Stealing Flowers
Published by E A St Amant at Smashwords.com
Smashwords Edition August 2011
Copyrighted by E A St Amant May 2006
e-Impression Toronto
Verses and poems within, by author.
Web and Cover design by: Edward Oliver Zucca
Web Developed by: Adam D’Alessandro
Author Contact: ted@eastamant.com
E A St Amant.com Publishers
All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, emailing, ebooking, by voice recordings, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author or his agent. Stealing Flowers = ISBN -13: 978-0-9780118-2-6. Digital ISBN: 978-1-4523-0270-6. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, companies, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances whatsoever to any real actual events or locales in persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Thanks to the many people who did editorial work on this project and offered their many kind suggestions, including Dr. P Miller and L D’Alessandro, and especially, Robyn Lori Stephenson. Thanks to T R St Amant for helping so kindly on the piloting and flying scenes.
By Edward St Amant
How to Increase the Volume of the Sea Without Water
Dancing in the Costa Rican Rain
Spiritual Apathy
Restrictions
Book of Mirrors
Perfect Zen
Five Days of Eternity
Five Years After
Five Hundred Years Without Faith
Fog Walker
Murder at Summerset
This Is Not a Reflection Of You
The Theory of Black Holes (Collected Poems)
The Circle Cluster, Book I, The Great Betrayer,
The Circle Cluster, Book II, The Soul Slayer,
The Circle Cluster, Book III, The Heart Harrower,
The Circle Cluster, Book IV, The Aristes,
The Circle Cluster, Book V, CentreRule,
The Circle Cluster, Book VI, The Beginning One
Non-Fiction
Atheism, Scepticism and Philosophy
Articles in Dissident Philosophy
The New Ancein Regime
By E O Zucca & E A St Amant
Molecular Structures of Jade
Instant Sober
Living Animal
Chapter One
Up until turning five-years-old, I lived in New Jersey with my birth mother, Diana Briner, who died in January of 1965. I was never able to find out of what. I don’t have any specific memory of her or of where we lived. My adoptive parents discovered little when they researched it. As I grew up, I lost interest in ever finding out if my birth-mother was Jewish or who my father was or even if my mother died suicidally of a drug overdose. I still don’t much care all these years later. Many experts say that our fate is decided by our heritage, that it’s all genes and spleens. This story is a complete refutation of that.
For the next three years after her death, I moved from institutions at St. Croix, where I could see the Empire State Building from my bedroom, to Gudgeon Place just off Tonelle. It was a grungy house with cockroaches and fleas. At the ripe old age of eight, I landed in the juvenile court system when for the third time I’d been picked up on the streets for truancy. I’d been shoplifting or panhandling each of those times.
I recall little of how I got from one place to another, or how I learned so much so quickly about the streets, but I think most of it was due to the influence of a rough streetwise eleven-year-old, Lloyd Mills, at the time, my only childhood companion. I became the youngest of the residents at 55 Carling Street, Juvenile Group Facility, Essex County, a halfway-home administered under the authority of the State of New Jersey near Lincroft.
I had met Lloyd at Gudgeon Place, but I recognized soon after I’d arrived at Carling Street, I needed his protection to cope inside with the twelve and thirteen-year-old bullies and gave him my full allegiance. Perhaps because I was so tall, no adult actually believed I was only eight years old.
Lloyd used to come into my room at about one o’clock in the morning after the guards had gone to watch television and sleep with me. Sometimes he cuddled against me, sometimes he would want more. He would stay four or so hours. He carried a switchblade which he’d boasted he’d much practice with, and the other boys feared him, as did I. He kept them away from me and made sure my holiday packages from the state weren’t stolen. I remember that I thought our relationship was a tradeoff on the level of life and death, an instinct to survive. I don’t recall ever being affectionate to him in a way which would be called love. I recollect the feeling of boredom with the mechanics of it. I sometimes would fall asleep and he’d get angry. However bad it was, it could never compete with the utter fear I felt of being all alone in the world at eight-years-old. It was the loneliness I recollect most vividly and it didn’t go away until I met Una and the Tappet family.
I think I cried quite often, but even in this period before the Tappets, I recall just selected events. Like I remember one day I found an irresistible kitten that had obviously gone unfed for sometime, and against the rules, smuggled it into the home. I begged Lloyd to steal food from the kitchen to feed it, which he did, and even better, he went to a grocery store and stole real cat food for it. After Lloyd would leave in the middle of the night, Snowball slept with me. It’d tickled my feet in the morning to wake me up. It was a white fluffy ball of fur, but had some black spots around the ears. I remember how small it was and how it needed my protection to survive. I was saving my money to get it to a vet to have it checked out. I loved that kitten and I cried inconsolably when it was run over by a car on Carling Street, even in the face of all the goading I received from the older boys, even Lloyd teased me about it. After all, for toughened boys, the only good cat is a dead cat.
I mention about my relationship with Lloyd so that what happened between me and my stepsister, can be understood more clearly. I’d experienced more about this sort of thing before I reached nine-years-old than most teenagers ever do. My behavior toward Sally was due in part to my amplified sexuality, matched evenly by the naivety of my new family. Parents adopting young boys living in orphanages or public institutions, don’t realize that they are sexually active at nine, eight, and even seven-years-old.
At that time, I attended Westside Park, East Essex State School. I remember it as an okay experience even if I was often truant. They served hot cereal and toast in the morning and they let me have double helpings. I’ve no existent report cards even though I tried to get them, or should I say, someone on my payroll when I was first putting my life story down in words, tried to get them for me. They could find no record of my existence before 1968, let alone my education. Apparently, until I became a Tappet, I’d no history and was a nonentity to the state.
