by M. E. Kerr
“Honestly, Brenda Belle, she really is coming to see me.”
“I’ll roll out the carpet down Central Avenue,” I said. “Do bring her into Corps for a Manhattan with an olive in it.”
“You don’t put olives in Manhattans,” he said. “Olives go in Martinis.”
“Keep your mouth shut about my upper lip,” I said as we came to the end of the hall. “Don’t spread it around.”
“You can trust me,” he said. “Have you told anyone I was expelled?”
“No.”
“Brenda Belle, I don’t know why I confide in you, but I do. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep it quiet about Billie Kay coming to Storm. She doesn’t like a lot of bother now that she’s getting older.”
“Knock it off,” I said.
“I mean it.”
“A joke’s a joke,” I said, “but an all-day running joke is a bore. I can’t be ‘on’ all the time. You’d better know that about me right now. Very few female comediennes have happy lives.”
“Brenda Belle, listen to me,” he said. “Billie Kay is really coming here. Please believe that.”
“You may wear expensive clothes,” I said, looking at his clothes and not seeing any difference from other people’s clothes, “but you have big problems. You not only cheat, you lie.”
I saw the look of disappointment on his face. “All of those things,” he said, and then he walked away from me.
That was fine as far as I was concerned. I had enough not going for me, without having a sickie tailing me around. It was funny, because I’d really liked him up until that conversation. But after that conversation, I thought, No wonder he’s interested in me—he’s slightly crazy. Whacked out. He’d probably been expelled from that school because of trouble with his head, I decided.
What I was looking for at that point in my life was normal companionship, not a misfit. I wanted someone who fit, so I’d feel I fit, too.
After struggling all through Algebra with problems in polynomial multiplication, I bumped into Christine Cutler in the hall.
“Did you ask him?” she said.
“Yes,” I said, “but he said he didn’t want to come, because it’d just be a lot of people mouthing other people’s opinions, which bores him. I’ll be there, though . . . around eight-on-the-dot.”
That night before supper, Christine Cutler called to say that she simply had to cut her party list down, that she was only having very close friends.
“You understand, don’t you, Brenda Belle?”
“Absolutely,” I said, “I understand.”
I had the dream again, that night, about Omaha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
From the Journal of A.
I’ll never forget the Christmas my father’s photograph was on the cover of Time magazine. It was during the early years of his marriage to Billie Kay. It had been a terrific year for my father. It had been the first year he’d ever been asked to the White House for dinner, and the year his photograph began appearing in newspapers and his name mentioned in gossip columns. We were trimming the tree, and my father was gulping down eggnog laced with brandy. When all the fancy decorations were tied to the tree’s branches, my father said, “Now for the finishing touch.” He took the photograph of himself on the cover of Time and pinned it to the very top of the tree. “There’s our star!” he said. Then he fell over backward and knocked the tree down, and everything broke.
I was remembering that on Christmas Eve afternoon, while I helped my grandfather paint empty beer cans gold and silver.
My grandfather had an awful hangover. The night before he’d phoned Late Night Larry to tell him he’d found a publisher for his book. (“When you become famous, Chuck From Vermont, don’t forget your friends in Radioland!”).
“You look down in the dumps, A.J.,” my grandfather said.
“I’m not, though,” I answered him. I was down, I guess. I often was at Christmas. One of the reasons I was down that Christmas was because I’d found out who was giving the Christmas party Brenda Belle had mentioned—the one she’d been invited to, on condition she didn’t bring me. It was Christine Cutler.
I was genuinely surprised. Maybe it had been my imagination, but I’d thought Christine Cutler took to me in some strange way. It was nothing I could put my finger on; it was a feeling I got sometimes when I’d see her in the hall or across a classroom. I’d thought there was just the slightest spark, no bells ringing or rockets going off, but the tiniest kind of undercurrent. I’d get her eye and she’d hold my eyes with hers, and I’d definitely feel this slight charge passing between us.
