Stealing Flowers

by Edward St Amant

  “What is that?” I asked pointing to the books.

  “Colliers’ Encyclopedia,” Sally said. “We have four sets now.”

  I’d never heard of an encyclopedia, but didn’t want to show my ignorance so said nothing. Sally took one book down and turned to a picture of a Polar Bear. “It lists everything alphabetically. You can use it for school.”

  “What’s that?” I said, pointing next to what looked like a small typewriter.

  “It’s a calculator. Mom and Dad make them.”

  “What do you think?” Stan asked and entered the room with a light knock on the door. Mary came in behind him.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  What else could I say? Mary walked up to the encyclopedia, and put her hand on it. “You’re probably one of a very few eight-year-olds who have their own encyclopedia,” she said. “Our tutor for you, Mr. Vontd, is proficient in their use and will show you more when the time comes. I’m sorry to inform you that if you want to start school with Sally in September, your private classes will have to start at once. Are you willing to give up part of your summer?”

  I could see she intended in treating me like an adult. The problem with answering these kinds of straightforward questions for me or any eight-year-old was that one didn’t know the sacrifice it would take to fulfill the obligation.

  I nodded solemnly, and for the first time in my presence, she smiled. “Una’s right about you,” she added. “You catch on fast. But you should understand that this isn’t a game or test. We have adopted you and this is your home. We aren’t going to toss you back if you don’t get A’s in school. Some boys will learn how to fly, others to swim. Do you swim?” I shook my head. “Well, then,” she continued, “let’s go swimming. I’ll give you your first lesson and we’ll try not to get your stitches wet.”

  Sally whooped in joy. I hadn’t missed the importance of the words from Mary about not being tossed back, but my mind leapt from one surprise to another. Mary went to a dresser and in the third drawer down pulled-out brand-new bathing-suits and beach towels.

  Left alone, I changed and stepped out into the hall, where I stood solitarily before a mammoth spotless hall-mirror, a skinny pale youngster, a stranger onto myself. Many times in my life, I would feel the same way looking at myself in a mirror and not recognizing the reflection.

  The walls were laid out with gigantic pictures of places and events that I knew nothing about. The swimming-suit was tight so that it exaggerated my thinness. Sally came out from a room near mine in a skin-tight two-piece. She was as skinny as me. She hadn’t developed even the hint of hips or breasts.

  “What are you doing?” she asked and came close, looking at my reflection in the mirror and placing her hand on my lower back.

  “It’s so strange,” I whispered. “Yesterday I was in one life, and I’m in another completely different one today.”

  She took my hand and dragged me away from the mirror. “Come on,” she said, “put on some socks. You can skate downstairs.”

  We didn’t look at the rest of my room nor did we return through the pantry to the kitchen. We raced down a plush carpeted spiral staircase which was wide enough to play the splits. We passed a huge front foyer. The pine floors had been polished so that you could slide on them in your socks. They were protected with East Indian hand-woven carpets, but Sally and I skated from room to room in between them. Family portraits hung on the walls, several of Sally. One was of a bright yellow bush-plane, floating in the middle of a small lake, with Stan standing and waving from the right pontoon.

  Oil paintings of wild cats including a cheetah and cougar, offset the family ones. We skated over more pine floors, passed more pictures, and ran out through giant double glass doors. The yard fell out into an immense deck leading to the swimming-pool area, then into a thick group of trees hiding most of the iron fences that ran for hundreds of feet along Rookery giving the property privacy from the street.

  In points beyond the pool were clusters of beautiful tall white birch trees and swirling circles of knee-high flowers swaying in the breeze. Ignoring it all, Sally jumped straight into the pool after taking off her socks. It was a rectangular shaped pool, painted brilliant cool aqua-blue. It was perhaps twenty meters long and ten wide, and surrounded by interlaced pale blue bricks and white wooden patio furniture with soft blue cushions.

