The Books of Fell

by M. E. Kerr

  “Dad said to ask you to stay for dinner,” Nina told me. “We eat at six, so we’ll have another half hour if you can do it.”

  I said I could before I realized it was Wednesday, steak night at Sevens. She tossed back her hair and straightened her posture so the dragonfly disappeared. There was a phone in the hall by the clock, she said, if I wanted to call The Tower. “You won’t miss out on the steak, either,” she said, “because I had our butcher cut us a thick sirloin … The only thing is, I haven’t cooked a steak for ages! Dad’s cut way back on red meat and I hardly ever eat it.”

  I jumped in. “I’ll cook it!”

  “Can you?”

  I smiled. “How did you know we have steak on Wednesdays?”

  “Dad. He was one of you, remember? … He wouldn’t ask just anyone from The Hill to rescue me from Eddie. It’d have to be one of the holy Sevens, of course. Really.”

  “We’re not that bad,” I said.

  “I know. You’re a good tutor, Fell. Do me a favor?”

  “I charge extra for favors.”

  “Let Dad think I don’t know what you’re really doing here — he hates it when I outsmart him.”

  “We’re doing the Brownings so far as I’m concerned,” I said. “Time out while I marinate the meat?”

  Chapter 10

  My first date with Delia, I’d made her French toast. I was thinking about that while I reached up in the cupboard for seasonings to go in the marinade.

  I was also thinking about the tattoo, and the look in Nina’s eyes when she said Eddie’s name.

  I was beginning to be sorry for myself because I wasn’t connected to anyone. It made me feel like a kid again, this half-assed (half-eared?) preppy who’d have to put his name on the blind-date list for The Charles Dance and hope the girl who got off the bus from Miss Tyler’s school didn’t have bad breath and think we ought to nuke Nicaragua.

  Then I saw something that started me going the other way, and I began to grin while I grabbed it.

  “Hey, Nina, where’d this come from?”

  It was a bottle of Fox’s U-Bet chocolate-flavored syrup. Made in Brooklyn!

  “That was my mom’s. It’s about three years old. She used to order it by the case to make egg creams.”

  “Which I’d kill for! Do you happen to have any seltzer?”

  “There’s a cylinder in on the bar. Can you make an egg cream, Fell?”

  “Can Michael Jackson dance?”

  “I’ve tried to make them like she used to, but they don’t come out right.

  “Just leave everything to me. All I need now is that seltzer and some milk.”

  I finished marinating the steak while Nina got the cylinder, a carton of milk, and two glasses.

  “Was that your mom’s picture in on the coffee table?”

  “Yes, but it’s not good of her. She was beautiful. She was like some exotic hothouse flower daddy’d never let breathe fresh air. He’s very overprotective, Fell.”

  “Sometimes you need protecting, Nina.”

  “I need it?”

  “Not you in particular. We all need it sometimes.”

  “I get too much of it.”

  “I thought you said you’d like to come back as this house so you’d get some attention.”

  “That’s right. This house gets loving care. I get locked inside with a bodyguard.”

  “How’s this for loving care? Watch me,” I said.

  She stood there while I spooned an inch of Fox’s U-Bet into each glass, adding another inch of milk.

  “Is that all the milk you use? I use half a glass.”

  “That’s too much. Now, the trick is to tilt the glass like so, and spray the seltzer off the spoon.”

  Soon there was a big chocolaty head.

  “See?” I said.

  We were right on the verge of clicking our glasses together in a toast I proposed to H. Fox & Company, Brooklyn, New York, when Meatloaf began crooning while he ran from the room as fast as his fat little legs could carry him.

  “Dad’s home,” said Nina.

  • • •

  Dad was your average nice-man type, getting gray at the temples, but keeping himself lean, dressed in a brown suit, a guy who probably wore his necktie from the time he got up until he went to bed. He looked like he’d be at home in an office, a bank, a church, at Rotary, on the golf course, or on his way in first class to some Hilton hotel for a meeting.

