by M. E. Kerr
The cards are the big, mushy sort with words on them he would never dream of speaking.
She thinks, too, of his habit of telling her he feels like scratching an itch. It has become his way of saying that he’s what Tory would call horny. Mrs. King hates that word, as well. Mrs. King thinks of it as wanting to make love, though that is not the most accurate description of what actually happens.
And Mrs. King remembers how surprised she used to be when she was with her girlfriends and they would admit to similar things going on in their lives. All of them did; all admitted it and laughed.
There was a warm camaraderie in the laughter, as though they all belonged to the same sorority … and one of them might say with a certain affectionate indignation, “Men!”
When she hears his car drive up, she steels herself. She tries to remember what Tory said to tell him: Vassar isn’t the only college—New York City has several very fine ones, including Parsons School of Design, and Cooper Union, for artists. Tory does not expect any help from home, either. Both she and Horacio are going to find jobs in New York.
And Mrs. King is to try and make him understand that since Horacio came into her life, Tory realizes she did not love Drew that way at all. She was never in love with him. Drew was more like a best friend. No … Mrs. King decides to omit that description of Drew.
Wham!—the slam of the Chrysler’s door, and now he is on his way up the walk.
Mrs. King’s heart is racing with an excitement she has not felt for ages and ages.
They had composed their own marriage vows.
They were very simple ones, ending with Tory saying, “We, Victoria and Horacio, will love each other forever.”
A pause for the exchange of rings.
Then it was Horacio’s turn. “‘Forever, he said,’” which is the last line of Love in the Time of Cholera.
THE GREEN KILLER
“Be nice to him,” my father said. “He’s your cousin, after all.”
“He takes my things.”
“Don’t be silly, Alan. What of yours could Blaze possibly want? He has everything … everything,” my father added with a slight tone of disdain, for we all knew how spoiled my cousin was.
But he did take my things. Not things he wanted because he needed them, but little things like a seashell I’d saved and polished, an Indian head nickel I’d found, a lucky stone shaped like a star. Every time he came from New York City with his family for a visit, some little thing of mine was missing after they left.
We were expecting them for Thanksgiving that year. It was our turn to do the holiday dinner with all our relatives. Everyone would be crowded into our dining room with extra card tables brought up from the cellar, and all sorts of things borrowed from the next-door neighbors: folding chairs, extra serving platters, one of those giant coffee pots that could serve twenty … on and on.
It was better when it was their turn and everyone trooped into New York for a gala feast in their Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park. They had a doorman to welcome us, a cook to make the turkey dinner, maids to serve us.
Blaze’s father was the CEO of Dunn Industry. My father was the principal of Middle Grove High School on Long Island. About the only thing the two brothers had in common was a son apiece: brilliant, dazzling Blaze Dunn, seventeen; and yours truly, Alan Dunn, sixteen, average.
But that was a Thanksgiving no one in the family would ever get to enjoy or forget. An accident on the Long Island Expressway caused the cherry black Mercedes to overturn, and my cousin Blaze was killed instantly.
I had mixed emotions the day months later when I was invited into New York to take what I wanted of Blaze’s things.
Did I want to wear those cashmere sweaters and wool jackets and pants I’d always envied, with their Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein labels? The shoes—even the shoes fit me, British-made Brooks Brothers Church’s. Suits from Paul Stuart. Even the torn jeans and salty denim jackets had a hyperelegant “preppy” tone.
Yes!
Yes, I wanted to have them! It would make up for all the times my stomach had turned over with envy when he walked into a room, and the niggling awareness always there that my cousin flaunted his riches before me with glee. And all the rest—his good looks (Blaze was almost beautiful with his tanned perfect face, long eyelashes, green eyes, shiny black hair); and of course he was a straight-A student. He was at ease in any social situation. More than at ease. He was an entertainer, a teller of stories, a boy who could make you listen and laugh. Golden. He was a golden boy. My own mother admitted it. Special, unique, a winner—all of those things I’d heard said about Blaze. Even the name, never mind it was his mother’s maiden name. Blaze Dunn. I used to imagine one day I’d see it up on the marquee of some Broadway theater, or on a book cover, or at the bottom of a painting in the Museum of Modern Art. He’d wanted to be an actor, a writer, a painter. His only problem, he had always said, was deciding which talent to stress.
