Hearts In Atlantis (5 page)

“My mom says she's trashy,” Carol said.

“If she's trash, I'd love to be the trashman,” S-J said, and wiggled his eyebrows like Groucho.

“Do
you
think she's trashy?” Bobby asked Carol.

“I'm not sure what that means, even.”

As they passed out from under the marquee (from within her glass ticket-booth beside the doors, Mrs. Godlow—known to the neighborhood kids as Mrs. Godzilla—watched them suspiciously), Carol looked back over her shoulder at Brigitte Bardot in her towel. Her expression was hard to read. Curiosity? Bobby couldn't tell. “But she's pretty, isn't she?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“And you'd have to be brave to let people look at you with nothing on but a towel. That's what I think, anyway.”

Sully-John had no interest in
la femme Brigitte
now
that she was behind them. “Where'd Ted come from, Bobby?”

“I don't know. He never talks about that.”

Sully-John nodded as if he expected just that answer, and threw his Bo-lo Bouncer back into gear. Up and down, all around, whap-whap-whap.

•   •   •

In May Bobby's thoughts began turning to summer vacation. There was really nothing in the world better than what Sully called “the Big Vac.” He would spend long hours goofing with his friends, both on Broad Street and down at Sterling House on the other side of the park—they had lots of good things to do in the summer at Sterling House, including baseball and weekly trips to Patagonia Beach in West Haven—and he would also have plenty of time for himself. Time to read, of course, but what he really wanted to do with some of that time was find a part-time job. He had a little over seven rocks in a jar marked
BIKE FUND
, and seven rocks was a start . . . but not what you'd call a
great
start. At this rate Nixon would have been President for two years before he was riding to school.

On one of these vacation's-almost-here days, Ted gave him a paperback book. “Remember I told you that some books have both a good story and good writing?” he asked. “This is one of that breed. A belated birthday present from a new friend. At least, I hope I am your friend.”

“You are. Thanks a lot!” In spite of the enthusiasm in his voice, Bobby took the book a little doubtfully. He was accustomed to pocket books with bright, raucous covers and sexy come-on lines (“She hit the gutter . . . 
AND BOUNCED LOWER
!
”); this one had neither. The
cover was mostly white. In one corner of it was sketched—
barely
sketched—a group of boys standing in a circle. The name of the book was
Lord of the Flies
. There was no come-on line above the title, not even a discreet one like “A story you will never forget.” All in all, it had a forbidding, unwelcoming look, suggesting that the story lying beneath the cover would be hard. Bobby had nothing in particular against hard books, as long as they were a part of one's schoolwork. His view about reading for pleasure, however, was that such stories should be easy—that the writer should do everything except move your eyes back and forth for you. If not, how much pleasure could there be in it?

He started to turn the book over. Ted gently put his hand on Bobby's, stopping him. “Don't,” he said. “As a personal favor to me, don't.”

Bobby looked at him, not understanding.

“Come to the book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it and draw your own map.”

“But what if I don't like it?”

Ted shrugged. “Then don't finish it. A book is like a pump. It gives nothing unless first you give to it. You prime a pump with your own water, you work the handle with your own strength. You do this because you expect to get back more than you give . . . eventually. Do you go along with that?”

Bobby nodded.

“How long would you prime a water-pump and flail the handle if nothing came out?”

“Not too long, I guess.”

“This book is two hundred pages, give or take. You read the first ten percent—twenty pages, that is, I
know already your math isn't as good as your reading—and if you don't like it by then, if it isn't giving more than it's taking by then, put it aside.”

“I wish they'd let you do that in school,” Bobby said. He was thinking of a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson which they were supposed to memorize. “By the rude bridge that arched the flood,” it started. S-J called the poet Ralph Waldo Emerslop.

“School is different.” They were sitting at Ted's kitchen table, looking out over the back yard, where everything was in bloom. On Colony Street, which was the next street over, Mrs. O'Hara's dog Bowser barked its endless
roop-roop-roop
into the mild spring air. Ted was smoking a Chesterfield. “And speaking of school, don't take this book there with you. There are things in it your teacher might not want you to read. There could be a brouhaha.”

