It sounded right anyhow.
“No, no, no,” Rubber Man said. “It’s the ball. I’m gonna slice this bastard open and take a look inside.”
“Or you could x-ray it.”
“Come on,” he said with a scoff. “Where am I going to find an x-ray machine?”
“I have one,” the Dentist reminded him. “I’ve used it to study your teeth.”
“Hot damn! You’re right. Sometimes I forget you’re a tradesman, too. Come on, let’s go.”
Soon Rubber Man and the Dentist were ensconced in a Packer, motoring toward Boston. Once in the city, the Dentist unlocked his office, making a liar out of its “closed for two weeks” sign.
They fired up the x-ray machine. To the Dentist’s vast surprise, though not at all to Rubber Man’s, the golf ball was the problem. Its core was off-center, oblong and tilted.
By the next summer, Rubber Man had patented a cross-winding machine, which created a perfectly round core. And just like that, his company began manufacturing golf balls along with the swim caps and water bottles they’d resorted to when rubber prices fell. A few years later he’d use this same machine to develop the “dead center” ball. He’d name it “Titleist” for all the titles its users would surely win.
“I never thanked you for that,” the Rubber Man said, years later, on that same sixth hole at Sankaty Head. By then one-fourth of U.S. Open entrants used his Titleists. “You suggested the x-ray machine and in effect improved both my golf game and my balance sheet. The former immeasurably more important than the latter, of course.”
“Speak nothing of it,” the Dentist said, stumbling.
His old friend was not known for his compliments or a tendency to give credit where credit was due. He may have been a scientist-turned-businessman but he lacked the smooth glad-handing of the type.
“Yesterday I transferred ten thousand shares of Young Processing Company into your name,” Rubber Man told him, matter-of-fact.
“Much obliged,” replied the Dentist, as yet unsure whether this gesture was generous or miserly to the extreme. What did ten thousand shares mean, really?
“It’s unfortunate you’re too elderly to have more kids,” the Dentist said, joshing for the most part. “Or I might ask that you name one in my honor. It only seems fair.”
Rubber Man laughed.
“Well,” he said. “I am too old for babies. Grandchildren, perhaps. Something to consider when the time comes.”
“Swell idea. Alas, your children might not appreciate having to name their offspring after their father’s golfing pal. Not to mention future spouses’ opinions on the matter.”
“Ah,” Rubber Man said with a wide grin. “There’s a solution to that. My only daughter goes to your oldest son.” He jabbed his club into the ground. “And so it is decreed.”
And wouldn’t you know? Some years later, on the lawn of the great Cliff House, the only daughter would go to the oldest son after all.
Whether this “deal,” however made in jest, sealed the fate of this young couple, we shall never know. But one thing is certain. The Dentist’s son will be forever grateful for a universe that befitted him with such a spectacular gal.
10
RUBY
July 1940
“So you’ll really go through with it?” Topper said. “The hitching?”
He was supine on Ruby’s bed, lobbing a baseball from one hand to the other.
“Why wouldn’t I go through with it?” she asked.
Their mother would have a fit, seeing Topper in Ruby’s room while she was in nothing but a panty girdle and a bra. But Ruby didn’t have a sister, and her nearest brother, ten months younger on the nose, was the next best thing. Not that Topper was at all girlie, especially with his sports playing and skirt chasing, but he was doggone skilled at humoring his sister and pretending they were interested in the same things.
“I don’t get it,” Topper said. “Why, exactly, are you marrying him? Because I can’t really figure it out.”
“What’s there to figure out? It’s quite simple, really. I love Sam. He’s kind, and smart, and devastatingly handsome. All the usual reasons.”
“Are those the usual reasons, then? I’m glad to have you around to tell me.”
“I do what I can.”
Ruby stood and walked over to her dress, which hung from the pink wardrobe in the corner. After giving it a thorough glare, she took to patting it down. Forty yards of silk taffeta. Lord almighty, it looked like a hurricane. The blasted thing could’ve swept up Dorothy and taken her to Oz.
“We want the same things,” Ruby said. “Sam and I.”
Topper froze, holding the baseball to his chest.
“Huh,” he said with a faint chuckle. “I guess you do. You want to want them, in any case.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Ruby said, and rolled her eyes. “Babble all you want, but despite your best efforts, the hitching will commence at eleven.”
Topper snorted and took to throwing the ball against the ceiling. Clonk, clonk, clonk. Mother would appear at any moment, materializing like a chimera and sporting a sour-lemon frown. Ruby glanced out the window toward the orchestra practicing in the distance. They had a fair length to go until they were fine-tuned.
“I’m not sure about this thing,” Ruby said, turning her attention back to the dress. “There’s quite a lot of taffeta.”
“I thought that was the point? Anyhow, you’re stuck now. You should junk the hat though, Red. Not flattering a’tall.”
He called her this, Red, despite hair that was golden like the summer sand. She was strawberry blond as a young child, but mostly it was a play on her name. Red, as in Ruby Red, though she was never as colorful as that.
“What do you have against him?” she asked.
“Who? The hat?”
“Yes, the hat,” Ruby said, and rolled her eyes again. “I’ve named him Pete. He’s quite the fella. I meant Sam, you dope.”
Topper sniggled.
“What’s the rub?” she asked. “You two used to be grand pals.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Listen, I have nothing against your fella. Sam’s a fine man. Attractive. Unobjectionable. That, dear Red, is the very problem.”
“That he’s attractive and unobjectionable?” She arched a brow.
“You need someone with more … gusto.”
“Gusto.”
“A little fire!” Topper said. “Some verve.”
“Right-o. A person to match my wildcat nature.”
Fact of the matter: Ruby was a damned straight arrow. Sure, she possessed a spicy tongue and had committed a few petty crimes in her day—the nicking of cigarettes and hooch while at Smith—but mostly Ruby listened to her parents, used her manners, and never went too far with any boy. Everyone found her universally delightful, a gem of a gal.
“I really should be with someone who causes a scene,” she added. “It’d be the primo fit.”
“Precisely, dear sister,” Topper said with a wink. “You’ve been too good, too protected, too damned cloistered in your ivory tower. You need someone to pitch a curveball atcha.”