Trouble With the Truth (9781476793498)

by Robinson, Edna

  “I don’t usually think about breathing when I do it,” I argued back happily.

  “For heaven’s sake!” Aunt Catherine shuddered retroactively.

  Ben struck a dramatic, contemplative pose. “Actually, there isn’t anything very world-shaking about swallowing a flea,” he declared with the full authority of a professor. “Even a live one. When you think of the number of microorganisms all of us must swallow every day. The classified germs alone probably run into the thousands. And when you consider the unclassified ones…”

  “Lord have mercy,” Aunt Catherine murmured.

  “That’ll be enough, Ben,” my father said.

  And that’s when the door-buzzer sounded. For a second we weren’t certain it had sounded. It was the barely tapped timid note struck by a stranger who isn’t sure he has the right house or that he isn’t awakening sleeping occupants. My father ambled to answer it, and at once, we saw that it wasn’t a stranger but was two—both quite young, quite nervous—men, one a head taller than the other. The taller one carried a large, cardboard-packing carton, and the shorter one held a dull, metal pistol in his right hand, pointed straight at my father’s wide chest.

  Without a word, they all moved into the living room, the young men advancing, my father backing up. Maybe it was the shock, but the robbers struck me as ludicrous—like puppet mice forcing an oversized puppet lion, my father, to retreat in some kind of make-believe puppet show. It was so silly I might have giggled if Ben hadn’t suddenly dropped his professor pose and stopped acting, and Aunt Catherine’s face hadn’t gone whiter than the curtains in our shared bedroom.

  As if by unspoken agreement that we too were puppets in this show, Ben and I simultaneously stood.

  “Everybody go over to that side of the room and nobody gets hurt,” the short one said.

  In one perfectly choreographed move, my father backed up all the way to the mantel and Ben and I joined him, nobody taking their eyes off the robbers.

  “I said everybody!” barked the short one, bobbing the gun at Aunt Catherine who seemed to be glued to her chair. With a jump, she came unstuck and ran on bird-toes to my side, where she reglued herself to my shoulder.

  The taller robber wandered casually around the room, swinging his carton. “C’mon. Let’s get going,” he said to his partner.

  “Okay,” the short one replied. He kept his stance facing us, the gun aimed at my father, but his eyes scanned the room, lighting on a huge, rectangular, seventeenth-century French tapestry on the one unornamented wall. “Get that,” he ordered the tall one.

  Like a monkey after a banana, the tall one scaled the bookcase to reach the tapestry’s hooks. He released them, and he and the tapestry dropped with two thuds to the floor. Then grabbing two corners of the heavy cloth, he started to fold.

  “You don’t fold that,” said my father, loudly, agreeably, only slightly wavering. “You roll it, son.”

  The monkey-man froze, squinted at my father, then looked to his partner.

  “Do like he says,” said the short one. “You gotta treat this stuff right.”

  “Why does that tapestry always have to be rolled?” Ben asked my father, in the curious, conversational way he might have asked such a question at any time.

  “Because those threads have been stretched for more than three hundred years. They’re liable to break if they’re bent sharply,” my father replied, the waver gone.

  The monkey-man spread the cloth on the floor and fell to all fours, rolling it. “C’mon, what else?” he said, breathing heavily. “This could take all night.”

  Our short, armed supervisor looked far right and left. “That over there in the corner,” he ordered. “Get that.” He gestured with his eyes at an enormous, tarnished serving tray that Fred customarily grumblingly stored on the floor since no pantry cabinet was large enough to house it, and no shelf was strong enough to support its weight. For years, he’d been after my father to sell it.

  My father shook his head. “Frankly, I think it would be ill-advised to take that,” he said reasonably.

  Our shorter visitor braced his thick legs further apart and lifted his aiming hand an inch. “Why?” he demanded.

  “Because, son, you’d have a very difficult time carting it in that carton.” My father spoke patiently, almost kindly. “And an even more difficult time selling it.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” the short one said suspiciously. “We got a guy—”

  “I know. Of course, it’s up to you, but I can tell you a little about it. That’s an authentic Cellini, all right…” He hesitated, thoughtful. “Real silver, that is. But nobody wants to buy it. I’ve tried to sell it all over the world.”

