Beginner's Luck

by Laura Pedersen

  "Want to stay for dinner?" offers Mr. Gil.

  "Uh, no thanks. It's probably best if I go underground tonight. We haven't seen the last of the dogcatchers."

  "Be sure to let us know if there's anything we can do to help," Mr. Bernard says.

  "Actually, if you don't mind if I take a shower ..."

  "Certainly. Help yourself to shampoo, and there's a hair dryer ... whatever you need. And feel free to use the laundry," adds Mr. Gil.

  I turn to go upstairs to the bathroom.

  "Uh, Hallie," Mr. Bernard says. "The superintendent of schools called here today. And then phoned me at the shop. By not agreeing to handcuff you and deliver you to his office by eight o'clock sharp tomorrow morning, I think we're now regarded as the enemy. Or the Principal Revolutionary Party, if you prefer Mother's lingo."

  "Listen, I'm really sorry about all this. I didn't mean for you to get involved. If you don't think it's a good idea to have me work here, I'd under—"

  "Oh, don't fret about it. Mother hasn't had a satisfying altercation with the authorities since the Judge became ill and had to take early retirement and they refused to cover home health care. I haven't seen her this exhilarated in years. She's back on the barricades. In case you haven't noticed, Mother's a bohemian. Though a rather militant one. Now, go make your toilette."

  Following a hot shower, I ride my bike over to the pizza parlor. Hopefully Craig is there and I can pay him back the sixty dollars I still owe him and also return Jane's dirty old gym clothes. It feels good to once again have some presidents in my pocket and actually have a choice as to what I'd like to eat. If I start painting the house on Saturday I'll have a car by Thanksgiving and be celebrating Christmas in Las Vegas.

  The minute Jane sees me entering she races across the room and tackles me like a long-lost wealthy relative. She must really be missing those sweatpants.

  "Hallie, I've been looking everywhere for you! Where the hell have you been?"

  "Uh, Jane, I didn't realize we were dating."

  But Jane doesn't smile. "Hallie, this is serious! Where's the money?” She says "money" as if I'm supposed to understand, as if we hijacked a Brinks truck together and both know about the Secret Hiding Place.

  "What money?" I am so sick of money. In one way or another everything that's wrong with my life right now has to do with money.

  "The money from the donuts! Almost three hundred dollars! We swapped duffel bags the day we delivered the donuts—the US World Cup bags I bought for us in New York!" Jane is bopping up and down on her toes as if she's preparing to hit a volleyball serve.

  "Jane, will you calm down? In that bag was an Ace bandage, a roll of tape, and some grunged-out sweats. The money was in a big manila envelope. Up front.”

  Tears begin to crowd the corners of Jane's eyes. "Oh, Hallie, you were my last hope. What am I going to do? The money is due on Monday."

  "Did you ask Gwen?" But that was a stupid question. Of course she'd asked Gwen. "Did you search the station wagon?"

  "We looked everywhere. I thought for sure that it was in my duffel bag."

  "Well, I don't know. Maybe I missed it." I remove Jane's crumpled bag from my backpack. No money.

  Jane eventually calms down. After all, three hundred bucks isn't the end of the world. Though I know she's saving to attend an expensive sports camp in North Carolina next summer. But her parents both have good jobs. I offer $160 from the money Mr. Bernard just paid me, but she declines, saying that her dad already offered a loan.

  Jane and Gwen and the rest of my friends have staked out our regular corner booth, though unfortunately there's no sign of Craig.

  "Hallie, where have you been?” asks Gwen through freshly applied pink lip gloss. "Eric told me you ran away and your mom is acting totally mysterious whenever I call."

  It transpires that a flurry of excitement has surrounded my absence. Gwen enthusiastically recounts how on Tuesday morning everyone in the eleventh grade was grilled by all kinds of grown-ups—teachers, social workers, PTA members—to see if they knew my whereabouts and if anybody thought I was suicidal or had a drug problem. Apparently it was all very thrilling and disruptive, because if you could claim to have spoken with me in the past few weeks you could skip class and tell your story to a counselor. Some top administrator in a suit even arrived and had a janitor cut the padlock off both my hall and gym lockers. I wonder if I can sue them for breaking and entering. Probably not, since it's school property. Oh well, my gym locker needed cleaning out anyway.