  If he’d started his business from scratch, as Schwartz had said, he was way past scratch now, and his voice let you know it.

  “Nina, before we go in to dinner, I want you to change your top.”

  I automatically looked down at my own seedy sweater, scruffy jeans, and stockinged feet. Nina said, “Don’t worry, Fell. Dad just doesn’t like scoop necks.”

  “I don’t have to look at it while I’m eating,” Mr. Deem said.

  “You don’t ever have to look at it,” said Nina. She finished the rest of her egg cream and left me in the kitchen with David Deem.

  I told him I’d cook the steak, and he mouthed a few sentences about his cholesterol level finally getting down, and his triglyceride staying at about 150.

  “You don’t have to worry about all that yet, John.”

  I asked him to call me Fell, and if I should get the steak in right away.

  He said Nina usually had the salad washed and waiting in the refrigerator, peeked in there, and nodded. “Yes, go ahead. Mrs. Whipple left us lima beans from last night we’ll just heat up.”

  He got busy behind me, after he dropped the beans into a pan he put on low, but he didn’t take his coat off or loosen his tie.

  Meatloaf sat up and begged, and Mr. Deem tossed him something and told him to go into his bed.

  Then Mr. Deem said, “I’m glad we have a few minutes alone, Fell…. If you ever hear anything or see anything that tells you Eddie Dragon is in touch with my daughter, I want you to tell me immediately. You know that, I hope.”

  Already I knew how hard this situation might become. I liked Nina. I couldn’t see myself ratting on her. But I couldn’t see myself letting her hang out with a pusher, either.

  He went right on without waiting for any comment from me. “He’s very clever, don’t forget that. He can charm the birds down from the trees, too, so you have to be on your guard…. Did you see it?” he asked me.

  “See what, sir?”

  “The tattoo. You couldn’t have missed it.”

  “I saw it.” I liked it. I’d never tell him that, but I wouldn’t have minded if Delia’d had something like it to remember me.

  “He did that to her,” said Deem.

  “She said she did it on her own initiative.”

  He laughed unhappily. “Don’t believe it! … Now she thinks it’s zany and original. But imagine, Fell, years from now when Nina will want to attend a dance, or a dress-up dinner party, or go to the club for a swim: There it will be. He’s marked her for life.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about that,” I said.

  “Then she talked about him, hmmm, Fell?”

  “Not much. Just a little when I noticed the tattoo.”

  “What did she say?”

  I sighed. I wasn’t going to be good at this at all. “She just said anything I might hear about him is a lie.”

  “Ha! He’s the liar! He’s a pro, Fell! He had me believing him, and I’ve met my share of liars!”

  The thought of it made him work the wooden fork and spoon so vigorously, a piece of lettuce flew at my sweater.

  I picked it off and popped it into my mouth. “Good dressing,” I said. It needed salt and a touch more garlic, but it was surprisingly tasty. A great mustardy tang.

  “My wife’s recipe…. Did I see you two drinking egg creams?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s good. Nina says she can’t make one right. They remind her of her mother too much, I think.”

  “She told me something about that.” “She did? She talked with y
ou about her mother?”

  “Not a lot, but a little.”

  “I’m surprised … and delighted. Nina has a lot of trouble talking about her. She took her death very hard. We both did, of course. Nina’s so much like Barbara in every way, sometimes I walk into a room, see her, and have to stop and catch my breath. She’s Barbara to her bones: the daredevil, the romantic — all the qualities I lack. But Nina could use some of my dull, old common sense, too. She needs to come down to earth.”

  I was timing the steak. “Mr. Deem? Do you two like your steak rare?”

  “Yes, rare…. I’m glad you came on the scene, Fell. I know Nina will win you over, and you may feel disloyal if you have to report anything to me, but just remember this.”

  He stopped and came around so he could face me.

  “If you care anything at all about my daughter, you’ll be doing her a very great service keeping Dragon out of her life.”

  Then his eyes got very wide and he said, “Oh, no!”

