by M. E. Kerr
He’d become convinced there was no way we’d ever figure out the true story of Lasher’s death, that Sevens had too much power … He’d also teamed up with a scruffy group of townies, led by John Horner, a day student known as Little Jack. They drove around Cottersville in an old Mustang, no muffler, black, furry dice hanging from the mirror, six-packs iced in the backseat….
“You’ve got your gang, I’ve got mine,” he told me.
Neither of us had done anything about learning how to work the Smith-Corona PWP.
Creery’s stepbrother was still with us, and Dib bought Rinaldo’s explanation that it had been arranged through Sevens for him to stay in Lasher’s apartment. He bought it, or he settled for it. He wasn’t interested any longer in pursuing it, he said; he wasn’t going to wait around in the dorm until I found time to discuss it with him.
The only change in Creery I noticed was his absence most nights at dinner. He ate with Lowell Hunter — that was Mark Twain’s last name, Hunter.
• • •
“Fell?” Nina said. “Thanks for this. I need to be around creative people.” She liked to wear gear. She had on an old camouflage jacket several sizes too large for her, a sailor’s blue knit cap pulled down around her long blond hair, and old corduroys that had been pegged so the cuffs slid into her lace-up leather boots.
“What’s New Hope like? I hear it’s a tourist trap.”
Nina said, “Some people’d say it’s a little artsy-fartsy, but in winter it’s just another small town.” She giggled. “With a lot of artsy-fartsy antique shops and restaurants. It’s pretty, though.”
“It’s a reward for the A+ you got on your Browning paper.”
“Thanks to you. You really improved it, Fell.”
“I like your new stories” — most of them were fantasies about future worlds — ”but I’d like to read your old ones, too.”
She shook her head. “You never will. I burned them. They aren’t me now. I’m not the same since Mom’s death.”
“You might want to remember what you were like, though.”
“I am working on a story about my mother and father. Their last fight. You know what it was over? A croquet game.”
“One was winning and one wasn’t?”
“They weren’t even playing,” said Nina. “My father had this unpainted sample from DOT, our mail-order division. He was supposed to approve it. It was in his study when my mother found it. She was like a kid sometimes. She loved games! She wanted to put it out on the lawn immediately. Dad said she couldn’t do it. He actually wrestled it away from her. It was weird, Fell: these two grown people tugging at a croquet set. He was shouting at her for unpacking it, and she was laughing at first. My aunt Peggy was visiting, and Mom was teasing him: Don’t be a party pooper, Dave! Wait until you see my sister swing a croquet mallet! … But Dad was dead serious. No way were they going to set up that game! … I figured out why he didn’t want her to set it up.”
“Why?”
“It’d ruin the lawn. You know how he is. He didn’t want the lawn spoiled … It was a terrible fight, too. They’d never fought physically before. They used to make these conversational digs at each other, but this time he actually slapped her. Then she kicked him. Hard. My aunt Peggy tried to break it up, and she almost got hit, too … It’s awful when parents fight, isn’t it? I hated it!”
“My parents usually fought about my father’s hours. He’d come through the door after a night’s work, and Mom would say, ‘Who are you? What are you doing in this house?’“
Nina said, “And right after the fight over the croquet set, she broke her neck doing a swan dive. Hit the shallow end of our pool because she’d overreached. If it wasn’t so sad, I’d say it was how she’d have wanted to go. Doing something beautiful and wild.”
“I’m sorry, Nina.”
“Me too…. My aunt never forgave him. She thinks my mother was in shock from his slapping her … and over what? The fact my mother wanted to play a game on the lawn.”
“It must be rough on him, too. Still.”
“I know. I think of that a lot, because he truly did love her. She was such a passionate woman. He was always trying to curb her, not maliciously. He’s not mean. But he just wants to be in control…. She loved romantic stories. She was always talking about famous lovers, reading us love poems at the dinner table. I think she was rubbing it in.”
“What would he do?”