After Brenda Belle told me what she did, I crossed it off to wishful thinking on my part. Still, to tell someone she couldn’t come if she brought me didn’t do a lot for my ego. I wondered if it had something to do with the rift between my grandfather and Dr. Cutler. I wanted to blame it on that, but a part of me said to just face facts: The only time someone like Christine Cutler noticed yours truly was when she knew whose son I was. . . . In addition, Brenda Belle’s attitude toward me had changed. I knew she took me for this stupid phony; I knew she thought I made up things like Billie Kay’s coming so I could get attention.
I was beginning to feel like an outcast in Storm; I was beginning to wish they all knew who I really was.
“Doesn’t anyone in this town remember my mother’s marriage to my father?” I asked Grandpa Blessing.
He said, “First of all, no one knows you’re Annabell’s son, A.J. And secondly, no one remembers who she was married to. Your mother met your father in New York City. He wasn’t anyone in those days. She died a year after she married him. It’s all forgotten.”
“I’m glad,” I lied. I didn’t want him to know how much trouble I was having making it on my own.
“If you’re worried about anyone finding out who you are, stop worrying,” he said. “I never mention your father’s name around here. I hardly knew him, anyway, and I don’t believe in reflected glory.”
My grandfather was busy tying the painted cans to the tree we’d made.
He said, “Of course, I don’t know how you’re going to explain Billie Kay Case’s visit. Someone might recognize her, never mind the phony name she’s registering under down at the hotel. A lot of her old movies are showing on TV.”
“If someone should recognize her,” I said, “I’ll just say she’s a friend.”
“Or a distant relative,” he said. “After all, there’s quite an age difference for her to be your friend. How old is she, A.J.?”
“I’m not supposed to say,” I said. “She’s fifty-eight. She doesn’t look it, though.”
“She’s only nine years younger than I am,” he said.
“She’s had her face lifted.”
“Why’d she do a fool thing like that?”
“She didn’t want to look older than my father.”
“Your father let her do that?” he said.
“By that time he was hardly ever home,” I said. “He didn’t know what we were doing.”
My grandfather stepped back to look at his handiwork. I did, too. I had to smile. It was a crazy-looking tree we’d made—not beautiful, but unique and zany, with a certain brave and punchy spirit, like someone who’d come to a formal dinner party in the wrong clothes and turned out to be the life of the party.
“We did a good job, A.J.!” my grandfather said. “Now, that’s a Christmas tree! We didn’t destroy anything living to make it, and we didn’t waste money to trim it. . . . Speaking of money, A.J.,” he said, reaching into his trouser pocket, “I’ve managed to come up with a few dollars I completely forgot I had. How about you running out and buying that girl a gift? Corps Drugs is still open, and they’ve got gift boxes of candy or toilet water—I don’t know why they put something to sell in a bottle and call it by that name—but here, A.J.” He shoved the money at me.
“No,” I said. “Save it for your telephone bill. I already bought Billie Kay a box of chocolate-covered cherries. She loves them.”
“I don’t mean Billie Kay. I mean the Blossom girl. You sort of take to her, don’t you?”
“Not really,” I said. “I think she takes after her mother. I think she’s a gift-wrapped package no one can get to.”
“She’s not as pretty as her mother was,” Grandpa Blessing said. “She shouldn’t be playing that hard to get.”
“Well what about me?” I said. “I’m no bargain, either.”
“What makes you say a thing like that?”
“No one’s exactly knocking themselves out over me,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “that may be my fault.” He put the money back in his pocket and slumped down on the couch. “It’s going to be harder being my grandson than being your father’s son. Reflected glory is bad enough to live with, but reflected blame is worse.”
“Blame for what?” I said. “What’d you ever do wrong?”
“I became the town drunk, for one thing,” he said.
“I’ve seen my father drunk a lot of times.”
