Boys and Girls Together: A Novel

  P.T. had been a customer at Randy’s since long before he could afford it, and he had been aware of the place’s existence, and what it was, since he was a child. He was born and brought up right around the corner, and one of his early games had been simply to hoot at the rich men from St. Louis as they hurried out of Randy’s at two or three o’clock on a summer morning. P.T.’s home was an oblong room—fifth floor, 71 steps—with a single dark window where he lived (lived?) with his father and his father’s monkey, a surly brown bundle of hair named Belinda. P.T. had never known his mother; either she had died or the oblong room had proved too much for her to bear. When he was young he had been afraid to ask his father for the truth, and when he was old enough to shame his fear his father’s mind had started playing tricks so the answer was unreliable.

  Since home was someplace you didn’t go, P.T. spent his life on the streets. They were dangerous streets, but not to him; he was big and he was strong and he was fast and he was smart so he was safe. He roamed, scavenged, stole, alone or with a pack, by day or by night, and it seemed only inevitable that he would, according to the countless fat housewives who screamed it at his fleeing form after he had tipped their garbage cans for laughs, “rot in the jailhouse with the other scum.”

  P.T. had no intention of rotting. And there were signs. School, for example. He liked school. Not the work, not the studying, but the building itself. He liked being inside it, warm on cool days, cool on hot. He was never absent or tardy, and although his grades were indifferent, there were occasional flashes of a mind operating behind the darting eyes. More than one teacher took him aside, urging hopefully, whispering, “Now, Phineas, if you would just apply yourself, if you would only try, Phineas ...” So the mind was capable of survival and certainly the body was strong, but what gave P.T. his confidence was that he had dreams. Great sun-drenched dreams.

  He was going to be a soldier.

  A general someday, but before that a captain, a decorated captain, chest bursting with ribbons and stars, a stern captain, hard, but beloved by his men. He attempted enlistment when he and the century were both twelve, but although they were kind to him he knew he had made himself a fool. Two years later, when the Great War broke, P.T. used to pray at night that it would wait for him. Thoughtfully, it did. Within the week after St. Louis and the rest of the country declared war, P.T. marched with tears in his eyes to meet his glory.

  He had flat feet.

  The shock of being rejected was too great to cause pain. P.T. wandered dumbly along the streets of East St. Louis, the ribbons and stars withering, falling from his chest row by row. If, during this mute journey, some intimate had seen him and asked him to join in a robbery or a mugging, P.T. would have likely gone along, and from there, who knows? But luck was with him (luck was always with him, only he did not know it yet), for at precisely four-fifteen on that April afternoon of nineteen and seventeen, P. T. Kirkaby stumbled (quite literally) into his salvation.

  It was a toaster.

  Someone had left a toaster on the sidewalk, and P.T., blind, had stumbled over it. For a moment he was tempted to kick it to bits with his fiat feet, but he didn’t. Instead he stared at it—it didn’t look all that old—eventually stooping, picking it up, tucking it under a strong arm. Then he began to wander again. At half past five he paused on the sidewalk in front of Kindall’s Garage.

  “Hey, P.T.” P.T. turned at the sound of George Kindall’s voice. George had been a friend, more or less, in high school, until he quit at the age of sixteen to tend his father’s garage.

  “Hey, George.”

  “Watchagot?”

  “Toaster.”

  “Looks broke.”

  “Is.”

  “Hey, you enlisting today?”

  “Flat feet.”

  “Oh. Sorry, P.T.”

  “Can I use the toolroom?”

  “Why not.”

  P.T. nodded and walked to the toolroom in the rear of the garage, closing the door tight behind him. Setting the toaster on a workbench, he examined it a while. He had no actual knowledge of its workings, but soon he started taking it apart, confident that he could get it back together without much trouble; he had faith in his fingers. And wires and bolts and plugs never bothered him much; he understood them somehow. This part just had to fit into that one, and the two of them together went snugly over this dingus here. Like that. He understood. Concentrating fully on the toaster left no room in his mind for the beaten captain. First making certain that the door to the toolroom was still shut, P.T. began to sing.

