The Business of Naming Things (11 page)

Father Paul finds himself laughing throughout this tale at the author's gentle sarcasm delivered in sentences as sharp as strung diamonds, all facets beautifully balanced in the weight of clauses and the light they carry. As the offending older gentleman, the wonderfully named (and diminutive) Mr. Pint, struggles in the summer heat to turn the ice-cream crank, Father Fabre quietly offers to take a turn. “But Mr. Pint, out to deny his size and years, needed no help, or lost in his exertions, had not heard.”

Father Paul laughs loudly, and rereads the lines about Mr. Pint—such care and attention and not a little bit of dignity bestowed upon the little man's efforts through the writer's own. Father Paul reads around in the story, delight after delight. When he reaches the end, where, indeed, there is a near-miraculous presence of grace in the church—the pastor's way, gentle stonewalling, perhaps the Church's way, prevails—Father Paul feels joy in his breast, at last: All come together to pray before the curate at devotions; his pastor, in the “dim,
dell-like recesses of the nave,” opens a few windows. A lovely feat, a lovely, perfect story, and Father Paul begins to whimper then, to feel his eyes moisten, perhaps a cry coming. Somehow, he understands what it is to listen. The Lord listens.

There is a knock on the door to room 11. “It's Mike, Father. You must open up.”

Seeney, his face worn, stands there, with state troopers at his shoulders—like crows, thinks Father Paul.

T
HE
N
EWMAN
B
OYS

I

“C
LEAN UNDERWEAR
, M
ICHAEL
,” said Michael's mother when she knocked on his door in the morning. He knew what this meant: They were going clothes shopping.

Michael's mother had directed his back-to-school shopping the previous August, on the eve of his entrance into seventh grade. It was considered a success. When outfitted, he looked neither like a farmer nor a beatnik, but “a young man from Andover,” as his mother put it. Michael didn't know what to think. But that was last year, an okay school year, in his view. He'd made the honor roll; he'd finished third in the low hurdles at Field Day and received a ribbon; and, at the end of the school year, he'd proven himself adept at spin the bottle. In the last six months or so, he'd had his growth spurt—he was no longer a size 14 boys'. He might even be a men's small.

It was big news for Michael's mother to drive the Cadillac
anywhere
. In her worldview, women didn't drive; they were driven—in every sense of the word. Michael didn't know if this made his mother modern or old-fashioned, and he didn't know whom to ask.

The everyday driving in the family was left mostly to his father, who motored the old Ford truck with the emblem of a
big bull on the driver's side door to and from the barn twice a day, ran errands, and made his Friday-night jaunts to the taverns on the river, where he talked local politics, shot pool, and came back with a few stories that he shared carefully at Saturday supper. And then there was the handyman, Ted Farrell, who drove a little. Ted helped on the farm some but was generally at the beck and call of Michael's mother. It was Ted who squired her to her hair appointments, to checkups with Dr. Forquet, and for her monthly visit to the credit union in Dannemora to make her deposits.

Indeed, Gwendolyn (Chilcott) Touhey spent most of her time right at home in the large salon, doing her accounts—Michael understood that a block of properties she'd inherited in Troy was the principle source of the family income. The Touheys lived in the biggest house in town, a three-story Victorian with a widow's walk and a cupola, though they were the smallest family in Oreville, but for the childless.

I
T HAD BEEN A SULLEN SUMMER
for Michael. A yellow coin of impetigo on his right shin had kept him from the swimming hole during most of August, and a badly sprained left ankle, incurred in the spring while playing in the hayloft, had dashed most of his Little League season. To make matters worse, in July his best friend's family had moved away, taking his best friend's older sister, Pearl, with them. Michael, as a result of these deprivations, spent most of his spare time during that summer of '66 reading the
Sporting News
his father would bring home, with its endless statistics on every major-league team as well as stats on all the minor leagues—the Pacific Coast League, the International League, the American Association, all the way down to the rookie leagues. It was
Michael's world. And there was also the one old copy of
Play-boy
he'd stolen from the outhouse at Macomb Park: Stella Stevens stretched out on a white mink bench, plus a long, confounding story by Ernest Hemingway. Michael's next world. As Labor Day weekend approached, for the first time he found himself adrift and, also for the first time, excited about returning to school. He was looking forward to the trip with his mother to find a new wardrobe.

“It's the finest men's clothier south of Montreal,” his mother said at breakfast—a soft-boiled egg in a cup, three fingers of toast for her, a bowl of Wheaties and glass of prune juice for him. “The finest north of Bergdorf's. The Merkels are Jewish, you know.

“Now wash up.”

T
HE FIFTEEN-MILE TRIP TO THE NEAREST CITY
, where there were nice shops in an actual downtown with traffic lights and metered parking and a pizza parlor, was very navigable; indeed, it was a leisurely route—a well-banked two-lane road that followed the easy laze of the river. Michael's mother drove slowly, with no distractions—no radio, no conversation. She eyed the road with an intense concentration. She shared this with her son, catching her breath at a four-way stop: “You line up the hood ornament with the stripe on the right shoulder and you'll always know where you are.”

She wore hose with that thick black line down the back of each calf like an angry vein. She wore heels, making her taller than her son, who was in khakis and tennis shoes and a light jacket over a sweatshirt. As she strode down the aisle of Merkel's, greetings of “Mrs. Touhey, good day to you” came from two men on the floor. Michael walked in her wake.

