Gentlehands (7 page)

“I’ll handle it myself, Mom,” I said. I’ve been lazy about handling my problems, but I’m not going to be anymore.”

“Come home after work,” she said.

“I’ll be there after he’s gone,” I said. I had to get my clothes, anyway.

I’D BEEN LIVING AT MY GRANDFATHER’S FOR FOUR
days. For the first time in my life, I had my own room, with an ocean view. Every morning I drove the jeep to work, and after work I headed over for a swim in the pool with Skye.

On the Friday of the Fourth of July weekend, as I was on my way to Beauregard, I heard a police siren behind me. I pulled over and looked at my father through the rearview mirror, sauntering up toward the jeep with his policeman’s cap pushed back on his head, one hand in his pocket. It was our first encounter since the one in the backyard when he’d clobbered me with his fist.

“How you doing?” he said.

“Okay.”

There was this little smile playing on his lips, and he couldn’t look at me while he talked to me. He watched the road ahead and lit a cigarette.

“How do you like being on your own?”

“I like it fine.”

“I can see why,” he said, giving the jeep door a slap with his hand, grinning more. He took a puff on his cigarette and we didn’t say anything for a while.

“How’s Streaker?” I said.

“He’s a great kid,” my father said. The day I’d packed and cleared out, Streaker wouldn’t come down from a tree in our front yard. I’d stood under the tree and tried to talk to him, tried to explain I had to take care of my problems, and he had to learn to fend for himself until I got myself straightened out.

“I don’t want your stupid catcher’s mitt,” he’d said.

“Good!” I’d said. “I can still use it.”

Then I’d said, “Aren’t you going to come down for a good-bye hug?”

“I don’t hug,” he’d said. “I’m not a girl.”

“I can see that,” I’d said. “You’re a cat that’s been treed. Well, meow, Streaker. Thanks for being so understanding.”

“I don’t care if I never see your face again,” he’d said.

“You’re not a cat at all,” I’d said. “You’re the family parrot, parroting everything Dad says.”

“Go to hell!” he’d yelled after me, and I’d walked toward Fireplace Road carrying my duffel bag, getting ready to hitch a ride to Montauk.

My father took a couple more drags on his cigarette and I sat in the jeep watching his face in profile. He wasn’t in a bad mood. I think he really wanted to talk to me.

“You don’t drive this thing after nine at night, do you?” he said.

“Of course not,” I said. “Grandpa Trenker wouldn’t let me if I wanted to.”

“I don’t know anything about your grandfather Trenker,” he said.

“He’s a nice guy,” I said.

“I’m not concerned with
him
,” he said.

“I’m doing okay,” I said.

“I can see that,” said my father.

“You been going clamming?” I asked.

“I’m going to take my boy clamming tomorrow,” he said, as though he had only one boy.

“Have a nice time,” I said. “I hope you and your boy get a big haul.”

“Okay, Buddy,” he sighed. “I’ve got to get back on duty.”

“Duty calls,” I said.

“How would you know?” he said.

“Have you said what you want to say?” I asked him.

“Don’t let me keep you” was his answer, and he gave me this little wave and walked back to the police car.

I waited for him to turn around and head the
other way, and then I went on to Beauregard.

It put me in a really bad mood, which I’d been veering toward all day because Skye was going to another dance at The Hadefield that night, and I wasn’t invited. Skye said it was a members-only thing, and she had to go because her brother was just back from Europe. The family had reserved a table; it was the annual Fourth of July Dinner Dance.

When I got to Beauregard, her brother was there with some friend he’d traveled through Europe with, this shrimp who came up to my shoulder, named Lennie Waterhouse.

I shook hands with Og first and Lennie second.

Og was tall like his father, with black hair like Skye’s and the same green eyes. Mrs. Pennington called him “Junior” and waddled around after him, down by the pool, while Lennie sat in one of the blue-and-white director’s chairs and read a paperback Agatha Christie.

“Lennie is going to Princeton next year,” Skye told me while we clung to the float in the center of the pool. “He’s going to be an art historian.”

I didn’t ask her what an art historian was, but in the next breath she gave me an idea. “Someday he’ll be the director of a big museum. I just love art, particularly anything to do with Renaissance art, which is going to be Lennie’s specialty.
I could spend an eternity in Rome. We were there two summers ago for a month and I didn’t even care that it was so hot you could fry an egg on the Via Veneto.”

“What’s your brother going to be?” I changed the subject.

“When he finishes Yale, he’s going to be a nepotist,” she said.

“A
what?
”

“He’s going to join Penn Industries,” she said. “He’s going to work for Daddy.”

“What does a nepotist do exactly?” I said.

