Personal Touch

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “I’m going for a test drive,” said Tim.

  “Don’t be gone too long,” said his mother pleadingly.

  I looked at Mrs. Lansberry. She wasn’t jumpy anymore. The psychiatrist really had done her some good. She looked tired and downcast, but firmer, somehow. Capable. I had told my parents about it and they had both gone over to talk to her and say they’d help. Do the things like turn off the outside faucets for the winter, find someone to clean the furnace (she was lucky to have a winterized house). That sort of thing. I felt sort of terrible for telling my parents and I was afraid Mrs. Lansberry wouldn’t like it, but she seemed very glad—as if I had gotten her over a hump she couldn’t have managed alone. She talked for hours to my mother and they pointedly stopped talking when I came in. So much for woman to woman talk! I was still a little girl after all. Mrs. Lansberry must have been really hard up for company when she originally asked me to go to New Haven with her.

  My father took Mrs. Lansberry down to the school offices to interview for a kindergarten aide position that was opening up in the fall. My mother went to work. I fed the sea gulls. The hours passed.

  “Tim isn’t back yet?” said Mrs. Lansberry, horrified. “But I’ve had three interviews already.”

  “Three?” I said.

  “Kindergarten aide,” she ticked off her fingers. “Yacht club hostess. Waitress at the Rusted Rudder.”

  “I don’t see you as a waitress.”

  “Neither do I. But I’m really excited about the kindergarten thing. I was Timmie’s class mother that year, you know, Sunny. I worked every Monday helping on consonant drill.” She told me a long story about a little girl named Amy who had difficulty with her final consonants and how after thirty consecutive Mondays, Mrs. Lansberry conquered this terrible problem.

  Still Tim did not come home.

  “Should we call the police?” said Mrs. Lansberry. “He’s been gone for so long.”

  “Nonsense,” said my father. “Tim’s very reliable. He’ll call if anything’s happened to him, and he’s much too good a driver for anything to have happened. Here. Come have supper with us.”

  I couldn’t decide if he was saying all that to bolster Mrs. Lansberry or if he really believed it. I had a feeling it was both, and I also thought that if Tim were my father’s son, he’d be in a bunch of trouble for staying out so long and worrying his mother at a time when she had enough to worry about.

  “Being reliable is a recent development,” said Mrs. Lansberry. “When Tim first got his driver’s license last year, I couldn’t even send him out to get a loaf of bread for me. Not unless I didn’t need the bread till the following day.”

  My father snorted with laughter. “In that case, there’s nothing unusual in Tim’s being gone for hours at a time and you should stop worrying.”

  But it wasn’t until we were having coffee and dessert that Tim drove in. He’d been gone ten hours. Mrs. Lansberry rushed out to see him and I went along. My father muttered to my mother, “What that kid needs is—”

  “Now, dear,” said my mother. “No violence, please.”

  “Where have you been?” cried Mrs. Lansberry.

  Tim looked mildly surprised. “Driving, Mom,” he said.

  “I know that, Timothy. But for so long? Where did you go?”

  “Everywhere,” said Tim. “You name it. I drove there today. Mom, it’s a super little car. I love it.”

  I was relieved to see that at least the ten hours of exposure to his car had changed his pronouns. I hate a car named “she.”

  “Though I need to adjust the fuel injection system,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll have to—”

  But my mother heard him through the fence. “Tomorrow, young man,” she said, “you’re working for me.”

  “Oh,” said Tim. He turned back and looked down at his squashy little car and said sadly again, “Oh.” He even pleaded with her to be excused from work for a day, but my mother is not known for mercy where Chair Fair is involved. Anyway, we were all irritated at him for being gone so long and he hadn’t so much as apologized.

  Tim shrugged. Just another obstacle in the great car race of life. “I’ll work on you after work,” he told his car lovingly. The moonlight reflected off the metallic finish and the chrome bumpers that looked like shortened Model-T bumpers.

  “Tim,” said his mother fretfully, “how much is it going to cost to keep this car? We have to think of that now. Insurance. Gas. All that kind of thing.” You could see the worry welling up in her, see her aching for a past when somebody else worried about money.

