Hearts In Atlantis (29 page)

“Getting hurt was her own fault!” he burst out.
“She knew something was wrong! You said so yourself! She's known for weeks!
Months!
But she wouldn't leave that job! She knew and she still went with them to Providence!
She went with them anyway!
”

“A lion-tamer knows, but he still goes into the cage. He goes in because that's where his paycheck is.”

“She's got money,” Bobby almost spat.

“Not enough, apparently.”

“She'll never have enough,” Bobby said, and knew it was the truth as soon as it was out of his mouth.

“She loves you.”

“I don't care! I don't love her!”

“But you do. You will. You must. It is
ka
.”

“
Ka?
What's that?”

“Destiny.” Ted had gotten most of the blood out of his hair. He turned off the water and made one final check of his ghost-image in the window. Beyond it lay all of that hot summer, younger than Ted Brautigan would ever be again. Younger than Bobby would ever be again, for that matter. “
Ka
is destiny. Do you care for me, Bobby?”

“You know I do,” Bobby said, beginning to cry again. Lately crying was all he seemed to do. His eyes ached from it. “Lots and lots.”

“Then try to be your mother's friend. For my sake if not your own. Stay with her and help this hurt of hers to heal. And every now and then I'll send you a postcard.”

They were walking back into the living room again. Bobby was starting to feel a little bit better, but he wished Ted could have put his arm around him. He wished that more than anything.

The bathroom door opened. Carol came out first,
looking down at her own feet with uncharacteristic shyness. Her hair had been wetted, combed back, and rubber-banded into a ponytail. She was wearing one of Bobby's mother's old blouses; it was so big it came almost down to her knees, like a dress. You couldn't see her red shorts at all.

“Go out on the porch and wait,” Liz said.

“Okay.”

“You won't go walking home without me, will you?”

“No!” Carol said, and her downcast face filled with alarm.

“Good. Stand right by my suitcases.”

Carol started out to the foyer, then turned back. “Thanks for fixing my arm, Ted. I hope you don't get in trouble for it. I didn't want—”

“Go out on the damned
porch
,” Liz snapped.

“—
anyone to get in trouble
,” Carol finished in a tiny voice, almost the whisper of a mouse in a cartoon. Then she went out, Liz's blouse flapping around her in a way that would have been comical on another day. Liz turned to Bobby and when he got a good look at her, his heart sank. Her fury had been refreshed. A bright red flush had spread over her bruised face and down her neck.

Oh cripes, what now?
Bobby thought. Then she held up the green keyfob, and he knew.

“Where did you get this, Bobby-O?”

“I . . . it  . . .” But he could think of nothing to say: no fib, no outright lie, not even the truth. Suddenly Bobby felt very tired. The only thing in the world he wanted to do was creep into his bedroom and hide under the covers of his bed and go to sleep.

“I gave it to him,” Ted said mildly. “Yesterday.”

“You took my son to a bookie joint in Bridgeport? A
poker-parlor
in Bridgeport?”

It doesn't say bookie joint on the keyfob
, Bobby thought.
It doesn't say poker-parlor, either . . . because those things are against the law. She knows what goes on there because my father went there. And like father like son. That's what they say, like father like son
.

“I took him to a movie,” Ted said. “
Village of the Damned
, at the Criterion. While he was watching, I went to The Corner Pocket to do an errand.”

“What sort of errand?”

“I placed a bet on a prizefight.” For a moment Bobby's heart sank even lower and he thought,
What's wrong with you? Why didn't you lie? If you knew how she felt about stuff like that—

But he
did
know. Of course he did.

“A bet on a prizefight.” She nodded. “Uh-huh. You left my son alone in a Bridgeport movie theater so you could go make a bet on a prizefight.” She laughed wildly. “Oh well, I suppose I should be grateful, shouldn't I? You brought him such a nice souvenir. If he decides to ever make a bet himself, or lose his money playing poker like his father did, he'll know where to go.”

“I left him for two hours in a movie theater,” Ted said. “You left him with me. He seems to have survived both, hasn't he?”

Liz looked for a moment as if she had been slapped, then for a moment as if she would cry. Then her face smoothed out and became expressionless. She curled her fist around the green keyfob and slipped it into her dress pocket. Bobby knew he would never see it
again. He didn't mind. He didn't
want
to see it again.

“Bobby, go in your room,” she said.

“No.”

“
Bobby, go in your room!
”

“No! I won't!”

Standing in a bar of sunlight on the welcome mat by Liz Garfield's suitcases, floating in Liz Garfield's old blouse, Carol began to cry at the sound of the raised voices.

“Go in your room, Bobby,” Ted said quietly. “I have enjoyed meeting you and knowing you.”

“
Knowing
you,” Bobby's mom said in an angry, insinuating voice, but Bobby didn't understand her and Ted took no notice of her.

“Go in your room,” he repeated.

“Will you be all right? You know what I mean.”

“Yes.” Ted smiled, kissed his fingers, and blew the kiss toward Bobby. Bobby caught it and made a fist around it, holding it tight. “I'm going to be just fine.”

Bobby walked slowly toward his bedroom door, his head down and his eyes on the toes of his sneakers. He was almost there when he thought
I can't do this, I can't let him go like this
.

He ran to Ted, threw his arms around him, and covered his face with kisses—forehead, cheeks, chin, lips, the thin and silky lids of his eyes. “Ted, I love you!”

Ted gave up and hugged him tight. Bobby could smell a ghost of the lather he shaved with, and the stronger aroma of his Chesterfield cigarettes. They were smells he would carry with him a long time, as he would the memories of Ted's big hands touching him, stroking his back, cupping the curve of his skull. “Bobby, I love you too,” he said.

