"Only child of a loving family," I said.
"Buttressed by accomplishment," Susan said.
"My father and my uncles were pretty impregnable too," I said.
"And to grow up," Susan said, "sooner or later, you had to separate from them."
"You think that's what I was doing?"
"When you went to the police?" Susan said. "Yes."
As one of the swan boats made its leisurely turn in front of us, a little boy was leaning out, trying to trail his hand in the water. His mother took hold of the back of his shirt and hauled him back in.
"Why then?" I said.
Susan waited. I thought about it.
"Because I had just done an adult thing," I said, answering my own question. "And I needed to what? Confirm it?"
"What happened when you had that trouble, with the men from the barroom?" Susan said.
"My father and my uncles came down and . . . fixed it," I said.
"And the bear?"
I nodded.
"My father came along and fixed it," I said.
"And the business on the river?"
"I fixed it," I said.
Susan nodded.
"And I had to fix it all the way," I said. "I couldn't let them fix the cover-up, so to speak."
"Correct," Susan said.
"It would have been a step back into childhood," I said.
"Yes," Susan said.
We were quiet. The light on Boylston Street turned green behind us and the traffic moved forward.
"You know a lot of stuff," I said.
"I do," Susan said. "Tell me how Jeannie was."
Chapter 27
It was late afternoon and starting to get dark. We were playing basketball, half-court, three on three, outdoors behind the junior high. There was a bench alongside the court and Jeannie Haden sat by herself on it watching us play.
When we got through, I walked over to her.
"You win?" she said.
"Jeannie," I said. "You been watching us play since school got out. Don't you keep track of the score?"
"I was just watching you," she said.
"Oh."
"Want to walk me home?" she said.
"Sure," I said.
"Want to stop on the way and buy me a Coke?" she said.
"Sure," I said.
We walked along Main Street to Martin's Variety, which sold bread and milk and canned foods and had a lunch counter down one side of the store. Most of their earnings probably came from the lunch counter, because the kids had pretty well taken over the store as a hangout, which meant that generally nobody else came in.
Jeannie and I said hello to some other kids as we walked down the counter and found two seats at the end where it curved.
A guy named Croy said to me, "Hey, Spenser the river rat."
"Just as smart," I said. "But not as good looking."
Croy gave it a big haw and elbowed one of his friends. He was a year older than I was, a big kid, fat mostly, but big enough to bully the younger kids.
We sat. Jeannie ordered a Coke. I had coffee.
"You don't like Coke anymore?" Jeannie said.
"Like coffee better," I said.
She nodded.
"Lotta kids know about us on the river," she said.
"They got the story straight?" I said.
"Mostly," Jeannie said. "Nobody seems to know about you moving the sign."
"Good," I said.
Croy yelled down the counter at me.
"How about Jeannie the Queenie," he said. "Have any fun with her in the woods?"
"You shut your mouth, Croy," Jeannie said.
"Bet you did," Croy said. "She hot, Spenser?"
I looked at him silently, the way I'd seen my father do when people annoyed him.
"No sense shouting back and forth," my father used to say. "If it's not worth fighting about, then it's not worth a lot of mouth. If it is worth fighting over, then you may as well get straight to it."
So far it wasn't worth fighting about.
But it was close.
"Look at that, Barry," Croy said to his friend. "Spenser the river hero is giving me a cold stare. Hot damn, is that scary or what?"
Barry was not a threat. He was a tough guy by association, hanging around with Croy probably made him feel important. He nodded.
"Scary," he said.
"I'm betting it's 'cause he don't know what to say, 'cause they did it and he don't want to admit it."
"I'm betting that too," Barry said.
"He do it to you, Jeannie Queenie?"
I stood up.
"I'll be back," I said.
Jeannie's face had an odd flush to it. I walked down to where Croy was sitting and jerked my head at the door.
"What?" Croy said. "You want to go outside?"
I nodded and kept walking toward the door.
"You little twerp," Croy said. "You want to fight me?"
"Yep," I said, and went out the front door and walked down the three steps and turned and waited. In a minute Croy pushed the door open. His face looked a little tight. He was mostly mouth and probably deep down he knew it.
"You sure you want to do this, kid?" Croy said.
"Yep."
"I don't want to hurt you," Croy said.
I put my hands up, like I did every weekday evening with my father and my uncles and had done every weekday evening with my father and my uncles since I was six.
"Good," I said. "But I want to hurt you."
He didn't like the boxing stance. But he was too far into this to back out. People had crowded out of Martin's to watch. He was stuck. He came down the step and walked at me.
I stuck a left jab onto his nose to stop him. It did stop him and it made his nose bleed. He shook his head and swung at me with his right hand. I blocked the punch and hit him with a straight right on his nose again. This time I broke it.
He yowled and took a step back and covered his face with his hands. Then he took his hands away a little and saw the blood and stared at it. Then he stared for a moment at me. Then he turned and pushed through the people watching and went away, walking very fast.
"Wow," Barry said. "You can really fight."
I dropped my hands and nodded to him.
"Keep it in mind," I said.
