Early Autumn Part 12

I said, "Lipwise you've still got it, baby."

Her face was serious and still, but her eyes glittered. "You ain't seen nothing yet," she said.

It was late when we were through. Most of our clothing was scattered about and the bedspread was badly wrinkled. I lay on my back with my heart pounding and my chest heaving in air. Susan lay beside me. She held my hand.

"Have you overexerted?" she said.

"Your resistance was fierce," I said.

"Umm," she said.

From the living room there was the faint sound of the television, which Paul had left on. The image of it gesticulating to an empty room pleased me.

"Just what do you plan to do with that boy, cookie?" Susan said.

"I thought we might want to talk that out," I said.

"We?"

"You know about kids."

"I know about guidance," Susan said. "There's a difference."

"I'll need help."

"You'll need more than that. The boy is bound to be difficult. Even without knowing him one could predict that. My G.o.d, he's chattel in a divorce settlement. What do you know about the needs of a neurotic adolescent?"

"I thought I'd ask you," I said.

"Based, on my experience with you?" she said.

"I'm not neurotic," I said.

Susan turned her face toward me. In the half-light she was smiling. She squeezed my hand. "No," she said, "you aren't. You're complicated, but you are not even a little bit neurotic"

"The kid needs to get away from his parents," I said.

"That's not the conventional wisdom, except in cases more extreme than this."

"Maybe the conventional wisdom is right," I said, "if the choice is to get into the welfare-youth services-foster-home system."

"But not if he's going to be with you?"

"Not if he's going to be with me," I said.

"You think you can make life better for him?"

"Yes."

"How long do you plan to keep him?"

"I don't know."

"It's hard enough to raise children you love," Susan said. "I've seen it from the failure end, over and over, parents whose kids are just a G.o.dd.a.m.ned mess. Parents who love them and have presided over the complete botching of their lives. I think your eyes are bigger than your stomach on this one, dear heart."

"How about that property in Maine," I said.

Susan propped up on one elbow. "Fryeburg?" she said.

"Yeah. I told you I'd build a house on it"

"When you got a chance, you said."

"This is the chance."

"You and Paul?"

"Yes."

She was quiet, lying naked beside me, on her right side with her head propped on her right elbow. Her lipstick was smeared. The intelligence in her face was like energy. It seemed almost to shimmer. That she was beautiful was only the first thing you noticed.

"Work release," she said.

"The kid's never been taught how to act," I said. "He doesn't know anything. He's got no pride. He's got nothing he's good at. He's got nothing but the tube."

"And you plan to teach him."

"Ill teach him what I know. I know how to do carpentry. I know how to cook. I know how to punch. I know how to act."

"You're not so bad in the rack either, big fella."

I grinned. "We'll let him work that out on his own, maybe."

She shook her head. "You make it sound simple. It's not. You don't teach people unless they want to learn. It's not just an intellectual exercise. It's a matter of emotion, of psychology. I mean the boy may be positively pathological."

"He's got nothing to lose," I said, "Compared to an afternoon of game shows on TV, anything is up. For crissake, the kid watches soap operas," I said.

"So do I," Susan said.

"Well, your degeneracy is already established," I said. "Besides you do others things."

"Only with you, sweet potato."

"You want to get in on this?" I said.

"The salvation of Paul Giacomin?"

"Yeah."

"I'm willing to consult," she said. "But I don't want to see you overinvested in this. The chances of success are slight. What happens if next week his mother runs out of money?"

"We'll worry about that when it happens."

"It'll happen soon," Susan said.

"Woman's intuition?"

"Believe me," Susan said. "It'll be soon."

I shrugged.

"You'll keep him anyway," she said.

I didn't say anything.

"You will," she said, "you big G.o.dd.a.m.ned sap. You know you will."

"He needs to grow up quick," I said. "He needs to get autonomous. It's the only hope he's got. For him he's gotta stop being a kid at fifteen. His parents are s.h.i.t. He can't depend on them anymore, He's gotta get autonomous."

"And you're going to show him how?"

"Yes."

"Well, no one better. You're the most autonomous human being I've ever seen. It's a grim prospect for a fifteen-year-old boy though."

"How do you like his prospects if he doesn't grow up quick?"

Susan was quiet, looking down at me. "Spring will be a little late this year," she said.

"For Paul? Yeah." I laughed with no pleasure. "Spring is gone. It's early autumn for Paul. If I can do it"

"And if he can," Susan said.

CHAPTER 15.

It was early May and the sun was thick and warm. The forsythias had begun. The birds were about and the joggers were out of their sweat pants, legs gleaming white in the spring sun. Paul Giacomin came out of his house with a big green plaid suitcase and a white drawstring laundry bag. He was still wearing his pea coat. He needed a haircut. His corduroy pants were too short. He was straining to carry the two bags.

