The Books of Fell (2 page)

One day Keats and I watched them, through the elephant grass, on a dune out behind Adieu. “Who are they?” I asked her. “Woodrow and Fern Pingree,” Keats said. “They live at Fernwood Manor. Woodrow and Fern. Fernwood. Get it? Isn’t that really gross, calling their house after their two first names?”

“At least it’s in English,” I said. “The Penningtons aren’t French, and neither are you. So what’s this Beauregard and Adieu? I think
that’s
really gross.”

“You just don’t like Daddy,” Keats laughed.

“Why didn’t he just call it Good-bye? What’s this Adieu crap?”

“Adieu sounds classier.”

“It sounds more pretentious,” I said.

She put her hand gently across my mouth and said, “Hush, Fell! Don’t start in on Daddy. Let’s watch the Pingrees instead.”

Woodrow Pingree had the muscles of someone who worked out regularly. From the neck down he looked like a man in his late thirties. Above the neck he was around fifty, white-haired, the cut close-cropped like someone in the military. He had a red hue to his face that my father’s high blood pressure used to bring to his.

Woodrow Pingree was coming out of the water, even though it was a cold May afternoon, so chilly Keats and I were bundled up in sweaters. Fern Pingree was sitting back near the dunes, sketching.

“He’s always going in in weather like this,” said Keats. “I’ve never seen her go in, not even in summer.”

“Is she drawing him, do you think?”

“I know she’s not. She only paints the ocean. I saw an exhibit of hers at the Stiles Gallery. There are never any people in her ocean scenes, and get this! — she doesn’t sign her name. She draws a teensy-weensy fern where the artist’s name would be.”

Fern Pingree looked much younger than Woodrow Pingree. When my father had that last client with the much younger wife, he’d tell me some men imagine that a new young wife will give them back their youth. I’d say, but what’s in it for the new young wife? Money, usually, he’d say. He’d say those young women don’t want to wait for a young man to make it, so they grab some old geezer who believes one of them when she says he’s sexy, he’s fascinating, he dresses too old for how she sees him. Oh, the crap they hand a poor guy you wouldn’t believe!

Fern Pingree had inky black hair pulled back behind her head. She was wearing white-framed dark glasses. She was dressed in a white jogging suit with a red down vest and a pair of those shiny olive Bean boots. She had her sketch pad propped up on her knees, but the moment she saw Woodrow Pingree coming toward her, she put it aside. She grabbed a white towel-cloth robe, got to her feet, and ran to meet him, reaching up to put the robe over his wet shoulders.

“His first wife died about eight years ago,” said Keats. “That place never had a name until Fern came into his life.”

“I don’t think I’d name a place anything, either,” I said.

“I don’t think you’ll have a place to name,” said Keats. “What do chefs make a year? About twenty thousand?”

“I won’t be just a chef. I’ll own the place,” I said.

“Oh, you’ll
own
the place! Will the place be a Burger King, or a McDonald’s?”

We were giving each other little pushes, clowning around until we heard Mr. Keating’s voice bellowing out over the bullhorn.

“HELEN? I WANT YOU!”

“I want you, too, Helen,” I said.

The first time old man Keating ever pulled that on us, we’d jumped as if someone were shooting at us. We’d been stretched out in the dunes and his voice had come booming over that thing like the wrath of God, ready to punish us for all we were about to do.

That afternoon, the Pingrees heard Mr. Keating’s voice, too, and glanced up in our direction so that for a moment we were looking at them and they were looking at us.

“Damn Daddy!” Keats said. “That’s really humiliating! I know he’s watching us through binoculars, too.”

“Let’s give him something to look at!” I said, and I tried to grab her, but she pulled away. “I have to live with Daddy, Fell! You don’t!”

I gave a little wave to the Pingrees as we stood up, but they didn’t wave back.

“They don’t encourage neighborly behavior,” said Keats. “They don’t even wave when they come out of their driveway the same time we come out of ours. Daddy says it’s just as well. He doesn’t want to know his neighbors, either.”

