Del had been dreaming along under the ninety-degree sun, self-consciousness about the beanie melting together with his sense of unreality and his pleasure in Tom's company to make him forget that they had a destination. 'Oh. Next street.'
They reached the corner and turned into the street. It seemed impossible to Del that he actually lived there. He would not have been wholly surprised to see Ricky and David Nelson playing catch on one of the lawns. 'Mr. Broome wanted to talk to you,' Tom said. 'Um-hum.'
'I suppose your father is an ambassador or something like that.'
'My father is dead. So is my mother.'
Tom quickly said, 'Geez, I'm sorry,' and changed the subject. His own father had recently begun a mysterious siege of X rays and over-night stays in St. Mary's Hospital. Hartley Flanagan was a corporation lawyer who could chin himself a dozen times and had been a varsity fullback at Stanford. He smoked three packs a day. 'Mr. Ridpath isn't too bad, he's just not very subtle' — both boys grinned — 'but you ought to watch out for his son. Steve Ridpath. I remember him from the Junior School.'
'He's worse than his father?'
'Well, he was a lot worse then. Maybe he's nicer now.' Tom's mouth twitched in a pained, adult manner, and Del saw that his new friend doubted his last remark. 'He beat the crap out of me once because he didn't like my face. He was in the eighth grade. I was in the fifth grade. A teacher saw him do it, and he still didn't get expelled. I just sort of made sure I never got near him after that.'
'This is the house,' Del said, still unable to refer to it as his. 'What does this guy look like?'
Tom took off his beanie and folded it into a hip pocket. 'Steve Ridpath? His nickname is Skeleton. But don't ever say it in front of him. In fact, if you can help it, don't ever say anything to him. Are we going to go in, or what?'
The door opened and a uniformed black man said, 'Saw you and your friend coming, Del.'
6
Inside
'Skeleton . . . ' Del said, shaking his head, but Tom Flanagan was looking at the tall bald black man who had let them in. He was too surprised not to stare. A few families in this affluent suburb had live-in maids, but he had never seen a butler before. The first impression that the man wore a uniform gradually dissipated as Tom realized that the butler was dressed in a dark gray suit with a white shirt and a silk tie the same charcoal shade as the suit. He was smiling down at Tom, clearly enjoying the boy's startled inspection. His broad face looked young, but the short wiry hair above his ears was silver. 'I see young Del is going to get on well at that school if he made such an alert friend already.'
Tom blushed.
'This is Bud Copeland,' Del said. 'He works for my godparents. Bud, this is Tom Flanagan. He's in my class. Are they in?'
'Mr. and Mrs. Hillman are out looking at a house,' the butler said. 'If you tell me where you'll be, I'll bring you whatever you want. Coke? Iced tea?'
'Thanks,' Del said. Tom was still wondering if he ought to shake hands with the butler, and while Del said 'Coke,' realized that the moment for it had passed. But by then his hand was out, and he said, 'Coke please, Mr. Copeland. I'm pleased to meet you.'
The butler shook his hand, smiling even more widely. 'My pleasure too, Tom. Two Cokes.'
'We'll be in my room, Bud,' Del said, and began to lead Tom deeper into the house. Cartons and boxes crowded what was obviously the living room. As they passed the dining room, Tom saw that it was nearly filled with a huge rectangular mahogany table.
'If you just moved in, why are they out looking at houses?' he asked.
'They're looking for a bigger place to buy. They want more land around them, maybe a pool. . . . They say this neighborhood is too suburban for them, so they're going to move somewhere even more suburban.' They were going upstairs; lighter squares on the wallpaper showed where pictures had hung. 'I don't even think they want to unpack. They hate this house.'
'It's okay.'
'You should see what they had in Boston. I used to live with them most of the time. In the summers . . . ' He looked over his shoulder at Tom and gave him an expression so guarded that Tom could not tell if it signified suspicion, fear of being questioned, or the desire to be questioned.
'In the summers?' , 'I went somewhere else. But their place in Boston was really huge. Bud worked for them there too. He was always really nice to me. Ah, here's my room.' Del had been walking down a corridor, his black-haired head proceeding along at about the level of Tom's eyes with more assurance than his behavior at the school had indicated that he had in him, and now he paused outside a door and turned around. This time Tom had no trouble reading the expression on his face. He was glowing with anticipation. 'If I was really corny, I'd say something like, 'Welcome to my universe.' Come on in.'
Tom Flanagan walked rather nervously into what at first appeared to be a totally black room. A dim light went on behind him. 'I guess you can see what I mean,' came Del's high-pitched voice. He sounded a shade less confident.
7
Ridpath at Home
Chester Ridpath parked his black Studebaker in his driveway and reached across the seat to lift his briefcase. Like the upholstery of his car, it had been several times repaired with black masking tape, and graying old ends of the tape played out beneath the gummy top layers. The handle adhered to his fingers. He wrestled the heavy satchel onto his lap-it was crammed with mimeographed football plays, starting lineups which went back nearly to the year when he had purchased the car, textbooks, lesson plans, and memos from the headmaster. Laker Broome spoke chiefly through memos. He liked to rule from a distance, even at faculty meetings, where he sat at a separate table from the staff: most of his administrative and disciplinary decisions were filtered down through Billy Thorpe, who had been assistant head as well as Latin master under three different headmasters. Sometimes Chester Ridpath imagined that Billy Thorpe was the only man in the. world who he really respected. Billy could not ever conceivably have had a son like Steve.
He exhaled, wiped sweat from his forehead back into his hair, temporarily flattening half a dozen fussy curls, and left the car. The sun burned through his clothes. The briefcase seemed to be filled with stones.
Ridpath found his bundle of keys in his deep pocket, shook them until his house key surfaced, and let himself into his house. Raucous music-music for beasts-battered the air. He supposed many parents came home to this din, but was it so loud in other houses? Steve had carried his phonograph home from the store, twisted the volume control all the way to the right, and left it there. Once in his room, he walled himself up inside this savagery. Ridpath could not communicate through a barrier so repellent to him; he suspected, in fact he knew, that Steve was uninterested in anything he might wish to communicate anyhow.
'Home,' he shouted, and banged the door shut — if Steve couldn't hear the shout, at least he would feel the vibration.
The house had been in disarray so long that Ridpath no longer noticed the pile of soiled shirts and sweaters on the stairs, the dark smudges of grease on the carpet. He and Margaret had bought the living-room carpet, a florid Wilton, on a layaway plan just after they had mortgaged his salary for twenty years to buy the house. During the fifteen years since his wife had left him, Ridpath had taken an unconscious pleasure in the gradual darkening and wearing away of the nap. There were places — before his chair, in front of the slat-backed couch — where the awful flower-spray pattern was nearly invisible.