Red Sky at Morning (20 page)

"At seventeen," he said, "you are what the law terms 'an infant' Aside from the obvious things you're not allowed to do, such as vote and purchase beverage alcohol, you may not sign contracts, form or be an officer in a corporation, operate a motor vehicle without permission of parents or guardian, marry—marriage is a form of contract, of course—serve on a jury or hold public office."

"That's all okay with me," I said. "This thing just says that I can give orders around the house while my father's away."

He said "Hmmmm," and thought about it. "Has your mother been declared incompetent?"

"Well," I said. "I've as much as told her I thought she was incompetent."

"Not the same thing at all. It is a judge, usually on the advice of a psychiatrist, who declares a person incompetent. And then it is necessary for the same, or another, judge to issue a writ of emancipation in behalf of the minor. In other words, he makes you, for certain legal purposes, an adult. The degree of emancipation is generally limited."

"I don't want to try to go through all that," I said. "What I really wanted to know was, is this thing on the parchment scroll any good? I mean, can I act on it?"

"In my opinion as a practicing attorney, the document has value only as a curiosity. Legally, it doesn't hold water, and a court test would show that very quickly. However, assuming that is your father's signature at the bottom, and disregarding for the moment the amusing archaic language, it does seem to express Mr. Arnold's will in certain matters relevant to the operation of your household. Although your father is absent, physically, from the situation, he may, as the head of your family, delegate certain responsibilities, I suppose. In ordinary, informal practice, of course, the mother is, uh, next in line of authority. I've known Ann Arnold for a good many years, and she's always seemed eminently competent to me. A very fine bridge player, for example, which generally implies a sound mind and cool judgment."

"I don't think Dad's saying she's incompetent. It's just that I know she doesn't particularly like giving orders to Amadeo and Excilda, and. . . ."

"Who are Amadeo and Excilda?"

"The Montoyas. I told you. They work for us. They've worked for us since I was a baby. Amadeo sort of does the heavy work and Excilda cooks and keeps the house clean. Mother doesn't like to give orders, or if she does she gives orders the wrong way and makes everyone sore. And then this guy Jimbob Buel I told you about, who's staying with us, he gives orders too. Amadeo can't stand him, and I don't blame him. What was happening was that Mother would say one thing and Jimbob would say something else, and sometimes they contradicted each other. Amadeo and Excilda got caught in the middle."

"And they resigned?"

"They got fired. Mother fired them one night when she was . . . when she was in a bad mood. Dad says nobody can fire them except for cause, and there wasn't any cause. They have about a dozen children, and not a lot of money."

"I'm sure that your concern for their welfare is commendable, but surely if your mother fired them. . . ."

"That's just it. She doesn't have any right to fire them, Dad says. He hired them, not Mother. And this parchment scroll says I can be the boss, sort of, as long as I seek—what is it?—Sage Counsel."

"Yes," said Mr. Gunther. "Sage Counsel. I assume he means the counsel of your mother."

"I don't think so. I believe he means the counsel of Amadeo and Excilda, since they're both pretty sage."

"But they are the employees. Surely the employer—or, in your case, the informally delegated agent of the employer—doesn't seek the advice of the employee before telling said employee what to do."

"That's the way it always worked. I mean, Amadeo would come to Dad and say, The limb on one of the apple trees needs propping or the weight of the apples will snap it off come October.' And Dad would say, 'Go ahead and prop it up.' That way, Dad gave the orders, but Amadeo told him what orders to give. As Amadeo told me once, those aren't
his
apple trees. He knows what he'd do if they
were
his apple trees, but since they aren't he has to ask for the orders before he does anything."

"I believe I see what you're getting at, but the whole affair is really out of my province. It seems to me that if your mother is willing to accept this, uh, eccentric document as the wishes of your father, and if she is further willing to abandon to you her position as head of the household
pro tem
(a Latin expression meaning for the time being, as I'm sure you know), then you have no problem."

"Good. That's what I wanted to know."

"If," he continued, "if on the other hand she does not wish to accede to the document, and chooses to ignore it as the playful product of a sarcastic mind, you are then back where you started. Legally, you have no rights, and your mother has all of them. It boils down to this: Is your father's word law around your house, or isn't it? Will your mother accede to his wishes or won't she? These are matters to be decided not by attorneys but by the parties involved."

