“But he’s our brother,” I said.
“So? You’re my brother, too,” she said. “That’s not why I like you.”
“Why
do
you?” I asked.
“I just do,” she said. We wrestled for a while in the woods, until she got something in her eye; I helped her get it out. She was sweaty and smelled like clean dirt. She had very high breasts, which seemed separated by too wide an expanse of chest, but Franny was strong. She could usually beat me up, unless I got completely on top of her; then she could still tickle me hard enough to make me pee if I didn’t get off her. When she was on top of me, there was no moving her.
“One day I’ll be able to beat you up,” I told her.
“So what?” she said. “By then you won’t want to.”
A fat football player, named Poindexter, came into the woods to move his bowels. We saw him coming and hid in the ferns we’d known about for years. For years the football players crapped in these woods, just off the practice field—especially, it seemed, the fat ones. It was a long run back to the gymnasium, and Coach Bob harangued them for not emptying their bowels before they came to practice. For some reason the fat ones could never get them entirely empty, we imagined.
“It’s Poindexter,” I whispered.
“Of course it is,” Franny said.
Poindexter was very awkward; he always had trouble getting his thigh pads down. Once he had to take off his cleats and remove the entire bottom half of his uniform, except his socks. This time he just struggled with the pads and pants that bound his knees precariously close together. He kept his balance by squatting slightly forward with his hands on his helmet (on the ground in front of him). This time he crapped messily on the insides of his football shoes and had to wipe the shoes as well as his ass. For a moment, Franny and I feared he would use the ferns for this purpose, but Poindexter was always hurried and panting, and he did as good a job as he could with the handful of maple leaves he’d gathered on the path and brought into the woods with him. We heard Coach Bob’s whistle blowing, and Poindexter heard it, too.
When he ran back toward the practice field, Franny and I started clapping. When Poindexter stopped and listened, we stopped clapping; the poor fat boy stood in the woods, wondering what applause he had imagined—this time—and then rushed back to the game he played so badly and, usually, with such humiliation.
Then Franny and I snuck down to the path that the football players always took back to the gym. It was a narrow path, pockmarked from their cleats. We were slightly worried where De Meo might be, but I went up to the edge of the practice field and “spotted” for Franny while she dropped her pants and squatted on the path; then she spotted for me. We both covered our rather disappointing messes with a light sprinkling of leaves. Then we retreated to the usual ferns to wait for the football players to finish practice, but Lilly was already in the ferns.
“Go home,” Franny told her; Lilly was seven. Most of the time she was too young for Franny and me, but we were nice to her around the house; she had no friends, and she seemed entranced by Frank, who enjoyed babying her.
“I don’t have to go home,” Lilly said.
“Better go,” Franny said.
“Why’s your face so red?” Lilly asked me.
“De Meo put poison on it,” Franny said, “and he’s looking around for more people to rub it on.”
“If I go home, he’ll see me,” Lilly said seriously.
“Not if you go right away,” I said.
“We’ll watch out for you,” Franny said. She stood up out of the ferns. “It’s all clear,” she whispered. Lilly ran home.
“Am I really all red in the face?” I asked Franny.
Franny pulled my face up close to hers and licked me once on my cheek, once on my forehead, once on my nose, once on my lips. “I can’t
taste
it anymore,” she said. “I got it all off you.”
We lay together in the ferns; it wasn’t boring, but it took a while for the practice to be over and for the first football players to come down the path. The third one stepped in it—a running back from Boston who was doing a postgraduate year at Dairy, basically to get a little older before he played football in college. He slid a short ways in it, but caught his balance; then he regarded the horror in his cleats.
“Poindexter!” he screamed. Poindexter, a slow runner, was well to the rear of the line of players heading for the showers. “Poindexter!” screamed the running back from Boston. “You
turd
, Poindexter!”
“What’d I do?” Poindexter asked, out of breath, forever fat—“fat in his genes,” Franny would say, later, when she knew what genes were.
“Did you have to do it on the path, you asshole?” the running back asked Poindexter.
“It wasn’t me!” Poindexter protested.
