“I’m seventeen. I’ll be eighteen in December.”
“Sydney, your stepmother and I think you should give some thought to the letter you wrote us some time ago, about coming to Doylestown and learning the business.”
“What about college?”
“No one’s discouraging the college idea. But you could start this summer to learn the business.”
“The letter was a mistake,” Shockproof said. “I don’t want to learn the swimming pool business.”
“One of our best friends is a veterinarian, Sydney. Dr. Morton Goldman. He’s Jewish. Sydney, do you know the difference between what Goldy makes and what I make?”
“I don’t even like swimming pools. I like the beach.”
“We don’t have beaches in Bucks County. That’s why we sell so many pools.… The difference is about fifteen thousand a year, Sydney. And I’m not going to stand still at what I’m making now. Goldy has no choice. There are just so many dogs and cats in Bucks County, but we haven’t even begun with the pools. And we’ll expand. We’ll go to New Jersey, New York—there’s no top on our business.”
“I don’t want to be a vet, either,” Shockproof said.
“That’s what you’ll learn to be at Cornell.”
“That would only be part of it.”
“If you lived with us, you could commute to Princeton. Sydney, I’m not pushing the pool business. Try it for a summer, and then go to Princeton. Study anything. I don’t care what you want to be, but give the pool business a chance before you decide.”
“I have a job,” Shockproof said.
“They can always find someone else to clean out the cages at that pet shop,” said Harold Skate. “If you work for me, you’ll be calling on real people, people of substance who count for something. In one week, Sydney, I meet lawyers, doctors, your writers and actors, brokers, judges. I met James Michener only a few weeks ago, your author of South Pacific.”
“Last week I met Lorna Dune,” said Shockproof.
“Who?”
“No one,” Shockproof said.
“Will you think about it, Sydney? The summer’s just begun.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“No one’s pushing you,” Harold Skate said, and then the waiter appeared.
Harold Skate said, “A Seven and Seven, a Manhattan with a cherry, and what would you like, Sydney?”
“Dewars and water,” Shockproof said.
“Now wait a minute, waiter. Wait a minute, Sydney. Sydney, we’re not going to break the law.”
“I’m going to be eighteen in December.”
“Sydney, this is June. The law is very clear on the drinking age.”
“I’ll have seven minus seven,” Shockproof said.
“One Seven-Up and Seagrams Seven,” said Harold Skate, “one Seven-Up, and one Manhattan with a cherry.” Then he said to Shockproof, “In New York they’re liable to put lemon peels in Manhattans unless you specify a cherry.… Does your mother allow you to drink, Sydney?”
“She treats me like an adult.”
“Then she does,” said Harold Skate, tight-lipped. “Well, that doesn’t surprise me one little bit.”
Rosemary Skate said, “What doesn’t surprise you one little bit, Harold?” She eased her way in beside Shockproof. “It’s a very clean rest room. That’s a good sign in a restaurant. Clean rest room, clean kitchen. What doesn’t surprise you, Harold?”
“The chickens are coming home to roost, that’s all,” said Harold Skate.
Midway through a third Seven-Up, Moo Goo Gai Pan, and Rosemary Skate’s discourse concerning a recent Hawaii Five-O episode dealing with germ warfare, Shockproof saw Ellie Davies. She was sitting on a banquette in the corner, with the river view behind her, facing someone whose back was to him. Ellie was very definitely at the start of things. She was leaning forward with her head cocked to one side in a wistful way, smoking a cigarette with her right hand, while her left hand played with the silverware in front of the other woman. She was caressing the spoons, which were about an inch from the other woman’s hand, and smiling, talking in a very intense style. They were not eating. There were cocktail glasses in front of them, the menus untouched at the side of the table.
The other woman was a blond, but that was all he could tell. He felt a glow of excitement at this serendipity, as Rosemary Skate went on about germ warfare and the potential loss of Hawaii’s sugar industry.