“He knows the Penningtons.”

“That’s different. They’re old money, and Skye Pennington is in my crowd. We don’t know anything about the Pingrees.”

I tried to take her hand, but she was thinking of Daddy with his binoculars out. The very thought of Daddy’s watching us touch each other stopped Keats cold.

“We don’t even know what Woodrow Pingree does for a living,” said Keats.

“Ah!” I said. “The all-important question! What do you do for a living? What does your father do for a living?”

Keats let that one go by. “But they have this weird kid. He’s not a kid, really, he’s about your age.” I was exactly one year younger than Keats, but in high school a senior is a senior and a junior is not a kid, really, he’s about my age.

Keats said, “This kid goes to a military school down south somewhere. Daddy really hates him.”

“He must have something admirable about him if Daddy hates him,” I said.

“Last Thanksgiving Daddy was jogging down on the beach and this kid jumped out of the dunes and pointed a gun right at Daddy. When he pulled the trigger, a black balloon sailed out of the mouthpiece with BOOM! BOOM! written on it in white. Daddy almost had a heart attack before he saw that it wasn’t a real gun. So Daddy called Woodrow Pingree, and do you know what that man said?”

“What?”

“He said, ‘I’m sorry, but Ping loves tricks,’ and then he laughed like it was funny.”

“I think it’s kind of funny myself.”

Keats said what she always said. “You just don’t like Daddy.”

That was the only time I even thought about the Pingrees, until the night I drove into the back of their dark-blue Mitsubishi.

You look like you’re going someplace special,” said Woodrow Pingree, after he lifted the hood of my Dodge and made the horn stop blowing. “I was. I’m not now.” I’d gotten out to face him. He lit a Viceroy and shoved the little white Bic lighter back into the pocket of his sports coat. “This shouldn’t take long. We just need to exchange some insurance information. You can probably still make it.”

“I changed my mind,” I said. “I’m not going where I was going.”

He laughed as though I’d said something funny and told me he didn’t think he was going where he was going, either.

“So follow me up to the house,” he said. “We might as well be comfortable while we’re writing down all the information.”

I got back behind the wheel and waited for him to go up the driveway first. I had a melon-sized dent in my right front fender, but I figured I was ahead because he didn’t seem at all angry about his back fender. At least this would help take my mind off Keats, who was probably a total wreck because she had to miss her Senior Prom. Things like that were important to Keats. She made a big deal over everything from Easter to Valentine’s Day. She loved ceremonies, traditions, rituals … and the Senior Prom was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It’d kill Keats not to show up there.

Fernwood Manor didn’t look like much of a manor, not like Beauregard or Adieu. There were only two stories. It was built of stone and shingle, with only one chimney. There was a hedge out front, and some trees in tubs. There was a metal jockey holding out a steel ring.

Woodrow Pingree was smoking, no hands, as he got out of the Mitsubishi in the circular driveway. He took another look at the damage I’d done, then gave me as much of a smile as he could and still hold the Viceroy between his lips.

We started walking toward the front door.

“What’s your name?” he asked me.

I told him. I told him that I knew his. I’d seen him go swimming one cold day in May.

“Was that you up there in the dunes? Were you with the Pennington girl or the Keating girl?”

“Helen Keating,” I said.

“I tell my boy it’s a shame. Two beautiful girls within walking distance and he won’t even bother to go over and introduce himself.”

He held the door open for me, and we walked down this black-and-white tile floor, with a living room to the right, and a dining room the other way.

“Woody?” Mrs. Pingree was sitting on a white wicker chair in the center of the living room. She was an audience of one, facing this kid in a black top hat, who was standing behind a card table with a cloth covering it. He had on a black turtleneck sweater and black pants, and there was a black cape with a red lining over his shoulders. He had a wand in one hand. His glasses were about a half inch thick.

“It’s all right, sweetheart! This young man ran into my car down at the bottom of the hill. Don’t let me stop the show! We’ll have a talk in my study.”

He was sort of leaning into the room, without inviting me to go that way.