  The sound was surprising. It seemed to have no connection with his speaking voice, which was ordinary. The singing voice was sweet and pure and most at home with Irish ballads. “The Last Rose of Summer” or poor, fat “Molly Malone.” It was his father’s voice—theirs were so similar as to be identical—and on occasional evenings when the monkey was still, they would sing old songs, sitting close together in the oblong room, harmonizing tenderly until the crazy lady living downstairs banged her broom into her cracked ceiling, quieting them.

  At a few minutes after six, P.T. left the toolroom, toaster in hand. “George?” he called.

  “All finished?” P.T. looked around, finally locating the feet extending from below the running board of a black Chevrolet. P.T. waited, and in a moment George Kindall rolled out into view. “Fix it?”

  P.T. held out the toaster. “Better ’n new.”

  “Buy it from you?” P.T. was about to say “You can have it,” but again luck was with him (luck was always with him), because before he could speak George Kindall said, “A buck,” and he reached into his overall pocket, pulling out the money.

  “Done,” P.T. said, and they swapped.

  “If it don’t work, I get my money back.”

  “Yeah-yeah-yeah.”

  “O.K. See you, P.T.”

  “See you, George.” He left the garage and started slowly toward the oblong room. Halfway there he stopped dead. Jerking the grease-stained bill from his pocket, he stared at it. A dollar! And for what? Just a little tinkering. Hell, at that rate he could be a millionaire in no time.

  It was almost that simple.

  The next morning he was up by dawn, scavenging from the streets. By noon he had found an iron and several coffeepots and by nightfall he had fixed and sold them, “Better ’n new.” Profit: six dollars. By the end of the first week he had made nineteen dollars. The following week he entered into negotiations with a small junk shop on the South Side, so after that he didn’t have to scavenge anymore. He worked all day every day in the toolroom of the garage, paying George Kindall five dollars per week for rent. When he had a group of appliances in working order, he would wander the streets shouting “Better ’n new! Better ’n new!” until he had customers enough to go around. Inside of three months the junk shop he had dealt with could not supply him sufficiently, so he struck a bargain with another, then another. By January the toolroom in the garage was too small, so he rented a loft and set to work there, working nights now, straining his brute’s body to the limit. “ ... if you would only apply yourself, Phineas ... if you would only try ...”

  Phineas tried.

  The brain that lurked behind the darting eyes grew tired of sleeping; day and night it burned. P.T. slaved sixteen hours a day, and in November 1918, when the war was over, the image of the soldier was dead. He watched the returning heroes as they marched the streets of St. Louis and he felt neither envy nor pain. Because he had money now. And he was going to have more. By his twentieth birthday he could afford the highest-priced girls at Randy’s on a biweekly basis, and how many who were twenty could do that? Damn few. Damn few. He had a staff now, three mechanics working under him, and they worked, not as hard as he did, of course, but he was P.T. Kirkaby and look out up there. Before he was twenty-two he opened his first store, on a side street in East St. Louis. (He wasn’t ready to make the move across the Mississippi yet; not quite yet.) Painted across the entirety of the store front,
in great white letters, was his name—K I R K A B Y—and underneath that, in letters slightly smaller, BETTER ’N NEW. The store did surprisingly well, but not well enough for P.T., and, several months later, when a sales representative thought to interest him in buying new appliances in large lots and selling them for less than standard price, P.T. was way ahead of him. But he feigned doubt, got a better deal, and from then on there was no stopping him. He sold decent stuff and he sold cheap, so the housewives loved him. He had three stores before another year went by, and the week of his twenty-fifth birthday P. T. Kirkaby rented a suite in the Park Plaza Hotel, where the rich people lived. It was a glorious day for him, the only difficult moments being caused by his father, who did not understand much of what was going on and who was deathly afraid of elevators. The old man tried fleeing across the lobby, and P.T. had to grab him and lift him into the elevator, where his father trembled, eyes closed, until the journey to the eleventh floor was safely over. P.T. had six stores by that time, half of them in St. Louis proper (he had crossed the Mississippi now), the largest of all being right on Maryland Avenue in the midst of the most expensive shops in town. He never failed to smile when he saw, at night, his name—KI R K A B Y—flashing red on Maryland Avenue.