A favorite place of mine at the time was the graveyard where my birth mother lay. I brought Snowball there several times to meet her. Her absence in my life had created a puzzling world of ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes.’ Life seemed so arbitrary and I never seemed to have any fun. I visited her there to talk about it. To try and understand. Perhaps to pray, although no one had ever instructed me in religion until I met Mary Tappet. Piety back then seemed the farthest virtue from me. Stealing and sex seemed more natural. Life stole mothers. Lloyd stole sex. Every Sunday I would steal flowers from this fancy man’s garden to put on my mother’s grave. It’s a large black-gated property at Rookery and Roanoke near Hoboken owned by one of the richest families in Jersey City. In my mind at eight-years-old, if I thought about it at all, it must have seemed a palace beyond my imagination. But really, I don’t remember what I felt as I scrambled through the property stealing their flowers. The electronic gate at the front driveway was always closed on Sundays. But back then, it was no deterrent at all.
In the summer of 1968, all I had to do was rush in through the northern walkway, pick up carnations, roses, or whatever appealed to me, and rush out through the southern gate. I’d worked it three weeks in a row, when on the fourth attempt, laden with another fine bouquet for my mother’s gravesite, I was attacked on my way out with the loot in hand.
The gardener, a tall spindly fellow with a long beard, this story is much about men with long beards, who has since left the employ of the Tappets, must have been lying in wait. I was told later that he had been expecting a hippy and not an eight-year-old boy. Hippies were just then starting to get bad press. I received a blow to the front of the head with the shovel, leading to bleeding, and a serious concussion, I was knocked out, I almost died.
For this, I owe him everything, and although my life completely changed afterwards, to this day, I curse him for it as well. As you will see, this is no mean exaggeration. My new dad, Stan, told me the gardener held a bizarre theory about the missing flowers. Stan called him ‘a conspiracy nut,’ but Mary, my new mother, called him, ‘Just a nut.’
I woke up in the hospital surrounded by a host of strange faces, perhaps ten of them. I’d have run for all my life, except I couldn’t move. Comforting brown eyes from a face full of love and laughter riveted my attention even though I felt half asleep. I had seen black women before, and many of them, but I could see at once that she’d formidable magic beyond her huge presence. Both her knowing gaze, and the happiness she radiated, came to my mind as uncanny. Her brilliant dress fell into a category that isn’t easily explained; it was outlandish but appeared quite natural on her huge frame; offbeat yet well-balanced; bright blue on dark black skin, but made of a texture and a color as befit her. She felt the little bit of my forehead that was exposed and her touch held tenderness and foreboding. I don’t tell you that about Una just because I have known and loved her ever since that moment. I actually remember it happening that way, like a metaphysical second, but who can say for sure. Memories are all we have and scientists say they aren’t that reliable. That’s just the way life is.
“Bryce whacked you good,” she said with a giggle, her voice cheerful and her accent easy on my ears. “You’ll live. The doctors here are expensive.” She winked. “Where are your parents?”
“It was a shovel,” I whispered feebly and then heard another voice.
“Bryce said he tackled you and you hit your head on a stone.”
My gaze moved from the big black face, to a round formless white face with friendly blue eyes and a moustache. He smiled sympathetically, as though he’d entertain the shovel version quite easily. He was in a shining silvery suit but the tie was loose and the jacket opened.
“What’s your name,” he asked, “and why are you stealing Bryce’s flowers every Sunday?”
He seemed nice enough and I weighed telling the truth, especially considering the big black woman, but quickly rejected it. Long ago I’d learned the truth could have bad unintended consequences, and moreover, it was as though the man expected something of me.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I believe Bryce used a shovel on you, you poor boy,” a third voice said and I followed it to the face of a white woman, perhaps my mother’s age if she’d still been alive. Her brown hair framed her narrow face. Her black eyes looked right at me, so that I at once looked away. She was their leader, I decided. The way she stood brought her attention. The style of her business dress and her sharp eyes indicated it.
“I think we should phone the police,” she added. “Bryce almost killed him. He’ll have to go!”
Her voice carried authority and scared me, but no one answered her so I spoke up. “I won’t steal anymore flowers,” I promised.
To my delight, everyone laughed. I now chanced a complete look around the room. One plump white woman and a tall old mean-looking man with grey skin, wore white smocks and stood a step or two back. These two I decided were doctors or nurses. Since my treatment by the medical professionals in the past had been deplorable, I instantly feared and hated them.
Two older Chinese men in silk business suits and with kind eyes, looked on, only mildly interested. They seemed to be as confused as I was. One man there, a fit well-tanned young fellow, who stood at the end of the bed, had the likeness of our halfway home councilor, a kind untried soul who seemed to me sometimes to be unworldly. He’d once told me that I was lucky to have a friend like Lloyd, even though I had told him earlier what Lloyd did to me on a nightly basis.
Another man stood near the door as though guarding it. His pale narrow face was in a profile and all I could see was that he had a large nose and droopy ears. He wore a crisp dark blue uniform and held a tiny policeman’s hat, casually twirling it from end to end in his hands. He didn’t look at me and kept his eyes down.
Then a transcendental event occurred to me. I saw Sally.
She slowly pushed through from behind her parents and came right up at the bedside eye to eye with a glossy yellow sucker in her mouth. She was a tall thin eight-year-old with long blond hair and deep translucent eyes. She smiled at me with absolute love and touched my hand. Then she gave me a purple sucker which I greedily seized and hid under the covers. I’d learned from my short lifetime in the homes that you can’t trust anybody with candy.
