Stealing Flowers (4 page)

We didn’t look at the rest of my room nor
did we return through the pantry to the kitchen. We raced down a
plush carpeted spiral staircase which was wide enough to play the
splits. We passed a huge front foyer. The pine floors had been
polished so that you could slide on them in your socks. They were
protected with East Indian hand-woven carpets, but Sally and I
skated from room to room in between them. Family portraits hung on
the walls, several of Sally. One was of a bright yellow bush-plane,
floating in the middle of a small lake, with Stan standing and
waving from the right pontoon.

Oil paintings of wild cats including a
cheetah and cougar, offset the family ones. We skated over more
pine floors, passed more pictures, and ran out through giant double
glass doors. The yard fell out into an immense deck leading to the
swimming-pool area, then into a thick group of trees hiding most of
the iron fences that ran for hundreds of feet along Rookery giving
the property privacy from the street.

In points beyond the pool were clusters of
beautiful tall white birch trees and swirling circles of knee-high
flowers swaying in the breeze. Ignoring it all, Sally jumped
straight into the pool after taking off her socks. It was a
rectangular shaped pool, painted brilliant cool aqua-blue. It was
perhaps twenty meters long and ten wide, and surrounded by
interlaced pale blue bricks and white wooden patio furniture with
soft blue cushions.

“Come in,” she cried. “It’s only up to
here.” She stood in the shallow end and I carefully climbed into
the pool using the ladder. The water wasn’t too cold and I jumped
up and down with Sally, keeping my legs firmly planted on the
ground. A bright blue slide ran from the shallow side into the deep
end and Sally turned on a tap which ran water over it. She climbed
the ladder and slid down, whooping it up, and though it looked like
enormous fun, I knew better than to go into the deep-end. However,
what I didn’t know was the shallow end, stopped abruptly.

I heard a splash behind me, it was Stan, and
I lost my footing, shooting over the lip. When my feet touched
bottom, I’d gone over my head, but kicked myself to the surface.
Doing so, I put myself even further out. I went down splashing and
kicking, swallowing a mouthful of water. I remembered I thought I
was going to die. That’s how drowning happens when you don’t know
anything about swimming. It is a mystery to the ignorant. Powerful
arms, snapped me back into the shallow end and I stood in the pool,
sputtering and coughing. Drawing breath was very difficult.

“Sweetie, when you’re in the pool with
Christian,” Stan said to Sally, “you’ll have to watch out for him.
You’ll have to turn-off your selfish button. Okay, sweetie?”

She nodded and drew up, holding my hand.
“What happened?” Mary asked from the lip of the pool, wearing a one
piece bathing suit which was grey and modest but didn’t hide her
fine figure.

“He took in a mouthful of water,” Stan
said.

I recovered and Mary taught me to tread
water before supper as Stan and Sally dove from the deep end and
swam around us. Mary was polite and her voice warmed up with every
passing minute. I thanked her for the lesson.

“You can’t very well thank us for
everything, Christian,” she said. “From the clothes, to the food,
to education, to everything, all you would do is thank us and feel
guilty. It won’t do. No more thanks. It’s enough that you are here
and that you put what opportunity this gives you to good use. We’re
here for you to make sure you succeed, that you are happy. Can you
understand that?”

It took all my self-control not to thank
her. Una’s supper was soft boneless chicken-breasts cooked with
honey Dijon mustard, cashews, and mandarins. I asked about each of
the other dishes: Wild rice, fresh corn on the cob, broccoli-heads
in white cheddar sauce and black bean soup, all of which I had
never tasted before. A bowl of salad was in the middle of the
table, but it looked like they weren’t going to make me eat rabbit
food, as Lloyd called it.

I’d my first glass of red wine and it was
nearly the foulest drink I’d ever tasted, but fortunately they also
had a glass of cold apple juice at my place and I swallowed this in
one enormous gulp to wash away the taste. Stan laughed at me.

