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The Love Letters of J. Timothy Owen
Constance C. Greene
For Philip and Lucia, readers and writers
of love letters nonpareil, with love and thanks.
Chapter 1
He kept the motor going as he leaned on the mower and covertly studied the girl. She was baby-sitting the kids next door, monsters all. He wanted to let her know he was on her side, was offering up a few prayers, maybe even a novena or two, for her health and safety. But how? He didn’t want her to think he was a complete wacko.
He wore his thick, tan hair long over his high forehead to conceal its depth and width, a suitable repository for his many weird thoughts. His Adam’s apple, big enough to fend for itself, was a good prop, and his glasses, purchased at Woolworth’s—thick, professorial-type glasses—completed the image he chose to present to the world at large: a slightly off-the-wall, undercover intellectual. Inside, he was a true romantic, a veritable mush of romanticism. He would die if anyone discovered his secret.
He’d already blown it once or twice. Long ago. Take third grade. He’d sent Jennifer, Jennifer of the pigeon-toes and the scraggly pigtails, five valentines. He’d gone early to school and had slipped them into the valentine box on the teacher’s desk before anyone else had arrived. All five were handmade beauties signed “Guess Who?” Then he’d signed, in the left-hand corner, his name: Tim O.
Jennifer had showed and told. They’d all laughed. Tony Montaldo had led the laughter, kept it going. “Guess who? Tim O.!” was the hue and cry. Tony was a big, good-looking kid who’d sat behind him and copied his arithmetic answers because Tim was good at arithmetic.
“How’s it going, Tim O.?” Tony had shouted regularly. Tony wouldn’t let go. “How’s it going, Tim O.?” Tim had managed to conceal his hurt as well as his anger, but it still rankled.
Then, in an excess of romantic zeal in seventh grade, he’d thrown handfuls of pebbles at the window of a girl named Karen. A habit, he’d read, of long-ago lovers, it seemed to him a wonderfully romantic thing to do. Karen’s father, however, took exception. Angered, no doubt, by his interrupted TV show, as well as a cracked windowpane, he’d given chase. Through backyards and over garbage pails they’d flown, he and Karen’s dad, with Tim always a little out front, spurred on by adrenaline, youth, and terror. This incident had dampened the romantic fire always burning in his insides.
Until now. He hoped they were paying her a fortune, because that’s what baby-sitting those kids was worth. He knew. He’d done it. In the olden days, five years or so ago, eager for a fast buck, a bag of M&M’s, and unlimited TV, he’d been available at a moment’s notice. The parents of the monsters, new in town, thought him a gem. Which he was. Living next door as he did, and being big for his age (eleven at the time), and cheap, he was called on whenever they felt the need of a breath of fresh air, which was often. A flick to be seen, a quiet dinner à deux, the shrink to be visited, whatever. Those monsters took a toll on the old nervous system, thereby lining his pockets.
He might still be baby-sitting, if the monsters’ parents hadn’t one day read once too often of the abundance of child molesters. Behind every tree, every steering wheel, lurking in every bulrush. Male babysitters, it seemed, were particularly suspect, henceforth persona non grata. From that day forward, the parents of the monsters worked hard at avoiding Tim’s eye as they led a seemingly unending procession down the garden path, of tottering old ladies trailing their knitting, or girl-children fresh from their orthodontists, live sacrifices all, as the eyes and the teeth of the monsters gleamed a welcome from behind damask draperies.
What those parents didn’t know, what he’d never told, was that he’d been the target of molestation, rather than the kids. Upon reflection, he considered himself lucky to be alive. Fortunately, he’d been a Boy Scout, and had also taken a survival course offered at the Y. Those kids had thrown some pretty heavy stuff his way. Masters at tying sophisticated knots, they also knew a multitude of ways to shut off the supply of oxygen to the brain. One memorable afternoon, the three oldest monsters had come close to trapping him in a handmade hangman’s noose, with which they’d attempted to hoist him to the rafters in the garage. Thanks to his intense interest in reading all available literature concerning the renowned escape artist Houdini, Tim had wriggled free in the nick of time. Oh, how the monsters’ faces had fallen; how they’d wept, the only time they’d done so, as he paraded before them, alive, victorious.