  “Come in,” she cried. “It’s only up to here.” She stood in the shallow end and I carefully climbed into the pool using the ladder. The water wasn’t too cold and I jumped up and down with Sally, keeping my legs firmly planted on the ground. A bright blue slide ran from the shallow side into the deep end and Sally turned on a tap which ran water over it. She climbed the ladder and slid down, whooping it up, and though it looked like enormous fun, I knew better than to go into the deep-end. However, what I didn’t know was the shallow end, stopped abruptly.

  I heard a splash behind me, it was Stan, and I lost my footing, shooting over the lip. When my feet touched bottom, I’d gone over my head, but kicked myself to the surface. Doing so, I put myself even further out. I went down splashing and kicking, swallowing a mouthful of water. I remembered I thought I was going to die. That’s how drowning happens when you don’t know anything about swimming. It is a mystery to the ignorant. Powerful arms, snapped me back into the shallow end and I stood in the pool, sputtering and coughing. Drawing breath was very difficult.

  “Sweetie, when you’re in the pool with Christian,” Stan said to Sally, “you’ll have to watch out for him. You’ll have to turn-off your selfish button. Okay, sweetie?”

  She nodded and drew up, holding my hand. “What happened?” Mary asked from the lip of the pool, wearing a one piece bathing suit which was grey and modest but didn’t hide her fine figure.

  “He took in a mouthful of water,” Stan said.

  I recovered and Mary taught me to tread water before supper as Stan and Sally dove from the deep end and swam around us. Mary was polite and her voice warmed up with every passing minute. I thanked her for the lesson.

  “You can’t very well thank us for everything, Christian,” she said. “From the clothes, to the food, to education, to everything, all you would do is thank us and feel guilty. It won’t do. No more thanks. It’s enough that you are here and that you put what opportunity this gives you to good use. We’re here for you to make sure you succeed, that you are happy. Can you understand that?”

  It took all my self-control not to thank her. Una’s supper was soft boneless chicken-breasts cooked with honey Dijon mustard, cashews, and mandarins. I asked about each of the other dishes: Wild rice, fresh corn on the cob, broccoli-heads in white cheddar sauce and black bean soup, all of which I had never tasted before. A bowl of salad was in the middle of the table, but it looked like they weren’t going to make me eat rabbit food, as Lloyd called it.

  I’d my first glass of red wine and it was nearly the foulest drink I’d ever tasted, but fortunately they also had a glass of cold apple juice at my place and I swallowed this in one enormous gulp to wash away the taste. Stan laughed at me.

  The black bean soup was repulsive to look at and I was disgusted to see Sally eating it like it was Campbell’s tomato soup, but I did taste it and it was fine, but the thought of it was too much for more than one spoon full. I tried the corn and ate several mouthfuls, however, it appeared that the chicken had been deliberately destroyed for the sole purpose of embarrassing me and making me appear as though I was going to be too much trouble to the Tappets.

  For a moment, I wondered if Una had done it on purpose. The most detestable mustard anyone thought to ever create had been thrown in great dollops on top of it so that even if I’d thought to have more than a few bites, I just couldn’t. The rice had little pieces of sticks in it. The broccoli was hard, and I’m sorry to say, the sauce smelt like puke. None of this stopped the Tappets from eating it like it was manna.

  “Is this tomato juice?” I asked and pointed to a tall glass of red liquid beside
my empty glass of apple juice. Stan nodded and I tried this. I hated it also and wondered what I would drink now to get the foul tastes out of my mouth. I was horrified, when halfway into the meal, Una sat beside me to eat. I thought she was going to make me finish my plate like they did in the halfway homes. Even if you gag, they make you finish it, but after a few moments, she looked at me, rubbed the top of my head. “What would you like to eat?” she asked. I flushed completely red. “It’s okay, my full-grown child,” she continued. “You’re not used to our ways and I see you’ve tried everything on your plate. Kraft dinner?”

  I nodded. Within five minutes, I’d a steaming plate of macaroni and cheese, another glass of apple juice, and one of my favorite foods, Heinz Ketchup. After supper, we cleaned up together and had vanilla ice-cream with chocolate syrup while we watched a program on television in the living room in which at the beginning a naked woman walks into the ocean. That was my favorite part. She had a very nice figure.

