Hearts In Atlantis (22 page)

And Bobby heard himself telling her everything, starting with the day Ted had moved in and how his mother had taken an instant dislike to him. He told
her about the first of Ted's blank-outs, about the low men, about the signs of the low men. When he got to that part, Carol touched him on the arm.

“What?” he asked. “You don't believe me?” His throat still had that achy too-full feeling it got after a crying fit, but he was getting better. If she didn't believe him, he wouldn't be mad at her. Wouldn't blame her a bit, in fact. It was just an enormous relief to get it off his chest. “That's okay. I know how crazy it must—”

“I've seen those funny hopscotches all over town,” she said. “So has Yvonne and Angie. We talked about them. They have little stars and moons drawn next to them. Sometimes comets, too.”

He gaped at her. “Are you kidding?”

“No. Girls always look at hopscotches, I don't know why. Close your mouth before a bug flies in.”

He closed his mouth.

Carol nodded, satisfied, then took his hand in hers and laced her fingers through his. Bobby was amazed at what a perfect fit all those fingers made. “Now tell me the rest.”

He did, finishing with the amazing day he'd just put in: the movie, the trip to The Corner Pocket, how Alanna had recognized his father in him, the close call on the way home. He tried to explain how the purple DeSoto hadn't seemed like a real car at all, that it only looked like a car. The closest he could come was to say it had felt
alive
somehow, like an evil version of the ostrich Dr. Dolittle sometimes rode in that series of talking-animal books they'd all gone crazy for in the second grade. The only thing Bobby didn't confess was where he'd hidden his thoughts when the cab
passed the William Penn Grille and the backs of his eyes began to itch.

He struggled, then blurted the worst as a coda: he was afraid that his mother going to Providence with Mr. Biderman and those other men had been a mistake. A
bad
mistake.

“Do you think Mr. Biderman's sweet on her?” Carol asked. By then they were walking back to the bench where she had left her jump-rope. Bobby picked it up and handed it to her. They began walking out of the park and toward Broad Street.

“Yeah, maybe,” Bobby said glumly. “Or at least  . . .” And here was part of what he was afraid of, although it had no name or real shape; it was like something ominous covered with a piece of canvas. “At least
she
thinks he is.”

“Is he going to ask her to marry him? If he did he'd be your stepdad.”

“God!” Bobby hadn't considered the idea of having Don Biderman as a stepfather, and he wished with all his might that Carol hadn't brought such a thing up. It was an awful thought.

“If she loves him you just better get used to the idea.” Carol spoke in an older-woman, worldly-wise fashion that Bobby could have done without; he guessed she had already spent too much time this summer watching the oh John, oh Marsha shows on TV with her mom. And in a weird way he wouldn't have cared if his mom loved Mr. Biderman and that was all. It would be wretched, certainly, because Mr. Biderman was a creep, but it would have been understandable. More was going on, though. His mother's miserliness about money—her
cheapskatiness
—was a part of it, and
so was whatever had made her start smoking again and caused her to cry in the night sometimes. The difference between his mother's Randall Garfield, the untrustworthy man who left the unpaid bills, and Alanna's Randy Garfield, the nice guy who liked the jukebox turned up loud . . . even that might be a part of it. (Had there really been unpaid bills? Had there really been a lapsed insurance policy? Why would his mother lie about such things?) This was stuff he couldn't talk about to Carol. It wasn't reticence; it was that he didn't know
how
.

They started up the hill. Bobby took one end of her rope and they walked side by side, dragging it between them on the sidewalk. Suddenly Bobby stopped and pointed. “Look.”

There was a yellow length of kite tail hanging from one of the electrical wires crossing the street farther up. It dangled in a curve that looked sort of like a question mark.

“Yeah, I see it,” Carol said, sounding subdued. They began to walk again. “He should go today, Bobby.”

“He can't. The fight's tonight. If Albini wins Ted's got to get his dough at the billiard parlor tomorrow night. I think he needs it pretty bad.”

“Sure he does,” Carol said. “You only have to look at his clothes to see he's almost broke. What he bet was probably the last money he had.”

