Two days before Thanksgiving Nat called me on the phone so distraught and upset that I could hardly understand a word she was saying.
“Try to calm down, Nat—please!” I said. “If you want me to help you, I’ve got to be able to hear you, and I can’t hear you if you’re crying into the phone.”
“Just a minute.” I was able to make out those words. Then I heard sniffling and the sound of Nat blowing her nose. “I think I can talk now.” Her voice was clearer this time.
“Good. Because all I got from what you’ve said until now is that something happened with Andy, and that it couldn’t have been something good.”
“Something good!” I heard Nat’s voice crack, and I was afraid she’d start blubbering all over again. But she took a deep breath and regained control. “Oh, Linda! You know how much I was looking forward to Thanksgiving and seeing Andy again, how he had invited me to have Thanksgiving dinner at his house and meet his family and all that.”
“Yes, I know. So what happened?”
“What happened was it’s off—it’s over!” At this she let out a loud wail, but after a few more sniffles and another blow of her nose, she was able to resume talking again.
“Andy called me tonight—I thought to finalize things for Thanksgiving. Well, he finalized things all right—not for Thanksgiving, but for us! He told me that it would be too uncomfortable for me to come for dinner under the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“That’s what I asked him! He answered that our relationship really doesn’t seem to be headed in a direction where families need to be involved. That’s when I asked him to please stop talking in riddles and come out with exactly what he meant. So he did—and then I was sorry I asked. He told me there was someone else, Linda—a girl he had met up at school. He’s been dating her behind my back since right after Homecoming, and he’s found himself getting too serious to pretend he cares for me anymore. Can you imagine? After I’ve been so loyal to him, and after I gave myself to him so completely, too! Oh, why, oh, why did I ever do that, Linda? I hate myself for it, I do!”
At this Nat began to cry all over again. I couldn’t blame her. I remembered how awful I had felt the times Lenny had broken up with me—as if my entire world had fallen apart.
“Look, Nat,” I said when I thought she had calmed down enough to listen to me. “What you need is to get away from your problems for a while. Why don’t you come and spend the weekend with me? There’s bound to be lots going on with the crowd because the boys who go away to college will be home for vacation. In fact, if you want, I can arrange to fix you up with Danny Kopler. You don’t have to feel any romantic pressure or anything— it’ll be a friendly kind of date. Danny goes to MIT, so if you’re still serious about going to Boston next year, he’ll be a good person for you to know. What do you say?”
Nat said yes, and I was glad to hear her voice sound a tiny bit more hopeful. Now I just had to clear it with Danny—and, of course, with Lenny.
* * *
“Go out with Danny?” Lenny looked far from overjoyed when I told him my plans. “You know I have zero tolerance for him, especially when he flirts with you, Linda. Plus, I don’t like to have anything to do with fixing people up on blind dates. It’s too uncomfortable if it doesn’t work out.”
“Come on, Lenny. If you saw how miserable Nat is, you’d want to do something to help her. Besides, this isn’t really a blind date. I told Danny about Nat’s fixation with Andy, and he said he understands this is strictly a friendly thing.”
“Well, okay. I’ll agree to go through with this, even though it’s against my better judgment. That is, as long as you agree to one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, it so happens that on Saturday night is the biggest race of the year. Reindeer’s Flash is running, and I’ve been dying to see him. I’ll agree to the date, providing we all go to the track.”
What could I say? As much as I disliked the track, it was important to me to do this for Nat. Besides, with her and Danny there to talk to, I figured I could tune out Lenny’s behavior and not let it get to me. Reluctantly, I agreed to go to the track.
* * *
Fortunately, Lenny’s soft heart got the best of him, and he went out of his way to be especially nice to Nat. “That Andy didn’t know a good thing when he had it,” he told her. “He’ll be sorry someday, and you’ll find someone better—I know you will.”
And fortunately, Nat and Danny hit it off fine. All he had to do was start talking about Boston, and her interest perked up. By the time we arrived at the track, the two of them were chatting away as if they were the ones who were old friends.
