by Michael Kun
“What is it?” Carl demanded of his wife and then, in turn, the Larias and the Allens and the Steinbergs and, lastly, the boy, Billy Corwell. “What is it? What happened?”
“I just had something of a coughing attack,” the boy said. “I was laughing too hard. I’m fine now. I just needed some water.”
“Did something funny happen?”
Nate Allen surveyed the others’ expressions, then elected himself spokesman. “Your wife just told a wonderful story,” he said.
“Margie?”
“Do you have another wife?”
The members of the secret society laughed.
“It’s a shame you missed the story,” Nate Allen said, and he smiled conspiratorially at the others, raising his eyebrows once, then again. “A crying shame is what it is.”
“I’d like to know what the story was,” Carl said, “if it wouldn’t be too much trouble to tell me.”
“That’s our little secret,” Nancy Steinberg said. She wagged a finger in the air. She was a small woman, a schoolteacher, and something about her presence suggested that she was not well liked by students. The way she thrust her chin forward, her dark and grinding voice, her narrow, square shoulders. “Don’t anyone tell him. It’ll be like a game. We know something Carl doesn’t know, and he can guess, and we’ll tell him whether he’s right.”
Carl shrugged. “It really doesn’t matter to me, Nancy. So all of you have a little secret. Good. Good for you. It makes no difference to me one way or the other.” Then, as if to prove his point, as if to let them know that he’d already moved on to something new, he scooped some potatoes from his plate and brought them to his mouth, even though everyone knew they had gone cold long ago.
“Everyone has secrets,” Betty Allen said. “Now we have one. We have one about you.”
“And I told you, Betty, it makes no difference to me.”
Carl ate more of the cold potatoes, proving his point, proving his point, proving his point.
“Guess what it is?” Betty Allen said. “Go ahead and guess.”
“I don’t care,” he said, neither politely nor impolitely.
“I’ll give you a hint to help you out,” she said. “Ring-ring. Ring-ring.” She shook an imaginary dinner bell beside her face.
“Ring-ring,” Tom Laria said. He too shook an imaginary dinner bell, the tone of his bell fuller and more resonant than Betty Allen’s.
Carl stuck his tongue in his cheek for a moment. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I honestly have no idea.”
“I’ll give you another hint then,” Betty Allen said, setting her dinner bell on the table. “It has to do with chocolate. It has to do with girls and chocolate.”
Carl’s head jerked, and he gave Margie a quick but corrosive look. Quickly, he rearranged the features of his face to suggest some rugged indifference.
“I said I don’t care, Betty. Now, can we please move on to some more appropriate dinner conversation? Margie, don’t we have some dessert for our guests?”
“I hope it doesn’t have chocolate in it,” Tom Laria said. “We might have to call a doctor! Is there a doctor in the house?”
Again, there was laughter, but Margie did not join in.
“Doctor, doctor, quick!” Nate Allen said, holding the back of his hand to his forehead and swooning. “I ate a Hershey bar!”
“A Hershey bar!” Walt Steinberg said. “What on earth were you thinking? Were you trying to kill yourself?”
“Doctor, doctor, you must help me first,” Sheila Laria said. “I just had a slice of devil’s food cake.”
“Devil’s food cake! Oh, no! We’ll have to pump your stomach!”
“They should outlaw it! Chocolate, in the wrong hands, can only cause pain!”
The joking went on and on and on, and Carl sat rigidly throughout. His eyes were on the china cabinet. Margie’s head was bowed.
“Are you all through having a little laugh at my expense?” Carl asked when there was a break. “Are you finished?”
There was no answer, and one by one the sad and guilty expressions of naughty dogs appeared on the faces of the guests. The silence lingered. Someone took a drink of water. Someone sniffed and cleared his throat.
“Mr. Peel, don’t get upset,” Billy Corwell said, and he placed a hand gently upon Carl’s wrist. “It was really nothing. It was just a funny little story that Margie told, that’s all. There was no harm.”
Carl pulled his arm away from the boy’s touch.
“I’m not upset, son.”
