The Books of Fell (25 page)

Folie à deux.

That’s the official name for it.

Would Gilbert have written without Sullivan? Would Lewis have discovered anything without Clark?… Would Loeb have murdered without Leopold?

On that bus, on that autumn day in Bucks County, when the leaves were being torn from the trees by a bitter wind in an early snap, Lenny Tralastski met
his
other.

“Is this seat taken?” said he.

I am not going to introduce myself.

I will tell you the story of Lenny Last with as few asides as possible.

You’ll notice that I take some liberties, the privilege of any storyteller…. Maybe the dialogue isn’t verbatim; maybe this one wasn’t smiling, that one wasn’t frowning when I said he was.

It’ll all come out in the wash.

• • •

Aside:

Folie à deux means simultaneous insanity.

It takes two to tango … to tangle, too.

Keats, this is Mrs. Violet, the Sevens’ housemother.”

“Keats?” she said, raising one eyebrow the way she did when we’d do something she wasn’t sure we should do.

“Helen Keating,” Keats said.

“Keats. That’s a nice nickname. I like that.”

I thought of the fact I didn’t even know Mrs. Violet’s first name. I’d never seen her out of Sevens House, and I’d never imagined her having any other life.

“I didn’t think you’d be here,” I said. “Don’t you ever take a vacation?”

She was all in white. When wasn’t she? These thin-legged silk pants that grabbed her ankles, high heels, pearls under a flimsy blouse, and the blond hair loose, not held back in the bun as usual.

“I always go somewhere in summer,” she said, “but now I have to help prepare for the girls.”

“What girls?”

“The
girls,
Fell,” she said. “The girls! Surely you know about it, or were you gone by the time it was announced?”

“We didn’t go coed, I trust.” I laughed a bit smugly.

“As a matter of fact, we did…. When I saw you two coming up the walk, I thought Keats was one of our prospective students, looking over the campus.”

I was in shock.

Keats said, “Will the girls be able to come here?”

“When one gets into Sevens, yes, or as a visitor of a Sevens.”

“Oh no!” I groaned. “Girls in Sevens!”

Keats gave me a look. “And what’s wrong with that?”

“I just can’t imagine it.”

“I thought you were a little brighter than that.”

Mrs. Violet said, “So did I, Fell. You are, too.”

“Some sexist pigs are bright,” said Keats, “but they lack emotional maturity.”

“Don’t gang up on me,” I said.

“Oh, poor baby,” said Keats.

Mrs. Violet was laughing. “You’ll get used to the idea, Fell,” she said.

She just assumed I was coming back. If I didn’t, I supposed there’d be those who’d imagine it was because females were finally going to be a part of life at The Hill. Gardner’d gone coed. I tried to picture them there, but nothing would come through in focus.

I finally got around to showing Keats my suite, which was what had brought us to Sevens House.

If you’ve made a decision not to return, we must know immediately, Fell,
the headmaster’d written just last week.
And, of course, you must alert Sevens.

The place had the eerie look of some dead person’s rooms whose loved ones had decided to keep just as he left them.

There was the Smith-Corona word processor Dib and I had bought together. There was a photograph on my desk of me dressed up as Sevens’ founder, Damon Charles. I’d gone to The Charles Dance that way — every male attended as someone named Charles. I’d caught a lot of flak because it was disrespectful to dare to pose as him.

There were a few bottles of Soho lemon spritzer on the windowsill, and the jacket to my tan gabardine suit on the back of the desk chair.

And there, between a history of the downfall of the Roman empire and a Paul Zindel novel, was the little black folder, with the fleur-de-lys stamped on it in gold. Inside, Delia’s letters with the Switzerland postmark, a paper napkin from The Surf Club in The Hamptons, a newspaper photo of her in Zurich, in a raincoat, a scarf around her long black hair, a cigarette burning…. Delia: the antidote to Keats, the one who’d “pulled me out in time,” as Paul McCartney used to sing in one song…. A year later what I needed was the antidote to Delia.

I wondered where she was and if she ever thought about me. And I thought then what I couldn’t get out of my head all summer: Dib had never even been with a girl, except that first time at Willing Wanda’s. He hadn’t had a clue to what it was all about.