“Clean my cleats, you shit-for-brains,” the running back said. At a school like Dairy, the linemen, although bigger, were the weaker, fatter, younger boys, often sacrificed for the few
good
athletes—Coach Bob let the good ones carry the ball.
Several rougher members of Iowa Bob’s backfield surrounded Poindexter on the path.
They don’t have girls here yet, Poindexter,” said the running back from Boston, “so there’s nobody but you to clean the shit off my shoes.”
Poindexter did as he was told; he was, at least, familiar with the job.
Franny and I went home, past the token cows in the falling-down school barns, past Coach Bob’s back door, where the rusty fenders of the 1937 Indian were inverted on the porch—to scrape your shoes on. The motorcycle fenders were the only outdoor remains of Earl.
“When it’s time for us to go to the Dairy School,” I said to Franny, “I hope we’re living somewhere else.”
“
I’m
not going to clean the shit off anybody’s shoes,” Franny said. “No way.”
Coach Bob, who ate supper with us, bemoaned his terrible football team. “It’s my last year, I swear,” the old man said, but he was always saying this. “Poindexter actually took a dump on the path today—during practice.”
“I saw Franny and John with their clothes off,” Lilly said.
“You did not,” Franny said.
“On the path,” Lilly said.
“Doing what?” Mother said.
“Doing what Grandpa Bob said,” Lilly told everyone.
Frank snorted his disgust; Father banished Franny and me to our rooms. Upstairs Franny whispered to me, “You
see
? It’s just you and me. Not Lilly. Not Frank.”
“Not Egg,” I added.
“Egg isn’t anybody yet, dummy,” Franny said. “Egg isn’t a human being yet.” Egg was only three.
“Now there’s two of them following us,” Franny said. “Frank and Lilly.”
“Don’t forget De Meo,” I said.
“I can forget him easy,” Franny said. “I’m going to have lots of De Meos when I grow up.”
This thought alarmed me and I was silent.
“Don’t worry,” Franny whispered, but I said nothing and she crept down the hall and into my room; she got into my bed and we left my door open so we could hear them all talking at the dinner table.
“It’s not fit for my children, this school,” Father said. “I know that.”
“Well,” Mother said, “all your talk about it has certainly convinced
them
of that. They’ll be afraid to go, when the time comes.”
“When the time comes,” Father said, “we’ll send them away to a good school.”
“I don’t care about a good school,” Frank said, and Franny and I could sympathize with him; although we hated the notion of going to Dairy, we were more disturbed at the thought of going “away.”
“‘Away’
where
?” Frank asked.
“Who’s going away?” Lilly asked.
“Hush,” Mother said. “No one is going away to school. We couldn’t afford it. If there’s a benefit to being on the faculty at the Dairy School, it’s at least that there’s someplace free to send our children to.”
“Someplace that’s not any good,” Father said.
“Better than average,” Mother said.
“Listen,” Father said. “We’re going to make money.”
This was news to us; Franny and I kept very still.
Frank must have been nervous at the prospect. “May I be excused?” he asked.
“Of course, dear,” Mother said. “
How
are we going to make money?” Mother asked Father.
“For God’s sake, tell
me
,” Coach Bob said. “
I’m
the one who wants to retire.”
“Listen,” Father said. We listened. “This school may be worthless, but it’s going to grow; it’s going to take on
girls
, remember? And even if it
doesn’t
grow, it’s not going to fold. It’s been here too long to fold; its instincts are only to survive, and it will. It won’t
ever
be a good school; it will go through so many phases that at times we won’t recognize the place, but it’s going to keep going—you can count on that.”
“So what?” said Iowa Bob.
“So there’s going to be a school here,” Father said. “A private school is going to go on being here, in this crummy town,” he said, “and the Thompson Female Seminary
isn’t
going to go on being here, because now the girls in town will go to Dairy.”
“Everybody knows that,” said Mother.
“May I be excused?” Lilly asked.
“Yes, yes,” Father said. “Listen,” he said to Mother and Bob, “don’t you see?” Franny and I didn’t see anything—only Frank, sneaking by in the upstairs hall. “What’s going to become of that old building, the Thompson Female Seminary?” Father asked. And that’s when Mother suggested burning it. Coach Bob suggested it become the county jail.
