Hearts In Atlantis (11 page)

“Shhh!” Ted's breath in his ear was as dry as the smell of that dust, and somehow intimate. His hands were on Bobby's back, cupping his shoulderblades and holding him still. “Not a word! Not a thought. Except . . . baseball! Yes, baseball, if you like!”

Bobby thought of Maury Wills getting his lead off first, a walking lead, measuring three steps . . . then four . . . Wills bent over at the waist, hands dangling, heels raised slightly off the dirt, he can go either way, it depends on what the pitcher does . . . and when the pitcher goes to the plate Wills heads for second in an explosion of speed and dust and—

Gone. Everything was gone. No bell ringing in his head, no sound of hooves, no smell of dust. No itching behind his eyes, either. Had that itching really ever been there? Or had he just made it up because Ted's eyes were scaring him?

“Bobby,” Ted said, again directly into Bobby's ear. The movement of Ted's lips against his skin made him shiver. Then: “Good God, what am I doing?”

He pushed Bobby away, gently but firmly. His face looked dismayed and a little too pale, but his eyes were back to normal, his pupils holding steady. For the moment that was all Bobby cared about. He felt strange, though—muzzy in the head, as if he'd just
woken up from a heavy nap. At the same time the world looked amazingly brilliant, every line and shape perfectly defined.

“Shazam,” Bobby said, and laughed shakily. “What just happened?”

“Nothing to concern you.” Ted reached for his cigarette and seemed surprised to see only a tiny smoldering scrap left in the groove where he had set it. He brushed it into the ashtray with his knuckle. “I went off again, didn't I?”

“Yeah,
way
off. I was scared. I thought you were having an epilepsy fit or something. Your eyes—”

“It's not epilepsy,” Ted said. “And it's not dangerous. But if it happens again, it would be best if you didn't touch me.”

“Why?”

Ted lit a fresh cigarette. “Just because. Will you promise?”

“Okay. What's the Beam?”

Ted gazed at him sharply. “I spoke of the Beam?”

“You said ‘All things serve the Beam.' I think that was it.”

“Perhaps sometime I'll tell you, but not today. Today you're going to the beach, aren't you?”

Bobby jumped, startled. He looked at Ted's clock and saw it was almost nine o'clock. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I ought to start getting ready. I could finish reading you the paper when I get back.”

“Yes, good. A fine idea. I have some letters to write.”

No you don't, you just want to get rid of me before I ask any other questions you don't want to answer
.

But if that was what Ted was doing it was all right. As Liz Garfield so often said, Bobby had his own fish
to fry. Still, as he reached the door to Ted's room, the thought of the red scrap of cloth hanging from the TV aerial and the crescent moon and the star next to the hopscotch grid made him turn reluctantly back.

“Ted, there's something—”

“The low men, yes, I know.” Ted smiled. “For now don't trouble yourself about them, Bobby. For now all is well. They aren't moving this way or even looking this way.”

“They draw west,” Bobby said.

Ted looked at him through a scurf of rising cigarette smoke, his blue eyes steady. “Yes,” he said, “and with luck they'll
stay
west. Seattle would be fine with me. Have a good time at the seaside, Bobby.”

“But I saw—”

“Perhaps you saw only shadows. In any case, this isn't the time to talk. Just remember what I said—if I should go blank like that again, just sit and wait for it to pass. If I should reach for you, stand back. If I should get up, tell me to sit down. In that state I will do as you say. It's like being hypnotized.”

“Why do you—”

“No more questions, Bobby. Please.”

“You're okay? Really okay?”

“In the pink. Now go. Enjoy your day.”

Bobby hurried downstairs, again struck by how sharp everything seemed to be: the brilliance of the light slanting through the window on the second-floor landing, a ladybug crawling around the lip of an empty milk-bottle outside the door of the Proskys' apartment, a sweet high humming in his ears that was like the voice of the day—the first Saturday of summer vacation.