  “What’s wrong, sir?” I thought of cholesterol and triglyceride, of high blood pressure and heart attacks.

  He went over to the sink and ran the cold water.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Deem?” My own father had died very suddenly of a heart attack.

  He grabbed a towel and put a corner of it under the water, turned, and handed it to me. “Your sweater,” he said. “There’s oil or something on it.”

  Where the lettuce had hit me.

  I grinned with relief and dabbed at the stain.

  “We should both have on aprons,” he said.

  • • •

  Nina was definitely out to get him at dinner. She was pretending to be reviewing for him what we’d gone over during the tutoring, but she talked far more about Elizabeth Barrett than she did about Browning, harping on her controlling father.

  “Ummm hmmmm,” Mr. Deem would respond. “Well, Nina, they were very strict with young ladies in those days.”

  Nina gave me a triumphant look. Then she said, “Dad, when she met Robert Browning she was practically forty! Her father was still telling her what to do!”

  “She was ill, wasn’t she? Didn’t you just say she was ill?”

  “He made her think she was! He wanted to keep her home with him!”

  “It all turned out all right, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, because she defied him! She eloped!”

  “That’s a word we don’t use much anymore. Elope.”

  “Oh, we still use it, Dad. Those who have a reason to use it still use it.”

  She could have been talking about basket weaving in Madagascar for all the reaction she got out of him. He gave the same bland responses no matter how impassioned Nina became. He sneaked bits of steak to Meatloaf, who was stationed at his feet, under the table.

  “The steak is done just right, Fell!” Mr. Deem decided to change the subject.

  “Thanks, sir.”

  “Nina, did you show Fell any of your old stories?”

  “I’m throwing them all out,” she said. “They were from another time.”

  “You’ll regret it if you do. You might want to remember that time someday, how you felt when you were younger.”

  “I don’t want to remember feeling like this little Goody Two Shoes who raised her umbrella and heard the wind sough in the trees. I actually wrote that line, Fell. ‘She raised her umbrella and heard the wind sough in the trees.’“

  “Sough is a perfectly legitimate word,” said her father.

  “My future characters aren’t going to own umbrellas,” Nina said, “or slipcovers or coasters. I’m never going to write about careful people again!”

  One thing I’d learned about her: If she was a jet crash, she had a certain brave facade about her. I couldn’t imagine her letting anyone feel sorry for her. I liked that about her, maybe because I was a little that way myself. We jet crashes had our pride.

  • • •

  I had to be back at The Hill by ten. At eight Mr. Deem walked out on the front porch with me, and we stood a moment in the cold night.

  Then he grabbed my hand, and I felt his thumb push against my fingers. I had almost forgotten the Sevens handshake. I let my thumb touch his. It was an awkward gesture that made me feel silly, but he seemed satisfied.

  “This is going to work out fine,” he told me. “I can tell.”

  He went back inside and left the light on for me as I headed down the walk.

  His Lincoln was there in the driveway.

  The license plate read DDD-7.

  The wind was soughing in the trees.

  Chapter 11

  I could have walked back to The Hill or caught the bus at the comer of Main and Hickory.

  I thought of Dib and decided in favor of the bus. I wanted to tell him all that Rinaldo had told me.

  But a block before Hickory I turned into Playwicky Road.

  While I’d been at the Deems’, I’d forgotten Lasher and Creery. For all the luxury at Sevens, I’d missed cooking, and eating a meal in a quiet room where there was a female. I’d missed a living room and a four-legged creature padding around.

  I remembered Jazzy dressed up as a question mark in a kindergarten play last Christmas. She’d had to recite some lines from Kipling:

  I keep six honest serving men

  (They taught me all I knew);

  Their names are What and Why and When

  And How and Where and Who.

  Temporarily, anyway, I’d parked the six serving men at the curb, and reveled in the idea of being in a real home again.

  Playwicky Arms was a row of two-story houses, each with its own twin entrances onto the street. The houses on the winding street were alternately gray and white, with brass lanterns in front and cobblestone sidewalks meeting the city’s paved ones.