“A nepotist works for his daddy, or his uncle or his aunt,” she laughed. “Nepotism is the fine old art of finding a job through a relative.”

“That’s a new one on me,” I said.

“I like that, Buddy,” she said, and she was looking at me again that way she had of looking at me, with her eyes fixed right on mine. “I like showing you things. Do you like me to show you things?”

“I don’t know.” I had to look away.

“Swim to the bottom of the pool with me and I’ll show you some things,” she said, and she dove under the float. I followed her. We held our breaths as long as we could, touched lips, she put her hands in my hair, and we surfaced, laughing.

We were winded, and hung on the float, the late-afternoon sun in our eyes. She reached for
my hand. “You’re rare, Buddy,” she said. “Do you think I am?”

“You’re more medium,” I said, “or well done,” and she splashed me and swam away, until I finally caught her by the legs near the pool ladder. We climbed out and dried off, and Skye picked her watch up from the table and said, “It’s five o’clock! I’ve got to get a firecracker under me if I’m going to be beautiful tonight, even though I don’t care whether I’m beautiful tonight or not, because you’re not going to be there. Maybe I’ll be dowdy, instead, and Lennie and Og can pretend they didn’t come with me.”

“Lennie?” I said. “Is Lennie a member of The Hadefield, too? I thought he was from Michigan?”

“He’s our guest, Buddy.”

“I didn’t know you could take guests,” I said.

“He’s from out of town, Buddy. I mean, we can’t just all prance off to the club and tell him to scramble himself some eggs or something.”

“I don’t care,” I said.

“I think you do,” she said. “You sound like you do, but honestly, Buddy, you can’t expect us to leave him home when he’s our guest for the weekend.” She put her towel around my neck and pulled me toward her. “I think you’re actually jealous, Buddy. I think I like that.”

“I am, a little,” I admitted.

“Be jealous a lot, Buddy, not a little,” she whispered to me. “I want you to feel a lot toward me, not a little.”

“I do,” I said, I
croaked
, because she was getting to me, we were so close we were practically kissing, and she whispered, “Me, too.”

When I got back to Montauk around six thirty, my grandfather’s Alfa Romeo wasn’t in the driveway. I parked the jeep and took the long steps leading down to the ocean, and walked around on the beach for a while. I’d told my grandfather I’d be there for dinner with him that night, and I figured he was probably out shopping. On weekends he liked to drive into Amagansett to shop at the Gristede’s market just outside the town. He liked to go in the early evening when it wasn’t crowded with summer people.

I walked around for a while on the hard sand near the surf and thought about Skye, which I was doing nonstop, all the time, anyway. I’d never been in a situation that didn’t have a future, the way Skye and I didn’t. I’d never even thought seriously of a future with a girl, beyond some dumb high-school dance coming up in a few months, or a game, or a party. Even though I tried to tell myself to just make the most of the time we did have together that summer, my
mind ached and my body yearned when I tried to imagine fall without her. How was I going to go back to the Seaville girls after Skye? How the
hell
, as my father would put it, was I going to get along without Skye? Bryn Mawr was way off somewhere in Pennsylvania, and I was on the tip of Long Island. I’d be a senior in some hick high school and she’d be a freshman in this fancy college. Even if I could hitchhike across three states to see her, I’d be competing with the Lennie Waterhouses of the world, and I didn’t even know what Renaissance art was!…Then I got steamed all over again at the idea of Lennie being invited to the dance at the club when I wasn’t. I had a feeling she wasn’t telling me the truth about The Hadefield Club affairs. I didn’t know how anybody at The Hadefield could tell whether I was a weekend guest of theirs or not, and it seemed to me I could have been sneaked in somehow, if the Penningtons had wanted me to go.

All of this was churning through my mind and my stomach as I made my way back toward the steps leading up to my grandfather’s. For a moment I saw the little white car parked at a cut in the beach without really registering it. There was elephant grass obscuring it, but it was plainly a Fiat convertible, and as I took that information in very slowly, and turned around for another
look, I saw him very clearly. I saw the yellow glasses, and I saw the binoculars he was holding, and I saw the direction they were aimed in: up. He was watching my grandfather’s house.

I don’t know if he saw me. The steps I was starting up were around the side of the cliff, so I doubted it. When I was walking along the beach, he might have focused on me.

I wondered if he was a bird-watcher. The feeders at my grandfather’s attracted every kind of bird there was anywhere near the shore.

I planned to tell my grandfather about it, but when. I reached the top of the steps, my grandfather came running out, calling at me that
she
would be there any minute, that I’d better shower and change fast!

“Who?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t you read the note I left on the table?”

“I didn’t go in the house,” I said.

