The Palace Thief (11 page)

“What stuff?”

“Equations. The things Clive thinks about.”

She was silent for a moment. “Did you lie about anything else?”

“Like what?”

She didn’t answer.

“Like, that you’re pretty, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

I felt to the side for the wall. “No way,” I said, “not about that.”

Now there was no sound, and I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark. “How am I doing?” I said, stepping forward again.

“You’re getting warmer.”

“You’re under the table, aren’t you?”

“Nope. Colder, genius. Good, warmer.”

“You’re up on the shelves.”

She giggled. “What
do
you like thinking about, William?”

“You must be around the
S
’s.”

“Warmer. Hot.”

I slid toward the wall in the dark, my hands out in front of me. When I reached the shelves, I felt for their crosspiece and held on to it, listening to her quiet breaths, just above me and to the left, like a panther in a tree. Then I said, “I like thinking about
you
, Sandra.”

There was a flurry of motion, the hop of her soft landing onto the carpet, and then, from behind me, the creak of the door.

When I found her she was sitting with Clive and our parents, waiting for the other contestants to finish. Her knee rested against his. Clive was telling them that at the Cuyahoga County championships, which were going to be held in two weeks, there would be an audience, and it would be given the problems as well.

“We’ll come watch,” I said, looking at Sandra.

“William can look for mistakes,” she said.

“The Counties won’t be anything,” said Clive. “It’s the States I’m worried about. Sheshevsky will be at the States.”

“Who’s Sheshevsky?” asked our mother.

“He’s some smart kid,” said Clive, “that’s all.”

“His father’s a physics professor,” I said. “He’s supposed to be a genius.”

“That makes two of you,” said Sandra.

“Three,” said our mother.

Clive looked around. “Sheshevsky’ll be trouble,” he said, “but I won’t see him till the States.”

“Assuming
you
get there,” said our father.

Our mother and Sandra laughed. So did Clive, and finally, so did I.

“Assuming,” said Clive.

The next day when I came home from school, Eric Clapton was playing on the living room speakers, and I heard Clive say, “And now, folks, catch this.” He was sitting with our father on the couch, and Mr. and Mrs. Cubano were on the two stuffed chairs. Clive’s eyes were closed and he was leaning back into the corner of the cushions nodding his head, while our father sat
forward at the edge of the pillows, nodding too. The song ended and Clive got up to pause the tape machine. “I’m turning the old folks on to Clapton,” he said.

“It’s not bad,” said Mr. Cubano. “It’s innovative.”

Clive smiled at him. “You crack me up, Mr. Cubano.”

“It’s not bad,” said our father. “The harmonies are standard, but the melody’s innovative.”

“It’s just me teaching you what
I
know, Dad.”

“I guess that’s right, young man. I guess that’s right.” Our father winked at Clive. “I have to admit,” he said, “you do seem to know a thing or two.” The Cubanos nodded. “Now,” our father said, turning to me, “why don’t we all try the next number. William, come sit next to me. Rose!” he called into the kitchen, “Rose, come hear this.” He closed his eyes, and I sat down next to him.

I moved as close as I could. “Dad,” I whispered then, “my report card is coming tomorrow.”

Without opening his eyes, he whispered back, “It came
today
, sailor.”

Our mother appeared and Clive started the tape. We sat through “Bell Bottom Blues” and “Layla,” our father nodding every now and then without opening his eyes, Mr. Cubano tapping his feet, Mrs. Cubano shifting hers, and our mother sitting at the cloth chair looking out the window into the yard. The tape clicked off at the end of the side.

“Well?” said Clive.

“I liked the second number,” said our father.

“Hip,” said Mr. Cubano, quietly.

“All
right
, folks,” said Clive. He gave the peace sign. “What about you, Mom?”

She looked up from the window. “I have values and taste,” she said.

“Birkahoosh,”
said Clive.

“Pardon?”

“Honey,” our father said to our mother, “this stuff is all around us. It’s the future.” He got up and slid his arm around her waist. “We might as well learn about it.”

She looked right at him. “You may listen to what you wish, Simon,” she said. Then she turned to Clive. “And what did you say, young man?”

