Cool's Ridge Page 6

  Now he was bawling down the halls in a rich and fruity baritone, “Bobby? Bobby Lee, you li’l ole Southern rascal, where are you? Old John’s a shovin’ off, son.” He opened and closed doors, came back, and said, “Well dammit anyhow. He was here just a while ago. He said he was going to take a shower.”

  “Maybe he’s still in the bathroom.”

  John made a face and looked at his watch. “Couldn’t be, unless he fell asleep under the shower.”

  “Well go look, but if he’s not there leave him a note. I want to start back before the afternoon rush.”

  “Bobby. Bobby Lee,” John called out. “Where are you, you old son-of-a-gun?” John went back through the rooms giving every door a solid thump. “Bob-a-ree-bob, Boba-lu, Bob-ba-ba-ba-Bob! Bob-o-link, Baaa, Baa, Baa!”

  And then he yelled, but the sound he made was piercing, a cry that went “ahhoooahh,” like someone, a mountain climber, lost and terrified at the base of a mountain crevasse. I had taken his spot on the cot and I sat there a moment, puzzled and dreamy, before I got up and started running. Then, running through the rooms, I foresaw it all. Moments ahead of time I saw exactly what I saw later, the rivulet of blood on the black and white tile floor that led from the mirrored sink to the shower stall, my brother’s rigid back with the shoulders blades as stiff as sprouted wings, the water still falling, the steam still rising in mild hallucinatory puffs.

  I ran to my brother and wedged myself in front of him. He groaned and leaned against the edge of the shower stall. I was panting with fright, by this time, and I fixed my eyes first on the shower floor with its sloping tiles and concave stainless steel drain where the water and blood (mixed) gently eddied and fell, and then on the boy’s thighs (he had fallen upon his knees) which were covered with slicked golden hair, and his poor now forever harmless genitals which looked so shrunken, so small. He had fallen on his knees and then toppled over upon his side, but was propped in a corner of the stall so that he was still more or less upright; his hands still clasped the red gash at his throat and his mouth was open, the lips already bluish, and his eyes were open too, that is, half-open, the violet lids somewhat sunken, and the whites were a bluish color as if all that water running down had washed the color out of his irises, diluting them.

  “Oh God, oh God,” John whispered. “Bobby, you jackass.” He bent forward and twisted the shower’s knobs off. He knelt and gently took one of the boy’s hands from his throat and felt for a pulse and at that moment I could see the awful gape quite clearly. The washed out blue eyes watched us indifferently.

  John stood up. The fringes of his cut-off jeans were wet. “See if you can get a pulse,” he said. I took the boy’s hand. It was still warm, but with an inert heaviness. I was struck by the texture of this hand that was heavy and solid and utterly dense, like a piece of clay.

  “There’s no pulse,” I said. “Where’s the phone? We’ll call a proctor. They’ll get the police.”

  “Never mind,” John said calmly. “He’s dead.”

  “John? Just tell me where the phone is, okay?”

  “He’s dead, Liz. Can’t you see that?”

  “Let’s get out of here, John. Now. Give me your hand. Do you have any idea—any idea at all why he did this?”

  John said, “I really don’t know. I have no idea. You remember how Bobby was. He was the most lovable person. He was the nicest guy. You know, his father and his grandfather and great-grandfather, they were all doctors, they had all practiced in this little Alabama town, and I guess Bobby thought he should be a doctor, too. But you see, he knew he couldn’t get in. To medical school. You see, as a matter of fact, Bobby just wasn’t good at a lot of the subjects he needed. Like chemistry. You need to have chemistry. In fact, Bobby wasn’t much of a scholar. Great football player. Good athlete. Hell of a nice guy. But we used to kid about it, there was not one single subject that Bobby Lee was good at.”

  All the time he’d been babbling, I had him by the arm and was steering him down the hall back to his room. I led him through the open door and to the cot. I said, “Sit down.” I said it firmly, the way one talks to a young child or a bad dog. “Sit down here, I’ll get help. Don’t move.”