The other thing Shockproof was handling was a growing anticipation of “japping” Estelle Kelly, and somewhere near the end of his Moo Goo Gai Pan, he ventured to put in, “By the way, after this I have an appointment, so I won’t be driving you back to the Commodore, if that’s all right with you.”
“An appointment?” Harold Skate looked at his watch. “At this hour? It’s almost eleven-thirty, Sydney.”
“Someone I went to school with lives in this neighborhood,” he said. “I promised I’d stop by and help him with something.”
“Help him with what at this hour?”
“His pet snake has mouth rot.”
“Ick!” Rosemary Skate exclaimed, wiggling her shoulders and making a face.
“You know, Sydney, it’s interesting,” said Harold Skate. “A lot of people find snakes in their swimming pools. They fall in at night and drown.”
“They don’t drown. The chemicals in the water kill them.”
“Is that so?”
“Do we have to talk about snakes when we’re eating?” Rosemary Skate said.
“Does this classmate expect you at this late hour, Sydney?” said Harold Skate.
“He’s a night owl.”
Then as Ellie Davies was sending the waiter away from her table, she looked across and saw Shockproof. She hit her forehead with her palm in a dramatic gesture, then waved at him. Her face turned scarlet.
Next, the woman across from her turned around and looked at Shockproof. It was Gloria Roy, who lived with Liz Lear. Shockproof suddenly understood perfectly why no one from M. E. Shepley Skate & Company had met Ellie Davies’s new amour, and why Ellie had not wanted Liz in on the onion pizza summit conference that night. Ellie Davies was running off with Gloria of Liz and Gloria! There was no predicting the turns romance could take among the ladies of M.E. & Co. Old friends suddenly felt new vibrations and the post office was busy with change of address notices, the jewelers were engraving new sets of initials on cigarette lighters and the backs of bracelets, and everyone then settled in until the next turn of the roulette wheel. Shockproof felt like Florabelle Muir sitting on top of the biggest item since the Burton-Taylor shenanigans, back in the years when M.E. was with Cappy.
Gloria Roy glanced back at Shockproof and gave him a halfhearted salute, accompanied by a small, defeated smile.
With these exchanges completed, Shockproof saw Rosemary Skate look over at the two women, and then at Shockproof. Rosemary Skate’s mouth was twisted in a tight little Pat Nixon smile.
“People you know, Sydney?” she said.
“Ummm hmmm.”
Harold Skate was frowning down at his Chow Har Kew.
“Friends of your mother?” Rosemary Skate persisted.
“Yes, they’re friends of ours,” said Shockproof.
“I, myself, don’t see a woman wearing pants to a restaurant,” Rosemary Skate said.
Ellie was wearing a black velvet pants suit with a bright green signature scarf tossed over her shoulder.
Shockproof said, “They’re in fashion.”
“In some places,” said Rosemary Skate. “Is this one of your mother’s restaurants?”
“My mother doesn’t have any restaurants. She’s a casting director.”
“Never mind, Rosemary,” Harold Skate said.
“Women wear pants in New York all the time,” Shockproof said.
“Which is another thing wrong with New York,” Harold Skate said.
Rosemary Skate shot him a quick little smile of gratification.
Someone with a li
terary bent was in the fortune cookie business. Before Shockproof had opened his, he had decided the message would tell him whether or not to proceed with his plans to “jap” Estelle Kelly.
Shockproof’s fortune read: “The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.”
Outside the Orient Room, the devil hailed a cab for the Harold Skates and went with his yellow furnace eyes, smelling of sulphur and tannis root. He envisioned her answering the door, half asleep. Guy came in and began making love to her.… Bigger he was than always; painfully wonderfully big. He lay forward upon her, his other arm sliding under her back to hold her, his broad chest crushing her breasts. The hugeness kept driving in, the leather body banging itself against her again, and again and again.
Now the devil was in the elevator of the building, ascending. Now sweeping down the hall, pressing the bell with his long, sharp nails.