Behind me, Keats said, “You guys are really spoiled! I live in one room half the size of this one.”

“I wonder if I could ever come back here.”

“You mean because it’s coed?”

“I don’t know what I mean,” I said. But I did. I meant could I ever be the old John Fell again? I’d lied when I’d told Keats I was through blaming myself for what happened to Dib. That was like saying you’d gotten the mildew off something … and maybe you had. But it’d be back.

I couldn’t shake the idea that if only I’d spent a little more time with him, he wouldn’t have turned to Little Jack … and after he finally did, I was still too busy being a Sevens, and being me: self-absorbed, and self-important.

“It’s too hot up here,” Keats said. “I think I should go and check into that Howard Johnson’s we saw coming into Cottersville. Obviously, you can stay here after all.”

We hadn’t been certain that Sevens House would be open.

I could remember the day when, given this situation, I’d be scheming to be in the same place she was that night.

Instead, I told her, “Most girls stay at The Cottersville Inn right in town.”

“Then I’ll check in there. You should pack some of your stuff up … and maybe call Little Jack, hmmm?”

She was standing in front of the window. I could see The Tower in the distance, where the Sevens clubhouse was. I remembered standing at the top of that thing that night I was asked to join. I remembered the Sevens serenading me down below:

“What’ll you do this afternoon?” I asked Keats.

“Shop,” she said.

I had a sudden vision of girls streaming down from The Hill after classes, on their way into Cottersville to shop.

I walked Keats out the door, but she held up her hand as I tried to see her down the stairs and out the front.

“No, Fell, you get as much done as you can. I’ll be back for you around six.”

“Don’t snack,” I said. “I know a great place we can get some lobsters. My treat.”

“This is funny, isn’t it, Fell?” Keats said.

“What do you mean?”

“Remember us? Can you imagine lobster being the highlight of our evening back then?”

“Was it escargots? Shrimp? I don’t recall.”

She gave my arm a punch. Then she leaned into me and kissed me. “Remember now?” she said.

“Of course! It was sautéed eel.”

She blew me another kiss as she walked away from me. I smiled at the idea both of us were thinking the same thing about the night ahead of us: how far we’d come from the time we couldn’t keep our hands off each other … when we’d named the backseat of my car “The Magnet” … and when we kept making our dates earlier because we couldn’t wait.

“Fell?” Keats called at me from downstairs. “It’ll be more like seven. I want to shop for shoes out at the mall.”

• • •

As it turned out, she was waiting outside in her little baby-blue Benz at quarter after six, top down.

It wasn’t my treat, either … wasn’t fish, but ribs charcoaled on an outside grill.

We dined at a long redwood picnic table, covered with a blue-and-white-checked cloth.

We were in the backyard of 11 Acquetong Road, home of the Homers, Tom and Lucy and Little Jack.

We’d been invited to Little Jack’s birthday party, but it seemed we were to celebrate without him.

Oh, the excitement (the rapture, really) of meeting your other! Can you imagine what that would be like?

Neither could they, of course, because neither one knew he was meeting someone on that bus who would change him forever.

Life is mysterious, you know, or we’d have some clue as to what we’re all doing here.

“Is this seat taken?” he asked.

“Help yourself.”

“I’m Nels Plummer.”

“Leonard Tralastski. Hi!”

He sat beside Lenny on the aisle seat of the Gardner bus. Everything about him seemed to be the opposite of Lenny.

Lenny was tall, dark, black haired, and brown eyed behind the thick glasses he could not see without. He had a plain, average sixteen-year-old face, regular features, no ethnic imprint.

Nels, same age, was short, light skinned, and blue eyed. He had one of those round, angelic faces, and angel hair, too, golden and curled. He wore a little slanted grin most of the time, but it wasn’t particularly warm or friendly.

Lenny’s clothes were picked out and bought at Macy’s with an employee’s discount, by his mother.

Nels’s came from Brooks Brothers after he deliberated over them for a long time.

Lenny had on a brown suit and a wool tie.