“Nadj a hoshaig ma,”
said Clive.

“Pardon, honey?”

“Nadjon melegem van.”

Nobody spoke. Finally Mrs. Cubano said, “Tell us how you solved that problem with the antes, Clive. It sounded complicated.”

“He doesn’t have to talk if he doesn’t want to, dear,” said Mr. Cubano.

“Yes, he does,” said our father.

“Djerunk.”

“Honey,” said our mother, “The Cubanos don’t understand you.”

Clive looked up. “Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Cubano,” he said. Then he looked over at me.
“Djerunk,”
he said again, as though I understood. I lowered my eyes. Abruptly, next to me, our mother started to cry, and when I looked up I saw that our father, at the head of the couch, had braced back his shoulders the way, in the old days, he used to brace them back before he hit us. But then he lowered them again. He closed his eyes. He kept them closed for a few moments, and when he opened them he patted our mother’s elbow, turned to the Cubanos, and said, “Isn’t it great what kids do nowadays. They reinvent everything. Clive’s invented a language.”

“Teach us a few words,” said Mrs. Cubano, coming around the chair to lay her hands on our mother’s shoulders.

*  *  *

That night after dinner I went back to our father’s study, where he was listening to W-104 instead of the Cleveland Symphony. “Afternoon Delight” came on, and I moved into the room and sat across from him on the corner of the desk. I could see my report card lying open among his stacks of bills. “What do you think of this music, William?” he said.

“It’s all right.”

“Clive seems to be quite enamored of it.”

I nodded. “Dad,” I said, “I just had a bad semester.”

“Don’t sweat it, sailor,” he said. “At ease.” He tugged at his belt. Then he said, “all this business with your brother, you know—the things he does, the music and the language—I want you to know that he’s just trying to understand his life, that’s all.” He looked out the window at the Cubanos’ house across the way, where the downstairs light went off and the staircase one came on. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes.”

“I knew you would.” He fingered his sideburns. “Now, I’m not saying the things he does are bad. And if you want to do them yourself someday, why, that’s just fine.”

“It is?”

“Yes. You know, my generation has a lot to learn from yours.” He unfastened his belt, loosened it a notch, and refastened it. He walked to one corner of the room, thrust his hands into his pockets, pulled them out, and walked across to the other. He returned to my side and we looked at ourselves in the glass. “A fifty-year-old man in a purple tie,” he said at last. “Look at me, William—your father.”

I was wearing one of my yellow-and-white tie-dyes, and in the window it looked like an egg with a broken yolk. I was
trying to grow my hair past my shoulders. “Look at me, Dad,” I said. “Your son.”

He laughed through his nose. “What a noble creature is man,” he said and punched me on the shoulder. He laughed again. “Your old man sells insurance, will you ever forgive him?”

“I forgive you, captain.”

He smiled. “I forgive you, too, sailor,” he said.

Across the way, the lights in the Cubanos’ upstairs bedroom came on. Then Mrs. Cubano appeared in the window in a maroon evening dress. She looked down at us in the study, waved, and pulled the shade closed. The faint dot of a satellite labored across the heavens, and when I looked away from it I could see that our father was watching me again in the glass.

“I just want you to know, William,” he said at last, “that grades don’t mean anything. I want you to know that. Why, I’m proud you don’t care about them.”

“You are?”

“They’re just an external source of approval for something you ought to be doing for yourself anyway.” He laid his hand on my shoulder. “Affirmative, sailor?”

“Affirmative, captain.”

The satellite had cleared the zenith now and was edging down the far dome of the sky. “In a hundred years we will never know,” he said. He pulled his hand from my shoulder and leaned closer to the window, this time looking at himself. “Sweet mercy!” he whispered. “How my very heart has bled, to see thee, poor old man. And thy grey hairs hoar with the snowy blasts.”

“It’s not that bad.”

He ruffled my hair again. “Samuel Taylor Coleridge,” he said. “
That’s
what’s important, William. Not your report card.”