  Outside of the fact that I had seen little television, what immediately got my attention was a tall thin man with a moustache and thick curly hair over his ears. He had kind intelligent eyes and a very natural smile. He held up to the cameras a tiny square device. He talked for a few minutes, but I didn’t really listen, I was looking around the room.

  Although I didn’t know it at the time, I sat in a Wassily chair. Its chrome-plated frame was made of steel-tubing which held a grey-canvass seat and arm rests. Sally sat in a similar one beside me. They’re still in the mansion today, although they’ve been refurbished a number of times. Love seats, sofa chairs, matching couches, and a Chippendale mahogany chair, were arranged together around the television. Huge vases with grey, silver, light powder-blue and green fern-like dried plants stood in several spots around the room. An enormous glass coffee table held fresh flowers and bamboo shoots in water.

  The television sat on a stainless-steel stand with only a large palm tree beside it, the pot which held it, was a silver color, but the whole thing was framed by an enormous window ten feet behind it which looked out on one of the side-yards. Directly behind the couches was a long wall of floor-to-ceiling windows which faced the backyard, although a fine white sheer-curtain covered them. Two enormous pictures hung on the wall, but I could see neither one of them clearly. Glancing again at the television, I was amazed to see the tall thin man now talking to Stan. I stood out of my chair. “How do they do that?” I asked.

  Everyone laughed. “The program is about computers,” Stan answered. “We don’t watch much television, but we had to see this.”

  I tried, but I didn’t understand much of what was discussed in the interview, except that Stan’s predictions about the future were hailed by the man as a windfall for everyone. The man talked about abundance, new leisure time, and an easier life for everyone. It sounded absolutely marvelous to my ears and I was beginning to realize I had been adopted by famous people. I’d never met anyone who had been on television before.

  After the program was over, we all clapped and Mary and Stan took Sally and me to the Jersey Port Theater to see a movie, The Lion in Winter. It was the first time I had seen a motion picture on the big screen, and though I remember it being hard to understand, I was riveted through the whole thing.

  The theater seats were comfortable and we sat high up in the second tier, eating popcorn and drinking ice cola. I held Sally’s hand through the whole story; the castles, horses, knights, warriors, and English landscape were thrilling. That night before sleep, Stan came into my room and sat on the edge of the bed. “How was your first day with us?” he asked.

  I swallowed to keep the tears out of my eyes. “Great.”

  “When I was a boy your age, my father left my mother. He wasn’t much of a father anyway, always drunk and unhappy. When I started in business after the war, I invented and patented a lathe machine for making precision tools. Now we have factories in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Japan, and are making many things. Soon, we’ll have many more factories. Mary is wonderful at running companies and knowing what to buy. I was a fighter pilot in Korea, in a conflict just after the Second World War. If you don’t know what war WWII was, it is the one where the Western Democracies fought against nations who wanted to impose a dictatorial government on the world, where you wouldn’t be able to vote on who runs things. We have an election going on in our country for president this year between Richard Nixon and whoever the Democrats elect in Chicago at their upcoming convention.

  “Mary and I will tell you more about politics as you grow up. I’m primarily a business man and I’m not really interested in it. Left to my own devices, I like to tinker with new ideas and to fly. I can teach you two things mainly: Commercial enterprise and being a pilot. Tomorrow, I’ll take you out for a quick flying lesson in my Cessna before I leave on a business trip. I’ll be away a few days. I quite often am. Next summer, if you’re all caught-up in your schooling, I’ll take you away with me a few times. I just wanted to say that I’m thrilled to have you as part of our family. Remember what Mary said tonight at supper. We want you to do well and go far. I think you can, but you’re our son now, and we’ll look after you no matter what. Welcome home.”

  I couldn’t say anything, I was too emotional and after he’d left, I made sure the door was closed tight and looked around the room carefully. I liked the wallpaper with the airplanes and wondered what kind of games I could play with the dinky-toy ones. Even though I had been alone in the world for the first eight years, I’d never really played any solitary games.