Nels would not have worn either thing, not ever!

As they began talking, they discovered three things immediately.

1. About the same time Lenny’s father was dying a World War II hero, Nels’s mother was dying in childbirth. Then that summer past, Nels’s father died, too. Poor little tyke was alone in the world … almost …
almost. (Presque,
as they say in Paris; and in Madrid they say casi. See how many languages you can say “almost” in.)

“All I have is this older sister, but she’s too busy working,” said Nels.

“All I have is my mother, and she’s too busy working, too,” said Lenny.

2. Lenny was the big reader, but the smart one was Nels, who claimed he read only Swinburne.

“Who?” said Lenny. “He’s a poet.”

“I must have missed him,” said Lenny, who never read poetry except for kinky stuff:
HOWL!
or Leonard Cohen.

3. Neither boy had a big collection of friends back home… “or even one,” Nels admitted.

• • •

If Nels was comfortable being friendless, Lenny wasn’t. He made excuses for himself. He said how sick he’d been as a kid, how he’d invented Handy as a result and become fascinated by ventriloquism.

Nels groaned. “Remember I told you I had a sister?”

“Yes. Annette.”

“She’s adopted. They adopted her because they didn’t think they could have children…. Then guess what.”

“You came along.”

“Right, Lenny. Out of the blue, a mortal surprise to my mother…. But before I made my appearance, Annette was spending most of her time in bed. She was always sick with something. That’s how Celeste came into the picture.”

“Who’s Celeste?”

“My sister’s dummy. My father had it made for her. She was this big deal in our house when I was growing up.”

“Is she wooden?”

“Wooden. Red wig. She’s like another sister, Lenny. You see, Annette is a
real
ventriloquist. A professional. She’s considered very good, I guess.”

“I’d love to see her.”

“She works for Star Cruises aboard the
Seastar.” “
Neat!”

“Except for the fact that I hate that little tree stump of hers!”

Lenny looked at him to see if there was a possibility he was serious. He was.

He said, “Celeste had her own room when I was growing up, and more toys than I had…. Now my sister’s a fat pig because of her. You should have seen Annette when I was little, Lenny. She could have been a movie star!”

“How could Celeste make her fat?”

“She wanted her that way.”

“Are you kidding?”

“She’d open this ugly little red mouth and whine: Tick tock
tickers! Where’s my Snickers?
That’s her favorite food. Snickers bars.”

“I suppose Annette had nothing to do with it.”

“Oh, sure, Annette’s partly to blame.”

Lenny said to himself: Partly.

Nels said, “My sister is always on this seafood diet.”

“You can’t get that fat eating seafood.”

“On my sister’s seafood diet she sees food and eats it.”

Lenny laughed, but he was thinking, He’s not kidding about the dummy doing that to his sister, is he?

• • •

The school was coming into view.

It was at the top of a big hill.

Lenny said once that it “loomed” at you just as you rounded a bend and saw the city sign: COTTERSVILLE.

The bus was met by a dozen boys in light-blue blazers and navy-blue pants.

All the blazers had gold 7’s over the blue-and-white Gardner insignias.

Nels raised an eyebrow in a cynical expression as he looked out the window at them and back at Lenny.

The group began to form a seven, all the while singing:

And
… da da dee da da dee — I can never remember the words, but Lenny got to know them by heart. He loved that song as much as Nels didn’t.

Nels made up some vile verses of his own, so irreverent only he’d sing them.

Anyway, as they walked down the aisle of the bus, Nels asked, “What’s the seven supposed to mean?”

“Search me,” Lenny said.

“Well, it must mean
something,”
said Nels.

(You better believe it, Big Guy.)

Lucy Horner made spareribs that fell off the bone when you touched them with a fork. She made fresh applesauce from the apple trees in the yard. Potato salad with hard-boiled eggs in it.

After she’d served us this double-layer fudge cake with a butter icing, I was mellowed out on home cooking and into a soaring chocolate high.

They could have convinced me of anything, even that Little Jack was innocent.

Innocent … heartsick … and don’t forget: eager to contact me.

I told Mr. Horner that if his son had been all that eager, it would have been as simple as picking up the phone.

