Personal Touch (11 page)

“We’ll live here,” said Tim at last. “Mom doesn’t want to go back to Albany, not when Dad’s there. Dad’s given her this house and he’ll pay for its upkeep and give her an allowance to support me. But that’s it, and that’s not really enough. She’ll have to get a job, and it terrifies her.”

“What can she do?” I said.

“Nothing. All she’s done her entire life is keep a house clean, prepare meals, and get suntanned.”

What a nothing life. “Hobbies?” I said. “Skills?”

“Zero.”

Tim was in the wrong lane for the turn he needed to make, and the traffic was too thick for him to change. He muttered under his breath and went around two blocks trying to get himself back where he needed to be.

My mother needed another clerk, although it was difficult to imagine Mrs. Lansberry clerking. The yacht club needed a hostess and she was certainly pretty and poised, but I couldn’t imagine her doing anything so servantlike. Actually she was the sort of beautiful bronze woman you can well believe does nothing all her life but wander through her perfect house and look at her perfect self in the mirror.

And yet I liked her. My heart hurt for her. Poor, poor, lady.

“She’s afraid to go for interviews,” said Tim. “She’s hoping a psychiatrist will give her strength, or something.”

A woman my mother’s age afraid of interviews. It made tears prick my eyes. My mother had not only always worked—she had always owned her own store. And I had gotten rejected a dozen times myself at sixteen years of age and it hadn’t scared me. But then, coming right after her husband rejecting her, it could be harder for her than it was for me.

“You don’t know what it did for Mom,” said Tim, “going to the Fourth with your parents. She kind of realized there are nice people out there, even in Sea’s Edge, and she really could function in the real world. She isn’t limited to lying on her towel getting tanned.”

I looked at Tim. He really loves her, I thought. He really is worried about her. Terribly. He just has to go about it differently than I would.

I liked him again.

I
EXPECTED THE NEXT
day to be spent in solemn quiet examination of the serious situation facing Tim and his mother. I figured we would sit over breakfast, his family and mine, out on their deck, watching the dedicated early morning sailors, shooing the sea gulls away from our food, trying to think of a job for Mrs. Lansberry.

It is best not to have very firm expectations where Tim is concerned.

He came racing into our kitchen slamming the door so hard he drove the knob another half-inch into the plaster. “Tim,” I said, “kindly remember you are no longer a scrawny little twelve-year-old.”

“I won the car, Sunny!” he yelled. He actually grabbed me by the shoulder and kissed me. “I bought nineteen lottery tickets for that car and I won it! They just delivered it! Come see it! It’s beautiful, Sunny!” What was beautiful was the way he picked me up and swung me around in his excitement. I tucked my feet in and didn’t even knock anything off the kitchen table. Tim dropped me and sped off to admire his new car. I ran after him.

It really happens, I thought. Boys actually pick girls up and swing them around, just like in the Westerns. Being slender is a bonus after all. He couldn’t have done that so easily if I weren’t as thin as a bookmark.

I began dreaming of long, slow drives that Tim and I would take along narrow, romantic country roads that would peter out into softly shaded, private parking spots. What a couple we’d make in that funny little car, dashing around Sea’s Edge!

I’d need a new wardrobe. A nifty little hat, just right for a girl off for a spin in a sports car. Or was it stretching a point to call a remodeled VW Beetle a sports car? Perhaps a scarf jauntily tied at my throat. A stickpin.

“Isn’t she terrific?” said Tim in a reverent voice.

Well, it was fine for a car. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “terrific” and I certainly wouldn’t call it “she.”

“Isn’t she beautiful?” whispered Tim, stroking the car. “To think that I won her.”

I began to wonder if Tim had kissed me in the kitchen only because even Tim would feel a bit odd kissing a car.

“She’s perfect,” sighed Tim, in the voice of one for whom life has reached a peak of joy never to be surpassed. Now if Tim could rave about me that way, I could agree with his choice of adjectives. But a car?

“I’m going for a test drive,” said Tim.

“Don’t be gone too long,” said his mother pleadingly.

