The Son of Someone Famous (12 page)

“I suppose you miss Adam,” he said.

“Adam who?” my mouth took over.

“Do you let Adam kiss you the way I kissed you?”

“Do you let Christine kiss you the way I kissed you?” There was something radically wrong with that answer, or unfeminine, as my mother would say . . . something not right; but I had to take things as they came, since protocol wasn't exactly dominating the ambiance.

“Christine and I have broken up,” he said. “Sit over here.”

“Why?” I said.

“I don't like you to be far away.”

“I mean why have you broken up?”

“Why aren't
you
with Adam?” he said. “You're supposed
to be going steady.”

“No comment,” I said, “under advice of my lawyers.”

“What do you know about him?” he said, taking a swig of the sherry. He winced. “This is really sweet!”

“Sweets for the sweet,” I said. “I know things about him that nobody knows.” But I had no intention of telling Ty that Adam had been kicked out of private school for cheating.

“Is he a joker?” Ty asked.

“He's very serious.”

“Christine says he's not a joker, either.”

“What does Christine Cutler know about Adam?” I said angrily.

“She just said he wasn't the type to send this postcard to her father,” Ty said. “Her father got this strange postcard in the mail, something about leaving someone behind him.”

“He must have left someone behind him,” I said, playing it very cool. “What would Adam send a postcard like that to Dr. Cutler for?”

“Search me,” Ty said, “but Dr. Cutler's got it in his head that Adam might have done it.”

“Ridic!” I said. “Ridic and prepost! Adam doesn't even know him.”

“I know, I know,” Ty said. “I guess he blames Adam because Adam is new in town.”

“
Blames
Adam? Didn't he like the postcard?”

“No, he didn't. He said some prankster sent it.”

“Adam isn't the type. Adam lived right next door to
Billie Kay Case at one time and he's very worldly.”

“He doesn't act it. He had some nerve saying he wouldn't go to Christine's party because it'd bore him.” Ty took another swig of sherry. “That really got to Christine. She couldn't get over it.”

“Christine Cutlers are a dime a dozen to someone like Adam,” I said.

“He's nothing,” said Ty.

“There is such a thing as Nothing Power,” I said.

Ty gave a snort. “Well, that's exactly what he's got: Nothing Power.”

“And Dr. Cutler is a big jackass if he thinks Adam would mail him any kind of postcard.”

“I don't know how he got that notion into his head, either,” said Ty. “I guess it's because Adam's new and Christine's been talking about him a lot. Also, Doc Cutler hates anyone with the name Blessing.”

I said, “Christine's been talking about him a lot?” He patted the cushion next to him. “Come on over and see me,” he said.

I said, “Christine Cutler has been talking about Adam Blessing a lot?”

“Enough to make me think she's had a lobotomy performed,” Ty snickered. “Her wires are crossed.”

“Is that what you fought about?” I said.

“Come over here and sit beside me, Brenda B.,” he said.

“Is that what you fought about?” I said.

“That's the last thing I'd fight about,” said Ty. “Do you think I'd take someone like him for serious competition?”

“If you insult him, you insult me,” I said. “We're going steady.”

Ty laughed aloud.

“We
are
!” I insisted. “We just had a slight lover's quarrel tonight.”

“If you won't come to me, I'll come to you,” Ty said. He stood up and came across the room.

I managed to say, “Is this the way you treat Christine?” before he sat down on the hassock by my feet and pulled me toward him.

“I don't care about Christine,” he said, while his lips brushed my cheek very lightly. “I care about you.”

I could feel my mouth fading into the background, leaving just me to handle things. Just me is a very weak entity, practically a nonentity.

“I care about you,” Ty said again.

“You do?” I whispered.

“I really do.”

“I'm going steady,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

“This isn't right,” I said.

“It's right,” he said. “What feels right is right.”

“Not always,” I said.

“Always,” he said.

“Brenda Belle?” my mother said. “Brenda Belle?”

I jumped to my feet, nearly knocking Ty over. “Mother?” I called back. I whispered to Ty, “The sherry!”

I yelled, “We're in here, Mother,” and I dashed across and turned on the overhead light. Ty grabbed his overcoat
and stuck the half-full tumbler of sherry in his pocket. Then he put the coat carefully over his arm.

“Why did you leave the party?” my mother said as she came into the living room. “Hello, Ty.”

“Hello, Mrs. Blossom,” he said, and then he said, “I'm afraid it's all my fault Brenda Belle left the party early. You see, I didn't like the way Adam was treating Brenda Belle.”

My Aunt Faith followed my mother into the living room.

“What do you mean?” said my mother.

“I mean you don't just ignore a lady, not on New Year's Eve.”

“Oh, that was Billie Kay's fault,” my Aunt Faith said. “She was causing a lot of excitement, and I think—”

But my mother didn't let my aunt finish. Ty had said the magic word: “Lady.”

“That was very considerate of you, Ty,” said my mother. “What happened to Christine tonight?”

“Christine didn't feel well,” said Ty. “Thank you for asking. I guess I'd better be getting along.”

As he picked up his cigarettes, he managed to wipe up the ring left by the tumbler of sherry. He slipped the piece of Kleenex up his shirt sleeve. My mother and my aunt didn't notice. They didn't notice anything strange about the slow way he moved across the room, either, being certain not to disturb the half-full tumbler in his overcoat pocket.

I followed him to the door.

