The Unmaking of Rabbit Read online

  “Just barely,” Mrs. Tuttle said, settling her snood on her head like a fisherman with a full net.

  When she had gone, Paul asked, “She meant me, didn’t she? She meant you shouldn’t have the responsibility of raising me because I’m not your child, I’m only your grandchild.”

  “Listen,” Gran said furiously, “Bess Tuttle talks too much. She may be a friend of mine, but she does. I don’t want to hear any nonsense from you.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “You are my flesh and blood and don’t you ever forget it.”

  She turned and opened the refrigerator door. “How about a grilled cheese?” she said. “And let’s celebrate. We’ll have a grilled cheese and bacon. How’s that?”

  5

  The day seemed very long. They finished lunch before noon, then Gran went to take a bath. “Maybe I’ll lie down for a minute,” she said. “All that cleaning took something out of me.”

  “Do you need anything at the store?” Paul asked. He wanted an excuse to get out of the house, anything to fill in the time until his mother arrived.

  Gran came out of her room with a mask of cold cream on her face. “I don’t know why I bother,” she said, and he understood she meant the cold cream. “My skin’s like a dried-up walrus. It’s funny how you keep on trying when it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference any more.”

  She wore the blue robe she’d had ever since Paul could remember. If she’d ever had another, Paul didn’t know about it.

  “Just let me see how I’m doing on eggs,” she said. “The Robber Baron has upped his prices on eggs, I see.” She called Mr. Barker the Robber Baron sometimes. It made Paul think of Robin Hood, for no good reason. If Mr. Barker were a few years younger, Paul thought, he would be a good Robin Hood. Mrs. Barker would have to do for Maid Marian. The only thing lacking was the forest.

  “Buy a half dozen,” Gran instructed, giving Paul her battered change purse. He hated that purse; it didn’t seem right for a boy to carry it. “That way we’ll use them up while they’re still fresh. Tell him the last lot was so old I thought a chick might hatch right smack on the kitchen table.”

  Gran never sent him to the store without some sort of message for Mr. Barker. Paul never delivered any of these messages, as they were always derogatory. He had a feeling Mr. Barker knew how Gran felt about him. It was not a subject for discussion.

  The sign was gone from the store window. That was quick, Paul thought. Mr. Barker must’ve hired a boy already. He went in and saw Mr. Barker talking to a tall boy who looked the way he, Paul, had looked last spring when he was getting over the chicken pox. Only this wasn’t chicken pox. It was just plain old pimples, like the ones guys in TV commercials had before they used the advertised product. After they used it, the pimples disappeared like magic.

  “Paul, this is Eugene, my new helper.” Mr. Barker pronounced it “Yoogene,” and Paul, who had never known anyone of that name, spelled it that way in his mind.

  “Hayah?” Eugene said, to which Paul responded, “Sure.” He bought the eggs, and Mr. Barker said, “The missus says she’d like you to come have supper with us before you leave. Says she feels terrible about you going.”

  For a minute Paul didn’t know what Mr. Barker meant. Then he remembered he’d said he’d probably go to live with his mother when she got married. “That’s O.K.,” he said. “It probably won’t be for a long while yet.”

  “The longer the better.” Mr. Barker smiled. “So long,” Paul said, and Eugene, who was busy stacking cans of soup, didn’t look up.

  There was a car in front of Gran’s house, a sleek, yellow car with wire wheels. Those wire wheels were what made that car, Paul decided. His throat dry and his eyes blinking rapidly, Paul walked as slowly as it was possible to walk and still keep moving. He practiced what he’d say. Not much, that was for sure. He prayed not to embarrass his mother by stuttering. She hated to hear him stutter.

  “Paul! Darling! Baby!” She enveloped him in a warm and scented embrace. Her hair tickled his nose and he sneezed. “You’re not coming down with a cold? Darling,” she said to Art, “I want you to meet Paul.”

  She called lots of people “darling.” The man got up and crossed over to shake hands. His grip was firm, so firm Paul imagined the bones in his hand snapping gently under its pressure. Gran would like that. She always said she didn’t trust a man with a wet-fish handshake.