“YOU!”
Shockproof stared up at Captain Kevin Kelly, towering over him in the doorway.
“Good evening, sir,” but the Captain was crazily grabbing hold of his collar, eyes ablaze with some monumental rage. A whiff of whiskey worked through the punch of fear invading Shockproof’s senses.
“You little bastard hippy! I’ll pound the shit out of you!”
Behind him, “Kevin! Kevin!”—a woman’s voice. “Easy, Kevin.”
“It’s the little creep in person!” the Captain said.
“Daddy?” Estelle Kelly’s voice from the background.
“Shut up, baby. I’ll handle this.”
Shockproof was being pushed back out into the hall. The door closed on the woman’s plea. “Don’t hurt him, Kevin.”
Now Shockproof was alone in the hall with the Captain.
“What—” Shockproof began, and felt a fist against his nose.
Next, Shockproof bent double with the assault to his liver.
“Mary Jane Marlboros, ah? You dirty little bastard!” the Captain bellowed.
At some point through tearing eyes, Shockproof caught a glimpse of Estelle Kelly hovering in the doorway, white and pinch-faced. Then Shockproof tore free, ran clutching his broken parts, bleeding, hobbling, fleeing downstairs like a rat through the bowels of the building.
Eight
MY MEMORY OF IT ALL IS UNSPEAKABLE
The Skate house outside Doylestown, Pennsylvania, was a long white ranch house with a sauna in the basement and a swimming pool in the backyard.
Early that morning it was still dark when Shockproof had let himself in the window of the guest room. This had triggered the alarm system. A wailing siren had freaked out Daughter Skate, the Persian cat, who had overturned all the potted cacti in the picture window, then scaled the drapes, hissing, until Shockproof had managed to pull the siren’s switch.
At ten o’clock that morning, he was awakened by Daughter’s sandpaper tongue cleaning his swollen nose, and the sound of the telephone.
He planned to let the phone ring—Harold and Rosemary Skate were still at the Commodore in New York—but the ring was too persistent to ignore. He got off the living room couch and hobbled across to answer it, his whole body protesting the action.
“Hello?”
“Who the hell do you think you are, Sydney—Martin Luther?” M.E. said. “Why didn’t you just leave the note inside, instead of attaching it to the door knocker?”
“I forgot my key. I was afraid if I slid it under the door, you’d walk over it without seeing it.”
“Leogrande’s furious, Sydney.”
“Didn’t you tell him I’d work tomorrow, my day off?”
“Didn’t you ever hear of giving anyone advance notice? Now just what happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Don’t give me that. Estelle Kelly called me.”
“Her old man beat the shit out of me.”
“She told me. Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right.”
“Did you go to a doctor?”
“I’m not a basket case, if that’s what you mean.”
“How do you know something’s not broken?”
“I know.”
“You’re a damn fool, Sydney! What is this about marijuana? Since when?”
“Since that well-known bent descendant of the Schiffs and Guggenheims and Kuhns, if you want to be gross about it.”
“Don’t pass the buck. You gave Estelle Kelly the pot.”
“I left some pot there by mistake,” said Shockproof. “She never touches drugs. She’s a drunkard.”
“Oh, she doesn’t?”
“No.”
“Her father got married, Sydney. Sunday night he brought his bride home to meet his daughter, and they found your little girlfriend sitting under a table in the living room smoking pot, with a loaded gun in her lap.”
“That loaded gun’s always been there in his sock drawer.”
“Well, it was in her lap Sunday night, Sydney, and she threatened their lives.”
“She might have done that anyway. She’s got a father hang-up,” Shockproof said. “I told you she had a father hang-up.”
“She says the pot did something to her mind.”
“Who told her to take the pot in the first place?”
“You left it there, Sydney.”
“I forgot it. He left the gun there.”
“He has a license for the gun. Do you have a license for the pot?”
“All right.”
