The Man Without a Face (12 page)

“I don’t want you to go to St. Matthew’s. I don’t want you to go to boarding school at all. You know what I think of them. I’m not sure whether I’ll let you go even if you pass the exam.”

It was funny. A couple of minutes ago I didn’t think I ever wanted to see McLeod again and going up there to study seemed about as desirable as going to jail. The trouble with Mother was she didn’t know when the odds were on her side. “I’m not going back to school in New York. If you don’t let me go to St. Matthew’s, then I’ll dropout.”

She looked frightened. “You can’t—you can’t drop out until you’re sixteen.”

“Then I’ll leave home, and you can’t stop me. Do you know how many kids my age are walking around the country? I’ll go where you won’t find me and don’t think I don’t have the contacts, because I do, any kid I know does.”

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Which was sheer bull, but Mother didn’t know that. And given the way things are today, she couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t get away with it.

At that moment the screen door opened and in walked Barry.

“Hi,” he said. Then he did something that absolutely knocked me out. He went over and kissed Mother, right on the mouth, like he had every right to. Mother turned pink and her eyes looked bigger and browner than ever. It made me furious.

“Help yourself,” I said nastily.

He turned around. Barry could lose twenty pounds, but I’ll say this for him, he doesn’t have a paunch and it’s not flab. Square face, bluish eyes, light hair, what there is of it—Mr. Average, almost as pink as Mother, which didn’t suit him the way it did her.

“Your mother has agreed to marry me, Chuck. I came by to tell you. I guess that was a tactless way of doing it.” He sounded apologetic, which turned me off. All I could think was that McLeod, if I had handed him lip like that, would have said something icily sarcastic that would have cut me down to size. Thinking about McLeod didn’t make me feel any better, either, especially when I remembered that I had given him the bridegroom’s role. For a second I tried to imagine him kissing Mother. I couldn’t. It didn’t work. I didn’t know why it didn’t, but it didn’t.

“Congratulations,” I said. “That’s just what I need, another stepfather.”

Barry looked at me, eyeball to eyeball. “Yes, Charles. That’s what I think you need.”

“Chuck!” Mother said. “Please be nice!”

I was about to say something else nasty when I remem

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bered what we were talking about when Barry walked in.

“All right. Best wishes and all that. But I’m not going back to that school in New York.”

“Is that St. Matthew’s you want to go to?” Barry asked, going over to the stove and pouring himself some coffee. “Yeah.”

“It’s not a bad school.”

I'd been all braced for a fight and was therefore surprised. “I thought it was supposed to be terrible,” Mother said. Barry took a swallow or two of coffee. “It went through a bad patch. It’s okay now. And they’ve got a new headmaster who’s beefing up the curriculum—Evans, I think his name is.”

“That’s the guy that wrote to me.”

Gloria walked in. The two horizontal strips of knitted nothing she had on would not have filled a teacup. Other than that she looked like a free-floating thunderstorm.

“Aren’t you afraid you’re going to feel constricted in all those clothes?” Barry said.

“Gloria, go up and put on a shirt or something,” Mother said. “You’re practically naked.”

“So what? It’s my house.” Gloria put some water in the kettle and put it on the stove. Then she got a bowl and poured herself some cereal.

“Please, Gloria.”

“After I’ve had breakfast. Maybe.”

Mother looked unhappy.

“Heard the news?” I said, curious as to whether that was behind her scowl. “Mother’s going to marry Barry.”

“I heard it yesterday.”

“Don’t overdo the delight,” Barry said amiably, “it might go to my head.”

Gloria went on eating. Barry walked over and stood be

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side her. “Look, I’d like us to be friends. It makes it a lot easier for me, and, more important, for your mother. She’d like a little moral support.”

“It’s not as though it were the first time.”

“In view of you and Chuck and Meg, that’s on the whole rather a good thing; don’t you think?”

Gloria didn’t look at him. She swallowed another mouthful of cereal. “You’ve got Meg.” That’s our Gloria—if she’s not first, she won’t play.

