The Tutor (24 page)

“In the stock market.”

“You’re playing the market?”

“Is that your Jewish grandmother imitation?”

“Like on
Seinfeld,
” Ruby said.

Linda turned on her. “Shut up,” she said. “And leave the room. That’s a disgusting thing to say, Scott.”

“Sorry,” said Scott. “I didn’t mean anything bad. But playing the market? Come on. It’s not foreign territory—you’ve got a four-oh-one K. I simply made an informed investment.”

“How much did we make, Dad?” Brandon said.

Scott scaled down the figure, thirty-seven five, perhaps too high for credibility. “Seventeen grand and change,” he said. “So far.”

Brandon high-fived him; that felt good.

“And the trip cost less than a quarter of that, everything included,” Scott went on. “So what do you say?”

Linda looked at Brandon, who was watching her in a surprisingly detached way that gave Scott an insight into how he might turn out; at Ruby, who’d made no move to leave the room and was close to jumping up and down; at him. He was pretty sure she was thinking about the poor heart remark. Linda smiled. Not much of a smile, and the vertical frown line was still deep, but she said: “Okay.”

Then came a few moments of happy pandemonium. Zippy lost control completely, barking, clawing at the trash bag, knocking a carton of Mongolian beef off the table with his tail.

“What about him?” Linda said.

“We’ll have to call the kennel first thing in the morning,” said Scott.

“You can’t do that,” Ruby said. “He hates the kennel.”

“And didn’t they say he could never go back after the last time?” said Brandon.

They all gazed down at Zippy. He was eating Mongolian beef off the floor, growling at the same time for some reason.

“What about Julian?” Ruby said. “Couldn’t he stay here while we’re gone? Zippy loves him.”

“Brilliant,” said Scott. “What’s his number?”

“Isn’t it a bit of an imposition?” Linda said.

“We’ll pay him, of course,” Scott said.

Scott called Julian. “How’re things?”

“No complaints,” said Julian. “And you?”

“Pretty good, in fact.” Scott heard the wind outside. Icy sheets came slapping against the windows in waves. Tomorrow at this time he’d be sitting at one of those in-pool swim-up bars, watching for the green flash. “We’ve got a little favor to ask you.”

“Yes?”

Scott explained. “And we’ll pay you, goes without saying,” he added at the end.

“No payment necessary,” Julian said. “A change of scene will do me good.”

Ruby ran upstairs to pack.

24

“W
hat room shall I take?” Julian said.

Ruby came down the stairs with her backpack, blessedly free of school things, now scattered around her room, and full of airplane carry-on things—CDs, player, crayons, gum, candy,
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
. Dad was looking at Mom.

“The bedroom at the end of the hall, I guess,” Mom said. “The empty one.”

“Or would you prefer I make up one of the couches,” Julian said, “perhaps in the entertainment center?”

“No, no,” said Mom. “Of course not.”

Enough chitchat, Ruby thought. To get her point across without being rude, she said, “Brandon up, I hope?”

“First one, in fact,” said Dad. “He’s loading the car.”

“My God,” said Ruby. The prince of sleep in action, and still dark outside.

Ruby went into the garage. There he was, doing lots of things crisply, showered, neatly dressed, gelled to a fare-thee-well, or maybe fair-thee-well, both expressions probably on their way out of the language, and good riddance. And that one too.

“Here,” he said, “give me that.”

Ruby handed him her backpack. He fitted it into a perfect space beside the tennis bag.

“What about the snorkeling stuff?” she said.

“All set.”

“Mine too?”

“Are you coming on the trip?”

“Yeah.”

“Then yours too.”

The prince of sleep wakes up as Mr. Helpful. She had a crazy impulse to throw her arms around him and give him a big kiss, maybe kicking up one of her heels at the same time like a war bride cutie pie. She fought off the whole thing in less than a second.

“Does Trish know you’re going?” she said.

“What’s it to you?”

And they were back on track. A quick little kiss: now she wished she’d squeezed it in while the moment was right.

Zippy came in, trotting in tight circles and making a whiny sound.

“He’s crying,” Ruby said.

“What a pussy,” said Brandon, stowing the hard little square suitcase with Mom’s toiletries.

“He doesn’t mean that,” Ruby told Zippy, kneeling and giving him a big hug. “Everybody loves you.” He licked her face in a frantic sort of way. “Oh, the poor thing,” she said. “He knows, he knows.” She took him into the kitchen, filled his food and water bowls to the brim. He didn’t even glance at them, not like him at all. “We’ll be back in no time,” she said, stroking his ears. He kept whining, gazed up at her with big eyes like a saint in one of those paintings by the guy who made everyone so long and thin.

“Don’t worry,” said Julian. She turned. He was watching from the door. “I’ll take good care of him.”

“Thanks, Julian. He’s no trouble at all, really. You’ll have lots of fun.” She opened a cupboard under the counter. “He needs a bowl of this every night, but sometimes he gets hungry in the morning, too. And he likes the occasional can of this stuff. These are for treats, and here are some toys. If you’ve got a chance, he could use a little refresher on his retrieving skills—he’s part retriever, did you know that?—and the rawhide bones—”

“Ruby!” Dad called from the garage. “What’s the holdup?”