“Oh, Dad tolerated it. I think that was her way of getting back at him. He’d forget birthdays, anniversaries, and when he did remember them, he’d come home with something like a new microwave oven … Emotion embarrasses him. She’d read us Keats, Shelley, some Frenchwoman named Duras … My shrink says Vell, dot is a form of hostile displacement ven you do dot.” She looked across at me and laughed, but I didn’t. I suddenly remembered the lady in the long black mink coat at Lasher’s funeral.
“What’s your shrink’s name?”
“Inge Lasher. You knew her son, didn’t you? He was a Sevens before he took a dive off The Tower. Or am I not supposed to mention that?”
“I didn’t know you knew about it.”
“Dad didn’t tell me. It wasn’t in the newspaper, either. They always hush up bad stuff that happens on The Hill.”
“Then how did you find out?”
“She told me. She said it vas not a disgrace so she vould not hide it. According to her, he secreted less growth hormone. Only she pronounces it groat hormone. Gawd, Fell!”
“What?”
“If your own shrink’s son does himself in, how are you supposed to be helped by her?”
“You’ve probably got enough groat hormone.”
“She hated having to tell me. She told all her patients. Clients, she calls us. She told everyone. It must have killed her! She tries to keep her personal life so secret. They all do. You’re not supposed to focus on them. But I’d see her daughter sometimes. Right after Mom died, her daughter was living in their town house. During my session I’d see her out the window coming up the walk with her schoolbooks.”
“Lauren,” I said.
“Is that her name? I didn’t even know her son was on The Hill until he died. What’s Lauren like?”
“Sort of sophisticated.”
“More than me?”
“You’re not the same type.”
“How is she different. Is she prettier?”
“No. You can’t compare you two.”
“Why not?”
“Why do you care?” I said.
“She’s my shrink’s daughter, Fell. You’ve never been shrunk, have you?”
“No.”
“Well, we basket cases care about things like that.”
“You should concentrate on yourself.”
“I bet you’re sorry you said that. That’s all I do.” Nina laughed. “I know Lauren’s got inky-black hair. I remember that.”
“And she wears Obsession, like an old girlfriend of mine.” Sometimes I’d say things like that thinking Nina’d ask me questions about myself, but she didn’t. She’d go right past the remark.
She said, “I like White Shoulders better. Would you date her, Fell?”
“She’s too opaque for me.”
“Opaque. Oh, I like that word.” I’d just tossed out whatever’d come into my head, but Nina looked like I’d told her the combination for a safe full of gold. “Then she’s exactly like her mother! I think Dr. Inge is the most mysterious person I’ve ever known! … And she’s sophisticated, too. European. On the elegant side. But Fell, she’s married to this little potbellied shrimp with a bald head. You should see him! He’s nothing!”
“I have seen them. They were both at the memorial service.”
“Of course! Then you know! Was it a sad memorial service?”
“There’re not a lot of happy ones. But it was short.” I decided not to mention that her shrink had addressed the gathering. It would save me having to go into all that. “No one from Sevens spoke
— that was a little strange. Rinaldo, one of our houseboys, read a poem he’d written.”
“I know Rinaldo! Rinaldo Velez?”
“Yes.”
“He was a senior when I was a sophomore. I didn’t know he wrote. I thought he only worried about things like not carrying stuff in his back pocket so he wouldn’t ruin his bun line.”
“I never noticed his bun line.”
“When he dances? He looks just like Patrick Swayze in that old movie Dirty Dancing! Someday I’ll show you his write-up in my yearbook.”
“I’d like to see it.”
She hurried back to her own priorities. “Well? Can you imagine those two shrinks married to one another?”
“Love is mysterious, Nina.”
“I don’t think marriage has anything to do with love, Fell. I think people settle.”
“My parents were in love.”
She did her usual bypass on the subject of me. “I’ll never settle!” she said. “I’ll never do what my mother did! I’ll never let the man I marry control me. In fact, Fell, I may never get married! That story I wrote about a future world where marriage is for inferiors with low I.Q.’s? I believe that! You don’t have to get married to have children! Who says so? The law? Who cares about the law? You make your own laws, I believe!”