The black bean soup was repulsive to look at
and I was disgusted to see Sally eating it like it was Campbell’s
tomato soup, but I did taste it and it was fine, but the thought of
it was too much for more than one spoon full. I tried the corn and
ate several mouthfuls, however, it appeared that the chicken had
been deliberately destroyed for the sole purpose of embarrassing me
and making me appear as though I was going to be too much trouble
to the Tappets.

For a moment, I wondered if Una had done it
on purpose. The most detestable mustard anyone thought to ever
create had been thrown in great dollops on top of it so that even
if I’d thought to have more than a few bites, I just couldn’t. The
rice had little pieces of sticks in it. The broccoli was hard, and
I’m sorry to say, the sauce smelt like puke. None of this stopped
the Tappets from eating it like it was manna.

“Is this tomato juice?” I asked and pointed
to a tall glass of red liquid beside my empty glass of apple juice.
Stan nodded and I tried this. I hated it also and wondered what I
would drink now to get the foul tastes out of my mouth. I was
horrified, when halfway into the meal, Una sat beside me to eat. I
thought she was going to make me finish my plate like they did in
the halfway homes. Even if you gag, they make you finish it, but
after a few moments, she looked at me, rubbed the top of my head.
“What would you like to eat?” she asked. I flushed completely red.
“It’s okay, my full-grown child,” she continued. “You’re not used
to our ways and I see you’ve tried everything on your plate. Kraft
dinner?”

I nodded. Within five minutes, I’d a
steaming plate of macaroni and cheese, another glass of apple
juice, and one of my favorite foods, Heinz Ketchup. After supper,
we cleaned up together and had vanilla ice-cream with chocolate
syrup while we watched a program on television in the living room
in which at the beginning a naked woman walks into the ocean. That
was my favorite part. She had a very nice figure.

Outside of the fact that I had seen little
television, what immediately got my attention was a tall thin man
with a moustache and thick curly hair over his ears. He had kind
intelligent eyes and a very natural smile. He held up to the
cameras a tiny square device. He talked for a few minutes, but I
didn’t really listen, I was looking around the room.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, I sat
in a Wassily chair. Its chrome-plated frame was made of
steel-tubing which held a grey-canvass seat and arm rests. Sally
sat in a similar one beside me. They’re still in the mansion today,
although they’ve been refurbished a number of times. Love seats,
sofa chairs, matching couches, and a Chippendale mahogany chair,
were arranged together around the television. Huge vases with grey,
silver, light powder-blue and green fern-like dried plants stood in
several spots around the room. An enormous glass coffee table held
fresh flowers and bamboo shoots in water.

The television sat on a stainless-steel
stand with only a large palm tree beside it, the pot which held it,
was a silver color, but the whole thing was framed by an enormous
window ten feet behind it which looked out on one of the
side-yards. Directly behind the couches was a long wall of
floor-to-ceiling windows which faced the backyard, although a fine
white sheer-curtain covered them. Two enormous pictures hung on the
wall, but I could see neither one of them clearly. Glancing again
at the television, I was amazed to see the tall thin man now
talking to Stan. I stood out of my chair. “How do they do that?” I
asked.

Everyone laughed. “The program is about
computers,” Stan answered. “We don’t watch much television, but we
had to see this.”

I tried, but I didn’t understand much of
what was discussed in the interview, except that Stan’s predictions
about the future were hailed by the man as a windfall for everyone.
The man talked about abundance, new leisure time, and an easier
life for everyone. It sounded absolutely marvelous to my ears and I
was beginning to realize I had been adopted by famous people. I’d
never met anyone who had been on television before.

After the program was over, we all clapped
and Mary and Stan took Sally and me to the Jersey Port Theater to
see a movie, The Lion in Winter. It was the first time I had seen a
motion picture on the big screen, and though I remember it being
hard to understand, I was riveted through the whole thing.

The theater seats were comfortable and we
sat high up in the second tier, eating popcorn and drinking ice
cola. I held Sally’s hand through the whole story; the castles,
horses, knights, warriors, and English landscape were thrilling.
That night before sleep, Stan came into my room and sat on the edge
of the bed. “How was your first day with us?” he asked.

I swallowed to keep the tears out of my
eyes. “Great.”