I looked at Mrs. Lansberry. She wasn’t jumpy anymore. The psychiatrist really had done her some good. She looked tired and downcast, but firmer, somehow. Capable. I had told my parents about it and they had both gone over to talk to her and say they’d help. Do the things like turn off the outside faucets for the winter, find someone to clean the furnace (she was lucky to have a winterized house). That sort of thing. I felt sort of terrible for telling my parents and I was afraid Mrs. Lansberry wouldn’t like it, but she seemed very glad—as if I had gotten her over a hump she couldn’t have managed alone. She talked for hours to my mother and they pointedly stopped talking when I came in. So much for woman to woman talk! I was still a little girl after all. Mrs. Lansberry must have been really hard up for company when she originally asked me to go to New Haven with her.

My father took Mrs. Lansberry down to the school offices to interview for a kindergarten aide position that was opening up in the fall. My mother went to work. I fed the sea gulls. The hours passed.

“Tim isn’t back yet?” said Mrs. Lansberry, horrified. “But I’ve had three interviews already.”

“Three?” I said.

“Kindergarten aide,” she ticked off her fingers. “Yacht club hostess. Waitress at the Rusted Rudder.”

“I don’t see you as a waitress.”

“Neither do I. But I’m really excited about the kindergarten thing. I was Timmie’s class mother that year, you know, Sunny. I worked every Monday helping on consonant drill.” She told me a long story about a little girl named Amy who had difficulty with her final consonants and how after thirty consecutive Mondays, Mrs. Lansberry conquered this terrible problem.

Still Tim did not come home.

“Should we call the police?” said Mrs. Lansberry. “He’s been gone for so long.”

“Nonsense,” said my father. “Tim’s very reliable. He’ll call if anything’s happened to him, and he’s much too good a driver for anything to have happened. Here. Come have supper with us.”

I couldn’t decide if he was saying all that to bolster Mrs. Lansberry or if he really believed it. I had a feeling it was both, and I also thought that if Tim were my father’s son, he’d be in a bunch of trouble for staying out so long and worrying his mother at a time when she had enough to worry about.

“Being reliable is a recent development,” said Mrs. Lansberry. “When Tim first got his driver’s license last year, I couldn’t even send him out to get a loaf of bread for me. Not unless I didn’t need the bread till the following day.”

My father snorted with laughter. “In that case, there’s nothing unusual in Tim’s being gone for hours at a time and you should stop worrying.”

But it wasn’t until we were having coffee and dessert that Tim drove in. He’d been gone ten hours. Mrs. Lansberry rushed out to see him and I went along. My father muttered to my mother, “What that kid needs is—”

“Now, dear,” said my mother. “No violence, please.”

“Where have you been?” cried Mrs. Lansberry.

Tim looked mildly surprised. “Driving, Mom,” he said.

“I
know
that, Timothy. But for so long? Where did you go?”

“Everywhere,” said Tim. “You name it. I drove there today. Mom, it’s a super little car. I love it.”

I was relieved to see that at least the ten hours of exposure to his car had changed his pronouns. I hate a car named “she.”

“Though I need to adjust the fuel injection system,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll have to—”

But my mother heard him through the fence. “Tomorrow, young man,” she said, “you’re working for me.”

“Oh,” said Tim. He turned back and looked down at his squashy little car and said sadly again, “Oh.” He even pleaded with her to be excused from work for a day, but my mother is not known for mercy where Chair Fair is involved. Anyway, we were all irritated at him for being gone so long and he hadn’t so much as apologized.

Tim shrugged. Just another obstacle in the great car race of life. “I’ll work on you after work,” he told his car lovingly. The moonlight reflected off the metallic finish and the chrome bumpers that looked like shortened Model-T bumpers.

“Tim,” said his mother fretfully, “how much is it going to cost to keep this car? We have to think of that now. Insurance. Gas. All that kind of thing.” You could see the worry welling up in her, see her aching for a past when somebody else worried about money.

“The car was free, Mom,” said Tim gently. “And it’s economical on gas, believe me. I can pay the insurance easily from what I’m earning. Try not to worry so much. Everything is going to work out, okay?” He put an arm around her and kissed her and I thought they were beautiful together. If he had been a little mean going off for so long, well, maybe it had been good for Mrs. Lansberry, too—having to face her interviews alone, the way other adults did.