His clothes—that's something only a girl would notice
, Bobby thought, and opened his mouth to tell her so. Before he could, someone behind them said, “Oh looka this. It's the Gerber Baby and the Maltex Baby. Howya doin, babies?”

They looked around. Biking slowly up the hill
toward them were three St. Gabe's boys in orange shirts. Piled in their bike-baskets was an assortment of baseball gear. One of the boys, a pimply galoot with a silver cross dangling from his neck on a chain, had a baseball bat in a homemade sling on his back.
Thinks he's Robin Hood
, Bobby thought, but he was scared. They were big boys, high-school boys,
parochial school
boys, and if they decided they wanted to put him in the hospital, then to the hospital he would go.
Low boys in orange shirts
, he thought.

“Hi, Willie,” Carol said to one of them—not the galoot with the bat slung on his back. She sounded calm, even cheery, but Bobby could hear fright fluttering underneath like a bird's wing. “I watched you play. You made a good catch.”

The one she spoke to had an ugly, half-formed face below a mass of combed-back auburn hair and above a man's body. The Huffy bike beneath him was ridiculously small. Bobby thought he looked like a troll in a fairy-tale. “What's it to you, Gerber Baby?” he asked.

The three St. Gabe's boys pulled up even with them. Then two of them—the one with the dangling cross and the one Carol had called Willie—came a little farther, standing around the forks of their bikes now, walking them. With mounting dismay Bobby realized he and Carol had been surrounded. He could smell a mixture of sweat and Vitalis coming from the boys in the orange shirts.

“Who are you, Maltex Baby?” the third St. Gabe's boy asked Bobby. He leaned over the handlebars of his bike for a better look. “Are you Garfield? You are, ain'tcha? Billy Donahue's still lookin for you from that
time last winter. He wants to knock your teeth out. Maybe I ought to knock one or two of em out right here, give im a head start.”

Bobby felt a wretched crawling sensation begin in his stomach—something like snakes in a basket.
I won't cry again
, he told himself.
Whatever happens I won't cry again even if they send me to the hospital. And I'll try to protect her
.

Protect her from big kids like this? It was a joke.

“Why are you being so mean, Willie?” Carol asked. She spoke solely to the boy with the auburn hair. “You're not mean when you're by yourself. Why do you have to be mean now?”

Willie flushed. That, coupled with his dark red hair—much darker than Bobby's—made him look on fire from the neck up. Bobby guessed he didn't like his friends knowing he could act like a human being when they weren't around.

“Shut up, Gerber Baby!” he snarled. “Why don't you just shut up and kiss your boyfriend while he's still got all his teeth?”

The third boy was wearing a motorcycle belt cinched on the side and ancient Snap-Jack shoes covered with dirt from the baseball field. He was behind Carol. Now he moved in closer, still walking his bike, and grabbed her ponytail with both hands. He pulled it.

“
Ow!
” Carol almost screamed. She sounded surprised as well as hurt. She pulled away so hard that she almost fell down. Bobby caught her and Willie—who could be nice when he wasn't with his pals, according to Carol—laughed.

“Why'd you do that?” Bobby yelled at the boy in
the motorcycle belt, and as the words came out of his mouth it was as if he had heard them a thousand times before. All of this was like a ritual, the stuff that got said before the
real
yanks and pushes began and the fists began to fly. He thought of
Lord of the Flies
again—Ralph running from Jack and the others. At least on Golding's island there had been jungle. He and Carol had nowhere to run.

He says “Because I felt like it.” That's what comes next
.

But before the boy with the side-cinched belt could say it, Robin Hood with the homemade bat-sling on his back said it for him. “Because he felt like it. Whatcha gonna do about it, Maltex Baby?” He suddenly flicked out one hand, snake-quick, and slapped Bobby across the face. Willie laughed again.

Carol started toward him. “Willie, please don't—”

Robin Hood reached out, grabbed the front of Carol's shirt, and squeezed. “Got any titties yet? Nah, not much. You ain't nothing but a Gerber Baby.” He pushed her. Bobby, his head still ringing from the slap, caught her and for the second time kept her from falling down.

“Let's beat this queer up,” the kid in the motorcycle belt said. “I hate his face.”