  “Hi, there,” the man said. Paul liked his face. It had a lot of deep lines and reminded Paul of pictures of Abraham Lincoln. He even had a beard like Lincoln’s.

  “Paul, this is Art. I hope you two are going to be good friends.” His mother smiled. She was very pretty. She wore a pink dress that matched her cheeks. She was prettier than anybody else’s mother. Paul wished he could figure out a way to get her to come to school so the kids could see her. That’d show them.

  “Paul.” Gran’s voice startled him. He had forgotten Gran. “Paul, bring a chair from the hall for Mr.—ah—What did you say your name was?”

  Art smiled. “Bogovich. B-o-g-o-v-i-c-h.” He spelled it out very slowly. “Just call me Art.”

  “Paul,” Gran said again, “bring a chair for Mr. Bogovich and get me my holder, will you? May I get you some refreshment, some sherry or a cup of tea?”

  Paul had never heard Gran speak in that tone of voice before. She didn’t sound like herself at all.

  “Nothing, thanks, Mother. We stopped for lunch on the way. We found this adorable place by the river with swans and ducks and the whole works.”

  “The food stank,” Art said, settling into the chair Paul brought in, “but the joint was loaded with atmossphere.”

  There was a silence. Paul picked up Flora from her nest in the couch and put her on the floor.

  “Some cat,” Art remarked.

  “Paul, you must’ve grown six inches since I last saw you,” his mother said.

  “That was some time ago,” Gran reminded her, without expression. Then, “Tell me about your work, Mr.—ah—Bogovich, is it? What do you do?”

  Art crossed his long legs, and Paul saw he wore no socks. If nothing else got Gran, that would.

  “I’m a free-lance photographer and also an artist,” he said.

  “What kind of art work do you do?” Gran asked.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Graphics,” he said, as if he was using a foreign language. “Actually, I do all sorts of art work,” he said to Gran. “I’m what you might call a jack-of-all-trades.”

  “Master of none,” Gran added.

  He smiled. “That’s right,” he said.

  “What on earth time is it?” Paul’s mother asked Art. She stood up and ran her hands down the sides of her dress. She squealed when he said four thirty. “We’ve got to fly,” she said. “We have this party some friends are giving. Next time we’ll stay longer.” She turned to Paul and put her arm around him. “Come on out with me, Paulie. I haven’t really had a chance to talk to you.” He wished she wouldn’t call him Paulie. He had asked her not to many times.

  When they were out of earshot, she whispered conspiratorially in his ear, “Do you like him? Art. Do you like him?”

  “He’s O.K., I guess.”

  “Darling, we’re going to get married. He’s going to be your new father.” Her eyes shone.

  Paul, who had never known his old father, shrugged. “That’s nice,” he said. “When do I get to come and live with you?”

  She drew back. “We’ve got to go on a honeymoon and look for a bigger apartment. My gosh, we couldn’t possibly have you in that little hole!” She turned to Art and Gran, who had followed them. “We’ve really got to run. Good-by, Mother.” She pressed her cheek against Gran’s. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Gran stood looking after the yellow car with the wire wheels as it drove away.

  “I wonder how much money he owes on that car,” she mused aloud.

  “How do you know he owes money on it?” Paul asked truculently.

  “That kind always do
es,” she said. “You wait and see.”

  “I like him,” Paul said. “I think he’s nice. He looks like Abraham Lincoln.”

  “Lincoln, shminkon,” Gran said.

  “Did my mother tell you she’s going to get married to him?” Paul asked. “Did she tell you?”

  “She told me.” Gran turned her head away, but not before Paul had seen two large tears working their way down her lined cheeks. He had never seen her cry before.

  “They have to get a bigger apartment before I can go live with them,” Paul said to cheer her up.

  “They’ll never get a bigger apartment,” Gran answered. “There isn’t an apartment big enough in the entire world.”

  6

  Eugene was picking his teeth and reading a magazine when Paul stopped at the store Monday after school.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m Paul, remember?” Eugene looked blank. “Where’s the boss? Where’s Mr. Barker?” Paul asked.

