“MAX,” SAID SARAH, “WOULD you mind if we swung by our house for just a minute?”
“Of course not.” Max’s glance was both tender and sober. “I feel like a louse for keeping you and Davy in town all summer.”
“Darling, don’t. Actually it’s been rather fun. Some of it, anyway. We’ve had no problems managing your therapy, as we would have had out here. It proves how right we were to hang on to the Boston house, having a place of our own to stay in has made all the difference. Brooks and Theonia have been marvelous, though I expect they’ll be well enough pleased to have the house to themselves when we move back here. It shouldn’t be long now, should it?”
“About another three weeks, the doctor thinks.”
“Then we’d better get on with finding someone to work full time in the office. I don’t intend for either of us to be shuffling back and forth any more than we can help. What a pity Mike didn’t decide on an art major.”
Max shook his head. “Mike’s a great kid, but he’ll make a far better engineer than he would a detective. You know, Sarah, crazy as it sounds, that oldest boy of your Cousin Lionel’s might not be such a bad assistant if he had the right training.”
“Jesse? Are you out of your mind? Anyway, Jesse’s not even in college yet and I can’t imagine which one would take him. Unless there’s a school that offers courses in vandalism and pillage.”
“I don’t know. I’ve talked to the kid a few times at those get-togethers your Aunt Appie puts on. He’s sharp, he’s got imagination, and he’s resourceful, to put it mildly.”
“Oh yes, Jesse’s full of resources. So are his brothers. So were the Visigoths, I believe. I don’t know though, Max, you could be right. Remember that time a mob of reporters tried to invade us from the beach and Lionel’s boys held them off with a barrage of fish heads? I remember feeling quite proud of them, though not for long. I suppose you could sound Jesse out a bit if you feel up to it. Just be sure to handcuff him to his chair first so that he won’t be able to pick your pockets.”
“Aren’t you being a trifle harsh?”
“Not at all, it’s just that I’ve known those four brats of Lionel’s a good deal longer than you have. They’re all chips off the old block, unfortunately. Their father’s as bad as they are, though Lionel’s a lot sharper at not letting his right hand notice what his left hand’s up to. Go ahead if you want to, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Hell, I can outmaneuver a kid his age.”
“Jesse’s no kid, unless perhaps he’s a reincarnation of Billy the Kid, which wouldn’t surprise me a bit. We might ask that friend of Theonia’s who does past-life readings to check his pedigree. By the way, do you have your key to the house with you? It’s just occurred to me that I’ve left mine in my other handbag.”
“It’s okay, don’t forget I was a Boy Scout once. Hey, how about that? We appear to have a welcoming committee.”
A scowling youth in the shortest of cutoffs and the holiest of T-shirts was straddling the drive directly in front of them. “Can’t you read the sign?” he was yelling. “This is private property.”
Sarah stuck her head out the car window. “Thanks for telling us, Jesse. Whatever are you doing here?”
Without being invited, Jesse opened the back door and climbed in.
“Guarding the premises. What’d you do, Aunt Sarah, rack up the other car? Hi, Max, you still got that bum leg? How come they didn’t amputate?”
“How come you weren’t exposed on a barren hillside at birth?” Sarah retorted. “What do you mean, you’re guarding the premises? Has something happened?”
“Ah, some jerks had a picnic here yesterday. They strewed Chinese food all over the place.”
“Chinese food?”
“Well, those boxes they put the take-out in. And broken chopsticks and a couple of fortune cookies. One of them said ‘Your luck has run out’ and the other said ‘Prepare for worse to come.’ That was kind of gross, I thought. So Mike told me to keep people off.”
“Mike knows you’re here?”
“Well, sure.” Jesse was all virtue. “I had to ask permission to camp, didn’t I? I told him I was your cousin, sort of, and you always let me and my family stay here.”
“Since when?”
“Well, grandma does, and we all did, that time when the boat house burned down. I had to go someplace, Vare kicked me out.”
“What for?”
“Oh, you know Vare.” Lionel and his wife had drilled their children to call them by their first names. Sarah saw this as a way of ducking parental responsibility, which in their case it probably was. “She got mad because I wouldn’t go on a slumber party with this dumb kid who’s got the hots for me.”
“What? Do you mean your mother actually—” Sarah had been aware that such things happened nowadays, but it hadn’t dawned on her that they might be occurring among the junior Kellings. “This dumb kid—ah, male or female?”
“Oh, female. Vare’s sickeningly conventional in some ways, you know. Anorexic and stupid. Skinny I could have handled, stupid I couldn’t. I mean, I can understand where Vare gets off about conforming to the mores of my peer group and all that garbage, but I don’t see why I should have to sacrifice the precious pearl of my virginity just to oblige a screwed-up skeleton who can’t even look at a pizza without barfing.”
