Ghost Story (35 page)

"Sears," Lewis said, "it's a funny thing, but it's hard not to make an ass of yourself when you talk about stuff like this."

"That's a point. But for God's sake, stop drinking."

"You know, Sears," Lewis said. "I get the feeling our little decorums aren't going to be much good anymore."

Ricky asked him, "Do you want to stop meeting?"

"Well, what the hell are we? The Three Musketeers?"

"In a way. We're what's left. Plus Don, of course."

"Oh, Ricky." Lewis smiled. "The sweetest thing about you is that you're so damned loyal."

"Only to the things worth being loyal to," Ricky said, and sneezed loudly twice. "Excuse me. I ought to be home. Do you really want to give up the meetings?"

Lewis shoved his glass toward the middle of the table and slumped down in his chair. "I don't know. I suppose not I'd never get any of Sears's good cigars if we didn't meet twice a month. And now that we have a new member, well ..." Just as Sears was about to burst out Lewis looked up at them and was as handsome as he'd ever been in his life. "And maybe I'd be scared not to meet. Maybe I believe everything you said, Ricky. I've had a couple of funny experiences since October—since the night Sears talked about Gregory Bate."

"So have I," Sears said.

"So have I," echoed Ricky. "Isn't that what we've been saying?"

"So I guess we should tough it out," Lewis said. "You guys are in another league intellectually from me, maybe this kid here is too, but I guess it's a hang together or hang separately kind of situation. Sometimes, out at my place, I get really spooked—like something is out there just counting the seconds until it can nail me. Like it nailed John."

"Do we believe in werewolves?" Ricky asked.

"No," Sears said, and Lewis shook his head.

"I don't either," said Don. "But there's something ..." He paused, thinking, and looked up to see all three of the older men looking expectantly at him. "I don't have it worked out yet. It's just an idea. I'll think about it some more before I try to explain it."

"Well, the lights have been on for some time now," Sears said pointedly. "And we had a good story. Perhaps we've made some progress, but I don't see how. If the Bate brothers are in Milburn, I'd like to assume that they'll do as the ineffable Hardesty suggests, and move on when they're tired of us."

Don read the expression in Ricky's eyes and nodded.

"Wait" Ricky said. "Excuse me, Sears, but I sent Don out to see Nettie Dedham at the hospital."

"Oh, yes?" Sears was already magisterially bored.

"I went, yes," Don said. "I met the sheriff and Mr. Rowles there. We all had the same idea."

"To see if she'd say anything," Ricky said.

"She couldn't. She isn't able to." Don looked at Ricky. "You must have called the hospital."

"I did," Ricky said.

"But when the sheriff asked her if she had seen anyone on the day her sister died, she tried to say a name. It was obvious that that's what she was doing."

"And the name?" Sears demanded.

"What she said was just a garble of consonants—like Glngr. Glngr. She said it two or three times. Hardesty gave up—couldn't make any sense out of it."

"I don't suppose anyone could," Lewis said, glancing at Sears.

"Mr. Rowles took me aside out in the parking lot and said that he thought she was trying to say her brother's name. Stringer? Isn't that right?"

"Stringer?" Ricky said. He covered his eyes with the palm of a hand.

"I'm missing something," Don said. "Would somebody explain to me why that's so important?"

"I knew this was going to happen," Lewis said. "I knew it."

"Get a hold of yourself, Lewis," Sears ordered. "Don, we will have to discuss this among ourselves first. But I think that we owe you a story to match the one you told us. You will not hear it tonight, but after we've discussed it, I imagine that you will get the ultimate Chowder Society story."

"Then I want to ask another favor," Don said. "If you decide to tell it to me, could we have it at my uncle's house?"

He saw the reluctance pass through the three men; they looked suddenly older—even Lewis seemed frail.

"That may not be a bad idea," Ricky Hawthorne said. He looked like one vast cold wrapped in mustache and spotted bow tie. "A house of your uncle's was where it started for us." He managed to smile at Don.

"Yes. I think you'll hear the ultimate Chowder Society story."

"And may the Lord protect us until then," Lewis said.

"May He protect us afterward," Sears added.

"What's for dinner tonight, mom?"

She tilted her head and looked at his reflection in the mirror for approximately a second. "Hot dogs and sauerkraut."

"Oh." Hot dogs were fine with Peter, but his father detested them.