“Fine!” I said. “Now can we please talk about something I’m interested in?”
She looked surprised. “Okay…. Like what?”
“Like Spinoza’s determinism,” I said. “Or Descartes’ dualism.”
She gave my arm a hard punch. “Oh, Fell! You’re good for me!”
I hoped so. There were times when we’d be talking about the future, about writing and Kenyon College over someplace like the University of Missouri’s journalism school, and suddenly Nina would be out to lunch. Her eyes wouldn’t move and her face lost its expression. I’d have to snap my fingers and say, “Hey, come back.”
But she was behaving less and less that way, and I liked to agree with her father, who’d always get me aside when he could do it tactfully and tell me I was helping her; he could see she was improving, forgetting Eddie Dragon.
Once she even said that herself, actually implying that I was better for her than Eddie. “It’s good to get to know someone, isn’t it, Fell?” She’d spoken up one afternoon. “I never really got to know a male except Dad, not really. I was always too nervous and self-conscious. God! After Eddie and I were together, I’d go over and over what we said, how I looked, play by play, like my whole life depended on some dumb little interlude with him. But this is just us: easy, relaxed. It’s good like this. It’s better.”
She’d even stopped saying “really” in every sentence.
We rode in silence for a while, following the Delaware River, which had chunks of ice floating in it, and Nina leaned over and snapped on the radio. She pushed the button to find music that suited her. She was sort of jumping around in the seat, taking her cap off to shake her hair free, putting it back on. She seemed to be acting out everything I was feeling: It was a great day, good to be away from Cottersville, pretty out there with the sun inching over to sink down in the sky, neat that the radio was playing old Elvis stuff.
When we got to the coffee shop where the Friday-afternoon poetry readings were held, there was a sign on the door:
CLOSED FEBRUARY AND MARCH.
“Didn’t you call, Nina?”
“Would we be here if I had? Don’t get mad at me. How do you think I feel?”
“Sorry,” I said. “What’ll we do now? Is anything open?”
We stood there hugging ourselves and stamping our feet in the cold, and Nina said unless I wanted to look at sleigh beds or weather vanes circa 1800, we were out of luck.
“I’m not hungry, either,” she added.
“I guess we’ll just drive back. No movies?”
“No movies.” She was heading toward the car. “It’s too cold to walk around.”
“Didn’t you know they closed in winter?”
“Fell, quit nagging me. Let’s try to look at the doughnut and not at the hole.”
I opened the car door for her and said I wouldn’t mind looking at a doughnut, either — I hadn’t eaten since lunch.
When I got back behind the wheel, she said to drive up near Point Pleasant. She thought there was a hamburger place that way.
She directed me while I tried to get myself back in a good mood. I knew the reason I was sounding cranky was that I was disappointed. I rated poetry readings about the same as guided tours through flower gardens, but at least it would have been special to Nina, something she’d remember us doing together … It’d been a long time since I’d cared about pleasing a girl. I wasn’t sure how much of it had to do with my wanting her to get her bearings again, or how much it had to do with me being ready to crank up my own broken motor. Something was in the wind … and it was a relief from thoughts of a body falling, a voice shrieking, and unanswered questions that had caused a rift between Dib and me.
We listened to the radio for a while: golden oldies — The Beatles and Steppenwolf, Jimi Hendrix and Buffalo Springfield.
Finally she glanced my way and said she had an idea.
“What?”
“You’re still mad, aren’t you, Fell?”
“I’m over that. I wasn’t really mad…. What’s your idea?”
“I want to see something.”
“What?”
“Something up ahead here.”
“Food, I hope.”
“Not food…. He’s got a shop somewhere right near here,” she said. “His sister runs it. He won’t be there, so don’t worry.”
She waited for it to sink in.
It hit my stomach first, then traveled around in my gut for a while and settled in my windpipe.
