Hearts in Atlantis(18)

Ted smiled. 'I'm sure he is.'

'Come on downstairs, Bob. It's time to give Mr Brattigan a rest.'

'But - '

'I think I would like to lie down awhile, Bobby. I've a little bit of a headache. I'm glad you liked Lard of the Flies. You can start your job tomorrow, if you like, with the feature section of the Sunday paper. I warn you it's apt to be a trial by fire.'

'Okay.'

Mom had reached the little landing outside of Ted's door. Bobby was behind her. Now she turned back and looked at Ted over Bobby's head. 'Why not outside on the porch?' she asked. 'The fresh air will be nice for both of you. Better than this stuffy room. And I'll be able to hear, too, if I'm in the living room.'

Bobby thought some message was passing between them. Not via telepathy, exactly . . . only it was telepathy, in a way. The humdrum sort adults practiced.

'A fine idea,' Ted said. 'The front porch would be lovely. Good afternoon, Bobby. Good afternoon, Mrs Garfield.'

Bobby came very close to saying See ya, Ted and substituted 'See you, Mr Brautigan' at the last moment. He moved toward the stairs, smiling vaguely, with the sweaty feeling of someone who has just avoided a nasty accident.

His mother lingered. 'How long have you been retired, Mr Brattigan? Or do you mind me asking?'

Bobby had almost decided she wasn't mispronouncing Ted's name deliberately; now he swung the other way. She was. Of course she was.

'Three years.' He crushed his cigarette out in the brimming tin ashtray and immediately lit another.

'Which would make you . . . sixty-eight?'

'Sixty-six, actually.' His voice continued mild and open, but Bobby had an idea he didn't much care for these questions. 'I was granted retirement with full benefits two years early. Medical reasons.'

Don't ask him what's wrong with him, Mom, Bobby moaned inside his own head. Don't you dare.

She didn't. She asked what he'd done in Hartford instead.

'Accounting. I was in the Office of the Comptroller.'

'Bobby and I guessed something to do with education. Accounting! That sounds very responsible.'

Ted smiled. Bobby thought there was something awful about it. 'In twenty years I wore out three adding machines. If that is responsibility, Mrs Garfield, why yes - I was responsible. Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees; the typist puts a record on the gramophone with an automatic hand.'

'I don't follow you.'

'It's my way of saying that it was a lot of years in a job that never seemed to mean much.'

'It might have meant a good deal if you'd had a child to feed, shelter, and raise.' She looked at him with her chin slightly tilted, the look that meant if Ted wanted to discuss this, she was ready. That she would go to the mat with him on the subject if that was his pleasure.

Ted, Bobby was relieved to find, didn't want to go to the mat or anywhere near it. 'I expect you're right, Mrs Garfield. Entirely.'

She gave him a moment more of the lifted chin, asking if he was sure, giving him time to change his mind. When Ted said nothing else, she smiled. It was her victory smile. Bobby loved her, but suddenly he was tired of her as well. Tired of knowing her looks, her sayings, and the adamant cast of her mind.

'Thank you for the rootbeer, Mr Brattigan. It was very tasty.' And with that she led her son downstairs. When they got to the second-floor landing she dropped his hand and went the rest of the way ahead of him.

Bobby thought they would discuss his new job further over supper, but they didn't. His mom seemed far away from him, her eyes distant. He had to ask her twice for a second slice of meatloaf and when later that evening the telephone rang, she jumped up from the couch where they had been watching TV to get it. She jumped for it the way Ricky Nelson did when it rang on the Ozzie and Harriet show. She listened, said something, then came back to the couch and sat down.

'Who was it?' Bobby asked.

'Wrong number,' Liz said.

In that year of his life Bobby Garfield still waited for sleep with a child's welcoming confidence: on his back, heels spread to the corners of the bed, hands tucked into the cool under the pillow so his elbows stuck up. On the night after Ted spoke to him about the low men in their yellow coats (and don't forget their cars, he thought, their big cars with the fancy paintjobs), Bobby lay in this position with the sheet pushed down to his waist. Moonlight fell on his narrow child's chest, squared in four by the shadows of the window muntins.

If he had thought about it (he hadn't), he would have expected Ted's low men to become more real once he was alone in the dark, with only the tick of his wind-up Big Ben and the murmur of the late TV news from the other room to keep him company. That was the way it had always been with him - it was easy to laugh at Frankenstein on Shock Theater, to go fake-swoony and cry 'Ohhh, Frankie!' when the monster showed up, especially if Sully-John was there for a sleepover. But in the dark, after S-J had started to snore (or worse, if Bobby was alone), Dr Frankenstein's creature seemed a lot more . . . not real, exactly, but . . . possible.

That sense of possibility did not gather around Ted's low men. If anything, the idea that people would communicate with each other via lost-pet posters seemed even crazier in the dark. But not a dangerous crazy. Bobby didn't think Ted was really, deeply crazy, anyhow; just a bit too smart for his own good, especially since he had so few things with which to occupy his time. Ted was a little . . . well . . . cripes, a little what? Bobby couldn't express it. If the word eccentric had occurred to him he would have seized it with pleasure and relief.