"Is that what you wanted to ask, Peter?" She did not look at him this time, but kept her eyes on the reflection of her hand pulling the brush through her hair.

Peter had always been conscious that his mother was an exceptionally attractive woman—maybe not a fabulous beauty like Stella Hawthorne, but more than merely pretty all the same. She had a high, youthful blond attractiveness; she had always had an unencumbered look, like a sailboat one sees far out in a bay, nipping into the breeze. Men desired her, he knew, though he did not wish to think about that; on the night of the party for the actress, he had seen Lewis Benedikt caress his mother's knees. Until then he had blindly (he now thought) imagined that adulthood and marriage meant release from the passionate confusions of youth. But his mother and Lewis Benedikt could have been Jim Hardie and Penny Draeger; they looked a more natural couple than she and his father. And not long after the party he had felt his parents' marriage begin to unravel.

"No, not really," he said. "I like to watch you brushing your hair."

Christina Barnes froze, her hand lifted to the crown of her head; then brought it down in a smooth heavy stroke. She found his eyes again, then looked quickly, almost guiltily away.

"Who's going to come to your party tomorrow night?" he asked.

"Oh, just the usual people. Your father's friends. Ed and Sonny Venuti. A few other people. Ricky Hawthorne and his wife. Sears James."

"Will Mr. Benedikt be here?"

This time she deliberately met his eyes. "I don't know. Maybe. Why? Don't you like Lewis?"

"Sometimes I guess I do. I don't see him all that much."

"Nobody sees him all that much, darling," she said, lifting his mood a little. "Lewis is a recluse, unless you're a twenty-five-year-old girl."

"Wasn't he married once?"

She looked at him again, this time more sharply. "What's the point of all this, Peter? I'm trying to brush my hair."

"I know. I'm sorry." Peter nervously smoothed the counterpane with his hand.

"Well?"

"I guess I was just wondering if you were happy."

She laid down the brush on her dressing table, making its ivory back click against the wood. "Happy? Of course I am, sweetie. Now go downstairs and tell your father to get ready for dinner."

Peter left the bedroom and went downstairs to the small side room where his father was undoubtedly watching television. That was another sign that things were going wrong: Peter could not remember his father ever choosing to watch television at night before, but for months he had taken his briefcase into the television room, saying that he wanted to work on a few papers; minutes later the theme music of "Starsky and Hutch" or "Charlie's Angels" would come faintly through the closed door.

He peeked into the room, saw the Eames chair pulled up in front of the flickering screen—"The Brady Bunch"—the salted nuts on the bowl on the table, a pack of cigarettes and lighter beside them, but his father was not there. His briefcase, unopened, lay on the floor beside the Eames chair.

Out of the television room, then, with its images of lonely comfort, and down the hall to the kitchen. When Peter walked in, Walter Barnes, dressed in a brown suit and worn brown wingtip shoes, was just dropping two olives into a martini. "Peter, old scout," he said.

"Hi, dad. Mom says dinner's going to be ready soon."

"I wonder what that means. An hour—an hour and a half? What did she make anyhow, do you know?"

"It's going to be hot dogs."

"Whoof. Ugh. Christ. I guess I'll need a few of these, hey, Pete?" He raised his glass, smiled at Peter, and sipped.

"Oh, dad ..."

"Yes?"

Peter stepped sideways, shoved his hands in his pockets, suddenly inarticulate. "Are you looking forward to your parry?"

"Sure," his father said. "It'll be a good time, Pete, you'll see. Everything's going to work out fine."

Walter Barnes began to walk out of the kitchen toward the television room, but some instinct made him look back at his son, who was spinning from side to side, hands still in his pockets, his face snagged with emotion. "Hey there, scout. Having trouble at school?"

"No," Peter said, shifting miserably: side to side, side to side.

"Come on with me."

They went down the hall, Peter hanging back. At the door to the television room, his father said, "Your friend Jim Hardie still hasn't come back, I hear."

"No." Peter started to sweat.

His father placed the martini on a mat and put himself heavily into the Eames chair. They both glanced at the screen. Most of the Brady children and their father were crawling around the furniture of their living room—a living room much like the Barnes's own—looking for a lost pet, a turtle or a kitten (or perhaps, since those Brady kids were cute little rascals, a rodent).

