How Long Has This Been Going On (54 page)

Walt's father made all the travel arrangements with Tom, as if Walt were a tot unable to read a timetable. Yet Walt is nineteen now, a bit taller than when Tom last saw him but, from the neck up, the same merrily serious little boy who was always cannonballing into the Dawsons' swimming pool.

"Say, Dexter, wait for me!"
echoed in Tom's thoughts as Walt walked toward him, backpacked from the calves to the crown of his head, his hand stretched out to take Tom's and a great smile on his face.

"Cousin Tom!"

"Hey, pal!" as they shake. "How's that dog of yours?"

Walt's smile vanishes. "He died," Walt whispers. "It was very rough."

"I'm sorry."

There was an awkward pause; to fill it, Walt shook Tom's hand again.

"Come on," said Tom. "You must be hungry. Lucky for you Jeanette came today."

"Is that your girl friend?"

"The maid. She also cooks. She'll tend a casserole all day while she's cleaning, then fridge it for me to reheat later. I think there's a veal-and-sausage number in there now."

"I would love a hot dog."

"Same old Walt," said Tom, tousling the boy's hair.

They took a circuitous route homeward, so Walt could see some of Minneapolis, Tom occasionally playing guide. "There's supposed to be another city across the river," he said, with a wink. "But no one's ever been there."

"It is the City of the Twelfth of Never," said Walt. "Many of its doors can be opened only with special keys."

"Who has these keys?" asked Tom, playing along, as one always did with Walt.

"I might have a few," said Walt, carelessly.

In the house, Walt got out of harness in the kitchen, shucking off everything as a child does when he comes in from the snow.

"You're really filled out, pal," said Tom. "Shoulders and all. What did you play in high school?"

"Mostly the piano."

Tom put the casserole in the oven to warm and took his cousin on a tour of the house.

"You have a piano, Cousin Tom!" cried Walt, exultant in the living room.

"Well, it'll be nice to hear someone make use of it, I guess."

Walt sat at the keyboard and broke into the opening flourish of Grieg's Piano Concerto, then started rocking the music. Tom went into the kitchen to check on the food, pleased with the noise now filling his empty mansion. Walt joined him there, then picked up his gear as Tom led him to the room Walt would occupy.

"I ordered some furniture," Tom told him, "but the bed hasn't arrived yet. You can sack in with me."

Walt was unpacking, setting a few books and souvenirs on the fresh new bookcase and occupying the bureau. It's amazing how much a teenager can stuff into a backpack; among the T-shirts and Tolkien posters were four boxes of apple-cinnamon Pop-Tarts.

"You planning to open a concession?" Tom asked wryly.

"I wasn't sure if you stocked the right flavor." "I don't stock any flavor of this stuff," said Tom, examining one of the boxes.

"Wasn't I smart to come prepared?" said Walt, taking out a stuffed bear.

"Golly," said Tom, "it's Claude! I haven't seen him in ages!"

"I don't usually need him any more, but if I left him behind my parents would have had him destroyed. They've moved me out for good, you know. I had to give my lifetime collection of Walt Disney comics to Harvey Oefnerling."

Walt turned to Tom.

"Cousin Tom," he said, "I really have to make good on this. Nobody approves of me back home now, so if I flunk with you, I'll really be in the seaweed."

"Don't worry, Walt. It'll all be fine. You'll like the business, too. I love what I do, and I do it well, and I'm going to teach you how to do it like me."

Right you are, now, but Walt started weeping.

"Shit," said Tom. "What's... what's wrong, Walt?"

"I'm in big trouble," Walt almost wailed.

Tom held the boy, patting his back. "No, you're not," he said. "You're in good hands here." Letting Walt go, he added, "Anything you want to talk about?"

Wiping his eyes, Walt shook his head.

"Well, come on downstairs," said Tom, guiding him with an arm around his shoulders. "I'm hungry."

It was a little like having a puppy, watching Walt hop through his pranks and worry his concerns. He did not burst into tears again or explain why he had done so, though it was clear that his being dispatched from Gotburg involved something more than his being apprenticed to a trade. But Walt threw himself eagerly into the business, accompanying Tom from site to site or staying home to run the office.

