Gentlehands

by M. E. Kerr

  “Year round?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so,” he said.

  “Why did you think so?”

  “You’re a townie,” he said. “You live in town. That’s what we used to call them when I went to college. We called girls we dated who weren’t in sororities and lived in town, townies. You’re a male townie.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” I asked him.

  “I’m not looking for anything wrong,” he said. “I’m looking for explanations, that’s all.”

  “I’m looking for you,” a voice behind me said, and then Skye grabbed my hand. “Daddy,” she said, “this is Buddy.”

  Yellow glasses moved away and I stared up at this gargantuan man with thick white hair, sea green eyes like Skye’s, and a tan that made me look anemic. He got my hand in the vise of his fingers and pumped it hard twice, then dropped it. “I’m glad to know you, Buddy. Mrs. Pennington has an appointment and can’t meet you. She sends her apologies.”

  “Pleased to meet you, sir,” I said. I was wondering what kind of an appointment someone could have in the middle of a party, and glad that I remembered the sir. Ollie Kidd always said if you sir’d the girl’s father, you were already ahead of the game.

  “Daddy, we don’t have to stick around here, do we?” Skye asked. Anything bad that had happened to me since I’d arrived at Beauregard was made up for by the way she looked: nearly as tall as I, thin with a full figure most thin girls don’t have, Skye was all in pink right down to her sandals; tan legs that were straight and strong looking—that long, shining black hair spilling down her back, her great, white smile. I wanted to grab her hand and run the length of the beach with her, so we’d never meet anyone else or get back for a long time.

  “Where do you plan to go?” Mr. Pennington directed the question to me.

  Skye answered it. “We’re just going to drive around, Daddy, maybe go to some of the hangouts.” It was the first mention I heard of driving around and I was about to say that I didn’t have a car, when Skye said, “Can we take the Jensen?”

  “What are the names of these hangouts?” Mr. Pennington asked.

  I hadn’t been planning to take her to them, but I answered, “The Surf Club, Dunn’s, The Sweet Mouth Soda Shoppe.” I’d planned to go to the beach, never figuring the beach was her backyard. The kids all hung around Main Beach, and I knew Ollie’d be there with his car. Maybe we’d get something to eat later at Dunn’s.

  “Do these hangouts serve liquor?” Mr. Pennington asked.

  “Oh Daddy, every place serves liquor. What kind of a question is that?” said Skye. “We serve liquor, too.”

  “Do you drink, Buddy?” Mr. Pennington asked me.

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “Do you drive?”

  “I have a license,” I said, but I didn’t say I was sixteen and couldn’t drive after nine, and didn’t have a car anyway. It was my first realization that I was younger than Skye.

  Mr. Pennington said, “You can take the Jensen if Skye drives. You’re to be back here at midnight, Skye.”

  “Will I turn into a pumpkin if I’m not?” She laughed.

  “Do you understand, Buddy?” Mr. Pennington asked me.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Then he reached down and put his long arms around her and hugged her very hard, as though she was taking off on a cross-country tour.

  “Be careful, baby,” I heard him whisper. “I love you.”

  I didn’t meet anyone else at Beauregard that night. Skye took my hand and led me through the crowd, chattering all the way.

  “Mummy’s appointment is with her spiritualist, could you die?”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. His name is Bachoo and he’s into astral travel and everything and Mummy would leave an audience with the Pope if he showed up, which he just did. Daddy says he always shows up just when Daddy’s flown in Dungeness crab-meat from the coast, which Daddy just did for this party, and there won’t be any left, either, because Bachoo’s The Human Hoover—that’s Daddy’s name for him—he just breathes in food like a vacuum cleaner sucking up dust.”

  Just at that point in her rambling, we passed the red pants and the plaid jacket in a cloud of that sickly sweet scent, with his yellow glasses turned toward me. “G’night, Buddy,” he called after me.

  “Good night,” I said.

  “Do you know Mr. De Lucca?” Skye asked me.

  “I just met him.”

