Enchanted Isle (2 page)

“...The one that what?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t unload on you.”

“Well, hey! It’s what a friend is for, isn’t it?”

“I could use one all right.”

He patted my hand, and we sat for some little time. Then: “I’m leaving home too, and I’m bound for Baltimore too. But I’m different from you—I’m not leaving, I was put. Out, I mean, like Bill Bailey, except without any fine-tooth comb till I bought myself one.” He took a comb from his pocket and waved it around at me. Then he went on, “Without anything, if you can believe it. Some friends took me in, but this morning
they
put me out. Stuff was missing from the pantry, and they said I took it and sold it. I said I hadn’t. I offered to prove I hadn’t, but would they let me? Would they believe what I said? Why is it my father, my mother, my friends, everyone except maybe my sister, got to believe somebody else, not me? Why can’t they ever believe me?”

“I’ve been through that, plenty.”

“But why? Will you tell me?”

“With that stepfather of mine I know why—I hope to tell you I do. I’d be ashamed to say. I’d be ashamed even to breathe it.”

“...When does your bus come through?”

“Twenty after. But I thought it was your bus too.”

“I wish it was. I’d love to travel with you, and Baltimore’s where I’m bound. The thing of it is I’m flat. I told you how they put me out—without a comb, without a brush, without a dime, and without one word being said about the two hundred they owe me, that they’re holding for me, that they’re supposed to be holding for me, that by rights ought to be mine...How much money you got?”

“...Little over seventy-four dollars.”

“Look, if you could lend me two dollars, then I could buy me a ticket and keep you company on this trip.”

“OK.”

“Thanks. You’re swell. What’s your name?”

“Mandy—Mandy Vernick. It’s really Amanda, but Mandy’s what they call me. What’s yours?”

“Rick. Rick Davis.”

“Rick? That’s for Richard?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I like it better than Dick.”

By then I had out my billfold to give him the money. He said, “Make it five—then I can hold my head up.”

So I made it five.

He went and bought a ticket, and then our bus came along, “three-twenty, right on time,” as he said, taking a flash at my watch. It was half full, but the back seat was empty and we took it, me sitting next to the window, him putting my bag and coat topside, in the rack over our heads. We passed a meadow off to one side, with a plane taxiing on it, a little yellow plane, and he said, “The College Park Flying Field—oldest one in the world. Did you know that, Mandy?”

“I never even heard of it.”

“Well, it is.”

That was the whole conversation for at lease half the trip. The bus was a local, stopping every three or four miles, but we held hands and didn’t mind. Then, though, I started talking, half to myself, and it all commenced coming out, about Steve, the real reason he had for spanking me, and even about Mother, who I shouldn’t have mentioned at all but had to; I just couldn’t help it. And yet I mightn’t have if it hadn’t been for him, listening so sympathetic. Seems funny, the way he treated me later, that I didn’t catch on at the time the kind of a guy he was. But I didn’t and went on and on, at last even telling about my father and how I would call him up soon as I got into the bus station in Baltimore. But then for the first time, ’stead of being so sympathetic, he shook his head no. “What’s the matter, Rick? I say something out of line?”

“Mandy, it’s none of my business—tell me shut my big mouth and I shut it. But that don’t sound good to me; it don’t sound good at all.”

“How do you mean it don’t sound good?”

“Well? Suppose he’s not home. What then?”

“I can wait, can’t I? And call again?”

“Suppose he’s out of town?”

“...I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Suppose he married after the bust-up? The one he had with your mother? Suppose his wife answers?”

“...I can ask to speak to him, can’t I?”

“Suppose she asks who’s calling?”

“Well? Can’t I say?”

“And she says, ‘Oh my, I didn’t realize! Oh my, will you hold, Miss Vernick? Oh my, he speaks of you often! Oh my, he’ll be so excited!’ In the pig’s right eye she will.”

“You mean she wouldn’t like it?”

“Well, would you?”

“...OK, what am I going to do?”

“Hold everything, let me think.”

So he thought, and then: “One thing you should do, Mandy, is give it the old switcheroo, so ’stead of you leading to him, he’ll be leading to you. I mean, forget that pitch, that you call him and then he’ll ask you there—to his house, or wherever it is that he lives. Fix it that he comes to you—it’ll make all the difference, all the difference in the world. Meaning you must have a place to stay, a place you can ask him to, so he comes to see you.”

