The Tutor

by Peter Abrahams

  Still, imagining a prospective second bedroom scene in an honest way, Julian had to admit that there would still be the problem of her inane chatter, on and on. Would a gag of some sort be acceptable? He could see her actually liking it, getting turned on, asking for the gag the next time and the time after—he was just being honest with himself.

  The lights stayed off in the upstairs window of the big house. Julian went to bed hungry.

  17

  Was there anything better than Sunday morning? Just to lie in bed reading, all snug and cozy, no practices, no lessons, nothing to do but turn the pages, stretch a little from time, listen to passing planes high above, like bowling balls in heaven. Sunday morning: why couldn’t there be one or two more scattered through the week? What use was Tuesday morning, for example? Monday mornings—the very worst—wouldn’t suck so bad if you could look forward to another Sunday morning the very next day. Whoever planned all this out could have done a better job. Throwing in lots of Sunday mornings would be her number one commitment to the American people if she ever ran for president.

  Bowling balls in heaven: where Adam was, if you believed in heaven. And if you didn’t believe, where was he? Probably better if there was a heaven, but by now, after all these centuries and centuries of dying, it would be very crowded, more packed than the planet Earth itself, with all the problems of crowding—pollution, rudeness, long lines for everything.

  Ruby lay in her bed, thinking about heaven as an environmental disaster with a lot of pissed-off people, when it suddenly struck her that although she was indeed lying in her bed and had awakened in it, she had gone to sleep down the hall in Adam’s room; and didn’t remember coming back. That scared her a little. Was she sleepwalking? Or had Dad found her and carried her back? She got up and went downstairs.

  Zippy was slurping out of the toilet in the little bathroom. “Stop it,” she called. No more slurping sounds, but she could picture him very well, head raised over the toilet bowl, ear cocked, waiting to see if she’d follow up. Ruby went into the kitchen, heard the faint sound of the next greedy tongueful.

  Dad was at the stove. Yes! French toast.

  “Morning, sweetheart.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “How does French toast sound?”

  “Yummy.”

  “Have a good sleep?”

  “Uh.”

  “Uh? What’s that?”

  “Good, yeah. And you?”

  “Me?”

  “Did you have a good sleep, Dad?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “Solid?”

  “What do you mean by solid?”

  “You know, slept like a baby, right through, no getting up and wandering around or anything.”

  Dad turned to her, spatula raised. He was using that walnut bread with the scallions, her absolute favorite for French toast. “What are you getting at, Ruby?”

  Complete bafflement on his face, like when the bad guy blows the safe and there’s nothing inside. Since Mom probably wasn’t strong enough to carry her and would have sent Dad anyway, that meant she’d been sleepwalking. “Nothing, Dad. Just polite chitchat, back and forth.”

  He looked like he was going to say something else, but then sizzling came from the pan and he turned his attention to that. “How hungry are you?”

  “Hungry.”

  “Two slices or three?”

  “Three,” Ruby said. She set the table for the two of them, put out the maple syrup and the sugar and cream for Dad’s coffee. Sleepwalking could be a sign of emotional problems, she knew that from “Dear Abby.” Could you have emotional problems and be happy at the same time? She was on the point of asking Dad when he suddenly said, “Shit,” making her jump, and shook his thumb in the air.

  “You okay, Dad?”

  “Yeah, sorry.”

  “That’s all right.” She sat down at her place, poured OJ for both of them, waited while he finished cooking. When just waiting got boring, which was pretty quick, she picked up a crayon lying on the table and began writing a poem on her napkin. First the title:

  Golden Lanes

  Then what? How about something like this?

  How’s the bowling up there, Adam?

  Are you knocking down those pearly pins?

  Racking up those strikes and

  “Hey, Dad, what’s that thing in bowling where you knock them all down in two balls?”

  “Spares.”

  spares?

  Sure must be getting good by now

  With God to show you all the tricks

  In three persons, blessed trinity.

