Behind the Curtain

by Peter Abrahams

  “Boston College,” Dad said, his tone sharpening. “A D-One school, in case you hadn’t heard. He’s got a gun for an arm. Didn’t the coaches tell you?”

  “Maybe,” said Ty, stabbing another piece. “I don’t remember.”

  Dad slammed his hand on the table, so unexpected it made Ingrid jump. “Damn it,” he said. “You think that’s good enough?”

  “Huh?” said Ty.

  “Because the world doesn’t work that way, buddy boy.” Dad rose, picked up his drink, left the room.

  “Mark?” said Mom.

  He didn’t answer. Ingrid heard his footsteps in the front hall, then up the stairs.

  “What’s he so pissed about?” said Ty.

  Mom had beautiful skin, the darkest in the family and very soft, the only flaws being two vertical lines on her forehead, just between the eyes. Sometimes they were hardly visible; at other times—now for example—they deepened. Ingrid thought of them as a measuring device, like a barometer, for predicting the weather in Momworld.

  “Excuse me,” Mom said, folding her napkin. Her footsteps faded fast, those sheepskin slippers making almost no sound at all.

  Ty and Ingrid looked at each other. “What does Dad do, exactly?” Ingrid asked.

  “Huh?” said Ty. “Works for Mr. Ferrand, you know that. Pass those egg rolls.”

  “How much are you going to eat?”

  “Got to get my weight up.” Ty bit off half an egg roll. “These are the best,” he said, or something like that—hard to understand him with his mouth so full.

  “It’s because of the ends,” Ingrid said.

  “The ends?”

  “The way Ta Tung egg rolls have those browned ends,” Ingrid said. “No one else does that.”

  Ty examined the remaining end of his egg roll. “Browned,” he said. “Cool.” He gave her a quick look. “How do you know stuff like that?”

  From Sherlock Holmes, of course, who believed in the importance of observing small things. But one small thing Ingrid had noticed was the way most people’s eyes glazed over when she got started on Holmes. She just shrugged and said, “What does Dad do for Mr. Ferrand?”

  “They develop things,” Ty said. “Invest. Dad’s the number-two guy, vice president.”

  “How many vice presidents are there?”

  “Just Dad. Gonna eat that last one?”

  Ingrid passed Ty the last egg roll.

  Somewhere upstairs a door closed. Dad’s voice rose for a moment. Then Mom said something and Dad got quieter. The whole house grew quiet, except for Ty’s chewing.

  Time to clean up.

  “Rock paper scissors,” Ingrid said.

  Ty nodded. They made fists. Their eyes met. They tried to read each other’s minds.

  “One, two, three,” said Ty.

  They pumped their hands. He was going for rock, beyond doubt. There was no one Ingrid knew better than Ty. She flashed spread fingers—paper.

  And Ty: scissors. Scissors? He never did scissors. “Don’t forget the countertops,” he said on his way out.

  Ingrid cleaned up. First came scraping off the plates. That meant opening the trash cupboard and again setting eyes on The Echo—two copies now, theirs and the Grunellos’. Ms. Julia LeCaine, formerly blah blah…vice president of operations. Did that make Dad vice president of everything else? Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe the richer the company, the more vice presidents. Microsoft probably had thousands, all of them with money piling up faster than they could count. If they got rich, the four of them, this family, the first thing she’d buy would be…what, exactly? Ingrid, loading the dishwasher, was trying to come up with the perfect kickass something when the doorbell rang.

  Ingrid went to the hall, switched on the outside light, opened the door. Sean Rubino? Sean was the older brother of her best friend, Stacy, and had dropped Stacy off at the house once or twice, but he’d never come to the door.

  “Yo,” he said.

  Ingrid peered past him. His car, a dinged-up old Firebird with a HELL ON WHEELS bumper sticker, was parked on the street, no one in it.

  “Hi,” Ingrid said. Had he come to pick Stacy up? “She’s not here.”

  “Who?” said Sean.

  “Stacy.” And come to think of it, wasn’t his license suspended because of that DUI thing on Labor Day?