  I pushed him and he sat, but bolt upright, with his hands on his knees. I ran down the stairs. I had no idea where to find a telephone or a proctor. The young man with the curling auburn hair was still sitting there on the patchy grass, but now he was reading a paperback book.

  I said, “Oh listen, please, something terrible has happened. There’s been an accident. Can you find a proctor? We need the police. There’s a boy up there, I think he’s dead.”

  That was how I met Skip Loomis. He’d come to Princeton to pick up a friend and drive him home, but there’d been a mix-up—the friend was taking a last exam.

  It was Skip, then, who did everything. He got the proctors, he called the police, and after the long hours of sitting around while the police talked to John and the Dean talked to John, and other people in the administration talked to John, Skip said to me, “Come on. It’s over. I’ll drive you both home.”

  “Oh I couldn’t let you do that,” I said. “You’ve spent too much time already.”

  “Did you call home yet?”

  “No.”

  “Well, do it, it’s late, they’ll be worried. Listen. It’s all right. I’ll drive you home in your car and then I’ll take the bus into New York and catch a bus back out here.”

  “But I can’t ask you to do that!”

  “You’re not asking, I’m offering. No, I’m not offering even, I’m telling you. Get in the car. John, my friend, hop in.” Skip wanly smiled. I liked his mouth. It was big and loose-looking, and I liked his teeth. They were big and a little crooked and slightly yellow, not white, perfect, boring, glamorous teeth. I liked his coloring, too, the long mop of russet curls that fell down a rather wide neck and onto his strong shoulders. He had a slightly top-heavy look. I guessed that he was a wrestler.

  I said, “Are you a wrestler?”

  “Not anymore,” he said. “Come on, John,” he said to my brother, who was sitting on the step of the entry.

  We got into the station wagon, the three of us squeezed into the front seat. I sat in the middle, John sat wedged against the door, looking straight ahead out of the windshield. He was pale and expressionless.

  John said nothing at all on the drive home. That night, as we all finally went up to bed (Skip had agreed to stay overnight), John turned to me on the stairs. “You know, Liz,” he said, “he wasn’t dead.”

  I looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Bobby wasn’t dead.”

  “John, that is nonsense. You felt his pulse, I felt it. There was no pulse. He was dead.”

  “That doesn’t mean he was dead.”

  “Yes it does, John. Bobby was dead. Are you thinking we could have saved him and didn’t? We couldn’t. We could not have saved him. It was too late.”

  “Maybe we just didn’t do the right things.”

  “John, there was no life in him. He was not alive. We did not just allow him to die. I’m sorry, John. I am so sorry.” I put my hand over his on the bannister. John looked at me peculiarly and then smiled, turned away and went up the stairs.

  “What’s the matter?” my mother asked, coming into the hall. Whenever she was worried she’d get cold, and this evening she’d put on the nearest available piece of clothing, which happened to be my father’s suit jacket. This was the first time I’d noticed that my mother had aged. Standing there in the outsize glen-plaid coat she looked faded and shrunken.

  “It’s John,” I said. “He’s sort of wacky.”

  “Horrible,” my mother said, raising her blue eyes to look at me. “That sweet boy. A stupid waste. Was he flunking out?”

  “No. John says his grades weren’t great. Not great enough for medical school.”

  “Oh I believe that. Nowadays, they’re letting in all the wrong people.”

  This was one of my
mother’s favorite themes, how my father was the last of a dying breed, The Dedicated Physician; that these new young doctors were all alike: money-grubbers. “And what’s the good,” she would ask, “of all that technical know-how, if you can’t talk to people and you can’t listen? None of these people know how to listen. All they can hear is the clink of coins or the morning rustle of The Wall Street Journal. When I was a little girl, doctors did not read The Wall Street Journal.”

  At this, my father’s feet would start doing a little tap dance all by themselves, and he’d rattle his own newspaper, which was certainly not The Wall Street Journal.

  “Cassie,” he’d say, “discretion goeth before a flop on the face.”

  “I am in the very bosom of my family and do not expect to be publicly quoted.”

  “Are you kidding? With your son John the Magpie sitting three feet away?”

