end of chapter three (after a small hiatus)
“Relax,” Sully said, catching up with him. “Nothing happened. He was just really down too, so I listened to his problems and everything. It was weird. I... have never actually treated him like a person. It’s funny, but I felt really shitty the whole time I was listening to him. I’m supposed to be this sensitive writer and shit and it seriously never occurred to me that Justin’s a real person. I don’t even know if we can do what we’ve been doing again. I don’t know if it would work.”
“Are you friends now?”
“No,” Sully said. “I don’t really like him. It’s not like I dislike him. It’s just… you have to sort of have some attraction toward a person. I don’t really feel anything for Justin.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen.”
“Sully!” Swain shouted as they walked into the solarium.
Balliol’s father began to say hello, but had a fit of coughs.
“Are you all right, Sir?” Sully had actually only met the old man a couple of times, but he always liked him. This very old Scotsman next to this very young Black man. How could they be father and son?
“Just a cough,” John Balliol said, but Sully noticed that Balliol’s brow was knit and he was watching his father very carefully.
“Sully’s staying tonight,” Balliol informed them.
“Then you should call you mother,” Ruth said in her husky accent. She said, “Muthah.”
“We sort of...” Sully began.
“Mom, maybe you should call her.”
Ruth didn’t ask any questions. She picked up the cordless and apparently knew Sully’s number.
“Hello? Mrs. Reardon?” (Rih-dunn) “This is Ruth Balliol. Yes. We’ve got your son. He’ll be staying the night. Is that all right? Yes, thank you. You too,” she said, and hung up the phone.
Balliol handed Sully a slice of pizza and motioned for him to sit down. He could tell that his mother hadn’t really bothered to talk to Tina. She must have gone right over her, not allowing her a word in just to make sure Tina couldn’t deny her.
Mother was like that.
It didn’t take Sully long to fall asleep, and when he’d gone to bed in the chair in Balliol’s room, and Swain was long gone, Balliol got out of his room and decided to go down the hall to his parents.
As he was going down the hall, Swain’s door popped open.
“God!” Balliol shouted.
“I was just going to say,” Swain said, “that you can’t let Sully not go to school next year.”
“I didn’t plan to,” Balliol said. “Come with me.”
They went down the hall and down the stairs. John and Ruth kept this whole level for themselves as Balliol usually had the entire third floor and their room was open. The blue light from three televisions was on. Ruth liked to watch the news in England, America and Canada and she came out of bed while they were approaching.
“Your father’s not feeling well,” she told Balliol. “I don’t want to wake him.”
“Oh,” Balliol said. Then: “Call the doctor tomorrow, Mom.”
“I will. I should have called last week. He’s had this throat cough. I thought it was allergies at first. What’s up?” She looked at the two cousins.
“One small thing. I could do it myself, but it’s better if you do it.”
“Hum?” she said.
“It’s about Sully.”
Sully was out when the red Miata parked in front of the house on Jury Street. Tina Reardon didn’t know anyone who drove a Miata, and wondered who it could be. And then the door opened and out walked a tall, beautiful woman, black was night, brown-black hair swinging behind her head, a the brim of a great red hat shading half her face. Her stroll dangerous, her handbag before her she came to the door and rung the bell.
Almost against her will, Tina got up to answer the door, and the woman said, in a husky British accent, “Are you Tina Reardon?”
“Yes?” she started uncertainly.
“Well, then I need to talk to you. May I come in?”
Tina let her in without even asking who she was. The beautiful woman looked at the cigarettes on the kitchen table and said. “May I?”
Tina nodded, and then remembered herself and said, “Yes.”
In fact, Tina took one out of the pack, offered it to the woman who lit it. She sat down, exhaling.
“I don’t do it often anymore,” she said. “But I miss it. Please sit,” she instructed Tina.
“We haven’t met properly, and we should have by now. My name is Ruth Balliol.”
Tina’s jaw almost dropped.