He whispered at me, “What feels right is right.” Then in
a loud voice he said, “I'll see you, Brenda Belle! Tell Adam he'd better brush up his manners if he wants to keep you! Good night! Happy New Year!”

I felt like my legs had turned to rubber. I was definitely not immune to Tyrone Hardin. I felt as though I'd had a heart transplant, only a drum had been put inside to replace the heart.

As soon as I shut the door, my mother said, “Brenda Belle, what kind of a lady
are
you? You got yourself a Coke, but you didn't give him anything. Didn't he want anything?”

Before I could defend myself she said, “If a gentleman doesn't want anything when a lady offers him something, then a lady doesn't have anything, either.''

“I had such a nice time!” my Aunt Faith said.

“Fawning over that boisterous woman!” said my mother. “I was embarrassed for you, Faith.”

“Were you, Millie?” my aunt said. “What a pity you couldn't enjoy yourself.”

“I don't think much of Adam Blessing or that Christmas tree tied with beer cans,” said my mother. “I didn't expect anything from old Charlie, but Brenda Belle, you led me to believe his grandson was a nice boy.”

“He
is
a nice boy, Millie,” my aunt said.

“You heard what the Hardin boy said about him, Faith,” my mother said. “The
Hardin
boy is a nice boy. He's a gentleman. He called Brenda Belle a lady.”

“Does that automatically make me a lady?” I said.

“In his eyes, I would say so,” said my mother.

“And I would say so
what
!” said my aunt, yawning.

“Nighty-night, all,” I said. “Don't enjoy yourselves too much.”

“I don't intend to enjoy myself at all,” said my mother, marching upstairs behind me.

From the Journal of A.

After Brenda Belle left the party with Ty Hardin, I made a jackass of myself by drinking too much punch. I even threw up. My father is fond of saying that the second most disgusting thing is a throw-up drunk. (The first most disgusting thing, according to him, is a beggar. “If you ever find yourself on your knees, A.J.,” he is also fond of saying, “don't beg. Pray!”)

I don't think I was really jealous of Ty Hardin, or anything like that. I was just tired of trying to please people and not being able to, and trying to behave as someone thought I should, and discovering it didn't make any difference, anyway.

I suppose the reason Brenda Belle didn't wait for our first kiss at the stroke of midnight was that she began to see me and my grandfather through Ty Hardin's eyes. The beer cans on the tree and the jelly glasses probably got to her, and she just took off with him—the hell with Nothing Power and the fact we were supposed to be going steady. I was also still smarting from the very perfunctory way I'd been treated by Dr. Cutler when I'd called Christine. . . . I
guess I felt like a jackass and that's why I turned into one.

I fell asleep next to Janice atop some pillows on the floor of my grandfather's bedroom. Billie Kay had passed out on the living-room couch, which was where I was supposed to sleep.

When I woke up, I had such a bad headache I couldn't move right away. I heard my grandfather's side of a conversation with one of his sons (an uncle I had never met) who had made one of his rare telephone calls in honor of the new year. My grandfather's sons were not exactly the attentive types, and my grandfather's conversation with the only one who'd called during the holidays was subdued and short. (“I'm having a wonderful time,” he said, “so don't worry about me. I've got Annabell's boy here and we're getting to know each other, so don't worry about me at all.”)

After he hung up, he and Billie Kay began talking together in the living room . . . if you could call it talking
together.
My grandfather was talking about my mother, and Billie Kay was talking about my father and Billie Kay.

I stared up at the ceiling and listened for a while.

“He never told me anything about Annabell,” Billie Kay was saying. “What was she like? He never liked to discuss his past. I told him everything from apples to zucchini about my life, but Mr. Big Deal liked to live in the present.”

My grandfather said, “She was just another young girl, very young, small town. Her mother died giving her life, and I raised her by myself. When she was little she said she wanted to be a vet like me. I would have liked that. I wasn't
close to my boys. None of my boys wanted to follow in my footsteps.”

“I once wanted to be an architect,” said Billie Kay. “A builder of bridges. I became a burner of bridges behind me, instead.”

“About a year before it was time for her to go to college, I hired a young assistant. Cutler. He was a married student over at the university, and he needed the job.”

“Yes, I've burned plenty of bridges behind me in my time,” Billie Kay said, “and I've crossed plenty of bridges before I came to them.”

My grandfather said, “For a while she helped us out. Then she went to New York City, skipped the whole idea of going to college—just took off.”

“He never told me about his years in New York City,” Billie Kay said. (He never told me, either.)

My grandfather said, “She met him there and married him less than a month later. I only met him once. At her funeral.”

“For all I know about your past, I used to tell him, you're from Mars or Venus. More likely Venus.” Billie Kay laughed.

“He was all in pieces,” my grandfather said.

“I'm in pieces right now,” Billie Kay said. “I've got three thousand little men with hammers buried under my skin, and they're all beating on my bones. Two thousand nine hundred of them are located inside my head.”

“I'll make some more coffee,” my grandfather said.

I was trying to picture my father all in pieces. I'd seen
him drunk, and I'd seen him depressed, but he was always all in one piece and tough as a chuck roast. If he was ever down, his hands were always balled in fists, and he never stayed down very long.

I was also letting the new accord between Billie Kay and my grandfather register. They were actually carrying on a conversation of sorts; at least they weren't taking swipes at each other. I didn't know how that had evolved, but one of the last things I remembered about the party was that my grandfather began taking charge toward the end of the evening.