  “The car was free, Mom,” said Tim gently. “And it’s economical on gas, believe me. I can pay the insurance easily from what I’m earning. Try not to worry so much. Everything is going to work out, okay?” He put an arm around her and kissed her and I thought they were beautiful together. If he had been a little mean going off for so long, well, maybe it had been good for Mrs. Lansberry, too—having to face her interviews alone, the way other adults did.

  I felt tears pricking my eyes. I had this funny deep hope that Tim would understand her enough to be nice all the time and I had an even deeper hope that she would not need him quite so much, because it wouldn’t do either of them much good.

  Tim broke out of the hug pretty fast and got back to his old self, muttering something about needing metric wrenches and a rolling dolly so he could slide under the car to work.

  “You have all those things in Albany,” said his mother.

  “Yeah. Too bad to buy new ones, huh?” he said. He brightened. “I know. I could just drive to Albany tomorrow and pick them up. That’ll really be a good mileage test.”

  “You’re working tomorrow,” said his mother firmly. “Buy new ones.”

  Tim had one hand on the fender of the car and one on his mother’s shoulder. When it came to Tim’s affections, Sunny was definitely not at the head of the line.

  “Well, boys are like that,” said my father.

  I hate generalities. I especially hate generalities about boys versus girls. “How do you know?” I demanded irritably. “You’ve taught elementary school. Little boys. Tim is practically an adult. Next year he’ll be able to vote.”

  My father sighed. “I’ve been principal of that elementary school for nine years,” he said, “and taught sixth grade eleven years before that. I’ve seen an awful lot of those little boys grow up to be voters, and Sunny, sweetheart, about half of them worshipped cars. The only thing that surprises me about the way Tim is treating that car is that he’s not using a Q-tip to clean the treads of the tires.”

  We sat on our stoop watching Tim washing his remodeled VW Beetle. He was toweling it dry with what I knew to be one of his mother’s white monogrammed towels. The kind she normally folded in perfect thirds and forbade children to use. Either the car ranked as high as an adult guest, or Mrs. Lansberry hated the monogram enough now that she was willing to have it wipe up a little soap scum.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” I told my father, “a car is nothing but seats on wheels.”

  “You’re a girl,” he said, undeniably.

  That sort of argument gets to me. My father likes to explain every difference between me and Tim by saying I am a girl and Tim is a boy. It doesn’t seem to me that can be the explanation for everything.

  “How can Tim afford the car?” I said, thinking about Mrs. Lansberry’s worries. “With Mr. Lansberry out of the picture and all.”

  My father shook his head. “Sunny, I cannot believe Mr. Lansberry won’t go on supporting them. For a few years at least, I think guilt will make him write the checks. After that I don’t know. But at this point, Tim is definitely earning enough to pay for the car. And any good lawyer—and I’ve gotten Mrs. Lansberry an appointment with a very good one—will certainly see that she gets a decent support payment. Stop worrying about it.”

  It was impossible not to worry, with Mrs. Lansberry doing her daily hand-wringing routine and Tim seemingly unaware. I knew that Tim r
eally was concerned, but it didn’t show on him. Right now he was squatting in front of the little car, happily scouring the headlights. He looked like a Russian dancer about to thrust out his legs and do some wild flinging dance. I wished he would. Anything besides scrub his car.

  “You went grocery shopping with Mrs. Lansberry, didn’t you?” said my father.

  “Yes. She was standing there, sort of hovering over Tim, and saying how much she would like company on some errands, and Tim said would she mind moving over a little bit because he had to get the salt off the finish or the car would rust. Poor Mrs. Lansberry was so demoralized I had to go with her or lie awake tonight knowing what a heel I am.”

  We watched Tim.

  “How come Tim doesn’t feel like a heel?” I said.

