Gentlehands Read online

  “You shut up, stupid!” Streaker said.

  “Don’t ever say ‘ass’ in my presence again,” said my mother.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “How come he gets away with calling me stupid every other word out of his mouth?”

  “Because you are!” Streaker said.

  “Don’t call Buddy stupid,” my mother said.

  My father pushed his chair back. “Buddy, I want to explain something to you about the yard when you’re through.”

  “I’m through now,” I said.

  “Buddy, you hardly ate,” my mother said.

  “May we be excused?” my father said.

  “Can I watch T.V.?” Streaker said.

  “Okay, okay,” my mother said. “Don’t mind me, I’m going to finish my dinner.”

  My father and I went out the side door and walked back toward the toolshed.

  “We’ve got a mole digging up the lawn, see the holes?” my father said.

  “Why did we ever plant this kind of grass?” I said. “It comes up like hay.” I was thinking of the soft, long green lawn at Beauregard.

  “This grass is okay,” my father said.

  “If you like hay for grass,” I said. “You ought to see the grass at Beauregard.”

  “Buddy,” my father said, “turn around a second.”

  “What is it?” I turned around and faced him.

  What it was was a punch to my neck, so hard I fell down from the weight of it. I just sat there looking up at his eyes, which were blazing. His face was the color of a ripe tomato. His hands were balled into white knuckles.

  “Get up!” he said.

  I got up and he socked me again. I reeled back, but caught my balance and stayed on my feet. My heart was slamming against my ribs and I stared at him while he just stood there watching my face with this look of revulsion in his eyes.

  “You’re very full of yourself, aren’t you, Buddy?”

  “What’s got into you?” I said. I began backing away, but he kept coming toward me, slowly.

  “I’ll hit you back!” I warned him.

  “If you do, I’ll mop up the place with you!” he said. He was actually hissing the words at me like an angry snake: “You—just—stand—still.”

  I did.

  He let his hands drop to his sides, but the fingers were still knotted into hard balls. “Golf-club covers and pool houses!” he snarled. “Thick carpets and everything monogrammed with P!”

  “It’s not my fault they’re rich,” I said. “And what’s wrong with being rich?”

  “A Rolls in the garage!” he said.

  “So what?” I said.

  “Little dogs that mean butterfly in French!” he said.

  “Okay, I’m a little impressed,” I said. “I’ve never met people like that. I’m a little impressed.”

  “You’re too impressed!” he said.

  “I know that,” I said. “Okay.”

  “You’re so impressed you lied, Buddy. I went by Sweet Mouth at two fifteen. Your bike was there but you weren’t!”

  “Okay,” I said. “I lied.”

  “Why?” my father demanded.

  “She came by to get me at two,” I said.

  “And you jumped, just like one of her trained dogs!”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “The hell with Streaker, your bike, your mother, me—you had to hightail it over to Beaublahblah!”

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said.

  “So am I!” he said.

  Then he said, “You’re to spend every single night right here for the next two weeks! Is that clear, Buddy?”

  “It’s clear,” I said.

  “I brought your bike home on the back of my car,” he said. It was a ten-speed Peugeot that he’d given me for my birthday. My old bike was a three-speed Sabre, and my father’d agreed to buy me the Peugeot if I’d promise to take good care of it. One hundred and eighty dollars is a hell of a lot of money for a bike, he’d said.

  But I wasn’t paying much attention to that. I wasn’t even paying attention to the fact that that was the first time he’d ever belted me and really meant it. I was too busy remembering that I’d promised Skye I’d see her Sunday night.

  7

  OUR FAMILY ISN’T VERY RELIGIOUS, BUT MY MOTHER goes to Mass nearly every Sunday morning.

  My father had worked all night; he was asleep in their bedroom. Streaker was still in his pajamas, eating a bowl of cereal in the living room, watching Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space. I’d played Yahtzee with him after the blowup in the yard with my father, until it was his bedtime, letting him win five games out of nine.