While I packed up garment bags full of his clothes, I pictured him leering down from that up above where we imagine the dead watching us. I thought of him smirking at the sight of me there in his room, imagined him saying, “It’s the only way you’d ever luck out like this, Snail!” He used to call me that. Snail. It was because I’d take naps when he was visiting. I couldn’t help it. I’d get exhausted by him. I’d curl up in my room and hope he’d be gone when I’d wake up. … He said snails slept a lot, too. He’d won a prize once for an essay he’d written about snails. He’d described how snails left a sticky discharge under them as they moved, and he claimed that because of it a snail could crawl along the edge of a razor without cutting itself. … He’d have the whole dining table enthralled while he repeated things like that from his prize-winning essays. And while I retreated to my room to sleep—that was when he took my things.
All right. He took my things; I took his things.
I thought I might feel weird wearing his clothes, and even my mother wondered if I’d be comfortable in them. It was my father who thundered, “Ridiculous! Take advantage of your advantages! It’s an inheritance, of sorts. You don’t turn down money that’s left you!”
Not only did I not feel all that weird in Blaze’s clothes, I began to take on a new confidence. I think I even walked with a new, sure step. I know I became more outgoing, you might even say more popular. Not dazzling, no, not able to hold a room spellbound while I tossed out some information about the habits of insects, but in my own little high-school world out on Long Island I wasn’t the old average Alan Dunn plodding along anymore. That spring I got elected to the prom committee, which decides the theme for the big end-of-the-year dance, and I even found the courage to ask Courtney Sweet out.
The only magic denied me by my inheritance seemed to be whatever it would take to propel me from being an average student with grades slipping down too often into Cs and Ds, up into Blaze’s A and A-plus status. My newfound confidence had swept me into a social whirl that was affecting my studies. I was almost flunking science.
When I finally unpacked a few boxes of books and trivia that Blaze’s mother had set aside for me, I found my seashell, my Indian head nickel, and my lucky stone. … And other things: a thin gold girl’s bracelet, a silver key ring from Tiffany, initials H. J. K. A school ring of some sort with a ruby stone. A medal with two golf clubs crossed on its face. A lot of little things like that … and then a small red leather notebook the size of a playing card.
In very tiny writing inside, Blaze had listed initials, dates, and objects this way:
A.D. December 25 Shell
H.K. March 5 Key ring
A.D. November 28 Indian nickel
He had filled several pages.
Obviously, I had not been the only one whose things Blaze had swiped. It was nothing personal.
As I flipped the pages, I saw more tiny writing in the back of the notebook.<
br />
A sentence saying: “Everything is sweetened by risk.”
Another: “Old burglars never die, they just steal away. (Ha! Ha!)”
And: “I dare, you don’t. I have, you won’t.”
Even today I wonder why I never told anyone about this. It was not because I wanted to protect Blaze or to leave the glorified memories of him undisturbed. I suppose it comes down to what I found at the bottom of one of the boxes.
The snail essay was there, and there was a paper written entirely in French. There was a composition describing a summer he had spent on the Cape, probably one of those “What I Did Last Summer” assignments unimaginative teachers give at the beginning of fall terms. … I did not bother to read beyond the opening sentences, which were “The Cape has always bored me to death for everyone goes there to have fun, clones with their golf clubs, tennis rackets, and volleyballs! There are no surprises on the Cape, no mysteries, no danger.”
None of it interested me until I found “The Green Killer.” It was an essay with an A-plus marked on it, and handwriting saying, “As usual, Blaze, you excel!”