Mrs. Pingree had her white-framed dark glasses pushed back on her head. She was a tiny woman. I thought she looked a little like Yoko Ono, John Lennon’s widow, without the oriental eyes. I guessed she was in her thirties.

“Then you’re not going out, Woody?” she said.

“No, I’ll be here.”

He led me through the dining room toward another room.

“My son’s going off to a summer camp for budding magicians in a few weeks,” he said. “When he gets there, he has to put on a show. So he’s practicing. Do you like magic?”

“Only sort of.” I really didn’t like it at all. I thought only real yo-yos did.

“I think my wife only sort of likes it, too, but she tries to humor Ping. He’s a nice boy, but he’s like America was in 1491. No one discovered it yet.” He chuckled at his own joke and led me into his study.

There were a lot of framed photographs lining the walls. There was a large desk, with French doors behind it leading out to a terrace.

He pointed to a leather armchair beside his desk and said to make myself comfortable. He said he was going to call “the Institute” and let them know he wasn’t going to be there after all.

He punched out a number, then said to me, “I work at Brutt Institute in Bellhaven. Do you know the place?”

I shook my head no. I only knew that Bell-haven was down in Nassau County.

“No reason why you should,” he said. “I’m a physicist. Do you like science?”

“It’s my worst subject.”

“Are you flunking it?”

“No, not flunking. But anything to do with science and I go down into the B’s.”

“So. You’re mostly an A student,” he said. And when I nodded, he added, “Like my son.”

Someone answered the phone at that point. Pingree said, “Something’s come up. I won’t be by. No, nothing to worry about.”

He put down the receiver. “I didn’t have anything important scheduled. I’ve seen every one of my son’s tricks again and again, so …” He let his voice trail off. “Did you bring in your insurance card?”

I got it out of the pocket of my white dinner jacket.

“After telling you to bring yours in I forgot to bring in mine,” he said. “I’d better get it, so we can write down all the information. You want a Tab?”

“Do you have Coke?”

“Just Tab. My wife’s always on a diet.”

“Okay. Tab. Thanks.”

He stood up. “You look like you were on your way to a dance. Are you sure you don’t want to go?”

I told him my date got sick.

He stubbed out the cigarette he’d just lit and said he’d be right back.

I sat there for a while, glancing through a yearbook that was on the end of his desk. It was from The Valley Academy. The motto of The Valley Academy was
Ne Pas Subir.
Don’t submit.

There were things written across photographs of boys in uniform.

And,

And,

It was more of the same all through Woodrow Pingree, Jr.’s, yearbook. I wondered why any kid would bring it home to let his folks see. I wouldn’t have.

I got up and walked to the French doors. I could see the lights of Adieu across the way. It seemed as though every light in the place was on. I wondered if Eaton was throwing a party over there while the Keatings were in New York City.

I opened the door to get more of a view just as Mr. Pingree returned with two Tabs on a tray, carrying his insurance card between his teeth.

I took the tray from his hands.

“That’s a good idea,” he said, nodding toward the terrace. “Let’s sit out there.”

After we went outside, he sat there writing out names and numbers he copied from our insurance cards. I stood, fascinated by the clear view of Adieu. Even the driveway lights were on. You could hear the ocean over the dunes.

Finally, Mr. Pingree tore a sheet of paper in half, handed me a piece of it, and said all the information I needed was there.

“I know now isn’t a good time,” he said, “but I’d like you to meet my boy sometime. He needs a buddy.”

“I saw his yearbook in there,” I said.

“He’s through at Valley now. Are you a sophomore?”

“I’m going to be a senior.”

“At Seaville High?”

“Probably not. My mother wants to move back to Brooklyn.”

“So you’re not from here?” “No. Brooklyn.”

“How long have you been out here?”

I told him, all the while staring over at Adieu. For someone who didn’t even wave at his neighbors, he seemed really interested in a complete stranger. He asked a lot of questions. I found myself rattling on about my father’s heart attack, my kid sister, my mother’s job at Dressed to Kill — I even told him about the Born to Shop decal I’d stuck on the back of my mother’s Volkswagen that morning.