“Don’t give him real bones,” Ruby said. “They could kill him.”

“Point taken.”

“Even though he’s a carnivore.”

“Ruby!” Dad came in from the garage.

“Bye, Zippy.” She kissed him and kissed him. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” He kissed her back like there was no tomorrow.

“For God’s sake, Ruby!”

“He doesn’t want me to go.”

“Any Mongolian beef left?” Dad said. “That’ll ease the pain.” He came over, grabbed her hand, pulled her toward the garage. “Thanks for everything, Julian,” he said.

Mom poked her head in the door, frantic all of a sudden. “We’ll never make it.”

“If I drove you,” Julian said, “you wouldn’t have to worry about parking.”

“Good idea,” said Dad.

“Sure you don’t mind?” said Mom.

“Not at all,” said Julian. “And it’ll give Zippy a chance to collect his thoughts.”

“C
ollect his thoughts?” said Brandon, laughing in the car. “Where’s he going to find the first one?”

They drove to the airport—Dad and Mom in front, Julian, Brandon, and Ruby in the back, Ruby in the middle, where Brandon never sat, not ever, like it was against his religion—laughing all the way, until they came to a car fire on I-91. Ruby had never seen a car fire before: smoke, flames, and a woman crying beside an ambulance.

“Oh, dear,” said Julian.

The car fire caused a backup. Fifteen minutes before departure, they squealed to a stop in front of the terminal—actually squealed, like a sound effect on a cop show—and everyone jumped out, Julian too, to help with the bags, and ran to the ticket counter. There was a huge line.

“Over here,” said Dad.

A huge line; but in first class no line at all.

“My, my,” said Julian.

“We never do this,” said Linda as Dad handed over the tickets. “One of those upgrades.”

Brandon and Julian heaved the bags on the scale. Ruby gazed at the economy-class line with satisfaction. Everyone in it was real tense. She herself was wonderfully relaxed, like the woman who said, “Peel me a grape.” Beyond the line, the sliding glass doors to the outside opened and three people came in—a man and a woman in long matching fur coats and a girl of about her own—

“Hey, there’s Kyla!”

Dad turned. “Kyla Gudukas?”

“Here you go, sir,” said the agent, handing him the tickets. “Gate nineteen.”

They started toward the gate, crossing paths with the Gudukases. Mrs. Gudukas had dyed her hair blond. She looked very small in her fur coat.

“Well, well,” said Mr. Gudukas. “Great minds think alike. Where’re you off to?”

Dad told him. “And you?”

“Paris,” said Mr. Gudukas. “Weekend getaway. We’re staying at the Ritz.”

“Bring me back one of their shampoos,” Ruby told Kyla.

The Gudukases went on, towing leather baggage with bright gold fittings.

“Julian, thanks so—” Mom began. They all looked around. Julian was gone.

“Maybe he saw a cop,” Dad said.

“A cop?” said Ruby.

“They tow,” Dad said.

“Wouldn’t want that, would we, Bran?” said Ruby.

“Too bad you said that,” said Bran. “I was going to let you have the window.”

They settled into the front of the first-class section. Ruby sat in her seat, aisle, not window, but the most comfortable seat ever invented, and tried every possible position. Across the aisle, she heard Mom say, “Paris? I had no idea they were doing so well.”

“Times are good,” Dad said.

A champagne cork popped nearby. The flight attendant smiled down at Ruby.

“What would you like?” she said.

Would
peel me a grape
be going too far?

J
ulian was not in a good mood when he drove back to 37 Robin Road, hit the button on the visor of Linda’s Jeep to open the garage door, parked, entered the kitchen. Plot development was his responsibility, but some of the characters, even minor ones like Mickey Gudukas, kept having their own ideas. If he hadn’t heard that little chirp—
there’s Kyla—
all his work would have been ruined, an unsatisfying, popgun climax, at once demeaning and absurd, like being pelted with rotten fruit. A near thing: his hurried exit, while unremarked at the time due to sheer choreographic happenstance, was bound to raise questions. He could imagine the answers to those questions—police, tickets, towing, answers probably supplied by Scott—but he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t even be sure, not one hundred percent, that Gudukas hadn’t seen him. Gudukas, still in the rubber-matted entrance between the sliding doors, beyond the economy-class line, hadn’t been looking his way, and Julian had instantly turned his back and walked off, but he couldn’t be sure. Two more low-grade worries, like trickles suddenly appearing on a dike: how was he expected to work in this atmosphere?

Julian lit a cigarette, dropped the match in the sink, tried to calm himself. Not so easy, especially when he saw they’d left dirty dishes—two mugs, one plate, one bowl, three juice glasses. Who was expected to clean them? He took deep tobacco breaths, gazed at the dishes.

Why does the boy worry so much?
He’d overheard his father asking that once, on the verandah at the tennis club above Freetown, as he came up the path from those strange African courts, well supplied with ballboys but too long by almost a yard. And his mother’s reply:
Because he’s marked for great things
. The words had thrilled him then, thrilled him still. Great things were happening at last: a fitting memorial, perhaps. It struck him at that moment that burning human flesh smelled like any other barbecue.