They moved in, the wheels of their bikes squeaking solemnly. Then Willie let his drop on its side like a dead pony and reached for Bobby. Bobby raised his fists in a feeble imitation of Floyd Patterson.

“Say, boys, what's going on?” someone asked from behind them.

Willie had drawn one of his own fists back. Still holding it cocked, he looked over his shoulder. So did Robin Hood and the boy with the motorcycle belt.
Parked at the curb was an old blue Studebaker with rusty rocker panels and a magnetic Jesus on the dashboard. Standing in front of it, looking extremely busty in the chest and extremely wide in the hip, was Anita Gerber's friend Rionda. Summer clothes were never going to be her friends (even at eleven Bobby understood this), but at that moment she looked like a goddess in pedal pushers.

“Rionda!” Carol yelled—not crying, but almost. She pushed past Willie and the boy in the motorcycle belt. Neither made any effort to stop her. All three of the St. Gabe's boys were staring at Rionda. Bobby found himself looking at Willie's cocked fist. Sometimes Bobby woke up in the morning with his peter just as hard as a rock, standing straight up like a moon rocket or something. As he went into the bathroom to pee, it would soften and wilt. Willie's cocked arm was wilting like that now, the fist at the end of it relaxing back into fingers, and the comparison made Bobby want to smile. He resisted the urge. If they saw him smiling now, they could do nothing. Later, however . . . on another day  . . .

Rionda put her arms around Carol and hugged the girl to her large bosom. She surveyed the boys in the orange shirts and
she
was smiling. Smiling and making no effort to hide it.

“Willie Shearman, isn't it?”

The formerly cocked-back arm dropped to Willie's side. Muttering, he bent to pick up his bike.

“Richie O'Meara?”

The boy in the motorcycle belt looked at the toes of his dusty Snap-Jacks and also muttered something. His cheeks burned with color.

“
One
of the O'Meara boys, anyway, there's so damned many of you now I can't keep track.” Her eyes shifted to Robin Hood. “And who are you, big boy? Are you a Dedham? You look a little bit like a Dedham.”

Robin Hood looked at his hands. He wore a class ring on one of his fingers and now he began to twist it.

Rionda still had an arm around Carol's shoulders. Carol had one of her own arms as far around Rionda's waist as she could manage. She walked with Rionda, not looking at the boys, as Rionda stepped up from the street onto the little strip of grass between the curb and the sidewalk. She was still looking at Robin Hood. “You better answer me when I talk to you, sonny. Won't be hard to find your mother if I want to try. All I have to do is ask Father Fitzgerald.”

“Harry Doolin, that's me,” the boy said at last. He was twirling his class ring faster than ever.

“Well, but I was close, wasn't I?” Rionda asked pleasantly, taking another two or three steps forward. They put her on the sidewalk. Carol, afraid to be so close to the boys, tried to hold her back, but Rionda would have none of it. “Dedhams and Doolins, all married together. Right back to County Cork, tra-la-tra-lee.”

Not Robin Hood but a kid named Harry Doolin with a stupid homemade bat-sling strapped to his back. Not Marlon Brando from
The Wild One
but a kid named Richie O'Meara, who wouldn't have a Harley to go with his motorcycle belt for another five years . . . if ever. And Willie Shearman, who didn't dare to be nice to a girl when he was with his friends. All it took to shrink them back to their proper size was one overweight woman in pedal pushers and a
shell top, who had ridden to the rescue not on a white stallion but in a 1954 Studebaker. The thought should have comforted Bobby but it didn't. He found himself thinking of what William Golding had said, that the boys on the island were rescued by the crew of a battle-cruiser and good for them . . . but who would rescue the crew?

That was stupid, no one ever looked less in need of rescuing than Rionda Hewson did at that moment, but the words still haunted Bobby. What if there
were
no grownups? Suppose the whole idea of grownups was an illusion? What if their money was really just playground marbles, their business deals no more than baseball-card trades, their wars only games of guns in the park? What if they were all still snotty-nosed kids inside their suits and dresses? Christ, that couldn't be, could it? It was too horrible to think about.

Rionda was still looking at the St. Gabe's boys with her hard and rather dangerous smile. “You three fellas wouldn't've been picking on kids younger and smaller than yourselves, would you? One of them a girl like your own little sisters?”