“You’re Balliol’s mother.”
“And Balliol’s wife. And—once upon a time—Balliol’s daughter-in-law,” she said. She reached into her purse. “I need you to do something for me. I need you to accept this.”
Tina didn’t understand what the hell was going on. And then she was holding a check in her hands, and she looked from it to the glamorous woman across from her. Now that Tina could see her, brown skin, mahogany eye shadow around dark eyes, and lipstick she thought that this was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. She had no business in this house.
“It’s not right that Sullivan not go to school next year,” Ruth continued. “This is for last year as well as this upcoming one.”
“I can’t take this,” Tina said, pushing the check back.
Ruth understood that what she meant was she wouldn’t take it. She was thinking how originally Lincoln had suggested just giving it to the school anonymously, but Ruth had disagreed. She’d had her reasons for dropping the check off to Tina Reardon face to face.
“Look,” she said. “We are sitting here, you and I. But it isn’t about us. Or about our pride. You’re too proud to take my money. I’m much too proud to have you toss it back. I grew up poorer than you will ever know. Go over to the south side or East End and you’ll see something that looks like where I came from. But here I am because now and again a friend helped me. The fact is that but for luck our shoes could be on the other feet.”
Ruth didn’t believe this for a moment. She’d grown up poor, but she and her sister were both beautiful and ambitious and hadn’t ended up rich by accident. Tina Reardon was homely, lower middle-class and apparently didn’t know how to make ends meet.
“But this is about your son, Sullivan, who is my son’s best friend. Sullivan’s a private young man. He told my son the truth, but it wasn’t easy. I think Lincoln rang it out of him. That’s his way. He gets it from me, and the truth is this is all his money. It’s his gift to his friend, it has nothing to do with us. I don’t mind telling you you’d be a selfish woman to stand in the way of two friends helping each other out.”
Tina was nonplussed. The fact was she’d always been a little afraid of Balliol, but seeing where he got all of his force and command from she was even more afraid of the source. She sat there for some time looking between Ruth, who was finishing the cigarette, blinking slowly, ashing her cigarette, and the check.
“I’ll take it,” she said. “On one condition.”
Ruth’s face betrayed nothing.
“I’ll pay it all back.”
Ruth knew it was important for people to have their pride, but it wasn’t Tina Reardon’s pride she cared about.
“You can have it on two conditions. I know that you do not like my son and never have. This is his money, not mine. I’m here because it just looks better. The first condition is you have to acknowledge that. Not to him, certainly not to your son, but to yourself. The rule he himself has made is that it cannot be paid back. It’s a gift, and the truth is you can’t afford to pay it back and he can afford to never see it again. Simple as that.
“The second condition is this, and it’s about Sullivan. He is Lincoln’s best friend and he is proud, and it wouldn’t do for him to know that Lincoln paid for him to go to school. I think it might even damage their relationship. It’s precarious enough, Lincoln being obviously richer. The last condition is that you must tell Sully that the school has come through on its own and provided him with a scholarship. You mustn’t let him know that this is Lincoln’s money.”
It was a day of surprises. Tina didn’t know what to say. She just blinked a great deal, and then nodded.
“Does everyone comb out their pubes or is it just me?”
They all looked at Mason.
“I mean,” he said, sitting Indian style on his bed, “I was just thinking this morning after I got out of the shower, that maybe I’m the only person who does this?”
Balliol, who had taken up one of Mason’s brushes to tidy up his hair said, “What brush do you do it with?”
“That one,” Mason pointed blithely to the one in Balliol’s hand.
Balliol shrugged and put the brush back down.
“Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” Addison said seriously. “Instead of just having it all wild and shit. I mean, you comb the hair up here, so why wouldn’t you comb the hair down there?”
“Because no one sees the hair down there,” Tommy said, as if this were obvious.
“I have someone,” Addison reminded them, “who sees the hair down there.”
“And besides,” Mason added. “It doesn’t matter if anyone sees it or not. It’s good to look good. To know that you look good, at your best in all places.”
