything goes well then, and you pass the entrance test, he’ll
come by three evenings a week to help you out with your
homework.”

To an eight-year-old, this might have been a
deadly blow to his summer’s plans, but it didn’t strike me that way
at all. Mr. Vondt, to my utter surprise, was the man from the
television program. Seeing him in person, magnified his thinness.
He was much younger than he looked on the screen and his eyes were
shrewd. He’d eyes like Lloyd, and I wondered if he was like Lloyd
in other ways, but he also had bushy eyebrows and a wonderful smile
which took away the cruelty from his eyes. His moustache was also
bushy and he was growing a straggly goatee. Stan introduced me as
his son, and I was proud of that. It felt good to be a Tappet
instead of a Briner, but I realized as well that Mr. Vondt and Stan
might be old friends and he’d know I wasn’t really his son.
Happily, I learned immediately this wasn’t the case.

“When I met Mr. Vondt during the taping of
his television show,” Stan said, “he’d mentioned that he was free
for the summer. He has done some teaching at all levels of the
school system, all the way from grade four to university, and is
considered an expert in the field.” We shook hands. “Una has set up
the Rose-room. It’s downstairs and faces the side-yard to the east.
Una will show you and I’ll let you two get acquainted. If you need
anything, Una will look after you. She pretty much runs everything
here and you can take her word for authority.”

I was astounded to actually hear the words.
Stan openly acknowledged Una’s power to a stranger. After he left,
Mr. Vondt and I found Una in the kitchen. “Mr. Vondt,” she said
happily, shaking his hands. “He’s a good boy,” she added, “just a
little behind in his schooling. This way.”

She took us through a part of the house I’d
never seen before and down into a room wallpapered in pink with
crimson roses raised in a relief. The ceiling was a light powdered
pink, almost white, and the dark hardwood floors had a white area
rug. The two couches were large light-brown cloth ones, facing each
other with matching sofa-chairs pushed against the walls.

“Tea?” Una asked Mr. Vondt when we had
settled across from each other on the couches. He refused with a
shake of his head and she left.

“Come sit beside me, Christian,” Mr. Vondt
said, softly, “and read the first page of this book aloud.” He took
out a book and turned it to the first page.

“Chapter One,” I said. The title of the
chapter was in a foreign language or something. I attempted it and
failed miserably.

“Ebenezer Scrooge,” Mr. Vondt said. “It is
the name of the main protagonist.”

I turned red but when I heard him say the
name, I realized I knew the story of Scrooge, I’d seen it on
television, a cartoon of A Christmas Carol, and might be able to
impress him so that he wouldn’t tell Stan and Mary that I was just
a dumb orphan.

“Jack-cob Mar-lay was dead,” I said. I had
got through my first sentence. I was relieved. “Everyone knew that.
There was no doubt about that.” Two more down. It looked good. “All
the–” I couldn’t get the next word. I was sweating.

“Official,” he said softly.

“Papers were properly signed by–” nor could
I get the next one.

“Witnesses.”

“To make them legal. The–” nor the next
word.

“Clergyman.”

I didn’t even know the definition of
clergyman. “Signed the papers.”

“Good,” he said. “Relax. We’ll be doing a
lot of reading this summer, but before September, I’ll open up a
world for you that you never thought possible. I know you have been
hit and miss with school, but I can see in your eyes that you’re
smart, that you’re a dreamer, and that you’ll succeed at school as
well as your sister.”

He was a mystery all right. I couldn’t make
up my mind about him, but I decided he’d behave himself. He seemed
to want to help me. Our first lesson was difficult and long, but I
tried to stay focused the entire time. He did little arithmetic,
which was too bad. It had been my only B in grade three, the rest
were Cs or Ds. But maybe he knew that. We mostly did reading and
cursive lettering. In both areas, I could see he wasn’t overly
impressed. Sally had promised to go swimming afterwards, and I kept
remembering that. It helped.

Mr. Vondt was insistent and gentle. He kept
his hands off me and often smiled. I’d heard somewhere that it’s
all in the balance. It’s hard to get that right. Why I say this is
because I believe he used self-control to keep his hands off me
that day just as much as I did to stay focused, and the days
afterwards. He was definitely a Lloyd kind of guy, and by the end
of that first lesson, I was aware of it.

At five o’clock, he released me and I flew
up the stairs to find Sally. We ate and played in the backyard with
two boys who lived next door, Andy Arckon, aged nine, and his older
brother, Kurt, ten. They both had curly black hair and acted like
tough kids, but compared to the gangsters at Carling Street, they
were pussycats. I just laughed at them. We played, Kick the Can and
Graveyard and had to come in for bed at nine o’clock. That night
Jesus came to me in my first sleep.

“I’ve placed you among the Tappets to bring
a message to the planet,” he said in his soft gentle voice of love.
“As you have seen, we’ve given you a guide. Just as I have mounted
a force of earthly good for your success, so Lucifer will rally an
earthly fellowship to bring you into his fold. When he strikes at
you, you may not know it. Stick close to your guide.”

This sounded even more ominous than before,
and moreover, it seemed my obligation was going from saving me to
saving the world. I was starting to wonder if it was really
Jesus.

When I woke up at one o’clock to sneak into
Sally’s room, I quickly chased these thoughts away. This time Sally
woke up and we kissed each other on the mouth and held each other
tight. Tonight she wore panties. This didn’t bother me. She still
let me snuggle against her. We slept in each other’s arms until
four o’clock when I snuck back to my room to sleep in my
closet.

Chapter
Two

Pulaski Park has four baseball diamonds on
the west side and is where Sally and I play baseball. The Pulaski
Skyway delivers and receives traffic from a dozen places,
including, the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, JFK Boulevard, the New
Jersey Turnpike, Tonelle Avenue, Hoboken Street, and other busy
roadways. The traffic ebbs and flows at surprising speeds
in-between yield-signs, lights, crosswalks, streetcar stops, and a
hundred other obstructions. Every time I saw it, I thought of the
poor cats, dogs, and other helpless creatures trying to cross and
being killed. It was one of the most dangerous crossroads one could
ever imagine.

Not far from here, snowball had been run
over, and not only animals got it in this area, but plenty of
people as well. On Saturdays, Sally, Andy, Kurt, and myself played
in an Essex County Peewee Baseball League. Our fathers would
alternatively drop us off. My instruction with Mr. Vondt had
continued uninterrupted and everyone seemed satisfied with both my
effort and lack of complaining, if not my results. Truth was, I
read now as fast as Sally. The Adventures of Robin Hood took me
only two days to finish.