  You can show me too someday

  And how to eat like the gods,

  heavenly hot dogs, sacred Sprite, etc.,

  While we tote up our scores,

  Fun forever

  All together

  But not too soon.

  “What are you writing?” Dad said.

  He was at the table, French toast on both their plates, stirring his coffee. Breakfast underway: somehow she’d missed the start.

  “Oh, nothing,” Ruby said, and placed her napkin on her lap, as all well-bred young ladies did. She poured a nice little pool of maple syrup on her French toast, watched it flow over the golden-brown cliffs in a waterfall of thick amber.

  “Hey. Easy on the syrup.”

  “Oops.”

  She sliced off a corner of the top piece, dipped it, soaked it—“What’s that word where something’s full of a liquid?”

  “Full of a liquid? I’m not sure.”

  “And any more, it just rains out?”

  “Saturated?”

  “Yeah.” Saturated that walnut-scallion French toast in maple syrup, genuine grade A amber from Vermont, none of that sneaky ungenuine crap that left out the key word—maple—and took that first bite.

  Dad was watching her. “How is it?”

  “The best you’ve ever done.”

  He gave her a big smile. It really was great. Her mouth was in heaven. Heaven popping up again. Right then, she got an idea for another poem. In fact, the whole thing—maple tree, farmer, cross—appeared in her mind, all at once. All she had to do was write it down later. Or get someone else to do it while she reclined on something fabulous and munched bonbons. She knew right then that if nothing better came along, she could always be a writer.

  “What do you think Brandon’s going to be when he grows up, Dad?”

  Dad put his coffee down. Uh-oh. He looked kind of grim all of a sudden. “Is he going to grow up? That’s the question.”

  Major mood change. But why? Then she got it: had to be the curfew. “Brandon’s home, right?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “On time?” Ruby said.

  “Not exactly.”

  “How late?”

  “There was a little more to it than that,” Dad said. He sighed, put his elbows on the table, made a frame with his hands, rested his chin on it.

  Speed it up a little, Dad. Ruby kept that one to herself.

  “This time the police were involved,” Dad said when he finally took up the story.

  “How?”

  “A bunch of them were drinking in the woods, I guess it got noisy, and someone called the cops. Brandon was pulled in for underage drinking.”

  “Like behind bars?”

  “No. And there are no charges or anything.”

  “This time,” Ruby said.

  He gave her a look, sat up straight. “Right.”

  Questions popped up all over the place in her mind, lots of them, like flowers blooming in one of those time-lapse documentaries. She dealt with them in no particular order.

  “What were they drinking?”

  “I don’t know. Beer, probably.”

  “Did Dewey get busted too?”

  “I don’t know. They were asking Brandon about Dewey, in fact.”

  “Asking him what?”

  “If he knew him.”

  “He denied it?”

  “How did
you know that?”

  From your tone of voice. “Just a guess,” Ruby said. “Who dropped the dime?”

  “What dime?”

  “For God’s sake, Dad, don’t you know the lingo that goes with this? Who called the police?”

  “Oh. They don’t give that out.”

  “But it’s pretty obvious.”

  Dad nodded.

  “Mr. Stromboli,” Ruby said. She used her deepest voice, the voice of doom. Stromboli sounded pretty scary that way. “Maybe we should throw a stink bomb down his chimney.”

  “That’s a joke, right?”

  “Except there’s a problem.”

  “With throwing stink bombs? Damn straight there’s a problem. I don’t ever—”

  “The problem, Dad, is how did the Strombolis hear the noise from their place?”

  “Why not?”

  “What time was this?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. Between midnight and twelve-thirty, maybe.”

  “Were you asleep then?”

  Dad seemed to have to think about that for some reason, and it didn’t make him happy. “I was awake.”

  “Did you hear any noise?”

  “No.”

  “And we’re closer to the woods than the Strombolis.”