He put his arm around my shoulder and practically trotted me along the rest of the way. He said, “In about ten minutes your mother is arriving for dinner.”

MY GRANDFATHER DID EVERYTHING WELL, INCLUDING
cook. He served us a filet of fish in spinach with shrimp and mushrooms, and a salad of fresh bean sprouts from his garden. In the center of the table he put a bouquet of red and pink roses he’d cut from the vines outside the patio. We all had a glass of wine with the meal, and instead of opera playing on the tape he had Strauss waltzes.

It took a while for my mother to unbend. My mother always wore pantsuits in the summer when she went out with my father, but that night she was in one of her best dresses, the kind she wore to Mass Sundays. It was a light blue dress, shades lighter than her eyes, and she had on white heels, carried a white bag, and wore her best earrings which were gold with pearls in the center. She looked really nice, a lot more dressed up than my grandfather and me. She wasn’t saying much to either of us in the beginning. I
think she said more to Mignon, carrying on one of those conversations like: “Well aren’t you a nice dog…. She says, ‘Yes, I
am
.’…You have a lot of hair in your eyes, Mignon…. She says, ‘I can hardly see out.’” That sort of thing, before we all sat down at the table.

My grandfather did most of the talking, at first. He told her how much he’d traveled before he’d finally settled in Montauk, naming all the countries he’d been in, and elaborating on how much it meant to him to finally have roots.

“What is it exactly you did?” my mother asked him.

“
Bitte?
” he said. “What do you mean?”

My mother shrugged her shoulders. “For a living?”

“Ah! Yes! I was an art dealer, a dealer in gold coins, rare stamps. I did whatever I could.
Wer rastet, rostet
.” He chuckled.

“I never learned German,” said my mother. “I picked some up from Mommy. Very little, though, because Mommy wanted to be a real American, and she wanted me to be one, too. We never spoke German together.”

“
Wer rastet, rostet
means who rests, rusts.” My grandfather chuckled again. “Now I’m resting and rusting. Oh, I rarely buy or sell art anymore.”

“I would like to know something about
Renaissance art,” I said. “Did you ever hear of that?”

“Yes I heard of that,” said my grandfather.

“That’s a new one on me,” my mother said, “Buddy wanting to know about art.”

“
Renaissance
art,” I said.

“That’s a new one on me, you wanting to know about any kind of art.”

“The
Lorelei
inspires the interest,” my grandfather said.

“The what?”—my mother.

“The girl. Am I right, Buddy?”

“Oh
her
. Well I’ve had her up to here,” my mother said, drawing her finger across her neck.

“Renaissance art was developed first and most fully in Italy,” said my grandfather. “Florence was the great center of the Renaissance masters. You’ve heard of Michelangelo, Buddy, and Leonardo da Vinci. Giotto? Fra Angelico?”

“Some of them I’ve heard of,” I said. “Michelangelo and da Vinci.”

“I’ll go into it with you,” my grandfather promised. “I have many books for you to study, if you’d like to.”

“Why did you settle here?” my mother asked. “How come you didn’t go back to Germany?”

“Where I lived is East Germany now,” said my grandfather. “I could not live with the Communists. To quote one of your own famous
statesmen, ‘Communism is the death of the soul.’ Do you remember Adlai Stevenson, Buddy? It was he who said that when he was accepting his nomination in nineteen fifty-two.”

“I’ve heard of him,” I said.

“I remember him,” my mother said. “He was a liberal.”

“Not that liberal,” my grandfather said, “not like some who played into the hands of the Communists.”

“We had a red out here one summer just down the street from us, a summer renter,” my mother said. “If he wasn’t a real red, he was a pinko. He was against the war in Vietnam and you name it. Bill used to come home from down there boiling!”

“It wasn’t a good war,” I said.

“Our boys were fighting in that war!” my mother said.

“It still wasn’t a good war!” I said.

“Oh no war is a good war,” said my grandfather.

“Well if our boys are in it, I say support our boys. One thing I am is loyal to my own,” said my mother. She looked sorry that she’d said it and went on quickly, with flushed cheeks. “I’d tell Bill, don’t go down there and drink with him because you just come home with your motor running!”

“Is Dad off tonight?” I said, to change the subject.

“He took Streaker to see
Bambi
. He borrowed Rob Hayden’s car, so I could take the Toyota. I’ve seen
Bambi
three times. Bill says to me, after
you
called”—she glanced across at my grandfather (she was starting to feel her second glass of wine)—‘so go out and have dinner with them, it won’t kill you’ and…” her voice trailed off.

“I’m delighted that you came,” said my grandfather.

For the first time my mother gave him a little smile. “I’m not sorry myself.”