  “He’s the token writer tonight,” Skye said. “Mummy found everybody but a black. A writer, a couple of artists, this divine astrologist, and even a man who plays the bagpipes. We’re lucky we don’t have to be here for that. He plays ‘Amazing Grace’ off key, and it’s just hairy to hear, I promise you!”

  “That guy’s a writer?” I said. “That guy in the yellow glasses?”

  “His name’s Nick De Lucca,” Skye said.

  “What’s he written?”

  “He’s a journalist,” Skye said. “Mummy found him through Bachoo. He did a story on spirituality in the Hamptons or some darn thing. Hey, the garage is this way.” She pulled me down a stone walk away from the house and then let go of my hand, as though now that we were alone it wasn’t right to hold hands. Maybe she was just shy when she wasn’t around a lot of people, I figured, because she stopped chattering, too. We walked along in the moonlight, silently, for a while. Behind us, I could hear the trio playing “Shine On, Harvest Moon.”

  “I’ve never been in a Jensen,” I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t said it. I’d never even heard of a Jensen, but I’d planned to play it cooler before I just blurted that out.

  “That’s all right,” she said. “Most people haven’t. It isn’t your ordinary, everyday car.” She fumbled in her bag for the keys while we walked toward a large, barnlike building. “Oh here’re my keys,” she said. “Are you happy, Buddy?” She stopped then and looked at me, taking me completely by surprise.

  “Sure I’m happy,” I said, sounding like some slow-wit.

  She looked at me for a moment, her eyes fixing right on mine, and I looked away, because it was too much. She was too much; the whole thing was, and I was beginning to think I wasn’t enough.

  She walked up very close to me and said very solemnly, “I want you to be happy with me, Buddy.”

  “Okay,” I managed. I croaked it out actually. I didn’t understand her, or I wasn’t up to her, or ready for her, but I wanted to be. Oh how I wanted to be.

  Then she did what I thought she was going to do and told myself of course she wasn’t going to do that—she put her hands very gently on my face a second, looked into my eyes, and I felt her soft, moist mouth just for the sweetest, shortest time press against my mouth.

  I didn’t touch her, and before I had a chance to say anything she smiled, stepped away, touched something I didn’t see, and the garage door opened, lights went on to display six sleek cars, one a Rolls. She moved toward the last one on the left, dark green. “The Jenny,” she said. “Want a lift somewhere, sailor?”

  I wondered if I’d ever be able to talk again, or walk without my knees trembling, or breathe without my heart slamming into my ribs. But I got in beside her, and when she asked me while she was backing out where I wanted to go—“Make it someplace special, Buddy”—I heard myself answering in a very confident tone, “Montauk.”

  “What’s there?” she said.

  “My grandfather,” I told her. Just like that, it came out of my mouth, and Skye let out a laugh that was like a whoop, and said, “Oh Buddy, that’s subtle! I’m going to like you, Buddy Boyle, I can tell.”

  3

  “HELLO, GRANDPA THIS IS BUDDY.” THERE WAS A long pause. Skye was parked at the corner waiting for me while I phoned him. I could see some guys walking back and forth admiring the Jensen, or admiring Skye, and Skye smiling at them. Why did she have to smile at them, I thought, and my stomach tightened; it would tighten all summer over any little thing like
that, anyone coming near her.

  “Buddy?” My grandfather finally spoke. “Ingeborg’s boy?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m in Montauk.”

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “I’m just in Montauk.”

  “I see. I—” I couldn’t blame him for not being able to think of anything to say. Our family had been about as interested in Grandpa Trenker since he’d moved to Montauk ten years ago, as we were interested in Rumanian gypsies or gamma rays.

  “I suppose it’s a lousy time to pay a visit,” I said.

  “Not at all,” he said. “Is that what you want to do?”

  “I have a girl with me,” I said.

  “How fortunate for you,” he said. “Do you know the directions?”

  He gave them to me, and warned me that at the end of his private driveway there’d be a chain across the road with a padlock attached to it.

  “It isn’t locked,” he said. “Just undo it, then drive all the way to the end. I’ll put on lights for you. You’ll hear Mignon barking.”