“He wanted to. He couldn’t.” “I tried to stop him from driving that day,” I said, “but he laughed and called me Felly.”

“He wanted very badly to see you. He still does.”

“What for? To say he’s sorry he was bombed?” I wanted to rub it in that Little Jack had been drinking. Somebody had to admit that. The police must have known. Maybe the Horners didn’t.

But they did. Mr. Horner’s eyes looked past me to some safer place in the distance.

He said, “I think the two of them had a fight in that car, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been about Jack’s drinking.”

“He hasn’t touched a drop since,” said Mrs. Horner. She was taking the candles out of the birthday cake to save, same as my mother’d save them for the next cake. When she’d come out with the cake inscribed H
APPY
S
EVENTEENTH
B
IRTHDAY
, J
ACK!
she’d made some apologetic noises about it being his favorite cake, and even though he wasn’t there it wouldn’t seem like his birthday if she didn’t bake it.

She had these big brown eyes, and a cherubic face framed by mounds of tangled hair.

I felt sorry for her, not sorry enough to join her in singing “Happy Birthday,” as Keats did … but sorry a woman like that had to be stuck with such a son.

“Says he’ll never drink again,” Mr. Horner said.

I don’t know why they both sounded as though that was some kind of major accomplishment. He was several years away from the legal drinking age.

I wanted to get back to the alleged fight. I asked Mr. Horner why he thought there’d been one.

“Jack was crying one night and — ”

“Crying his eyes out,” Mrs. Horner interrupted. “I’ve never seen our son weep that way.”

“He could hardly talk, but he did manage to get out that the last words he said to Dib were
Shut up!”

“Dib must have been reminding him he had one DWI and if he got another he’d be in big trouble. That’s what I think,” said Mrs. Horner.

I jumped right in at that point. “But apparently he
didn’t
get in big trouble.”

“Fell, Jack was run into. That old Cadillac crossed the line and rammed into Jack.”

I couldn’t really give either one of them a hard time. It was as though Central Casting had picked them to be The Nice Parents…. He even smoked a pipe, which gave him a sort of philosophical air: the thoughtful type. A pharmacist by profession, you could imagine him ministering to people, wearing one of those short white coats people wear who can’t have the long one that means MD.

“We’re not proud of what happened,” Mrs. Horner said.

“We’re not ashamed of it, either,” her husband said defensively. “Jack didn’t murder anyone, by design or by accident. Jack’s a victim, too.”

“Well …” said Mrs. Horner.

“Well what? He
is!”

“Well, he didn’t get charged for driving while drinking. We should be very grateful for that.”

He shot her a look.

Then he sighed, and by his posture seemed to cave in with relief that someone was finally saying what had been unspoken all evening. He stretched his legs out in front of him, ran his hand through his thinning hair, and sighed again.

“In a small town, people are family,” he said.

She said, “If Mrs. Greenwald, across the street, has a migraine and late at night needs something strong to get her out of pain, Tom’s not going to tell her sorry, you have no prescription.”

Keats was nodding in agreement and sympathy.

“The authorities knew Jackie had that one DWI, and his license was suspended…. He could have been in real trouble.”

“He’s never going to drive again, either. Never! That’s what he says,” Mrs. Horner said.

“That’s what he says now,” said Mr. Horner.

“I’m glad he’s not driving this weekend, with all the drinking that’ll be going on there.”

“I doubt there’ll be drinking,” he said.

“What kind of a convention doesn’t have plenty of drinking?” she said.

He said, “Jack’s at a ventriloquists’ convention.”

“The fellow driving the car? Ever hear of Lenny Last?” Mrs. Horner said.

Keats snapped a finger. “Of course! Now I remember! Lenny Last and Plumsie!”

“He was a ventriloquist,” Mr. Horner said. “I never heard of him.”

“I heard of him and I saw him!” Mrs. Horner said. “He was on
The Tonight Show
once, and I saw him on an afternoon show, too.”

“Anyway, that’s where Jack’s heading tonight. He’s going to a convention and selling the dummy,” said Mr. Horner.