“Good!” my grandfather said. “Would you like another helping?”

“I don’t mind if I do,” my mother said. “I usually fry flounder. Bill’s always coming home with some he’s caught or Rob’s caught, and I just stick it in the pan, because Bill would practically let me fry good steak, he’s so nuts about anything fried.”

I don’t exactly remember how it got started, but a short while after dinner my mother mentioned some German song her mother sang, and my grandfather said, “Ah ‘
Muss i denn
’!” and before I knew it they were singing softly together, my mother’s face soft and relaxed, and my grandfather’s eyes shining.

It was Mignon who interrupted the singing. She began barking very loudly way down behind the house. My grandfather called her, but she
wouldn’t come and she wouldn’t stop barking.

“I’d better go see what’s bothering her,” said my grandfather, and for the first time that evening I remembered De Lucca parked down on the beach.

I didn’t have time to mention it to my grandfather because he just took off after Mignon, but in a while, I heard him calling me.

“Bring me a heavy towel from the bathroom, Buddy, and my gloves!” he shouted up to me. “It’s a trapped animal!”

“Oh
no
!” my mother exclaimed, and I got the towel and the gloves.

“Turn on the outside lights!” my grandfather shouted. “Bring the flashlight!”

My mother ran after me, down the path behind the house. Mignon was whining then, and dancing around where my grandfather was kneeling. I turned the flashlight on the face of a small raccoon my grandfather was freeing from a steel trap.

My grandfather put on the gloves and lifted the bleeding creature from the jaws of the thing, saying, “Now you’ll be all right,
Liebchen
.”

The raccoon actually had tears of pain in his eyes, and my grandfather wrapped the towel around him.

“Oh my God!” my mother said. “The poor little thing.”

“My neighbor is protecting his precious garbage!” my grandfather said bitterly.

He carried the raccoon back in his arms, telling me as we went, “I want you to call 324–2455 when we get inside. You’ll be talking to Dr. Baird in East Hampton. Explain what happened and tell him I am bringing the animal to him. I’m sorry we have to end the evening this way, Ingeborg.”

“I could take him to the doctor on my way back to Seaville,” said my mother.

“You can’t drive and hold him,” said my grandfather. “He’s in pain, and terrified.”

“I’ll go with her, Grandfather,” I said. “We can do it together, and I’ll sleep home tonight.”

“Then tell the doctor I’ll come in the morning for him,” my grandfather said. “You’ll wear these gloves, and hold him in the towel.”

When we were ready to leave, my grandfather walked us down to the Toyota. “Nothing is so cruel as the steel trap,” he said. “I saw a mother raccoon die tearing herself to pieces to reach starving young, and a baby raccoon caught in a trap like that being gnawed and pulled apart by drooling dogs.”

“
Don’t
,” my mother said.

“I’m sorry, Ingeborg. I hate those traps. They should be outlawed. What woman can wear fur from a fox that slowly froze to death? For someone’s vanity, animals are tortured! Is he doing all right, Buddy?”

“Yes, we’ll take good care of him.”

On the way home from the doctor’s my mother said, “Well, he couldn’t be all bad. He has a heart, Buddy, I’ll give him that.”

“I’ll give him a lot more than that,” I said.

“Buddy,” my mother said, “your father and I had a talk. We want to start all over with this thing.”

“Meaning what?” I said.

“Meaning let’s just forget the past. Bygones are bygones.”

“What about Grandfather Trenker?”

“I said ‘bygones are bygones,’” she said. “I’m not going to fall all over him and call him ‘Daddy,’ but the past is the past.”

“I like staying at Grandfather’s,” I said.

“You like having a jeep to ride around in.”

“It’s not
just
that.”

“I know it’s not just that,” she said. “I heard all about this thing with Renestence art—”

“
Renaissance
,” I said.

“This art you want to know about,” she said. “I get the picture, Buddy, and I told your father it’s not as if he wants to smoke pot or drink liquor the way some boys his age do. I said he’s in love with this girl who’s very high class and he wants to know about things.”

“What did Dad say?”

“You know your father, he didn’t say that
much, but he’s not going to stand in your way.”

“Thanks for talking to him, Mom,” I said.

“Well there’s one thing your father will never have to buy me after this evening,” said my mother, “and that’s a fur coat!”

Later, I played Man on the Mountain with Streaker in our room, in our bunk bed, and my father stood in the doorway for a while and watched us for a second or so. He had that little half-smile he gets on his mouth, but he didn’t say much, just to keep it down because we were drowning out the T.V.

“Are you still in trouble?” Streaker whispered to me while I pulled him down by the legs from the top bunk.

“I think it’s going to be okay,” I said.

That night it looked that way.