I felt very out of it as we sat there watching the races. Danny and Nat would choose a horse together because they liked the name, bet a token two-dollar bet, and then spend the rest of the time between races talking about stuff like the favorite hangouts for the college kids in Boston—stuff I had absolutely no interest in. As for Lenny, once he arrived at the track, he was so absorbed in the dumb horses that I might as well not have been there.
It was even worse than the last time we had gone to the track together. At least then it was new to me, and I had been curious about what was going on. But now I knew exactly what to expect—Lenny would bury himself in the program, figuring and figuring exactly how to anticipate the race to be run, make his bets, and cheer on his horse like a lunatic, without paying any attention to me.
About the only time he spoke to me was when he would come back from making his bet and hand me a ticket to hold so I’d know what horse to cheer for. But it didn’t take long to find out he was only showing me part of his bets. He had other tickets hidden away in his pocket he didn’t want me to know about.
“Where are you going?” I asked after the third race, when the horse Lenny had given me the ticket for had lost. Despite this fact, he got up and headed up the aisle as if to collect his winnings.
“Oh. That wasn’t the only horse I bet on.” He grinned, pulling a ticket out of his pocket. “I had a backup bet on Blue Velvet just to make sure, and it paid off!”
I didn’t like this one bit. True, this time Lenny’s “backup bet” had paid off, but how many times was he hiding tickets to bets that didn’t? Lenny took the track far too seriously, and I was sure he was betting way too much money.
“Lenny, aren’t you betting an awful lot?” I asked him. He cut me off immediately.
“I know how much I should bet, Linda. It’s my money, and I’ve had lots of experience by now. I know what it takes to be a winner.”
It turned out that, by the end of the night, Lenny really was a winner. “Eighty-two dollars!” he announced when he returned from the window and began flashing his money in the air. He had gotten small bills, so it looked like a big bankroll.
“Lenny! Don’t do that! You’re asking for someone to come steal your money!” I said.
“Don’t be silly,” he laughed. “I’m a winner tonight, and nothing can go wrong!”
Still, I was relieved when he finally stuffed his money into his front pants pocket. All that flamboyance was making me nervous.
Lenny was in such a good mood after his win that he insisted on treating Danny and Nat, who had lost six dollars between them, to some ice cream. Not only that, but when we arrived at the candy store, he picked up the checks for three other kids from the crowd who happened to be there.
“Boy, you must have hit it big tonight!” Mike teased as Lenny took out his bankroll to pay the bill.
“I did, but it’s disappearing faster than I thought it would,” Lenny said, laughing. “But you’re my witness, Mike. I’m not going to spend a penny more. I’m putting the rest away to buy a holiday present for a very special girl.” He put his arm around me and kissed me right there. All the kids clapped and laughed and called out their approval. Lenny was everyone’s friend when he had money to throw around.
“I thought Danny was really nice,” Nat told me as we relaxed later, talking over the evening. “But he really fades next to Lenny. What liveliness, what passion, what intensity your boyfriend has for everything he does. He’s so much fun to be around.”
“I know,” I said. “And I love that about him— most of the time.” Still, something inside me was very uncomfortable with his intensity when it came to the track.
* * *
Right after Thanksgiving I was so busy with studying for my SATs and with some babysitting jobs, that I had less time to concentrate on Lenny and what he was doing. It wasn’t until the SATs were behind me that I became aware of how haggard Lenny had been looking.
It was a Saturday afternoon, and I found him sitting in the back booth of the candy store when I got back from taking the exam. He was staring at his soda, swishing it around with his straw and looking mighty glum. He attempted a smile when he saw me.
“So, how did the exam go?”
I slid into the booth across from him. “Okay. I knew most of the math. The English was tough, though. I swear they invented some of those vocabulary words.”
“Oh, I bet you did better than you think you did—you always do.” He yawned and rubbed his eyes.
That’s when I noticed the dark circles that were under them. “Lenny, are you okay? You look exhausted!”
“That’s because I didn’t sleep much last night. I spent it in the poolroom with Tony Hall. We tried to sleep on the pool tables and on the benches, but neither was very comfortable.”