“That’s different, A.J. . . . If you get drunk now and then at a big party at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, that’s a way of life. If you get drunk in a little house all by yourself, that’s a way out of life. I’ve been ducking out.”
“That’s your business,” I said.
“Maybe this whole idea of you coming to live with me is a bad one,” he said. “How’re you ever going to make nice friends?”
“And that’s my business,” I said. “I’ll learn.”
I was glad the telephone rang then. We were both working our way into gloomy moods. It was almost time for me to meet Billie Kay’s bus. Usually Billie Kay took a limousine from an airport to a town she was visiting, but she’d decided she’d be less conspicuous arriving in Storm by bus. No one expected to see an old movie star getting off a Greyhound.
My grandfather was in the kitchen talking to someone on the phone.
I heard him say, “Is he eating? Is his nose warm?”
More free advice, I thought, and then I thought of the Christmas Eve party at the Cutlers’ . . . and of Christine Cutler telling Brenda Belle she could come on condition she didn’t bring me.
For some reason, at that moment, I could picture Christine Cutler very clearly in my mind. I could see her blonde hair spilling to her shoulders, and I could remember how she moved down the hall at school. She had that way of walking that was almost a strut, and I wondered why I was suddenly able to recall quite a lot about her: the fact that she wore white most of the time, and the tiny gold bracelets that jingled at her wrist, and her voice, breathless-sounding and soft.
I remembered one time when my father was trying to get this new Hollywood starlet to go out with him. She wasn’t even famous; he was so much more famous than anyone she probably knew. She didn’t even seem surprised he’d called her. She didn’t try to draw the conversation out, or explain why she wouldn’t go on a date with him. She simply rejected him. I heard the whole thing. When he hung up, I waited for him to curse and make some sort of derogatory remark about her.
Instead, he said, “By God, I like her style!”
Then he sent her six dozen long-stemmed white roses.
At the time, I simply didn’t understand it. Then this Psychology teacher we had at school enlightened me on the subject. He had his own name for it: the Groucho Marx syndrome. He called it that because there was a story about the comedian Groucho Marx. Groucho had been trying for years to get a membership in this fancy club, but the club kept refusing him. When the club finally relented and asked him to join, Groucho said he didn’t want to belong to any club that would have him as a member.
In a way, my father was like that about women. He chased the ones who weren’t interested. When one became interested, he lost his interest.
It was a form of masochism. Our Psych teacher said it was rooted in a deep inferiority complex. I’m not sure I bought that. My father was the last man you could imagine having an inferiority complex. He had everything going for him, and even if he did chase women who weren’t interested at the start, it wasn’t long before they did an about-face.
I did have an inferiority complex. To be frank about the whole matter, and I was being frank with myself that Christmas Eve afternoon, I was plain inferior. I was. I tried to compare myself with my father at my age. He’d been a brilliant student; he’d really sweated to get where he was. Nobody’d handed him anything, and he’d come from a real nothing family. . . . Then look at me—all I was, was the son of. I wasn’t even a person in my own right. I couldn’t even make it in a hick town like Storm.
I just hoped I wasn’t going to turn into this masochist; I made a little promise to myself then and there that I wasn’t. The hell with the Christine Cutlers of this world. If they didn’t want the pleasure of knowing me, their loss, I told myself, their loss!
From the kitchen, I heard my grandfather say, “No, don’t worm him! People should never worm their animals themselves. Take him to Dr. Cutler.”
I sat there looking at the tree with the beer cans tied to it and listening to my grandfather. It was a funny thing, but I loved him a whole lot right at that moment. . . . Because no matter what life had done to him, he wasn’t mean.
I didn’t imagine life had many goodies in store for me, either, and I just hoped I’d make it through without being mean, too.
Because there were times when you could feel the meanness creeping into your own soul, times when you wanted to hurt someone, wanted someone to have a party where no one would show up. . . . things like that.
Notes for a Novel by B.B.B.
