by M. E. Kerr
“Ready!” she said.
I walked over, put on the top hat and a long black coat with a fur collar, grabbed a black cane to complete the costume.
Ann was standing there with her hand on her hip, laughing and ohing and ahing. As soon as we moved toward the iron bench in front of the mural with the mill, and the waterfall and the willow tree, she picked up a camera.
“I’m doing all the hard work now,” she said, “while the boss is on assignment.”
“Who’s the dragon collector?” Nina asked.
“My husband. Eddie,” Ann said. “That’s our last name. Dragon.”
I gave Nina a long, long look she refused to return, so I figured she was handling it Nina style: no show of the punch that must have just landed hard to her insides.
She was busy acting as though this was one of the best times she’d ever had, twirling her parasol, and affecting a haughty expression. “Let’s try and look très, très superior,” she said to me, something I would have expected from Lauren Lasher, never Nina.
I tried my best: tilting my top hat over my eye, resting my weight on the cane, my arm around Nina.
“That’s jaunty, not superior,” said Nina.
Ann just kept laughing.
Nina fixed the top hat so it sat squarely on my head, and she told me to stare straight ahead and hook the cane over my free arm.
“Good, Lauren!” Ann said. “That’s fun!”
“Now don’t smile and don’t put your arm around me. I’ll hook mine in yours,” Nina directed me.
“Perfect!” Ann said. “It’ll be ready in no time.”
The cross-eyed Siamese was watching us behind the beads in the doorway.
Nina walked around looking at things I didn’t want to look at, like rugs made out of animal skin and carvings made from elephant tusks.
I said, “You’ve really got a lot of variety.”
“My husband’s a pack rat. I never know what he’ll walk in with, but it’s always different.” She laughed again. She was a hard laugher, tossing back her head, showing her love of life … and of Eddie Dragon, too, I thought.
I asked her what we owed her, and as soon as she’d given me five dollars change from a twenty, the picture was ready. It came in a small metal frame, with REMEMBER POINT PLEASANT written in gold at the top.
It wasn’t good of me. I looked the way I’d begun to feel: like someone getting used to a bad smell.
Nina was a better actress. She came off looking haughty, superficial, insane.
“This has been fun!” Nina said, but the air was seeping out of the balloon: I could see it in her tired little smile, the kind that began to hurt the corners of your mouth because of all the effort that was going into it.
While Ann walked us to the door, she said, “Good-bye, Lauren, John. Thanks for stopping by. It gets lonely here this time of year.”
Chapter 15
We were driving along the river’s edge. I put the fog lights on.
“He told me not to go there,” she said softly.
“I can see why.”
“Fell? I never, ever want to see him again!”
It was easy to ignore that one.
I snapped, “What’s this crap about him being on assignment? She made him sound like a foreign correspondent or something.”
“He takes pictures. Weddings and stuff.”
“How come you knew he wouldn’t be there today?” She didn’t answer for a minute. Then she said, “I called there yesterday. I pretended I wanted him to take some baby pictures, and she said he was on assignment until next Monday.”
“You’ve been calling him all along, then?”
“No. I never dared call him there. I wouldn’t have known about that place, except when he got framed the address was in the newspaper.”
“When he got framed. Sure.”
“He got framed, Fell.”
“And his sister runs the place. Sure.”
“How do you think I feel, Fell? Believe me, I am finished with Edward Gilbert Dragon!”
“Believe you,” I laughed.
“Don’t you have any feelings for me?”
“Yeah. I have the feeling you’ve just forced me to become an informer.”
“You’re not going to tell Dad?”
“I’m not? Why aren’t I? Dad’s paying me.”
“I didn’t try to see Eddie, Fell. I didn’t even want to see him. I just wanted to see Dragonland … He’d never take me there.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Fell, please don’t tell Dad! I can promise you I’ll never have anything to do with Eddie Dragon again!” She turned to face me, pulling her knees up under her, slinging an arm across the seat. “Listen to me, Fell! I feel horrible! She’s so … earnest.”
