The Man Without a Face (8 page)

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gripper under the best of circumstances. But I couldn’t concentrate.

“Well?”

“Your face doesn’t bother me,” I blurted out, and realized as I said it that it was true. I hadn’t even thought about his disfigurement since that day in the stable. “I don’t think about it that way any more.”

He was sitting on the sill of the window, staring down at his crossed feet. “Then what were you thinking?”

I wanted to tell him but I didn’t know how. I mean, I have pretty well perfected the techniques of how to put somebody down or off or out. But I didn’t even know how to begin to tell him that I was wondering whether or not he liked me, because that was like telling him that I liked him. It’s disconcerting, making important discoveries like that in the middle of a conversation. Everything stops while I sort things out. One thing was certain: I’d never before tried to tell anyone—least of all a grown-up—that I liked him. The words were piling up in the back of my throat until I could almost feel my eyes bulge. But nothing came out.

“Never mind. I didn’t mean to invade your privacy. Continue with Lucy.” He came back to the table and stood looking down at his copy.

I was really in a turmoil, as though somebody had switched on a propeller somewhere in my midriff. Not knowing what to say, or rather, not knowing how to say what I wanted to say, I looked down at the book and grumbled, “The way he goes on about Lucy, it’s worse than Humbert Humbert over Lolita. I mean—”

But I never got to what I meant.

There was an explosion of laughter. “Oh, my God,” McLeod said and put his hand up to his eyes.

I felt rather clever. “It’s crap, isn’t it?”

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I knew right away I’d gone too far, even though I could tell he still wanted to laugh. I said hastily, “I mean—the whole Lucy thing’s silly, don’t you think?”

“No. But it’s a bad choice for you now at this age. They should know better. By the way, try for a word other than * »»

crap.

“It’s a legitimate expression of authentic feeling,” I quoted The Hairball piously.

“It’s also laziness. When you have found ten synonyms or reasonable substitutes then you may use it. In the meantime, as part of your assignment tomorrow, you can look up the Latin equivalents—there are several—and decline them; then you can see how many times each of them is used, and how they are used, in the Vergil.’’

I was furious. “That’s a lot of work. Besides, you’ve already set the homework.”

“But a limited vocabulary is a serious handicap. I should dislike your going to St. Matthew’s under such a grave disadvantage.”

I stared back at him, too mad now to remember my embarrassment. I knew good and well he was laughing at me, but not by a flicker did it show.

“By the way,” he said. “Whom were you quoting just now?”

“The Hairball,” I said, not thinking.

“The what'

“My last stepfather.”

“How many have you had?”

“Two. Then there was Mother’s first husband who would have been a step if I had been born then. Only I wasn’t. He was Gorgeous Gloria’s father.”

“The one you’re so devoted to.”

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I decided to live dangerously. “I thought you were never supposed to end a sentence with a preposition.”

“I, too, can quote,” he said deadpan. “There is a certain type of insubordination going on around here up with which I will not put.”

I couldn’t help grinning. “You’re not serious about me having to do that Latin word bit, are you, Mr. McLeod?” (At our school in New York the teachers all make a big thing about us calling them by their first names. Democracy and all that. It didn’t even occur to me to do it with McLeod.)

“Oh, yes. That is, if you want to use your favorite word again.”

I sighed loudly. It really is against my principles to give in to an adult. But somehow, of the two of us, I had a strong feeling he wasn’t going to do the yielding.

“All right. I won’t—at least, I’ll try to remember.” “Angels could no more,” McLeod said, moving towards the bookcase.

I gathered my things up. “Is that from a poem?” “Yes.”

“That stuff always turns me off.”

He pulled down a volume. “You like planes, don’t you?” “Sure.”

He came back, turning over the pages. “You might like this,” he said, and read aloud:

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,

Where never lark, or even eagle, flew,

And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

It was queer, what it did to me. There were little explosions in my head and stomach and a tingling down my back. My throat was dry. McLeod was looking at me. “Here,” he said, holding out the book. “Take it.”