  Eugene brayed like a donkey. “Him. He’s over to the bank in an armored car, making a couple deposits.”

  “You sound like my grandmother,” Paul told him. “She’s always complaining about the prices here.”

  Eugene winked at Paul. “The old man’s no fool. He knows how to charge. Maybe if I stay here long enough, he’ll remember me in his will. Like, he’s got no son, right? He’s got nobody but the missus to leave his dough to.” Eugene’s brow furrowed with thought. “Get on the good side of him, maybe he’ll leave the poor orphan five, ten thousand clams, who knows? That’s not a bad idea.”

  “Are you an orphan?” Paul asked, interested. He’d never known a real orphan before.

  “Nah,” Eugene said. His face seemed to grow longer as Paul watched him. “But who knows? I might be someday.”

  “How do you like working here?” Paul leaned against the counter. “I’d like to when I get older. That is, if I still live around here—if I don’t go live with my mother when she gets married.”

  Eugene took a comb out of his pocket and carefully rearranged his hair. Then he took a mirror out of another pocket and tilted it one way, then another to get the full effect.

  “The way I look at it, kid,” Eugene said, “work’s work, any way you slice it. If the pay’s good and the hours short, why, I’ll give it a whirl. I’m not out to lick the world singlehanded. I figure as soon as I get a few beans together, I’ll take me to Miami Beach, one of those places, and find myself some rich old babe and be a gigolo. I always wanted to be a gigolo.”

  “What’s a gigolo?” Paul wanted to know.

  Eugene opened his little eyes as wide as they’d go. “You never heard of a gigolo, kid?” he asked, amazed. “It’s the only way to go. You find some rich old tomato, she likes to dance, see, and eat in ritzy restaurants—only she’s got nobody to take her and she doesn’t want to go alone. So she pays the gigolo to escort her around, give her a little love, stuff like that, and she pays for the whole shebang.”

  They heard a car pull up behind the store.

  “I think that’s Mr. Barker,” Paul said.

  “You better shove off. I gotta get to work,” Eugene said. He started to whistle and move his shoulders in rhythm. “You oughta see me dance. I’m some dancer. Spend the days on the sand, the nights dancing in some fancy joint, and if the lights are dim enough, you don’t even have to see the rich old babe who picks up the check. Think about it, kid. That’s the life.”

  “Eugene,” Mr. Barker called, “I need some help out here.”

  Eugene swore under his breath. “Be right there,” he called.

  “Think about it,” he whispered to Paul.

  7

  “Do you feel all right, Paul?” Gran asked that evening. “You’re awfully quiet.”

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Bess Tuttle said she’d call about that Gordon coming to visit,” Gran said. “You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to. Just because you’re the same age doesn’t mean you’d get on. Any more than two women the same age get on together. Chances are they won’t like each other. The women, I mean. Turns out nine times out of ten they don’t have anything in common.”

  The telephone rang. “That must be Bess now,” Gran said.

  But it wasn’t.

  “Darling!” Paul’s mother’s voice rang along the telephone wire, and it was as if she were in the same room. “I have wonderful news! Art and I got married. This afternoon.”

  “You did?” Paul said. Gran watched him. “Why didn’t you call us up? I could’ve got out of school.”

  “Baby, it was just a tiny ceremony, just us and the judge and a couple of our friends. It wouldn’t have been worth the trip, really.”

  “It’s my mother,” Paul said to Gran. “She got married.”

  “Let me speak to her,” Gran said.

  Paul went to his room, and without turning on the light he shoved Flora off his bed, where she often lay. She rubbed against his legs and made noises in her throat.

  “Get out of here,” he said. “Scram.” He made a fist and hit her on the nose. She regarded him with cold cat’s eyes and stayed where she was.

  Presently Gran called, “Supper’s ready,” and he went out, blinking in the sudden light. They ate without saying much.

  “I wonder what school I’ll go to when I go to live with them,” Paul said.

  Gran took the plates away and slapped a bowl of ice cream covered with hot butterscotch sauce in front of him.