“It’s big enough,” he said. Someone else had suggested this at Town Meeting.
“Nobody wants a jail here,” Father said. “Not in the middle of town.”
“It already looks like a jail,” Mother said.
“Just needs more bars,” said Iowa Bob.
“Listen,” Father said, impatiently. Franny and I froze together; Frank was lurking outside my door—Lilly was whistling, somewhere close by. “Listen, listen,” Father said. “What this town needs is a
hotel
.”
There was silence from the dining room table. A “hotel,” Franny and I knew, lying in my bed, was what did away with old Earl. A hotel was a vast ruined space, smelling of fish, guarded by a gun.
“Why a hotel?” Mother finally said. “You’re always saying it’s a crummy town—who’d want to come here?”
“Maybe not
want
to,” Father said, “but
have
to. Those parents of those kids at the Dairy School,” he said. “They visit their kids, don’t they? And you know what? The parents are going to get richer and richer, because the tuition is going to keep going up and up, and there won’t be any more scholarship students—there will
only
be rich kids coming here. And if you visit your kid at this school now, you can’t stay in town. You have to go to the beach, where all the motels are, or you have to drive even farther, up toward the mountains—but there’s nothing, absolutely nothing to stay in
right
here.”
That was his plan. Somehow, although the Dairy School could barely afford enough janitors, Father thought it would provide the clientele for one hotel in the town of Dairy—that the town was so motley, and no one else had dreamed of putting up a place to stay in it, didn’t worry my Father, in New Hampshire the summer tourists went to the beaches—they were half an hour away. The mountains were an hour away, where the skiers went, and where there were summer lakes. But Dairy was valley land, inland but not upland: Dairy was close enough to the sea to feel the sea’s dampness but far enough away from the sea to benefit not in the slightest from the sea’s freshness. The brisk air from the ocean and from the moutains did not penetrate the dull haze that hung over the valley of the Squamscott River, and Dairy was a Squamscott Valley town—a penetrating damp cold in winter, a steamy humidity all summer. Not a picture-pretty New England village but a mill town on a polluted river—the mill now as abandoned and as ugly as the Thompson Female Seminary. It was a town with its sole hopes hung on the Dairy School, a place no one wanted to go.
“If there was a hotel here, however,” Father said, “people would stay in it.”
“But the Thompson Female Seminary would make a dreadful hotel,” Mother said. “It could
only
be what it is: an old school.”
“Do you realize how cheaply one could buy it?” Father said.
“Do
you
realize how much it would cost to fix it up?” Mother said.
“What a depressing idea!” said Coach Bob.
Franny started to pin my arms down; it was her usual method of attack—she’d get my arms all tied up, then tickle me by grinding her chin into my ribs or my armpit, or else she’d bite me on the neck (just hard enough to make me lie still). Our legs were thrashing under the covers, throwing the blankets off—whoever could scissor the other’s legs had the initial advantage—when Lily came into my room in her weird way, on all fours with a sheet over her.
“Creep,” Franny said to her.
“I’m sorry you got in trouble,” Lilly said under the sheet. Lilly always apologized for ratting on us by completely covering her body and crawling into our rooms on all fours. “I brought you something,” Lilly said.
“Food?” Franny asked. I pulled Lilly’s sheet off and Franny took a paper bag that Lilly had carried to us, clutched in her teeth. There were two bananas and two of the warm rolls from supper in it. “Nothing to drink?” Franny asked. Lilly shook her head.
“Come on, get in,” I said to her, and Lilly crawled into bed with Franny and me.
“We’re going to move to a hotel,” Lilly said.
“Not quite,” said Franny.
But they seemed to be talking about something else downstairs at the dining table. Coach Bob was angry with my Father, again—for the same old thing, it seemed: for never being satisfied, as Bob put it, for living in the future. For always making plans for the next year instead of just
living
, moment by moment.
“But he can’t help it,” my mother was saying; she always defended my father from Coach Bob.
“You’ve got a wonderful wife, and a wonderful family,” Iowa Bob was telling my father. “You’ve got this big old house—an inheritance! You didn’t even have to pay for it! You’ve got a job. So what if the pay’s not great—what do you need money for? You’re a lucky man.”
