The One-in-a-Million Boy (24 page)

Later that night, while Belle saw to the boy's elaborate bedtime ritual—ten sips of water, ten fluffs of the pillow, ten deep breaths—Quinn confided to Amy, “Shouldn't a nine-year-old kid be on a baseball team?”

“He's in Scouts.”

“But he can't name a single other kid in the troop.” Quinn had taken him to a den meeting that very morning, a humbling exercise wherein he watched Ted Ledbetter, his unbeknownst future rival, demonstrate his skill with children. “You don't think that's strange, Amy? From a list maker? That he can't name one kid in his troop?”

They were drinking Scotch in the living room—or, Amy was drinking Scotch; Quinn had a Sprite. “Actually,” Amy said, “what's strange is that you told him fifty times that his teacher's name was Mr. Lincoln, and he knew it wasn't, and he didn't correct you.”

Quinn took a long, unproductive guzzle of his fake drink.

“He's afraid of you, Quinn. You have to try harder.” She set down her own drink, which quivered alluringly. “Sisterly advice? Belle thinks you never bonded with your own child, and whether or not that's true”—here she paused significantly—“making judgments about his basic and unchangeable nature just adds fuel to the fire.”

Quinn despised the word
bonded,
which reminded him of liability insurance, and he suspected Amy of using it to goad him. But she was a little drunk, and they were otherwise getting along, so he gave her a pass.

“He's not an easy kid to bond with.”

“What could be easier?” she said, without rancor. “He's a beautiful, beautiful child,” she said. “I love him.” Then she faced him with an expression so unguarded, so achingly helpless, that he couldn't muster the guts to hold her gaze.

Belle and Ted were waiting for his answer. He sensed the party of high schoolers watching from their corner booth.

“I've never been in a wedding,” Ona twittered. “No one has ever once asked me.”

“I wanted to get married at home,” Ted said, “but this'll be just fine. Just perfect.” He turned to his bride-to-be, unable to hide his bafflement. “My mother and the boys will be disappointed, though.”

“We'll have a party eventually,” Belle said. “Maybe even another ceremony.” She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow exactly as she'd once done with Quinn.

Oh, God,
Quinn thought.
She loves the guy.
And why wouldn't she? Ted Ledbetter wanted a real wedding in which he rounded up his creaky mother and charming sons and all of Troop 23 and the other teachers at King Middle School and the women who'd known his angelic late wife; he wanted to assemble on a beach to proclaim his love over the music of gulls and cellos, but because Belle could not bear a meeting of dearly beloved—not now, maybe not ever—he'd agreed to repeat a few boilerplate phrases after a pokerfaced Vermont town clerk. He was committing to the crushed remnants of the woman he loved, to a lawsuit that would take years, to a sister-in-law who would engage him in a lifelong border dispute, to a father-in-law who would chew him up so hard there'd be no need to swallow.

Quinn tried to marshal his envy and resentment; instead, he dredged up a surprise: awe.

“It won't take five minutes,” Belle said.

He couldn't smile. “I'd be delighted.”

Ted edged in, smelling of peppermint, wearing the same shirt from the day before, a far cry from the wedding coat he'd likely kept for months in a dry-cleaning bag. “She won't regret me, Quinn, I promise.”

Quinn didn't doubt it, much as he longed to. Ted was the kind of man Belle should have married in the first place. “Goddamn it,” he said under his breath, “let's just go.”

Ona got up. “I'm hardly presentable to attend a wedding, much less participate.”

“Neither am I,” said the besotted Ted, “but try and stop me.”

The overfilled bouquet turned out to be two separate bundles, one of which he presented to Ona. “For the matron of honor.” His smile lengthened and he seemed to relax, his happiness at last immune to Quinn's presence, to the functional ceremony, to his closest kin being two states away.

“I accept,” Ona said, as if
her
hand were the one he wanted. Quinn shot her a punishing glare for so fluidly switching sides, but she merely opened her eyes wider, silently urging him to rise to the occasion.