  “So it couldn’t have been them—is that what you’re saying?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Ruby. “Mr. Stromboli could have been out walking, maybe even walking in the woods himself.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “He’s a weirdo, Dad. You know that.”

  Dad sipped his coffee. “We’ll never know,” he said. “Anyway, it’s beside the issue.”

  “What’s the issue?”

  “Brandon screwing up.” He gazed at her over his coffee cup. “You’re not going to do stuff like that, drinking in the woods, are you?”

  “Hell, Dad,” Ruby said, “I was there last night.”

  “Very funny,” said Dad. “Eat your breakfast.”

  They ate their breakfast. It was nice and quiet, no sound but those flowers popping open in Ruby’s head, out of Dad’s hearing.

  Getting a stink bomb would not be a problem. If Dewey couldn’t lay his hands on a stink bomb, who could? The problem was finding out whether Mr. Stromboli had gone walking in the woods. Normally on a Sunday morning like this, Ruby might have gone back to bed, curled up with The Complete Sherlock Holmes, or maybe had a bubble bath with something extra special from the Body Shop, listening to CDs on the bathtub player. Today she got dressed, put on her blue jacket with the yellow trim, her yellow mittens and her blue hat with the yellow tassel: a perfect outfit. She stuck her magnifying glass in her pocket, clipped Zippy to his leash, and went outside.

  Not too cold. Could she see her breath? Yes. Could she see Zippy’s breath? No. Why was that? “Are you breathing, Zippy?” He lifted his leg and peed right there, on their own front steps. “Zippy!” She tugged him away. He kept peeing, three legs dragging, one still raised, leaving a wiggly yellow line in the snow.

  It all depended on the snow, of course, she knew that already. When was the last time it snowed? She couldn’t remember. She could be so dumb sometimes. Are you awake in there, Rubester? She could see it wasn’t fresh, anyway. There were lots of footprints in their yard, including hers, the smallest, and these over here, bigger, deeper, most likely . . . She knelt, took out her magnifying glass, examined the corrugated ridges of the sole, so detailed under the glass, could even spot two words, faint and backward in the snow: Dr. Martens. Brandon, as she’d thought.

  She crossed the street. “Down, Zippy.” Very few tracks over at the Strombolis’: not a surprise, the Strombolis didn’t do a whole lot of playing in the snow, probably went in and out through the garage most of the time, in the car. There was just one set, in fact, huge footprints leading from halfway down the shoveled walk across the front lawn to a ring-shaped depression in the snow, and on to the driveway. She’d seen a ring-shaped depression like that before, in her own yard. And it would be? Yes, the mark left by a trash can lid on garbage day, when the trash guys zoomed off in that wild way of theirs, scattering trash cans and lids behind them. The trash guys were great. One year Dad left them a case of Bud for Christmas; they’d started popping them open on the spot, trash cans all over the street that day, except for theirs, neatly stacked. The special treatment had lasted for at least two weeks.

  So last trash pickup day, Mr. Stromboli had come out the front door, cut across the lawn, picked up the lid, muttering goddamn fucking trash guys and stuff like that, taken it into the garage. Ruby stepped into their yard. Zippy growled. “Be good,” she said, keeping her voice down and looping the leash hard around her wrist.

  Ruby took out the magnifying glass, bent over, watched an unmarred print swim into view. Mr. Stromboli’s feet were enormous. He was one scary dude, no doubt about it. His soles had left funny little square patterns, except at the heels, which were worn and smooth. There was even a tiny groove in the right heel that didn’t appear in the left. These prints would be real easy to identify. If she found them in the woods, it would be case closed, definite proof that Mr. Stromboli was the villain, smoke bombs away and damn the torp—

  The front door opened. Ruby, down on all fours for some reason—how had that happened?—felt her heart kick into a violent beat. Mrs. Stromboli peered out, wearing a quilted pink housecoat and matching pink slippers with pompoms on the toes. Zippy barked, tried to bolt right at her. Ruby yanked the leash with all her might, stretched full-length in the snow. His bark ended in a high-pitched sound like a car jamming on the brakes.