“Say hello, dear,” the black woman urged.
But Sally said nothing and we stared happily at each other until the woman with the voice-of-authority spoke again.
“Isaac,” she said, “go see what’s keeping them.” The man with the tan left. She looked at me thoughtfully again. “How do we get a hold of your parents?” I shrugged. I didn’t have the slightest idea. “Where’s your mother right now?” she asked further.
“She is at the graveyard,” I answered softly.
“Is that who the flowers were for?” she continued.
I regretfully nodded. She was a clever woman and I was too distracted by her daughter to fight her inquiries. As well, I had grown more tired.
“Where is your father?” she went on.
I shrugged and closed my eyes for a moment. She pulled me back from sleep.
“What’s your name?”
“Christian Donald Briner.”
Afterwards, they let me sleep. When I awoke, they were gone, and I got out of the bed and peed, then took a walk around the hospital. It was a clean dark place full of shadows and coughing. I was in very little discomfort. Several days must have passed. All I could feel of my wound was a clean strip of gauze with no sign of blood.
The number of people in the hospital had greatly increased. This led me to believe an epidemic had broken out in Jersey City. When supper was delivered, I asked a tall wizened nurse why so many people were sick. She patted my head and left without answering me.
After supper, I was given pills, and I dreamt that I was back with my mother. I think she didn’t really have a face but was just the idea of motherhood, like the Virgin Mary. She showed me how to empty my head of the vulgar and horrible things Lloyd had put into it. How to stop the cheap brass from rattling in my brain. They weren’t just sounds that I cleared out of my head either, but the unclean concepts they signified. Lloyd had shown me plenty of pictures of people engaged in all sorts of things and had explained every little detail.
“Tonight I will show you the path to a higher plain,” she said, “but first you must let me hold you in my arms a while as you sleep.”
When my head was emptied, she whispered that I was purified and should try to communicate directly with God. I looked up, stunned and lost for words. Even though she held me in her arms, her face lay hidden in the shadows of the dark hospital room, but I could hear her soft voice in my ears.
“Tonight, Jesus will come for you,” she whispered, “and will show you the way.”
I was overjoyed to hear it and when I opened my eyes, a man came to me with piercing blue eyes and a long trimmed beard.
“I’ll take you to a place which few men have seen and returned to tell,” he said. “You’re a good boy and deserve favor, but you may refuse to go. Many cannot come back. The joy, the fulfillment, the pleasures, are nearly irresistible. If you decide to go, you’ll walk the clouds and follow me inside the gates of heaven. If you can leave when I say you must, no matter what enraptures you feel, then you may return to your mother’s arms and you’ll awake unpolluted.”
I nodded, not knowing what to say. His piercing blue eyes looked into my heart and he touched me with his hand. The g-force increased as we sped to heaven, and for several minutes, my stomach was in my throat. I hoped he truly was who he seemed to be. His direct presence in my life would put me further than I had ever been from a nobody-orphan. God himself spoke directly to me now, and I figured that was really something splendid.
“Listen to me carefully,” he said when we arrived, “don’t open your eyes and don’t talk. You must think of only goodness and grace, nothing sinful. Can you do it?” I nodded. “Your very life depends on it,” he continued. “Do you understand that you mustn’t talk nor open your eyes the whole length of time we are beyond the gates?” I nodded again. “Enter here now with me,” he whispered, “and feel all the senses of eternity.”
A sudden roar of music filled my head. I felt the enticing spirits of young virgins swish through me and whisper into my ears to follow them. The smell of cinnamon and exotic spices came to my nostrils. My mouth watered with the taste of a flavor so wonderful that I nearly cried out. Light burned brightly beyond my closed-eyelids which I fiercely fought to keep tight. The wind rushed through my short crop of hair and up my naked backside. I became flush and felt many pleasures rush through all parts of my body. My head exploded in a flurry of delight so that I could hardly breathe. Suddenly, I decided I would stay. What was the point of returning when life up here was so full of pleasure?
However, the man touched me before I opened my eyes and we were gone from heaven.
“It’s late,” he said almost gently, “and you have done well. In the grey dawn when you awake with your youthful health and cleared mind, the body and soul as one, you’ll remember me. If you ever need to see me again, go to any clergy and they’ll guide you here. Now before I leave, I must tell you something. Tomorrow begins your new life. Whatever gifts you are offered, you must take them, but fear them as well. They’ll only be presented this one time, and they are indeed glorious, beyond the wildest hopes of your mortal fate, but in them, lies the seeds of your destruction unless you follow the guide which has been dispatched for you.”
I’d no idea what he meant, but it sounded complicated and I was glad when he finished. I remembered pretty much everything during my stay at the hospital, but especially that dream. I now had a friend in Jesus. When I awoke the next morning, a song played in my head, a blusterous rhapsody in a language I’d never heard, but it quickly faded as another group of people gathered around me.
“He’s awake,” Mr. Drury said, my assigned truant-officer, a sad-looking man with a round face and hard perplexed eyes. His bald head had a sweep of grey hair on the sides and he wore a trim grey moustache. He looked vaguely like a cop, and if it hadn’t been for the sad, almost anguished eyes, he would have looked like a mean one too. The irony of this thought wasn’t lost on me, he was actually a police-officer of sorts, and I knew it, it’s just that at the time, I equated cops with the men in the blue uniform.
“He has more color today,” the plump nurse said softly. I recognized her voice but didn’t look at her face. “I’ll get the doctor.”