“A
what?
”

“An uproar. And if you get in trouble at school, you get in trouble at home—this I'm sure you don't need me to tell you. And your mother  . . .” The hand not holding the cigarette made a little seesawing gesture which Bobby understood at once.
Your mother doesn't trust me
.

Bobby thought of Carol saying that maybe Ted was on the run from something, and remembered his mother saying Carol didn't miss much.

“What's in it that could get me in trouble?” He looked at
Lord of the Flies
with new fascination.

“Nothing to froth at the mouth about,” Ted said dryly. He crushed his cigarette out in a tin ashtray, went to his little refrigerator, and took out two bottles of pop. There was no beer or wine in there, just pop
and a glass bottle of cream. “Some talk of putting a spear up a wild pig's ass, I think that's the worst. Still, there is a certain kind of grownup who can only see the trees and never the forest. Read the first twenty pages, Bobby. You'll never look back. This I promise you.”

Ted set the pop down on the table and lifted the caps with his churchkey. Then he lifted his bottle and clinked it against Bobby's. “To your new friends on the island.”

“What island?”

Ted Brautigan smiled and shot the last cigarette out of a crumpled pack. “You'll find out,” he said.

•   •   •

Bobby did find out, and it didn't take him twenty pages to also find out that
Lord of the Flies
was a hell of a book, maybe the best he'd ever read. Ten pages into it he was captivated; twenty pages and he was lost. He lived on the island with Ralph and Jack and Piggy and the littluns; he trembled at the Beast that turned out to be a rotting airplane pilot caught in his parachute; he watched first in dismay and then in horror as a bunch of harmless schoolboys descended into savagery, finally setting out to hunt down the only one of their number who had managed to remain halfway human.

He finished the book one Saturday the week before school ended for the year. When noon came and Bobby was still in his room—no friends over to play, no Saturday-morning cartoons, not even
Merrie Melodies
from ten to eleven—his mom looked in on him and told him to get off his bed, get his nose out of that book, and go on down to the park or something.

“Where's Sully?” she asked.

“Dalhouse Square. There's a school band concert.” Bobby looked at his mother in the doorway and the ordinary stuff around her with dazed, perplexed eyes. The world of the story had become so vivid to him that this real one now seemed false and drab.

“What about your girlfriend? Take her down to the park with you.”

“Carol's not my girlfriend, Mom.”

“Well, whatever she is. Goodness sakes, Bobby, I wasn't suggesting the two of you were going to run off and elope.”

“She and some other girls slept over Angie's house last night. Carol says when they sleep over they stay up and hen-party practically all night long. I bet they're still in bed, or eating breakfast for lunch.”

“Then go to the park by yourself. You're making me nervous. With the TV off on Saturday morning I keep thinking you're dead.” She came into his room and plucked the book out of his hands. Bobby watched with a kind of numb fascination as she thumbed through the pages, reading random snatches here and there. Suppose she spotted the part where the boys talked about sticking their spears up the wild pig's ass (only they were English and said “arse,” which sounded even dirtier to Bobby)? What would she make of it? He didn't know. All his life they had lived together, it had been just the two of them for most of it, and he still couldn't predict how she'd react to any given situation.

“Is this the one Brattigan gave you?”

“Yeah.”

“As a birthday present?”

“Yeah.”

“What's it about?”

“Boys marooned on an island. Their ship gets sunk. I think it's supposed to be after World War III or something. The guy who wrote it never says for sure.”

“So it's science fiction.”

“Yeah,” Bobby said. He felt a little giddy. He thought
Lord of the Flies
was about as far from
Ring Around the Sun
as you could get, but his mom hated science fiction, and if anything would stop her potentially dangerous thumbing, that would.

She handed the book back and walked over to his window. “Bobby?” Not looking back at him, at least not at first. She was wearing an old shirt and her Saturday pants. The bright noonlight shone through the shirt; he could see her sides and noticed for the first time how thin she was, as if she was forgetting to eat or something. “What, Mom?”