  “Did someone mention my name?” John would stand and take a bow.

  That night, I showed Skip Loomis up to our guest room. It was a pretty room, all decorated in blue and white, only it was a little dusty—we never had guests. “Hmm,” I said, trailing a fingertip across the mahogany bureau and creating a definite furrow, “sorry about that. I hope you don’t choke to death.”

  He gave a short laugh, like a grunt. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Oh God,” I said. “Did I sat that? I guess I did. I’m really sorry. Talk about obsessing. I just wanted to tell you how great you were. Thank you for all your help.”

  “You were pretty cool-headed yourself. Anyway, I didn’t do anything. I’m sorry this happened. Poor John.”

  “They were good friends. Well. Let’s see. Towels are in there and if there’s anything else you need …”

  “Thanks. Looks like I’m set.”

  “Well. Good night.”

  “‘night.”

  I slept late the next morning, and when I came downstairs he was gone. My mother, all dressed up in a blue linen suit and frilly white blouse, was sipping her coffee, leaning all the way over the table so she wouldn’t drip on her skirt. Still, I thought looking at her that her hair was wrong. It needed a cut and instead, just limply hung so it didn’t go with the crisp suit. The thing about my mother was this—either her clothes were right and her hair was wrong or she’d get her hair done and the clothes would be appalling. I used to complain about this when I was younger, in one of my many adolescent efforts to patch up the poor old parents, but sometime later I figured out that she must have wanted it that way. I think that the idea of being totally impeccable scared her. It would have seemed too much like giving up her democratic commitments.

  “Nice suit,” I said, sitting down at the breakfast table.

  “Thank you,” she said. “He left.”

  “What?”

  “He just left. He’s a nice boy.”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling faint and discouraged.

  “But don’t get your hopes up,” she said. She extended her chin out over her plate and bit into a slice of whole wheat toast.

  I found it infuriating that she had taken aim and fired before my thought had even been fully formed.

  “We’re engaged,” I said.

  “What?” she said.

  “We’re engaged,” I said. “So there.”

  “Humph. It’s a bad start.”

  I stood up and took my orange juice with me into the kitchen.

  A moment later she came clicking in. “Have you seen my car keys?”

  “No.”

  “He won’t call.”

  “Mom!”

  “Darling, he won’t, I can tell. He’s too easygoing. With that type you have to do all the work.”

  “You sure know a heck of a lot.”

  “I may be wrong.”

  “Really!”

  “Anyhow, if you like him very much you might just have to plan a weekend in D.C. I’d make it soon, too. I’ll bet his attention span is all of five minutes.”

  “You think he’s stupid?”

  “No. I think he gets chased. Don’t you know who his father is?”

  “You already found out who his father is? Wow, fast work.”

  “His father is George Loomis, head of Loomis and Loomis, Inc. It’s a giant construction firm much in demand for federal projects in our nation’s capital.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I read the papers. The Loomises are always in the news, as in: ‘Last night at a party for four hundred at the stately residence of George and Amelia Loomis …’”

  “Okay, I get it. He’s rich so you don’t like him.”

  “No,” she said thoughtfully. “No, I like him. He’s very attractive. However, if you say something to him, back comes your own statement, charmingly reworded, which, frankly, I find a trifle spooky—it’s like talking to a mirror. I mean, what does he really think? Who knows?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to tell you.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Well, that’s not a crime. I don’t know why you think someone would want to sit at breakfast with you and have intellectual arguments.”

  “You’re right, you’re right. I probably scared him. Do you think I scared him?”

  “Yes. Or maybe he’s not a morning person. Or maybe he was just being really polite.”

  “And then I thought, ‘He’s not a go-getter.’”

  I laughed.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “You don’t like go-getters.”

  “That’s true. Oops! Look at the time, I’ve got to run. Why here are my keys, right in my purse. Lizzie, would you do me a favor today? Would you talk to John?”

  “I always talk to John.”