“She’s a lot more than earnest!”
“Do you think she’s pretty?”
“Yes, I think she’s pretty, and if the next question is do I think she’s prettier than you, yes! And smarter, too!”
She touched my shoulder with her hand. “Oh, Fell, don’t be mad. I’m trying to handle this thing, and I can’t deal with it when you’re mad at me.”
“Tough!” I said. “Damn! Everything was going so well, I thought, and all the while you’ve got these snakes in your head!”
“That’s a good name for them, snakes. Dr. Inge calls them compulsions, but they’re snakes all right. They were, anyway.”
She touched the bare skin at my neck with her finger. “Fell? Please? I’m sorry.”
“And don’t try stuff like that!” I said.
“I’m just touching you, friend to friend.”
“Don’t!” I said. I leaned over and pushed on the radio. “I don’t want to talk, okay?”
• • •
When we got to Cottersville, the black Lincoln was in the drive. The porch light was on. The downstairs lights, and a light where David Deem had his study.
I locked the BMW and handed the key to Nina. She gave me the souvenir photograph. “I don’t want this thing — do you?”
I stuffed it inside my jacket.
We were standing in the driveway. Meatloaf was barking. She pulled off her stocking cap and shook her hair loose so the moon caught its shine.
“It was really good that we went there, Fell. Now I know the truth … Can’t you at least think about not telling Dad? Sleep on it or something? I’m in little pieces right now.”
“I’m not going to tell him tonight,” I said. “I’m too hungry.’“
“You’re always hungry.” She was starting to cry.
“Nina,” I began, not knowing where it would end, not having to worry because the front door opened and her father stepped out on the porch. “Come in, Fell! Mrs. Whipple made you both corned beef sandwiches.”
“Please don’t tell him, Fell,” Nina said.
• • •
I said I couldn’t stay, I’d take my sandwich with me, and David Deem picked up Meatloaf and told me what he had to say wouldn’t take long.
“You go into the kitchen and wrap Fell’s sandwich, honey,” he told Nina. “Fell? Come in and sit down for a minute.”
Then he said, “Do those boots come off?”
• • •
I was in my smelly stockinged feet again, my jacket over my lap, sitting forward on the couch.
“You’ve never told me how you like being a Sevens,” said Mr. Deem, straightening his tie, leaning back in an armchair he was sharing with Meatloaf.
“Who wouldn’t like it?” I said.
“Take me. I was this raw-eared kid from Pennsylvania Dutch country, father a farmer. I went to The Hill on a scholarship. I’d always made my own bed, didn’t know what a soup spoon was, never, never had anyone wait on me … and suddenly …” He spread his arms out.
“That was all changed by mere chance,” I said.
He laughed hard at that. “Yes … yes … it changed my life, Fell. It gave me my first taste of being somebody.”
; I let him talk. I didn’t think it was the right time to tell him “somebody’s” daughter was still sneaking around after a pusher who suddenly had a wife in the bargain.
“I feel badly about what happened at The Tower.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “The suicide. I haven’t told Nina. It just so happens that was her psychiatrist’s son.”
“Nina knows, Mr. Deem. Dr. Lasher told her.”
He thought that one over. He said, “Nina’s so interior. She calls me secretive because I lock my study. But look at her. You think she’d have told me she knew.”
I resisted saying No, I wouldn’t think that. I would think Nina wouldn’t tell anything … and here’s why, Mr. Deem.
“Her doctor overdoes the confidentiality rule, if you ask me. Here I’ve been so careful about keeping all that business to myself. Is Nina taking it all right?”
“Your daughter seems to handle things,” I said.
“Yes. That’s her mother’s independent streak … Well, then, this clears the way for what I’m about to suggest. I’d like Nina to meet some nice young men now that the dragon’s been slain.” A pleased little haw-haw for punctuation.
I bit my lip. I’d hear him out first. I was thinking of the corned beef sandwich, too. I was hoping Mrs. Whipple knew enough to smear the bread with lots of Dijon mustard.
