Under Cover (2 page)

The school bigwigs were too dumb to know that
his persistence was part of the Asperger’s, that he had no
malicious intent whatsoever. They held all sorts of hearings and
were getting ready to expel him. Before they actually did, Ben
transferred to Southbridge High.

Even so, Maddie wanted his name cleared and
she enlisted my help. Aside from being neurotic, that girl must
have been a real idiot not to want Ben. But I was glad she left him
for me.

True, he had some odd quirks. Most Aspies do,
but it didn’t mean he was dangerous. In fact, I thought his
quirkiness made him even more interesting. As Maddie said, the ones
you really have to watch out for are those who seem perfectly
reasonable, presentable, and oh, so charming. Probably most of them
are, but that sort of façade can mask a dangerous psychopath like
her own ex-boyfriend. She should know. She’s been there.

I asked Maddie, “Don’t you have any extra
work I could do?”

Maddie did typing at home for her dad’s law
firm. She had a laser printer that looked really neat and she got
paid by the hour.

“If I ever do,” she said, “you’ll be the
first to know.”

Both she and Ben had cars, so they needed
their income. I had nothing, not even my bike, which somebody
ruined last fall. I’d been saving my babysitting money so I could
take dance lessons in New York, along with singing and acting. I
wanted a career on Broadway, with people throwing roses at my feet.
Like that was going to happen.

After Kippie Hurlow, the baby I sat for, was
kidnapped, I got a little more realistic. Aspiring dancers and
actors are a dime a dozen. Where I could really make a difference
would be if I knew some child psychology and could help with
traumatized kids like Kippie and his brother. Kippie wasn’t even
two years old when he went through that ordeal no one should have
to face. Things like that get buried and lie there festering.

His brother Davy was five, but some people,
even his mother, had the idea he must have done something to make
the baby disappear. All those questions and suspicions could cause
plenty of damage.

If I went to college instead of ballet
school, Mom would pay for it. She refused to pay for dance. With
that, I wouldn’t need the money for Broadway anymore. What I’d
earned so far was sitting in the bank. It wasn’t enough for a car,
but I could get a new bike.

Trouble was, I liked having money in the
bank. So I left it there and hoofed my way to school. Or got a ride
with Ben or Maddie.

* * * *

It was June and school would be over soon. I
always loved summer, but I wanted a job. Every day I studied the
want ads and kept trying. One afternoon in desperation I called
Frosty Dan for the second time. That was where Ben worked. They
still didn’t have any openings, but I asked them to keep me in
mind.

I would have loved working with Ben. We’d be
together every day, all day. What could be better than that? Even
if half his mind was on MIT.

This was my second turndown from Frosty Dan
and my eleventh for summer jobs in general. I put away the phone,
not knowing who else to call. In a daze of discouragement, I
flopped on our sofa and stared out the living room window at
Riverview Boulevard. If I leaned sideways, I could barely see Olive
Hurlow’s house. Damn those people for kidnapping the baby, scaring
everyone to death, and screwing up my whole life. Grandma says
things happen for a reason. I seriously doubt that. Things don’t
just happen
;
people make them happen because people are
selfish and greedy.

Am I cynical, or what?

Jasper, our Brussels griffon, jumped up on
the sofa to keep me company. Mom had rules about dogs on furniture,
but she wasn’t home. Nor was Grandma, who spoiled him even more
than I did. A few months ago, Grandma took driving lessons and got
a car of her own. With that, she was always on the go.

After a minute or two of Jasper therapy, I
recovered enough to notice some mail on the cluttered coffee table.
That was where Grandma usually dumped it. Along with the catalogs
and other junk was a tissue-thin airmail envelope addressed to Mom
and me. He always wrote us together, as a unit, so he wouldn’t have
to do separate, personalized letters. That was my dad. Since he
included me, I had the right to open it.