I felt tears pricking my eyes. I had this funny deep hope that Tim would understand her enough to be nice all the time and I had an even deeper hope that she would not need him quite so much, because it wouldn’t do either of them much good.

Tim broke out of the hug pretty fast and got back to his old self, muttering something about needing metric wrenches and a rolling dolly so he could slide under the car to work.

“You have all those things in Albany,” said his mother.

“Yeah. Too bad to buy new ones, huh?” he said. He brightened. “I know. I could just drive to Albany tomorrow and pick them up. That’ll really be a good mileage test.”

“You’re working tomorrow,” said his mother firmly. “Buy new ones.”

Tim had one hand on the fender of the car and one on his mother’s shoulder. When it came to Tim’s affections, Sunny was definitely not at the head of the line.

“Well, boys are like that,” said my father.

I hate generalities. I especially hate generalities about boys versus girls. “How do you know?” I demanded irritably. “You’ve taught elementary school.
Little
boys. Tim is practically an adult. Next year he’ll be able to vote.”

My father sighed. “I’ve been principal of that elementary school for nine years,” he said, “and taught sixth grade eleven years before that. I’ve seen an awful lot of those little boys grow up to be voters, and Sunny, sweetheart, about half of them worshipped cars. The only thing that surprises me about the way Tim is treating that car is that he’s not using a Q-tip to clean the treads of the tires.”

We sat on our stoop watching Tim washing his remodeled VW Beetle. He was toweling it dry with what I knew to be one of his mother’s white monogrammed towels. The kind she normally folded in perfect thirds and forbade children to use. Either the car ranked as high as an adult guest, or Mrs. Lansberry hated the monogram enough now that she was willing to have it wipe up a little soap scum.

“As far as I’m concerned,” I told my father, “a car is nothing but seats on wheels.”

“You’re a girl,” he said, undeniably.

That sort of argument gets to me. My father likes to explain every difference between me and Tim by saying I am a girl and Tim is a boy. It doesn’t seem to me that can be the explanation for
everything.

“How
can
Tim afford the car?” I said, thinking about Mrs. Lansberry’s worries. “With Mr. Lansberry out of the picture and all.”

My father shook his head. “Sunny, I cannot believe Mr. Lansberry won’t go on supporting them. For a few years at least, I think guilt will make him write the checks. After that I don’t know. But at this point, Tim is definitely earning enough to pay for the car. And any good lawyer—and I’ve gotten Mrs. Lansberry an appointment with a very good one—will certainly see that she gets a decent support payment. Stop worrying about it.”

It was impossible not to worry, with Mrs. Lansberry doing her daily hand-wringing routine and Tim seemingly unaware. I knew that Tim really was concerned, but it didn’t show on him. Right now he was squatting in front of the little car, happily scouring the headlights. He looked like a Russian dancer about to thrust out his legs and do some wild flinging dance. I wished he would. Anything besides scrub his car.

“You went grocery shopping with Mrs. Lansberry, didn’t you?” said my father.

“Yes. She was standing there, sort of hovering over Tim, and saying how much she would like company on some errands, and Tim said would she mind moving over a little bit because he had to get the salt off the finish or the car would rust. Poor Mrs. Lansberry was so demoralized I had to go with her or lie awake tonight knowing what a heel I am.”

We watched Tim.

“How come Tim doesn’t feel like a heel?” I said.

“Judge not, Sun,” said my father. “Tim’s around his mother all day and all night. I have a feeling he does a lot of propping up when we’re not there to see it.” He shook his head. “Your mother and I are already getting tired of helping her along with this separation. I can just imagine how tiring it is for Tim. And don’t forget, there are two sides to every marriage breakup. Tim may have some feelings for his father that make it a little difficult to comfort his mother around the clock. You never know.”

I kept forgetting about Tim being the son of Mr. Lansberry. I didn’t like the man; poor Mrs. Lansberry no longer liked him much; and I had overlooked the possibility that Tim might like his father immensely and wish none of this were happening. I tried to imagine liking Mr. Lansberry immensely, but it was beyond me.

Tim stopped polishing and sauntered out from behind his car. He was grinning at me. My heart flopped over. Tim had quite an ability to make me forget his flaws (which I might well be making up) and concentrate on his assets. Which were many and obvious!

“Want to drive it?” said Tim, waving at his treasure.