Tommy thought about this a moment and then said, “Well, I guess.”
“Guess my ass,” Balliol sat up in the chair before Mason’s desk. “That’s the most ludicrous bullshit I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Mason’s bedroom door opened and Sully came in, happier than they’d seen him in days.
“Reardon, think fast. Is it good to comb your pubes out or not?”
Sully gaped at them cocking his head like a cross between a fish and a dog on a strange scent.
“See,” Balliol told Mason. “No one does that but you.”
“Actually,” Sully said, “I thought everyone did it.”
Balliol looked at his oldest friend.
“You comb out your crotch hair?”
Sully looked strange and said, “Well, it’s all... bushy and everything.” And then he turned red. “Could we switch the subject?”
“Yes,” Balliol said. “Please.”
“I... uh... I should tell all of you guys. I was just going to tell Bailey the good news because... I had only told him the bad. I wasn’t ready to let everyone know. I keep things to myself, I shouldn’t but—”
“Sullivan!” Mason said.
“I wasn’t supposed to come back to school next year. My mom… She had screwed things up, but it’s all better, and the school gave me a scholarship. ME. I think for being a writer. I just have to get all B’s.”
Balliol didn’t have to act to do his part. This genuinely was a surprise to him, Tina Reardon had embellished and it was Balliol’s first instinct to shout out something. But what he shouted out was, “That’s great, Sully!”
The look on his friend’s face was worth whatever surprise twists Tina had added to Balliol’s gift. Besides, she had to tell him something. Saint Vitus didn’t just give money to kids because they needed it.
“How’s your dad?” Sully said to Balliol.
“You missed the update,” Mason told him.
“Or the downdate,” Balliol amended. “They’re keeping him in hospital a few more days. Running some test. I guess it’s more than a cold.”
“Oh,” Sully said, sounding deflated. He put his hand on Balliol’s shoulder. “Well, they’ve got good doctors. They’ll fix him right up I’ll bet.”
The other boys nodded, and Balliol said, “Of course they will.”
But to Sully his friend didn’t sound very convinced.
“Where is Swain?” Sully asked.
“Believe it or not,” said Addison, “she’s hanging out with Bonnie.”
“I don’t believe it,”
Balliol turned to him and said, “You really brush your stuff...? Down there?”
“I think this subject is closed,” Sully told him.
“I think it ought to be,” said Tommy.
There was a knock on the door and Mark Powers and Sidney stuck their heads in. Sidney looked untroubled, but anxiety was all over Mark’s face.
“Lincoln, come out here a second,” Sidney told him.
Balliol got up, and a few seconds later, the other boys came out as well. Ruth Balliol, Swain and Bonnie Metzger were in the living room, and though Ruth seemed untroubled and Swain came and touched Mason’s hand, Bonnie’s face was a little wild. Ruth and her son were the same height. She was beautiful, but not dressed up, her hair tied in a ponytail.
“We should go back,” Tommy said.
“We should just hang in the hallway where we can’t be seen,” Swain modified, and they left the living room, watching Ruth, Balliol, Sidney and Mark.
“You all can stay here,” Ruth said. “Mr. Darrow has already said if you want to you can stay the night. I’m going back with your father.”
Balliol nodded.
Sully looked at Mason. They both felt like things were moving around them, like they didn’t know what was going on. When Ruth left, Sully looked at Mason, the old best friend to the new best friend.
“Go to him,” Mason said, pushing Sully.
Sully nodded and went into the living room to stand beside Balliol who was still at the door.
“Bailey?”
“He has throat cancer,” Balliol said simply. “Advanced.”
Sully didn’t know what to say. So he turned and clenching his hands, kissed him on both cheeks and his forehead, and then held him a moment before letting him go.
They were the oldest of friends and understood each other almost, sometimes, sort of and kind of thoroughly and completely.
So now and again, they could get away with things like that.