The Books of Fell

by M. E. Kerr

  “Why do they call it Sevens?”

  “No one knows.”

  “What do you mean, no one knows? Someone must know.”

  “Members of Sevens know what it means, of course. My grandfather knew. He was the only member from our family.”

  “Did he tell you anything about it?”

  “Never! If you get into Sevens you never tell the reason you got in, or the meaning of the name, or anything about Sevens. You’re set apart when you get into Sevens … some say for life.”

  “You didn’t make it, and your father didn’t?”

  “Just my grandfather.”

  “Why are you mentioning it this morning?”

  “There’s something else I didn’t tell you about my grandfather’s will,” he said. He finished his bacon and eggs, pushed his plate back, and lit a cigarette. “If you make Sevens, you automatically get another ten thousand dollars. You get it instantly.”

  “You didn’t think I’d make it, so you didn’t mention it before, hmmm?” I couldn’t eat any more. I tossed the rest of the muffin out toward the fat pigeon on the lawn.

  Pingree began to speak extra clearly, as though he wanted what he was saying to really sink in.

  “No one knows why a boy qualifies for Sevens. There’s no type. Anyone can be in Sevens, but few are. Only about five or six a year. One year there was no one tapped for Sevens.”

  “This club really impresses you, doesn’t it? You’re not just talking about it because of the extra ten thousand, are you?”

  “Yes, I guess it does really impress me, Fell. I like solutions to things. I could never solve that one — what makes a Sevens.”

  “If I were to go to Gardner, and if I got in, I’d tell you.”

  “Oh, no. No one’s ever been told.”

  “But I think that stuff is crap! I don’t care about secret clubs!”

  “Gardner will teach you about tradition. Tradition isn’t a bad thing, Fell. Sometimes it’s the only continuity.”

  “I don’t mean tradition. I like tradition, too.”

  I did. So had my dad. Christmas used to be this big production when he was alive, starting with the tree trimming on Christmas Eve. He always made Christmas breakfast, too. “It’s snobbery I don’t like. It’s people thinking they’re better than other people just because they’re in some stupid club.

  “I see.”

  He stirred his coffee. We both checked out the lovers. They were still at it. Pingree met my eyes and we grinned.

  Then Pingree said, “I wish I’d been more like you when I was growing up. I was all caught up in what it meant to be a Pingree, what was expected of me. My father drilled that into me. I’ve done a lot of bad things to Ping, but I’ll never do that to him. I’m surprised Fern isn’t more sympathetic in this regard. She hates snobbery, too, but she’s dead set on Ping’s going to Gardner. Ping can’t conquer that phobia of his. We’ve tried hypnotism, everything. I think Fern thinks he’s faking it.”

  I said, “I saw Arizona Darkness last night.”

  He looked across at me. “That belongs to the Stileses.”

  “Delia Tremble’s their au pair.”

  “Ah! For the twins.”

  “Yes. We wondered why your wife named something Arizona Darkness that’s this ocean under this hot sun?”

  “She chooses very unusual titles for her paintings. I think that one had to do with Jerome, Arizona. Oh, they all do, really.”

  “What does Jerome, Arizona, have to do with your wife?”

  Pingree ground out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Her grandfather was there in World War Two, long before she was born. They had one of those internment camps there for Japanese-Americans. Our version of concentration camps. We didn’t gas them the way the Germans did the Jews. Didn’t work them. But we confined them. They were our prisoners. Only Japanese-Americans were put through that. Fern can’t forget it.”

  I remembered watching a program about it on TV.

  “I didn’t even know she was Japanese.”

  “Her father is. Not her mother. Her mother’s Irish-American.”

  I was remembering the barracks in the field, in the painting she called Smiles We Left Behind Us.

  “Then came Hiroshima, another shattering blow to Asians. And Vietnam. Fern has a very melancholy nature as a result. I fall in love with very melancholy women. My first wife was the same way.”

  I liked him. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he never talked down to me.

  He called for the check.

  “There’s so little time,” he said. “You know that, don’t you, Fell?”

  chapter 13

  On the way to the Surf Club Monday night, Delia Tremble said she wanted a frozen custard. I stopped at Frosty’s, and she passed two dollars to me and said, “Get yourself one, too, Hunk!” I took the money.

  I said, “This doesn’t mean you can have your way with me later.”

  She had that lilting laugh I’d grown to love in just forty-eight hours. The sky was deep blue with an orange ball up in it, and a thousand stars. We were headed down to the club to dance outside under them. She smelled of roses, or she reminded me of how roses smell. I didn’t know which.

  When I came back with two chocolate frozen custards dripping down my fingers, she said, “Why do you carry a gun?”

  “Why do you snoop into my glove compartment?”

  “You go first,” she said.

  “It’s my dad’s gun.”

  It was his.38 Smith & Wesson, never loaded, with ivory butt plates and an owl carved into it, the eyes made of two real rubies. Years ago some Mafia character’d given it to him as thanks for following his wife around.

  She said, “But he’s dead, you said.”

  I got behind the wheel. “I can’t throw it out or turn it in.”

  “So you keep it in your car?”