The title made it sound like a Stephen King fantasy, but the essay was a description of an ordinary praying mantis … a neat and gory picture of the sharp spikes on his long legs that shot out, dug into an insect, and snap went his head!
“You think it is praying,” Blaze had written, “but it is waiting to kill!”
My heart began pounding as I read, not because of any blood-thirsty instinct in me, but because an essay for science was due, and here was my chance to excel!
Blaze had gone to a private school in New York that demanded students handwrite their essays, so I carefully copied the essay into my computer, making a little bargain with Blaze’s ghost as I printed it out: I will not tell on you in return for borrowing your handiwork. Fair is fair. Your golden reputation will stay untarnished, while my sad showing in science will be enhanced through you.
“The Green Killer” was an enormous hit! Mr. Van Fleet, our teacher, read it aloud, while I sat there beaming in Blaze’s torn Polo jeans and light blue cashmere sweater. Nothing of mine had ever been read in class before. I had never received an A.
After class, Mr. Van Fleet informed me that he was entering the essay in a statewide science contest, and he congratulated me, adding, “You’ve changed, Alan. I don’t mean just this essay—but you. Your personality. We’ve all noticed it.” Then he gave me a friendly punch, and grinned slyly. “Maybe Courtney Sweet has inspired you.
And she was waiting for me by my locker, looking all over my face as she smiled at me, purring her congratulations.
Ah, Blaze, I thought, finally, my dear cousin, you’re my boy … and your secret is safe with me. That’s our deal.
Shortly after my essay was sent off to the science competition, Mr. Van Fleet asked me to stay after class again.
“Everyone,” he said, “was impressed with ‘The Green Killer,’ Alan. Everyone agreed it was remarkable.”
“Thank you,” I said, unbuttoning my Ralph Lauren blazer, breathing a sigh of pleasure, rocking back and forth in my Church’s loafers.
“And why not?” Mr. Van Fleet continued. “It was copied word for word from an essay written by Isaac Asimov. One of the judges spotted it immediately.”
So Blaze was Blaze—even dead he’d managed to take something from me once again.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
“Hello, son.”
“Hi there!” I don’t think he noticed that I’d stopped calling him Dad. Not just because he wasn’t my dad, but because I wished with all my heart he was. I wished I’d never become involved in this masquerade, and yet if I hadn’t, I never would have met Onondaga John.
It was a warm, early spring day, surprising in upstate New York, where we often have snow up to our downstairs windows in March.
We sat in the prison visiting room. This was our third meeting. The first had been at Thanksgiving. The second at Christmas.
John Klee’s face was lit by the few bars of sun that came through the high windows in the place. He had deep blue eyes, the color of his uniform. He told me once there was a saying: True blue will never stain. It meant that a truly noble heart will never disgrace itself … but it also referred to the blue aprons worn by butchers, which wouldn’t show bloodstains.
“Johnny, today I want to tell you something I’ve never mentioned. Make yourself comfortable because there’s a story attached.”
“When isn’t there a story?” I said with a smile. “Go ahead, sir.”
He loved to talk about his life before Redmond, as though the young man he had once been was now understood by a gentler, wiser elder. He talked of his mistakes, some of them what he called “whoppers.”
“I had no patience, Johnny, that was my one big flaw. I wanted everything right away.” He’d said that both times. He said, “I don’t hold that against myself, though. Growing up, I was the poor kid, the one whose family got the charity box from the Rotary Club every year. Grown up, I was a show-off—never drove a black car if I could get one fire-engine red. My wheels squealed around corners and my horn played ‘Sweet Talkin’ Guy.’”
He didn’t tell me sob stories, nor did he make himself the hero of his tales. He just wanted me to know him. He wanted to know me too. Not really me—he’d never know me. But he wanted to know his son.