•   •   •

Back in the apartment, Bobby grabbed his toy cars and trucks from various stashes under his bed and at the back of his closet. A couple of these—a Matchbox Ford and a blue metal dumptruck Mr. Biderman had sent home with his mom a few days after Bobby's birthday—were pretty cool, but he had nothing to rival Sully's gasoline tanker or yellow Tonka bulldozer. The 'dozer was especially good to play with in the sand. Bobby was looking forward to at least an hour's serious roadbuilding while the waves broke nearby and his skin pinkened in the bright coastal sunshine. It occurred to him that he hadn't gathered up his trucks like this since sometime last winter, when he and S-J had spent a happy post-blizzard Saturday afternoon making a road-system in the fresh snow down in Commonwealth Park. He was old now, eleven, almost too old for stuff like this. There was something sad about that idea, but he didn't have to be sad right now, not if he didn't want to. His toy-truck days might be fast approaching their end, but that end wouldn't be today. Nope, not today.

His mother packed him a lunch for the trip, but she wouldn't give him any money when he asked—not even a nickel for one of the private changing-stalls which lined the ocean side of the midway. And almost before Bobby realized it was happening, they were having what he most dreaded: an argument about money.

“Fifty cents'd be enough,” Bobby said. He heard the baby-whine in his voice, hated it, couldn't stop it. “Just half a rock. Come on, Mom, what do you say? Be a sport.”

She lit a Kool, striking the match so hard it made a snapping sound, and looked at him through the smoke with her eyes narrowed. “You're earning your own money now, Bob. Most people pay three cents for the paper and you get paid for reading it. A dollar a week! My God! When I was a girl—”

“Mom, that money's for my bike! You know that.”

She had turned to the mirror, frowning and fussing at the shoulders of her blouse—Mr. Biderman had asked her to come in for a few hours even though it was Saturday. Now she turned back, cigarette still clamped between her lips, and bent her frown on him.

“You're still asking me to buy you that bike, aren't you?
Still
. I told you I couldn't afford it but you're still asking.”

“No, I'm not! I'm not either!” Bobby's eyes were wide with anger and hurt. “Just a lousy half a rock for the—”

“Half a buck here, two bits there—it all adds up, you know. What you want is for me to buy you that bike by handing you the money for everything else. Then you don't have to give up any of the
other
things you want.”

“That's not fair!”

He knew what she would say before she said it, even had time to think that he had walked right into that one. “
Life's
not fair, Bobby-O.” Turning back to the mirror for one final pluck at the ghost of a slip-strap hovering beneath the right shoulder of her blouse.

“A nickel for the changing-room?” Bobby asked. “Couldn't you at least—”

“Yes, probably, oh I imagine,” she said, clipping off each word. She usually put rouge on her cheeks before
going to work, but not all the color on her face this morning came out of a powderbox, and Bobby, angry as he was, knew he'd better be careful. If he lost his temper the way she was capable of losing hers, he'd be here in the hot empty apartment all day, forbidden to so much as step out into the hall.

His mother snatched her purse off the table by the end of the couch, butted out her cigarette hard enough to split the filter, then turned and looked at him. “If I said to you, ‘Gee, we can't eat this week because I saw a pair of shoes at Hunsicker's that I just had to have,' what would you think?”

I'd think you were a liar
, Bobby thought.
And I'd say if you're so broke, Mom, what about the Sears catalogue on the top shelf of your closet? The one with the dollar bills and the five-dollar bills—even a ten or two—taped to the underwear pages in the middle? What about the blue pitcher in the kitchen dish cabinet, the one tucked all the way in the back corner behind the gravy boat with the crack in it, the blue pitcher where you put your spare quarters, where you've been putting them ever since my father died? And when the pitcher's full you roll the quarters and take them to the bank and get bills, and the bills go into the catalogue, don't they? The bills get taped to the underwear pages of the wishbook
.

But he said none of this, only looked down at his sneakers with his eyes burning.

“I have to make choices,” she said. “And if you're old enough to work, sonnyboy of mine, you'll have to make them, too. Do you think I like telling you no?”