“At the poolroom? With Tony? But why, Lenny? The poolroom is no place to sleep. And I thought you didn’t like Tony.”
“I don’t. But he doesn’t go home half the time because his father gets violent and beats him up. So Tony and I have something in common.”
“But your mother doesn’t beat you up, Lenny.”
“That’s because I’m big enough now so that she knows she won’t win if she gets physical. But that doesn’t stop her from screaming or throwing tantrums. I never know how I’m going to find her when I get home. My nerves are so on edge each time I walk in the door anticipating what kind of mood she might be in, that sometimes it’s better not to go home at all. And this week she’s really been on the warpath.”
“Why?” Suddenly thirsty, I grabbed his soda and took a sip of it. It was already going flat.
“Oh, it doesn’t have to be anything special to set her off,” he said, shrugging. “This time it was a little thing. She got mad because I asked her to lend me some money to hold me over until I get paid.”
“Money? Why would you ask her for money, Lenny? You earn enough to meet your expenses. Besides, you have that extra money you won at the track.”
“Had that extra money,” he corrected.
“Had?” The implications of what he was saying started to dawn on me. “You had over fifty dollars put away. What happened to it?”
“Well, it’s like this, baby.” He started talking very rapidly. “I decided fifty dollars wasn’t enough to spend on a girl like you. I mean, I love you so much that I wanted to get you something special. And then Adios Charlie was running in the eighth race the other night—a sure thing. I couldn’t resist taking that fifty and making it grow so I could buy you what you really deserve!”
“So what happened?” I asked, although I was afraid I already knew the answer.
“Well, the horse was running way ahead of the field, as I had predicted. But something happened and he died in the stretch. If only he could have held on a few seconds longer.” Lenny shook his head sadly. “He lost by a nose.”
“So the money is gone?” I asked hoarsely.
He nodded. “But I could have made it back easily, if only my mother had lent me the money. The horse I would have bet on came in and paid twenty dollars to win!” He banged the table in frustration.
I stared at him in horror as the impact of what he was saying sank in. Lenny had lost all his money in one race at the track. Then he had tried to borrow money from his mother to bet some more. Now they were fighting so badly he had to stay out all night. What a horrible situation!
“What’s wrong with you, Lenny?” I demanded. “Thinking you always have to have more money, then running to gamble to get it. I don’t usually side with your mother, but this time she was absolutely right not to give you the money! You can’t keep gambling at the track and losing money this way!”
“Losing money? What about all the times I won? Don’t you understand, Linda? I love the track! I love the excitement, the action, watching the horses run. I need it to escape from the dullness of my job, the drudgery of school, the turmoil I’ve always got to deal with at home. It’s good for me!”
“Well, Lenny, if you really think it’s good for you, you obviously haven’t taken a good look in the mirror recently,” I said hotly. “You look like hell, your relationship with your mother is so bad you can’t go home at night, and I bet this is starting to affect you at work and school, too. Are you so blind that you can’t see what this is doing to you? You could wind up a compulsive gambler, and then you’ll have nothing!”
I guess “compulsive gambler” was the wrong choice of words for me to use. As soon as I said them, Lenny’s face flushed red and the veins stood out on his neck the way they did whenever he lost his temper.
“Compulsive gambler! What kind of thing is that for you to say to me, Linda, after all we’ve been through together? And I thought you wanted me to come to you with the truth, that you were going to accept things even if you didn’t like them. Well, now I see how far that promise went!”
He stood up so abruptly that he knocked over what was left of the soda. It sloshed all over the table and formed a little river that headed in my direction. Quickly I jumped up to avoid being wet by the sticky stream.
We stood there glaring at each other, both hot with fury. For a change I was the one to get in the last word.
“This is so typical of you, Lenny—distorting the facts to make it seem that somehow this is my fault. Well, this time I’m not buying it. You got yourself into this trouble with your gambling, and it’s up to you to get yourself out of it!”
I pounded the table so hard that droplets of soda splashed on both of us. I was too angry to even care. I turned around and fled from the candy store to prevent him from seeing the tears that came flooding to my eyes.
I had this terrible feeling this incident was only the start of lots more trouble to come.