  “Does he bite?” I said.

  “She,” he said. “No, she won’t bite you. Are you coming right now?”

  “Right now, if that’s okay.”

  He said it was, and I ran from the phone booth to the Jensen. All the guys who’d been shuffling around the car stood there gaping at us as we took off, and I thought of how many times I’d been the gaper. Then I watched Skye’s profile while she drove up Old Montauk Highway, and felt the chill as we neared the ocean, and smelled the salt spray. It was like a dream, I thought, and I wondered if it would always seem like a dream and never seem natural to be with her.

  You couldn’t see my grandfather’s house from the road. There were woods all around, and after I undid the chain, we started up the long hill. His house sat right on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. The first time I’d ever seen it—the only time—it hadn’t been dark as it was that night, and all I could think of as I stared at it, formidable and superb standing there in the sun with the blue ocean stretched out beyond it, was that nobody related to me could live in that house.

  “Nice” was what Skye said at our first glimpse of the place.

  Grandpa Trenker had the yard bathed in light.

  “Oh, and who’s he?” Skye squealed as she got out and this shaggy dog came running to greet us.

  “It’s a she,” I said. “Her name’s Mignon.”

  “Hello, Mignon,” Skye said, letting the dog jump up on her and lick her arm. “What kind of a dog are you? Are you an opera and not a dog, because I know an opera named Mignon, but I’ve never seen a dog like you!”

  “She’s both an opera and a dog”—my grandfather’s voice—and he stepped out of the shadows then, walking toward Skye with his hand extended.

  Skye took his hand. “I’ve never seen a dog like this!” she squealed again, and Mignon kept jumping on her. “What kind of a dog is this? I thought I knew every kind of dog there is! My mother, Mummy, used to raise green-eyed, all white Pomeranians, which are kind of rare—but what are you, honey?” Skye said to the dog. I was beginning to realize she chattered very fast when she was nervous.

  “Down, Mignon!” my grandfather said sharply. The dog obeyed instantly.

  “Mignon is a keeshond,” said my grandfather. “And I’m Frank Trenker.”

  “I’m Skye Pennington. How do you do, Mr. Trenker.”

  “Hello, Grandpa,” I said.

  “Good evening, Buddy.”

  “A keeshond,” Skye babbled on as we walked toward the house. “I’ve never heard of a keeshond and I’ve been dragged to dog shows since I was old enough to toddle, believe me. I thought I’d seen every breed there was, but a keeshond, oh Mignon, aren’t you special, and I LOVE Mignon, the opera, too. ‘Adieu, Mignon,’” she sang, and my grandfather chuckled. They walked ahead of me.

  My grandfather might be a snob, I thought, but he has something to be a snob about. Did you ever see the old, spooky movies on T.V. with Boris Karloff in them? He’s this very tall, thin, very undaunted character, thick white hair, a mustache—my grandfather looks something like him, only he’s not spooky. He’s dignified, and confident, and you just know that in his day he was really something else, and he’s still an extraordinarily handsome man. I’d turn around on the street to get another look at him, even if he wasn’t my grandfather. He’s that kind of man. You notice him; you know he’s special in some way. He’s in his sixties, but he’s one of those men who you don’t think of as an old man. When I went to Montauk to see him that time with my mother, I thought all those same things about him, but I was trying to see him through my mother’s eyes, and I didn’t let myself admire him. I tried to imagine how I’d feel if my dad just ducked out on me while I was growing up, and then reappeared and tried to say he was my father. I’d have had the same reaction, I guess: you can just take that father bit and stuff it!

  But he hadn’t done anything to me, had he? At some point bygones had to be bygones, and I guess we were at that point that night. I was, anyway.

  My grandfather had this opera going on the stereo when we walked inside the house, and Skye gave another squeal and said it was her favorite aria of all, and she sang “Un—bel—di,” and did a little spin and clapped her hands. “Madame Butterfly!” she said.

  She said to me, “Butterfly is singing ‘One fine day,’ Buddy. She’s saying one day there’ll be a thread of smoke rising from the ocean, and her husband’s ship will come into the harbor, and he’ll rush up to the little house on the hilltop to greet her.”