“But your lip.” The boy gestured with his head. Carl’s lower lip was trembling almost, but not quite, imperceptibly. It trembled like a child’s does as a preface to tears. Margie had noticed it too. She’d seen it before, when Carl had missed a shot in tennis, or when a repairman didn’t come to the house when he was supposed to, or when one of the children spilled juice or soda pop. There’d been other times as well, but how had the boy noticed?
“There’s nothing wrong with my lip,” Carl said. He pulled at the ends of his white-streaked mustache, his strong hand tense with anger—repressed, but terrible nonetheless.
“Whatever you say, Mr. Peel. It’s just that my stepfather’s lip does the same thing when he gets upset.”
Dutifully, spotting the opportunity to shift the spotlight from her husband, Margie placed a hand flat on the table and said, “I didn’t know you had a stepfather, Billy. Did your father pass on?”
The boy looked directly into her eyes again.
“Oh, no, no,” he said. “Oh, no. My father’s fine. My parents divorced when I was young, and then my mother married Hank.” The boy said “Hank” as if pronouncing a seldom-used curse.
“Not fond of Hank, are you?” There was a touch of cruelty to Carl’s voice, his lip no longer trembling.
The boy made a clucking noise, flicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I don’t know what I would say to that exactly, Mr. Peel. Hank’s okay, I suppose. I don’t like him, but I don’t hate him either. I mean, if he were drowning, I’d probably save him. But then, I’d do that for any man, woman, or child, I suppose.”
“That’s very humane of you,” Carl said.
“I’d do it for dogs too.”
“Not cats?”
The boy grinned handsomely. “No, I’m not much of a fan of cats.” He looked at Margie. He didn’t wink exactly, but his expression, his lips curling, had the same effect.
Nancy Steinberg pitched her head to one side. She rubbed her chin as if she did her thinking with it. “Billy, dear, is there something wrong with Hank?”
“Oh, no. Oh, no, ma’am.” Clearly, he’d forgotten his audience; he’d forgotten that his aunt was at the table.
“I thought you and Hank got on fine.”
“There’s no problem.”
“Well,” Nancy Steinberg said, “it’s something you just said that suggested that you and Hank didn’t get along.”
“Yes,” Carl said. He spoke in a low, reasonable voice. “That’s certainly the impression I was left with.”
“He’s an unusual man, that’s all.”
Nancy Steinberg bunched her eyebrows. “Hank?”
“Yes.”
“Unusual?”
“Yes.”
“Unusual how?”
“In the usual ways.” The boy looked for someone to laugh, but no one did.
“What on earth does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said—and now he seemed very much a boy, shy, small, pink where he was not white, at a loss for words. “It’s just him. It’s just the things he does. He does unusual things.”
“Tell us, son,” Carl said. A smile of satisfaction oiled his face.
“It’s no big deal.”
“Please,” Carl said. “Tell us, son. Give us an example of the acts of horrible Hank.”
“I didn’t say he was horrible.”
“Just the same, you can’t attack a man’s good name without an
example. You have to give us an example. You can’t just ask us to trust your judgment on a matter like this.” Carl had not always been this way. He’d not always been cruel. It was not something he’d acquired in the Army. No, he’d come back from the Army as sweet as he’d joined it, despite the bap-a-bap-a-baps that had sometimes spoiled his days. No, this was something he’d acquired since he’d started practicing law, a cunning awareness of people’s frailties and a willingness to expose them openly, meanly. He’d brought his own children to tears at times, never once raising his voice or his hand, but producing the same effect.
The boy hesitated, and Margie tried not to smile, sensing that the boy was too smart for this, that he’d already sized up Carl and sized him up right. He wasn’t going to give Carl an answer. But she was wrong, and she knew she was wrong when the boy looked at her again, looked into her eyes for whatever he’d found before.