  Todd Murphy says that someone's mother reported seeing me enter an OTB with a weapon and another kid's neighbor insisted I'd been kidnapped by the Mafia for gambling debts. My life should only be so exciting. I don't bother to tell everyone that I've been busy weeding half-dead flower beds. Because whatever they come up with is going to be a lot more interesting than the truth.

  Eventually I take the sixty dollars that I owe Craig and hand it to Gwen, since her locker is across from his. "Please give this to Craig and say that I'm sorry."

  "All right. But why don't I tell him that you'll be at my Halloween party and then if he still likes you ..." says Gwen. "You are coming, aren't you?"

  "Of course," I reply.

  "Be careful," Jane warns jokingly. "Last year Gwen fixed a cousin up with her biology student teacher and now they're getting married."

  Seth Gilmore, who's also a junior and works one period in the principal's office, comes over with a calzone and joins our expanding group. He heard that the principals in all the surrounding districts are worried that if our school doesn't get me back then soon other kids will start taking off, sort of like copycat crimes.

  They all want to know if I'm coming back to school. And the truth is, I have no idea what I'm doing right now other than weed whacking and painting the house. I'd always just assumed that after graduation I'd become a professional gambler.

  "You're so brave," says Tara, the fullback on the soccer team, with true admiration in her voice. "I wish I had the guts to cut school and just go AWOL. But my parents would kill me."

  "It's not really like that, Tara. It's hard to explain."

  After dinner I ride my bike to the bookstore, since the library is already closed. I look up this Truman Capote guy and find that he's got a book out called Breakfast at Tiffany's. It must be based on the movie.

  In the reference section I look up Bohemia. It was located in Eastern Europe, but now it's gone. Poor Ms. Olivia. Her whole country was abolished in 1948. She must be a refugee. No wonder she's against all forms of government and oppression.

  That night I lie on the couch in the summerhouse and read more Catch-22 by flashlight. Chief White Halfoat just overturned a jeep because even though somebody kept telling him to switch on the headlights, he wouldn't listen.

  Outside the clouds travel dark and fast across the moon and it's sprinkling just enough to drown out the usual spooky sounds that come from the fifty or so chipmunks that have built condominiums in the walls.

  After reading a few more pages of Joseph Heller, I hear music. At first I think it's the rain hitting the windows, tapping out a melody, like sometimes I swear I hear songs in the beat of the rain the way you imagine you see cartoon characters in cloud formations. But after a minute I'm positive that the music is actually playing right inside the summerhouse, and not just inside my head. Flashing my light around the room, I eventually spy two small speakers nestled in the far corners of a shelf. They're next to a row of white porcelain urns with colorful designs of people doing some pretty interesting things to one another.

  I'm no electrician, but I surmise that the Stocktons have a stereo system with an extension out here that can be operated from within the house. Only last night when I heard the music, it was coming from an open window of the main house and not through these speakers.

  My radar tells me that I've been busted, only this time not by Officer Rich or my parents. I switch off the flashlight, lay the book on the coffee table, and peer ove
r the back of the couch, toward the house. No one is visible in the windows, but the porch light flicks on and off. Or maybe I'm imagining things. Perhaps I do need to cut down on the Yoo-Hoo. Pointing my flashlight toward the house, I flick it on and then off again. The porch light answers back. Which one of them could it be?

  I hope they can't get in trouble for harboring a fugitive. I snuggle up under the afghan and the music softly drifts through the room. It's not quite classical, but more akin to those shows where people holler a lot and then get bad coughs and die in the end. Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma! Tu pure, o Principessa, Nella tua fredda stanza, Guardi le stelle Che tremano, d'amore e di speranza....

  This whole deal is getting to be more and more like Alice in Wonderland. Curiouser and curiouser. But I'm tired and the song is soothing and so I drift off to sleep.

  Chapter 19

  Fast Company «

  Upon entering the main house the following morning, I find Ms. Olivia and Mr. Bernard are in the middle of a major league quarrel. Only this time they don't seem to be joking around.