  “Judge not, Sun,” said my father. “Tim’s around his mother all day and all night. I have a feeling he does a lot of propping up when we’re not there to see it.” He shook his head. “Your mother and I are already getting tired of helping her along with this separation. I can just imagine how tiring it is for Tim. And don’t forget, there are two sides to every marriage breakup. Tim may have some feelings for his father that make it a little difficult to comfort his mother around the clock. You never know.”

  I kept forgetting about Tim being the son of Mr. Lansberry. I didn’t like the man; poor Mrs. Lansberry no longer liked him much; and I had overlooked the possibility that Tim might like his father immensely and wish none of this were happening. I tried to imagine liking Mr. Lansberry immensely, but it was beyond me.

  Tim stopped polishing and sauntered out from behind his car. He was grinning at me. My heart flopped over. Tim had quite an ability to make me forget his flaws (which I might well be making up) and concentrate on his assets. Which were many and obvious!

  “Want to drive it?” said Tim, waving at his treasure.

  “I haven’t ever driven a standard shift,” I said.

  “I’ll teach you. It isn’t hard.”

  I remembered Tim learning—bucking over the rose bushes, missing driving into the marsh by half an inch, grinding the gears with a screaming rasp that set my teeth on edge. “I don’t know,” I said. “Are you sure I can do that?”

  He snorted. “Look at all the fools on the road who do it every day, Sunny. If they can do it, you can do it.”

  I got into the driver’s seat. It was very cramped. I put my hand on the gear stick and Tim put his hand over mine and I thought a girl could get to enjoy being cramped like this. “Put the clutch in,” directed Tim. Then he had to tell me which was the clutch. We’ve never had a manual transmission car; every car we’ve ever owned has been automatic. I put the clutch in.

  “Now,” said Tim, settling in for a tutoring session. He was enjoying himself.

  My mother yelled out the kitchen window, “Tim! Sunny doesn’t have her license yet! It’s one thing for her to go driving with me in an automatic for practice, but it’s something else entirely to go out on the road with you in a completely unfamiliar car you probably don’t even have proper insurance on! You do not have my permission to do this!”

  “Oh,” said Tim meekly. He looked at me very carefully, as if being sixteen were a strange and bizarre phenomenon he had totally forgotten about. “That’s right,” he said pleasantly. “You’re just a little kid still, aren’t you, Sun?”

  We exchanged a few insults. I told him the laboratory had his brain ready and he told me I was in luck: the same lab had cloned him and now I could possess a matched pair of Tims.

  “I’ll settle for one,” I said, and then we were looking at each other the way we had that night at the fireworks. A funny, breathless look that said enough for both of us to blush and fumble.

  We left his car sitting in the driveway.

  “For the sea gulls to wreck my finish,” said Tim mournfully. “Why did you train those gulls to come up on our property anyway?”

  I didn’t answer. Why dredge up old feelings when the new ones were so much better? We walked down to the beach, holding hands.

  It was early enough that only the young mothers and the day camps were on the sand. We carried our shoes and waded through the warm shallow water along the rim of the beach.

  The summer Tim was thirteen, he and I had been friends for exactly one afternoon. I remembered it suddenly. We’d corralled about a dozen fiddler crabs and had fiddler crab races. My crabs won. Tim made me a tiny blue first-prize ribbon out of a bit of a beer bottle label that washed up in the tide. I wondered now if he had ever thought of that day since. I didn’t ask.

  Had I saved the little ribbon? I had boxes of junk in the attic. I’d have to look for it. If Tim and I got married, and we had children, I’d show them the prizes back from when we were little and played in the sand.

  Got married, I thought.

  I blushed scarlet. Tim was probably daydreaming about finishing up the wax job on his car and going for a long drive up north. If he knew I was thinking about marriage, he’d be sprinting up the beach so fast he’d have a lock built on his eight-foot fence before I even managed to get home.

  “How’s your mother doing?” I said.

  “Okay, I guess. Dad called up last night. He was very jovial. Trying to pretend we’re all friends and everything’s cool. He wants a divorce immediately. He wants mother to be civilized about this. That’s his word. Civilized.”

  “In other words, he doesn’t want her to make him feel guilty.”

  “You got it.”

