Chapter 12

“Joy said to tell you she’s sorry she can’t make it for dinner tonight,” his father said. “Her nephew’s in town. She’s taking him to see the sights.”

“What sights? Which—Hojo’s or McDonald’s? There are no sights in this town.” His mother slammed some pots and pans around noisily. She was in a bad mood, had been ever since the No! had popped out of him when she’d said she was thinking of marrying Kev. He and his mother, usually friends, were on the outs. He knew lots of kids who were perpetually on the outs with their mothers and, up to now, he’d had no sympathy for them.

“I didn’t know Joy was supposed to be coming for dinner,” his mother snapped, opening a can of tomatoes so violently tomato juice spewed over everything. “I’m a little tired of her coming here for dinner, especially when I didn’t ask her, if you want to know the truth. She never brings even so much as a flower. Or a piece of candy.”

His father mopped up the spilled juice and looked surprised. “I thought you hated to have people bring you candy because you eat it and get fat,” he said.

His mother turned, slowly, majestically. “I am never fat,” she said, pronouncing each word as if his father had just entered the country from Latvia and didn’t understand a word of English.

“I thought you liked Joy,” his father said in a wounded tone. “She likes you.”

“Baloney. We hate each other and you know it. This is a very artificial situation, and I for one am calling it quits. If you want to come for dinner now and then, fine. But leave Joy home. Let her make her own dinner.”

Time for him to get lost, he decided. Let them fight it out. It would be just like old times.

He retreated to his room to think. Sophie had given him no sign so far that she’d gotten the letter. But how could she when she didn’t know he’d sent it? If anything, she paid less attention to him now than she had before, if such a thing was possible. He thought it entirely possible he could fall at Sophie’s feet, foaming at the mouth and turning blue, and she’d step over him as if he were invisible. He suspected her friend Barbara of bad-mouthing him, probably spreading nasty rumors about how he ate peas off his knife, about how he kicked little dogs, and about how he ate with his elbows on the table. Not to mention stealing little old ladies’ Social Security checks the first of every month.

But he’d decided. Even if Sophie showed no sign that she’d received the first letter, tonight he was going to put the finishing touches on the second, which would be more passionate, more romantic than the first. His plan was to continue his barrage through the mails, each letter more fervent that the last, until Sophie was his.

It would be simpler, of course, to just pick up the telephone, dial Sophie’s number, and when she answered, say, “How about it? Want to go steady?” Or, if that proved too abrupt, he could say, “How about a flick tonight?” Neither of these approaches grabbed him. The love letters were it.

Tonight, however, the words, his own or the real pros’, seemed to have lost their charm. So he took down the old cigar box his father had given him. He had put the old letters from the trunk inside that box. When his father had presented it to him with a certain formality, saying, “I kept my stamp collection in this when I was your age, Tim. I want you to have it,” he had known his father, in his quiet way, was telling him how much he cared about his son.

“Thanks, Dad,” he’d said. The box still smelled faintly of ancient cigars. Even the meager pile of letters smelled of old cigars. He rifled through the stack. Not all of them were letters of love. Several had been written in a spidery hand to someone named Mae, from her Aunt Nellie.

Well, weather here a little cooler as we had a good rain last night. It’s been high eighties since Mon. Had some palpitations and went to Dr. to see what was what. Dr. said it was the heat, told me to lie with my feet up higher than my head when they started in. Jesse caught me with my feet in the air and thought I was passed out and having a fit. He threw a glass of water in my face to bring me around and ruined my new shirtwaist. Love, Aunt Nellie.

Every time he read that one, he laughed out loud. He could see Jesse throwing the glass of water in her face, see her jumping up and maybe chasing Jesse around the yard, waving a broom at him and hollering.

He put the cigar box back on his closet shelf and lay on his bed, fingers laced behind his head.

I don’t want that turkey, Kev, for a stepfather, he thought. Why can’t she find some bozo her own age, someone who loves her better than he loves himself, someone who doesn’t carry an orange tent on his back like some sort of bizarre shell.

Turkey Kev sounded like a dish using leftover turkey in a new and delicious way, he thought. One that combined yogurt, tofu, and bean sprouts, perhaps. If his mother hadn’t freaked out and lost her sense of humor, as she seemed to have done, he’d tell her that. And she’d come up with other ingredients to add to Turkey Kev. As it was, he kept his thoughts to himself.

A knock on the door made him spring to his feet. He didn’t like anyone to find him lying down. They might think he was sick, or taking a nap. Neither of which he was.

“Oh, hi, Dad.”

“Tim, just thought I’d ask if you’d like to go with Joy and me on Saturday to the driving range. Maybe you might like to give it another chance?” He noticed his father’s sideburns had been trimmed down considerably.

“Sure, Dad, why not?” Why not indeed.

“Pick you up at ten, then,” his father said.

“Great.” His too-hearty voice rang insincerely in his own ears. He wondered how his father was going to break the news to Joy that she was persona non grata at the family dinner table. Maybe his mother was simply going through a hostile phase and would pass through it quickly and emerge on the other side. She loved to cook for people, loved having diners compliment her on the excellence of her cuisine. His mother could make three-day-old chicken taste like squab. Just ask her, she’d give you the recipe right off the top of her head. A pinch of thyme, a dash of basil, and it would melt in your mouth. Even its own mother wouldn’t recognize it. She insisted on teaching him how to cook so that when he was on his own, she said, he wouldn’t exist solely on hamburgers and scrambled eggs.

“Sophie, my angel,” he said aloud. “My angel Sophie.” Either one was bound to win her. Any girl would like being called my angel. Wouldn’t she?