“Yes, thank heaven,” Barry said. “And here she is. Just like the Marines.”

I don’t know whether Meg had heard all that or not. She went over to Mother and gave her a smack on the cheek. Then she went to Barry. She not only gave him a smack. She put her arms around him. He bent and gave her a bear hug and lifted her off the floor.

“You’ll get a hernia,” Gloria said.

Mother looked at her quickly. “Gloria—that’s mean!” Barry put Meg down. “It would be well worth it. We’ll go on a diet together after the wedding, Meg.”

What I wanted to do was go back up to bed and sleep off this cottony feeling in my head. I don’t mean my head hurt. But I felt funny, sort of unfocused. The house was obviously no place to sack out in today. Besides—more than ever I wanted to go to St. Matthew’s now. And, for once, it looked like I might have some support.

I plunked my cereal bowl and the plate in the sink and headed for the door.

“Chuck, where are you going?”

“To study.”

“Where—where do you study?”

There was a short silence, then I had an inspiration. “Up

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above the cove.” The beauty about that was that it was true. McLeod’s cliff was above the cove—by a couple of hundred feet. I just didn’t add that it was also several miles further along the coastline.

“Well where do you keep your books?”

“There’s an abandoned shack there.” Also true. I could even shove a couple of old texts there for any snoop.

Barry was watching me. So was Gloria. I could feel my face beginning to get hot.

“S’long,” I muttered, and started to leave.

“By the way, Chuck,” Gloria said, getting up and pouring hot water into the drip pot, “that mangy animal of yours nearly bit Percy yesterday. You know if he ever bites anybody the we’ll have to put him away.”

“And what was Percy doing to him?” I said angrily. “Just trying to take a woodchuck away from him—like any humane person.”

“Moxie has to hunt. Nobody feeds him around here. You have no right to interfere and you can tell your scrofulous boyfriend to keep his filthy hands away from him, or I’ll—”

“You’ll do what—lick him? He’s on every team in his college. He’d make mincemeat of you, Chuck.”

I was still boiling with fury when Barry said, “No one’s going to hurt Moxie, Chuck. So keep your shirt on. She just said that to irritate you. When will you learn?”

Meg had got up and come to the door. “Come on, Chuck. Let’s go.”

As we walked down towards the road I finally said, “All right. She laid the booby trap and I walked into it. But why does she do it?”

“Does it matter?” Meg said. “Besides. You know the answer. She has to be number one, like in the commercial. ”

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“But why me?”

“Because you’re handy. Because you let her get to you. Because she’s jealous of you.”

“Jealous of what, for the love of Mike? You mean from when we were babies?”

“Maybe. I wasn’t around. You’re good-looking and people like you. Gloria’s good-looking, too, but people don’t like her. She tries hard to make them, but after a while they ail go away. You’re the opposite. People would like to get closer to you but you won’t let them. Were you smoking pot yesterday?”

The abrupt switch threw me off. “Is that any business of yours? I suppose now you’re going to tell Barry.” That was dirty and I knew it and was ashamed right away. But I felt so all-around lousy that I had to make somebody else miserable, too.

Meg stopped dead in the road. “No, I won’t tell Barry, though sometimes I think I ought to. If you’re going to go and be a drug addict I don’t think I’m doing you any good by not telling anybody. But I don’t care as much as I used to, because you’re not my friend any more. I guess you must be McLeod’s friend. But I don’t see why you can’t be both. But you needn’t bother now because I don’t care any more.”

“Megsy!”

“Let me go. I’m glad Barry is going to marry Mother. You just think I’m a nuisance now, but he likes me.” She pulled her arm away and shot across the road towards the beach.

Joey once had his horoscope read and was really turned on because the swami or fortune-teller said Joey was going to have a great political career, except maybe he was also going to jail. But, as Joey said, today one often goes with

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the other, and maybe he should take up law as a preparation for politics.

I said law might also be useful if he got put in jail, and he agreed.

But what I’m getting at is I’d always looked on the whole horoscope scene as bull, but I was beginning to wonder if my moon or planet or whatever was in some undesirable place these past couple of days, because nothing was coming out right.