  “My dad did, too. He said you should never keep a gun in the house. A lot of accidents with guns happen in policemen’s houses, did you know that?”

  “No.” She was licking the frozen custard off the side of the cone. It was sexy the way she did that.

  “A lot of homicides happen in policemen’s homes, too,” I said. “Their guns are always there.” I put a napkin around the bottom of my cone. It wasn’t going to do any good. It was a hot night. I was glad to be with her.

  “Now your turn,” I said. “What were you looking for in my glove compartment?”

  “Any evidence I could find of you.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m curious about you.”

  “Are you glad I’m not the preppy you thought I was?”

  “I like preppies.”

  “What do you like about them?”

  “I like the ones who go to all-male schools.”

  “Why them?”

  “They’re starved for women, so they’re eager to please and shyer, but they have more dignity than other guys.” She bit into the tip of the chocolate custard. “I like all three traits.”

  “You like eager to please, shy, and dignified?”

  “Yes. Are you any of those?”

  “I’m eager to please, and I’m dignified.”

  “I’ll make you shy,” she said.

  I laughed painfully. “It’s worth a try.” I managed to sound my idea of suave. Maybe not hers. I started the car.

  “Could you ever use that gun?”

  “I could. I know how to shoot. I learned to shoot when I was thirteen.”

  “Guns scare me,” she said, “but they fascinate me, too. This is awful. When I saw that gun in there, it turned me on.”

  “This is awful,” I said. “It turns me on that it turned you on.”

  We both laughed. I took her left hand with my right.

  I wished I had a convertible. We should have been speeding down toward the sea in a convertible. I’d never had that kind of thought with Keats. I suppose that was because there was only one thing I could do with Keats that Daddy and she hadn’t already d
one, including speed along Ocean Road in a little blue Benz, top down. But with Delia Tremble I felt there were things I could show her, maybe not then and there, but there was the feeling she hadn’t seen it all. She’d already said she hadn’t been many places. Keats had been to Europe three times, India, the Orient, even China. I couldn’t begin to name all the islands in the Caribbean she’d carried her tube of Bain de Soleil down to and come back bronze from.

  Delia let go of my hand and reached into her pocket for a cigarette. I pushed in the lighter. She had on a bright-blue cotton blazer with the sleeves rolled up, over a dress with big blue and white flowers all over it. The same hoop earrings; the same gold rings. She had white low-heeled sandals on, so she was shorter than I was this time.

  I had on some khaki stone-washed pants that Keats had given me last summer. It seemed like way back last summer with Delia beside me and something new starting. Something good.

  When the lighter popped out, I held it up for her.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Fell? Do you miss anyone now?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “Not now. Thanks for taking me dancing, Fell.”

  I couldn’t remember any girl ever thanking me for taking her somewhere, on the way there.

  She shifted her cigarette to her right hand and held my right hand again.

  I looked over at her. I decided to try out my father’s old imitation of Humphrey Bogart. I sucked down my lower lip and said, “This is just the beginning of our travels, kid.”

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Do the Bogie bit. I don’t like bits. I always think men pull that stuff when they’re afraid to show any emotion.”

  So there, Dad.

  I said, “Why shouldn’t we be afraid to show emotion? Show emotion and die.”

  “No. That’s see Naples. See Naples and die.” She laughed. “Show emotion and take your chances.”

  • • •

  Delia Tremble was a real good dancer. When you danced with her, people watched. Not you. Her. Some people watched her and danced. A few couples stopped to watch her.

  She had all sorts of moves, and she’d heard every song whether it was a hard rock disco song or the softer kind that came rarely and only at the end of a set. She did things with herself that were graceful and hot and new to me. New to a lot of us. What I liked was she didn’t dance for them, and she didn’t dance for herself like some girls do. Some girls dance in a way you could go down to the corner and back and they wouldn’t know you’d been gone. Delia danced for me, and with me, smiling at me, her eyes always coming back to me.

  We danced out on the big deck, without sitting down, for about an hour.

  Then we went into the bar, got some cherry Cokes, and took them outside to the little deck and talked for another hour.

  She told me she was from Atlantic City. Her father had once managed a big hotel there when Atlantic City was still pretty much a summer resort.

  “When I was a kid,” she said, “I used to wait for winter, when all the tourists would be gone. Then my mom and my sisters and I could move into one of the big suites that looked out on the ocean. That’s why the ocean here affects me so. It reminds me of when I was little.”

  A red-faced, crew-cut older guy began playing piano on the little deck.

  Delia said, “Let’s dance here. On the lawn. It’s slow. We can take off our shoes. It’s wet on the grass.”

  We did.

  I knew the song the fellow began singing. It was an old, old Billy Joel one, from before he’d met Christie Brinkley. It was one he wrote to his first wife about not changing, and it used to get Mom mad. It said he didn’t need clever conversation, he wanted her to stay the way she was. Mom would say, “Stay dumb, huh? Is that the message, Billy Joel?”

  But it sounded really romantic with this old saloon singer doing it. He sounded as if he were an inch away from having lung cancer. He was smoking, no hands, the way Pingree often did. He was singing “Don’t go changing.”