“The best young men are on The Hill, no doubt of that. And from what I see of you, Fell, Sevens is still instilling in its members the idea that you live up to privilege, and become more because of it.”
How was I going to tell him I’d become less the second I saw Dragonland? I’d become Silly Putty in Nina’s hands.
“One of the most amusing and memorable traditions of Sevens, of course, is The Charles Dance. What fun I had at those things!” He was stretching his legs out, letting Meatloaf wiggle onto his lap. “Do you know that at the first Charles Dance there were twelve boys dressed the same as me? Never go as Charlie Chaplin, Fell. You’ll see yourself all over the place!”
“I was thinking of going as Damon Charles.”
“Uh-oh, the founder himself, hmmm? That takes nerve…. I like that, Fell. I wonder if anyone’s ever done that?”
“In his pictures he has a big handlebar mustache and a monocle … so it’ll be easy.”
Nina was back in the room, arms folded across her chest, an uncertain look in her eyes, directed at me.
“Mustard, Fell?” she said.
“Yes. Dijon?”
“Dijon. It’s already on both sandwiches. I’d have had to make you another if you didn’t like it … Well?” She shrugged. “Is this a private conversation?” She couldn’t seem to look at her father.
“Not really, Nina, honey,” he answered her, and his tone of voice told her I hadn’t squealed … yet.
Then he said, “I checked with Sevens today and learned that Fell’s signed up for a blind date for The Charles Dance.”
He glanced across at me. “You don’t have to take a blind date, Fell, if you’d prefer to take Nina. I’m ready for her to see how Sevens do things.”
“Oh, Dad! Can I go?”
“Well, Fell?” said Mr. Deem.
Both of them were looking at me expectantly.
“Sure,” I said. What was I supposed to say? “Would you go with me, Nina?”
“I’d like that, Fell.”
“It’ll be her very first time on The Hill,” said Mr. Deem. “I wanted it to be for something Sevens was doing. This is perfect.”
“Perfect!” Nina agreed. “Oh, I hope and pray nothing comes up to spoil this!”
Her father chuckled. “Such histrionics, Nina! You hope and pray? Nothing’s going to spoil this. What could spoil it?”
Then he said, “I know you’re hurrying, Fell, and Nina’s occupied a lot of your time today, so take the BMW. It’s cold, too.”
“I can hike it,” I told him.
“Anyone can hike it, but what’s being a Sevens all about? … Take advantage of your advantages, Fell. You can bring the car back tomorrow afternoon.” Then, meticulous as always, he added, “I told you before, didn’t I, that there’s a spare key in the back ashtray?”
Nina walked me to the door. “I feel like a spare female. You don’t have to take me to the dance if you don’t want to,” she said. “I know Dad sprang that on you in a way you almost couldn’t refuse.”
“He sprang it on you, too,” I said. I was getting into my boots and thinking about buying myself some Odor-Eaters for the insides, if I kept visiting the Deems.
“He didn’t spring it on me, exactly. I’ve been begging him to ask you to invite me.”
I was glad, too glad, the kind of glad that leaps up the way Wordsworth’s heart did when he beheld a rainbow in the sky.
“If today hadn’t happened,” I started to say, and she didn’t let me finish. She put two fingers against my lips. “Today was the tag end of something. The Fates arranged for today to happen.”
“You arranged for today to happen, Nina.”
“It was like the final period at the end of the sentence ‘I don’t care about him anymore.’”
“Just say the period. Never mind the final period.”
“My tutor.” She smiled at me, coming closer.
I moved back a step, remembering the dragonfly with the blue wings crawling out of her bra.
I said, “Why do I still have the feeling I can’t trust you?”
“I’ll make that go away. You’ll see.”
She was looking all over my face, and I could feel something shivering down my arms.
Her hands reached up, starting to rest on my shoulders, but I shrugged them away, trying to act the way someone would when he was still angry.
It wasn’t easy.
Maybe my problem was I liked tricky females. I didn’t have a history of elevated heartbeat except when I was confronted by the beautiful/sweet-talking/kinky ones who made chopped liver out of your heart.