I was driving Susan's Bronco. I got out and took the suitcase from Paul and put it in the back. He stuck the laundry bag in beside it and left the drawstring hanging out over the tailgate. I flipped the string inside and put the power window up with the key. Patty Giacomin came out and stood by the Bronco. Pale green slacks, lavender shirt, white blazer. Big sungla.s.ses, bright lipstick. Stephen was with her. He was as beautiful as she-jeans with a Pierre Cardin patch on them, Frye boots, a half-b.u.t.toned tailored collarless shirt in vertical blue-on-blue stripes, a gray sharkskin vest, unb.u.t.toned. His dark maroon Pontiac Firebird was parked in the Giacomin driveway.

"The Firebird's not right," I said. "It doesn't go with the rest of the look."

"Oh, really," Stephen said. "What would you suggest?"

"A Z maybe, or a Porsche. Extend that clean sophisticated continental look, you know?"

Stephen smiled. "Perhaps," he said.

Patty said to her son, "I'll write you a letter."

He nodded. She made an awkward gesture of hugging him. But she didn't seem able to carry through and ended up putting one arm across his shoulders for a moment and patting him slightly on the back. He stood silently while this happened. Then he got into the Bronco. The high step into the front seat was difficult and he had to struggle, and finally squirm up onto the seat. I got in the driver's side.

Patty said, "Bye."

Paul said, "Bye," and we drove off. As we turned off Emerson Road I saw tears fill Paul's eyes. I kept watching the road. He didn't cry. We took Route 3 to 495, 495 to 95 and went north on 95 to the Portsmouth Circle. In that time Paul didn't say anything. He sat and stared out the window at the unvarying landscaping along the highways. I plugged a Johnny Hartman tape into the stereo on the a.s.sumption that it was never too soon to start his education. He paid no attention. At the Portsmouth Circle we took the Spaulding Turnpike and then Route 16. We were in rural New England now. An hour from Boston cows grazed. There were barns and feed stores and towns with a mill that no longer milled at the center.

We got to North Conway, New Hampshire, about one thirty in the afternoon. I stopped at a restaurant called Horsefeathers opposite the green in the center of town. There was a softball diamond on the green and some kids were playing a game without umpires.

I said, "Let's eat."

He said nothing, but got out of the car and went into the restaurant with me. We'd been in rural New England. Now we were in rural chic North Conway is a major ski resort in the winter, and summer homes abound around it in New Hampshire and across the border in Maine. Horsefeathers had bra.s.s and hanging plants and looked just like restaurants in San Francisco.

The food was good and at two twenty we were in the car again heading for Fryeburg. At a quarter to three we were parked at the edge of Kimball Lake. The land Susan had gotten from her husband as part of the divorce settlement was nearly three quarters of an acre at the end of a dirt road with woods all around. There were cabins along the lake close enough to keep you from feeling like Henry Th.o.r.eau, but it was secluded. Susan's ex-husband had used the place for hunting and fishing. At one edge of the property he'd built a small cabin with running lake water for showering, a well for drinking water, electricity, and a flush toilet, but no central heat. There was a free-standing fireplace in the living room, a small electric stove and an old electric refrigerator in the galleylike kitchen, and two small bedrooms with metal bunk beds in them, and no closets. Susan and I came up occasionally to cook steaks over a wood fire, swim in the lake, and stroll in the woods until the bugs closed in.

Paul said, "We're gonna stay here?"

"Yes. We'll live in that cabin and tomorrow we'll start building a new and better one."

Paul said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "We're going to build a house. You and me."

"We can't do that"

"Yeah, we can. I know how. I'll teach you."

"How do you know how to build a house?"

"My father was a carpenter."

The kid just looked at me. It never occurred to him that houses were built by people. Sometimes they were built by construction companies and sometimes they probably just generated spontaneously.

"Come on, unload. We're going to be very busy up here. There's a lot to do."

"I don't want to build a house," Paul said.

"I'll need help. I can't do it alone. It'll be good to work with your hands. You'll like it"

"I won't"

I shrugged. "We'll see," I said. "Help me unload."

The back seat of the Bronco folded forward, leaving a lot of cargo s.p.a.ce. The cargo s.p.a.ce was full. There was the big old tool chest that had been my father's. And there was a radial arm saw I'd bought last year and used in Susan's cellar sometimes. There was also a set of barbells, a weight bench, a heavy bag, a speed bag, my suitcase, a large green cooler with perishables in it, a big carton with other food, a pump-action Ithaca shotgun, ammunition, some fishing equipment, two sleeping bags, some boots, a five-cell flashlight, an ax, some books, a machete, a carton of records, two shovels, a mattock, and one hundred feet of rope.