  We were dancing out there on the wet grass by ourselves, in the dark. I kissed her near the end of the song. She kissed me back.

  I think we both felt changed, never mind don’t go changing, because we didn’t smile or joke as we walked back toward the deck. You could cut the tension with a knife. It was sex. It was this great physical thirst that had come over us, and that we knew was coming, but weren’t sure what to do with after its arrival.

  We sat down on the steps and picked up our cherry Cokes.

  Delia said, “I have a chance to go around the world in the fall. On a ship. I’m going to take it.”

  “Will you be an au pair?”

  “Not for the Stileses.”

  “Did you just decide?”

  “Not just About a month ago. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go away for such a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “A year at least.”

  I let out a low whistle instead of a wail. “I wanted to tell you,” she said. “I was going to wait to tell you, but now I think you should know.”

  “A year?”

  “Yes.”

  She put her hand over mine. “I feel things, too, Fell. The way you dance.”

  “The way I dance,” I said.

  She took her hand away and reached for a cigarette.

  “Thanks for not being mean about my smoking, too.”

  I smelled her light up. She smoked those long brown Mores.

  I finally said, “I might go away myself.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “I told you. Switzerland. Prep school.”

  “Oh, Fell, you’d be a preppy after all.”

  “Don’t laugh.”

  “I’m not. I told you. I like that.” “I like you,” I said, “and I think I know what you’re saying.”

  “What am I saying?”

  “You’re saying we both feel something. But.” I took her hand and brought it up to my lips, and let my tongue play lightly between her fingers. Then I put her hand back. “You’re saying we can’t help feeling it, but we can’t expect to make anything out of it. Nothing permanent for now.”

  “Nothing permanent. Exactly. Because I’ll be away a long time.”

  “I will be, too,” I said.

  I decided then and there to go to Gardner.

  We danced an hour longer. I never danced that way before with anyone, never felt that way with anyone while I was dancing.

  Then we drove down to the beach. We were still there when the sun started coming up.

  Tuesday was her day off.

  I said, “Come home with me. I’ll make us breakfast. You can meet my mother and Jazzy.”

  She ran her finger down my lips, then pressed them together with it. “Hush, Fell.”

  She had the collar of the blue blazer turned up and my aqua sweater wrapped around her neck like a scarf.

  For once, I wasn’t at all cold.

  “I don’t want to meet your family, or get to know your friends. I don’t want ties. I don’t want us to be a couple.”

  “What are we then?” I wasn’t whining around as I used to with Keats. I was asking her to see what she’d come up with, after what had just happened between us.

  “We’re what we are, Fell.” She smiled. She looked sleepy. “We don’t have to define it or label it … and I want our memories to be just of the two of us.”

  I kept trying to keep myself from making some kind of wisecrack, or doing a Bogie imitation, or all the other jazz. She’d taught me that.

  She took my hand. “I like what we are,” she said. “It’s good enough, isn’t it?”

  “It’s better than that,” I said.

  We left the beach, and I dropped her off at the Stileses’.

  When I got home, I called Woodrow Pingree and told him I’d decided to do it.

  “You won’t be sorry, Fell,” he said.

  fell

  part II

  ARIZONA DARKNESS

>   chapter 14

  The first thing I found out was that no one going to Gardner School ever called it that. They called it The Hill. The school sat on a hill in the middle of farm country. That was all I saw, once I got off the train at Trenton, New Jersey, and into the school bus. Ten of us new boys were bound for the little town of Cottersville, Pennsylvania.

  There we were met by a dozen fellows in light-blue blazers and navy-blue pants. All the blazers had gold 7’s over the blue-and-white Gardner insignias. The group formed a seven around us and sang the Gardner song.

  Others will fill our places,

  Dressed in the old light blue.

  We’ll recollect our races.

  We’ll to the flag be true.

  And youth will still be in our faces

  When we cheer for a Gardner crew …

  And youth will still be in our faces

  When we cheer for a Gardner crew!

  A fellow behind me said, “Now we have to plant trees.”

  “We have to what?”

  “We each have to plant a tree. It’s the first thing you do when you get here, even before you get your room assigned. You get a little evergreen handed to you. You have to give it a name.”

  “What kind of a name?”

  “Any name. A name. By the way, I’m Sidney Dibble. Dib.”

  “I’m Thompson Pingree. Tom.”

  He was the basketball player type, all legs and arms, skinny, so tall I had to look way up at him. He was blond like me. He had on a tan suit with a beige T-shirt and Reeboks.

  I’d worn the only suit that had been mine in my other life: the dark-blue one. I felt like Georgette after her real family had come to claim her. Pingree had driven me into New York City one August afternoon and taken me to Brooks Brothers. I had a whole trunkful of new stuff.

  I asked Dib if he was sure about this tree thing. That was one detail Pingree’d left out. Dib said he was positive. His brother’d just graduated from Gardner. Dib said he was the world’s foremost authority on Gardner — ”Except when it comes to Sevens,” he added.

  The words weren’t even out of his mouth a half second before a member of Sevens began barking orders at us. He was a tall skinhead, with vintage thrift-shop zoot-suit pants, and two earrings in his left ear. He had on a pair of black Converse sneakers.