The Love Letters of J. Timothy Owen (2 page)

He heard the girl calling the monsters home to roost. Her voice sounded thin and strained and anxious, probably wondering what she'd do with them once they got there, or, if they didn't show, how she'd explain their absence to their parents.

He turned off the mower, conserving gas. His mother had gone inside, no doubt to mull over the merits of collecting Oriental rugs as opposed to old baseball cards.

The monsters, flushed fresh from the shrubbery, arranged themselves in a tight circle at his feet, ready to gnaw on his ankles if need be. He thought he heard a whirring sound, the tiny, tinny sound of their collective brains plotting his immediate demise. Only their eyes moved, eyes as big and as flat as silver dollars. They lifted their angelic faces to him, as flowers lift theirs to the sun. What a scene. The whirring sound continued. Either it was their brains working overtime or a rattlesnake off course. Hard to say which he feared most.

“So why don't you guys pack it in, go home, and put on the feed bag? The baby-sitter's probably got a treat for you.” The eyes widened, the mouths remained clamped shut. They gave him the silent treatment, figuring it would turn him to jelly, as it had so many others.

Sometimes the sudden move won the Cracker Jacks. “You!” he snapped, leveling a grass-green finger at the biggest monster, who wore cutoffs and a sneer. “You're the general!”

Who could resist that? Everybody wants to be the general, right?

“You're the pilot,” he told the girl. “And you're the adjutant,” he addressed the smallest monster.

It was all in the choice of words; that and the authoritative snap with which they left his mouth. That took care of the lot. Keep moving, keep talking. At least he had their complete attention.

“Ready, march!” he bellowed, and, miracle of miracles, they obeyed. Revving the engine once more, he pushed the mower before him like a Sherman tank, and goose-stepped across the yard with the troops following on his heels. If it works, don't knock it, was his slogan for the day.

When they reached the back door of the monsters' house, he turned off the mower and opened the screen door. He marched inside, and they followed, lambs being led to the slaughter.

Benjy lay on the floor supporting his head in his cupped hands. The TV set dithered and spouted weird noises and bright lights and screams of greed from the contestants trying for a new refrigerator.

The baby-sitter had gone. Had she, perhaps, bolted, unable to stand the gaff? Or was she even now suspended from a homemade hangman's noose in the garage, heels dangling in the murky air?

Neither. He was relieved to hear a pounding on the bathroom door, indicating her presence within.

“You little weasel!” he snarled at Benjy, who smiled vacantly around the edges of his grimy paws and continued to watch the carnage on the small screen. He went to the bathroom door and turned the knob. Locked. No key in sight.

“Let her out before I break both your legs,” he said. Wordlessly, the general in the cutoffs rummaged under the rug and brought forth a key.

“He's so dumb he always puts it in exactly the same place,” the general explained.

The key fitted the lock; he turned it and the door swung open. The girl sat on the edge of the bathtub chewing a fingernail.

She jumped to her feet, pale with rage. “That's the first and last time I baby-sit in this hellhole!” she cried. “I don't care if they pay me ten bucks an hour. You couldn't drag me in here again. Who are you?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you in this, too?” She clenched her fists and he prepared to duck. “Let me go or I'll scream. I'll scream bloody murder.” He didn't doubt it.

“I'm …” he began, but she wasn't listening.

“I have a brown belt in karate!” she shouted. “You lay a finger on me and I'll put you on your back just like that!”

He was not averse to the idea of her putting him on his back but, at the moment, he wanted to comfort her. His mouth opened and closed like a fish coming up for air. She started to edge past him. He was careful not to touch her. The monsters lined up, watching, listening, intrigued by this real-life drama.

“You lay a hand on me and you'll regret it,” the girl said. He made himself concave as she sidestepped him, so no part of him would touch her as she made her escape. How could she know he was a knight in shining armor, a courtier, a vagabond lover? He felt like breaking into song, if only he could carry a tune. He wished for a Royal Canadian Mountie's red coat or a snow-white charger to carry him into battle so he could slay all the dragons in the kingdom for his fair maiden.