  Sunday was the only day I didn’t work, so I was hanging around in my shorts, waiting for it to be eleven o’clock, the time I figured it’d be okay to call Skye.

  “Can we go to the bay?” Streaker asked me. He had a milk mustache and a wet cornflake on his pajama top.

  “We might,” I said. It was one of those beautiful summer mornings in June. Down at the bay there were already kids swimming out to the raft, and sailboats dotting the horizon.

  I looked at my watch. It was ten forty-eight.

  “What do you mean we might?” Streaker said.

  “I’m not making any promises I can’t keep this time,” I said.

  “We don’t have to wait until Mom comes home,” he said. “She said I could go if you took me.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I have to make a phone call first.”

  “Then can we go?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “When are you going to make your phone call?”

  “In a few minutes.”

  “Why don’t you make your phone call now?”

  “Streaker,” I said, “do you mind letting me do things my way?”

  “If you shout you’re going to wake up Dad, and then Dad will be teed off and we won’t be able to go to the bay.”

  “Don’t talk with a mouth full,” I said. “Do you think I want to look at all that garbage you haven’t swallowed yet?”

  I looked at my watch again and decided I’d try Skye even though it wasn’t quite eleven yet.

  I went into the kitchen and used the wall phone.

  “Miss Skye will call you back,” Peacock told me. “She’s finishing her breakfast.”

  I gave him the number and paced around the kitchen waiting. I wanted to answer the phone on the first ring, so it wouldn’t disturb my father. I’d heard him complaining to my mother early that morning that he’d had a hell of a night with DWI’s all over Montauk Highway. That meant people driving while intoxicated. Saturday nights in summer there was a lot of that, and a lot of accidents because of it. I could never understand anyone getting behind the wheel of a car drunk. I’d probably do a lot of dumb things in my day, I always told myself, but that wouldn’t be one of them.

  Streaker came out to the kitchen and got out the stool and stood on it while he rinsed out his cereal bowl. Then he pulled out the dishwasher and stuck the bowl inside.

  “Shall I put on my bathing suit?” he asked me.

  “Sure,” I said. “If we don’t go to the bay, you can run under the sprinkler in the yard.”

  “I’m not going to run under the dumb sprinkler,” he said.

  “Do what you want to do,” I said, and the phone rang.

  “Bonjour, chéri,” Skye said.

  “Bonjour,” I said.

  “Come va?” she said.

  “No speakety Spanish,” I said.

  “That was Italian!” She laughed.

  “Spaghetti,” I said, “ravioli, pizza.”

  “Fettucini,” she said. “Did you think about me last night?”

  “Un petit peu,” I said.

  Streaker was standing under me, scratching his belly and looking up at me with his face wrinkled up.

  “Just a little bit?” Skye said. “Oh I’m going to commit defenestration on myself.”

  “Whatever that is,” I said.

  “
That means I’m going to throw myself out the window,” she said. “It’s one of my Uncle Louie’s words. We played words-of-twelve-letters-or-over last night at dinner, and Uncle Louie knows millions of them and he said I was an infra-caninophile, which I bet you don’t even know the meaning of.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I didn’t either. It means underdog lover. Uncle Louie says all Americans are infracaninophiles, and I’m a living example. Well I’d hate to be a dead example, I said, if I’m going to be any kind of an example of anything, I’m glad I’m a living example.”

  “About tonight,” I said.

  “Come over right now and we’ll talk about tonight,” she said.

  “Right now?”

  “We’re going to have dimanche déjeuner on the beach at one, and we could swim before and I could give you your present. Would you like that, Buddy?”

  “What present?” I said.

  “Come and find out,” she said. “Hurry!”

  There was a click.

  I hung up, too.

  Then I picked Streaker up and whispered in his ear, “Hey, I’ve got a secret.”

  “Tell me at the bay,” he said.

  “Part of the secret is we’re not going to the bay,” I said, and then I put my hand over his mouth and said, “Shhhhhh. Now listen. This secret is about tonight.”