First I took a moment to admire the exotic
stamps. He was still in Borneo, where he’d settled after going
around the world a few times. He took off right after I was born,
telling Mom he needed space. He flew all over, taking pictures,
writing articles, and working at odd jobs to supplement whatever
tiny income he got. That was what sent Mom into real estate, where
she did very well. Better than he was doing.

I picked up the cheese knife Grandma kept
there and slit the tissue-thin envelope. I unfolded the tissue-thin
letter and started reading.

Hey, buddy,
it began.
I hope by now
you’re out of prison.

I had to go over it twice and finally
concluded he didn’t mean us.

Who did he mean? Maybe if I read the whole
letter, I could find out.

The rest of it only got weirder.

It grieves me no end to learn about your
troubles. How did you get into such a mess? Do those people have
some sort of hold over you? I hope to find out more when I see you.
I’ve made a reservation that gets into JFK on Friday.

Dad was coming! But not to us. He gave the
date, time, and flight number of some exotic airline, and hoped Hey
Buddy would meet him.

How would Hey Buddy know to do that if he
didn’t get this letter?

Dad signed it with an initial, D. It was the
same flourish he always used, but a different character. For us he
signed J as in Jules, because that was his name. Could it be that
my dad was leading a double life?

I didn’t know how to find out. Nobody was
home except Jasper, snuggled beside me on the sofa.

I felt like calling Maddie. She and Ben were
relative newcomers in my life. They wouldn’t know my family
history, so they couldn’t tell me anything.

There was this girl, Stacie Marr, who I grew
up with. But how would she know more than I did?

Besides, Stacie had vanished. Completely. To
begin with, she stole my first ever boyfriend, so I didn’t want to
talk to her. Not only didn’t, but couldn’t. Shortly after the
boyfriend thing, her father got arrested for molesting her. It made
her so humiliated, she dropped out of school and disappeared. I
didn’t mind her being gone, but I couldn’t help some curiosity
about where she went and what she was doing.

I read Dad’s letter again and was no more
enlightened than the first time. Who in heck was Hey Buddy? The
very term Buddy made me think it was a man. He must have been
somewhere near enough Kennedy Airport to meet Dad there. How could
he do that if he was in prison?

I perked up when I heard a key in the lock.
We always locked up since the time some lowlife sneaked in and
stole Jasper. Luckily we got him back, but it made us a lot more
careful.

Grandma came in wearing sweatpants and
sneakers. She had short red hair with some natural curl that I
didn’t inherit. Mine was more a mahogany shade, long and straight.
She had on blue mascara to match her eyes, and she carried a mesh
bag with her bowling shoes in it.

I said, “Is there something you people never
told me?”

She straightened up from petting Jasper,
who’d been jumping all over her.

“What are you talking about?” She set her
bowling shoes on the floor and sat down next to me. The sofa faced
a picture window that looked out on Riverview Boulevard. She kept
one eye on the street in case anything interesting happened, which
it almost never did, and one eye on me.

I showed her the envelope. “We got a letter
from my dad, but it’s not for us. I want to know what’s going
on.”

“Who said anything is? What are you talking
about?”

“Take a look.” I pushed the letter into her
hand.

She read it. A frown appeared on her forehead
and got deeper as she went along.

“Huh!” she said, and gave it back to me. “How
can you be sure it’s from him?”

“Grandma! How many people do we know in
Borneo? That’s his address and his typewriter, I’d recognize it
anywhere. And his signature, except it’s D instead of J. Is he
leading a double life?”

It sounded crazy and I got embarrassed. But
what other explanation could there be?

“Double life?” She spoke thoughtfully, as if
considering it.

Then she tossed the whole thing back at me.
“You’ll have to ask your mom.”

“Grandma! If you don’t know, why can’t you
say so?”

She looked at me with those blue eyes. “Fine.
Now I’m saying so.”

My eyes are brown, but they have the same
ability as hers. We can both look completely innocent even when
we’re not. At least I think I can. I know she can.

I also knew that was all I would get from
her.