  We had left the beach. We went over to a breakwater, dry for low tide, and sat on a high, hot rock. We spent the rest of the morning talking about divorce and stepparents.

  Tim spouted like a steaming tea kettle.

  There was not much I could say except, “Oh, dear” and “what a mess” and then, for variation, “Oh, Tim, how awful that would be.”

  The curious thing—I was half ashamed of it—was that I enjoyed it. Every bit of it. Tim trusted me enough to say things to me I had not thought he would ever allow himself to say to anyone. Tim, who talked and chattered and joked…but never, not once, revealed anything about himself if he could help it.

  It was, in a way, another kind of blue ribbon.

  When we got home, Tim’s father’s car was in the driveway.

  10

  AREN’T MORNINGS TERRIFIC?

  That yellow sunshine spills in your bedroom window and makes patterns on the wall and you can lie there for a moment and you just know it’s going to be a good day. In the morning everything is okay.

  It was chilly and damp.

  Nothing could dampen me, though. I hugged to myself the wonderful time I had had talking to Tim. Today, I thought. Today will be the day he calls and we’ll actually go on a date.

  I thought about his father’s car in the driveway. Maybe Mr. Lansberry had repented and missed them terribly and everything was going to be okay after all.

  I shivered and closed my window against the chill, feeling sorry for families whose only vacation was this week, and they were having to spend it in sweaters instead of bikinis. I like sweaters myself. I put on a marvelous black sweater Jeter knit me last year: cotton, with a seven-color rainbow that rushes across the front and sleeves. It’s very striking. I always feel triumphant in it.

  When I danced downstairs the kitchen phone was ringing and I was not at all surprised when my mother said, “For you, Sunny. Tim.”

  “Hi, Tim,” I said gaily.

  But he didn’t respond the way I had planned. He said his father wanted him to go up to Albany for a while and he didn’t seem to have much choice in the matter.

  Leaving! I thought. Oh, no! “For how long?” I said. Summer was drawing to a close. Tim and I had really just begun to reach a friendship that meant something, that was more than teasing.

  He’ll stay in Albany, I thought. After all, it’ll be his senior year in high school. He won’t want to change schools at this late date. Next thing I know, he’ll be in college and I’ll never see him aga
in. Mrs. Lansberry won’t stay here alone. She’ll put the house on the market and go live somewhere else and—

  “I don’t know how long,” said Tim wearily. “Can I speak to your mother, please?”

  For a moment, forgetting he was mother’s employee, I could not imagine why he would want to speak to my mother instead of to me.

  Tim was obviously straightening out with mother his absence from work. She wasn’t too pleased, but she said she’d find somebody else to work. “Yes,” she said, “we’ll keep an eye on your house. But why, Tim? Is your mother going back to Albany with you? Will the house be empty?

  “Oh,” said my mother. “Georgia. What’s in Georgia? Oh, your mother’s family. I see.”

  He won’t come back, I thought. Tears pricked the back of my eyes. Mrs. Lansberry would stay in Georgia, surrounded and comforted by family. Tim would stay in Albany. I would never see him again.

  Tim and I got back on the phone together, but it was no good. He was terribly stilted and tense. “Is your father there?” I said.

  “Waiting for me to hang up so we can get going,” said Tim.

  I could just picture Mr. Lansberry, elegantly annoyed, looking at his Swiss watch and refraining in a gentlemanly way from losing his temper at his poky son. “Well, good-bye,” I said finally. My heart was full of things to say to him, but not one of them came out.

  For a few seconds Tim was silent and then he said, “Bye” and hung up. And that was all.

  “Maybe it’s just as well they’ve gone,” I overheard my mother saying to my father. “I was afraid Sunny was getting in over her head. She had a terrible crush on that boy.”

  “Anybody in love is in over his head,” said my father. “But don’t worry. Tim didn’t even notice. He was too worried about his parents to notice Sunny making eyes at him. I worry about that boy. His mother and father are going to rip him apart in their private little war.”

  “Tim didn’t even notice.”

  I went up to my room and wept.