  “I know you do, you’re a wonderful sister.” She patted me on the head, and I pulled away. I was still mad at her for her gratuitous remarks. The only boyfriend of mine she had ever liked had an IQ of 180 and allergies. He had white hair and pink eyes and a perpetually stuffy nose. She went out the kitchen door and I finished my orange juice. When John came downstairs he seemed fine. I said, “How are you?” He said, “Do me a favor will you? Let’s not discuss it.”

  7.

  Saturday night, May’s turn to cook. She was a shy cook, anxious to please, carefully bringing steaming dishes out to the trestle table between potholders. When someone complimented her she flushed and stood goofily smiling in the doorway, her brown eyes lit up with pleasure. She had cooked sukiyaki, with thin strips of stir-fried London broil, hunks of spinach, brown mushrooms, bean sprouts.

  “Well folks,” I said. “Skip thinks I should offer my services to The Sussex Monitor.”

  “Will you type?” Wayne asked. He sat at table attentively, with a fork streaming bean sprouts held in mid-air, as if for our inspection.

  “Haven’t we had this conversation?” I said. “It seems familiar.”

  “Ask the editor,” Shauna said.

  “Len’s the editor,” Wayne said. “Speak up Leonard! Do you want her or not?”

  Leonard looked up, his black brows bristled and collided. “What?” he said.

  “Aw geez, Wayne,” Sal Victoria said. “Didn’t nobody ever teach you about personal questions?”

  I said, “It’s the painting I thought I’d help with. Aren’t you painting the new office next week? Why did I think Wayne was the editor?”

  “Because he’s bossy,” May said.

  “You see,” Wayne said, beaming at me, “I’m just taking a summer off from the more or less normal course of events in my life.”

  “Which is?” I said. There was a silence.

  “He’s a shrink,” Skip said, at last.

  “A psychiatrist,” Shauna said, in case I’d never heard the term before.

  “I see,” I said. “Now I get it. That’s why you don’t read women novelists. It’s your Freudian training.”

  Wayne solemnly chewed, swallowed, and then sighted down the fork’s tines. Bingo, I thought. There goes Virginia, Jane, Emily, that whole crowd. “No,” he said
, “they just don’t interest me.”

  Leonard said, “You overestimate him, Liz. The last novel of any kind that Wayne read was Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates.”

  “Sounds good,” Sal Victoria said. “Who wrote it, Bobby Orr?”

  “Mary Mapes Dodge,” I said. “A woman.”

  “You people are trying to make me feel bad,” Wayne said.

  “You know, Wayne”—I wouldn’t let go. I was like a terrier that had hold of a pant leg—“it’s really ironic. Hitler burned Freud’s books but used his theories. ‘Vimin should stay home and haff kids.’”

  “Dear Liz,” Wayne said. “Skip, she’s an intellectual.”

  “Wayne, dear,” I said. “Do you agree or disagree?”

  “What is it you’re mad at, Lizzy?” Wayne said soothingly.

  “Oh no, not that old stuff again. Wayne, dear. I’m not mad, or mad.”

  “Not much,” Skip said humorously, to his plate.

  “Traitor,” I said, baring my teeth at him across the table.

  “Whatever is the problem?” Alice asked, raising her head and frowning. She sat across the table from me on Skip’s left.

  I heard Leonard’s laugh. “The problem,” Leonard said to her, “is that Wayne told Liz he never reads lady novelists.”

  A series of catcalls came from the women. Shauna stuck her forefinger in Wayne’s face and waggled it. “True?” she asked. “Is it true? For shame! You expect us to recommend patients? Ha!”

  “All right,” Wayne said, “okay. I’ll tell you what. Peace. I’ll read a lady novelist.”

  “Woman novelist,” I said. “No, wait, I take that back. Why do we have to be gender specific? It’s art we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

  “Then it’s lost on Wayne,” May said.

  Leonard threw back his head and laughed—ah-ah-ah—in a deep rumble. I was glad to have heard him laugh, he was usually silent and depressed. At first I’d assumed his expression was a cultural hand-me-down—there is a look of reserve and melancholy that I’d seen before on Jewish faces. Then I’d noticed something more specific—flashes of anger that showed up in his eyes.