“Oh for
Christ's sake!
” Liz nearly screamed. Bobby turned toward her and what he saw was Don Biderman pushing her into a corner. Somewhere the Benny Goodman Orchestra was playing “One O'Clock Jump” on a hi-fi turned all the way up. Mr. Biderman had his hand out as if to slap. Mr. Biderman was asking her if she wanted a little more, was that the way she liked it, she could have a little more if that was the way she liked it. Bobby could almost taste her horrified understanding.

“You really
didn't
know, did you?” he said. “At least not all of it, all they wanted. They thought you did, but you didn't.”

“Go in your room right now or I'm calling the police and telling them to send a squad-car,” his mother said. “I'm not joking, Bobby-O.”

“I know you're not,” Bobby said. He went into his bedroom and closed the door. He thought at first he was all right and then he thought that he was going to throw up, or faint, or do both. He walked across to his bed on tottery, unstable legs. He only meant to sit on it but he lay back on it crosswise instead, as if all the muscles had gone out of his stomach and back. He tried to lift his feet up but his legs only lay there, the muscles gone from them, too. He had a sudden image of Sully-John in his bathing suit, climbing the ladder of a swimming float, running to the end of the board, diving off. He wished he was with S-J now. Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here. Anywhere at all but here.

•   •   •

When Bobby woke up, the light in his room had grown dim and when he looked at the floor he could barely see the shadow of the tree outside his window.
He had been out—asleep or unconscious—for three hours, maybe four. He was covered with sweat and his legs were numb; he had never pulled them up onto the bed.

Now he tried, and the burst of pins and needles which resulted almost made him scream. He slid onto the floor instead, and the pins and needles ran up his thighs to his crotch. He sat with his knees up around his ears, his back throbbing, his legs buzzing, his head cottony. Something terrible had happened, but at first he couldn't remember what. As he sat there propped against the bed, looking across at Clayton Moore in his Lone Ranger mask, it began to come back. Carol's arm dislocated, his mother beaten up and half-crazy as well, shaking that green keyfob in his face, furious with him. And Ted  . . .

Ted would be gone by now, and that was probably for the best, but how it hurt to think of.

He got to his feet and walked twice around the room. The second time he stopped at the window and looked out, rubbing his hands together at the back of his neck, which was stiff and sweaty. A little way down the street the Sigsby twins, Dina and Dianne, were jumping rope, but the other kids had gone in, either for supper or for the night. A car slid by, showing its parking lights. It was even later than he had at first thought; heavenly shades of night were falling.

He made another circuit of his room, working the tingles out of his legs, feeling like a prisoner pacing his cell. The door had no lock on it—no more than his mom's did—but he felt like a jailbird just the same. He was afraid to go out. She hadn't called him for supper, and although he was hungry—a little, anyway—he
was afraid to go out. He was afraid of how he might find her . . . or of not finding her at all. Suppose she had decided she'd finally had enough of Bobby-O, stupid lying little Bobby-O, his father's son? Even if she was here, and seemingly back to normal . . . was there even such a thing as normal? People had terrible things behind their faces sometimes. He knew that now.

When he reached the closed door of his room, he stopped. There was a scrap of paper lying there. He bent and picked it up. There was still plenty of light and he could read it easily.

Dear Bobby—

By the time you read this, I'll be gone . . . but I'll take you with me in my thoughts. Please love your mother and remember that she loves you. She was afraid and hurt and ashamed this afternoon, and when we see people that way, we see them at their worst. I have left you something in my room. I will remember my promise
.

All my love
,

The postcards, that's what he promised. To send me postcards
.

Feeling better, Bobby folded up the note Ted had slipped into his room before leaving and opened his bedroom door.

The living room was empty, but it had been set to rights. It looked almost okay if you didn't know there was supposed to be a sunburst clock on the wall
beside the TV; now there was just the little screw where it had hung, jutting out and holding nothing.

Bobby realized he could hear his mother snoring in her room. She always snored, but this was a heavy snore, like an old person or a drunk snoring in a movie.
That's because they hurt her
, Bobby thought, and for a moment he thought of

(
Howya doin Sport howza boy
)

Mr. Biderman and the two nimrods elbowing each other in the back seat and grinning.
Kill the pig, cut her throat
, Bobby thought. He didn't want to think it but he did.

He tiptoed across the living room as quietly as Jack in the giant's castle, opened the door to the foyer, and went out. He tiptoed up the first flight of stairs (walking on the bannister side, because he'd read in one of the Hardy Boys mysteries that if you walked that way the stairs didn't creak so much), and ran up the second.

Ted's door stood open; the room beyond it was almost empty. The few things of his own he'd put up—a picture of a man fishing at sunset, a picture of Mary Magdalene washing Jesus' feet, a calendar—were gone. The ashtray on the table was empty, but sitting beside it was one of Ted's carryhandle bags. Inside it were four paperback books:
Animal Farm, The Night of the Hunter, Treasure Island
, and
Of Mice and Men
. Written on the side of the paper bag in Ted's shaky but completely legible handwriting was:
Read the Steinbeck first. “Guys like us,” George says when he tells Lennie the story Lennie always wants to hear. Who are guys like us? Who were they to Steinbeck? Who are they to you? Ask yourself this
.

Bobby took the paperbacks but left the bag—he was afraid that if his mom saw one of Ted's carryhandle bags she would go crazy all over again. He looked in the refrigerator and saw nothing but a bottle of French's mustard and a box of baking soda. He closed the fridge again and looked around. It was as if no one had ever lived here at all. Except—