Not exactly
, Bobby thought, looking at his sneakers and biting at his lip, which wanted to loosen up and start letting out a bunch of blubbery baby-sounds.
Not exactly, but I don't think you really mind it, either
.

“If we were the Gotrocks, I'd give you five dollars to spend at the beach—hell, ten! You wouldn't have to borrow from your bike-jar if you wanted to take your little girlfriend on the Loop-the-Loop—”

She's not my girlfriend!
Bobby screamed at his mother inside his head.
SHE IS NOT MY LITTLE GIRLFRIEND!

“—or the Indian Railroad. But of course if we were the Gotrocks, you wouldn't need to save for a bike in the first place, would you?” Her voice rising, rising. Whatever had been troubling her over the last few months threatening to come rushing out, foaming like sodapop and biting like acid. “I don't know if you ever noticed this, but your father didn't exactly leave us well off, and I'm doing the best I can. I feed you, I put clothes on your back, I paid for you to go to Sterling House this summer and play baseball while I push paper in that hot office. You got invited to go to the beach with the other kids, I'm very happy for you, but how you finance your day off is your business. If you want to ride the rides, take some of the money you've got in that jar and ride them. If you don't, just play on the beach or stay home. Makes no difference to me. I just want you to stop whining. I hate it when you whine. It's like  . . .” She stopped, sighed, opened her purse, took out her cigarettes. “I hate it when you whine,” she repeated.

It's like your father
. That was what she had stopped herself from saying.

“So what's the story, morning-glory?” she asked. “Are you finished?”

Bobby stood silent, cheeks burning, eyes burning, looking down at his sneakers and focusing all his will on not blubbering. At this point a single choked sob
might be enough to get him grounded for the day; she was really mad, only looking for a reason to do it. And blubbering wasn't the only danger. He wanted to scream at her that he'd rather be like his father than like her, a skinflinty old cheapskate like her, not good for even a lousy nickel, and so what if the late not-so-great Randall Garfield hadn't left them well off? Why did she always make it sound like that was
his
fault? Who had married him?

“You sure, Bobby-O? No more smartass comebacks?” The most dangerous sound of all had come into her voice—a kind of brittle brightness. It sounded like good humor if you didn't know her.

Bobby looked at his sneakers and said nothing. Kept all the blubbering and all the angry words locked in his throat and said nothing. Silence spun out between them. He could smell her cigarette and all of last night's cigarettes behind this one, and those smoked on all the other nights when she didn't so much look at the TV as through it, waiting for the phone to ring.

“All right, I guess we've got ourselves straight,” she said after giving him fifteen seconds or so to open his mouth and stick his big fat foot in it. “Have a nice day, Bobby.” She went out without kissing him.

Bobby went to the open window (tears were running down his face now, but he hardly noticed them), drew aside the curtain, and watched her head toward Commonwealth, high heels tapping. He took a couple of big, watery breaths and then went into the kitchen. He looked across it at the cupboard where the blue pitcher hid behind the gravy boat. He could take some money out of it, she didn't keep any exact count of how
much was in there and she'd never miss three or four quarters, but he wouldn't. Spending it would be joyless. He wasn't sure how he knew that, but he did; had known it even at nine, when he first discovered the pitcher of change hidden there. So, with feelings of regret rather than righteousness, he went into his bedroom and looked at the Bike Fund jar instead.

It occurred to him that she was right—he
could
take a little of his saved dough to spend at Savin Rock. It might take him an extra month to accumulate the price of the Schwinn, but at least spending this money would feel all right. And there was something else, as well. If he refused to take any money out of the jar, to do anything but hoard it and save it, he'd be like
her
.

That decided the matter. Bobby fished five dimes out of the Bike Fund, put them in his pocket, put a Kleenex on top of them to keep them from bouncing out if he ran somewhere, then finished collecting his stuff for the beach. Soon he was whistling, and Ted came downstairs to see what he was up to.

“Are you off, Captain Garfield?”

Bobby nodded. “Savin Rock's a pretty cool place. Rides and stuff, you know?”

“Indeed I do. Have a good time, Bobby, and don't fall out of anything.”