“Okay,” the boy volunteered. “I’ll give you an example, if you’d like. I’ll give you what I believe is a good example. The first time I met Hank was after he and my mother had been dating for a few months. Hank took me and my mother and my brother, Steve, up to his cabin in the woods for a weekend. When we got up there, he dropped us off and said he had to go into town for some reason. Maybe he said he had to get food. Who knows? It’s not important. Anyway, he drove off, but he didn’t really go anywhere. He just parked his car down the road a bit and put a stocking over his face—you know, a woman’s stocking—and broke into the house through the back door, waving a knife around. A big, sharp knife. Steve and I were screaming. We were just kids then, and we thought he was going to kill us. Our mother was screaming too. Finally, Hank took the stocking off his face and said, ‘You big babies, it was just me.’ That’s what I mean when I say he’s unusual. That’s what I mean.”
Billy Corwell told that story matter-of-factly, like the narration that accompanies a filmstrip on cloud formations: cumulus, stratus, cirrus. It was a voice that spoke the truth, nothing more and nothing less, and when he was through, Margie realized that her hand was over her mouth and her mouth was open.
“That’s terrible,” Betty Allen said. “What a terrible thing for a grown man to do to little children.”
“Hank did that?” Nancy Steinberg asked. “Hank? My sister’s husband, Hank? Hank?”
“Mm hmm.”
“I don’t believe you. Not Hank.”
“He’s done worse. I wish I hadn’t said anything, but it’s true. He’s a very odd man.”
There was a pause, a silence that signals the end of a topic of conversation. Margie tried to think of a new subject, anything.
“That’s it?” Carl asked before Margie could speak. “That’s it, the one story that happened a long time ago? That’s it? If that’s it, even if it’s true, it sounds like an aberration. It’s not the sort of thing you can defame a man about. One event does not make up a man’s character.”
“There are other stories,” the boy answered. “There are more.”
“What else has he done?” Carl crossed one leg casually over the other. “What else, what else?”
“Yes,” Nancy Steinberg said. “What else?”
The boy licked his lips in thought. “Here’s one. When I was about twelve, he wanted me to play baseball because he used to be a baseball player himself, so he signed me up for Little League. I wasn’t any good and I didn’t really want to play. I was afraid of the ball, afraid that it’d hit me and I’d get hurt. Well, Hank had been a catcher, so he decided I had to be a catcher too, just like him. Like father, like son, except that he’s not my father. He said, ‘No son of mine is going to be afraid of the ball.’ So he put a catcher’s mask and a chest protector on me, and he took me out in the backyard. He had me kneel down in front of the fence, the fence in the backyard. Then he tied my hands behind my back with rope and started throwing baseballs at me. They were bouncing off my shoulders and my mask, and he kept yelling, ‘Don’t flinch, boy. A good catcher likes the pain. Don’t flinch. Don’t flinch.’”
“That’s not true!” Nancy Steinberg protested. She shook her head furiously, like a paint mixer. “Oh, no, that can’t be true.”
“I agree,” Carl said. “That can’t be true. The boy’s just having some fun with us, seeing if he can pull the wool over our eyes.”
“It’s true,” the boy said. He placed his hand over his heart in a way that was almost heartbreaking. “It’s very, very true,” he swore.
Carl was grinning now. He took a deep breath, as if the boy’s discomfort were a fragrance.
“No, son, I think we’re all onto your little game now. You had a little fun with all of us, spinning your little yarn to see if you could make fools of us, but now it’s time to move on to some more appropriate—and honest—dinner conversation.”
“I am being honest.” The boy’s voice rose a little, turning girlish, yet sour, and he looked around the table to see disbelieving eyes, all except Margie’s. The boy stared directly and pleadingly into her eyes. “You believe me, don’t you, Margie?”
Margie started to answer, but before she did, she turned toward Carl. He said nothing, though the muscles in his jaw flexed as if being tightened by some tiny tool.
“Margie?” the boy said. He leaned forward, his head over his plate, over the cold potatoes and chicken bones. “Please. You believe me, don’t you?”
Margie lowered her eyes. “I think you may have been exaggerating a bit,” she heard herself say softly. “I’m not saying that you made it up. I’m just saying that maybe you made it sound a little worse than it really was.”
When she raised her eyes, the boy wasn’t looking at her anymore. He seemed to be inspecting his fingers, studying where they were yellow and brown.