Jesse’s face had turned the color of a boiled lobster. For the first time in their stormy acquaintance, Sarah saw the boy embarrassed to the point of tears. “I—hell, I suppose this sounds crazy, but I just don’t want to do it unless it’s with somebody I at least kind of like. And any girl I think I might like never likes me. So here I am, still a virgin at sixteen. Maladjusted, Vare says, maybe she’s right for once. I suppose I can’t blame my mother for not wanting a nut case around the house setting a bad example to my younger siblings, but a guy’s got to march to his own drummer, is how I look at it.”
“Buck up, Jess,” said Max. “Some day your princess will come. Did you happen to bring any clothes with you?”
“Clothes?”
“You know. Shorts, pants, a jacket, maybe even shoes?”
“Oh, those. I’ve got Reeboks and Levi’s and a sweater. And my sleeping bag. It starts getting cold nights at this time of year. Not that I’m soft, you understand. I just don’t want to get sick and be a burden on Mike and Carrie.”
“That’s thoughtful of you, Jesse.” For Max’s sake, Sarah tried her level best to sound as though she believed him. “What are you living on? Do you have money for groceries?”
“No, Vare wouldn’t give me any.”
“Then is Mike feeding you?”
“No! I don’t need anybody. I can feed myself. I dig clams and pick berries and stuff. Mike and Carrie did ask me up for pizza a couple of nights, though,” the outcast admitted.
“How long have you been here?”
“What day’s today?”
“Wednesday.”
“Only Wednesday? Then it’s five days. I thought it was longer. Time sure flies when you’re having fun.”
“You haven’t been using the house, then?”
“Oh no. Just those two times, and then we ate out on the deck. They don’t let anybody into the house, only the woman who comes to clean and Mr. Lomax. They have their own keys because Mike and Carrie are off working all day. I hang out in the lean-to. Remember the one Lionel and we kids built that time?”
Sarah remembered all too well. “But it’s falling down.”
“Not any more. I’ve got it fixed good as new. Want to see?”
“We’re a little pressed for time just now.” Sarah glanced at Max and got a nod. “Would you care to ride back to Boston with us, and spend the night on Tulip Street for a change? You can’t live on clams indefinitely, I think we’d better arrange for you and Lionel to have a talk.”
“You can’t, they’ve all gone off on the boat.”
“When are they coming back?”
“When they get seasick, I guess.”
“Is your grandmother with them?”
“Of course. You don’t think they’d risk leaving the golden goose without her bodyguard?”
This was disrespectful of Jesse, but Sarah knew it was accurate. Apollonia Kelling had inherited a great deal of money from her late husband and even more from a deceased friend. The latter and larger legacy had, to Lionel’s temporary dismay, turned out to have been left for Appie’s lifetime only. Should she fail to spend it all during however many years she had left, the rest would be passed on to the local yacht club.
Lionel was therefore working hard to keep his dear old gray-haired mummy alive and productive for as long as possible. With touching solicitude he shuttled her back and forth in a series of expensive cars from her big old house in Cambridge to her sumptuous new ski lodge in Vermont or her sleek new yacht, selected and captained by her doting only son and manned by her almost as doting daughter-in-law and grandchildren.
Lionel was a passionate sailor, and a good one. They wouldn’t be back until he tired of the sea or Vare kicked up a monumental fuss. Sarah could see the handwriting on the wall, but what could she say?
“Then you’d better come with us anyway. Put on your Levi’s and we’ll borrow one of Mike’s shirts for you to wear.”
“Can we stop at the garage and tell him where I’m going?”
Ira Rivkin owned Ireson Town’s garage and filling station. Mike had been working for his father weekends and summers ever since he was old enough; this probably would be his last year, since he was finishing up his master’s degree. Jesse had no doubt begged him not to tell Sarah and Max that he was camping on their property and Mike had, as any warmhearted but conscientious young fellow would do, agreed to keep mum as long as Jesse behaved himself.
Perhaps Vare had done the right thing in shoving her firstborn out to fend for himself however insane her reason. Away from his hellhound brothers and his weird parents, strapped for cash and not daring to burgle the source of his occasional pizzas, the boy might have been using some of that empty time to do a bit of constructive thinking for a change. Max could even be right about Jesse, he’d turned a few other unlikely characters into reliable members of his far-flung network.
Sarah knew one thing in Jesse’s favor, the boy was remarkably fast on his feet. Should the occasion arise, he could probably outrun the little man in the red sweat suit. Thus trying to console herself she led the way into the house that she’d been missing so much.