"His mother's worried sick," his father said, and popped a handful of macadamia nuts into his mouth. When those had gone down his throat, he said, "Eleanor's a nice woman. But she never understood that boy. You have any idea where he might have gone?"

"No," Peter said, looking to the rodent hunt as if for clues to the conduct of family life.

"Just took off in his car."

Peter nodded. He had walked over toward Montgomery Street on his way to school the day after his escape from the house and from halfway down the block had seen that the car was gone.

"Rollie Draeger's a bit relieved, is my guess," said his father. "Probably just good luck his daughter's not pregnant."

"Um hum."

"You wouldn't have any idea where Jim went?" His father glanced at him.

"No," Peter said, and risked a look in return.

"He didn't confide in you during one of your beer-drinking sessions?"

"No," Peter said unhappily.

"You must miss him," his father said. "Maybe you're even worried about him. Are you?"

"Yeah," Peter said, by now as close to tears as he sometimes thought his mother was.

"Well, don't be. A kid like that will always cause more trouble than he'll ever be in himself. And I'll tell you something—I know where he is."

Peter looked up at his father.

"He's in New York. Sure he is. He's on the run for some reason or other. And I wonder if he might not have had something to do with what happened to old Rea Dedham after all. Looks funny that he ran out, don't you think?"

"He didn't," Peter said. "He just didn't. He couldn't."

"Still, you're better off with a couple of old farts like us than with him, don't you think?" When Peter did not give him the agreement he expected, Walter Barnes reached out toward his son and touched his arm. "One thing you have to learn in this world, Pete. The troublemakers might look glamorous as hell, but you're better off steering clear of them. You stay with people like our friends, like the ones you'll be talking to at our party, and you'll be on your way. This is a hard enough world to get through without asking for trouble." He released Peter's arm. "Say, why don't you pull up a chair and watch TV a little while with me? Let's spend a little time together."

Peter sat down and pretended to watch the television. From time to time he heard the grinding of the snowplow, gradually working past their house and then continuing on in the direction of the square.

Alone again in his room he looked up
Robinson, F,
in the directory and dialed the number, his heart trying to bump the roof of his mouth. After two rings, someone picked up the receiver and immediately replaced it.

The radio brought disasters. A fifty-two-year-old man in Lester died of a heart attack while shoveling out his driveway; two children were killed when their mother's car struck a bridge abutment near Hillcrest. An old man in Stamford died of hypothermia—no money for the heating.

At six the snowplow again rattled past the house. By then Peter was in the television room, waiting for the news. His mother looked in, a blond head in a swirl of cooking orders: "Remember to change for dinner, Pete. Why don't you go all out and wear a tie?"

"Is anybody coming in this weather?" He pointed to the screen—a blur of falling snow, blocked traffic. Men with a stretcher carried the body of the hypothermia victim, seventy-six-year-old Elmore Vesey, out of a rotting snowbound shack.

"Sure. They don't live far away." Inexplicably happy, she sailed off.

His father came home gray-faced half an hour later, looked in and said, "Hiya, Pete. Okay?" and went upstairs to roll into a hot tub.

At seven his father joined him in the television room, martini in hand, cashews in the bowl. "Your mother says she'd like to see you in a tie. Since she's in a good mood, why not oblige her this once?"

"Okay," he said.

"Still no word from Jim Hardie?"

"No."

"Eleanor must be losing her mind with worry."

"I guess."

He went back up to his room and lay on his bed. Being in attendance at a party, answering all the familiar questions ("Looking forward to Cornell?"), walking around with a tray and pitchers of drinks, were what he felt least in the world like doing. He felt most like curling up in a blanket and staying in bed for as long as they'd let him. Then nothing could happen to him. The snow would build up around the house, the thermostats would click on and off, he would fall into great arcs of sleep ...

At seven-thirty the bell rang, and he got up from bed. He heard his father opening the door, voices, drinks being offered: the arrivals were the Hawthornes and another man whose voice he did not recognize. Peter slid his shirt up over his head and replaced it with a clean one. Then he pulled a tie under the collar, knotted it, combed his hair with his fingers and left the bedroom.

When he reached the landing and was able to see the door, his father was hanging up coats in the guest closet. The stranger was a tall man in his thirties—thick blond hair, squarish friendly face, tweed jacket and blue shirt without a tie.
No lawyer,
Peter thought, "A
writer,"
his mother said at that instant, her voice way up out of its normal register. "How interesting," and Peter winced.