He sighed now, contemplating the girl from afar. Her cheekbones were a work of art. Her legs, long as a stork’s and considerably more symmetrical, were comely, enticing. Her mouth was a bright-red beacon, luring him onto the shoals. A natural beauty—one of few—her name, he happened to know, was Sophie. She was a sophomore and played oboe in the school band.
“Cut it out, Benjy!” he heard her holler from the neighbors’ lawn. Little did she know that one word of protest acted like the proverbial red flag to Benjy. His blood, always on the simmer, reached a full, rolling boil, and his killer instincts, located close to his skin, emerged, fully developed. The other monsters, Tim noted, were out of sight, probably scouting around for some kindling to get a good blaze going in the master bedroom, a room without a fireplace.
“Tim!” His mother’s voice, calling from the house, had a high, clear ring to it. She seemed to get nervous when she saw him standing still, doing nothing. She’d been on edge since his thirteenth birthday, when he’d become a full-fledged teenager. The day he’d hit thirteen, she’d started to go to pieces. Now that he was sixteen, she was still going downhill. He raised a hand to show her he’d heard and bent over the mower, pretending its motor had conked out and he was doing his best to get it going again. People were too uptight these days, he reflected, peering through his hair for a better look at The Girl. (Even though he knew her name was Sophie, in his head he called her The Girl.)
Uptight about everything—teenagers, child molesters, security systems, triple locks, guard dogs, you name it.
“Tim, are you almost finished? I need some help.” His mother had gone into the antique business in an effort to keep busy, make some money, and allay her anxieties—anxieties about him, his father, cholesterol, cellulite, anorexia, bulimia, the world in general, to say nothing of nuclear waste. She collected things—willowware, fans, old clothes, whirligigs—Americana in all forms. Once, in an effort to re-create a cabin in the woods, circa 1845, she’d draped the TV set in an old quilt, attempting to disguise it. She was queer for weather vanes, old baskets, Shaker pegboards. If it was art deco, she snapped it up. When she wasn’t going to auctions, she was ravaging tag sales in the hope of flushing out an unsigned Picasso, or some ancient portrait of Abraham Lincoln done by an itinerant artist on oilcloth. It was the oilcloth that pushed up the price.
Then there was that story on the six-o’clock news, of an outrageously ugly candy dish, bought at a tag sale for two bucks and sold at an auction in a high five-figure bracket after said candy dish was found to have been made by some canny Frenchman smart enough to have turned out only two such outrageously ugly candy dishes, the other being prominently displayed in the Louvre. Tim’s mother thrived on such stories and woke each morning, renewed, certain that today would be her day in the sun.
“Yeah, Ma, coming!”
A rustling in the bushes and a spate of giggles told him he was not alone. He glimpsed a couple of straw-colored heads and some bare flesh. The monsters were deploying their forces.
He got the mower going, revved the engine, and aimed it at the clump of bushes. Maybe he could wipe out the lot of them in one fell swoop. Mow ’em down, to coin a phrase.
“Coming for you!” he roared as he and his mower advanced noisily. The bushes trembled as if caught in a typhoon, but were not sundered. He kept on going, growing a little apprehensive, even considered backing down, thereby losing face. He didn’t fancy having a murder rap hung on him.
With seconds to spare, the bushes parted, spewing three scantily clad bodies topped by three straw-colored heads, all screaming with glee and the excitement of bloodletting, even if the blood turned out to be their own.
Then a commotion next door silenced even the monsters, and they watched as the girl wrestled Benjy to the ground and sat on him. For that alone, he could’ve kissed her. For not only was she beautiful, she was also strong.
Chapter 2
Before his mother would allow him to go next door to baby-sit, she had insisted on demonstrating to him the fine art of diapering a baby, as there seemed to be quite a few babies among the tribe of monsters. Moreover, most of them appeared to be wearing diapers. Either that or large, billowing behinds ran in their family. Like baldness. Or blue eyes. The monsters’ mother revealed she had read all the books on child rearing and was against forced toilet training.
