Pin (8 page)

“Is that so?” he said. “Tell me, what do you plan to do with the shares of Sante Fe?” He was testing me just so I would feel inadequate.

“I'm going to hold them,” I said quickly, looking directly at him. “They've gone up five points since we bought them, and father expected them to go to twelve during the coming year. You know what the exporting of all that grain is going to do?” I hardly knew what I was talking about, but Uncle Hymie was taken aback. He was floored by my confidence. “Anyway, I have a good legal and financial advisor in Mr. Orseck. Father trusted him, didn't he?”

“Well, yes, I suppose…. Look, Leon, your Aunt Dorothy thinks you two should come to live with her. You could come to live with us also. Maybe you could spend some time with both of us.”

“We'll be fine here,” I said quickly. I felt Ursula's hand touch mine under the table. I held her fingers.

“I could never leave this place without knowing you two were well taken care of. Why, your father and mother would expect that from us, to say the least.”

“No, they wouldn't,” Ursula said. “Father especially would want us to become independent. He brought us up that way.”

“It's out of the question,” he said.

“You've already stated, Uncle Hymie, that I'm eighteen and legally in control of my finances.”

“Yes, but Ursula's just sixteen. She has to have a proper home.”

“She'd have it here with me. This is her home. This is where she's going to school too. How can you pull her out of all that?”

“And what will she do when you go to college next
year? Live here by herself?” That question took me by surprise. I hadn't thought of it. Ursula's grip on my hand tightened.

“I'm not going to go to college,” I said softly. “There's no reason to anymore.”

“What? Why not?”

“As far as I can see, we're financially as comfortable as we need be.”

“But there's more to life than being financially well-off, Leon. Look, there's no sense in our discussing it anymore. Even if I agreed, your Aunt Dorothy would insist. If you want to stay, Leon, there is nothing I can do. But Ursula will have to come and live with one of us.”

“Then you'll have to go to court to make her,” I said.

“That's damn right,” Ursula added. Uncle Hymie just sat looking at us. Then he shook his head and stood up. “And even if you did win, you'd have to drag me to your house and keep me under constant guard day and night, because the first chance I got, I'd run back.”

“I don't think either of you is thinking clearly,” he said, and left. A moment later, Aunt Dorothy came in, and we went through a similar argument. Finally frustrated, she left too. Ursula and I went upstairs to our rooms. About an hour or so later, all of them came up. We gathered in Ursula's room. Uncle Hymie was their spokesman.

“We've decided to let you two have your way for a while, Leon. In a short time, I'm sure, as is everyone else, that you'll realize what's best for Ursula and yourself. At least, until she goes off to college.” They all nodded. My Aunt Sadie looked as if she were about to cry.

“I'm not going to college either,” Ursula said.

“You may change your mind,” Aunt Dorothy responded. She pursed her lips and placed her hands on her hips.

“I doubt it,” I said. They all stood there looking at us in silence for a few moments longer. Then they turned and left the room. In the morning all of them went home. We had breakfast together (Ursula insisted on preparing it just to show her abilities), and then we escorted them to the door. My Aunt Sadie cried as she kissed us. She was so high-strung and emotionally upset that Uncle Hymie had his hands full with her and paid us little attention at the end.

“You'll call us the moment you change your minds, right?” Aunt Dorothy said. I nodded, but Ursula wouldn't even grant her that much. “And we'll call you periodically.” I nodded again. They finally left, each of them touching us on the arms and face. I closed the door. For a long moment, Ursula and I stood there alone in the big empty house.

“We did it,” she said coming up to me and taking my arm in hers. “I never thought they'd leave us.”

“They saw we meant business,” I said. She laughed. Then we went into the living room and flopped on the couch. Simultaneously, we both had the same idea and jumped up to take off the plastic covers.

“We'll be all right, won't we, Leon?”

“Sure we will. No problems. I'll see Mr. Orseck tomorrow and plan out our financial life, just like I told Uncle Hymie. There's nothing to worry about.”

“I knew you could handle it,” she said. Her face was lit up with happiness. “They were like putty in
your hands. You are brilliant, Leon. You are. We will be all right.”

“Certainly. And tonight we'll go and get Pin. We'll drive over to the office, dress him and put him in the backseat.”

The smile left her face.

“Where will you keep him? I mean …”

“The room behind the garage. It'll be perfect. Don't you agree?” She nodded slowly.

“I feel like soaking in a hot bath. Will you come up in a while and wash my back?”

“Sure,” I said. I watched her walk away. Since the abortion, we hadn't done anything as intimate as that. I sat there in that empty living room for about fifteen minutes before I got up to go upstairs. It was very lonely. I couldn't wait to get Pin over.

When I opened the door to the bathroom, I found Ursula sitting in the tub with her eyes closed. I walked over and looked down at her. Some foam from the suds had settled around the nipples of her breasts. She opened her eyes and looked up at me. She smiled and I knelt down to lift the warm washcloth out of the water. She sat up and leaned forward so I could rub her back. I waited as she reached back and held her hair away. Then I began, moving the cloth in small circular motions.

“How's that feel?”