My sleep-encrusted eyes wouldn’t go from face to face. It was just too much, and I was mortified they’d been staring at the lump on my stomach only half hidden under the linen sheets. I rubbed my eyes harshly and forced myself to sit up a little on my pillow. I quickly felt my head to find the gauze had been removed. Only long narrow bandages covered the lump on it now, but it was still gross to touch.
“How do you feel?” Mrs. Abbibas said softly, an East Indian woman, who though dressed in Western style, always managed to look as though she was in a silk sari. She coiffured her graying hair in smooth waves, and her compassionate eyes were full of affection. Her black dress was covered in a large grey silk shawl as though she was a person from a mysterious land who hid out in New Jersey and wished to return home, but couldn’t find the secret path back.
She had these deep-set eyes and a smile on her face that seemed the definition of maternal love. Many times she had talked to me, and appeared always magnanimous, but I could never really understand what she said. Not that it mattered. Outside of taking me home, what could she do? My mother was dead, my father, nonexistent. I’d no standing or money. I was sleeping with Lloyd, living in a broken-down halfway home on Carling Street, and had been arrested for truancy three times. Who wanted to adopt an eight-year-old with a history? And one caught stealing from perhaps the wealthiest family in New Jersey no less?
I nodded and she lightly rubbed my hand. I recognized the man with the friendly blue eyes and moustache. He looked down and smiled again. This time he was dressed in casual clothes. “I’m Stan Tappet,” he said in a rather timid voice. “This is Una.” I darted a glance at the big black woman with the formidable magic.
Una was an opposite type to Mrs. Abbibas. She dressed in a loose bright red-yellow floral dress, and her eyes were playful and full of inquiry. ‘The Tappets perhaps owned New Jersey,’ her eyes said, ‘but people like me built it.’
“Do you know why we’ve come?” she asked loudly.
Indeed, I’d guessed it, but shook my head and got out from under her gaze. Stan was to be my new father. I could see he was afraid that I’d turn him down, that for some reason, that somehow, I wouldn’t understand what was being offered. I think he was afraid that I was thick as a brick. I saw that I held sway over him. He’d been sent out by the lady with the voice of authority and wasn’t to come home without me. They were used of getting what they wanted. I remember feeling exactly that! Power. Perhaps it was the first time in my life I had it over someone and I didn’t even know why, but I wouldn’t willingly give it up.
Sally strode in from behind the people in the room, her face kindled with delight, a bright red tin of Coca-Cola in her hand.
“Hi,” she mouthed.
I saw that she had recognized inside herself the seed of love I’d planted there from our first meeting. No shyness came to her eyes either. They were fountains of translucence whose depths were unimaginable. I had to have her—I became greedy for her. It was deplorable but urgent as well. I had power over someone for the first time, but he’d taken it all back by bringing his daughter who had power over me. With her in my life, the taste of Lloyd could be rinsed out and my past thoroughly rejected. Through Sally, I could purify myself further. Jesus had sent Sally to me.
All of this must have jumped to my face or something, and Una pounced on me. She took my hand and squeezed it not so gently. “Well, Mr. Christian, my full-grown child, ” she said, “just don’t be wagging your tail yet. The nice people at Carling Street would be happy to get rid of you, and I can see why, but I think that the poor Tappets would be fools to take you in. They feel obliged and I don’t see it that way at all. It was just an accident. Bryce didn’t mean to hit you so hard.” With her other hand on my chin, she forced me to look at her. “Is there the devil in you?” she asked.
Fear jumped to my face. I shook my head so vigorously it caused her to let out a loud laugh. She stared at me for the longest time until I tore my eyes away and looked up at Stan for mercy. To my utter surprise, he shrugged. I saw she’d the power over me, and not he. I didn’t have power at all. I was furious that I misread the whole situation so poorly.
I abruptly saw Una’s power then. It was brilliantly disguised. So mysterious and extraordinary as to be frightful, and at this point, totally camouflaged and unknowable by someone my age. What force she served, I couldn’t see, yet I knew she’d been the one who was responsible for Sally’s upbringing, the one who would be responsible for me. Perhaps it was she and not Sally who would be my earthly guide as Jesus had promised. But whatever her standing and who ever she served, I could clearly see I had absolutely no power over her and that she could stop everything this instant with just a remark.
“The Tappet family wishes to adopt you, Christian,” Mr. Drury said from the foot of my bed as though coming to my rescue. “Mrs. Abbibas and I feel it is an excellent opportunity for you. We strongly recommend it. Nothing stands in the way of an expeditious agreement. We already spoke to Carling Street. You could be in your new home today. All we need is your agreement.”
I looked at Stan and perhaps said one of the most disingenuous statements, and there have been many in my time as a son to him, with a wild-eyed smile on my face.
“You will become my father?” I asked in wonder.
He returned the smile completely taken in, but Una spoke up again.
“Mr. Tappet is a very busy man, my full-grown child,” she said staring at me again. “He invents things, and all over the world, he works for a better place. He’ll have time for none of your nonsense. I can assure you of that. I’ll be looking after you, mostly, so, think twice before you say yes to this. It’ll be no picnic.”
Though her eyes remained playful, I didn’t doubt her words for a second. She was truly neutral to my coming into her life. I could see it clearly. Her love would be conditional. I’d never be able to work my charm on her as I would others. I guessed that she didn’t really want the extra responsibility. I don’t think it was even personal, but she seemed to see through my mask so quickly and perhaps was afraid I was a bad person. Or maybe she had a bad premonition of what my arrival meant, of the calamities that would unfold.