"Here's our boy Pete," his father said, and all three guests looked up at him, the Hawthornes with smiles, the stranger merely with an appraising glance of interest. He shook their hands and wondered, taking Stella Hawthorne's hand, as he always did seeing her, how a woman that old managed to be as good-looking as anyone you saw in the movies. "Nice to see you, Peter," Ricky Hawthorne said, and gave him a brisk dry handshake. "You look a little beat."

"I'm okay," he said.

"And this is Don Wanderley, he's a writer, and he was the nephew of Mr. Wanderley," his mother said. The writer's handshake was firm and warm. "Oh, we must talk about your books. Peter, would you please go in the kitchen and get the ice ready?"

"You look sort of like your uncle," Peter said.

"Thank you."

"Pete, the
ice."

Stella Hawthorne said, "On a night like this I think I want my drinks steamed, like clams."

His mother cut off his laugh—"Pete, the ice, please" —and then turned to Stella Hawthorne with a fast nervous grin. "No, the streets seem all right for the moment," he heard Ricky Hawthorne say to his father; he went down the hall into the kitchen and began cracking ice into a bowl. His mother's voice, too loud, carried all the way.

A moment later she was beside him, taking things from under the grill and peering into the oven. "Are the olives and rice crackers out?" He nodded. "Then get these on a tray and hand them around, please, Peter." They were egg rolls and chicken livers wrapped in bacon. He burned his fingers transferring them to a tray, and his mother crept up behind him and kissed the nape of his neck. "Peter, you're so sweet." Without having had a drink, she acted drunk. "Now, what do we have to do? Are the martinis ready? Then when you come back with the tray, come back in for the pitcher and put it on another tray with the glasses, will you? Your father'll help. Now. What do I have to do? Oh—mash up capers and anchovies to put in the pot. You look just lovely, Peter, I'm so glad you put on a tie."

The bell rang again: more familiar voices. Harlan Bautz, the dentist, and Lou Price, who looked like the villain of a gangster movie. Their wives, brassy and meek respectively.

He was passing the first tray around when the Venutis arrived. Sonny Venuti popped an egg roll in her mouth, said "Warmth!" and kissed him on the cheek. She looked pop-eyed and haggard. Ed Venuti, his father's partner, said, "Looking forward to Cornell, son?" and breathed gin in his face.

"Yes, sir."

But he was not listening. "God bless the Martoonerville Trolley," he said as his father put a filled glass in his hand.

When he offered the tray to Harlan Bautz, the dentist slapped his back and said, "Bet you can't wait to get to Cornell, hey, boy?"

"Yes, sir." He fled back into the kitchen.

His mother was spooning a greenish mixture into a steaming casserole. "Who just came?"

He told her.

"Just finish adding this goop and then put it back in the oven," she said, handing him the bowl. "I have to get out and say hello. Oh, I feel so
festive
tonight."

She left, and he was alone in the kitchen. He dropped the rest of the thick green substance into the casserole and twirled a spoon around in it. When he was putting it back into the oven, his father appeared and said, "Where's the drinks tray? I shouldn't have made so many martinis, we got a crowd of whiskey drinkers. Oh, I'll just take out the pitcher and use the other glasses in the dining room. Hey, the joint's jumping already, Pete. You ought to talk to that writer, he's an interesting fella, guess he writes chillers—I remember Edward telling me something about it. Interesting, no? I knew you'd have a good time if you spent some time with our friends. You are, aren't you?"

"What?" Peter closed the oven door.

"Having a good time."

"Sure."

"Okay. Get out there and talk to people." He shook his head as if in wonderment. "Boy. Your mother's all wound up. She's having a great time. Nice to see her like this again."

"Yes," Peter said, and drifted out to the living room, carrying a tray of canapes his mother had left behind.

There she was, "all wound up," as his father had said: almost as if literally wound up, talking rapidly through a cloud of exhaled smoke, darting from Sonny Venuti to pick up a bowl of black olives and offer them to Harlan Bautz.

"They say if this keeps up Milburn could be cut off entirely," Stella Hawthorne said, her voice lower and more listenable to than his mother's and Mrs. Venuti's. Perhaps for that reason, it stopped all conversation. "We only have that one snowplow, and the county's plow will be kept busy on the highway."