  “So, if it’s real authentic silver,” said the squat young man with the pistol, “why don’t nobody want to buy it?”

  “Because it’s probably the one downright hideous Cellini piece in existence.” My father spoke confidently. “If you look at it, really look at it, you’ll see that it could have been made by any third-rate, sixteenth-century silversmith.”

  The young man with the gun glanced at the tray again, now in the straining arms of his associate. “Yeah. It is ugly. Okay. Put it down, Frank.”

  “What?” Frank said, incredulous. “Hey, listen. We gotta get goin’!”

  The short one waved the gun impatiently. “I said put it down.”

  Aunt Catherine clutched my arm in a death grip as she bit her lower lip and blinked hard to clear the fast-coming tears.

  “Ow,” I murmured as she dug her nails into my bone, and Frank banged the heavy tray to the floor.

  “Jeez!” he grunted angrily. “And what’s the idea callin’ me Frank?!”

  “Shut up and pack those,” the short one said, indicating an assortment of silver forks, demitasse spoons, and carved-handled knives tied together with narrow silk ribbon and employed as a paperweight for the day’s newspapers on the marble coffee table.

  “You had no right to call me by my name, Sled-boy,” Frank spat viciously.

  “All right. So, you called me my name,” Sled-boy said.

  “But that’s not a real name, like Frank.”

  “Everybody calls me Sled-boy, don’t they?” the short one reasoned. “And we know their name’s Briard, don’t we?”

  “May I present my son, Ben, my daughter, Lucresse, and my sister-in-law, Mrs. Tippet?” said my father, as though he were hosting a dinner party.

  “How do you do?” I said.

  “Oh, Walter,” whimpered Aunt Catherine, sucking in a sob.

  Ben stepped forward extending his hand. “Glad to meet you, Sled-boy, Frank.”

  With a hurried, embarrassed motion, Sled-boy transferred his gun to his left hand and gave Ben a fast handshake.

  “For Chris’ sake, are we doin’ a job here or not?” said Frank.

  “Say, you know what you could sell easily, and would be no trouble carrying in that carton?” Ben said to Sled-boy, as if collaborating with a best friend or a brother on a household chore.

  “What?” said Sled-boy.

  “Books!” said Ben brightly. “There are lots of very valuable books here. And we’ve been in stores where they’ll buy anything.”

  “That’s true,” said my father helpfully, “but before you get in a rush about it, I think you ought to give books more careful consideration.”

  “How do you mean, Mr. Briard?” said Sled-boy, looking at my father with an expression I couldn’t quite understand. Admiration? Fascination? Affection?

  “Perhaps if we all sat down,” suggested my father congenially, “we could analyze the problem properly.” And he gestured for our visitors to make themselves comfortable.

  “Walter! Really!” Aunt Catherine gasped.

  Frank shot her a commiserating look. “Yeah, lady. You’d think this was a tea party or something.”

  In response, Aunt Catherine dug her bony fingers even deeper into my skinny arm. I wiggled with pain, and she gave me a withering look.

&nb
sp; Sled-boy remained braced, thinking, contemplative—almost the way Ben had been when playing the professor before our visitors’ surprising entrance. Then, deciding he might as well comply, he sat on the edge of the wing-chair near him and laid his gun in his lap. With a sigh, my father eased himself into his usual club chair and crossed his legs. To restore my circulation, I unclutched Aunt Catherine’s fingers from my bicep and sat on the arm of my father’s chair while she maintained her rigid stance by the wall. And Frank, almost recalcitrant, leaned against the woodwork of the doorway. Seeing his objecting attitude, Aunt Catherine clamped closed her eyes to shut out the sight of him and all else. Ben, afire with interest in the proceedings, scraped the desk chair over as close to Sled-boy as he could.

  “Now,” my father said, as we were all settled, “Ben’s suggestion of books has merit. Provided one is aware of the needs and practices of the ‘stores’ he has in mind.” He smiled at Ben, who seemed to glow with the compliment, and like a twin brother, Sled-boy seemed to follow suit, leaning in to hear my father’s advice. “One practice of dealers in rare books is that they often take years to pay for their purchases,” my father continued. “Which is understandable. It often takes them years to resell a book. Nevertheless, Ben, your idea shows straight and speedy thought.”