  I walked into the closet, astounded how big it was. I thought of sleeping there tonight. It seemed much safer, but what would the Tappets think if they found out? Some clothes hung there and two new pairs of shoes lay on the floor. I tried them on and they fit.

  Behind another door, I was surprised to find my very own bathroom with my very own tub, and a big one too. Fresh towels hung on three walls. Toiletry items such as boxes of tissues, shampoo, soap, toothpaste and cologne lay in a cupboard below the sink. The door even locked.

  Never mind the encyclopedia. I wanted to take a bath with Zest soap. I’d seen a commercial just this very evening and there were several bars. In front of a mirror which ran from floor to ceiling, I took off my clothes and unwrapped the purple sucker Sally had given me in the hospital, and licked it while the water poured into the tub. I was very thin to my own critical eye, but my skin was smooth, without any hair, and I looked healthy with red cheeks and shining hair.

  I peeled off the bandage and looked closely at the repair job. It had a purple color and the cut seemed fused. After soaking for some time, I dressed in my old pajamas, and lay on some blankets on the closet floor, sleeping until about one o’clock. That was the time, Lloyd use to come in and wake me up every night. I tiptoed across the hall and snuck into Sally’s room, crawling under the covers with her. She moaned softly and cuddled up.

  I held her tightly. She wore a night gown with no panties and I snuggled up against her; it was wonderful and warm. I hated to leave, but even at eight-years-old, I understood enough not to be caught in bed with her in the morning. They might not have thought anything had happened, and it hadn’t, but they would have made sure that I didn’t go into her room again. At four in the morning, I kissed her good night and returned to my room. This time I slept in my bed. I woke up and stayed under my fine smelling blankets, listening to the sounds of the house. Outside, it was another sunny day. After I washed and dressed, I went down stairs.

  “What would you like?” Una asked me when I came into the kitchen at around nine o’clock.

  “Where’s Sally?”

  “Do you hear the piano in the background?” I nodded. “She’s doing her lessons.”

  I listened more intently. “Can I go see?”

  “Tell me first what you want? Sally is having blueberry pancakes.”

  “Okay.”

  Walking by myself through the mansion in the morning, the sunlight had a magical quality, m
ade all the more uncanny by the echo-sound of Sally’s scattered piano. I noticed a large picture above a fireplace mantel. Stan, Mary, and Una, stood outside a small restaurant almost dwarfed on either side by huge coconut trees.

  “Watson’s Jamaican Jerky,” I whispered, reading the small plaque on the bottom of the frame. It seemed far away, perhaps exotic, and I guessed that the whole family traveled together. My eyes wandered to Una’s. Even in the photograph, they radiated mischief and love. She dressed in a brilliant crimson red dress and had a red carnation in her hair. Certainly, she was a mysterious creature. I wondered what it was about her and decided I’d have to find out at the first available opportunity.

  “She’s my confidant and best friend,” Mary said softly from behind me as though reading my mind. I spun and saw that she was dressed for work and even had a briefcase in hand. “She’s been with us since the birth of Sally,” she continued. “She manages our affairs in such a way that Stan and I just can’t do without her. That was her place. She owned several of them. We have pictures of them in the kitchen. She was quite a successful business woman in Jamaica. Of course, she is here too.”

  I scratched my head. I think that was what I wanted to know, not that I knew completely what it meant. The piano stopped and Sally came in and kissed her mom, who said good bye and left. After Mary was out of sight, Sally hugged me and kissed me on the lips. “You’re my scrumps,” she whispered.

  “What’s that?”

  “Something delicious.”

  I was very happy. We returned to the kitchen hand in hand, and I studied five pictures of small Jamaican Jerk Shacks hung on the wall. The restaurants were all the same general size, and their smart appearance and large tinted front windows made it obvious they’d done well. They were each in different locations and the ten-by-twelve pictures were labeled accordingly: Kingston, Montego Bay, Savanna la Mar, Santa Cruz, and Spanish Town. Una stood front-and-center in all the photographs, and in each one wore a different colored, but equally brilliant, dress. “Una, why did you leave there?” I asked.