My real name is Brian Moore. I am Millie Moore’s kid, one of these single-parent children. So in the beginning it sounded like fun to pretend I was Onondaga John’s son.
My mother’s bed-and-breakfast, called the Blue Moon, specializes in the families of men locked up in Redmond Prison, right in our downtown.
When you cater to a crowd of women (mostly) whose brothers or husbands or fathers are doing nickels and dimes, you get to know them. Onondaga John is doing two quarters, and of that fifty-year sentence he’s served only sixteen years.
We call Mrs. Klee, his wife, Polly Posh, because there is something posh about her, something glamorous—even though, as she likes to say, her days of Concorde flights and mansions, silk sheets and chauffeurs, are over. She is a forty-eight-year-old con’s wife. Her rich family want nothing to do with her. Neither does her son, the real Johnny. He moved in with his grandparents when he was eight years old. Now, at Oxford House, he tells his prep school pals that his dad is dead.
For a long while Onondaga John didn’t want anything to do with his son either. He was ashamed of himself, and uncertain about how the boy felt toward him. Early in his sentence Polly had said something about not wanting to bring a little kid to Redmond Prison, not wanting to have him see his father that way. Onondaga John thought there was a possibility she’d lied to their boy, maybe said he was on some secret mission far away … maybe even said he was dead. It wasn’t uncommon for prisoners’ wives to keep the truth from their kids.
Onondaga John didn’t even ask to see pictures of Johnny Jr. Let Polly bring up the boy the way she thought best.
He asked her if Johnny needed anything, if everything was okay with him—general references, but nothing specific. Polly guessed Onondaga John was too proud to face a little tyke walking through those iron doors, calling out “Daddy.” Not his son! Leave well enough alone.
Polly was just as glad he felt that way. She never had to tell her husband that the boy had turned into Little Lord-It-Over-Everyone. She never had to tell Onondaga John that his son claimed to be fatherless.
Then came the fatal day when Onondaga John told Polly he’d like to meet his son. “Isn’t he around sixteen now?”
“Yes.” Polly told my mother she was thinking right then and there that I was around sixteen too.
“Does he know about me, Polly?”
“Yes.”
“Bring him along next time. I’m not planning to become a daddy to him suddenly. I just want to see him.”
“Sur
e,” Polly said.
That night at the Blue Moon, Polly asked my mother and me, “What would it hurt if Brian visited him, said he was his son?”
“Well, Brian,” said my mother, “here’s your chance to be an actor. Here’s your chance to prove to everyone at that school you’re the Tom Hanks of Redmond, not some flop!”
“He can’t tell anyone he’s doing it!” said Polly. “And who said he was a flop?”
“That’s what they think of him,” said my mother. “Ask him.”
“Why do they think that, Brian?” Polly asked me.
“Not every kid comes across as interesting. I don’t.” That was putting it mildly. I didn’t “come across” at all, except as El Nerdo.
“This might make you feel interesting,” Polly said, “even if you can’t talk about it.”
I said, “It’d be a change anyway.”
I thought the main thing would be seeing inside Redmond. You live in a prison city your whole life never knowing what’s behind those walls. You see the guys going and coming on the buses in and out of Redmond. Going with a birdcage and the shiny new suit the state pays for. Coming, manacled to a plainclothesman, not wanting to look you in the eye.
But the main thing didn’t turn out to be Redmond Prison. It was Onondaga John himself. Right away he asked me how I felt about things, and he told me how he did. He said his favorite author was Charles Dickens and one of his favorite books was Great Expectations. What do you like to read, he wanted to know, and whose music do you like? What do you want to be someday? “An actor?” he said. “Hey! Hey!” he said, grinning at me, looking as pleased as though I’d just unlocked the front gate and said “You’re free.”
I’d never had an adult male interested in me unless it was a guidance counselor wanting to know why my fingernails were chewed down to the quick, or why I couldn’t stop rubbing away my eyebrows.