"I think she'll do what he wants her to do," I said. "He's always had the responsibility; she's never liked it much."

"Then you have no problem. For your purposes, the document is adequate. I wonder . . . would you wait a few minutes while my secretary copies this, uh, thing? I'm lecturing at the University on Contracts next week, and I'd like to show the students a textbook example of what happens when a man not trained in the law attempts to write one."

"Sure," I said. "Go ahead. But I thought it was pretty good."

"I must admit that it's a work of, art, but is it airtight? Is it sound? Ah, no. Contractually speaking it's as feeble an instrument as I've ever seen."

"Well, thank you, Mr. Gunther," I said. "How much do I owe you for your time and so on?"

"Nothing, my boy. Nothing. You've helped breathe life into next week's lecture."

So Amadeo and Excilda came back the following Monday, which was Christmas Day. Jimbob got out of the sack for dinner, and cooed over the roast lamb, not forgetting to whisper to my mother that of course it wasn't as good as it would have been if
she'd
cooked it. But his heart wasn't in the lie. I thought about telling him the truth: That it wasn't lamb at all, but roast kid, but decided it would be un-Christmaslike to make the poor fellow sick again. He'd lost weight with the pneumonia, and looked very fragile. I was allowed a small glass of red wine—a Mâcon, I believe—with my meal, after promising my mother I wouldn't get drunk on it. We all toasted each other: Jimbob, always a good man with a literary allusion, said, "God bless us, every one!" and then spoiled the effect somewhat by murmuring, "Thackeray." I asked Excilda if she'd come into the dining room and give us a Sagrado-style toast, and she raised her glass, fixed her eye on Jimbob, and said, with a big smile,
Más vale llegar a tiempo que ser invitado."
Then she translated it as something about health and wealth, and we applauded.

What it really meant was: "It's better to arrive in time for dinner than to be invited."

On New Year's Eve afternoon, a gray, cold day which showed no promise of turning into a gala night, Steenie and I picked up our celebration mates and walked them to the movies, a rerun of "The Thief of Bagdad," with Sabu and a giant genie whose name escaped me. It wasn't clear whose companion was whose; Marcia was one of them, and the other was Eleanor Pickens, a classmate who'd just won the National Honor Society pin because she had a trick memory for algebraic formulae. Marcia was to spend the night at her house, across the street from Steenie's. I was staying with Steenie, on the concrete floor of his bedroom. Eleanor's parents were in Denver, at a building contractors' convention, Steenie told me as we stood side by side in the men's room of the theater. We'd gone there together, partly for obvious reasons, and partly to escape the short subject, which featured a third-rate conga band—Bananas Lupo and his Island Bunch—shaking castanets in a daytime night club, with fifty extras sitting at little tables, smiling at each other and nodding their heads in time to the music. I suppose it's the way Hollywood makes junior directors start their careers. If they can put movement into a group of bored Cubans on a bandstand, they can go on to better things. The camera angles would change —a long shot of the whole ensemble, a medium shot from the left as the trumpet players jumped to their feet to blow a measure, then a close-up of the castanet man, shaking all over like a Model A truck and showing gold teeth. It was one of the few things that could drive me away from the screen, and it never missed.

"There's something in the air," Steenie said. "Know what it is?"

"Snow?" I asked. "It was clouding over pretty solid when we got here."

"It's love," he said. "Eleanor is an enthusiastic necker, and Marcia hates to be left out. No matter how we pair off, there's a promise of action."

When we returned to our seats, Marcia said we'd missed the best part "There was a girl with a big plate of fruit on her head," she said, "who looked just like Carmen Miranda's uncle. She sang 'Shoo-Fly Pie' in Portuguese. Then there were three colored tap dancers wearing silk suits and two-toned shoes."

"I'll come down again tomorrow and catch it," Steenie said.

We ate egg rolls and spaghetti at the Chinese restaurant, which had a Japanese chef until the war, when he was interned. The new chef was a Greek. We passed up the minestrone subgum as too chancy, and the sweet-and-pungent spareribs wrapped in grape leaves as too exotic. With all the bars closed—it was Sunday—Sagrado was going to have to have a peaceful New Year's Eve.

After a chilly walk to Eleanor's house, we built a fire and grumbled while the girls made hot chocolate. "They're just putting off the hour of reckoning," Steenie said. "I shall not be denied."

