Portrait of a young con artist
Chapter eight:
The Plan
In the breezy ways of the ocean side, two figure emerge, climbing dunes like hobos, a collection of drift wood across their shoulders. At home, neither would work this hard, neitehr would let the seat run down into their eyes as it does now. But here in the name of indepdendence, they move along, building private projects, constructiong shapes out of their imagaintions which they think original, hardly aware that the pattern for their constructions has come from the heads of their forfathers.
Dave watched them go from the upstairs window, the dust of the car's windshield hiding the dtails of their faces, leanding to Dave's imagaintion the moods of the people within. He could see his brother's blond hair shimmering in the bright August sun. He could see the wedding band glittering on his mother's finger as the hand gripped the steering wheel. Both served as beacons to tell Dave the coast was clear.
He shivered.
"The air‑conditioner is set too high," he thought. "I'll have to turn it down."
But he knew he wouldn't, one more testimony to his new found independence.
"I can do whatever I want," he thought and laughed.
Mother certainly would have yelled over the waste of energy.
"You know we can't afford to the gas and electric bill as it is," she had said before.
The air‑conditioner had come as a gift, one she had threatened to sell more than once on account of Dave's waste of electricity.
Dave cursed the power company, seeing them as money grubbers sucking their life savings out of every socket.
But now, he didn't even care about them, he was free.
Of course, mother hadn't liked the idea of leaving him along, and in fact, when he first suggested it, she flatly refused.
"What are you going to do if something happens?" she'd asked, in that know‑it‑all tone of voice he most hated about her.
"Ah, mom, nothing's going to happen to me," Dave argued, aware of her arched brows, one certain indication that she remained unconvinced.
But then, Kenny had said that convincing her would be the most difficult part of the plan.
"The money and transportation are easy," Kenny said. "But you've got to make her let you stay."
"How?"
"Plead if you have to," Kenny said.
And Dave pleaded as he had never pleaded before, his mother shaking her head again and again, growing angry with his insistance.
"If something goes wrong we'll be a hundred miles away," she said firmly. "We're not going to leave you behind and that's final."
But it was not final, could not be final, and Dave bellowed, "BUT I'VE GOT TO STAY!"
"Got to?" Mother said, her deep frown full of suspicion. "What do you mean?"
Dave's mother was a tall woman with a narrow, pale face, and when she stared down at him, she looked postively haunting.
Dave swallowed slowly.
"You know how I get on long rides," he said.
"So?"
"So I would be miserable the whole trip."
"Maybe you would," mother admitted. "But car sick or not, I want you along. This is a family outting."
Dave sighed and looked around the shabby apartment. But she had cleaned recently so it lacked the usual dirty laundry or unwashed dishes with which he could offer a bribe. He was left with the harder items, the real repairs that she had nagged him to do for months, the leaking toilet upstairs and the hall in need of paint.
He offered the toilet first, hating the smell of paint too much to give in so soon with that. He would only offer that if she refused all else.
"No," she said, then eyed him again, the previous suspicion growing in her eyes. "What are you up to?"
"Up to? What do you mean?"
"You wouldn't be offering to fix the toilet unless you had something else in mind," she said. "Out with it."
Dave sagged. Kenny had warned him to expect this. He abandoned the idea of offering to paint the hall for the moment and went with Kenny's suggestion instead.
"Tell her a little of the truth," Kenny had said, being an expert liar from so much practice with his uncles. "She'll recognize the truth in your voice, but won't know it's not all of the truth."
"Look, mom," Dave said. "I just don't want to go to Seaside Heights this year."
"Why not?"
How could Dave make her see it, how at 16‑years of age, how silly he felt walking down the splintered board walk following behind his mother, his brother and his sister, trying not to stare to hard at all the tan‑bodied and near‑naked girls, girls who giggled over his entrapment.
Seaside Heights was exactly where he wanted to be, only he wanted to be there as a free agent, unrestrained by his family.