  I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, “just looking,” as my mother was fond of saying in department stores.

  Number 6 was white and in the middle.

  Both the top and bottom floors were lighted. I figured Lauren must have gone from Sevens House to here, rather than catch the bus back to Miss Tyler’s. Midwinter, during the week, there wasn’t regular service to Princeton.

  I was only slightly curious about this off-campus pad of Lasher’s. It figured that he’d had one, and that only card players knew about it. He wasn’t the first fellow from The Sevens to have one, probably just the first one to chance reprimand for poker or blackjack instead of girls.

  What interested me more was the idea of surprising Lauren. I was trying to imagine that unflappable face reacting with surprise. It was a little like trying to picture the Mona Lisa throwing her head back to have a good belly laugh.

  I enjoyed the idea of telling Dib I’d checked out Playwicky, too. He liked the image of Fell, Boy Detective, far more than he appreciated Fell, member of Sevens. It would go a long way in helping him to stop suspecting I was part of some Sevens cover-up.

  I walked up and down the street while I invented these excuses for my own chronic curiosity, and while I practiced what I’d say to Lauren.

  Lauren, I can’t stay but I finished assembling the memorial book, so can you pick it up tomorrow? I had my own selfish reasons, too. Sevens drew the line at free postage and delivery of packages. We had to get them to the post office ourselves, a chore I could easily postpone for weeks.

  There were two bells at number 6, the top one with the name Lewis under it, the bottom one unmarked.

  I pushed the bottom one, heard it ring, and waited.

  My father used to say he could always feel it when he was being watched. It was a sixth sense. It had saved his life once when all he could see on a street where he was doing surveillance was an empty florist’s station wagon with a roof rack carrying a coffin-sized cardboard box, the sort used for wholesale flower deliveries. There was a man with a gun inside the box, aiming at him through a hole. Dad ducked just in time, getting away in a crouch.

  I could feel eyes on me from inside. I
could see the curtains move in the downstairs front window. I knew there was no gun aimed at me, but some of the same feelings people who point guns have were probably overwhelming Lauren then. She’d say how did you find out about this place, Fell? I’d tell her I was in the neighborhood and number 6 just looked like her. Something about it.

  I smiled at the thought and jabbed the bell again.

  This time all the lights on the bottom floor went off. So did the one inside the brass lantern.

  Plain enough. I walked away.

  I went up the street in the opposite direction from where I’d entered it, and stood a moment beside a large oak tree, seeing if the lights would go on again.

  I wondered if Lauren had seen that it was me, or if she feared that it was someone who could cause trouble. Maybe over at Miss Tyler’s the idea of her crashing in her brother’s off-campus card den wouldn’t sit so well. It probably wasn’t the first time either. A girl like Lauren couldn’t have been interested in cards. Boys, more likely … Rinaldo’d said to ask Kidder about number 6 Playwicky. What if Kidder, with his Colgate smile, his Polo wardrobe, and his Key West yacht, appealed to Lauren?

  My thoughts were chasing in circles while I stood hugging myself to keep warm. I was ready to admit that my imagination was overtaking reality again. Kidder’d played poker there; whatever Lauren had been up to, I’d probably never know.

  Staying was pointless, I decided. That was the second the lantern light went on again.

  Just for a moment, a man stepped out and looked around.

  I’d seen him before.

  I’d never seen him barefoot, in an orange kimono, but I’d seen the thick white hair and the white mustache.

  Only someone from Miami wouldn’t think to pack slippers.

  Chapter 12

  In Sevens house my mailbox was full. There was a large package from Mom, a letter from Keats, three messages from Dib. Where are YOU? was one. Then, Where ARE you? Finally, WHERE are you?

  Mom never sent me stuff unless it was a special occasion. She said that since I’d made Sevens, sending me anything was like carrying coals to Newcastle.

  I opened the package on the spot. Little plastic peanuts spilled from the box to the mailroom floor.