“How do you mean, a place?”

“Well, like an apartment.”

“I see, I see.”

“Then you invite him, like a lady does.”

“OK. But I can’t get a place tonight.”

“It’s what’s been bothering me, Mandy.”

“I’ll have to go to a motel.”

“That’s what’s been bothering me. You can’t.”

“Why can’t I?”

“They won’t take you in, that’s why. A young girl? Alone? Wants a single and bath? For what purpose, Mandy? For all they know, you could be using that room for business of a very peculiar kind.”

“Oh.”

“There’s plenty of
that
going on.”

“Well, what am I going to do?”

“I’ve been figuring on it, and I’m your friend, no? And what’s a friend for? We could go to the motel together.”

“...You mean, as Mr. and Mrs.?”

“Well, who’s going to know the difference?”

“I’d have to think about that.”

Then I told him, “OK.”

“I already said, you’re swell.”

“Rick, what name are we going to use?”

“Well, there’s a Baby Ruth sign—why not John P. Ruth and wife?”

“Better make it Richard P. Ruth—I might call you Rick by mistake, tip them off without meaning to.”

“Richard P. Ruth is good. Mrs. Ruth, hiya?”

“I’m fine, Mr. Ruth—how’s your own self?”

We both laughed and squeezed hands, and then I said, “Rick, there’s a motel—a little one, maybe not so expensive as the others. And we’re already in Baltimore. I’ve been here before and can tell by the brick houses with white doorsteps.”

“That motel was put there for us. OK.”

He got my bag and coat down, and at the next stop, which was in the same block as the motel, we got off.

A
T THE MOTEL THE
room was small and beat-up, but at lease it had twin beds, a bathroom with clean towels in it, and a bureau with big-enough drawers. But he hardly seemed to see it or notice what it was like, because all during the time I was putting my things away, and he was putting his things away—his razor, toothbrush, and comb, which seemed to be all he had—he was crabbing and crabbing and crabbing about what happened down at the desk. There, soon as he’d signed the card and asked for a double with bath, the woman said, “Second floor front. That’ll be eight dollars, please.” I was kind of surprised, as there was my luggage beside me, my zipper bag that I had, but paid with a ten-dollar bill, and when she gave me my change and key, I started upstairs. Rick followed along with the bag, but when we got to the room he burst out, “How does she get that way? Making us pay in advance? We look like bums or something?” I said it was more of the same, what he had mentioned before: “We’re kids and no one believes us, that we’d pay for our room or anything. Always, we get the short end of the stick.”

For me that covered it, but he went on and on, taking the one chair that we had, while I sat on one of the beds, and he kept going on, even while we ate dinner, which we did around six o’clock, at a coffee pot up the street, an all-night joint that the woman directed us to. We both had the roast beef sandwich and buttermilk, and pie a la mode for dessert. And on the eight dollars, I would like to have given it a rest, but he kept on about it—so even the counterman threw me a wink—about the dirty tricks being played on him by everyone, especially by his father. He’d go into a long, mixed-up story that didn’t make any sense, like about the tires that had been hid in the family garage, then found there by the police, and then begin asking questions that didn’t have any answers: “Could I know that bunch would steal those tires, then stash them in our garage? Would he believe me, that I didn’t know they were there? Why would he pay for that loot? To save me, as he said? From having to go to Patuxent? Or to make me look like a bum?” Then, when I’d kind of lost track, he’d switch off to another mixed-up thing, about slinging sodas the previous summer. Then: “And that drugstore, reporting me on my cash to him, that I was short. Would he believe I wasn’t? Would he make them come up with their slips, so I could prove I was clean? Oh, no, he had to pay, for the same noble reason—to keep me from doing time.” And next, the bitterest squawk of all, was about some girl who lived next door to him and gave him $7.50 she had made selling Girl Scout cookies door-to-door to keep for her until Monday, so she wouldn’t spend it Saturday night. And: “When I gave it back to her, she said it was seven-teen-fifty, that I’d nicked her out of a tenspot that was part of the money. I hadn’t. I know what she gave me, don’t I? But would my father believe what I said? I give you one guess if he would. Once more he paid, but this time he said was the last—that’s when he put me out.” And that’s when I wanted to tell him, “Cool it, enough is enough.” But then I thought, “Wait a minute, Mandy! Who talked whose ear off today coming in on the bus? And who listened real nice? Took your side and did the best he knew how to help you out of your spot? He did, that’s who. So fix up your face and keep still. Maybe he does have a squawk. The lease you can do is listen.” So I did, saying, “Oh my, I can hardly believe it” and “That was really awful” and “Your father would do that to you?” All while we were finishing dinner I talked like that, and during the walk we took afterward. It seemed funny later, when I drove the getaway car after we held up the bank, that those places I had to know to do my part right I’d already noticed real close on the walk I took that night: the chopper-blade factory, a two-story concrete building with black marble framing the entrance and
THE COLYPTE CORPORATION
in brass letters over the door and a chopper blade over that; the branch bank of the Chesapeake Banking and Trust Company, a block and a half beyond the stoplight, on the cross-street in between; and the phone booth on the cross-street, a half block up from the bank, where it crossed my mind for a moment that I could call Mother and ease her mind, but what crossed my mind next was: I didn’t want to.