Walt was diligent at tending records and keeping Tom abreast of his phone messages. The boy was fascinated with the answering machine—there was none in Gotburg that he knew of—and he changed the taped greeting several times in his first week with Tom, trying, as he explained it, to "find the perfect greeting, which is trustworthy but also businesslike, and lets everyone know that Walt is here now."

The neighbors certainly knew it, for when the first snow fell, in a dense blanket that froze as it landed, Walt built a snow fort on the front lawn.

"This one's Gothic," he told Tom. "Last year in Gotburg I was working on a Camelot, but we ran out of cocoa for that after-snow pick-me-up, so I decided to stay inside."

Judith, Tom's current girl friend, thought Walt enchanting. "Is the whole town like that?" she asked. "Every minute you're around him, you sense his vulnerability. You want to shield him, almost."

Tom shrugged. "He's young."

"You're the finished product, then, because you're totally self-protected. You select what you show of yourself—no, don't make that silly face, because you know I'm right. Is that what Godsend does to people? Cause them to—"

"Gotburg. And it isn't your town that does things to you. It's your family. I had a rotten one. Walt had a nice one." How wrong Tom is about that we shall learn soon enough. "Besides, he was sort of the... the little doll of our group. We were always joking with him and looking out for him. So he's still playing out that kind of part."

"He's so sweet. Loving. He makes you worry that one day someone's going to be cruel and simply blast him away."

They were in Judith's kitchen. Before Walt arrived, Tom and Judith spent their overnights in Tom's house. But now Judith requested—modestly and, I think, quite appropriately—that Tom schedule his bed-sharing at her place. They were often in Judith's kitchen, for Tom routinely took a little something before bedtime, in what he and Luke, in the bygone days of staying over at each other's house so frequently that it was hard to tell where they slept from where they lived, termed a "midnight raid." This entailed standing in the insurrectionary freedom of the wide-open refrigerator door to consider the menu. Salami! Leftover spaghetti! Cherry pie to be hunked up in the hand and popped into the mouth!

Tom and Judith were enjoying a midnight raid, Tom working on a bologna sandwich and potato chips and Judith finishing off the last of a week's worth of split-pea-with-ham soup.

"Don't worry about Walt," Tom told Judith. "I'm taking real care of him."

"Who's taking care of you?"

"Well, no one has to, anyway."

Judith stirred her soup. She nodded.

"Huh. Well, I see the doctor is in," said Tom.

"And the lover is out."

"Look—"

"Tom,
you
look. You have it so together the whole town is agog. All my friends ask me, What is he like?"

"To know?"

"In bed, you dear fool." Tom grinned. "So what do you say?"

"'He has nothing to worry about.'" Tom nodded.

"But that's not the point," Judith went on. "Who is Tom, and what is Walt telling me?"

"Judes, I don't know what that—" "Who hurt you? Who did what to you?" Tom said nothing.

"There's something in that town, isn't there?" Judith declared and asked. "Like in some horror movie."

"It was a beautiful place, Judith. It was green and wide and happy. It was a bunch of us all together, and we... It was our whole world, made by us. Snow fights and hamburgers and Walt's unbelievable dog." Tom's eyes were wet. "What a perfectly stupid time. I don't believe any of it happened."

This is what Tom wrote in his diary about Walt:

I am very fond of the young man. He likes to shower before bedtime, and since his bed still hasn't arrived he comes into my room toweling off, just naked and so trusting. I wouldn't hurt him for anything. I try to joke with him, wrestle him around. He yelps and runs away, then comes running back for more. But I wouldn't do anything with him. I just like the feel of him in my arms, and the way he melts and calls me Cousin Tom. But that's all. I worry because maybe if he wasn't my blood cousin I might really want him, not just sleep beside him. This is different from when you see a guy you like the looks of. This is Baby Walt. Look, I was there when he took his first steps in the back of the Lindstroms'. It was some grown-up shindig, where they drag the kids along. Suddenly, Walt reared up with this goofy grin and staggered around, chasing the Lindstroms' cat.

Well, finally they delivered Walt's bed, and he was so excited he said he'd put a notice to that effect in the next greeting he taped on the phone machine. I said to cool it, because who knows who'slistening, anyway? Besides, he's still sleeping with me. I guess he just got used to it, or we both did, or something. Well, there's room for two there. He pours himself a can of V-8 most nights, and apparently he gets up and sips from it because by morning it's all gone. Sometimes he turns over real close to me and I can hear him breathing and I think about how he still calls me Cousin Tom after all these years of his life.