I seriously thought about refusing it, but with the dream and everything, how could I? I put away the smile and hung my head. “I’ll be a good son to you, Mr. Tappet,” I promised.
This got everything going and even Una agreed it could be fun. When they left, I dressed into clothes Mrs. Abbibas had brought from Carling Street. In the washroom, I peeled back the bandages and was surprised to see that my head held twenty or so stitches, but it didn’t look as bad as it felt. Mr. Drury waited out in the hall, having agreed to take me back to pack up and sign some papers.
“Are you ready?” he asked when I stepped out into the corridor. I could see some of the anguish in his eyes had been alleviated by my good fortune. I felt fine and kept up to him with no problem. Looking back, I saw I had stayed in North Jersey General. It was a huge complex bordered by busy streets. Since Snowball had been killed by a speeding car, I’d become extremely annoyed with traffic in general. Mr. Drury owned a new navy-blue Grand Prix, and on his car-radio on the way to Carling Street, a song played, People Got to be Free, which I thought was very true.
For an eight-year-old, every path seems blocked. No liberty exists, only endless numbers of mysterious adult rules, and especially, the perplexing laws of life. But now I was happy and that was almost like being free. Mr. Drury rubbed my shoulder. “It’s a hard story to believe,” he said slowly. “It’s the darnedest thing, really. One of the richest families along these parts is going to adopt you, and all because you were stealing their flowers and their gardener clobbered you.” He chuckled to himself. “Who would believe it? But I’m happy for you, Christian. You’re a good boy and you deserve a nice family.”
I’d tears at these words. It was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to me. I wished I had thanked him for it, but I was too emotional. A chance in a million had come to me. It was a miracle really. Lloyd came over to help pack up my things, but gathering it up was the simplest thing in the world. My clothes fit into a small duffle bag with room left for that much again. I’d no cards, music, glasses, radios, watches, jewelry, belts, sports stuff, toys, stuffed animals, or anything else like that, just a few old rags, my toothbrush, and an old black plastic comb.
“Will I be able to come over to your new home and see you?” he asked.
I shook my head and certainly hoped not. He hugged me, and though I tried with all my will to return it, I couldn’t.
“I love you,” he whispered in my ear.
“I’ll see you some time,” I said, breaking away.
His unshaped face took on a forlorn-look, but I felt no pity. What I owed him for protection, I’d paid in full, and then some.
“Mr. Tappet is waiting,” Mr. Drury said, knocking on the door.
I shook a few hands, signed some papers, and in a minute, found myself out on the street standing in front of a huge black stretch limousine, which back in 1968 was quite an uncommon sight.
“This isn’t ours, my full-grown child,” Una said coming from the front passenger seat to let me in. “We rented it, so don’t go getting highfalutin. This is Mary’s idea of welcoming you into our family.”
I sat beside Sally in the backseat straight across from Stan and Mary Tappet. Enough room remained between the seats to stretch my legs but everybody sat up and so did I. Sally had her blond hair in a pony tail and her narrow face looked wonderful with her clear shining eyes. For the first time, probably because Una had stripped me of my power, I was nervous and couldn’t speak.
“You look much improved,” Mary said. “You must have so many questions in your head.”
I did, but could hardly ask them why they were going to adopt me, why anyone on earth would bother? I’d once overheard Mr. Drury say that after you’re eight-years-old it is pretty much a done deal for an orphaned boy, and I believed it. All the teenage orphans I’d met, long ago had given up any hope of it. I nodded but said nothing.
“Let me explain the best I can,” she continued. “For sometime after Sally was born, we tried to have another child and weren’t successful. The business needed my full attention in the last three years so I couldn’t afford to get pregnant. By default. Do you know what that word means?” I lied with a nod. “By default,” she continued, “we decided Sally would be an only child and that she would learn to live with it, but she herself complained about this and has asked many times about a sibling. When Bryce clobbered you and we found out that you were an orphan, Una said it was a sign.”
I turned around to look at Una who sat watching from the front seat. She nodded her head but said nothing. “We have to talk to you about our family,” Mary added, “our rules, and your obligations. Sally is a gifted student and we’ll get you a tutor to get you up to speed in that department. Are you willing to try to catch up to Sally so that you can enter the same school as her in September?” I nodded. “Good,” she continued. “We saw your truancy reports. We hope it isn’t reflective of your attitude toward school.”
“My teacher was boring,” I said with another lie.
“We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again,” Mary said with a smile. “This is your number one obligation in our family, just as it is Sally’s. If you do well in school and listen to Una, you may have whatever you wish, but school comes first on all fronts. We’ve had the week to prepare a room for you which we hope you’ll like. Stan says you look chipper and he picked out the design. I don’t know what that means, but he feels you’ll fit in just fine.”
“Besides expressing himself well,” Una piped in, “Mr. Stan has many talents. He’s an airplane pilot and collects dinky-toy airplanes. Wait until you see your room. You’ll beg to be returned at once to Carling Street.”
Both Stan and Mary laughed at this, so I joined in, although I didn’t understand the joke and thought it was a bit much from a servant. However, that pretty much defined their relationship. I heard Una make fun of Mary only a few times in my whole life, but Stan got it every day.
“Would you like to learn to fly airplanes?” she asked me further. Again I nodded. “You’re very cooperative,” she added, making fun of me. “Let’s see how far you’ll go to please us. Sally has a fine collection of Barbie dolls, maybe a dozen or so. Will you play Barbie with her?”