CHAPTER 5

It was after twelve when I got home. McLeod had kept me half an hour overtime, although, come to think of it, I hadn’t felt kept. I just hadn’t realized it was so late. But I did realize I was hungry. The house was blessedly empty. I like empty houses or rooms. I once said this to one of the five school psychologists and he got so upset that they broke out a fresh set of Rorschach’s for me to run through. So I went through all their bags of tricks and answered all their stupid questions and I still like empty houses and rooms, especially those that are empty of people I’m related to, except maybe Meg.

Feeling relaxed and eager to look at that poem again, I was pouring myself some milk when the screen door squeaked open and in came Gorgeous Gloria and Putrid Percy.

“Hi,” Gloria said, oozing with friendship. Then she gave

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me a big smile and I knew instantly what all our roles were: hers was The People's Choice as Big Sister of the Year. Mine was the same as it always is, Unappreciative Kid Brother. Mother’s is Unappreciative Parent. Meg’s is Unappreciative Kid Sister. The plot is whatever is happening at the moment. But I was the only member of the cast available, which meant that the burden of revealing the Unappreciation by which Gloria is always surrounded lay solely, and heavily, on me. I watched her carefully over the glass of milk I was drinking to see how the plot developed.

“Percy, this is my kid brother, Chuck.”

He tossed his head to get a long curling lock out of the way. “Hi, man.”

I waved a hand. “Hi,” I said, when I had finished drinking the milk.

Gloria glanced at the books that I had put down on the table. “Chuck’s trying to get into St. Matthew’s,” she explained in a kindly fashion.

Percy took a bite out of a doughnut Gloria had taken out of a jar. “Anybody can do that,” he mumbled through a full mouth, showing a lot of teeth and wet dough. Then he swallowed. “What’s your problem, man?”

“Chuck’s not the academic type,’’ Gloria said, nibbling at a carrot stick, and still eyeing the books.

My part was beginning to shape up. I was now not only Unappreciative Brother, I was also Backward Brother.

“Percy goes to Princeton,” Gloria said (as if we all didn’t know), turning the top book around so she could see the title on the spine.

I suddenly realized that was McLeod’s book, and for all I knew he might have his name in it, and then Gloria would really have a plot to get to work on.

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I’m not usually a fast thinker. But Gloria’s hand was on the cover of the book about to open it, and emergency bells were clanging in my head. There wasn’t time to put the milk container I was holding down or back in the refrigerator, so I dropped it.

Milk flew all over the floor and over Gloria’s feet. The People’s Choice for Big Sister vanished as the real Gloria stood up. “You clumsy clot,” she shrieked in her best witchlike voice. “You verminous moron. You did that deliberately.”

“Gosh, I’m sorry,” I tucked the books under my arm and moved towards the back stairs. “But if you get it off right away everybody says it won’t stain.” I opened the door to the stairs.

Percy the Pursuer was slapping at his shorts with a rag. “Lousy coordination,” he was muttering. But he was looking in a strange way at Gloria, and who could blame him? America’s sweetheart, voice like an ungreased axle, was enumerating the goodies in store for me once Mother had been apprised of my latest sin.

“You did that deliberately,” she said, staring up from the floor where she was wiping off her sandals. “I know you, Chuck Norstadt, that’s your subtle way of distracting my attention. You’ve done it before. And don’t think I won’t find out what it is you don’t want me to know and tell Mother. I will, I always do, and then you’ll be so sorry you’ll crawl.”

I really couldn’t have written her part better myself, if the object was to show Percy what he was about to take to his heart; if not home. Which just goes to prove what everybody says: I’m not very bright. If I had been, I would have given my all to convince Percy what a jewel he was about to acquire. With any luck they’d elope—at the least he’d keep

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her attention occupied. Instead, I couldn’t have done a more efficient job of showing her up if I’d planned it for a week.