*  *  *

The Cuyahoga County finals were held in April, in an auditorium at Oberlin College. The three regional champions sat on stage and puzzled through their problems. Both of the other contestants wore ties and jackets, and one had a yarmulke clipped into his hair; Clive’s eyes were red, his hair was tied in a leather headband, and as always, he pulled his sandals on and off as he worked. The other two boys bent to their desks and scribbled calculations while Clive gazed about, adjusted his sandals, occasionally noted something on paper, then looked up and thought some more. Mr. Woodless, Clive’s math teacher, was in the audience, along with Mr. Sherwood and the Cubanos, Elliot, and Sandra, who sat next to me. After each problem, the contestants were given a break, during which the previous problem was handed out to the onlookers.

Mr. Cubano whistled when the first problem was passed down the row and reached him. He handed the mimeographed stack to our mother, who looked down but did not take one, and then passed it on to Mr. Woodless, who did. I took one too:

Next to me, Sandra’s hands were clasped together. I looked at them and considered my brother onstage, his thoughts whirling with possibilities, moving deeper and deeper into the secret area of his being where none of us could ever go. His eyes
fluttered and closed, and I knew that he had answered the question. His eyes opened, and as he wrote something on his sheet Sandra’s hands opened too.

At the end of the afternoon the judges graded the problems while the audience milled about in the hall, drinking lemonade; I tried to talk to Sandra about a Doobie Brothers concert that Billy DeSalz had gone to, pretending I had gone myself, but she was distracted; finally a bell rang, and we went back in to hear the superintendent of schools tell us that in mathematics the real winner was the mind, and the country, and the love of knowledge, but that in this particular case, today’s winner, with a perfect score, was Clive Messerman.

The next afternoon, I filled my pockets with tangerines and knocked on the Philco box, but when it opened, Elliot, not Sandra, was standing there. Behind him, on Sandra’s bed, Clive sat holding the Plexiglas smoke bottle he had made in shop class. It was designed to conceal the smell of a joint. “Well, well,” he said. “Since when do you know about this place?”

“Don’t worry, I haven’t told anybody.”

“Servoos,”
said Elliot.

“Who was worried?” said Clive.

“Dad says his generation has a lot to learn from ours anyway,” I said, ducking inside to sit down with them. “He told me that.”

Clive nodded. His shirt was unbuttoned, and he reached inside it, retrieved a joint, and slid it into the housing of the bottle. He touched it with a lighter, then examined it; the smoke filled the chamber but did not escape into the room. He held it up to the light for us to inspect. “Like a drum,” he said.

“Like a clam’s ass,” said Elliot.

“I just came down here to bring Sandra some food, you guys.”

Elliot laughed. “Feeding the monster,” he said.

Clive nodded, then leaned forward and sucked hard on the bottle, clearing the dense smoke like a vacuum. “What else did Dad say?” he rasped.

I thought for a moment. “He said he thinks you’re just trying to understand life.” Clive laughed, spraying a jet of smoke from his nostrils that he tried to direct out the window.

“I hear you,” I said.

Elliot took the bottle, waited for the smoke to gather again, then toked from it, turned to Clive, and said, “It’s true, you know. William’s right. We have to lead our parents through this stuff. If they don’t see something, we have to show them. It’s up to us.”

Clive shook his head. “It ain’t up to us,” he said.

Elliot handed the bottle to me, and I pretended to take a drag through the top. I held the smoke in my mouth without inhaling.

“We have to educate them,” Elliot said.

“Hold it in, William,” said Clive.

Upstairs the back door opened, and when the two of them looked out the window under the deck, I quickly exhaled. “Supposedly you guys have your own dictionary,” I said.

“Who told you that?” said Elliot.

“I heard at school.”

“Kipihenni magayat,”
Clive said.

“Well, not yet, William,” said Elliot. He hummed a quick Jefferson Airplane lick. “But we’re getting there. We’re writing one.” He handed me the bottle again, and I took a small toke into my mouth.

“A whole dictionary?”

“Yeah.”

“Who’s we?” I said.

“Don’t talk,” said Clive. “Hold it in.”

Elliot looked at him again. “It’s up to us to educate them,” he said.

“Nothing’s up to us,” said Clive.

That night, early in the bluest hour of morning, I woke and found Sandra sitting at the end of my bed. “Easy, tiger,” she whispered.