Judith gave a Christmas Eve party, inviting all her "friends away from their family," as she put it. Tom took Walt to Anthony's to pick out a new shirt, tie, and sport jacket.

"The girls'll love you like that," Tom told Walt when they got home and the boy tried everything on. "They'll want to eat you with a knife and fork."

"Won't I be young?" Walt asked, staring in the mirror. "They may seem a little racy for a country boy."

"You can handle them, pal. I'm counting on you." "No, don't." Walt turned to the side. "Say, it's hard to look at your own profile."

"Why shouldn't I count on you?" "I wonder if I should bring Claude." "Aren't you a little big for Claude?" "Yes. But he likes older men."

Claude stayed home, so Walt was by far the junior of the congregation. But Judith was attractive, smart, and generous, and such people tend to have comparable friends. So Walt was welcomed: respected by the men and adored by the women. Judith had a piano, too, and she played Christmas carols as the company hugged and sang, everything from "Good Christian Men, Rejoice" to "White Christmas," capped by a contest to see who knew the most verses to "Good King Wenceslas."

Then Walt took stage, accompanying himself in his own composition, "The Candy Corn Chorale," sung more or less to the tune of "God Rest You Merry Gentlemen":

Oh! Candy Corn went out to pray

And came back in the morning!

Candy Corn was then devoured

By all the merry folk!

Oh! Candy Corn went out to pray

And never did return!

For Candy Corn was et,

He was et!

Oh! Candy Corn was et!

Then everyone wanted to sing it, and Walt divided them by vocal type and built up a ringing choir fit to compete in an eisteddfod. Walt saw Judith smiling at Tom as they sang, and Walt loved that, and everyone was smiling; but everyone was a little sozzled by then, and it was time to part. Walt and Tom were the last guests to leave, staying to help Judith put her place in order. Tom and Judith took some minutes to themselves while Walt auditioned Debussy's
Children's Corner
suite on the piano. Then Walt joined them, saying, "That last piece was 'The Golliwog's Cakewalk.'"

"Let's cakewalk ourselves home," said Tom. "It's late." Walt offered his hand to Judith, but she embraced him, saying, "I hope there will be many parties like this one, Walt."

In the car, Tom said, "Well, Judith really likes you." "That was a nice crowd of people. They were quite turned on to 'The Candy Corn Chorale.'"

"It was quality music, pal."

Coming down from the high of a wonderful party, the two were silent for the rest of the ride. Once home, they separated on diverse errands. Walt pumped more carols out of the piano while Tom, in the office, took out his diary. He wrote:

I don't know how to proceed. I don't know what I want. I don't know who I'm supposed to love. Could I screw Judith and hold Walt, or should it be vice versa? I don't know what I'd do with Walt, and yet I want to do it.

The phone rang; Tom glanced at his watch. It was a little after midnight.

"Don't answer it, Walt!" Tom called out. Some Christmas prank, probably. But the piano was silent, and Tom heard Walt talking and, then, suddenly, shouting.

"It's
Chris,
Cousin Tom! Chris is calling especially for us in a holiday spirit!"

Tom went as rigid as stone.
Chris?

Walt, at the door, goes, "Hurry! It's the true voice of our past!"

Tom leaps up and follows the rushing Walt to the nearest extension, in the kitchen.

"Chris!"

"Oh, Tom, Merry Christmas, and I hope it isn't too late to call."

"No, it's... No, great to hear you! Chris!"

"This is Call Me Impulsive. I tried Information for Minneapolis, and there you—"

"Well, how are you, voice of our past? Walt is beside himself. Anyway, he
was.
He just wandered off again in the excitement."

"What's
he
doing there?"

"Living."

"Oh. Oh, that's so sweet, Tom. That's... Golly."

They did that for a while, then they did Chris's career, then New York, then Minneapolis—which fascinated Chris, who, like most Gotburgers, had never been there.

"I can't get over it," said Tom. "You're this big theatre lady now."

"One off-Broadway hit and nineteen dinner-theatre
Hello, Dolly!
s isn't big. It's promising."