I was still sore at McLeod and I was thinking about this when I suddenly remembered the other thing that was bothering me: I had ratted on him.

I stopped walking. I had told Pete about McLeod’s drunk driving and killing a kid. I now wished to God I hadn’t. When I thought of what they could do with that—and how inevitably that would get the news to Mother about what I was doing all day—sweat broke out all over me. I’d done it because I was mad and, I suppose—I didn’t like to think about this—to buy my way back into the good graces of Pete and the others. Talk about a fink!

I started walking again. The rest of the walk I tried to convince myself that in view of the way he’d acted towards me, I was justified. It didn’t work too well. I still felt like a ratfink. If the whole family situation hadn’t got worse instead of better, what with Barry joining the troops and adding one more body to our apartment, I might have turned back. But it had, so I went on.

CHAPTER 8

When I walked into the library McLeod was standing by the fireplace staring down into what were probably last

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night’s ashes. It sounds loony, but up here, even in early August, fires feel pretty good at night.

He looked up.

“Sorry to be late,” I muttered, and slid into my seat at the table.

“I want to talk to you,” McLeod said abruptly. For one sickening minute I wondered if he had already heard about my telling on him.

“Yes?” And added, without much conviction, “Sir.” But it wasn’t what I was afraid of. It was somehow worse. Typically, he went straight to the point. “I’m sorry about— about what happened yesterday. I told you once that I had lived alone too long. I accused you of always running away. Well, that’s what I did. Only instead of running I built a wall. Being a writer made it easy; easy to be up here earning a living, easy to be alone and keep clear of people.” Stubborn pride made me say, “It doesn’t matter.”

He looked at me then. “Doesn’t it, Charles? Then why did you leave so abruptly?”

I had no answer to give. Or rather, I didn’t want to answer, so we didn’t say anything for a bit.

“Well?”

Nothing.

“If you can make me believe that I didn’t make you angry, or hurt you, then I’ll stop.”

It was a hand held out, but I wouldn’t let myself take it. How could I after ratting on him?

“Why can’t we just forget it?”

“Is that what you want?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Then let’s get back to Vergil.”

But it wasn’t. As we crawled through the whole dreary Carthage bit, what I had told Pete was there like a ghost,

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getting larger and larger. Words that I knew perfectly well I couldn’t remember. Whole parts that I knew we had gone through might as well have been new. Finally McLeod put down his book.

“What’s the matter with you? You act as though you’ve never seen this. We went over it a few days ago.”

That strange unfocused feeling was back. Pot didn’t affect any of the other kids this way—at least not that I knew of. But then I remembered hearing in school or reading in one of those dumb pamphlets they’re always giving out that some people can’t take it, like some people can’t drink. This made me think about my father. Why, I don’t know. Then I remembered the dream I had at the cove.

“Charles!”

McLeod’s voice cracked like a whip. Suddenly he was standing over me. “What did you do yesterday?” he asked. “After you left here?”

Mother had asked that, but it wasn’t the same. Besides, I had left her and come here. Now there was no more place to go to, and if there had been I wasn’t at all sure I could get it all together and go there, or that I wanted to. .

“I went to the cove where my gang hangs out.”

“And?”

“Smoked some grass.” So now I had ratted on Pete and the others. But it didn’t feel like ratting the way it had about telling on McLeod. I waited for him to wade in.

But he didn’t. Not right away, anyway. Then he said wearily, “Oh, my God,” and went and stood by the window.

“If your generation drinks, what’s wrong with mine smoking grass? When you were in school didn’t you ever sneak beer?”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s all the flak about?”

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“How do you feel?”

“Fine. What’s that got to do with it?”

“Because you’re not concentrating very well—as you know.”

“So? Did you ever have hangovers?”

“I thought marijuana wasn’t supposed to give those.” “I’m not hung over. Look, Me—Mr. McLeod. What I do when I’m not here is my own business.”

The moment I said that I knew it was a mistake. This was the perfect opening for him to remind me that it was my idea being here, not his. I held my breath.