Chapter
Two

It was after nine when Mom came home. I
didn’t know if most agents worked that late. She said it was the
only time a lot of people have for looking at houses. I worried
about her touring empty places at night with some stranger who
might be a nutcase. You never know about people. I’d run into a few
nutcases myself. I was glad she had her cell with 911 in the speed
dial.

She came home frazzled. Before starting on
Hey Buddy, I let her have her nightly screwdriver with crackers and
cheese so she would be in a more receptive mood.

Then I showed her the letter. She was sitting
in bed with her glasses on, paging through a real estate
catalog.

My mom was an elegant-looking woman who kept
her figure and wore her reddish hair in a French twist. Even her
glasses made a bold statement, with big round tortoise-shell
frames. She spent a while studying the letter and frowning at
it.

“I know it’s Dad’s typewriter,” I said by way
of explanation. “And it’s his return address, but I kind of think
he didn’t mean it for us.”

“I kind of think so, too.” She handed it back
to me.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Mom!”

“Mom, what?”

“What am I missing?”

“Missing?”

She couldn’t fool me with that pretended
ignorance. I waited her out and finally she caved.

“It seems to me,” she said, as though it were
a big revelation, “he must have written to someone else at the same
time and mixed up the envelopes.”

“Thanks, Mom. I figured out that much all by
myself, but it doesn’t explain anything.”

“What did you want explained?” she asked,
still pretending.

“Like, who is this other person?”

Mom lounged on her bed under a lacy afghan.
She rested against a pile of pillows and gave me a steady look.
“What makes you think I would know that?”

“You knew him longer and better than I did,”
I said. “I don’t know him at all.”

“You know him through his letters.”

“He doesn’t say anything in his letters.”

It was true. He revealed very little about
himself. Only superficial stuff, like the places he had seen or if
he happened to sell an article to some magazine nobody ever heard
of. In my almost seventeen years I’d learned scarcely anything
about Jules Penny, the man. About his thoughts, his feelings, his
ideas and goals. Do other people know things like that about their
dads? Maybe not. But I didn’t see why I shouldn’t. He was half of
me. I had a right to know.

I thought of calling Ben just to talk. He
ought to be home by now, but probably exhausted and hitting the
sack. If I irritated him, he wouldn’t hesitate to say so. That was
part of being an Aspie. They tell it like it is.

And next year he’d be away at MIT, surrounded
by genius girls who were smart and sophisticated. All the while I’d
still be a dumb little high school kid stuck in dumb old
Southbridge. Sometimes I felt as if I’d lost him already.

I wanted our relationship to be forever. He
said I was the only girl besides Maddie who understood his
Asperger’s. Probably at MIT at least half the girls have
Asperger’s. The guys, too. I could apply there myself, but knew I
didn’t have the brains to get in.

My life was a wreck. All I had to look
forward to was my dad coming.

But not for us. Only for Hey Buddy, who might
be in prison.

Mom went back to her reading and I wandered
around the room, visiting all the things I used to play with when I
was little. The miniature elephants from India on her dresser. The
cut glass atomizer from somebody who never noticed that she didn’t
wear perfume. The Victorian-style lamp with roses painted on it and
crystal icicles dangling from the shade.

She was looking at a fat catalog of real
estate listings. Reading in bed was a favorite luxury of hers, but
real estate listings? Okay, it was her job.

The luxury part was the bed itself, a big
four-poster with swans carved on the headboard. She and Daddy
bought it, at least the frame, at an antiques fair not long after
they were married, which wasn’t long before I was born. It was
obvious they’d had to get married because of me.

Maybe they weren’t really married and the
antiques fair was only a story. Maybe he wasn’t really my
father.

She looked up from her listings. “Did you
want something?”

“I would like to know…” I couldn’t say “who I
am.” I would get an earful about how loony that was.

So I tried a different approach. “When he
came that other time…”

He actually did visit a few years back, but
the visit was brief and he was always running off somewhere.

“Yes?” Her eyes went back to the catalog.

It’s hard to talk when your listener isn’t
listening, but I tried.