Her voice followed me up the stairs. I closed my door and stuck a chair under it—there isn’t a key in the house, and in this mood Gloria wouldn’t hesitate to walk in. Then I sat down at the small table that serves me for a desk and cursed my idiocy. It was the big sister bit that got me—of all her acts it’s the most repulsive. When she’s being her real self it’s unpleasant, but nobody’s fooling anybody else. It’s the phoniness that brings out the worst.

I looked down at McLeod’s book and flipped open the front cover and there, sure enough, was his name: Justin McLeod. Then I nearly fell over because underneath his name was St. Matthew9s School. And then there was a date, I958.

I did some hasty figuring. He certainly couldn’t have been a student in I958, that was only thirteen years ago, so he must have been a teacher.

I racked my memory for what he had said about the school—nothing really, except at the beginning when he implied it shouldn’t be too hard to get in.

But the real mystery was—why hadn’t he said he had been there?

I riffled through the pages and found the poem again. It was called “High Flight,” and it was by somebody named John Gillespie Magee. And even just reading it, without McLeod’s voice, which was good, it had the same effect. That Magee really knew about flying. I’ve been up in a small one-engined plane twice. Nobody knew about it either time. I just took some money out of my savings, got on the Long Island train when I should have been at school, and went over to a private airport on the Island. Those were the two best days I ever had.

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* * *

An hour or so later there was a banging on my bedroom door. “It’s me,” Meg said. I got up and let her in.

“Now you’ve done it,” she said gloomily. “Charles— you just aren’t very smart.”

“What else is new?” I said sarcastically.

“What happened?” She flopped down on the bed, sand and all.

“What d’ya mean, what’s happened?” I sounded surly, but my heart sank.

“I mean I was playing down at the cove with some of the other kids when I looked up, and there was our Gloria with a double-dip chocolate-chip-marshmallow ice cream cone which she said was for me. So I knew she wanted something.”

“So of course you refused it—the ice cream cone, I mean.”

“No,” Meg said sadly.

“Maybe you aren’t so bright, either.”

“D’accord." Meg’s pretty conceited about her French which she jabbers with Barry Rumble Seat who spent some years in Paris.

“Whatever that means.”

“It means right on.”

“What did Gloria want?”

“She wanted to know, casual-like, if you were studying with anyone and if so, who.”

“Whom.” McLeod’s iron approach to grammar was beginning to have effect.

“Boy! He must be good if he got that through your head.” “Thanks a lot! He is. What did you tell her, Meg?”

“I told her that you were studying by yourself but had

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discovered some morning hideout where you can have peace and quiet. But I don’t think she believed me.”

“Who would, since you go lobster red every time you cry and tell a lie.”

“I can’t help it. Is it my fault if I’m naturally honest?” “You might remember it’s in a good cause.”

“That has nothing to do with it. She also said that one of your books didn’t look like any book she’d seen around the house before and whose was it?”

“Well that just proves what I’ve always thought—that she goes snooping around my room when I’m not there. How the heck does she know which is my book and which isn’t? Whose did you say it was?”

“I told her I thought it was Pete Lansing’s.”

Good old Pete, I thought. First his jeans and now his book. “Did she swallow it?”

“I don’t think so, and neither would I if I’d known what kind of book it was; she said it was hard to imagine Pete having a poetry anthology I remembered her turning the book around and squinting at the title. “Lousy peeping tom,” I muttered.

“I said it could have been given to him.”

“Thanks, Meg, that was neat.”

“I thought so too. But all the same, she’ll check. Look—I’ve been thinking all the way up here. Is there any way you could study up at McLeod’s house? That’d solve a lot of problems. You could keep your books up there so Gloria could snoop to her heart’s content. Mother already thinks you’re breathing the great outdoors, and if you were just up there out of the way, who’d know the difference?” “McLeod.”