  “I’m looking for Ty,” Sean said.

  “Ty?” Sean and Ty weren’t friends. Sean was two years older for one thing, a junior at Echo Falls High, and also not into sports, although he was pretty big.

  “He in?” said Sean.

  Ingrid gazed up at him. Sean looked a lot like his sister: same broad face, same color hair—although hers wasn’t gelled up like that—but the feeling you got from seeing them was very different. “I’ll get him,” she said.

  He came in, stood in the hall, glanced around.

  Ingrid went upstairs. Mom and Dad’s door was closed, Ty’s open. He had a pile of books on his desk but was playing a video game.

  “Sean Rubino’s here to see you,” Ingrid said.

  Ty turned away from an exploding worm creature. “Yeah? Tell him to come up.”

  Ingrid paused. “You want Sean Rubino to come up?”

  Ty’s eyes got that squinty look she knew so well. “What’s your problem?”

  Ingrid went downstairs. Dad’s golf clubs stood in the corner by the door. Sean was over there, examining the putter.

  “He says go up,” said Ingrid. “Second door on the right.”

  Sean slid the putter back into Dad’s bag and went upstairs. She didn’t like the way he put his hand on the rail, which was crazy.

  Ingrid got her backpack and sat down at the kitchen table, her first choice homework venue. She closed her eyes, pulled out a book. Whatever it was, she’d do first. Except it turned out to be math. She tried again. English. That was better.

  The assignment: Write ten complete, grammatical sentences using two adverbs in each.

  Ingrid went to the fridge, snapped open a Fresca. Ah.

  1. This corpse has been frozen recently, said Sherlock Holmes icily.

  2. Holmes stepped into the hansom cab handsomely as the horse neighed nasally.

  3. Dr. Watson coughed harumphingly when the woman in red—

  Ingrid heard footsteps coming down the stairs. The front door opened and closed. She went to the hall, looked out the window in time to see Sean driving off in the Firebird, one taillight out. He turned right on Avondale and disappeared. Ingrid was about to return to her homework when headlights flashed down the street. A second car drove by, also turning right on Avondale. This one read ECHO FALLS POLICE on the driver’s door, and in smaller letters: CHIEF. But Ingrid would have recognized Chief Gilbert L. Strade anyway, just from the massive silhouetted form behind the wheel.

  Homework all done, at least to her satisfaction. Sometimes Ingrid was easily pleased. Up in her room, she went online, sent an IM to Stacy.

  Gridster22: sean was here

  Powerup77: ???

  Gridster22: to see ty

  Powerup77: sean my stupid bro?

  Gridster22: yup

  Powerup77: wha for?

  Gridster22: i’m asking u

  Powerup77: dunno—wanna come over after the game?

  Gridster22: sounds goooooood—i’ll—

  Ty poked his head in the door.

  “Got a minute?” he said.

  Gridster22: cul8tr

  “What?” said Ingrid.

  “Need a safety,” he said.

  “What about Dad?”

  “They went to bed.”

  “Why so early?”

  “Do I look like a search engine?” Ty said. “You gonna help me or not?”

  Ingrid went to the basement with Ty. They had practically a whole gym down there—StairMaster, treadmill, slant board, bench press, and machines for leg curls, leg extensions, leg presses, ab crunches, delt thises and pec thats, none of which Ingrid ever used. She’d read in a magazine—on the lett
ers-to-the-editor page, actually, just a letter from some reader who didn’t even have an MD after his name, but it did get printed—that thirteen was too young for weight training. No sense taking chances.

  Ty went to the bench press, slid a forty-five-pound plate on each end of the bar, then added two twenty-fives. Forty-five plus forty-five was ninety, plus fifty made one thirty, and don’t forget the weight of the bar itself, forty-five more: one eighty-five. Wow. The most she’d ever seen him do was two twenty-fives on each end—one forty-five—and that had been only a few weeks ago. Those iron plates: so big.

  “What are you looking at?” he said.

  “Nothing.”

  Ty lay down on the bench. Ingrid stood at the end, ready to help if he had trouble raising the bar back up to the cradle. But what kind of help could she be with one eighty-five? Ingrid weighed ninety-four pounds.