I blushed and hoped she wouldn’t wait for an answer. I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t want to disappoint Sally. A silence ensued so that I knew I couldn’t ignore the question. Una’s power over them seemed supernatural, but the thought of playing Barbie at that age naturally repulsed me, as it should any boy. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t think I could play with dolls.”
“A man of principle,” Una said with a laugh and turned around.
This seemed to satisfy everyone, even Sally. I was bewildered.
“Una is quite insane,” Stan whispered with a smile, “there’s no cure.”
He put his fingers to his lips to signal to keep it to myself and winked. I held his daughter’s hand and waited to arrive at the mansion where I’d stolen flowers for my mother. When we drove up the driveway, a feeling of being lost in a dream overwhelmed me.
“Why are you crying?” Sally whispered, her voice so full of conspiratorial love that more tears came still. The limousine drove up the wide extended driveway which ran along the back of the house. Gold and orange colored bricks lay interlocked in a shimmering circular design and made up the drive and walkways. Flourishing climbing-roses and tall potted grafted azaleas bordered the lavish cement archways. Red maples and flowering African vine trees lined the driveway, interspersed with bright blooming flower beds and sculptures of fawns and naked children. It was beautiful and I caught my breath several times.
Sally continued to hold onto my hand and we walked up a stone pathway to a partially hidden door. This led to the kitchen which had a large center island with a sunroom and eating room to the right, facing west, then it fell out onto a large dining room. It was freshly painted with pristine-white, and held huge white appliances which sparkled in the bright room: two fridges, a stove, dishwasher, and others I didn’t even know at the time existed, like rotary grill-cookers, toaster-ovens, microwaves, stand up freezers, and so forth.
They all carried the Factory-Bright label, the Tappet trade name, but of course, I didn’t know that at the time either. Pictures of Una standing in the front yard of small restaurants surrounded by tall palm trees, all in different places, adorned the walls in the kitchen.
“Mom, let me show him his room,” Sally urged.
“Okay, Sweetie,” Mary said. “We’ll give you a five minute head start.”
Sally opened a door to a dark room on the left, and turned on the light. In front of my eyes stood what look like a grocery store, a pantry so loaded with food that it seemed impossible that a house could hold it. Giant coffin-freezers and two huge silver-colored fridges took up the wall in the middle. At the back of it, stood a wide carpeted spiral-staircase and she led me in a rush up to the top floor.
She took me down a hallway so wide it could have been a room. Three corridors broke out from it. Still holding my hand, she led me to my new room. My first impression of it was that it was the size of a small dormitory. It had two enormous bay windows. Below one window sat a desk so large that it had two chairs on wheels. The bed on the other hand, differed little in size from what I slept in at Carling Street, however, it had a comforter which matched the sheets, pillow cases, and curtains. This I thought was quite ingenious.
The walls were papered in a light design of airplane sketches, all kinds of planes, from the earliest to the most modern, and the multiple shelves attached to them held either model airplanes or books; dozens of both. A wind-chime of helicopters hung from the ceiling in one of the corners. A sizable television-set sat on a wooden stand and there was a large radio on my desk. Above it on a shelf, a new leather-bound edition of a huge set of books was all aligned in perfect order.
“What is that?” I asked pointing to the books.
“Colliers’ Encyclopedia,” Sally said. “We have four sets now.”
I’d never heard of an encyclopedia, but didn’t want to show my ignorance so said nothing. Sally took one book down and turned to a picture of a Polar Bear. “It lists everything alphabetically. You can use it for school.”
“What’s that?” I said, pointing next to what looked like a small typewriter.
“It’s a calculator. Mom and Dad make them.”
“What do you think?” Stan asked and entered the room with a light knock on the door. Mary came in behind him.
“Thank you,” I said.
What else could I say? Mary walked up to the encyclopedia, and put her hand on it. “You’re probably one of a very few eight-year-olds who have their own encyclopedia,” she said. “Our tutor for you, Mr. Vontd, is proficient in their use and will show you more when the time comes. I’m sorry to inform you that if you want to start school with Sally in September, your private classes will have to start at once. Are you willing to give up part of your summer?”
I could see she intended in treating me like an adult. The problem with answering these kinds of straightforward questions for me or any eight-year-old was that one didn’t know the sacrifice it would take to fulfill the obligation.
I nodded solemnly, and for the first time in my presence, she smiled. “Una’s right about you,” she added. “You catch on fast. But you should understand that this isn’t a game or test. We have adopted you and this is your home. We aren’t going to toss you back if you don’t get A’s in school. Some boys will learn how to fly, others to swim. Do you swim?” I shook my head. “Well, then,” she continued, “let’s go swimming. I’ll give you your first lesson and we’ll try not to get your stitches wet.”
Sally whooped in joy. I hadn’t missed the importance of the words from Mary about not being tossed back, but my mind leapt from one surprise to another. Mary went to a dresser and in the third drawer down pulled-out brand-new bathing-suits and beach towels.
Left alone, I changed and stepped out into the hall, where I stood solitarily before a mammoth spotless hall-mirror, a skinny pale youngster, a stranger onto myself. Many times in my life, I would feel the same way looking at myself in a mirror and not recognizing the reflection.
The walls were laid out with gigantic pictures of places and events that I knew nothing about. The swimming-suit was tight so that it exaggerated my thinness. Sally came out from a room near mine in a skin-tight two-piece. She was as skinny as me. She hadn’t developed even the hint of hips or breasts.
“What are you doing?” she asked and came close, looking at my reflection in the mirror and placing her hand on my lower back.
“It’s so strange,” I whispered. “Yesterday I was in one life, and I’m in another completely different one today.”
She took my hand and dragged me away from the mirror. “Come on,” she said, “put on some socks. You can skate downstairs.”