Michael knew he was the only boy from Oreville, a poor town, to be shopping at Merkel's—aside from Norton & Sons, it was the most expensive around. The Merkels' shop—long and narrow and high-ceilinged—featured chocolaty cherrywood shelving and cabinets. You could open a little glass door on sweet hinges and look at ties, or you could gently tug a drawer that slowly rolled toward you with a pleasing rattle and inspect the folded shirts there arrayed. It was as if everything had already found a home and was in its place, and you were just there viewing someone's magnificent personal collection. But it was all for sale.

A grid of pigeonholes, like something you might see behind the desk at a hotel on a TV show, held plush cotton socks, each pair folded in half so that what you saw was a soft turn of color—blues on blacks on grays on greens—stacked in long columns. On the higher shelves, above offerings of men's colognes standing on a marble mantel, were the sweaters—V-necks, crews, cardigans, turtlenecks.

“The cornflower is nice,” Michael's mother said. “Goes with your eyes. But I'll leave you alone. I'll pop into Norton's next door. I need a hat.”

Through several costume changes in the fitting room, Michael tried to imagine himself in different guises. But since he was concentrating on how he might look to Jody Favaro, in his class, or the incoming Sandy Champaigne, who already had a reputation, his choices were fairly narrow: Those girls were both from Morrisonville, how different could they be? He looked at himself in the full-length mirror. He looked at himself as he was—a dopey kid in Nowheresville. He wanted to look like George Harrison. He wanted a long, lean face with sunken cheeks and high cheekbones and big teeth. He wanted a face that was sad and witty; that would do. But
he looked like Opie Taylor—no glamour, no forelock. He couldn't wait till he had to shave.

After an hour or so, his mother came calling. She seemed rushed and excited, in high color. She was rocking one toe up on a high heel. Michael was glumly looking through a glass-topped cabinet—at tie pins and men's grooming implements. He wished for the future. He wanted to go home but could never say so in words. She didn't ask what had happened. It was up to him to say. And nothing had happened. He looked at her as if to say, So?

Michael's mother spoke rapidly and spun two parallel streams of content. First, that she had found, next door “just the style for you—more Continental, shall we say. Come see.” And that she had run into Mrs. Newman there—“of the Newman family moving into the Dashnaw house.”

The Dashnaw house was where Michael had spent much of his childhood—it was where his friend Terry Dashnaw lived, had lived, and where Terry's older sister, Pearl, had lived, and grown, and ditched Bucky Weir because of what happened at the keg party, and slept, in that bedroom Michael could see from his own, where when her light went out, so did his. Perhaps she'd notice. But now it didn't matter. They'd moved.

“Come, let's go next door to Norton's.”

Norton's was a traditional English shop, always out of fashion except to the few folks in the area—college deans and surgeons and such—who might fancy custom shirts or have need of a boot maker. But Michael's mother, perhaps correctly, had connected the staid British style to what the new music bands from England were wearing.

Michael's mother had an odd respect for the Beatles. As a family, they had watched the band's ballyhooed appearance on
The Ed Sullivan Show
two years before. Everything was
dark, a snowed-in winter Sunday night. Not long after the president had been killed and the Catholic priest in town had had a breakdown, these longhaired boys appeared to all that screaming and Michael's mother decided they were polite, well-dressed boys with lovely voices. Michael's father snorted at that but seemed to agree. And Michael thought all the boys seemed strange except George, who was the youngest, still a teenager.

Mother and son walked into Norton & Sons.

W
HEN THEY GOT HOME
, Michael carried all his packages into his room, where he planned to array them on his bed in private to see just what he had done, but his mother insisted he come to the kitchen table for some lunch. As he helped prepare, working the can opener, setting out “fork, then knife, then spoon,” he sensed his mother had something to say. There was something she wanted.

“I know this Mrs. Newman,” she said brightly. Now Michael remembered: the new neighbors. “It is the most extraordinary thing, running into her—I had just wandered into Norton's to give you some time to yourself, and there she was! I recognized her as a Farthing, and I introduced myself. I knew her sister, it turns out, Mabel Farthing, at St. Rose. Mabel and I were in the same house. I think I even met her younger sister, this Hilda, during one of the parents' days, oh so long ago. And now she's a neighbor.”

Michael didn't know what to make of this. He pressed finger marks into his sandwich, five of them, in a circle. “The Farthings are a very, very good family,” said Michael's mother, flapping her napkin square over her lap. “Stop that, Michael. Mabel was a beauty, and she played piano beautifully. The
family was in steel, I believe. Mabel married an Aldrich. Hilda told me that she went to Smith.”

Michael had to ask what Smith was and was told, but he wondered who else was in this new family. His mother moved quickly to dispense more of the intelligence she'd gleaned on the floor of Norton's.

“You will be delighted to know that they have two boys and one boy is exactly your age.” She bit lightly into her sandwich, maintaining a strained smile. “His name is Thomas. He plays the piano. They have a piano. And he will be in your homeroom—you do have Jane Davies again, don't you?”

He did have Mrs. Davies. And this certainly was of interest to Michael. “The back street,” as their road was called, ran for about a mile through the small town. Although the local school was a centralized school, attracting kids from half a dozen surrounding towns whose schools had closed, Oreville itself, in the dead of summer, was just another little empty hamlet, and having enough boys to get up a ball game was always a challenge. Two more would help. Having a piano was unusual, for Oreville. But maybe that's interesting, Michael thought.

“What about the other kid?” he asked.