  Ty gripped the bar, his fingers wriggling around for the spot that felt right. He planted his feet on the floor, first wriggling them a bit too. Then he took a deep breath, jerked all that weight up out of the cradle, lowered it to his chest, pushed up again.

  “One,” said Ingrid.

  Down. Up.

  “Two.”

  He grunted.

  “Three.”

  The grunts got louder. His face got red. His eyes bugged out. He looked like a freak. But he did ten. Ten at one eighty-five, and lowered the bar into the cradle with no help.

  “Hey,” Ingrid said.

  Ty lay on the bench, chest rising and falling, the muscles stretching his T-shirt. RED RAIDER FOOTBALL it said on the front. BIGGER, FASTER, STRONGER.

  “What was Sean doing over here?” Ingrid said.

  “Nothing,” said Ty, reaching up for the bar. He took a few deep breaths. “Ready,” he said, and lifted on the last exhale.

  “One,” said Ingrid. This was what being a slave master in a Roman galley must have been like, easy work but boring and a bit smelly. Ty grunted louder, got redder and more bug-eyed, but did ten more.

  “Good job,” she said.

  He got up, rubbing his shoulder. Ingrid turned to go. “One more set,” he said. He fetched two tens from the weight stack, added them to the bar.

  One eighty-five plus twenty? That made—“What are you doing?” Ingrid said.

  “Just three reps,” said Ty.

  “Whoa,” said Ingrid.

  “Did I ask for your opinion?” said Ty.

  He lay on the bench, grasped the bar, planted his feet, took a huge deep breath, pushed. The bar lifted off the cradle. Ty lowered it to his chest, grunted, tried to heave the weight back up, a vein popping out in his neck, all blue and throbbing. Slowly, oh so slowly, the bar rose. Ingrid heard his teeth grinding, got ready to say one. But at that moment, the bar still maybe six inches below the cradle, Ty’s arms started shaking and the bar stalled.

  “A little help,” he said, almost in a normal tone of voice.

  Help? What was she supposed—

  “Help!” This time not normal at all.

  Ingrid stepped forward, grabbed the bar, her hands between his, his upside-down face, purple now, right under all that iron. She bent her legs, drove up with all her might. The bar didn’t budge, except for the quiver from the way Ty’s arms were shaking.

  “Damn it,” said Ty. “Lift.”

  Ingrid found a little extra. Now she was grunting too. They grunted together, fighting the weight of that bar. It rose, inch by inch, up to cradle level and clanged into place. For a second she felt lighter than air, as though she could float up to the ceiling.

  “That was lucky,” Ingrid said.

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Ty said.

  “Huh?”

  He sat up, pulled off his T-shirt, mopped his face. “I’m so damn weak.”

  “Maybe mentally,” Ingrid said.

  His voice rose, that deep man voice he sometimes had now. “You’re such a jerk,” he said, throwing the T-shirt at her.

  Ingrid ducked. For just a second, a scary second, she thought he might hit her. They’d had an incident or two like that in the past. Instead he turned and drove his fist into the padded bench, very hard, making a sound that boomed through the house. He was acting so weird. What was wrong with him? And his back: Ty had always been one of those lucky acne-free kids, and his face still was smooth and unblemished. But under the ceiling lights, she could see dark-red pimples all over his upper back. He rose and started stripping off the weights.

  In the morning when Ingrid went downstairs, Mom and Ty were already gone. Echo Falls High started half an hour before Ferrand Middle, and Mom went right by it on her way to work. That meant Ingrid and Dad ate a lot of breakfasts together, Dad never going in before his nine-o’clock meeting with Mr. Ferrand. Dad would read her little snippets from The Wall Street Journal, and Ingrid would eat the kind of things she ate when no one was paying attention. But today The Wall Street Journal was still in its plastic wrapper and Dad was already packing his briefcase, tie knotted, suit jacket on.

  “Morning, Dad.”

  “Morning,” he said, barely looking up. “Going in a little early today.”

