Life Among Giants by Bill Roorbach Page B

pulled them off his sweaty feet. One at a time, Freddy accepted them, held them as he might a pair of dead animals, turned and ambled down the lawn.

3
    I couldn’t stop thinking about how my father had locked me out of the house. Th e only way to make it seem okay was if you considered that he already knew Freddy and knew I’d be all right with him. But that left a lot of unsettled questions, and here I was already pretty well unsettled. I wanted to talk with Kate—she’d have some answers—but when I called her college I got nothing but a ringing phone, or worse, her suitemate Ling-Ling Po, who apparently found calls from family deeply irritating and insignificant. “You again!” And it wasn’t like I could trot over to the High Side and ask the dancer what was going on. Earth-deep pounding had come from there all night, the bass lines of an endless rock ’n’ roll evening: so much for needy hugs in her kitchen.
    Th at Monday morning at school moved slow as snot down Linsey’s lip unto lunchtime. And it didn’t get better then, Jinnie and Jimp making out severely at the tables under the cafeteria’s grand windows—the unofficial football section—lots of big, obvious laughs and smooches offered for my benefit, the rest of the team ignoring my entrance pointedly. I spotted Emily, but she ignored me, too, engrossed in conversation with an art boy named Mark Nussbaum, serious stuff. I got myself to math early to watch her arrive: not so much as a glance in my direction, whispering sleek skirt, homemade sweater, that fragrance of hers not from any perfumer.
    Leaving school later, seated among a lot of younger kids on the Route Fifteen bus (no more football, no more daily practice, no more rides in the Jimpy-mobile—how the mighty had fallen!), I spied her by her car with someone. Him again, Nussbaum. I had them in my sights long enough to see him kiss her, all very sober, like communion at church. She put her hand on his face, said something ardent, drank from his lips.
    When I got home, dejected, I found Mom blocking the stairs, same expression as when she found my Trojans back when Jinnie was mine. Th e condoms were still in my drawer because I never got to use them, truth be told.
    â€œWhat does this mean!” Mom said, brandishing a silver-piped envelope, which she’d already ripped open.
    I grabbed it away from her, tore it further, found a fragrant note on thick parchment, beautiful handwriting in rich fountain-pen bronze: Sylphide, telling me there was much to apologize for. Her frantic accusations were an embarrassment to everyone at the High Side. Very soon, she said, she’d make it up to me with an invitation. Th e paper smelled of her jasmine liniment, also sweat. Th e language of the note, however, smelled of Desmond, the hyperarticulate butler, or houseman, or whatever you were supposed to call him. I recognized his handwriting: blocky and formal, the kind you see on blueprints.
    Mother breathed and pulled herself up. She was a formidable woman, all right. People often suggested that we were similar, but I never had her edge, the steely stare, the sharpness of features, the look of a falcon plummeting to a kill: “What accusations ?”
    My heart pounded in my throat. Dad and I had managed not to tell Mom the goon story. Th at was the way it worked in my family—cabals.
    I attempted an end run, called up all my indignation: “What are you doing opening my mail?”
    â€œI’m your mother, David Hochmeyer, and I’ll open your mail when I see fit. Do not change the subject. Whose accusations?”
    When you can’t tell a little, tell it all, tell it at length, tell it so thoroughly you never get to the end: “You remember I mowed her lawn the other day?”
    â€œI remember you didn’t mow ours. ”
    A FTER HER LONG silence, almost a month since she’d left for college, a week after the incursion