It was still not yet eight o’clock when we got back to the motel, though with daylight saving time it was broad daylight. But we bought two Evening Suns and after watching TV a few minutes went on up to the room. Then for the first time Rick made a pass: “Well, what do you say, Mandy? We having a roll in the hay?”

“Well? It’s what hay is for, isn’t it?”

We both laughed and that’s all there was to it—but telling the truth about it, I wasn’t too excited one way or the other. And I added on real quick, “I tell you one thing, though: you’re taking a bath first, Rick. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, to smell the way you do. You heard what I said: you smell. We could almost say S-T-I-N-K.”

“Well, look at the life I’ve been leading.”

“And you could dunk some of what you’re wearing. You wash those things out good, then hang them up over the tub to drip-dry on that shower-curtain rail.”

“OK, OK, OK.”

“Take one of my nighties to sleep in.”

I got it for him. “What’s the matter with skin?”

“I’m a nice girl. Put something on.”

But he’d hardly closed the bathroom door when I dropped him out of my mind. Because I thought: why must I wait? Wait till I have an apartment before calling my father? I could do it right now. I could do it here from this room. I don’t have to give him that name, the one Rick wrote on the register. I could give him my real name, his name of course, and then meet him downstairs in the lobby—be waiting for him there when he comes. Then I could make a fresh start, forget this thing with Rick and the roll in the hay he expects. It’s still early evening, exactly the right time, so I got the phone book from the night table, took it to the window, and looked, and sure enough he was in it, Edward Vernick, at an address on West Lombard Street. I called the desk and gave the woman the number, then sat on the bed, patted myself on the heart, and tried to make it calm down. But all it did was pound. After some rings a woman answered. I said, “Mr. Vernick, please.”

“Who’s calling?”

“...He doesn’t know me, Ma’am.”

“I have to say who it is.”

“...Tell him Mandy.”

“...Tell him—who?”

“He’ll know if you tell him. Mandy.”

All that got was a long silence, but then a man came on the line. “Edward Vernick talking. Who is this, please?”

“Mr. Vernick, it’s Mandy.”

“I’m sorry, the name means nothing to me.”

“I’m your daughter, Mr. Vernick. Mandy.”

It was so long before he answered that I thought the connection was broken and asked him if he was there. At last he said, “Yes, I’m here, but I don’t have any daughter and don’t know anyone named Mandy. You’re under a misapprehension, or someone’s been telling you falsehoods. But whatever the reason is, don’t call me again, and don’t come to this house. You’ll not be let in if you do. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“And don’t expect any money.”

“...Money? Is that what you said, money?”

“I said don’t ask it. You’ll not get it.”

“Well, who’s asking money of you? Who wants money of you? Who needs money of you? How did money get in it?”

“Whether you ask it or want it or need it, you’re not going to get it. Am I making myself clear?”

“You make yourself any clearer I can see right through to your backbone how much like a snake it looks.”

“Is there anything else?”