This sounded sullen.
“Where have you been staying?”
“I had some money, because I got paid Friday. It was a hotel on Copley Square. But I ran out of money, so I checked out of that hotel. I thought I’d be in the army by now, but they just let us all go, even the non-Yippies, because I guess they were fed up.”
At her place, she called her mom first, but there was no answer — it was five-thirty; maybe they were outside. Then, with Richie’s permission, she called Aunt Andy, but no answer there, either. Richie said, “What day is it?”
“Tuesday.”
“Nedra’s day off.”
“Do you want me to call your dad’s office?”
“They’ve gone home.”
“If they are looking for you, you have no idea where they are or what they’re doing.”
“I’m sure Michael told them some story.”
“What story could he tell them?”
“I fell in the river, and there’s no point in dredging because I was washed out to sea?”
Debbie said, “You guys! Everyone would know he was joking, right?”
“He can be pretty convincing,” said Richie.
Richie went into the bathroom. She felt a little protective of Richie — without Michael, even at six three or whatever he was, he seemed vulnerable. When he came out of the bathroom, she asked him if he wanted to go out for a pizza.
She had two pieces; he had six, and two Cokes. And she didn’t have to pry. He was not like Tim had been, secretive about every little thing. He told her about school — he had been busted down to corporal twice for fighting with Michael, but then he had made a friend of his own, from Little Rock, Greg, who was a swimmer. Richie turned out to be a better swimmer than a runner, and he had gotten on the varsity swim team. He and Greg practiced all the time, and his butterfly was really fast — he’d won six races over the winter. Greg was also good at math, and helped Richie bring up his grade to an A+, so he’d been promoted back to sergeant by the end of the year. The kids who hung around with Michael stopped teasing Greg when Richie punched one of them so hard he fell flat down, and Michael refused to punch Richie out, saying that if a guy couldn’t take care of himself it wasn’t Michael’s job to take care of him. So a truce for most of the spring, ready to be promoted in the fall, and supposedly off to West Point or the Naval Academy or something like that — but why wait? thought Richie.
“You can’t be in favor of the Vietnam War?” said Debbie. The undercurrent of their conversation, for her, was Tim Tim Tim, but maybe Richie didn’t perceive this. He would have been — what? — thirteen when Tim was killed. She knew from her job that thirteen-year-olds were lost in outer space.
“Why not?” said Richie. “The President was elected. He’s the commander-in-chief; he knows more about it than I do. His job is to know stuff that I don’t know. That’s why he ordered the invasion of Cambodia. Those college kids who’re shutting down campuses and rioting and stuff are just lazy and don’t want to fight.”
Debbie felt a pop of anger, but pressed her lips closed around that reference to Tim that she was about to make, reminding herself that Richie had been in military school for three years. She only said, “I guess they feel differently about it at military schools than at liberal-arts colleges.”
“My dad fought in World War II. He’s not sorry.”
“What does he think about the war in Vietnam?”
“He thinks it’s us or them.”
“Oh,” said Debbie. “I didn’t know that.”
“What does your dad think?”
Debbie shook her head. “I don’t think anyone will ever know.” And then she must have looked sad, because Richie — Richie! — actually reached across the table and patted her on the shoulder, then said, “Uncle Arthur is the most fun of any grown-up that ever lived.” After that, he said, “I thought Tim was our family’s version of Superman.”
Back at her apartment, she still could not reach Aunt Andy, and so she made up her mind. “Okay. Richie, I am going to give you train fare back to New York, and then you get yourself to Englewood and just walk in the door. Do you have a key?”
He nodded.
“The best thing to do is show up, and see what they say. Answer their questions honestly, but don’t offer any extra information. My bet is, they’ll be so glad to see you that they’ll lay off after a day or so. Also, give your mom a hug every so often, and tell her you missed her, and leave it at that. Did you give the army your home address?”
“Yes. There were cards and stuff.”
“Well, my boyfriend says that the Yippies are really successful here because there are so many kids who can be drafted. If you give them trouble, they just cross you off the list and go on to someone else.”
“I don’t want to be crossed off the list.”
“Yes, you do; at least finish high school.”
He nodded. She got him off early the next morning, dragging his suitcase, which he had left in a locker at the station the morning he went for the physical. She made him take a shower, so only his clothes stank, but, really, it was amazing what seventeen-year-old boys did not notice. Of course he didn’t write, but a week later she got a letter from her mother:
Dear Debbie—
It’s been terribly hot here. I hope you are getting some sea breezes! When you come home for Labor Day Weekend, you can revive us, if you feel like it. Listen to this! Richie was gone for six days! He showed up Wednesday evening, and he said NOTHING. Well, your aunt Andy was very upset, so she went into his room and got all over him, and he said, didn’t she get his note? And, of course not. Apparently, a friend of his from school had come East for a week, and they had decided to drive around and look at colleges, since the boy had never been in the East before. They went to Annapolis and West Point and Penn, just to have a look. I guess Richie had money from his job. Then he showed her the note he’d left for her, taped it to the BAR in their family room, but now she’s stopped drinking, so she never even opened the bar and never saw it. Frank thought it was a sign of manly independence that they did this, so he isn’t mad. Wonders never cease (and I’m talking about the fact that she didn’t look into the bar for six days). She’s a very mysterious person, and your dad wonders if, now that she is no longer pickled, she will start to age like the rest of us.
Too hot to go on any longer,
We love you!
Mom
—
ANDY LOOKED AROUND the table. Twenty-four people, all smiling. She had been here twenty times now, and she had never once stood up and said, “Hi, I’m Andy, and I am an alcoholic.” She had the book, and she had read most of it. She left it on the coffee table, and sometimes she saw that Frank or Nedra had opened it, or at least moved it. Already this evening, Bob had stood up and related how he went off the wagon on Thanksgiving, and fell down in the kitchen and hit his head. Roman had related how he was supposed to go to his mother’s house, and he knew there would be liquor there. So Roman had turned it over to his Higher Power and tried to forget about it. When he went out to get into his car Thursday, his battery was dead, and at the very moment he was wondering which restaurant, his neighbor two doors down came out onto his porch and asked him what he was doing, because there were only the four of them, and so Roman contributed the pecan pie he’d been planning to take to his mother’s, and it turned out that the neighbor needed new kitchen counters and had the money to pay, and wanted this new surface that was coming out called Corian, God knew what that was, but expensive, so Roman was smiling. And then Mary said that she had gotten through Thanksgiving fine, but yesterday, the 29th, was the fifth anniversary of the death of her daughter from falling out of the window of their old apartment on Ninety-first Street, and even though they now lived in the Village, she had had to go up there and stand on the very spot where her daughter landed, she had had to, but she didn’t drink anything, though she came close. A shocking story, but you were not supposed to make drama, which was maybe why Andy never said a word.