When my voice returned, it said, “You planned this all along, didn’t you, Nina?”
“And don’t say my name in there,” she said. “I promised him I’d never come here.” She touched my leg with her hand. “Oh, Fell, this won’t hurt anything. I’m just curious. Aren’t you ever curious?”
I was staring straight ahead, mad as hell, when I saw it come into view.
A gigantic black dragon with gold wings and green eyes, breathing out fake fire.
Chapter 14
Dragonland was an old, gray, cold, musty-smelling barn at the bottom of a hill. It was one of those hodgepodge places that sold everything from Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs to leather coats with fringe on the sleeves. They specialized in twenty-four-hour film service, “Award-Winning Wedding and Graduation Photography,” “Furniture: Bought and Sold,” and rental tools.
The giant dragon perched on the roof wasn’t the only one. Dragons were everywhere, in every color, made of rubber, iron, tin, wood, and papier-mâché. There were dragonflies, too. If Eddie Dragon didn’t run the place himself, his spirit certainly dominated the decor.
At one end of the barn there was a mural of a waterfall, an old mill, and a willow tree, an iron bench in front of it. A sign to the left saying:
DRESS UP IN OLD CLOTHES
TAKE HOME A SOUVENIR.
I’d seen the scenery before, in the photograph of Eddie Dragon that Schwartz had given me.
To the right there was a rack with assorted clothes, feather boas and hats with veils, canes, top hats, derbies, old furs, and mustaches and wigs.
There was a woman behind the counter with the kind of great, warm smile that could make you forget anything, including the fact you shouldn’t have stopped the car to go inside that place with Nina.
She didn’t look like someone who belonged in a Pennsylvania winter. I could see her out under the sun in some Kansas field with a piece of straw stuck playfully between her teeth and the wind blowing back her thick, curly, brown hair. She had magnificent white teeth; big everything: hands, feet, bosoms, the gypsy type loaded with beads and bracelets jangling on her wrists. She had on a long, red dress with a full skirt and some kind of Mexican-looking red
-and-white shawl over her shoulders. You’d imagine her stirring pots of fabulous-tasting stews, or tending a garden, or mending something. She might as well have had one of those cartoon balloons over her head with “I’ll take care of you” inside.
It was hard for me to guess women’s ages. All the while I was with Delia, I thought she was maybe nineteen — she’d never tell me. She was really twenty-five. This woman looked older. I figured she was Dragon’s big sister.
“You lost?” she said. “You look lost.” She was laughing, picking up a Siamese cat who’d run to her with his ruff up the moment the bell jingled to announce our arrival.
I’d seen the cat before, too. I let Nina do the talking.
“We were really looking for someplace to get a hamburger.”
“Not around here, I’m afraid. Try New Hope down the road. Or Doylestown up the road.”
“You have a lot of interesting things.”
“We try…. Are you visiting?”
“We came from New Jersey,” Nina said. She wasn’t one to worry that there was a Pennsylvania license plate on the BMW.
The cat was hanging on to the woman like we were going to bag it and toss it in the river. She got its claws out of her shawl and put it down on the floor. “Go find your mousie,” she said to it, as though the thing would answer Okay! Good idea! and the dark-brown tail disappeared into a room behind her. No door, just a curtain of beads.
“Would you like me to show you anything?”
“I just love this place!” Nina sounded naive and girlish, instead of dark-hearted and possessed.
The woman gave us that great big white smile again and said, “I’m Ann.”
Nina jumped right in. “I’m Lauren,” she said, “and that’s John Fell.”
“Lauren, John,” Ann said. “If you want to know the price of anything, there’s a tag on the bottom.”
“Fell, let’s have our picture taken!” Nina said.
Ann said, “Just pick out your costumes. Anything over on the rack.”
Nina headed that way, babbling about how we’d have a souvenir of the day, and soon she’d found herself a little green hat with an orange feather on it, a black velvet cape, and a white silk parasol.