“I don’t get you, Sydney. At all.”
“I don’t get you, either.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“I heard it. What exactly don’t you get, Sydney?”
“I get you. All right?”
“What did you go to Doylestown for?”
“I don’t know. I just felt like getting away.”
“Your father’s still in New York, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Then what the hell are you doing?”
“I’m taking a day off.”
“You get yourself back to New York by dinner, or you can have the whole summer off, and spend it right where you are. Do you hear me?”
“I might spend it here, anyway.”
“If you’re not back in time for dinner, I’ll forward your clothes.”
“Did Estelle Kelly say I was responsible?”
“She didn’t have to. You are.”
“What about that well-known pusher from Gramercy Park South? She’ll be some endorsement for chewing gum. Be Chew-zee. Drop acid.”
“If you can’t keep your head above water, don’t go in over your head.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
“I told you she wasn’t a little Stuart Hall girl, Sydney.”
“I know what you told me.”
“What’s this about acid?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you take LSD now?”
“No.”
“Pot is one thing, acid’s another.”
“I don’t take acid.”
“Don’t you ever give Estelle Kelly LSD, either.”
“I won’t be seeing Estelle Kelly.”
“She feels very badly about it, Sydney. She was crying. She wanted to be sure you were all right.”
“I may stay here and learn the swimming pool business.”
“If you can take all that excitement, you do that.”
“I wouldn’t want to be responsible for anyone shooting Captain Kelly and his new bride.”
“Dinner’s at seven, Sydney,” said M. E. Shepley Skate. “If you’re not here I’ll rent your room out.”
“I may not be kidding, you know.”
“I may not be, either, you know.”
After Shockproof cleaned up the dirt from the rug and rearranged the pots of cacti, he went into the guest room which his father used for an auxiliary office.
Shockproof opened the file cabinet, M-S.
The folder labeled SKATE, SYDNEY (SON) took up most of the drawer.
<
br /> Shockproof could not remember writing or receiving that many invoices from his father.
He pulled one out at random. It was written three years ago, the summer he was at Fire Island Pines with his mother and Corita Carr.
His father’s part of the invoice read:
Dear Sydney,
I am sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. Last week your stepmother lost your new little prospective stepbrother in a miscarriage. It would have been a boy. We are both very disappointed. This is the third miscarriage as you may know. But I have you to carry on the name, although we don’t see a great deal of you. It would be good for her morale if you sent your stepmother a cheer-up card. Your stepmother and I were very proud of your grades, and happy to know your mother can afford a nice vacation at the beach for you, which you richly deserve.
Business is good, and I am the top salesman now. My dream is to have my own business within two years. We are going to buy a house on Acquetong Road.
Affectionately,
Your father, Harold Skate
Shockproof’s part of the invoice read:
Dear Dad,
Today I went clamming down at the bay. I have a good tan and like it here. What I really wish I had is a mask, snorkel and fins, so I could do some diving. The new wrap-around mask costs $16.95, but a plain $4.95 will do. The snorkel sells for $1.95. A good average price of flippers is about $10. I could probably do the whole thing for $17. I don’t know if you’ll want to add these vacation “extras” or not. The house alone cost mother $3,000.
Affectionately,
Your son, Sydney Skate
No mention of Rosemary Skate’s miscarriage; Shockproof had never sent the cheer-up card, either.
Shockproof remembered that when the check for seventeen dollars had arrived, M. E. Shepley Skate had forbidden him to purchase the mask, snorkel, and fins.
“If I say you’re too young to skin dive, you’re too young to skin dive, Sydney. How’d you con him out of the seventeen dollars?”
“It was his idea I might like to try skin diving.”
“Oh, sure. He wouldn’t know the cost of a fishhook, and suddenly he knows the exact cost of a mask, snorkel, and fins. Let me see the invoice he wrote with the check.”
“I already sent it back, and I don’t keep my copies.”
Shockproof Sydney Skate Page 8
