Fifteen

Two dark enormous figures ran down an alley where I stood in a doorway. As they passed me, I realized they were not only enormous but also as tiny as toy soldiers. I knew they were looking for me, but they passed right by me.

I woke up with a cry. The sun came into the room in bars through the Venetian blinds. I lay in bed, letting the dream go. It wasn’t all that hard to figure out.

“Pete?” Gene rapped on my door. “Fried eggs if you get up right now.”

“Okay.” I rolled out of bed, yawning. Then I remembered Cary’s phone call last night and did my push-ups in record time.

“Can you come to my house Sunday around two o’clock with your bike?” she’d asked.

“Then it’s all set?”

“Not really. My parents want to meet you and ask you some questions.”

“Questions?” I said. “Like what?”

“I don’t know exactly, Pete, just some stuff to make sure they feel okay about us being friends.” She emphasized friends. “And, Pete, they’re real bears about punctuality, so make it as close to two as possible, okay?”

I hopped around the room, pulling on jeans and a striped tee-shirt. I’d never heard of Drew’s getting the once-over from anybody’s parents.

In the kitchen, I sat down across from Gene and heaped eggs on my plate. He asked me some stuff about school and if I wanted to go out to dinner with him and Martha, and then he started talking about Charley’s Aunt, the play he was in.

“I don’t know about the director on this play we’re doing. This is her first play—”

“Uh uh uh, watch that sexist stuff, or I’ll have to sic Drew’s girl friend on you.”

“What I want you to do is come to a rehearsal in a week or so, Pete, and tell me how my character is shaping up.”

“I get the chance to criticize you legitimately?”

“My character, not me, wise guy. Brassett’s the quintessential English serving man—extremely polite and extremely shrewd. It’s that shrewdness I want to get across.”

I mopped up the eggs with a piece of toast. “Okay if I bring a friend with me?” Instant flash: Cary sitting next to me in the darkened theater, head close to mine, saying respectfully, Does your uncle always ask your advice? “Drew?” Gene said. “Sure.”

“Not Drew. It’s, um, it’s a girl. No funny remarks, please.”

“Is that who you were on the phone with last night? I sort of caught that it wasn’t Drew.”

“We’re going on a bike ride, Sunday. That is, if I get her parents’ seal of approval. They’re looking me over before they let her out with me. Her parents are mucho strict. I have a feeling if I pass inspection they’re going to slap a hunk of red wax on my forehead. ‘Certified Harmless.’”

In the living room the grandfather clock struck the half hour. “How old is this girl?”

“Her name’s Cary. Almost seventeen. As a sort of parent, you want to give me any good advice on how to impress her parents with how trustworthy and upstanding I am?”

“‘To thine own self be true.’”

“That’s the best you can do?”

“Hmmm. Okay, be polite, try to understand their point of view, and smile. There’s nothing like a smile.”

“You really think so?” I bared my teeth at my uncle. “What if they ask me about Laura and Hal?”

“Why would they? Anyway, you know what to say.”

I dumped my dishes into the sink and followed him out to the hall. “I’m not exactly your normal all-American kid, am I? Sometimes I get the feeling it shows. Like pimples. Even if you tell yourself to act like you don’t have them, everybody else can see the ugly little brutes.”

“Pete, calm down. Just go see your girl friend and put all that other stuff out of your mind.”

“Stuff? You mean Laura and Hal? My parents? Is that what you do? Just wipe them out of the old mind? Blank them out as if they didn’t exist? That’s just great. That’s really great!” I was suddenly shouting.

Gene looked at me for a moment, then put on his jacket and went out the door. I stood there, breathing hard. What the hell was the matter with me? I ran after my uncle. “Gene!” I caught him on the street. “Forget I did that, will you? The maniac in me—” I held out my hands. “I’m sorry.”

On Sunday, on the way to Cary’s house, the gears on my bike were slipping and I had to stop several times to adjust them. Even so, I was there too early. I rode past the house. Was Cary watching from the window? I bent forward over the handlebars, wishing I had a helmet with a chin strap. I rode around the block five or six times, checking my watch every other minute. At exactly two o’clock, I was on the porch, ringing the bell.

Cary answered the door. “Hi.” She looked different again, I guess because of her hair—it was pulled back into a ponytail. And this was the first time I’d seen her in shorts.

I followed her into the house, suddenly nervous and trying to remember Gene’s advice. In the living room she said, “Sit down, Pete, I’ll get Mom and Dad.” I perched on the edge of an upholstered chair. Not for anything would I have sat back and messed up the cushion. Everything in that room was perfect. Not a thing out of place. The magazines on the coffee table were stacked with their edges ruler-straight, the couch was fat and smooth—had anything as vulgar as a behind ever been on it?—and even the curtains at the windows billowed out as stiffly as if they were at attention. Martha said that for two guys, Gene and I kept ourselves in a very civilized manner, but compared to this house, we lived like a couple of slobs.

