"Did you need a chaperone, Bev?"
"Stop it," I begged. "Please, stop it."
"You must have met a lot of fellows, selling ties."
"Stop it!"
I wanted to put my hands over my ears. I was gulping my tears into my mouth. I didn't want to hear any more ugly tonight. So I ran.
Chapter 20
I ran down the streets barefoot, sandals in both hands, hiccupping my misery into the air. Past The Breakers, down a street lined with palm trees, turning again. It was so dark. The moon was behind the clouds. The tall ficus hedges on either side of the road were like giant men in a fairy tale, scary and mean. I ran and ran on the dark silent street. All the houses were shuttered, their owners away until winter, when the island would come alive. What a screwy place, I thought, when you had to wait until December to wake up.
I kept thinking about Tom Grayson's hand squeezing that piece of paper. And the manager's face. He had been waiting to deliver that news. He had been happy to do it. That was the ugliest part.
And Joe and Mom. I'd heard them fight, but never like that, where they wanted to say the meanest things they could, the crudest things they could think of.
I needed someone to explain it to me. Someone who would tell me the real deal.
I remembered the blue convertible turning down a street, and that's where I headed. There were no cars anywhere, no lights on in the houses. I walked and walked, down one street, then another. The driveways curved away from the street, and I had to run down each one to look for the car. I pressed my face against garage-door windows.
Finally I noticed a dirt road under a canopy of pines. It was solid dark, too dark to see anything but the outline of a white house shaded by tall trees with twisted roots. The shutters were drawn tightly over the windows. I went alongside the house, down a narrow crushed-shell driveway. It hurt my feet, so I put my shoes back on.
The blue car was pulled up underneath the overhanging branches of a tree. A breeze sent the branches shivering, and a shower of orange petals fell on my head. It seemed like a good omen. I walked into the backyard.
He was sitting outside. Two chairs, chaise lounges, angled toward each other. Peter was sitting on one, in the dark, staring at the swimming pool, empty and clogged with debris. Leaves and grass and sand had collected in the bottom, rotting and brown.
"Checking up on me?" he asked, his back to me. "How considerate."
He didn't sound glad.
I walked closer, and he turned. Whatever expression was on his face was gone in less than a moment. "Well. Hello, you."
Now that I was here, I didn't know what to say. "It's so gloomy. Why don't you turn on a light?"
"They turn off the electricity in the summers. They told me to turn everything on, but I don't want to impose. I told you I was camped out."
"The windows are all boarded up."
"In case of hurricanes. I didn't want to ask the caretaker to take them down. The guy looks about ninety. What's wrong?"
"I just had to see you."
"Don't fret, pussycat. The punch didn't hurt."
"No, I mean, I'm sorry about the punch, but — the Graysons got kicked out of the hotel. Tonight. They're Jewish. The manager just kicked them out, just like that."
Peter let out a ppphhhh, shaking his head. "Palm Beach is restricted. You know that."
"I didn't know. Anyway, you can't just kick someone out like that."
"Of course you can. That's the way it works. I told you that before. They just didn't have a sign outside, but
Arlene and Tom knew what could happen if they tried to pass. What are they going to do?"
"They're leaving in the morning. Peter, you don't understand," I said. "The manager. He enjoyed it."
Peter sighed.
"I don't get it!"
"That's a good thing," he said. "A good thing that you don't get it."
"But you do. You get it. So clue me in. Tell me how someone could do that and be happy about it!"
"Baby, I was in a war. Of course I get it. That's where all the bad in the world comes from. Guys who like being mean." Peter's face went tight and closed. "I was that guy once. So was Joe. We were all that guy, for at least a minute. We had to be."
I felt the close, hot darkness around me. "Tell me what you did. Tell me," I said, very slowly, because just then I realized it, the whole obvious truth of it right in front of my face, "what you and Joe did. Together. What happened? You say I'm good. I don't need good. I need to know things. I need to know why Joe drinks so much, and why he hates you. Why he wants to move here. Why he wants to get away."
"Ask him. He's your dad."
"Tell me. Tell me, Peter. Tell someone and let it be me."
He jerked his face away, looked down at the empty swimming pool.
He looked so wretched that it made me brave. "Tell someone who loves you," I said.
"You don't love me, kiddo," Peter said softly. "You're a lovely little girl with a lovely little crush. You don't know me —"
"I do know you. I know you right down to the ground," I said. "I know that you were nice to Mr. Grayson when he was embarrassed about being 4-F. I know that night I met you that you felt sorry for me, that you knew how stupid I looked in that gown and you danced with me anyway. I know you taught me to drive because you wanted me to have a piece of being an adult. You saw that Mom treated me like a baby, and you showed her that I wasn't. I know that you didn't punch Joe tonight because he was drunk and you would have flattened him. I know that whatever you did, however bad it was, that you're not bad."
He stood there, and I saw something change for him. I saw me change for him. That dress I thought had changed me in his eyes? It had been nothing. This was it, this was finally it, when I got what I wanted.
He sat down at the edge of the pool, his feet dangling. After a minute I sat next to him.
"In the infantry," he said, "you walk and walk through miles of broken things. Trees snapped in two. Bridges cut in half. Walls of farmhouses blown away so you see chairs and a kitchen table with a cup sitting on it, dusty and perfect. And then there are the things you see that you stop thinking about even while you're walking by them. You've got you and your squad and that's it. You can't even remember home anymore, even though you tell your buddies about it. You get used to lifting stuff from another outfit if you need it. A wrench, a gun, some rations — a Jeep, even. Everybody did it. War turns you into a crook and a liar and a cheat. Except you never cheat your buddies."
Peter put his hands on both sides of his body, as if he wanted to push himself off and leap into the pool. "You remember the story from when you're a kid, about Aladdin's Cave?"
"Sure."
"Well, we found it, Joe and me. After the war. It was a warehouse in Salzburg. Riled with loot. Treasure. And it belonged to nobody. This train, it left Hungary near the end of the war, packed with stuff. The Germans tried to hide it. Only we got our hands on it. It was things that belonged to the Jews. Everything you could imagine. Dishes and rugs and watches and rings and paintings and silverware. You name it. And it was all loaded into this warehouse until they decided what to do with it."
"What happened ..."
"To the Jews? I don't know. Most of them were dead, I'm sure. Sent to the camps. Maybe some of them made it out; it was near the end of the war. Maybe some were DPs, but how were we supposed to trace them?"