Читать книгу The Son Of Someone Famous - M.E. Kerr - Страница 10

From the Journal of A.

“She’s probably been told to stay away from you because of me,” Grandpa Blessing said about a week after the day I met Brenda Belle Blossom in Corps Drugs. “Her mother doesn’t approve of me. Not many people do.”

“Don’t blame yourself for everything,” I told him. “She hasn’t even been in school. She’s probably sick.”

“It won’t be easy for you in Storm,” he said. “I’m not exactly a hero around here.”

“I’m not exactly a hero, either,” I said, “so we’re even.”

We’d just finished dinner and we were sitting in the living room watching the evening news on television. Grandpa Blessing was polishing off another beer. My father never drank beer because he said it gave a man a big belly, but it hadn’t done that to my grandfather. He was tall and lean with the weathered face of an old Maine fisherman. He had thick white hair he wore in a brush cut, and blue eyes the color of a summer sky. I really liked his looks, and the kind of clothes he wore: old plaid flannel shirts and corduroy pants and those heavy ankle-length boots he ordered from Sears. He smoked a pipe, and I liked that too. My father chain-smokes cigarettes. You sit across the room from my father for a long time and you get the feeling his insides are a tangle of strained nerves, but my grandfather always looked calm and ready to deal with whatever came down the runway. That’s the great thing about being around someone who’s lived a long time: Not much will surprise him anymore; he’s ready for you and whatever’s happened to you, and you can talk to him about it.

The only trouble with Grandpa Blessing was he didn’t really appreciate himself; he had this feeling he hadn’t amounted to much. Late at night when he was really bombed, he’d call up this radio talk show that originated in Boston. He called himself “Chuck From Vermont,” because when he was a young man during World War I, his army buddies used to call him Chuck. He’d been a cook in that war—it was long before he studied to be a vet. He knew a lot about food and traditions involving food, and Late Night Larry, the man who ran the show, treated him like a real authority.

“Well, it’s Chuck From Vermont,” Late Night Larry would say. “What nugget of knowledge can you pass on to our listeners this morning?”

“This concerns saltcellars,” my grandfather might answer. “In the Middle Ages the saltcellar stood in the center of the table, and was the symbol that divided high rank from low rank. Noblemen and others of rank sat above the salt, and commoners sat below the salt.”

“Chuck From Vermont, you are something!” Late Night Larry would enthuse. “You always give us food for thought—ha, ha—and we appreciate hearing from you. How’s that book coming along; have you finished it?”

“I’m working on it,” my grandfather would tell him.

My grandfather wasn’t working on a book at all. He told me he just liked to kid Late Night Larry. I think there was more than that to it, though. It was sort of his way of being someone. If Late Night Larry suspected that my grandfather was in his cups, he never mentioned it. He treated my grandfather with respect, and I suppose that alone was worth the price of the calls to Boston, even though my grandfather didn’t really have the money for long-distance telephoning. My grandfather kept track of the cost, spaced his calls, and saved up to make them. It was his one extravagance.

Sometimes my grandfather would fall asleep over his beer with his clothes on. I’d wake up the next morning to find him still slumped in the living room chair, and all the lights still burning. And I’d cover him with a blanket before I set off for school.

He was a great talker on every subject but my mother. Once he’d taken a picture from his wallet to show me, one of my mother and father bringing me home from the hospital after I was born. It was years old and he hadn’t looked at it in a long time, I could tell, because it was taken with an old Polaroid camera and the snapshot had never been coated (the old Polaroid pictures were preserved with a coating you had to apply yourself). There we were, all right, all three of us, but our faces had faded away. . . . My grandfather didn’t like to talk about my mother. Once he asked me what my father said about her, and I told him my father felt badly because she loved him more than he loved her. My grandfather’s comment was simply, “She was very young, A.J. Just a kid, not much older than you.”

That night while we were watching the news on television, I’d asked him what Brenda Belle Blossom’s mother was like.