A little girl in overalls, carrying a tin robot, wandered in. We looked at each other. I tried to think of something to say to her. I didn’t know anything about kids. She started the conversation. “Zoooom, zoooom, zoooom.”

“Zoooom, zoooom, zoooom,” I agreed. She ran the robot lightly over the arm of the couch and gazed at me with round blue eyes. A moment later, Cary came in with her father and her mother, who was holding a baby over her shoulder. I jumped up and Cary introduced us.

“Pete.” Her father was short with broad shoulders. He gave me a handshake I wasn’t going to forget soon. “Right on time,” he said, giving me another powerful hand squeeze.

“How’s the weather outside?” Cary’s mother said. She was the woman with bangs and glasses who’d tapped on the window, the one I’d thought was Cary’s older sister. Her father didn’t exactly look young enough to be Cary’s brother, but he didn’t look that old either. He had the same blue eyes as the little girl with the robot.

“Pretty baby, Mrs. Longstreet.” I remembered my uncle’s advice to be polite and smile a lot.

“Yancey,” she said.

“Oh! Sorry.” I should have remembered how they answered the phone. I puzzled again over the two names and decided, looking from Mr. Yancey to Cary, that maybe he was her stepfather. She certainly looked more like Mrs. Yancey; they both had brown eyes.

“Well,” Mr. Yancey said, “what’s this about a bike ride? Where do you plan to go? How long will it take?”

Cary’s mother sat down on the couch. Mr. Yancey picked up the little girl in overalls and sat down too. “I don’t know about your family,” he said, “but in our house we have rules that we expect Cary to follow. No exceptions.”

I nodded, trying to look like I really understood their point of view.

“Where do you live, Peter?” Mrs. Yancey said.

“Mooreland Avenue.”

“Mooreland? Isn’t that downtown?” Mr. Yancey said. “Or is there another Mooreland Avenue?”

“No, it’s downtown. Off South.”

“Well, right. I would have been surprised to hear there was a Mooreland Avenue I didn’t know about. I’ve lived and worked in Winston all my life and I know it like the back of my hand.”

“Do you and your brothers and sisters like living downtown?” Mrs. Yancey said. “Don’t you miss having a yard?”

“We do have a yard. Not very big, but we have a couple of trees. It’s really nice. The house is old.” That didn’t sound good. “I don’t mean old crappy—” I stopped again, realizing from Mrs. Yancey’s face that I’d goofed. Crappy was a no-no. “The house is historical,” I said quickly. “When my uncle bought it, he saved it from the wreckers.”

Mrs. Yancey patted the baby. “Your uncle lives with your family? That’s nice.”

I cleared my throat. “Actually, it’s just the two of us.”

“Just you and your uncle? No sisters or brothers? How awful for you. And where are your parents?”

“My parents—” I cleared my throat again. “Actually, they’re dead.” As always when I said this, my lips went numb.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Yancey said. “I didn’t mean to bring up a painful subject. I know how it feels to be alone.” There was a short pause—for sympathy?—then Mrs. Yancey went briskly back to the subject at hand. Onward with the investigation of one Pete Greenwood. “Now what does your uncle do, Peter?”

“You mean for a living? He’s an optometrist. Greenwood’s Optometry Center. That’s downtown too.”

“I know the place,” Mr. Yancey said. “Years ago there was a cigar shop right there. Where do you go to school?

“Winston High.”

“On the other side of town. How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Sixteen,” Mrs. Yancey repeated, with a little tuck of her mouth. “When I was sixteen, I was wild. I was a wild kid, so I know all about being sixteen.”

She seemed to be waiting for me to say something. “Ah, I try not to be too wild.” I glanced at Cary. Did I get a smile on that one?

“I hope you realize that Cary is not interested in having a boyfriend.”

Cary spoke for the first time. “People can be just friends, Mom. It’s not like when you were growing up.”

Her mother brushed something off Cary’s tee-shirt. “Certain things don’t change, Cary. Boys are boys and girls are girls and that’s the way life is.”

“Maybe, but Pete and I are just friends.”

“I want to count on that,” Mr. Yancey said, fixing his blue eyes directly on me. “You may think we’re a little strict, Pete, but our point of view is that there’s nothing more important than watching out for our children’s welfare.”

I nodded. Cary pulled on a white hooded sweater. “Can we take some cookies and apples?” she asked. And I realized that, whatever the test was, I must have passed.