Alien groceries in the kitchen were the first blow to her sensibilities: bizarre cereals in hideous boxes, canned soups, an empty take-out fried-chicken box left on the counter, soft drinks in the fridge, things she and Max wouldn’t have touched with a ten-foot pole. Mike and Carrie were no doubt trying to keep the house in good order, but their ideas of neatness were not Sarah’s. She couldn’t suppress a feeling of having been invaded, even though she was truly grateful to the lovers for looking after the place.
Miriam was sending food over, of course. Sarah recognized a Tupperware cake plate with half a cinnamon ring under its clear plastic cover. Jesse was eyeing the pastry with undisguised lust. She took a carton of milk from the fridge and poured him a glass.
“You’d better eat some of this coffee cake before we go, Jesse. We’re running behind schedule and shan’t be able to stop for food on the way. We’d better just leave a note for Mike, you can phone him this evening from Boston if you like.”
The shellfishing and berry picking must not have been all that productive this morning. Jesse finished every crumb of the cinnamon ring and would probably have licked the plate if Sarah hadn’t been in the kitchen. He didn’t exactly fall on his knees with gratitude over the plain blue knitted polo shirt Max foraged from the bedroom that Mike and Carrie were sharing in accordance with the mores of their peers; but he took it.
“I’ll go change and meet you down at the bottom of the driveway.”
“At least he’s not conspicuously dirty,” Sarah remarked as the boy ran off and she picked up the grocery pad to write Mike a note. He and Carrie wouldn’t be heartbroken over losing Jesse, she surmised, though they might be rather hard-hit about the coffee cake. “I suppose he’s been swimming a lot for want of anything else to do, and sluicing off under the outdoor shower. I shouldn’t have minded a swim myself, but there’ll be other times.”
She finished her note and took out her car keys. “Well, I suppose we’d better go. It’s curious, your having mentioned Jesse on the way here and our finding him all moved in. Or is it?”
“Not really,” Max confessed. “Mike phoned the other day while you were out with Davy and told me the kid had shown up. I didn’t tell you because I know how you feel about Lionel’s wrecking crew, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the little bastard. So I told Mike to keep Jesse out of the house and let me know if he caused any trouble. I figured he wouldn’t stay long, I didn’t realize that screwball mother of his had shoved him out with no money or clothes. Vare ought to be locked up.”
“Many have thought so, dear, myself included. There’s your little wanderer now, he must have run all the way. Just understand one thing, Max Bittersohn, this kid’s all yours. I took you for better or worse, but not for Jesse Kelling. Oh dear, it’s just occurred to me, we’ll have to take him with us to the funeral tomorrow. I wouldn’t dare leave him in the house by himself.”
“God, you’re a hard woman.”
“You just bet I am. Furthermore, he can’t go in dungarees and a borrowed shirt, Anora would be insulted. Charles will have to take him shopping when we get back, and you, my love, will have to shell out the money. Don’t think Lionel will reimburse you, either. Aunt Appie might, if Lionel wasn’t around to stop her. How long are you planning to keep Jesse?”
“Who knows? He can have one of the third-floor bedrooms, can’t he?”
“On the condition that he doesn’t set fire to it.”
“You’re not really sore, are you?” Max was beginning to sound worried.
“Not yet,” Sarah answered, “but time will tell. All right, this is the moment of truth.”
She hit the brakes, Jesse climbed in with his rolled-up sleeping bag, almost respectable in his borrowed shirt. He’d even remembered to put on his sneakers. Sarah had been expecting Max to get in a little missionary work during the ride, but he didn’t say much to either Jesse or herself. He didn’t even use the car telephone, she became anxious that he might have overtired himself and started his leg hurting again.
Jesse wasn’t talking either, perhaps they were both taking naps. She pushed the little car along as fast as she could without risking a speeding ticket. It rode better with Jesse’s extra weight, though he couldn’t be adding much over another hundred pounds. He looked like a famine victim; aside from a bath and a haircut and something to wear, that boy’s greatest need right now was to get a few decent meals inside him.
“I’ll let you two out at the house, Max, and put the car away while you’re getting Jesse settled in,” she remarked as they were heading down Storrow Drive.
Her husband wasn’t having that. “Couldn’t you turn off at Arlington and drop me at the corner of Charles and Boylston so that I can walk over to the office? Jesse may as well go on into the garage with you so he’ll know where we keep the cars. Do you drive, Jess?”
“When I get the chance. Lionel keeps saying he’ll get me a car when my grades pick up, but they’re never good enough to suit him. He makes me sick. I’m not going back to school this fall. I’m never going back.” Jesse shrugged in self-pity. “So I’ll be a dropout and spend the rest of my life doing manual labor and sleeping under bridges. Who cares?”
“You might, some day,” said Max. “I’ll see you in a while, then, Sarah. Call me at the office if anything comes up.”