“Good luck, you guys!” called one of the high schoolers, a girl in a pink baseball cap.

Quinn paid the bill and Ona took his arm as if they were in an official wedding party. Mac Cosgrove had always admonished Quinn to associate with “goal setters.” Well, he was escorting one out to the car this very minute; she'd freshened her lipstick and smelled very nice.

“You're a gentleman,” she informed him as he ferried her through the grease-printed doors. “You're doing the gentlemanly thing.”

Despite her age, her infirmity, her lack of physical wiles, she managed to float on his arm in Belle's red blouse like the girl she must once have been, and her attentions flattered him. He found them improbably welcome. She looked up at him as if appraising a gem; the least he could do was stand up for the bride and try his best to shine.

 

PART FOUR

 

 

* * *

This is Miss Ona Vitkus. This is her life memories and shards on tape. This is Part Seven.

. . .

We were talking about Louise. And that awful rumor. Louise first landed on my doorstep very shortly thereafter.

. . .

I think it was October. Couldn't have been winter yet. But all the same I recollect her arrival as a wintry one, her cheeks afire with cold. Seems like a January night in my mind, now; the air had that midwinter crackle. You know that feeling, like the air might break?

. . .

Well. Weather was different back then. I'd just made one of my favorite suppers, and suddenly there was Louise Grady at my door.

. . .

Meat pie, with fried cabbage on the side. The secret is caraway, if you ever take a notion.

. . .

It's a seed. Possibly I had my mother in mind. She'd died over the summer and Papa had passed long before that. But until the summer of 1955 Mama was living on Wald Street, ninety-one years old and still minding her parsnips. She dropped right there in her garden on a hot July day, which struck me even at the time as an easeful way to go.

. . .

All those growing things must soften the blow, don't you think? A dressy row of carrots calling, “Don't be afraid! It smells marvelous under here!”

. . .

I know. Funny. So, there's Louise and her fiery cheeks in October. I invited her in for supper—couldn't very well avoid it, since she was standing there with a clear enough intention.

. . .

“Why, thank you, Miss Vitkus.” That's what she said, as if my invitation was a big gift-wrapped surprise.

. . .

Oh, she could eat, that Louise. Plump equaled beautiful back then. You didn't see these half-starved coat racks prancing around in their underwear. Louise had on that purple suit dress.

. . .

Heavens, no. I wasn't the suit dress type. I had a closetful of shirtwaists. “What brings you out on such a cold evening, Miss Grady?” That's what I asked her after she'd shoveled into the pie.

. . .

She said, “Miss Vitkus, I find myself in need of an ally.” Why she needed an ally I had no idea. The boy who'd loosened up the rumor—a scholarship boy, unfortunately, from a cannery family on River Street—he'd been expelled.

. . .

Because Louise confronted the little fellow right in front of the Hawkins boy and his parents, and when she finished she had Mrs. Hawkins in tears apologizing six ways from Sunday. The boys, too: both of them in tears.

. . .

It was over, yes, but Louise was taking no chances. Like me, she had no man to pay her bills. “How would you like to become a schoolgirl again, Miss Vitkus?” she asks me.

. . .

“I haven't been a schoolgirl since I was fourteen years old, Miss Grady,” I told her. And I hastened to add, in case she thought me ill educated, that I'd had a brilliant tutor.

. . .

Exactly! Maud-Lucy Stokes, who schooled me like a countess.

. . .

She said, “Then you'll welcome the chance to reprise your studies, Miss Vitkus,” and she invites me to take part in her Senior Literature Seminar. I would vacate my station from one o'clock to three o'clock every Monday afternoon, and apparently that was fine with Dr. Valentine. You have no idea what a radical proposition this was in 1955.

Has anyone ever told you—?

. . .

Your face. Not a single judging bone in it.

. . .

You're welcome. So I tell Louise, “I'd be honored to attend your seminar, Miss Grady.” And Louise says, “Call me Louise.”

. . .

