1960: They had a stick sharpened at both ends.
1960
LOW MEN IN YELLOW COATS
I. A BOY AND HIS MOTHER. BOBBYâS BIRTHDAY. THE NEW ROOMER. OF TIME AND STRANGERS.
Bobby Garfieldâs father had been one of those fellows who start losing their hair in their twenties and are completely bald by the age of forty-five or so. Randall Garfield was spared this extremity by dying of a heart attack at thirty-six. He was a real-estate agent, and breathed his last on the kitchen floor of someone elseâs house. The potential buyer was in the living room, trying to call an ambulance on a disconnected phone, when Bobbyâs dad passed away. At this time Bobby was three. He had vague memories of a man tickling him and then kissing his cheeks and his forehead. He was pretty sure that man had been his dad. SADLY MISSED, it said on Randall Garfieldâs gravestone, but his mom never seemed all that sad, and as for Bobby himself . . . well, how could you miss a guy you could hardly remember?
Eight years after his fatherâs death, Bobby fell violently in love with the twenty-six-inch Schwinn in the window of the Harwich Western Auto. He hinted to his mother about the Schwinn in every way he knew, and finally pointed it out to her one night when they were walking home from the movies (the show had been The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, which Bobby didnât understand but liked anyway, especially the part where Dorothy McGuire flopped back in a chair and showed off her long legs). As they passed the hardware store, Bobby mentioned casually that the bike in the window would sure make a great eleventh-birthday present for some lucky kid.
âDonât even think about it,â she said. âI canât afford a bike for your birthday. Your father didnât exactly leave us well off, you know.â
Although Randall had been dead ever since Truman was President and now Eisenhower was almost done with his eight-year cruise, Your father didnât exactly leave us well off was still his motherâs most common response to anything Bobby suggested which might entail an expenditure of more than a dollar. Usually the comment was accompanied by a reproachful look, as if the man had run off rather than died.
No bike for his birthday. Bobby pondered this glumly on their walk home, his pleasure at the strange, muddled movie they had seen mostly gone. He didnât argue with his mother, or try to coax herâthat would bring on a counterattack, and when Liz Garfield counterattacked she took no prisonersâbut he brooded on the lost bike . . . and the lost father. Sometimes he almost hated his father. Sometimes all that kept him from doing so was the sense, unanchored but very strong, that his mother wanted him to. As they reached Commonwealth Park and walked along the side of itâtwo blocks up they would turn left onto Broad Street, where they livedâhe went against his usual misgivings and asked a question about Randall Garfield.
âDidnât he leave anything, Mom? Anything at all?â A week or two before, heâd read a Nancy Drew mystery where some poor kidâs inheritance had been hidden behind an old clock in an abandoned mansion. Bobby didnât really think his father had left gold coins or rare stamps stashed someplace, but if there was something, maybe they could sell it in Bridgeport. Possibly at one of the hockshops. Bobby didnât know exactly how hocking things worked, but he knew what the shops looked likeâthey had three gold balls hanging out front. And he was sure the hockshop guys would be happy to help them. Of course it was just a kidâs dream, but Carol Gerber up the street had a whole set of dolls her father, who was in the Navy, had sent from overseas. If fathers gave thingsâwhich they didâit stood to reason that fathers sometimes left things.
When Bobby asked the question, they were passing one of the streetlamps which ran along this side of Commonwealth Park, and Bobby saw his motherâs mouth change as it always did when he ventured a question about his late father. The change made him think of a purse she had: when you pulled on the drawstrings, the hole at the top got smaller.
âIâll tell you what he left,â she said as they started up Broad Street Hill. Bobby already wished he hadnât asked, but of course it was too late now. Once you got her started, you couldnât get her stopped, that was the thing. âHe left a life insurance policy which lapsed the year before he died. Little did I know that until he was gone and everyoneâincluding the undertakerâwanted their little piece of what I didnât have. He also left a large stack of unpaid bills, which I have now pretty much taken care ofâpeople have been very understanding of my situation, Mr. Biderman in particular, and Iâll never say they havenât been.â
All this was old stuff, as boring as it was bitter, but then she told Bobby something new. âYour father,â she said as they approached the apartment house which stood halfway up Broad Street Hill, ânever met an inside straight he didnât like.â
âWhatâs an inside straight, Mom?â
âNever mind. But Iâll tell you one thing, Bobby-O: you donât ever want to let me catch you playing cards for money. Iâve had enough of that to last me a lifetime.â
Bobby wanted to enquire further, but knew better; more questions were apt to set off a tirade. It occurred to him that perhaps the movie, which had been about unhappy husbands and wives, had upset her in some way he could not, as a mere kid, understand. He would ask his friend John Sullivan about inside straights at school on Monday. Bobby thought it was poker, but wasnât completely sure.
âThere are places in Bridgeport that take menâs money,â she said as they neared the apartment house where they lived. âFoolish men go to them. Foolish men make messes, and itâs usually the women of the world that have to clean them up later on. Well . . .â
Bobby knew what was coming next; it was his motherâs all-time favorite.
âLife isnât fair,â said Liz Garfield as she took out her housekey and prepared to unlock the door of 149 Broad Street in the town of Harwich, Connecticut. It was April of 1960, the night breathed spring perfume, and standing beside her was a skinny boy with his dead fatherâs risky red hair. She hardly ever touched his hair; on the infrequent occasions when she caressed him, it was usually his arm or his cheek which she touched.
âLife isnât fair,â she repeated. She opened the door and they went in.
⢠⢠â˘
It was true that his mother had not been treated like a princess, and it was certainly too bad that her husband had expired on a linoleum floor in an empty house at the age of thirty-six, but Bobby sometimes thought that things could have been worse. There might have been two kids instead of just one, for instance. Or three. Hell, even four.