  “Is there a problem?” said Mrs. Stromboli, every feature pointing down.

  “Just doing some detective work,” said Ruby, getting up, brushing snow off her face; some had already got down her neck. She held up the magnifying glass.

  “What are you looking for?” said Mrs. Stromboli.

  “The blue carbuncle,” said Ruby.

  Mrs. Stromboli smiled. A stunning development. “You have to look inside a goose for that, if I remember.”

  Ruby smiled back, her cutest smile. “I’m just pretending,” she said, not quite a lisp, but close.

  “You go on and pretend,” said Mrs. Stromboli. “Long as you don’t mind the cold.”

  “Oh, no,” said Ruby. “I had such a good sleep last night.” Not a very smooth cut to the chase, but nothing better came to mind.

  “That’s nice, dear.”

  “It was so quiet and peaceful, don’t you think, Mrs. Stromboli? But especially quiet.”

  “I really didn’t notice.”

  “No? So you didn’t think it was maybe a bit noisy?”

  “Noisy?”

  “Yeah. One of those noisy kind of nights.”

  Mrs. Stromboli looked puzzled. “We live in a fairly quiet neighborhood, don’t you think?”

  “Except for us, right?”

  Mrs. Stromboli laughed. “Mr. Stromboli’s bark is worse than his bite.”

  What about when he tried to murder Zippy with the golf club? “So it was a quiet night for you and Mr. Stromboli?”

  Mrs. Stromboli blinked. Then she blushed a little. “Is this part of your detective work?”

  Ruby nodded. “My method is founded on the observance of trifles.”

  “Then yes,” said Mrs. Stromboli. “We had a quiet night. Fell asleep watching the news, as usual, without seeing hide nor hair of the blue carbuncle.”

  “What time was the news, Mrs. Stromboli?”

  “We always watch the ten o’clock on channel fifty-six. Do you need to know what was on? There was a fire in Hartford, if I remember, and—”

  “That’s all right, Mrs. Stromboli. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Anytime,” said Mrs. Stromboli. “Hope you find it.”

  “We’ll do our best.”

  “I get it. Your dog’s Dr. Watson.”

  A great idea, but Ruby didn’t have time to dwell on the possibilities, getting Zipp
y one of those deerstalker hats, for example. She had to focus on the problem: if not Mr. Stromboli, who?

  The real Dr. Watson, on his very dumbest day, would have had no trouble identifying the scene of the party in the woods. All around the far side of the pond lay empty bottles, beer cans, cigarette butts, pizza boxes, candy wrappers, and footprints on footprints, down to the mud under the snow. There was even a beer keg, abandoned, Ruby supposed, when the kids ran away, still dripping slowly from its hose. Zippy found a slice of thick-crust sausage and pepperoni, gobbled it up.

  “How the hell,” she said, watching him sniff in the snow for more, “are we going to find what we’re looking for in all this?”

  A huge man stepped from behind the big rock. He wore a navy blue jacket with a silver badge on the front and three stripes on the arm. “Depends what you’re looking for, little lady.”

  Was that what a heart attack felt like, when your heart sprang up and tried to escape through your mouth? “Zippy lost his toy in here the other day,” she said, backing up, her voice real squeaky, kind of like Amanda’s.

  “What kind of toy?” said the man.

  “A red rubber bone,” Ruby said, finally standing her ground; he’d actually had a toy like that at one time. “But now it’s all so messy.”

  “Sure is,” said the man. He reached down, picked up a wallet, glanced inside, dropped it in a black bag. Brandon had once lost three wallets in a week.

  “Are you a policeman?” Ruby said.

  “Yup.”

  “And the stripes mean you’re a sergeant?”

  Pause. “You live around here?” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Ruby, waving vaguely, and in the wrong direction.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ruby.”