“Buzz off!” hissed the fair maiden, eyes shooting sparks.

The sound of the family car limping into the drive brought all hands around. The silver-dollar eyes darted hither and yon in a search-and-destroy mission of all evidence.

“There you are, my darlings!” the monsters' mother cried, refreshed by her hiatus. She stopped short, her mouth an O of astonishment. “Why, Tim, what on earth are you doing here? You know we don't allow boys in the house while we're not home, dear,” she turned to the girl. “That's against the rules.” The monsters lowered their eyes, stunned into silence. They hadn't known there were any rules.

“We won't stand for any teenage hanky-panky here,” the mother announced, gathering her chicks under her wings, two to a wing. The girl shook her head as if she'd just been dealt a severe blow to her solar plexus. Tim admired her solar plexus, as well as the way her muscles moved under her luscious skin, and wished for a set of muscles nearly as nice.

“I never saw him before in my life,” the girl snapped.

She passed him almost every day of her life, going in and out of the science lab. He must have a forgettable face, he thought sadly.

“I was locked in the bathroom and, all of a sudden, he burst in.”

Had he burst? He'd thought he was doing her a favor.

“If there's a problem here, I'm sure it can be worked out.” The monsters' mother, eminently reasonable and open to suggestion, stroked her childrens' heads tenderly as they gazed, glassy-eyed, at their filthy feet.

Outside, the car horn blasted. The monsters' dad was waiting, no doubt, to drive the baby-sitter home.

“Poor Daddy is losing his patience.” The mother opened her purse and peered inside. “I only have a five-dollar bill,” she said. “Will that be all right?”

“No,” said the girl. He admired very much the way she stated this simple fact. “No, you owe me for four hours, at two dollars an hour. That's eight dollars, without a tip,” she said firmly.

“Yes, how stupid of me. You take the five and my husband will give you the rest. Thank you, dear. I'll be in touch.”

“She sat on my stomach,” Benjy chirped.

“Oh, my. Is that true? Did you sit on my baby's stomach?”

“Yeah,” the girl said. “And he locked me in the bathroom.”

“Oh, Benjy! Not again!” The mother sounded as if she might cry.

“Plus, he's no baby.” The girl tucked the fiver in her pocket. “In some ancient cultures, he'd be out in the fields picking rice. So long kids, don't eat any poisonous mushrooms.” She grinned suddenly, and Tim fell in love all over again.

Chapter 3

“Tim, be very careful with this one, will you? It's full of practically irreplaceable china.” His mother stood over him, supervising. She was a born supervisor. She had bought a bunch of stuff from someone's attic, and he was helping her sort it. His father was coming for dinner. With Joy. Joy lived next door to his father in his new condo. They were just friends, his mother said. Joy was a computer programmer who had just moved in and was newly divorced herself. Joy ate TV dinners, his father said, laughing. His mother was a pushover for hungry people. “Bring her for dinner, why don't you?” she'd said. Tim had expected a middle-aged lady wearing sensible shoes and a three-piece suit, but Joy had been thin and thirty-two, and something of an airhead, he'd thought. He had noticed his mother and father got along much better now than when they had been married. And when Joy was there, all was sweetness and light at the dinner table, the four of them jabbering away like old sorority buddies.

“Whadya mean, practically irreplaceable? Either it's irreplaceable or it's not,” he said.

“Tim, I have absolutely no time to argue with you now. I told Kev I'd have the stuff unpacked when he got here, to give him a chance to look it over. And he'll be here in half an hour. Or an hour. Whichever's soonest.” His mother sometimes delivered lines in a way that, if you didn't know her, might make you think she was an airhead, too. Far from the case. She was some smart cookie.

Kev was his mother's partner in the antique shop. He was thirty-seven and gorgeous. Or so Tim's mother thought.

“Isn't he gorgeous?” was the first thing she'd said after Kev had left that first night he showed up at the house. “Isn't he the most gorgeous thing you ever saw?”

“You want a straight answer?” was what he'd said to that. But his mother had been occupied with other things and hadn't answered.

“Look at this!” she cried now. “Will you just look at this!”