Or suppose she had to work some really hard job to support the two of them? Sullyâs mom worked at the Tip-Top Bakery downtown, and during the weeks when she had to light the ovens, Sully-John and his two older brothers hardly even saw her. Also Bobby had observed the women who came filing out of the Peerless Shoe Company when the three oâclock whistle blew (he himself got out of school at two-thirty), women who all seemed way too skinny or way too fat, women with pale faces and fingers stained a dreadful old-blood color, women with downcast eyes who carried their work shoes and pants in Total Grocery shopping bags. Last fall heâd seen men and women picking apples outside of town when he went to a church fair with Mrs. Gerber and Carol and little Ian (who Carol always called Ian-the-Snot). When he asked about them Mrs. Gerber said they were migrants, just like some kinds of birdsâalways on the move, picking whatever crops had just come ripe. Bobbyâs mother could have been one of those, but she wasnât.
What she was was Mr. Donald Bidermanâs secretary at Home Town Real Estate, the company Bobbyâs dad had been working for when he had his heart attack. Bobby guessed she might first have gotten the job because Donald Biderman liked Randall and felt sorry for herâwidowed with a son barely out of diapersâbut she was good at it and worked hard. Quite often she worked late. Bobby had been with his mother and Mr. Biderman together on a couple of occasionsâthe company picnic was the one he remembered most clearly, but there had also been the time Mr. Biderman had driven them to the dentistâs in Bridgeport when Bobby had gotten a tooth knocked out during a recess gameâand the two grownups had a way of looking at each other. Sometimes Mr. Biderman called her on the phone at night, and during those conversations she called him Don. But âDonâ was old and Bobby didnât think about him much.
Bobby wasnât exactly sure what his mom did during her days (and her evenings) at the office, but he bet it beat making shoes or picking apples or lighting the Tip-Top Bakery ovens at four-thirty in the morning. Bobby bet it beat those jobs all to heck and gone. Also, when it came to his mom, if you asked about certain stuff you were asking for trouble. If you asked, for instance, how come she could afford three new dresses from Sears, one of them silk, but not three monthly payments of $11.50 on the Schwinn in the Western Auto window (it was red and silver, and just looking at it made Bobbyâs gut cramp with longing). Ask about stuff like that and you were asking for real trouble.
Bobby didnât. He simply set out to earn the price of the bike himself. It would take him until the fall, perhaps even until the winter, and that particular model might be gone from the Western Autoâs window by then, but he would keep at it. You had to keep your nose to the grindstone and your shoulder to the wheel. Life wasnât easy, and life wasnât fair.
⢠⢠â˘
When Bobbyâs eleventh birthday rolled around on the last Tuesday of April, his mom gave him a small flat package wrapped in silver paper. Inside was an orange library card. An adult library card. Goodbye Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Don Winslow of the Navy. Hello to all the rest of it, stories as full of mysterious muddled passion as The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Not to mention bloody daggers in tower rooms. (There were mysteries and tower rooms in the stories about Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, but precious little blood and never any passion.)
âJust remember that Mrs. Kelton on the desk is a friend of mine,â Mom said. She spoke in her accustomed dry tone of warning, but she was pleased by his pleasureâshe could see it. âIf you try to borrow anything racy like Peyton Place or Kings Row, Iâll find out.â
Bobby smiled. He knew she would.
âIf itâs that other one, Miss Busybody, and she asks what youâre doing with an orange card, you tell her to turn it over. Iâve put written permission over my signature.â
âThanks, Mom. This is swell.â
She smiled, bent, and put a quick dry swipe of the lips on his cheek, gone almost before it was there. âIâm glad youâre happy. If I get home early enough, weâll go to the Colony for fried clams and ice cream. Youâll have to wait for the weekend for your cake; I donât have time to bake until then. Now put on your coat and get moving, sonnyboy. Youâll be late for school.â
They went down the stairs and out onto the porch together. There was a Town Taxi at the curb. A man in a poplin jacket was leaning in the passenger window, paying the driver. Behind him was a little cluster of luggage and paper bags, the kind with handles.
âThat must be the man who just rented the room on the third floor,â Liz said. Her mouth had done its shrinking trick again. She stood on the top step of the porch, appraising the manâs narrow fanny, which poked toward them as he finished his business with the taxi driver. âI donât trust people who move their things in paper bags. To me a personâs things in a paper sack just looks slutty.â
âHe has suitcases, too,â Bobby said, but he didnât need his mother to point out that the new tenantâs three little cases werenât such of a much. None matched; all looked as if they had been kicked here from California by someone in a bad mood.
Bobby and his mom walked down the cement path. The Town Taxi pulled away. The man in the poplin jacket turned around. To Bobby, people fell into three broad categories: kids, grownups, and old folks. Old folks were grownups with white hair. The new tenant was of this third sort. His face was thin and tired-looking, not wrinkled (except around his faded blue eyes) but deeply lined. His white hair was baby-fine and receding from a liverspotted brow. He was tall and stooped-over in a way that made Bobby think of Boris Karloff in the Shock Theater movies they showed Friday nights at 11:30 on WPIX. Beneath the poplin jacket were cheap workingmanâs clothes that looked too big for him. On his feet were scuffed cordovan shoes.
âHello, folks,â he said, and smiled with what looked like an effort. âMy nameâs Theodore Brautigan. I guess Iâm going to live here awhile.â
He held out his hand to Bobbyâs mother, who touched it just briefly. âIâm Elizabeth Garfield. This is my son, Robert. Youâll h...