We didn’t look at the rest of my room nor did we return through the pantry to the kitchen. We raced down a plush carpeted spiral staircase which was wide enough to play the splits. We passed a huge front foyer. The pine floors had been polished so that you could slide on them in your socks. They were protected with East Indian hand-woven carpets, but Sally and I skated from room to room in between them. Family portraits hung on the walls, several of Sally. One was of a bright yellow bush-plane, floating in the middle of a small lake, with Stan standing and waving from the right pontoon.
Oil paintings of wild cats including a cheetah and cougar, offset the family ones. We skated over more pine floors, passed more pictures, and ran out through giant double glass doors. The yard fell out into an immense deck leading to the swimming-pool area, then into a thick group of trees hiding most of the iron fences that ran for hundreds of feet along Rookery giving the property privacy from the street.
In points beyond the pool were clusters of beautiful tall white birch trees and swirling circles of knee-high flowers swaying in the breeze. Ignoring it all, Sally jumped straight into the pool after taking off her socks. It was a rectangular shaped pool, painted brilliant cool aqua-blue. It was perhaps twenty meters long and ten wide, and surrounded by interlaced pale blue bricks and white wooden patio furniture with soft blue cushions.
“Come in,” she cried. “It’s only up to here.” She stood in the shallow end and I carefully climbed into the pool using the ladder. The water wasn’t too cold and I jumped up and down with Sally, keeping my legs firmly planted on the ground. A bright blue slide ran from the shallow side into the deep end and Sally turned on a tap which ran water over it. She climbed the ladder and slid down, whooping it up, and though it looked like enormous fun, I knew better than to go into the deep-end. However, what I didn’t know was the shallow end, stopped abruptly.
I heard a splash behind me, it was Stan, and I lost my footing, shooting over the lip. When my feet touched bottom, I’d gone over my head, but kicked myself to the surface. Doing so, I put myself even further out. I went down splashing and kicking, swallowing a mouthful of water. I remembered I thought I was going to die. That’s how drowning happens when you don’t know anything about swimming. It is a mystery to the ignorant. Powerful arms, snapped me back into the shallow end and I stood in the pool, sputtering and coughing. Drawing breath was very difficult.
“Sweetie, when you’re in the pool with Christian,” Stan said to Sally, “you’ll have to watch out for him. You’ll have to turn-off your selfish button. Okay, sweetie?”
She nodded and drew up, holding my hand. “What happened?” Mary asked from the lip of the pool, wearing a one piece bathing suit which was grey and modest but didn’t hide her fine figure.
“He took in a mouthful of water,” Stan said.
I recovered and Mary taught me to tread water before supper as Stan and Sally dove from the deep end and swam around us. Mary was polite and her voice warmed up with every passing minute. I thanked her for the lesson.
“You can’t very well thank us for everything, Christian,” she said. “From the clothes, to the food, to education, to everything, all you would do is thank us and feel guilty. It won’t do. No more thanks. It’s enough that you are here and that you put what opportunity this gives you to good use. We’re here for you to make sure you succeed, that you are happy. Can you understand that?”
It took all my self-control not to thank her. Una’s supper was soft boneless chicken-breasts cooked with honey Dijon mustard, cashews, and mandarins. I asked about each of the other dishes: Wild rice, fresh corn on the cob, broccoli-heads in white cheddar sauce and black bean soup, all of which I had never tasted before. A bowl of salad was in the middle of the table, but it looked like they weren’t going to make me eat rabbit food, as Lloyd called it.
I’d my first glass of red wine and it was nearly the foulest drink I’d ever tasted, but fortunately they also had a glass of cold apple juice at my place and I swallowed this in one enormous gulp to wash away the taste. Stan laughed at me.
The black bean soup was repulsive to look at and I was disgusted to see Sally eating it like it was Campbell’s tomato soup, but I did taste it and it was fine, but the thought of it was too much for more than one spoon full. I tried the corn and ate several mouthfuls, however, it appeared that the chicken had been deliberately destroyed for the sole purpose of embarrassing me and making me appear as though I was going to be too much trouble to the Tappets.
For a moment, I wondered if Una had done it on purpose. The most detestable mustard anyone thought to ever create had been thrown in great dollops on top of it so that even if I’d thought to have more than a few bites, I just couldn’t. The rice had little pieces of sticks in it. The broccoli was hard, and I’m sorry to say, the sauce smelt like puke. None of this stopped the Tappets from eating it like it was manna.
“Is this tomato juice?” I asked and pointed to a tall glass of red liquid beside my empty glass of apple juice. Stan nodded and I tried this. I hated it also and wondered what I would drink now to get the foul tastes out of my mouth. I was horrified, when halfway into the meal, Una sat beside me to eat. I thought she was going to make me finish my plate like they did in the halfway homes. Even if you gag, they make you finish it, but after a few moments, she looked at me, rubbed the top of my head. “What would you like to eat?” she asked. I flushed completely red. “It’s okay, my full-grown child,” she continued. “You’re not used to our ways and I see you’ve tried everything on your plate. Kraft dinner?”
I nodded. Within five minutes, I’d a steaming plate of macaroni and cheese, another glass of apple juice, and one of my favorite foods, Heinz Ketchup. After supper, we cleaned up together and had vanilla ice-cream with chocolate syrup while we watched a program on television in the living room in which at the beginning a naked woman walks into the ocean. That was my favorite part. She had a very nice figure.