  "Mother, I won't hear of it!" Mr. Bernard nods toward me as I enter the kitchen, but he doesn't stop arguing, the way my parents always do when one of us kids shows up. "You don't know anything about this person."

  "His name is Ottavio." Ms. Olivia then turns to me. "Don't you think that's a lovely name, Hallie? He's the eighth child, and in Italian families they sometimes name the eighth child Ottavio, for eight."

  "Then I guess I should be named Secondo, since I'm number two out of seven. Actually, make that eight in another few months." I remove a chocolate Yoo-Hoo from the fridge, shake it, and pop off the top. But Mr. Bernard has stopped beating his eggs and is giving me a sideways stare while Ms. Olivia is looking at me as if I'm speaking in tongues. Total silence.

  Where the hell did that come from? I wonder. First the joke and then the family update. I was cracking. The first rule of being an outlaw is to never volunteer information. It could end up as ammunition in the hands of the opposition. The old anything you say can and will be used against you.

  But maybe it's okay. After all, Mr. Bernard said he's on my side. And they're probably risking prison for aiding and abetting a juvenile delinquent by purchasing the very Yoo-Hoos that are keeping me alive.

  "Secondo," Mr. Bernard repeats. "That's funny. But of course, it's true—it's what they often call the second son. Primo for the firstborn, and then Secondo."

  Only now I don't really know what to say, so I just raise my Yoo-Hoo in toast fashion and then take a big swallow. However, they quickly recover from my interruption and get back to the business, or rather the altercation, at hand.

  "Now, Hallie, if you don't mind, would you please tell Mother that these bounders one encounters on the Internet are not who they seem. This Ottavio person is most likely a swarthy four-hundred-pound transsexual who spray-paints neon Elvis daguerreotypes on a black velvet background."

  "Don't be ridiculous, Bernard. I made his acquaintance in a Bernini chat room. We happen to share an enthusiasm for Italian baroque sculpture. And we've spoken on the phone. In fact, Ottavio E-mailed me a photograph of himself in front of the Tomb of Pope Urban VIII in St. Peter's." She says this last part with dreamy detachment.

  "That's exactly what I mean, Mother. It could be a picture of anyone. He, she, it, could have cut the photo out of a magazine!"

  "Bertie, why don't you just say it? Stop couching the issue in terms of computer security. Just admit that you don't want me to have anything to do with other men while your father is still living and breathing."

  "Mother, of course I want you to have friends...."

  "Yes, but you don't want me to take a lover. And I respect that, Bernard. All I'm asking is that we discuss the actual issue."

  Mr. Bernard haughtily hands the tray he's just prepared to Ms. Olivia and begins furiously scrubbing a frying pan. "Please, just go and free Father—I mean feed Father. I don't wish to consider this matter any further right now!"

  I'm hoping that they do decide to talk about it later, because I'm feeling uncomfortable, as if I'm eavesdropping. Transsexuals and popes and lovers. Wow. And it's only half past eight in the morning.

  However Ms. Olivia isn't ready to be dismissed. "I love your father very much, Bernard, and I always will, but the man I married has been gone for six years now. I wish you would consider that the heart is not an hourglass filled with only so many grains of sand. And therefore one love does not exclude another."

  She purposefully turns and stalks out of the room. Only she forgets the tray and so she has to march back in, retrieve it, and purposefully stalk out all over again. As Ms. Olivia disappears under the archway, Mr. Bernard lifts his head up from scrubbing and says, "Honestly, Hallie, she's going to drive me crazy... if it's not already too late." Then, as if he's talking to himself, he continues, "Chat rooms ... she can chat all she wants right here. It makes no sense whatsoever."

  He removes a plate from the oven on which there are two homemade Egg McMuffin-style sandwiches and shoves it firmly into my hand. "Can you believe this? My sixty-two-year-old mother is caught up in some Internet romance with a Neapolitan bricklayer-slash-songwriter and is arranging a weekend tryst in Havana! Of all places! She and the roue are going to wind up in some communist prison and we'll all be sleeping on cots at Guantanamo Bay while mixed up in some type of horrendous international incident."

