Hearts In Atlantis (16 page)

His fear proved groundless. Ted spoke pleasantly of his childhood in New Jersey and, when Bobby's mom asked him, of his job in Hartford. To Bobby he seemed less comfortable talking about accounting than he did reminiscing about sleighing as a kid, but his mom didn't appear to notice. Ted
did
ask for a second slice of meatloaf.

When the meal was over and the table cleared, Liz gave Ted a list of telephone numbers, including those of Dr. Gordon, the Sterling House Summer Rec office, and the Warwick Hotel. “If there are any problems, I want to hear from you. Okay?”

Ted nodded. “Okay.”

“Bobby? No big worries?” She put her hand briefly on his forehead, the way she used to do when he complained of feeling feverish.

“Nope. We'll have a blast. Won't we, Mr. Brautigan?”

“Oh, call him Ted,” Liz almost snapped. “If he's going to be sleeping in our living room, I guess I better call him Ted, too. May I?”

“Indeed you may. Let it be Ted from this moment on.”

He smiled. Bobby thought it was a sweet smile, open and friendly. He didn't understand how anyone could resist it. But his mother could and did. Even now, while she was returning Ted's smile, he saw the hand with the Kleenex in it tightening and loosening in its old familiar gesture of anxious displeasure. One of her absolute favorite sayings now came to Bobby's mind:
I'd trust him
(or her)
as far as I could sling a piano
.

“And from now on I'm Liz.” She held out a hand across the table and they shook like people meeting for the first time . . . except Bobby knew his mother's mind was already made up on the subject of Ted Brautigan. If her back hadn't been against the wall, she never would have trusted Bobby with him. Not in a million years.

She opened her purse and took out a plain white envelope. “There's ten dollars in here,” she said, handing the envelope to Ted. “You boys will want to
eat out at least one night, I expect—Bobby likes the Colony Diner, if that's all right with you—and you may want to take in a movie, as well. I don't know what else there might be, but it's best to have a little cushion, don't you think?”

“Always better safe than sorry,” Ted agreed, tucking the envelope carefully into the front pocket of his slacks, “but I don't expect we'll go through anything like ten dollars in three days. Will we, Bobby?”

“Gee, no, I don't see how we could.”

“Waste not, want not,” Liz said—it was another of her favorites, right up there with
the fool and his money soon parted
. She plucked a cigarette out of the pack on the table beside the sofa and lit it with a hand which was not quite steady. “You boys will be fine. Probably have a better time than I will.”

Looking at her ragged, bitten fingernails, Bobby thought,
That's for sure
.

•   •   •

His mom and the others were going to Providence in Mr. Biderman's car, and the next morning at seven o'clock Liz and Bobby Garfield stood on the porch, waiting for it to show up. The air had that early hazy hush that meant the hot days of summer had arrived. From Asher Avenue came the hoot and rumble of heavy going-to-work traffic, but down here on Broad there was only the occasional passing car or delivery truck. Bobby could hear the
hisha-hisha
of lawn-sprinklers, and, from the other side of the block, the endless
roop-roop-roop
of Bowser. Bowser sounded the same whether it was June or January; to Bobby Garfield, Bowser seemed as changeless as God.

“You don't have to wait out here with me, you
know,” Liz said. She was wearing a light coat and smoking a cigarette. She had on a little more makeup than usual, but Bobby thought he could still detect shadows under her eyes—she had passed another restless night.

“I don't mind.”

“I hope it's all right, leaving you with him.”

“I wish you wouldn't worry. Ted's a good guy, Mom.”

She made a little hmphing noise.

There was a twinkle of chrome from the bottom of the hill as Mr. Biderman's Mercury (not vulgar, exactly, but a boat of a car all the same) turned onto their street from Commonwealth and came up the hill toward 149.

“There he is, there he is,” his mom said, sounding nervous and excited. She bent down. “Give me a little smooch, Bobby. I don't want to kiss you and smear my lipstick.”

Bobby put his hand on her arm and lightly kissed her cheek. He smelled her hair, the perfume she was wearing, her face-powder. He would never kiss her with that same unshadowed love again.