  On their second date P.T. took Emily Harding to watch the Cardinals play the Giants. He bought peanuts and hot dogs and when the game was about to begin he nudged her, gesturing toward the Giant manager. “There he is,” P.T. said, awed. “There’s McGraw.”

  “Yes,” Emily said. “Of course.”

  “You never heard of John McGraw?” P.T. was stunned. McGraw was one of his special heroes, along with Fairbanks and (privately) John McCormack. Shaking his head, he handed her some peanuts.

  “Thank you,” she said, but it was immediately evident that she did not know what to do with them. She glanced several times at P.T.’s big hands, at the way his fingers pressed sharply on the proper seam, making the shell split. Then she tried it herself, suddenly talking very fast. “I had no idea baseball could be so much fun. I really never thought it. I’m not much of an athlete, I’m afraid. Of course I played field hockey at school, but then everyone played field hockey at school.”

  “Like this.” P.T. demonstrated his peanut technique.

  “Oh yes, I see now,” but she still could not do it. Finally she dropped the peanuts to the concrete. “I know I must look silly, but my father was very strict. He would never let me come to this kind of thing. You understand that.”

  But the game had started and P.T. was not aware of her talking until she pulled several times at his arm. “What?”

  “I was just asking about your father.”

  “What about my father?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that you never mentioned him. So I wondered ...” She shrugged.

  Dead. That was what she was asking. “Yes.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  P.T. nodded and turned back to the game. They sat in silence through the rest of the inning, and when the Cardinals took the field P.T. said, “He’s alive.”

  “Pardon?”

  “He’s alive!” Why so loud? “My father. He’s retired now but he’s alive. He played the organ. He was a musician. A fine musician. O.K.?” She was looking at him and he didn’t much like it, so he shoved the peanuts at her and said, “Have some more lobster,” and, happily, she laughed.

  That night, after he had pulled his Packard to a halt in her driveway but before she had a chance to push at the door-handle, he kissed her. She was surprised and at first made token resistance, but as his strong arms held her in their circle, she honestly faced her own desire and kissed him back. When that was done, P.T. walked her up the stone steps to the great front door. Awkwardly, he kissed her hand (Fairbanks did it better) and probably it was funny, but she did not laugh.

  Later, P.T. stood outside Randy’s, frozen. He was unable to think why he was unable to move, so he simply stood still, waiting. Eventually a gang of children began hooting at him from across the street and their derision freed him. P.T. reached into his pocket, scattered a handful of change into the street, roared as the children scrambled for the silver. Turning abruptly, he returned to his Packard and drove back to the Park Plaza Hotel, singing.

  They were married in merciless heat and honeymooned for three months in Europe. P.T. spent a fortune—“You’re only nouveau riche once”—and on their return their house in the suburbs was finished, so they all moved in, P.T. and Emily and Emily’s Negro maid and P.T.’s father and an English couple named Saunders, who were to be the first in an endless stream of servants. In their second year of marriage Emily gave birth to their first son and three years later Walt came along, but between the two the crash came, hitting P.T. hard for a while. Three stores had to be closed and two more were on the verge, though he managed to avoid the shattering losses that claimed most of his competitors. Emily gave a lot of parties in between her seemingly constant social work, and the marriage looked exemplary for several years. It wasn’t, of course, but the initial decay went unnoticed. It was not until their seventh-anniversary party, at which P.T. arrived late, drunk and with several female companions, that his whoring became very common knowledge. Once it surfaced, however, he no longer took pains to hide it—Emily’s public humiliations were almost ritual now—and people took to shaking their heads in silent commiseration whenever Emily walked by.