Dear Christine,
This is a note to tell you I see through your dumb Christmas Eve invitation, and I think you are a louse for trying to use me. If you only knew what a neat person I thought you were before you pulled this on me. I thought about you a lot, honestly. Christine, honestly, you were one person I wanted to trust because you were special to me. I guess you don’t care what I think of you, which is a shame because you were maybe the only person I really—
“Brenda Belle,” my mother said to me late Christmas Eve afternoon, “did you write this note?”
“What are you doing going through my wastebasket?” I said. “Living here is like being investigated by the FBI.”
“I’m glad you decided not to finish it,” my mother said. “You’re getting to be a little old for this kind of schoolgirl crush.”
“I don’t have a crush on her,” I lied.
“You’ve had a crush on her for some time. I wonder if you’re aware how often you’ve brought up her name.”
“Excuse me for living,” I said.
“I’m not trying to humiliate you,” my mother said, “but I do want you to think more about your femininity.”
“What do you think I was thinking about when I ripped off half the skin on my face?” I told her.
“Femininity is inside, not outside,” my mother said. It’s a feeling one has about oneself, a feeling that one is a woman.”
“One finds that difficult to believe when one is sprouting a mustache,” I said.
“A little facial hair is normal, Brenda Belle.”
“Tell that to the bearded lady in the circus.”
“Brenda Belle,” she said, sitting on the edge of my bed and folding her hands in her lap, “your Aunt Faith was very much like you when she was young. She was very busy being the smart aleck, slapping her knees when she laughed, getting to her feet in company to mimic someone—she just never thought very much about how she looked to the opposite sex. Our mother just let her develop into a boisterous type, heedless of how it would affect her relationships with men. . . . I’m afraid she missed out on the important things in life. She married too late, and old Doc Hendricks never gave her a child. I don’t want that to happen to you, dear.” My mother always said a man gave a woman a child, as though the woman had no part in its conception.
I felt like asking my mother about her own marriage to m
y father. I doubt very much that it would go down in history as one of the more successful undertakings between two people. My mother seldom spoke well of my father; she seldom spoke about him at all.
I said, “I’m not planning to imitate Aunt Faith.”
“Whether you’re planning it or not, you remind me of Faith at your age.”
She tossed my note to Christine Cutler back into the wastebasket and said, “Christine Cutler is no one to look up to, believe me. I know things about her father that are repulsive and revolting.”
“For instance?” I said.
“I don’t intend to repeat them,” she said, “but you can take my word . . . and blood will always tell.”
“What does that mean, what does ‘blood will always tell’ mean?”
“It means that she’s his daughter and she has some of him in her makeup,” my mother said.
I said, “Oh, everyone knows he cheated Charlie out of the business. That’s old news.”
“Everyone does not know everything,” my mother said. “Now, tell me about Charlie’s grandson.”
“What about him?”
“He seems like a nice boy.”
“You’ve never even met him, Mother.”
“Why don’t you invite him over so I can?”
“He’s easily bored,” I said.
“Then try to be interesting, Brenda Belle. Play one of your little piano pieces for him. Show him your avocado plants. I’ll bake a chocolate ripple fudge cake for the occasion.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Promise?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”
What I was really thinking about was what repulsive and revolting things Dr. Cutler was supposed to have done. He was a mild-mannered man, balding, bespectacled and bossed around by Christine’s mother. A few years ago I owned a cat, and once when I took her to Dr. Cutler, I got a glimpse of that marriage. There was an intercom in his office which was connected with his house. Every few minutes Mrs. Cutler’s voice would come blaring over the intercom. She was nagging at him about staying too late in his office; she was saying things like: “Ted, I’ll give you three minutes to get here or we’ll eat without you!” and “Ted, did you hear me?” There was an old ski cap of his hanging on a hook behind him, and finally he just put it over the intercom, as though he were pulling it down over her mouth. . . . I’d also heard that Ty Hardin’s nickname for Mrs. Cutler was “Screamer.”