"Because I'm too old to go, that's why," Dave said in a gush, the conviction of the words evident even to himself, though it was only half the truth.
"Too old? That's rediculous."
"It's not," Dave protested. "Seaside is for little kids."
"I'll have you know your father and I went there on our honeymood."
"Sixteen years ago," Dave said. "Things were different back then."
"Different? How?"
Again, he was at a loss for words. How did he go about explaining how much different 1965 was from 1949, how with the Vietnam War and the Beatles, the world had changed into an utterly different place, how the threat of the Russian bomb had made boys like Dave, and Kenny, and the others from school into more than desperate children, seeking to find some thrills before it all went up in radioactive smoke.
Dave swallowed slowly, nearly tasting the free salt air already, free if only he could convince his mother to go on without him.
"Look, Mom, I'll paint the hall for you. I know how much you want that done, and if I do it while you're away, you won't have to smell the fumes."
Mother bit her lower lip. "I'd be so worried," she said. "Something could happen, even with you as old as you are. I certainly can't leave you totally on your own."
"I can go to Mr. Jorgenson," Dave said, launching into the part of the plan Kenny had thought up.
"Our Landlord wouldn't want to be saddled with you."
"I'd only bother him in a emergency," Dave said.
"Well..."
"I want to stay home, too!" little brother screeched, his blond head bobbing up and down behind mother where Dave couldn't get at him, where Dave couldn't ring his scrawny little sunburned neck.
"That's it" Mother said. "This is a family outting, and if one of us isn't going, all of us will stay home."
"But mom...."
"You're either coming with us, or we'll cancel the whole damned thing," mother said.
Little brother giggled and danced away, and Dave knew he would have the boy's skin before the trip was over.
But Dave's face must have betrayed something else for his mother to stop again when she was half way down the stairs, she looking up at him with regret in her eyes.
"You really don't want to go with us, do you?" she asked.
"No," he said.
"Why?"
"Because I'd feel stupid clinging to your skirt the whole time. I'm 16 years old, Mom, too old to be taken places by my mother."
"Sixteen is not as old as you'd think," mother said.
"It is when girls look at you stupid."
Mother's eyes seemed to register this in a new, knowing way. She looked at him again, and this time seemed to catch hints of how much he has grown, how he wasn't the boy she imagined him to be, and how embarrassed she was making him by insisting on taking him along. She sighed.
"I'll leave some extra money for food," she said softly, the lines around her eyes and mouth growing thicker, as if seeing him as older had made her realize her own age.
Now that they were gone, Dave stared around the empty apartment as if it was haunted, hearing the echo of his own footsteps and jumping when ever the refrigerator compressor turned on or stopped suddenly.
"Am I crazy!" he thought. "Why am I so afraid now that she's gone?"
Perhaps, it was his father's ghost he felt cooling the air around him despite the 90 degree temperatures outside. Photographs of the man still hung on the wall, static except in Dave's mother's memory, each of the numerous other mementos recalling for her some precious moment she had shared with the man. Even the summer vacation was a momento. While she never told them the reason for their yearly trip south, Dave had seen enough of the photographs to recognize the place she and his father had gone to as the same places they went each summer.
Dave sighed, then reached behind the couch to retrieve the bag he had hidden there, a bag packed for a week with bathing suit and sunday clothing, as well as an extra set of underwear, and a few candy bars for the long bus ride south.
The door bell rang, freezing Dave in mid-stride, until he realized it had to be Kenny on the other end.
That part was in the plan, too. Kenny was supposed to be outside, watching for mother's car to leave.
Dave rushed to the window and stuck his head out, staring down at the sidewalk where Kenny stood, the jutting jaw, the long hair, the cut off jeans, and that defiant glance that said: "See, didn't I tell you it would work? Why don't you ever believe me?"