  “What is it?” he said.

  I picked the cornflake off his pajama top. “Tonight we’re going to have a magic mystery hunt right here in this house. We’re going to hunt for a secret box containing tiny little secret things.”

  Streaker was pouting. “What tiny little secret things? I’d rather go to the bay.”

  “Not when you see the tiny little secret things,” I said. I didn’t know what the tiny little secret things would be, but I’d come up with something!

  He squirmed in my arms and I put him down. “Streaker,” I said, “try to understand something.”

  “What?” He was rubbing his eyes with his tiny fists the way he did just before he started bawling.

  “Streaker, I’m in trouble,” I said.

  “What trouble?” He put his fists down and looked at me wide-eyed.

  “I can’t explain it now,” I said, “but you have to help me.”

  “How?”

  “You have to let me go now and not make a fuss. I have to get myself out of trouble. I’m counting on you, Streaker.”

  “Will Daddy have to arrest you if you don’t get out of trouble?”

  “It isn’t that kind of trouble,” I said. “It’s worse.”

  “Worse than against the law?” he said.

  “Don’t ask any more questions,” I said. “Just help me out, will you?”

  “I guess so,” Streaker said.

  “Just keep what I’ve said a secret between us, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Don’t tell Mom and don’t tell Dad.”

  “Okay.”

  “I have to go and straighten it out, and when I come home we’ll have a magic mystery hunt. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  He followed me back to our bedroom while I changed into a pair of white pants and a striped T-shirt. I made sure the shirt wasn’t Orlon but plain 100% cotton, and then I slipped into a pair of sneaks. I didn’t need a sweater.

  While I dressed, I said to Streaker, “When I was your age I didn’t have a brother, and I had to do everything by myself. How’d you like that?”

  “I wouldn’t like it,” Streaker said. “Where do you have to go now?”

  I put my finger to my lips. “Shhhhh, Streaker, we can’t talk about it anymore. Just let me get out of here and take care of it.”

  “What’ll I tell Mom?” he said.

  “Just tell her I’ll be back for supper.”

  “You’re not going to have dinner here?”

  “I can’t,” I said. “Just tell her I had to go out and it was okay with you. Got that?”

  “You were going to eat my sparrow grass so I didn’t have to,” he said.

  “Streaker, you’re not helping me. Don’t you think I’d eat sparrow grass if I could? I love sparrow grass!”

  “Okay, Buddy,” he said.

  “That’s my boy,” I said, and I kissed him, and he wiped my kiss away, grinning with embarrassment.

  “I’ll turn the sprinkler on for you,” I said.

  Then I stuck two dimes in his piggy bank because I felt like a real rat.

  8

  ONCE I GOT TO BEAUREGARD, I ALWAYS SEEMED ABLE to put my own life out of my head, and just wallow in theirs, with Skye. Beauregard was like a drug; so was she. If a fleeting image of Streaker playing under the sprinkler by himself crossed my mind, it was soon erased by the sight of a flotilla of waiters carrying blue-and-white beach umbrellas down to the dunes, along with wicker picnic baskets with blue-and-white ribbons attached to the handles. The guests were beginning to arrive for the dimanche déjeuner, which just meant Sunday lunch in French.

  Skye was all in yellow this time, yellow short shorts, a yellow shirt with the tails knotted around her tan midriff, and yellow sandals. We sat for a while by the pool talking. Connie Spreckles was there and so was Rachel, but Skye gave me all her attention.

  “When do you want your present, Buddy?”

  “I don’t want a present,” I said. “You didn’t have to buy me a present.”

  “That’s why I bought you one, because I didn’t have to.”

  The Papillons were playing around by our feet, and Peacock was passing by with a huge silver bucket filled with bottles of wine.

  “After you left yesterday afternoon, I called Mark, Fore and Strike in East Hampton, and told them exactly what I wanted for you, and made them promise to deliver it to me right away, which they did, because God knows I practically support them single-handed in the summer.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What is it?”