And went back into Martin's.
Chapter 28
I walked Jeannie home later that night. When we got to her house, we stopped and she turned and faced me.
"You're always taking care of me," she said.
"Not always," I said.
"I'm serious," she said. "You took care of me on the river. You defended me from Croy."
She seemed kind of intense. I didn't know what to say. I was a little uncomfortable.
"You like me," she said. "Don't you?"
"Sure," I said. "I known you since first grade."
She stood close to me, looking at me. I realized I was supposed to do something.
"I mean, you really like me," she said.
"I do," I said.
She sort of lunged forward and put her arms around me and raised her face. I realized I was supposed to kiss her. So far in life, I'd had more fights than kisses. She pressed herself hard against me. A feeling of, like, overheating flashed through me. I felt a little short of breath.
"Show me how much you like me," she whispered. "Kiss me."
I stared down at her face. Her eyes were closed. I realized I didn't quite know what I should do. Some of the women my father and my uncles brought home had kissed me on the cheek. I knew I shouldn't kiss her on the cheek. Okay, I thought, and took in a breath and bent down a little and kissed her on the mouth. She kissed back hard with her lips tight together. It hurt a little where the inside of my lip was pressed against my teeth.
I felt more of the overheating feeling. But not much else. No stars fell. No skyrockets. No moon-beams. No music. She kept pressing against me. I didn't think this was going the way it should. I liked her fine, but not th
e way I think she wanted me to. And I thought we might be making a mistake that we weren't really ready to make. On the other hand, there was that overheated feeling and the sense that I didn't want to hurt her feelings.
She broke off her kissing and leaned back with her arms still around my waist and looked up at me.
"My mom doesn't come home until eleven," she said. "You want to come in?"
From off to one side, where there was the me that always looked on calmly, I heard myself say, "Sure."
My voice sounded kind of hoarse, I thought.
Chapter 29
"No surprise there," Susan said. "A young woman with an abusive absentee father whose mother feels a woman is incomplete without a man."
"I was a little surprised at the time," I said.
"You were fourteen," Susan said.
"I was," I said.
The sun was now entirely behind the low buildings in the Back Bay, and the people walking past us in the Public Garden looked like people going home from work.
"So here she is kidnapped by her brute of a father and the handsome young Galahad comes galloping"âSusan smiledâ"or in this case, mostly drifting downriver and saves her."
"My strength was as the strength of ten," I said. "Because my heart was pure."
"Sure it was," Susan said. "And then you defend her honor from a local bully."
"It was probably mostly about my own honor," I said.
"Probably," Susan said. "But she almost had to fall in love with you."
"Or what she thought was love."
"Shrinks call it cathexis," Susan said.
"Cathexis?"
"A powerful emotional investment in something or someone, which in fourteen-year-old girl terms feels like love, but probably isn't."
"You were once a fourteen-year-old girl," I said. "Did you do a lot of cathexis?"
"Several times a year," Susan said. "But I was, of course, always waiting for the one."
"Are you making sport of my obsession?" I said.
"I am," Susan said. "How did it work out after that night?"
"Not too well," I said. "She always sat beside me in study hall. She wanted to hold my hand if we walked anyplace. She started talking all the time about us."
"And that wasn't what you wanted."
"No. She was a friend, but not the only one. Sometimes I wanted to play ball or hang with the guys."
"Did you tell her this?" Susan said.
"Yes."
"How did you break it to her?" Susan said.
"I told her about what I just told you," I said. "That she was a friend, but not my only friend. And, you know, we didn't have an exclusive contract."
"How did she take it?"
"She cried," I said.
Susan nodded.
"I remember so clearly. It was raining like hell, and a lot of wind, and we were standing under the marquee of the Main Street Movie Theater to stay dry. She cried for a little bit, and I felt I had to put my arm round her shoulders, at least. And she shook it off, and took in a big deep breath, and said, âNo. I'm okay.' And I said, âYou're sure?' and she said, âI can wait.' And I didn't say anything. And she said, âBut I have to walk. You have to walk with me.' And I said, âOkay.' And we walked for about an hour in a driving rain. And when we finally went to her house, she turned around and put her head against my chest and said, âIt's okay. I'll be fine. But I'm not giving up.' Then she gave me a little kiss on the lips and went into her house."
"How was it next day?" Susan said.
"Fine," I said. "She stayed my friend. I'm sure she was waiting to be more. But she never pressed it again."
"Good for her," Susan said.
"Good for both of us."
Chapter 30
I was in study hall pretending to take notes on a book I was reading. The book was a novel about Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodman, by Rex Stout. My father had come across a Nero Wolfe novel at the library a while ago and brought it home and we all read it, and now all of us were reading all the Rex Stout we could find. Their household was all men, like ours.
Jeannie came into the study hall and sat down beside me. The teacher eyed her, and Jeannie opened a geography book and began to look at it.
The teacher looked away and Jeannie whispered to me from behind the geography book.
"My mom wants you to come for supper," she said.