“When I was a boy your age, my father left
my mother. He wasn’t much of a father anyway, always drunk and
unhappy. When I started in business after the war, I invented and
patented a lathe machine for making precision tools. Now we have
factories in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Japan, and are
making many things. Soon, we’ll have many more factories. Mary is
wonderful at running companies and knowing what to buy. I was a
fighter pilot in Korea, in a conflict just after the Second World
War. If you don’t know what war WWII was, it is the one where the
Western Democracies fought against nations who wanted to impose a
dictatorial government on the world, where you wouldn’t be able to
vote on who runs things. We have an election going on in our
country for president this year between Richard Nixon and whoever
the Democrats elect in Chicago at their upcoming convention.

“Mary and I will tell you more about
politics as you grow up. I’m primarily a business man and I’m not
really interested in it. Left to my own devices, I like to tinker
with new ideas and to fly. I can teach you two things mainly:
Commercial enterprise and being a pilot. Tomorrow, I’ll take you
out for a quick flying lesson in my Cessna before I leave on a
business trip. I’ll be away a few days. I quite often am. Next
summer, if you’re all caught-up in your schooling, I’ll take you
away with me a few times. I just wanted to say that I’m thrilled to
have you as part of our family. Remember what Mary said tonight at
supper. We want you to do well and go far. I think you can, but
you’re our son now, and we’ll look after you no matter what.
Welcome home.”

I couldn’t say anything, I was too emotional
and after he’d left, I made sure the door was closed tight and
looked around the room carefully. I liked the wallpaper with the
airplanes and wondered what kind of games I could play with the
dinky-toy ones. Even though I had been alone in the world for the
first eight years, I’d never really played any solitary games.

I walked into the closet, astounded how big
it was. I thought of sleeping there tonight. It seemed much safer,
but what would the Tappets think if they found out? Some clothes
hung there and two new pairs of shoes lay on the floor. I tried
them on and they fit.

Behind another door, I was surprised to find
my very own bathroom with my very own tub, and a big one too. Fresh
towels hung on three walls. Toiletry items such as boxes of
tissues, shampoo, soap, toothpaste and cologne lay in a cupboard
below the sink. The door even locked.

Never mind the encyclopedia. I wanted to
take a bath with Zest soap. I’d seen a commercial just this very
evening and there were several bars. In front of a mirror which ran
from floor to ceiling, I took off my clothes and unwrapped the
purple sucker Sally had given me in the hospital, and licked it
while the water poured into the tub. I was very thin to my own
critical eye, but my skin was smooth, without any hair, and I
looked healthy with red cheeks and shining hair.

I peeled off the bandage and looked closely
at the repair job. It had a purple color and the cut seemed fused.
After soaking for some time, I dressed in my old pajamas, and lay
on some blankets on the closet floor, sleeping until about one
o’clock. That was the time, Lloyd use to come in and wake me up
every night. I tiptoed across the hall and snuck into Sally’s room,
crawling under the covers with her. She moaned softly and cuddled
up.

I held her tightly. She wore a night gown
with no panties and I snuggled up against her; it was wonderful and
warm. I hated to leave, but even at eight-years-old, I understood
enough not to be caught in bed with her in the morning. They might
not have thought anything had happened, and it hadn’t, but they
would have made sure that I didn’t go into her room again. At four
in the morning, I kissed her good night and returned to my room.
This time I slept in my bed. I woke up and stayed under my fine
smelling blankets, listening to the sounds of the house. Outside,
it was another sunny day. After I washed and dressed, I went down
stairs.

“What would you like?” Una asked me when I
came into the kitchen at around nine o’clock.

“Where’s Sally?”

“Do you hear the piano in the background?” I
nodded. “She’s doing her lessons.”

I listened more intently. “Can I go
see?”

“Tell me first what you want? Sally is
having blueberry pancakes.”

“Okay.”

Walking by myself through the mansion in the
morning, the sunlight had a magical quality, made all the more
uncanny by the echo-sound of Sally’s scattered piano. I noticed a
large picture above a fireplace mantel. Stan, Mary, and Una, stood
outside a small restaurant almost dwarfed on either side by huge
coconut trees.