  She reached under her chair and pulled out a gift-wrapped package, placing it on my knees.

  “Thanks,” I said. “What is it?”

  “Open it.”

  “Okay.”

  “I hope it’s your size. You can return it if it isn’t.”

  I tore off the ribbon and lifted the lid from the box.

  “It’ll be perfect for tonight, Buddy.”

  “Tonight?” I took it out of the tissue paper.

  “We’re having a hot-dog-and-marshmallow roast tonight.”

  It was a navy blue sweater, cashmere.

  I held it up the way Rachel had held up my Orlon sweater the day before.

  “Whose is it?” I said. I smelled it. “It smells very expensive. It must be Peacock’s.”

  Skye laughed.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Sure I like it.”

  “Do you love it?”

  “I’ll probably sleep with it,” I said.

  “Oh you love it that much? I hope you won’t sleep with it on the first date because that’s gross.”

  “No. I’ll wait.”

  I was embarrassed because I knew then how embarrassed Skye had been for me when we’d played the game in front of her friends.

  “You’re a little embarrassed,” Skye said.

  “You’ve got the wrong boy,” I said. “All donations are gratefully accepted.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “After all, I didn’t have to work my tail off at Sweet Mouth to pay for it.”

  That remark just made it worse, but I got past it and laughed and loved her green eyes watching mine and told myself however long it lasted, I might as well enjoy it, because I doubted anyone like her would ever come my way again.

  Skye wasn’t the first girl I’d ever gone around the bend over. I’d had crushes on girls since I was thirteen. But she was worlds away and a far cry from LuAnn Derby or Karen Suchanik, both of whose idea of flirting was to put Wind Song behind their ears and sit there.

  We went into the pool house and change
d into our suits (I’d brought mine with me this time), and she knocked on the wall separating our dressing rooms and called out, “I can say everything I want to say to you now because my door’s locked and you can’t come in and get me.”

  “What do you want to say?” I called back.

  “Everything!”

  We raced down to the dunes and I splashed into the ocean after her. We played in the surf, jumping the big waves, letting them carry us into shore, then rushing out to greet the new ones. All along the beach, people were watching the Beauregard waiters set up the umbrellas and backrests for the picnic, standing at a discreet distance while the Penningtons’ guests settled down to enjoy the dimanche déjeuner.

  If that was lunch, I was King Kong. Everyone had his own picnic basket; inside was a half chicken, cheese, potato salad, deviled eggs, ham rolled up with watercress and mashed avocado inside, spareribs, an apple, grapes, and a thick wedge of chocolate cake. There were cold Cokes for the young people and cold white wine for everyone else. At our house they’d be just finishing Sunday dinner: steak with mashed and asparagus. Chocolate ice cream for dessert.

  Connie and Rachel listened to tapes and sunbathed after lunch, and I slept for a while in the sand, on my stomach, until I felt Skye sitting on my back. “Do you want me to teach you backgammon?” she said.

  We played enough games for me to begin to get the hang of it. There were a lot of backgammon games in progress while the waiters collected the picnic baskets. Peacock appeared to take the Papillons out of the sun and back to the house. People walking along the beach stared up at us in wonder, crossing back and forth several times, some of them.

  “Will you whisper provocative things in my ear at the hot-dog roast?” Skye asked me.

  I’d been putting the hot-dog roast out of my mind.

  “I don’t know if I can come.”

  “You don’t have to come, you’re here.”

  “I don’t know if I can stay.”

  “I’ll have to get handcuffs,” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  I excused myself to go back to the pool house john, and saw a phone on the bar.

  I dialed, heard my father bark “Hello!” and hung up, even though I knew he always barked hello, it didn’t mean anything, particularly. He began the four-to-twelve shift that week. I looked at my watch. It was three fifteen. Another fifteen minutes and he’d be gone. I hung around the pool house, waiting, sitting on the barstool flipping the pages of Time magazine.