“It feels good, Leon. Real good,” she said. Then she leaned back again. Still kneeling beside the tub, I stared at her. She smiled again. “I'm not afraid anymore,” she added. “Not afraid.”

E
VEN THOUGH OUR UNCLES AND AUNTS CALLED LESS AND
less frequently that first year, we sweated it out, expecting at any time for them to go to family court and get an order for Ursula to go live with them. Of course, they never did. Ursula believed it was probably because they really never wanted the responsibility and aggravation involved in acting as guardians. She said we got them off the hook by being so independent. Maybe she was right. Ursula would certainly have made life difficult for whomever she was forced to live with. They knew that.

When Ursula finally did turn eighteen, we had a great celebration. The three of us had a fantastic dinner and drank lots of champagne. Ursula got wiped out and I had to carry her upstairs to put her
to sleep. Afterward, Pin and I sat in the living room and talked quietly about her future. She continually refused to go to college. Pin thought I ought to try harder to talk her into it. I did try, but she was determined not to go. Finally she settled on the job at the library. I think she first did it just so we would stop bothering her about her future, but after a while, she got to like the job a lot. It paid little, but she didn't really need the money anyway. I guess it was a good way for her to occupy her day. She used to come home and tell us all about the people who came in and what books they requested.

“I like the whole atmosphere of quiet in there,” she would say. “The serenity, the peacefulness of the place. It's very relaxing.”

The library really didn't have that many books in it and there weren't that many people using it. Some kind of government funds supported it, I think. Ursula worked with an old lady, a Miss Spartacus, who lived with her sister. Ursula said Miss Spartacus was at least seventy-three years old. She had been with the library as far back as anyone could remember. In fact, she had become a librarian right out of high school. I used to kid her about that and tell her someday she'd be another Miss Spartacus. The old lady was a short woman with very thin hair. Ursula said she was close to being bald. Her nose and eyebrows twitched from a nervous condition. When I wanted to get a reaction out of Ursula, I would tell her to stop twitching her nose.

“Miss Spartacus has little gray hairs all over her face,” Ursula told me. “She could shave in the morning.”

“That's not really unusual for old women,” Pin said.

Ursula said that Miss Spartacus went to the reserved book racks to eat lunch every day. She said she nibbled on her food like a squirrel.

“She even holds it like a squirrel. All she eats is nuts and fruits.”

“You'll have to invite her to dinner one night,” Pin said. I laughed.

Actually, we invited very few people to our house. Aside from an occasional salesman and some kids selling cookies or magazines, people rarely came to our door. The first year after mother and father died, I used to have kids over on weekends, but gradually they stopped coming and I stopped asking them. Ursula withdrew completely. I don't know how she finished her last year in high school. She was absent so much. I once asked Pin if he minded our lack of company.

“I suppose you were used to something entirely different over there in father's office. There were people coming and going all day long.”

“It's a change, but it's not a bad change. I've grown to like our privacy,” he said. “Besides, the only people who came over there were people with troubles of one sort or another. The more people you know, the more trouble you learn about.”

I think he meant it, although sometimes I wondered if he wasn't just saying it for my benefit. He was right about people bringing their troubles, though. One afternoon, not long after the funeral, I brought Marcia Matterson home with me. Ursula was still in school and I thought it was a good opportunity to get a piece of what Marcia was so charitably giving out. The doctor had told us about nymphomaniacs, but I couldn't imagine one until I met Marcia. She had absolutely no concern about
whom she was with or how often she was with someone. Although she was heavy in the hips, she had a reasonably attractive face and very big breasts—enormous ones, in fact. I had a secret desire to weigh one, betting with myself that they weighed at least ten pounds apiece. I gave her a highball, although it really wasn't necessary to pump her full of booze first. She was quite prepared to hop right into bed with me.

Pin was sitting in the corner of the living room in the shadows. He liked sitting in the shadows because he said it put him in a pensive mood. Sometimes I would sit in the opposite corner in the shadows and think too. I didn't introduce Marcia to him when we first came in. I really didn't think he wanted to meet her anyhow. Pin was really a little prudish when I think about it. He could also be very bashful and clam right up. That would get very embarrassing and uncomfortable for all present.

So Marcia and I went upstairs to my room. She drank her drink very quickly and we embraced on my bed. We were fully clothed and for the first ten or fifteen minutes, I just squeezed her breasts and kissed her neck. I really wasn't convinced myself that I was going to have intercourse. (I really wanted to say screw or fuck, but the doctor's influence lasted long after his death.) In any case, though, she was positive about what she wanted. She grew very impatient with me and undressed herself. I sat there watching her struggle to get that sweater over her head. Her breasts, freed of the bra, fell with relief onto her. I leaned forward and gently lifted one with the palm of my right hand. I bounced it softly, as if weighing it. She smiled and moaned and pursed her lips.

Somehow she turned me off. I don't really know why I suddenly felt that way. Perhaps I was just turned off by her gross body. For the first time, I noticed that there were little dark hairs growing over her lower lip. That bothered me, I know. She unzipped her skirt and then looked at me in anticipation. I was just sitting there, staring blankly at her naked bosom.