“Has Mr. Brattigan given you any other presents?”

“It's
Brautigan
, Mom.”

She frowned at her reflection in the window . . . or more likely it was his reflection she was frowning at. “Don't correct me, Bobby-O. Has he?”

Bobby considered. A few rootbeers, sometimes a tuna sandwich or a cruller from the bakery where Sully's mom worked, but no presents. Just the book, which was one of the best presents he had ever gotten. “Jeepers, no, why would he?”

“I don't know. But then, I don't know why a man you just met would give you a birthday present in the first place.” She sighed, folded her arms under her small sharp breasts, and went on looking out Bobby's window. “He told me he used to work in a state job
up in Hartford but now he's retired. Is that what he told you?”

“Something like that.” In fact, Ted had never told Bobby anything about his working life, and asking had never crossed Bobby's mind.

“What kind of state job? What department? Health and Welfare? Transportation? Office of the Comptroller?”

Bobby shook his head. What in heck was a comptroller?

“I bet it was education,” she said meditatively. “He talks like someone who used to be a teacher. Doesn't he?”

“Sort of, yeah.”

“Does he have hobbies?”

“I don't know.” There was reading, of course; two of the three bags which had so offended his mother were full of paperback books, most of which looked
very
hard.

The fact that Bobby knew nothing of the new man's pastimes for some reason seemed to ease her mind. She shrugged, and when she spoke again it seemed to be to herself rather than to Bobby. “Shoot, it's only a book. And a paperback, at that.”

“He said he might have a job for me, but so far he hasn't come up with anything.”

She turned around fast. “Any job he offers you, any chores he asks you to do, you talk to me about it first. Got that?”

“Sure, got it.” Her intensity surprised him and made him a little uneasy.

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“
Big
promise, Bobby.”

He dutifully crossed his heart and said, “I promise my mother in the name of God.”

That usually finished things, but this time she didn't look satisfied.

“Has he ever . . . does he ever . . .” There she stopped, looking uncharacteristically flustered. Kids sometimes looked that way when Mrs. Bramwell sent them to the blackboard to pick the nouns and verbs out of a sentence and they couldn't.

“Has he ever what, Mom?”

“Never mind!” she said crossly. “Get out of here, Bobby, go to the park or Sterling House, I'm tired of looking at you.”

Why'd you come in, then?
he thought (but of course did not say).
I wasn't bothering you, Mom. I wasn't bothering you
.

Bobby tucked
Lord of the Flies
into his back pocket and headed for the door. He turned back when he got there. She was still at the window, but now she was watching him again. He never surprised love on her face at such moments; at best he might see a kind of speculation, sometimes (but not always) affectionate.

“Hey Mom?” He was thinking of asking for fifty cents—half a rock. With that he could buy a soda and two hotdogs at the Colony Diner. He loved the Colony's hotdogs, which came in toasted buns with potato chips and pickle slices on the side.

Her mouth did its tightening trick, and he knew this wasn't his day for hotdogs. “Don't ask, Bobby, don't even think about it.”
Don't even think about it
—one of her all-time faves. “I have a ton of bills this week, so get those dollar-signs out of your eyes.”

She
didn't
have a ton of bills, though, that was the thing. Not this week she didn't. Bobby had seen both the electric bill and the check for the rent in its envelope marked
Mr. Monteleone
last Wednesday. And she couldn't claim he would soon need clothes because this was the end of the school-year, not the beginning. The only dough he'd asked for lately was five bucks for Sterling House—quarterly dues—and she had even been chintzy about that, although she knew it covered swimming and Wolves and Lions Baseball, plus the insurance. If it had been anyone but his mom, he would have thought of this as cheapskate behavior. He couldn't say anything about it to her, though; talking to her about money almost always turned into an argument, and disputing any part of her view on money matters, even in the most tiny particulars, was apt to send her into ranting hysterics. When she got like that she was scary.