“How did he get the dummy?” Keats asked before I could.

“It seems Lenny Last was alive for a while,” Mrs. Horner said. “He spoke to my son. He said, ‘Please take care of the dummy for me.’ That’s why I feel so bad about what Jack’s doing.”

I helped myself to another piece of the cake. It was the real thing, made from scratch, not the airy fluff that you opened a box, added an egg to, and then baked.

“He’s doing the only sensible thing,” said Tom Horner. “How do you take care of a dummy? You turn it over to someone who knows how to pull its strings.”

“Tom, it doesn’t have strings. It’s not a puppet.”

He ignored the correction and turned back to me. “This fellow Last had only one relative: his mother. She’s in a home in upstate New York. I called her to offer my help, and she asked me to place a death notice in
The New York Times.
She put everything but his hat size in it, said she didn’t care that it’d cost an arm and a leg. And I helped her get the body up there, too. Who was going to do it all if I didn’t?”

“Tom did everything he could for the old lady.”

“She had no quarrel with the idea that Jack keeps the dummy. She seemed relieved, if you ask me.”

“Then our telephone began to ring off the hook,” said Mrs. Horner. “This fellow was eager to buy the dummy.”

“Are you too young to remember Charlie McCarthy?”

“I’ve seen him in old movies,” I said. “He always wore a tux and a top hat, and the ventriloquist’s lips moved.”

“Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy,” Keats said. “Sure. Edgar Bergen was Candy Bergen’s father.”

“The same men who made Charlie made Plumsie,” said Mr. Horner.

“They were brothers,” she said. “The McElroy brothers. I remember the name because we’ve got McElroys for neighbors.”

“This fellow trying to buy the dummy is up to a thousand dollars now. One thousand dollars!”

“That’s why Jack went out to The Hamptons. He thinks the dummy’s probably worth a lot more.”

I was waiting for Keats to squeal,
The Hamptons!

Mrs. Horner said, “But he did the dumbest thing of all. He forgot Plumsie’s suitcase. Called us last night — ”

Then it came. “The
Hamptons?
That’s where I live!”

“You’re kidding, Kates!” Mrs. Horner just couldn’t get the name right.

“Keats will be heading there tomorrow,” I said.

“There’s a God in heaven!” said Mrs. Horner. “Do you know a place called Kingdom By The Sea?”

“Cap Marr’s place, sure,” said Keats. “Everything there is named after a poem by Edgar Allan Poe.”

“And the rooms don’t have numbers, they have names. Jack’s in one called ‘The Raven.’“ Mr. Horner’s face was wrinkled up suspiciously. I didn’t figure him for a poetry lover.

Keats laughed. “Yes, that’s the place, all right. It’s very romantic. There’s a big fountain in the courtyard. Cap Marr’s dead wife was supposed to be related to Poe … Last year they had a convention of numerologists.”

I’d never heard any of it. I’d only lived in Seaville under two years. But I remembered the place. It was outside of Amagansett, a huge structure that rambled on behind the ocean dunes. Last time I’d seen it, it looked like an old, abandoned amusement park.

“Would you take the suitcase to Jack?” Mrs. Horner asked Keats. “It’s got a whole wardrobe for the dummy inside. The convention begins tomorrow and runs to Monday.”

“Fell?” Keats looked at me. “Will you be finished by tomorrow? Would you come with me?”

“It sounds good to me, sure.” It sounded better than work. It sounded better than responsibility.

“Jack thinks he can get a better price if he’s got all Plumsie’s clothes. They’re very fancy duds, Jack says.”

“I would love to peek in on a ventriloquists’ convention,” said Keats. “I can’t think of anything more bizarre.”

“And that’ll give Jack the chance to talk with you, Fell,” Mr. Horner said. “I think he wants you to know exactly how the accident happened.”

And how it went unreported that Jack was drunk, with a suspended license for one DWI already — sure. Jack wanted to fill me in on all that.

But I was full of good food and pleasant summer-night-backyard vibes. It wasn’t the Horners’ fault they loved their son.