Of course I did. Then I plundered my cupboards and found a bottle of sherry left behind by the previous tenant. I didn't have the right sort of glasses, but we toasted.

. . .

“Cheers,” I imagine. I don't exactly recall. I remember clinking the wrong sort of glasses and wishing I had the
right
sort of glasses, and to this day I consider that moment—
clink!
—as the beginning of our friendship. I'm glad it made a sound.

. . .

I'll say we did! We went through half the bottle, and because I was unused to drinking, I may have mentioned Dr. Valentine more than once.

. . .

Oh, I adored him. He was so . . . accomplished. But Louise got an idea in her head.

. . .

As she was leaving my apartment she turned around and said, “How long, Ona Vitkus, have you been in love?” Her arms came around me. She smelled like violets even in that freezing night air. “He's your secret valentine,” she said. “But Ona, dear, are you his?”

. . .

. . .

Excuse me. I forgot you for a second. You have this way of disappearing. Do you know what
unrequited
means?

. . .

U-n-r-e-q-u-i
—. Never mind. You won't need that word, fine-looking boy like you.

. . .

You never mind about him. Poor man spent the rest of the term tippy-tapping around Louise, going so far as to let her tinker with the final modules of the seminar. That was Dr. Valentine's word,
modules.
I think he made it up, though by the time the sixties got into full swing everybody was using it.

. . .

The idea was to corral time in a fashion that took advantage of the boys' fickle brains. At the time it was revolutionary, but you know, Dr. Valentine wasn't a rebel. He was just a man in the wrong job. He liked his tea and muffin in the morning. Honestly, he was just a smarter, pleasanter, better-educated, handsomer, more enchanting version of Howard.

. . .

Right, so Louise was getting ready for the final module of the Senior Literature Seminar, which was supposed to get the boys all hepped up over Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

. . .

Long-winded gasbags from the nineteenth century. But Louise slipped in some lady writers with scandalous personal lives.

. . .

“These boys need a fuller immersion in the bracing waters of literature,” she'd say. I thought she had a point, not that anyone asked me.

. . .

Oh, the boys were all for it. They found the notion of female rebellion hard to resist. And anyway, they were all half in love with Louise by then.

. . .

Because she listened. The way you're doing right now. Poor Louise had to scuffle for every book on her list. She took it as her duty to turn out future husbands with whom future wives could bear to converse over coffee and crumpets without plunging a butter knife into their own breasts.

. . .

Because Louise herself had divorced two imperfect men. No children, which left her with an excess of motherly inclinations. The boys' real mothers had fallen down on the job, is how Louise saw it.

. . .

I'm sure they did do the best they could.

. . .

Yes, I'm sure they did, I'm
agreeing
with you, but according to Louise it wasn't nearly enough. It was her burden, by default, not only to shine up the future husbands of the world, but also to prevent them from marrying batty-lashed simpletons.

. . .

By forcing the boys to read things like “Désirée's Baby”—that's a shocking story by a lady writer named Kate Chopin. A crusader, that was Louise. Her mother was an old suffragette from Philadelphia.

. . .

. . .

Sorry, I forgot you again. You know, one meets so many people, the years pass and pass, but there are certain times, certain people—

. . .

They take up room. So much room. I was married to Howard for twenty-eight years and yet he made only a piddling dent in my memory. A little nick. But certain others, they move in and make themselves at home and start flapping their arms in the story you make of your life. They have a wingspan.

. . .

I would say so, yes. I would say that you are a boy with a wingspan.

. . .

You're welcome. So, Louise brought in all these books for Dr. Valentine's approval. But she was a cagey one, that Louise. In they came, stack after stack, big sliding mountains of books. We had six chairs lined up along the wall outside Dr. Valentine's office, and that's where Louise deposited her books, on these straight-back chairs where boys were supposed to wait in a sweat after some absurd infraction.

. . .

One stack per chair. You never saw anything so comical, all those books sitting in neat towers, each one the height of a boy. You wanted to put hats on them.