  As Ben glowed and Frank, still standing at the doorway, listened, his face became more boyish somehow, softer, eager—as though he too had the queer feeling that he was playing in some sort of a show, where he was like Ben, a brother boy puppet, whose father was saying something nice about him and to him.

  I had a funny feeling in that place deep inside, that mysterious place behind my eyes where Felicity had once seen me. But I blinked several times and it soon disappeared.

  “I must admit,” my father said, returning Frank’s soft and interested gaze, “I don’t know much about your field of business, son. But yours and mine are both trades, of a sort.”

  “And you know yours, all right,” Ben said, smiling broadly.

  Frank relaxed against the doorpost as the dreaminess on his face invaded his body. His puppet-brother had said something nice to their father. I, too, felt persuaded that the admiration glowing between Ben and my father was extraordinary and usual with them, although I couldn’t recall the last time they had exchanged such open, ready compliments.

  “It seems to me that you fellows ought to limit your product to something that is, one, transportable; two, nonidentifiable; and, three, and above all, negotiable.”

  “I think you’re right, Mr. Briard,” Frank said loudly. “This job sure wasn’t my idea. Sled-boy says there’s a fortune here, and he’s got the guy for it. But from the beginning, I says, I don’ know.”

  “So’s what would you limit the product to, Mr. Briard?” Sled-boy spoke up, with newly distinct diction.

  My father sat far back in his chair, poked his thumbs through his belt, and smiled. “Only one product I know qualifies. Cash.”

  “Cash,” Sled-boy repeated thoughtfully, as though receiving advice from his accountant. “Yeah, you don’t need no big box to carry it, and you can spend it right away without waiting around on nobody. That’s real good advice, Mr. Briard.” He crossed his legs the same way my father’s were crossed. “I don’t yen to make a job more complicated than it has to be and maybe get sent up.”

  “You are a very sensible young man,” my father said admiringly, and the uncomfortable feeling that I’d blinked away from behind my eyes moved down to my chest.

  “Okay!” barked Frank, sounding almost jealous of Sled-boy. “So, it’s smart to take cash. So, we take cash and forget about the other junk you were so hot on. Okay. So, let’s get the cash. Where is it, Mr. Briard?”

  My father looked pained. “That’s the only trouble, here,” he said. “I never keep cash on hand. Oh, I must have two or three dollars in my pocket. But that would hardly be worth your while.”

  “C’mon now,” Frank said, “how can a man have a million dollars’ worth of junk around and not have cash?”

  “Dear heaven,” Aunt Catherine muttered. Her shoulders were shaking.

  “Because he doesn’t use cash much,” Ben said, giving Frank the disdainful look he frequently used on me. He turned to Sled-boy. “That’s right. Nobody in our house, besides Lucresse, ever has any money because they charge everything. And all she’s got is her allowance.”

  “You believe that?” Frank said to Sled-boy.

  Sled-boy seemed to want to believe it, but sense was getting in the way of desire. He examined my father’s face. My father smiled genially. He examined mine. I tried to imitate my father’s expression, but it turned weak and stupid as the icky feeling in my chest moved down to my stomach, and I wondered if my father liked these two robbers better than me. What a silly feeling, I thought, but it remained lodged in my stomach like a stone.

  Frank rose to his psychological advantage. “Okay, Sled-boy. You’ve run things so far. Now I take over. You keep them here, and I’ll search the place. You can’t tell me there’s no cash in a layout like this.” He started for the door to the den.

  “Frank, I’ll make a bet with you,” Ben said.

  Frank wheeled around. “What kind of bet?”

  Ben turned to me enthusiastically. “How much do you have in your drawer?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You always know.”

  “About four dollars and sixty-five cents, I think.”

  “Okay. Frank, I’ll bet you her four dollars and sixty-five cents that we don’t have another nickel anywhere in this house, except what’s in my father’s pocket, and, here—” he pulled a crumpled dollar out of his pants—“what’s in mine. If you do find more, it’s yours. If you don’t, you give us four dollars and sixty-five cents. Okay?”