Was that the next line of the poem? He took out his notepad, wrote standing by the sink.

negligent is to forsake as

mendacious is to deceive

nothing you can’t depend on

will ever depend on you.

burning human flesh—

He stopped right there. It was not the next line of the poem, perhaps belonged in some other poem; perhaps in no poem at all. He sucked on his cigarette, smoked it long past the point of elegance, down to an addict’s nub.

Something pressed the back of his leg, startling him. Julian whirled, heart pounding. Only the dog. It pressed up against him, wagging its tail. Julian backed away.

“None of that,” he said.

Then he saw what should have been obvious from the moment he came in: a turd, right in front of the doorway leading to the dining room.

“Come here, Zippy.”

Zippy came.

Julian took Zippy’s collar. “New regime, Zippy,” Julian said. “Meet Robespierre.”

He led Zippy toward the dining room. He’d had a dog once, briefly, growing up. His father had trained the animal, name now forgotten. You trained a dog like this.

“Like this, Zippy.”

But Zippy dragged his feet, and as they got closer to the mess he’d made, dropped down into a sitting position. Julian pulled him along, brisk and matter-of-fact, the way his father had done, at least at the start of training sessions. Brisk and matter-of-fact, but his father had had a rough hand: with a smile he’d give your shoulder a little encouraging squeeze, a squeeze that always hit a nerve, carrying a countermessage.

“Here we go, Zippy.”

They stood over the stinking pile. His hand tight around Zippy’s collar, Julian forced the dog’s head down and down. The dog whined, resisted with all his strength; the difference in their relative strengths was delicious.

“Making the connection, little doggie?” Julian said. “This is what we never ever do.” He pushed Zippy’s face a little farther down, to be absolutely sure the message got through, that all nerves got touched. Then Zippy growled, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. Julian heard himself growling back, but louder, felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising too, and hot chills shot through his own nervous system, rebounded around. He shoved Zippy’s muzzle right into the shit, held it there, mushed it around a little.
Never ever, Mommy and Daddy.

Julian let Zippy go. The dog bolted from the room, tail down, spirit altered. Julian’s mood lifted. Now he didn’t mind cleaning the mess, was hardly aware of doing it. Hot chills still circulated inside him, but less intense. He felt much better, more comfortable, at home.

J
ulian carried his suitcase up to the empty bedroom at the end of the upstairs hall, the one raised a few steps to its own level, Adam’s room. Like an artist’s garret: it really was the nicest room in the house, quite suitable.

The bedding was still rumpled, as before. Julian stripped off the sheets, piled them by the doorway for laundering on his next trip downstairs. First he had to familiarize himself with his new personal space. This was basic, a fundament of the military arts. He flipped the mattress, opened the closet, all the drawers in the desk and chest of drawers, found nothing. The boy hadn’t even carved his name on any of the wooden surfaces.

On the wall, Julian found two or three bits of transparent tape where posters had been hung, but no posters, not rolled up among the dust balls under the bed, not fallen behind the chest of drawers or the desk. Just as well: the sight of some now retired athlete or has-been movie star would have been mildly depressing in a predictable sort of way. But what was this? Behind the desk, wedged between the wall and the tin of the baseboard radiator: a yellowed sheet of paper. Julian withdrew it with care, restored the desk to its precise previous position.

He moved to the window. Another dark day, almost colorless. He held the paper to what light there was; funereal, he couldn’t help but think.

Book Report
Adam Gardner
Ms. Freleng, Third Grade

The Wind in the Willows is my favorit book I ever read. By Kenneth Grahame. This is all about a bunch of animals that live by a river. Some of them are Mole Rat and Badger, but the funniest one is Toad. Toad is rich and lives in Toad Hall. Also he is a very bad driver. He cant stop himself from stealing a beuatifull car. He gets thrown in gaol, which is jail in there country, for twenty years but he escapes. When Toad says things like I wonder if this sort of car starts easily, get reddy for a big adventure.

The reasin for the title is there is a Wild Wood in the book with willow trees and sometimes the lone wind blows.

Good,
it said at the bottom,
but not a full page. Watch spelling and punctuation.

Julian folded the paper and put it in his pocket: excellent data for the Adam page in his notebook, to be analyzed later.
Superboy—the paragon under whose boot they lie.
Paragon or normal kid? Decidedly normal—probably not much brighter, if at all, than his brother, the project. Was there something in the very nature of these family people, these complacent exemplars of the 5,999,900,000, that marred their vision of each other? What a helpful insight that might be!

Julian explored the house. He didn’t find and hadn’t expected any dark secrets. Check books, bank statements, report cards, common prescription medicines, none psychotropic—he added details but learned nothing new. He did come across the blueprints to 37 Robin Road in a desk in the master bedroom and borrowed them temporarily. Scott’s toolbox he found in the furnace room, a Santa Claus card still taped to the handle, the tools inside shiny and in their virginal slots.