"I'll be right down," Dave told him, receiving only a nod as reply. Then, in rush of activity, he grabbed his shirt, his extra pair of sneakers, and his bag, flipping off lights as he rushed through the apartment, checking the gas stove three times in passing to make sure he had not left the gas on or turned it on since his last passing, and then, finally, fled out the door into the hall, yanking the chain out from under his shirt, the key dangling on its end which locked the door. The click of the lock resounded in the hall and startled him, and he stared at the door for a moment, pondering the act, feeling as if he had locked himself out, and even though he still had the key in his hand, could not return.
"Will you please hurry up!" Kenny yelled, having pushed open the downstairs door to shout up the stairs, his voice breaking the spell, allowing Dave to stumble down the hall towards the stairs, the back windows of the hall looking down on his neighbors yard where the small kids played, their voices full of holiday, too, as if they were going away to the beach the way Dave and Kenny were.
"You sure took your time," Kenny said, when he saw Dave at the top of the stairs. "Now we're going to have to run if we plan to catch the early bus to New York."
"My mother left late," Dave said, and huried down, his large feet pounding on the weak stairs, reaching the door as Kenny retreated, and both boys stood side by side on the sidewalk, the jewelry store window revealing their reflections, Dave a huge six foot six at 16, while Kenny just reaching six feet, looking small, insignifant in comparision.
"Did you get the money?" Kennya asked.
"Sure did," Dave said, proudly, holding up the extra money his mother had left. It, combined with change Dave had saved up himself made enough to pay the bus and have some for fun on the other end.
Kenny stared at the wad and whistled.
"That's more than I ever expected her to leave," he said.
Dave grinned. "Me, too," he said, carrying his pack low as they made their way away from liquor store. They did not need Mr. Jorgenson seeing them, a man who reported their activities dutifully to parents and police as if he thought them messengers of satan.
But something held Dave back, and even as Kenny took several determined strides towards Main Street and the bus there that would take them to the Port Authority, Dave halted.
For some reason, the old neighborhood looked better than ever to him, the limbs of the trees overhanging the street, the shimmer of the sunshine across the faces of the houses.
"What's the matter now?" Kenny asked, coming to a reluctant stop a few yards away.
"I don't know," Dave said, glancing around, shaking his head. "Why can't we just hang around up here. Two weeks without my mother and little brother would be fun in its own way."
"Sure," Kenny said, his eyes taking on that dark stare Dave hated. "And you can spend the rest of your life clinging to your mother's skirts."
"But..." Dave protested, but Kenny continued quickly.
"You know we're not going to meet any girls up here. If we want to meet women, we have to go where the women go, and that's Seaside heights. That's what we planned to do, and now you don't want to do it."
"But it doesn't feel right."
"Fine!" Kenny said throwing up his hands. "Stay. I'll go mess with the girls by myself."
"You can't, you need my money," Dave said, defiantly.
"Like hell I do," Kenny said, and pulled out a wad of bills of his, thicker in number than Dave's and with higher demoninations.
"Where did you get that?"
"You don't need to know," Kenny said. "But I figured you might chicken out, so I made plans of my own. Are you coming or what?"
Dave shivered, tried to shake his head but could not for the shame, nodding instead.
"Then, come on," Kenny said and started off.
Dave followed limply, but followed, and when they reached the bus stop fifteen minutes later, waited side by side with Kenny until the New York bus came, then climbed up into it behind Kenny as well, riding the whole way into Manhattan in silence, letting Kenny direct him off the one bus and then onto the other that took them back into New Jersey but on a much more southerly route. An hour later, as the bus drove down the Garden State Parkway, Dave stiffened.
"What is it?" Kenny asked.
"Mother's going to know I wasn't home for two weeks."
"You're crazy," Kenny said.
"No, I mean it, she is," Dave moaned.
"All right, how?"
"I just remembered, I forgot to turn off the airconditioner."
Kenny pondered this a moment, then shrugged.
"That's the breaks," he said. "We can't turn back now."