“I don’t want to be a teacher,” Father said quietly, which meant he was angry again. “I don’t want to be a coach. I don’t want my kids to go to a school this bad. It’s a hick town, and a floundering school full of rich kids with problems; their parents send them here in a desperate effort to arrest their already considerable sophistication—
run-amok
sophistication on the part of the kids, run-amok hickness on the part of the school and the town. It’s the worst of both worlds.”
“But if you just spent more time with the kids,
now
,” Mother said, quietly, “and worried a little less about where they’re all going to be in a few
years
.”
“The
future
again!” said Iowa Bob. “He
lives
in the future! First it was all the travelling—all so he could go to Harvard. So he went to Harvard, then, as fast as he could—so he could be
through
with it. For what? For this job, which he’s done nothing but complain about. Why doesn’t he
enjoy
it?”
“Enjoy
this
?” Father said, “
You
don’t enjoy it, do you?”
We could imagine our grandfather, Coach Bob, fuming; fuming was how he ended most arguments with my father, who was quicker than Iowa Bob; when Bob felt outwitted, but still right, he fumed. Franny and Lilly and I could imagine his knotty, bald head smoldering. It was true that he had no higher regard for the Dairy School than my father had, but Iowa Bob had at least committed himself to something, he felt, and he wished to see my father involved with what he was doing instead of
involved
—as Bob would say—with the
future
. After all, Coach Bob had once bitten a running back; he had not seen my father ever so engaged.
He was probably distressed that my father never became passionate about any sport, although Father was athletic and liked exercise. And Iowa Bob loved my mother very much; he had known her all the years my father was away at the war, away at Harvard, and away with Earl. Coach Bob probably thought that my father neglected his family; in the last years, I know, Bob thought Father had neglected Earl.
“Excuse me,” we heard Frank say; Franny locked her hands around my waist at the base of my spine; I tried to force her chin up, off my shoulder, but Lilly was sitting on my head.
“What is it, dear?” Mother said.
“What’s up, Frank?” Father said, and we could tell by the sharp creak of a chair that Father had grabbed for Frank; he was always trying to loosen Frank up a little by wrestling with him, or trying to get him to play, but Frank wouldn’t go for it. Franny and I loved it when Father would roughhouse with us, but Frank didn’t like it at all.
“Excuse me,” Frank repeated.
“You’re excused, you’re excused,” Father said.
“Franny is out of her room, she’s in bed with John,” Frank said. “And Lilly’s with them. She brought them something to eat.”
I felt Franny slide away from me; she was out of my bed and out of my room, her flannel nightie ballooning like a sail in the draught from the upstairs hall by the stairwell; Lilly grabbed her sheet and crawled into my closet. The old Bates family house was huge; there were so many places to hide, but my mother knew them all. I thought Franny was dashing back to her room, but I heard her going
downstairs
, instead, and then I heard her screaming.
“You weirdo fink, Frank!” she screamed. “You fart! You turd in a birdbath!”
“Franny!” Mother said.
I ran to the stairwell and hugged the banister; the stairs were carpeted, deep and soft, the same carpet that covered the house, I could see Franny go straight for the headlock on Frank in the dining room. She took him down fast—Frank was slow-moving and not very physical; he was badly coordinated, although bigger than Franny, and much bigger than me. I rarely fought with him, even in fun; Frank did little in the way of fighting for fun, and even in fun he could hurt you. He was too large, and despite his distaste for the physical life, he was strong. He had a way, too, of finding your ear with his elbow, or your nose with his knee; he was the kind of fighter whose fingers and thumbs always found an eye, whose head bobbed up and split your lip against your own teeth. There are people who are so physically uncomfortable with themselves that they seem to jar against any
other
body. Frank was like that, and I left him alone; it was not just because he was two years older.
Franny occasionally couldn’t stand not testing him, but they almost always hurt each other. I watched her locked in a death grip with Frank under the dining room table.
“Stop them, Win!” my mother said, but Father hit his head on the table trying to drag them out where he could separate them; Coach Bob went under the table from the other side.
“Shit!” Father said.