  “Very good,” my grandfather said.

  I didn’t say anything, but I’d noticed that Skye realized I didn’t know one opera from another, which didn’t make me feel great even though it was true. About the only serious music we ever played in our house was Perry Como’s version of “The Lord’s Prayer.”

  My grandfather’s house was filled with books and paintings and the kind of furniture my mother called “fancy antique stuff.” Skye waltzed around admiring everything, and I remembered when I visited there with my mother, the thing that impressed me the most was the view of the ocean from the windows. Skye saw that view all the time at Beauregard. We couldn’t see it very well in the dark, anyway, but we could hear the waves crashing down on the beach, and we could see the lights of the other houses arcing down the coastline.

  There was a glass of wine on the table beside a large leather chair. In front of the chair, on the oriental rug, there was a bag of sunflower seeds. My grandfather explained he was just about to fill his bird feeders.

  “The birds like to feed early in the morning,” he said, “before I’m up. I’m a night owl, so I fill the feeders before I go to bed.”

  “Oh, you’d love Mummy, my mother,” Skye said, “she’s a bird lover, too, and she keeps track of every bird she’s ever seen, about one hundred and fifty varieties, and when I was a kid she’d drag me out here to the walking dunes at Oysters Pond to spot birds. I mean, what did I care about birds, but now I wish I’d paid attention because I don’t know an oriole from a robin.”

  “It’s never too late to learn,” said my grandfather.

  “I’d really like to learn,” Skye said. “I really admire birds, they’re so free. I mean, they symbolize freedom.”

  “Far from it,” said my grandfather.

  Skye said, “What?”

  “I said far from it. Birds look free but they’re not, you know. They’re very restricted. They’re prisoners, really, of their own territory. They can’t move easily from one territory to another.”

  Skye looked at him a moment, eye to eye, carefully, the way she’d looked at me in the driveway at Beauregard when she told me she wanted me to be happy with her. Then she said, “I really admire you, Mr. Trenker. You’re subtle. I mean, you’re really subtle—and I like all of this—” her arms sweeping out to indicate the whole room, everything. “I do.”

  When Skye called something o
r someone subtle, it was her highest compliment, I gathered. I just sat on the couch and let them talk, congratulating myself for bringing her there. I remembered an English teacher we had once describing something called “borrowed glory” to us. Borrowed glory was when you couldn’t think of a way to say something, so you got out Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, looked up “love” or “fear” or “patriotism”—whatever subject you had on your mind—and you copied down what Shakespeare or Emerson or someone famous had said about it, and put that into your composition as a quote. This teacher used to say just because you could find a quote about something didn’t mean you’d really expressed yourself. It just meant you’d borrowed glory. He said there were all sorts of ways to borrow glory. If your family was rich and you were conceited about it—that was borrowing glory, too, because you hadn’t done anything to make them rich—you were just coasting on their abilities.

  So that night I was borrowing glory by letting my grandfather make the impression on Skye Pennington, instead of trying to impress her with my own personality.

  Well, thank God for borrowed glory, I thought. Thank God I had someone in my family to borrow it from, because all the while I sat there watching Skye, I told myself I wasn’t going to let her slip through my fingers. Whatever it took to keep her in my life, I was going to do it…even if it meant learning about opera, which had always sounded to me like a lot of people screeching around in German or Italian with music drowning them out until they could get their breaths again.

  We spent a lot of that evening—or they did—talking about animals. My grandfather was this great animal lover. He had a whole pot of plain spaghetti cooked which he put out on his back patio for raccoons to have. He had a light fixed so we could see them sneaking in from the woods, one by one, taking the spaghetti in their little hands and winding it all around themselves while they sucked it into their mouths. They looked like little masked bandits, and a few of them stretched out on their backs like clowns and fed the spaghetti into their mouths in long strings. They took marshmallows from his hand, and he let Skye feed a few to them, and she looked over her shoulder at me with this expression of sheer joy on her face, as though she’d never done anything so fantastic in all her life.