She handed me the keys to the BMW, and I went outside where winter was waiting to cool me off.
Chapter 16
All I wanted to do that night was eat my sandwich in peace and study for the test on medieval history coming up Monday. I’d be expected to explain, in an hour, how a scruffy army of illiterate soldiers, chomping on hunks of raw meat between battles, could bring down the whole Roman Empire.
Sevens House was dead. It seemed as though everyone but Mrs. Violet, our housemother, was still over at The Tower. I looked at my watch. It was almost eight. They were finished with dessert by now, those who hadn’t left for the weekend. Some were still hanging around over coffee, or starting to play chess and backgammon in the library. Others were on their way into Cottersville, to meet the bus from Miss Tyler’s or to go to the movies, bowling, the play at the Civic Center.
I got my mail. That was when I noticed someone else abroad in Sevens House. Creery. Behind me in the phone booth. He wasn’t dining at The Tower these nights. He looked like he’d just come in from the cold, too.
I could hear him telling someone, “I waited over an hour for you. Ask Lowell. Where were you?”
I opened a club bill for the gold 7 I’d already sent to Mom. OVERDUE was stamped across it.
“Then I’ll come there tomorrow morning,” Creery continued…. “Not too early because I’ll be up late.”
I didn’t have any personal letters. I never opened my box that I didn’t hope I’d see one from Delia. I was going to hear from Delia the day they discovered something that would rhyme with orange, but that never stopped me looking for the tiny handwriting with the long loops and the ? bars flying off the handles.
I had the usual junk mail: Save the Seals and Support National Arbor Day. Your Christmas subscription to Esquire will be up next December so renew in March. A catalog from The Sharper Image promising that a Shotline Putter would release the pro golfer within me.
I tossed it all in the wastebasket while Creery told whoever he was talking to that he had to cram for the same history
test. I decided to keep him in mind if we were called on to describe Alaric the Goth, the one who plundered Rome and got everyone eating each other instead of the parrots’ tongues they were fond of baking into pies.
I did wonder who Creery’d have in his life to complain to, since it wasn’t his stepbrother on the phone. And I thought about who he might be meeting “there” the next day … maybe the same one who arranged for Lowell Hunter to stay at number 6 Playwicky.
“How are you, Fell?” said Mrs. Violet. “Long time no see.”
Our housemother was always in white, always gorgeous, usually stationed nights in the wing chair near the reception room.
“I’m fine, thanks. What are you reading tonight?”
She closed the book in her lap so I could see the cover. Hunted Down by Charles Dickens.
“You want to hear something extraordinary?” she said, not waiting for my answer. “Listen. I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honestly out of countenance, any day in the week. She pushed a strand of blond hair away from her forehead and looked up at me. “And I always judge boys by whether or not they can look you in the eye.”
“Maybe Dickens didn’t mean boys,” I said. “My dad used to say a really good con man always looks you in the eye.”
So had Delia had that skill. So did Nina.
“I’ll have to think about that,” Mrs. Violet said.
Creery was going up the staircase in a long gabardine overcoat, the blue-and-white wool Sevens scarf wrapped around his neck, the tail behind his head.
It wasn’t like him to greet Mrs. Violet. It wasn’t like his eyes to see the people around him. His eyes saw La La Land, little blue and red pills, joints and smoke.
“Fell? That friend of yours from the dorm was in your room earlier this evening. He said he had permission.”
“He does, ma’am.”
“Sidney Dibble.”
“Yes.”
“And your mother called. She said it wasn’t important. Just a hello.”
Mom had probably received the gold 7 for her birthday.
I thanked Mrs. Violet and kept going. In a while her freshman groupies would come over from The Tower. A score of them. Healthy young boys who turned into groveling lackeys, eager to do any chore she could dream up. Or they simply sat at her feet while she read to them. It didn’t matter what. She’d call them “darling” or “dear” — words most of them never heard from any lips but hers, unless they called home.