  “Something special happening?”

  “Probably be going in a little early for the foreseeable future.”

  “How come?”

  “Globalization, if you want to put it in one word.”

  A word that was in the air, even if Ingrid didn’t really understand it. “What does it mean, anyway?”

  “Means we’re all going to have to work harder,” Dad said. “Including you.”

  “Me?”

  “Not just you,” said Dad. “Kids in general.”

  “Kids have to work harder?”

  “That’s the future. Big forces are on the move.”

  “What kind of forces?”

  “History will judge.”

  Dad poured coffee into a thermos—he never did that, always enjoyed his second cup at home—and headed for the door that led from the kitchen to the garage.

  “I like your shirt, Dad.” A beautiful deep blue with white collar and cuffs, but Dad, already out the door, didn’t hear. For the first time in her life, Ingrid felt a little nostalgic. History would judge how hard she was working? The future sounded grim.

  three

  INGRID HAD HEALTH last period on Fridays. Time slowed way, way down in health class, just when you wanted to be out of the building so bad, but otherwise Ingrid had no complaints. Mr. Porterhouse, the gym and health teacher, whistle hanging around his neck, would read for a while from the textbook, and then say, “I know all you sports”—Mr. Porterhouse called everyone sport—“got work to do.” Then he would settle down to the Hartford Courant crossword puzzle and the kids could a) do their homework, b) talk quietly, or c) go to sleep. Getting a head start on weekend homework made the most sense, but come on. And had it been first period, Ingrid would have slept, but her sleepiness always wore off by midmorning. So she almost always chose B, talking to her friends, and she had a lot of them in health class, including Stacy, Mia, and Joey Strade.

  Today’s subject seemed to be drugs, pretty much as usual. There were a lot to cover—heroin, PCP, cocaine, meth, LSD, ecstasy, marijuana, hashish, plus all those nicknames like crank, crack, spliff, weed, grass, smoke, uppers, downers. Ingrid’s favorite—as a name—was hashish because it sounded so exotic. Without even smoking it, she could call up clear pictures of caravans, camels, casbahs. So: Why bother smoking it?

  All those drugs were bad; Ingrid didn’t dispute that for a second. The problem was that maybe they all weren’t quite as bad as the textbook said, a discrepancy that raised doubts in the minds of some kids. Getting the facts right was important. As Holmes told Watson in “A Case of Identity,” “Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.” You could learn a lot from Sherlock Holmes, and Ingrid had. On the other hand, he could be unpredictable, like when he went on cocaine jags from time to time. Maybe if h
e’d run into Mr. Porterhouse, who was now droning on about—

  “…anabolic steroids mumble mumble synthetic hormones mumble mumble make muscle.” He glanced over the top of his reading glasses. “We all know what hormones are by now?”

  No one disagreed.

  Mr. Porterhouse went back to the text. He wasn’t a fast reader but it seemed that way, maybe because he ignored punctuation. Plus all that mumbling. “…exaggerating the mumble mumble testosterone on the body such as increased mumble mumble muscle mass and deep voices steroids are illegal and can cause stunted mumble irreversible liver mumble violent mood mumble facial hair on girls and women as well as male-pattern mumble and bad acne.”

  He glanced up at the wall clock, where the minute hand still had a huge distance to travel before they were free. “That about covers it,” he said. “Any questions?”

  No questions. Mr. Porterhouse reached for the crossword. Quiet talk started humming around the room.

  Joey Strade, sitting across the aisle, said: “Going to the game tonight?”

  Ingrid turned to him. Joey, son of Chief Strade, was someone she’d sort of known for years. He’d always been a quiet, pudgy kid, his only uniqueness being a stubborn cowlick that stood up like a blunt Indian feather. Now he wasn’t so quiet or pudgy—although the cowlick was still happening—and she knew him better. They’d gone to a couple of dances at the Rec Center and she’d been to his house, where he’d demonstrated the catapult he built for the science fair, winning honorable mention. He also had this new direct way of looking at you. And they’d kissed two times, no point leaving that out, although how important it was Ingrid didn’t know.