  Once—it was the day after a swimming party at the Kirkaby pool at which P.T. had struck Emily (it was the first time he had ever done that, in public)—Emily’s best friend, Adele Hosquith, asked her point-blank why she put up with it all. Emily—who was probably the person at the party least surprised by P.T.’s action since he was always at his crudest right after he had “been bad” (her word for it)—was embarrassed by the question and tried not to answer. But when Adele pursued, Emily simply stated what she understood to be true: that although he was undeniably at times somewhat less kind than she would wish, still, her admiration of him and for him was more than sufficient to cover any occasional imperfections. But underneath the explanation lay sadness, for the first time he had been bad (they had not been married a year) he had come to her and told her, painfully, explicitly. He told her and stood before her, waiting, a gigantic moppet, impatient, almost, for his whipping. And she should have whipped him, she knew that now. She should have doled him his expected portion of scorn. But she piled his plate high with forgiveness, and that night, when he wept in her arms, she joyously mistook his hatred for penitential tears.

  When Emily first noticed the small lump on the underside of her left breast she immediately decided not to think about it. She was vaguely aware of the possibility of the lump being a harbinger of a certain disease (the clean image of a crab flashed across her mind, but she would not think the word) but she doubted it. No one in her family had ever had the disease (dirty thing) and, besides, she was still under forty and it was an old people’s sickness. There was no question about it: the lump would go away. To make absolutely certain that it would, she vowed never to look at her left breast again.

  P.T. discovered it, months later. They were (for some reason) in her bed and his hands moved slowly across her body. Suddenly the hands stopped.

  “Hey,” P.T. said.

  She pulled away from him.

  “Hold still.”

  She tried getting up.

  “I said ‘still.’ ” Forcing her back, he flicked on the bedlight. “What the hell.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “You’re a doctor?”

  “Please.”

  In answer, he took her gently in his arms. “Hey, honey?”

  “What?” she said, though she knew what he wanted. A checkup. Just a little checkup, huh? Take a little trip to Chicago and let them have a look at you. Emily resisted, but he had no intention of losing, so eventually she succumbed. She took the train to Chicago, where P.T. had arranged for a suite at the Ambassador East, and she toured the Art Institute and bought
some clothes on Michigan Avenue and went to the theater twice and after a week the doctors were done testing. A sweet Jew named Berger was in charge, and when he called her into his office they lied to each other for a while.

  “I’m going to be absolutely honest with you,” Dr. Berger said. Lie number one.

  “I want you to be.” Number two.

  “Well, it could be a lot worse.” Number three.

  “I believe you.” Four.

  They went through seventeen lies without once mentioning that name (Emily stopped counting after seventeen), and when they were all done they both smiled and shook hands and as she waved goodbye and started for the elevator she knew she was a dead woman. Back at the hotel, she was tempted to call P.T. but she did not. Instead she packed, paid her bill and took a taxi to the railroad station. She arrived in St. Louis at a few minutes before seven and took another taxi to her home. P.T. was out, but the boys were glad to see her and she talked and played with them until they tired. Then she put them both to bed. After that she unpacked, carefully folding her clothes into their proper drawers. She showered, dried herself thoroughly, ran a comb through her hair. Finally, naked (no sense in hiding it anymore), she lay down in the dark to wait. She waited from ten till eleven till one till two, motionless, staring at the ceiling, feeling it build all the while inside her. She would gladly have waited a month or a year because the look on his face was going to be worth it. When P.T. came home at three she made no sound of welcome. She listened, rather, to the sounds of his undressing. When he entered their room and turned on the overhead light, she still did not move. He did, though. He saw her and his mouth dropped and he stumbled with surprise.