The teacher looked back at us. Her name was Miss Harris and she was lean and kind of leathery and hard eyed. She frowned and shook her head. We were quiet. Miss Harris went back to correcting papers. The room reeked of silence.
"Sure," I whispered.
Jeannie nodded.
Miss Harris had her head down, making notes in the margin of a blue book. I could see the thin white line of her scalp down the middle of her head where she parted her hair and pulled it back tight.
"Friday night?" Jeannie whispered.
Miss Harris's head jerked up and her eyes darted around the room.
"This is a time set aside for you to study," she said loudly. "Obviously some of you think it's gossip time. You are wrong, and if you continue, you will be here late after school."
I was industriously taking notes on my Nero Wolfe novel. Jeannie appeared entranced with her geography book.
Me? Dinner with Mrs. Haden? And Jeannie?
An eraser came sailing past me from the back corner of the room and bounced off the back of a chubby girl with a hair ribbon, who was sitting right in front of Miss Harris.
"Ow," the girl said.
Miss Harris got to her feet.
"What is your problem, Betsey?" she said.
"Someone threw an eraser at me."
"Sure," I whispered to Jeannie.
She smiled and nodded.
"Do you know who threw it?" Miss Harris said.
"Joey Visco," Betsey said.
"Mr. Visco," Miss Harris said.
Joey Visco said, "Miss Harris, I didn't throw nothing."
"I didn't throw anything," Miss Harris said.
"I know it," Joey said.
There was a lot of giggling.
"See me after class, Mr. Visco," Miss Harris said.
"But I didn't do nothing."
"After class," Miss Harris said, and went and rested her hips on her desk and folded her arms and stared at us silently.
Chapter 31
It was a pretty bad neighborhood. Mean-looking dogs behind chain-link fences. Chickens in some of the yards. Streetlights few and far apart. I wasn't comfortable. But I figured if Jeannie could live there, I could walk through it.
I didn't want to go to dinner at Jeannie's house. But her mother had invited me, and I couldn't just say no, so here I was.
Mrs. Haden met me at the door and I put out my hand like a well-brought-up boy. She took it and then pulled me to her and gave me a hug. I had very little experience at being hugged by a woman. She was wearing a lot of perfume.
"Oh, you dear thing," she said. "Jeannie's told me so much about you."
I nodded.
"And you're so handsome too," Mrs. Haden said.
I sort of nodded and sort of shrugged.
"I just had to meet you and thank you for saving my little girl," she said.
I didn't know what to say, so I nodded again and smiled as hard as I could.
"Come in, sit down, would you like a Coca-Cola? Jeannie, get him something while I look in the oven."
"Want a Coke?" Jeannie said.
"Okay," I said.
She and her mother both went to the kitchen. They looked sort of alike. Except Mrs. Haden was about twenty years older than Jeannie and looked like she might have had a hard life. She was still kind of pretty. Her hair was long. She was slim, and she wore a lot of makeup. She had on a black dress with no sleeves and black high-heeled shoes. It seemed very fashionable to me, and I wondered why she dressed up for dinner with her daughter and a fourteen-year-old kid.
Jeannie and I drank our Coke uneasily in the
living room. Jeannie's house wasn't much. I'd been there once before with Jeannie when her mother was at work. The house was shaped sort of like a railroad car. There was a little front porch. Then you went in the front door into the living room, through the living room to the kitchen, through the kitchen to a bedroom, and in a little L off that bedroom there was a bath and another bedroom.
Mrs. Haden had cooked a chicken and some white rice and some frozen peas. We sat at the kitchen table. There was a candle lit on the table. Mrs. Haden was drinking some pink wine. "I'm sorry I can't offer you some," Mrs. Haden said. "But I couldn't without your father's permission."
"That's okay, ma'am," I said. "I don't enjoy wine so much."
Actually I didn't know if I enjoyed wine or not. I wasn't sure I'd ever had any.
"Oh, you will," she said, and drank some from her glass.
"Yes, ma'am," I said.
"Jeannie says you don't have a mother," Mrs. Haden said.
I ate some chicken. It was kind of dry.
"Yes, ma'am."
"You live with your father?" she said.
"And my two uncles," I said.
"Isn't that interesting," she said. "Three brothers raising a child."
"Actually they are my mother's brothers," I said. "My father and them were friends and when my mother died, they moved in to help out."
"Do you remember your mother?"
"No, ma'am."
"Three men and a boy and no women," she said.
She drank the rest of the wine in her glass.
"Oh, there's women," I said. "My father and my uncles all have a bunch of girlfriends, but none of them has got married."
Mrs. Haden gave herself some more wine.
"A house full of boys," she said.
"I guess so."
"Probably living on peanut butter sandwiches and cold beans from the can," Mrs. Haden said.
"We take turns cooking," I said.
"You too?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Do you suppose they'd like to come here with you next time for a home-cooked meal?" Mrs. Haden said.
"I guess so," I said.
"Well, that's what I'm going to do," she said. "I'm going to invite them for a home-cooked meal."
I looked at Jeannie. She smiled blankly. I nodded.
"That would be nice," I said.
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