Keats and Mrs. Homer rambled on as they went in to get Plumsie’s things. I watched some bumblebees duck inside a red rose, leaned back, shut my eyes, and almost forgot Mr. Homer was across from me.

I sat up and glanced over at him.

He’d been watching me, I think. He looked away and back, shaking his head. Then he said, “I thought you’d be a lot more interested in all of this than you are, Fell.” “Why is that, sir?”

“Oh, never mind the sir…. I wish my boy had picked up some of that Hill polish. I guess being a day student is different.”

“Yes, it’s hard to be a townie at Gardner.”

“And of course you’re in the famous Sevens club.”

“How did you know that?” “I remember Jack telling me that Dib’s best friend was a Sevens. That’s you, isn’t it?” “That’s me.”

“It’s why I thought you’d be more enthusiastic about all this involvement my boy’s had with Lenny Last. He was the last one to speak to him … and now he’s got the dummy.”

“I don’t get it, Mr. Horner. What’s the connection with Sevens?”

“Why, he was a Sevens, Fell!”

“Are you sure, Mr. Horner?”

“He was staying at your residence.”

“That wasn’t mentioned in
The Compass.”

“I noticed. We protect our own. You protect your own. It wasn’t even mentioned that he was visiting Gardner. I guess Sevens
and
the school just can’t take any more bad publicity … But I sent some drugs to him there. Asthma medicine, and a little Valium. A Mrs. Violet signed for them.”

“During Easter vacation?”

“That’s right, Fell. And when he left … there was the accident. That same day.”

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“I’ve always been curious about the club…. The things you hear, sometimes it’s hard to believe.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, you know the things. That you take care of your own throughout a lifetime. That you live all over the world, and you keep in touch … the rewards … The Revenge.”

I knew he was going to get around to that.

“I think The Sevens Revenge is more myth than reality,” I said.

“Oh, Fell, I’m not trying to pin you down…. You should be proud of yourself. You must have done something good to get in with that group.”

That’s what everybody thought. If they only knew I hadn’t done anything but name a tree something with seven letters in it.

It was the great secret of Sevens, known only to its members.

We’d gotten in by mere chance.

Keats was carrying the suitcase when she came back with Mrs. Horner. It looked like the little cowhide carry-on my mom had ordered from the Sharper Image catalog for me.

I reached for the bag, and we thanked them for dinner.

“Fell?” said Mr. Horner. “Will you do me a favor? Will you let Jack talk to you before you say anything to him? He’s just a kid. He doesn’t have that Sevens polish.”

Keats gave me a poke in the ribs, grinning. “Not like Fell, hmmm?” she said to them.

The one sure thing to break Keats up was the idea I was cool. She’d known me from way back when I was wrestling wheels of cheese after school, in Plain and Fancy, then tooling up the long drive to her palatial home, my old 1977 Dodge Dart backfiring to announce me.

We stuck Plumsie’s suitcase in the trunk of the Benz and waved good-bye to the Horners.

Keats asked me to drive. She was tired.

“I’m so excited, Fell! To think you’re going to be upstairs in Adieu again … this time with Daddy’s permission.”

Her father had named their house Adieu, because it was the last one he would ever design before his retirement.

I could see her father’s face very clearly, the grimace after he’d asked me what
my
father did for a living and I’d said he was a detective.

“Was?”
he said. “Is he dead?” He made it sound very déclassé to be fatherless.

I didn’t have the right stuff for Keats’s crowd, only for Keats herself, and that was enough to blackball me forever.

“I think I’d better sleep on the beach,” I said.

“No. I think Daddy likes you now that he knows we’re not involved that way anymore.”

“To me, that’s more bizarre than a ventriloquists’ convention: keeping Daddy posted when you’re not involved that way anymore.”

“We’re a very close family,” she said.

I said, “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Remind me of close families,” I said. “My mother’s starting to date and I hate it!”

She reached over and messed up my hair. “Fell,” she said, “you’re so available when you’re down…. It’s nice.”

Nels said, “What’s the seven supposed to mean?” “Search me,” Lenny said.

“Well, it must mean
something,”
said Nels.

“I wonder if they assign roommates or what,” said Lenny.