She gave him a vague little smile, not looking at him, looking instead at Mr. Biderman's boat of a Merc, which swerved gracefully across the street and pulled up at the curb in front of the house. She reached for her two suitcases (two seemed a lot for two days, Bobby thought, although he supposed the fancy dress took up a good deal of space in one of them), but he already had them by the handles.

“Those are too heavy, Bobby—you'll trip on the steps.”

“No,” he said. “I won't.”

She gave him a distracted look, then waved to Mr. Biderman and went toward the car, high heels clacking. Bobby followed, trying not to grimace at the weight of the suitcases . . . what had she put in them, clothes or bricks?

He got them down to the sidewalk without having to stop and rest, at least. Mr. Biderman was out of the car by then, first putting a casual kiss on his mother's cheek, then shaking out the key that opened the trunk.

“Howya doin, Sport, howza boy?” Mr. Biderman always called Bobby Sport. “Lug em around back and I'll slide em in. Women always hafta bring the farm, don't they? Well, you know the old saying—can't live with em, can't shoot em outside the state of Montana.” He bared his teeth in a grin that made Bobby think of Jack in
Lord of the Flies
. “Want me to take one?”

“I've got em,” Bobby said. He trudged grimly in Mr. Biderman's wake, shoulders aching, the back of his neck hot and starting to sweat.

Mr. Biderman opened the trunk, plucked the suitcases from Bobby's hands, and slid them in with the rest of the luggage. Behind them, his mom was looking in the back window and talking with the other two men who were going. She laughed at something one of them said. To Bobby the laugh sounded about as real as a wooden leg.

Mr. Biderman closed the trunk and looked down at Bobby. He was a narrow man with a wide face. His cheeks were always flushed. You could see his pink scalp in the tracks left by the teeth of his comb. He
wore little round glasses with gold rims. To Bobby his smile looked as real as his mother's laugh had sounded.

“Gonna play some baseball this summer, Sport?” Don Biderman bent his knees a little and cocked an imaginary bat. Bobby thought he looked like a dope.

“Yes, sir. I'm on the Wolves at Sterling House. I was hoping to make the Lions, but  . . .”

“Good. Good.” Mr. Biderman made a big deal of looking at his watch—the wide gold Twist-O-Flex band was dazzling in the early sunshine—and then patted Bobby's cheek. Bobby had to make a conscious effort not to cringe from his touch. “Say, we gotta get this wagon-train rolling! Shake her easy, Sport. Thanks for the loan of your mother.”

He turned away and escorted Liz around the Mercury to the passenger side. He did this with a hand pressed to her back. Bobby liked that even less than watching the guy smooch her cheek. He glanced at the well-padded, business-suited men in the rear seat—Dean was the other guy's name, he remembered—just in time to see them elbowing each other. Both were grinning.

Something's wrong here
, Bobby thought, and as Mr. Biderman opened the passenger door for his mother, as she murmured her thanks and slid in, gathering her dress a little so it wouldn't wrinkle, he had an urge to tell her not to go, Rhode Island was too far away,
Bridgeport
would be too far away, she needed to stay home.

He said nothing, though, only stood on the curb as Mr. Biderman closed her door and walked back around to the driver's side. He opened that door, paused, and then did his stupid little batter-up pantomime
again. This time he added an asinine fanny-wiggle.
What a nimrod
, Bobby thought.

“Don't do anything I wouldn't do, Sport,” he said.

“But if you do, name it after me,” Cushman called from the back seat. Bobby didn't know exactly what that meant but it must have been funny because Dean laughed and Mr. Biderman tipped him one of those just-between-us-guys winks.

His mother was leaning in his direction. “You be a good boy, Bobby,” she said. “I'll be back around eight on Thursday night—no later than ten. You're sure you're fine with that?”

No, I'm not fine with it at all. Don't go off with them, Mom, don't go off with Mr. Biderman and those two grinning dopes sitting behind you. Those two nimrods. Please don't
.

“Sure he is,” Mr. Biderman said. “He's a sport. Ain't you, Sport?”

“Bobby?” she asked, not looking at Mr. Biderman. “Are you all set?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I'm a sport.”