He laughed hard at that.

I said, “I guess all women could use one of those decals for their bumpers.”

“My first wife would have clobbered you for that remark,” he said. “She was a feminist. She hated it when you tried to say females were this way or they were that way. She’d say that was sexist, and I’d say well, when the day comes when we don’t know who’s going to have the baby, the male or the female, we can stop talking about the differences between us.”

I kind of liked him. But I couldn’t give him my full attention, sit down and sip my Tab and shoot the bull with him, as he seemed to want me to do. I couldn’t get Keats off my mind. I kept thinking of her on her way into New York City while her whole class was pouring out of cars right that minute, heading into the Seaville High gym, the band playing, all the girls wearing flowers.

“This dance you were going to, was it over at the high school?”

“The Senior Prom,” I said.

He winced and said, “Ouch!”

“It’s not so bad for me. It wasn’t my prom. It was hers.”

“The Keating girl’s?”

“Yes.”

“Still …” he said. “You wouldn’t go stag?” “I don’t really hang out with any senior but her.” “Who do you hang out with? You have your own crowd?”

“I don’t hang out that much.”

“Oh. A loner. Like my son.”

I said, “Well …” with a noncommittal shrug. I wasn’t a loner, but the crowd I’d hung out with my last year in Brooklyn was filled with fast trackers. They were the kind my father’d take in off the streets and book, days he used to still walk a beat.

Pingree was a chain-smoker. He’d light one Viceroy after the other. He’d drop the spent butts into a seashell ashtray on the wrought-iron table in front of him.

He had very light sea-colored eyes. Around his neck he wore a scarf the same color, tucked into a white shirt.

I thought of the purple silk bow tie Keats had bought to match my eyes. I watched Adieu.

“I didn’t go to a high school,” Pingree said. “I went to Gardner School. Did you ever hear of it?”

“No, sir.” I was watching a car go up the driveway over at Adieu.

“It’s a fine old school. My father went there and his father before him. Now, Ping will enter there as a junior.”

I knew the car. It was Quint Blade’s silver Porsche.

“Pingrees have always gone to Gardner,” said Woodrow Pingree.

Then I saw Keats.

I saw her walk out the front door of Adieu with Mr. Keating.

I watched Quint Blade get out of the Porsche and go around and open the passenger door for Keats. He had on a light-blue dinner jacket, with black tuxedo pants and a white ruffled shirt. Keats was in a long white gown, with gold slippers. She had a white cape over her shoulders. She had my white orchid.

“Those Gardner years were my happiest years,” Mr. Pingree was saying.

I murmured,
“Ummm hmmm.”

“I still know all four verses to the school song,” he said.

I had the feeling he was almost ready to sing them.

I watched Keats’s father wave from the front steps as the silver Porsche pulled away.

I had to sit down or sink to my knees.

“Someday,” said Pingree, “maybe I’ll tell you about that school.”

I figured he was this lonely man, with a young wife and a ditsy kid — a man who’d planned to drive down into another county to check in at his office just for something to do.

Then I came along. Someone to talk to — never mind what I’d done to his Mitsubishi, this fellow needed someone to talk to.

When I visited my grandfather at his nursing home, he’d always try to get me to stay another hour. He’d say things like, “Someday I’ll tell you what happened the first day your father ever walked a beat.” William the Conqueror might not be in my background, but there were a lot of cops.

I’d ask my grandfather to tell me about it, and his eyes would light up. He’d say, “You want to hear about it
now?”

But this man across from me was no relation. I couldn’t rise to the occasion and do him any favors.

I kept thinking she’d called Quint Blade and he’d come running.

I swallowed my Tab, chug-a-lug.

“I have to go,” I said.

“So soon?” Pingree said.

“So soon?” my grandfather would always say. “When is your father coming, Johnny?”

He’s not, Granddad. He had a heart attack, remember?

Pingree got up when I did.

“I’ll walk you out,” he said.