“When they’re ready,” she said piously, “they will let me know.” In the meantime, the behinds got bigger and soggier, and the air in the monsters’ house got pretty steamy on a hot summer’s day.
Using an ancient diaper and Tim’s scraggly old teddy bear, which she somewhat sheepishly brought from its hiding place for use in her diapering demo, his mother had said in her precise way, “You fold it with the thickness in front if it’s a boy baby, Tim, and with the thickness in back if it’s a girl.”
So it was he learned the facts of life, sort of.
He liked little kids. Maybe he’d have some of his own when he was thirty, and rich. Or forty, and richer. One of his friends’ fathers was pushing sixty. When the father showed up at school on occasion, some smart ass always said, “Who’s the old geezer?” It didn’t seem to bother his friend, and presumably the old geezer never heard.
He heard the girl calling the monsters home to roost. Her voice sounded thin and strained and anxious, probably wondering what she’d do with them once they got there, or, if they didn’t show, how she’d explain their absence to their parents.
He turned off the mower, conserving gas. His mother had gone inside, no doubt to mull over the merits of collecting Oriental rugs as opposed to old baseball cards.
The monsters, flushed fresh from the shrubbery, arranged themselves in a tight circle at his feet, ready to gnaw on his ankles if need be. He thought he heard a whirring sound, the tiny, tinny sound of their collective brains plotting his immediate demise. Only their eyes moved, eyes as big and as flat as silver dollars. They lifted their angelic faces to him, as flowers lift theirs to the sun. What a scene. The whirring sound continued. Either it was their brains working overtime or a rattlesnake off course. Hard to say which he feared most.
“So why don’t you guys pack it in, go home, and put on the feed bag? The baby-sitter’s probably got a treat for you.” The eyes widened, the mouths remained clamped shut. They gave him the silent treatment, figuring it would turn him to jelly, as it had so many others.
Sometimes the sudden move won the Cracker Jacks. “You!” he snapped, leveling a grass-green finger at the biggest monster, who wore cutoffs and a sneer. “You’re the general!”
Who could resist that? Everybody wants to be the general, right?
“You’re the pilot,” he told the girl. “And you’re the adjutant,” he addressed the smallest monster.
It was all in the choice of words; that and the authoritative snap with which they left his mouth. That took care of the lot. Keep moving, keep talking. At least he had their complete attention.
“Ready, march!” he bellowed, and, miracle of miracles, they obeyed. Revving the engine once more, he pushed the mower before him like a Sherman tank, and goose-stepped across the yard with the troops following on his heels. If it works, don’t knock it, was his slogan for the day.
When they reached the back door of the monsters’ house, he turned off the mower and opened the screen door. He marched inside, and they followed, lambs being led to the slaughter.
Benjy lay on the floor supporting his head in his cupped hands. The TV set dithered and spouted weird noises and bright lights and screams of greed from the contestants trying for a new refrigerator.
The baby-sitter had gone. Had she, perhaps, bolted, unable to stand the gaff? Or was she even now suspended from a homemade hangman’s noose in the garage, heels dangling in the murky air?
Neither. He was relieved to hear a pounding on the bathroom door, indicating her presence within.
“You little weasel!” he snarled at Benjy, who smiled vacantly around the edges of his grimy paws and continued to watch the carnage on the small screen. He went to the bathroom door and turned the knob. Locked. No key in sight.
“Let her out before I break both your legs,” he said. Wordlessly, the general in the cutoffs rummaged under the rug and brought forth a key.
“He’s so dumb he always puts it in exactly the same place,” the general explained.
The key fitted the lock; he turned it and the door swung open. The girl sat on the edge of the bathtub chewing a fingernail.
She jumped to her feet, pale with rage. “That’s the first and last time I baby-sit in this hellhole!” she cried. “I don’t care if they pay me ten bucks an hour. You couldn’t drag me in here again. Who are you?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you in this, too?” She clenched her fists and he prepared to duck. “Let me go or I’ll scream. I’ll scream bloody murder.” He didn’t doubt it.
“I’m …” he began, but she wasn’t listening.