He went over to see what all the excitement was about.

“It looks like an old trunk to me,” he said.

“It
is
an old trunk. See what's inside. Why, they must've been here for ages. More than a hundred years, I'll bet. Maybe more than that.”

His mother's eyes shone. Nothing turned her on like the mention of age, as long as it wasn't her own. She got all hot and bothered when she talked about the age of a piece of furniture, or a picture, or anything she collected. “It has some age to it,” she always said when trying to justify what seemed to him an outrageously high price for some piece of old junk.

Now, carefully, tenderly, she lifted from the trunk's bottom a pile of tattered paper tied with a pale ribbon. “They're old letters,” she said softly. “Just look, Tim. They're tied with this beautiful ribbon. I'll bet they're love letters. What do you want to bet? Otherwise, why would they have been saved?” She began to untie the ribbon and it fell apart in her hand, sending the letters drifting to the ground like the last leaves of autumn.

“I told you!” his mother crowed. “Why, the ribbon was so old it just disintegrated. Isn't that marvelous?”

“Maybe they're letters from George Washington to old Martha from Valley Forge,” he suggested. “Or from Abe Lincoln to John Wilkes Booth telling him he was a bad actor.” He liked that one.

“I think I hear Kev. Back in a minute.” His mother flew off in the new, girlish way she'd had since the advent of Kev into her life.

He stayed where he was, his imagination fired by finding the old letters. Even if they weren't love letters, they were still interesting simply because they were old. And if they turned out to speak words of love, it would be all right to read them, because all the lovers concerned must be long gone.

On his hands and knees, he crawled around, gathering up the letters. He glanced at one now and then. There were no envelopes, simply musty-smelling pieces of paper covered, for the most part, in spidery, slanted handwriting. The same person must have written them all, he thought.

“My dearest darling,” one began, and he hastily looked away, as if he'd intruded on something very personal. My dearest darling. Nobody talked like that. Not anymore they didn't. But what did you say after openers like that?

“I carry with me your dear face,” the letter went on, and, entranced, he settled down to read it all. “I have no need of perfumed remembrances. I smell your scent, it is with me all the day and night, sweeter than any flower.” Then the guy had to blow it all by telling a long, boring story about how the locks on the Erie Canal had gotten stuck and had made him late in his arrival in Buffalo. What a turkey. The letter was signed “Thine, until Death doth part us.” The letter writer's name was Willie.

“Kev's here, Tim.” His mother stood there, beaming, presenting Kev to him like a present wrapped in shiny paper and tied with a big bow. “Hi, fella,” Kev said, as if he were a dog. Kev always called him “fella.” He personally had known three dogs called Fella. Was Kev trying to tell him something?

He got up off the floor, lifted a hand in greeting, and put the letters back into the trunk.

Thine, until Death doth part us. Heavy, really heavy. But eye-catching. Capital D for Death. He'd have to remember that. Maybe he could use it sometime. The last letter he'd written had been a thank-you note to his grandparents after Christmas for a ten-dollar check they'd sent. They still thought ten bucks was a fortune. They'd told him not to spend it all in one place. Probably they thought he would use the money to take a trip to Vegas, play the slots, buy the show girls champagne, and play chemin de fer until the sun came up.

“I think you'll like this china, Kev,” his mother said. She was always trying to please this bozo, trying to make him say that something she'd bought was a real find. It made him sick, the way she tried to please Kev. And Kev was very picky. Compared to Kev, Tim's father was a piece of cake.

“Umm.” Kev inspected the china. “Chip here.” With his thumb Kev traced the chip on a cup. That was the way Kev operated, point out the bad things straight off, ignore the good. The china looked OK to Tim, although, perhaps, not museum quality. They were always talking about stuff being “museum quality.” If it was museum quality, why wasn't it in a museum?

Kev came over to where he was kneeling by the trunk.

“What's that?” Kev looked inside the trunk.

“Letters.”

“We found a pile of old letters in the trunk,” his mother said. “Tim's intrigued.”

“Maybe they're worth something,” Kev said, hunkering down, picking up the pile, thumbing through it. “You never know.”