“She was real pretty once,” he said, “but she’s like a present that stayed gift wrapped. No one ever got to appreciate it, though I think Hank Blossom tried hard. He was her sister’s beau before he met Millie. Everyone thought Hank would marry Faith. He came from Omaha, Nebraska, and he rode in the rodeo. He was handsome as sin, a rascal who’d rather laugh than eat, and Faith and Hank were always howling their lungs out over just anything. But Faith wasn’t the pretty one of the sisters.”

“So he married Millie.”

“Yes. She set about trying to get him out of the rodeo and into a suit of clothes with his hair slicked down. He left her a couple of times. It was Faith who always tried to get them to patch it up, even though it was Faith who loved Hank better than I love beer. The last time Hank left Millie, Millie was pregnant with your friend Brenda Belle. Faith found out Hank was in a rodeo out in Missouri. She talked Millie into going to see him. The one thing Millie’d always refused to do was to see Hank ride.”

“What happened then?” I said.

“What happened was Hank looked up and saw Millie sitting there beside Faith, and Hank fell off his horse. Millie told it that he was drinking and couldn’t stay on the critter, but Faith told it that the shock of seeing Millie’s angry face threw him.”

“Was he hurt?” I asked.

“Mortally,” my grandfather said. “The horse kicked him in the head.”

“Then Brenda Belle never knew her father?”

“Nope.”

“Did Faith ever marry?”

“Faith was married for a short time,” my grandfather said. “She married old Doc Hendricks, used to be county coroner. He was a good man, a kind man, but he was old and he died, and Faith and Millie moved in together.”

“Brenda Belle and I have something in common then,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Well, I never knew my mother, either.” I could see it made him uncomfortable to bring up the subject of my mother again, so I babbled on. “It’s harder for a girl, I guess. I feel sorry for her living with those two old ladies.”

“Don’t let that be the only reason you want to see a girl,” my grandfather told me. “When you pity someone, sometimes all it means is you wish someone would pity you.”

I was thinking that one over while the news continued on television.

Suddenly the subject was dropped. The reason was what came across our television screen then. It was my father getting out of a helicopter on the White House lawn. The Vice-President was waiting to meet him.

“Your old man’s put on weight,” my grandfather said. “I saw pictures when he was in Moscow and he was a lot thinner.”

“Yeah,” I answered, watching my father, all smiles, shaking hands with the Veep.

“I didn’t know he was heading for Washington,” my grandfather said.

“Neither did I,” I said. “I thought he was still in Paris.”

“Maybe you’ll see him at Christmas after all,” my grandfather said. “Maybe he’ll be sending for you.”

I said, “I doubt it.”

“Oh well, he’s a busy man,” my grandfather said.

“I haven’t been with him the last two Christmases anyway,” I said. “I spent them with Billie Kay.”

“Did you want to spend them with him?”

“No,” I lied. “Christmas is a commercial holiday. All the original meaning has gone out of Christmas.” I’d gotten that line from some preacher at chapel.

“I never liked the original meaning to begin with,” Grandpa Blessing said. “We shouldn’t celebrate the day someone is born, or the day someone dies. You can’t help being born, or dying; everyone’s born and everyone dies. We should celebrate accomplishments.”

“I never thought of that,” I said.

“I’d like to find out the day beer was invented,” my grandfather said. “I’d celebrate that day, all right.”

The White House scene was off the screen and there was a story about a train wreck being televised. My grandfather went into the kitchen for another beer. I sat there watching the train wreck without really seeing it. I was thinking about my father. I wondered what my father said to people like the President and the Vice-President. I wondered if he ever interrupted them by saying, “Hell, that’s manifest knowledge, don’t bore me with it,” as he often said to me; or, “Don’t mouth other people’s opinions. Form your own!”

When the telephone rang, I made no effort to answer it. A lot of people in Storm pestered my grandfather by calling him up to recite the symptoms of their cats and dogs. That way they decided whether or not the symptoms were serious enough to warrant a visit to Dr. Cutler. My grandfather was always polite and helpful, but I think it hurt him a lot. He never blamed Cutler outright for anything; he never said Cutler had stolen his practice, though that was the rumor in Storm. Marlon Fredenberg had told me that much the first week I was there. All my grandfather ever said about Cutler was that he had his reasons for not wanting anything to do with Cutler, and that included talking about Cutler. Marlon Fredenberg said the least Cutler could have done was ask my grandfather to assist him, but Cutler just bought him out; that ended that.

