Right?
He felt no relief as he dragged the dolly back along the path. Nothing was working out the way it was supposed to, nothing. It was as if malignant fate had come between him and the notebooks, just as fate had come between Romeo and Juliet. That comparison seemed both ludicrous and perfectly apt. He was a lover. Goddam Rothstein had jilted him with The Runner Slows Down, but that didn’t change the fact.
His love was true.
When he got back to the house, he went immediately to the shower, as a boy named Pete Saubers would do many years later in this very same bathroom, after visiting that very same embankment and overhanging tree. Morris stayed in until his fingers were pruney and the hot water was gone, then dried off and dressed in fresh clothes from his bedroom closet. They looked childish and out of fashion to him, but they still fit (more or less). He put his dirt-smeared jeans and sweatshirt in the washer, an act that would also be replicated by Pete Saubers years later.
Morris turned on the TV, sat in his father’s old easy chair – his mother said she kept it as a reminder, should she ever be tempted into stupidity again – and saw the usual helping of ad-driven inanity. He thought that any of those ads (jumping laxative bottles, primping moms, singing hamburgers) could have been written by Jimmy Gold, and that made his headache worse than ever. He decided to go down to Zoney’s and get some Anacin. Maybe even a beer or two. Beer wouldn’t hurt. It was the hard stuff that caused trouble, and he’d learned his lesson on that score.
He did get the Anacin, but the idea of drinking beer in a house full of books he didn’t want to read and TV he didn’t want to watch made him feel worse than ever. Especially when the stuff he did want to read was so maddeningly close. Morris rarely drank in bars, but all at once he felt that if he didn’t get out and find some company and hear some fast music, he would go completely insane. Somewhere out in this rainy night, he was sure there was a young lady who wanted to dance.
He paid for his aspirin and asked the young guy at the register, almost idly, if there was a bar with live music that he could get to on the bus.
The young guy said there was.
2010
When Linda Saubers got home that Friday afternoon at three thirty, Pete was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of cocoa. His hair was still damp from the shower. She hung her coat on one of the hooks by the back door, and placed the inside of her wrist against his forehead again. ‘Cool as a cucumber,’ she pronounced. ‘Do you feel better?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘When Tina came home, I made her peanut butter crackers.’
‘You’re a good brother. Where is she now?’
‘Ellen’s, where else?’
Linda rolled her eyes and Pete laughed.
‘Mother of Mercy, is that the dryer I hear?’
‘Yeah. There were a bunch of clothes in the basket, so I washed em. Don’t worry, I followed the directions on the door, and they came out okay.’
She bent down and kissed his temple. ‘Aren’t you the little do-bee?’
‘I try,’ Pete said. He closed his right hand to hide the blister on his palm.
The first envelope came on a snow-showery Thursday not quite a week later. The address – Mr Thomas Saubers, 23 Sycamore Street – was typed. Stuck on the upper-right-hand corner was a forty-four-cent stamp featuring the Year of The Tiger. There was no return address on the upper left. Tom – the only member of Clan Saubers home at midday – tore it open in the hall, expecting either some sort of come-on or another past due notice. God knew there had been plenty of those lately. But it wasn’t a come-on, and it wasn’t a past due.
It was money.
The rest of the mail – catalogues for expensive stuff they couldn’t afford and advertising circulars addressed to OCCUPANT – fell from his hand and fluttered around his feet, unnoticed. In a low voice, almost a growl, Tom Saubers said, ‘What the fuck is this?’
When Linda came home, the money was sitting in the middle of the kitchen table. Tom was seated before the neat little pile with his chin resting on his folded hands. He looked like a general considering a battle plan.
‘What’s that?’ Linda asked.
‘Five hundred dollars.’ He continued to look at the bills – eight fifties and five twenties. ‘It came in the mail.’
‘From who?’
‘I don’t know.’
She dropped her briefcase, came to the table, and picked up the stack of currency. She counted it, then looked at him with wide eyes. ‘My God, Tommy! What did the letter say?’
‘There was no letter. Just the money.’
‘But who would—’
‘I don’t know, Lin. But I know one thing.’
‘What?’
‘We can sure use it.’
‘Holy shit,’ Pete said when they told him. He had stayed late at school for intramural volleyball, and didn’t come in until almost dinnertime.