"Yes, you shall," Marcia said, coming into the living room with a tray and looking very housewifey. "Eleanor and I have been talking it over. We'll dance, play Monopoly or tell ghost stories, but no kissing except at midnight."

"We're bigger and stronger than you are," Steenie said. "We'll take you by force. Right, Tiger?"

"Right," I said. "You might as well submit peacefully."

"Drink your cocoa before it gets cold," Eleanor said. "I'll get the Monopoly set."

"I've got half a mind to break off negotiations right now," Steenie said. "I can play Monopoly when I'm eighty or ninety. Right now the sap is running."

Eleanor got three houses on Park Place very quickly, and Marcia erected a fine, modern hotel on the Boardwalk. Steenie and I were wiped out by eleven.

"I don't seem to have much instinct for real estate," I said. "I think I'm more the artistic type."

"You owe me exactly two thousand dollars," Marcia said. "I don't think mortgaging Baltic Avenue is going to do you much good. Fish or cut bait."

"Let's sit on the couch and watch the fire," Steenie suggested. "I don't suppose you have a bottle of champagne, do you, Eleanor?"

"Daddy's liquor is all locked up in the sideboard," she said. "Would you like some ginger ale?"

"In the sideboard, eh? Eleanor, you've just said a very indiscreet thing."

The lock was childishly inadequate, and by scarring the finish just a little with a pocket knife Steenie unearthed a nearly-full bottle of Gilbey's gin. "This looks like very good stuff," he said. "My father uses it as an anesthetic in difficult labor." He peered into the sideboard again. "Hmm. Johnny Walker. I think that's some kind of bourbon, or sherry. It probably mixes very well with the gin."

"Leave that alone," Eleanor pleaded. "Daddy's been saving it all through the war."

"Hoarding is unpatriotic and chicken," he said. "Hey, what's this in the unlabeled bottle?" He removed a flask full of a colorless liquid. "Has your old man been moonshining? Naughty, naughty." He unscrewed the top and took a small swig. "That's the real stuff," he said, shuddering.

"That's chafing-dish fluid," Eleanor said.

"And it's pretty
rotten
chafing-dish fluid. I'll stick with the gin and sherry."

"I don't know what I'll say if Daddy finds out."

"He'll never know. I'll just take a little off the top. He's not the kind of skinflint that measures levels, is he?" He gulped some of the Johnny Walker from the bottle, chasing it with a little gin. "So
that's
what a martini tastes like," he said wonderingly. "Josh, why don't you join me? I think I can find a clean glass somewhere."

"No, thanks," I said. "I'm a wine snob."

"Come
on.
Come
on.
It's just like Sal Hepatica for the smile of health. It's a medical fact: No one your age has ever contracted cirrhosis of the liver. The healthy tissues of youth just slough the alcohol away, and absorb the vitamin A."

"All right," I said. "Let me have some of the Scotch. I'll get some ice."

"Scotch? Which one is Scotch?"

"The Johnny Walker," I said.

"That's
Scotch? I didn't know you made martinis with Scotch. Live and learn."

"You're both a couple of pigs," Marcia said. "You're ruining our New Year's Eve."

"Daddy'll know," Eleanor wailed. "I just know he'll know."

"My father will make full res . . . restitution to your father," Steenie assured her. "Soon as the war's over. Oooh, looky! A whole 'nother bottle of Gilbey's gin." He pronounced it Jilbey's. "Looks just like water. He'll never, never know, unless you squeal. All the world hates a tattletale."

I drank two glasses of the Scotch, which was horrible-tasting, and filled the bottle back to its original level with tap water. It looked a little paler afterwards, but I thought it would pass inspection. Steenie stayed with the gin. At midnight we heard the cathedral bells announce the New Year, and looked for the girls, but they had locked themselves in Eleanor's bedroom. We opened Mrs. Pickens's secretary desk, wrote "Happy New Year, with love and XXXXXXX from Steenie and Josh, January 1, 1945" on a sheet of her expensive-looking stationery, and slipped it under the door. We congratulated ourselves by having a drink; I changed to gin. Steenie said that my switching to gin was a genuine sacrifice, and that only a great gentleman and friend would have done it. I agreed. One of the girls knocked on the inside of the bedroom door.