“Phone’s for you!” my grandfather called from the kitchen.

I went out to answer it, figuring that if it was my father asking me to guess where he was calling from, I’d just say, “I suppose you’re at Buckingham Palace, or the Kremlin, or the White House,” to sort of take the wind out of his sails. I don’t know why I wanted to do that, particularly. I just did. I wasn’t much of a loving son. I should have been glad he’d call me at all.

“A.J.? How would you like a visitor for Christmas?” It wasn’t my father. It was Billie Kay calling from New York City.

“You mean you’d come here?” I said. I was really glad to hear her voice, but in a way I couldn’t picture Billie Kay in Storm. She liked luxury too much. I couldn’t see her in my grandfather’s house.

“I’ll stay at the hotel,” she said. “Will you and your grandfather invite me for Christmas dinner?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” I said. I knew Billie Kay would expect this gala feast; she was very big on holidays and celebrating. I didn’t see how I could ask my grandfather to spend the money on a turkey and all the trimmings, and my own allowance was too small. Then too, I remembered my grandfather’s last call to Late Night Larry. He’d told Late Night Larry Christmas wasn’t even celebrated in the early days in New England, because it was a feast day of the Church of England, against which the Pilgrims and Puritans were in rebellion. In 1659 a law was passed imposing a fine on anyone celebrating Christmas. (“You don’t say!” Late Night Larry had responded. My grandfather had said, “I do say! Thanksgiving was the important day! Not this phony Christmas!”)

“Let me talk to my grandfather,” I told Billie Kay. I put my hand over the mouthpiece so she wouldn’t hear our conversation.

“It’s Billie Kay,” I said. “She wants to make a big deal over Christmas, but I’d just as soon tell her we don’t go in for phony holidays.”

“We don’t go in for fancy holidays,” my grandfather said, “but we’ll cook up a meal she won’t forget. Tell her to come, A.J.”

“Are you sure?” I said.

“Is the Pope Catholic?” he said.

“Billie Kay,” I said, “we’d love to have you.”

“Great, A.J. I’m bringing Janice. I hope you don’t have any dogs there?”

“You can bring Janice,” I said. “I’ll make a reservation at the hotel.”

After I finished talking with her, my grandfather brought his beer into the living room and sat down opposite me. “So we’re going to have two dinner guests, huh?” he said.

“Janice is just a Siamese cat,” I said.

“You know, A.J.,” he said, “Christmas wasn’t even celebrated in the early days in New England.”

“Is that right?” I said. I didn’t want to tell him that I’d been sitting right beside him when he’d gone into all that with Late Night Larry. I knew he’d blacked out, the same way Billie Kay sometimes did when she drank too much. I let him finish. Then I said, “I’m sorry I got you into this, Grandpa.”

“What are you talking about?” he said. “Times change. It isn’t 1659 anymore.”

“But I know you never even liked the original meaning of Christmas,” I said.

“The original meaning has gone out of Christmas,” he answered. “You said that yourself just a short while ago. Where’s your memory, A.J.? It can mean anything we want it to mean!”

I laughed. “It’ll mean a lot of work for you.”

“I like to cook,” he said. “Remember, you’re talking to Chuck From Vermont. . . . I’ll tell you something else, A.J.”

“What’s that?”

“I think we ought to have a tree. I think we ought to fix this place up so it looks a little more like Christmas!”

“Do we have the money?” I asked.

“No, we don’t have the money,” he said.

“I could wire my father for some,” I said.

“Not on your sweet little behind,” my grandfather said. “I’ve got a turkey in the deep freeze.”

“But we shouldn’t buy a tree.”

“We won’t. And we won’t cut one down for our own selfish purposes, either. We’ll make a tree from pine branches,” my grandfather said. “And we’ll decorate it ourselves.”

“What’ll we use for decorations?” I said.

“What do we have the most of around here, A.J.?” I looked at him, puzzled.

“Beer cans, A.J.!” my grandfather laughed. “Empty beer cans!”

Christmas was a week away.