  “Listen,” she said, then stopped. Paul looked at her expectantly, but from the way she snapped her mouth shut as if it were on hinges, he knew she would not say anything further.

  “Thanks, Gran,” he said when he was going to bed.

  “What for?”

  “For the supper,” he said. “And the dessert. It was very good.” He lay awake for a long time, listening to his heart beat and thinking about the day. A lot had happened, that was for sure.

  8

  “All right, class,” Miss Olah said on Tuesday morning. “I have an assignment for you.” Everybody groaned and moaned. She raised her hand for quiet. “I think you’re old enough to know that if I assign something due at a certain time, I will expect it to be done. Just as happens in high school and college.”

  Miss Olah was an ace at psychology Paul thought. She knew if she made the kids feel they were being treated as adults, most of them would rise to the challenge. Not all, but most.

  “I want you all to write a story, entirely your own.” She cast a dark look at several in the class who had been known to plagiarize. More groans and moans. “This will be due a week from today. Exactly one week—no more, no less—from Tuesday. It can be as short or as long as you like, but it must have a moral.”

  “Moral? Moral? What’s moral mean?” Everybody turned and asked everybody else.

  “My, but you’re a noisy bunch today,” Miss Olah said with a sigh. “Moral, in this case, means the lesson the story teaches. Write about an episode in your life from which you think you learned something. It can be real or imaginary.”

  Paul felt his nose begin to twitch. He put both hands over his ears and pressed them close to his head. Up front, Freddy Gibson mouthed words, made exaggerated faces, and indicated distress in general.

  “Freddy, sit up straight and cut the comedy,” Miss Olah said crisply. Paul very much admired her ability to handle Freddy or anyone else who stepped out of line. He figured Miss Olah wasn’t afraid of anything. It was a good way to be.

  Freddy went limp as a rag doll, pretending he had fainted. He let his legs sprawl out into the aisles. The whole class went crazy. They laughed as hard as if they had been watching Abbott and Costello on TV.

  Miss Olah waited, then said, “Class, come to order,” and there was no fooling in her voice. Everyone stopped laughing but Paul. He couldn’t stop. He put his head down and covered it with his arms and tried to stop, but something inside him kept on and on until he was almost crying.

  “Paul, go out in the hall
until you can pull yourself together,” Miss Olah said, not unkindly. Head down, Paul lurched out of the room, but not before he heard Freddy whisper, “Go, go, Rabbit, hippety-hop, Rabbit baby, go, go, go.”

  The hall stretched long and empty and smelled of old gym suits and egg salad sandwiches. It was nice out there alone, peaceful and calm. Paul heard other teachers talking to their classes. One kid, so little he must have been a first grader, came down the hall, putting one foot carefully in front of the other, singing a song to himself. He went into the boys’ room without noticing Paul. That was good. He might’ve been embarrassed if he’d known he was being watched.

  Presently Miss Olah came out and said, “Are you all right now, Paul?”

  He nodded, not trusting his voice.

  “I know you’ll do a good job on the story, Paul,” she said. “I think you express yourself on paper very well. Now go back to your seat and get to work.”

  Paul had to pass Freddy’s desk on the way to his own, but Freddy was so intent on what he was writing that he didn’t notice. Paul breathed a sigh of relief.

  Too soon. Freddy was waiting, along with four of his cohorts, by the side door as Paul came out of school.

  “Hey,” he said. “Hey, Rabbit, I want to talk to you.” Paul thought of pretending he’d forgotten something in his desk, but before he had a chance, Freddy held out a box of licorice. “Take one,” he said. It was more a command than an invitation. Paul didn’t like licorice, but he took a piece and chewed on it, careful not to make a face. Freddy had never offered him anything before.

  He smiled at Paul, revealing a gap between his two front teeth, which protruded slightly. He looks more like a chipmunk than I look like a rabbit, Paul thought suddenly, feeling pleased that this was so. Does anyone ever call Freddy “chipmunk”? Paul smiled, thinking how much he would like to, but he said nothing. He was conscious now of the black taste spreading through his mouth, coating his tongue and teeth. I’m going to look like a chow dog, he thought.