I felt something warm against my hip at the banister; it was Lilly, peering out from under her sheet.
“You rat’s asshole, Frank!” Franny was screaming.
Then Frank got Franny’s hair and yanked her head against the dining table leg; although I did not have breasts of my own, I could feel it in my chest when Frank dug his knuckles into Franny’s breast. She had to let go of her headlock and he rapped her head against the table leg twice more, snarling her hair around his fist, before Coach Bob got three of their four legs in his huge hands and hauled them out from under the table. Franny lashed out with her free foot and caught Bob with a good blow to the nose, but the old Iowa lineman hung on. Franny was crying now, but she managed to strain against her hair hard enough to bite Frank on the cheek. Frank grabbed one of her breasts in his hand; he must have squeezed her hard because Franny’s mouth opened against Frank’s cheek and a losing sob broke from her. It was so terrible and defeated a sound that it sent Lilly running back to my room with her sheet. Father knocked Frank’s hand from Franny’s breast and Coach Bob got a headlock on Franny, so that she couldn’t bite Frank again. But Franny had a hand free and she went for Frank’s private parts; whether you were in a cup, in or out of a jock, or wearing nothing at all, Franny could get to your private parts when the chips were down. Frank was suddenly all arms and legs jerking, and a moan so blue escaped him that I shivered. Father slapped Franny in the face, but she wouldn’t let go; he had to claw her fingers open. Coach Bob dragged Frank free of her, but Franny took a last kick with her long leg and Father was forced to slap her, hard, across the mouth. That ended it.
Father sat on the dining room carpet, holding Franny’s head against his chest and rocking her in his arms while she cried. “Franny, Franny,” he said to her softly. “Why does everyone have to hurt you to stop you?”
“Easy, son, just breathe easy,” Coach Bob told Frank, who lay on his side with his knees up to his chest, his face as grey as one of the Dairy School colours; old Iowa Bob knew how to console somebody who’d been felled by a blow to the balls. “Feel kind of sick, don’t you?” Coach Bob inquired, gently. “Just breathe easy, lie still. It goes away.”
Mother cleared the table, picked up the fallen chairs; her determined disapproval of her family’s inner violence registered on her face as enforced silence, bitter and hurt and full of dread.
“Try a deeper breath, now,” Coach Bob advised Frank; Frank tried and coughed. “Okay, okay,” said Iowa Bob. “Stick with the little breaths awhile longer.” Frank moaned.
Father examined Franny’s lower lip while her tears streamed down her face and she made those gagging kinds of sobs, half strangled in her chest. “I think you need some stitches, darling,” he said, but Franny shook her head furiously. Father held her head tightly between his hands and kissed her just above her eyes, twice. “I’m sorry, Franny,” he said, “but what can I
do
with you, what can I
do
?”
“I don’t need stitches,” Franny mourned. “No stitches. No way.”
But on her lower lip a jagged flap protruded and Father had to cup his hand under Franny’s chin to catch her blood. Mother brought a washcloth full of ice.
I went back to my room and coaxed Lilly out of the closet; she wanted to stay with me and I let her. She fell right asleep, but I lay in bed thinking that every time someone said “Hotel,” there would be blood and sudden sorrow. Father and Mother drove Franny to the Dairy School infirmary, where someone would stitch her lip together; no one would blame Father—least of all Franny. Franny would blame Frank, of course, which—in those days—was my tendency, too. Father would not blame himself—or at least not for long—and Mother would blame herself, inexplicably, for some while longer.
Whenever we fought, Father usually cried at us, “Do you know how this upsets your mother and me? Imagine that
we
fought all the time, and you had to live with it? But
do
your mother and I fight?
Do
we? Would you like it if we did?”
We would not, of course; and they didn’t—most of the time. There was only the
old
argument, the living-in-the-future-and-not-enjoying-today argument, which Coach Bob expressed more vehemently than Mother, though we knew it was her opinion of my father, too (that, and that Father couldn’t help it).
It didn’t seem like a big thing, to us kids. I rolled Lilly on her side so that I could stretch out flat on my back with both my ears off the pillow, so that I could hear Iowa Bob coaching Frank upstairs. “Easy, boy, just lean on me,” Bob was saying. “The secret’s in the breathing.” Frank blubbered something and Coach Bob said, “But you can’t grab a girl’s tit, boy, and not expect to take a shot in the balls, now, can you?”