  "So what are you going to do?"

  "Do! What's there to do? She does whatever the heck she likes. Always has. Fortunately for us and the rest of the world, she customarily uses her talents for worthy causes."

  I don't feel it's my place to say anything. Mr. Bernard puts the pans in the drying rack, checks to make sure the stove is turned off, and then hangs the towel that he's been using over the faucet.

  "And heaven forbid Mother ever couches something in a euphemism such as she would enjoy some companionship.” He exhales dramatically. "No, she has to announce that she's taking a lover! And of course Mother can't just have a date, it has to be a grande passion, and with a boulevardier. Whenever I had boyfriend problems, it was always an affair de coeur,''

  Did he just say what I think he said? Maybe he meant when he had problems as a boyfriend. No, of course not. Who did I think Gil was, anyway? Okay, they're a couple. So what?

  "I... I've never met anyone like your mother," I finally manage to say.

  "Neither have I," he answers with exasperation.

  "But .. . but I like her. She's nice. And, uh, very unusual. I mean, interesting."

  "Her heart is in the right place ... most of the time. And the worst thing about this Ottavio person business is that she's right in theory. Anyway, let's forget about all that nonsense for now. Paint, paint..." He fishes through all his different pockets. "Mother said you're up for some painting." He passes me his credit card. "I'll phone the hardware store and tell them it's okay for you to use this. Purchase whatever we need—drop cloths, rollers, brushes. Ivory matte on the inside, eggshell gloss on the outside. And bring Mother some paint chips and wallpaper samples for her den in the most outrageous colors and patterns you can find. Perhaps that will keep her occupied for a few days. And do me a favor and stop at the drugstore." He hands me a neatly printed list containing toothpaste, shampoo, aspirin, and some medication for the Judge.

  I wolf down the last bite of egg sandwich and wipe my hand on my jeans before pocketing the list. One thing is for sure, there's never a dull moment in this house. I mean, the big excitement when we visit my grandma is to hear about who in her bridge group is having a hip replacement operation and which of her kids never visits.

  The hardware store trip actually turns out to be a revelation. Usually I go in there to buy something inexpensive, like a patch for my bike tire. And then I always have to wait until Mr. Burke finishes with all the grown-ups, even if they come in after me. But today, because I have a credit card and am picking out hundreds of dollars' worth of paint, Mr. Burke is incredibly nic
e and makes other customers wait while he locates a trim brush out of the stockroom. I never realized how differently a person could be treated just for having a piece of plastic.

  Chapter 20

  Cool Hand Hallie ♠

  As always, Herb and Al and Officer Rich spend the first few minutes complaining about their wives and the high cost of sneakers and college tuition. Fortunately Father Costello doesn't bring any of his counseling and sermon stuff to the card table.

  "So what's the score with the school?" I eventually ask Officer Rich.

  "You're here. They're there," he says without looking up from his cards.

  It's obvious he's got a crappy hand. He only looks at a good hand for a few seconds. But a nasty one, he keeps staring at the cards, like if he gazes at them long enough they'll transmogrify into a royal flush.

  "So?" I ask.

  "So you're winning, as usual," Officer Rich replies and throws away an eight of clubs, which is the exact card I know Herb was hoping to be dealt.

  "For now," he adds mysteriously.

  "What do you mean for now?”

  "The emancipated minor thing was real cute, but you'd better have a pretty good reason to petition the court."

  "Yeah, I knew I was on slightly weak ground there. So why didn't they come and drag me away?"

  "Because they figure you'll just jump out the window again. They say you have a problem with windows."

  "When the Good Lord closes a door, he usually opens a window somewhere else," Father Costello absentmindedly says as he fingers the silver cross around his neck.

  We all give him a funny glance, because normally he doesn't chime in with any religiosity. He catches our looks. "It's not scripture. It's what the Mother Superior said to Maria in The Sound of Music. My mother and I watched it on television last night."

  We all look relieved. I'm thinking what a fun life Ar-thur must have. It's no wonder he never misses a poker game. In fact, I'd bet my winnings that he makes up some lame excuse to his mo-ther, like he's running a Bible study group on Monday nights.