Mr. Biderman bellowed ferocious laughter—
Kill the pig, cut his throat
, Bobby thought—and dropped the Mercury into gear. “Providence or bust!” he cried, and the car rolled away from the curb, swerving across to the other side of Broad Street and heading up toward Asher. Bobby stood on the sidewalk, waving as the Merc passed Carol's house and Sully-John's. He felt as if he had a bone in his heart. If this was some sort of premonition—a winkle—he never wanted to have another one.

A hand fell on his shoulder. He looked around and saw Ted standing there in his bathrobe and slippers, smoking a cigarette. His hair, which had yet to make
its morning acquaintance with the brush, stood up around his ears in comical sprays of white.

“So that was the boss,” he said. “Mr . . . . Bidermeyer, is it?”

“Bider
man
.”

“And how do you like him, Bobby?”

Speaking with a low, bitter clarity, Bobby said, “I trust him about as far as I could sling a piano.”

An hour or so after seeing his mother off, Bobby went down to Field B behind Sterling House. There were no real games until afternoon, nothing but three-flies-six-grounders or rolly-bat, but even rolly-bat was better than nothing. On Field A, to the north, the little kids were futzing away at a game that vaguely resembled baseball; on Field C, to the south, some high-school kids were playing what was almost the real thing.

Shortly after the town square clock had bonged noon and the boys broke to go in search of the hotdog wagon, Bill Pratt asked, “Who's that weird guy over there?”

He was pointing to a bench in the shade, and although Ted was wearing a trenchcoat, an old fedora hat, and dark glasses, Bobby recognized him at once. He guessed S-J would've, too, if S-J hadn't been at Camp Winnie. Bobby almost raised one hand in a wave, then didn't, because Ted was in disguise. Still,
he'd come out to watch his downstairs friend play ball. Even though it wasn't a real game, Bobby felt an absurdly large lump rise in his throat. His mom had only come to watch him once in the two years he'd been playing—last August, when his team had been in the Tri-Town Championships—and even then she'd left in the fourth inning, before Bobby connected for what proved to be the game-winning triple.
Somebody has to work around here, Bobby-O
, she would have replied had he dared reproach her for that.
Your father didn't exactly leave us well off, you know
. It was true, of course—she had to work and Ted was retired. Except Ted had to stay clear of the low men in the yellow coats, and that was a full-time job. The fact that they didn't exist wasn't the point. Ted
believed
they did . . . but had come out to see him play just the same.

“Probably some dirty old man wanting to put a suckjob on one of the little kids,” Harry Shaw said. Harry was small and tough, a boy going through life with his chin stuck out a mile. Being with Bill and Harry suddenly made Bobby homesick for Sully-John, who had left on the Camp Winnie bus Monday morning (at the brain-numbing hour of five
A.M.
). S-J didn't have much of a temper and he was kind. Sometimes Bobby thought that was the best thing about Sully—he was kind.

From Field C there came the hefty crack of a bat—an authoritative full-contact sound which none of the Field B boys could yet produce. It was followed by savage roars of approval that made Bill, Harry, and Bobby look a little nervously in that direction.

“St. Gabe's boys,” Bill said. “They think they own Field C.”

“Cruddy Catlicks,” Harry said. “Catlicks are sissies—I could take any one of them.”

“How about fifteen or twenty?” Bill asked, and Harry was silent. Up ahead, glittering like a mirror, was the hotdog wagon. Bobby touched the buck in his pocket. Ted had given it to him out of the envelope his mother had left, then had put the envelope itself behind the toaster, telling Bobby to take what he needed when he needed it. Bobby was almost exalted by this level of trust.

“Look on the bright side,” Bill said. “Maybe those St. Gabe's boys will beat up the dirty old man.”

When they got to the wagon, Bobby bought only one hotdog instead of the two he had been planning on. His appetite seemed to have shrunk. When they got back to Field B, where the Wolves' coaches had now appeared with the equipment cart, the bench Ted had been sitting on was empty.

“Come on, come on!” Coach Terrell called, clapping his hands. “Who wants to play some baseball here?”

•   •   •

That night Ted cooked his famous casserole in the Garfields' oven. It meant more hotdogs, but in the summer of 1960 Bobby Garfield could have eaten hotdogs three times a day and had another at bedtime.