Outside of the fact that I had seen little television, what immediately got my attention was a tall thin man with a moustache and thick curly hair over his ears. He had kind intelligent eyes and a very natural smile. He held up to the cameras a tiny square device. He talked for a few minutes, but I didn’t really listen, I was looking around the room.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, I sat in a Wassily chair. Its chrome-plated frame was made of steel-tubing which held a grey-canvass seat and arm rests. Sally sat in a similar one beside me. They’re still in the mansion today, although they’ve been refurbished a number of times. Love seats, sofa chairs, matching couches, and a Chippendale mahogany chair, were arranged together around the television. Huge vases with grey, silver, light powder-blue and green fern-like dried plants stood in several spots around the room. An enormous glass coffee table held fresh flowers and bamboo shoots in water.
The television sat on a stainless-steel stand with only a large palm tree beside it, the pot which held it, was a silver color, but the whole thing was framed by an enormous window ten feet behind it which looked out on one of the side-yards. Directly behind the couches was a long wall of floor-to-ceiling windows which faced the backyard, although a fine white sheer-curtain covered them. Two enormous pictures hung on the wall, but I could see neither one of them clearly. Glancing again at the television, I was amazed to see the tall thin man now talking to Stan. I stood out of my chair. “How do they do that?” I asked.
Everyone laughed. “The program is about computers,” Stan answered. “We don’t watch much television, but we had to see this.”
I tried, but I didn’t understand much of what was discussed in the interview, except that Stan’s predictions about the future were hailed by the man as a windfall for everyone. The man talked about abundance, new leisure time, and an easier life for everyone. It sounded absolutely marvelous to my ears and I was beginning to realize I had been adopted by famous people. I’d never met anyone who had been on television before.
After the program was over, we all clapped and Mary and Stan took Sally and I to the Jersey Port Theater to see a movie, The Lion in Winter. It was the first time I had seen a motion picture on the big screen, and though I remember it being hard to understand, I was riveted through the whole thing.
The theater seats were comfortable and we sat high up in the second tier, eating popcorn and drinking ice cola. I held Sally’s hand through the whole story; the castles, horses, knights, warriors, and English landscape were thrilling. That night before sleep, Stan came into my room and sat on the edge of the bed. “How was your first day with us?” he asked.
I swallowed to keep the tears out of my eyes. “Great.”
“When I was a boy your age, my father left my mother. He wasn’t much of a father anyway, always drunk and unhappy. When I started in business after the war, I invented and patented a lathe machine for making precision tools. Now we have factories in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Japan, and are making many things. Soon, we’ll have many more factories. Mary is wonderful at running companies and knowing what to buy. I was a fighter pilot in Korea, in a conflict just after the Second World War. If you don’t know what war WWII was, it is the one where the Western Democracies fought against nations who wanted to impose a dictatorial government on the world, where you wouldn’t be able to vote on who runs things. We have an election going on in our country for president this year between Richard Nixon and whoever the Democrats elect in Chicago at their upcoming convention.
“Mary and I will tell you more about politics as you grow up. I’m primarily a business man and I’m not really interested in it. Left to my own devices, I like to tinker with new ideas and to fly. I can teach you two things mainly: Commercial enterprise and being a pilot. Tomorrow, I’ll take you out for a quick flying lesson in my Cessna before I leave on a business trip. I’ll be away a few days. I quite often am. Next summer, if you’re all caught-up in your schooling, I’ll take you away with me a few times. I just wanted to say that I’m thrilled to have you as part of our family. Remember what Mary said tonight at supper. We want you to do well and go far. I think you can, but you’re our son now, and we’ll look after you no matter what. Welcome home.”
I couldn’t say anything, I was too emotional and after he’d left, I made sure the door was closed tight and looked around the room carefully. I liked the wallpaper with the airplanes and wondered what kind of games I could play with the dinky-toy ones. Even though I had been alone in the world for the first eight years, I’d never really played any solitary games.
I walked into the closet, astounded how big it was. I thought of sleeping there tonight. It seemed much safer, but what would the Tappets think if they found out? Some clothes hung there and two new pairs of shoes lay on the floor. I tried them on and they fit.
Behind another door, I was surprised to find my very own bathroom with my very own tub, and a big one too. Fresh towels hung on three walls. Toiletry items such as boxes of tissues, shampoo, soap, toothpaste and cologne lay in a cupboard below the sink. The door even locked.
Never mind the encyclopedia. I wanted to take a bath with Zest soap. I’d seen a commercial just this very evening and there were several bars. In front of a mirror which ran from floor to ceiling, I took off my clothes and unwrapped the purple sucker Sally had given me in the hospital, and licked it while the water poured into the tub. I was very thin to my own critical eye, but my skin was smooth, without any hair, and I looked healthy with red cheeks and shining hair.
I peeled off the bandage and looked closely at the repair job. It had a purple color and the cut seemed fused. After soaking for some time, I dressed in my old pajamas, and lay on some blankets on the closet floor, sleeping until about one o’clock. That was the time, Lloyd use to come in and wake me up every night. I tiptoed across the hall and snuck into Sally’s room, crawling under the covers with her. She moaned softly and cuddled up.
I held her tightly. She wore a night gown with no panties and I snuggled up against her; it was wonderful and warm. I hated to leave, but even at eight-years-old, I understood enough not to be caught in bed with her in the morning. They might not have thought anything had happened, and it hadn’t, but they would have made sure that I didn’t go into her room again. At four in the morning, I kissed her good night and returned to my room. This time I slept in my bed. I woke up and stayed under my fine smelling blankets, listening to the sounds of the house. Outside, it was another sunny day. After I washed and dressed, I went down stairs.
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