Lou Price, on the couch beside Sonny Venuti, said, "And look who's driving our plow. The council should never have let Omar Norris's wife talk them into it. Most of the time Omar's too boiled to see where he's going."

"Now, oh, Lou, now, that's the only work Omar Norris does all year round—and he came by here twice today!" His mother defended Omar Norris overbrightly: Peter saw her looking at the door, and knew that her febrile high spirits were caused by someone who had not arrived yet.

"He must be sleeping out in the boxcars these days," Lou Price said. "In boxcars or in his garage, if his wife lets him get that close. You want a guy like that running a two-ton snowplow past your car? He could run the damn thing on his breath."

The doorbell rang, and his mother nearly dropped her drink.

"I'll get it," Peter said, and went to the door.

It was Sears James. Beneath the wide brim of his hat, his face was worn and so white his cheeks looked almost blue. Then he said, "Hello, Peter," and looked normal again, taking off his hat and apologizing for being late.

For twenty minutes Peter took canapes around on trays, refilled drinks and evaded conversation. (Sonny Venuti, grabbing his cheek with two fingers: "I bet you can't wait to get away from this awful town and start chasing college girls, right, Pete?") Whenever he looked at his mother, she was in the middle of a sentence, her eyes darting to the front door. Lou Price was loudly explaining something about soybean futures to Harlan Bautz; Mrs. Bautz was boring Stella Hawthorne with advice about redecoration. ("I'd say, go rosewood.") Ed Venuti, Ricky Hawthorne and his father were talking off in a corner about the disappearance of Jim Hardie. Peter returned to the sterile peacefulness of the kitchen, loosened his tie and cradled his head on a counter spattered with green. Five minutes later the telephone rang. "No, don't bother, Walt, I'll get it," he heard his mother cry in the living room.

The kitchen extension stopped ringing a few seconds' later. She was on the phone in the television room. Peter looked at the white telephone on the kitchen wall. Maybe it was not what he thought; maybe it was Jim Hardie to say
hey don't worry, man, I'm in the Apple ...
he had to know. Even if it was what he thought. He picked up the receiver: he would listen only for a second.

The voice was Lewis Benedikt's, and his heart folded.

"... can't come, no, Christina," Lewis was saying. "I just can't. My drive is six feet deep in snow."

"Someone's on the line," his mother said.

"Don't be paranoid," Lewis said. "Besides, Christina, it would be a waste of time for me to come out. You know."

"Pete? Is that you? Are you listening?"

Peter held his breath; did not hang up.

"Oh, Peter's not listening. Why would he?"

"Damn you, are you there?" His mother's voice: sharp as the buzz of a hornet.

"Christina, I'm sorry. We're still friends. Go back to your party and have a great time."

"You can be such a shallow creep," his mother said, and slammed down the phone. A second later, in shock, Peter also put down his receiver.

He stood on wobbly legs, almost certain of the meaning of what he had overheard. He blindly turned to the kitchen window. Footsteps. The door behind him opened and closed. Behind his own blank reflection—as drained as when he had looked into an empty room on Montgomery Street—was his mother's, her face an angry blur. "Did you get an earful, spy?" Then there was another reflection between them—it was like that for a moment, another pale blur sliding between his face and his mother's. It shifted closer, and Peter was looking at a small face not in reflection, but directly outside the window: an imploring, twisted childish face. The boy was begging him to come out. "Tell me, you little spy," his mother ordered.

Peter screamed; and jammed his fist in his mouth to stop the noise. He closed his eyes.

Then his mother's arms were around him and her voice was going, muttering apologies, the tears now not latent but warm on his neck. He could hear, above the noise his mother was making, the voice of Sears James declaiming: "Yes, Don came here to take possession of his house, but also to help us out with a little problem—a research problem." Then a muffled voice that might have been Sonny Venuti's. Sears replied, "We want him to look into the background of that Moore girl, the actress who disappeared." More muffled voices: mild surprise, mild doubt, mild curiosity. He took his fist out of his mouth.

"It's okay, mom," he said.

"Peter, I'm so sorry."

"I won't tell."

"It's not—Peter, it wasn't what you think. You can't let it upset you."

"I thought maybe it was Jim Hardie calling," he said.