But Frank blubbered on: how Franny was terrible to him, how she never let him alone, how she was always turning the other kids against him, how he tried to avoid her but she was always there. “She’s in the middle of everything bad that happens to me!” he cried. “You don’t
know!”
he croaked. “You don’t know how she teases me.”
I thought
I
knew, and Frank was right; he was also rather unlikable, and that was the problem. Franny
was
awful to him, but Franny was not awful; and Frank was not really awful to any of us, except he (himself) was, somehow, awful. It bewildered me, lying there. Lilly began to snore. I heard Egg snuffle down the hall and wondered how Coach Bob would handle it if Egg woke up hollering for Mother. Bob had his hands full with Frank in the bathroom.
“Go on,” Bob said. “Just let me see you do it.” Frank sobbed. “There!” cried Iowa Bob, as if he’d just discovered a fumble in the end zone “See? No blood, boy—just piss. You’re okay.”
“You don’t know,” Frank kept saying. “You don’t know.”
I went to see what Egg wanted; being three, he wanted something unobtainable, I thought, but I was surprised that he was cheerful when I came into his room. He was obviously surprised to see me, and when I returned all the soft animals to his bed—he had thrown them all over his room—he proceeded to introduce me to each of them: the frayed squirrel he had vomited on, many times; the worn elephant with one ear; the orange hippopotamus. He was upset whenever I tried to leave him, so I took him into my room and put him in my bed with Lilly. Then I carried Lily back to her room, although that was a long way for me to carry her and she woke up and became irritable before I got her in her own bed.
“I never get to stay in your room,” she said; then she was asleep again, instantly.
I went back to my room and got in bed with Egg, who was wide-awake and talking nonsense. He was happy, though, and I heard Coach Bob talking downstairs—at first, I thought, to Frank, but then I realized Bob was talking to our old dog, Sorrow. Frank must have gone off to sleep, or at least gone off to sulk.
“You smell worse than Earl,” Iowa Bob was telling the dog. And, in truth. Sorrow was dreadful to smell; not only his farting but his halitosis could kill you if you weren’t careful, and the old black Labrador retriever seemed viler to me, too, than my faint memory of the foul odors of Earl. “What are we going to do with you?” Bob mumbled to the dog, who enjoyed lying under the dining room table and farting all through mealtimes.
Iowa Bob opened windows downstairs. “Come on, boy,” he called to Sorrow. “Jesus,” Bob said, under his breath. I heard the front door open; presumably Coach Bob had put Sorrow out.
I lay awake with Egg crawling all over me, waiting for Franny to get back; if I was awake, I knew she’d come and show me her stitches. When Egg finally fell asleep, I carried him back to his room and his animals.
Sorrow was still outside when Father and Mother drove Franny home; if his barking hadn’t woken me up, I’d have missed them. “Well, that looks pretty good,” Coach Bob was saying, obviously approving of Franny’s lip job. “That won’t leave any scar at all, after a while.”
“Five of them,” Franny said, thickly, as though they had given her an additional tongue.
“Five!” Iowa Bob cried. “Terrific!”
“That dog’s been farting in here again,” Father said; he sounded grouchy and tired, as if they’d been talking, talking,
talking
nonstop since they’d left for the infirmary.
“Oh, he’s so sweet,” Franny said, and I heard Sorrow’s hard tail wagging against a chair or the sideboard—
whack, whack, whack
. Only Franny could he next to Sorrow for hours and be unaffected by the dog’s various stenches. Of course, Franny seemed to notice smell, in general, less than the rest of us. She had never objected to changing Egg’s diapers—or even Lilly’s, when we were all much younger. And when Sorrow, in
his
senility, would have an accident overnight, Franny never found the dog shit displeasing; she had a cheerful curiosity about strong things. She could go the longest, of any of us, without a bath.
Дата добавления: 2015-11-04; просмотров: 32 | Нарушение авторских прав
| <== предыдущая лекция | | | следующая лекция ==> |