“I have a brown belt in karate!” she shouted. “You lay a finger on me and I’ll put you on your back just like that!”
He was not averse to the idea of her putting him on his back but, at the moment, he wanted to comfort her. His mouth opened and closed like a fish coming up for air. She started to edge past him. He was careful not to touch her. The monsters lined up, watching, listening, intrigued by this real-life drama.
“You lay a hand on me and you’ll regret it,” the girl said. He made himself concave as she sidestepped him, so no part of him would touch her as she made her escape. How could she know he was a knight in shining armor, a courtier, a vagabond lover? He felt like breaking into song, if only he could carry a tune. He wished for a Royal Canadian Mountie’s red coat or a snow-white charger to carry him into battle so he could slay all the dragons in the kingdom for his fair maiden.
“Buzz off!” hissed the fair maiden, eyes shooting sparks.
The sound of the family car limping into the drive brought all hands around. The silver-dollar eyes darted hither and yon in a search-and-destroy mission of all evidence.
“There you are, my darlings!” the monsters’ mother cried, refreshed by her hiatus. She stopped short, her mouth an O of astonishment. “Why, Tim, what on earth are you doing here? You know we don’t allow boys in the house while we’re not home, dear,” she turned to the girl. “That’s against the rules.” The monsters lowered their eyes, stunned into silence. They hadn’t known there were any rules.
“We won’t stand for any teenage hanky-panky here,” the mother announced, gathering her chicks under her wings, two to a wing. The girl shook her head as if she’d just been dealt a severe blow to her solar plexus. Tim admired her solar plexus, as well as the way her muscles moved under her luscious skin, and wished for a set of muscles nearly as nice.
“I never saw him before in my life,” the girl snapped.
She passed him almost every day of her life, going in and out of the science lab. He must have a forgettable face, he thought sadly.
“I was lock
ed in the bathroom and, all of a sudden, he burst in.”
Had he burst? He’d thought he was doing her a favor.
“If there’s a problem here, I’m sure it can be worked out.” The monsters’ mother, eminently reasonable and open to suggestion, stroked her childrens’ heads tenderly as they gazed, glassy-eyed, at their filthy feet.
Outside, the car horn blasted. The monsters’ dad was waiting, no doubt, to drive the baby-sitter home.
“Poor Daddy is losing his patience.” The mother opened her purse and peered inside. “I only have a five-dollar bill,” she said. “Will that be all right?”
“No,” said the girl. He admired very much the way she stated this simple fact. “No, you owe me for four hours, at two dollars an hour. That’s eight dollars, without a tip,” she said firmly.
“Yes, how stupid of me. You take the five and my husband will give you the rest. Thank you, dear. I’ll be in touch.”
“She sat on my stomach,” Benjy chirped.
“Oh, my. Is that true? Did you sit on my baby’s stomach?”
“Yeah,” the girl said. “And he locked me in the bathroom.”
“Oh, Benjy! Not again!” The mother sounded as if she might cry.
“Plus, he’s no baby.” The girl tucked the fiver in her pocket. “In some ancient cultures, he’d be out in the fields picking rice. So long kids, don’t eat any poisonous mushrooms.” She grinned suddenly, and Tim fell in love all over again.
Chapter 3
“Tim, be very careful with this one, will you? It’s full of practically irreplaceable china.” His mother stood over him, supervising. She was a born supervisor. She had bought a bunch of stuff from someone’s attic, and he was helping her sort it. His father was coming for dinner. With Joy. Joy lived next door to his father in his new condo. They were just friends, his mother said. Joy was a computer programmer who had just moved in and was newly divorced herself. Joy ate TV dinners, his father said, laughing. His mother was a pushover for hungry people. “Bring her for dinner, why don’t you?” she’d said. Tim had expected a middle-aged lady wearing sensible shoes and a three-piece suit, but Joy had been thin and thirty-two, and something of an airhead, he’d thought. He had noticed his mother and father got along much better now than when they had been married. And when Joy was there, all was sweetness and light at the dinner table, the four of them jabbering away like old sorority buddies.
The Love Letters of J. Timothy Owen Page 1