  “What we ought to do is call the police,” said Aunt Catherine quietly.

  “Y’see? You said this’d be easy,” Frank said to Sled-boy.

  Sled-boy dutifully leveled his gun at Aunt Catherine. She buried her head in her arms, trembling.

  “Of course she isn’t going to call anyone,” my father said comfortingly. “Frank, do you accept Ben’s bet or not?”

  “Why not?” Sled-boy said.

  “Sure,” Frank said. “Dammit, if there’s dough here, I’m gonna find it.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Ben said.

  “To be certain that the bet is perfectly fair, let’s see how much I actually do have on my person.” My father dug into his trousers’ pocket, and extracted some wrinkled bills and a few coins, then drew the pocket and the one on the other side inside out. He put the bills and change in a basket-woven china dish on the lamp table next to his chair. “Exactly two dollars and seventeen cents.”

  “Okay,” Frank said, and sprinted out of the room into the den.

  I traced his search by the lights that went on throughout the house. But he hardly made a sound. I couldn’t stop thinking that it was a pity Frank hadn’t taken up ballet dancing—he was so lithe.

  “Catherine, won’t you please sit down?” my father said. “It may be quite a wait.”

  She perched on a corner of the sofa, grasping its arm with clawed fingers. Her cheeks looked like cement.

  “Try to relax, Catherine,” he said more kindly.

  I could see by the light trail that Frank was in Ben’s room, and I couldn’t stay out of things any longer. “He won’t find anything in there,” I said, “except a bunch of plays and books on acting.”

  “And of course those are of no value whatever,” said Ben, fuming.

  “They’re not money. You make fun of me for saving money, but you never have any.”

  “My son’s going to be a very successful actor,” my father explained to Sled-boy. “But I’m afraid he’d better find himself a very cautious business manager or he’ll never accumulate any money. Or, then again, Ben, it’s just possible that you may turn into the most penurious, penny-pinching actor yet known.”

  “An actor, h
uh?” Sled-boy mused. “I once knew a guy, was in all the plays in high school when I went. A real good lookin’ guy. He was gonna get in the movies. You know what? His old man gave him two hundred bucks, for nothin’ except to go out to California. An’ you know what? The guy damn near starved to death. I think he finally got a job at Lockheed.” Sled-boy raised and resettled his thick thighs, one at a time. “Mr. Briard, how come you’re so sure your boy there gonna be such a big success? You know some big Hollywood producer or somebody?”

  My father laughed. “No. If I did, I certainly would recommend Ben to him, when he’s ready. Not that it would do him any good in the long run.”

  “I don’t want anybody’s help,” Ben said.

  “That’s a very proper, immature attitude, and a very easy one to have when you don’t need help, Ben. But Sled-boy asked me how I know you’ll be successful. It’s apparent.”

  “Why, Dad?”

  I was as interested in the answer as I was in the question. I had known from the moment, years before, on some church steps in some now almost forgotten town, that Ben was going to be an actor. It had never occurred to me that he wouldn’t be a successful actor. My reasoning being that there weren’t actors who didn’t appear any more than there were plumbers who didn’t do plumbing.

  “Success, as we categorize it, is a simple and pitiable thing,” my father said. “It’s only a matter of degree of wanting, and accident. Wanting plays the major role in everybody’s life—accident all the others. The only condition any of us can be sure of in this universe is wanting. How tepid or burning hot the want is depends on accident. But since accident isn’t really as accidental as we’d like to think—accident is the great fooler and comforter of mankind—we become ‘successful’ exactly to the degree we want.”

  Sled-boy bent forward, concentrating. “But, Mr. Briard, say a guy like me wants, really wants, like hell, a lot of things. A house like this …say he wants, well, to be a guy like you, when he’s your age.”

  “One moment, Sled-boy. The first thing one must want, in order to gain anything, is to be himself, gaining. Don’t confuse sterile wishing with true wanting. I think it was Dryden who described that mistake: ‘I strongly wish for what I faintly hope: / Like the day-dreams of melancholy men, / I think and think on things impossible…’ You must want to be you, Sled-boy, and then, if your want is sufficient, equal to, or stronger than the want of the people who have houses like this, you’ll get yours.”