Hearts in Atlantis(31)

'Good. Listen, kiddo . . . I'm sorry we got into an argument this morning. I hate working on Saturdays.' This last came out almost in a spit.

'It's okay, Mom.'

She touched his cheek and shook her head. 'That fair skin of yours! You'll never tan, Bobby-O. Not you. Come on in and I'll put some Baby Oil on that sunburn.'

He followed her inside, took off his shirt, and stood in front of her as she sat on the couch and smeared the fragrant Baby Oil on his back and arms and neck - even on his cheeks. It felt good, and he thought again how much he loved her, how much he loved to be touched by her. He wondered what she would think if she knew he had kissed Carol on the Ferris wheel. Would she smile? Bobby didn't think she would smile. And if she knew about McQuown and the cards -

'I haven't seen your pal from upstairs,' she said, recapping the Baby Oil bottle. 'I know he's up there because I can hear the Yankees game on his radio, but wouldn't you think he'd go out on the porch where it's cool?'

'I guess he doesn't feel like it,' Bobby said. 'Mom, are you okay?'

She looked at him, startled. Tine, Bobby.' She smiled and Bobby smiled back. It took an effort, because he didn't think his mom was fine at all. In fact he was pretty sure she wasn't.

He just had a winkle.

That night Bobby lay on his back with his heels spread to the corners of the bed, eyes open and looking up at the ceiling. His window was open, too, the curtains drifting back and forth in a breath of a breeze, and from some other open window came the sound of The Platters: 'Here, in the afterglow of day, We keep our rendezvous, beneath the blue.' Farther away was the drone of an airplane, the honk of a horn.

Rionda's dad had called it a winkle, and once he'd hit the daily number for fifty dollars. Bobby had agreed with her - a winkle, sure, I had a winkle - but he couldn't have picked a lottery number to save his soul. The thing was . . .

The thing was Mr McQuown knew where the queen ended up every time, and so I knew.

Once Bobby realized that, other things fell into place. Obvious stuff, really, but he'd been having fun, and . . . well . . . you didn't question what you knew, did you? You might question a winkle - a feeling that came to you right out of the blue but you didn't question knowing.

Except how did he know his mother was taping money into the underwear pages of the Sears catalogue on the top shelf of her closet? How did he even know the catalogue was up there? She'd never told him about it. She'd never told him about the blue pitcher where she put her quarters, either, but of course he had known about that for years, he wasn't blind even though he had an idea she sometimes thought he was. But the catalogue? The quarters rolled and changed into bills, the bills then taped into the catalogue? There was no way he could know about a thing like that, but as he lay here in his bed, listening while 'Earth Angel' replaced 'Twilight Time,' he knew that the catalogue was there. He knew because she knew, and it had crossed the front part of her mind. And on the Ferris wheel he had known Carol wanted him to kiss her again because it had been her first real kiss from a boy and she hadn't been paying enough attention; it had been over before she was completely aware it was happening. But knowing that wasn't knowing the future.

'No, it's just reading minds,' he whispered, and then shivered all over as if his sunburn had turned to ice.

Watch out, Bobby-0 - if you don't watch out you'll wind up as nuts as Ted with his low men.

Far off, in the town square, the clock began bonging the hour of ten. Bobby turned his head and looked at the alarm clock on his desk. Big Ben claimed it was only nine-fifty-two.

All right, so the clock downtown is a little fast or mine is a little slow. Big deal, McNeal. Go to sleep.

He didn't think he could do that for at least awhile, but it had been quite a day - arguments with mothers, money won from three-card monte dealers, kisses at the top of the Ferris wheel - and he began to drift in a pleasant fashion.

Maybe she is my girlfriend, Bobby thought. Maybe she's my girlfriend after all.

With the last premature bong of the town square clock still fading in the air, Bobby fell asleep.

5

Bobby Reads the Paper. Brown, with a

White Bib. A Big Chance for Liz.

Camp Broad Street. An Uneasy Week.

Off to Providence.

On Monday, after his mom had gone to work, Bobby went upstairs to read Ted the paper (although his eyes were actually good enough to do it himself, Ted said he had come to enjoy the sound of Bobby's voice and the luxury of being read to while he shaved). Ted stood in his little bathroom with the door open, scraping foam from his face, while Bobby tried him on various headlines from the various sections.

'VIET SKIRMISES INTENSIFY?'

'Before breakfast? Thanks but no thanks.'

'CARTS CORRALLED, LOCAL MAN ARRESTED?'

'First paragraph, Bobby.'

'"When police showed up at his Pond Lane residence late yesterday, John T. Anderson of Harwich told them all about his hobby, which he claims is collecting supermarket shopping carts. 'He was very interesting on the subject,' said Officer Kirby Malloy of the Harwich P.D., 'but we weren't entirely satisfied that he'd come by some of the carts in his collection honestly.' Turns out Malloy was 'right with Eversharp.' Of the more than fifty shopping carts in Mr Anderson's back yard, at least twenty had been stolen from the Harwich A&P and Total Grocery. There were even a few carts from the IGA market in Stansbury."'