“Or,” she said, “maybe your memory’s playing tricks with you. It happened so long ago that maybe it’s become a little distorted in your memory. That happens to me sometimes. I’ll remember something differently than it actually happened.”
The boy picked at his fingers.
“Or maybe you’ve just forgotten the pleasant times and are focusing on a couple of isolated incidents. I’m sure you have some very pleasant memories of your stepfather. You must. Ballgames or movies or long walks or maybe a trip to the beach. Yes?”
Margie went on and on, past the point where even she understood what she was saying, but the boy wouldn’t look at her no matter what she said or how she said it. Eventually, the conversation turned, and Margie served dessert and coffee; thin little plumes of steam rose from the coffee cups and left the room in a serene mist. There were stories, and there was quiet laughter, and, finally, it grew late and the guests began to make those gestures that are the precursor to departing. A stifled yawn, a glance at a wristwatch. The boy rose to leave when the Steinbergs did, saying only, “Thank you,” to no one in particular as he slipped his coat on at the front door. Carl stood at Margie’s side, his fingers on the waist of her sweater. He rolled the fabric in his thick fingers and tickled her skin as an anxious young lover might; she couldn’t say anything to the boy even if she wanted. She waited for him to look at her, even for a moment, so she could mouth an apology or offer him a consoling look, anything to let him know that she believed, that she knew Hank had done everything he’d said and more, that she understood cruelty, but the boy turned and left, his shoulders hunched against the cold although there was none.
After closing the door, Carl released the fabric of Margie’s sweater. She followed him into the dining room, and they began to carry the dessert dishes and coffee cups into the kitchen, adding them to the mountain range of dirty dishes beside the sink.
“All in all, I think that went very well,” Carl announced at last.
“Yes,” Margie answered. “They’re nice people.”
Carl removed his sports jacket and rolled his shirtsleeves to his elbows. He turned on the faucet at the kitchen sink, and, after he had tested the water, Margie handed him a dish. He ran it under the water and scrubb
ed at it with a soapy sponge, then rinsed the dish off, put it in the rack to dry, and extended his hand blindly, waiting for another dish like a runner in a relay race anticipating the baton. Margie handed him another dish.
“Now, Margie, there’s something I want to talk about. Those people are the people I work with. You know that, don’t you?”
“Mm hmm.”
“You know that?” he said more firmly.
“Of course I know that.”
“I have to see them every day. You know that?”
“Yes.”
“I’m a respected man. I’m a partner in a very good law firm. You know that? And that’s allowed us to have a lot of the better things in life. Like the house. Like the cars. Things for the children. Vacations. You know that, don’t you? You know that?”
“Yes.”
Carl pulled at his mustache with his soapy fingers.
“Maybe all those things don’t mean anything to you. Maybe the house and the cars and the vacations, maybe they don’t mean anything to you.”
When Margie didn’t respond, he said, “Do they? Do they mean anything to you?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if that’s the case, then I don’t want you to tell that story about the girls and the chocolate ever again. It’s an embarrassing story and it diminishes me. God knows if it even happened. God knows if I even said the things you claim I said. I certainly don’t remember it.”
“You were sick. You were talking in your sleep.”
“Just the same, I don’t remember it.”
“Carl, it happened.”
“You yourself said that sometimes you remember events differently than they really happened. Just tonight you said that, remember? And I’m telling you that I don’t remember that story at all. Tonight’s the last time I ever want to hear that story. Do you understand?”
Margie nodded to confirm that she understood. Carl extended a hand to her, and she passed him another dish, which he ran under the hot water.
“And the china cabinet,” he said. “Did you see the china cabinet?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s scratched, on the side.” When Margie didn’t respond, he said, “There’s a scratch on the side of the china cabinet about an inch long. That’s an expensive china cabinet. You know that, you were there when we bought it. It’s cherry. We have to take better care of these things. I don’t know how it got scratched, but I know I didn’t do it. Will you have someone come out tomorrow to look at it? They’re probably going to have to refinish the whole thing. That’s five hundred dollars down the drain right there.”
